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In utero, babies can tell the difference between loud sounds and voices. They can even distinguish their mother’s voice from that of a female stranger. But when it comes to embryonic learning, birds could rule the roost. As recently reported in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, some mother birds may teach their young to sing even before they hatch. Newborn chicks can then mimic their mom’s call within a few days of entering the world....

The U.N. climate report released this week had some stunning revelations, claiming that the 2020s could be one of humanity’s last chances to avert devastating impacts. But some say its authors were being too cautious. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states in plain language that averting a climate crisis will require a wholesale reinvention of the global economy. By 2040, the report predicts, there could be global food shortages, the inundation of coastal cities and a refugee crisis unlike the world has ever seen....

The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould used to rail against the notion of a ladder of perfection rising from early humanlike species to Neandertals to Homo sapiens at the pinnacle. Two new fossils unearthed near a lake in Kenya bear out Gould’s preferred metaphor for human evolution—that of a bush with many branches. The first specimen, a jawbone assigned to the hominid (roughly: human ancestor) species Homo habilis, dates to a time 1....

Editor’s Note (02/08/18): Scientific American is re-posting the following article, originally published August 5, 2016, in light of the 2018 Winter Games which begin on February 9 in PyeongChang, South Korea. Is it safe to assume that a gold medalist at the Olympics practiced more than a silver medalist—and that a silver medalist practiced more than a bronze winner? Definitely not, according to a new analysis, which looked at nearly 3,000 athletes....

If you wanted to build a space telescope to see another Earth orbiting another star—in the words of Carl Sagan, another “pale blue dot” that could be searched for signs of life—how big and expensive would such a telescope be? Just a decade ago the answer boiled down to “too big” and “too expensive,” leading NASA and other space agencies to postpone for at least a generation plans to build giant, budget-busting observatories to snap pictures of Earth’s possible cosmic doppelgangers....

Hurricane Joaquin could be headed right for the U.S. East Coast this weekend. Models so far fail to agree on where the storm might make landfall, but shorelines from North Carolina to Massachusetts are possible targets for the high rise of ocean water, or surge, that hurricanes push ahead of them. Even if the storm veers east in the Atlantic Ocean, an unusually large atmospheric pressure gradient near the storm is destined to push strong winds onshore for many hours, bringing an extended period of high surf and heavy rain, forecasters say....

Biologists observing the spread of invasive Asian carp up the Mississippi River Basin had identified two possible barriers—one structural, one biological—that could keep the nemesis fish from invading the Great Lakes. Climate change may nix the biological one, researchers say, meaning the only safeguard against an invasion into Lake Michigan is an $800 million fish wall proposed for the Des Plaines River near Joliet, Ill. Presumably, the upriver-swimming fish won’t be able to pass the Army Corps of Engineers structure, which could include acoustic fish deterrents, an air bubble curtain and an electric barrier, according to a recent corps study....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. October is a dismal time of year. The clocks go back, which accelerates the onset of darker evenings and the “shorter days” inevitably lead to calls for the tradition of putting clocks forward or backward to stop. Of course, the annual return to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) from British Summer Time (BST) doesn’t make the days any shorter, it merely shifts an hour of available daylight from the evening to the morning....

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to crack down on “greenwashing” when it updates its environmental marketing guidelines for the first time since 1998. The agency’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims, or Green Guides, define terms such as “recyclable” and “biodegradable” and explain how businesses should back up environmental assertions. Though FTC cannot force businesses to adopt greener practices, Section 5 of the FTC Act authorizes the agency to intervene when businesses are misrepresenting their practices to clients – in other words, turning greenwashing into fraud....

Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic have uncovered a world unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents, one populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs. It was “almost like a sight from another planet,” said expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University. Even in the eye-popping world of deep-sea vents, the Antarctic discoveries stand out, with the unfamiliar species of crabs found crowded in piles around the warm waters emanating from the seafloor....

Key concepts Soil erosion Ecology Geology Introduction Perhaps you try to save water. Maybe you already reduce, reuse and recycle. But did you ever consider conserving soil? Perhaps you haven’t, but soil erosion—the wearing away of soil by water, wind and other natural forces—can be a major ecological problem. Productive farmlands can disappear as nutrient-rich topsoil in fields washes away when heavy rains hit them. Waterways can then become polluted as pesticides and fertilizers wash into them....

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, celebrating its 76th anniversary this year, counts two million members who participate in some 115,000 groups worldwide, about half of them in the U.S. How well does it work? Anthropologist William Madsen, then at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claimed in a 1974 book that it has a “nearly miraculous” success rate, whereas others are far more skeptical. After reviewing the literature, we found that AA may help some people overcome alcoholism, especially if they also get some professional assistance, but the evidence is far from overwhelming, in part because of the nature of the program....

Heading the campaign, former Ecuadorean ambassador to the United States Ivonne A-Baki said on a swing through Washington last week that she was frustrated with the U.S. government’s indifference to the cause of Yasuní National Park. Yasuní also happens to be the site of Ecuador’s largest untapped oil reserves – nearly 1 billion barrels. President Rafael Correa has vowed not to drill there, under the condition that the international community chip in for his country’s lost revenue....

A woody shrub with big oily seeds could be the ideal source for biofuel. For hundreds of years, Africans in places such as Tanzania and Mali have used Jatropha curcas (jatropha) as a living fence. Now biodiesel entrepreneurs in tropical zones in Africa and India are buying up land, starting plantations and looking forward to making fuel from the seeds, which, they argue, will be better for the global environment and economy than conventional biofuel crops grown in temperate climates....

THE 2007 NOBEL PRIZES The awards feature a rarity—scientists won the Peace Prize, the first time since 1995. Two of this year’s Nobelists have written for Scientific American: Mario Capecchi and former vice president Al Gore—three if you count the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Physiology or Medicine: Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah, Martin Evans of Cardiff University and Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for their discoveries leading to gene targeting in mice....

U.S. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission shut down a research reactor in Denver after inspectors found it to be in violation of staffing and training regulations. The commission recommended imposing a $7,250 fine on the U.S. Geological Survey, which operates the reactor. TANZANIA A butterfly farming project in the country’s East Usambara Mountains is providing an alternative to timber-harvesting jobs that threaten forest biodiversity. The project’s 250 farmers—more than half of whom are women—raise caterpillars and sell pupae to zoos and butterfly parks in Europe and the U....

(Reuters) - The benefits of male circumcision outweigh the risks, according a long awaited draft of federal guidelines from U.S. health officials released on Tuesday, which indicate that scientific evidence supports recommending the procedure. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that medically performed male circumcision could help decrease the risk of contracting HIV and several other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as well as other health problems. The recommendation, which includes counseling parents of male newborns on the benefits and risks of the procedure, comes at a time when the rate of male circumcision has been decreasing in the United States....

Medical researchers have confirmed what some desperate parents have been claiming for years—that a nonpsychoactive component of marijuana known as cannabidiol (CBD) can reduce epileptic seizures in some children. Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the findings stem from a double-blind, placebo-controlled study—the most scientifically rigorous type of investigation possible. “This study clearly establishes cannabidiol as an effective anti-seizure drug for this disorder and this age group," says principal investigator Orrin Devinsky, director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at New York University Langone Medical Center....

First came Martin Shkreli, the brash young pharmaceutical entrepreneur who raised the price for an AIDS treatment by 5,000 percent. Then, Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, who oversaw the price hike for its signature Epi-Pen to more than $600 for a twin-pack, though its active ingredient costs pennies by comparison. Now a small Virginia company called Kaleo is joining their ranks. It makes an injector device that is suddenly in demand because of the nation’s epidemic use of opioids, a class of drugs that includes heavy painkillers and heroin....

Mole rats—known for their small eyes, grublike bodies and sometimes naked skin—mostly live underground. Yet they seem to dramatically affect aboveground ecological processes. A recent report in the Journal of Zoology showed that the burrowing activity of mole rats strongly influences the composition of plant communities in one of Africa’s biodiversity hotspots, the Cape fynbos region in South Africa. In the process of excavating their burrows, mole rats churn soil together with vegetation, uneaten food, and their own urine and feces....