Cook County and the Ohio State University are researching the coyote population in the Chicago area. Among their findings:

Coyotes are common throughout most of the Chicago region, and our radio-tracking data demonstrate that people and coyotes coexist on a daily basis, with people usually unaware of interactions.

That is, until one trots down State Street. The research site even has territory maps and graphs of pet attacks.

• I caught a Nova episode called Cracking the Maya Code that outlines the long history and surprisingly recent breakthroughs in understanding Mayan hieroglyphs. This episode has it all—evil conquistadors, eccentric communists, child prodigies and a stunningly beautiful written language.
• NASA will send your name on the next Mars rover if you just fill in their form. They even provide a spiffy printable certificate.
• This guy built a huge lighted grid as a custom electronic music controller. It has some great sounds and stutters wonderfully, but he admits “all this makes for one monstrous spaceship console which I can currently only fly at the recruit level.”

A human-powered machine with bird-like wings was one of our earliest conceptions of flight. University of Toronto engineering students revived this design with modern materials and an assisted take-off. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, but the flight doesn’t touch the record set by MIT’s Daedalus.

• The Royal Observatory in Greenwich awards the Astronomy Photographer of the Year each year for a number of different categories. In an audio slideshow, Dr Marek Kukula, one of the judges, explains this year’s winning photographs.
• Gunung Mulu is a cave system that extends for hundreds of miles under the island of Borneo. Much of it remains unexplored, but National Geographic collects some pictures of its interesting formations and chambers.
• The BBC put little video cameras on the backs of some of the fastest birds in the world: the Peregrine Falcon and the Goshawk. Look at that thing weave through the trees!

• Collecting some of the best typefaces released in 2009, Print Magazine awards its Oscars of Type. Mr. Eaves looks great and League Gothic (from the always-free League of Movable Type) is an admirable re-creation of Alternate Gothic.
• Science! Straight from the hypertext-age of the internet, this Physics FAQ is fascinating even if it isn’t pretty.
• A gallery of century-old mugshots shows working-class Britons arrested for public intoxication. Some are fascinating, some are funny, some are sad.

With digital technology, hearing aids have come a long way in the past 10 years, but there is still a long way to go. Wired published a brief overview of “why they suck.” But it’s not all bad:

Increased demand from aging technophilic boomers is expected to spur both innovation and acceptance: Researchers are looking to consumer electronics to sex up what has been a medical-device backwater. And now that everyone walks around wearing a Bluetooth headset, the stigma of having a device clamped to your ear is receding. This should drive more adoption, innovation, and (maybe) lower prices.

• A medley of Christmas songs transposed into a minor key.
• NASA plays music to wake up the crew for a day’s work in space. They keep track of what they’ve played, and you can listen to their selections. Most are funny, like the theme song to Star Trek or the Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine.”
• If you have some down time during the holiday, there are worse things to get into than the complete archives of Calvin and Hobbes.

• Rivers Cuomo of Weezer did an interview with Terry Gross of Fresh Air. Don’t worry, he talks about some older stuff.
• Who Sampled does what it says on the tin. Compare songs and listen to where popular samples came from. Also, remember why George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” went to court.
• A long, detailed tour of the International Space Station by an astronaut with a hand-held camera. It’s so cluttered! Then again, who knows what I was expecting…

• The 115 images of Earth that were sent on the Voyager space probe golden record. It’s like a family photo album that says “look what we’ve done!” More info.
• Some scenes from the Official Beatles Coloring Book. (1964)
• Tone Audio offers the best review that I’ve read on the Beatles Remasters. Being sticklers, they have a lot to say about Mono vs. Stereo.