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Gently capturing wild bats to act as temporary study participants. Recording frog calls in the tropical forest. Setting up night-vision cameras. Doing it all in Panama near the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Sometimes the science described in our articles just sounds like an awful lot of fun to do.
Today, three experts on animal behavior, bat cognition and frog communication describe how they investigated the question of how frog-eating bats know from a frog’s call whether it’s worth swooping down for a tasty bite or waiting for more suitable prey to come along. The differences the researchers found between the ways adult and juvenile bats react to various frog calls revealed details about how these animals learn which sounds match with a delicious meal.
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A frog-eating bat approaches a túngara frog, one of its preferred foods.
Grant Maslowski
Logan S. James, The University of Texas at Austin; Rachel Page, Smithsonian Institution; Ximena Bernal, Purdue University
By listening to a frog call, adult bats can tell which prey are palatable and which are poisonous. Young bats must acquire this ability over time.
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Arts + Culture
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Jessica Maddox, University of Alabama; Jess Rauchberg, Seton Hall University
Snark subreddits act as a regulatory guardrail in an industry that has gone largely unchecked.
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Politics + Society
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Rick Baldoz, Brown University
An immigration historian says removal orders targeting student activists echo America’s long past of jailing and expelling immigrants because of their race, what they say or believe – or all three.
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Science + Technology
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Chandler Bauder, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory; Aly Fathy, University of Tennessee
Today’s radar technology can detect the minute movements when your heart beats or you take a breath. Machine learning turns those signals into vital signs readings.
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David Oygenblik, Georgia Institute of Technology; Brendan Saltaformaggio, Georgia Institute of Technology
AIs are notoriously opaque, even to the people who build them, which makes it hard to know why they fail. A new tool aims to reveal their inner workings at the moment they went off the rails.
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Education
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F. Chris Curran, University of Florida
A new executive order would create new guidelines on school discipline, suggesting the current ones are ‘discriminatory.’
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Environment + Energy
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Amal Elawady, Florida International University; Fahim Ahmed, Florida International University; Mohamed Eissa, Florida International University; Omar Metwally, Florida International University
Engineers use giant fans in the Wall of Wind test facility to study the destructive ways these powerful winds can interact with tall buildings.
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Courtney McGinnis, Quinnipiac University
Fast-rising temperatures can change how plants and animals behave and disrupt the delicate timing of pollination.
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Economy + Business
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Bahaa Chammout, Missouri University of Science and Technology; Islam H. El-adaway, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Labor costs – especially for unskilled roles – are climbing fast.
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Ethics + Religion
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Lisa Pavia-Higel, Missouri University of Science and Technology
‘Looping’ and ‘reframing’ are two techniques that can help build understanding in stressful disagreements.
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Peter Nguyen, SJ, College of the Holy Cross
Members of the White Rose movement, who defied Nazi tyranny, were imprisoned, and many were executed.
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From the archive – Vietnam War anniversary
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Randall B Woods, University of Arkansas
Lyndon Johnson made the decision to Americanize the conflict in Vietnam. Why?
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Jana Lipman, Tulane University
Not all who fled Vietnam at the end of the war wanted to be resettled in the US. But those who returned faced an unwelcoming government.
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Richard Lachmann, University at Albany, State University of New York
Is there honor in a losing battle? The US military faced this question in Vietnam. Its response would eventually change how the media covered war and how Americans perceive it.
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