The Download: AI tracking birds, and a pig kidney transplant

In a warming world, migratory birds face many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their migrations, but each has shortcomings. And there’s another problem: Most birds migrate at night, when it’s more difficult to identify them visually and while most birders are in bed.

For over a century, acoustic monitoring has hovered tantalizingly out of reach as a method that would solve ornithologists’ woes. Now, finally, machine-learning tools are unlocking a treasure trove of acoustic data for ecologists. Read the full story.

—Christian Elliot

This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6—it’s all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you don’t already, subscribe to receive a copy.

A woman in the US is the third person to receive a gene-edited pig kidney

Towana Looney, a 53-year-old woman from Alabama, has become the third living person to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. 

Looney, who donated one of her kidneys to her mother back in 1999, developed kidney failure several years later following a pregnancy complication that caused high blood pressure. She started dialysis treatment in December of 2016 and was put on a waiting list for a kidney transplant soon after.

But it was difficult to find a match. So Looney’s doctors recommended the experimental pig organ as an alternative. After eight years on the waiting list, Looney was authorized to receive the kidney. Read the full story.