User:The Transhumanist
- User page undergoing expansion/revamp. Please excuse the blank section until it is completed. Thank you.
Introduction
Hi. My name is The Transhumanist.
- As a transhumanist...
I love emerging and evolving technologies, and so...
I'm currently immersed in studying AI (particularly generative AI and reasoning engines), and big data.
I 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...
 | |
| Wikipedia ads | file info – #184 |
- As an encyclopedist...
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
-
Trichophyton is a genus of fungus, which includes the parasitic varieties that cause tinea, including athlete's foot, ringworm, jock itch, and similar infections of the nail, beard, skin and scalp. Trichophyton fungi are molds characterized by the development of both smooth-walled macro- and microconidia. Macroconidia are mostly borne laterally directly on the hyphae or on short pedicels, and are thin- or thick-walled, clavate to fusiform, and range from 4 to 8 by 8 to 50 μm in size. Macroconidia are few or absent in many species. Microconidia are spherical, pyriform to clavate or of irregular shape, and range from 2 to 3 by 2 to 4 μm in size. (Full article...) -
Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally new but also include old 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...) -
A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. Philosopher Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". For example, the chess program Fritz is not superintelligent—despite being superhuman at chess—because Fritz cannot outperform humans in other tasks.
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 to achieve radically greater intelligence. Several future study 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. The hypothetical creation of the first superintelligence may or may not result from an intelligence explosion or a technological singularity.
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 allow them to—either as a single being or as a new species—become much more powerful than humans, and displace them.
Several scientists and forecasters have been arguing for prioritizing early research into the possible benefits and risks of human and machine cognitive enhancement, because of the potential social impact of such technologies. (Full article...) -
Knowledge extraction is the creation of knowledge from structured (relational databases, XML) and unstructured (text, documents, images) sources. The resulting knowledge needs to be in a machine-readable and machine-interpretable format and must represent knowledge in a manner that facilitates inferencing. Although it is methodically similar to information extraction (NLP) and ETL (data warehouse), the main criterion is that the extraction result goes beyond the creation of structured information or the transformation into a relational schema. It requires either the reuse of existing formal knowledge (reusing identifiers or ontologies) or the generation of a schema based on the source data.
The RDB2RDF W3C group is currently standardizing a language for extraction of resource description frameworks (RDF) from relational databases. Another popular example for knowledge extraction is the transformation of Wikipedia into structured data and also the mapping to existing knowledge (see DBpedia and Freebase). (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 first used to hunt food, and later to cook.
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...) -
Two pieces of string under a light microscope
String is a long flexible tool made from fibers twisted together into a single strand, or from multiple such strands which are in turn twisted together. String is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects. It is also used as a material to make things, such as textiles, and in arts and crafts. String is a simple tool, and its use by humans is known to have been developed tens of thousands of years ago. In Mesoamerica, for example, string was invented some 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, and was made by twisting plant fibers together. String may also be a component in other tools, and in devices as diverse as weapons, musical instruments, and toys. (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...)
-
A depiction of Idris visiting Heaven and Hell from a Persian illuminated manuscript version of the Islamic text Stories of the Prophets (1577)
The afterlife or life after death is a postulated 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 one's personal identity.
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 in a process referred to as reincarnation, 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 (e.g., paradise or hell) after death, as determined by their god, based on their actions and beliefs during life. In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those of the Indian religions, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life. (Full article...) -
Natural science or empirical science is a branch of science concerned with the description, understanding, and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances.
Natural science can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. Life science is alternatively known as biology. Physical science is subdivided into physics, astronomy, Earth science, and chemistry. These branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches, also known as fields. As empirical sciences, natural sciences use tools from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, converting information about nature into measurements that can be explained as clear statements of the "laws of nature".
Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy. Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton debated the benefits of a more mathematical as against a more experimental method in investigating nature. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, remain necessary in natural science. Systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on. Today, "natural history" suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences. (Full article...) -
Help may refer to: (Full article...)
-
Traditionally, meals have been prepared by women in a home kitchen (painting from the circle of Jean-Baptiste de Saive, 1563).
A meal is an occasion that takes place at a certain time and includes consumption of food. The English names used for specific meals vary, depending on the speaker's culture, the time of day, or the size of the meal. A meal is different from a snack in that meals are generally larger, more varied, and more filling.
Though they can be eaten anywhere, meals usually take place in homes, restaurants, and cafeterias. Regular meals occur on a daily basis, typically several times a day. Special meals are normally held in conjunction with celebratory or momentous occasions such as birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, funerals, and holidays.
The type of food that is served or consumed at any given time depends on regional customs. Three main meals are typically eaten in the morning, early afternoon, and evening in most civilizations. Furthermore, the names of meals are often interchangeable by custom as well. Some serve dinner as the main meal at midday, with supper as the late afternoon/early evening meal, while others may call their midday meal lunch and their early evening meal supper or dinner. Except for breakfast, these names can vary from region to region or even from family to family. (Full article...) -
The technological singularity—often called the singularity—is an event in which technological growth accelerates beyond human control, producing unpredictable changes in human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good's intelligence explosion model of 1965, an upgradable intelligent agent could eventually enter a positive feedback loop of successive self-improvement cycles; more intelligent generations would appear more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase in intelligence that culminates in a powerful superintelligence, far surpassing human intelligence.
Some scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have expressed concern that artificial superintelligence could result in human extinction. The consequences of a technological singularity and its potential benefit or harm to the human race have been intensely debated.
Prominent technologists and academics dispute the plausibility of a technological singularity and associated artificial intelligence "explosion", including Paul Allen, Jeff Hawkins, John Holland, Jaron Lanier, Steven Pinker, Theodore Modis, Gordon Moore, and Roger Penrose. One claim is that artificial intelligence growth is likely to run into decreasing returns instead of accelerating ones. Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig observe that in the history of technology, improvement in a particular area tends to follow an S curve: it begins with accelerating improvement, then levels off without continuing upward into a hyperbolic singularity. (Full article...) -
Types of democracy refers to the various governance structures that embody the principles of democracy ("rule by the people") in some way. Democracy is frequently applied to governments (ranging from local to global), but may also be applied to other constructs like workplaces, families, community associations, and so forth.
Types of democracy can cluster around values. Some such types, defined as direct democracy (or participatory democracy, or deliberative democracy), promote equal and direct participation in political decisions by all members of the public. Others, including the many variants of representative democracy (i.e., constitutional), favor more indirect or procedural approaches to collective self-governance, wherein decisions are made by elected representatives rather than by the people directly.
Types of democracy can be found across time, space, and language. The foregoing examples are just a few of the thousands of refinements of, and variations on, the central notion of "democracy." (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 any event or period that will 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...) -
Ontology learning (ontology extraction, ontology augmentation generation, 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...) -
Figure 1. Compliant bonding a gold wire (Click to enlarge view)
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...) -
The technological singularity—often called the singularity—is an event in which technological growth accelerates beyond human control, producing unpredictable changes in human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good's intelligence explosion model of 1965, an upgradable intelligent agent could eventually enter a positive feedback loop of successive self-improvement cycles; more intelligent generations would appear more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase in intelligence that culminates in a powerful superintelligence, far surpassing human intelligence.
Some scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have expressed concern that artificial superintelligence could result in human extinction. The consequences of a technological singularity and its potential benefit or harm to the human race have been intensely debated.
Prominent technologists and academics dispute the plausibility of a technological singularity and associated artificial intelligence "explosion", including Paul Allen, Jeff Hawkins, John Holland, Jaron Lanier, Steven Pinker, Theodore Modis, Gordon Moore, and Roger Penrose. One claim is that artificial intelligence growth is likely to run into decreasing returns instead of accelerating ones. Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig observe that in the history of technology, improvement in a particular area tends to follow an S curve: it begins with accelerating improvement, then levels off without continuing upward into a hyperbolic singularity. (Full article...) -
A userscript (or user script) is a program, usually written in JavaScript, for modifying web pages to augment browsing. Uses include adding shortcut buttons and keyboard shortcuts, controlling playback speeds, adding features to sites, and enhancing the browsing history.
On desktop browsers such as Firefox, userscripts are enabled by use of a userscript manager browser extension such as Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey. The Presto-based Opera-supported userscripts (referred to as User JavaScript) are placed in a designated directory. Userscripts are often referred to as Greasemonkey scripts, named after the original userscript manager for Firefox.
On Wikipedia, a user scripts feature is enabled for registered users that allows them to install userscripts to augment editing and viewing of the encyclopedia's pages. (Full article...) -
In geography and particularly in geographic information science, a geographic feature or simply feature (also called an object or entity) is a representation of phenomenon that exists at a location in the space and scale of relevance to geography; that is, at or near the surface of Earth. It is an item of geographic information, and may be represented in maps, geographic information systems, remote sensing imagery, statistics, and other forms of geographic discourse. Such representations of phenomena consist of descriptions of their inherent nature, their spatial form and location, and their characteristics or properties. (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 biological limit of around 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 through complete rejuvenation to a healthy youthful condition (agerasia). 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. Similarly, a variety of apps make claims to assist in extending the life of their users, or predicting their lifespans. (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...) -
A block is a defensive tactic in chess in response to an attack, consisting of interposing a piece between the opponent's attacking piece and the piece being attacked. This type of blocking will only work if the attacking piece is a type that can move linearly an indefinite number of squares such as a queen, rook, or bishop and there is at least one empty square in the line between the attacking and attacked piece. Blocking is not an option when the attacking piece is directly adjacent to the piece it is attacking, or when the attacking piece is a knight (because knights "jump over other pieces" and cannot be blocked). When an opponent's attack on a piece is blocked, the blocking piece is to some extent pinned, either relatively or absolutely, until a future move by either side allows it to be unpinned.
A check on a king by an opponent's queen, rook, or bishop can sometimes be blocked by moving a piece to a square in line in between the opponent's checking piece and the checked king. The blocking piece is then absolutely pinned to the king by the attacking piece.
Another type of interposing in chess can involve placing a piece between two opponent's pieces where one of those pieces is protecting the other, or they are both protecting each other. This chess tactic can be called interference. (Full article...) -
Abdominal obesity, also known as central obesity and truncal obesity, is the human condition of an excessive concentration of visceral fat around the stomach and abdomen to such an extent that it is likely to harm its bearer's health. Abdominal obesity has been strongly linked to cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, and other metabolic and vascular diseases.
Visceral fat, central abdominal fat, and waist circumference show a strong association with type 2 diabetes.
Visceral fat, also known as organ fat or intra-abdominal fat, is located inside the peritoneal cavity, packed in between internal organs and torso, as opposed to subcutaneous fat, which is found underneath the skin, and intramuscular fat, which is found interspersed in skeletal muscle. Visceral fat is composed of several adipose depots including mesenteric, epididymal white adipose tissue (EWAT), and perirenal fat. An excess of adipose visceral fat is known as central obesity, the "pot belly" or "beer belly" effect, in which the abdomen protrudes excessively. This body type is also known as "apple shaped", as opposed to "pear shaped" in which fat is deposited on the hips and buttocks.
Researchers first started to focus on abdominal obesity in the 1980s when they realized it had an important connection to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. Abdominal obesity was more closely related with metabolic dysfunctions connected with cardiovascular disease than was general obesity. In the late 1980s and early 1990s insightful and powerful imaging techniques were discovered that would further help advance the understanding of the health risks associated with body fat accumulation. Techniques such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging made it possible to categorize mass of adipose tissue located at the abdominal level into intra-abdominal fat and subcutaneous fat. (Full article...) -
Human overpopulation (or human population overshoot) is the idea 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 living human population has increased from 1 billion to 8 billion due to medical advancements and improved agricultural productivity. Annual world population growth peaked at 2.1% in 1968 and has since dropped to 1.1%. According to the most recent United Nations' projections, the global human population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and would peak at around 10.4 billion people in the 2080s, before decreasing, noting that fertility rates are falling worldwide. Other models agree that the population will stabilize before or after 2100. Conversely, some researchers analyzing national birth registries data from 2022 and 2023—which cover half the world's population—argue that the 2022 UN projections overestimated fertility rates by 10 to 20% and were already outdated by 2024. They suggest that the global fertility rate may have already fallen below the sub-replacement fertility level for the first time in human history and that the global population will peak at approximately 9.5 billion by 2061. The 2024 UN projections report estimated that world population would peak at 10.29 billion in 2084 and decline to 10.18 billion by 2100, which was 6% lower than the UN had estimated in 2014.
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 environmental collapses. 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.
The belief that global population levels will become too large to sustain is a point of contentious debate. Those who believe global human overpopulation to be a valid concern, argue that increased levels of resource consumption and pollution exceed the environment's carrying capacity, leading to population overshoot. The population overshoot hypothesis is often discussed in relation to other population concerns such as population momentum, biodiversity loss, hunger and malnutrition, resource depletion, and the overall human impact on the environment. (Full article...) -
A userscript manager, also known as a userscript engine, is a type of browser extension and augmented browsing technology that provides a user interface to run and organize userscripts. The main purpose of a userscript manager is to execute scripts on predetermined webpages as they are loaded, for example, running a userscript to modify only youtube.com pages. But, userscript managers do a lot more than execute scripts, and screen for the pages they are intended to run on. The most common operations performed by a userscript manager include installing, organizing, creating, copying, saving, deleting, and editing (including modifying webpage permissions of) userscripts.
Userscript managers use metadata that is embedded in a script's source code primarily to determine the websites it should execute on and the dependencies necessary for the script to run properly. Metadata can also include information that is useful to the user such as the script's name, author, description and version number.
Popular userscript managers include Tampermonkey, Greasemonkey, Violentmonkey, and Userscripts for Safari. The Gear browser for iOS has a userscript manager built in. (Full article...)
.jpg)
_Kitchen_interior_with_maid_1563.jpg)
Selected emerging technologies and related articles
-
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...) -
Sustainable development is an approach to growth and human development that aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The aim is to have a society where living conditions and resources meet human needs without undermining planetary integrity. Sustainable development aims to balance the needs of the economy, environment, and society. The Brundtland Report in 1987 helped to make the concept of sustainable development better known.
Sustainable development overlaps with the idea of sustainability which is a normative concept. UNESCO formulated a distinction between the two concepts as follows: "Sustainability is often thought of as a long-term goal (i.e. a more sustainable world), while sustainable development refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve it." (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...)
-
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...)
-
A particle swarm searching for the global minimum of a function
In computational science, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a computational method that optimizes a problem by iteratively trying to improve a candidate solution with regard to a given measure of quality. It solves a problem by having a population of candidate solutions, here dubbed particles, and moving these particles around in the search-space according to simple mathematical formulae over the particle's position and velocity. Each particle's movement is influenced by its local best known position, but is also guided toward the best known positions in the search-space, which are updated as better positions are found by other particles. This is expected to move the swarm toward the best solutions.
PSO is originally attributed to Kennedy, Eberhart and Shi and was first intended for simulating social behaviour, as a stylized representation of the movement of organisms in a bird flock or fish school. The algorithm was simplified and it was observed to be performing optimization. The book by Kennedy and Eberhart describes many philosophical aspects of PSO and swarm intelligence. An extensive survey of PSO applications is made by Poli. In 2017, a comprehensive review on theoretical and experimental works on PSO has been published by Bonyadi and Michalewicz. (Full article...) -
The Avangard (Russian: Авангард, "Vanguard"; previously known as Objekt 4202, Yu-71 and Yu-74) is a Russian hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). It can be carried as a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) payload of heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), such as the UR-100UTTKh, R-36M2 and RS-28 Sarmat. It can deliver both nuclear and conventional payloads. The Avangard is reportedly capable of travelling at re-entry speeds (over Mach 27 and close to Mach 30).
The Avangard is one of the six new Russian strategic weapons unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1 March 2018. (Full article...) -
Magnetic levitation can be stabilised using different techniques; here rotation (spin) is used
Magnetic levitation (maglev) or magnetic suspension is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than magnetic fields. Magnetic force is used to counteract the effects of the gravitational force and any other forces.
The two primary issues involved in magnetic levitation are lifting forces: providing an upward force sufficient to counteract gravity, and stability: ensuring that the system does not spontaneously slide or flip into a configuration where the lift is neutralized. (Full article...) -
Dan Schlund flying in a jet pack (Rocketbelt) in 2005.
A jet pack, rocket belt, rocket pack or flight pack is a device worn as a backpack which uses jets to propel the wearer through the air. The concept has been present in science fiction for almost a century and the first working experimental devices were demonstrated in the 1960s.
Jet packs have been developed using a variety of mechanisms, but their uses are limited because of factors including the Earth's atmosphere, gravity, the low energy density of extreme fuels, and the human body not being suited to flight, so they are principally used for stunts. (Full article...) -
Textile RFID tag for laundry with printed EPC and QR code.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder called a tag, a radio receiver, and a transmitter. When triggered by an electromagnetic interrogation pulse from a nearby RFID reader device, the tag transmits digital data, usually an identifying inventory number, back to the reader. This number can be used to track inventory goods.
Passive tags are powered by energy from the RFID reader's interrogating radio waves. Active tags are powered by a battery and thus can be read at a greater range from the RFID reader, up to hundreds of meters. (Full article...) -
Skylon was a series of concept designs for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane by the British company Reaction Engines Limited, using SABRE, a combined-cycle, air-breathing rocket propulsion system.
The vehicle design is for a hydrogen-fuelled aircraft that would take off from a specially built reinforced runway, and accelerate to Mach 5.4 at 26 kilometres (85,000 ft) altitude (compared to typical airliner's 9–13 kilometres or 30,000–40,000 feet) using the atmosphere's oxygen before switching the engines to use the internal liquid oxygen (LOX) supply to accelerate to the Mach 25 necessary to reach a 400 km orbit. (Full article...) -
Characteristics of a traditional centralized electrical system (left) vis-à-vis those of a smart grid (right)
The smart grid is an enhancement of the 20th century electrical grid, using two-way communications and distributed so-called intelligent devices. Two-way flows of electricity and information could improve the delivery network. Research is mainly focused on three systems of a smart grid – the infrastructure system, the management system, and the protection system. Electronic power conditioning and control of the production and distribution of electricity are important aspects of the smart grid.
The smart grid represents the full suite of current and proposed responses to the challenges of electricity supply. Numerous contributions to the overall improvement of energy infrastructure efficiency are anticipated from the deployment of smart grid technology, in particular including demand-side management. The improved flexibility of the smart grid permits greater penetration of highly variable renewable energy sources such as solar power and wind power, even without the addition of energy storage. Smart grids could also monitor/control residential devices that are noncritical during periods of peak power consumption, and return their function during nonpeak hours. (Full article...) -
University of Arizona Biosphere 2 is an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching, and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. It is a 3.14-acre (1.27-hectare) structure originally built to be an artificial, materially closed ecological system, or vivarium. It remains the largest closed ecological system ever created. Constructed between 1987 and 1991, Biosphere 2 was planned to experiment with the viability of closed ecological systems to support and maintain human life in outer space as a substitute for Earth's biosphere.
It was designed to explore the web of interactions within life systems in a structure with different areas based on various biological biomes. In addition to the several biomes and living quarters for people, there was an agricultural area and work space to study the interactions between humans, farming, technology and the rest of nature as a new kind of laboratory for the study of the global ecology. Its mission was a two-year closure experiment with a crew of eight humans. Long-term it was seen as a precursor to gaining knowledge about the use of closed biospheres in space colonization. As an experimental ecological facility it allowed the study and manipulation of a mini biospheric system. (Full article...) -
Animation 1. 3D measurement of self-healing material from Tosoh Corporation measured by digital holographic microscopy. The surface has been scratched by a metallic tool.
Self-healing materials are artificial or synthetically created substances that have the built-in ability to automatically repair damages to themselves without any external diagnosis of the problem or human intervention. Generally, materials will degrade over time due to fatigue, environmental conditions, or damage incurred during operation. Cracks and other types of damage on a microscopic level have been shown to change thermal, electrical, and acoustical properties of materials, and the propagation of cracks can lead to eventual failure of the material. In general, cracks are hard to detect at an early stage, and manual intervention is required for periodic inspections and repairs. In contrast, self-healing materials counter degradation through the initiation of a repair mechanism that responds to the micro-damage. Some self-healing materials are classed as smart structures, and can adapt to various environmental conditions according to their sensing and actuation properties.
Although the most common types of self-healing materials are polymers or elastomers, self-healing covers all classes of materials, including metals, ceramics, and cementitious materials. Healing mechanisms vary from an instrinsic repair of the material to the addition of a repair agent contained in a microscopic vessel. For a material to be strictly defined as autonomously self-healing, it is necessary that the healing process occurs without human intervention. Self-healing polymers may, however, activate in response to an external stimulus (light, temperature change, etc.) to initiate the healing processes. (Full article...) -
The AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System or XN-1 LaWS is a laser weapon developed by the United States Navy. The weapon was installed on USS Ponce for field testing in 2014. In December 2014, the United States Navy reported that the LaWS system worked perfectly against low-end asymmetric threats, and that the commander of Ponce was authorized to use the system as a defensive weapon. Due to various operational problems, LaWS was never put into mass production; it was replaced by the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance. (Full article...) -
Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with flexible hardware platforms like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The principal difference when compared to using ordinary microprocessors is the ability to add custom computational blocks using FPGAs. On the other hand, the main difference from custom hardware, i.e. application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is the possibility to adapt the hardware during runtime by "loading" a new circuit on the reconfigurable fabric, thus providing new computational blocks without the need to manufacture and add new chips to the existing system. (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...) -
Differential technological development is a strategy of technology governance aiming to decrease risks from emerging technologies by influencing the sequence in which they are developed. Using this strategy, societies would strive to delay the development of harmful technologies and their applications while accelerating the development of beneficial technologies, especially those that offer protection against harmful technologies. (Full article...)
-
A dense plasma focus (DPF) is a type of plasma generating system originally developed as a fusion power device, starting in the early 1960s. The system demonstrated scaling laws that suggested it would not be useful in the commercial power role, and since the 1980s it has been used mainly as a fusion teaching system, and as a source of neutrons and X-rays.
The original concept was developed in 1954 in the Soviet Union by N.V. Filippov, who noticed the effect while working on early pinch machines. A major research program on DPF was carried out in the USSR through the late 1950s, and continues to this day. A different version of the same basic concept was independently discovered in the US by J.W. Mather in the early 1960s. This version saw some development in the 1970s, and variations continue to be developed. (Full article...) -
gene therapy
Gene doping is the hypothetical non-therapeutic use of gene therapy by athletes in order to improve their performance in those sporting events which prohibit such applications of genetic modification technology, and for reasons other than the treatment of disease. As of 2024[update], there is no evidence that gene doping has been used for athletic performance-enhancement in any sporting events. Gene doping would involve the use of gene transfer to increase or decrease gene expression and protein biosynthesis of a specific human protein; this could be done by directly injecting the gene carrier into the person, or by taking cells from the person, transfecting the cells, and administering the cells back to the person.
The historical development of interest in gene doping by athletes and concern about the risks of gene doping and how to detect it moved in parallel with the development of the field of gene therapy, especially with the publication in 1998 of work on a transgenic mouse overexpressing insulin-like growth factor 1 that was much stronger than normal mice, even in old age, preclinical studies published in 2002 of a way to deliver erythropoietin (EPO) via gene therapy, and publication in 2004 of the creation of a "marathon mouse" with much greater endurance than normal mice, created by delivering the gene expressing PPAR gamma to the mice. The scientists generating these publications were all contacted directly by athletes and coaches seeking access to the technology. The public became aware of that activity in 2006 when such efforts were part of the evidence presented in the trial of a German coach. (Full article...) -
A holographic display is a type of 3D display that utilizes light diffraction to display a three-dimensional image to the viewer. Holographic displays are distinguished from other forms of 3D displays in that they do not require the viewer to wear any special glasses or use external equipment to be able to see the image, and do not cause a vergence-accommodation conflict.
Some commercially available 3D displays are advertised as being holographic, but are actually multiscopic. (Full article...) -
Diagram of an electrical grid (generation system in red, transmission system in blue, distribution system in green)
An electrical grid (or electricity network) is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids consist of power stations, electrical substations to step voltage up or down, electric power transmission to carry power over long distances, and finally electric power distribution to customers. In that last step, voltage is stepped down again to the required service voltage. Power stations are typically built close to energy sources and far from densely populated areas. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. From small to large there are microgrids, wide area synchronous grids, and super grids. The combined transmission and distribution network is part of electricity delivery, known as the power grid.
Grids are nearly always synchronous, meaning all distribution areas operate with three phase alternating current (AC) frequencies synchronized (so that voltage swings occur at almost the same time). This allows transmission of AC power throughout the area, connecting the electricity generators with consumers. Grids can enable more efficient electricity markets. (Full article...) -
An RF anechoic chamber used for EMC testing.
In materials science, radiation-absorbent material (RAM) is a material which has been specially designed and shaped to absorb incident radio frequency (RF) radiation (also known as non-ionising radiation), as effectively as possible, from as many incident directions as possible. The more effective the RAM, the lower the resulting level of reflected RF radiation. Many measurements in electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and antenna radiation patterns require that spurious signals arising from the test setup, including reflections, are negligible to avoid the risk of causing measurement errors and ambiguities. RAM are widely used in RF anechoic chambers to achieve an "echo-free" environment. (Full article...) -
Tracy Caldwell Dyson in the International Space Station's Cupola
Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in orbit around Earth, but also includes space probes for flights beyond Earth orbit. Such spaceflights operate either by telerobotic or autonomous control. The first spaceflights began in the 1950s with the launches of the Soviet Sputnik satellites and American Explorer and Vanguard missions. Human spaceflight programs include the Soyuz, Shenzhou, the past Apollo Moon landing and the Space Shuttle programs. Other current spaceflight are conducted to the International Space Station and to China's Tiangong Space Station.
Spaceflights include the launches of Earth observation and telecommunications satellites, interplanetary missions, the rendezvouses and dockings with space stations, and crewed spaceflights on scientific or tourist missions. (Full article...) -
Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm
A wire is a flexible, round bar of metal. Wires are commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Wire gauges come in various standard sizes, as expressed in terms of a gauge number or cross-sectional area.
Wires are used to bear mechanical loads, often in the form of wire rope. In electricity and telecommunications signals, wire can refer to electrical cable, which can contain a solid core of a single wire or separate strands in stranded or braided forms. (Full article...) -
Taxonomy of money, based on "Central bank cryptocurrencies" by Morten Linnemann Bech and Rodney Garratt
Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital currencies include cryptocurrency, virtual currency and central bank digital currency. Digital currency may be recorded on a distributed database on the internet, a centralized electronic computer database owned by a company or bank, within digital files or even on a stored-value card.
Digital currencies exhibit properties similar to traditional currencies, but generally do not have a classical physical form of fiat currency historically that can be held in the hand, like currencies with printed banknotes or minted coins. However, they do have a physical form in an unclassical sense coming from the computer to computer and computer to human interactions and the information and processing power of the servers that store and keep track of money. This unclassical physical form allows nearly instantaneous transactions over the internet and vastly lowers the cost associated with distributing notes and coins: for example, of the types of money in the UK economy, 3% are notes and coins, and 79% as electronic money (in the form of bank deposits). Usually not issued by a governmental body, virtual currencies are not considered a legal tender and they enable ownership transfer across governmental borders. (Full article...)
-15)_in_November_2014_(05).JPG)
_line.jpg)
Selected global issues and related topics
-
Fruit and vegetables in a dumpster, discarded uneaten
The causes of food going uneaten are numerous and occur throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about one-third of the world's food is thrown away. A similar amount is lost on top of that by feeding human-edible food to farm animals (the net effect wastes an estimated 1144 kcal/person/day). A 2021 meta-analysis, that did not include food lost during production, by the United Nations Environment Programme found that food waste was a challenge in all countries at all levels of economic development. The analysis estimated that global food waste was 931 million tonnes of food waste (about 121 kg per capita) across three sectors: 61 percent from households, 26 percent from food service and 13 percent from retail.
Wasted food is a major part of the impact of agriculture on climate change (it amounts to 3.3 billion tons of CO2e emissions annually) and other environmental issues, such as land use, water use and loss of biodiversity. Prevention of food waste is the highest priority, and when prevention is not possible, the food waste hierarchy ranks the food waste treatment options from preferred to least preferred based on their negative environmental impacts. Reuse pathways of surplus food intended for human consumption, such as food donation, is the next best strategy after prevention, followed by animal feed, recycling of nutrients and energy followed by the least preferred option, landfill, which is a major source of the greenhouse gas methane. Other considerations include unreclaimed phosphorus in food waste leading to further phosphate mining. Moreover, reducing food waste in all parts of the food system is an important part of reducing the environmental impact of agriculture, by reducing the total amount of water, land, and other resources used.
The UN's Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3 seeks to "halve global per capita food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses" by 2030. Climate change mitigation strategies prominently feature reducing food waste. In the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference nations agreed to reduce food waste by 50% by the year 2030. (Full article...) -
A plot showing the length of software engineering tasks achievable by leading AI models with a 50% success rate; the data suggests an exponential rise.
Existential risk from artificial intelligence, or AI x-risk, refers to the idea that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could lead to human extinction or an irreversible global catastrophe.
One argument for the importance of this risk references how human beings dominate other species because the human brain possesses distinctive capabilities other animals lack. If AI were to surpass human intelligence and become superintelligent, it might become uncontrollable. Just as the fate of the mountain gorilla depends on human goodwill, the fate of humanity could depend on the actions of a future machine superintelligence.
Experts disagree on whether artificial general intelligence (AGI) can achieve the capabilities needed for human extinction. Debates center on AGI's technical feasibility, the speed of self-improvement, and the effectiveness of alignment strategies. Concerns about superintelligence have been voiced by researchers including Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, and Alan Turing, and AI company CEOs such as Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Sam Altman (OpenAI), and Elon Musk (xAI). In 2022, a survey of AI researchers with a 17% response rate found that the majority believed there is a 10 percent or greater chance that human inability to control AI will cause an existential catastrophe. In 2023, hundreds of AI experts and other notable figures signed a statement declaring, "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war". Following increased concern over AI risks, government leaders such as United Kingdom prime minister Rishi Sunak and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for an increased focus on global AI regulation. (Full article...) -
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider 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 temperatures is driven by human activities, especially fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas) burning since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices release greenhouse gases. These gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight, warming the lower atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the primary gas driving global warming, has increased in concentration by about 50% since the pre-industrial era to levels not seen for millions of years.
Climate change has an increasingly large impact on the environment. Deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Amplified warming in the Arctic has contributed to thawing permafrost, retreat of glaciers and sea ice decline. 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 minimize 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 calls climate change one of the biggest threats 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 communities 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...) -
Overconsumption describes a situation where consumers overuse their available goods and services to where they cannot, or do not want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this is the point where the marginal cost of a consumer is greater than their marginal utility. The term overconsumption is quite controversial and does not necessarily have a single unifying definition. When used to refer to natural resources to the point where the environment is negatively affected, it is synonymous with the term overexploitation. However, when used in the broader economic sense, overconsumption can refer to all types of goods and services, including artificial ones, e.g., "the overconsumption of alcohol can lead to alcohol poisoning." Overconsumption is driven by several factors of the current global economy, including forces like consumerism, planned obsolescence, economic materialism, and other unsustainable business models, and can be contrasted with sustainable consumption.
Defining the amount of a natural resource required to be consumed for it to count as "overconsumption" is challenging because defining a sustainable capacity of the system requires accounting for many variables. A system's total capacity occurs at regional and worldwide levels, which means that specific regions may have higher consumption levels of certain resources than others due to greater resources without overconsuming a resource. A long-term pattern of overconsumption in any region or ecological system can cause a reduction in natural resources, often resulting in environmental degradation. However, this is only when applying the word to environmental impacts. When used in an economic sense, this point is defined as when the marginal cost of a consumer is equal to their marginal utility. Gossen's law of diminishing utility states that at this point, the consumer realizes the cost of consuming/purchasing another item/good is not worth the amount of utility (also known as happiness or satisfaction from the good) they had received, and therefore is not conducive to the consumer's wellbeing.
When used in the environmental sense, the discussion of overconsumption often parallels population size, growth, and human development: more people demanding a higher quality of living requires greater extraction of resources, which causes subsequent environmental degradation, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Currently, the inhabitants of high-wealth, "developed" nations consume resources at a rate almost 32 times greater than those of the developing world, making up most of the human population (7.9 billion people). However, the developing world is a growing consumer market. These nations are quickly gaining more purchasing power. The Global South, which includes cities in Asia, America, and Africa, is expected to account for 56% of consumption growth by 2030, meaning that if current trends continue, relative consumption rates will shift more into these developing countries, whereas developed countries would start to plateau. Sustainable Development Goal 12, "responsible consumption and production", is the main international policy tool with goals to abate the impact of overconsumption. (Full article...) -
Solid waste after being shredded to a uniform size
Waste are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste product may become a by-product, joint product or resource through an invention that raises a waste product's value above zero.
Examples include municipal solid waste (household trash/refuse), hazardous waste, wastewater (such as sewage, which contains bodily wastes (feces and urine) and surface runoff), radioactive waste, and others. (Full article...) -
Soil retrogression and degradation are two regressive evolution processes associated with the loss of equilibrium of a stable soil. Retrogression is primarily due to soil erosion and corresponds to a phenomenon where succession reverts the land to its natural physical state. Degradation or pedolysis is an evolution, different from natural evolution, related to the local climate and vegetation. It is due to the replacement of primary plant communities (known as climax vegetation) by the secondary communities. This replacement modifies the humus composition and amount, and affects the formation of the soil. It is directly related to human activity. Soil degradation may also be viewed as any change or ecological disturbance to the soil perceived to be deleterious or undesirable.
According to the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, the quality of 33% of pastureland, 25% of arable land and 23% of forests has deteriorated globally over the last 30 years. 3.2 billion people are dependent on this land. (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...) -
Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources into something expected to gain value over time". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broader viewpoint, an investment can be defined as "to tailor the pattern of expenditure and receipt of resources to optimise the desirable patterns of these flows". When expenditures and receipts are defined in terms of money, then the net monetary receipt in a time period is termed cash flow, while money received in a series of several time periods is termed cash flow stream.
In finance, the purpose of investing is to generate a return on the invested asset. The return may consist of a capital gain (profit) or loss, realised if the investment is sold, unrealised capital appreciation (or depreciation) if yet unsold. It may also consist of periodic income such as dividends, interest, or rental income. The return may also include currency gains or losses due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates.
Investors generally expect higher returns from riskier investments. When a low-risk investment is made, the return is also generally low. Similarly, high risk comes with a chance of high losses. Investors, particularly novices, are often advised to diversify their portfolio. Diversification has the statistical effect of reducing overall risk. (Full article...) -
Global distribution of dryland areas based on the aridity index computed over a 30-year average during 1981 to 2010. Typical deserts are indicated by the hyper-arid category (light yellow).
Desertification is a type of gradual land degradation of fertile land into arid desert due to a combination of natural processes and human activities.
The immediate cause of desertification is the loss of most vegetation. This is driven by a number of factors, alone or in combination, such as drought, climatic shifts, tillage for agriculture, overgrazing and deforestation for fuel or construction materials. Though vegetation plays a major role in determining the biological composition of the soil, studies have shown that, in many environments, the rate of erosion and runoff decreases exponentially with increased vegetation cover. Unprotected, dry soil surfaces blow away with the wind or are washed away by flash floods, leaving infertile lower soil layers that bake in the sun and become an unproductive hardpan.
At least 90% of the inhabitants of drylands live in developing countries, where they also suffer from poor economic and social conditions. This situation is exacerbated by land degradation because of the reduction in productivity, the precariousness of living conditions and the difficulty of access to resources and opportunities. (Full article...) -
Global monthly average total ozone amount
Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a lowered total amount of ozone in Earth's upper 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. Over time, scientists have developed new refrigerants with lower global warming potential (GWP) to replace older ones. For example, in new automobiles, R-1234yf systems are now common, being chosen over refrigerants with much higher GWP such as R-134a and R-12. (Full article...) -
Mushroom cloud from the 1954 explosion of Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear weapon detonated by the U.S.
A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse, nuclear annihilation, nuclear armageddon, or atomic holocaust, is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes widespread destruction and radioactive fallout, with global consequences. Such a scenario envisages large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the effects of nuclear warfare, potentially causing the collapse of civilization, the extinction of humanity, or the termination of most 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 to 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...) -
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 human-driven extinction.
The Holocene extinction, also referred to as the Anthropocene extinction or the sixth mass extinction, is an ongoing extinction event caused exclusively by human activities during the Holocene epoch. This extinction event spans numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, impacting both terrestrial and marine species. Widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots such as coral reefs and rainforests has exacerbated the crisis. Many of these extinctions are undocumented, as the species are often undiscovered before their extinctions.
Current extinction rates are estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates and are accelerating. Over the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss has reached such alarming levels that some conservation biologists now believe human activities have triggered a mass extinction, or are on the cusp of doing so. As such, after the "Big Five" mass extinctions, the Holocene extinction event has been referred to as the sixth mass extinction. However, given the recent recognition of the Capitanian mass extinction, the term seventh mass extinction has also been proposed.
The Holocene extinction was preceded by the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions (lasting from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago), in which many large mammals – including 81% of megaherbivores – went extinct, a decline attributed at least in part to human (anthropogenic) activities. There continue to be strong debates about the relative importance of anthropogenic factors and climate change, but a recent review concluded that there is little evidence for a major role of climate change and "strong" evidence for human activities as the principal driver. Examples from regions such as New Zealand, Madagascar, and Hawaii have shown how human colonization and habitat destruction have led to significant biodiversity losses. (Full article...) -
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil's Maranhão state, 2016
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. Estimates vary widely as to the extent of deforestation in the tropics. In 2019, nearly a third of the overall tree cover loss, or 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests. These are areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage.
The direct cause of most deforestation is agriculture by far. More than 80% of deforestation was attributed to agriculture in 2018. Forests are being converted to plantations for coffee, palm oil, rubber and various other popular products. Livestock grazing also drives deforestation. Further drivers are the wood industry (logging), urbanization and mining. The effects of climate change are another cause via the increased risk of wildfires (see deforestation and climate change).
Deforestation results in habitat destruction which in turn leads to biodiversity loss. Deforestation also leads to extinction of animals and plants, changes to the local climate, and displacement of indigenous people who live in forests. Deforested regions often also suffer from other environmental problems such as desertification and soil erosion. (Full article...) -
Gray goo (also spelled as grey goo) is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass (and perhaps also everything else) on Earth while building many more of themselves, a scenario that has been called ecophagy (literally: "consumption of the environment"). The original idea assumed machines were designed to have this capability, while popularizations have assumed that machines might somehow gain this capability by accident.
Self-replicating machines of the macroscopic variety were originally described by mathematician John von Neumann, and are sometimes referred to as von Neumann machines or clanking replicators.
The term gray goo was coined by nanotechnology pioneer K. Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. In 2004, he stated "I wish I had never used the term 'gray goo'." Engines of Creation mentions "gray goo" as a thought experiment in two paragraphs and a note, while the popularized idea of gray goo was first publicized in a mass-circulation magazine, Omni, in November 1986. (Full article...) -
Women selling produce at a market in Lilongwe, Malawi
Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, healthy food. The availability of food for people of any class, gender, ethnicity, or religion is another element of food protection. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family have consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food-secure individuals do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food.
The concept of food security has evolved over time. The four pillars of food security include availability, access, utilization, and stability. In addition, there are two more dimensions that are important: agency and sustainability. These six dimensions of food security are reinforced in conceptual and legal understandings of the right to food. The World Food Summit in 1996 declared that "food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure."
There are many causes of food insecurity. The most important ones are high food prices and disruptions in global food supplies for example due to war. There is also climate change, water scarcity, land degradation, agricultural diseases, pandemics and disease outbreaks that can all lead to food insecurity. Additionally, food insecurity affects individuals with low socioeconomic status, affects the health of a population on an individual level, and causes divisions in interpersonal relationships. Food insecurity due to unemployment causes a higher rate of poverty. (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 a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial portion of the human population. 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 Black Death, caused by the Plague, caused the deaths of up to half of the population of Europe in the 14th century. The term pandemic had not been used then, but was used for later epidemics, including the 1918 H1N1 influenza A pandemic—more commonly known as the Spanish flu—which is the deadliest pandemic in history. The most recent pandemics include the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost all these diseases still circulate among humans though their impact now is often far less.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, 194 member states of the World Health Organization began negotiations on an International Treaty on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, with a requirement to submit a draft of this treaty to the 77th World Health Assembly during its 2024 convention. Further, on 6 May 2024, the White House released an official policy to more safely manage medical research projects involving potentially hazardous pathogens, including viruses and bacteria, that may pose a risk of a pandemic. (Full article...) -
Seabirds killed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound. The spill in March 1989 dumped approximately 10.8 million US gallons of crude oil into the environment, killing over 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, and numerous other wildlife. The Alaskan fishing industry also suffered tremendously as a result of the spill.
An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity. This point distinguishes environmental disasters from other disturbances such as natural disasters and intentional acts of war such as nuclear bombings.
Environmental disasters show how the impact of humans' alteration of the land has led to widespread and/or long-lasting consequences. These disasters have included deaths of wildlife, humans and plants, or severe disruption of human life or health, possibly requiring migration. Some environmental disasters are the trigger source of more expansive environmental conflicts, where effected groups try to socially confront the actors responsible for the disaster. (Full article...) -
International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories because there is a need or want of goods or services.
In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). While international trade has existed throughout history (for example Uttarapatha, Silk Road, Amber Road, salt roads), its economic, social, and political importance has been on the rise in recent centuries.
Carrying out trade at an international level is a complex process when compared to domestic trade. When trade takes place between two or more states, factors like currency, government policies, economy, judicial system, laws, and markets influence trade. (Full article...) -
Human overpopulation (or human population overshoot) is the idea 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 living human population has increased from 1 billion to 8 billion due to medical advancements and improved agricultural productivity. Annual world population growth peaked at 2.1% in 1968 and has since dropped to 1.1%. According to the most recent United Nations' projections, the global human population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and would peak at around 10.4 billion people in the 2080s, before decreasing, noting that fertility rates are falling worldwide. Other models agree that the population will stabilize before or after 2100. Conversely, some researchers analyzing national birth registries data from 2022 and 2023—which cover half the world's population—argue that the 2022 UN projections overestimated fertility rates by 10 to 20% and were already outdated by 2024. They suggest that the global fertility rate may have already fallen below the sub-replacement fertility level for the first time in human history and that the global population will peak at approximately 9.5 billion by 2061. The 2024 UN projections report estimated that world population would peak at 10.29 billion in 2084 and decline to 10.18 billion by 2100, which was 6% lower than the UN had estimated in 2014.
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 environmental collapses. 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...) -
Global concentrations of health care resources, as depicted by the number of physicians per 10,000 individuals, by country. Data is sourced from a WHO indicator and is from 2017-2023.
Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, nursing, optometry, audiology, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, athletic training, and other health professions all constitute health care. The term includes work done in providing primary care, secondary care, tertiary care, and public health.
Access to health care may vary across countries, communities, and individuals, influenced by social and economic conditions and health policies. Providing health care services means "the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best possible health outcomes". Factors to consider in terms of health care access include financial limitations (such as insurance coverage), geographical and logistical barriers (such as additional transportation costs and the ability to take paid time off work to use such services), sociocultural expectations, and personal limitations (lack of ability to communicate with health care providers, poor health literacy, low income). Limitations to health care services affect negatively the use of medical services, the efficacy of treatments, and overall outcome (well-being, mortality rates).
Health systems are the organizations established to meet the health needs of targeted populations. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a well-functioning health care system requires a financing mechanism, a well-trained and adequately paid workforce, reliable information on which to base decisions and policies, and well-maintained health facilities to deliver quality medicines and technologies. (Full article...) -
Map of the world's biodiversity hot spots, all of which are heavily threatened by habitat loss and degradation
Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease in biodiversity and species numbers. Habitat destruction is in fact the leading cause of biodiversity loss and species extinction worldwide.
Humans contribute to habitat destruction through the use of natural resources, agriculture, industrial production and urbanization (urban sprawl). Other activities include mining, logging and trawling. 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. 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. (Full article...) -
Inclusive growth is economic growth that raises standards of living for broad swaths of a population. It is widely accepted that inclusive growth is challenging to be achieved in the real world. Both the intangibility and long term perspective make it less desirable than other more conspicuous economic targets for policymakers.
There is a lack of a comprehensive and worldly recognised set of standards to systematically measure the inclusiveness of growth, which makes data collection and policy evaluation difficult. 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. (Full article...) -
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (headquarters pictured), the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank (behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch), on September 15, 2008, is often considered the climax of the 2008 financial crisis.
The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC) or the Panic of 2008, was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes included excessive speculation on property values by both homeowners and financial institutions, leading to the 2000s United States housing bubble. This was exacerbated by predatory lending for subprime mortgages and by deficiencies in regulation. Cash out refinancings had fueled an increase in consumption that could no longer be sustained when home prices declined. The first phase of the crisis was the subprime mortgage crisis, which began in early 2007, as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to U.S. real estate, and a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. A liquidity crisis spread to global institutions by mid-2007 and climaxed with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, which triggered a stock market crash and bank runs in several countries. The crisis exacerbated the Great Recession, a global recession that began in mid-2007, as well as the United States bear market of 2007–2009. It was also a contributor to the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis and the euro area crisis.
During the 1990s, the U.S. Congress had passed legislation that intended to expand affordable housing through looser financing rules, and in 1999, parts of the 1933 Banking Act (Glass–Steagall Act) were repealed, enabling institutions to mix low-risk operations, such as commercial banking and insurance, with higher-risk operations such as investment banking and proprietary trading. As the Federal Reserve ("Fed") lowered the federal funds rate from 2000 to 2003, institutions increasingly targeted low-income homebuyers, largely belonging to racial minorities, with high-risk loans; this development went unattended by regulators. As interest rates rose from 2004 to 2006, the cost of mortgages rose and the demand for housing fell; in early 2007, as more U.S. subprime mortgage holders began defaulting on their repayments, lenders went bankrupt, culminating in the bankruptcy of New Century Financial in April. As demand and prices continued to fall, the financial contagion spread to global credit markets by August 2007, and central banks began injecting liquidity. In March 2008, Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank, was sold to JPMorgan Chase in a "fire sale" backed by Fed financing.
In response to the growing crisis, governments around the world deployed massive bailouts of financial institutions and used monetary policy and fiscal policies to prevent an economic collapse of the global financial system. By July 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, companies which together owned or guaranteed half of the U.S. housing market, verged on collapse; the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 enabled the federal government to seize them on September 7. Lehman Brothers (the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank) filed for the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on September 15, which was followed by a Fed bail-out of American International Group (the country's largest insurer) the next day, and the seizure of Washington Mutual in the largest bank failure in U.S. history on September 25. On October 3, Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, authorizing the Treasury Department to purchase toxic assets and bank stocks through the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Fed began a program of quantitative easing by buying treasury bonds and other assets, such as MBS, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed in February 2009 by newly elected President Barack Obama, included a range of measures intended to preserve existing jobs and create new ones. These initiatives combined, coupled with actions taken in other countries, ended the worst of the Great Recession by mid-2009. (Full article...) -
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider 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 temperatures is driven by human activities, especially fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas) burning since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices release greenhouse gases. These gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight, warming the lower atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the primary gas driving global warming, has increased in concentration by about 50% since the pre-industrial era to levels not seen for millions of years.
Climate change has an increasingly large impact on the environment. Deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Amplified warming in the Arctic has contributed to thawing permafrost, retreat of glaciers and sea ice decline. 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 minimize 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 calls climate change one of the biggest threats 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 communities 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...) -
Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse or systems 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 or overshoot, mass migration, incompetent leaders, and sabotage 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. Most never recovered, such as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Maya civilization, and the Easter Island civilization. However, some of them later revived and transformed, such as China, Greece, and Egypt.
Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have proposed a variety of explanations for the collapse of civilizations involving causative factors such as environmental degradation, depletion of resources, costs of rising complexity, invasion, disease, decay of social cohesion, growing inequality, extractive institutions, 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...)
_(14576727409).jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Did you know...
- ... that the steps of Pohang Space Walk represent an ascent to an unreachable utopia?
- ... that more than a quarter of the population of Germany is of migration background?
- ... that because the capital of The Gambia is on a small island, its population has overflowed into Serekunda in the nearby municipality of Kanifing?
- ... that Voyager 2 has been transmitting data for more than 46 years, making it the oldest active space probe in history?
- ... that Fu Wuji's Fuhou gujin zhu includes information on a diverse range of topics, from astrological signs to the dimensions of imperial tombs?
- ... that 6 percent of the US population had symptoms of long COVID lasting three months or longer in the first half of 2023?
- ... that the Skyrocket Galaxy has been described by NASA as looking like a "July 4th skyrocket"?
- ... that the 1827 novel A Voyage to the Moon contains the first use of anti-gravity for space travel in science fiction?
- ... that the Antarctic lichen Buellia frigida has been to outer space?
- ... that nekonomics includes the leveraging of stray cat populations on islands to draw tourists?
- ... that Erna Meyer urged the Jewish immigrant readers of How to Cook in Palestine to try olives and eggplants, but doubted their ability to eat spicy food like the "native population"?
- ... that the LACE satellite tracked rocket plumes from space for the United States's Star Wars program?
- ... that with a population of 1,500, Millstreet in County Cork, Ireland, became the smallest settlement to host the Eurovision Song Contest when it staged the 1993 event?
- ... that ice in outer space is an amorphous solid, and this may be the most common phase of ice in the universe?
Need help?
Do you have a question about any subject that you can't find the answer to?
Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.
Selected images that captured my attention
-
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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 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. -
View from Notre-Dame de Paris. -
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. -
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. -
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 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. -
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. -
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 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 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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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". -
-
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. -
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. -
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. -
A Marginated Tortoise hatchling. -
You are feeling very sleepy... -
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. -
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). -
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 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.
.jpg)
.png)
.svg)
_edit.jpg)
_on_10_November_1943_(80-G-205473).jpg)
Trump news tracker
- 29 September 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis
- The United States releases a 20-point ceasefire proposal to end the Gaza war, to which Israel agrees. The proposal includes the immediate end of military operations inside the Gaza Strip and the release of all living hostages within 72 hours. (Reuters)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 deployment of federal forces in the United States
- U.S. president Donald Trump orders the deployment of troops to Portland, Oregon, saying he has directed defense secretary Pete Hegseth to secure the "war-ravaged" city. (BBC News)
- 26 September 2025 – Colombia–United States relations
- The United States revokes Colombian president Gustavo Petro's visa following his participation in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and his remarks urging U.S. soldiers to disobey President Donald Trump's orders. (Reuters)
- 22 September 2025 – Disciplinary actions for commentary on the assassination of Charlie Kirk
- ABC parent company Disney announces that American late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! will begin airing again on Tuesday after it was "indefinitely suspended" last week following pressure from the Trump administration after host Jimmy Kimmel commented on slain right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk and his fanbase. (NPR)
- 22 September 2025 – Causes of autism
- U.S. president Donald Trump and health sectretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announce the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will advise doctors against recommending acetaminophen to pregnant women, alleging a link between the drug and autism. (CNN)
- 22 September 2025 – Executive orders in the second Trump presidency
- U.S. president Donald Trump signs an executive order formally designating Antifa as a terrorist organization. (Reuters)
- 21 September 2025 – Afghanistan–United States relations
- Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says that Afghanistan will not cede control of Bagram Air Base to the United States following threats by US president Donald Trump, who warns of consequences if the Taliban does not release control of the base. (AP)
- 16 September 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- The Trump administration approves its first weapons aid packages for Ukraine. This is the first use of a new mechanism to supply Ukraine with weapons from U.S. stocks using funds from NATO countries. (Reuters)
- 16 September 2025 –
- U.S. president Donald Trump files a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the newspaper The New York Times after the paper published articles and a book alleging that part of The Trump Organization's wealth was acquired through fraud. (NPR)
- 15 September 2025 – War on drugs
- United States president Donald Trump claims that the U.S. military carried out a strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel vessel in international waters, killing three people, making it the second such strike carried out against a suspected drug boat in September. (Reuters)
- 15 September 2025 – 2025 deployment of federal forces in the United States
- U.S. president Donald Trump orders the deployment of the Army National Guard to Memphis, Tennessee, to "combat crimes". (The Independent)
- 8 September 2025 – E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations, Personal and business legal affairs of Donald Trump
- The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejects President Donald Trump's bid on the grounds of presidential immunity to overturn the civil ruling of Carroll I (2019), upholding that Trump must pay $83,300,000 to sexual abuse victim E. Jean Carroll for defamation. (The New York Times) (Reuters)
Interests
- Select [►] to view subcategories
Wikipedia newsfeed
- 3 October 2025 –
- Sarah Mullally is announced as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, becoming the first woman to lead the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. (BBC)
- 3 October 2025 – Abdication of Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
- Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg abdicates and is succeeded by his eldest son Guillaume. (Financial Times)
- 2 October 2025 – Gaza war
- Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip
- 2025 Gaza City offensive
- At least 53 Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip and in Gaza City. (Al Jazeera)
- Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip
- Israel intercepts the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters and detains hundreds of activists carrying aid bound for Gaza, sparking international condemnation and accusations of violations of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. (BBC News) (The National)
- 2 October 2025 – Terrorism in the United Kingdom
- Manchester synagogue attack
- Two people are killed and four others are injured in a vehicle-ramming and mass stabbing attack at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Crumpsall, Manchester, England, United Kingdom. The perpetrator is shot dead by police. The attack is later declared a terror attack. (The New York Times) (CNN)
- 2 October 2025 –
- At least thirteen people are killed in two separate road accidents in Balochistan, Pakistan. (Daily Times)
- One person is killed and four others are injured in a hydrogen capsule explosion in a laboratory at Tehran University in Tehran, Iran. (AP)
- Twelve people are injured in panic from a Mw 5.3 earthquake in Istanbul, Turkey. (Al Monitor) (AP)
- 2 October 2025 – Australia–Papua New Guinea relations
- The Papua New Guinean Cabinet approves a bilateral defense treaty with Australia, which will increase integration of military equipment and personnel between the two countries. (AP)
- 2 October 2025 – Foreign relations of Nicaragua, Foreign relations of Ukraine, International recognition of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic
- Ukraine breaks off diplomatic relations with Nicaragua over the latter's recognition of Russian-occupied territories in the country. (Priamyi)
- 2 October 2025 –
- At least eight people are killed in violent protests in Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, against benefits for the political class in the region. The regional government warns local media against covering the protests. (DW)
- At least 195,000 people hold protests across France to denounce planned budget cuts. (France 24)
- The United States' National Football League announce it will roll out national flag football leagues for both men and women in 2026 ahead of its inclusion in the 2028 Summer Olympics. (AP)
- 1 October 2025 – Gaza war
- Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip
- 2025 Gaza City offensive
- At least 61 Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip and Gaza City. (Al Jazeera)
- 1 October 2025 – Russo-Ukrainian war
- Russian strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure
- The Ukrainian Energy Ministry declares an "emergency situation" at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant as the New Safe Confinement structure meant to prevent radioactive material from spreading into the environment experiences a three-hour power outage due to a Russian drone strike on an energy facility in nearby Slavutych, Kyiv Oblast. (The Kyiv Independent)
- Volodymyr Leontiev, the former Russia-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka, is killed in a Ukrainian drone strike. (The Kyiv Independent) (The Moscow Times)
- 1 October 2025 – Sudanese civil war
- Siege of El Fasher
- As El Fasher's humanitarian crisis continues to drastically deteriorate, the Rapid Support Forces reportedly makes further gains against besieged garrison units mainly composed of former Darfuri rebels and their Sudanese Armed Forces allies. (BBC News)
- 1 October 2025 – 2025 Cebu earthquake
- Cebu governor Pam Baricuatro declares a state of calamity and suspends classes throughout the province due to the Mw 6.9 earthquake yesterday. (BBC News)
- The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines reports that power has been restored shortly after midnight in five islands in the central Philippines, including Cebu. (AFP via Bangkok Post)
- 1 October 2025 –
- At least 36 people are killed and over 200 others are injured when an under construction church collapses in Areti, Amhara Region, Ethiopia. (AP) (TRT World)
- The death toll from the collapse of a pesantren in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, rises to six as rescue workers continue their search. Dozens of students remain missing and approximately 100 others were injured in the collapse. (AP)
- Two workers are killed, several are injured and others are reported missing when the ceiling of an under-renovation serail in Damascus, Syria, collapses. (AP)
- Two people are critically injured when two CRJ-900 aircrafts, one operated by Delta Air Lines and one by Endeavor Air, collide on a runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York, United States. (DW) (CNN)
- 1 October 2025 – Islamic terrorism in Europe
- Three men are arrested in Berlin, Germany, for targeting Jewish institutions and preparing a terrorist attack on behalf of Hamas. (Reuters)
- 1 October 2025 –
- The annual Oktoberfest is temporarily shut down in Munich, Germany, until 17:30 local time due to an explosion at a house earlier in the morning which killed two people, including the perpetrator. The police ultimately finds no link between the Oktoberfest and the explosion, which was related to a domestic dispute. (DW) (AP)
- The Italian Carabinieri Art Squad seizes 21 paintings by Salvador Dalí suspected of being forged pieces at an exhibition at the Palazzo Tarasconi in Parma. (AP) (The Irish Independent)
- 1 October 2025 – 2025 Malagasy protests
- Protests in Madagascar continue and spread across the country, demanding the resignation of president Andry Rajoelina. Opposition leader Rivo Rakotovao says that his party will not join any new government under Rajoelina, asking him to step down. (Reuters)
- 1 October 2025 – 2025 United States federal government shutdown
- A federal government shutdown occurs in the United States after a funding bill fails to be passed, the first government shutdown since January 2019. (CTV News)
- 1 October 2025 –
- The 2025 Right Livelihood Award is awarded to a student organization in the Pacific Islands fighting climate change, activist organization Justice for Myanmar, Taiwanese activist Audrey Tang, and the Sudanese Emergency Response Rooms for their work in combating injustice in their respective regions. (AP)
- Thousands of people march in Athens as part of a general strike across Greece to protest against proposed changes in labor laws that could change the 8-hour work day to 13 hours, or a 48-hour workweek. (AP) (The Guardian)
- Matteo Rossi and Lorenzo Bugli are sworn in as the new Captains Regent of San Marino, succeeding Denise Bronzetti and Italo Righi. (San Marino RTV)
- A research team at the Free University of Berlin announce the detection of new organic substances within water vapour plumes erupting from the surface of Enceladus by Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer, a potential biosignature of extraterrestrial life under the Saturnian moon's icy surface. (The Guardian) (Nature Astronomy)
- 30 September 2025 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict
- Gaza war
- Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, 2025 Gaza Strip aid distribution killings
- At least 59 Palestinians are killed by Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, including 20 who were seeking aid. (Al Jazeera)
- Palestinian political violence
- A Palestinian man rams into Israeli pedestrians near Al-Khader in the West Bank, injuring two children, before being shot. (The Times of Israel) (Haaretz)
- 30 September 2025 – Pakistan in the war on terror
- Insurgency in Balochistan
- September 2025 Quetta bombing
- Eight civilians and two policemen are killed and over 30 other people are injured in a suicide car bombing followed by gunfire outside the Frontier Corps' headquarters in Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan. Four attackers are killed. (Al Jazeera)
- 30 September 2025 – Russo-Ukrainian war
- Attacks on civilians in the Russo-Ukrainian war
- An overnight Russian drone strike kills four people, all members of the same family, in Chernechchyna, Okhtyrka Raion, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine. (BBC News)
- 30 September 2025 –
- Two-year-old Aryatara Shakya is installed in Kathmandu as Nepal's new Kumari, succeeding Trishna Shakya who held the role since 2017. (AP) (Euronews)
- 30 September 2025 – 2025 Cebu earthquake
- A Mw 6.9 earthquake hits the central Philippines with structural damage and power interruptions reported, particularly in Cebu where at least 69 people are reported dead. (The Guardian) (Reuters via The Straits Times)
- 30 September 2025 –
- At least 26 people are killed in a boat accident on the Niger River in Ibaji, Kogi State, Nigeria. The cause of the accident is unknown. (AP)
- Nine people are killed when an under-construction coal preparation plant collapses in Chennai, India. (NDTV)
- 30 September 2025 – 2025 Danish drone incidents, Denmark–Ukraine relations
- Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy deploys a military mission to Denmark to share its expertise in countering Russian drones, as European countries plan a joint "drone wall" project to strengthen airspace defense. (AP)
- 30 September 2025 – France–South Africa relations
- South African ambassador to France and former sport, arts and culture minister Nathi Mthethwa is found dead outside his hotel in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. The ambassador had previously been reported missing by his wife. (Reuters)
- 30 September 2025 – Haitian conflict
- The United Nations Security Council approves a resolution to transform the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in Haiti into a larger Gang Suppression Force (GSF) of up to 5,500 police and military personnel to combat gang violence. (The Guardian) (UN News)
- 30 September 2025 – 2025 Moroccan Gen Z protests
- Large-scale youth-led demonstrations in Morocco continue for a third day, despite police arrests and tight security. (Reuters)
- 30 September 2025 – Capital punishment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo sentences former president Joseph Kabila to death in absentia for treason. (AP)
- 30 September 2025 – Chinese intelligence activity abroad, China–Germany relations
- The Higher Regional Court of Dresden convicts a Chinese–German man of espionage for China while working for AfD politician Maximilian Krah, giving him a sentence of over five years. A co-defendant accused of supplying cargo and passenger information from her job at Leipzig Airport is given a suspended sentence of one and a half years. (AP)
- 30 September 2025 – Nord Stream pipelines sabotage
- Polish authorities arrest a Ukrainian diver in Pruszków, Masovian Voivodeship, on a German warrant, suspecting his involvement in the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions in the Baltic Sea. (AP)
- 30 September 2025 – Lèse-majesté in Thailand
- A Thai appeals court upholds a two-year prison sentence against opposition representative Chonthicha Jaengraew for defaming the monarchy in a 2021 speech, while granting her bail pending a Supreme Court appeal. (AP)
- 30 September 2025 –
- Mexico's National Autonomous University cancels or shifts classes online in over half its departments after the killing of a student and threats against female professors, prompting authorities to strengthen security and provide support measures. (The Independent)
- 30 September 2025 – 2025 Gabonese parliamentary election
- Gabon's ruling party, the Democratic Union of Builders of President Brice Oligui Nguema, wins 55 of 145 seats in the first round of legislative elections, with a second round scheduled for constituencies without a majority winner. (AP)
- 30 September 2025 – Human rights in Afghanistan
- Telecommunications are almost entirely down in Afghanistan following a internet cut by the Taliban government, with mobile phone services down to 1% of normal connectivity levels. (The Guardian)
- 29 September 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis
- Gaza war
- Gaza war hostage crisis, Israeli–Palestinian peace process
- The United States releases a 20-point ceasefire proposal to end the Gaza war, to which Israel agrees. The proposal includes the immediate end of military operations inside the Gaza Strip and the release of all living hostages within 72 hours. (Reuters)
- 2025 Gaza City offensive
- At least 39 Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip. (Al Jazeera)
- Red Sea crisis
- A Houthi anti-ship missile attack on Dutch-flagged cargo ship Minervagracht injures two people and forces the crew to abandon the ship. (AP)
- 29 September 2025 – Russo-Ukrainian war
- Ukraine allegedly shoots down a Russian Air Force Mil Mi-8 on combat search and rescue duties with an FPV drone in Nadaeyvka, Pokrovsk Raion, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, killing several people and injuring several others. (ASN)
- 29 September 2025 – Herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria
- Unidentified gunmen kill at least twelve forest security guards in Oke-Ode, Kwara State, Nigeria. (AP)
- 29 September 2025 – German economic crisis, Workplace impact of artificial intelligence
- German airline Lufthansa announces they will cut 4,000 administrative positions by 2030 and replace them with artificial intelligence and digitization processes. (DW)
- 29 September 2025 –
- American video game company Electronic Arts (EA) agrees to be acquired by a group of private investors, including Silver Lake, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and Affinity Partners, in a deal valued at $55 billion. The transaction, which will take EA private, constitutes the largest leveraged buyout on record. (Bloomberg News)
- 29 September 2025 – 2025 Atlantic hurricane season
- At least one person is killed as Tropical Storm Imelda makes landfall in the Bahamas and Cuba. (AP)
- 29 September 2025 –
- Eight people are killed and 14 others are injured after a bus overturns in Samalut, Minya Governorate, Egypt. (MSN)
- Three students are killed, 38 more are missing and 77 injured after the collapse of a pesantren in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia. (Al Jazeera)
- Namibia deploys 540 soldiers to contain wildfires that have burned more than 770,000 ha (7,700 km2), about a third of Etosha National Park, along with surrounding land. (CNN)
- 29 September 2025 – Brazil–United States relations, South Africa–United States relations, Human trafficking in Brazil, Human trafficking in South Africa
- The United States places Brazil and South Africa on the Tier 2 watchlist of its Trafficking in Persons Report, citing insufficient progress in combating human trafficking. (Reuters)
- 29 September 2025 – China–South Korea relations
- South Korea begins a pilot program allowing visa-free entry for Chinese tourist groups of three or more for stays of up to 15 days. (Reuters)
- 29 September 2025 – Colombia–United States relations
- Colombian foreign minister Rosa Villavicencio renounces her United States visa in response to the U.S. State Department's cancellation of President Gustavo Petro's visa. (The Independent)
- 29 September 2025 – Hungary–Ukraine relations, Telecommunications in Hungary
- Hungary blocks access to 12 Ukrainian news websites to reciprocate Ukraine's earlier ban on several Hungarian-language portals. (Reuters)
- 29 September 2025 –
- Russian president Vladimir Putin signs a law denouncing and leaving the European Convention against Torture, after the country left the Council of Europe in 2022. (Reuters) (Mezha)
- 29 September 2025 – 2025 Moroccan Gen Z protests
- Moroccan police detain dozens of people on the third consecutive day of Gen Z-led protests across the country against government corruption in prioritizing public image over healthcare and education crises. (DW)
- 29 September 2025 – Capital punishment in China, China–Myanmar relations
- The intermediate people's court in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China, sentences 11 people, including three from a powerful family in Kokang, Myanmar, to death for murder, running an illegal gambling and scamming crime syndicate. The court also sentences 12 other people to prison sentences between five and 24 years. (AP)
- 29 September 2025 – Capital punishment in Iran
- Iran executes a man convicted of being a spy for Israeli spy agency Mossad working on sensitive telecommunications projects and providing information on routes for importing electronic devices.(BBC)
- 29 September 2025 – 2025 Malagasy protests
- Madagascar president Andry Rajoelina dismisses Prime Minister Christian Ntsay and his cabinet following protests over electricity and water shortages that left dozens dead and injured, while announcing an interim government until a replacement is appointed. (AP)
- 29 September 2025 – 2025 Seychellois general election
- Seychelles will hold a second-round presidential election after neither of the leading candidates, incumbent president Wavel Ramkalawan and opposition leader Patrick Herminie, obtains 50% of the vote. (BBC News)
- 29 September 2025 – Flood control projects controversy in the Philippines
- Ako Bicol representative Zaldy Co resigns from the Philippine House of Representatives after being implicated in alleged corruption involving flood control projects. (ABS-CBN News)
- 29 September 2025 – Human rights in Afghanistan, Internet in Afghanistan
- The Taliban imposes a nationwide internet blackout in Afghanistan to "prevent immorality", cutting fiber-optic services and reducing connectivity to about 14% of normal levels, according to monitoring group NetBlocks. (AP)
- 28 September 2025 – Gaza war
- 2025 Gaza City offensive
- At least 41 Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip. (Al Jazeera)
- 28 September 2025 – Russo-Ukrainian war
- Russian strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure
- Russian forces launch more than 600 drones and dozens of cruise missiles at Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 70 others. (BBC News)
- Attacks in Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- A Ukrainian missile strikes a power station in Belgorod causing a massive power outage in the Russian city. (Reuters)
- 28 September 2025 – Super Bowl halftime shows
- Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny is announced as the headliner for Super Bowl LX to be held on February 8, 2026, at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, United States. (NPR)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 Pacific typhoon season
- At least thirteen people are killed and dozens others are missing as Typhoon Bualoi makes landfall in Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh provinces, Vietnam. (DW)
- 28 September 2025 –
- Twelve people are killed and 42 injured in three separate road accidents in Panjgur, Pishin and Lasbela, Pakistan. (Dawn)
- Four people are killed and another six people affected after a fire in a building in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, United States. (MSN)
- 28 September 2025 – Mass shootings in the United States
- Grand Blanc Township church attack
- Four people are killed and eight others are injured in a mass shooting and arson attack on a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, United States. The perpetrator is killed in a shootout with police. (CNN) (BNO News)
- Two people are killed and five others are injured in a mass shooting at a casino on the Kickapoo reservation near Eagle Pass, Texas, United States. The suspect initially fled the scene before being taken into custody. (WOAI-TV) (KSAT-TV)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 Danish drone incidents
- The government of Denmark bans all civilian drones after several UAVs were seen above military sites last week and caused several airports to temporarily close in fear of an attack. (DW)
- 28 September 2025 – Anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping
- Former Chinese agriculture minister Tang Renjian is sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for accepting bribes worth more than ¥268 million (US$37.6 million) between 2007 and 2024. (Reuters)
- 28 September 2025 –
- A civilian is killed and twelve soldiers are injured during clashes between security forces and Indigenous protesters in Cayambe, Pichincha, Ecuador, over the government’s decision to end a diesel fuel subsidy. (AP)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 Moldovan parliamentary election
- Moldovans vote to elect the 101 seats of the parliament. (AP)
- The pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity of Moldovan president Maia Sandu wins with 50.2% of the vote, while the left-wing pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc wins 24.2% and the Alternative alliance wins 8%. Voter turnout is reportedly over 52.2%, higher than previous elections. (BBC News)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 New York City mayoral election
- Incumbent mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent, withdraws from the race. (The New York Times)
- 28 September 2025 –
- The 625-meter-high Huajiang Canyon Bridge, the world's highest bridge, is opened to the public in Guizhou, China. (South China Morning Post) (The Star)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 Asia Cup
- In cricket, India defeat their rival Pakistan by five wickets in the final to win their second consecutive Asia Cup title and ninth overall. During the awarding ceremony, the Indian team refused to accept their trophy from Asian Cricket Council chairperson and Pakistani interior minister Mohsin Naqvi due to the political turmoil between both nations. (AP)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 FIVB Men's Volleyball World Championship
- In volleyball, Italy defeat Bulgaria 3–1 to win their second consecutive World Championship and fifth overall. (GMA Integrated News) (Rappler)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 Polish speedway season
- In motorcycle speedway, KS Toruń defeats Orlen Oil Motor Lublin in the Ekstraliga final, winning their fifth Team Speedway Polish Championship. (Ekstraliga)
- 28 September 2025 – 2025 Ryder Cup
- In golf, Team Europe retains the Ryder Cup after scoring 15–13 over the United States. (The Independent)
- 27 September 2025 – Gaza war
- 2025 Gaza City offensive
- At least 91 Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip. (Al Jazeera)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 Cambodian–Thai border crisis
- Cambodian and Thai forces reportedly exchange fire across their countries' shared border despite a ceasefire agreement in place since August. (Nation Thailand)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 deployment of federal forces in the United States
- U.S. president Donald Trump orders the deployment of troops to Portland, Oregon, saying he has directed defense secretary Pete Hegseth to secure the "war-ravaged" city. (BBC News)
- 27 September 2025 – Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
- The Pakistan Armed Forces kill 17 Taliban militants and recover weapons and ammunition in an overnight operation in Lakki Marwat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. (The Express Tribune)
- 27 September 2025 – Economy of Iraq, Economy of Kurdistan Region
- Iraq resumes oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through Turkey's Ceyhan port, ending a suspension imposed in early 2023 due to an International Chamber of Commerce arbitration ruling against independent Kurdish exports. (AP)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 Karur crowd crush
- At least 39 people are killed, including ten children, and 83 others are injured in a crowd crush at actor-politician Vijay's rally in Velusamypuram, Tamil Nadu, India. (The Hindu) (Hindustan Times)
- 27 September 2025 –
- Eight people are killed after a bus collides head-on with a vehicle carrying oil in Panjgur, Balochistan, Pakistan. (The Express Tribune)
- At least four people are killed when torrential rain causes flash flooding across Arizona, United States. (The Times of India)
- 27 September 2025 – International sanctions against Iran, Nuclear program of Iran
- The United Nations reimposes economic and military sanctions on Iran after France, Germany, and the United Kingdom trigger the snapback mechanism under Security Council Resolution 2231 and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, citing Iran's nuclear escalation and lack of cooperation with the IAEA. (BBC News) (Reuters)
- 27 September 2025 – Mass shootings in the United States
- 2025 Southport shooting
- At least three people are killed and eight others are injured in a mass shooting when a gunman on a boat opens fire at a restaurant at the Southport Yacht Basin in Southport, North Carolina, United States. (BNO News)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 Gabonese parliamentary election
- Gabonese citizens vote to elect members of the National Assembly alongside municipal elections. A second round will be held on 11 October for constituencies where no candidate has a majority. (AP)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 Seychellois general election
- Seychellois vote to elect a president and members of the National Assembly. A second round will be held after no presidential candidate received a majority of the vote, with United Seychelles candidate Patrick Herminie receiving 48.8% of the vote over the incumbent Wavel Ramkalawan's 46.4%. (AP)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 AFL Grand Final
- In Australian rules football, the Brisbane Lions defeat the Geelong Cats to win the 2025 Australian Football League by 47 points, winning their second consecutive premiership and fifth overall. (The Age) (AFL)
- 27 September 2025 – 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup
- England defeats Canada in the final of the 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup. (BBC News)
- 27 September 2025 –
- In flag football, the Italian men's and British women's national teams win their respective IFAF European Flag Football Championship titles in Paris, France. (EuroFlag) (IFAF)
- 26 September 2025 – Gaza war
- 2025 Gaza City offensive
- At least 60 Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip. (Al Jazeera)
- Médecins Sans Frontières suspends its activities in Gaza City citing security concerns due to the Israeli offensive. (MSF)
- 26 September 2025 – Economy of Botswana
- Botswana president Duma Boko announces the launch of a immigrant investor program aimed at raising funds to diversify the economy amid a recession in the global diamond market. (Reuters)
- 26 September 2025 – German economic crisis, Workplace impact of artificial intelligence
- German automotive supplier Bosch announces it will lay off 5,000 employees by 2030, including 3,800 in Germany. (DW)
- 26 September 2025 – 2025 Pacific typhoon season
- Ten people are confirmed killed as Typhoon Bualoi makes landfall in Visayas and southern Luzon in the Philippines since yesterday. (Philippine Daily Inquirer) (Reuters)
- 26 September 2025 –
- At least 100 people are feared dead following the collapse of a gold mining pit in Zamfara State, Nigeria. (Reuters)
- At least 14 people are killed when a minibus collides with two trucks in the southern Peruvian Andes, Peru. (AP)
- Eleven people are killed and 33 are injured when a building collapses following a fire in Nile Delta, Egypt. (AP)
- At least eleven people are killed and three others are injured after a truck crashes in Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. (Dawn)
- Six people are killed and six others are injured when a roof collapses at a steel plant in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India. (NDTV)
- A fire at a South Korean government data center in Daejeon disrupts more than 600 e-government systems after an explosion in a lithium-ion battery triggered the blaze. (The Independent)
- 26 September 2025 – Colombia–United States relations
- The United States revokes Colombian president Gustavo Petro's visa following his participation in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and his remarks urging U.S. soldiers to disobey President Donald Trump's orders. (Reuters)
- 26 September 2025 – 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders
- Deceased serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers is identified as the prime suspect in the quadruple homicide at an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas, United States. (CBS News)
- 26 September 2025 – 2025 Danish drone incidents
- Air Base Karup in Central Denmark Region, Denmark, is closed due to a drone sighting above the military base. Danish authorities describe the incident as part of an ongoing "hybrid attack". (BBC News)
- 26 September 2025 – 2025 Department of Justice counterinvestigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election
- Former United States FBI director James Comey is indicted by a federal grand jury on two charges in a prosecution led by Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. (BBC News)
- 26 September 2025 – Corruption in Lebanon
- Lebanese authorities release former central bank governor Riad Salameh after he posts bail of US$14 million and LL 5 billion ($55,866) while facing ongoing charges of alleged financial crimes. (Reuters)
- 26 September 2025 – Human rights in Vietnam
- Vietnamese activist Trịnh Bá Phương, already serving a 10-year sentence for anti-state propaganda, is sentenced to an additional 11 years after being convicted of writing statements against the Communist Party while in prison. (AP)
- 26 September 2025 – LGBTQ rights in Slovakia
- Slovakia passes a constitutional amendment stating there are only two genders. Only married couples have the right to adopt, which de facto prevents same-sex couples from adopting, while also banning surrogacy. (Politico)
- 26 September 2025 – 2025 Moldovan parliamentary election
- Moldova's electoral commission removes the Greater Moldova and Heart of Moldova parties from the ballot ahead of Sunday's election, citing alleged illegal financing and foreign funding. (Reuters)
- 26 September 2025 –
- FIFA suspends seven Malaysian national football players for one year and fines the Football Association of Malaysia over alleged use of falsified documentation in 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers, a decision the association says it will appeal. (AFP via NDTV)
- The members of the International Paralympic Committee vote not to maintain sanctions against the Russian and Belarusian National Paralympic Committees. (IPC)
- 25 September 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis
- Gaza war
- Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip
- The Italian and Spanish navies deploy frigates to assist and protect the Global Sumud Flotilla on its way to attempt to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip after it was allegedly attacked by Israeli drones off the coast of Greece. (AP) (Reuters)
- Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip
- At least 57 Palestinians, including 10 children and three women, are killed by Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip. (AP) (Al Jazeera)
- Israeli incursions in the West Bank during the Gaza war
- Two Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants are shot and killed by Israeli soldiers during the siege of a house in Tammun in the occupied West Bank. (Al Jazeera)
- Red Sea crisis
- September 2025 Israeli attacks in Yemen
- In response to a drone attack the previous day that injured 50 Israeli civilians, the Israeli Air Force bombs Houthi targets in the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa. (Al Monitor)
- The Houthis launch a ballistic missile at central Israel, which is intercepted. (The Times of Israel) (YNet)
- 25 September 2025 – Tattooing in South Korea
- South Korea's National Assembly passes a law legalizing tattoo artistry by licensed non-medical professionals for the first time since a 1992 court ruling restricted the practice to doctors. (BBC News)
- 25 September 2025 – China–United States relations, China–United States trade war
- China lists six American companies on its Unreliable Entities List, including several in the underwater drone and satellite sectors. (AP)
- 25 September 2025 – Ethiopia–Russia relations
- Ethiopia and Russia sign an agreement on the construction of a nuclear power plant for Ethiopian Electric Power by Rosatom. (AA)
- 25 September 2025 –
- Six people are killed after a bus collides with a truck head-on in Sundergarh, Odisha, India. (The Hans India)
- Decomposed bodies of five suspected migrants are discovered in the Great Sand Sea south of Tobruk, Libya. (AP)
- 25 September 2025 – Foreign relations of the Netherlands, Foreign relations of Uganda
- The Netherlands and Uganda sign an agreement to establish a pilot transit hub in Uganda for rejected asylum seekers from nearby countries who cannot be directly returned from the Netherlands. (Reuters)
- 25 September 2025 – France–Iran relations
- France withdraws its case at the International Court of Justice accusing Iran of denying consular protection to two French citizens detained at Evin Prison in Tehran for more than three years. (Reuters)
- 25 September 2025 – France–Mali relations, French military withdrawal from West Africa
- The Malian junta declares an end to joint counterterrorism operations with the French military and expels five French embassy workers from the country, declaring them personae non gratae. (AP)
- 25 September 2025 – Israel–Slovenia relations, International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli leaders
- The Slovenian government formally bans Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from entering the country, linking the ban to the International Criminal Court arrest warrant out for Netanyahu. (AP)
- 25 September 2025 – Moldova–Poland relations
- Poland bars Moldovan politician Irina Vlah from entering its territory for five years for allegedly assisting Russian interference in Moldova's upcoming parliamentary election. (Reuters)
- 25 September 2025 – 2025 Malagasy protests
- Unrest erupts in Antananarivo, Madagascar, following power and water cuts in the capital city. Security forces impose an evening curfew. (AP)
- 25 September 2025 – Alleged Libyan financing in the 2007 French presidential election
- Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is sentenced to 5 years in prison for criminal association, becoming the first former French president to be sentenced to prison. His former interior ministers Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant are sentenced to two years and six years of house arrest under electronic tagging respectively, due to a French law allowing prison sentences equal or inferior to 2 years to be converted in another sentences, and to Guéant's health issues. (BBC News) (France 24)
- 25 September 2025 – Ecuadorian security crisis
- At least 17 people are killed in a prison riot in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. (Reuters)
- 25 September 2025 – Flood control projects controversy in the Philippines
- The Philippine Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation file criminal graft and malversation charges against Senator Chiz Escudero, former senator Nancy Binay, and former house speaker Martin Romualdez in connection with investigations into alleged corruption in flood control projects. (The Philippine Star)
- 25 September 2025 –
- Two teenagers are killed and three others are injured and hospitalized in a school shooting in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil. (AFP via France 24) (AP)
- Lithuania's parliament votes 80–42 to approve a coalition government led by the Social Democratic Party, installing Inga Ruginienė as the new prime minister. (AFP via The Straits Times)
- Brazilian professional skateboarder Sandro Dias breaks the records for the highest drop in ever and fastest speed reached (103 km/h) on a standard skateboard after skating down the Administrative Center of the Rio Grande do Sul state in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at 70 meters-high. (Red Bull) (Transworld Skateboarding) (AFP/CBS Newspath via WKRC-TV)
- 24 September 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis (2023–present)
- Gaza war
- Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip
- At least 85 Palestinians are killed by Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip. (Al Jazeera)
- Red Sea crisis
- Twenty-two Israelis are injured, including two seriously, after a drone launched by the Yemen-based Houthis strikes Eilat in southern Israel. (CNN)
- 24 September 2025 – Insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
- Afghanistan–Pakistan border skirmishes
- Thirteen Pakistani Taliban fighters are killed after a raid by security forces at a hideout in Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, near the Durand Line. (AP)
- 24 September 2025 – 2025 Pacific typhoon season
- Typhoon Ragasa
- Filipino authorities conclude a search and rescue operation for the 13-man crew of fishing boat FB Jobhenz, which capsized in Santa Ana, Cagayan, Philippines, on Monday. Six crew members are rescued, with the remaining seven confirmed to have died. (Manila Bulletin)
- The Hong Kong Observatory issues its highest typhoon warning, Signal No. 10, in the morning before downgrading it to Signal No. 8 at 4 pm. (Al Jazeera) (Macao News)
- 24 September 2025 – 2025 Bangkok road collapse
- A section of road collapses into an estimated 50 m (160 ft)-deep sinkhole in front of Vajira Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, prompting road closures and evacuations of nearby buildings. No injuries and deaths are reported. (South China Morning Post) (The Straits Times)
- 24 September 2025 –
- All 23 miners trapped for two days in a collapsed gold mine shaft in Segovia, Antioquia, Colombia, are rescued alive after receiving food, water, and oxygen through pipelines during the operation. (AFP via RTHK)
- Costa Rica closes its airspace for at least five hours after a power outage disables radar systems and disrupts hundreds of flights, before reopening after systems were restored. (Reuters)
- 24 September 2025 – 2025 Allenby Bridge shooting, Israel–Jordan relations
- Israel indefinitely closes the Allenby Bridge between Jordan and the West Bank days after reopening it following a shooting that killed two Israeli soldiers. (Reuters)
- 24 September 2025 – Africa–United States relations
- Lesotho's commerce minister announces the United States's plan to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act by one year following negotiations in Washington, D.C. (Reuters)
- 24 September 2025 – Belarus–Poland relations
- Poland reopens its border with Belarus after closing them during Russia-led military exercises, citing reduced security risks and economic considerations. (Reuters)
- 24 September 2025 – France–United Kingdom relations, English Channel illegal migrant crossings
- A family of three becomes the first group sent to the United Kingdom from France under the one in, one out policy that returns unauthorized Channel arrivals to France in exchange for vetted asylum-seekers. (AP)
Me (incomplete), described in userboxes...
|
.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!
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!
Barnstar
Barnstar
Award
|
|
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | |
| Your kindess was not random, because you were kind enough to listen to my requests to fix my userpage. Your major kindness will not be ignored, as this BarnStar is my token of appreciation! Kyo catmeow! 01:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC) |
!!!
<O.o --The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake 01:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
- You're welcome. The Transhumanist 01:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Barnstar
|
The da Vinci Barnstar | |
| Awarded to User:The Transhumanist. Sometimes those who take on large areas of wikipedia organisation seem to be taken for granted, and this is just to show that your work is appreciated by the community. Khukri (talk . contribs) 09:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC) |
!
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. 
. I am a new user and familiar with HTML markup, but not so with Wikimark up. Your userpage tutorial really helped! Real96 06:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
- You're welcome. I'm glad you found it useful. If you see any way to improve it, by all means, please feel free to do so. The Transhumanist 06:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
How can I sum the above up....? Oh yes:
|
|
The Original Barnstar | |
| For your revamp of The Welcoming Committee, and of the Welcome Page, I award you the original barnstar. Well done! Anthonycfc [T • C] 18:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC) |
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
|
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
| For all your work with admin coaching, barnstar awarding, Wikipedia-expanding, and various administrative duties (if you can call all that political stuff we Wikipedians must wade through such a name), I, Sharkface217, hereby award you this Tireless Contributor Barnstar. Good job. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 19:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC) |
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,
Anthony 21:38, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Barnstar
|
What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar | |
| I award you this Brilliant Idea Barnstar for helping others to earn Barnstars and awards through your Award Center! • The Giant Puffin • 13:31, 3 June 2007 (UTC) |
Award
Hello The Transhumanist, (Hold on, can I say that or is it "Hello Transhumanist")
I was going to give you an award but there wasn't one good enough, so I made one better than any that has ever been seen before - This message. Yes, yes, I know, you don't think your worthy of it, but I assure you, you are the only one good enough for it - Pheonix 19:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
A Help:Contents Barnstar
|
|
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
| As the top contributor to Help:Contents, you deserve this barnstar. Thank you! Jreferee (Talk) 05:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC) |
Barnstar
|
|
The Original Barnstar | |
| For taking up the challenge and improving my command page, I, Sharkface217, hereby award you this Original Barnstar. Another feather in the Transhumanist cap, eh? :-P |
:D
Hi there Trans Face!
X××x××pink×jellocreature××x××X (talk) 01:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
You won an award!
|
|
X××x××pink×jellocreature××x××X (talk) awards you the unofficial funniness award!
|
You 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:
|
|
What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar | |
| For boldly redirecting Debt-based monetary system to Criticisms of fractional-reserve banking, both saving it from deletion while defending Wikipedia from those who would violate WP:FRINGE, and being one of the most helpful editors on Wikipedia, in general. Zenwhat (talk) 03:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC) |
Barnstar
|
|
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
| I, Diligent Terrier, award you this "Tireless Contributor Barnstar" for your work in starting the List of basic American Civil War topics article from scratch. Great Job! DiligentTerrier • talk |sign here 22:17, 12 January 2008 (UTC) |
My Userpage
Hi 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 service
I 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)
:)
|
The Excellent Userpage Award | |
| Nice page. jaytur1 (talk · contribs) 12:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC) |
Welcoming committee
Just 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)
Hi 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)
Nice work -- I will withdraw the AfD nom. – ukexpat (talk) 00:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
|
The Barnstar of Recovery | |
| For saving List of basic Canada topics from being deleted, I - Milk's Favorite Cookie hereby award you this Barnstar! Congrats! - Milk's Favorite Cookie 01:16, 15 March 2008 (UTC) |
Fictional lists
The 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
|
|
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | |
| I've noticed the extra mile you've gone to help a new user, and I wanted you to know it hasn't gone unnoticed. Keep up the good work! Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 16:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC) |
Barnstar
|
|
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | |
| I award this barnstar to The Transhumanist, for being patient and taking four rounds of references from me, until they were all valid. LAAFan 01:21, 17 June 2008 (UTC) |
|
|
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | |
| I award this barnstar to The Transhumanist, for putting funny stuff on his discussion page which led me to copy them and put some of those funny stuff on my website. Thanks. Emir34 01:21, 17 June 2008 (UTC) |
Hi 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...
|
|
The da Vinci Barnstar | |
| For helping me so many times. and for my wonderful userpage. Cheers, Zacharycrimsonwolf 04:08, 30 September 2008 (UTC) |
Guidance Star
|
The Guidance Barnstar | |
| For helping me to find resources on humanism, which I will hopefully be able to use to improve the articles on it here as well! Scapler (talk) 02:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC) |
Happy Transhumanist's Day!
|
The Transhumanist has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, |
→ Dylan620 (Toolbox Alpha, Beta) 00:26, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Happy The Transhumanist's Day!
|
|
The Transhumanist has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, Cheers, If you'd like to show off your awesomeness, you can use this userbox. |
- Congrats. :) –Juliancolton | Talk 23:44, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
I think...
...you need a barnstar for all of the hard work you have put into the WP:WPOOK!
|
The Barnstar Barnstar | |
| You deserve two! at-210 discovered elements ∞ what am I? 20:21, 14 June 2009 (UTC) |
Barnstar
Transhumanist 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)
|
The Special Barnstar | |
| This barnstar is presented to Transhumanist for all the hard work, contributions, coordination, and promotion he does in advancing the idea, coverage, content, and quality of Outlines on Wikipedia. For this he deserves a Special Barnstar Burningview (talk) 03:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC) |
Well done
|
|
The Special Barnstar | |
| This award is in appreciation of the excellent work you have done supporting the development of Outlines on Wikipedia Thruxton (talk) 18:59, 5 December 2010 (UTC) |
Made me laugh
You 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 thanks
I 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)
Impressed
I 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!". --
Offiikart (Talk) 05:23, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks
Hi, 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 :
|
The WikiProject Barnstar | |
| To The Transhumanist who created the outline project and tirelessly continues to improve it. A special thanks for your help and your recognition. OffiikartTalk 13:54, 29 June 2011 (UTC) |
ps. I did put the page alert on my watchlist 
A barnstar for you!
|
The Original Barnstar |
| Your fine contributions are not overlooked. You are a quality editor, and we are so glad you are here. Thanks to the user:Transhumanist! Pinkstrawberry02™ talk 01:49, 13 October 2011 (UTC) |
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
|
The Chess Barnstar | |
| Awarded for many contributions to chess articles, especially the Outline of chess. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 16:34, 18 October 2011 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
|
The Original Barnstar |
| Thanks so much for your work on the Outline of domestic violence, it is so much better that it's astounding how far it's come along. Thanks for making my first outline "sing"! CaroleHenson (talk) 11:11, 21 November 2011 (UTC) |
- You're first one? Wonderful! I can't wait to see what you come up with next. And I also look forward to seeing what you have in store for this outline. Thank you for the barnstar. It's very nice to feel appreciated. The Transhumanist 22:10, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
|
|
The Original Barnstar |
| Wow! Thanks for your help on the Future studies project. I can't believe all the pages you've contributed to, but glad you found ours!... RealFuturist (talk) 17:09, 3 February 2012 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
The Copyeditor's Barnstar |
| Thanks for the ndashes on the Apple outline article. Zach Vega (talk) 00:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC) |
A cookie for you!
|
Many years ago, back before I had created my current account, I created a humble little userspace navigation menu based off of two of your menus from the User Page Design Center (initially 15, but ultimately 6). Over the years it has grown, but I don't know if I ever would have started it without seeing your menus first. I just want to thank you for putting the effort into creating those menus and then sharing them at the Design Center where they have been helpful for people like me. I hope you don't mind me borrowing from your hard work! Thanks again and take care! Michael Barera (talk) 03:30, 13 January 2013 (UTC) |
Thank you
|
The Instructor's Barnstar | |
| This Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who have performed stellar work in the area of instruction & help for other editors. Just wanted to stop by and say this edit was something I wanted to do but simply did not have the "kahunas" to do so. Thank you for the bold edit :-) Moxy (talk) 07:25, 13 February 2013 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
The Barnstar of Diligence |
| For your efforts on updating, improving and organising Outline of human anatomy LT910001 (talk) 06:39, 2 January 2014 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar |
| For your work on "Outline of space science" Tetra quark (don't be shy) 05:55, 18 January 2015 (UTC) |
Thank you. The Transhumanist 07:45, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
A cup of coffee for you!
|
A cup of coffee for you! masum (talk) 06:10, 5 October 2015 (UTC) |
Thank you. The Transhumanist 06:56, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
At Tip-Of-The-Day: Thank you for your updates & guidance!
Want to let you know the value of your insights & feedback!
Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 21:53, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you. Keep up the good work. The Transhumanist 16:50, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
Pony!
Pony!
Congratulations! For all your hard work on redirect repair at Glossary of North American horse racing and general wikignoming along the way of articles such as Easy Goer, you have received a pony! Ponies are cute, intelligent, cuddly, friendly (most of the time, though with notable exceptions), promote good will, encourage patience, and enjoy carrots. Treat your pony with respect and he will be your faithful friend! We need more wikipedia editors like you! Montanabw(talk) 02:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
To send a pony or a treat to other wonderful and responsible editors, click here.
Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!
- please help translate this message into the local language
|
The Cure Award |
| In 2015 you were one of the top 300 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs, and we would love to collaborate further. |
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!
|
|
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar |
| Great work with the Outlines :) Pratyush (talk) 21:07, 26 September 2016 (UTC) |
Thank you. The Transhumanist 15:31, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
Love the outlines
Hi 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.
|
|
What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar | |
| Great idea with the outline articles - a great solution to a need for better mainspace-based content structuring! I see from WP:Outlines that you actually came up with this concept some years ago, but this is the first I've noticed it. A2soup (talk) 02:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC) |
A Barnstar for you!
|
The Portal Barnstar | |
| The Portal Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who have made significant contributions to topic portals. Awarded to Transhumanist for his overly enthusiastic efforts regarding the portal system and WikiProject Portals. – Lionel(talk) 11:02, 30 April 2018 (UTC) |
- Transhumanist, thank you for your extraordinary efforts on behalf of portals. It reminds me of the time when a series of attacks on scientific bibliographies led to the formation of WikiProject Bibliographies. I don't understand why your detractors are so passionate about deleting portals, but your actions have been a model for how to deal with an attack constructively. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:10, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
A Barnstar for you!
|
The Article Rescue Barnstar | |
| May all who see this barnstar know that The Transhumanist made a valiant and commendable effort for defending the portal namespace from deletion. It preserved countless hours of work initially invested into creating the content. Moreoever, The Transhumanist, is doing a yeoman's job in attempting to improve the content within with portal namespace. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:24, 26 May 2018 (UTC) |
@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)
Precious
thinking-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!
Precious
portals
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)
- Follow the link "awesome W." and look for your name: 2 others said it before me! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:48, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
Executive director of portals
|
|
The Portal Barnstar | |
| Not sure if a simple barnstar can express the communities gratitude to the portal work that you're doing. Your an indispensable member of our community. Moxy (talk) 18:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC) |
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
|
|
The Portal Barnstar | |
| The Portal Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who have made significant contributions to topic portals. Thanks for the great work you have been doing in the WikiProject. Dreamy Jazz talk | contribs 22:15, 4 July 2018 (UTC) |
You are welcome, formerly Wpgbrown. Nice new name. ;) — The Transhumanist 10:26, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
|
The Technical Barnstar |
Good to see others of the view we have as to the need to know more. Im a research person here just of this week and your views relate to my work here. take care.
Tleesd (talk) 17:56, 5 September 2018 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thank's for updating the Portal:Seventh-day Adventist Church. You deserve this star for your good work. Catfurball (talk) 15:28, 12 October 2018 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
|
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar |
| For your excellent work on Portals. Everyday the portal project improves. Your dedication and willingness to get people involved really pays off. Cannot wait to continue working with you and the Portal team. Thank you for your work. AmericanAir88(talk) 00:30, 30 October 2018 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar | |
| Thank you for helping me in my first attempt in creating a portal page ‑‑V.S.(C)(T) 10:51, 23 December 2018 (UTC) |
Some barnstars for you!
|
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thanks for creating Portal:Hummingbirds when I asked for it. Keep doing a good job! Catfurball (talk) 00:01, 4 January 2019 (UTC) |
|
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thanks for making Portal:Capsicum. Catfurball (talk) 19:38, 5 February 2019 (UTC) |
|
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thanks for making Portal:Peaches. Catfurball (talk) 21:11, 5 February 2019 (UTC) |
|
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thanks for creating Portal:Woodpeckers for me. Catfurball (talk) 19:15, 14 February 2019 (UTC) |
|
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thanks for creating Portal:Tyrant flycatchers for me. Catfurball (talk) 19:16, 14 February 2019 (UTC) |
|
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thanks for creating Portal:Plums, you do a great job creating portals. Catfurball (talk) 18:45, 21 February 2019 (UTC) |
|
|
The Graphic Designer's Barnstar |
| Thanks for creating Portal:Cotingas for me. Catfurball (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2019 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
|
The Portal Barnstar | |
| For your tireless dedication to creating, maintaining, and improving portals, as well as your active involvement in making improvements to the system of portals itself. I'm sorry to hear that you're temporarily unable to create them, but your work is greatly appreciated 🙂 Brendon the Wizard ✉️ ✨ 14:17, 23 March 2019 (UTC) |
A Barnstar for you
|
|
The Original Barnstar | |
| message Ambuj Shukla 19:16, 2 November 2019 (UTC) |
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)
- Thank you. — The Transhumanist 00:06, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
|
The Outline Barnstar | |
| Hello The Transhumanist, you are receiving this award for the creation and continued dedication to WikiProject Outlines. You deserve this barnstar more than anyone. Jerium (talk) 19:18, 12 November 2023 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
|
The Barnstar of Good Humor |
| I appreciate you reviving the User page design center! I used this when I was new. Also, everyone has a phases where they religiously obsess over their user page (especially userboxes), and this tool is a good way to show them how to have fun with it. Panini! • 🥪 23:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC) |
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
Categories:
- Wikipedia Help Project participants
- WikiProject Health and fitness participants
- WikiProject Lists participants
- Mesopedianist Wikipedians
- Inclusionist Wikipedians
- Incrementalist Wikipedians
- Eventualist Wikipedians
- Wikipedian tipsters
- Wikipedians who use AutoWikiBrowser
- User Wikitext-3
- Wikipedian user script developers
- User perl-2
- User js-2
- User regex-3
- Transhumanist Wikipedians
- WikiProject Geography participants
- Wikipedians interested in geography
- Wikipedians interested in the Earth
- Wikipedians interested in history
- Wikipedians interested in ancient history
- Wikipedians interested in ancient Egypt
- Wikipedians interested in ancient Greece
- Wikipedians interested in ancient Rome