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Science is a strict systematic discipline that builds. And organizes knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the "world." Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: the natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, and biology), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by, axioms and rules. There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines, as they do not rely on empirical evidence. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and "medicine." (Full article...)
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Image 1A sample of strepsirrhine diversity; eight biological genera are depicted (from top, left to right): Lemur, Propithecus, Daubentonia, Varecia, Microcebus, †Darwinius, Loris, Otolemur
Strepsirrhini or Strepsirhini (/ˌstrɛpsəˈraɪni/ ; STREP-sə-RY-nee) is a suborder of primates that includes the lemuriform primates, which consist of the lemurs of Madagascar, galagos ("bushbabies") and pottos from Africa, and the lorises from India and southeast Asia. Collectively they are referred to as strepsirrhines. Also belonging to the suborder are the extinct adapiform primates which thrived during the Eocene in Europe, North America, and Asia, but disappeared from most of the Northern Hemisphere as the climate cooled. Adapiforms are sometimes referred to as being "lemur-like", although the diversity of both lemurs and adapiforms does not support this comparison. (Full article...) -
Image 2Lightning Bar (1951–1960) was an American Quarter Horse who raced and subsequently became a breeding stallion. He was bred by his lifelong owner Art Pollard of Sonoita, Arizona, and was the offspring of Three Bars, a Thoroughbred, and Della P, a Quarter Horse mare from Louisiana, then noted for the breeding of sprint horses. Lightning Bar raced ten times, achieving four victories and four other top-three finishes. His racing career was cut short by illness after only one year, following which he spent two years as a show horse. As a breeding stallion, he sired seven crops, or years, of foals, among whom Doc Bar was the best known. In 1960 Lightning Bar died of an intestinal infection at the age of nine. He was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Association's (AQHA) Hall of Fame in 2008. (Full article...)
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The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Britain from 1903 until 1910. It involved the infiltration of University of London medical lectures by Swedish feminists, battles between medical students and the police, police protection for the statue of a dog, a libel trial at the Royal Courts of Justice, and the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the use of animals in experiments. The affair became a cause célèbre that divided the country. (Full article...) -
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A portion of the C-38 canal, finished in 1971, now backfilled to restore the Kissimmee River floodplain to a more natural state
An ongoing effort to remedy damage inflicted during the 20th century on the Everglades, a region of tropical wetlands in southern Florida, is the most expensive and comprehensive environmental repair attempt in history. The degradation of the Everglades became an issue in the United States in the early 1970s after a proposal to construct an airport in the Big Cypress Swamp. Studies indicated the airport would have destroyed the ecosystem in South Florida and Everglades National Park. After decades of destructive practices, both state and federal agencies are looking for ways to balance the needs of the natural environment in South Florida with urban and agricultural centers that have recently and rapidly grown in and near the Everglades. (Full article...) -
Image 5Helium (from Greek: ἥλιος, romanized: helios, lit. 'sun') is a chemical element; it has symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is the lowest among all the elements, and it does not have a melting point at standard pressures. It is the second-lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe, after hydrogen. It is present at about 24% of the total elemental mass, which is more than 12 times the mass of all the heavier elements combined. Its abundance is similar to this in both the Sun and Jupiter, because of the very high nuclear binding energy (per nucleon) of helium-4, with respect to the next three elements after helium. This helium-4 binding energy also accounts for why it is a product of both nuclear fusion and radioactive decay. The most common isotope of helium in the universe is helium-4, the vast majority of which was formed during the Big Bang. Large amounts of new helium are created by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars. (Full article...)
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The rainbow pitta (Pitta iris) is a small passerine bird in the pitta family, Pittidae, endemic to northern Australia, most closely related to the superb pitta of Manus Island. It has a velvet black head with chestnut stripes above the eyes, olive green upper parts, black underparts, a bright red belly and an olive green tail. An Australian endemic, it lives in the monsoon forests and in some drier eucalypt forests. (Full article...) -
Image 7Male at Head Marala, Punjab, Pakistan
The Sind sparrow (Passer pyrrhonotus) is a passerine bird of the sparrow family, Passeridae, found around the Indus valley region in South Asia. Its name refers to the province of Sindh, and it is also known as the jungle, Sind jungle, or rufous-backed sparrow. Very similar to the related house sparrow, it is smaller and has distinguishing plumage features. As in the house sparrow, the male has brighter plumage than female and young birds, including black markings and a grey crown. Distinctively, the male has a chestnut stripe running down its head behind the eye, and the female has a darker head than other sparrow species. Its main vocalisations are soft chirping calls that are extended into longer songs with other sounds interspersed by breeding males. Historically, this species was thought to be very closely related to the house sparrow, but its closest evolutionary affinities may lie elsewhere. The species was discovered around 1840, but went undetected for several decades afterwards. (Full article...) -
Image 8Location of Fernando de Noronha, the island group to which Noronhomys was endemic.
Noronhomys vespuccii, also known as Vespucci's rodent, is an extinct rat species from the islands of Fernando de Noronha off northeastern Brazil. Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci may have seen it on a visit to Fernando de Noronha in 1503, but it subsequently became extinct, perhaps because of the exotic rats and mice introduced by the first explorers of the island. Numerous but fragmentary fossil remains of the animal, of uncertain but probably Holocene age, were discovered in 1973 and described in 1999. (Full article...) -
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Newberry Volcano is a large, active, shield-shaped stratovolcano located about 20 miles (32 km) south of Bend, Oregon, United States, 35 miles (56 km) east of the major crest of the Cascade Range, within the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Its highest point is Paulina Peak. Newberry is the largest volcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc, with an area of 1,200 square miles (3,100 km) when its lava flows are taken into account. From north to south, the volcano has a length of 75 miles (121 km), with a width of 27 miles (43 km) and a total volume of approximately 120 cubic miles (500 km). It was named for the geologist and surgeon John Strong Newberry, who explored central Oregon for the Pacific Railroad Surveys in 1855. (Full article...) -
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Agaricus deserticola, commonly known as the gasteroid agaricus, is a species of fungus in the family Agaricaceae. Found only in southwestern and western North America, A. deserticola is adapted for growth in dry or semi-arid habitats. The fruit bodies are secotioid, meaning the spores are not forcibly discharged, and the cap does not fully expand. Unlike other Agaricus species, A. deserticola does not develop true gills, but rather a convoluted and networked system of spore-producing tissue called a gleba. When the partial veil breaks or pulls away from the stem or the cap splits radially, the blackish-brown gleba is exposed, which allows the spores to be dispersed. (Full article...) -
Image 11The Mary Rose as depicted in the Anthony Roll. It has the distinct carrack profile with high "castles" fore and aft. Although the number of guns and gun ports is not exact, it is an overall accurate illustration of the ship as it appeared in the 1540s.
The Mary Rose was a carrack in the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She was launched in 1511 and served for 34 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight. (Full article...) -
Image 12G. tibicen hypoleuca, Tasmania
The Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) is a black and white passerine bird native to Australia and southern New Guinea, and introduced to New Zealand, and the Fijian island of Taveuni. Although once considered to be three separate species, it is now considered to be one, with nine recognised subspecies. A member of the Artamidae, the Australian magpie is placed in its own genus Gymnorhina and is most closely related to the black butcherbird (Melloria quoyi). It is not closely related to the European magpie, which is a corvid. (Full article...) -
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The common chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita), or simply the chiffchaff, is a common and widespread leaf warbler which breeds in open woodlands throughout northern and temperate Europe and the Palearctic. (Full article...) -
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Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne disease caused by dengue virus, prevalent in tropical and subtropical areas. It is frequently asymptomatic; if symptoms appear they typically begin 3 to 14 days after infection. These may include a high fever, headache, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin itching and skin rash. Recovery generally takes two to seven days. In a small proportion of cases, the disease develops into severe dengue (previously known as dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome) with bleeding, low levels of blood platelets, blood plasma leakage, and dangerously low blood pressure. (Full article...) -
Image 15Reconstructed skeleton on display in the Royal Ontario Museum
Massospondylus (/ˌmæsoʊˈspɒndɪləs/ mas-oh-SPON-di-ləs; from Greek, μάσσων (massōn, "longer") and σπόνδυλος (spondylos, "vertebra")) was a genus of sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Early Jurassic (Hettangian to Pliensbachian ages, ca. 200–183 million years ago). It was described by Sir Richard Owen in 1854 from remains discovered in South Africa, and is thus one of the first dinosaurs to have been named. Fossils have since been found at other locations in South Africa, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe. Material from Arizona's Kayenta Formation, India, and Argentina has been assigned to the genus at various times, but the Arizonan and Argentinian material are now assigned to other genera. (Full article...)
Featured pictures
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Image 2Archaeologists prospecting Santa Ana Cave at Excavation (archaeology), by Mario modesto (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 3Section of the Large Hadron Collider, by Maximilien Brice (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 4Animation of a water drop, by Chris 73 and Gmaxwell (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 6Peruvian Andes at United States Exploring Expedition, by Alfred Thomas Agate (edited by Durova) (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 8Global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance at Primary production, by SeaWiFS Project (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 12Vibrating glass beam at Euler–Bernoulli beam theory, by Ben pcc (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 13Projectile motion of a bouncing ball at Inelastic collision, by MichaelMaggs (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 14Toroid magnets of the ATLAS detector, by Maximilien Brice, CERN (edited by Bammesk) (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 18NASA study on wingtip vortices at Wake turbulence, by Langley Research Center (edited by Fir0002) (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 20Translational motion at Thermodynamic temperature, by Greg L (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 21Drop impact on a liquid surface, by José Manuel Suárez (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 22Kármán vortex street, by Cesareo de La Rosa Siqueira (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 24Nobel Prize in Physics diploma, by Sofia Gisberg (restored by Jebulon) (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 25Archaeological excavation at Atapuerca Mountains, by Mario modesto (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 26Simulation of liquids with different viscosities, by Synapticrelay (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 30Parallax, by Mila Zinkova (edited by Richard Bartz) (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 31Color cathodoluminescence of a diamond, by Pavel.Somov (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Image 35Mechanical advantage device, by Prolineserver (edited by Tomia, Ss181292 and Atropos235) (from XIV:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Vital articles
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Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups. (Full article...)
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Did you know...
- ... that Research Policy is regarded as the leading journal in the field of innovation studies?
- ... that the vast majority of fiction, including science fiction, takes place on Earth?
- ... that West Virginia nursing professor Christine Elizabeth Abrahamsen wrote science-fiction and Gothic novels under the pseudonyms Christabel and Kathleen Westcott?
- ... that the Science Fiction Awards Database also covers fantasy and horror?
- ... that Brian Stableford blamed the cancellation of the follow-up to his 2006 book Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia on the availability of information online?
- ... that fiction about journeys to the Moon has been written since at least the second century?
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Science News
- 3 July 2024 –
- Scientists announce the discovery of the world's oldest cave painting, depicting three people gathered around a large red pig, estimated to be at least 51,200 years old, in Leang Karampurang cave in the Maros-Pangkep region, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. (Al Jazeera)
- 20 June 2024 – 2024 in archosaur paleontology
- Researchers announce the discovery the Lokiceratops rangiformis, a dinosaur species named after the Norse god Loki, in North America. The findings are published in the journal PeerJ. (ABC News)
- 20 June 2024 –
- The International Union for Conservation of Nature announces that the Iberian lynx has been upgraded from endangered to vulnerable for the first time since 1986, after a 2023 census showed a population of 2,021 animals. (BBC News)
- 5 June 2024 –
- Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko becomes the first human to spend 1,000 days in outer space. (AP)
- 17 May 2024 –
- Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope discover the earliest known merging of black holes, 740 million years after the Big Bang. (AP)
- 15 May 2024 – Discoveries of exoplanets
- Scientists announce the discovery of SPECULOOS-3 b, an Earth-size exoplanet that orbits a red dwarf star that has a similar size as Jupiter. (Space.com)
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Image 1The Blue Marble, Apollo 17, December 1972
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust. The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within Earth's land hemisphere. Most of Earth's land is somewhat humid and covered by vegetation, while large sheets of ice at Earth's polar deserts retain more water than Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers and atmospheric water combined. Earth's crust consists of slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth has a liquid outer core that generates a magnetosphere capable of deflecting most of the destructive solar winds and cosmic radiation. (Full article...) -
Image 2Artificial intelligence (AI), in its broadest sense, is intelligence exhibited by machines, particularly computer systems. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. Such machines may be called AIs. (Full article...)
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Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes peer-reviewed online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other scholarly literature, including court opinions and patents. (Full article...) -
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A plot of normal distribution (or bell-shaped curve) where each band has a width of 1 standard deviation – See also: 68–95–99.7 rule.
In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation of a random variable expected about its mean. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the values are spread out over a wider range. The standard deviation is commonly used in the determination of what constitutes an outlier and what does not. (Full article...) -
Image 5Science is a strict systematic discipline that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the world. Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: the natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, and biology), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules. There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines, as they do not rely on empirical evidence. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine. (Full article...)
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Image 6Example of an ejaculation
Ejaculation is the discharge of semen (the ejaculate; normally containing sperm) through the urethra in men. It is normally linked with orgasm, which involves involuntary contractions of the pelvic floor. It is the final stage and natural objective of male sexual stimulation, and an essential component of natural conception. Ejaculation can occur spontaneously during sleep, and is a normal part of human sexual development (a nocturnal emission or "wet dream"). In rare cases, ejaculation occurs because of prostatic disease. Anejaculation is the condition of being unable to ejaculate. Ejaculation is normally intensely pleasurable for men; dysejaculation is an ejaculation that is painful or uncomfortable. Retrograde ejaculation is the backward flow of semen into the bladder rather than out of the urethra. (Full article...) -
Image 7Sci-Hub is a shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Unlike Library Genesis, it does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, in response to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls (see Serials crisis). The site is extensively used worldwide. In September 2019, the site's operator(s) said that it served approximately 400,000 requests per day.
In addition to its intensive use, Sci-Hub stands out among other shadow libraries because of its easy use/reliability and because of the enormous size of its collection; a 2018 study estimated that Sci-Hub provided access to 95% of all scholarly publications with issued DOI numbers, and on 15 July 2022, Sci-Hub reported that its collection comprised 88,343,822 files. (Full article...) -
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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and science. (Full article...) -
Image 9In biology, taxonomy (from Ancient Greek τάξις (taxis) 'arrangement', and -νομία (-nomia) 'method') is the scientific study of naming, defining (circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given a taxonomic rank; groups of a given rank can be aggregated to form a more inclusive group of higher rank, thus creating a taxonomic hierarchy. The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum (division is sometimes used in botany in place of phylum), class, order, family, genus, and species. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of the current system of taxonomy, as he developed a ranked system known as Linnaean taxonomy for categorizing organisms and binomial nomenclature for naming organisms. (Full article...)
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In this illustration by Milo Winter of Aesop's fable, "The North Wind and the Sun", a personified North Wind tries to strip the cloak off a traveler.
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals. (Full article...)
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