baby

Newborn babies arrive as strangers in a strange land. They know nothing of the customs or language of their new mysterious world. Yet astonishingly, with almost no obvious effort, babies learn an entirely new language. Some babies even learn several.

They manage this feat, in part, by tons of behind-the-scenes practice, a new study finds. Babies mentally rehearse the movements required for speech long before they utter a word, scientists reported July 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

...It soon became clear she was going into labour, and three teaching assistants, Dita Gojnovci, Chris Sword and Sam Mustafa, stepped in to help.
The three delivered the baby while taking instructions from paramedics over the phone, as towels and other equipment were gathered from around the school.

The teacher, Diane Krish-Veeramany, was quoted to say, "We now joke (Jonah) was late for his first day at school as he was born after the bell."

If this gag seems a bit familiar, you've seen Will Ferrell born on Saturday Night Live.

Harvard geneticist George Church recently told Der Spiegel he's close to developing the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal, at which point all he'd need is an "adventurous human woman" — einen abenteuerlustigen weiblichen Menschen — to act as a surrogate mother.