Songbirds are mysteriously dying across the eastern U.S. Scientists are scrambling to find out why
Jul. 6, 2021 , 5:00 PM
Jennifer Toussaint, chief of animal control in Arlington, Virginia, can’t forget the four baby blue jays. In late May, worried residents had delivered the fledglings to her clinic just outside of Washington, D.C., within just a few hours. Each was plump, indicating “their parents had done a great job caring for them,” Toussaint says. But the birds were lethargic, unable to keep their balance, and blinded by crusty, oozing patches that had grown over their eyes.
Toussaint and her staff soon reached a gloomy diagnosis: the jays were the latest victims of a mysterious deadly disease that had emerged in their area just a few weeks earlier and had already killed countless wild birds. There was no known treatment, so they euthanized the jays. “It was difficult to feel so helpless,” Toussaint recalls.
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Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is just one example of a prominent landmark that the earliest people in Australia could have used as a navigational aid. Simon Bradfield/iStock
Ancient Australian ‘superhighways’ suggested by massive supercomputing study
May. 4, 2021 , 3:05 PM
When humans first set foot in Australia more than 65,000 years ago, they faced the perilous task of navigating a landscape they’d never seen. Now, researchers have used supercomputers to simulate 125 billion possible travel routes and reconstruct the most likely “superhighways” these ancient immigrants used as they spread across the continent. The project offers new insight into how landmarks and water supplies shape human migrations, and provides archaeologists with clues for where to look for undiscovered ancient settlements.
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The bill is designed primarily to address the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerate the distribution of vaccines and treatments that have proved effective against the pandemic coronavirus. In addition to direct cash payments to millions of U.S. residents, the bill includes nearly $60 billion for vaccine and treatment development, manufacturing, distribution, and tracking, as well as COVID-19 testing and contact tracing. It also includes $11 billion that will go to international groups and foreign governments addressing the pandemic and other public health threats, including $3.5 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and $250 million to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the primary U.S. aid program to address HIV/AIDS.