To celebrate a cool Halloween creature--bats--we teamed up with the Smithsonian’s Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the National Museum of Natural History. Here, he answers three commonly asked questions about these winged mammals.

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Bats living in the dense urban area of Panama City, the scientists learned, represent just a small fraction of the roughly 25 species of high-flying insectivorous bats found in Panama’s rainforests.

The post Only large, fast-flying bats can handle life in the big city; small bats can’t adapt appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The loud love calls of tiny túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) that reverberate through the nighttime jungles of Panama are bold advertisements for a suitable mate. […]

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As the male túngara frog serenades female frogs from a pond, he creates watery ripples that make him easier to target by rivals and predators […]

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When it’s time for a meal of katydids, bats use their ears. When hunting and eating male katydids, different bat species locate their prey by […]

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Like many predators, the fringe-lipped bat primarily uses its hearing to find its prey, but with human-generated noise on the rise, scientists are examining how […]

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Meet Rachel Page, a Smithsonian scientist in Panama who studies frog-eating bats (fringe-lipped bats), among other topics. Her current research focuses on learning and memory in neotropical bats, combining field studies with laboratory experiments to learn about predator cognition and its effects on the evolution of their prey.

The post Meet our Scientist Rachel Page. She studies frog-eating bats, and other animals, in Panama appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

How do you train a wild animal to come back to you after you have set it free? If it is a fringe-lipped bat, Trachops […]

The post Rockin’ out: Bats learn to love heavy metal music appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Do you enjoy Tequila? Then you need to raise your glass to the pollinating bats that helped to make it! Here at Smithsonian Science we […]

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Bats can adapt to certain changes in habitat that threaten their preferred roosting sites. A new study from Poland shows that bats will widen their criteria for selecting roosting sites if forest management practices limit their preferred sites. However, experts recommend that small patches of old growth forest suitable for bat roosting are maintained as the bats in this study did not adapt to young woodland.

Human-generated noise can reduce the foraging activity of wildlife and should be taken into account during conservation planning, a new study suggests. The test showed that traffic noise decreased the foraging activity of Daubenton’s bat (Myotis daubentonii) by inducing an avoidance response. The new experimental approach could be used to identify how noise disturbs any species capable of detecting noise.

Insect-eating bats are estimated to be worth US$ 1 billion (€0.91 billion) a year to maize farmers around the world, a new study has revealed. Not only do bats reduce crop damage by eating adult corn earworm crop pests, they also suppress fungal infections in maize ears. Bats and their habitats need to be better protected for their ecological and economic contributions, say the study’s authors.

These creatures of the night could be the models for future aircraft.

The Bats and Churches Partnership aims to ease the sometimes fraught relationship between bats and the houses of worship they roost in.

Manchester's City of Trees scheme will plant one leafy specimen for every resident.

Researchers have developed an interactive tool that uses bat calls and local environmental conditions to help wind farms reduce bat fatalities while still runni

White-nose syndrome is obliterating American bats, but scientists may have found a ray of hope: bacteria that live on bat wings.

Despite its petite size, Bi(h)OME carves out ample room for urban wildlife.

A new study reveals how smooth, vertical surfaces can confuse a bat's echolocation abilities.

A new study reveals mosquito DNA in the guano of two widespread North American bat species.

BIrds and bats don't seem to rely on their gut bacteria for the same things we do.

A brand new flu virus has been found in Peruvian bats.

We've rounded up some adorable wombat photos and some surprising facts about the wombat.

Handmade 'cuddlebatz' wraps swaddle distressed baby bats and make you forget all about vampires.

Why are these crocodiles orange? One grotesque theory about their coloration might shock you.

Researchers just released dozens of bats they successfully treated for white-nose syndrome, marking a milestone in the wildlife epidemic.

Cornfields without bats are infested by nearly 60 percent more moth larvae, researchers say.

Some people see them as pests, but bats are among the most fascinating and ecologically indispensable animals on Earth.

Wind turbines can kill birds and bats, but they don't have to. Here are a few ways to help them coexist.

Bats don't pose an unusual risk among mammals, research suggests, and bat viruses we do get often rely far more on us than bats.

A fungus is obliterating North America's bats in 'one of the most severe wildlife diseases ever recorded,' scientists warn.

Baseball bats come in many widths, lengths and materials. A heavier bat gives the ball more momentum but a heavier bat also means a less speedy swing. Bats that are made from graphite or aluminum hit balls farther than baseball bats made from wood.

Sometimes in art, as in life, a brand new way of doing things is discovered. This is a natural progression. Recently, new author Katherine Batsis accomplished something few first-time authors could ever imagine.

Sometimes in art, as in life, a brand new way of doing things is discovered. This is a natural progression. Recently, new author Katherine Batsis accomplished something few first-time authors could ever imagine.

On Wednesday, July 16 sometime between 2:30-3 p.m., MST, a bat landed on a visitor while she was standing in front of the Tusayan Museum, just west of the Desert View Visitors’ Center within Grand Canyon National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2-bats-positive-rabies.htm

Grand Canyon National Park has received confirmation that two bats collected along the Colorado River in the park last month tested positive for rabies. The rabies-positive bats, both Canyon Bats, were deceased at the time of collection and did not come in contact with any visitors or staff. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/bats-found-in-grand-canyon-national-park-test-positive-for-rabies-20190912.htm

Yesterday, Cameron Koczon shared a link to the dingbat font, Pictos, by the talented, Drew Wilson. Cameron predicted that dingbats will soon be everywhere. Symbol fonts, yes, I thought. Dingbats? No, thanks. Jason Santa Maria replied:

@FictiveCameron I hope not, dingbat fonts sort of spit in the face of accessibility and semantics at the moment. We need better options.

Jason rightly pointed out the accessibility and semantic problems with dingbats. By mapping icons to letters or numbers in the character map, they are represented on the page by that icon. That’s what Pictos does. For example, by typing an ‘a’ on your keyboard, and setting Pictos as the font-face for that letter, the Pictos anchor icon is displayed.

Other folks suggested SVG and JS might be better, and other more novel workarounds to hide content from assistive technology like screen readers. All interesting, but either not workable in my view, or just a bit awkward.

Falling down with CSS text-replacement

A CSS solution in an article from Pictos creator, Drew Wilson, relies on the fact that most of his icons are mapped to a character that forms part of the common name for that symbol. The article uses the delete icon as an example which is mapped to ‘d’. Using :before and :after pseudo-elements, Drew suggests you can kind-of wrangle the markup into something sort-of semantic. However, it starts to fall down fast. For example, a check mark (tick) is mapped to ‘3’. There’s nothing semantic about that. Clever replacement techniques just hide the evidence. It’s a hack. There’s nothing wrong with a hack here and there (as box model veterans well know) but the ends have to justify the means. The end of this story is not good as a VoiceOver test by Scott at Filament Group shows. In fairness to Drew Wilson, though, he goes on to say if in doubt, do it the old way, using his font to create a background image and deploy with a negative text-indent.

I agreed with Jason, and mentioned a half-formed idea:

@jasonsantamaria that’s exactly what I was thinking. Proper unicode mapping if possible, perhaps?

The conversation continued, and thanks to Jason, helped me refine the idea into this post.

Jon Hicks flagged a common problem for some Windows users where certain Unicode characters are displayed as ‘missing character’ glyphs depending on what character it is. I think most of the problems with dingbats or missing Unicode characters can be solved with web fonts and Unicode.

Rising with Unicode and web fonts

I’d love to be able to use custom icons via optimised web fonts. I want to do so accessibly and semantically, and have optimised font files. This is how it could be done:

1. Map the icons in the font to the existing Unicode code points for those symbols wherever possible.

   Unicode code points already exist for many common symbols. Fonts could be tiny, fast, stand-alone symbol fonts. Existing typefaces could also be extended to contain symbols that match the style of individual widths, variants, slopes, and weights. Imagine a set of Clarendon or Gotham symbols for a moment. Wouldn’t that be a joy to behold?

   There may be a possibility that private code points could be used if a code-point does not exist for a symbol we need. Type designers, iconographers, and foundries might agree a common set of extended symbols. Alternatively, they could be proposed for inclusion in Unicode.

2. Include the font with font-face.

   This assumes ubiquitous support (as any use of dingbats does) — we’re very nearly there. WOFF is coming to Safari and with a bit more campaigning we may even see WOFF on iPad soon.

3. In HTML, reference the Unicode code points in UTF-8 using numeric character references.

   Unicode characters have corresponding numerical references. Named entities may not be rendered by XML parsers. Sean Coates reminded me that in many Cocoa apps in OS X the character map is accessible via a simple CMD+ALT+t shortcut. Ralf Herrmann mentioned that unicode characters ‘…have “speaking” descriptions (like Leftwards Arrow) and fall back nicely to system fonts.’

Limitations

1. Accessibility: Limited Unicode / entity support in assistive devices.

   My friend and colleague, Jon Gibbins’s old tests in JAWS 7 show some of the inconsistencies. It seems some characters are read out, some ignored completely, and some read as a question mark. Not great, but perhaps Jon will post more about this in the future.

   Elizabeth Pyatt at Penn State university did some dingbat tests in screen readers. For real Unicode symbols, there are pronunciation files that increase the character repertoire of screen readers, like this file for phonetic characters. Symbols would benefit from one.

2. Web fonts: font-face not supported.

   If font-face is not supported on certain devices like mobile phones, falling back to system fonts is problematic. Unicode symbols may not be present in any system fonts. If they are, for many designers, they will almost certainly be stylistically suboptimal. It is possible to detect font-face using the Paul Irish technique. Perhaps there could be a way to swap Unicode for images if font-face is not present.

Now, next, and a caveat

I can’t recommend using dingbats like Pictos, but the icons sure are useful as images. Beautifully crafted icon sets as carefully crafted fonts could be very useful for rapidly creating image icons for different resolution devices like the iPhone 4, and iPad.

Perhaps we could try and formulate a standard set of commonly used icons using the Unicode symbols range as a starting point. I’ve struggled to find a better visual list of the existing symbols than this Unicode symbol chart from Johannes Knabe.

Icons in fonts as Unicode symbols needs further testing in assistive devices and using font-face.

Last, but not least, I feel a bit cheeky making these suggestions. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Combine it with a bit of imagination, and it can be lethal. I have a limited knowledge about how fonts are created, and about Unicode. The real work would be done by others with deeper knowledge than I. I’d be fascinated to hear from Unicode, accessibility, or font experts to see if this is possible. I hope so. It feels to me like a much more elegant and sustainable solution for scalable icons than dingbat fonts.

For more on Unicode, read this long, but excellent, article recommended by my colleague, Andrei, the architect of Unicode and internationalization support in PHP 6: The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets.

Kevin Pietersen's hopes of a second England chance have been dealt another blow after coach Peter Moores appeared to rule out the possibility while he is in charge of the national team.

Former Australia captain Steve Waugh has urged England to move on from Kevin Pietersen, believing the controversial batsman no longer merits a place in the side and brings too much baggage as well.

Live performances by San Fermin, Birds of Chicago, Fruit Bats (solo), Cataldo, and Office Culture

Recorded 11/24/2019 in Charleston, WV.

Support is provided by Adventures on the Gorge. https://adventuresonthegorge.com/

Matthew Murphy, aka “Murph,” from the British rock band The Wombats describes how hearing Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” and Radiohead’s “Creep” when he was a teenager set him on an alt-rock path, and describes what it’s like to talk about songwriting with Paul McCartney. Listen to this episode of This Song   Listen to […]

An innovative baiting method being trialled on Queensland's Cape York Peninsula could be used on a larger scale to reduce the impact feral pigs have on Australia's marine turtle populations.

Bats have been migrating earlier than usual this year due to inland drought and a lack of food in Queensland's south-east, with red flying foxes seen covering Mount Isa's sky.

A police investigation is underway in a quiet corner of WA's south-west, after more than 150 people brawled with baseball bats and poles near a local football club's post-grand final celebration.