Good morning!

Welcome to "On the Net Today". Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we bring you a handpicked selection of three valuable and interesting online resources to help you get the most out of the internet and optimize your browsing time.

Here are the three resources we've prepared for today:

• Our World in Data: data visualizations to fight the world's biggest problems

• Khan Academy: free online classes for students worldwide

• National Geographic discovers the world's largest coral

Our World in Data: data visualizations to fight the world's biggest problems

Our World in Data is a project driven by the University of Oxford through social historian and development economist Max Roser that provides data, graphs, and maps on a wide variety of topics to "make knowledge about the major problems" facing humanity accessible and understandable.

In Our World in Data, we can visualize data about poverty, diseases, hunger, climate change, wars, existential risks, or inequalities, among other topics. The project, which publishes new visualizations daily, offers a thematic index and a search engine to locate information.

As stated on their homepage, Our World in Data's mission is to publish "research and data to advance in solving the world's biggest problems."

The publication, which allows the reuse of its data and visualizations under a Creative Commons license as long as the source and authors are cited, is funded through user contributions.

Link:

• Our World in Data

Khan Academy: free online classes for students worldwide

Khan Academy is an international non-profit organization with the mission to provide free world-class education to students anywhere in the world.

The online education they offer covers educational topics ranging from kindergarten to early university years, across a wide variety of subjects: mathematics, science, reading, computer science, history, economics, art history, or financial literacy, among others.

Khan Academy combines practical exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard. Each student can follow the courses at their own pace.

Additionally, Khan Academy offers free tools for both parents and teachers, so they can help their children or students in the best possible way.

Khan Academy's website is available in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Furthermore, their courses are translated into more than 35 languages.

In the 2023-24 academic year, Khan Academy had 168.7 million registered users, of which 14.8 million were new. Of the total users, 153.4 million were students, 7 million were teachers, and 8.3 million were parents.

The project receives financial support from various institutions and individual contributions made by people around the world.

Links:

• Khan Academy 

National Geographic discovers the world's largest coral

A team from National Geographic's Pristine Seas project has discovered what is considered to be the world's largest coral in the Solomon Islands.

Estimated to be 300 years old, this enormous marine organism was discovered in the Three Sisters archipelago in the Solomon Islands of the southwestern Pacific Ocean during a Pristine Seas expedition. The discovered coral measures 34 meters wide, 32 meters long, and 5.5 meters high.

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and founder of Pristine Seas, Enric Sala, stated that “Just when we think there is nothing left to discover on planet earth, we find a massive coral made of nearly one billion little polyps, pulsing with life and color”. 

The Pristine Seas project, launched by National Geographic in 2008, has helped establish a total of 29 of the world's largest marine protected areas, covering a total area of 6.8 million square kilometers, more than twice the size of India.

Links:

• New Discovery: Largest Coral in the World Found in the Solomon Islands – National Geographic

• Scientists discover world's largest coral—so big it can be seen from space – National Geographic

What resources would you recommend to include in the newsletter? Feel free to email your proposals to [email protected]. We are confident that your input will help make this project even more valuable.

If you're visiting the newsletter directly on the web or it's been forwarded to you and want to receive it directly in your inbox for free, click below:

That's all for today. Thank you for reading!