HandWiki | Encyclopedia MDPI

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.

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Biography

Julius Edgar Lilienfeld

Julius Edgar Lilienfeld (April 18, 1882 – August 28, 1963) was a Jewish Austro-Hungarian-born German-American physicist and electronic engineer, credited with the first patents on the field-effect transistor (FET) (1925) and electrolytic capacitor (1931). Because of his failure to publish articles in learned journals and because high-purity semiconductor materials were not available yet, his

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10 Nov 2022

Biography

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari (Hebrew: יובל נח הררי‎, [juˈval ˈnoaχ (h)aˈʁaʁi]; born 24 February 1976) is an Israeli historian and a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[1] He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Centu

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10 Nov 2022

Biography

Michael E. Mann

Michael Evan Mann (born December 28, 1965) is an American climatologist and geophysicist,[1] currently director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, who has contributed to the scientific understanding of historic climate change based on the temperature record of the past thousand years. He has pioneered techniques to find patterns in past climate change, and to is

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10 Nov 2022

Topic Review

List of Plants Used in Cherokee Ethnobotany

This is a list of plants documented to have been traditionally used by the Cherokee, and how they are used.

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10 Nov 2022

Topic Review

American Petroleum Institute

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent about 650 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the petroleum industry. The association describes its mission as to influence public policy in support of a strong, viable U.S. oil and natural gas industry. API's chief functions on behalf of the industry include advocacy, negotiation and lobbying with governmental, legal, and regulatory agencies; research into economic, toxicological, and environmental effects; establishment and certification of industry standards; and education outreach. API both funds and conducts research related to many aspects of the petroleum industry. The current CEO and president is Mike Sommers.

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10 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Cerberin

Cerberin is a type of cardiac glycoside, a steroidal class found in the seeds of the dicotyledonous angiosperm genus Cerbera; including the suicide tree (Cerbera odollam) and the sea mango (Cerbera manghas). This class includes digitalis-like agents, channel-blockers that as a group have found historic uses as cardiac treatments, but which at higher doses are extremely toxic; in the case of cerberin, consumption of the C. odollam results in poisoning with presenting nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, often leading to death. The natural product has been structurally characterized, its toxicity is clear—it is often used as an intentional human poison in third-world countries, and accidental poisonings with fatalities have resulted from individuals even indirectly consuming the agent—but its potentially therapeutic pharmacologic properties are very poorly described.

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10 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Loan-Out Corporation

A Loan-Out corporation, also known as a Loan-Out Company, or Personal service corporation, is a form of United States business entity in which the creator is an 'employee' whose services are loaned out by the corporate body. The creator of the corporation are typically the sole shareholder, and thus the corporation is used as a means to reduce their personal liability, protect their assets and exploit taxation advantages. Loan-Out corporations are especially prominent in the entertainment and professional sports industries, as the creator's services are typically performed on individual contract bases, and receive large, irregular sums of income throughout the year. The corporate body is engaged by external third parties to fulfil services, rather than the individual directly. Consequently, it is the creator's Loan-Out Corporation that is referred to and liable in contracts to perform the services required.

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10 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Mooring (Watercraft)

A mooring refers to any permanent structure to which a vessel may be secured. Examples include quays, wharfs, jetties, piers, anchor buoys, and mooring buoys. A ship is secured to a mooring to forestall free movement of the ship on the water. An anchor mooring fixes a vessel's position relative to a point on the bottom of a waterway without connecting the vessel to shore. As a verb, mooring refers to the act of attaching a vessel to a mooring. The term likely stems from the Dutch verb meren (to moor), used in English since the end of the 15th century.

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10 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boat

A rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) or rigid-inflatable boat (RIB) is a lightweight but high-performance and high-capacity boat constructed with a solid, shaped hull and flexible tubes at the gunwale. The design is stable and seaworthy. The inflatable collar allows the vessel to maintain buoyancy if a large quantity of water is shipped aboard due to bad sea conditions. The RIB is a development of the inflatable boat. Uses include work boats (supporting shore facilities or larger ships) in trades that operate on the water, military craft, where they are used in patrol roles and to transport troops between vessels or ashore, and lifeboats.

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10 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a wide-field survey reflecting telescope with an 8.4-meter primary mirror, currently under construction, that will photograph the entire available sky every few nights. The word synoptic is derived from the Greek words σύν (syn "together") and ὄψις (opsis "view"), and describes observations that give a broad view of a subject at a particular time. The telescope uses a novel 3-mirror design, a variant of three-mirror anastigmat, which allows a compact telescope to deliver sharp images over a very wide 3.5-degree diameter field of view. Images will be recorded by a 3.2-gigapixel CCD imaging camera, the largest digital camera ever constructed. The telescope is located on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón, a 2,682-meter-high mountain in Coquimbo Region, in northern Chile , alongside the existing Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes. The LSST Base Facility is located about 100 kilometres (62 mi) away by road, in the town of La Serena. The LSST was proposed in 2001, and construction of the mirror began (with private funds) in 2007. LSST then became the top-ranked large ground-based project in the 2010 Astrophysics Decadal Survey, and the project officially began construction 1 August 2014 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) authorized the FY2014 portion ($27.5 million) of its construction budget. The ceremonial laying of the first stone was performed on 14 April 2015. Site construction began on April 14, 2015, with engineering first light anticipated in 2019, science first light in 2021, and full operations for a ten-year survey commencing in January 2022. LSST, unlike almost all previous large astronomical observatories, has committed to making all data public as soon as it is taken. In their words "By providing immediate public access to all the data it obtains, it will provide everyone, the professional and the “just curious” alike, a deep and frequent window on the entire sky."

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10 Nov 2022

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