Livyatan is an extinctgenus of macroraptorial sperm whale containing one known species: L. melvillei. The genus name was inspired by the biblical sea monster Leviathan, and the species name by Herman Melville, the author of the famous novel Moby-Dick about a white bull sperm whale. Herman Melville often referred to whales as "Leviathans" in his book. It is mainly known from the Pisco Formation of Peru during the Tortonian stage of the Mioceneepoch, about 9.9–8.9 million years ago (mya); however, finds of isolated teeth from other locations such as Chile, Argentina, the United States (California), South Africa and Australia imply that either it or a close relative survived into the Pliocene, around 5mya, and may have had a global presence. It was a member of a group of macroraptorial sperm whales (or "raptorial sperm whales") and was probably an apex predator, preying on whales, seals and so forth. Characteristically of raptorial sperm whales, Livyatan had functional, enamel-coated teeth on the upper and lower jaws, as well as several features suitable for hunting large prey. (Full article...)
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Dracophyllum fiordense, commonly known as the Fiordland grass tree, is a species of tree or shrub in the heath family, Ericaceae. It is endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. It reaches a height of 1.5–5.0 metres (5–16 feet) and has tufts of long green leaves at the ends of its branches. Each leaf has a distinctive curled spiral tip. D. fiordense has a pyramid-shaped inflorescence (flower spike) hidden under each clump of leaves, with between 113 and 120 pink flowers on each spike, and later reddish-brown dry fruit; both are around just 2 by 2 mm. It inhabits shrubland, lowland and subalpine forests, and tussock grassland of mountain slopes, gullies, and ridges. Its range covers two main areas: one in Fiordland National Park, and one in Aoraki / Mount Cook and Westland National Parks. (Full article...)
A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars that is bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards its center. It can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of member stars, all orbiting in a stable, compact formation. Globular clusters are similar in form to dwarf spheroidal galaxies, and though globular clusters were long held to be the more luminous of the two, discoveries of outliers had made the distinction between the two less clear by the early 21st century. Their name is derived from Latinglobulus (small sphere). Globular clusters are occasionally known simply as "globulars". (Full article...)
Banksia serrata, commonly known as the saw banksia, the old man banksia, the saw-tooth banksia or the red honeysuckle and as wiriyagan by the Cadigal people, is a species of woody shrub or tree of the genus Banksia, in the family Proteaceae. Native to the east coast of Australia, it is found from Queensland to Victoria with outlying populations on Tasmania and Flinders Island. Commonly growing as a gnarled tree up to 16 m (50 ft) in height, it can be much smaller in more exposed areas. This Banksia species has wrinkled grey bark, shiny dark green serrated leaves and large yellow or greyish-yellow flower spikes appearing over summer. The flower spikes, or inflorescences, turn grey as they age and pollinated flowers develop into large, grey, woody seed pods called follicles. (Full article...)
Lightning 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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Display case reconstructing the arrangement of the hoard treasure when excavated.
The Hoxne Hoard (/ˈhɒksən/HOK-sən) is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, and the largest collection of gold and silver coins of the fourth and fifth centuries found anywhere within the former Roman Empire. It was found by Eric Lawes, a metal detectorist in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England in 1992. The hoard consists of 14,865 Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins and approximately 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewellery. The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million (about £4.5 million in 2023). (Full article...)
Female genital mutilation (FGM) (also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision) is the cutting or removal of some or all of the vulva for non-medical reasons. FGM prevalence varies worldwide, but is majorly present in some countries of Africa, Asia and Middle East, and within their diasporas. As of 2024[update], UNICEF estimates that worldwide 230 million girls and women (144 million in Africa, 80 million in Asia, 6 million in Middle East, and 1-2 million in other parts of the world) had been subjected to one or more types of FGM. (Full article...)
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Eruptions in the Lassen volcanic area in the last 70,000 years. Circle shows base of Mount Tehama. See timeline image.
Ronnie Lee Gardner (January 16, 1961 – June 18, 2010) was an American criminal who received the death penalty for killing a man during an attempted escape from a courthouse in 1985, and was executed by a firing squad by the state of Utah in 2010. He is the most recent person to be executed by this method. His case spent nearly 25 years in the court system, prompting the Utah House of Representatives to introduce legislation to limit the number of appeals in capital cases. (Full article...)
The grey currawong (Strepera versicolor) is a large passerine bird native to southern Australia, including Tasmania. One of three currawong species in the genus Strepera, it is closely related to the butcherbirds and Australian magpie of the family Artamidae. It is a large crow-like bird, around 48 cm (19 in) long on average; with yellow irises, a heavy bill, dark plumage with white undertail and wing patches. The male and female are similar in appearance. Six subspecies are recognised and are distinguished by overall plumage colour, which ranges from slate-grey for the nominate from New South Wales and eastern Victoria and subspecies plumbea from Western Australia, to sooty black for the clinking currawong of Tasmania and subspecies halmaturina from Kangaroo Island. All grey currawongs have a loud distinctive ringing or clinking call. (Full article...)
An illustration of the helium atom, depicting the nucleus (pink) and the electron cloud distribution (black). The nucleus (upper right) in helium-4 is in reality spherically symmetric and closely resembles the electron cloud, although for more complicated nuclei this is not always the case. The black bar is one angstrom (10−10 m or 100 pm).
Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element. (Full article...)
... that after Ursula K. Le Guin published her collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters, a reviewer called her the "ideal science fiction writer for readers who ordinarily dislike science fiction"?
... that a poem by Moses da Rieti includes an encyclopedia of the sciences, a Jewish paradise fantasy, and a post-biblical history of Jewish literature?
... that Brazilian computer science researcher and internet pioneer Tadao Takahashi negotiated with drug lords to install internet equipment in his country?
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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 the values of a variable 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. Standard deviation may be abbreviated SD or std dev, and is most commonly represented in mathematical texts and equations by the lowercase Greek letterσ (sigma), for the population standard deviation, or the Latin letters, for the sample standard deviation. (Full article...)
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...)
Sci-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 most of the scholarly publications with issued DOI numbers. On 15 July 2022, Sci-Hub reported that its collection comprised 88,343,822 files. Since December 2020, the site has paused uploads due to legal troubles. (Full article...)
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Projectile motion of a bouncing ball at Inelastic collision, by MichaelMaggs (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Mechanical advantage device, by Prolineserver (edited by Tomia, Ss181292 and Atropos235) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
NASA study on wingtip vortices at Wake turbulence, by Langley Research Center (edited by Fir0002) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance at Primary production, by SeaWiFS Project (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Simulation of liquids with different viscosities, by Synapticrelay (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Archaeologists prospecting Santa Ana Cave at Excavation (archaeology), by Mario modesto (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Translational motion at Thermodynamic temperature, by Greg L (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Section of the Large Hadron Collider, by Maximilien Brice (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Toroid magnets of the ATLAS detector, by Maximilien Brice, CERN (edited by Bammesk) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Archaeological excavation at Atapuerca Mountains, by Mario modesto (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Color cathodoluminescence of a diamond, by Pavel.Somov (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Vibrating glass beam at Euler–Bernoulli beam theory, by Ben pcc (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Drop impact on a liquid surface, by José Manuel Suárez (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Parallax, by Mila Zinkova (edited by Richard Bartz) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Nobel Prize in Physics diploma, by Sofia Gisberg (restored by Jebulon) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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Peruvian Andes at United States Exploring Expedition, by Alfred Thomas Agate (edited by Durova) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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