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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.

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Papier-mache Offering Shops in Hong Kong
Traditional papier-mâché offering shops in Hong Kong sell papier-mâché offering items for sacred purposes and for festival-celebration purposes, the popularity has grown since the 1940s. Nowadays, the demand of papier sacred products is reducing and thus papier-mâché shops and the entire papier-mâché industry are facing declinate.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Quaternary Numeral System
A quaternary /kwəˈtɜːrnəri/ numeral system is base-4. It uses the digits 0, 1, 2 and 3 to represent any real number. Four is the largest number within the subitizing range and one of two numbers that is both a square and a highly composite number (the other being 36), making quaternary a convenient choice for a base at this scale. Despite being twice as large, its radix economy is equal to that of binary. However, it fares no better in the localization of prime numbers (the smallest better base being the primorial base six, senary). Quaternary shares with all fixed-radix numeral systems many properties, such as the ability to represent any real number with a canonical representation (almost unique) and the characteristics of the representations of rational numbers and irrational numbers. See decimal and binary for a discussion of these properties.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Power-System Protection
Power-system protection is a branch of electrical power engineering that deals with the protection of electrical power systems from faults through the disconnection of faulted parts from the rest of the electrical network. The objective of a protection scheme is to keep the power system stable by isolating only the components that are under fault, whilst leaving as much of the network as possible still in operation. Thus, protection schemes must apply a very pragmatic and pessimistic approach to clearing system faults. The devices that are used to protect the power systems from faults are called protection devices.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Biography
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He was one of the first to explore the study of the human being as an aspect of natural history. His teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to his classification of human races, of which he claimed there were five, Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, an
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Magellan's Circumnavigation
In 1519, the Portuguese naval officer and explorer Ferdinand Magellan led a Spanish expedition to find a western route to the East Indies and reach the Moluccas or Spice Islands (in present day Indonesia) with a fleet known as the Armada de Molucca. After the death of Magellan in the Philippines in 1521 and following several other short-lived leaderships, Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the expedition to the Spice Islands and ultimately across the Indian Ocean and up the Atlantic ocean back to Spain, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the world in 1522. The expedition is therefore also known as the Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation. The goal of the expedition was to find a western route to the Moluccas (Spice Islands) and trade for spices. Magellan left Spain on 20 September 1519, sailed across the Atlantic, and discovered the strait that now bears his name, allowing him to pass through the southern tip of South America into the Pacific Ocean (which he named). The fleet performed the first ever crossing of the Pacific, stopping in what is today called the Philippines , and eventually reached the Moluccas, accomplishing its goal. A much-depleted crew finally returned to Spain on 6 September 1522. The fleet initially consisted of about 270 men and five ships: four carracks and one caravel. The expedition faced numerous hardships including mutinies, starvation, scurvy, storms, and hostile encounters with indigenous people. Magellan died in battle in the Philippine islands and was succeeded as captain-general by a series of officers, with Juan Sebastián Elcano leading the trip onward to Spain. He and seventeen other men in one ship (the Victoria) were the only ones to circumnavigate the globe. The expedition was funded mostly by King Charles I of Spain, with the hope that it would discover a profitable western route to the Moluccas, as the eastern route was controlled by Portugal under the Treaty of Tordesillas. Though the expedition did find a route, it was much longer and more arduous than expected, and was therefore not commercially useful. Nevertheless, the first circumnavigation has been regarded as a great achievement in seamanship, and had a significant impact on the European understanding of the world.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Biography
Charles Lee Isbell, Jr.
Charles Lee Isbell Jr. is an American computationalist, researcher, and educator. He has been a professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing since 2002, and since July 2019 serves as the College's dean. His research interests focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, particularly interactive and human-centered AI. He has published over 100 scientific papers.
  • 1.9K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Hoverfly
Hoverflies, also called flower flies or syrphid flies, make up the insect family Syrphidae. As their common name suggests, they are often seen hovering or nectaring at flowers; the adults of many species feed mainly on nectar and pollen, while the larvae (maggots) eat a wide range of foods. In some species, the larvae are saprotrophs, eating decaying plant and animal matter in the soil or in ponds and streams. In other species, the larvae are insectivores and prey on aphids, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects. Insects such as aphids are considered a crop pest, and therefore the aphid-eating larvae of some hover flies serve as an economically (as well as ecologically) important predator and even potential agents for use in biological control, while the adults may be pollinators. About 6,000 species in 200 genera have been described. Hoverflies are common throughout the world and can be found on all continents except Antarctica. Hoverflies are harmless to most mammals, though many species are mimics of stinging wasps and bees, a mimicry which may serve to ward off predators.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Communalism
Communalism usually refers to a system that integrates communal ownership and federations of highly localized independent communities. A prominent libertarian socialist, Murray Bookchin, defines the Communalism political philosophy that he developed as "a theory of government or a system of government in which independent communes participate in a federation", as well as "the principles and practice of communal ownership". The term 'government' in this case does not imply an acceptance of a State or top-down hierarchy. This usage of communalism appears to have emerged during the late 20th century to distinguish commune-based systems from other political movements and/or governments espousing (if not actually practicing) similar ideas. In particular, earlier communities and movements advocating such practices were often described as "anarchist", "socialist" and/or "communist". Many historical communities practicing utopian socialism or anarcho-communism did implement internal rules of communalist property ownership in the context of federated communalism. It is at least theoretically possible for a federation of communes to include communes which do not practice communalist rules of property, which is to say, that the overall national government may be a federation of communes, but that private property rather than communalist property is the order within each such commune. Karl Marx, often viewed as the founder of modern communism, criticized older forms, including primitive communism and/or utopian socialism, as poorly conceived and/or prone to disintegration in practice. Communalism in the form described above is distinct from the predominant usage in South Asian forms of English: allegiance to a particular ethnic and/or religious group rather than to a broader society. As such, this usage is synonymous with sectarianism and associated with communal violence.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Strasburg, Virginia
Strasburg /ˈstrɑːzbɜːrɡ/ is a town in Shenandoah County, Virginia, United States , which was founded in 1761 by Peter Stover. It is the largest town by population in the county and is known for its grassroots art culture, pottery, antiques, and American Civil War history. Strasburg has blended the nostalgia of the past with the inspiration of the future. The population was 6,398 at the 2010 census.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Reactive Transport Modeling in Porous Media
Reactive transport modeling in porous media refers to the creation of computer models integrating chemical reaction with transport of fluids through the Earth's crust. Such models predict the distribution in space and time of the chemical reactions that occur along a flowpath. Reactive transport modeling in general can refer to many other processes, including reactive flow of chemicals through tanks, reactors, or membranes; particles and species in the atmosphere; gases exiting a smokestack; and migrating magma.
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