Ripped from the Headlines: February 2024: This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for February 10–February 16, 2024

According to the lunar calendar, the Year of the Wood Dragon began on February 10. Chinese astrology considers it an auspicious year to be born, leading some to predict a baby boom. Many in China hope the luck associated with dragons will entice people to choose parenthood. Birthrates there have fallen for years, and China is on track to lose 200 million workers by 2050. Auspicious is from a Latin word meaning "divination by observing the flight of birds."

In a British aviary, one penguin has stepped in as "guide bird" for another penguin whose vision is failing due to cataracts. The partially-sighted penguin, Squid, was diagnosed with clouded lenses when she was a chick. Her friend, whose name is Penguin, helps her navigate their enclosure at Birdworld in Surrey, guiding her to the fish bucket at feeding time. The Latin source of cataract is cataracta,"portcullis," or "gate."

A Florida man's shoe repair videos have become a viral sensation on TikTok and Instagram. Jim McFarland has worked as a cobbler for nearly 40 years, following in the footsteps of both his father and his grandfather, who opened a shoe repair shop in 1920. McFarland's videos, some of which have been viewed 60 million times, show him replacing worn heels, mending torn leather, and taking old shoes apart and putting them back together newly cleaned, stitched, glued, and sanded.

On February 11, the Kansas City Chiefs became the first NFL team in 19 years to win two consecutive Super Bowls. The Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime, coming back after trailing in the first half to win 25-22. The Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes was named the game's MVP. Consecutive is derived from the Latin consequi, "to follow after."

A new study shows the effect of sleep deprivation on short-term memory. Researchers gave cognitive tests to 500,000 adults and found that people who slept from six to eight hours nightly scored higher than those who only slept three to six hours. Scores on tasks like reading and memorizing lists decreased with each lost hour of sleep. Experts say sleep debt is cumulative, and it takes several nights to catch up. The Latin privare, "to rob," is the root of deprivation.

After being saved from near-extinction, California sea lions are protecting their habitat from erosion. Algal blooms, rising sea level, and an explosion of burrowing tidal crabs had caused the Monterey Bay estuary to deteriorate, with pieces of the coastal marsh crumbling into the water. Scientists compared a section of the estuary without sea lions to areas where sea lions live, feasting on the crabs, and found their presence dramatically reduced the amount of erosion.

New research shows that polluted flowers smell less sweet to pollinators. Scientists found that the scent of the pale evening primrose was dulled by the presence of nitrate radicals, compounds that are present in polluted urban air at night. The change in the flower's odor was enough to deter hawk moths, which typically collect and spread dusty grains of pollen from the primrose. Pollinator comes from the Latin pollen, "mill dust or fine flour."

Camels are helping with the restoration of Joshua trees to California's Mojave National Preserve. The park had the world's largest Joshua tree forest until a 2020 fire destroyed 1.3 million of the twisty, spiky trees. As part of the effort to bring Joshua trees back to the preserve, volunteers regularly load three camels with tree seedlings and water. The humped animals "leave a smaller footprint than a mule or a horse" and can easily carry their packs for miles across the arid desert.

A neighborhood that was unscathed by Chile's deadly wildfires proved it's possible to fireproof communities. The fires have destroyed over 15,000 homes, but a group of 80 houses that had been chosen for an educational pilot program remained unharmed. Residents learned to protect their homes from damage by removing vegetation and debris, soaking the ground with water, and setting up a communication system. Unscathed is from the verb scathe "to harm."

A crowd of people vandalized a driverless taxi in San Francisco on February 11. A video shared widely on social media shows the group using fireworks to set an empty Waymo self-driving car on fire. They also broke the taxi's windows and covered it in spray-painted graffiti. Vandalize comes from vandal, named for the Germanic Vandals who sacked Rome in 455.

Archaeologists uncovered a 1,700-year-old egg that still contained its yolk. The egg was one of four found in Buckinghamshire, England at a site known to contain Roman ruins. Though three eggs broke during excavation, the fourth was intact, filled with a liquid mixture of albumen and yolk. The Old English source of yolk is geolca, "the yellow part," from geolu, "yellow."