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Geography may have been your favourite subject in school, but how well do you remember your capital cities or recognise national flags?

America's Government Accountability Office has estimated that 73 per cent of American 13-14 year olds tested below the proficiency level for subject.

With that in mind, we've devised a short geography quiz, to test out how well you know your geography.

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How good is your geography? Take the quiz

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Geography may have been your favourite subject in school, but how well do you remember your capital cities or recognise national flags? America's Government Accountability Office has estimated that 73 per cent of American 13-14 year olds tested below the proficiency level for subject.

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British researchers are now routinely mapping a great swathe of Earth's surface, looking for the subtle warping that ultimately leads to quakes.

The team is processing satellite images to show how rocks in a belt that stretches from Europe's Alps to China are slowly accumulating strain.

Movements on the scale of just millimetres per year are being sought.

The new maps are being made available to help researchers produce more robust assessments of seismic hazard.

The kind of change they are trying to chart is not noticeable in the everyday human sense, but over time will put faults under such pressure that they eventually rupture - often with catastrophic consequences.

"We may well discover regions that have very small strain rates that we have not been able to detect before," said Dr Richard Walters.

"And that may well tell us that earthquakes are more likely in some areas that traditionally have been thought of as being completely stable and not at risk of having earthquakes at all."

Dr Walters is affiliated to the UK Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics ( COMET).

He announced the start of the new service here in San Francisco, at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Key to the UK scientists' work is the high performance of the EU's new Sentinel-1 radar satellites.

This pair of spacecraft repeatedly and rapidly image the surface of the globe, throwing their data to the ground using a high-speed laser link. And by comparing whole stacks of their pictures in a technique known as interferometry, the COMET group can begin to see the very slow bending and buckling that occurs in the crust as a result of shifting tectonic plates.

To initiate the service, the researchers are concentrating on the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt.

This is the sector where most of the deaths arising from big earthquakes occur.

In time, however, the mapping exercise will be extended to cover all major seismic hazard zones, including the rim of the Pacific basin - the so-called "ring of fire", where large tremors are also a regular occurrence.

To be really effective, the team's maps need to be sensitive to movements of about 1mm per year over 100km.

The system is not quite there yet, but as the Sentinels gather more and more images, the desired standard should be realised.

As a proof of principle - and to give an example of what the new system can do - the COMET group showed off its maps of Turkey at AGU.

These capture the 20-25mm/year westwards march of the Anatolian plateau relative to Eurasia.

The focus of interest is how tectonic strain is building up along the North and East Anatolian Faults - the trigger points for so many damaging quakes in the past.

Prof Tim Wright, the director of COMET, said one of the breakthroughs that had made the new service possible was simply the prodigious volumes of data the Sentinel satellite system could now feed to the ground.

"To give you an example, in just one year of Sentinel operation there are 156 terabytes of data; whereas the entire 10-year archive of Envisat (a previous European radar satellite) has just 24TB.

"And we now process the data from the Sentinels automatically within a few hours of getting it."

Dr Walters added: "This is a big data project. We've had funding from the UK's Natural Environment Research Council to build a big data-processing facility, to take these data from the European Space Agency, which they provide for free, and make useful geophysical measurements.

"We then serve that to the community. We put the data out there not just for us to analyse and think about seismic hazards, but for scientists all over the world to use."

The "Looking inside the Continents from Space" project has just sent live a website where all the processed maps can be accessed.

COMET is also working on a very similar system that would allow scientists to track the behaviour of volcanoes. The Sentinels will also see their slow developing bulges of magma that may precede eruptions.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

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British researchers are now routinely mapping a great swathe of Earth's surface, looking for the subtle warping that ultimately leads to quakes. The team is processing satellite images to show how rocks in a belt that stretches from Europe's Alps to China are slowly accumulating strain.

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Almost half the UK's electricity came from clean energy sources such as wind and nuclear power last year, official figures have revealed.

Renewables accounted for a quarter of the country's power supplies in 2015, outstripping coal power for the first time, the data published by the government revealed.

In total, low-carbon power sources, which produce little in the way of greenhouse gas emissions, supplied a record 46% of the UK's electricity in 2015, as the amount of renewables grew and nuclear generation rose after outages in late 2014.

Coal supplied just over a fifth (22%) of power in 2015, down from 30% in 2014, while gas continued to provide around 30% of the UK's electricity.

Nuclear power's contribution rose slightly from 19% in 2014 to 21% last year, the figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy showed.

The amount of onshore and offshore wind turbines and solar panels increased, while higher wind speeds and more rainfall boosted hydropower - helping to generate more clean energy.

And the UK's biggest coal-fired power station, Drax, in North Yorkshire, switched another unit from coal to mostly burning biomass - most of which is wood pellets.

Overall, renewable sources - which include onshore and offshore wind, solar farms, hydroelectric dams and biomass - accounted for 25% of the UK's electricity generation.

The total amount of generation capacity was down as several power stations closed, but some of the fall was offset by new renewables.

The government wants to phase out polluting coal-fired power stations by 2025 as part of efforts to tackle climate change, but only if new gas plants can be built to meet demand.

Industry body RenewableUK's deputy chief executive, Maf Smith, said: "The Government took the right decision when it announced the phasing out of coal.

"Now we can see renewable energy filling the gap, replacing old technology with new. 2015 was the first year that renewables outperformed coal.

"A quarter of Britain's power is now coming from wind, wave and tidal power and other renewable energy sources.

"Renewables are now part of our energy mainstream, helping us modernise the way we keep the lights on by building new infrastructure for the generations to come."

Across all energy use - including power, heating and transport - renewables accounted for 8.3% of consumption, up from 7.1% in 2014.

The UK has a target under European Union rules to source 15% of its energy from renewables by 2020.
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Record 46% of UK's electricity generated by clean energy sources in 2015

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Almost half the UK's electricity came from clean energy sources such as wind and nuclear power last year, official figures have revealed. Renewables accounted for a quarter of the country's power supplies in 2015, outstripping coal power for the first time, the data published by the government revealed.

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Geologists say they are close to creating the hottest borehole in the world.

They are drilling into the heart of a volcano in the south-west of Iceland.

They have told the BBC that they should reach 5km down, where temperatures are expected to exceed 500C (932F), in the next couple of weeks.

The researchers want to bring steam from the deep well back up to the surface to provide an important source of energy.

"We hope that this will open new doors for the geothermal industry globally to step into an era of more production," said Asgeir Margeirsson, CEO of the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), a collaboration between scientists, industry and the Icelandic government.

"That's the aim - that's the hope. We have never been this deep before, we have never been into rock this hot before, but we are optimistic."

The project is located on the Reykjanes peninsula, where a volcano last erupted 700 years ago.

A huge rig stands out against the black lava fields; inside a drill has been operating for 24 hours a day since August.

It has now descended nearly 4,500m, and the team expects it to hit its target depth of 5km by the end of the year.

Gudmundur Omar Fridleifsson, from Icelandic energy company HS Orka, is the project's chief geologist.

He shows me thin cores of black basalt rock that have been collected from deep beneath the ground.

"It's getting hotter - and that's what we want," he said.

"We don't expect to drill into magma, but we are drilling into hot rock. And by hot rock, we mean 400 to 500C."

Close to the rig, sulphurous steam is blasting from the ground, blending into the grey sky above.

Iceland, sitting on the boundary between two major tectonic plates, is one of the most volcanically active places in the world.

Harnessing this energy through geothermal technology is already well established here.

"In this area at Reykjanes, we typically drill to 2km or 3km depth to harness the steam, to run power plants and produce clean, renewable electricity," explained Asgeir Margeirsson.

"We want to see if the resources go deeper than that."

When the drill gets to 5km, the team expects to find molten rock mixed with water. But with the extreme heat and immense pressure found at this depth, the water becomes what is known as "supercritical steam".

It is neither a liquid nor a gas, but it holds far more energy than either. And it is this supercritical steam that the team wants to bring back up to the surface to convert into electricity.

They believe its special properties mean it could produce up to 10 times as much energy as the steam from conventional geothermal wells.

Mr Margeirsson said: "If this works, in the future we would need to drill fewer wells to produce the same amount of energy, meaning we would touch less surface, which means less environmental impact and hopefully lower costs.

"But that is if this works. This is full-scale research and development - we don't know what the outcome will be."

And there is a good reason to be cautious. With volcanoes, expect the unexpected.

In 2009, the IDDP team attempted to drill deep down into another volcanic site. But at 2,100m, they accidentally hit a shallow reservoir of magma.

Footage on the internet shows black smoke billowing from the well - and the drill was destroyed. So is it really a good idea to tamper with these complex and destructive forces of nature?

Simon Redfern, professor of mineral physics at the University of Cambridge, told the BBC: "I think the risks are rather minor. The likelihood is that there will be natural eruptions before any that are generated by human activity."

If the drill does hit magma, because it is under pressure, it would be likely to come to the surface rapidly, he explained.

"It would come out rather like lancing a boil or popping a spot. It would cause huge problems for the drilling operation itself, but it is unlikely to cause anything more significant than that."

Despite Iceland having more than 300 volcanoes, Prof Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a volcanologist at the University of Iceland, says there is still much to learn about them.

"We have many models of what the interior of a volcano looks like, but actually most of these models of active volcanoes are based on indirect observations," he explained.

"We can see seismic waves pass through them, or we can do some geophysical exploration, or we can study ground deformation.

"But actually, we have very few in situ measurements of what the interior of a volcano looks like."

This drilling project, however, would give geologists a unique vantage point, he said.

"There is always some risk... but there is also a risk if we don't do projects like this.

"By this project I think we can really make fundamental discoveries about how volcanoes work, and learn about their properties and conditions - and when magma could erupt to the surface."

The IDDP team says it is currently "drilling blind", which means no rocky debris is coming back up to the surface. Instead, it is somehow being absorbed into the surrounding rocks.

And without being able to examine the rock, it means the geologists really are heading into the unknown.

However, with only a few hundred metres to go, they are optimistic that the world's hottest borehole is now within their sights.

The IDDP project is funded by energy companies (HS Orka, Statoil, Landsvirkjun and Orkuveita Reykjavíkur), Orkustofnun (the National Energy Authority of Iceland), the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), the National Science Foundation in the US and EU Horizon 2020.

Follow Rebecca on Twitter.

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World's hottest borehole nearly complete

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Geologists say they are close to creating the hottest borehole in the world. They are drilling into the heart of a volcano in the south-west of Iceland. They have told the BBC that they should reach 5km down, where temperatures are expected to exceed 500C (932F), in the next couple of weeks.

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The highest-ever wave detected by a buoy has been recorded in the North Atlantic ocean, the World Meteorological Organization has said.

The 19-metre (62.3ft) wave happened between Iceland and the United Kingdom, off the Outer Hebrides.

It was created in the aftermath of a very strong cold front with 43.8 knot (50.4mph) winds on 4 February 2013.

The WMO, which released the data, said the previous record was 18.275 metres (59.96ft) in December 2007.

That wave was also in the North Atlantic.

It is not the biggest-ever recorded wave, however. In 2002 a ship spotted a 29-metre (95 ft) North Atlantic wave.

In 2014, the M4 Donegal buoy recorded a 23.4 metre wave, but the WMO said the new record was based on "significant wave height" which required certain measuring methods and observing periods.

The buoy is part of the UK Met Office's network of Marine Automatic Weather Stations. Known as K5, it sits in the North Atlantic off the Western Isles

The buoys complement ship-based measurements and satellite observations, which monitor the oceans and forecast meteorological hazards on the high seas.

Peaks and troughs

Giant waves can be created in the north Atlantic, which stretches from the Grand Banks plateau off the coast of Canada to the area south of Iceland and west of the UK.

In winter, wind circulation and pressure systems cause extratropical storms, sometimes known as bombs, the WMO said.

The height of a wave is measured from the crest of one to the trough of the next.

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The highest-ever wave detected by a buoy has been recorded in the North Atlantic ocean, the World Meteorological Organization has said. The 19-metre (62.3ft) wave happened between Iceland and the United Kingdom, off the Outer Hebrides. It was created in the aftermath of a very strong cold front with 43.8 knot (50.4mph) winds on 4 February 2013.

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After much discussion, New Zealand has opted to change it's flag, unveiling a Silver Fern.

The black, white and blue flag came out on top after a referendum and will replace the old one- which depicts the Union jack- after almost one hundred years.

The study of flags, or vexillology, was invented by Whitney Smith in 1957. Smith was probably the biggest flag fan ever - he devoted his entire life to bringing big flag fans together to do flag-related stuff.

Smith worked to organise the first ever Congress of Vexillology: "a week of discussion of flags in both formal and informal settings".

He also founded North American Vexillological Association, and helped to set up the International Federation of Vexillological Associations.

You're never going to love flags as much as Whitney Smith did, the first step is to take the quiz below and see how many flags you can identify.

How did you get on? Let us know in the comments below.

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After much discussion, New Zealand has opted to change it's flag, unveiling a Silver Fern. The black, white and blue flag came out on top after a referendum and will replace the old one- which depicts the Union jack- after almost one hundred years.

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The rampant problem of food waste gets worse throughout the last two months of each year. WorldWatch Institute estimates that the U.S. creates three times as much food waste during the holiday season. The overall statistics don't look much better: An average family tosses out $2,500 worth of food in a year, while the average person throws out around 20 pounds of food in a month.

Why does it matter? In addition to all the people who go hungry as a result of unequal food distribution, there's a climate change element too. Take the quiz below to learn more, and see the tips below the quiz to find out what you can do to help.

The last question of the quiz provides a starting point for steps you can take to reduce food waste in your life. This graphic, which was featured in National Geographic magazine's March 2016 story " How 'Ugly' Fruits and Vegetables Can Help Solve World Hunger," adds even more options to the list. Check out these tips for how to reorganize your fridge and reduce your food waste. And this holiday season, try new ways to save food after big meals -like the Thanksgiving feast that awaits you on Thursday.

This article is part of our Urban Expeditions series, an initiative made possible by a grant from United Technologies to the National Geographic Society.

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The rampant problem of food waste gets worse throughout the last two months of each year. WorldWatch Institute estimates that the U.S. creates three times as much food waste during the holiday season. The overall statistics don't look much better: An average family tosses out $2,500 worth of food in a year, while the average person throws out around 20 pounds of food in a month.

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Scientists have warned that central Italy faces a serious risk of suffering further devastating earthquakes in the near future. The region - in central Italy north of Rome - has already been struck by three major tremors over the past few weeks. Seismologists believe a further earthquake could soon strike the region.

"Given what we have discovered about these three related earthquakes, there is a real chance that there is going to be another significant quake in the region in the very near future," said Richard Walters, a lecturer in earth science at Durham University. "That is well within the bounds of possibility."

Earthquakes are caused when enormous amounts of energy are released as sections of rock, subjected to intense pressure miles underground, move abruptly. This energy is released in the form of seismic waves, which cause the ground to shake, sometimes with highly destructive consequences.

In western Europe, the region with the highest seismic hazard is the mountainous backbone of peninsular Italy, the Apennines. It has a long record of earthquakes spanning back to Roman times.

Map of quake zone

Scientists now know that the region is prone to earthquakes because it is being stretched in a north-east/south-west direction at a rate of about 3mm a year. "That is roughly a tenth of the rate at which your fingernails grow," said Walters.

Some of this geological stretching is due to the underground tectonic plates on which Italy sits and which are moving apart. In addition, it is thought that Earth's mantle under the crust is pushing upwards and this also leads to stretching.

This pulling of the Earth's crust across Italy leads to the build-up of elastic energy, which is suddenly released, periodically, in earthquakes. "Unfortunately we do not know the exact timing of when this is going to happen," added Walters.

On 26 September 1997, a sequence of earthquakes, including six that had magnitudes of between 5 and 6 on the Richter scale, struck the Umbria-Marche region and killed 13 people. More than 40,000 were left homeless. And in 2009 the 13th-century city of L'Aquila was struck by a 6.3-magnitude quake which left 308 people dead, more than 1,500 injured and more than 65,000 homeless.

But the most recent earthquakes have been the most dramatic. On 24 August, this year, there was a 6.2-magnitude earthquake near Amatrice that killed more than 250 people. This was followed by a 6.1 earthquake, which struck Visso on 26 October. One man died after a heart attack.

Four days later, the village of Arquata del Tronto was destroyed by a 6.6 earthquake. Two women died of heart attacks during the quake.

All three earthquakes were closely related, said Walters. "An earthquakes occurs when there is a slip at an underground fault which releases energy. But it transfers stress on to a neighbouring fault. This effect can trigger other events."

Seismologists now believe that the August earthquake at Amatrice damaged two nearby geological faults, known as Laga and Vettore. The latest earthquakes - on 24 and 30 October - have further broken portions of the Vettore fault. So far, only the top segments of these faults appear to have been affected, but the deeper regions soon could be. "It opens up the prospect that the lower part of the Vettore fault could still fail and we would get another big earthquake," said Walters.

There was a precedent, he added. In Tibet, there was a quake in 2010 when there was slippage in the shallow section of geological fault. Ten months later, the deeper section suffered a similar slippage, triggering a new earthquake. "That could be a possibility here," said Walters. "I would not like to rule that out."

But seismologists have found no tell-tale signs on the surface to indicate where and when that underground slippage will occur. Techniques include measuring strain rates in rocks, looking for changes in electrical signals from rocks, and examining alterations in the behaviour of ground water, searching for chemical or thermal anomalies in a region, or analysing electromagnetic variations. None has proved effective.

"We know there is a real risk of another quake, but cannot say exactly where it will strike - or when," Walters added.

This article was amended on 10 November to correct the location of August's earthquake to Amatrice.

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Italy faces more earthquakes in near future, scientists warn

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Scientists have warned that central Italy faces a serious risk of suffering further devastating earthquakes in the near future. The region - in central Italy north of Rome - has already been struck by three major tremors over the past few weeks. Seismologists believe a further earthquake could soon strike the region.

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This may just be the most accurate map of Earth that you've ever seen. It won't look familiar, though.

Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa has divided the world into nearly 100 triangles to form this unique view, and believes it overcomes a 447-year-old problem which you've probably never heard of, yet has plagued every map you'll have ever seen.

The traditional world map, known as the Mercator map, is considered highly inaccurate due to huge distortions in the size of Antarctica and Greenland - caused by trying to flatten a spherical globe.

Narukawa's "AuthaGraph World Map" divides the globe into 96 triangles which are then flattened and transferred to a tetrahedron. That allows the world map to be "unfolded" into a rectangle while still maintaining the proportions of countries.

READ MORE:
* Putting NZ on the Google Map
* We've been forgotten from world's maps
* New Zealand is being left off world maps

WHY IS ANTARCTICA OFF SOUTH AMERICA, BUT NOT BELOW NZ?

Narukawa's map does have one obvious limitation: as Popular Mechanics puts it, his map "doesn't align to the cardinal directions" - that's north, east, south and west to the rest of us.

As a result, one version of Narukawa's AuthaGraph World Map shows Antarctica underneath South America, and far to the right of New Zealand.

That could be remedied, at least partly, by choosing a different frame of the map, which would show Antarctica to south of Aotearoa.

What the AuthaGraph map does do, according to the company's website is: "Represent(s) all oceans, continents including Antarctica which has been neglected in many existing maps in substantially proper sizes. These fit in a rectangular frame without interruptions and overlaps."

The Mercator map, drawn up by Gerardus Mercator almost 450 years ago, was a tool for navigation. While it fulfils that job well - it allowed navigators to plot a straight-line course across the sea - it was not meant for anything else.

To help sailors navigate the oceans, Mercator turned the meridians - lines of longitude - into parallel lines, rather than the converging lines of the globe.

That means his map shows the world getting wider than it really is the further a place is from the equator.

That's not all Mercator did. To enable a course plotted on his map to stay true on the water, he also increased proportionally the distance between the lines of latitude around the world.
DISTORTIONS OF THE MERCATOR MAP:
* Greenland appears larger than Africa, when in reality Africa is 14 times larger and Greenland is really only about the size of Brazil,

* Alaska takes up as much area as Brazil, which is nearly five times bigger,

* Scandinavia appears to be larger than India, although India is three times the size of all Scandinavian countries put together,

* And while Russia is big, it's nowhere as extensive as the Mercator projection would suggest.

New Zealand Cartographic Society president Igor Drecki said the AuthaGraph map was "stunning and innovative, visually engaging and probably deserving of recognition".

All map projections introduced error, some smaller and some greater. The trick was to use the right projection for the purpose involved, Drecki said.

"The novelty of the AuthaGraph map is, in addition to a stunning design, an introduction of 96 triangles for which map projection was applied individually. Resulting 'flat' maps were then 'stitched' together into a seamless map.

"It is unclear to me, without an in-depth study, which characteristics (area, distance, angle) have been retained for these individual tiles, but I suspect none. The shape of Australia, India or Brazil suggests that these individual projections were probably compromises applied to retain the 'right appearance' of the world."
AN AWARD-WINNING MAP:
The judges of Japan's prestigious Good Design Award were impressed, choosing the AuthaGraph map for its 2016 grand award.

The outline of the AuthaGraph entry on the award website said the mapping method could transfer a spherical surface to a rectangular surface, while maintaining correct proportions in areas.

"AuthaGraph faithfully represents all oceans, continents including the neglected Antarctica," the website said.

It did have one qualification. The map needed a further step, increasing the number of subdivisions, to improve its accuracy to be officially called an "area-equal map".

As described by Popular Mechanics, the key to creating the new map was dividing the globe into 96 equal regions and then transferring the dimensions from a sphere to a tetrahedron before generating the rectangular map.

"By using multiple steps to change the globe from a rounded sphere to an angular pyramid and finally to a flat map, the area ratios of land and water can be preserved."

The proportions are so accurate the map can be folded up into a three-dimensional globe. Also, different world maps can be put together from the AuthaGraph images, making it possible to make maps with anywhere in the world at the centre.
NOT A NEW ISSUE:
The Mercator map was also in the firing line on season two of US political drama, The West Wing.

In the episode, White House press secretary CJ Cregg meets with the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality - a group pushing for the president to ditch the Mercator map and adopt the inverted Peters Projection map.

Cregg probably channelled the audience's thoughts when she asked "what the hell is that", upon seeing the "real" map.

"Why it's where you've been living this whole time," she's told.

- Stuff

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This new map of Earth is unlike anything you've ever seen

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This may just be the most accurate map of Earth that you've ever seen. It won't look familiar, though. Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa has divided the world into nearly 100 triangles to form this unique view, and believes it overcomes a 447-year-old problem which you've probably never heard of, yet has plagued every map you'll have ever seen.