The Beatles, now and then.

The last Beatles, Out now, now and then. I'm Scientific American, Assistant News Editor Sarah

Out now. I'm Scientific American, assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frazier.

And here's a short piece from the January 2021 issue of the magazine in the section called

Advances, Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine.

The article is titled Quick Hits. in Tears, and it's a rundown of some non-Curonavirus stories from around the globe.

In Costa Rica, researchers embedded GPS devices in decoy sea turtle eggs to track poaching patterns.

In their first field test, five of the 101 decoys, which had similar size, weight, and texture to real eggs,

traveled significantly, potentially reaching consumers.

In Latvia, DNA harvested from a 700-year-old public toilet in Riga, as well as a 600-year-old

cespet in Jerusalem, will help researchers examine how human

microbiomes have evolved over time.

Microbial DNA from both sites matches some species common in modern hunter-gatherers and some in today's city dwellers.

In Antarctica, new analysis suggests a 50 million-year-old footbone found on Seymour Island

comes from a species of bird whose wingspan reaches 6.4 meters across.

The researchers also attributed part of a large jawbone with tooth-like structures to the species.

In a Madagascar garden, researchers found several Voltsko's chameleons, a rare species whose females can

change from green to a vivid black, white and blue, when excited.

The short-lived species had not been documented for more than 100 years, and no females were

previously recorded at all.

In Indonesia, new research shows that fluffy but venomous slow loruses frequently bite one another to settle territorial disputes, a rarity in venomous animals.

In Australia, an enormous new-found coral reef off the continent's northern coast is taller than the Empire State Building, rising more than 500 meters above the sea floor.

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