科学美国人60秒 SSS 全球科学简讯（在线收听）

Hi, I'm Scientific American assistant news editor Sarah Lewin Frasier.

大家好，我是《科学美国人》助理新闻编辑莎拉·莱温·弗雷西尔。

And here's a short piece from the August 2020 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine.

下面是本杂志2020年8月刊的一篇短文，摘自“进展：科学、技术和医学前沿快报”版块。

The article is titled "Quick Hits," and it's a rundown of some noncoronavirus stories from around the globe.

这篇文章名为《要闻快讯》，汇集了全球各地非新冠病毒报道的摘要。

From Canada:

加拿大：

A new study models how a gigantic, morphing blob of liquid iron in Earth's outer core underneath the Canadian Arctic is losing its grip on the North magnetic pole.

一项新研究模拟了加拿大北极下的地球外核中一个巨大变形液态铁团如何失去对北磁极的控制。

A second, intensifying blob below Siberia is pulling the pole away.

西伯利亚地下另一个不断加强的液态水团正在将磁极拉远。

From Scotland:

苏格兰：

A geologic-dating effort suggests the fossil of a millipedelike creature found on the island of Kerrera formed 425 million years ago,

一项地质年代测定工作表明，在科雷拉岛上发现的千足虫类生物化石形成于4.25亿年前，

making it possibly the oldest-known fossilized land animal. (Older land animals have been spotted indirectly, through preserved tracks.)

使它成为可能是已知最古老的陆地动物化石（人们通过保存下来的足迹间接发现了更古老的陆地动物。）

From Tanzania:

坦桑尼亚：

Researchers discovered Africa's largest-ever collection of fossilized human footprints, left in volcanic mud about 10,000 years ago.

研究人员发现了非洲有史以来最大的人类脚印化石群，这些脚印在大约1万年前留在火山泥中。

Many of them came from a group of 17 people, mostly women, all walking in the same direction.

许多脚印来自一个由17人组成的团体，成员大多是女性，都朝着同一个方向行走。

From Norway:

挪威：

Archaeologists are excavating a 20-meter Viking ship, buried below a farmer's field, to stop a wood-eating fungus from destroying it.

考古学家正在挖掘一艘埋在农民田地下面的20米长的海盗船，以阻止一种食木真菌破坏它。

Ground-penetrating radar had found the ship in 2018, and a new wood sample analysis revealed that it could not be preserved underground.

探地雷达在2018年发现了这艘船，新的木材样本分析显示它无法保存在地下。

From Zambia and Mongolia:

赞比亚和蒙古：

This spring a satellite-tagged cuckoo completed an epic 12,000-kilometer journey from one country to the other.

今年春天，一只被卫星追踪的布谷鸟完成了从一国到另一国的1.2万公里壮丽旅程。

It had originally been tagged in Mongolia in 2019 and traversed 16 countries in its round-trip migration.

它最初于2019年在蒙古被标记，并在往返迁徙中穿越了16个国家。

From Antarctica:

南极洲：

Scientists found that king penguin excrement releases nitrous oxide–also known as laughing gas.

科学家发现，帝企鹅的排泄物会释放出一氧化二氮——也就是笑气。

It forms as soil bacteria eat the droppings' nitrogen-rich compounds.

它由土壤细菌吃掉粪便中富含氮的化合物而形成。

That was "Quick Hits." I'm Sarah Lewin Frasier.

以上是《要闻快讯》，我是莎拉·莱温·弗雷泽。