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PhysOrg

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  1. As climate change brings record droughts and floods, extended fire seasons continue to make headlines, and the role of humans in this terrible situation is now undisputed, institutional change has been slow and unsteady. In particular, conservationists have been wary of pointing to climate change as the biggest threat to biodiversity, given the many other threats that exist.

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  2. Humans can easily identify sweet-tasting foods—and with pleasure. However, many carnivorous animals lack this ability, and whether birds, descendants of meat-eating dinosaurs, can taste sweet was previously unclear. An international team of researchers led by Maude Baldwin of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology has now shown that songbirds, a group containing over 4.000 species, can sense sweetness regardless of their primary diets. The study highlights a specific event in the songbird ancestors that allowed their umami (savory) taste receptor to recognize sugar. This ability has been conserved in the songbird lineage, influencing the diet of nearly half of all birds living today.

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  3. The COVID-19 pandemic will change a lot about the way knowledge is produced, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and medicine. Social movements such as Black Lives Matter have also increased awareness of significant economic inequalities along racial and geopolitical lines. People have new tools and new ways of working, many of which have heightened awareness of systemic inequalities in everyday life, work and research.

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  4. Don't let the great snipe's pudginess fool you. A stocky marsh bird with a 20-inch wingspan, great snipes are also speedy marathoners that can migrate from Sweden to Central Africa in just three days, without even stopping to eat, drink, or sleep. Now, researchers find that the snipes also rise nearly 2,500 meters in elevation at dawn and descend again at dusk each day, perhaps to avoid overheating from daytime solar radiation by climbing to higher, cooler altitudes. The findings appear June 30 in the journal Current Biology.

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