UChicago experts contributed to two new studies which found that ambient clinical documentation tools can cut down on administrative time and help physicians be more mentally healthy and present with patients.

For decades, scientists have known that only a few groups of birds—songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds—can learn to produce new sounds. But a new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 100, Number 4, reveals that many more birds can learn to understand the sounds of others, suggesting that comprehension learning, not production, may be the foundation for the evolution of language.

In their paper, “Vocal Contextual Learning in Birds,” William A. Searcy and Eleanor M. Hay of the University of Miami review decades of research to uncover how birds modify their understanding and use of vocal signals through experience. Their findings show that vocal comprehension learning occurs naturally in at least 17 of 37 avian orders, encompassing nearly every major branch of the bird family tree.