A few brief reports about international science and technology from Indonesia to Spain, including one from Brazil about the highest-voltage electric eel ever discovered

---

 
A few brief reports about international science and technology 
from Indonesia to Spain, including one from Brazil about the 
highest-voltage electric eel ever discovered. 
Hi, I’m
Scientific American
podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here’s a short 
piece from the December 2019 issue of the magazine, in the section called 
Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and 
Medicine. The article is titled 
“
Quick Hits
,”
and it’s a rundown of some science 
and technology stories from around the globe, compiled by assistant news 
editor Sarah Lewin Frasier. 
From Spain: 
Summer’s powerful drought revealed a more tha
n 4,000-year-old oval of at 
least 100 standing stones called the Dolmen of Guadalperal, which had been 
submerged since 1963 in an engineered reservoir. 

---

From Russia: 
Scientists identified a small group of Nordmann’s greenshanks, among the 
most endangered sh
orebirds, in a bog in Russia’s far eastern region. They 
helmed the first in-depth study of the bird since 1976 and are the first ever to 
capture a photograph of an adult on a nest. 
From New Zealand: 
Researchers found that humpback whales traveling near Raoul Island, 700 
miles off New Zealand’s coast, learn songs from members of other breeding 
grounds. 
From Indonesia: 
Climate models have more firmly connected a record-setting cold European 
summer in 1816 to the previous year’s eruption of Indonesia’s Mount 
Tambora, which injected sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and caused 
widespread surface cooling. 
And from Brazil: 
A newfound species of electric eel in Brazil, 
Electrophorus voltai,
produces the 
strongest shock scientists have ever measured from a living animal. It can 
produce 860 volts at up to one amp of current.
That was “Quick Hits,” by Sarah Lewin Frasier.