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Australian Humpback Whales Are Singing Less and Fighting More, Should We Be Worried?
As eastern Australian humpback whale populations have recovered over the years, males have adapted their mating strategy in a highly strategic way, new research finds. I analysed 123 days’ worth of data on Australian humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae), collected from 1997 to 2015, and found male humpbacks sang less and fought more as the whale population…
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The Threat of Killer Fungi Infections Is Growing, Researchers Find
Fungal infections have received a frenzy of attention thanks to the popularity of HBO’s The Last of Us. The show depicts a fungal pandemic caused by the real-life zombie-ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. It imagines the outcome of society’s collapse and a brutal approach to maintaining public health. But in (real-life) laboratories, hospitals and public health…
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Are Wind-Powered Cargo Ships the Future?
A growing source of global emissions is cargo ships. A new generation of ships propelled by the wind can reverse this unsustainable trend.
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Forget Spy Balloons, the World of Surveillance Has Tried Everything From Schoolchildren to Trained Cats
The Chinese “spy balloon” shot down over the United States has brought the seemingly strange methods of surveillance and espionage into news headlines. Balloons have long been used for espionage – and not just for surveillance, as appears to be the case with this one. In the 1950s, Soviet soldiers in East Germany often saw…