User:The Transhumanist
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Introduction
Hi. My name is The Transhumanist, and I'm a wikipediholic.
I love emerging and evolving technologies, and so... I'm currently immersed in studying AI, particularly deep learning, and how it applies to big data. I also dabble in JavaScript, including writing user scripts from time to time. My best user script so far, is SearchSuite... SearchSuite provides further control over Wikipedia search results, such as on/off features to sort them, to present results one-per-line, and more. While it seems to work fairly well, there is definitely room for improvement. Comments and suggestions are welcome. By the way, most of the scripts I've been working on are for building and augmenting outlines...
I'm interested in all knowledge, especially how to organize it so you can find whatever is most relevant at any given moment. I've been around Wikipedia since the Fall of 2005, and have been working mostly on Wikipedia's structure, and its knowledge navigation systems, throughout that time. | |||||
Selected articles that I've worked on
Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take varied forms, including artistic pottery, including tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. As one of the plastic arts, ceramic art is a visual art. While some ceramics are considered fine art, such as pottery or sculpture, most are considered to be decorative, industrial or applied art objects. Ceramic art can be created by one person or by a group, in a pottery or a ceramic factory with a group designing and manufacturing the artware.
In Britain and the United States, modern ceramics as an art took its inspiration in the early twentieth century from the Arts and Crafts movement, leading to the revival of pottery considered as a specifically modern craft. Such crafts emphasized traditional non-industrial production techniques, faithfulness to the material, the skills of the individual maker, attention to utility, and an absence of excessive decoration that was typical to the Victorian era.
The word "ceramics" comes from the Greek keramikos (κεραμεικός), meaning "pottery", which in turn comes from keramos (κέραμος) meaning "potter's clay". Most traditional ceramic products were made from clay (or clay mixed with other materials), shaped and subjected to heat, and tableware and decorative ceramics are generally still made this way. In modern ceramic engineering usage, ceramics is the art and science of making objects from inorganic, non-metallic materials by the action of heat. It excludes glass and mosaic made from glass tesserae.
There is a long history of ceramic art in almost all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are all the artistic evidence left from vanished cultures, like that of the Nok in Africa over 2,000 years ago. Cultures especially noted for ceramics include the Chinese, Cretan, Greek, Persian, Mayan, Japanese, and Korean cultures, as well as the modern Western cultures. (Full article...)- This glossary of philosophy is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to philosophy and related disciplines, including logic, ethics, and theology. (Full article...)
- Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity". A variety of definitions have been used for different purposes over time. Health can be promoted by encouraging healthful activities, such as regular physical exercise and adequate sleep, and by reducing or avoiding unhealthful activities or situations, such as smoking or excessive stress. Some factors affecting health are due to individual choices, such as whether to engage in a high-risk behavior, while others are due to structural causes, such as whether the society is arranged in a way that makes it easier or harder for people to get necessary healthcare services. Still, other factors are beyond both individual and group choices, such as genetic disorders. (Full article...)
- Ontology learning (ontology extraction, ontology generation, or ontology acquisition) is the automatic or semi-automatic creation of ontologies, including extracting the corresponding domain's terms and the relationships between the concepts that these terms represent from a corpus of natural language text, and encoding them with an ontology language for easy retrieval. As building ontologies manually is extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming, there is great motivation to automate the process.
Typically, the process starts by extracting terms and concepts or noun phrases from plain text using linguistic processors such as part-of-speech tagging and phrase chunking. Then statistical
or symbolic
techniques are used to extract relation signatures, often based on pattern-based or definition-based hypernym extraction techniques. (Full article...) 
An EXCOMM meeting during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a crisis between the United States and Soviet Union over ballistic missiles in Cuba
A crisis (PL: crises; ADJ: critical) is either any event or period that will (or might) lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affairs, especially when they occur abruptly, with little or no warning. More loosely, a crisis is a testing time for an emergency. (Full article...)- The history of California can be divided into the Native American period (about 10,000 years ago until 1542), the European exploration period (1542–1769), the Spanish colonial period (1769–1821), the Mexican Republic period (1823–1848), and United States statehood (September 9, 1850–present). California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. After contact with, many of the Native Americans died from foreign diseases and genocide campaigns.
After the Portolá expedition of 1769–1770, Spanish missionaries began setting up 21 California missions on or near the coast of Alta (Upper) California, beginning with the Mission San Diego de Alcala near the location of the modern day city of San Diego, California. During the same period, Spanish military forces built several forts (presidios) and three small towns (pueblos). Two of the pueblos would eventually grow into the cities of Los Angeles and San Jose. After Mexico's Independence was won in 1821, California fell under the jurisdiction of the First Mexican Empire. Fearing the influence of the Roman Catholic church over their newly independent nation, the Mexican government closed all of the missions and nationalized the church's property. They left behind a "Californio" population of several thousand families, with a few small military garrisons. After the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, The Mexican Republic was forced to relinquish any claim to California to the United States.
The California Gold Rush of 1848–1855 attracted hundreds of thousands of ambitious young people from around the world. Only a few struck it rich, and many returned home disappointed. Most appreciated the other economic opportunities in California, especially in agriculture, and brought their families to join them. California became the 31st U.S. state in the Compromise of 1850 and played a small role in the American Civil War. Chinese immigrants increasingly came under attack from nativists; they were forced out of industry and agriculture and into Chinatowns in the larger cities. As gold petered out, California increasingly became a highly productive agricultural society. The coming of the railroads in 1869 linked its rich economy with the rest of the nation, and attracted a steady stream of settlers. In the late 19th century, Southern California, especially Los Angeles, started to grow rapidly. (Full article...) - Artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness (Gamez 2008; Reggia 2013), is a field related to artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics. The aim of the theory of artificial consciousness is to "Define that which would have to be synthesized were consciousness to be found in an engineered artifact" (Aleksander 1995).
Neuroscience hypothesizes that consciousness is generated by the interoperation of various parts of the brain, called the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC, though there are challenges to that perspective. Proponents of AC believe it is possible to construct systems (e.g., computer systems) that can emulate this NCC interoperation.
Artificial consciousness concepts are also pondered in the philosophy of artificial intelligence through questions about mind, consciousness, and mental states. (Full article...) 
James Burke in 2007
James Burke (born 22 December 1936) is a British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer. He was one of the main presenters of the BBC1 science series Tomorrow's World from 1965 to 1971 and created and presented the television series Connections (1978), and its more philosophical sequel The Day the Universe Changed (1985), about the history of science and technology. The Washington Post has called him "one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world". (Full article...)- A revenue model is a framework for generating financial income. It identifies which revenue source to pursue, what value to offer, how to price the value, and who pays for the value. It is a key component of a company's business model. It primarily identifies what product or service will be created in order to generate revenues and the ways in which the product or service will be sold.
Without a clear and well-defined revenue model; in other words, a clear plan of how to generate revenues, new businesses will more likely struggle due to costs which they will not be able to offset. By having a clear revenue model, a business can focus on a target audience, fund development plans for a product or service, establish marketing plans, open a line of credit and raise capital. (Full article...)
Compliant bonding is used to connect gold wires to electrical components such as integrated circuit "chips". It was invented by Alexander Coucoulas in the 1960s. The bond is formed well below the melting point of the mating gold surfaces and is therefore referred to as a solid-state type bond. The compliant bond is formed by transmitting heat and pressure to the bond region through a relatively thick indentable or compliant medium, generally an aluminum tape (Figure 1). (Full article...)
Robots revolt in R.U.R., a 1920 play
An AI takeover is a hypothetical scenario in which an artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, as computer programs or robots effectively take the control of the planet away from the human species. Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce, takeover by a superintelligent AI, and the popular notion of a robot uprising. Stories of AI takeovers are very popular throughout science-fiction. Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control. (Full article...)- Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally new but also include older technologies finding new applications. Emerging technologies are often perceived as capable of changing the status quo.
Emerging technologies are characterized by radical novelty (in application even if not in origins), relatively fast growth, coherence, prominent impact, and uncertainty and ambiguity. In other words, an emerging technology can be defined as "a radically novel and relatively fast growing technology characterised by a certain degree of coherence persisting over time and with the potential to exert a considerable impact on the socio-economic domain(s) which is observed in terms of the composition of actors, institutions and patterns of interactions among those, along with the associated knowledge production processes. Its most prominent impact, however, lies in the future and so in the emergence phase is still somewhat uncertain and ambiguous."
Emerging technologies include a variety of technologies such as educational technology, information technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
New technological fields may result from the technological convergence of different systems evolving towards similar goals. Convergence brings previously separate technologies such as voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications) and video together so that they share resources and interact with each other, creating new efficiencies. (Full article...) 
Location of Asia.
Asian food incorporates a few significant provincial cooking styles: Central Asian, East Asian, North Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and West Asian. A food is a trademark way of cooking practices and customs, usually associated with a specific culture. Asia, being the largest and most populous continent, is home to many cultures, many of which have their own characteristic cuisine. Asian cuisine are also famous about their spices, Asian people traditionally use different kind of spices in their regular meals.
Ingredients common to many cultures in the East and Southeast regions of the continent include rice, ginger, garlic, sesame seeds, chilies, dried onions, soy, and tofu. Stir frying, steaming, and deep frying are common cooking methods.
While rice is common to most Asian cuisines, different varieties are popular in the various regions. Glutinous rice is ingrained in the culture, religious tradition and national identity of Laos. Basmati rice is popular in the Indian subcontinent, jasmine rice is often found across Southeast Asia, while long-grain rice is popular in China and short-grain in Japan and Korea.
Curry is a common dish in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Curry dishes have their origins in the Indian subcontinent. Countries in East Asia typically use a coconut milk base in their curries, whilst countries in South West Asia typically use a yoghurt base. (Full article...)- A feature (also called an object or entity), in the context of geography and geographic information science, is a discrete phenomenon that exists at a location in the space and scale of relevance to geography; that is, at or near the surface of Earth, at a moderate to global scale. It is one of the primary types of phenomena represented in geographic information, such as that represented in maps, geographic information systems, remote sensing imagery, statistics, and other forms of geographic discourse. Such representations of features consists of descriptions of their inherent nature, their spatial form and location, and their characteristics or properties. (Full article...)
- The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I.J. Good's intelligence explosion model, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an "explosion" in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.
The first person to use the concept of a "singularity" in the technological context was the 20th-century Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann. Stanislaw Ulam reports in 1958 an earlier discussion with von Neumann "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue". Subsequent authors have echoed this viewpoint.
The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge first in 1983 in an article that claimed that once humans create intelligences greater than their own, there will be a technological and social transition similar in some sense to "the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole", and later in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he wrote that it would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate. He wrote that he would be surprised if it occurred before 2005 or after 2030. Another significant contributor to wider circulation of the notion was Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, predicting singularity by 2045.
Some scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have expressed concern that artificial superintelligence (ASI) could result in human extinction. The consequences of the singularity and its potential benefit or harm to the human race have been intensely debated. (Full article...) - Automatic taxonomy construction (ATC) is the use of software programs to generate taxonomical classifications from a body of texts called a corpus. ATC is a branch of natural language processing, which in turn is a branch of artificial intelligence.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially, a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. Among other things, a taxonomy can be used to organize and index knowledge (stored as documents, articles, videos, etc.), such as in the form of a library classification system, or a search engine taxonomy, so that users can more easily find the information they are searching for. Many taxonomies are hierarchies (and thus, have an intrinsic tree structure), but not all are.
Manually developing and maintaining a taxonomy is a labor-intensive task requiring significant time and resources, including familiarity of or expertise in the taxonomy's domain (scope, subject, or field), which drives the costs and limits the scope of such projects. Also, domain modelers have their own points of view which inevitably, even if unintentionally, work their way into the taxonomy. ATC uses artificial intelligence techniques to quickly automatically generate a taxonomy for a domain in order to avoid these problems and remove limitations. (Full article...) - An artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of hypothetical intelligent agent. The AGI concept is that it can learn to accomplish any intellectual task that human beings or other animals can perform. Alternatively, AGI has been defined as an autonomous system that surpasses human capabilities in the majority of economically valuable tasks. Creating AGI is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic. AGI is a common topic in science fiction and futures studies.
The timeline for AGI development remains a subject of ongoing debate among researchers and experts. Some argue that it may be possible in years or decades, others maintain it might take a century or longer, and a minority believe it may never be achieved. Additionally, there is debate regarding whether modern deep learning systems, such as GPT-4, are an early yet incomplete form of AGI or if new approaches are required.
Contention exists over the potential for AGI to pose a threat to humanity; for example, OpenAI treats it as an existential risk, while others find the development of AGI to be too remote to present a risk.
A 2020 survey identified 72 active AGI R&D projects spread across 37 countries. (Full article...) - Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites. Web scraping software may directly access the World Wide Web using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or a web browser. While web scraping can be done manually by a software user, the term typically refers to automated processes implemented using a bot or web crawler. It is a form of copying in which specific data is gathered and copied from the web, typically into a central local database or spreadsheet, for later retrieval or analysis.
Scraping a web page involves fetching it and extracting from it. Fetching is the downloading of a page (which a browser does when a user views a page). Therefore, web crawling is a main component of web scraping, to fetch pages for later processing. Once fetched, extraction can take place. The content of a page may be parsed, searched and reformatted, and its data copied into a spreadsheet or loaded into a database. Web scrapers typically take something out of a page, to make use of it for another purpose somewhere else. An example would be finding and copying names and telephone numbers, companies and their URLs, or e-mail addresses to a list (contact scraping).
As well as contact scraping, web scraping is used as a component of applications used for web indexing, web mining and data mining, online price change monitoring and price comparison, product review scraping (to watch the competition), gathering real estate listings, weather data monitoring, website change detection, research, tracking online presence and reputation, web mashup, and web data integration.
Web pages are built using text-based mark-up languages (HTML and XHTML), and frequently contain a wealth of useful data in text form. However, most web pages are designed for human end-users and not for ease of automated use. As a result, specialized tools and software have been developed to facilitate the scraping of web pages. (Full article...) - The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I.J. Good's intelligence explosion model, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an "explosion" in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.
The first person to use the concept of a "singularity" in the technological context was the 20th-century Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann. Stanislaw Ulam reports in 1958 an earlier discussion with von Neumann "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue". Subsequent authors have echoed this viewpoint.
The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge first in 1983 in an article that claimed that once humans create intelligences greater than their own, there will be a technological and social transition similar in some sense to "the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole", and later in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he wrote that it would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate. He wrote that he would be surprised if it occurred before 2005 or after 2030. Another significant contributor to wider circulation of the notion was Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, predicting singularity by 2045.
Some scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have expressed concern that artificial superintelligence (ASI) could result in human extinction. The consequences of the singularity and its potential benefit or harm to the human race have been intensely debated. (Full article...) - Life extension is the concept of extending the human lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled limit of 125 years. Several researchers in the area, along with "life extensionists", "immortalists" or "longevists" (those who wish to achieve longer lives themselves), postulate that future breakthroughs in tissue rejuvenation, stem cells, regenerative medicine, molecular repair, gene therapy, pharmaceuticals, and organ replacement (such as with artificial organs or xenotransplantations) will eventually enable humans to have indefinite lifespans (agerasia) through complete rejuvenation to a healthy youthful condition. The ethical ramifications, if life extension becomes a possibility, are debated by bioethicists.
The sale of purported anti-aging products such as supplements and hormone replacement is a lucrative global industry. For example, the industry that promotes the use of hormones as a treatment for consumers to slow or reverse the aging process in the US market generated about $50 billion of revenue a year in 2009. The use of such hormone products has not been proven to be effective or safe. (Full article...) - A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. "Superintelligence" may also refer to a property of problem-solving systems (e.g., superintelligent language translators or engineering assistants) whether or not these high-level intellectual competencies are embodied in agents that act in the world. A superintelligence may or may not be created by an intelligence explosion and associated with a technological singularity.
University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". The program Fritz falls short of superintelligence—even though it is much better than humans at chess—because Fritz cannot outperform humans in other tasks. Following Hutter and Legg, Bostrom treats superintelligence as general dominance at goal-oriented behavior, leaving open whether an artificial or human superintelligence would possess capacities such as intentionality (cf. the Chinese room argument) or first-person consciousness (cf. the hard problem of consciousness).
Technological researchers disagree about how likely present-day human intelligence is to be surpassed. Some argue that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will probably result in general reasoning systems that lack human cognitive limitations. Others believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater intelligence. A number of futures studies scenarios combine elements from both of these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers, or upload their minds to computers, in a way that enables substantial intelligence amplification.
Some researchers believe that superintelligence will likely follow shortly after the development of artificial general intelligence. The first generally intelligent machines are likely to immediately hold an enormous advantage in at least some forms of mental capability, including the capacity of perfect recall, a vastly superior knowledge base, and the ability to multitask in ways not possible to biological entities. This may give them the opportunity to—either as a single being or as a new species—become much more powerful than humans, and to displace them. (Full article...) - The afterlife or life after death is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's stream of consciousness or identity continues to exist after the death of their physical body. The surviving essential aspect varies between belief systems; it may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, which carries with it personal identity. Belief in an afterlife is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.
In some views, this continued existence takes place in a spiritual realm, while in others, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or otherworld. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.
Some belief systems, such as those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific place (eg Paradise) after death, as determined by God, based on their actions and beliefs during life. In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those in the Indian religions, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life. (Full article...) - In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change. (Full article...)
- Prehistoric technology is technology that predates recorded history. History is the study of the past using written records. Anything prior to the first written accounts of history is prehistoric, including earlier technologies. About 2.5 million years before writing was developed, technology began with the earliest hominids who used stone tools, which they may have used to start fires, hunt, and bury their dead.
There are several factors that made the evolution of prehistoric technology possible or necessary. One of the key factors is behavioral modernity of the highly developed brain of Homo sapiens capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving. The advent of agriculture resulted in lifestyle changes from nomadic lifestyles to ones lived in homes, with domesticated animals, and land farmed using more varied and sophisticated tools. Art, architecture, music and religion evolved over the course of the prehistoric periods. (Full article...)
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- An amorphous metal transformer (AMT) is a type of energy efficient transformer found on electric grids. The magnetic core of this transformer is made with a ferromagnetic amorphous metal.
The typical material (Metglas) is an alloy of iron with boron, silicon, and phosphorus in the form of thin (e.g. 25 µm) foils rapidly cooled from melt. These materials have high magnetic susceptibility, very low coercivity and high electrical resistance.
The high resistance and thin foils lead to low losses by eddy currents when subjected to alternating magnetic fields. On the downside amorphous alloys have a lower saturation induction and often a higher magnetostriction compared to conventional crystalline iron-silicon electrical steel. (Full article...) - Bioremediation broadly refers to any process wherein a biological system (typically bacteria, microalgae, fungi, and plants), living or dead, is employed for removing environmental pollutants from air, water, soil, flue gasses, industrial effluents etc., in natural or artificial settings. The natural ability of organisms to adsorb, accumulate, and degrade common and emerging pollutants has attracted the use of biological resources in treatment of contaminated environment. In comparison to conventional physicochemical treatment methods bioremediation may offer considerable advantages as it aims to be sustainable, eco-friendly, cheap, and scalable.
Most bioremediation is inadvertent, involving native organisms. Research on bioremediation is heavily focused on stimulating the process by inoculation of a polluted site with organisms or supplying nutrients to promote the growth. In principle, bioremediation could be used to reduce the impact of byproducts created from anthropogenic activities, such as industrialization and agricultural processes. Bioremediation could prove less expensive and more sustainable than other remediation alternatives.
UNICEF, power producers, bulk water suppliers and local governments are early adopters of low cost bioremediation, such as aerobic bacteria tablets which are simply dropped into water. (Full article...)
VirtuSphere is a spherical virtual reality device. It consists of a 10-foot hollow sphere, which is placed on a special platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely in any direction according to the user’s steps. It works with computer based simulations and virtual worlds, and rotates as the user walks, allowing for an unlimited plane upon which the user can walk. A wireless head-mounted display with gyroscopes is used to both track the user's head movement as well as display the environment of the virtual world. VirtuSphere can serve many purposes, including exercise, video gaming, military training, and virtual museum tours.
The VirtuSphere is a creation of Ray and Nurulla Latypov, whose company, VirtuSphere Inc, is based in Binghamton, New York. (Full article...)- Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project by the Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail interstellar probes named Starchip, to be capable of making the journey to the Alpha Centauri star system 4.37 light-years away. It was founded in 2016 by Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking, and Mark Zuckerberg.
A flyby mission has been proposed to Proxima Centauri b, an Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone of its host star, Proxima Centauri, in the Alpha Centauri system. At a speed between 15% and 20% of the speed of light, it would take between 20 and 30 years to complete the journey, and approximately 4 years for a return message from the starship to Earth. (Full article...) 
Gemini 11 Agena tethered operations
Artificial gravity is the creation of an inertial force that mimics the effects of a gravitational force, usually by rotation.
Artificial gravity, or rotational gravity, is thus the appearance of a centrifugal force in a rotating frame of reference (the transmission of centripetal acceleration via normal force in the non-rotating frame of reference), as opposed to the force experienced in linear acceleration, which by the equivalence principle is indistinguishable from gravity.
In a more general sense, "artificial gravity" may also refer to the effect of linear acceleration, e.g. by means of a rocket engine.
Rotational simulated gravity has been used in simulations to help astronauts train for extreme conditions.
Rotational simulated gravity has been proposed as a solution in human spaceflight to the adverse health effects caused by prolonged weightlessness.
However, there are no current practical outer space applications of artificial gravity for humans due to concerns about the size and cost of a spacecraft necessary to produce a useful centripetal force comparable to the gravitational field strength on Earth (g).
Scientists are concerned about the effect of such a system on the inner ear of the occupants. The concern is that using centripetal force to create artificial gravity will cause disturbances in the inner ear leading to nausea and disorientation. The adverse effects may prove intolerable for the occupants. (Full article...)- Humavox Ltd. is an Israeli startup that develops a Radio Frequency (RF) based wireless charging technology for wearables, hearables, IoT, enterprise, consumer electronics and healthcare devices, including hearing aids. Humavox's hardware platform, ETERNA, will be licensed to device manufacturers to enable wireless charging within their device. (Full article...)
A haptic suit (also known as VR suit, tactile suit, gaming suit or haptic vest) is a wearable device that provides haptic feedback to the body. (Full article...)- * When insulin pump technology is combined with a continuous blood glucose monitoring system, the technology seems promising for real time control of the blood sugar level. Currently there are no mature algorithms to automatically control the insulin delivery based on feedback of the blood glucose level. When the loop is closed, the system may function as an artificial pancreas.
- Insulin pumps are being used for infusing pramlintide (brand name Symlin, or synthetic amylin) with insulin for improved postprandial glycemic control compared to insulin alone.
- Dual hormone insulin pumps that infuse either insulin or glucagon. In event of hypoglycemia, the glucagon could be triggered to increase the blood glucose. This would be particularly valuable in a closed loop system under the control of a glucose sensor. The Artificial Pancreas, currently in clinical trials for FDA approval, is a recently developed device designed with this technology in mind.
- Ultrafast insulins. These insulins are absorbed more quickly than the currently available Humalog, Novolog, and Apidra which have a peak at about 60 minutes. Faster insulin uptake would theoretically coordinate with meals better, and allow faster recovery from hyperglycemia if the insulin infusion is suspended. Biodel is developing an ultrafast insulin
Cattle feedlot in Colorado, United States
Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starting with the Neolithic Revolution when animals were first domesticated, from around 13,000 BC onwards, predating farming of the first crops. By the time of early civilisations such as ancient Egypt, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were being raised on farms.
Major changes took place in the Columbian exchange, when Old World livestock were brought to the New World, and then in the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century, when livestock breeds like the Dishley Longhorn cattle and Lincoln Longwool sheep were rapidly improved by agriculturalists, such as Robert Bakewell, to yield more meat, milk, and wool. A wide range of other species, such as horse, water buffalo, llama, rabbit, and guinea pig, are used as livestock in some parts of the world. Insect farming, as well as aquaculture of fish, molluscs, and crustaceans, is widespread. Modern animal husbandry relies on production systems adapted to the type of land available. Subsistence farming is being superseded by intensive animal farming in the more developed parts of the world, where, for example, beef cattle are kept in high-density feedlots, and thousands of chickens may be raised in broiler houses or batteries. On poorer soil, such as in uplands, animals are often kept more extensively and may be allowed to roam widely, foraging for themselves. (Full article...)
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to evoke human form, but most robots are task-performing machines, designed with an emphasis on stark functionality, rather than expressive aesthetics.
Robots can be autonomous or semi-autonomous and range from humanoids such as Honda's Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility (ASIMO) and TOSY's TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot (TOPIO) to industrial robots, medical operating robots, patient assist robots, dog therapy robots, collectively programmed swarm robots, UAV drones such as General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, and even microscopic nano robots. By mimicking a lifelike appearance or automating movements, a robot may convey a sense of intelligence or thought of its own. Autonomous things are expected to proliferate in the future, with home robotics and the autonomous car as some of the main drivers. (Full article...)- In computing, an interface is a shared boundary across which two or more separate components of a computer system exchange information. The exchange can be between software, computer hardware, peripheral devices, humans, and combinations of these. Some computer hardware devices, such as a touchscreen, can both send and receive data through the interface, while others such as a mouse or microphone may only provide an interface to send data to a given system. (Full article...)
An intelligent transportation system (ITS) is an advanced application which aims to provide innovative services relating to different modes of transport and traffic management and enable users to be better informed and make safer, more coordinated, and 'smarter' use of transport networks.
Some of these technologies include calling for emergency services when an accident occurs, using cameras to enforce traffic laws or signs that mark speed limit changes depending on conditions. (Full article...)- Green development is a real estate development concept that considers social and environmental impacts of development. It is defined by three sub-categories: environmental responsiveness, resource efficiency, and community and cultural sensitivity. Environmental responsiveness respects the intrinsic value of nature, and minimizes damage to an ecosystem. Resource efficiency refers to the use of fewer resources to conserve energy and the environment. Community and cultural sensitivity recognizes the unique cultural values that each community hosts and considers them in real estate development, unlike more discernable signs of sustainability, like solar energy, (solar panels are more visibly "green" than the use of local materials). Green development manifests itself in various forms, however it is generally based on solution multipliers: features of a project that provide additional benefits, which ultimately reduce the projects' environmental impacts. (Full article...)
- An active structure (also known as a smart or adaptive structure) is a mechanical structure with the ability to alter its configuration, form or properties in response to changes in the environment.
The term active structure also refers to structures that, unlike traditional engineering structures (e.g., bridges, buildings), require constant motion and hence power input to remain stable. The advantage of active structures is that they can be far more massive than a traditional static structure: an example would be a space fountain, a building that reaches into space. (Full article...)
Electronic textiles or e-textiles are fabrics that enable electronic components such as batteries, lights, sensors, and microcontrollers to be embedded in them. They are not to be confused with smart textiles, which are fabrics that have been developed with new technologies that provide added value. Many smart clothing, wearable technology, and wearable computing projects involve the use of e-textiles.
Electronic textiles are distinct from wearable computing because the emphasis is placed on the seamless integration of textiles with electronic elements like microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators. Furthermore, e-textiles need not be wearable. For instance, e-textiles are also found in interior design. (Full article...)
Omni Processor pilot plant by Sedron Technologies treating fecal sludge in Dakar, Senegal
Omni Processor is a term coined in 2012 by staff of the Water, Sanitation, Hygiene Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to describe a range of physical, biological or chemical treatments to remove pathogens from human-generated fecal sludge, while simultaneously creating commercially valuable byproducts (e.g., energy). An Omni Processor mitigates unsafe methods in developing countries of capturing and treating human waste, which annually result in the spread of disease and the deaths of more than 1.5 million children.
Rather than a trademark, or a reference to a specific technology, the term Omni Processor is a general term for a range of self-sustaining, independently developed systems designed with the same end in mind, to transform and extract value from human waste — using various technological approaches, including combustion, supercritical water oxidation and pyrolysis. (Full article...)
Typical cathode-ray tube (CRT) gamut
The grayed-out horseshoe shape is the entire range of possible chromaticities, displayed in the CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram format (see below). The colored triangle is the gamut available to the sRGB color space typically used in computer monitors; it does not cover the entire space. The corners of the triangle are the primary colors for this gamut; in the case of a CRT, they depend on the colors of the phosphors of the monitor. At each point, the brightest possible RGB color of that chromaticity is shown, resulting in the bright Mach band stripes corresponding to the edges of the RGB color cube.
In color reproduction (including computer graphics and photography), the gamut, or color gamut /ˈɡæmət/, is a certain complete subset of colors. The most common usage refers to the subset of colors which can be accurately represented in a given circumstance, such as within a given color space or by a certain output device.
Another sense, less frequently used but still correct, refers to the complete set of colors found within an image at a given time. In this context, digitizing a photograph, converting a digitized image to a different color space, or outputting it to a given medium using a certain output device generally alters its gamut, in the sense that some of the colors in the original are lost in the process. (Full article...)- Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition or speech to text (STT). It incorporates knowledge and research in the computer science, linguistics and computer engineering fields. The reverse process is speech synthesis.
Some speech recognition systems require "solly" (also called "enrollment") where an individual speaker reads text or isolated vocabulary into the system. The system analyzes the person's specific voice and uses it to fine-tune the recognition of that person's speech, resulting in increased accuracy. Systems that do not use training are called "speaker-independent" systems. Systems that use training are called "speaker dependent". (Full article...)
A skyhook is a proposed momentum exchange tether that aims to reduce the cost of placing payloads into low Earth orbit. A heavy orbiting station is connected to a cable which extends down towards the upper atmosphere. Payloads, which are much lighter than the station, are hooked to the end of the cable as it passes, and are then flung into orbit by rotation of the cable around the center of mass. The station can then be reboosted to its original altitude by electromagnetic propulsion, rocket propulsion, or by deorbiting another object with the same kinetic energy as transferred to the payload.
A skyhook differs from a geostationary orbit space elevator in that a skyhook would be much shorter and would not come in contact with the surface of the Earth. A skyhook would require a suborbital launch vehicle to reach its lower end, while a space elevator would not. (Full article...)- A quantum dot laser is a semiconductor laser that uses quantum dots as the active laser medium in its light emitting region. Due to the tight confinement of charge carriers in quantum dots, they exhibit an electronic structure similar to atoms. Lasers fabricated from such an active media exhibit device performance that is closer to gas lasers, and avoid some of the negative aspects of device performance associated with traditional semiconductor lasers based on bulk or quantum well active media. Improvements in modulation bandwidth, lasing threshold, relative intensity noise, linewidth enhancement factor and temperature insensitivity have all been observed. The quantum dot active region may also be engineered to operate at different wavelengths by varying dot size and composition. This allows quantum dot lasers to be fabricated to operate at wavelengths previously not possible using semiconductor laser technology. One challenge in the further advances with quantum dot lasers is the presence of multicarrier Auger processes which increases the nonradiative rate upon population inversion. Auger processes are intrinsic to the material but, in contrast to bulk semiconductors, they can be engineered to some degree in quantum dots at the cost of reducing the radiative rate. Another obstacle to the specific goal of electrically-pumped quantum dot lasing is the generally weak conductivity of quantum dot films.
Devices based on quantum dot active media have found commercial application in medicine (laser scalpel, optical coherence tomography), display technologies (projection, laser TV), spectroscopy and telecommunications. A 10 Gbit/s quantum dot laser that is insensitive to temperature fluctuation for use in optical data communications and optical networks has been developed using this technology. The laser is capable of high-speed operation at 1.3 μm wavelengths, at temperatures from 20 °C to 70 °C. It works in optical data transmission systems, optical LANs and metro-access systems. In comparison to the performance of conventional strained quantum-well lasers of the past, the new quantum dot laser achieves significantly higher stability of temperature. (Full article...)
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to evoke human form, but most robots are task-performing machines, designed with an emphasis on stark functionality, rather than expressive aesthetics.
Robots can be autonomous or semi-autonomous and range from humanoids such as Honda's Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility (ASIMO) and TOSY's TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot (TOPIO) to industrial robots, medical operating robots, patient assist robots, dog therapy robots, collectively programmed swarm robots, UAV drones such as General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, and even microscopic nano robots. By mimicking a lifelike appearance or automating movements, a robot may convey a sense of intelligence or thought of its own. Autonomous things are expected to proliferate in the future, with home robotics and the autonomous car as some of the main drivers. (Full article...)- The Nintendo 3DS is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo. The console was announced in March 2010 and unveiled at E3 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS. The system features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS video games. As an eighth-generation console, its primary competitor was Sony's PlayStation Vita.
The handheld's most prominent feature is its ability to display stereoscopic 3D effects without the use of 3D glasses or additional accessories, and it offers new features such as the StreetPass and SpotPass tag modes, powered by Nintendo Network; augmented reality using its 3D cameras; and Virtual Console, which allows owners to download and play games originally released on older video game systems. (Full article...) - Laser color television (laser TV), or laser color video display, is a type of television that utilizes two or more individually modulated optical (laser) rays of different colors to produce a combined spot that is scanned and projected across the image plane by a polygon-mirror system or less effectively by optoelectronic means to produce a color-television display. The systems work either by scanning the entire picture a dot at a time and modulating the laser directly at high frequency, much like the electron beams in a cathode ray tube, or by optically spreading and then modulating the laser and scanning a line at a time, the line itself being modulated in much the same way as with digital light processing (DLP).
The special case of one ray reduces the system to a monochrome display as, for example, in black and white television. This principle applies to a direct view display as well as to a (front or rear) laser projector system. (Full article...)
Food spoilage is the process where a food product becomes unsuitable to ingest by the consumer. The cause of such a process is due to many outside factors as a side-effect of the type of product it is, as well as how the product is packaged and stored. Due to food spoilage, one-third of the world's food produced for the consumption of humans is lost every year. Bacteria and various fungi are the cause of spoilage and can create serious consequences for the consumers, but there are preventive measures that can be taken. (Full article...)- A pulse detonation engine (PDE) is a type of propulsion system that uses detonation waves to combust the fuel and oxidizer mixture. The engine is pulsed because the mixture must be renewed in the combustion chamber between each detonation wave and the next. Theoretically, a PDE can operate from subsonic up to a hypersonic flight speed of roughly Mach 5. An ideal PDE design can have a thermodynamic efficiency higher than other designs like turbojets and turbofans because a detonation wave rapidly compresses the mixture and adds heat at constant volume. Consequently, moving parts like compressor spools are not necessarily required in the engine, which could significantly reduce overall weight and cost. PDEs have been considered for propulsion since 1940. Key issues for further development include fast and efficient mixing of the fuel and oxidizer, the prevention of autoignition, and integration with an inlet and nozzle.
To date, no practical PDE has been put into production, but several testbed engines have been built and one was successfully integrated into a low-speed demonstration aircraft that flew in sustained PDE powered flight in 2008. In June 2008, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unveiled Blackswift, which was intended to use this technology to reach speeds of up to Mach 6. However the project was reported cancelled soon afterward, in October 2008. (Full article...)
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- Biodiversity loss includes the worldwide extinction of different species, as well as the local reduction or loss of species in a certain habitat, resulting in a loss of biological diversity. The latter phenomenon can be temporary or permanent, depending on whether the environmental degradation that leads to the loss is reversible through ecological restoration/ecological resilience or effectively permanent (e.g. through land loss). The current global extinction (frequently called the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction), has resulted in a biodiversity crisis being driven by human activities which push beyond the planetary boundaries and so far has proven irreversible.
The main direct threats to conservation (and thus causes for biodiversity loss) fall in eleven categories: Residential and commercial development; farming activities; energy production and mining; transportation and service corridors; biological resource usages; human intrusions and activities that alter, destroy, disturb habitats and species from exhibiting natural behaviors; natural system modification; invasive and problematic species, pathogens and genes; pollution; catastrophic geological events, climate change.
Numerous scientists and the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services assert that human population growth and overconsumption are the primary factors in this decline. However other scientists have criticized this, saying that loss of habitat is caused mainly by "the growth of commodities for export" and that population has very little to do with overall consumption, due to country wealth disparities. (Full article...)
Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby reducing biodiversity and species abundance. Habitat destruction is the leading cause of biodiversity loss. Fragmentation and loss of habitat have become one of the most important topics of research in ecology as they are major threats to the survival of endangered species.
Activities such as harvesting natural resources, industrial production and urbanization are human contributions to habitat destruction. Pressure from agriculture is the principal human cause. Some others include mining, logging, trawling, and urban sprawl. Habitat destruction is currently considered the primary cause of species extinction worldwide. Environmental factors can contribute to habitat destruction more indirectly. Geological processes, climate change, introduction of invasive species, ecosystem nutrient depletion, water and noise pollution are some examples. Loss of habitat can be preceded by an initial habitat fragmentation.
Attempts to address habitat destruction are in international policy commitments embodied by Sustainable Development Goal 15 "Life on Land" and Sustainable Development Goal 14 "Life Below Water". However, the United Nations Environment Programme report on "Making Peace with Nature" released in 2021 found that most of these efforts had failed to meet their internationally agreed upon goals. (Full article...)- Existential risk from artificial general intelligence is the hypothesis that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could result in human extinction or some other unrecoverable global catastrophe.
The existential risk ("x-risk") school argues as follows: The human species currently dominates other species because the human brain has some distinctive capabilities that other animals lack. If AI surpasses humanity in general intelligence and becomes "superintelligent", then it could become difficult or impossible for humans to control. Just as the fate of the mountain gorilla depends on human goodwill, so might the fate of humanity depend on the actions of a future machine superintelligence.
The probability of this type of scenario is widely debated, and hinges in part on differing scenarios for future progress in computer science. Concerns about superintelligence have been voiced by leading computer scientists and tech CEOs such as Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Alan Turing, Elon Musk, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In 2022, a survey of AI researchers found that some researchers believe that there is a 10 percent or greater chance that our inability to control AI will cause an existential catastrophe (more than half the respondents of the survey, with a 17% response rate). (Full article...) 
Mushroom cloud from the explosion of Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear weapon detonated by the U.S., in 1954.
A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse, nuclear Armageddon, or atomic holocaust, is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes globally widespread destruction and radioactive fallout. Such a scenario envisages large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the effects of nuclear warfare, potentially causing the collapse of civilization and, in the worst case, extinction of humanity and/or termination of all biological life on Earth.
Besides the immediate destruction of cities by nuclear blasts, the potential aftermath of a nuclear war could involve firestorms, a nuclear winter, widespread radiation sickness from fallout, and/or the temporary (if not permanent) loss of much modern technology due to electromagnetic pulses. Some scientists, such as Alan Robock, have speculated that a thermonuclear war could result in the end of modern civilization on Earth, in part due to a long-lasting nuclear winter. In one model, the average temperature of Earth following a full thermonuclear war falls for several years by 7 – 8 °C (13 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit) on average.
Early Cold War-era studies suggested that billions of humans would survive the immediate effects of nuclear blasts and radiation following a global thermonuclear war. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War believe that nuclear war could indirectly contribute to human extinction via secondary effects, including environmental consequences, societal breakdown, and economic collapse. (Full article...)
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period.
Unemployment is measured by the unemployment rate, which is the number of people who are unemployed as a percentage of the labour force (the total number of people employed added to those unemployed).
Unemployment can have many sources, such as the following: (Full article...)- Human overpopulation (or human population overshoot) describes a concern that human populations may become too large to be sustained by their environment or resources in the long term. The topic is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may concern individual nations, regions, and cities.
Since 1804, the global human population has increased from 1 billion to 8 billion due to medical advancements and improved agricultural productivity. According to the most recent United Nations' projections, "[t]he global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100 [assuming] a decline of fertility for countries where large families are still prevalent." The UN's projections report predicts that the human population will peak at around 10.4 billion people, before decreasing, noting that fertility rates are falling worldwide.
Early discussions of overpopulation in English were spurred by the work of Thomas Malthus. Discussions of overpopulation follow a similar line of inquiry as Malthusianism and its Malthusian catastrophe, a hypothetical event where population exceeds agricultural capacity, causing famine or war over resources, resulting in poverty and depopulation. More recent discussion of overpopulation was popularized by Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book The Population Bomb and subsequent writings. Ehrlich described overpopulation as a function of overconsumption, arguing that overpopulation should be defined by a population being unable to sustain itself without depleting non-renewable resources. (Full article...) 
Tar sands in Alberta, 2008. Oil is one of the most used resources by humans.
Resource depletion is the consumption of a resource faster than it can be replenished. Natural resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources (see also mineral resource classification). Use of either of these forms of resources beyond their rate of replacement is considered to be resource depletion. The value of a resource is a direct result of its availability in nature and the cost of extracting the resource, the more a resource is depleted the more the value of the resource increases. There are several types of resource depletion, the most known being: Aquifer depletion, deforestation, mining for fossil fuels and minerals, pollution or contamination of resources, slash-and-burn agricultural practices, soil erosion, and overconsumption, excessive or unnecessary use of resources.
Resource depletion is most commonly used in reference to farming, fishing, mining, water usage, and consumption of fossil fuels. Depletion of wildlife populations is called defaunation. (Full article...)
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes, and is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices increase greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Larger amounts of these gases trap more heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, causing global warming.
Due to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include ocean heating, ocean acidification and sea level rise.
Climate change threatens people with increased flooding, extreme heat, increased food and water scarcity, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Societies and ecosystems will experience more severe risks without action to limit warming. Adapting to climate change through efforts like flood control measures or drought-resistant crops partially reduces climate change risks, although some limits to adaptation have already been reached. Poorer countries are responsible for a small share of global emissions, yet have the least ability to adapt and are most vulnerable to climate change. (Full article...)
Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become arid. It is the spread of arid areas caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change and overexploitation of soil as a result of human activity.
Throughout geological history, the development of deserts has occurred naturally. In recent times, the potential influences of human activity, improper land management, deforestation and climate change on desertification is the subject of many scientific investigations. (Full article...)
Destruction, from The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole (1836)
Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of social complexity as an adaptive system, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, economic collapse, population decline, mass migration, and sabotage or assimilation by rival civilizations. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear.
Virtually all civilizations have suffered such a fate, regardless of their size or complexity, but some of them later revived and transformed, such as China, India, and Egypt. However, others never recovered, such as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Maya civilization, and the Easter Island civilization. Societal collapse is generally quick but rarely abrupt.
Anthropologists, (quantitative) historians, and sociologists have proposed a variety of explanations for the collapse of civilizations involving causative factors such as environmental change, depletion of resources, unsustainable complexity, invasion, disease, decay of social cohesion, rising inequality, long-term decline of cognitive abilities, loss of creativity, and misfortune. However, complete extinction of a culture is not inevitable, and in some cases, the new societies that arise from the ashes of the old one are evidently its offspring, despite a dramatic reduction in sophistication. Moreover, the influence of a collapsed society, such as the Western Roman Empire, may linger on long after its death. (Full article...)
Medical professionals treating a COVID-19 patient in critical condition in an intensive care unit in São Paulo in May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified in an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Attempts to contain it there failed, allowing the virus to spread to other areas of Asia and later worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020, and began referring to it as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. As of 5 June 2023, the pandemic had caused 767,364,119[1] cases and 6,938,340[1] confirmed deaths, making it one of the deadliest in history.
COVID-19 symptoms range from undetectable to deadly, but most commonly include fever, dry cough, and fatigue. Severe illness is more likely in elderly patients and those with certain underlying medical conditions. COVID-19 transmits when people breathe in air contaminated by droplets and small airborne particles containing the virus. The risk of breathing these in is highest when people are in close proximity, but they can be inhaled over longer distances, particularly indoors. Transmission can also occur if contaminated fluids reach the eyes, nose, or mouth, or, more rarely, through contaminated surfaces. Infected individuals are typically contagious for 10 days and can spread the virus even if they do not develop symptoms. Mutations have produced many strains (variants) with varying degrees of infectivity and virulence.
The COVID-19 vaccines have been approved and widely distributed in various countries since December 2020. According to a June 2022 study, COVID-19 vaccines prevented an additional 14.4 million to 19.8 million deaths in 185 countries and territories from 8 December 2020 to 8 December 2021. Other preventive measures include social distancing, wearing masks, improving ventilation and air filtration, and quarantining those who have been exposed or are infected. Treatments include novel antiviral drugs and symptom control. Common public health mitigation measures during the emergency phase included travel restrictions, lockdowns, business restrictions and closures, workplace hazard controls, mask mandates, quarantines, testing systems, and contact tracing of the infected, which, together with treatments, served to bring about the control of the pandemic. (Full article...)
Food security speaks to the availability of food in a country (or geography) and the ability of individuals within that country (geography) to access, afford, and source adequate foodstuffs. According to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security, food security is defined as meaning that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. The availability of food irrespective of class, gender or region is another element of food security. There is evidence of food security being a concern many thousands of years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference, the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply; food security is defined as the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The first World Food Summit, held in 1996, stated that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all members, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food insecurity, on the other hand, is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a situation of "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways". Food security incorporates a measure of resilience to future disruption or unavailability of critical food supply due to various risk factors including droughts, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO, identified the four pillars of food security as availability, access, utilization, and stability. The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to Food in the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and has since said that it is vital for the enjoyment of all other rights. (Full article...)
Raw sewage and industrial waste in the New River as it passes from Mexicali (Mexico) to Calexico, California
Water pollution (or aquatic pollution) is the contamination of water bodies, usually as a result of human activities, so that it negatively affects its uses. Water bodies include lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers, reservoirs and groundwater. Water pollution results when contaminants mix with these water bodies. Contaminants can come from one of four main sources: sewage discharges, industrial activities, agricultural activities, and urban runoff including stormwater. Water pollution is either surface water pollution or groundwater pollution. This form of pollution can lead to many problems, such as the degradation of aquatic ecosystems or spreading water-borne diseases when people use polluted water for drinking or irrigation. Another problem is that water pollution reduces the ecosystem services (such as providing drinking water) that the water resource would otherwise provide.
Sources of water pollution are either point sources or non-point sources. Point sources have one identifiable cause, such as a storm drain, a wastewater treatment plant or an oil spill. Non-point sources are more diffuse, such as agricultural runoff. Pollution is the result of the cumulative effect over time. Pollution may take the form of toxic substances (e.g., oil, metals, plastics, pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, industrial waste products), stressful conditions (e.g., changes of pH, hypoxia or anoxia, increased temperatures, excessive turbidity, changes of salinity), or the introduction of pathogenic organisms. Contaminants may include organic and inorganic substances. A common cause of thermal pollution is the use of water as a coolant by power plants and industrial manufacturers.
Control of water pollution requires appropriate infrastructure and management plans as well as legislation. Technology solutions can include improving sanitation, sewage treatment, industrial wastewater treatment, agricultural wastewater treatment, erosion control, sediment control and control of urban runoff (including stormwater management). (Full article...)
Ocean acidification is the decrease in the pH of the Earth's ocean. Between 1950 and 2020, the average pH of the ocean surface fell from approximately 8.15 to 8.05. Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are the primary cause of ocean acidification, with atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels exceeding 410 ppm (in 2020). CO2 from the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. This produces carbonic acid (H2CO3) which dissociates into a bicarbonate ion (HCO−3) and a hydrogen ion (H+). The presence of free hydrogen ions (H+) lowers the pH of the ocean, increasing acidity (this does not mean that seawater is acidic yet; it is still alkaline, with a pH higher than 8). Marine calcifying organisms, such as mollusks and corals, are especially vulnerable because they rely on calcium carbonate to build shells and skeletons. A change in pH by 0.1 represents a 26% increase in hydrogen ion concentration in the world's oceans (the pH scale is logarithmic, so a change of one in pH unit is equivalent to a tenfold change in hydrogen ion concentration). Sea-surface pH and carbonate saturation states vary depending on ocean depth and location. Colder and higher latitude waters are capable of absorbing more CO2. This can cause acidity to rise, lowering the pH and carbonate saturation levels in these areas. Other factors that influence the atmosphere-ocean CO2 exchange, and thus local ocean acidification, include: ocean currents and upwelling zones, proximity to large continental rivers, sea ice coverage, and atmospheric exchange with nitrogen and sulfur from fossil fuel burning and agriculture.
Decreased ocean pH has a range of potentially harmful effects for marine organisms. These include reduced calcification, depressed metabolic rates, lowered immune responses, and reduced energy for basic functions such as reproduction. The effects of ocean acidification are therefore impacting marine ecosystems that provide food, livelihoods, and other ecosystem services for a large portion of humanity. Some 1 billion people are wholly or partially dependent on the fishing, tourism, and coastal management services provided by coral reefs. Habitat for Humanity. Ongoing acidification of the oceans may therefore threaten food chains linked with the oceans. (Full article...)- Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing different behaviors, aspirations and needs equally, regardless of gender.
Gender equality is the goal, while gender neutrality and gender equity are practices and ways of thinking that help in achieving the goal. Gender parity, which is used to measure gender balance in a given situation, can aid in achieving gender equality but is not the goal in and of itself. Gender equality is more than just equal representation, it is strongly tied to women's rights, and often requires policy changes. , the global movement[which?] for gender equality has not incorporated the proposition of genders besides women and men, or gender identities outside of the gender binary.
UNICEF says gender equality "means that women and men, and girls and boys, enjoy the same rights, resources, opportunities and protections. It does not require that girls and boys, or women and men, be the same, or that they be treated exactly alike." (Full article...)
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, 4IR, or Industry 4.0, conceptualises rapid change to technology, industries, and societal patterns and processes in the 21st century due to increasing interconnectivity and smart automation. The term was popularised in 2015 by Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman, and has since been used in numerous economic, political, and scientific articles in reference to the current era of emerging high technology. Schwab asserts that the changes seen are more than just improvements to efficiency, but express a significant shift in industrial capitalism.
A part of this phase of industrial change is the joining of technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, to advanced robotics that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.
Throughout this, fundamental shifts are taking place in how the global production and supply network operates through ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology, large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M), and the internet of things (IoT). This integration results in increasing automation, improving communication and self-monitoring, and the use of smart machines that can analyse and diagnose issues without the need for human intervention. (Full article...)- Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city." Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning. In addition to describing a special form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development. Medieval suburbs suffered from the loss of protection of city walls, before the advent of industrial warfare. Modern disadvantages and costs include increased travel time, transport costs, pollution, and destruction of the countryside. The cost of building urban infrastructure for new developments is hardly ever recouped through property taxes, amounting to a subsidy for the developers and new residents at the expense of existing property taxpayers.
In Continental Europe, the term peri-urbanisation is often used to denote similar dynamics and phenomena, but the term urban sprawl is currently being used by the European Environment Agency. There is widespread disagreement about what constitutes sprawl and how to quantify it. For example, some commentators measure sprawl by residential density, using the average number of residential units per acre in a given area. Others associate it with decentralization (spread of population without a well-defined centre), discontinuity (leapfrogging development, as defined below), segregation of uses, and so forth.
The term urban sprawl is highly politicized and almost always has negative connotations. It is criticized for causing environmental degradation, intensifying segregation, and undermining the vitality of existing urban areas, and is attacked on aesthetic grounds. The pejorative meaning of the term means that few openly support urban sprawl as such. The term has become a rallying cry for managing urban growth. (Full article...) 
“Whatever happened to the Ozone Hole?”, Distillations Podcast Episode 230, April 17, 2018, Science History Institute
Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone layer) around Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon is referred to as the ozone hole. There are also springtime polar tropospheric ozone depletion events in addition to these stratospheric events.
The main causes of ozone depletion and the ozone hole are manufactured chemicals, especially manufactured halocarbon refrigerants, solvents, propellants, and foam-blowing agents (chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), HCFCs, halons), referred to as ozone-depleting substances (ODS). These compounds are transported into the stratosphere by turbulent mixing after being emitted from the surface, mixing much faster than the molecules can settle. Once in the stratosphere, they release atoms from the halogen group through photodissociation, which catalyze the breakdown of ozone (O3) into oxygen (O2). Both types of ozone depletion were observed to increase as emissions of halocarbons increased.
Ozone depletion and the ozone hole have generated worldwide concern over increased cancer risks and other negative effects. The ozone layer prevents harmful wavelengths of ultraviolet (UVB) light from passing through the Earth's atmosphere. These wavelengths cause skin cancer, sunburn, permanent blindness, and cataracts, which were projected to increase dramatically as a result of thinning ozone, as well as harming plants and animals. These concerns led to the adoption of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which bans the production of CFCs, halons, and other ozone-depleting chemicals. Currently, scientists plan to develop new refrigerants to replace older ones. (Full article...)
The dodo became extinct during the mid-to-late 17th century due to habitat destruction, overhunting, and predation by introduced mammals. It is an often-cited example of a modern extinction.
The Holocene extinction, or Anthropocene extinction, is the ongoing extinction event during the Holocene epoch. The extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, and affecting not just terrestrial species but also large sectors of marine life. With widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots, such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, which goes unrecorded. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates, and is increasing.
During the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss and species extinction have accelerated, to the point that most conservation biologists now believe that human activity has either produced a period of mass extinction, or is on the cusp of doing so. As such, after the "Big Five" mass extinctions, the Holocene extinction event has also been referred to as the sixth mass extinction or sixth extinction; given the recent recognition of the Capitanian mass extinction, the term seventh mass extinction has also been proposed for the Holocene extinction event.
The Holocene extinction follows the extinction of many large (megafaunal) animals during the preceding Late Pleistocene as part of the Quaternary extinction event. It has been suggested that megafauna outside of the African mainland, which did not evolve alongside modern humans, proved highly sensitive to the introduction of human predation, and many died out shortly after early humans began spreading and hunting across the Earth. (Full article...)
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, convention centers (pictured here) were deemed to be ideal sites for temporary hospitals, due to their existing infrastructure (electrical, water, sewage). Hotels and dormitories were also considered appropriate because they can use negative pressure technology.
A pandemic (/pænˈdɛmɪk/ pan-DEM-ik) is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic diseases with a stable number of infected individuals such as recurrences of seasonal influenza are generally excluded as they occur simultaneously in large regions of the globe rather than being spread worldwide.
Throughout human history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases such as smallpox. The most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the Black Death—also known as The Plague—which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The term had not been used then but was used for later epidemics, including the 1918 influenza pandemic—more commonly known as the Spanish flu.
Current pandemics include HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. (Full article...)- Biodiversity loss includes the worldwide extinction of different species, as well as the local reduction or loss of species in a certain habitat, resulting in a loss of biological diversity. The latter phenomenon can be temporary or permanent, depending on whether the environmental degradation that leads to the loss is reversible through ecological restoration/ecological resilience or effectively permanent (e.g. through land loss). The current global extinction (frequently called the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction), has resulted in a biodiversity crisis being driven by human activities which push beyond the planetary boundaries and so far has proven irreversible.
The main direct threats to conservation (and thus causes for biodiversity loss) fall in eleven categories: Residential and commercial development; farming activities; energy production and mining; transportation and service corridors; biological resource usages; human intrusions and activities that alter, destroy, disturb habitats and species from exhibiting natural behaviors; natural system modification; invasive and problematic species, pathogens and genes; pollution; catastrophic geological events, climate change.
Numerous scientists and the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services assert that human population growth and overconsumption are the primary factors in this decline. However other scientists have criticized this, saying that loss of habitat is caused mainly by "the growth of commodities for export" and that population has very little to do with overall consumption, due to country wealth disparities. (Full article...) - Biotechnology risk is a form of existential risk from biological sources, such as genetically engineered biological agents. The release of such high-consequence pathogens could be
- deliberate (in the form of bioterrorism or biological weapons)
- accidental, or
- a naturally occurring event.
A chapter on biotechnology and biosecurity was included in Nick Bostrom's 2008 anthology Global Catastrophic Risks, which covered risks including viral agents. Since then, new technologies like CRISPR and gene drives have been introduced.
While the ability to deliberately engineer pathogens has been constrained to high-end labs run by top researchers, the technology to achieve this is rapidly becoming cheaper and more widespread. For example, the diminishing cost of sequencing the human genome (from $10 million to $1,000), the accumulation of large datasets of genetic information, the discovery of gene drives, and the discovery of CRISPR. Biotechnology risk is therefore a credible explanation for the Fermi paradox. (Full article...) - Inclusive growth is economic growth that raises standards of livings for broad swaths of a population. Proponents for inclusive growth warn that inequitable growth may have adverse political outcomes.
The definition of inclusive growth implies direct links between the macroeconomic and microeconomic determinants of the economy and economic growth. The microeconomic dimension captures the importance of structural transformation for economic diversification and competition, while the macro dimension refers to changes in economic aggregates such as the country’s gross national product (GNP) or gross domestic product (GDP), total factor productivity, and aggregate factor inputs.
Sustainable economic growth requires inclusive growth. Maintaining this is sometimes difficult because economic growth may give rise to negative externalities, such as a rise in corruption, which is a major problem in developing countries. Nonetheless, an emphasis on inclusiveness—especially on equality of opportunity in terms of access to markets, resources, and an unbiased regulatory environment—is an essential ingredient of successful growth. The inclusive growth approach takes a longer-term perspective, as the focus is on productive employment as a means of increasing the incomes of poor and excluded groups and raising their standards of living. (Full article...)
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes, and is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices increase greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Larger amounts of these gases trap more heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, causing global warming.
Due to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include ocean heating, ocean acidification and sea level rise.
Climate change threatens people with increased flooding, extreme heat, increased food and water scarcity, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Societies and ecosystems will experience more severe risks without action to limit warming. Adapting to climate change through efforts like flood control measures or drought-resistant crops partially reduces climate change risks, although some limits to adaptation have already been reached. Poorer countries are responsible for a small share of global emissions, yet have the least ability to adapt and are most vulnerable to climate change. (Full article...)
The TED spread (in red), an indicator of perceived risk in the general economy, increased significantly during the financial crisis, reflecting an increase in perceived credit risk. The TED spread spiked up in July 2007, remained volatile for a year, then spiked even higher in September 2008, reaching a record 4.65% on October 10, 2008.
The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or Global Financial Crisis (GFC), was a severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm".
Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to American real estate, as well as a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. Financial institutions worldwide suffered severe damage, reaching a climax with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and a subsequent international banking crisis.
The preconditioning for the financial crisis was complex and multi-causal. Almost two decades prior, the U.S. Congress had passed legislation encouraging financing for affordable housing. However, in 1999, parts of the Glass-Steagall legislation, which had been adopted in 1933, were repealed, permitting financial institutions to commingle their commercial (risk-averse) and proprietary trading (risk-taking) operations. Arguably the largest contributor to the conditions necessary for financial collapse was the rapid development in predatory financial products which targeted low-income, low-information homebuyers who largely belonged to racial minorities. This market development went unattended by regulators and thus caught the U.S. government by surprise. (Full article...)
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Did you know...
- ... that Paul Blasingame was a member of the "inertial mafia", who advocated the use of inertial navigation systems, and he oversaw the development of the one used by the Apollo spacecraft?
- ... that while The Gods from Outer Space has eight volumes, only four were published in English?
- ... that the rare Somali pigeon urgently needs a population survey?
- ... that the tunnel boring machines that dug the London's new Northern line extension were named after the first British astronaut Helen Sharman, and British aviation pioneer Amy Johnson?
- ... that when creating Aerodynamic Forms in Space in 2010, Rodney Graham was inspired by photographs of misassembled toy model gliders he took in 1977?
- ... that after training for the Soyuz T-11 mission, Indian Air Force pilot Ravish Malhotra stayed on the ground as a backup astronaut for Rakesh Sharma, who became the first Indian in space?
- ... that SpaceX's reusable Starship launch vehicle has twice as much thrust as the Apollo program's Saturn V?
- ... that ESA astronauts used virtual reality to verify the design of the International Habitation Module?
- ... that the name of the Squirrel Scouts section of the Scout Association in the United Kingdom was inspired in part by the thriving population of red squirrels on Brownsea Island, where Scouting began?
- ... that infectious diseases specialist Jameela Al Salman has supported the development of medical robots and called their use in Bahrain a "pioneering experiment"?
- ... that the population of Holmes County, Ohio, is approximately 50 percent Amish?
- ... that Ed White was the first American to perform a spacewalk?
- ... that when astronaut Shannon Lucid returned to Earth after six months in orbit, she was presented with a box of M&M's?
- ... that Baer's pochard, found in eastern Asia, has seen a population decline of more than 99 percent in past decades, and is no longer migratory in central and eastern China?
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Selected images that captured my attention
American astronaut Eugene Cernan (born March 14, 1934), shown here on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission, the last time any human has set foot on it. In that final lunar landing mission, launched December 7, 1972, Cernan became "the last man on the moon" since he was the last to re-enter the Apollo Lunar Module during its third and final extra-vehicular activity. Prior to this, Cernan had also gone into space twice on the Gemini 9A and Apollo 10 missions.
A swan created using modular origami, a paperfolding technique which uses two or more sheets of paper to create a larger and more complex structure than possible with single-piece origami techniques. Each individual sheet of paper is folded into a module, or unit, and then modules are assembled into an integrated flat shape or three-dimensional structure by inserting flaps into pockets created by the folding process. These insertions create tension or friction that holds the model together.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag of the United States, part of the Lunar Flag Assembly, during Apollo 11. The Lunar Flag Assembly was designed to survive a Moon landing and to appear to "wave" as it would in a breeze on Earth. This flag fell over when the Lunar Module Eagle took off.
One of two monkey selfies taken by Celebes crested macaques using equipment belonging to the British nature photographer David Slater. In mid-2014, the images' hosting on Wikimedia Commons was at the centre of a dispute over whether copyright could be held on artworks made by non-human animals. Slater argued that, as he had "engineered" the shot, he held copyright, while Wikimedia considered the photographs public domain on the grounds that they were made by an animal rather than a person. In December 2014, the United States Copyright Office stated that works by a non-human are not subject to US copyright, a view reaffirmed by a US federal judge in 2016.
An animation of a cicada undergoing ecdysis, the molting of the exoskeleton in arthropods and related groups. Since the cuticula of these animals is inelastic, it is shed during growth and a new, larger covering is formed. The old, empty exoskeleton is called an exuvia. Within one or two hours, the cuticle hardens and darkens, during which time the animal grows, since growth is otherwise constrained by the rigidity of the exoskeleton. Each frame of this image was taken at one-minute intervals, with a 30-minute gap in middle while the cicada rested. The entire process took about 2 hours to complete.
A man engaging in big wave surfing at Mavericks, located just north of Half Moon Bay, California. Big wave surfing is a discipline within surfing in which experienced surfers paddle into or are towed onto waves which are at least 20 ft (6.1 m) high, and is a hazardous activity, as surfers can be pushed far beneath the surface of the water after a wipeout.
Atlantic White-sided Dolphins, on a concrete-floored dock at the port of Hvalba, which is in the Faroe Islands, north of the United Kingdom. Whaling in the Faroe Islands has been practised since at least the 10th century. It is strongly regulated by Faroese authorities and is approved by the International Whaling Commission.
A Marginated Tortoise hatchling.
The International Space Station (ISS) as seen from the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Zarya, the first module of the ISS launched in 1998, is seen in the foreground. Since then, twenty-six Space Shuttle flights have docked with the ISS to assemble various other modules and components, which include four pairs of solar arrays seen on each side.
United States Navy personnel engage in Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction (SPIE) training between a Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk helicopter and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69). SPIE involves either a person or goods being lowered from or raised to a helicopter via a cable above terrain on which landing would be difficult.
A neutral density filter is a filter that reduces or modifies the intensity of all wavelengths or colors of light equally, giving no changes in hue of color rendition. The filter reduces the amount of light entering the lens, allowing the photographer to select combinations of aperture, exposure time and sensor sensitivity to avoid overexposed pictures. It would normally be attached to the lens, but is hand-held here to illustrate the effect.
The Door to Hell is a natural gas field in Derweze, Turkmenistan, which has been burning since 1971 when it was ignited by Soviet scientists who expected it to burn out within days. They were trying to prevent the release of poisonous gases. The name "Door to Hell" was given to the field by locals. The hot spots range over an area with a width of 60 metres (200 ft) and to a depth of about 20 metres (66 ft).
Devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana during 2005, shown here looking down on Interstate 10 at West End Boulevard towards Lake Pontchartrain. Over 1,800 people were confirmed dead with 705 still missing. It was the costliest Atlantic hurricane in history causing around $86 billion in damage. This photo shows flooded roadways as the United States Coast Guard conducted initial damage assessment overflights of New Orleans on Monday, August 29, 2005. The city flooded due primarily to the failure of the levee system. Many who remained in their homes had to swim for their lives, wade through deep water, or remain trapped in their attics or on their rooftops.
The Aqueduct of Segovia is a Roman aqueduct located in Segovia, Spain that transports water from the Rio Frio. It is thought to have been constructed during the 1st century CE. One of the most significant and best-preserved ancient monuments left on the Iberian Peninsula, the aqueduct is considered a symbol of Segovia and is present on the city's coat of arms.
Height comparison of notable statues: 1) Statue of Unity 240 m. 2) Spring Temple Buddha 153 m. 3) Statue of Liberty 93 m. 4) The Motherland Calls 91 m. 5) Christ the Redeemer 39.6 m. 6) Statue of David 5.17 m.
aurora australis, as seen from the International Space Station. Aurorae are natural light displays in the sky caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude thermosphere. The particles originate in the magnetosphere and solar wind and, on Earth, are directed by Earth's magnetic field into the atmosphere.
Tracy Caldwell Dyson in the Cupola module of the International Space Station, observing the Earth below during Expedition 24. Caldwell Dyson is an American chemist and astronaut. She was selected by NASA in 1998 and made her first spaceflight in August 2007 on the STS-118 mission aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour.
The Pinwheel Galaxy is a face-on spiral galaxy located 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It was first discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781, and communicated to Charles Messier, who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries. This image, released on February 28, 2006, is composed of 51 individual exposures, as well as some extra ground-based photos. At the time of its release, it was the largest and most detailed image of a galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope.
San Francisco Bay shrouded in fog, as seen from the Marin Headlands looking east. The fog of San Francisco is a kind of sea fog, created when warm, moist air blows from the central Pacific Ocean across the cold water of the California Current, which flows just off the coast. The water is cold enough to lower the temperature of the air to the dew point, causing fog generation. In this photo, the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge can be seen poking through the fog, and the Bay Bridge is visible in the distance.
Crash landing of an F6F Hellcat into the port side 20mm gun gallery of the USS Enterprise, November 10, 1943. Lieutenant Walter L. Chewning, Jr., USNR, the Catapult Officer, is climbing up the plane's side to assist the pilot from the burning aircraft. The pilot, Ensign Byron M. Johnson, escaped without significant injury. Note the plane's ruptured belly fuel tank.
The I-35W Mississippi River bridge was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Saint Anthony Falls of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Once the third-busiest bridge in the state, it suddenly collapsed on August 1, 2007, killing 13 and injuring 145. Rescue of people stranded on the bridge was complete in three hours, while recovery of bodies—involving 75 local, state and federal agencies—took three weeks. An NTSB investigation cited a design flaw as the likely cause of the collapse, noting that a too-thin gusset plate ripped along a line of rivets.
The "Baker" explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on July 25, 1946. Its purpose was to test the effect of nuclear weapons on naval ships. It was the second US nuclear bomb set off since the bombing of Nagasaki.
View from Notre-Dame de Paris.
The mushroom cloud caused by the detonation of the "Fat Man" bomb during the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, rising approximately 18 kilometres (11 mi) above the hypocenter.
The American Bison, or Buffalo, is the largest terrestrial mammal in North America, and once inhabited the Great Plains in massive herds. They were central to the lives of Native American tribes. This pile of bison skulls from the 1870s illustrates the extent of their slaughter in the 19th century by settlers: from a population of about 60 million in 1800 to as few as 750 in 1890. They have since been reintroduced into the wild and are no longer considered a high risk endangered species.
An overhead view of Skylab, the United States' first space station, in Earth orbit as photographed from the Skylab 4 Command and Service Modules. Skylab 4 was the last mission to Skylab and brought back its final crew; this photograph was the last one taken of the station before the mission re-entered Earth's atmosphere and disintegrated in 1979.
A lava lake at Mount Nyiragongo, a volcano found in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lava lakes, which can form in three different ways, are large volumes of molten lava, usually basaltic, contained in a volcanic vent, crater, or broad depression. Persistent lava lakes such as the one at Nyiragongo, which is the largest to appear in recent times, are rare.
You are feeling very sleepy...
The Hubble Extreme Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax released by NASA on September 25, 2012. The successor to the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, this image was compiled from 10 years of previous images with a total exposure time of two million seconds, or approximately 23 days.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was a magnitude 9.15, undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on December 26 2004. The earthquake generated a tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people around the Indian Ocean, making it one of the deadliest disasters in modern history. This photograph shows the tsunami as it reached Ao Nang, Thailand.
Crowds surrounding the Reflecting Pool, during the August 28 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 people participated in the march, which featured Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech. It was a major factor leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The march was also condemned by the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X, who termed it the "farce on Washington".
NGC 1300 is a barred spiral galaxy located roughly 69 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Eridanus. In its core, the nucleus shows its own extraordinary and distinct "grand-design" spiral structure that is about 3,300 light-years long.
Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and currently the tallest man-made structure in the world, at 829.8 m (2,722 ft). It was designed to be the centerpiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development known as Downtown Dubai. Construction took over five years, and the skyscraper was officially opened in January 2010.
The sperm whale is the largest toothed animal on Earth. The species was hunted extensively by humans throughout history, until protected by a worldwide moratorium on whaling starting in 1985–86.
Sandboarding is a boardsport similar to snowboarding, but competitions take place on sand dunes rather than snow-covered mountains. Here, a member of the US Navy sandboards down a dune in Jebel Ali, Dubai.
Imagine waking up to this. Which makes me wonder whatever happened to the guy who took this photo.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the freestanding bell tower of the Cathedral of Pisa, Italy. The third oldest structure in the city's Square of Miracles, it is known worldwide for its unintended tilt. The tower's tilt began during construction in the 12th century, caused by an inadequate foundation on ground too soft on one side to properly support the structure's weight. The tilt gradually increased until the tower was stabilized (and the tilt partially corrected) by efforts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The tower, which measures 55.86 metres (183.27 feet) from the ground on the low side and 56.67 metres (185.93 feet) on the high side, has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.
Lucky Diamond Rich (b. 1971) is a New Zealand-born performance artist and street performer who holds the Guinness World Record for most tattooed man, taking the title from Tom Leppard in 2006. He is recognized by Guinness as being covered in tattoos over 100% of his body, including the inside of his eyelids, ears, and mouth.
The mushroom cloud from the Ivy Mike nuclear test, one of two tests conducted as part of Operation Ivy at the Pacific Proving Grounds on Elugelab in the Marshall Islands. Mike was the first successful full-scale test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon, and it left an underwater crater 6,240 ft (1,900 m) wide and 164 ft (50 m) deep where the island had been.
A dust storm rushes towards a military camp as it rolls over Al Asad Airbase, Iraq, just before nightfall on April 27, 2005. A dust storm (or sandstorm) is a meteorological phenomenon common in dry, arid and semi-arid regions, usually the result of convection currents created by intense heating of the ground. These currents then carry clouds of sand over large distances.
Glaucus atlanticus is a species of small, blue sea slug. This pelagic aeolid nudibranch floats upside down, using the surface tension of the water to stay up, and is carried along by the winds and ocean currents. The blue side of their body faces upwards, blending in with the blue of the water, while the grey side faces downwards, blending in with the silvery surface of the sea. G. atlanticus feeds on other pelagic creatures, including the Portuguese man o' war.
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Trump news tracker
- 9 May 2023 – E. Jean Carroll vs. Donald J. Trump
- A nine-member jury in Manhattan federal court finds former U.S. President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, and also finds him liable for defaming her. Trump is ordered to pay Carroll $5 million. (Reuters)
- 4 May 2023 – January 6 United States Capitol attack
- Four members of the Proud Boys are found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a jury in Washington, D.C., for their role in forcibly preventing the peaceful transfer of power from then-U.S. President Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election. (CNN)
Interests
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Wikipedia newsfeed
- 5 June 2023 – Capital punishment in South Korea
- The Ministry of Justice says it will submit a bill to parliament to lift the ban on carrying out death sentences after 30 years, although South Korea has not carried out an execution since 1997. (Yonhap)
- 5 June 2023 –
- New South Wales Governor Margaret Beazley unconditionally pardons Kathleen Folbigg, releasing her from 20 years of a 25-year sentence for killing all four of her children, after scientific and medical research suggested the deaths were caused by genetic mutations. (The Guardian)
- Former Vice President Mike Pence officially files to run for President of the United States in 2024. (BBC News)
- 4 June 2023 –
- Seventy-seven primary school girls are hospitalised after a poison attack on two schools in Sancharak, Sar-e Pol, Afghanistan. (CNA)
- 4 June 2023 – 2021–2023 global energy crisis
- Saudi Arabia's energy ministry announces a cut in oil production from around ten million barrels per day this month to nine million barrels per day from July. Oil prices on Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures initially rise by more than two per cent, but later fall slightly. (CNBC)
- 4 June 2023 – 2023 Virginia plane crash
- An unresponsive Cessna Citation plane crashes over mountainous terrain after being intercepted by an F-16 jet over Washington, D.C. The plane was flying from Elizabethton Municipal Airport, Tennessee, United States, to Long Island MacArthur Airport, New York. (AP) (WRC-TV)
- 4 June 2023 –
- Fourteen people are killed and five others are missing after a landslide in a mountainous area near Leshan, Sichuan, China. (Reuters)
- One person is killed and 14 others are injured when a bus travelling from Lecce in Puglia to Rome crashes on a motorway in Vallesaccarda, Campania, Italy. (Ansa)
- One person is killed and ten others are injured in a fire at a refugee centre in Apolda, Thuringia, Germany. (AP)
- 4 June 2023 – 2023 Guinea-Bissau legislative election
- The citizens of Guinea-Bissau go to the polls to elect 102 members of the National People's Assembly. (Reuters)
- 4 June 2023 – 2023 Polish protests
- Anti-government protests erupt across Poland, with an estimated 500,000 demonstrators gathering in the capital Warsaw, according to Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. (AP)
- 3 June 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Attacks on civilians in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Russian forces strike a residential area in Dnipro Raion with Iskander cruise missiles, killing a two-year-old girl and injuring 22 other civilians, including five children. (Reuters)
- 3 June 2023 – Egypt–Israel relations
- 2023 Egypt–Israel border shooting incident
- Three Israeli soldiers and an Egyptian policeman are killed in an exchange of fire near the Egyptian-Israeli border. It is the first fatal incident between the two countries in more than a decade. (The Washington Post)
- 3 June 2023 – 2023 United States debt-ceiling crisis
- President Joe Biden signs the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 to prevent the United States from breaching its debt ceiling. (NBC News)
- 3 June 2023 – 2023 Nova Scotia wildfires
- A wildfire in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia, Canada, continues to burn out of control, becoming the largest wildfire in the province's history. (CBC News)
- 3 June 2023 –
- Four children are found dead on a beach in Portneuf-sur-Mer, Quebec, Canada, after eleven people on a fishing trip on the St. Lawrence River were caught in a tidal bore and went missing. Six of the eleven people have been rescued, while one man is still missing. (CNN)
- Two people are killed when a small plane crashes at Tupelo Regional Airport in Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. (AP)
- One person is killed, another injured and 14 rescued after an overcrowded boat capsizes off the coast of Haiti. (AP)
- 3 June 2023 – 2023 Epsom Derby
- Surrey Police make 19 arrests on suspicion of "conspiracy to cause public nuisance" ahead of the Epsom Derby. (BBC Sport)
- 3 June 2023 –
- Seven people are killed and two others injured in a mass shooting at a hostel in the township of Umlazi, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. (News 24)
- 3 June 2023 – Third inauguration of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
- The third inauguration of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as President of Turkey takes place at the Presidential Complex in Ankara. (TIME)
- 3 June 2023 – 2022–23 FA Cup
- In association football, Manchester City beat rivals Manchester United 2–1 in the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium in London to win their seventh FA Cup title. İlkay Gündoğan breaks the record for the fastest goal in an FA Cup final, scoring after just 12 seconds. (BBC Sport)
- 3 June 2023 – 2022–23 UEFA Women's Champions League
- FC Barcelona Femení lifted the UEFA Women's Champions League trophy for the second time after defeating VfL Wolfsburg 3–2 in the final at the Philips Stadion in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Fridolina Rolfö scored the winner after Barcelona had trailed 2–0 at the break. (Al Jazeera)
- 2 June 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Southern Ukraine campaign
- Russian occupation official Vladimir Rogov says Ukrainian forces have shelled the port of Berdiansk in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, injuring nine people. (Reuters)
- 2 June 2023 – Allied Democratic Forces insurgency, Kivu conflict
- Nine people are killed when Allied Democratic Forces insurgents attack a group of people on the Kyondo-Kyavinyonge road in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. (AP)
- 2 June 2023 – Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials
- The U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg, is renamed Fort Liberty. (Reuters)
- 2 June 2023 – 2023 Odisha train collision
- At least 288 people are killed and more than 900 injured in a train collision in Balasore district, Odisha, India. (India Today) (Al Jazeera)
- 2 June 2023 – 2023 Atlantic hurricane season
- Tropical Storm Arlene forms as the first named storm of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season. (The Washington Post)
- 2 June 2023 –
- One person is killed and nine others injured by a fire in a high-rise building in Rome, Italy. (BBC News)
- 2 June 2023 – 2023 Central Canada wildfires
- The government of Sept-Îles, Quebec, Canada, declares a state of emergency and orders the evacuation of more than 10,000 residents following a series of wildfires in the eastern part of the country. (CNA)
- 2 June 2023 –
- Japan's fertility rate is expected to have reached a record low of 1.2565 in 2022. (Reuters)
- 2 June 2023 – Foreign nationals detained in Iran
- Iran releases one Danish and two dual Austrian-Iranian citizens. (BBC News)
- 2 June 2023 – Assassination of Jovenel Moïse
- A Florida court in the United States sentences a Haitian-Chilean national to life in prison for the July 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. (The Guardian)
- 1 June 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- 2022–2023 Western Russia attacks
- Russia says they have prevented three attacks by the Russian Volunteer Corps in Belgorod Oblast. (The New Voice of Ukraine via Yahoo! News) (Reuters)
- Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov says that Ukrainian forces have shelled Shebekino with BM-21 Grad rockets, damaging a dormitory and an administrative building in the town. Hundreds of people are evacuated. (Reuters)
- Attacks on civilians in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Russia launches cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at Kyiv, killing three civilians and injuring 12 others. (AFP via Arab News)
- 1 June 2023 – 2023 Sudan conflict
- Twenty-seven people are killed and at least 106 others are injured when rockets are fired at a market in Khartoum, Sudan. (The Guardian) (BBC News)
- 1 June 2023 –
- Three people in Lakhsh District, eastern Tajikistan are killed by a landslide. (RFE/RL)
- 1 June 2023 – 2018–2023 Haitian crisis
- At least 160 suspected gang members were killed in Haiti between April 24 and May 24 by armed citizens after an increase in violence across the country. (Al Jazeera)
- 1 June 2023 – Bill Cosby sexual assault cases
- A new lawsuit is filed against American actor Bill Cosby by Playboy model Victoria Valentino, accusing him of drugging and raping her in 1969. (NBC News)
- 1 June 2023 –
- Nine people are killed during protests in Dakar and Ziguinchor, Senegal, between the police and supporters of convicted opposition leader Ousmane Sonko. (France 24)
- Four people are injured by a knife attack at a school in Eskilstuna, Södermanland, Sweden. (Reuters)
- 1 June 2023 – Mexican drug war
- Authorities find 45 bags containing human remains in Jalisco, Mexico, after seven people were reported missing in the state last week. (CBS News)
- 1 June 2023 –
- A Swiss appeals court finds former Liberian rebel commander Alieu Kosiah guilty of crimes against humanity committed during the First Liberian Civil War, sentencing him to 20 years in prison at first instance. (Sinar Daily)
- Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announces that the government will construct a prison to hold white-collar criminals. He also announces that the country's security forces had raided the properties of former president Alfredo Cristiani. (Reuters)
- 1 June 2023 – 2024 Salvadoran general election
- Nayib Bukele officially proposes two bills to the Legislative Assembly to reduce the number of municipalities from 262 to 44 and the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly from 84 to 60. (La Prensa Gráfica)
- 1 June 2023 – Capital punishment in Zimbabwe
- The parliament of Zimbabwe votes in favour of a new clause of the penal code which will introduce the death penalty for "unpatriotic acts" such as supporting sanctions on the country or supporting calls to overthrow the government. (Africa Feeds)
- 1 June 2023 – Wedding of Hussein, Crown Prince of Jordan, and Rajwa Al Saif
- Crown Prince of Jordan Hussein bin Abdullah marries Saudi architect and distant relative of the Saud family Rajwa Al Saif in the Jordanian capital of Amman. (CNN)
- 1 June 2023 – 2023 United States debt-ceiling crisis
- The United States Senate passes the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, sending the measure to President Joe Biden to sign in order to avoid a debt ceiling default. (CBS News)
- 31 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Southern Ukraine campaign
- Russia says that it destroyed the Ukrainian Navy warship Yuri Olefirenko at the Port of Odesa in a missile strike on May 29. (Reuters)
- 2022–2023 Western Russia attacks
- Russian authorities say that a Ukrainian drone strike has caused a fire at an oil refinery in Krasnodar Krai, and also caused damage in Shebekino, Belgorod Oblast. (Reuters)
- Battle of Donbas
- According to Russian authorities, five people are killed and 19 others are injured by Ukrainian shelling in Karpaty, in Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast. (US News)
- 31 May 2023 – Jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso
- About 100 gunmen ambush a military escort of a food convoy in Tibou, killing two civilians. At least 50 of the attackers are killed in the ensuing gunfight with soldiers. (Africa News)
- 31 May 2023 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict
- Five members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command are killed and ten others are injured in an explosion at a base in Qusaya, Beqaa Governorate, Lebanon. The PFLP accuses the Israel Defense Forces of responsibility. (Al Jazeera)
- 31 May 2023 – 2022–2023 North Kosovo crisis
- NATO deploys a further 700 troops to North Kosovo to reinforce its KFOR peacekeeping mission amid clashes with Kosovo Serb protesters over the election and installation of ethnic Albanian mayors in several Serb-majority towns following a Serbian election boycott. (Reuters)
- 31 May 2023 – Cannich wildfire
- A wildfire which had been burning for four days in the Scottish Highlands is brought under control after affecting about 30 sq mi (78 km2) of land, making it the largest ever recorded in the United Kingdom. (BBC News)
- 31 May 2023 –
- A magnitude 5.9 earthquake strikes Kachin State, Myanmar, with damage reported. (Fresherslive)
- The United Arab Emirates confirms that it has withdrawn from the United States Navy-led Combined Task Force 150 mission in the Persian Gulf amid recent seizures of oil tankers by Iran. (Reuters)
- The Kyrgyzstan Prosecutor-General's Office calls for lawmakers to allow the prosecution of United Kyrgyzstan opposition leader Adakhan Madumarov for alleged attempts to seize power. (RFE/RL)
- 31 May 2023 – 2023 Bournemouth beach incident
- Two people die and eight others are injured during an incident at a beach in Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom. A man has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, according to Dorset Police. (BBC News)
- 31 May 2023 – 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum
- The Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 bill passes the Australian House of Representatives, thereby allowing for a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament later this year. (ABC News Australia)
- 31 May 2023 – 2023 Latvian presidential election
- Edgars Rinkēvičs is elected the 11th President of Latvia. (LSM)
- 31 May 2023 – Discoveries of exoplanets
- In a news release published by NASA, it is revealed that the James Webb Space Telescope has discovered traces of water on the exoplanet WASP-18b, which has a mass equal to 10 Jupiters. (CBS News)
- 31 May 2023 –
- The launch of the North Korean spy satellite Malligyong-1 ends in failure due to a malfunction of the second stage of the rocket, causing the satellite to crash into the sea. An emergency evacuation alert was erroneously sent to residents of Seoul, South Korea, after the rocket launch, which also triggered air raid sirens in the city. (AP) (Financial Times)
- The tapes for a long lost, unreleased John Coltrane live album with Eric Dolphy are found at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts[2]
- 31 May 2023 – 2022–23 UEFA Europa League
- In association football, Sevilla win a record-extending seventh UEFA Europa League title after defeating A.S. Roma 4–1 on penalties following a 1–1 draw after extra time in the 2023 UEFA Europa League final at the Puskás Aréna in Budapest, Hungary. (The Guardian)
- 30 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- 2023 Moscow drone strikes
- Russian authorities say they have intercepted eight drones over Moscow. (BBC News)
- A Russian drone attack on Kyiv results in the death of a civilian and injures several others. (The New York Times)
- 30 May 2023 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict
- An Israeli settler is shot and killed near Hermesh, West Bank by Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade gunmen. (AP)
- 30 May 2023 – Boko Haram insurgency
- Eight people are killed when Boko Haram gunmen attack the towns of Mora and Zigage, Far North Region, Cameroon. (AP)
- 30 May 2023 –
- Elon Musk meets Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang on a visit to China. (Reuters)
- Three people are killed in a fire at a paper warehouse in Odintsovo, Moscow Oblast, Russia. (Reuters)
- Three people are killed in a fire at a hospital in Mödling, Lower Austria, Austria. (AP)
- Ten Vaishno Devi pilgrims are killed and 57 others are injured when their bus falls from a bridge in Jammu and Kashmir, India. (The Tribune)
- 30 May 2023 – Salvadoran gang crackdown
- Former President of El Salvador Mauricio Funes is sentenced to 14 years in prison for making deals with gangs in El Salvador to start the 2012–2014 Salvadoran gang truce. (AP)
- 30 May 2023 –
- Princess Eugenie of the United Kingdom gives birth to a baby boy named named Ernest George Ronnie, who was named after "his great-great-great grandfather George, his grandpa George and my grandpa Ronald". (BBC News)
- 30 May 2023 – Discoveries of exoplanets
- Indian scientists from the Physical Research Laboratory discover TOI 4603b, an exoplanet with a mass that is 13 times that of Jupiter. (The Hindu)
- 29 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- 2022–2023 Russian strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure
- Russian forces strike Kyiv using Iskander ballistic and cruise missiles, with debris injuring one civilian and damaging infrastructure. Ukraine claims to have shot down all of the missiles. (AP via Los Angeles Times)
- Battle of Donbas
- Russian airstrikes on Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast, target a petrol station and a multi-storey building, killing two people and injuring eight others. (Reuters)
- 29 May 2023 – Syrian civil war
- Northwestern Syria clashes
- Commander-in-chief of the Russian special forces in Syria, Colonel Oleg Pechevisty, is killed by an HTS artillery strike on a military post in Latakia Province. (SOHR) (Enab Baladi)
- 29 May 2023 – 2022–2023 North Kosovo crisis
- Twenty-five peacekeepers of the NATO-led KFOR are injured after clashes with ethnic Serbs in North Kosovo over the installation of ethnic Albanian mayors. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić places the Serbian Armed Forces on the highest level of combat alert in response to the clashes. (BBC News) (AP)
- 29 May 2023 –
- One person is killed and four others are missing after a chartered boat sinks near Sitka, Alaska, United States. (AP)
- 29 May 2023 – United States and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Russia–United States relations
- The Russian Interior Ministry issues an arrest warrant for United States Senator Lindsey Graham over comments Graham made about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Reuters)
- 29 May 2023 – Capital punishment for homosexuality, Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2023
- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signs the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law which introduces the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" and a sentence of 20 years in prison for the "promotion of homosexuality". (Reuters)
- 29 May 2023 –
- Nine people are injured after a shooting on a beach in Hollywood, Florida, United States. (AP)
- The Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, unexpectedly announces his intention to resign by the end of the week, citing exhaustion after the COVID-19 pandemic in Western Australia. (ABC)
- Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, calls for snap elections after the defeat of his party in the Local and regional elections. (El País)
- 28 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Two people are killed and three others are injured in a "record drone attack" on Kyiv. Ukrainian authorities say they have shot down 52 of 54 drones. (Euronews)
- 28 May 2023 – Kivu conflict
- Two rangers are killed in a shooting at Virunga National Park in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Reuters)
- 28 May 2023 – 2023 Manipur violence
- Thirty-three tribal militants are killed by soldiers during an operation in Manipur, India, following ethnic clashes in the region. (Reuters)
- 28 May 2023 –
- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates a new parliament building capable of holding 1,272 MPs. The ceremony is boycotted by the opposition for not asking President Droupadi Murmu to inaugurate it and for selecting the birthday of Hindutva founder Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as the inauguration date, while Delhi Police detain wrestlers Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik for protesting the sexual abuse of female athletes at the ceremony. (BBC News)
- The Comac C919, China's first domestically-built passenger jet, completes its first commercial flight from Shanghai to Beijing by China Eastern Airlines. (AP)
- Three people are injured in Battagram District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, when a magnitude 5.2 earthquake strikes Badakshan, Afghanistan. (Dawn)
- 28 May 2023 – Lake Maggiore boat incident
- Four people are killed and five others injured when a boat capsizes amid bad weather on Lake Maggiore in Lombardy, Italy. (BBC News)
- 28 May 2023 –
- Buildings and roads are damaged across Melbourne by a magnitude 4.0 earthquake in Victoria, Australia. (AFR)
- An apartment building partially collapses in Davenport, Iowa, United States, leaving two people missing. (Associated Press)
- 28 May 2023 – 2023 Turkish presidential election
- Citizens in Turkey head to the polls to vote in the second round of the presidential election. (AP)
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is declared the winner by the Supreme Election Council, defeating his opponent Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu with 52 percent of the vote. (Tagesschau)
- 28 May 2023 – Politics of Spain
- Local and regional elections are held in Spain. (El País)
- 28 May 2023 – Politics of Somalia
- Somalia announces that beginning next year, the country will change to a presidential system and elect officials by direct vote, ending more than three decades of indirect voting where lawmakers elected the country's leaders with the approval of clan and elderly leaders. (Reuters)
- 28 May 2023 – 2023 Indianapolis 500
- Two-time series champion Josef Newgarden wins the 107th Indianapolis 500. (CNN)
- 27 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- 2022–2023 Western Russia attacks
- Russian authorities say that shelling has killed a person in Shebekino, Belgorod Oblast and Kursk, Kursk Oblast, respectively. Russia accuses Ukraine of the attacks, although Ukraine denies any involvement. (AFP via The Moscow Times)
- 27 May 2023 – Afghanistan–Iran relations
- 2023 Afghanistan–Iran clash
- Two Iranian border guards and a Taliban member are killed during a sbootout along the Afghanistan–Iran border. (Reuters)
- 27 May 2023 – Jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso
- About 40 people, mainly VDP members, are killed during two attacks by gunmen in the Boucle du Mouhoun Region. (Africa News)
- 27 May 2023 – 2023 Astore avalanche
- Eleven people are killed and 25 more injured when a nomadic tribe is hit by an avalanche in the Astore District, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. (AP)
- 27 May 2023 – 2023 Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever outbreak
- The Afghanistan health department reports two deaths from Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever. (Tolo News)
- 27 May 2023 –
- Police in the Netherlands announce the arrest of 1,500 Extinction Rebellion protesters, including actress Carice van Houten, after protesters blocked a section of the A12 motorway near The Hague. (BBC News)
- The Texas House of Representatives votes 121–23 to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton on 20 counts. (AP)
- 27 May 2023 – 2023 Mauritanian parliamentary election
- Mauritanians head to the polls to vote in the second round of the parliamentary election. (New Arab)
- 26 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- 2022–2023 Dnipro missile strikes
- A Russian missile strike on Dnipro damages a medical facility, killing two people and injuring 23 others. (Ukrainska Pravda) (The Guardian)
- 26 May 2023 – Somali Civil War
- Fifty-four Ugandan soldiers are killed after Al-Shabaab gunmen storm an AMISOM base in Bulomarer. (Al Jazeera)
- 26 May 2023 – Allied Democratic Forces insurgency, Kivu conflict
- Seventeen civilians are killed by Allied Democratic Forces members in Beni, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. (AP)
- 26 May 2023 – Mali War
- Germany's Bundestag votes 375–263, with one abstention, to approve the Bundeswehr's deployment in Mali as part of the UN's MINUSMA peacekeeping mission until May 31, 2024. (DW)
- 26 May 2023 – Foreign nationals detained in Iran
- The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs swaps Asadollah Asadi for Belgian prisoner Olivier Vandecasteele. (CNN)
- 26 May 2023 – 2023 Guatemalan general election
- The Constitutional Court of Guatemala blocks the candidacy of frontrunner Carlos Pineda in the 2023 Guatemalan general election due to alleged violations of electoral law. (AP)
- 25 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Battle of Bakhmut
- Wagner Group forces begin withdrawing from Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, transferring control over to the Russian Ground Forces. (BBC News)
- 25 May 2023 – 2021–2023 inflation surge
- The German economy enters a recession for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic amid high levels of inflation. (BBC News)
- 25 May 2023 – Modern immigration to the United Kingdom
- Net migration to the United Kingdom reaches a record of 606,000, mostly due to non-EU arrivals, according to the Office for National Statistics. In response, Minister of State for Immigration Robert Jenrick reaffirmed the governments commitment "to reducing overall net migration to sustainable levels". (Sky News)
- 25 May 2023 – Belarus–Russia relations
- Russian military presence in Belarus
- Russia and Belarus sign an agreement in Minsk allowing the stationing of Russian tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko says that the weapons are already being transferred to Belarus. (Reuters)
- 25 May 2023 – Afghanistan–Iran relations, Recognition of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
- Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says that Iran does not recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan due to the lack of an inclusive government as well as recent tensions between Iran and the Taliban over border incidents and a dispute over the Helmand River. (Xinhua)
- 25 May 2023 – Aftermath of the January 6 United States Capitol attack
- Criminal proceedings in the January 6 United States Capitol attack
- Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the 2021 attacks on the Capitol. (CNN)
- 25 May 2023 – 2023 Nagano attack
- A man kills four people in a shooting and stabbing attack in Nakano, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. (BBC News)
- 25 May 2023 –
- The Supreme Court of Russia orders the liquidation of the People's Freedom Party, the oldest opposition party in the country. (The Moscow Times)
- Police in South Africa arrest Fulgence Kayishema, who was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2001 for his involvement in the Rwandan genocide. (Al Jazeera)
- Police arrest a man after he crashed his car into the gates outside Downing Street in London, which houses the official residences and offices of the prime minister Rishi Sunak. (BBC News)
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves Neuralink's first-in-human clinical study of brain implants to treat conditions such as paralysis and blindness. (Reuters)
- A potent new antibiotic, abaucin, capable of killing Acinetobacter baumannii (one of three superbugs the World Health Organization has identified as a "critical threat" to humanity), is created using artificial intelligence. (BBC News)
- 24 May 2023 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Military aid to Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War
- Japan announces that it will donate 100 military vehicles to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. (ABC News)
- 24 May 2023 – Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
- 2023 North Waziristan suicide bombing
- Four people are killed and several others are injured by a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in North Waziristan District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. (AP)
- 24 May 2023 – 2023 Pacific typhoon season
- People in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are told to seek refuge as Typhoon Mawar approaches with winds reaching 282 km/h (175mph). (RNZ)
- 24 May 2023 –
- The historic Cotton Tree, a large Ceiba pentandra, is felled during a rainstorm in Freetown, Sierra Leone. President Julius Maada Bio calls the destruction of the iconic tree a "great loss to the nation". (Reuters)
- 24 May 2023 – Canada–Saudi Arabia relations
- Canada and Saudi Arabia agree to restore full diplomatic relations and to appoint new ambassadors for the first time since a breakdown in relations in 2018 over the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. (Reuters)
- 24 May 2023 – 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries
- Ron DeSantis 2024 presidential campaign
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announces his campaign for the 2024 United States presidential election. (Reuters) (AP)
- 24 May 2023 –
- In a medical first, a paralyzed man is able to walk naturally through the use of electronic brain implants implanted by Swiss scientists. (BBC News)
- 23 May 2023 – Kurdish–Turkish conflict
- Three Sinjar Resistance Units militants are killed by a Turkish drone strike in Sinjar District, Iraq. (Reuters)
- 23 May 2023 – Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
- Four security troops and two private guards are killed after several gunmen tried to storm an oil and gas plant in Hangu, Pakistan. (AP)
- 23 May 2023 – 2023 Pacific typhoon season
- Typhoon Mawar officially strengthens into a category 4 super typhoon as it approaches the US territory of Guam. (CNN)
- 23 May 2023 –
- Nine people are injured in a fire caused by an explosion in Eshtehard, Alborz province, Iran. (Reuters)
- 23 May 2023 – 2023 Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever outbreak
- Namibia declares an outbreak after a person dies of Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever in Windhoek. (Reuters)
- 23 May 2023 – 2023 Cardiff riot
- Rioting occurs in Ely, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, after two teenage boys were killed when their e-bike collided with a bus as they were being pursued by police. (BBC News)
Me (incomplete), described in userboxes...
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.png){kind=small}
History and contributions...
Awards and praise I've received over the years...
Tip of the day April 21, 2006: Thanks for helping a newbie!Filmcom 14:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC) I just want to thank you for building on my tip and making it a true wikipedia tip of the day. I'm still learning a lot about how to do things around here, so your help was greatly appreciated! Keep up the great work, and keep on Going for it!
Smashing! Smashing job on Tip of the day!
Barnstar This Working Man's Barnstar is awarded to Go for it! for your tireless and diligent work on the reference desk templates! -- Natalya 19:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Barnstar For going above and beyond the call of duty at Esperanza/Admin coaching, I award you this Original Barnstar. Good work! --Fang Aili talk 18:34, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Award
!!!<O.o --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 01:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Barnstar
!Cool signature Kamope · talk · contributions 12:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC) Thanks. The Transhumanist 05:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC) Thanks so much!Thanks so much for the hints in your userpage tutorial.
WCHow can I sum the above up....? Oh yes:
WOW!!as a near- noob, this is by far the most detailed and useful article on wikipedia for me! Excellent! I really wish I had a user page like this after two years...Snailey! 15:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC) Barnstar
Just a few words...TT, my friend, my mop would never have been gained without your incredible expertise. My kindest regards to you, and drop by as often as possible! Now, a little token of my appreciation...  This, the Golden Wiki Award, the highest attainment level of awards and barnstars, goes to you - The Transhumanist - for being one of the most helpful, kind, resourceful and generous Wikipedians I've had to utmost fortune to meet. Your contributions around the Wiki - at the WikiClassroom, in Dispute Resolution, at the Welcoming Committee, but most of all being a genuinely fun guy, are an amazing feat, and if half the trolls I'll undoubtedly meet after gaining my mop (thanks to you) took a leaf from your book, Wikipedia would be a nicer place. My kindest possible regards, Barnstar
AwardHello The Transhumanist, (Hold on, can I say that or is it "Hello Transhumanist") A Help:Contents Barnstar
Fractional-reserve bankingYou deserve a barnstar for your efforts. I can't think of anyone who has contributed more to Wikipedia, except maybe Jimbo. I'm not sure where to put this on your frontpage, so here it is:
Barnstar
:DHi there Trans Face! You won an award!
Fractional-reserve banking
Barnstar
My UserpageHi There First id like to thank you immensly for your pages about creating a decent userpage!! They are great and I would be lost without them!! Just one question, On my userpage i have a small welcome banner up the top. How do I make this text larger and change the font? Sorry if you have already covered this somewhere. Thanks in advanceCstubbies (talk) 12:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC) A valuable serviceI think you need recognition for doing the job of ten other editors, and doing it out of altruism and genuine belief in Wikipedia. Not many editors here have the same good attitude and provide the same service as you - I don't have any specific point to put across, but I thought you should just be prodded and reminded that you do a lot of good around here, in the hope you'll keep it up. Kudos! Seegoon (talk) 17:43, 25 January 2008 (UTC) :)
Welcoming committeeJust a note, I've made a minor update to your contributions. To reiterate my edit summary, you put in a tonne of effort there, and you deserve to be credited for it :) Feel free to revert, nonetheless. Regards, AGK (contact) 16:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC) List of basic space exploration topicsHi there TTH, Just wanted to thank you for your labors on this page, which is a great resource for us. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 17:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC) You'd better hope there is a humour barnstar... because you just gave me the biggest laugh in weeks. Good stuff giving that RfA spammer what-for here. αѕєηιηє t/c 22:03, 1 March 2008 (UTC) List of basic Canada topicsNice work -- I will withdraw the AfD nom. – ukexpat (talk) 00:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Fictional listsThe deletion review was approved for recreation: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 March 10. Just letting you know, in case you weren't watchlisting it. I'm not sure what you have to do next to get the old version undeleted though (if that's what you wanted :) Nice catch on rescuing that grouping. -- Quiddity (talk) 00:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC) 'Tis for you
Barnstar
List_of_basic_France_topicsHi Transhumanist, I wanted to note that I saw all of your work on the List of Basic France topics, and I appreciate it! Lazulilasher (talk) 02:12, 8 August 2008 (UTC) From Zach...
Guidance Star
Happy Transhumanist's Day!
→ Dylan620 (Toolbox Alpha, Beta) 00:26, 1 June 2009 (UTC) Happy The Transhumanist's Day!
I think......you need a barnstar for all of the hard work you have put into the WP:WPOOK!
BarnstarTranshumanist my friend, It's about time you deserve a barnstar for all your contributions to outlines on Wikipedia, and also for being the promoter that you are for outlines. If it wasn't for you we might not have outlines as they are, so it is my honor to present to you the Special Barnstar because no other barnstar could merit what you do for outlines on Wikipedia. :-) Burningview (talk) 03:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Well done
Made me laughYou once said in a AFD: "If you are building a robot, you can start with just the left pinky." I love that. Happy New Year! Jerry delusional ¤ kangaroo 20:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC) another thanksI appreciate you pointing me in the direction of a formatted signature. For some reason I couldn't find any reference to how it is done in the years I have been here. Cheers. ◦◦derekbd◦◦my talk◦◦ 12:16, 4 June 2011 (UTC) ImpressedI just wanted to tell you (probably not the 1st ^^ ) that your are an incredible wikipedia member, your userpage is simply amazing and your contribution is...gigantic? huge? Incredible? not for the number edits (still high) but rather over the appropriateness of the things that you have created, especially the outline project. I wont give you another award, you already have billions, but simply a modest "Bravo!". -- ThanksHi, thanks a lot for the barnstar, you are truly a user with whom it is pleasant to interact. I greatly appreciate your help, your tips and you recognition on the work done, even if only very minimal compared to the work you have done. I think you, more than everyone else, deserve a special recognition. Here is the first Barnstar I ever awarded :
A barnstar for you!
Note to user getting this message: Please respond on Pinkstrawberry02's talk page. If for some reason you cannot, please send them a {{talkback}} and reply on your own talk page. Thanks for your understanding in this manner. See ya around the wiki! barnstar
A barnstar for you!
A barnstar for you!
A barnstar for you!
A cookie for you!
Thank you
A barnstar for you!
A barnstar for you!
Thank you. The Transhumanist 07:45, 18 January 2015 (UTC) A cup of coffee for you!
Thank you. The Transhumanist 06:56, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
At Tip-Of-The-Day: Thank you for your updates & guidance!Greetings The Transhumanist,Want to let you know the value of your insights & feedback!
Pony! Pony! Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!
Thanks again :) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 03:59, 29 February 2016 (UTC) A barnstar for you!
Thank you. The Transhumanist 15:31, 28 September 2016 (UTC) Love the outlinesHi there! I just wanted to let you know that I think your planet outlines are really cool. I have long thought it was a shame that only Wikipedians seem to know about Books or Portals, because they are really great tools for structuring knowledge (while everyone loves diving down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, we could really do with some better content organization). The outlines strike me as a great way to bring that sort content organization to mainspace, where it will actually reach a large number of readers. I notice that I am the first one to edit them besides yourself, and I hope you know that I do so with love.
A Barnstar for you!
A Barnstar for you!
@RightCowLeftCoast: Thank you. I feel honored. Please keep in mind that I have not been working alone. Credit goes to the nearly 400 editors who came forward to speak up for the keeping of portals. And although the RfC to delete all portals is over, the job of defending portals from deletion is not. For the portal namespace to be retained in the long term, the portals in it will need to be improved to a worthy quality level, otherwise we may see more deletion attempts. This task is far more than a single editor can handle. Fortunately, many editors have come forward to meet the challenge. Working to develop portals and the entire portal system, is a team of 80 editors who are diligently redesigning, upgrading, updating, and maintaining portals. They are the members of the Portals WikiProject, and without them there might be no portals. They are doing a wonderful job, and I am very proud of them. Thank you. — The Transhumanist 17:22, 26 May 2018 (UTC) Preciousthinking-related topics  Thank you for organising a list of thinking-related topics, for Shift work sleep disorder and the index of oral health and dental articles, for your thoughts and efforts regarding portals, and beginnings such as Portal:Thinking/Selected picture, - you are an awesome Wikipedian! Preciousportals Thank you for your thoughts and efforts regarding portals, for the concept of outlines, for sectional redirects, for articles such as Life Extension Foundation, for service from 2006, including portal philosophy and user page design center, - repeating (1 & 4 June 2009): you are an awesome Wikipedian! Thank you. I looked, but couldn't figure out what 1 & 4 June 2009 were referring to. Just curious. — The Transhumanist 19:26, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
Executive director of portals
Moxy, thank you. I'm honored, and I receive this praise for the team, without whom there would be very little progress on portals. They are literally transforming them into something new. I'm glad to be a part of that. — The Transhumanist 18:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC) A Barnstar for you
You are welcome, formerly Wpgbrown. Nice new name. ;) — The Transhumanist 10:26, 6 July 2018 (UTC) A barnstar for you!
A barnstar for you!
A barnstar for you!
A barnstar for you!
Some barnstars for you!
A barnstar for you!
A Barnstar for you
You have made immense contributions to outlines over the years, and have encouraged many more Wikipedians to follow your lead. The impact of your contributions are great. Keep doing the good work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ambujshukla2004 (talk • contribs) 19:16, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
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