Sunspots 971

 

Some things that I have spotted that may be of interest to others:

Newsweek reports that humpback whales appear to use tools. Really.

Politifact fact-checks the acceptance speech of Kamala Harris.

NPR presents the latest guidance on COVID.

NPR also reports that medical researchers are finally beginning to use menstrual blood in diagnoses.

NPR also reports that Australia is trying to allow workers to disconnect from the company when working hours have passed, 

CNN reports that marmoset monkeys can send messages to a specified individual monkey. In other words, they use names for each other.

Baby parrots have unique "names" which function like human names

I was amazed to read some reports on research by a Karl Berg, and his group, from Cornell University, that indicates that baby parrots are given names by their parents, and modify these slightly, so that each parrot has a unique sound sequence that identifies the animal, much like "John Jones, Jr." might identify a human individual.

Here is the report in Science Now, and here in Nature News blog. The reports are readable, and interesting, and both of them include a short video. Science and Nature are the two most important scientific periodicals in English.

Thanks for reading!