Wizardry, warfare, Wii on ballot for World Video Game HOF
Wizardry, warfare and Wii are on the ballot as the World Video Game Hall of Fame narrows down its contenders for the class of 2023.
Mar 15, 2023
0
3
Wizardry, warfare and Wii are on the ballot as the World Video Game Hall of Fame narrows down its contenders for the class of 2023.
Mar 15, 2023
0
3
Cheap, reliable audio recorders developed at Imperial have been used to reliably identify birds by their songs in a large trial in Norwegian forests.
May 3, 2022
0
28
Inspired by how birds land and perch on branches, a team of engineers at Stanford University has built robotic graspers that can fit on drones, enabling them to catch objects and grip various surfaces.
Dec 5, 2021
0
44
Massey University Ph.D. student Chris Muller's novel "Drone Ranger" technology is being used to track the 40 Toutouwai North Island robins that were translocated to Palmerston North's Turitea Dam in April.
Aug 16, 2021
0
9
One of the biggest obstacles in the adoption of Artificial Intelligence is that it cannot explain what a prediction is based on. These machine-learning systems are so-called black boxes when the reasoning for a decision is ...
Jun 16, 2021
0
7
A bird flaps its wings, glides using air currents and then smoothly descends to perch on a pole. But this is not just any bird, it's a robot bird. And robots like these could in the next decade be used to respond to emergencies ...
Jun 1, 2021
0
9
Artificial intelligence (AI) is good at recognizing a single bird in an image. Where it falls short is when it tries to identify hundreds of tiny birds in an aerial photo. Yi Shang, a professor in the University of Missouri ...
Apr 21, 2021
0
11
Finland's Rovio reported Friday that quarterly game revenue climbed to a record 66.9 million euros ($79 million) as people stuck in coronavirus lockdowns spent more time playing its leading title Angry Birds.
Aug 14, 2020
0
5
Britain, a global leader in offshore wind energy, plans to make the sector one of the pillars of its transition to carbon neutrality in the coming decades.
Jan 19, 2020
3
14
Wind energy is increasingly seen as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, as it contributes to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that by 2050, wind turbines will contribute more than 20% of the ...
Oct 19, 2019
0
35
About two dozen - see section below
Birds (class Aves) are winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) Bee Hummingbird to the 2.7 m (8 ft 10 in) Ostrich. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period, around 150–200 Ma (million years ago), and the earliest known bird is the Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx, c 155–150 Ma. Most paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs that survived the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event approximately 65.5 Ma.
Modern birds are characterised by feathers, a beak with no teeth, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton. All birds have forelimbs modified as wings and most can fly, with some exceptions including ratites, penguins, and a number of diverse endemic island species. Birds also have unique digestive and respiratory systems that are highly adapted for flight. Some birds, especially corvids and parrots, are among the most intelligent animal species; a number of bird species have been observed manufacturing and using tools, and many social species exhibit cultural transmission of knowledge across generations.
Many species undertake long distance annual migrations, and many more perform shorter irregular movements. Birds are social; they communicate using visual signals and through calls and songs, and participate in social behaviours including cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of bird species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but rarely for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous ("many females") or, rarely, polyandrous ("many males"). Eggs are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching.
Many species are of economic importance, mostly as sources of food acquired through hunting or farming. Some species, particularly songbirds and parrots, are popular as pets. Other uses include the harvesting of guano (droppings) for use as a fertiliser. Birds figure prominently in all aspects of human culture from religion to poetry to popular music. About 120–130 species have become extinct as a result of human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Currently about 1,200 species of birds are threatened with extinction by human activities, though efforts are underway to protect them.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA