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The world’s best athletes will gather in Paris, France, this year to compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics. Opening on July 26, the Olympics will include everything from gymnastics to basketball to breakdancing.

More than 10,000 athletes are scheduled to compete during the two-week event. We’re highlighting a few who experts say have a good chance at striking gold.

Humans call each other by name, but do other animals do this? A group of researchers say elephants seem to.

The researchers listened to recordings of a low, rumbling sound that elephants make as part of their communication with one another. The elephants in the recordings were living in Amboseli National Park and Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in Kenya. For each recording, the researchers knew which elephant was making the sound and which elephant it was addressed to. 

With the help of machine learning, the researchers worked out whether the rumbles contained distinctive sound information, the way humans often use people’s names when speaking to them. Not every recording did, but humans don’t always address one another by name either. Then scientists tried to determine how often each distinctive sound matched with the elephant that was being addressed. The machine learning showed that the sounds matched the elephants being addressed more than 27 percent of the time, much more often than when the scientists looked at random sounds. 

“There must be something in the calls that’s allowing the [technology] to figure out at least some of the time who that call was addressed to,” Mickey Pardo, a biologist at Cornell University and an author of the study, told National Public Radio (NPR). Researchers also noted that the “names” were often used by adult elephants to address young elephants.

The researchers then worked with some of the elephants they believed were being addressed in the recordings. They played some of the recordings for the elephants to see if they recognized their own “names.” The elephants didn’t seem all that enthusiastic when they heard sounds that weren’t addressed to them. Their reaction was stronger when they heard their own names.

“The elephants responded much more strongly on average to playbacks of calls that were originally addressed to them relative to playbacks of calls from the same caller that were originally addressed to someone else,” Pardo told NPR.

Are movies back? Experts believe the success of Inside Out 2 is a sign that audiences are returning to movie theaters after years of thin attendance.

Inside Out 2, the sequel to the 2015 Pixar movie about the emotions in an 11-year-old girl’s brain, opened on June 14. That weekend, the movie earned approximately $155 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada. It was the second-most successful opening weekend for a Pixar movie and the second-biggest opening for an animated movie in history, behind Incredibles 2 (2018). Based on ticket sales, Inside Out 2, which stars Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Tony Hale, Ayo Edebiri, and others, is doing well with audiences of all ages and backgrounds. 

“This performance came in well above our expectations,” Daniel Loria, editorial director at movie performance tracker Box Office Pro, told CNN. “We imagined it could…maybe match Toy Story 4’s $120 million opening weekend [in 2019], but this result is absolutely extraordinary.”

Experts say it’s great news for Pixar and its parent company, Disney. Of Pixar’s last couple of movies, Elemental had a slow start and Lightyear was not successful. The movie industry as a whole has struggled to recover since movie theaters closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Film studios hope that the success of Inside Out 2 is a sign of better things to come.

“Everybody needed this because success begets success,” Tony Chambers of Disney told the Associated Press, meaning that one successful movie often leads to more hits. “It’s great for the industry, great for Pixar, and great for the business overall.”

Jeff Whipple, a vice president at Megaplex Theaters, is expecting seats to be filled this summer. He says families are seeing Inside Out 2 together, and kids have been taking photos of posters for Despicable Me 4, which opens on July 3.

“I think word is going to spread on [Inside Out 2] and help draw people into theaters throughout the summer,” Whipple told the Associated Press.

A wild orangutan living in an Indonesian rainforest shocked researchers when he treated his wound with a plant known to have healing properties. The researchers say this behavior has never been seen in the animal world.

“This is the first observation of a wild animal actually treating his wound precisely with a medical plant,” primatologist Isabelle Laumer told National Geographic.

The orangutan, named Rakus, suffered a wound below his eye, probably during a fight with another male. A few days later, researchers saw Rakus eating the leaves of a plant called Akar Kuning, or yellow root, which is not normally part of the orangutan diet. Rukus then chewed more of the leaves to get their juices, which he spread on the wound. The next day, he ate some more leaves. When the wound began to attract flies, he covered it with yellow root leaves. Researchers also noted that he rested a lot during this period. The wound closed within five days, and it was healed after about a month, leaving only a faint scar.

When a group of orcas (also called killer whales) started ramming boats off the coasts of Europe and North Africa, some people thought the animals were out for revenge. Maybe they’re mother orcas protecting their young, or maybe the orcas have had enough of all the boat traffic. But a new report says the orcas aren’t vengeful at all. They’re bored.

There have been at least 673 encounters between boats and orcas off the coasts of Spain, Portugal, France, and Morocco since the first reported incident in May 2020. The new report, released by a group of orca experts from several countries, says it’s likely the orcas are using the boats as playthings.

“The sea is a very boring place for an animal,” Renaud de Stephanis, president of the marine preservation group CIRCE (Conservación, Información y Estudio sobre Cetáceos), told USA Today. “If you’re a dog or some other mammal, you can interact with objects around you. But in the sea, there’s not much for the orcas to interact with, so they play with the rudders [on the boats].”

The experts say it makes sense because orcas are both intelligent and playful. And studies have shown that orcas work together and learn from one another. So, when one or two orcas rammed boats, others probably took an interest in this “fun” activity. Experts add that most of the orcas that ram boats are juveniles, which are the orca equivalent of teenagers and are often bolder and more curious than adult orcas.

According to the experts, orcas are more likely to be bored in recent years. That’s because the local population of bluefin tuna, the orcas’ favorite food, has risen after years of a low supply. The orcas spend less time hunting than they used to—so they have more time to have fun.

But while this solves the mystery of the orcas’ behavior, it doesn’t protect vessels from dangerous encounters with orcas. Experts advise boaters to avoid orcas when possible. Boaters can also change the appearance of their rudders by adding pieces of plastic that make rudders look like jellyfish. Orcas don’t like jellyfish.

“We don’t want to see people in distress,” University of Washington senior research scientist Alex Zerbini told the Washington Post. “But we also don’t want to see the animals being hurt. And we have to remember that this is their habitat and we’re in the way.”

Josh Gibson is finally getting his due. Major League Baseball (MLB) named Gibson its career batting average leader after incorporating Negro League statistics into its calculations.

Gibson, who played professional baseball in the 1930s and 1940s, had a batting average of .372. Yet Ty Cobb, with a batting average of .367, was long considered the career leader because MLB’s rankings didn’t include athletes who played for the Negro Leagues during the era when professional baseball was segregated. That changed in 2020, when MLB decided to include Negro League stats and Gibson’s name rose to the top.

Gibson also surpassed MLB great Babe Ruth in slugging percentage (the number of bases a player records per at-bat). 

“We’re excited,” Josh Gibson’s great grandson, Sean Gibson, told CNN. “This is a long time coming. Not just for Josh Gibson, but all the other great Negro League family members as well.”

Where can you find German cockroaches? Anywhere humans live—unfortunately for us! Unlike other cockroach species, German cockroaches have evolved to thrive inside warm buildings—and they do, all over the world. In a recent study, scientists unraveled the mystery of how these insects became humans’ unwelcome roommates. 

To figure out where a living thing comes from, it helps to study its genes. Scientists studied the genes of 281 German cockroaches (also known as Blattella germanica) from 17 countries and learned that they evolved from an Asian cockroach species called Blattella asahinai about 2,100 years ago. They theorized that after humans started settling into homes, these cockroaches began living with them and eventually evolved into a new species. Unlike Blattella asahinai, the new species couldn’t fly, and it was more likely to be active in the dark as opposed to being attracted to light. These new traits were perfect for an insect that needed to sneak around people’s homes, stealing crumbs. 

“To survive, cockroaches have to avoid being seen by humans, and German cockroaches have evolved to be nocturnal [and] avoid open spaces, and although it retained its wings, it has stopped flying,” said Theo Evans, an associate professor of biology at the University of Western Australia and an author of the study.

The cockroaches spread to other parts of the world by hitching a ride with humans when they traveled long distances to trade with one another or engage in war. From Asia, the insects went to the Middle East. Then, about 270 years ago, they first appeared in Europe. Finally, around 1900, they arrived in the Americas and the rest of the world. As home heating became more effective, the cockroaches were able to live in colder climates. 

So what makes “German cockroaches” German? They got their name because the scientist who first identified them, Carl Linnaeus, collected them in Germany.

The German cockroach is considered a bit of a supervillain because it’s hard to defeat. The species, which can contribute to asthma and allergies in humans, is resistant to insecticides. Scientists hope that by understanding the origin of the German cockroach, they can figure out how to beat it. 

As the world continues to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, a company called Climeworks aims to do the opposite. Recently, Climeworks opened a plant in Iceland that’s designed to suck the carbon out of the atmosphere like a vacuum cleaner. Climeworks says it’s the largest plant of its kind so far.

The plant uses a technology called direct air capture (DAC). DAC technology sucks in air and then uses chemical reactions to remove the carbon dioxide from it. The carbon dioxide can either be used for some other purpose, like growing plants, or injected into the ground. Climeworks will send the carbon it captures deep underground, where it will naturally turn to stone. Otherwise, that carbon dioxide would remain in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and other forms of climate change. The video below demonstrates how the giant vacuum works.

Who needs movies or video games when there’s a light show happening in the sky? For several days starting on May 10, an aurora borealis, also called the northern lights, was visible in a large part of the Northern Hemisphere. And the light show may soon return.

During an aurora, the night sky lights up with a beautiful display of bright pink, purple, and green colors. Sometimes the colors flash, flicker, or shift. Auroras occur due to activity on the Sun, such as solar flares (which are basically huge explosions) and coronal mass ejections (which are ejections of electrical charged particles). When charged particles from the Sun seep into Earth’s atmosphere, there can be geomagnetic storms that appear in the sky as auroras. Auroras are fairly common in the far northern and southern parts of our planet.

But in May, two massive sunspots produced particularly strong solar flares, spawning a geomagnetic storm so intense that the northern lights could be seen as far south as the southern regions of North America, Europe, and Asia.

People all over the Northern Hemisphere ventured outside to catch a glimpse of the light show. No two auroras are the same; the sky gives a different show every time, which is why even seasoned aurora viewers were captivated.

“I’ve never seen so many vivid colors dancing across the sky,” United Kingdom resident Daisy Dobrijevic told Space.com. Dobrijevic, a Space.com editor, has seen auroras in northern Sweden, where they’re more common. But it was special to witness one so close to home. “What a tremendous treat indeed,” she said.

People who missed the mid-May aurora might not be out of luck. Since the sunspots continue to do their thing, scientists say more auroras could decorate the night sky in 2024. 

Check out the slideshow for more photos from the aurora borealis!

An oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, may have found the key to developing vaccines that would treat many forms of cancer. Dr. Catherine Wu’s research focuses on getting the body’s own immune system to attack cancer cells.

When a cancerous tumor grows, its cells mutate, or change, over time. The body’s immune system—the network of cells and tissues that defend the body against infection—often doesn’t recognize the difference between tumor cells and healthy cells, so it doesn’t attack the tumor. Wu’s vaccines, which would treat existing cancer (not prevent cancer from developing), would help the immune system to do its job.

This is different from two common cancer treatments—chemotherapy and radiation. In those treatments, the body is exposed to chemicals or radiation. This is meant to destroy cancer cells, but it can also end up damaging healthy cells.

Wu believes it’s possible to develop vaccines for specific types of cancer so that the immune system can be directed to defend that part of the body. Although she doesn’t believe every form of cancer could be treated with a vaccine, many could, including some that are currently hard to treat, such as melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Wu conducted a study in which six melanoma patients were vaccinated. After three to four years, the patients’ cancer cells were under control.

So far, Wu and her team have conducted “small” studies, in which they tested the vaccine on only a handful of people. Many more studies are necessary before she and others know if these cancer vaccines will be safe and effective. But her research is very promising, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which in February 2024 awarded her its Sjöberg Prize for “decisive contributions” to cancer research.

Wu has dreamed of curing cancer since she was in second grade. She may be getting close.