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Statue of two men speaking

Communication is usually understood to be the transmission of information. Many models of communication describe it in terms of a source using a coding system to express ideas in the form of a message. The message is sent through a channel to a receiver who decodes it to understand it. For verbal communication, the message is articulated in linguistic form, including regular speech and writing. Nonverbal communication, including body language, touch, and facial expressions, does not rely on a linguistic system. The history of human communication was shaped by the development of technologies such as writing, printing, radio, and the internet. Communication also happens among animals and plants, for example when birds sing to attract mates. Interspecies communication occurs between distinct species, such as flowers using distinctive colors to signal to bees where nectar is located. The main discipline investigating communication is called communication studies. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Catherine, Princess of Wales

... that Catherine, Princess of Wales (pictured), is a keen amateur photographer and the patron of the Royal Photographic Society, and has taken many official photographs of her children?
... that a Connecticut radio station left the FM band for good after it was out of service for a week and only one person wrote a letter to complain?
... that the Swiss mountaineer Hermann Alfred Tanner invented a compass to navigate colour harmony?
... that during the January 1982 California floods, more than 18,000 landslides swept through the San Francisco Bay Area with little warning?
... that Kathanar – The Wild Sorcerer is being shot on a custom-built studio spanning 45,000 square feet, utilizing the virtual production technology?
... that in her 2021 book The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Robyn Faith Walsh found that German Romanticists were in part responsible for modern scholarly assumptions about the gospels?
... that a 1974 recording of Mozart's Così fan tutte with Ryland Davies as Ferrando was used in a 1995 film by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre?
... that sculptures of defecating people are displayed in the park surrounding Haewoojae?

In the news

Vulcan Centaur

United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket (pictured) debuts with the launch of the Peregrine lunar lander, the first mission on NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
In darts, Luke Humphries wins the PDC World Championship.
In Kerman, Iran, at least 91 people are killed by Islamic State bombings during a ceremony commemorating the assassination of Qasem Soleimani.
Japan Airlines Flight 516 collides with a Japan Coast Guard airplane at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, killing five aboard the latter aircraft.

On this day

January 9

Artist's depiction of planets orbiting PSR B1257+12

1797 – War of the First Coalition: The siege of Kehl by Habsburg and Württembergian forces ended when French troops withdrew from their fortifications.
1917 – First World War: Troops of the British Empire defeated Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rafa on the Sinai–Palestine border in present-day Rafah.
1972 – The Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending a 33-game winning streak, the longest in major American professional team sports.
1975 – In Central and Southeastern United States, a Great Storm formed the first of forty-five tornados over a three-day period.
1992 – Radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 (depicted), considered to be the first definitive detection of exoplanets.

T. W. Robertson (b. 1829)
Carrie Chapman Catt (b. 1859)
Farhan Akhtar (b. 1974)
Lei Jieqiong (d. 2011)

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Today's featured picture

The jabiru (Jabiru mycteria) is a large stork found in the Americas from Mexico to Argentina, except west of the Andes, occasionally also moving into the southern United States. Its name comes from Tupi–Guarani and means 'swollen neck'. It is a tall bird, with larger males reaching a height of more than 1.5 metres (4.9 ft). It measures 2.3 to 2.8 metres (7.5 to 9.2 ft) across the wings, and can weigh up to 9 kilograms (20 lb). The plumage is mostly white, but the head and upper neck are featherless and black, with a featherless red stretchable patch at the base. This jabiru was photographed in the Pantanal area of Brazil.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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