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🔗 Central Asia 🔗 Oceans 🔗 Lakes 🔗 Central Asia/Kazakhstan 🔗 Central Asia/Uzbekistan

The Aral Sea ( ARR-əl; Kazakh: Арал теңізі, romanized: Aral teñızı; Uzbek: Орол денгизи, romanized: Orol dengizi; Karakalpak: Арал теңизи, romanized: Aral teńizi; Russian: Аральское море, romanized: Aral'skoye more) was an endorheic lake lying between Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda Regions) in the north and Uzbekistan (Karakalpakstan autonomous region) in the south which began shrinking in the 1960s and had largely dried up by the 2010s. The name roughly translates as "Sea of Islands", referring to over 1,100 islands that had dotted its waters. In the Mongolic and Turkic languages aral means "island, archipelago". The Aral Sea drainage basin encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Formerly the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km² (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. By 1997, it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into four lakes: the North Aral Sea, the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea, and the smaller intermediate Barsakelmes Lake.

By 2009, the southeastern lake had disappeared and the southwestern lake had retreated to a thin strip at the western edge of the former southern sea. In subsequent years occasional water flows have led to the southeastern lake sometimes being replenished to a small degree. Satellite images by NASA in August 2014 revealed that for the first time in modern history the eastern basin of the Aral Sea had completely dried up. The eastern basin is now called the Aralkum Desert.

In an ongoing effort in Kazakhstan to save and replenish the North Aral Sea, the Dike Kokaral dam was completed in 2005. By 2008, the water level had risen 12 m (39 ft) above that of 2003. Salinity has dropped, and fish are again present in sufficient numbers for some fishing to be viable. The maximum depth of the North Aral Sea was 42 m (138 ft) (as of 2008).

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the shrinking of the Aral Sea "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters". The region's once-prosperous fishing industry has been devastated, bringing unemployment and economic hardship. The water from the diverted Syr Darya river is used to irrigate about two million hectares (5,000,000 acres) of farmland in the Ferghana Valley. The Aral Sea region is heavily polluted, with consequent serious public health problems. UNESCO has added historical documents concerning the Aral Sea to its Memory of the World Register as a resource to study the environmental tragedy.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Italy 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Military history/Early Modern warfare 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Ships 🔗 Military history/Medieval warfare 🔗 Industrial design 🔗 Military history/Italian military history 🔗 Former countries 🔗 Military history/European military history 🔗 Former countries/Italian historical states

The Venetian Arsenal (Italian: Arsenale di Venezia) is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice in northern Italy. Owned by the state, the Arsenal was responsible for the bulk of the Venetian republic's naval power from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. It was "one of the earliest large-scale industrial enterprises in history".

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Free and open-source software 🔗 C/C++ 🔗 C/C++/C

Cairo (stylized as cairo) is an open-source graphics library that provides a vector graphics-based, device-independent API for software developers. It provides primitives for two-dimensional drawing across a number of different back ends. Cairo uses hardware acceleration when available.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/technology and engineering in Russia 🔗 Russia/mass media in Russia 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Intelligence 🔗 Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history 🔗 Radio Stations

UVB-76, also known as "The Buzzer", is a nickname given by radio listeners to a shortwave radio station that broadcasts on the frequencies 4625 and 4810 kHz. It broadcasts a short, monotonous buzz tone , repeating at a rate of approximately 25 tones per minute, 24 hours per day. Sometimes, the buzzer signal is interrupted and a voice transmission in Russian takes place. The first reports were made of a station on this frequency in 1973.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Energy

This article lists notable military accidents involving nuclear material. Civilian accidents are listed at List of civilian nuclear accidents. For a general discussion of both civilian and military accidents, see nuclear and radiation accidents. For other lists, see Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents.

🔗 Physics

A nanoscale vacuum-channel transistor (NVCT) is a theoretically visioned transistor in which the electron transport medium is a vacuum. In a traditional solid-state transistor, a semiconductor channel exists between the source and the drain, and the current flows through the semiconductor. However, in a nanoscale vacuum-channel transistor, no material exists between the source and the drain, and therefore, the current flows through the vacuum. However, experimental realization of such a transistor has not been demonstrated.

Theoretically, a vacuum-channel transistor is expected to operate faster than a traditional solid-state transistor, and have higher power output. Moreover, vacuum-channel transistors are expected to operate at higher temperature and radiation level than a traditional transistor making them suitable for space application.

The development of vacuum-channel transistors is still at a very early research stage, and there are only limited study in recent literature such as vertical field-emitter vacuum-channel transistor, gate-insulated planar electrodes vacuum-channel transistor, vertical vacuum-channel transistor, and all-around gate vacuum-channel transistor.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Dogs 🔗 Russia/science and education in Russia 🔗 Genetics

The domesticated silver fox is a form of the silver fox that has been to some extent domesticated under laboratory conditions. The silver fox is a melanistic form of the wild red fox. Domesticated silver foxes are the result of an experiment designed to demonstrate the power of selective breeding to transform species, as described by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species. The experiment at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Siberia explored whether selection for behaviour rather than morphology may have been the process that had produced dogs from wolves, by recording the changes in foxes when in each generation only the most tame foxes were allowed to breed. Many of the descendant foxes became both tamer and more dog-like in morphology, including displaying mottled or spotted coloured fur.

In 2019, an international research team questioned the conclusion that this experiment had provided strong support for the validity of domestication syndrome. They did conclude that it remains "a resource for investigation of the genomics and biology of behavior".

🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Spaceflight/Timeline of spaceflight working group

This article documents notable spaceflight events during the year 2019.

🔗 Automobiles

The Hofmeister kink (sometimes also translated Hofmeister kick, German: Hofmeister-Knick) is an automotive design feature seen on modern BMWs and automobiles by other manufacturers. The feature consists of a low forward bend at the C-pillar or D-pillar in the case of touring vehicles or SUVs. It is named for Wilhelm Hofmeister, BMW design chief from 1955-1970.

Among the first cars to feature this design trait were some 1949 General Motors 2-door cars, as well as the 1958 Lancia Flaminia Sport Zagato and the 1961 Lancia Flavia Coupé. Despite its being used broadly across automotive makes, the term "Hofmeister kink" is generally used in reference to automobiles designed by BMW it later appeared in.

The first BMWs to feature it were the BMW 3200 CS and the BMW 1500 shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 1961 and was later named after then-BMW director of design, Wilhelm Hofmeister. In early models, the widened base of the C-pillar sometimes featured the BMW roundel.

Apart from its stylistic effect, the Hofmeister kink is said by BMW to suggest that all BMW models have rear-wheel drive (or all-wheel drive biased to the rear).

Not unique to BMW models, similar C-pillar kinks have appeared on cars of other brands both before 1961 and since. For example, the 1951 Kaiser Deluxe Golden Dragon shows a considerable "Hofmeister kink" in its greenhouse design. Another instance is seen with the 1994 Chevrolet Impala SS, based on the 1991+ Chevrolet Caprice, which had a plastic C-pillar kink insert and unique quarter window added to its design for its debut year. For 1994, the Caprice retained the standard triangular shaped window glass. In 1995, GM did away with the plastic insert, and incorporated this kink into the stamped sheetmetal quarter panels themselves for both the Impala SS as well as the Caprice Classic. In addition, the kink is present on some Honda Accord and Civic models.