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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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QuickView
QuickView is a file viewer in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems. The viewer can be used to view practically any file. The software has been ported by third parties to support XP, Vista and 7. On 1995-04-03, InfoSoft International, Inc., announced the acquisition of Systems Compatibility Corporation, and the renaming of InfoSoft International, Inc. to Inso Corporation. Inso Corporation later developed Quick View Plus products.
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Greenhouse Gas Footprint
The Greenhouse gas footprint, or GHG footprint, refers to the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted during the creation of products or services. Human activities are one of the main causes of greenhouse gas. These increase the earth's temperature and are emitted from fossil fuel usage in electricity and other byproducts of manufacturing. The major effects mainly consist of climate changes, such as extreme precipitation and acidification and warming of oceans. Climate change has been occurring since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1820s. Due to humans' heavy reliance on fossil fuels, energy usage, and constant deforestation, the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is increasing, which makes reducing a greenhouse gas footprint harder to achieve. However, there are several ways to reduce one's greenhouse gas footprint, such as using more energy efficient household appliances, increase usage of fuel efficient cars, and saving electricity.
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Form of Action
The forms of action were the different procedures by which a legal claim could be made during much of the history of the English common law. Depending on the court, a plaintiff would purchase a writ in Chancery (or file a bill) which would set in motion a series of events eventually leading to a trial in one of the medieval common law courts. Each writ entailed a different set of procedures and remedies which together amounted to the "form of action". The forms of action were abolished during the 19th century, but they have left an indelible mark on the law. In the early Middle Ages, the focus was on the procedure that was employed to bring one's claim to the royal courts of King's Bench or Common Pleas: it was the form of one's action, not its substance, which occupied legal discussion. This restrictive approach is one of the reasons which attracted litigants to petition the King directly, which eventually led to the development of a separate court known as the Court of Chancery, from which the body of law known as equity derives. Modern English law, as in most other legal systems, now looks to substance rather than to form: a claimant need only demonstrate that he or she has a valid cause of action.
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Verb–Subject–Object
In linguistic typology, a verb–subject–object (VSO) language is one in which the most typical sentences arrange their elements in that order, as in Ate Sam oranges (Sam ate oranges). VSO is the third-most common word order among the world's languages, after SOV (as in Hindi and Japanese) and SVO (as in English and Mandarin). Families where all or many of the languages are VSO include the following: Spanish resembles Semitic languages such as Arabic in allowing for both VSO and SVO structures: "Jesús vino el jueves"/"Vino Jesús el jueves, "Tu madre dice que no vayas"/"Dice tu madre que no vayas". Many languages, such as Greek, have relatively free word order, where VSO is one of many possible orders. Low level programming languages such as assembly tend to follow VSO order in how they assign bits in a memory word. Although the bit sizes vary between architectures, the general form consists of an opcode (verb) followed by a combination of memory or register addresses (subjects) and/or values (objects).
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Religion of the Indus Valley Civilization
Religion of the Indus Valley Civilization ("IVC") is a debated topic and remains a matter of speculation. If the Indus script is ever deciphered, this may provide clearer evidence. The first excavators of the IVC were struck by the absence of obvious temples or other evidence of religion, and there remain no examples of buildings generally agreed by scholars to have had a religious function, although some suggestions of religious use have been made. The religion and belief system of the Indus Valley people have received considerable attention, especially from the view of identifying precursors to deities and religious practices of Indian religions that later developed in the area. However, due to the sparsity of evidence, which is open to varying interpretations, and the fact that the Indus script remains undeciphered, the conclusions are partly speculative and many are largely based on a retrospective view from a much later Hindu perspective. Geoffrey Samuel, writing in 2008, finds all attempts to make "positive assertions" about IVC religions as conjectural and intensely prone to personal biases — at the end of the day, scholars knew nothing about Indus Valley religions. An early and influential work in the area that set the trend for Hindu interpretations of archaeological evidence from the Harappan sites was that of John Marshall, who in 1931 identified the following as prominent features of the Indus religion: a Great Male God and a Mother Goddess; deification or veneration of animals and plants; symbolic representation of the phallus (linga) and vulva (yoni); and, use of baths and water in religious practice. Marshall's interpretations have been intensely critiqued, and most of his specific details have failed to stand the test of time. Yet, claims Asko Parpola, Marshall's conclusions have been generally accepted. Contemporary scholars (most significantly, Parpola) continue to probe the roles of the IVC in the formation of Hinduism; others remain ambivalent of these results.    
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  • 13 May 2025
Topic Review
Tetrapod
Tetrapods (/ˈtɛtrəˌpɒdz/; from grc τετρα- (tetra-) 'four', and πούς (poús) 'foot') are four-limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (/tɛˈtrɒpədə/). It includes extant and extinct amphibians, reptiles (including dinosaurs and therefore birds), and synapsids (including mammals). Tetrapods evolved from a group of animals known as the Tetrapodomorpha which, in turn, evolved from ancient lobe-finned (sarcopterygian) fish around 390 million years ago in the middle Devonian period; their forms were transitional between lobe-finned fishes and the four-limbed tetrapods. Limbed vertebrates (tetrapods in the broad sense of the word) are first known from Middle Devonian trackways, and body fossils became common near the end of the Late Devonian but these were all aquatic. The first crown-tetrapods (last common ancestors of extant tetrapods capable of terrestrial locomotion) appeared by the very early Carboniferous, 350 million years ago. The specific aquatic ancestors of the tetrapods and the process by which they colonized Earth's land after emerging from water remains unclear. The change from a body plan for breathing and navigating in water to a body plan enabling the animal to move on land is one of the most profound evolutionary changes known. Tetrapods have numerous anatomical and physiological features that are distinct from their aquatic ancestors. These include the structure of the head for feeding and breathing, limb girdles and digits for locomotion, eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, and the heart and lungs for gas circulation and exchange outside water. The first tetrapods (stem) or "fishapods" were primarily aquatic. Modern amphibians, which evolved from earlier groups, are generally semiaquatic; the first stage of their lives is as fish-like tadpoles, and later stages are partly terrestrial and partly aquatic. However, most tetrapod species today are amniotes, most of which are terrestrial tetrapods whose branch evolved from earlier tetrapods early in the Late Carboniferous. The key innovation in amniotes over amphibians is the amnion, which enables the eggs to retain their aqueous contents on land, rather than needing to stay in water. (Some amniotes later evolved internal fertilization, although many aquatic species outside the tetrapod tree had evolved such before the tetrapods appeared, e.g. Materpiscis.) Some tetrapods, such as snakes and caecilians, have lost some or all of their limbs through further speciation and evolution; some have only concealed vestigial bones as a remnant of the limbs of their distant ancestors. Others returned to being amphibious or otherwise living partially or fully aquatic lives, the first during the Carboniferous period, others as recently as the Cenozoic. One group of amniotes diverged into the reptiles, which includes lepidosaurs, dinosaurs (which includes birds), crocodilians, turtles, and extinct relatives; while another group of amniotes diverged into the mammals and their extinct relatives. Amniotes include the tetrapods that further evolved for flight—such as birds from among the dinosaurs, pterosaurs from the archosaurs, and bats from among the mammals.
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Modern Pascal
Modern Pascal (sometimes stylized as ModernPascal) is a closed source, cross-platform, interpreter, compiler, and runtime system (environment) for command line, server-side and networking applications. Modern Pascal applications are written in Pascal and Object Pascal, and can be run within the Modern Pascal runtime on the operating systems Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, Solaris and DOS/32. Its work is hosted and supported by the 3F, LLC and partner MP Solutions, LLC. Modern Pascal provides a blocking I/O application programming interface (API) technology commonly used for operating system applications. Modern Pascal CodeRunner contains a built-in library to allow applications to act as a Web server without software such as Apache HTTP Server or Internet Information Services (IIS).
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
AirPort Time Capsule
The AirPort Time Capsule (originally named Time Capsule) was a wireless router sold by Apple Inc., featuring network-attached storage (NAS) and a residential gateway router, and is one of Apple's AirPort products. They are, essentially, versions of the AirPort Extreme with an internal hard drive. Apple describes it as a "Backup Appliance", designed to work in tandem with the Time Machine backup software utility introduced in Mac OS X 10.5. Introduced on January 15, 2008 and released on February 29, 2008, the device has been upgraded several times, matching upgrades in the Extreme series routers. The earliest versions supported 802.11n wireless and came with a 500 GB hard drive in the base model, while the latest model, introduced in 2013, features 802.11ac and a 3 TB hard drive. All models include three Gigabit Ethernet ports and a single USB port. The USB port can be used for external peripheral devices to be shared over the network, such as external hard drives or printers. The NAS functionality utilizes a built-in "server grade" hard drive. On April 26, 2018, Bloomberg News announced that Apple Inc. entire AirPort line had been discontinued without replacement.
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Archery Games
These novelty forms of archery are generally regarded as amusements, and, as such, are not governed by organizationally-sanctioned rules.
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  • 04 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Osmium-191
Osmium (76Os) has seven naturally occurring isotopes, five of which are stable: 187Os, 188Os, 189Os, 190Os, and (most abundant) 192Os. The other natural isotopes, 184Os, and 186Os, have extremely long half-life (1.12×1013 years and 2×1015 years, respectively) and for practical purposes can be considered to be stable as well. 187Os is the daughter of 187Re (half-life 4.56×1010 years) and is most often measured in an 187Os/188Os ratio. This ratio, as well as the 187Re/188Os ratio, have been used extensively in dating terrestrial as well as meteoric rocks. It has also been used to measure the intensity of continental weathering over geologic time and to fix minimum ages for stabilization of the mantle roots of continental cratons. However, the most notable application of Os in dating has been in conjunction with iridium, to analyze the layer of shocked quartz along the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary that marks the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. There are also 30 artificial radioisotopes, the longest-lived of which is 194Os with a half-life of six years; all others have half-lives under 94 days. There are also nine known nuclear isomers, the longest-lived of which is 191mOs with a half-life of 13.10 hours. All isotopes and nuclear isomers of osmium are either radioactive or observationally stable, meaning that they are predicted to be radioactive but no actual decay has been observed.
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  • 08 Nov 2022
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