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  1. Hummingbirds occupy a unique place in nature: They fly like insects but have the musculoskeletal system of birds. According to Bo Cheng, the Kenneth K. and Olivia J. Kuo Early Career Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Penn State, hummingbirds have extreme aerial agility and flight forms, which is why many drones and other aerial vehicles are designed to mimic hummingbird movement.

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  2. A new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters used satellite mapping data to analyze how changes in human footprint on the landscape between 1970 and 2018 overlapped with distributions of 1,469 Colombian bird species. The study is the first of its kind to expand focus from forested regions, like the Amazon and Chocó, to all of Colombia's terrestrial habitats. Researchers also projected future trends in human impact on bird habitats through 2030.

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  3. According to a new NASA-led study, the world has lost 561 square miles (1,453 square kilometers) of salt marshes over the past 20 years. In a recent research paper published in the journal Nature, scientists described the first consistent global accounting of salt marsh locations and changes. The work also allowed them to start estimating the amount of carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas—emitted into the atmosphere as marshland is degraded or lost.

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  4. Restoring and rewilding islands that have been decimated by damaging invasive species provides benefits to not only the terrestrial ecosystem but to coastal and marine environments as well. Linking land and sea through coordinated conservation efforts may offer unrealized and amplified benefits for biodiversity, human well-being, climate resilience and ocean health, and provides a microcosm for the untapped potential of ecosystem restoration on a larger scale. This new era of conservation focuses on the interconnectedness of all ecosystems, rather than pursuing individual pieces through siloed efforts.

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  5. It was once regarded as a miracle chemical to protect against disease and improve global food production. The man who discovered its properties even won a Nobel Prize for medicine. But today, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) is best known for its devastating effects on the environment, as well as on animal and human health.

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  6. While most animals don't learn their vocalizations, everyone knows that parrots do—they are excellent mimics of human speech. But how large is the vocabulary of different parrot species? Do males "talk" more than females? Does a parrot's vocabulary expand with age? A new study publishing Dec. 5 in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, titled "A survey of vocal mimicry in companion parrots," adds to what we know about animal vocal learning by providing the largestcomparative analysis to date of parrot vocal repertoires.

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  7. A team of researchers from Seoul National University, the University of Alberta and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences has identified the first known example of a streamlined, non-avian theropod dinosaur to walk on two legs. In their paper published in Communications Biology, the group describes where the fossil was found, its condition, and its features that were used to help identify it as a new dinosaur species.

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