Summary

HandWiki is the world's largest wiki-style encyclopedia dedicated to science, technology and computing. It allows you to create and edit articles as long as you have external citations and login account. In addition, this is a content management environment that can be used for collaborative editing of original scholarly content, such as books, manuals, monographs and tutorials.

Expand All
Entries
Topic Review
Sarahsaurus
Sarahsaurus is a genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur which lived during the Early Jurassic period in what is now northeastern Arizona, United States.
  • 1.2K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Drama Therapy
Drama therapy is the use of theatre techniques to facilitate personal growth and promote mental health. Drama therapy is used in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, schools, mental health centers, prisons, and businesses. Drama therapy, as a modality of the creative arts therapies, exists in many forms and can apply to individuals, couples, families, and various groups.
  • 3.1K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Tensile Testing
Tensile testing, also known as tension testing, is a fundamental materials science and engineering test in which a sample is subjected to a controlled tension until failure. Properties that are directly measured via a tensile test are ultimate tensile strength, breaking strength, maximum elongation and reduction in area. From these measurements the following properties can also be determined: Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, yield strength, and strain-hardening characteristics. Uniaxial tensile testing is the most commonly used for obtaining the mechanical characteristics of isotropic materials. Some materials use biaxial tensile testing. The main difference between these testing machines being how load is applied on the materials.
  • 3.5K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Automated Similarity Judgment Program
The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) is a collaborative project applying computational approaches to comparative linguistics using a database of word lists. The database is open access and consists of 40-item basic-vocabulary lists for well over half of the world's languages. It is continuously being expanded. In addition to isolates and languages of demonstrated genealogical groups, the database includes pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, and constructed languages. Words of the database are transcribed into a simplified standard orthography (ASJPcode). The database has been used to estimate dates at which language families have diverged into daughter languages by a method related to but still different from glottochronology, to determine the homeland (Urheimat) of a proto-language, to investigate sound symbolism, to evaluate different phylogenetic methods, and several other purposes. ASJP is not widely accepted among historical linguists as an adequate method to establish or evaluate relationships between language families. It is part of the Cross-Linguistic Linked Data project hosted by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  • 1.3K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Circassian Beauties
Circassian beauty or Adyghe beauty (Adyghe: Адыгэ пшъашъэ, romanized: Adıgə pş̂aş̂ə) is a stereotype and a belief used to refer to an idealized image of the women of the Circassian people of the Northwestern Caucasus. A fairly extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were thought to be unusually beautiful, spirited, and elegant, and as such were desirable as concubines. This reputation dates back to the Late Middle Ages, when the Circassian coast was frequented by traders from Genoa, and the founder of the Medici dynasty, Cosimo de' Medici, had an illegitimate son from a Circassian slave. During the Ottoman Empire and Persian Safavid and Qajar dynasties, Circassian women living as slaves in the Sultan's Imperial Harem and Shah's harems started to build their reputation as extremely beautiful and genteel, which then became a common trope in Western Orientalism. As a result of this reputation, in Europe and America Circassians were often characterised as ideals of feminine beauty in poetry and art. Cosmetic products were advertised, from the 18th century on, using the word "Circassian" in the title, or claiming that the product was based on substances used by the women of Circassia. In consequence, most wives of several Ottoman Sultans were ethnic Circassians converted to Islam, e.g. Valide Sultans (Empress mothers), including Perestü Valide Sultan, Şevkefza Valide Sultan, Tirimüjgan Valide Sultan, Nükhetseza Başhanımefendi, other important Hatuns (Ladies) and Sultans like Şemsiruhsar Hatun and Saçbağlı Sultan, Haseki sultans (chief consorts) such as Hümaşah Haseki Sultan, Hatice Muazzez Haseki Sultan, and Ayşe Haseki Sultan besides numerous Başkadınefendis (most senior consorts), including Bedrifelek I, Bidar II, Kamures I, and Servetseza I as well as Kadınefendis (senior consorts) such as Bezmara VI, Düzdidil III, Hayranıdil II, Meyliservet IV, Mihrengiz II, Neşerek III, Nurefsun II, Reftaridil II, Şayan III, amongst many others, or İkbals (honoured lady consorts), most notable of them being Cevherriz II, Ceylanyar II, Dilfirib I, Nalanıdil III, and Nergis IV in addition to Gözdes (favourite lady consorts), including Dürdane I, Hüsnicenan III, Safderun IV, amongst others. The "golden age" of the Circassian beauty may be considered to be between the 1770s, when the Russian Empire seized the Crimean Khanate and cut off their slave trade, which increased the demand for Circassian women in Near Eastern harems; and the 1860s, when the Russians massacred thousands of Circassians and conquered Circassia. In the 1860s the showman P. T. Barnum exhibited women who he claimed were Circassian beauties. They wore a distinctive curly, big hair style, which had no precedent in earlier portrayals of Circassians, but which was soon copied by other female performers in the United States, who became known as "moss-haired girls". This hair style was a sort of exhibit's trademark and was achieved by washing the hair of women in beer, drying it and then teasing it. It is not clear why Barnum chose this hairstyle. It may have been a reference to the Circassian fur hat, rather than the hair. There were also several classical Turkish music pieces and poems that praise the beauty of the Circassian ethnic group like "Lepiska Saçlı Çerkes" (Straight, flaxen-haired Circassian; "lepiska" refers to long blonde hair which is straight, as if flatironed). As a foreign group, they were always praised in Turkey for what they labeled as distinct and pure European features.
  • 10.8K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Electric Beacon
In navigation, an electric beacon (or electromagnetic beacon) is a kind of beacon, a device which marks a fixed location and allows direction finding equipment to find relative bearing, the direction to the beacon. The most common are radio beacons, which broadcast a radio signal which is picked up by radio direction finding systems on ships, aircraft and vehicles to determine the bearing to the beacon, but the term also covers infrared and sonar beacons.
  • 902
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Entity–Component–System
Entity–component–system (ECS) is an architectural pattern that is mostly used in game development. ECS follows the composition over inheritance principle that allows greater flexibility in defining entities where every object in a game's scene is an entity (e.g. enemies, bullets, vehicles, etc.). Every Entity consists of one or more components which add behavior or functionality. Therefore, the behavior of an entity can be changed at runtime by adding or removing components. This eliminates the ambiguity problems of deep and wide inheritance hierarchies that are difficult to understand, maintain and extend. Common ECS approaches are highly compatible and often combined with data-oriented design techniques.
  • 3.9K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Jupiter (Rocket Family)
The Jupiter family of super heavy-lift launch vehicles was part of the proposed DIRECT Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle architecture. It was intended to be the alternative to the Ares I and Ares V rockets which were under development for the US Project Constellation. Major benefits were projected from re-using as much hardware and facilities from the Space Shuttle program as possible, including cost savings, experience with existing hardware, and preserving the workforce.
  • 1.7K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Matrix Metallopeptidase
Matrix metallopeptidases (MMPs), also known as matrix metalloproteinases or matrixins, are metalloproteinases that are calcium-dependent zinc-containing endopeptidases; other family members are adamalysins, serralysins, and astacins. The MMPs belong to a larger family of proteases known as the metzincin superfamily. Collectively, these enzymes are capable of degrading all kinds of extracellular matrix proteins, but also can process a number of bioactive molecules. They are known to be involved in the cleavage of cell surface receptors, the release of apoptotic ligands (such as the FAS ligand), and chemokine/cytokine inactivation. MMPs are also thought to play a major role in cell behaviors such as cell proliferation, migration (adhesion/dispersion), differentiation, angiogenesis, apoptosis, and host defense. They were first described in vertebrates (1962), including humans, but have since been found in invertebrates and plants. They are distinguished from other endopeptidases by their dependence on metal ions as cofactors, their ability to degrade extracellular matrix, and their specific evolutionary DNA sequence. Recently matrix metalloproteinases have been proposed as markers of many pathological conditions for their ability to degrade extracellular matrix components and remodel tissues. Herein, MMPs have been reported as one of the main factors of cancer progression and metastasis formation. This led to the emerging research field in biosensors development for the detection of such enzymes.
  • 1.1K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Superspreader
A superspreader is an unusually contagious organism infected with a disease. In the context of a human-borne illness, a superspreader is an individual who is more likely to infect others, compared with a typical infected person. Such superspreaders are of particular concern in epidemiology. Some cases of superspreading conform to the 80/20 rule, where approximately 20% of infected individuals are responsible for 80% of transmissions, although superspreading can still be said to occur when superspreaders account for a higher or lower percentage of transmissions. In epidemics with such superspreader events (SSEV), the majority of individuals infect relatively few secondary contacts. SSEVs are shaped by multiple factors including a decline in herd immunity, nosocomial infections, virulence, viral load, misdiagnosis, airflow dynamics, immune suppression, and co-infection with another pathogen. Children, who can superspread measles disease, appear not to superspread SARS-CoV-2. In fact, some children appear to have a form of immunity from the more recent disease.
  • 646
  • 23 Nov 2022
  • Page
  • of
  • 863

Other Entry Collections

>>