ISBN: 9781988040431 Pub date: Fall 2018 Rebecca Higgins’s characters do weird things in their attempts to negotiate the world. They steal books and hide in bathrooms and treat grocery receipts like tarot cards. They may want solitude, even escape, but they don’t want to be invisible. They move between isolation and connection—on the internet, at uncomfortable [...]

Browsery DVD M1366.S54 L855 2016

A willingness to experiment with new foods and ways of foraging may make some birds less vulnerable to extinction.

Hayden Library - P35.5.R9 F47 2019

Online Resource

Online Resource

Hayden Library - QL765.M86 2018

Online Resource

Hayden Library - PT2662.E293 A2 2015

Online Resource

Charles Bishop discusses the "roller-coaster" flight strategy of bar-headed geese as they migrate across the Himalayas between their breeding and wintering grounds. Online news editor David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: © Nyambayar Batbayar]

Renée Duckworth discusses the role of maternal effects on species replacement in ecological communities shaped by forest fires. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © Alex Badyaev]

In this week’s podcast, David Grimm talks about brave birds, building a brighter light bulb, and changing our voice to influence our emotions. Plus, Ann Gibbons discusses the implications of a butchered 45,000-year-old mammoth found in the Siberian arctic for human migration. Read the related research in Science. [IMG: Dmitry Bogdanov]

Stories on birds that guide people to honey, genes left over from the last universal common ancestor, and what the nose knows about antibiotics, with Devi Shastri.  The Endangered Species Act—a 1973 U.S. law designed to protect animals in the country from extinction—may need a fresh look. The focus on “species” is the problem. This has become especially clear when it comes to wolves—recent genetic information has led to government agencies moving to delist the grey wolf. Robert Wayne helps untangle the wolf family tree and talks us through how a better understanding of wolf genetics may trouble their protected status.  [Image: Claire N. Spottiswoode/Music: Jeffrey Cook]

This week we have stories on the twisty tree of human ancestry, why mice shed weight when they can’t smell, and the damaging effects of even a small amount of oil on a bird’s feathers—with Online News Editor David Grimm.  Sarah Crespi talks to News Editor Tim Appenzeller about a special section on how artificial intelligence is changing the way we do science.  Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: © 2012 CERN, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE ALICE COLLABORATION; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

You can learn a lot about ocean health from seabirds. For example, breeding failures among certain birds have been linked to the later collapse of some fisheries. Enriqueta Velarde of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa, Mexico, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what these long-lived fliers can tell us about the ocean and its inhabitants. Also this week, Sarah and Cathal O’Madagain of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris discuss pointing—a universal human gesture common to almost all children before age 1. They discuss why pointing matters, and how this simple gesture may underlie humans’ amazing ability to collaborate and coordinate. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on the show: Kiwico.com Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: C. O’Madagain et al., Science Advances 2019; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

On this week’s show, science journalist Josh Sokol talks about a global cooling event sparked by space dust that lead to a huge shift in animal and plant diversity 466 million years ago. (Read the related research article in Science Advances.) And I talk with Kenneth Rosenberg, an applied conservation scientist at Cornell University, about steep declines in bird abundance in the United States and Canada. His team estimates about 3 billion birds have gone missing since the 1970s. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: MOVA Globes; KiwiCo.com Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Host Sarah Crespi talks with undergraduate student Micheal Munson from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, about a smartphone app that scans photos in the phone’s library for eye disease in kids.  And Sarah talks with Todd Roberts of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, about incepting memories into zebra finches to study how they learn their songs. Using a technique called optogenetics—in which specific neurons can be controlled by pulses of light—the researchers introduced false song memories by turning on neurons in different patterns, with longer or shorter note durations than typical zebra finch songs. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: MOVA Globes; KiwiCo.com Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast  

Wright, N. T. (Nicholas Thomas), author

This morning hundreds of ladybirds were flying through the air and massing on the white walls of the house. I managed to get a few clear macro photographs.

The sun was shining and the ladybirds seemed to be attracted to anything white. I stuck a white T-shirt on and headed outside. Pretty soon I was covered in them and could pluck them from my shirt to get some close ups using my little Canon IXUS 60.

At some point a ladybird took off just before I tried to photograph it and I decided I’d try to capture that moment. A few minutes later I’d worked out that I could prompt one of the insects to walk up my finger like the stem of a flower, that they’d take off when they reached the tip, and that they took up a distinct posture just before their wing-case shot open.

The speed at which they prepare to take off, open their wings, and fly away is so quick that I just had to take the shot as soon as I saw a ladybird get into the “take-off position” and hope that I reacted fast enough to get a picture of the open wing-case.

Kaplan, Gisela T., author

Dewey Library - KF5505.K58 2018

Durham : Duke University Press, 2020.

Barker Library - TL787.A244 v.167

Bird's-eye views of Alberta's land boom of the 1910s Stevens, Rhys M. G. Open access article

eBird Scott, David R. Review of eBird, a free online database of bird sightings from around the world. Sherpa Romeo green journal. Permission to archive accepted author manuscript