> , <br />> National Geographic [excellent details] <br />> Nature [abstract] <br />> University of Oldenburg [press release and description] <br />> Link to Rocky Mt. Environmental Health Association [with summary <br />> article and interesting follow up links] <br />> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140507-birds-migration-electromagnetic-robins-henrik- <br />mouritsen-science-broadband/ <br />> Cracking Mystery Reveals How Electronics Affect Bird Migration <br />> From a glitch in a bird experiment, scientists gain startling <br />> insight into the effects of weak broadband waves. <br />> Susan McGrath for National Geographic <br />> <http://news.nationalgeographic.com> Published May 7, 2014 <br />> In the spring of 2005 Henrik Mouritsen <br />> <http://www.member.uni-oldenburg.de/henrik.mouritsen/private homepage.html> <br />> was stumped. Mouritsen, a professor of neurosensory sciences at <br />> Germany's University of Oldenburg, had just launched an ambitious <br />> investigation into what part of the brain a migratory bird uses <br />> in orienting to the Earth's magnetic compass. <br />> The animal navigation expert had all his ducks in a row: funding, <br />> lab space, graduate students, sophisticated instruments. But to <br />> Mouritsen's dismay, the birds themselves (not actually ducks, but <br />> European robins) refused to cooperate. <br />> The birds' innate migratory behavior -well documented, <br />> fundamental to the research design, and the least of Mouritsen's <br />> concerns going into this project- had gone haywire. <br />> It took Mouritsen and his team three years to get to the bottom <br />> of the birds' seemingly anomalous behavior. But in doing so the <br />> scientists made a startling discovery, one with important <br />> implications both for songbird conservation and for human health. <br />> The results are published in the current issue of <br />> <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13290> Nature, <br />> <http://dx.doi.org/l 0.1038/nature13290> released today. <br />> Here's how the mystery was unraveled. <br />> Birds, and Scientists, Baffled <br />> Mouritsen's research centers on two wooden huts and two sets of <br />> night-migrating European robins already restless to fly north. <br />> One set of birds serves as the control population; the other is <br />