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🔗 Biography 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Cognitive science 🔗 Neuroscience 🔗 Birds

Alex (May 1976 – 6 September 2007) was a grey parrot and the subject of a thirty-year experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop. The name Alex was an acronym for avian language experiment, or avian learning experiment. He was compared to Albert Einstein and at two years old was correctly answering questions made for six-year-olds.

Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent, as their only common use of communication was mimicking and repeating sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex's accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively. Pepperberg wrote that Alex's intelligence was on a level similar to dolphins and great apes. She also reported that Alex seemed to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human, in some respects, and he had not even reached his full potential by the time he died. She believed that he possessed the emotional level of a two-year-old human at the time of his death.

🔗 Philately

Letterlocking is the act of folding and securing a written message which could be on papyrus, parchment, or paper, so that it does not require an envelope or additional enclosure. It is a document security tradition which utilizes folding and cutting. The process dates to the 13th century in Western history, corresponding with the availability of flexible writing paper. Letterlocking uses small slits, tab, and holes placed directly into a letter, which combined with folding techniques are used to secure the letter ("letterpacket"), preventing reading the letter without breaking seals or slips, providing a means of tamper resistance. These folds and holes may be additionally secured with string and sealing wax. A Scottish diplomat in Italy, William Keith of Delny, sent letters to James VI of Scotland which would tear in two if not opened with care.

Intricate letterlocking works contain artistic elements, demonstrating more than a utilitarian purpose. While the use of sealing techniques may have been limited to ecclesiastic and the nobility, letterlocking was historically performed by all classes of writers. An individual could also be recognised by their personal technique of folding, as was the case with Jane Whorwood, of whose letter Charles I, imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, wrote: "This Note [...] I know, by the fowldings [...] that it is written by [Mrs Whorwood]".

Letterlocking is also a discipline focusing on "the materially engineered security and privacy of letters, both as a technology and a historically evolving tradition."

🔗 England 🔗 Linguistics 🔗 Linguistics/Applied Linguistics 🔗 Languages 🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom

Linguistic purism in English is the preference for using words of native origin rather than foreign-derived ones. "Native" can mean "Anglo-Saxon" or it can be widened to include all Germanic words. Linguistic purism in English primarily focuses on words of Latinate and Greek origin, due to their prominence in the English language and the belief that they may be difficult to understand. In its mildest form, it merely means using existing native words instead of foreign-derived ones (such as using begin instead of commence). In a less mild form, it also involves coining new words from Germanic roots (such as wordstock for vocabulary). In a more extreme form, it also involves reviving native words which are no longer widely used (such as ettle for intend). The resulting language is sometimes called Anglish (coined by the author and humorist Paul Jennings), or Roots English (referring to the idea that it is a "return to the roots" of English). The mild form is often advocated as part of Plain English, but the more extreme form has been and is still a fringe movement; the latter can also be undertaken as a form of constrained writing.

English linguistic purism is discussed by David Crystal in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. The idea dates at least to the inkhorn term controversy of the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 19th century, writers such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and William Barnes advocated linguistic purism and tried to introduce words like birdlore for ornithology and bendsome for flexible. A notable supporter in the 20th century was George Orwell, who had a preference for plain Saxon words over complex Latin or Greek ones, and the idea continues to have advocates today.

🔗 Companies 🔗 History 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Buddhism 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/History 🔗 Japan/Business and economy

Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. (株式会社金剛組, Kabushiki Gaisha Kongō Gumi) is a Japanese construction company which was the world's oldest continuously ongoing independent company, operating for over 1,400 years. In January 2006, it became a subsidiary of Takamatsu.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Australia 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Biography/sports and games 🔗 Christianity 🔗 Boxing 🔗 Australia/Australian rules football

Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls, (9 December 1906 – 4 June 1988) was a prominent Aboriginal Australian from the Yorta Yorta people. He was a professional athlete, Churches of Christ pastor and church planter, ceremonial officer and a pioneering campaigner for reconciliation.

Nicholls was the first Aboriginal Australian to be knighted when he was appointed Knight Bachelor in 1972 (he was subsequently appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1977). He was also the first — and to date the only — Indigenous Australian to be appointed to vice-regal office, serving as Governor of South Australia from 1 December 1976 until his resignation on 30 April 1977 due to poor health.

🔗 United States 🔗 California 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 Oregon 🔗 Canada 🔗 Anthropology 🔗 Canada/British Columbia 🔗 United States/Washington 🔗 Canada/History of Canada 🔗 Canada/Geography of Canada 🔗 United States/U.S. history 🔗 Cascadia 🔗 Earthquakes 🔗 Anthropology/Oral tradition

The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26, 1700 with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2. The megathrust earthquake involved the Juan de Fuca Plate from mid-Vancouver Island, south along the Pacific Northwest coast as far as northern California. The length of the fault rupture was about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), with an average slip of 20 meters (66 ft).

The earthquake caused a tsunami which struck the west coast of North America and the coast of Japan.

🔗 Fishes

The sturddlefish is a hybrid of the American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) and the Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), accidentally created by researchers in 2019 and announced in 2020. Obtaining living hybrids through breeding individuals from different families is unusual, especially given that the two species' last common ancestor lived 184 million years ago. The hybrids were created accidentally during attempts to induce gynogenesis, a type of parthenogenic reproduction where a sperm cell must be present to trigger embryogenesis but does not genetically contribute to the offspring. Hundreds of hybrid fish were created, of which about two-thirds survived over one month, and about 100 survived for one year. As of July 2020, all living hybrid fish are living in captivity at the research lab in Hungary. There are no further plans to create new sturddlefish.

🔗 Musical Instruments 🔗 Electronic music

The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterwards Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's death in 2002.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Ancient philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of mind 🔗 Philosophy/Modern philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Metaphysics 🔗 Philosophy/Analytic philosophy 🔗 Folklore

In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The concept is one of the oldest in Western philosophy, having been discussed by the likes of Heraclitus and Plato by ca. 500-400 BC.

🔗 Climate change 🔗 Environment 🔗 Geography 🔗 Antarctica 🔗 Arctic 🔗 Geology 🔗 Globalization 🔗 Science Policy 🔗 Weather 🔗 Sanitation

Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

The largest driver of warming is the emission of gases that create a greenhouse effect, of which more than 90% are carbon dioxide (CO
2) and methane. Fossil fuel burning (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy consumption is the main source of these emissions, with additional contributions from agriculture, deforestation, and manufacturing. The human cause of climate change is not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing. Temperature rise is accelerated or tempered by climate feedbacks, such as loss of sunlight-reflecting snow and ice cover, increased water vapour (a greenhouse gas itself), and changes to land and ocean carbon sinks.

Temperature rise on land is about twice the global average increase, leading to desert expansion and more common heat waves and wildfires. Temperature rise is also amplified in the Arctic, where it has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Warmer temperatures are increasing rates of evaporation, causing more intense storms and weather extremes. Impacts on ecosystems include the relocation or extinction of many species as their environment changes, most immediately in coral reefs, mountains, and the Arctic. Climate change threatens people with food insecurity, water scarcity, flooding, infectious diseases, extreme heat, economic losses, and displacement. These impacts have led the World Health Organization to call climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries, including rising sea levels, rising ocean temperatures, and ocean acidification.

Many of these impacts are already felt at the current level of warming, which is about 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a series of reports that project significant increases in these impacts as warming continues to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) and beyond. Additional warming also increases the risk of triggering critical thresholds called tipping points. Responding to climate change involves mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation – limiting climate change – consists of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere; methods include the development and deployment of low-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar, a phase-out of coal, enhanced energy efficiency, reforestation, and forest preservation. Adaptation consists of adjusting to actual or expected climate, such as through improved coastline protection, better disaster management, assisted colonisation, and the development of more resistant crops. Adaptation alone cannot avert the risk of "severe, widespread and irreversible" impacts.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2.0 °C (3.6 °F)" through mitigation efforts. However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.8 °C (5.0 °F) by the end of the century. Limiting warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) would require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving near-zero emissions by 2050.