Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
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The white-eyed river martin (Pseudochelidon sirintarae) is a passerinebird, one of only two members of the river martin subfamily of the swallows. Since it has significant differences from its closest relative, the African river martin, it is sometimes placed in its own genus, Eurochelidon. First found in 1968, it is known only from a single wintering site in Thailand, and may be extinct, since it has not been seen since 1980 despite targeted surveys in Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia. It may possibly still breed in China or Southeast Asia, but a Chinese painting initially thought to depict this species was later reassessed as showing pratincoles. (Full article...)
The Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) is a South American New World vulture and is the only extant member of the genusVultur. It is found in the Andes mountains and adjacent Pacific coasts of western South America. With a maximum wingspan of 3.3 m (10 ft 10 in) and weight of 15 kg (33 lb), the Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world, and is generally considered to be the largest bird of prey in the world. (Full article...)
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An adult American white ibis wading in the Tampa Bay area of Florida
The American white ibis (Eudocimus albus) is a species of bird in the ibis family, Threskiornithidae. It is found from the southern half of the US East Coast (Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia), along the Gulf Coast states (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas) and south through most of the Caribbean coastal regions of Central America. This particular ibis species is a medium-sized wading bird, possessing an overall white plumage with black wing-tips (usually only visible in flight), and having the typical downward-curving bill of the ibises, though of a bright red-orange color, the same hue as its long legs. Males are larger and have longer bills than females. The breeding range runs along the Gulf and Atlantic Coast, and the coasts of Mexico and Central America. Outside the breeding period, the range extends further inland in North America and also includes the Caribbean. It is also found along the northwestern South American coastline in Colombia and Venezuela. Populations in central Venezuela overlap and interbreed with the scarlet ibis. The two have been classified by some authorities as a single species. (Full article...)
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GRB 970228 was the first gamma-ray burst (GRB) for which an afterglow was observed. It was detected on 28 February 1997 at 02:58 UTC. Since 1993, physicists had predicted GRBs to be followed by a lower-energy afterglow (in wavelengths such as radio waves, x-rays, and even visible light), but until this event, GRBs had only been observed in highly luminous bursts of high-energy gamma rays (the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation); this resulted in large positional uncertainties which left their nature very unclear. (Full article...)
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Male Laysan honeycreeper photographed by Donald R. Dickey in 1923, a few days before the extinction of the species
The Laysan honeycreeper (Himatione fraithii), also known as the Laysan ʻapapane or Laysan honeyeater, is an extinct species of finch that was endemic to the island of Laysan in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The bird was first recorded in 1828, and in 1892 it received its scientific name from Walter Rothschild, who placed it in the genus Himatione along with the ʻapapane. The specific name, fraithii, refers to George D. Freeth, the self-appointed governor of Laysan, but was misspelled. Rothschild attempted to emend it to freethi in a later publication. This was accepted by most subsequent authors throughout the 20th century, and the bird was also considered a subspecies of the ʻapapane, as H.sanguineafreethii, for most of this time. By the 21st century, after further research, the original name was reinstated and it was considered a full species again. As a Hawaiian honeycreeper, a grouping within the finch subfamilyCarduelinae, its ancestors are thought to have come from Asia. (Full article...)
The Mascarene teal (Anas theodori), also known as the Mauritius duck and Sauzier's teal, is an extinct species of duck that lived on the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Réunion. A small duck was mentioned in 17th century accounts from these islands which is thought to be this species, and it may also be depicted in one illustration. In 1893, various bones from the Mare aux Songes swamp of Mauritius were used to name a new species in the duck genus Anas, A. theodori, after Théodore Sauzier [de] who directed the excavations. Additional remains from Réunion were considered to belong to the same species in 1999, and it was determined to be related to the Sunda teal of the Indian Ocean. (Full article...)
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Distribution of O. gorgasi (blue) and the related O. couesi (red) in northwestern South America.
Oryzomys gorgasi, also known as Gorgas's oryzomys or Gorgas's rice rat, is a rodent in the genus Oryzomys of family Cricetidae. First recorded in 1967, it is known from only a few localities, including a freshwater swamp in the lowlands of northwestern Colombia and a mangrove islet in northwestern Venezuela. It reportedly formerly occurred on the island of Curaçao off northwestern Venezuela; this extinct population has been described as a separate species, O. curasoae, but does not differ morphologically from mainland populations. (Full article...)
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Tell es-Sakan in September 2017
Tell es-Sakan (Arabic: تل السكن, lit.'Hill of Ash') is a mound created by the accumulation of the remains of consecutive settlements, located about 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of Gaza City in Palestine. This tell was the site of two separate Early Bronze Age urban settlements. During Ancient Egypt's expansion into southwestern Canaan in the latter half of the 4th millennium BCE, Tell es-Sakan was founded as an administrative centre for the Egyptian colonies in the region. It was inhabited from about 3300 BCE to 3000 BCE. After a period of abandonment, a Canaanite city was established around 2600 BCE and inhabited until about 2250 BCE, after which Tell es-Sakan was permanently abandoned. (Full article...)
The use of horses in World War I (1914–1918) marked a transitional period in the evolution of armed conflict. Cavalry units were initially considered essential offensive elements of a military force, but over the course of the war, the vulnerability of horses to modern machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire reduced their utility on the battlefield. This paralleled the development of tanks, which ultimately replaced cavalry in shock tactics. While the perceived value of the horse in war changed dramatically, horses still played a significant role throughout the war. (Full article...)
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Range in northern Peru
Eremoryzomys polius, also known as the gray rice rat or the Marañon oryzomys, is a rodent species in the tribe Oryzomyini of the family Cricetidae. Discovered in 1912 and first described in 1913 by Wilfred Osgood, it was originally placed in Oryzomys and named Oryzomys polius. In 2006, a cladistic analysis found that it was not closely related to Oryzomys in the strict sense or to any other oryzomyine then known, so that it is now placed in its own genus, Eremoryzomys. The Brazilian genus Drymoreomys, named in 2011, is probably the closest relative of Eremoryzomys. Eremoryzomys has a limited distribution in the dry upper valley of the Marañón River in central Peru, but may yet contain more than one species. (Full article...)
Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to Earth after the Sun, located 4.25 light-years (1.3 parsecs) away in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes, it is a small, low-mass star, too faint to be seen with the naked eye, with an apparent magnitude of 11.13. Proxima Centauri is a member of the Alpha Centauristar system, being identified as component Alpha Centauri C, and is 2.18° to the southwest of the Alpha Centauri AB pair. It is currently 12,950 AU (0.2 ly) from AB, which it orbits with a period of about 550,000 years. Its Latin name means the 'nearest star of Centaurus'. (Full article...)
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The 1966 New York City smog was a major air-pollution episode and environmental disaster, coinciding with that year's Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Smog covered the city and its surrounding area from November23 to 26, filling the city's air with damaging levels of several toxic pollutants. It was the third major smog in New York City, following events of similar scale in 1953 and 1963. (Full article...)
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups. (Full article...)
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A plot of normal distribution (or bell-shaped curve) where each band has a width of 1 standard deviation – See also: 68–95–99.7 rule. In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation of the values of a variable about its average. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to their average (also called the expected value or arithmetic mean) of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the values are spread out over a wider range. Standard deviation may be abbreviated SD or std dev, and is most commonly represented in mathematical texts and equations by the lowercase Greek letterσ (sigma). (Full article...)
Mickey Mouse, an anthropomorphic mouse and an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks Anthropomorphism (from the Greek words "ánthrōpos" (ἄνθρωπος), meaning "human," and "morphē" (μορφή), meaning "form" or "shape") is the ascribing or depicition of human form, personality, or attributes to non-human entities, often including non-human animals. In fiction, it is specifically the endowing of non-human characters with human-like behaviors, speech, facial expressions, etc; common examples include talking animals, talking trees, anthropomorphized food, and sentient toys. (Full article...)
Sci-Hub is a shadow library that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Unlike Library Genesis, it does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, in response to the rising costs of research papers behind paywalls. The site is extensively used worldwide. In September 2019, the site's operator(s) said that it served approximately 400,000 requests per day. In addition to its intensive use, Sci-Hub stands out among other shadow libraries because of its easy use and reliability, as well as the enormous size of its collection. A 2018 study estimated that Sci-Hub provided access to most of the scholarly publications with issued DOI numbers. On 15 July 2022, Sci-Hub reported that its collection comprised 88,343,822 files. Since December 2020, the site has paused uploads due to legal troubles. (Full article...)
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An Airbus A321neo of Wizz Air, the largest operator of the type
In biology, taxonomy (from Ancient Greekτάξις (taxis)'arrangement' and -νομία (-nomia)'method') is the scientific study of naming, defining (circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon), and these groups are given a taxonomic rank; groups of a given rank can be aggregated to form a more inclusive group of higher rank, thus creating a taxonomic hierarchy. The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum (division is sometimes used in botany in place of phylum), class, order, family, genus, and species. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of the current system of taxonomy, having developed a ranked system known as Linnaean taxonomy for categorizing organisms. (Full article...)
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
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Color cathodoluminescence of a diamond, by Pavel.Somov (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Parallax, by Mila Zinkova (edited by Richard Bartz) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
NASA study on wingtip vortices at Wake turbulence, by Langley Research Center (edited by Fir0002) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance at Primary production, by SeaWiFS Project (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Section of the Large Hadron Collider, by Maximilien Brice (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Archaeological excavation at Atapuerca Mountains, by Mario modesto (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Peruvian Andes at United States Exploring Expedition, by Alfred Thomas Agate (edited by Durova) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Simulation of liquids with different viscosities, by Synapticrelay (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Translational motion at Thermodynamic temperature, by Greg L (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Drop impact on a liquid surface, by José Manuel Suárez (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Archaeologists prospecting Santa Ana Cave at Excavation (archaeology), by Mario modesto (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Animation of a water drop, by Chris 73 and Gmaxwell (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Projectile motion of a bouncing ball at Inelastic collision, by MichaelMaggs (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Vibrating glass beam at Euler–Bernoulli beam theory, by Ben pcc (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Toroid magnets of the ATLAS detector, by Maximilien Brice, CERN (edited by Bammesk) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Mechanical advantage device, by Prolineserver (edited by Tomia, Ss181292 and Atropos235) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
Nobel Prize in Physics diploma, by Sofia Gisberg (restored by Jebulon) (from Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Others)
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