In a warming world, migratory birds face many existential threats. Scientists use a combination of methods to track the timing and location of migration, each with drawbacks. And there’s another problem. Most birds migrate at night, when it is difficult to visually identify them, and most birders migrate while they are sleeping.
For more than a century, acoustic monitoring remained out of reach as a solution to ornithologists’ problems. Now, machine learning tools have finally unlocked a treasure trove of acoustic data for ecologists. Please read the full text.
—Christian Elliott
This article is from the upcoming MIT Technology Review magazine edition, which will be published on January 6th. This article is all about exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you haven’t already, subscribe to receive your copy.
American woman becomes third person to receive gene-edited pig kidney transplant
Twana Rooney, a 53-year-old woman from Alabama, became the third survivor to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig.
Rooney donated one of her kidneys to her mother in 1999, but developed kidney failure several years later due to pregnancy complications that caused high blood pressure. She started dialysis treatment in December 2016 and was placed on the waiting list for a kidney transplant soon after.
However, finding a match was difficult. Rooney’s doctors recommended laboratory pig organs as an alternative. After eight years on the waiting list, Rooney was given permission to receive a kidney. Please read the full text.