Science Quickly

Two monkey species who last shared a common ancestor 3 million years ago have "eerily similar" alarm calls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Millipedes, often blind, have come up with clever physical signals to ward off sexual advances from members of wrong species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People appear to consume between 74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles annually, and that's probably a gross underestimate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the third Scientific American “Science on the Hill” event, “Solving the Plastic Waste Problem”, one of the issues discussed by experts on Capitol Hill was biodegradability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers trained a neural network to scrutinize high school essays and sniff out ghostwritten papers. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthropologists found parasite eggs in ancient poop samples, providing a glimpse of human health as hunter-gatherers transitioned to settlements. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Murray Gell-Mann, 1969 Nobel Laureate in Physics who identified the quark, died May 24th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some wild female bonobos introduce their sons to desirable females—then make sure their relations won’t be interrupted by competing males. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Preterm babies who listened to music in the neonatal intensive care unit had brain activity that more closely resembled that of full-term babies. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study suggests women's performance on math and verbal tasks increases as room temperature rises, up to about the mid 70s F. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A study found that only a small percentage of bird beak shape variation is dependent on diet, with other factors like display and nest construction probably playing parts too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chewing gums discovered in western Sweden contain the oldest human DNA found in Scandinavia. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Frances Arnold, the Caltech scientist who shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, says evolution can show us how to solve problems of sustainability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing up in a home filled with books enhances enhances intellectual capacity in later life, even if you don't read them all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A study finds that kids, especially daughters, are effective at teaching their parents about climate issues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ammonia from penguin poop gets carried on Antarctic winds, fertilizing mosses and lichens as far as a mile away. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The residue of ancient urine can reveal the presence of early stationary herder-farmer communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By dampening the energy of waves, coral reefs protect coastal cities from flooding damage and other economic losses. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers want to outfit air conditioners with carbon-capture technology. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his memoirs, the womanizing writer Giacomo Casanova described suffering several bouts of gonorrhea—but researchers found no trace of the microbe on his handwritten journals. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Algorithms learned to sift ultrasonic rat squeaks from other noise, which could help researchers who study rodents’ emotional states. Lucy Huang reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists propose that the moon could have formed when a Mars-sized object slammed into an Earth covered in magma seas. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Felines move their ears, heads and tails more when they hear their names compared to when they hear similar words. Jim Daley reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few brief reports about international science and technology from Liberia to Hawaii, including one on the discovery in Northern Ireland of soil bacteria that stop the growth of MRSA and other superbugs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The likelihood of an event like Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and of its massive precipitation, is fivefold higher in the climate of today than it would have been some 60 years ago Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snake venom toxicity depends on snake size, energy requirements and environmental dimensionality more than on prey size. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Freshwater dolphins are evolutionary relics, and their calls give clues to the origins of cetacean communication in general. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The tiny brain of a honeybee is apparently able to calculate small numbers' addition and subtraction. Annie Sneed reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A deeper data dive calls into question a 2018 study that found a spike in fatal traffic accidents apparently related to marijuana consumption on this date. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Female hyenas keep their clans in line by virtue of their complex social networks. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One in three gluten-free dishes tested at restaurants contained gluten—especially GF pizzas and pastas. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At an April 9th event sponsored by the Kavli Foundation and produced by Scientific American that honored Nobel and Kavli Prize winners, neuroscientists James Hudspeth and Robert Fettiplace talked about the physiology of hearing and the possibility of restoring hearing loss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At an April 9th event sponsored by the Kavli Foundation and produced by Scientific American that honored Nobel and Kavli Prize winners, economist Paul Romer talked about how the social system of science offers hope for humanity and for how we can live with each other. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At extreme pressures, potassium atoms can be both liquid and solid at the same time, a phase of matter known as "chain melt." Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coyotes become fearless around people in just a few generations—which isn’t good for their longterm co-existence with humans in cities. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NYU’s “Sounds of New York City” project listens to the city—and then, with the help of citizen scientists, teaches machines to decode the soundscape. Jim Daley reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hydrogen peroxide in whitening treatments penetrates enamel and dentin, and alters tooth proteins. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Light tuned to a specific frequency warms ice more than water—which could come in handy for defrosting delicate biological samples. Adam Levy reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The monkeys lower the pitch of their "whinnies" when they're far from the rest of their group, which might help the calls travel further through jungle foliage. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Food chemists precisely measured how charcoal filtration contributes to Tennessee whiskey's smoother flavor. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

English lacks some words that other languages pack with meaning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists tracked bumblebee queens with radar when they emerged from hibernation and found the bees take only brief flights en route to a new nest. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tracking the location and mood of 15,000 people, researchers found that scenic beauty was linked to happiness—including near urban sights like bridges and buildings. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We don't yet know what the immersion in technology does to our brains, but one neuroscientist says the answer is likely to be that there's good, there's bad, and it's complex. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During daylight hours, hundreds of bombardier beetles of multiple species will congregate together to more effectively ward off any predators not afraid of a lone beetle's toxic spray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When jets of charged particles from the sun hit our magnetosphere, some of the ensuing ripples travel toward the northern and southern poles and get reflected back. The resulting interference allows standing waves to form, like on a drumhead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By tracking duetting choir singers, researchers found that when an individual singer's pitch drifts off tune their partner’s tend to too. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers aiming to lower the cost of mealworms were able to double the worms' size, but the larger larvae had fewer eggs and weaker offspring. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new model suggests smashing killer space rocks with insufficient force could let gravity pull the pieces back together. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Weekday sleep deprivation with weekend make-up sleeping seems to be worse for blood sugar control than even chronic sleep deprivation alone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices