Nell Greenfield Boyce

The palm-like plants, called cycads, live in the tropics.

They make pollen and seeds in long pinecone-like structures, and the plant can heat these cones up.

In the journal Science, researchers report that the nocturnal beetles that pollinate these plants...

have antennae that are specially designed to sense heat.

And experiments with a fake cone that heated up showed that the beetles would home in on the source of the infrared radiation.

The researchers say that long before colorful flowers emerged to attract later insects like bees and butterflies, plants were using an infrared glow to attract poor-sighted pollinators that were active at night.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

The annual Geminid meteor shower happens when the Earth passes through a field of tiny particles left behind by an asteroid.

That debris hits our atmosphere and produces bright streaks of light.

Like the summertime Perseids, this meteor shower produces a good number of shooting stars.

It just happens when it's a lot colder outside.

Still, if you can brave the cold, find a dark spot and give your eyes plenty of time to adjust.

Then watch the sky and wait.

Some of the best viewing will be late at night before the crescent moon rises.

Or once the moon is up, you can keep your back to it so that its light won't swap out your view.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

A team of researchers did experiments by simulating some common video call scenarios.

like health consultations or sales pitches, to see how people in glitch-free video calls are perceived compared to people whose videos have brief freezes, lags, or audio echoes.

The results in the journal Nature show that glitches when a person was speaking resulted in that person being perceived as less likable or trustworthy.

The researchers also studied some real-world data from parole hearings that were conducted over video and found that technical glitches significantly reduced the chances that someone would get parole.