Science

Cranes are elegant and endangered. For four decades, the International Crane Foundation has focused on their conservation. NPR's Jacki Lyden talks to one of the organization's co-founders, George Archibald, about a life spent researching his feathered friends all around the world.

Even infants too young to discern the meaning of words seem better able to learn while listening to the sound of human speech than while listening to nonsense — speech run backward. Little surprise there, perhaps, but a study shows that recordings of lemur calls spark learning, too.

About 160 years ago, before Europe began warming up, glaciers in the Alps started rapidly retreating. Now NASA scientists offer a possible explanation for this apparent paradox: Soot from the Industrial Revolution could have heated up the ice.

Many obstetricians make more money for C-sections than for vaginal deliveries. In a recent study, these doctors were more likely to perform the costly procedure than doctors paid a flat salary. But when the pregnant women were also physicians, doctors seemed less swayed by financial incentives.

Age-related fumbles of memory are often feared as early signs of Alzheimer's dementia, but recent research confirms an important difference. The underlying biology of the two sorts of memory loss aren't the same. And the age-related form may be reversible someday.

A decade ago, cranes that had never before migrated followed the lead of an ultralight plane to learn the route south. Several generations later, old cranes are teaching young birds to navigate that same route. It's a clue that migration is a combination of nature and nurture, researchers say.

The Earth's average annual temperature has been rising for decades, but not in the last 15 years — colder winters and hotter summers notwithstanding. Now scientists offer evidence that this "pause" in average warming is because a cooler Pacific is temporarily taking up more heat than usual.

The doyenne of TV chefs imparted much wisdom to American cooks, but one piece of Child's advice you should ignore is to wash your raw poultry before cooking. It spreads germs. Everywhere. Yet studies suggest 90 percent of Americans do it, so food safety researchers are launching a campaign to squash the habit.

New technology is revolutionizing disabled peoples' ability to have the kind of outdoor adventures many had before losing functionality in their limbs. Amputees and people with spinal cord injuries are now off-road hand cycling, rock climbing and whitewater kayaking. Companies making innovative new gear describe cool recent innovations and challenges they're still working on. Disabled adventurers experienced and new to the scene talk about liberation through technology.

If Kansas farmers keep pumping water out of the High Plains aquifer as they have in the past, the amount of water they can extract will start to fall in just 10 years or so, scientists predict. That will cause big changes in the agricultural economy. But reducing water use now could help delay and ease that disruption.