The novel coronavirus is a new kind of enemy. Now, the United States Army has added a cutting-edge tool to its arsenal to better understand this threat: “organs-on-chips” that recapitulate the microarchitecture and function of living human lungs. Army scientists are conducting research with the Lung-Chips to observe intracellular interactions and gain insight into the role of proteins within human lung cells exposed to the virus.

Read the story at IEEE Pulse: Fighting COVID-19 With Lung-Chips.

By using drones to film from above, scientists from the University of Exeter and the Center for Whale Research observed details of killer whales’ social lives as never before. The research not only provides insights into the importance of these animals’ relationships but also has conservation implications.

Read the whole story at my Animal Minds blog: Drone Footage Reveals Killer Whales’ Secret Social Lives.

In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have begun to investigate how magic effects — tricks such as sleight-of-hand, illusion, and misdirection — exploit quirks of attention and perception in humans. With a new experiment with Eurasian jays, researchers are now expanding their focus to include other species’ reactions to magic tricks. What can the results tell us about how other animals perceive their worlds?

Read the story at my Animal Minds blog: What Can Magic Tricks Reveal About Animal Minds?

How can we assess consciousness in nonverbal animals? A team of philosophers, biologists, and psychologists suggest that failing a conditioning test when distracted could be an indication of awareness of the "now."

Read more at my Animal Minds blog: A Test for Animal Consciousness.

Researchers reared baby bats under normal conditions or in helium-enriched conditions, in which the speed of sound was increased by 15%. The results suggest that time perception is innate in echolocating bats and that bats encode the world in terms of time rather than space.

Read the whole story at my Animal Minds blog: How Do Echolocating Bats Perceive Distance?