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Yield
In chemistry, yield, also referred to as reaction yield, is a measure of the quantity of moles of a product formed in relation to the reactant consumed, obtained in a chemical reaction, usually expressed as a percentage. Yield is one of the primary factors that scientists must consider in organic and inorganic chemical synthesis processes. In chemical reaction engineering, "yield", "conversion" and "selectivity" are terms used to describe ratios of how much of a reactant was consumed (conversion), how much desired product was formed (yield) in relation to the undesired product (selectivity), represented as X, Y, and S.
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  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Taupo Volcano
Lake Taupo, in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island, is the caldera of a large rhyolitic supervolcano called the Taupo Volcano. This huge volcano has produced two of the world’s most violent eruptions in geologically recent times. The Taupo Volcano forms part of the Taupo Volcanic Zone, a region of volcanic activity that extends from Ruapehu in the South, through the Taupo and Rotorua districts, to White Island, in the Bay of Plenty region. Taupo began erupting about 300,000 years ago, but the main eruptions that still affect the surrounding landscape are the Oruanui eruption, about 26,500 years ago, which is responsible for the shape of the modern caldera, and the Hatepe eruption, dated 232 ± 5 CE. However, there have been many more eruptions, with major ones every thousand years or so (see timeline of last 10,000 years of eruptions). Considering recent history alone, the volcano has been inactive for an unusually long period of time, but considering its long-term activity, it was inactive for much longer between 8100 and 5100 BCE (3,000 year inactivity, compared to the current 1,800 years). Some volcanoes within the Taupo Volcanic Zone have erupted far more recently, however, notably a violent VEI-5 eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886, and frequent activity of Whakaari/White Island, which erupted most recently in December 2019.
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  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Bṛhaspati
Bṛhaspati (Sanskrit: बृहस्पति; meaning spati of briha, the spirit of vastness of the universe written as Brihaspati) is an Indian name, and refers to different mythical figures depending on the age of the text. In ancient Hindu literature Brihaspati is a Vedic era sage who counsels the gods, while in some medieval texts the word refers to the largest planet of the solar system, Jupiter. He taught Bhishma the duties of a king which he later taught it to Vidura.
  • 6.7K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Docker
Docker is a set of platform as a service (PaaS) products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. The service has both free and premium tiers. The software that hosts the containers is called Docker Engine. It was first started in 2013 and is developed by Docker, Inc.
  • 2.5K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Devil's Garden (Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument)
The Devil's Garden of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in south central Utah, the United States, is a protected area featuring hoodoos, natural arches and other sandstone formations. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) designated the name Devils Garden—without an apostrophe according to USGS naming conventions—on December 31, 1979. The area is also known as the Devils Garden Outstanding Natural Area within the National Landscape Conservation System. The formations in the Devils Garden were created, and continue to be shaped, by various weathering and erosional processes. These natural processes have been shaping sandstone layers formed more than 166 million years ago during the Jurassic period's Middle epoch. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers the Devils Garden and the entire GSENM which is the first national monument assigned to the BLM.
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  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
World Religions
World religions is a category used in the study of religion to demarcate the five—and in some cases more—largest and most internationally widespread religious movements. Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are always included in the list, being known as the "Big Five". Some scholars also include other world religions, such as Taoism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and/or the Baháʼí Faith, in the category. These are often juxtaposed against other categories, such as indigenous religions and new religious movements, which are also used by scholars in this field of research. The world religions paradigm was developed in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, where it was pioneered by phenomenological scholars like Ninian Smart. It was designed to broaden the study of religion away from its heavy focus on Christianity by taking into account other large religious traditions around the world. The paradigm is often used by lecturers instructing undergraduate students in the study of religion and is also the framework used by school teachers in the United Kingdom and other countries. The paradigm's emphasis on viewing these religious movements as distinct and mutually exclusive entities has also had a wider impact on the categorisation of religion—for instance in censuses—in both Western countries and elsewhere. Since the late 20th century, the paradigm has faced critique by scholars of religion like Jonathan Z. Smith, some of whom have argued for its abandonment. Critics have argued that the world religions paradigm is inappropriate because it takes the Protestant variant of Christianity as the model for what constitutes religion; that it is tied up with discourses of modernity, including modern power relations; that it encourages an uncritical understanding of religion; and that it makes a value judgement as to what religions should be considered "major". Others have argued that it remains useful in the classroom, so long as students are made aware that it is a socially-constructed category.
  • 1.4K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Compact Cassette
The Compact Audio Cassette (CAC) or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the cassette tape or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. It was developed by Philips in Hasselt, Belgium, and released in 1962. Compact cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette, or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms are reversible by the user. The compact cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. The first cassette player (although mono) designed for use in car dashboards was introduced in 1968. Between the early 1970s and the early 2000s, the cassette was one of the two most common formats for prerecorded music, first alongside the LP record and later the compact disc (CD). Compact Cassettes contain two miniature spools, between which the magnetically coated, polyester-type plastic film (magnetic tape) is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell which is 4 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches (10 cm × 6.3 cm × 1.3 cm) at its largest dimensions. The tape itself was commonly referred to as "eighth-inch" tape, supposedly ​1⁄8 inches wide, but it was slightly larger: 0.15 inches (3.81 mm). Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second (pair) when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by flipping the cassette, or by the reversal of tape movement ("auto-reverse") when the mechanism detects that the tape has come to an end.
  • 9.7K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Exonym and Endonym
An exonym (from Greek: éxō, 'outer' + ónuma, 'name'; also known as xenonym) is a common, external name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, or a language/dialect, that is used only outside that particular place, group, or linguistic community. Exonyms not only exist for historico-geographical reasons, but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words. An endonym (from Greek: éndon, 'inner'; also known as autonym) is a common, internal name for a geographical place, group of people, or a language/dialect, that is used only inside the place, group, or linguistic community in question; it is their self-designated name for themselves, their homeland, or their language.
  • 13.2K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Cross-Cultural Psychology
Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Through expanding research methodologies to recognize cultural variance in behavior, language, and meaning it seeks to extend and develop psychology. Since psychology as an academic discipline was developed largely in North America and Europe, some psychologists became concerned that constructs accepted as universal were not as invariant as previously assumed, especially since many attempts to replicate notable experiments in other cultures had varying success. Since there are questions as to whether theories dealing with central themes, such as affect, cognition, conceptions of the self, and issues such as psychopathology, anxiety, and depression, may lack external validity when "exported" to other cultural contexts, cross-cultural psychology re-examines them using methodologies designed to factor in cultural differences so as to account for cultural variance. Some critics have pointed to methodological flaws in cross-cultural psychological research, and claim that serious shortcomings in the theoretical and methodological bases used impede, rather than help the scientific search for universal principles in psychology. Cross-cultural psychologists are turning more to the study of how differences (variance) occur, rather than searching for universals in the style of physics or chemistry. While cross-cultural psychology represented only a minor area of psychology prior to WWII, it began to grow in importance during the 1960s. In 1971, the interdisciplinary Society for Cross-Cultural Research (SCCR) was founded, and in 1972 the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) was established. Since then, this branch of psychology has continued to expand as there has been an increasing popularity of incorporating culture and diversity into studies of numerous psychological phenomena. Cross-cultural psychology is differentiated from cultural psychology, which refers to the branch of psychology that holds that human behavior is strongly influenced by cultural differences, meaning that psychological phenomena can only be compared with each other across cultures to a limited extent. In contrast, cross-cultural psychology includes a search for possible universals in behavior and mental processes. Cross-cultural psychology "can be thought of as a type [of] research methodology, rather than an entirely separate field within psychology". In addition, cross-cultural psychology can be distinguished from international psychology which centers around the global expansion of psychology especially during recent decades. Nevertheless, cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and international psychology are united by a common concern for expanding psychology into a universal discipline capable of understanding psychological phenomena across cultures and in a global context.
  • 2.7K
  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
UNC
UNC is a set of proteins first identified through a set of screening tests in Caenorhabditis elegans, looking for roundworms with movement problems. Worms with which were un-coordinated (hence UNC) were analysed in order to identify the genetic defect. Such proteins include UNC-5, a receptor for UNC-6 which is one of the netrins. Netrins are a class of proteins involved in axon guidance. UNC-5 uses repulsion (genetics) to direct axons while the other netrin receptor UNC-40 attracts axons to the source of netrin production.
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