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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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Main-belt Comet
User:RMCD bot/subject notice Main-belt comets (MBCs) are bodies orbiting within the asteroid belt that have shown comet-like activity during part of their orbit. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory defines a main-belt asteroid as an asteroid with a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) of more than 2 AU but less than 3.2 AU, and a perihelion (closest approach distance to the Sun) of no less than 1.6 AU. David Jewitt from UCLA points out that these objects are most likely not comets with sublimating ice, but asteroids that exhibit dust activity, and hence he and others started calling these class of objects active asteroids. The first main-belt comet discovered is 7968 Elst–Pizarro. It was discovered in 1979 and was found to have a tail by Eric Elst and Guido Pizarro in 1996 and given the cometary designation 133P/Elst-Pizarro.
  • 1.1K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Life Quality Index
The Life Quality Index (LQI) is a calibrated compound social indicator of human welfare that reflects the expected length of life in good health and enhancement of the quality of life through access to income. The Life Quality Index combines two primary social indicators: the expectancy of healthy life at birth, E, and the real gross domestic product per person, G, corrected for purchasing power parity as appropriate. Both are widely available and accurate statistics.
  • 1.4K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Gendered Associations of Pink and Blue
The colors pink and blue are associated with girls and boys respectively, in the United States, the United Kingdom and some other European countries. Originating as a trend in the mid-19th century and applying primarily to clothing, gendered associations with pink and blue became more widespread from the 1950s onward. Since the 1990s, these gendered associations have also increasingly applied to toys as well, especially in the case of pink toys for girls. Despite popular belief—including from various academic and popular sources—a reported "pink-blue reversal", wherein the gendered associations of both colors were "flipped" sometime during the 20th century, most likely never occurred, and instead is likely to have been a misunderstanding of earlier reporting.
  • 3.7K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Burt’s Solar Compass
Burt's solar compass is a surveying instrument that makes use of the sun's direction instead of magnetism. William Austin Burt invented his solar compass in 1835. It is a device which allows a person to find the north direction from the position of a shadow. The reason for this instrument was to get away from the erratic readings of a normal magnetized compass when in a local land territory of high iron ore content. The instrument was found to be so accurate that it was the choice of the United States government when surveying public lands, state boundaries, and railroad routes. It won awards from various organizations for its technology. It was used by surveyors from the nineteenth century into the twentieth century.
  • 1.7K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Petya and NotPetya
Petya is a family of encrypting malware that was first discovered in 2016. The malware targets Microsoft Windows–based systems, infecting the master boot record to execute a payload that encrypts a hard drive's file system table and prevents Windows from booting. It subsequently demands that the user make a payment in Bitcoin in order to regain access to the system. Variants of Petya were first seen in March 2016, which propagated via infected e-mail attachments. In June 2017, a new variant of Petya was used for a global cyberattack, primarily targeting Ukraine . The new variant propagates via the EternalBlue exploit, which is generally believed to have been developed by the United States . National Security Agency (NSA), and was used earlier in the year by the WannaCry ransomware. Kaspersky Lab referred to this new version as NotPetya to distinguish it from the 2016 variants, due to these differences in operation. In addition, although it purports to be ransomware, this variant was modified so that it is unable to actually revert its own changes. The NotPetya attacks have been blamed on the Russian government, specifically the Sandworm hacking group within the GRU Russian military intelligence organization, by security researchers, Google, and several governments.
  • 3.8K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
CLIP
CLIP (cross-linking immunoprecipitation) is a method used in molecular biology that combines UV cross-linking with immunoprecipitation in order to analyse protein interactions with RNA or to precisely locate RNA modifications (e.g. m6A). CLIP-based techniques can be used to map RNA binding protein binding sites or RNA modification sites of interest on a genome-wide scale, thereby increasing the understanding of post-transcriptional regulatory networks.
  • 2.0K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) is the independent body that checks on standards and quality in UK higher education. It conducts quality assessment reviews, develops reference points and guidance for providers, and conducts or commissions research on relevant issues. QAA checks how universities, colleges and alternative providers of UK higher education maintain their academic standards and quality. It does this through external peer review. Reviewers check that the 19 expectations of the Quality Code, agreed and recognised by the UK higher education sector, are met. It also provides advice to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, on institutions' requests for degree awarding powers and the right to be called a university. In addition to its role in sustaining the reputation of UK higher education, QAA also regulates the Access to Higher Education Diploma, a qualification that enables individuals without A Levels or the usual equivalent to enter higher education. QAA works closely with other organisations that have an interest in the reputation of UK higher education, including the Higher Education Academy, Universities UK and GuildHE.
  • 1.4K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Take This Lollipop
Take This Lollipop is a 2011 interactive horror short film and Facebook app written and directed by Jason Zada. It uses the Facebook Connect application to bring viewers themselves into the film, through use of pictures and messages from their own Facebook profiles. Starring actor Bill Oberst Jr. as 'The Facebook Stalker', the film acts to personalize and underscore the dangers inherent in posting too much personal information about oneself on the internet. The information gathered from a viewer's Facebook profile by the film's app is used once, and then deleted. The title is derived from the 1963 song "Please Little Girl Take This Lollipop", written and performed by singer-songwriter Bobby Jameson, which is used in the film. According to Zada, Take This Lollipop was taken offline "a few months" prior to August 2018. The film's website now hosts a Facebook post by him, saying that the data needed had become "quite hard to access" and had affected the functionality of the film.
  • 10.1K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Bilaminar Blastocyst
Bilaminar blastocyst or bilaminar disc refers to the epiblast and the hypoblast, evolved from the embryoblast. These two layers are sandwiched between two balloons: the primitive yolk sac and the amniotic cavity. The inner cell mass, the embryoblast, begins to transform into two distinct epithelial layers just before implantation occurs. The epiblast is the outer layer that consists of columnar cells. The inner layer is called the hypoblast, or primitive endoderm, which is composed of cuboidal cells. As the two layers become evident, a basement membrane presents itself between the layers. The final two layers of the embryoblast are known collectively as the bilaminar embryonic disc as well as the bilaminar blastocyst or bilaminar blastoderm. This bilaminar blastocyst also defines the primitive dorsal ventral axis. Blastocyst implantation will occur during the second week of fetal development in the endometrium of the uterus; the epiblast is dorsal and the hypoblast is ventral.
  • 7.0K
  • 19 May 2023
Topic Review
Buddhism and Theosophy
Theosophical teachings have borrowed some concepts and terms from Buddhism. Some theosophists like Helena Blavatsky, Helena Roerich and Henry Steel Olcott also became Buddhists. Henry Steel Olcott helped shape the design of the Buddhist flag. Tibetan Buddhism was popularised in the West at first mainly by Theosophists including Evans-Wentz and Alexandra David-Neel. Blavatsky sometimes compared Theosophy to Mahayana Buddhism. In The Key to Theosophy she writes:
  • 2.5K
  • 19 Oct 2022
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