"thwop," "muah" and "boop" are some of the sounds made by Humpback Whales. This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. From the "boing" of a minke whale to the "drum" of a red piranha, scientists are documenting more sounds in our world's oceans, rivers and lakes every year. Now, a team of experts wants to go a step further and create a reference library of aquatic noise to monitor the health of marine ecosystems. The Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds (GLUBS) will include every "thwop," "muah" and "boop" of a humpback whale, as well as human-made underwater sounds and records of the geophysical swirl of ice and wind, according to a paper in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

My friend Robert Burton, a neurologist and author, wanted to share a song with me last year, and sent me a link to an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. "It's wonderful to see truly new and inspiring music," he wrote. I clicked open the link to a band who appeared to have journeyed from their mountain village in Russia to busk for tourists in the city square. Three women wore long white wedding dresses, thick strands of bead necklaces, and Cossack hats that towered from their heads like minarets of black wool. They played, respectively, a cello, djembe drum, and floor tom drum. They were joined by an accordion player who could pass for a bearded hipster from Brooklyn. The accordionist was the first to sing. A bray of syllables erupted from him like an exorcism. A steady drumbeat followed and then the women commanded the singing. Their vocals ranged from yodels to yips, whoops to whispers. At first turbulence reigned, as if the women were singing different songs at each other. But soon their voices blended into a melody that curled like a river.

All of these plans include SmartZone motion detection, a feature that lets you set a custom area within each camera's field of view for motion-triggered video capture and notifications. A free trial is included with the camera, so you can try these features out and decide if you want to invest in them for the long term. The Lux65 is a great way to keep an eye on your baby or small child, but $184 for what is basically a conventional video baby monitor without a Hubble Connected subscription is a little steep. Considering you need one of those subscriptions to unlock all the Lux65 has to offer, you're looking at an initial outlay of more than $200, plus the recurring annual subscription cost. If that's beyond your budget, something like the VTech VM3251 Expandable Digital Video Baby Monitor will give you most of the same basic features without the Wi-Fi capability for less than $100.

Lullabies have been helping people drift off to sleep since 2,000 BC - and now, more than 4,000 years latera an AI machine has made its own relaxing tune. Scientists have produced two tunes - one by Scottish composer Eddie McGuire and the other created by neural networks, in an attempt to see which one is better. The AI-created lullaby was trained using sheet music in a computer-readable format, from which it developed a sense of harmony and rhythm, and it claims to be able to help cure insomnia. The AI-created music was trained using sheet music in a computer-readable format from which it developed a sense of harmony and rhythm. It was created through deep learning, which is based on layers of artificial neural networks inspired by the brain.

Lullabies and music to help soothe babies are used by many different cultures around the world - and they may have evolutionary roots. Infant-directed songs may have evolved as a way for parents to signal to children that their needs are being met - while still giving parents enough time for other tasks like obtaining food or caring for other children. These infant-directed songs may then have evolved into the more complex forms of music we hear today. Singing gives parents many opportunities to indicate that they're giving their children attention - such as adjusting their singing, altering their melody and rhythm and adding hand motions, bouncing and facial expressions Researchers aren't sure why music appears in so many cultures around the world, especially because it has no known connection to reproductive success. But a new research paper co-authored by doctoral student Samuel Mehr and Assistant Professor of Psychology Max Krasnow of Harvard University proposes that parents and babies are engaged in an'arms race' battle over their parents' attention.

At the two-day RoboBusiness Conference, about 2,000 people were serenaded with lullabies and Disney tunes, including "Let It Go" from the hit film "Frozen," by a human-like robot designed to comfort senior citizens and autistic children. And next to a man-size robot that can drive a motorcycle 190 mph around a race track, a half-dozen ant-size robots quickly scurried about a miniature factory floor. "In five years, could you imagine what this conference is going to look like?" "There are going to be 8-foot robots walking all around us, talking to us, some of them maybe being smarter than us." The 12th annual conference, which wrapped up Thursday, illustrated how the focus of robotics is shifting from industrial uses to consumer products. That's especially true at a time when drones, self-driving cars and police robots that carry bombs are making news.