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SCIENCE!


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The red-winged fairywren (Malurus elegans) is a perching bird in the family Maluridae. It is non-migratory, and endemic to the southwestern corner of Western Australia. The sexes are dimorphic: females, juveniles and non-breeding males have predominantly grey-brown plumage, but breeding males adopt brilliant colours, with an iridescent silvery-blue crown and upper back, red-brown shoulders, a black throat, grey-brown wings and pale underparts. Though the red-winged fairywren is locally common, there is evidence of a decline in numbers. Primarily insectivorous, it forages and lives in the shelter of scrubby vegetation in temperate wetter forests dominated by the karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor), remaining close to cover to avoid predators.


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The Spanish painted frog (Discoglossus jeanneae) is a species of frog in the family Alytidae. Endemic to Spain, it commonly inhabits open areas, pine groves and shrublands. It feeds mostly on insects and worms.


Corals are marine invertebrates that typically live in compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Each polyp is a sac-like animal typically only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in length. Corals are major contributors to the physical structure of the coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef.


Acacia pycnantha, commonly known as the golden wattle, is a tree of the family Fabaceae native to southeastern Australia. It grows to a height of 8 m (25 ft) and has sickle-shaped phyllodes (flattened leaf stalks) instead of true leaves. The profuse fragrant, golden flowers appear in late winter and spring, followed by long seed pods. Plants are cross-pollinated by several species of thornbill and honeyeater, which visit nectaries on the phyllodes and brush against flowers, transferring pollen between them. An understorey plant in eucalyptus forest, it is native to southern New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, and southeastern South Australia.


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Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, and Corona Australis, the Southern Crown, are two small constellations among the 48 listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. Corona Borealis, which generally represented the crown given by the god Dionysus to the Cretan princess Ariadne, is in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere, while Corona Australis, associated with Sagittarius or Centaurus, is in the Southern. Corona Borealis boasts the highly variable stars R and T Coronae Borealis and the huge Corona Borealis Supercluster. Corona Australis, lying alongside the plane of the Milky Way, hosts Epsilon Coronae Australis, the brightest example of a W Ursae Majoris variable in the southern sky. It also contains one of the closest star-forming regions to our Solar System, about 430 light years away—a dusty dark nebula known as the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud, with stars at their earliest stages.


Terns are seabirds in the family Sternidae that are found worldwide, generally near the sea, rivers or wetlands. They are slender, lightly built birds with long forked tails, narrow wings, long bills and relatively short legs. Most species are pale grey above and white below, with a contrasting black cap, but the marsh terns, the Inca tern and some noddies have dark plumage for at least part of the year. The sexes are identical in appearance. They are birds of open habitats that typically breed in noisy colonies and lay their eggs on bare ground with little or no nest material. Many terns are long-distance migrants, and the Arctic tern, migrating each year between the Arctic and Antarctic, may see more daylight in a year than any other animal.


Entoloma sinuatum is a poisonous mushroom found across Europe and North America. It is the largest mushroom of the Entoloma genus of pink-spored fungi. Appearing in late summer and autumn, it is found in or near deciduous woodlands on clay or chalky soils, sometimes in the form of fairy rings. The ivory to light grey-brown cap is up to 20 cm (8 in) across with a margin that is rolled inward. The sinuate gills are pale and often yellowish, becoming pink as the spores develop. The thick whitish stem has no ring. When young, it may be mistaken for the edible St George's mushroom (Calocybe gambosa) or the miller mushroom (Clitopilus prunulus).


The Cleveland Bay is a breed of horse that originated in England during the 17th century, named after its consistent bay colouring and the Cleveland district of Yorkshire. It is a strong, well-muscled horse breed, the oldest established breed in England, and the only non-draught horse developed in Great Britain. The ancestors of the breed were developed during the Middle Ages for use as pack horses. These were crossbred with Andalusian and Barb blood, and later with Arabians and Thoroughbreds, to create the Cleveland Bay of today. Over the years, the breed became lighter in frame as they were used more as carriage and riding horses. They have been patronised by members of the royal family throughout their history, and some are still used to pull carriages in royal processions. Today they are used for farm work, driving, and under-saddle work, but are particularly popular for fox hunting and show jumping.


The tarantula Aphonopelma hollyi was named after rock 'n' roll singer Buddy Holly.


Myotis escalerai is a European bat, found in Spain (including the Balearic Islands), Portugal, and far southern France. Although the species was first named in 1904, it was included in the Natterer's bat species (Myotis nattereri) until molecular studies in 2006 proved that the two are distinct. Similar to M. nattereri, it is mostly gray with lighter underparts, and of medium size, less than 9.5 g (0.3 oz). It has a pointed muzzle, a pink face, and long ears. The bat is an agile flyer, with rapid wingbeats and broad wings, 245 to 300 mm (9.6 to 11.8 in). Females start to aggregate in late spring in maternity colonies in caves, mines, tree holes, bridges or houses. Hibernation colonies need constant temperatures between 0 and 5 °C (32 and 41 °F), and are usually found in caves or basements.


The wasp Anoplius viaticus caches a paralysed spider for its offspring to feed on.


The common raven (Corvus corax) is a large, all-black passerine bird and the most widely distributed of all corvids. Averaging 63 centimetres (25 inches) in length and 1.2 kilograms (2.6 pounds) in weight, these intelligent birds can live up to 21 years in the wild. They are commonly found in mythology, folklore, art, and literature.


Telopea oreades, commonly known as the Gippsland waratah, is a large shrub or small tree in the family Proteaceae. Native to southeastern Australia, it is found in wet sclerophyll forest and rainforest on rich acidic soils high in organic matter. No subspecies are recognised, though an isolated population hybridises extensively with the Braidwood waratah (T. mongaensis).


Dactylotrochus cervicornis is a large polyp stony coral from the Red Sea and western Pacific Ocean. It is the only member of the monotypic genus Dactylotrochus.


Pluto is a dwarf planet orbiting the Sun, with about a sixth of the mass of the Moon and a third of its volume. Like other Kuiper belt objects, which are generally outside Neptune's orbit, Pluto is primarily rock and ice. It has an elongated and highly inclined orbit that takes it from 49 astronomical units (7.3 billion km) away from the Sun down to 30, closer than Neptune. Light from the Sun takes about 5.5 hours to reach it at its average distance. Since its discovery in 1930, it had been considered the ninth planet, but the International Astronomical Union came up with a new definition for planets in 2006 that excluded Pluto after many other similar icy objects were found, including Chiron and Eris. Pluto has five known moons: Charon (about half as wide as Pluto), Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. On 14 July 2015, a spacecraft is visiting the dwarf planet and its moons for the first time: the New Horizons probe is performing a flyby and attempting to take detailed measurements and images. NASA has invited the general public to suggest names for surface features that will be discovered on Pluto and Charon.


Xylolaemus sakhnovi was the first of its genus described from the fossil record.


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The coral Solenosmilia variabilis dominates reefs 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) beneath the sea.


The corn crake (Crex crex) is a bird in the rail family. It breeds in Europe and Asia, and migrates to Africa for the northern hemisphere's winter. It is a medium-sized crake with buff- or grey-streaked brownish-black upperparts, chestnut markings on the wings, and blue-grey underparts with rust-coloured and white bars on the flanks and undertail. The male's call is a loud krek krek, from which the scientific name is derived. The breeding habitat is grassland, particularly hayfields; the female builds a nest of grass leaves in a hollow in the ground and lays 6–14 cream-coloured eggs that hatch in 19 or 20 days. The bird is in steep decline across much of its former breeding range because modern farming practices often destroy nests before breeding is finished. It is omnivorous but mainly feeds on invertebrates, the occasional small frog or mammal, and some seeds. Natural threats include feral and introduced mammals, large birds, and various parasites and diseases.


Radiocarbon dating is used to determine the age of carbon-bearing material by measuring its radiocarbon, the radioactive isotope carbon-14 (with six protons and eight neutrons). Invented by Willard Libby in the late 1940s, the method soon became a standard tool for archaeologists. Radiocarbon is constantly created in the atmosphere, when cosmic rays create free neutrons that hit nitrogen. Plants take in carbon, including radiocarbon, through photosynthesis, and after an animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment. Half of the radiocarbon decays every 5,730 years; the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by radiocarbon dating are around 50,000 years ago.


The larva of Aphidius nigripes, a parasitoid of the potato aphid, can control the behaviour of its host?


Pappochelys (meaning "grandfather turtle" in Greek) is an extinct genus of diapsid reptile closely related to turtles. The genus contains only one species, Pappochelys rosinae, from the Middle Triassic of Germany, which was named by paleontologists Rainer Schoch (de) and Hans-Dieter Sues in 2015. The discovery of Pappochelys provides strong support for the placement of turtles within Diapsida, a hypothesis that has long been suggested by molecular data, but never previously by the fossil record. It is morphologically intermediate between the definite stem-turtle Odontochelys from the Late Triassic of China and Eunotosaurus, a reptile from the Middle Permian of South Africa whose relationships were unclear prior to the discovery of Pappochelys, but now likely lie with stem-turtles as well.


The great knot (Calidris tenuirostris) is a small, strongly migratory wader which breeds in the tundra of north eastern Siberia and winters on coasts from southern Asia through Australia. The species feeds on molluscs and insects.


On this day in 1886, French chemist Henri Moissan reported he was able to successfully isolate elemental fluorine (liquid fluorine pictured), for which he later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.


I believe people should stop claiming they believe in me, when all they really want is to abuse me for their own agenda.


Astatine is a very rare radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol At and atomic number 85. It occurs on Earth as the decay product of various heavier elements. All its isotopes are short-lived, with half-lives of 8.1 hours or less. Elemental astatine has never been viewed because a mass large enough to be seen by the naked eye would be immediately vaporized by its radioactive heating. The bulk properties of astatine are not known with any certainty, but they have been predicted based on its similarity to the other halogens, the lighter elements directly above it in the periodic table: fluorine, chlorine, bromine and especially iodine. It is likely to have a dark or lustrous appearance and may be a semiconductor or possibly a metal; it probably has a higher melting point than iodine. Chemically, several anionic species of astatine are known and most of its compounds resemble those of iodine. It also shows some metallic behavior, including the ability to form a stable monatomic cation in aqueous solution (unlike the lighter halogens).


M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. The existence of such a theory was first conjectured by Edward Witten at a string theory conference at the University of Southern California in the spring of 1995. Witten's announcement initiated a flurry of research activity known as the second superstring revolution.


DNA repair refers to a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as UV light can cause DNA damage, resulting in as many as 1 million individual molecular lesions per cell per day. Many of these lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule and can alter or eliminate the cell's ability to transcribe the gene that the affected DNA encodes. Other lesions induce potentially harmful mutations in the cell's genome, which affect the survival of its daughter cells after it undergoes mitosis. Consequently, the DNA repair process must be constantly active so it can respond rapidly to any damage in the DNA structure.


The cap of the Australian mushroom Cortinarius australiensis can reach 30 centimetres (12 in) across.


Still, I was inspired to create two new aliases from that idiotic shit. So I guess there is some bit of appreciation to be had. It had been a long time....


I believe some people are distinctly lacking a sense of humor. And I made this awesome new alias for nothing.

But I believe I shall be the better man and just hide that little circle-jerk away.