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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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Corona
A corona (meaning 'crown' in Latin derived from Ancient Greek 'κορώνη' (korōnè, “garland, wreath”)) is an aura of plasma that surrounds the Sun and other stars. The Sun's corona extends millions of kilometres into outer space and is most easily seen during a total solar eclipse, but it is also observable with a coronagraph. Spectroscopy measurements indicate strong ionization in the corona and a plasma temperature in excess of 1000000 kelvin, much hotter than the surface of the Sun. Light from the corona comes from three primary sources, from the same volume of space. The K-corona (K for kontinuierlich, "continuous" in German) is created by sunlight scattering off free electrons; Doppler broadening of the reflected photospheric absorption lines spreads them so greatly as to completely obscure them, giving the spectral appearance of a continuum with no absorption lines. The F-corona (F for Fraunhofer) is created by sunlight bouncing off dust particles, and is observable because its light contains the Fraunhofer absorption lines that are seen in raw sunlight; the F-corona extends to very high elongation angles from the Sun, where it is called the zodiacal light. The E-corona (E for emission) is due to spectral emission lines produced by ions that are present in the coronal plasma; it may be observed in broad or forbidden or hot spectral emission lines and is the main source of information about the corona's composition.
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  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Land Change Modeling
Land change models (LCMs) describe, project, and explain changes in and the dynamics of land use and land-cover. LCMs are a means of understanding ways that humans change the Earth's surface in the past, present, and future. Land change models are valuable in development policy, helping guide more appropriate decisions for resource management and the natural environment at a variety of scales ranging from a small piece of land to the entire spatial extent. Moreover, developments within land-cover, environmental and socio-economic data (as well as within technological infrastructures) have increased opportunities for land change modeling to help support and influence decisions that affect human-environment systems, as national and international attention increasingly focuses on issues of global climate change and sustainability.
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  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Georgism
Georgism, also called in modern times geoism and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land – including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations – should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance which attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice. Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution and the control of commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g. intellectual property). Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of land monopoly involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value, arguing that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (such as on income, trade, or purchases) that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend. The concept of gaining public revenues mainly from land and natural resource privileges was widely popularized by Henry George through his first book, Progress and Poverty (1879). The philosophical basis of Georgism dates back to several early thinkers such as John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Paine. Economists since Adam Smith and David Ricardo have observed that a public levy on land value does not cause economic inefficiency, unlike other taxes. A land value tax also has progressive tax effects. Advocates of land value taxes argue that they would reduce economic inequality, increase economic efficiency, remove incentives to underutilize urban land and reduce property speculation. Georgist ideas were popular and influential during the late 19th and early 20th century. Political parties, institutions and communities were founded based on Georgist principles during that time. Early devotees of Henry George's economic philosophy were often termed Single Taxers for their political goal of raising public revenue mainly or only from a land value tax, although Georgists endorsed multiple forms of rent capture (e.g. seigniorage) as legitimate. The term Georgism was invented later, and some prefer the term geoism as more generic.
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Topic Review
ANK2
Ankyrin-B, also known as Ankyrin-2, is a protein which in humans is encoded by the ANK2 gene. Ankyrin-B is ubiquitously expressed, but shows high expression in cardiac muscle. Ankyrin-B plays an essential role in the localization and membrane stabilization of ion transporters and ion channels in cardiomyocytes, as well as in costamere structures. Mutations in ankyrin-B cause a dominantly-inherited, cardiac arrhythmia syndrome known as ankyrin-B syndrome as well as sick sinus syndrome; mutations have also been associated to a lesser degree with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Alterations in ankyrin-B expression levels are observed in human heart failure.
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  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Herring–Nabarro Creep
Nabarro–Herring creep is a mode of deformation of crystalline materials (and amorphous materials) that occurs at low stresses and held at elevated temperatures in fine-grained materials. In Nabarro–Herring creep (NH creep), atoms diffuse through the crystals, and the creep rate varies inversely with the square of the grain size so fine-grained materials creep faster than coarser-grained ones. NH creep is solely controlled by diffusional mass transport. This type of creep results from the diffusion of vacancies from regions of high chemical potential at grain boundaries subjected to normal tensile stresses to regions of lower chemical potential where the average tensile stresses across the grain boundaries are zero. Self-diffusion within the grains of a polycrystalline solid can cause the solid to yield to an applied shearing stress, the yielding being caused by a diffusional flow of matter within each crystal grain away from boundaries where there is a normal pressure and toward those where there is a normal tension. Atoms migrating in the opposite direction account for the creep strain ([math]\displaystyle{ \epsilon_{NH} }[/math]). The creep strain rate is derived in the next section. NH creep is more important in ceramics than metals as dislocation motion is more difficult to effect in ceramics.
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Topic Review
Laboratory B in Sungul’
Laboratory B in Sungul' was one of the laboratories under the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD (MVD after 1946) that contributed to the Soviet atomic bomb project. It was created in 1946 and closed in 1955, when some of its personnel were merged with the second Soviet nuclear design and assembly facility. It was run as a sharashka – a secret scientific facility run as a prison. Laboratory B employed German scientists from 1947 to 1953. It had two scientific divisions, radiochemistry and radiobiophysics; the latter was headed by the world-renowned geneticist N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij. For two years, the renowned German chemist, Nikolaus Riehl was the scientific director.
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Topic Review
Design Assist
Design Assist is the procurement method by which, prior to completion of design, a construction contract may be awarded on a best value basis pursuant to which a contractor provides design assistance to the architect or engineer of record through a design professional separately retained by the contractor.
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  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Taiaha
A taiaha (Māori pronunciation: [ˈtaiaha]) is a traditional weapon of the Māori of New Zealand; a close-quarters staff weapon made from either wood or whalebone, and used for short, sharp strikes or stabbing thrusts with efficient footwork on the part of the wielder. Taiaha are usually between 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 m) in length. It has three main parts; the arero (tongue), used for stabbing the opponent and parrying; the upoko (head), the base from which the tongue protrudes; and the ate (liver) or tinana (body), the long flat blade which is also used for striking and parrying.
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  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Nickel(II) Precatalysts
Nickel(II) precatalysts are a type of catalyst used in organic reactions. Many transformations are catalyzed by nickel in organometallic chemistry and in organic synthesis. Many of these transformations invoke a low valent (generally Ni(0)) species as the active catalyst. Unfortunately, unlike its counterpart, Pd(0), Ni(0) catalysts are predominantly confined to the glovebox due to their high instability to air and water, with the most common Ni(0) catalyst being Ni(cod)2. Additionally, Ni(cod)2 is more expensive than many Ni(II) salts and the quality varies significantly amongst suppliers. To make nickel catalysis more accessible and amenable to synthesis and industrial purposes, the use of air-stable Ni(II) precursors has emerged as an important development in this area of research. This page describes the more commonly employed nickel(II) precatalysts, their synthesis for those not commercially available, and the methods for their reduction to Ni(0) complexes.
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Topic Review
Tollmann's Hypothetical Bolide
Alexander Tollmann's bolide, proposed by Kristan-Tollmann and Tollmann in 1994, is a hypothesis presented by Austrian geologist Alexander Tollmann, suggesting that one or several bolides (asteroids or comets) struck the Earth at 7640 BCE (±200), with a much smaller one at 3150 BCE (±200). If true, this hypothesis explains early Holocene extinctions and possibly legends of the Universal Deluge. The claimed evidence for the event includes stratigraphic studies of tektites, dendrochronology, and ice cores (from Camp Century, Greenland) containing hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid (indicating an energetic ocean strike) as well as nitric acids (caused by extreme heating of air). Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas in their book, Uriel's Machine, argue that the 7640 BCE evidence is consistent with the dates of formation of a number of extant salt flats and lakes in dry areas of North America and Asia. They argue that these lakes are the result remains of multiple-kilometer-high waves that penetrated deeply into continents as the result of oceanic strikes that they proposed occurred.
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