North America has lost about 3 billion birds since 1970, antibiotic resistance in food animals is becoming a major health issue, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates, study shows immigrants have lower incarceration rate than those born in the U.S.

These, and more, are the newsworthy stories from this past week.

Science and Environment

• A new study by published in Science has found that since 1970, bird populations in the United States and Canada have declined by 29 percent, representing a decline of almost 3 billion birds.
  
  From ZME Science
  

• Plastic pollution is now in the fossil record Plastic deposits in the soil have increased exponentially sine WWII, doubling every 15 years.
  
  From ZME Science
  

• An algae bioreactor has been created that can capture and sequester as much carbon as an acre of trees, occupying just a fraction of this surface area.
  
  Algae convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, power plants or steel processing exhaust into algae oil. This can then be used as food as a rich source of protein or to produce valuable goods like carbon fiber, a lightweight, high-strength material.
  
  From ZME Science
  

Health and Society

• Research shows that hungry people will make more impulsive decisions even when their outcomes will do nothing to relieve hunger such as with finances and love life.
  
  From ZME Science
  

• Global antibiotic resistance in food animals has become a major issue. Reducing antibiotic usage in animals should be a priority, new research concludes.
  
  From ZME Science
  

• Helpful gut bacteria were scarcer in the guts of babies born by C-section. Instead, higher percentages of species commonly found in hospital settings were present.
  
  Antibiotics delivered during birth also shape which bacteria are found in infants.
  
  From Science News Magazine
  

• Scientists have discovered that brain tumors, called high-grade gliomas, form synapses that hijack electrical signals from healthy nerve cells to drive their own growth.
  
  Experiments demonstrated that interrupting these signals with an existing anti-epilepsy drug greatly reduced the cancers’ growth in human tumors in mice, providing the first evidence for a possible new way to treat gliomas.
  
  From Neuroscience News
  

• Researchers found two short peptides, or strings of amino acids, that when injected into mice with Alzheimer’s disease daily for five weeks, significantly improved the mice’s memory. The treatment also reduced some of the harmful physical changes in the brain that are associated with the disease.
  
  From Neuroscience News
  

• The U.S. counted 862,000 abortions in 2017, the lowest level since the procedure became legal nationwide in 1973.
  
  Fewer women are becoming pregnant, likely in part due to increased accessibility of contraception since 2011, as the Affordable Care Act required most private health insurance plans to cover contraceptives without out-of-pocket costs.
  
  From AP
  

Business and Economics

• Entertainment heavyweights have spent more than $2 billion in recent months to acquire the streaming rights for “Big Bang Theory,” “Seinfeld,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Friends” and “The Office.”
  
  From The Wall Street Journal
  

• Wing Aviation — a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent of Google — is collaborating with FedEx Express and Walgreens to launch a drone delivery service next month in Christiansburg, Va., near Virginia Tech.
  
  From Axios
  

• Paris is testing Seabubbles, an eco-friendly bubble-shaped taxi that zips up and down the Seine.
  
  From AP
  

• Amazon.com has adjusted its product-search system to more prominently feature listings that increase its profitability, said people who worked on the project—a move, contested internally, that could favor Amazon’s own brands.
  
  From The Wall Street Journal
  

• In the first UAW strike in 12 years, about 46,000 hourly autoworkers are walking off GM factory floors and joining picket lines.
  
  The strike shuts down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the U.S., plus 22 parts distribution warehouses.
  
  The strike is in reaction to GM’s November decision to “unallocate” five plants in the U.S.
  
  From AP
  

• The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-percentage point for the second time in two months, as Chairman Jerome Powell left the door open to more cuts.
  
  The main potential impact on the average consumer is probably the effect on mortgage rates, which have been falling in recent months.
  
  From The Wall Street Journal
  

Government and Politics

• The annual cost of running the prison at Guantánamo Bay, set up nearly 18 years ago to house detainees in the war on terrorism, was about $13 million per prisoner in 2018.
  
  From The New York Times
  

• Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California will spend $20 million on a public awareness campaign about the dangers of vaping nicotine and cannabis products.
  
  From AP
  

• Studies have shown that immigrants in the US have much lower incarceration rates than the native-born — about 5 times lower. They also indicate that recidivism, or tendency for repeat offenses, is lower among immigrants than native-born.
  
  From ZME Science
  

• Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the mid-2000s ordered his top lieutenants to work with Colombian Marxist guerrillas to flood the U.S. with cocaine in his government’s efforts to combat the Bush administration.
  
  From The Wall Street Journal
  

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