October is officially Bat Appreciation Month. In the spirit of the season and conservation, a team of biologists in California recently spent time finding bats at Muir Woods National Monument and Samuel P. Taylor State Park. And while Halloween is fast approaching, the activity had nothing to do with spooky festivities and everything to do with tracking hoary (Lasiurus cinereus) and western red bats (Lasiurus blossevillii).
The goal of their survey was to put GPS trackers on bats from the two migratory species. Hoary bats have grey-white fur and are the most widespread bat species in North, Central, and South America. Western red bats, also known as southern red bats, sport a reddish fur and are found in parts of South America. In redwood forests, bats like nesting within holes inside large trees.
“When they migrate, those little guys can cover a LOT of ground!” the Golden Gate National Recreation Area writes, referencing both species. “By learning about these migratory patterns, we can better understand entire ecosystems like Muir Woods.”
The bats were released back into the wild after getting their trackers. Image: NPS / Emily Pellegrini.
Bats are important members of such ecosystems. They are pollinators, they spread seeds, and they help manage insect populations. To catch these helpful agents, scientists set up a sheer, delicate net called a “mist net” over a creek at dusk. All bats are nocturnal, and when they went searching for their next meal—bugs—they flew into the net.
It was a bit of a trick for the winged mammals, but a treat for the human team. “Expert bat wranglers” carefully took them out of the nets, noted their weight and size, presumably attached the GPS tracker, and then returned them to the wild.
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s shared pictures of tiny, disgruntled looking bats carefully pinched between gloved fingers. In one image, an expert holds a bat wing up to the light of a colleague’s headlamp. In fact, illuminated wing membrane patterns literally shed light on the bat’s age and developmental stage.
A bat’s membrane can tell biologists how old the animal is and what developmental stage it is in. Image: NPS / Emily Pellegrini.
While this survey focused on two bat species, researchers at the Muir Woods National Monument have previously spotted 10 different species.
On the evening of March 18, as it was growing dark, I went to the window, not knowing what was drawing me. Next to the house stood a shadow, ghost-like, shrunken, at one with the dusk, almost translucent, and I recognized The Girl with the Broken Foot.
I walked out into the falling wet snow, slowly approaching her, and she allowed me to come close. Nine months old, she was the size of a fawn half that age. Starkly emaciated, her body seemed to be collapsing inward, her head held low. Literal hunger and a deeper starvation were palpable. She bore the haunted look of terminal solitude seen in souls driven to the margins of society, among the liv-ing, yet apart. She seemed so frail that I couldn’t imagine she would live more than another day or two.
Going inside and returning with a bowl of apples, I cut them into pieces and placed a few on the ground between us. She was raven-ously hungry and I gave her a few more apples, and still more, until she had eaten a total of eight. After she had finished eating, she stayed with me. We stood about a foot apart. She showed no fear of me, a fact which I would later come to recognize as meaningful. The moment had the compelling quality which has been present at the onset of many enduring connections in my life, of being un-bound by linear time.
“I am watching over you,” I said softly. “If you come here, I will take care of you. You are not alone.”
It was fully dark when we parted, having been together for an hour. I expected that she would recede into the woods, yet the next morning she was sleeping against the house, directly beneath the window closest to where I sit all day to work. Save for the wall separating us, she could not have gotten any closer to me.
Paul feeding Penelope. Image: Paul Bochner.
When I went around to the front of the house, she struggled to her feet and approached. In the morning light, I was better able to assess the state of her health. Months of solitary survival had taken a severe toll. Her body seemed hollowed, her ribs and pelvis sharply visible beneath her skin, and it felt a miracle that she was alive. On her right flank was a hemispherical mass the size of a cantaloupe, which I took to be a tumor, yet it had an open, running wound at its center, which she periodically craned her neck to lick. Her eyes were running and had congealed masses at their inner corners.
I bent to get a look at her injured foot. From not being walked on, the backward-facing cloven hoof had grown to an abnormal length and was curling upward. The wrist, which unnaturally bore her weight, had a flattened forward surface, an oval about two inches across, worn raw, without hair or skin, only pale pink–grey flesh, which, at its center, appeared to have been further abraded to the bone. Her right front foot, forced to compensate, was splayed and rockered, her right scapula protruded, and her front quarters were substantially lower than her hips.
I again placed apple pieces on the ground between us. I spoke very gently to her, saying, “You are the best one of all the deer. You are the most beautiful. You are good.” I continued to talk to her while she ate her apples, and when she had taken all she could, she returned to her resting spot under the window. I went inside to work, keeping periodic watch, pleased that she seemed to have claimed a place. But in a few minutes, from around the corner of the house came the twins, followed by their mother who immediately and ag-gressively charged at her. The Girl with the Broken Foot lurched upright and hobbled down the embankment, across the road and into the woods.
She was once again alone, but a step had been taken. Since the previous evening, things had changed. Even before her second feed-ing she had recognized me on sight. She had approached and had again allowed me near.
Although I had seen her fewer than half a dozen times in the preceding months, from the night of our first connection, she began to come to the house every day. She slowly gained strength and I would watch for her and thrill to the sight of her slow approach. It was our private time. We stood together, and I placed her food on the ground between us. After she ate, she would stare into my eyes for long periods, seemingly entranced. I told her stories. I sang softly to her. I told her she was my beauty.
So began our journey, and one of the greatest loves I have ever known.
Penelope walking into the house. Image: Paul Bochner.
About the Author
Paul Bochner began his professional life early, as a working musician through his mid-teens in Los Angeles, then moving to Montreal at the invitation of the National Film Board of Canada. He has won several international awards for his films and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting. He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
How many young AI cloud providers can the market, and Nvidia, support?
That’s one of the big questions after a week in which investors worried about the data center buildout and the risks that its unproven participants, known as neoclouds, are taking. Those risks include loading up on debt (CoreWeave) or trying to go public without much of a track record (Firmus and Nscale). Firmus abruptly pulled its public offering last week while shares of CoreWeave and its smaller rivals fell around 20%. The concerns even hit bigger AI cloud providers like Oracle.
Data center and neocloud executives told me there’s a limit to the number of AI cloud providers that can exist, even if Nvidia provides many of them with investment or backstops.
One cold December day in 2021, Colorado carnivorous plant grower Jeremiah Harris shared some pictures of wild Amazonian giant water lilies (Victoria amazonica) plants in the Inírida River in Guainía, Colombia to Instagram. There’s just one problem. No known Victoria water lily species grow there.
When water lily expert Carlos Magdalena saw the post on Instagram, he suspected a new plant species could be involved. To investigate the matter, he used satellite imagery to remotely search the Inírida River and its surrounding lakes and confirmed the presence of Victorias.
And yes, you can see these enormous plants from space. Victorias grow the world’s second largest single plant leaf.
Victoria colombiana is the fourth Victoria water lily to be described. Image: Carlos Magdalena.
Magdalena is a botanical and scientific research horticulturist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the U.K. Along with his colleagues, the team went on a five-day expedition to Inírida. The team included members of the Indigenous reserves del río Atabapo, one of whom had seen the lilies during his childhood.
However, the trip didn’t exactly go according to plan. By their last night, they had found only two water lily plants, neither of which had flowers. This was a problem, because botanists need a flower to differentiate species. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the water lilies they found seemed to be struggling with a late rainy season.
But when Magdalena described their situation to the expedition’s boat captain, Gustavo Melo, he said he knew where they could find more of this water lily. They didn’t have much time to do so, with the team’s flight back to Bogotá was at 9:00 a.m. the next morning. Thus at 1:00 a.m., Melo, a member of the Indigenous Tucano community, led them to a small lake. There, they found five more Victorias, one of which was blooming.
Horiculturalist Carlos Magdalena holds up a giant lilypad. Image: Mauricio Bernal.
“This is one of those extraordinary stories where indigenous and horticultural knowledge with the help of social media and technology came together to uncover a truly extraordinary botanical achievement,” Magdalena said in a statement.
The researchers were able to collect what they needed to start the official scientific description of the new species: Victoria colombiana. They even managed to make that early flight. In their recent study published in the journal Phytotaxa, he and his colleagues also announced the discovery of another new Victoria species, Victoria mattogrossensis.
A Victoria colombiana bud. Image: Nilo Rodriguez.
The team estimates that there are only between 30 and 50 wild V. colombiana plants, and is extremely vulnerable to extinction. They are currently working to get the plant officially categorized as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List.
“Now that we know this water lily exists, our responsibility is to understand it better and protect it. With so many plants in the wild threatened with extinction, we simply cannot wait any longer to take action,” Magdalena added. Experts are considering starting a naturalized population in a more accessible lake in Indigenous territory and researchers also are hoping to cultivate the species in Bogotà.
A song has been stuck on loop in my mind for days now. Yeah, this one.
C’mon, haven’t you heard the big, brassy James Bond theme playing too? We have an honest-to-goodness spy scandal on our hands! That would be the affair over at OpenAI, where the FBI has arrested a former engineer, Abdulrahman Alfozan, for allegedly placing a toilet paper–wrapped recording device in a conference room. Why’d he do it? The Justice Department wasn’t explicit in its press release announcing Alfozan’s arrest, though the statement does make sure to prominently describe him as a “national of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” implying, obviously, that he was hoping to spy on OpenAI for the Saudis.
I expect a not unsizable part of Silicon Valley experienced some schadenfreude when reading about the turn of events at OpenAI. I’d advise against indulging in that feeling, because when I struck up conversations with a few corporate security consultants and surveillance experts over the last few days, they all echoed the same sentiment: Plenty of companies risk ending up in the same situation—especially as they move quickly in today’s era of frenzied, heightened competition. A discomforting thought, eh?
“Organizations can sometimes be moving so fast that they often don’t understand that there’s an issue associated with somebody until that person’s on board and up to no good,” said Bill Priestap, a former head of FBI counterintelligence who now runs his own security consultancy, Trenchcoat Advisors. “Meaning they’re recruiting, and they’re under such pressure to get the right people and get them on board that in many regards, they end up with a minimal understanding of the people they’re bringing on board.” Well, good thing there hasn’t been an enormous, frantic hiring binge lately. Ha ha ha.
If you’re starting to feel a little paranoid, I strongly, strongly advise against talking to someone like David Abbott, a San Francisco private detective, to find out how easy it is to bug an office. Such conversations will only further unnerve you—you might end up holding your next board meeting in your home basement, Tony Soprano style—because according to Abbott, it’s pretty darn easy to install a recording device.
A suitable one can be bought for less than $100. Some of the popular ones resemble phone chargers, which get tucked into a power socket, hidden in plain sight. He’s also seen surveillance devices in fake coffee cups—you know, like the ones that might lie casually around an office—and quite a few in fake smoke alarms.
More bad news: Should you find such a device, it’s like spotting an ant in your kitchen. One ant suggests the presence of more ants. “If I’m doing a bug sweep, just because I find one does not mean there isn’t a second,” said Abbott. “If you find one, there’s going to be two. If you find two, there’s going to be three. You just keep looking.”
What happened at OpenAI underscores Abbott’s warning. There, Alfozan, the alleged spy, did plant two bugs. Well, he tried to do so. Alfozan, not the sort who seems like he would’ve ever earned double 0 status, had placed another bug in a bag that he then mislaid: He reported it missing and had to go pick it up from the company’s lost and found.
OK, if I’ve spooked the heck out of you, I guess I can offer some solace by pointing you in the direction of Eric and Greg Levesque, whose Salt Lake City–based startup, Strider Technologies, has raised $110 million in the last few years to sell AI-powered software to businesses that monitors email and other internal communications, flagging suspicious behavior and possible espionage attempts. (Yes, the company’s name is a reference to Strider from “The Lord of the Rings,” the nom de cloak of Aragorn, the character Viggo Mortensen plays.)
“What we’ve found is that companies are not always dealing with trained intelligence operatives. Like, they’re dealing with scientists or legitimate engineers who have been approached or coerced in some form or fashion and are now working on behalf of someone else,” said Greg Levesque. “They can leave a lot of digital exhaust.”—Abram Brown(abe@theinformation.com)
As the pandemic shut down the world in 2020, Sayre Quevedo, then a producer for The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast, quit his job and headed out to Los Angeles, hoping for a chance at self-reinvention. To cope with those tumultuous times, he decided to pursue a documentary project, recording every phone call. Had nothing else of import happened in his life, Quevedo might’ve wound up with an intriguing time capsule. But something quite unusual did occur: Just months after moving to LA, he and his twin brother, Connor, happened to finally locate their biological father, whom they’d never before met. He worked as a barber—blocks from where Sayre lived. “Reaching Out,” a new podcast co-produced by NPR station KCRW that won a top prize in the Tribeca Festival’s expanded podcast categories, is a starkly intimate account of their journey to meet him and their reconciliation with each other, their lives and what life might’ve been like if their father hadn’t been a total stranger who happened to be just down the street.—Abram Brown
Chuck Lorre, the indefatigable TV showrunner, writer and producer, has kept the masses laughing for years—and years—and years, with a list of hits that includes “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Dharma and Greg.” Those are sitcoms, a term Lorre acknowledges once made him practically break out in hives, since it was often used to cheapen what he sees as grueling, high-touch art. With spicy good humor, he reclaims the word in his new memoir about his time in Hollywood, “Sitcom.”
“The truth is, making a live studio audience laugh for twenty-odd minutes every week, for twenty-two weeks, is incredibly hard and unbelievably stressful,” Lorre writes. “If you’re one of those people who insist on labeling all sitcoms as being cheap, juvenile and unsophisticated, well…all I can say is, blow me.”
I’d say “Sitcom” functions as a good primer on managing talent, too, and Lorre attests to having learned the importance of keeping out of the way. “Creativity needs air to breathe,” he writes. To do the opposite risks turning a leader into “one of those plastic bags you get at the dry cleaners that can kill small children.” Lorre also takes the opportunity to set down what he sees as good comedy’s basic tenets and decry the medium’s basest impulse: to write only about stupid people doing stupid things: “A better, perhaps deeper means to achieving laughter involves pain and suffering.”
Such a sentiment is most certainly shared by Larry David of “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the subject of “Emperor of Nothing,” a biography that won his reluctant cooperation. (When author Blake J. Harris finally wore David down, Harris received a two-line email from him: “Oh Jesus. If we must.”) As with “Sitcom,” “Emperor of Nothing” charts a remarkable rise across Hollywood from an inauspicious start: Lorre was a wannabe musician before his TV run, while David was a little-known stand-up comic with an unremarkable series of TV writing jobs before co-creating “Seinfeld.”
Like Lorre, David describes the process of penning comedy as an arduous affair. And by David’s own telling, the process of sitting down to write a new “Seinfeld” season would bring on full panic. “That always seemed like a daunting prospect,” he recalled. “Especially because all the good ideas were used up the year before.” Fortunately, David had his friendship with the show’s eponymous star, Jerry Seinfeld, one of many people within David’s orbit who gave interviews for “Emperor of Nothing.” “I would always say, ‘All we have to do is write today,’” Seinfeld said. Or as David recalled: “Jerry always talked me off the ledge.”—A.B.
No one does a charming, self-involved cad better than Dominic West, the British character actor who first washed ashore in America as “The Wire”’s Detective McNulty and then again in Showtime’s “The Affair” and in the final two seasons of “The Crown” as Prince Charles. In “War,” HBO’s new high-tension legal drama, he’s tech billionaire Morgan Henderson, a fellow championing a safer, more responsible social media—while embroiled in an increasingly messy divorce from his Hollywood star wife, Carla (Sienna Miller). Much of that mess is Morgan’s own doing: He looks wonderful in his Savile Row trousers—he just has trouble keeping them on. As Morgan and Carla gird for an extended battle, they assemble a posse of cutthroat attorneys, who find their impulsive clients constantly upending their carefully laid strategies. That flock of legal eagles includes a handsome rogue, Johnny (Archie Renaux), a lad from working-class south London who sees a chance to ascend by, uh, redefining zealous representation. Backstabbing and double crosses abound.—A.B.
When zoology professor Daniel Baldassarre traveled to the remote Galápagos Islands of Wolf and Darwin with two other researchers, getting there proved quite a challenge. With no beaches to land a boat on, they had to approach the islands’ cliffs in a small dinghy and wait for a lull in the waves before jumping onto sharp, black lava rocks.
But their efforts paid off. On that trip, they saw a bird that very few people have ever set eyes on in the wild: the vampire ground finch. These finches are only found on Wolf and Darwin, and feed on the blood of much larger birds called Nazca boobies that also live on the islands.
Up close, Baldassarre and his colleagues noted the vampire finches’ blood-stained bills and their throats visibly engorged with blood. They also saw them in action.
“We observed scores of vampire finches clamouring all over the backs, tails, and wings of boobies, opening up substantial wounds with their sharp beaks, and drinking their fill of blood,” they wrote in an article for The Conversation.
Why only some birds drink blood
“Blood is a notoriously difficult food source to process and extract nutrients from, which probably partly explains why so few animals have evolved to feed on it,” Baldassarre tells Popular Science. He suspects that on these islands where freshwater is extremely rare, blood might serve as a water source for the finches.
Two Nazca boobies perform their species’ mating call. Vampire ground finches feed on Nazca boobies on the remote Galápagos Islands of Wolf and Darwin. Image: Getty Images / inthedark72
It’s not the only component of the vampire finches’ diet, however. Based on unpublished data collected by Baldassarre and his colleagues, blood makes up about one-tenth of the vampire finches’ diet.
“These finches are quite opportunistic, so they will eat just about anything they can find,” Baldassarre says. “We observed them feeding on everything from seeds to insects to broken seabird eggs.”
One theory is that vampire finches rely more on blood feeding in periods of extreme drought, when other resources are scarce. But more research is needed to see if this idea holds up in practice.
How this strange behavior evolved
Vampire finches weren’t always vampires, scientists think. The relationship between vampire finches and boobies probably started off with the finches eating parasites found on the skin and feathers of the boobies. This would have been mutually beneficial because it provided a cleaning service for the boobies and food for the finches.
But at some point in evolutionary history, in the process of picking off parasites, the finches started to create lesions on the boobies’ skin, and eventually began feeding on their blood.
Over time, their bills became more scalpel-like, perfect for making skin incisions. Their digestive system also changed. When Baldassarre and his colleagues studied the microbes found in vampire finches’ guts, they found that their gut microbiome was very different from that of other, non-blood-consuming finches on the Galápagos Islands, something they attribute to their unique diet.
Until recently, vampire finches were considered a subspecies of the sharp-beaked ground finch (Geospiza difficilis).
“But they have now been designated as their own species [Geospiza septentrionalis] because of the differences they have evolved because of blood feeding,” Baldassarre notes.
Vampire ground finches on Wolf island have been seen drinking nectar from Galápagos prickly pear flowers and other flowers. Image: Peter Wilton / CC BY 2.0
How the boobies cope
Baldassarre and his colleagues have seen vampire finches gang up on and kill nestling boobies,“but that was quite rare,” he points out.
“In most cases, the finches seem to inflict just enough damage to break the skin and extract some blood, but not too much to harm the boobies significantly.” This is similar to many parasite-host relationships, such as fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes on mammals. “You can kind of think of the vampire finches as giant mosquitoes,” Baldassarre says.
“For one, as in large animals being bitten by mosquitoes, often the damage is minimal and not noticeable, so it doesn’t elicit a strong reaction. Also, the boobies sometimes have a vested interest in staying put and guarding their spot in the colony, or perhaps nest or nestlings, so may not want to fly away. Finally, the finches seem to target hard-to-reach areas on the boobies like the base of tail feathers, so it’s likely difficult for the boobies to deter them.”
I, for one, was feeling very sorry for the boobies being constantly hounded by these small vampire birds. Until I learnt that Nazca boobies practice something called “obligate siblicide,” which essentially means that the first-hatched chick routinely attacks and kills its younger sibling. It’s a harsh, bird-eat-bird world in the Galápagos Islands.
In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
Some animal rescues are more complicated than others—especially when the creature in peril is about to become a snack for a seagull on a remote Alaskan beach with polar bears lurking nearby.
That was the sticky situation an orphaned Pacific walrus (a subspecies of Odobenus rosmarus) calf was in when two researchers found it on an island in the region of Point Lay, Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research walrus biologist Tony Fischbach and Ilisaġvik College student and Point Lay local Violet Anniskett stumbled upon the young male while investigating walrus carcasses on a remote beach. They found the orphan between the remains of two adult walruses, which was a first in Fischbach’s long experience working with walrus herds there.
The researchers requested permission to rehabilitate the walrus from the local Inupiaq community and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Once the approval arrived, the next hurdle was getting the mammal to the Alaska SeaLife Center. The center is the only marine mammal rehabilitation facility in Alaska, and was over 800 miles away. As if things could get any more difficult, stormy weather left Anniskett, Fischbach, and the walrus stuck on the island for days. In the meantime, the researchers guided the calf to an abandoned building to shelter from predators.
“When we found him, a determined flock of gulls was intent on scavenging him. He was in immediate peril of suffering this fate had we not gotten approval to intervene. Two polar bears were also active on the island,” Fischbach said in a statement.
“He bonded with us fast and wouldn’t sleep unless one of us were in the room. It was just us two for three days, stuck in a storm with the young walrus,” Anniskett added.
The calf was finally transported to the local airport, and made it to Alaska SeaLife Center on September 14 after a flight and van ride. The 200 pound baby arrived dehydrated, but in good physical condition. They treated some superficial wounds, gave him fluids, and applied other stabilizing treatments.
But the calf’s journey wasn’t over. In fact, orphaned Pacific walrus calves are one of the most specialized patients in marine mammal rehabilitation.That’s because in the wild, calves are very attached to their mothers, with whom they usually stay for one to two years. Close physical contact both with their mothers and others of their king is a crucial element in a calf’s early life. In the case of an orphaned calf, humans (who are authorized specialists) can act as surrogates, but it’s a tough babysitting job. Someone has to be around all the time to provide physical contact, social interaction, feeding support, and any veterinary care.
Caring for a Pacific walrus calf is not for the faint of heart, but can be pretty cute. Image: Kaiti Grant/Alaska SeaLife Center.
“Caring for an orphaned walrus calf is truly a team effort and requires around the clock commitment,” said Jane Belovarac, an Alaska SeaLife Center wildlife response curator. “At least two staff members have been working shifts around the clock to stay with him and provide the care he needs. This means long days and some unusual sleeping schedules for our team.”
It also means that the calf becomes comfortable with humans and thus cannot return to the wild. Now in a new long term home (whose location hasn’t been announced yet), he will be an ambassador for his species by teaching people about Pacific walruses.
In a follow-up on the measles outbreak in Sweden, no new cases of measles linked to the Urkult festival in Västernorrland have been reported in Sweden since the last update on September 9.
The outbreak has been declared over as of October 14. A total of 40 cases were reported in the outbreak.
In 28 cases, the spread of infection occurred during the Urkult festival. 12 people are considered to have been infected after contact with a person who was infected at the festival.
The majority of the cases are school-age children and young adults. Most of the cases have been unvaccinated against measles.
The cases have been reported from ten regions: Gotland (4 cases), Jämtland Härjedalen (6 cases), Skåne (2 cases), Stockholm (12 cases), Sörmland (3 cases), Uppsala (1 case), Värmland (2 cases), Västerbotten (7 cases), Västernorrland (2 cases) and Västra Götaland (1 case). One case has been reported from Finland.
The regions’ infection tracing of the outbreak cases showed that the source of the outbreak was infected abroad.
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The Madagascar Ministry of Health recently reported plague cases in South Midongy state.
Health officials report three cases of pneumonic plague, Test results are still pending on other suspected cases, which are suspected as being bubonic plague.
Officials report the health of all patients are improving with treatment.
Image/CDC
No new cases have been reported since October 12 in Midongy state.
Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis. It is found in animals throughout the world, most commonly rats but other rodents like ground squirrels, prairie dogs, chipmunks, rabbits and marmots. Fleas typically serve as the vector for plague.
People can also get infected through direct contact with an infected animal, through inhalation and in the case of pneumonic plague, person to person.
Yersinia pestis is treatable with antibiotics if started early enough.
There are three forms of human plague; bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic.
Plague is endemic on the Plateaux of Madagascar. A seasonal upsurge, predominantly of the bubonic form, usually occurs yearly between September and April.
According to the general secretary of the Madagascar Ministry of Health, between 300 and 600 suspected cases are reported each year, with about 30 cases of pulmonary plague and 10 to 70 deaths.
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As of October 14, 2026, the Democratic Republic of the Congo Ministry of Health reports 65 new confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) have been reported across four provinces: Ituri (31 cases), North Kivu (28 cases), Haut-Uélé (5 cases), and Tshopo (1 case).
Additionally, 15 deaths were recorded in Ebola Treatment Centers (ETCs)—6 in Ituri, 6 in North Kivu, 2 in Tshopo, and 1 in Haut-Uélé—bringing the total number of confirmed deaths for the period in question to 37.
Furthermore, 38 patients (18 in Ituri, 15 in North Kivu, and 5 in Haut-Uélé) have been declared recovered after testing negative twice for EVD.
Since the beginning of the outbreak, the DRC has recorded a cumulative total of 9,277 confirmed cases and 4,478 deaths, representing a case fatality rate of 48.3%. Ituri remains the epicenter of the outbreak, accounting for 73.4% of all cumulative confirmed cases and 47.7% of the new confirmed cases reported over the last 24 hours.
To date, 65 out of 167 health zones (38.9%), spread across seven provinces, have been affected since the start of the outbreak.
The 2026 Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the country’s 17th recorded Ebola outbreak and its largest and deadliest to date. It is also the second-largest Ebola outbreak in global history (after the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic). Caused by Bundibugyo virus (BDBV), for which there is no licensed vaccine or specific treatment, it has expanded rapidly amid insecurity, high population mobility, and challenges with surveillance and community engagement.
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YouTube is reportedly planning to launch audiobooks for its Premium subscribers.
Audiobooks could arrive for the platform's ad-free $16 subscription plan in 2027 if this goes without a hitch for Google/YouTube.
YouTube would run into competition with the likes of Spotify (audiobooks arrived in 2023) and Audible.
Audiobook-enjoyers might have something to celebrate on YouTube. There are rumors that the platform is looking to enter a new market for its Premium subscribers.
A post by the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) highlighted rumors that YouTube Premium could soon offer audiobooks in one of its subscription plans (via GSMArena). Supposedly, Google has been "talking with publishers" about bringing audiobooks onto the platform in 2027.
Early reports allege YouTube Premium would offer audiobooks in its ad-free plan, which currently runs consumers $16 a month. What's interesting is that this could solve an issue: piracy. GoodEReader brought this up in its coverage, highlighting data that shows "45% of listeners" consume "audiobooks" on YouTube. The air quotes (and literal quotes) are warranted here, as the publication states these are AI-narrated, not authentic.
Audiobooks in YouTube Premium would give users the best experience possible, away from false creations. However, it's worth remembering that these are rumors, and nothing's been confirmed by YouTube yet.
YouTube's branching out
(Image credit: Chris Wedel/Android Central)
Android Central's Take
This is one of those things where you can associate a product or a feature or a form of entertainment with the name. If I think Spotify, I think music. If I think Audible, I think audiobooks. When I think of YouTube... I do not think about audiobooks (nevermind the fact that I prefer reading over an audiobook). I wonder how large of a market there is for YouTube. But I guess there must be if there's a piracy problem, and they're using AI voices. Crazy.
Many should be well-acquainted with Audible's audiobook offerings. In recent history, Spotify has joined that market, taking the fight directly to Audible with over 200,000 "free" titles. That was how it all started, anyway. When audiobooks launched for Spotify Premium in 2023, the platform gave its subscribers in the U.S. and the U.K. 15 hours of listening per month.
After you exceeded your limit, you could pay an additional $12.99 to get 10 more hours "or buy them a la carte." Spotify's library exceeded that initial 200,000 for Premium subscribers. But if you wanted more, you'd have to buy them individually. Spotify then launched its "Audiobook Access" tier for $9.99, giving users the same 15 hours of listening per month deal.
It goes without saying that YouTube will have its work cut out for it by stepping into this new world.
In a follow-up on the Ebola situation in Kenya, the Ministry of Health has confirmed a third case of Ebola (Bundibugyo virus disease) in Kenya. The patient was already in quarantine, and there is no evidence of community transmission.
See press release signed by Dr. Patrick Amoth:
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A report claims that Samsung's Galaxy S27 Ultra has run into extreme overheating issues with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6.
These issues have reportedly caused "throttling" in the device, lowering its performance significant; a problem Samsung has reached out to Qualcomm to solve.
Reports say time is ticking, and if these issues aren't solved, Samsung might have to go with the Exynos 2700.
These issues are familiar, considering Samsung's own chips have struggled in the past with overheating problems, but the Exynos 2600 tried to solve that.
While we're eagerly awaiting the next Ultra flagship from Samsung, a report states the company's run into a problem. The issue lies with its chip and its supposed performance hiccups.
A report late this week by SEDaily (Korean) claims that Samsung's run into problems with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 on the Galaxy S27 Ultra (via SamMobile). Samsung reportedly observed that the chip pushed the phone's temperatures beyond acceptable thresholds. Much like a computer, if the device begins to overheat, performance issues will occur.
Samsung has reportedly experienced "throttling" with the Galaxy S27 Ultra. This hasn't sat well with the Korean OEM. The publication reports that Samsung holds the device to the highest standards and that it must "stably run high-performance cameras, graphics, and AI features" (machine-translated).
Presently, if the S27 Ultra continues to experience issues with the SD 8 EE Gen 6, then Samsung may switch to the Exynos 2700. This is a reality that has yet to happen.
The post states that Samsung has reached out to Qualcomm about these issues. Time is of the essence; however, the OEM has given the chipmaker until "mid-October" to rectify the problems. The problem Samsung experienced is interesting, considering it mirrors the gripes consumers have had with its Exynos series in the past.
Overheating chips
(Image credit: Samsung)
Qualcomm split its flagship chips going into 2027 with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. The latter is designed to push the boundaries of mobile phone technology and targets Ultra phones. Qualcomm built the chip on a 2nm process with its new Adreno Neural Fusion technology. This leans on AI to boost graphics performance for gamers during longer sessions.
As we alluded to before, Samsung's Exynos chips were infamous for overheating. We'd like to remind you of the Exynos 2600 from 2025. This chip was a significant step for Samsung in the right direction compared to previous generations. Not only was it the world's first 2nm chip, but its CPU and GPU upgrades were also important. What's more, the company introduced a new Heat Path Block (HPB) to fix overheating and performance issues.
While these overheating fixes did well, Samsung could do better. Rumors about the Exynos 2700 say the company wants to introduce a next-generation HPB, reducing heat generation further.
Android Central's Take
This is textbook tech. If it can output graphic or whatever at a higher strength, it will generate more heat. Look at gaming PCs. Why do you think they have so many fans? Why do you think the graphics card has its own fan—or maybe two or three! There's a chance that Samsung and Qualcomm will have to reconfigure some things in the Galaxy S27 Ultra and the chip. Beyond this, there's also public perception. Samsung hesitates to drop an Ultra with Exynos in the States because it could impact sales.
Then there's overall performance. Can the Exynos 2700 go blow for blow with the SD 8 EE Gen 6?
It takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes it takes more than one wildlife rehabilitation center to care for a bat. Even if the bat in question weighs only six grams (about two ounces).
The recent rescue of the juvenile bat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania involved teamwork from the beginning. The “sky puppy” had been hanging on a local porch for two days. While that might not sound off, the bat’s exposure to the elements in a single location for that period of time made the situation an emergency, according to Raven Ridge Wildlife Center in southern Pennsylvania.
The rescued bat perched on a local porch. Image: Raven Ridge Wildlife Center.
Pennsylvania Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation contacted Raven Ridge, who sent a team member to get the bat. The winged mammal was very dehydrated and underweight. It was also unlike the bats that typically arrive at Raven Ridge. The team stabilized her, recontacted PA Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation, and the two organizations realized that they had a northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) on their hands.
“Sadly, northern long-eared bats are now critically endangered in North America, with their population dropping by as much as 97% to 100% because of white-nose syndrome,” Tracie Young, Raven Ridge Wildlife Center director, tells Popular Science. White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that has killed millions of bats in the U.S. and Canada.
“They are now protected at both the state and federal levels,” Young adds.
A Raven Ridge volunteer ultimately drove the youngster to the PA Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation facility about an hour away, where the team is expert in critically endangered bats. The bat was eventually returned to the wild, with a video featuring the little bat launching from a woman’s gloved hand into the night.
“Even though this is just one bat, it was important to get this bat to the rehabber who specializes not only in bats but also in those in a critically endangered status,” Young adds. “The video shows her flying beautifully. This effort was a wonderful partnership between Raven Ridge Wildlife Center and PA Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation.”
Nathan Fielder's documentary about disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has created a constellation of colliding personas that interrogate the very nature of authenticity.
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