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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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Anchorite
An anchorite or anchoret (female: anchoress; adj. anchoritic; from Ancient Greek:, anachōrētḗs, "one who has retired from the world", from the verb ἀναχωρέω, anachōréō, signifying "to withdraw", "to retire") is someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, or Eucharist-focused life. Whilst anchorites are frequently considered to be a type of religious hermit, unlike hermits they were required to take a vow of stability of place, opting instead for permanent enclosure in cells often attached to churches. Also unlike hermits, anchorites were subject to a religious rite of consecration that closely resembled the funeral rite, following which they would be considered dead to the world, a type of living saint. Anchorites had a certain autonomy, as they did not answer to any ecclesiastical authority other than the bishop. The anchoritic life is one of the earliest forms of Christian monasticism. In the Catholic Church today, it is one of the "Other Forms of Consecrated Life" and governed by the same norms as the consecrated eremitic life. From the 12th to the 16th centuries, female anchorites consistently outnumbered their male equivalents, sometimes by as many as four to one (in the 13th century), dropping eventually to two to one (in the 15th century). The sex of a high number of anchorites, however, is not recorded for these periods.
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  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Historical Climatology
Historical climatology is the study of historical changes in climate and their effect on civilization from the emergence of hominins to the present day. This differs from paleoclimatology which encompasses climate change over the entire history of Earth. These historical impacts of climate change can improve human life and cause societies to flourish, or can be instrumental in civilization's societal collapse. The study seeks to define periods in human history where temperature or precipitation varied from what is observed in the present day. The primary sources include written records such as sagas, chronicles, maps and local history literature as well as pictorial representations such as paintings, drawings and even rock art. The archaeological record is equally important in establishing evidence of settlement, water and land usage.
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  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Hollywood Indian
The Hollywood Indian is a fictitious stock character, a stereotype and representation of Native Americans used in television and movies, especially in the Western genre. The image of the Hollywood Indian reflects contemporary and historical Native American popular culture. Closely connected to myths and images created about Native Americans and the Wild West, the stereotype has undergone significant changes from the beginning of cinema to the present day.
  • 2.5K
  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Sutra
Sutra (Sanskrit: सूत्र, romanized: sūtra, lit. 'string, thread') in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text. Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In Hinduism, sutras are a distinct type of literary composition, a compilation of short aphoristic statements. Each sutra is any short rule, like a theorem distilled into few words or syllables, around which teachings of ritual, philosophy, grammar, or any field of knowledge can be woven. The oldest sutras of Hinduism are found in the Brahmana and Aranyaka layers of the Vedas. Every school of Hindu philosophy, Vedic guides for rites of passage, various fields of arts, law, and social ethics developed respective sutras, which help teach and transmit ideas from one generation to the next. In Buddhism, sutras, also known as suttas, are canonical scriptures, many of which are regarded as records of the oral teachings of Gautama Buddha. They are not aphoristic, but are quite detailed, sometimes with repetition. This may reflect a philological root of sukta (well spoken), rather than sutra (thread). In Jainism, sutras also known as suyas are canonical sermons of Mahavira contained in the Jain Agamas as well as some later (post-canonical) normative texts.
  • 5.1K
  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Oracle Policy Automation
Oracle Policy Automation (abbreviated OPA) is a suite of software products for modeling and deploying business rules within enterprise applications. Oracle Corporation acquired OPA in December 2008 when it purchased Australian software company RuleBurst Holdings, then trading as Haley. Oracle Policy Automation was designed by RuleBurst to transform legislation and policy documents into executable business rules, particularly for the calculation of benefit entitlements and payment amounts. Although OPA was originally developed for and sold to the public sector, it can be used in other industries. Oracle Policy Automation continues to be available as a standalone offering and an integrated rules solution for SAP and Siebel.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Starlink Project
The Starlink Project, referred to by users as Starlink and by developers as simply The Project, was a United Kingdom astronomical computing project which supplied general-purpose data reduction software. Until the late 1990s, it also supplied computing hardware and system administration personnel to UK astronomical institutes. In the former respect, it was analogous to the United States IRAF project. The project was formally started in 1980, though the funding had been agreed, and some work begun, a year earlier. It was closed down when its funding was withdrawn by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in 2005. In 2006, the Joint Astronomy Centre released its own updated version of Starlink and took over maintenance; the task was passed again in mid-2015 to the East Asian Observatory. The latest version was released on 2018 July 19. Part of the software is relicensed under the GNU GPL while some of it remain under the original custom licence.
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  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Coon Creek Formation
The Coon Creek Formation is a geologic formation located in western Tennessee and extreme northeast Mississippi. It is a sedimentary sandy marl deposit, Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) in age, about 70 million years old. The formation is known for producing mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, particularly at Coon Creek in McNairy County, Tennessee, which the formation is named for. Additionally, the formation produces many other marine invertebrates such as Turritella and the state fossil of Tennessee, the bivalve Pterotrigonia thoracica, as well as other fossils such as crabs.
  • 1.0K
  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Time Geography
Time geography or time-space geography is an evolving transdisciplinary perspective on spatial and temporal processes and events such as social interaction, ecological interaction, social and environmental change, and biographies of individuals. Time geography "is not a subject area per se", but rather an integrative ontological framework and visual language in which space and time are basic dimensions of analysis of dynamic processes. Time geography was originally developed by human geographers, but today it is applied in multiple fields related to transportation, regional planning, geography, anthropology, time-use research, ecology, environmental science, and public health. According to Swedish geographer Bo Lenntorp: "It is a basic approach, and every researcher can connect it to theoretical considerations in her or his own way."
  • 3.4K
  • 13 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Derailleur Gears
Derailleur gears are a variable-ratio transmission system commonly used on bicycles, consisting of a chain, multiple sprockets of different sizes, and a mechanism to move the chain from one sprocket to another. Although referred to as gears in the bike world, these bicycle gears are technically sprockets since they drive or are driven by a chain, and are not driven by one another. Modern front and rear derailleurs typically consist of a moveable chain-guide that is operated remotely by a Bowden cable attached to a shifter mounted on the down tube, handlebar stem, or handlebar. When a rider operates the lever while pedalling, the change in cable tension moves the chain-guide from side to side, "derailing" the chain onto different sprockets. For more information about the choice of particular gear ratios and sprocket sizes, see Bicycle gearing.
  • 1.5K
  • 16 Nov 2022
Topic Review
TI MSP430
The MSP430 is a mixed-signal microcontroller family from Texas Instruments, first introduced on 14 February 1992. Built around a 16-bit CPU, the MSP430 is designed for low cost and, specifically, low power consumption embedded applications.
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  • 16 Nov 2022
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