| 2. When did rats come to the Americas, and was Lucy really our direct ancestor?Чт, 04 апр[-/+] Tracing the arrival of rats using bones, isotopes, and a few shipwrecks; and what scientists have learned in 50 years about our famous ancestor Lucy First on the show: Did rats come over with Christopher Columbus? It turns out, European colonists weren’t alone on their ships when they came to the Americas—they also brought black and brown rats to uninfested shores. Eric Guiry, a researcher in the Trent Environmental Archaeology Lab at Trent University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how tiny slices of bone from early colony sites and sunken shipwrecks can tell us when these pesky rodents arrived. Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons about what has happened in the 50 years since anthropologists found Lucy—a likely human ancestor that lived 2.9 million to 3.3 million years ago. Although still likely part of our family tree, her place as a direct ancestor is in question. And over the years, her past has become less lonesome as it has become populated with other contemporaneous hominins. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons LINKS FOR MP3 META Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4scrgk About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
9. What makes blueberries blue, and myth buster Adam Savage on science communicationЧт, 15 фев[-/+] Why squeezing a blueberry doesn’t get you blue juice, and a myth buster and a science editor walk into a bar First up on the show this week, MythBusters’s Adam Savage chats with Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp about the state of scholarly publishing, better ways to communicate science, plus a few myths Savage still wants to tackle. Next on the show, making blueberries without blue pigments. Rox Middleton, a postdoctoral fellow at the Dresden University of Technology and honorary research associate at the University of Bristol, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how blueberries and other blue fruits owe their hue to a trick of the light caused by specialized wax on their surface. In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews professor Jim Wells about organoid therapies. This segment is sponsored by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z7ye2st Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
14. The environmental toll of war in Ukraine, and communications between mom and fetus during childbirthЧт, 11 янв[-/+] Assessing environmental damage during wartime, and tracking signaling between fetus and mother First up, freelance journalist Richard Stone returns with news from his latest trip to Ukraine. This week, he shares stories with host Sarah Crespi about environmental damage from the war, particularly the grave consequences of the Kakhovka Dam explosion. Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with researcher Nardhy Gomez-Lopez, a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology and pathology and immunology in the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The two discuss signaling between fetus and mother during childbirth and how understanding this crosstalk may one day help predict premature labor. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Andrew Pospisilik, chair and professor of epigenetics at the Van Andel Institute, about his research into how epigenetics stabilizes particular gene expression patterns and how those patterns affect our risk for disease. This segment is sponsored by the Van Andel Institute. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Rich Stone Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z5jiifi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
15. The top online news from 2023, and using cough sounds to diagnose diseaseЧт, 04 янв[-/+] Best of online news, and screening for tuberculosis using sound This week’s episode starts out with a look back at the top 10 online news stories with Online News Editor David Grimm. There will be cat expressions and mad scientists, but also electric cement and mind reading. Read all top 10 here. Next on the show, can a machine distinguish a tuberculosis cough from other kinds of coughs? Manuja Sharma, who was a Ph.D. student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington at the time of the work, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her project collecting a cough data set to prove this kind of cough discrimination is possible with just a smartphone. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm Audio credit for human infant cries: Nicolas Grimault, Nicolas Mathevon, Florence Levrero; Neuroscience Research Center, ENES and CAP team. UJM, CNRS, France. Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpuo5vn About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
18. Farm animals show their smarts, and how honeyguide birds lead humans to hivesЧт, 07 дек 2023[-/+] A look at cognition in livestock, and the coevolution of wild bird–human cooperation This week we have two stories on thinking and learning in animals. First, Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about a reporting trip to the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in northern Germany, where scientists are studying cognition in farm animals, including goats, cows, and pigs. And because freelance audio producer Kevin Caners went along, we have lots of sound from the trip—so prepare yourself for moos and more. Voices in this story: Christian Nawroth Annkatrin Pahl Jan Langbein Next, audio producer Katherine Irving talks with Claire Spottiswoode, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, about her research into cooperation between honeyguide birds and human honey hunters. In their Science study, Spottiswoode and her team found honeyguides learn distinct signals made by honey hunters from different cultures suggesting that cultural coevolution has occurred. Read a related Perspective. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Katherine Irving Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zr3zfn1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
20. Exascale supercomputers amp up science, finally growing dolomite in the lab, and origins of patriarchyЧт, 23 ноя 2023[-/+] A leap in supercomputing is a leap for science, cracking the dolomite problem, and a book on where patriarchy came from First up on this week’s show, bigger supercomputers help make superscience. Staff Writer Robert F. Service joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how the first exascale computer is enabling big leaps in scientists’ models of the world. Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with the University of Michigan’s Wenhao Sun, professor of materials science and engineering, and graduate student Joonsoo Kim. They discuss solving the centuries-old problem of growing the common mineral dolomite in the lab. Finally, books host Angela Saini is back but this time she’s in the hot seat talking about her own book, The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality. Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson and host Sarah Crespi chat with Angela about what history, archaeology, and biology reveal about where and when patriarchy started. See our whole series of books podcasts on sex, gender, and science. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini; Robert Service Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn0660 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
23. Turning anemones into coral, and the future of psychiatric drugsЧт, 02 ноя 2023[-/+] Why scientists are trying to make anemones act like corals, and why it’s so hard to make pharmaceuticals for brain diseases First up on this week’s show, coaxing anemones to make rocks. Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the difficulties of raising coral in the lab and a research group that’s instead trying to pin down the process of biomineralization by inserting coral genes into easy-to-maintain anemones. Next on the show, a look at why therapeutics for both neurodegenerative disease and psychiatric illness are lagging behind other kinds of medicines. Steve Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, talks with Sarah about some of the stumbling blocks to developing drugs for the brain—including a lack of diverse genome sequences—and what researchers are doing to get things back on track. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, associate editor Jackie Oberst discusses with Thomas Fuchs, dean of artificial intelligence (AI) and human health and professor of computational pathology and computer science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the potential and evolving role of AI in health care. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Christie Wilcox; Sarah Crespi Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science. adm6756 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
26. Mysterious objects beyond Neptune, and how wildfire pollution behaves indoorsПт, 13 окт 2023[-/+] The Kuiper belt might be bigger than we thought, and managing the effects of wildfires on indoor pollution First up on this week’s show, the Kuiper belt—the circular field of icy bodies, including Pluto, that surrounds our Solar System— might be bigger than we thought. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the distant Kuiper belt objects out past Neptune, and how they were identified by telescopes looking for new targets for a visit by the New Horizons spacecraft. Next up on the show, the impact of wildfire smoke indoors. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Delphine Farmer, a chemist at Colorado State University, about an experiment to measure where particulates and volatile organic compounds end up when they sneak inside during a wildfire event. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Jens Nielsen, CEO of the BioInnovation Institute—an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark—about the next big leap in biology: synthetic biology. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi, Paul Voosen, Kevin McLean
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science. adl3178
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
28. Visiting utopias, fighting heat death, and making mysterious ‘dark earth’Чт, 28 сен 2023[-/+] A book on utopias and gender roles, India looks to beat climate-induced heat in cities, and how ancient Amazonians improved the soil
First up on this week’s show: the latest in our series of books on sex, gender, and science. Books host Angela Saini discusses Everyday Utopia: In Praise of Radical Alternatives to the Traditional Family Home with ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee, professor of Russian and Eastern European studies at the University of Pennsylvania. See this year’s whole series here.
Also this week, as part of a special issue on climate change and health, host Sarah Crespi speaks with Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, a freelance journalist based in Mumbai, India. They talk about how India is looking to avoid overheating cities in the coming decades, as climate change and urbanization collide.
Finally, we hear about how ancient Amazonians created fertile “dark earth” on purpose. Sarah is joined by Morgan Schmidt, an archaeologist and geographer at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. They discuss recent research published in Science Advances on the mysterious rich soil that coincides with ancient ruins, which may still be produced by modern Indigenous people in Brazil.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0606 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
29. Reducing cartel violence in Mexico, and what to read and see this fallЧт, 21 сен 2023[-/+] The key to shrinking cartels is cutting recruitment, and a roundup of books, video games, movies, and more
First up on this week’s show: modeling Mexico’s cartels. Rafael Prieto-Curiel, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how modeling cartel activities can help us understand the impact of potential interventions such as increased policing or reducing gang recruitment.
Lisa Sanchez, executive director of Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia, talks with Sarah about just how difficult it would be to make the model results—which show that reducing recruitment is key—a reality.
Next on the show, Science books editor Valerie Thompson and books intern Jamie Dickman discuss a huge selection of science books, movies, video games, and even new exhibits—all due out this fall. See the complete roundup here.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Valerie Thompson, Jamie Dickman
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk9453 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
30. Why cats love tuna, and powering robots with tiny explosionsЧт, 14 сен 2023[-/+] Receptors that give our feline friends a craving for meat, and using combustion to propel insect-size robots
First up on this week’s episode, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about why despite originating from a dry, desert environment cats seem to love to eat fish.
Next on the show, bugs such as ants are tiny while at the same time fast and strong, and small robots can’t seem to match these insectile feats of speed and power. Cameron Aubin, a postdoc at Cornell University who will shortly join the University of Michigan, discusses using miniscule combustion reactions to bring small robots up to ant speed.
Finally in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Bobby Soni, chief business officer at the BioInnovation Institute, an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark, what it takes to bring a product from lab to market and how to make the leap from scientist to entrepreneur. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk8409 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
32. Reducing calculus trauma, and teaching AI to smellЧт, 31 авг 2023[-/+] How active learning improves calculus teaching, and using machine learning to map odors in the smell space
First up on this week’s show, Laird Kramer, a professor of physics and faculty in the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University (FIU), talks with host Sarah Crespi about students leaving STEM fields because of calculus and his research into improving instruction.
We also hear from some Science staffers about their own calculus trauma, from fear of spinning shapes to thinking twice about majoring in physics (featuring Kevin McLean, Paul Voosen, Lizzie Wade, Meagan Cantwell, and FIU student and learning assistant Carolyn Marquez).
Next on the show, can a computer predict what something will smell like to a person by looking at its chemical structure? Emily Mayhew, a professor in the department of food science and human nutrition at Michigan State University, talks about how this was accomplished using a panel of trained smellers, and what the next steps are for digitizing the sense of smell.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen; Lizzie Wade
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk6142 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
33. The source of solar wind, hackers and salt halt research, and a book on how institutions decide genderЧт, 24 авг 2023[-/+] A close look at a coronal hole, how salt and hackers can affect science, and the latest book in our series on science, sex, and gender
First up on this week’s show, determining the origin of solar wind—the streams of plasma that emerge from the Sun and envelope the Solar System. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, about how tiny jets in so-called coronal holes seem to be responsible. Sarah also talks with Science Editor Keith Smith about the source of the data, the Solar Orbiter mission. Read a related Perspective.
Next, two stories on unlikely reasons for slowing science. First, cyberattacks on telescopes scramble ground-based astronomy in Hawaii and Chile, with Diverse Voices Interns Tanvi Dutta Gupta and Celina Zhao. Also, we hear about an unparalleled water crisis in Uruguay that has left scientists high and dry, with science journalist Maria de los Angeles Orfila.
Finally, in this month’s books segment in our series on science, sex, and gender, host Angela Saini talks with author and political scientist Paisley Currah about his book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, on why and how government institutions categorize people by sex and gender.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini; Maria de los Angeles Orfila; Celina Zhao; Tanvi Dutta Gupta
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4714 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
34. What killed off North American megafauna, and making languages less complicatedЧт, 17 авг 2023[-/+] Ancient wildfires may have doomed Southern California’s big mammals, and do insular societies have more complex languages?
First up on this week’s show, what killed off North America’s megafauna, such as dire wolves and saber-toothed cats? Online News Editor Mike Price joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the likely culprits: climate or humans, or one that combines both—fire. They discuss how the La Brea Tar Pits are helping researchers figure this out. Read the related Science paper.
Next up, do languages get less complex when spoken in multilingual societies? Olena Shcherbakova, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, joins Sarah with a broad look at how the complexity of languages changes under different social and linguistic environments.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Trine Bartholdy, chief innovation officer at the BioInnovation Institute, an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark, about the continued disparity in women’s health research and funding and ways in which these challenges are being overcome. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Mike Price
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3475
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
37. Researchers collaborate with a social media giant, ancient livestock, and sex and gender in South AfricaЧт, 27 июл 2023[-/+] On this week’s show: evaluating scientific collaborations between independent scholars and industry, farming in ancient Europe, and a book from our series on sex, gender, and science.
First up on this week’s show, a look behind the scenes at a collaboration between a social media company and 17 academics. Host Sarah Crespi speaks with Michael Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication who acted as an impartial observer for Meta’s U.S. 2020 election project. Wagner wrote a commentary piece about what worked and what didn’t in this massive project, which will spawn more than 15 papers, three of them out this week in Science.
Then, producer Meagan Cantwell speaks with Silvia Valenzuela Lamas about her talk about how sociopolitical changes shaped livestock in ancient Europe. Her talk was part of a session on migrations and exchanges in ancient civilizations from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting.
Also this week, the latest in our book series on sex, gender, and science. Host Angela Saini talks with author Amanda Lock Swarr about her book: Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
38. Adding thousands of languages to the AI lexicon, and the genes behind our bonesЧт, 20 июл 2023[-/+] A massive effort by African volunteers is ensuring artificial intelligence understands their native languages, and measuring 40,000 skeletons
Our AI summer continues with a look at how to get artificial intelligence to understand and translate the thousands of languages that don’t have large online sources of text and audio. Freelance journalist Sandeep Ravindran joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss Masakhane, a volunteer-based project dedicated to spurring growth in machine learning of African languages. See the whole special issue on AI here.
Also this week on the show, Eucharist Kun, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues used machine learning to take skeletal measurements from x-rays stored in the UK Biobank. Kun discusses links from these body proportions to genes, evolution, and disease.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews Aysha Akhtar, co-founder and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, about how the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act 2.0 along with advances in technology are clearing the way for alternatives to animal testing in the development of new drugs. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7646 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
41. Putting organs into the deep freeze, a scavenger hunt for robots, and a book on race and reproductionЧт, 29 июн 2023[-/+] On this week’s show: Improvements in cryopreservation technology, teaching robots to navigate new places, and the latest book in our series on sex and gender
First up this week on the show, scientists are learning how to “cryopreserve” tissues—from donor kidneys to coral larvae. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the latest in freezing and thawing technology.
Next up: How much does a robot need to “know” about the world to navigate it? Theophile Gervet, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses a scavenger hunt–style experiment that involves bringing robots to Airbnb rentals.
Finally, as part of our series of books on sex, gender, and science, host Angela Saini interviews author Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, about her book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Warren Cornwall
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj4684
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
42. A space-based telescope to hunt dark energy, and what we can learn from scaleless snakesЧт, 22 июн 2023[-/+] On this week’s show: Euclid, a powerful platform for detecting dark energy, and a slithery segment on how snakes make scales
First up on the show this week, we’re taking the hunt for dark energy to space. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new space-based telescope called Euclid, set to launch next month. Euclid will kick off a new phase in the search for dark energy, the mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe.
Also on this week’s show, snakes reveal a new way to pattern the body. Athanasia Tzika, a senior lecturer in the genetics and evolution department at the University of Geneva, talks about her Science Advances paper on the novel way snakes organize their scales.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
48. Debating when death begins, and the fate of abandoned landsЧт, 11 мая 2023[-/+] A new approach promises to increase organ transplants but some question whether they should proceed without revisiting the definition of death, and what happens to rural lands when people head to urban centers
First up this week, innovations in organ transplantation lead to ethical debates. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and several transplant surgeons and doctors about defining death, technically. Also in this segment:
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Anji Wall, abdominal transplant surgeon and bioethicist at Baylor University Medical Center
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Marat Slessarav, consultant intensivist and donation physician at the London Health Sciences Centre and assistant professor in the department of medicine at Western University
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Nader Moazami, surgical head of heart transplantation at New York University Langone Health
Next up, what happens to abandoned rural lands when people leave the countryside for cities? Producer Kevin McLean talks with Gergana Daskalova, a Schmidt Science Fellow in the Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, about how the end of human activities in these places can lead to opportunities for biodiversity.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Additional music provided by Looperman.com
About the Science Podcast
[Image: Martin Cathrae/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: partially collapsed old barn with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi6336 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
49. Building big dream machines, and self-organizing landscapesЧт, 04 мая 2023[-/+] Builders of the largest scientific instruments, and how cracks can add resilience to an ecosystem
First up this week, a story on a builder of the biggest machines. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about Adrian’s dad and his other baby: an x-ray synchrotron.
Next up on this episode, a look at self-organizing landscapes. Host Sarah Crespi and Chi Xu, a professor of ecology at Nanjing University, talk about a Science Advances paper on how resilience in an ecosystem can come from the interaction of a plant and cracks in the soil.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, assistant editor for custom publishing, discusses challenges early-career researchers face and how targeted funding for this group can enable their future success. She talks with Gary Michelson, founder and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies and Aleksandar Obradovic, this year’s grand prize winner of the annual Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
[Image: Hong’an Ding/Yellow River Estuary Association of Photographers; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: red beach from above with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Adrian Cho
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/science.adi5718 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
50. The value of new voices in science and journalism, and what makes something memorableЧт, 27 апр 2023[-/+] Science’s editor-in-chief and an award-winning broadcast journalist discuss the struggles shared by journalism and science, and we learn about what makes something stand out in our memories
First up on the show this week: Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with Amna Nawaz, an award-winning broadcast journalist and host of the PBS NewsHour, about the value of new voices in science and journalism and other things the two fields have in common.
Next up, what makes something stand out in your memory? Is an object or word memorable because it is unique or expressive? Are there features of things that make them memorable, regardless of meaning? Wilma Bainbridge, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her Science Advances paper on teasing apart the features of memorability.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
[Image: madabandon/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: array of lemons with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi4383
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
51. Mapping uncharted undersea volcanoes, and elephant seals dive deep to sleepЧт, 20 апр 2023[-/+] What does it mean that we have so many more seamounts than previously thought, and finding REM sleep in seals
First up on the show this week: so many seamounts. Staff News Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a study that mapped about 17,000 never-before-seen underwater volcanoes. They talk about how these new submarine landforms will influence conservation efforts and our understanding of ocean circulation.
Next up, how do mammals that spend 90% of their time in the water, get any sleep? Jessica Kendall-Bar, the Schmidt AI in Science postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is here to talk about her work exploring the sleep of elephant seals by capturing their brain waves as they dive deep to slumber.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, assistant editor for the Custom Publishing office, interviews Friedman Brain Institute Director Eric Nestler and Director of Drug Discovery Paul Kenny, two experts on addiction from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Rob Oo/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: two female elephant seals looking at the camera with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi3256
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
52. More precise radiocarbon dating, secrets of hibernating bear blood, and a new book seriesЧт, 13 апр 2023[-/+] Anchoring radiocarbon dates to cosmic events, why hibernating bears don't get blood clots, and kicking off a book series on sex, gender, and science
First up this week, upping the precision of radiocarbon dating by linking cosmic rays to isotopes in wood. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Online News Editor Michael Price about how spikes in cosmic rays—called Miyake events—are helping archaeologists peg the age of wooden artifacts to a year rather than a decade or century.
Next on the show, we have a segment on why bears can safely sleep during hibernation without worrying about getting clots in their blood. Unlike bears, when people spend too much time immobilized, such as sitting for a long time on a flight, we risk getting deep vein thrombosis—or a blood clot. Johannes Muller-Reif of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry talks with host Sarah Crespi about what we can learn from bears about how and why our bodies decide to make these clots and what we can do to prevent them.
Stay tuned for an introduction to our new six-part series on books exploring science, sex, and gender. Guest host Angela Saini talks with scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling about the books in this year's lineup and how they were selected.
We’ve been nominated for a Webby! Please support the show and vote for us by 20 April.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
[Image: Thomas Zsebok/iStock/Getty; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: brown bear lying in a cave with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Mike Price; Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi2236 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
53. Why not vaccinate chickens against avian flu, and new form of reproduction found in yellow crazy antsЧт, 06 апр 2023[-/+] Why some countries, such as China, vaccinate flocks against bird flu but others don’t, and male ants that are always chimeras
First up this week, highly pathogenic avian influenza is spreading to domestic flocks around the globe from migrating birds. Why don’t many countries vaccinate their bird herds when finding one case can mean massive culls? Staff News Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the push and pull of economics, politics, and science at play in vaccinating poultry against bird flu.
Next up, a crazy method of reproduction in the yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes). Hugo Darras, an assistant professor in the Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution at Johannes Gutenberg University, talks about how males of this species are always chimeras—which means their body is composed of two different cell lines, one from each parent.
Read a related perspective.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
[Image: The Wild Martin; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Queen and worker yellow crazy ants with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi0665 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
57. Compassion fatigue in those who care for lab animals, and straightening out ocean conveyor beltsЧт, 09 мар 2023[-/+] On this week’s show: Compassion fatigue will strike most who care for lab animals, but addressing it is challenging. Also, overturning ideas about ocean circulation
First up this week: uncovering compassion fatigue in those who work with research animals—from cage cleaners to heads of entire animal facilities. Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm discuss how to recognize the anxiety and depression that can be associated with this work and what some institutions are doing to help.
Featured in this segment:
Next up on the show, a segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes Science) on overturning assumptions in ocean circulation. Physical oceanographer Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks with producer Kevin McLean about the limitations of the ocean conveyor belt model, and how new tools have been giving us a much more accurate view of how water moves around the world.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
[Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Global sea surface currents and temperature with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh4938
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
63. Wolves hunting otters, and chemical weathering in a warming worldЧт, 26 янв 2023[-/+] On this week’s show: When deer are scarce these wolves turn to sea otters, and chemical weathering of silicates acts as a geological thermostat
First up on this week’s show we have a story about a group of Alaskan wolves that has switched to eating sea otters as deer populations have dwindled. Science journalist Jack Tamisiea tells host Sarah Crespi about some of the recently published work on this diet shift, and wildlife biologist Gretchen Roffler weighs in on the conditions on the island where this is happening.
Also on this week’s show: Chemical weathering and the global carbon cycle. Sarah speaks with Susan Brantley, Evan Pugh university professor in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and Department of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, about how weathering of silicates in rocks pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They talk about how this temperature-sensitive process could increase as Earth warms, as well as the potential and limitations of this effect on the global carbon budget.
Take the podcast audience survey here.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
[Image: Landon Bazeley; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Wolf pup pulling a sea otter carcass up a rocky beach with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jack Tamisiea Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
67. Year in review 2022: Best of online news, and podcast highlightsЧт, 22 дек 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: A rundown of our favorite online news stories, and some of our favorite moments on the podcast this year
This is our last show of the year and it’s a fun one! Dave Grimm, our online news editor, gives a tour of the top online stories of the year, from playful bumble bees to parasite-ridden friars.
Then, host Sarah Crespi looks back at some amazing conversations from the podcast this year, including answers to a few questions she never thought she’d be asking. Highlights include why we aren’t just shooting nuclear waste into space, and how mapping ant diversity is like mapping the early universe.
Past shows mentioned in this episode:
What saliva tells babies about human relationships
A global map of ant diversity
Gut bacteria that nourish hibernating squirrels
Securing nuclear waste for 100,000 years
Why rabies remains
Why sunscreen is bad for coral
Saving the Spix’s macaw
Waking up bacterial spores
Collecting spider silks
Don’t miss this year’s podcast series on books in food, science, and agriculture, hosted by Angela Saini.
Take our audience survey at https://www.science.org/podcasts.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Peter Trimming/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: squirrel relaxing on a branch with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg3947
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
68. Breakthrough of the Year, and the best in science booksЧт, 15 дек 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Science’s Breakthrough of the Year and runners-up, plus the top books in 2022
You might not be surprised by this year’s breakthrough, but hopefully you won’t guess all our runners-up. Producer Meagan Cantwell is joined by Greg Miller, who edited the section this year. The two discuss the big winner and more.
In our second segment, host Sarah Crespi is joined by Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson to chat about the best books in science from this year, and one movie.
Books mentioned in this segment:
Otherlands Review | Buy
How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures Review | Buy
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Buy
A House Between Earth and the Moon Review | Buy
Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice Review | Buy
What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care Review | Buy
Stolen Science: Thirteen Untold Stories of Scientists and Inventors Almost Written out of History Review | Buy
The Science Spell Book: Magical Experiments for Kids Review | Buy
Fire of Love (Film) Trailer
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science (2023) Buy
Don’t miss this year’s podcast series on books in food, science, and agriculture, hosted by Angela Saini.
Take our audience survey at: https://www.science.org/podcasts
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STScI; Joseph DePasquale, Alyssa Pagan,
and Anton M. Koekemoer/STScI Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: the birth of a star with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Greg Miller; Valerie Thompson
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg2633
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
72. Mammoth ivory trade may be bad for elephants, and making green electronics with fungusЧт, 17 ноя 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: The potentially harmful effects of prehistoric ivory on present-day elephants, and replacing polymers in electronics with fungal tissue
First up this week on the podcast, we hear about the effect of mammoth and mastodon ivory on the illegal elephant ivory trade. Online News Editor Michael Price joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as melting permafrost has uncovered fossilized ivory from these extinct creatures, more has entered the ivory trade. The question is: Does the availability of this type of ivory reduce the demand for ivory from elephants, or does it endanger them more?
Next, making electronics greener with fungus with Doris Danninger, a Ph.D. student in the Soft Matter Physics Division at the Institute of Experimental Physics at Johannes Kepler University, Linz. Doris and Sarah discuss the feasibility of replacing the bulky backing of chips and the casing of batteries with sheets of fungal tissue to make flexible, renewable, biodegradable electronics.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: RudiHulshof/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: photo of an elephant tusk with point facing the camera with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Michael Price
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8340
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
73. Kurt Vonnegut’s contribution to science, and tunas and sharks as ecosystem indicatorsЧт, 10 ноя 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: How sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut foresaw many of today’s ethical dilemmas, and 70 years of tunas, billfishes, and sharks as sentinels of global ocean health
First up this week on the podcast, we revisit the works of science fiction author Kurt Vonneugt on what would have been his 100th birthday. News Intern Zack Savitsky and host Sarah Crespi discuss the work of ethicists, philosophers, and Vonnegut scholars on his influence on the ethics and practice of science.
Researchers featured in this segment:
Next, producer Kevin McLean discusses the connection between fishing pressure and extinction risk for large predatory fish such as tunas and sharks. He’s joined by Maria Jose Juan Jorda, a postdoc at the Spanish Institute for Oceanography, to learn what a new continuous Red List Index using the past 70 years of fisheries data can tell us about the effectiveness and limits of fishing regulations.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Joseph Hyser, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine about his use of wide-field fluorescence live cell microscopy to track intercellular calcium waves created following rotavirus infection. This segment is sponsored by Nikon.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: richcarey/istock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: underwater photo of a swirling mass of tunas, with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Zack Savitsky
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf7398
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
78. Linking violence in Myanmar to fossil amber research, and waking up bacterial sporesЧт, 06 окт 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: A study suggests paleontological research has directly benefited from the conflict in Myanmar, and how dormant bacterial spores keep track of their environment
First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Rodrigo Perez Ortega joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss links between violent conflict in Myanmar and a boom in fossil amber research.
Also on the show this week, we hear about how bacterial spores—which can lie dormant for millions of years—decide it’s time to wake up. Kaito Kikuchi, an image analysis scientist at Reveal Biosciences, joins Sarah to discuss how dormant spores act a bit like neurons to make these decisions.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Ramon Parsons, director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about his institute’s innovative approach to cancer treatment.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: (public domain); Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: micrograph of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Perez Ortega
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf2050
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
79. Giving a lagoon personhood, measuring methane flaring, and a book about eating high on the hogЧт, 29 сен 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Protecting a body of water by giving it a legal identity, intentional destruction of methane by the oil and gas industry is less efficient than predicted, and the latest book in our series on science and food
First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about why Spain has given personhood status to a polluted lagoon.
Also on the show this week is Genevieve Plant, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. Genny and Sarah talk about methane flaring—a practice common in the oil and gas industry—where manufactures burn off excess methane instead of releasing it directly into the atmosphere. Research flights over several key regions in the United States revealed these flares are leaky, releasing five time s more methane than predicted.
In this month’s installment of books on the science of food and agriculture, host Angela Saini talks with culinary historian and author Jessica B. Harris about her book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Jeff Peischl/CIRES/NOAA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: methane flares with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf0584
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
83. Using free-floating DNA to find soldiers’ remains, and how people contribute to indoor air chemistryЧт, 01 сен 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: The U.S. government is partnering with academics to speed up the search for more than 80,000 soldiers who went missing in action, and how humans create their own “oxidation zone” in the air around them
First up on the podcast this week, Tess Joosse is a former news intern here at Science and is now a freelance science journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin. Tess talks with host Sarah Crespi about attempts to use environmental DNA—free-floating DNA in soil or water—to help locate the remains of soldiers lost at sea.
Also featured in this segment:
Also this week, Nora Zannoni, a postdoctoral researcher in the atmospheric chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, talks about people’s contributions to indoor chemistry. She chats with Sarah about why it’s important to go beyond studying the health effects of cleaning chemicals and gas stoves to explore how humans add their own bodies’ chemicals and reactions to the air we breathe.
In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for Custom Publishing, interviews Benedetto Marelli, associate professor at MIT, about winning the BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation and how he became an entrepreneur.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Jeremy Borrelli/East Carolina University; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: a scuba diver underwater near a World War II wreck off Saipan with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Tess Joosse
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade6771
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
84. Chasing Arctic cyclones, brain coordination in REM sleep, and a book on seafood in the information ageЧт, 25 авг 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Monitoring summer cyclones in the Arctic, how eye movements during sleep may reflect movements in dreams, and the latest in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture.
First up on the podcast this week, Deputy News Editor Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the first airborne campaign to study summer cyclones over the Arctic and what the data could reveal about puzzling air-ice interactions.
Next on the show, Sarah talks with Yuta Senzai, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, about his paper on what coordinated eye movement and brain activity reveal about the neurology of rapid eye movement sleep.
Also on the show this week, a fishy installment of our series of books on the science of food and agriculture. Host Angela Saini interviews writer and editor Nicholas Sullivan about his latest book The Blue Revolution: Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS data; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: photo from space of an epic 2012 Arctic cyclone with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Eric Hand; Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade5525
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
85. Monitoring a nearby star’s midlife crisis, and the energetic cost of chewingЧт, 18 авг 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: An analog to the Maunder Minimum, when the Sun’s spots largely disappeared 400 years ago, and measuring the energy it takes to chew gum
We have known about our Sun’s spots for centuries, and tracking this activity over time revealed an 11-year solar cycle with predictable highs and lows. But sometimes these cycles just seem to stop, such as in the Maunder Minimum—a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 with little or no sunspot activity. News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a nearby star that appears to have entered a similar quiet period, and what we can learn from it about why stars take naps.
Also this week on the show, Adam van Casteren, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester, joins Sarah to talk about measuring how much energy we use to chew up food. Based on the findings, it appears humans have turned out to be superefficient chewers—at least when it comes to the gum used in the study—with less than 1% of daily energy expenditure being spent on mastication.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA/SDO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: photo of the largest sunspot from our latest solar cycle with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4241
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
88. Probing beyond our Solar System, sea pollinators, and a book on the future of nutritionЧт, 28 июл 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Plans to push a modern space probe beyond the edge of the Solar System, crustaceans that pollinate seaweed, and the latest in our series of author interviews on food, science, and nutrition
After visiting the outer planets in the 1980s, the twin Voyager spacecraft have sent back tantalizing clues about the edge of our Solar System and what lies beyond. Though they may have reached the edge of the Solar System or even passed it, the craft lack the instruments to tell us much about the interstellar medium—the space between the stars. Intern Khafia Choudhary talks with Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone about plans to send a modern space probe outside the Solar System and what could be learned from such a mission.
Next up on the show, Myriam Valero, a population geneticist at the evolutionary biology and ecology of algae research department at Sorbonne University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about how a little crustacean might help fertilize a species of algae. If the seaweed in the study does use a marine pollinator, it suggests there may have been a much earlier evolutionary start for pollination partnerships.
Finally, we have the next in our series on books exploring the science of food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with biochemist T. Colin Campbell about his book The Future of Nutrition: An Insider’s Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Johns Hopkins APL/Mike Yakovlev; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: illustration of an interstellar probe crossing the boundary of the heliosphere with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rich Stone; Angela Saini; Khafia Choudhary
++
LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1292
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
89. Possible fabrications in Alzheimer’s research, and bad news for life on EnceladusЧт, 21 июл 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Troubling signs of fraud threaten discoveries key to a reigning theory of Alzheimer’s disease, and calculating the saltiness of the ocean on one of Saturn’s moons
Investigative journalist Charles Piller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles brought to light by a neuroscientist whistleblower.
Next, researcher Wan Ying Kang talks with Sarah about Saturn’s bizarre moon Enceladus. Kang’s group wrote in Science Advances about modeling the salinity of the global ocean tucked between the moon’s icy shell and solid core. Their findings spell bad news for potential habitability on Enceladus.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Enceladus as viewed from Cassini with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Charles Piller
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade0384
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
90. The Webb Space Telescope’s first images, and why scratching sometimes makes you itchyЧт, 14 июл 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope hint at the science to come, and disentangling the itch-scratch cycle
After years of delays, the James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of December 2021. Now, NASA has released a few of the first full-color images captured by the instrument’s enormous mirror. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these first images and what they mean for the future of science from Webb.
Next on the podcast, Jing Feng, principal investigator at the Center for Neurological and Psychiatric Research and Drug Discovery at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, discusses his Science Translational Medicine paper on why scratching sometimes triggers itching. It turns out, in cases of chronic itch there can be a miswiring in the skin. Cells that normally detect light touch instead connect with nerve fibers that convey a sensation of itchiness. This miswiring means light touches (such as scratching) are felt as itchiness—contributing to a vicious itch-scratch cycle.
Also this week, in a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Paul Bastard, chief resident in the department of pediatrics at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris and a researcher at the Imagine Institute in Paris and Rockefeller University. They talk about his work to shed light on susceptibility to COVID-19, which recently won him the Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STSCI; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: James Webb Space Telescope image of image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9123
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
91. Running out of fuel for fusion, and addressing gender-based violence in IndiaЧт, 07 июл 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: A shortage of tritium fuel may leave fusion energy with an empty tank, and an attempt to improve police responsiveness to violence against women
First up this week on the podcast, Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new hurdle for fusion: not enough fuel. After decades of delays, scientists are almost ready to turn on the first fusion reactor that makes more energy than it uses, but the fast-decaying fuel needed to run the reactor is running out.
Also this week, we highlight an intervention aimed at increasing police responsiveness to gender-based violence in India. Sandip Sukhtankar, an economist at the University of Virginia, talks about creating dedicated spaces for women in local police stations, staffed by trained officers. The presence of these “help desks”—when staffed by women officers—increased the recording by police of crimes against women, opening up access to social services and possibly a path to justice.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: DAVID PARKER/SCIENCE SOURCE; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: The interior of the ITER fusion megareactor (artist’s concept) with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8229
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
93. Using waste to fuel airplanes, nature-based climate solutions, and a book on Indigenous conservationЧт, 23 июн 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Whether biofuels for planes will become a reality, mitigating climate change by working with nature, and the second installment of our book series on the science of food and agriculture
First this week, Science Staff Writer Robert F. Service talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about sustainable aviation fuel, a story included in Science’s special issue on climate change. Researchers have been able to develop this green gas from materials such as municipal garbage and corn stalks. Will it power air travel in the future?
Also in the special issue this week, Nathalie Seddon, a professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, chats with host Sarah Crespi about the value of working with nature to support the biodiversity and resilience of our ecosystems. Seddon emphasizes that nature-based solutions alone cannot stop climate change—technological approaches and behavioral changes will also need to be implemented.
Finally, we have the second installment of our series of author interviews on the science of food and agriculture. Host and science journalist Angela Saini talks to Jessica Hernandez, an Indigenous environmental scientist and author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. Hernandez’s book explores the failures of Western conservationism—and what we can learn about land management from Indigenous people.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: USDA NCRS Texas; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: cows in a forest]
Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Robert Service, Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6320
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
94. A look at Long Covid, and why researchers and police shouldn’t use the same DNA kitsЧт, 16 июн 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Tracing the roots of Long Covid, and an argument against using the same DNA markers for suspects in law enforcement and in research labs for cell lines
Two years into the pandemic, we’re still uncertain about the impact of Long Covid on the world—and up to 20% of COVID-19 patients might be at risk. First on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to share a snapshot of the current state of Long Covid research, particularly what researchers think are likely causes.
Also this week, Debra Mathews, assistant director for science programs in the Berman Institute of Bioethics and associate professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University, talks with Sarah about why everyone using the same DNA kits—from FBI to Interpol to research labs—is a bad idea.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Bobby Soni, chief business officer at the BioInnovation Institute (BII), about what steps scientists can take to successfully commercialize their ideas. This segment is sponsored by BII.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: A. Mastin/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: illustration of potential causes for Long Covid ]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add4887
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
95. Saving the Spix’s macaw, and protecting the energy gridЧт, 09 июн 2022[-/+] Two decades after it disappeared in nature, the stunning blue Spix’s macaw will be reintroduced to its forest home, and lessons learned from Texas’s major power crisis in 2021
The Spix’s macaw was first described in scientific literature in 1819—200 years later it was basically poached to extinction in the wild. Now, collectors and conservationists are working together to reintroduce captive-bred birds into their natural habitat in northeastern Brazil. Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt discusses the recovery of this highly coveted and endangered parrot with host Sarah Crespi.
Also this week, in an interview from the AAAS annual meeting, Meagan Cantwell talks with Varun Rai, Walt and Elspth Rostow professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, about how to prepare energy grids to weather extreme events and climate change.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: PATRICK PLEUL/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: two blue Spix’s macaws with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt; Meagan Cantwell
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3733
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
96. The historic Maya’s sophisticated stargazing knowledge, and whether there is a cost to natural cloningЧт, 02 июн 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Exploring the historic Maya’s astronomical knowledge and how grasshoppers clone themselves without decreasing their fitness
First this week, Science contributing correspondent Joshua Sokol talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about the historic Maya’s sophisticated astronomical knowledge. In recent decades, researchers have set out to understand how city structures relate to astronomical phenomena and decipher ancient texts. Now, collaboration between Western scholars and living Indigenous people hopes to further illuminate the field.
Also this week, Mike Kearney, a professor at the school of biosciences at the University of Melbourne, chats with host Sarah Crespi about a species of grasshopper that can reproduce asexually. After studying the insect’s genetics, Kearney and his group didn’t find harmful mutations—or traits that made the grasshopper better adapted to its environment than the two species of grasshopper it hybridized from. Kearney and his team suggest this way of reproducing might not be rare because it’s harmful, but because most animal have safeguards in place to prevent asexual reproduction from arising.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Sergio Montufar/pinceladasnocturnas.com—Estrellas Ancestrales “Astronomy in the Maya Worldview”; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Joshua Sokol; Sarah Crespi
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3058
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
97. Saying farewell to Insight, connecting the microbiome and the brain, and a book on agriculture in AfricaЧт, 26 мая 2022[-/+] What we learned from a seismometer on Mars, why it’s so difficult to understand the relationship between our microbes and our brains, and the first in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture
First up this week, freelance space journalist Jonathan O’Callaghan joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the retirement of NASA’s Mars InSight lander. After almost 4 years of measuring quakes on the surface of the Red Planet, the lander’s solar panels are getting too dusty to continue providing power. O'Callaghan and Crespi look back at the insights that InSight has given us about Mars’s interior, and they talk about where else in the Solar System it might make sense to place a seismometer.
Also this week, we have a special issue on the body’s microbiome beyond the gut. As part of the special issue, John Cryan, principal investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, wrote a commentary piece on tightening the connections research has made between microbes and the brain—the steps needed to go from seeing connections to understanding how the microbiome might be tweaked to change what’s happening in the brain.
Finally this week, we have the first installment of our series of author interviews on the science of food and agriculture. In this inaugural segment, host and science journalist Angela Saini talks to Ousmane Badiane, an expert on agricultural policy and development in Africa, and a co-author of Food For All In Africa: Sustainable Intensification for African Farmers, a 2019 book looking at the possibilities and reality of sustainable intensive farming in Africa.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Illustration: Hannah Agosta; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: overlapping drawings of microbial populations]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jonathan O’Callaghan; Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.10.1126/science.add1406
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
98. Seeing the Milky Way’s central black hole, and calling dolphins by their namesЧт, 19 мая 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: The shadow of Milky Way’s giant black hole has been seen for the first time, and bottlenose dolphins recognize each other by signature whistles—and tastes
It’s been a few years since the first image of a black hole was published—that of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy came about in 2019. Now, we have a similar image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way—our very own galaxy. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why these images look so much alike, even though M87’s black hole is 1600 times larger than ours. We also discuss what’s next for the telescope that captured these shots.
Also this week, we take to the seas. Bottlenose dolphins are known to have a “signature whistle” they use to announce their identity to other dolphins. This week in Science Advances, Jason Bruck and colleagues write about how they may also recognize other dolphins through another sense: taste. Jason, an assistant professor in the department of biology at Stephen F. Austin State University, talks with Sarah about what this means for dolphin minds.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor, interviews Gary Michelson, founder and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies, about the importance of supporting research in the field of immunology—and where that support should be directed. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Dolphin Quest ; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: bottlenose dolphin peeking its head out of the water with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add0515
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
100. Staking out the start of the Anthropocene, and why sunscreen is bad for coralЧт, 05 мая 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Geoscientists eye contenders for where to mark the beginning of the human-dominated geological epoch, and how sunscreen turns into photo toxin
We live in the Anthropocene: an era on our planet that is dominated by human activity to such an extent that the evidence is omnipresent in the soil, air, and even water. But how do we mark the start? Science Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how geoscientists are choosing the one place on Earth that best shows the advent of the Anthropocene, the so-called “golden spike.”
Also this week, Djordje Vuckovic, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, joins Sarah to talk about how sunscreen threatens coral reefs. Reefs are under a lot of stress these days, from things like warming waters, habitat destruction, and the loss of their fishy friends to voracious fishermen. Another suspected stressor is chemical sunscreens, which drift off swimming tourists. It turns out that common chemicals in sunscreen that protect skin from the Sun are modified by sea anemones and corals into a photo toxin that damages them when exposed to the Sun’s rays.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Amanda Tinoco; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: photo of healthy corals at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
TWEET
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Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq8294
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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101. Using quantum tools to track dark matter, why rabies remains, and a book series on science and foodЧт, 28 апр 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: How physicists are using quantum sensors to suss out dark matter, how rabies thwarts canine vaccination campaigns, and a kickoff for our new series with authors of books on food, land management, and nutrition science
Dark matter hunters have turned to quantum sensors to find elusive subatomic particles that may exist outside physicists’ standard model. Adrian Cho, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to give a tour of the latest dark matter particle candidates—and the traps that physicists are setting for them.
Next, we hear from Katie Hampson, a professor in the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, about her work contact tracing rabies in Tanzania. Her group was able to track rabies in a population of 50,000 dogs over 14 years. The massive study gives new insight into how to stop a virus that circulates at superlow levels but keeps popping up, despite vaccine campaigns.
Finally, we launch our 2022 books series on food and agriculture. In six interviews, which will be released monthly for the rest of the year, host and science journalist Angela Saini will speak to authors of recent books on topics from Indigenous land management to foods that are going extinct. This month, Angela talks with Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, who helped select the books for the series.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Suzanne McNabb; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Dogs in Tanzania with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini, Adrian Cho
Episode page: https://www.science.org/content/podcast/using-quantum-tools-track-dark-matter-why-rabies-remains-and-book-series-science-and
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
102. Protecting birds from brightly lit buildings, and controlling robots from orbitЧт, 21 апр 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Saving birds from city lights, and helping astronauts inhabit robots
First up, Science Contributing Correspondent Josh Sokol talks with host Sarah Crespi about the millions of migrating birds killed every year when they slam into buildings—attracted by brightly lit windows. New efforts are underway to predict bird migrations and dim lights along their path, using a bird-forecasting system called .
Next, we hear from Aaron Pereira, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and a guest researcher at the human robot interaction lab at the European Space Agency. He chats with Sarah about his Science Robotics paper on controlling a robot on Earth from the International Space Station and the best way for an astronaut to “immerse” themselves in a rover or make themselves feel like it is an extension of their body.
In a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Alberto Pugliese, professor of medicine, microbiology, and immunology at the University of Miami, about a program he leads to advance research into type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Helmsley Charitable Trust and nPod (the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes).
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: M. Panzirsch et al., Science Robotics (2022); Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: remote-controlled rover with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Josh Sokol
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq5907
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
103. Desert ‘skins’ drying up, and one of the oldest Maya calendarsЧт, 14 апр 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Climate change is killing critical soil organisms in arid regions, and early evidence for the Maya calendar from a site in Guatemala
Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how climate change is affecting “biocrust,” a thin layer of fungi, lichens, and other microbes that sits on top of desert soil, helping retain water and create nutrients for rest of the ecosystem. Recent measurements in Utah suggest the warming climate is causing a decline in the lichen component of biocrust, which is important for adding nitrogen into soils.
Next, Sarah talks with Skidmore College anthropologist Heather Hurst, who directs Guatemala’s San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project, and David Stuart, a professor of art history and director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas, Austin, about their new Science Advances paper. The study used radiocarbon dating to pin down the age of one of the earliest pieces of the Maya calendar. Found in an archaeological dig in San Bartolo, Guatemala, the character known as “seven deer” (which represents a day in the Maya calendar), was dated to 300 B.C.E. That early appearance challenges what researchers know about the age and origins of the Maya dating system.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Heather Hurst; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Ixbalamque painting from San Barolo, Guatemala, with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi
Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq4848
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
105. Probing Earth’s mysterious inner core, and the most complete human genome to dateЧт, 31 мар 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: A journey to the center of the center of the Earth, and what was missing from the first human genome project
Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the many mysteries surrounding the innermost part of our planet—from its surprisingly recent birth to whether it spins faster or slower than the rest of the planet.
Next, Sarah chats with Adam Phillippy about the results from the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium, an effort to create a complete and detailed read of the human genome. Phillippy, a senior investigator and head of the Genome Informatics Section at the National Human Genome Research Institute, explains what we can learn by topping up the human genome with roughly 200 more megabases of genetic information—practically a whole chromosome’s worth of additional sequencing.
See all the T2T papers.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: An array of the human chromosomes showing newly sequenced parts from the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1885
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
106. Scientists become targets on social media, and battling space weatherЧт, 24 мар 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Why it’s tougher than ever to be a researcher on Twitter, and a highlight from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting
First up, Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady talks with host Sarah Crespi about the harassment that COVID-19 researchers are facing and a survey conducted by Science that shows more media exposure is linked to higher levels of abuse.
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell shares another interview from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting. She talks with Delores Knipp, a research professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead aerospace engineering sciences department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, about what happens when our well-behaved Sun behaves badly.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: SkyLab 4/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: solar flare image taken from Skylab 4]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O'Grady
Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb2091
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
109. A global treaty on plastic pollution, and a dearth of Black physicistsЧт, 03 мар 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: The ins and outs of the first global treaty on plastic pollution, and why the United States has so few Black physicists
First up, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the world’s first global treaty on plastics pollution–and the many questions that need answers to make it work. Read a related Policy Forum here.
Up next, we hear from some of more than 50 Black physicists interviewed for a special news package in Science about the barriers Black physicists face, and potential models for change drawing on a 2020 report that documents how the percentage of undergraduates physics degrees going to Black students has declined over the past 20 years.
In his excerpt, Willie Rockward, chair and professor of physics at Morgan State University, describes how a study group dubbed the “Black Hole” provided much-needed support for him and four colleagues who were part of the first cohort of Black graduate physics students at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Next, Fana Mulu-Moore, a physics and astronomy instructor at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado, explains her ‘life-changing’ transition from research to teaching, and how it has given her a sense of purpose.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Carl Campbell/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: sheaves of plastic wrap photographed against a black background]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb1765
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
112. Merging supermassive black holes, and communicating science in the age of social mediaЧт, 10 фев 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: What we can learn from two supermassive black holes that appear to be on a collision course with each other, and the brave new online world in which social media dominates and gatekeeps public access to scientific information
First up, Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about the possibly imminent merger of two supermassive black holes in a nearby galaxy. How imminent? We might see a signal as early as 100 days from now.
Also, this week we have a special section on science and social media. In her contribution, Dominique Brossard, professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, talks about the shift in the source of scientific information away from traditional publishers, newspapers, etc. to social media platforms, and what it means for the future of science communication.
Finally, we share some tweets about the relationship of social media and science communication submitted by young readers in our Letters section. You can read our picks here or check out all the submissions on Twitter at #NextGenSci.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: simulation of a pair of supermassive black holes on the cusp of merging]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada1028
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
113. Building a green city in a biodiversity hot spot, and live monitoring vehicle emissionsЧт, 03 фев 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Environmental concerns over Indonesia building a new capital on Borneo, and keeping an eye on pollution as it comes out of the tailpipe
First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Dennis Normile talks with host Sarah Crespi about Indonesia’s plans for an ultragreen new capital city on the island of Borneo. Despite intentions to limit the environmental impact of the new urban center, many are concerned about unplanned growth surrounding the city which could threaten rare plants and animals.
Also this week, John Zhou, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Technology Sydney talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on reducing pollution from cars and trucks by live monitoring vehicle emissions using remote sensors.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Malinda Rathnayake/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: cars on the road in a city at sunset]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dennis Normile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
115. A window into live brains, and what saliva tells babies about human relationshipsЧт, 20 янв 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: Ethical concerns rise with an increase in open brain research, and how sharing saliva can be a proxy for the closeness of a relationship
Human brains are protected by our hard skulls, but these bony shields also keep researchers out. With brain surgeries and brain implants on the rise , scientists are getting more chances to explore living brains. Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the ethics of doing research on patients undergoing intense medical procedures, and the kinds of research being done.
Also this week, Ashley Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher in the brain and cognitive science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about the meaning behind sharing saliva. Spend any time with a baby lately? Were you in awe—eager to cuddle, kiss, even change a diaper? Or were you slightly horrified by the drool and other fluids seeping out of this new human? Your feelings on the matter might depend on your closeness with the baby and—as Thomas and colleagues write this week in Science— the baby may notice which way you feel. According to their results, babies, like adults, seem to recognize sharing saliva—like sharing food and utensils or kissing—as a signal of close relationships.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Onfokus/Getty/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: baby chewing on a cellphone]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick
Episode page: http://www.science.org/content/podcast/window-live-brains-and-what-saliva-tells-babies-about-human-relationships
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
116. Cloning for conservation, and divining dynamos on super-EarthsЧт, 13 янв 2022[-/+] On this week’s show: How cloning can introduce diversity into an endangered species, and ramping up the pressure on iron to see how it might behave in the cores of rocky exoplanets
First up this week, News Intern Rachel Fritts talks with host Sarah Crespi about cloning a frozen ferret to save an endangered species.
Also this week, Rick Kraus, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talks about how his group used a powerful laser to compress iron to pressures similar to those found in the cores of some rocky exoplanets. If these super-Earths’ cores are like our Earth’s, they may have a protective magnetosphere that increases their chances of hosting life.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Kimberly Fraser/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: three baby black-footed ferrets being held by gloved hands]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Fritts
Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acz9974
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
118. Top online stories, the state of marijuana research, and AfrofuturismЧт, 23 дек 2021[-/+] On this week’s show: The best of our online stories, what we know about the effects of cannabinoids, and the last in our series of books on race and science
First, Online News Editor David Grimm brings the top online stories of the year—from headless slugs to Dyson spheres. You can find out the other top stories and the most popular online story of the year here.
Then, Tibor Harkany, a professor of molecular neuroscience at the Medical University of Vienna’s Center for Brain Research, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the state of marijuana research. Pot has been legalized in many places, and many people take cannabinoids—but what do we know about the effects of these molecules on people? Tibor calls for more research into their helpful and harmful potential.
Finally, we have the very last installment of our series of books on race and science. Books host Angela Saini talks with physician and science fiction author Tade Thompson about his book Rosewater. Listen to the whole series.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Biodiversity Heritage Library/Flickr/Public Domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: illustration of a wombat]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
120. Tapping fiber optic cables for science, and what really happens when oil meets waterЧт, 09 дек 2021[-/+] Geoscientists are turning to fiber optic cables as a means of measuring seismic activity. But rather than connecting them to instruments, the cables are the instruments. Joel Goldberg talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about tapping fiber optic cables for science.
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Sylvie Roke, a physicist and chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, and director of its Laboratory for fundamental BioPhotonics, about the place where oil meets water. Despite the importance of the interaction between the hydrophobic and the hydrophilic to biology, and to life, we don’t know much about what happens at the interface of these substances.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Artography/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: oil droplets and water]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Joel Goldberg
Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acx9771
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
121. The ethics of small COVID-19 trials, and visiting an erupting volcanoЧт, 02 дек 2021[-/+] There has been so much research during the pandemic—an avalanche of preprints, papers, and data—but how much of it is any good? Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the value of poorly designed research on COVID-19 and more generally.
In September, the volcano Cumbre Vieja on Spain’s Canary Islands began to erupt. It is still happening. The last time it erupted was back in 1971, so we don’t know much about the features of the past eruption or the signs it was coming. Marc-Antoine Longpre, a volcanologist and associate professor at Queens College, City University of New York, discusses the ongoing eruption with Sarah and what today’s sensors tell us about what happens when this volcano wakes up.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Eduardo Robaina; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: The eruption of Cumbre Vieja, September 2021]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
125. The folate debate, and rewriting the radiocarbon curveЧт, 04 ноя 2021[-/+] Some 80 countries around the world add folic acid to their food supply to prevent birth defects that might happen because of a lack of the B vitamin—even among people too early in their pregnancies to know they are pregnant. This year, the United Kingdom decided to add the supplement to white flour. But it took almost 10 years of debate, and no countries in the European Union joined them in the change. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ongoing folate debate.
Last year, a highly anticipated tool for dating ancient materials was released: a new updated radiocarbon calibration curve. The curve, which describes how much carbon-14 was in the atmosphere at different times in the past 55,000 years, is essential to figuring out the age of organic materials such as wood or leather. Sarah talks with Tim Heaton, senior lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and Edouard Bard, a professor at the College of France, about how the curve was redrawn and what it means, both for archaeology and for our understanding of the processes that create radiocarbon in the first place—like solar flares and Earth’s magnetic fields.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[Alt text: close-up photograph of layers in volcanic tephra]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
126. Sleeping without a brain, tracking alien invasions, and algorithms of oppressionЧт, 28 окт 2021[-/+] Simple animals like jellyfish and hydra, even roundworms, sleep. Without brains. Why do they sleep? How can we tell a jellyfish is sleeping? Staff Writer Liz Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what can be learned about sleep from these simple sleepers. The feature is part of a special issue on sleep this week in Science.
Next is a look at centuries of alien invasions—or rather, invasive insects moving from place to place as humans trade across continents. Sarah talks with Matthew MacLachlan, a research economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, about his Science Advances paper on why insect invasions don’t always increase when trade does.
Finally, a book on racism and the search algorithms. Books host Angela Saini for our series of interviews on race and science talks with Safiya Umoja Noble, a professor in the African American Studies and Information Studies departments at the University of California, Los Angeles, about her book: Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: marcouliana/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[Alt text: brown marmorated stink bug pattern]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi, Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
127. Soil science goes deep, and making moldable woodСр, 20 окт 2021[-/+] There are massive telescopes that look far out into the cosmos, giant particle accelerators looking for ever tinier signals, gargantuan gravitational wave detectors that span kilometers of Earth—what about soil science? Where’s the big science project on deep soil? It’s coming soon. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about plans for a new subsoil observatory to take us beyond topsoil.
Wood is in some ways an ideal building material. You can grow it out of the ground. It’s not very heavy. It’s strong. But materials like metal and plastic have one up on wood in terms of flexibility. Plastic and metal can be melted and molded into complicated shapes. Could wood ever do this? Liangbing Hu, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering and director of the Center for Materials Innovation at the University of Maryland, College Park, talked with Sarah about making moldable wood in a new way.
In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing office, interviews Michael Brehm, associate professor at UMass Chan Medical School Diabetes Center of Excellence, about how he is using humanized mouse models to study ways to modulate the body’s immune system as a pathway to treating type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Xiao et al., Science 2021; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[Alt text: honeycomb structure made from moldable wood]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
128. The ripple effects of mass incarceration, and how much is a dog’s nose really worth?Чт, 14 окт 2021[-/+] This week we are covering the Science special issue on mass incarceration.
Can a dog find a body? Sometimes. Can a dog indicate a body was in a spot a few months ago, even though it’s not there now? There’s not much scientific evidence to back up such claims. But in the United States, people are being sent to prison based on this type of evidence. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Peter Andrey Smith, a reporter and researcher based in Maine, about the science—or lack thereof—behind dog-sniff evidence.
With 2 million people in jail or prison in the United States, it has become incredibly common to have a close relative behind bars. Sarah talks with Hedwig Lee, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, about the consequences of mass incarceration for families of the incarcerated, from economic to social.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Adrian Brandon; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[Alt text: illustration from the special issue on mass incarceration by Adrian Brandon. He writes: “This illustration shines a light on the structural role of the prison system and how deeply embedded it is in the fabric of this country.”]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Peter Andrey Smith
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129. Swarms of satellites could crowd out the stars, and the evolution of hepatitis B over 10 millenniaЧт, 07 окт 2021[-/+] In 2019, a SpaceX rocket released 60 small satellites into low-Earth orbit—the first wave of more than 10,000 planned releases. At the same time, a new field of environmental debate was also launched—with satellite companies on one side, and astronomers, photographers, and stargazers on the other. Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the future of these space-based swarms.
Over the course of the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic, different variants of the virus have come and gone. What would such changes look like over 10,000 years? Arthur Kocher, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, talks with Sarah about watching the evolution of the virus that causes hepatitis B—over 10 millennia—and how changes in the disease’s path match up with shifts in human history.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Rafael Schmall; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[Alt text: Starlink satellites moving across the sky in a long-exposure photograph of the star Albireo in Cygnus]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Josh Sokol Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
130. Whole-genome screening for newborns, and the importance of active learning for STEMЧт, 30 сен 2021[-/+] Today, most newborns get some biochemical screens of their blood, but whole-genome sequencing is a much more comprehensive look at an infant—maybe too comprehensive? Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ethical ins and outs of whole-genome screening for newborns, and the kinds of infrastructure needed to use these screens more widely.
Sarah also talks with three contributors to a series of vignettes on the importance of active learning for students in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Yuko Munakata, professor in the department of psychology and Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, talks about how the amount of unstructured time and active learning contributes to developing executive function—the way our brains keep us on task.
Nesra Yannier, special faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and inventor of NoRILLA, discusses an artificial intelligence–driven learning platform that helps children explore and learn about the real world.
Finally, Louis Deslauriers, senior preceptor in the department of physics and director of science teaching and learning at Harvard University, laments lectures: why we like them so much, why we think we learn more from lectures than inquiry-based learning, and why we’re wrong.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Jerry Lai/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[Alt text: newborn baby feet]
[Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
131. Earliest human footprints in North America, dating violins with tree rings, and the social life of DNAЧт, 23 сен 2021[-/+] Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss fossilized footprints left on a lake shore in North America sometime before the end of Last Glacial Maximum—possibly the earliest evidence for humans on the continent. Read the research.
Next, Paolo Cherubini, a senior scientist in the dendrosciences research group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, discusses using tree rings to date and authenticate 17th and 18th century violins worth millions of dollars.
Finally, in this month’s installment of the series of book interviews on race and science, guest host Angela Saini interviews Alondra Nelson, professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, about her 2016 book The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome.
Note on the closing music: Violinist Nicholas Kitchen plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne on the violin “Castelbarco” made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy, in 1697. Courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Bennet et al., Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[Alt text: human footprints preserved in rock]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Angela Saini See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
138. A freeze on prion research, and watching cement dryЧт, 05 авг 2021[-/+] International News Editor Martin Enserink talks with host Sarah Crespi about a moratorium on prion research after the fatal brain disease infected two lab workers in France, killing one.
Next, Abhay Goyal, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, talks with intern Claire Hogan about his Science Advances paper on figuring out how to reduce the massive carbon footprint of cement by looking at its molecular structure.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Ansuman Satpathy, assistant professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of supporting early-career research and diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Marquette LaForest/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
139. Debating healthy obesity, delaying type 1 diabetes, and visiting bone roomsЧт, 29 июл 2021[-/+] First this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the paradox of metabolically healthy obesity. They chat about the latest research into the relationships between markers of metabolic health—such as glucose or cholesterol levels in the blood—and obesity. They aren’t as tied as you might think.
Next, Colin Dayan, professor of clinical diabetes and metabolism at Cardiff University and senior clinical researcher at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, joins Sarah to discuss his contribution to a special issue on type 1 diabetes. In his review, Colin and colleagues lay out research into how type 1 diabetes can be detected early, delayed, and maybe even one day prevented.
Finally, in the first of a six-part series of book interviews on race and science, guest host Angela Saini talks with author and professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Samuel Redman, about his book Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums. The two discuss the legacy of human bone collecting and racism in museums today.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Jason Solo/Jacky Winter Group; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
143. Preserving plastic art, and a gold standard for measuring extreme pressureЧт, 01 июл 2021[-/+] First this week, Contributing Correspondent Sam Kean talks with producer Joel Goldberg about techniques museum conservators are using to save a range of plastic artifacts—from David Bowie costumes to the first artificial heart.
Next, Dayne Fratanduono, an experimental physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about new standards for how gold and platinum change under extreme pressure. Fratanduono discusses how these standards will help researchers make more precise measurements of extreme pressure in the future.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Laura Mackay, professor and laboratory head at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by the Michelson Foundation.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Aleth Lorne; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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Authors: Joel Goldberg; Sam Kean; Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
144. Does Botox combat depression, the fruit fly sex drive, and a series on race and scienceЧт, 24 июн 2021[-/+] First this week, Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady talks with host Sarah Crespi about controversy surrounding the use of Botox injections to alleviate depression by suppressing frowning.
Next, researcher Stephen Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, discusses his Science Advances paper on what turns on the fruit fly sex drive.
Finally, we are excited to kick off a six-part series of monthly interviews with authors of books that highlight the many intersections between race and science and scientists. This week, guest host and journalist Angela Saini talks with Keith Wailoo, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, who helped select the topics about the books we will be covering and how they were selected.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Tomasz Klejdysz/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
147. Cicada citizen science, and expanding the genetic codeЧт, 03 июн 2021[-/+] First this week, freelance journalist Ian Graber-Stiehl discusses what might be the oldest community science project— observing the emergence of periodical cicadas. He also notes the shifts in how amateur scientists have gone from contributing observations to helping scientists make predictions about the insects’ schedules.
Next, Jason Chin, program leader at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, discusses how reducing redundancy in the genetic code opens up space for encoding unusual amino acids. His group shows that eliminating certain codes from the genome makes bacteria that are resistant to viruses and that these edited codes can be used to program the cells to make complicated molecules.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with Gary Michelson, founder of the Michelson Medical Research Foundation and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies, about the best ways to support early-career scientists, including through prizes such as the new Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Bill Douthitt/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ian Graber-Stiehl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
150. Cutting shipping air pollution may cause water pollution, and keeping air clean with lightningЧт, 13 мая 2021[-/+] News Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss possible harms from how the shipping industry is responding to air pollution regulations—instead of pumping health-harming chemicals into the air, they are now being dumped into oceans.
Also this week, William Brune, professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, talks about flying a plane into thunderstorms and how measurements from research flights revealed the surprising amount of air-cleaning oxidants created by lightning.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Manfred Kraus, senior director and head of in vivo pharmacology oncology at Bristol Myers Squibb, about the impact of humanized mice on preclinical research. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Samantha Dellaert/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Erik Stokstad; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
151. Chernobyl’s ruins grow restless, and entangling macroscopic objectsЧт, 06 мая 2021[-/+] Rich Stone, former international news editor at Science and current senior science editor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Tangled Bank Studios, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about concerning levels of fission reactions deep in an inaccessible area of the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Though nothing is likely to come of it anytime soon, scientists must decide what—if anything—they should do tamp down reactions in this hard-to-reach place.
Also on this week’s show, Shlomi Kotler, an assistant professor in the department of applied physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joins Sarah to discuss the quantum entanglement of macroscopic objects. This hallmark of quantum physics has been confined—up until now—to microscopic items like atoms, ions, and photons. But what does it mean that two drums, each the width of a human hair, can be entangled?
Read a related insight.
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[Image: Caption: New Safe Confinement structure built over Chernobyl ruins; Credit: URBEX Hungary/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Rich Stone; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
157. Social insects as models for aging, and crew conflict on long space missionsЧт, 25 мар 2021[-/+] Most research on aging has been done on model organisms with limited life spans, such as flies and worms. Host Meagan Cantwell talks to science writer Yao-Hua Law about how long-living social insects—some of which survive for up to 30 years—can provide new insights into aging.
Also in this episode, host Sarah Crespi talks with Noshir Contractor, the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University, about his AAAS session on keeping humans in harmony during long space missions and how mock missions on Earth are being applied to plans for a crewed mission to Mars.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image:TerriAnneAllen/Unsplash ; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Yao Hua Law; Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
164. Looking back at 20 years of human genome sequencingЧт, 04 фев 2021[-/+] This week we’re dedicating the whole show to the 20th anniversary of the publication of the human genome. Today, about 30 million people have had their genomes sequenced. This remarkable progress has brought with it issues of data sharing, privacy, and inequality.
Host Sarah Crespi spoke with a number of researchers about the state of genome science, starting with Yaniv Erlich, from the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science and CEO of Eleven Biotherapeutics, who talks about privacy in the age of easily obtainable genomes.
Next up Charles Rotimi, director of the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health at the National Human Genome Research Institute, discusses diversity—or lack thereof—in the field and what it means for the kinds of research that happens.
Finally, Dorothy Roberts, professor in the departments of Africana studies and sociology and the law school at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about the seemingly never-ending project of disentangling race and genomes.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Holly Gramazio/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
171. Making ecology studies replicable, and a turnaround for the Tasmanian devilЧт, 10 дек 2020[-/+] The field of psychology underwent a replication crisis and saw a sea change in scientific and publishing practices, could ecology be next? News Intern Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the launch of a new society for ecologists looking to make the field more rigorous.
Sarah also talks with Andrew Storfer, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University, Pullman, about the fate of the Tasmanian devil. Since the end of the last century, these carnivorous marsupials have been decimated by a transmissible facial tumor. Now, it looks like—despite many predictions of extinction—the devils may be turning a corner.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: The Mammals of Australia, John Gould, 1804-1881/Biodiversity Library/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
174. Fish farming’s future, and how microbes compete for space on our faceЧт, 19 ноя 2020[-/+] These days about half of the protein the world’s population eats is from seafood. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how brand-new biotech and old-fashion breeding programs are helping keep up with demand, by expanding where we can farm fish and how fast we can grow them.
Sarah also spoke with Jan Claesen, an assistant professor at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, about skin microbes that use their own antibiotic to fight off harmful bacteria. Understanding the microbes native to our skin and the molecules they produce could lead to treatments for skin disorders such as atopic dermatitis and acne.
Finally, in a segment sponsored by MilliporeSigma, Science’s Custom Publishing Director and Senior Editor, Sean Sanders, talks with Timothy Cernak, an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Chemistry at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, about retrosynthesis—the process of starting with a known chemical final product and figuring out how to make that molecule efficiently from available pieces.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: Erik Christensen/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook, Podington Bear]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
175. How the human body handles extreme heat, and improvements in cooling clothesЧт, 12 ноя 2020[-/+] This week the whole show focuses on keeping cool in a warming world. First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Senior News Correspondent Elizabeth Pennisi about the latest research into how to stay safe when things heat up—whether you’re running marathons or fighting fires.
Sarah also talks with Po-Chun Hsu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke University, about the future of cooling fabrics for everyday use. It turns out we can save a lot of energy and avoid carbon dioxide emissions by wearing clothing designed to keep us cool in slightly warmer buildings than we’re used to now. But the question is, will cooling clothes ever be “cool”?
Visit the whole special issue on cooling.
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[Image: J. Bartlett Team Rubicon/BLM for USFS/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elizabeth Pennisi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
177. Taking the politicians out of tough policy decisions; the late, great works of Charles Turner; and the science of cookingЧт, 29 окт 2020[-/+] First up, host Sarah Crespi talks to News Intern Cathleen O’Grady about the growing use of citizens’ assemblies, or “minipublics,” to deliberate on tough policy questions like climate change and abortion. Can random groups of citizens do a better job forming policy than politicians?
Next, we feature the latest of a new series of insight pieces that revisit landmark Science papers. Sarah talks with Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona, a Ph.D. student at Queen Mary University of London, about Charles Turner, a Black zoologist who published multiple times in Science in the early 1900s. Despite being far ahead of his time in his studies of animal cognition, Turner’s work was long overlooked—due in large part to the many difficulties facing a Black man in academia at the turn of the century.
Finally, in our monthly books segment, host Kiki Sanford chats with author Pia Sorensen about her new book: Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, From Homemade to Haute Cuisine.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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180. Visiting a once-watery asteroid, and how buzzing the tongue can treat tinnitusЧт, 08 окт 2020[-/+] First up, Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to the asteroid Bennu. After OSIRIS-REx’s up-close surveys of the surface revealed fewer likely touchdown points than expected, its sampling mission has been rejiggered. Paul talks about the prospects for a safe sampling in mid-October and what we might learn when the craft returns to Earth in 2023.
Sarah also talks with Hubert Lim, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Neuromod Devices Limited, about his Science Translational Medicine paper on a new treatment for tinnitus. The team showed that bimodal stimulation—playing sounds in the ear and buzzes on the tongue—was able to change the brain and turn down the tinnitus in a large clinical trial.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Extra audio credits: Tinnitus sound samples courtesy of the American tinnitus Association. Treatment samples courtesy of Neuromod Ltd.
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[Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr/NASA/Goddard; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
192. Reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, and taking the heat out of crude oil separationЧт, 16 июл 2020[-/+] Contributing correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks about what can be learned from schools around the world that have reopened during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, few systematic studies have been done but observations of outbreaks in schools in places such as France or Israel do offer a few lessons for countries looking to send kids back to school soon. The United Kingdom and Germany have started studies of how the virus spreads in children and at school, but results are months away. In the meantime, Gretchen’s reporting suggests small class sizes, masks, and social distancing among the adults at school are particularly important measures.
Read all our coronavirus news coverage.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Kirstie Thompson, a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, about increasing the efficiency of petroleum processing. If all—or even some—petroleum processing goes heat free, it would mean big energy savings. Around the world, about 1% of all energy use goes to heating up petroleum in order to get useful things such as gas for cars or polymers for plastics. These days, this separation is done through distillation, heating and separating by boiling point. Kirstie describes a heat-free way of getting this separation—by using a special membrane instead.
Read a related Insight.
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[Image: Kurt Bauschardt/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
194. An oasis of biodiversity a Mexican desert, and making sound from heatЧт, 02 июл 2020[-/+] First up this week, News Intern Rodrigo Perez-Ortega talks with host Meagan Cantwell about an oasis of biodiversity in the striking blue pools of Cuatro Cienegas, a basin in northern Mexico. Researchers have published dozens of papers exploring the unique microorganisms that thrive in this area, while at the same time fighting large agricultural industries draining the precious water from the pools.
David Tatnell, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Exeter, talks with host Sarah Crespi about using heat to make sound, a phenomenon known as thermoacoustics. Just like the sound of fire or thunder, sudden changes in temperature can create sound waves. In his team’s paper in Science Advances, Tatnell and colleagues describe a thermoacoustic speaker that uses thin, heated films to make sound. This approach cuts out the crosstalk seen in mechanical speakers and allows for extreme miniaturization of sound production. In the ultrasound range, arrays of thermoacoustic speakers could improve acoustic levitation and ultrasound imaging. In the hearing range, the speakers could be made extremely small, flexible, and even transparent.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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[Image: David Jaramillo; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Rodrigo Perez-Ortega, Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
195. Stopping the spread of COVID-19, and arctic adaptations in sled dogsЧт, 25 июн 2020[-/+] Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies how ocean waves disperse virus-laden aerosols, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how she became an outspoken advocate for using masks to prevent coronavirus transmission. A related insight she wrote for Science has been downloaded more than 1 million times.
Read Science’s coronavirus coverage.
Mikkel Sinding, a postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College Dublin, talks sled dog genes with Sarah. After comparing the genomes of modern dogs, Greenland sled dogs, and an ancient dog jaw bone found on a remote Siberian island where dogs may have pulled sleds some 9500 years ago, they found that modern Greenland dogs—which are still used to pull sleds today— have much in common with this ancient Siberian ancestor. Those similarities include genes related to eating high-fat diets and cold-sensing genes previously identified in woolly mammoths.
In this month's book segment, Kiki Sanford talks with Rutger Bregman about his book, Humankind: A Hopeful History which outlines a shift in the thinking of many social scientists to a view of humans as more peaceful than warlike.
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[Image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi;
Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/stopping-spread-covid-19-and-arctic-adaptations-sled-dogs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
197. The facts on COVID-19 contact tracing apps, and benefits of returning sea otters to the wildЧт, 11 июн 2020[-/+] Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the ins and outs of coronavirus contact tracing apps—what they do, how they work, and how to calculate whether they are crushing the curve.
Read all our coronavirus coverage.
Edward Gregr, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, talks with Sarah about the controversial reintroduction of sea otters to the Northern Pacific Ocean—their home for centuries, before the fur trade nearly wiped out the apex predator in the late 1800s. Gregr brings a unique cost-benefit perspective to his analysis, and finds many trade-offs with economic implications for fisheries For example, sea otters eat shellfish like urchins and crabs, depressing the shellfishing industry; but their diet encourages the growth of kelp forests, which in turn provide a habitat for economically important finfish, like salmon and rockfish. Read a related commentary article.
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200. How scientists are thinking about reopening labs, and the global threat of arsenic in drinking waterЧт, 21 мая 2020[-/+] Online news editor David Grimm talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the unique challenges of reopening labs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Though the chance to resume research may instill a sense of hope, new policies around physical distancing and access to facilities threaten to derail studies—and even careers. Despite all the uncertainty, the crisis could result in new approaches that ultimately benefit the scientific community, and the world.
Also this week, Joel Podgorski, a senior scientist in the Water Resources and Drinking Water Department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the global threat of arsenic in drinking water. Arsenic is basically present in all rocks in minute amounts. Under the right conditions it can leach into groundwater and poison drinking water. Without a noticeable taste or smell, arsenic contamination can go undetected for years. The paper, published in Science, estimates that more than 100 million people are at risk of drinking arsenic contaminated water and provides a guide for the most important places to test.
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[Image: Ian Aiden Relkoff/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; David Grimm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
201. How past pandemics reinforced inequality, and millions of mysterious quakes beneath a volcanoЧт, 14 мая 2020[-/+] Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of inequality in past pandemics. Evidence from medical records and cemeteries suggests diseases like the 1918 flu, smallpox, and even the Black Death weren’t indiscriminately killing people—instead these infections caused more deaths in those with less money or status.
Also this week, Aaron Wech, a research geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, joins Sarah to talk about recordings of more than 1 million earthquakes from deep under Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano, which hasn’t erupted in 4500 years. They discuss how these earthquakes, which have repeated every 7 to 12 minutes for at least 20 years, went undetected for so long.
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209. Ancient artifacts on the beaches of Northern Europe, and how we remember musicЧт, 19 мар 2020[-/+] On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg talks with science journalist Andrew Curry about recent archaeological finds along the shores of Northern Europe. Curry outlines the rich history of the region that scientists, citizen scientists, and energy companies have helped dredge up.
Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Elizabeth Margulis, a professor at Princeton University, about musical memory. Margulis dives into several music cognition studies, as well as her own study on how Western and non-western audiences interpret the same song differently.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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210. Science’s leading role in the restoration of Notre Dame and the surprising biology behind how our body develops its tough skinЧт, 12 мар 2020[-/+] On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Leste-Lasserre talks with host Sarah Crespi about the scientists working on the restoration of Notre Dame, from testing the changing weight of wet limestone, to how to remove lead contamination from four-story stained glass windows. As the emergency phase of work winds down, scientists are also starting to use the lull in tourist activity to investigate the mysteries of the cathedral’s construction.
Also this week, Felipe Quiroz, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, talks with Sarah about his paper on the cellular mechanism of liquid-liquid phase separation in the formation of the tough outer layer of the skin. Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids “demix,” or separate, like oil and water. In cells, this process created membraneless organelles that are just now starting to be understood. In this work, Quiroz and colleagues create a sensor for phase separation in the cell that works in living tissue, and show how phase separation is tied to the formation of the outer layers of skin in mice. Read the related Insight.
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212. An ancient empire hiding in plain sight, and the billion-dollar cost of illegal fishingЧт, 27 фев 2020[-/+] This week on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a turning point for one ancient Mesoamerican city: Tikal. On 16 January 378 C.E., the Maya city lost its leader and the replacement may have been a stranger. We know from writings that the new leader wore the garb of another culture—the Teotihuacan—who lived in a giant city 1000 kilometers away. But was this new ruler of a Maya city really from a separate culture? New techniques being used at the Tikal and Teotihuacan sites have revealed conflicting evidence as to whether Teotihuacan really held sway over a much larger region than previously estimated.
Sarah also talks with Rashid Sumaila, professor and Canada research chair in interdisciplinary ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. You may have heard of illegal fishing being bad for the environment or bad for maintaining fisheries—but as Sumaila and colleagues report this week in Science Advances, the illegal fishing trade is also incredibly costly—with gross revenues of between $8.9 billion and $17.2 billion each year.
In the books segment this month, Kiki Sanford interviews Gaia Vince about her new book Transcendence
How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time.
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220. Areas to watch in 2020, and how carnivorous plants evolved impressive trapsЧт, 02 янв 2020[-/+] We start our first episode of the new year looking at future trends in policy and research with host Joel Goldberg and several Science News writers. Jeffrey Mervis discusses upcoming policy changes, Kelly Servick gives a rundown of areas to watch in the life sciences, and Ann Gibbons talks about potential advances in ancient proteins and DNA.
In research news, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Beatriz Pinto-Goncalves, a post-doctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre, about carnivorous plant traps. Through understanding the mechanisms that create these traps, Pinto-Goncalves and colleagues elucidate what this could mean for how they emerged in the evolutionary history of plants.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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221. Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in booksЧт, 19 дек 2019[-/+] As the year comes to a close, we review the best science, the best stories, and the best books from 2019. Our end-of-the-year episode kicks off with Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm talking about the top online stories on things like human self-domestication, the “wood wide web,” and more.
News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins Sarah to discuss Science’s 2019 Breakthrough of the Year, some of the contenders for breakthrough, also known as runners-up, and the breakdowns—when science and politics just didn’t seem to mix this year.
Finally, Science books editor Valerie Thompson brings her favorites from the world of science-inflected media. She and Sarah talk about some of the best books reviewed in Science this year, a food extinction book we should have reviewed, a pair of science-centric films, and even an award-winning birding board game.
For more science books, films, and games, visit the books et al blog at blogs.sciencemag.org/books.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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222. Hunting for new epilepsy drugs, and capturing lightning from spaceПт, 13 дек 2019[-/+] About one-third of people with epilepsy are treatment resistant. Up until now, epilepsy treatments have focused on taming seizures rather than the source of the disease and for good reason—so many roads lead to epilepsy: traumatic brain injury, extreme fever and infection, and genetic disorders, to name a few. Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about researchers that are turning back the pages on epilepsy, trying to get to the beginning of the story where new treatments might work.
And Sarah also talks with Torsten Neurbert at the Technical University of Denmark’s National Space Institute in Kongens Lyngby about capturing high-altitude “transient luminous events” from the International Space Station (ISS). These lightning-induced bursts of light, color, and occasionally gamma rays were first reported in the 1990s but had only been recorded from the ground or aircraft. With new measurements from the ISS come new insights into the anatomy of lightning.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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223. Debating lab monkey retirement, and visiting a near-Earth asteroidЧт, 05 дек 2019[-/+] After their life as research subjects, what happens to lab monkeys? Some are euthanized to complete the research, others switch to new research projects, and some retire from lab life. Should they retire in place—in the same lab under the care of the same custodians—or should they be sent to retirement home–like sanctuaries? Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss recently penned legislation that pushes for monkey retirements and a new collaboration between universities and sanctuaries to create a retirement pipeline for these primates.
Sarah also talks with Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) and a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, about the latest news from the asteroid Bennu. Within 1 week of beginning its orbit of the asteroid, OSIRIS-REx was able to send back surprising images of the asteroid ejecting material. It’s extremely rocky surface also took researchers by surprise and forced a recalculation of the sample return portion of the craft’s mission.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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224. Double dipping in an NIH loan repayment program, and using undersea cables as seismic sensorsЧт, 28 ноя 2019[-/+] The National Institutes of Health’s largest loan repayment program was conceived to help scientists pay off school debts without relying on industry funding. But a close examination of the program by investigative correspondent Charles Piller has revealed that many participants are taking money from the government to repay their loans, while at the same time taking payments from pharmaceutical companies. Piller joins Host Sarah Crespi to talk about the steps he took to uncover this double dipping and why ethicists say this a conflict of interest.
Sarah also talks with Nate Lindsey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, about turning a 50-meter undersea fiber optic cable designed to move data into a sensor for activity in the ocean and the land underneath. During a 4-day test in Monterey Bay, California, the cable detected earthquakes, faults, waves, and even ocean-going storms.
For this month’s books segment, Kiki Sandford talks with Dan Hooper about his book At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds.
You can find more books segments on the Books et al. blog.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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225. Building a landslide observatory, and the universality of musicЧт, 21 ноя 2019[-/+] You may have seen the aftermath of a landslide, driving along a twisty mountain road—a scattering of rocks and scree impinging on the pavement. And up until now, that’s pretty much how scientists have tracked landslides—roadside observations and spotty satellite images. Now, researchers are hoping to track landslides systematically by instrumenting an entire national park in Taiwan. The park is riddled with landslides—so much so that visitors wear helmets. Host Sarah Crespi talks with one of those visitors—freelance science journalist Katherine Kornei—about what we can learn from landslides.
In a second rocking segment, Sarah also talks with Manvir Singh about the universality of music. His team asked the big questions in a Science paper out this week: Do all societies make music? What are the common elements that can be picked out from songs worldwide? Sarah and Manvir listen to songs and talk about what love ballads and lullabies have in common, regardless of their culture of origin.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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226. How to make an Arctic ship ‘vanish,’ and how fast-moving spikes are heating the Sun’s atmosphereЧт, 14 ноя 2019[-/+] The Polarstern research vessel will spend 1 year locked in an Arctic ice floe. Aboard the ship and on the nearby ice, researchers will take measurements of the ice, air, water, and more in an effort to understand this pristine place. Science journalist Shannon Hall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her time aboard the Polarstern and how difficult these measurements are, when the researchers’ temporary Arctic home is the noisiest, smokiest, brightest thing around.
After that icy start, Sarah talks also with Tanmoy Samanta, a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University in Beijing, about the source of the extreme temperature of the Sun’s corona, which can be up to 1 million K hotter than the surface of the Sun. His team’s careful measurements of spicules—small, plentiful, short-lived spikes of plasma that constantly ruffle the Sun’s surface—and the magnetic networks that seem to generate these spikes, suggest a solution to the long-standing problem of how spicules arise and, at the same time, their likely role in the heating of the corona.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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227. Unearthing slavery in the Caribbean, and the Catholic Church’s influence on modern psychologyЧт, 07 ноя 2019[-/+] Most historical accounts of slavery were written by colonists and planters. Researchers are now using the tools of archaeology to learn more about the day-to-day lives of enslaved Africans—how they survived the conditions of slavery, how they participated in local economies, and how they maintained their own agency. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about a Caribbean archaeology project based on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and launched by the founders of the Society for Black Archaeologists that aims to unearth these details. Watch a related video here.
Sarah also talks with Jonathan Schulz, a professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, about a role for the medieval Roman Catholic Church in so-called WEIRD psychology—western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. The bulk of psychology experiments have used participants that could be described as WEIRD, and according to many psychological measures, WEIRD subjects tend to have some extreme traits, like a stronger tendency toward individuality and more friendliness with strangers. Schulz and colleagues used historical maps and measures of kinship structure to tie these traits to strict marriage rules enforced by the medieval Catholic Church in Western Europe. Read related commentary.
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228. How measles wipes out immune memory, and detecting small black holesЧт, 31 окт 2019[-/+] Measles is a dangerous infection that can kill. As many as 100,000 people die from the disease each year. For those who survive infection, the virus leaves a lasting mark—it appears to wipe out the immune system’s memory. News Intern Eva Fredrick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a pair of studies that looked at how this happens in children’s immune systems.
Read the related studies in Science and Science Immunology.
In our second segment this week, Sarah talks with Todd Thompson, of Ohio State University in Columbus, about his effort to find a small black hole in a binary pair with a red giant star. Usually black holes are detected because they are accruing matter and as the matter interacts with the black hole, x-rays are released. Without this flashy signal, black hole detection gets much harder. Astronomers must look for the gravitational influence of the black holes on nearby stars—which is easier to spot when the black hole is massive. Thompson talks with Sarah about a new approach to finding small, noninteracting black holes.
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229. A worldwide worm survey, and racial bias in a health care algorithmЧт, 24 окт 2019[-/+] Earthworms are easy … to find. But despite their prevalence and importance to ecosystems around the world, there hasn’t been a comprehensive survey of earthworm diversity or population size. This week in Science, Helen Philips, a postdoctoral fellow at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Institute of Biology at Leipzig University, and colleagues published the results of their worldwide earthworm study, composed of data sets from many worm researchers around the globe. Host Sarah Crespi gets the lowdown from Philips on earthworm myths, collaborating with worm researchers, and links between worm populations and climate. Read a related commentary here.
Sarah also talks with Ziad Obermeyer, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, about dissecting out bias in an algorithm used by health care systems in the United States to recommend patients for additional health services. With unusual access to a proprietary algorithm, inputs, and outputs, Obermeyer and his colleagues found that the low amount of health care dollars spent on black patients in the past caused the algorithm to underestimate their risk for poor health in the future. Obermeyer and Sarah discuss how this happened and remedies that are already in progress. Read a related commentary here.
Finally, in the monthly books segment, books host Kiki Sanford interviews author Alice Gorman about her book Dr. Space Junk vs The Universe: Archaeology and the Future. Listen to more book segments on the Science books blog: Books, et al.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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230. Trying to find the mind in the brain, and why adults are always criticizing ‘kids these days’Чт, 17 окт 2019[-/+] We don’t know where consciousness comes from. And we don’t know whether animals have it, or whether we can detect it in patients in comas. Do neuroscientists even know where to look? A new competition aims to narrow down the bewildering number of theories of consciousness and get closer to finding its biological signs by pitting different theories against each other in experimental settings. Freelance journalist Sara Reardon talks with host Sarah Crespi about how the competition will work.
In our second segment, we talk about how we think about children. For thousands of years, adults have complained about their lack of respect, intelligence, and tendency to distraction, compared with previous generations. A new study out this week in Science Advances suggests our own biased childhood memories might be at fault. Sarah Crespi talks with John Protzko of the University of California, Santa Barbara, about how terrible people thought kids were in 3800 B.C.E. and whether understanding those biases might change how people view Generation Z today.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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231. Fossilized dinosaur proteins, and making a fridge from rubber bandsЧт, 10 окт 2019[-/+] Have you ever tried to scrub off the dark, tarlike residue on a grill? That tough stuff is made up of polymers—basically just byproducts of cooking—and it is so persistent that researchers have found similar molecules that have survived hundreds of millions of years. And these aren’t from cook fires. They are actually the byproducts of death and fossilization. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel about how these molecules can be found on the surface of certain fossils and used as fingerprints for the proteins that once dwelled in dinos.
And Sarah talks with Zunfeng Liu, a professor at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, about a new cooling technology based on a 100-year-old observation that a stretched rubber band is warm and a relaxed one is cool. It’s going to be hard to beat the 60% efficiency of compression-based refrigerators and air conditioning units, but Zunfeng and colleagues aim to try, with twists and coils that can cool water by 7°C when relaxed.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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232. An app for eye disease, and planting memories in songbirdsЧт, 03 окт 2019[-/+] Host Sarah Crespi talks with undergraduate student Micheal Munson from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, about a smartphone app that scans photos in the phone’s library for eye disease in kids.
And Sarah talks with Todd Roberts of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, about incepting memories into zebra finches to study how they learn their songs. Using a technique called optogenetics—in which specific neurons can be controlled by pulses of light—the researchers introduced false song memories by turning on neurons in different patterns, with longer or shorter note durations than typical zebra finch songs.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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233. Privacy concerns slow Facebook studies, and how human fertility depends on chromosome countsЧт, 26 сен 2019[-/+] On this week’s show, Senior News Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis talks with host Sarah Crespi about a stalled Facebook plan to release user data to social scientists who want to study the site’s role in elections.
Sarah also talks with Jennifer Gruhn, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Copenhagen Center for Chromosome Stability, about counting chromosomes in human egg cells. It turns out that cell division errors that cause too many or too few chromosomes to remain in the egg may shape human fertility over our reproductive lives.
Finally, in this month’s book segment, Kiki Sanford talks with Daniel Navon about his book Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy. Visit the books blog for more author interviews: Books et al.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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234. Cooling Earth with asteroid dust, and 3 billion missing birdsЧт, 19 сен 2019[-/+] On this week’s show, science journalist Josh Sokol talks about a global cooling event sparked by space dust that lead to a huge shift in animal and plant diversity 466 million years ago. (Read the related research article in Science Advances.)
And I talk with Kenneth Rosenberg, an applied conservation scientist at Cornell University, about steep declines in bird abundance in the United States and Canada. His team estimates about 3 billion birds have gone missing since the 1970s.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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235. Studying human health at 5100 meters, and playing hide and seek with ratsЧт, 12 сен 2019[-/+] In La Rinconada, Peru, a town 5100 meters up in the Peruvian Andes, residents get by breathing air with 50% less oxygen than at sea level. International News Editor Martin Enserink visited the site with researchers studying chronic mountain sickness—when the body makes excess red blood cells in an effort to cope with oxygen deprivation—in these extreme conditions. Martin talks with host Sarah Crespi about how understanding why this illness occurs in some people and not others could help the residents of La Rinconada and the 140 million people worldwide living above 2500 meters. Read the whole special issue on mountains.
Sarah also talks with Annika Stefanie Reinhold about her work at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin training rats to play hide and seek. Surprisingly, rats learned the game easily and were even able to switch roles—sometimes playing as the seeker, other times the hider. Annika talks with Sarah about why studying play behavior in animals is important for understanding the connections between play and learning in both rats and humans.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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236. Searching for a lost Maya city, and measuring the information density of languageЧт, 05 сен 2019[-/+] This week’s show starts with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade, who spent 12 days with archaeologists searching for a lost Maya city in the Chiapas wilderness in Mexico. She talks with host Sarah Crespi about how you lose a city—and how you might go about finding one.
And Sarah talks with Christophe Coupe, an associate professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Hong Kong in China, about the information density of different languages. His work, published this week in Science Advances, suggests very different languages—from Chinese to Japanese to English and French—are all equally efficient at conveying information.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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237. Where our microbiome came from, and how our farming and hunting ancestors transformed the worldЧт, 29 авг 2019[-/+] Micro-organisms live inside everything from the human gut to coral—but where do they come from? Host Meagan Cantwell talks to Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi about the first comprehensive survey of microbes in Hawaii’s Waimea Valley, which revealed that plants and animals get their unique microbiomes from organisms below them in the food chain or the wider environment.
Going global, Meagan then speaks with Erle Ellis, professor of geography and environmental science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, about a project that aggregated the expertise of more than 250 archaeologists to map human land use over the past 10,000 years. This detailed map will help fine-tune climate models.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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238. Promising approaches in suicide prevention, and how to retreat from climate changeЧт, 22 авг 2019[-/+] Changing the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline from 1-800-273- 8255 (TALK) to a three-digit number could save lives—especially when coupled with other strategies. Host Meagan Cantwell talks to Greg Miller, a science journalist based in Portland, Oregon, about three effective methods to prevent suicides—crisis hotlines, standardizing mental health care, and restricting lethal means. Greg’s feature is part of a larger package in Science exploring paths out of darkness.
With more solutions this week, host Sarah Crespi speaks with A. R. Siders, a social scientist at the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware in Newark, about her policy forum on the need for “managed climate retreat”—strategically moving people and property away from high-risk flood and fire zones. Integrating relocation into a larger strategy could maximize its benefits, supporting equality and economic development along the way.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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239. One million ways to sex a chicken egg, and how plastic finds its way to Arctic iceЧт, 15 авг 2019[-/+] Researchers, regulators, and the chicken industry are all united in their search for a way to make eggs more ethical by stopping culling—the killing of male chicks born to laying hens. Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks with host Sarah Crespi about the many approaches being tried to determine the sex of chicken embryos before they hatch, from robots with lasers, to MRIs, to artificial intelligence, to gene editing with CRISPR.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Melanie Bergmann, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, about finding microplastic particles in snow all the way up at the Fram Strait, between Greenland and the Svalbarg archipelago in Norway.
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240. Next-generation cellphone signals could interfere with weather forecasts, and monitoring smoke from wildfires to model nuclear winterЧт, 08 авг 2019[-/+] In recent months, telecommunications companies in the United States have purchased a new part of the spectrum for use in 5G cellphone networks. Weather forecasters are concerned that these powerful signals could swamp out weaker signals from water vapor—which are in a nearby band and important for weather prediction. Freelance science writer Gabriel Popkin joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the possible impact of cellphone signals on weather forecasting and some suggested regulations.
In other weather news this week, Sarah talks with Pengfei Yu, a professor at Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, about his group’s work using a huge smoke plume from the 2017 wildfires in western Canada as a model for smoke from nuclear bombs. They found the wildfire smoke lofted itself 23 kilometers into the stratosphere, spread across the Northern Hemisphere, and took 8 months to dissipate, which line up with models of nuclear winter and suggests these fires can help predict the results of a nuclear war.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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241. Earthquakes caused by too much water extraction, and a dog cancer that has lived for millenniaЧт, 01 авг 2019[-/+] After two mysterious earthquake swarms occurred under the Sea of Galilee, researchers found a relationship between these small quakes and the excessive extraction of groundwater. Science journalist Michael Price talks with host Sarah Crespi about making this connection and what it means for water-deprived fault areas like the Sea of Galilee and the state of California.
Also this week, Sarah talks with graduate student Adrian Baez-Ortega from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom’s Transmissible Cancer Group about the genome of a canine venereal cancer that has been leaping from dog to dog for about 8000 years. By comparing the genomes of this cancer from dogs around the globe, the researchers were able to learn more about its origins and spread around the world. They also discuss how such a long-lived cancer might help them better understand and treat human cancers.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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242. Breeding better bees, and training artificial intelligence on emotional imageryЧт, 25 июл 2019[-/+] Imagine having a rat clinging to your back, sucking out your fat stores. That’s similar to what infested bees endure when the Varroa destructor mite comes calling. Some bees fight back, wiggling, scratching, and biting until the mites depart for friendlier backs. Now, researchers, professional beekeepers, and hobbyists are working on ways to breed into bees these mite-defeating behaviors to rid them of these damaging pests. Host Sarah Crespi and Staff Writer Erik Stokstad discuss the tactics of, and the hurdles to, pesticide-free mite control.
Also this week, Sarah talks to Philip Kragel of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado in Boulder about training an artificial intelligence on emotionally charged images. The ultimate aim of this research: to understand how the human visual system is involved in processing emotion.
And in books, Kate Eichorn, author of The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media, joins books host Kiki Sanford to talk about how the monetization of digital information has led to the ease of social media sharing and posting for kids and adults.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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243. Can we inherit trauma from our ancestors, and the secret to dark liquid dancesЧт, 18 июл 2019[-/+] Can we inherit trauma from our ancestors? Studies of behavior and biomarkers have suggested the stress of harsh conditions or family separations can be passed down, even beyond one’s children. Journalist Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a possible mechanism for this mode of inheritance and mouse studies that suggest possible ways to reverse the effects.
Spiky, pulsating ferrofluids are perpetual YouTube stars. The secret to these dark liquid dances is the manipulation of magnetic nanoparticles in the liquid by external magnets. But when those outside forces are removed, the dance ends. Now, researchers writing in Science have created permanently magnetic fluids that respond to other magnets, electricity, and pH by changing shape, moving, and—yes—probably even dancing. Sarah Crespi talks to Thomas Russell of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst about the about the applications of these squishy, responsive magnets.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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244. The point of pointing, and using seabirds to track ocean healthЧт, 11 июл 2019[-/+] You can learn a lot about ocean health from seabirds. For example, breeding failures among certain birds have been linked to the later collapse of some fisheries. Enriqueta Velarde of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa, Mexico, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what these long-lived fliers can tell us about the ocean and its inhabitants.
Also this week, Sarah and Cathal O’Madagain of the Ecole Normale Supe?rieure in Paris discuss pointing—a universal human gesture common to almost all children before age 1. They discuss why pointing matters, and how this simple gesture may underlie humans’ amazing ability to collaborate and coordinate.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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245. Converting carbon dioxide into gasoline, and ‘autofocal’ glasses with lenses that change shape on the flyЧт, 04 июл 2019[-/+] Chemists have long known how to convert carbon dioxide into fuels—but up until now, such processes have been too expensive for commercial use. Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about using new filters and catalysts to close the gap between air-derived and fossil-derived gasoline.
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Nitish Padmanaban of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, about replacing bifocals with “autofocals.” These auto-focusing glasses track your eye position and measure the distance to the visual target before adjusting the thickness of their liquid lenses. The prototype glasses have an onboard camera and batteries that make them particularly bulky; however, they still outperformed progressive lenses in tests of focus speed and acuity.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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246. Creating chimeras for organ transplants and how bats switch between their eyes and ears on the wingЧт, 27 июн 2019[-/+] Researchers have been making animal embryos from two different species, so-called “chimeras,” for years, by introducing stem cells from one species into a very early embryo of another species. The ultimate goal is to coax the foreign cells into forming an organ for transplantation. But questions abound: Can evolutionarily distant animals, like pigs and humans, be mixed together to produce such organs? Or could species closely related to us, like chimps and macaques, stand in for tests with human cells? Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the research, the regulations, and the growing ethical debate.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Yossi Yovel of the School of Zoology and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University in Israel about his work on sensory integration in bats. Writing in Science Advances, he and his colleagues show through several clever experiments when bats switch between echolocation and vision. Yossi and Sarah discuss how these trade-offs in bats can inform larger questions about our own perception.
For our monthly books segment, Science books editor Valerie Thompson talks with Lucy Jones of the Seismological Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena about a song she created, based on 130 years of temperature data, for an instrument called the “viola de gamba.” Read more on the Books et al. blog.
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247. The why of puppy dog eyes, and measuring honesty on a global scaleЧт, 20 июн 2019[-/+] How can you resist puppy dog eyes? This sweet, soulful look might very well have been bred into canines by their intended victims—humans. Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Meagan Cantwell about a new study on the evolution of this endearing facial maneuver. David also talks about what diseased dog spines can tell us about early domestication—were these marks of hard work or a gentler old age for our doggy domestics?
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Michel Marechal of the University of Zurich in Switzerland about honesty around the globe. By tracking about 17,000 wallets left at hotels, post offices, and banks, his team found that we humans are a lot more honest than either economic models or our own intuitions give us credit for.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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248. Better hurricane forecasts and spotting salts on Jupiter’s moon EuropaЧт, 13 июн 2019[-/+] We’ve all seen images or animations of hurricanes that color code the wind speeds inside the whirling mass—but it turns out we can do a better job measuring these winds and, as a result, better predict the path of the storm. Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how a microsatellite-based project for measuring hurricane wind speeds is showing signs of success—despite unexpected obstacles from the U.S. military’s tweaking of GPS signals.
Also this week, Sarah talks with graduate student Samantha Trumbo, a Ph.D. candidate in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, about spotting chloride salts on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. What can these salts on the surface tell us about the oceans that lie beneath Europa’s icy crust?
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249. The limits on human endurance, and a new type of LEDЧт, 06 июн 2019[-/+] Cheap and easy to make, perovskite minerals have become the wonder material of solar energy. Now, scientists are turning from using perovskites to capture light to using them to emit it. Staff Writer Robert Service joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using these minerals in all kinds of light-emitting diodes, from cellphones to flat screen TVs.
Read the related paper in Science Advances.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Caitlin Thurber, a biologist at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, about a hard limit on human endurance. Her group used data from transcontinental racers—who ran 957 kilometers over the course of 20 weeks—and found that after about 100 days, their metabolism settled in at about 2.5 times the baseline rate, suggesting a hard limit on human endurance at long timescales. Earlier studies based on the 23-day Tour de France found much higher levels of energy expenditure, in the four- to five-times-baseline range.
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250. Grad schools dropping the GRE requirement and AIs play capture the flagЧт, 30 мая 2019[-/+] Up until this year, most U.S. graduate programs in the sciences required the General Record Examination from applicants. But concerns about what the test scores actually say about potential students and the worry that the cost is a barrier to many have led to a rapid and dramatic reduction in the number of programs requiring the test. Science Staff Writer Katie Langin joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this trend and how it differs across disciplines.
Also this week, Sarah talks with DeepMind’s Max Jaderberg in London about training artificial agents to play a video game version of capture the flag. The agents played approximately 4 years’ worth of Quake III Arena and came out better than even expert human players at both cooperating and collaborating, even when their computer-quick reflexes were hampered.
And in this month’s book segment, new host Kiki Sanford interviews Marcus Du Satoy about his book The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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251. New targets for the world’s biggest atom smasher and wood designed to cool buildingsЧт, 23 мая 2019[-/+] The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built with one big goal in mind: to find the Higgs boson. It did just that in 2012. But the question on many physicists’ minds about the LHC is, “What have you done for me lately?” Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about proposals to look at the showers of particles created by its proton collisions in new ways—from changing which events are recorded, to changing how the data are analyzed, even building more detectors outside of the LHC proper—all in the hopes that strange, longer-lived particles are being generated but missed by the current set up.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Tian Li of the University of Maryland in College Park about a modified wood designed to passively cool buildings. Starting from its humble roots in the forest, the wood is given a makeover: First it is bleached white to eliminate pigments that absorb light. Next, it is hot pressed, which adds strength and durability. Most importantly, these processes allow the wood to emit in the middle-infrared range, so that when facing the sky, heat passes through the wood out to the giant heat sink of outer space.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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252. Nonstick chemicals that stick around and detecting ear infections with smartphonesЧт, 16 мая 2019[-/+] The groundwater of Rockford, Michigan, is contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals found in everything from nonstick pans to dental floss to—in the case of Rockford—waterproofing agents from a shoe factory that shut down in 2009. Science journalist Sara Talpos talks with host Meagan Cantwell about how locals found the potentially health-harming chemicals in their water, and how contamination from nonstick chemicals isn’t limited to Michigan.
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Shyamnath Gollakota of the University of Washington in Seattle about his work diagnosing ear infections with smartphones. With the right app and a small paper cone, it turns out that your phone can listen for excess fluid in the ear by bouncing quiet clicks from the speaker off the eardrum. Clinical testing shows the setup is simple to use and can help parents and doctors check children for this common infection.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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253. Probing the secrets of the feline mind and how Uber and Lyft may be making traffic worseЧт, 09 мая 2019[-/+] Dog cognition and social behavior have hogged the scientific limelight for years—showing in study after study that canines have social skills essential to their relationships with people. Cats, not so much. These often-fractious felines tend to balk at strange situations—be they laboratories, MRI machines, or even a slightly noisy fan. Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss several brave research labs that have started to work with cats on their terms in order to show they have social smarts comparable to dogs. So far, the results suggest that despite their different ancestors and paths to domestication, cats and dogs have a lot more in common then we previously thought.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Greg Erhardt, assistant professor of civil engineering at University of Kentucky in Lexington about the effect of ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft on traffic in San Francisco, California. His group’s work showed that when comparing 2010 and 2016 traffic, these services contributed significantly to increases in congestion in a large growing city like San Francisco, but questions still remain about how much can be generalized to other cities or lower density areas.
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254. The age-old quest for the color blue and why pollution is not killing the killifishЧт, 02 мая 2019[-/+] Humans have sought new materials to make elusive blue pigments for millennia—with mixed success. Today, scientists are tackling this blue-hued problem from many different angles. Host Sarah Crespi talks with contributing correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt about how scientists are looking to algae, bacteria, flowers—even minerals from deep under Earth’s crust—in the age-old quest for the rarest of pigments.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Andrew Whitehead, associate professor in the department of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Davis, about how the Atlantic killifish rescued its cousin, the gulf killifish, from extreme pollution. Whitehead talks about how a gene exchange occurred between these species that normally live thousands of kilometers apart, and whether this research could inform future conservation efforts.
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255. Race and disease risk and Berlin’s singing nightingalesЧт, 25 апр 2019[-/+] Noncancerous tumors of the uterus—also known as fibroids—are extremely common in women. One risk factor, according to the scientific literature, is “black race.” But such simplistic categories may actually obscure the real drivers of the disparities in outcomes for women with fibroids, according to this week’s guest. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Jada Benn Torres, an associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, about how using interdisciplinary approaches— incorporating both genetic and cultural perspectives—can paint a more complete picture of how race shapes our understanding of diseases and how they are treated.
In our monthly books segment, book review editor Valerie Thompson talks with David Rothenberg, author of the book Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound, about spending time with birds, whales, and neuroscientists trying to understand the aesthetics of human and animal music.
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256. How dental plaque reveals the history of dairy farming, and how our neighbors view food wasteЧт, 18 апр 2019[-/+] This week we have two interviews from the annual meeting of AAAS in Washington D.C.: one on the history of food and one about our own perceptions of food and food waste.
First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Christina Warinner from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, about the history of dairying. When did people first start to milk animals and where? It turns out, the spread of human genetic adaptations for drinking milk do not closely correspond to the history of consuming milk from animals. Instead, evidence from ancient dental plaque suggests people from all over the world developed different ways of chugging milk—not all of them genetic.
Next, Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-director of the Michigan State University Food Literacy and Engagement Poll, about the public’s perception of food waste. Do most people try to conserve food and produce less waste? Better insight into the point of view of consumers may help keep billions of kilograms of food from being discarded every year in the United States.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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257. A new species of ancient human and real-time evolutionary changes in flowering plantsЧт, 11 апр 2019[-/+] The ancient humans also known as the “hobbit” people (Homo floresiensis) might have company in their small stature with the discovery of another species of hominin in the Philippines. Host Sarah Crespi talks to Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about what researchers have learned about this hominin from a jaw fragment, and its finger and toe bones and how this fits in with past discoveries of other ancient humans.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Florian Schiestl, a professor in evolutionary biology at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, about his work to understand the rapid evolution of the flowering plant Brassica rapa over the course of six generations. He was able to see how the combination of pollination by bees and risk of getting eaten by herbivores influences the plant’s appearance and defense mechanisms.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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258. A radioactive waste standoff and science’s debt to the slave tradeЧт, 04 апр 2019[-/+] A single factory in Malaysia supplies about 10% of the world’s rare earth oxides, used in everything from cellphones to lasers to missiles. Controversy over the final resting place for the slightly radioactive byproducts has pushed the plant to the brink of closure. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with freelance writer Yao Hua Law about calls to ship the waste back to where it was originally mined in Australia, and how stopping production in Malaysia would mean almost all rare earth production would take place in China.
In another global trade story, host Sarah Crespi talks with freelance writer Sam Kean about close links between the slave trade and early naturalists’ efforts to catalog the world’s flora and fauna. Today, historians and museums are just starting to come to grips with the often-ignored relationships between slavers and scientists.
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259. Mysterious racehorse injuries, and reforming the U.S. bail systemЧт, 28 мар 2019[-/+] Southern California’s famous Santa Anita racetrack is struggling to explain a series of recent horse injuries and deaths. Host Meagan Cantwell is joined by freelance journalist Christa Leste-Lasserre to discuss what might be causing these injuries and when the track might reopen.
In our second segment, researchers are racing to understand the impact of jailing people before trial in the United States. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about the negative downstream effects of cash bail—and what research can tell us about other options for the U.S. pretrial justice system.
Last up is books, in which we hear about the long, sometimes winding, roads that food can take from its source to your plate. Books editor Valerie Thompson talks with author Robyn Metcalfe about her new work, Food Routes: Growing Bananas in Iceland and Other Tales from the Logistics of Eating.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
*Correction, 1 April, 12 p.m.: A previous version of this podcast included an additional research technique that was not used to investigate the Santa Anita racetrack.
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260. Vacuuming potato-size nodules of valuable metals in the deep sea, and an expedition to an asteroid 290 million kilometers awayЧт, 21 мар 2019[-/+] Pirate’s gold may not be that far off, as there are valuable metals embedded in potato-size nodules thousands of meters down in the depths of the ocean. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the first deep-sea test of a bus-size machine designed to scoop up these nodules, and its potential impact on the surrounding ecosystem.
In an expedition well above sea level, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down on the asteroid Ryugu last month. And although the craft won’t return to Earth until 2020, researchers have learned a lot about Ryugu in the meantime. Meagan speaks with Seiji Sugita, a professor at the University of Tokyo and principal investigator of the Optical Navigation Camera of Hayabusa 2, about Ryugu’s parent body, and how this study can better inform future asteroid missions.
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261. Mysterious fast radio bursts and long-lasting effects of childhood cancer treatmentsЧт, 14 мар 2019[-/+] Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Daniel Clery about the many, many theories surrounding fast radio bursts—extremely fast, intense radio signals from outside the galaxy—and a new telescope coming online that may help sort them out.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel about her story on researchers’ attempts to tackle the long-term effects of pediatric cancer treatment. The survival rate for some pediatric cancers is as high as 90%, but many survivors have a host of health problems. Jennifer’s feature is part of a special section on pediatric cancer.
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262. Clues that the medieval plague swept into sub-Saharan Africa and evidence humans hunted and butchered giant ground sloths 12,000 years agoЧт, 07 мар 2019[-/+] New archaeological evidence suggests the same black plague that decimated Europe also took its toll on sub-Saharan Africa. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about diverse medieval sub-Saharan cities that shrank or even disappeared around the same time the plague was stalking Europe.
In a second archaeological story, Meagan Cantwell talks with Gustavo Politis, professor of archaeology at the National University of Central Buenos Aires and the National University of La Plata, about new radiocarbon dates for giant ground sloth remains found in the Argentine archaeological site Campo Laborde. The team’s new dates suggest humans hunted and butchered ground sloths in the late Pleistocene, about 12,500 years ago.
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263. Measuring earthquake damage with cellphone sensors and determining the height of the ancient Tibetan PlateauЧт, 28 фев 2019[-/+] In the wake of a devastating earthquake, assessing the extent of damage to infrastructure is time consuming—now, a cheap sensor system based on the accelerometers in cellphones could expedite this process. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about how these sensor systems work and how they might assist communities after an earthquake.
In another Earth-shaking study, scientists have downgraded the height of the ancient Tibetan Plateau. Most reconstructions estimate that the “rooftop of the world” reached its current height of 4500 meters about 40 million years ago, but a new study suggests it was a mere 3000 meters high during this period. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Svetlana Botsyun, a postdoctoral researcher at Tubingen University in Germany, about her team’s new approach to studying paleoelevation, and how a shorter Tibetan Plateau would have impacted the surrounding area’s climate.
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264. Spotting slavery from space, and using iPads for communication disordersЧт, 21 фев 2019[-/+] In our first segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (Science’s publisher) in Washington, D.C., host Sarah Crespi talks with Cathy Binger of University of New Mexico in Albuquerque about her session on the role of modern technology, such as iPads and apps, in helping people with communication disorders. It turns out that there’s no killer app, but some devices do help normalize assistive technology for kids.
Also this week, freelance journalist Sarah Scoles joins Sarah Crespi to talk about bringing together satellite imaging, machine learning, and nonprofits to put a stop to modern-day slavery.
In our monthly books segment, books editor Valerie Thompson talks with Judy Grisel about her book Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction, including discussions of Gisel’s personal experience with addiction and how it has informed her research as a neuroscientist.
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265. How far out we can predict the weather, and an ocean robot that monitors food websЧт, 14 фев 2019[-/+] The app on your phone tells you the weather for the next 10 days—that’s the furthest forecasters have ever been able to predict. In fact, every decade for the past hundred years, a day has been added to the total forecast length. But we may be approaching a limit—thanks to chaos inherent in the atmosphere. Staff writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how researchers have determined that we will only be adding about 5 more days to our weather prediction apps.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell interviews Trygve Fossum from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim about his article in Science Robotics on an underwater autonomous vehicle designed to sample phytoplankton off the coast of Norway. The device will help researchers form a better picture of the base of many food webs and with continued monitoring, researchers hope to better understand key processes in the ocean such as nutrient, carbon, and energy cycling.
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266. Possible potato improvements, and a pill that gives you a jab in the gutЧт, 07 фев 2019[-/+] Because of its genetic complexity, the potato didn’t undergo a “green revolution” like other staple crops. It can take more than 15 years to breed a new kind of potato that farmers can grow, and genetic engineering just won’t work for tackling complex traits such as increased yield or heat resistance. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Erik Stokstad about how researchers are trying to simplify the potato genome to make it easier to manipulate through breeding.
Researchers and companies are racing to perfect an injector pill—a pill that you swallow, which then uses a tiny needle to shoot medicine into the body. Such an approach could help improve compliance for injected medications like insulin. Host Meagan Cantwell and Staff Writer Robert F. Service discuss a new kind of pill—one that flips itself over once it hits the bottom of the stomach and injects a dose of medication into the stomach lining.
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267. Treating the microbiome, and a gene that induces sleepЧт, 31 янв 2019[-/+] Orla Smith, editor of Science Translational Medicine joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what has changed in the past 10 years of microbiome research, what’s getting close to being useful in treatment, and how strong, exactly, the research is behind those probiotic yogurts.
When you’re sick, sleeping is restorative—it helps your body recover from nasty infections. Meagan Cantwell speaks with Amita Sehgal, professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, about the process of discovering a gene in fruit flies that links sleep and immune function.
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268. Pollution from pot plants, and how our bodies perceive processed foodsЧт, 24 янв 2019[-/+] The “dank” smelling terpenes emitted by growing marijuana can combine with chemicals in car emissions to form ozone, a health-damaging compound. This is especially problematic in Denver, where ozone levels are dangerously high and pot farms have sprung up along two highways in the city. Host Sarah Crespi talks with reporter Jason Plautz about researchers’ efforts to measure terpene emissions from pot plants and how federal restrictions have hampered them.
Next, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Dana Small, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University, about how processed foods are perceived by the body. In a doughnut-rich world, what’s a body to think about calories, nutrition, and satiety?
And in the first book segment of the year, books editor Valerie Thompson is joined by Erika Malim, a history professor at Princeton University, to talk about her book Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America, which follows the rise and fall of the “killer ape hypothesis”—the idea that our capacity for killing each other is what makes us human.
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269. Peering inside giant planets, and fighting Ebola in the face of fake newsЧт, 17 янв 2019[-/+] It’s incredibly difficult to get an inkling of what is going on inside gas giants Saturn and Jupiter. But with data deliveries from the Cassini and Juno spacecraft, researchers are starting to learn more. Science Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about new gravity measurements from Cassini’s last passes around Saturn. Using these data, researchers were able to compare wind patterns on Saturn and Jupiter and measure the mass and age of Saturn’s rings. It turns out the rings are young, relatively speaking—they may have formed as recently as 10 million years ago, after dinosaurs went extinct.
Megan Cantwell then talks to science writer Laura Spinney about how researchers are fighting conspiracy theories and political manipulation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the country’s ongoing Ebola outbreak. In a first, the government, nongovernmental organizations, and scientists are working with community leaders to fight misinformation—and they might actually be winning.
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270. A mysterious blue pigment in the teeth of a medieval woman, and the evolution of online master’s degreesЧт, 10 янв 2019[-/+] Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide free lectures and assignments, and gained global attention for their potential to increase education accessibility. Plagued with high attrition rates and fewer returning students every year, MOOCs have pivoted to a new revenue model—offering accredited master’s degrees for professionals. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Justin Reich, an assistant professor in the Comparative Media Studies Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, about the evolution of MOOCs and how these MOOC professional programs may be reaching a different audience than traditional online education.
Archaeologists were flummoxed when they found a brilliant blue mineral in the dental plaque of a medieval-era woman from Germany. It turned out to be lapis lazuli—an expensive pigment that would have had to travel thousands of kilometers from the mines of Afghanistan to a monastery in Germany. Host Sarah Crespi talks to Christina Warinner, a professor of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, about how the discovery of this pigment shed light on the impressive life of the medieval woman, an artist who likely played a role in manuscript production.
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271. Will a radical open-access proposal catch on, and quantifying the most deadly period of the HolocaustЧт, 03 янв 2019[-/+] Plan S, an initiative that requires participating research funders to immediately publish research in an open-access journal or repository, was announced in September 2018 by Science Europe with 11 participating agencies. Several others have signed on since the launch, but other funders and journal publishers have reservations. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Contributing Correspondent Tania Rabesandratana about those reservations and how Plan S is trying to change publishing practices and research culture at large.
Some 1.7 million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis in the 22 months of Operation Reinhard (1942–43) which aimed to eliminate all Jews in occupied Poland. But until now, the speed and totality of these murders were poorly understood. It turns out that about one-quarter of all Jews killed during the Holocaust were murdered in the autumn of 1942, during this operation. Meagan talks with Lewi Stone, a professor of biomathematics at Tel Aviv University in Israel and mathematical science at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, about this shocking kill rate, and why researchers are taking a quantitative approach to characterizing genocides.
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272. End of the year podcast: 2018’s breakthroughs, breakdowns, and top online storiesЧт, 20 дек 2018[-/+] First, we hear Online News Editor David Grimm and host Sarah Crespi discuss audience favorites and staff picks from this year’s online stories, from mysterious pelvises to quantum engines.
Megan Cantwell talks with News Editor Tim Appenzeller about the 2018 Breakthrough of the Year, a few of the runners-up, and some breakdowns. See the whole breakthrough package here, including all the runners-up and breakdowns.
And in her final segment for the Science Podcast, host Jen Golbeck talks with Science books editor Valerie Thompson about the year in books. Both also suggest some last-minute additions to your holiday shopping list.
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273. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ turns 50, and how Neanderthal DNA could change your skullЧт, 13 дек 2018[-/+] In 1968, Science published the now-famous paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” by ecologist Garrett Hardin. In it, Hardin questioned society’s ability to manage shared resources, concluding that individuals will act in their self-interest and ultimately spoil the resource. Host Meagan Cantwell revisits this classic paper with two experts: Tine De Moor, professor of economics and social history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Brett Frischmann, a professor of law, business, and economics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. They discuss how premodern societies dealt with common resources and how our current society might apply the concept to a more abstract resource—knowledge.
Not all human skulls are the same shape—and if yours is a little less round, you may have your extinct cousins, the Neanderthals, to thank. Meagan speaks with Simon Fisher, neurogeneticist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, about why living humans with two Neanderthal gene variants have slightly less round heads—and how studying Neanderthal DNA can help us better understand our own biology.
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274. Where private research funders stow their cash and studying gun deaths in childrenЧт, 06 дек 2018[-/+] A new Science investigation reveals several major private research funders—including the Wellcome Trust and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—are making secretive offshore investments at odds with their organizational missions. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with writer Charles Piller about his deep dive into why some private funders choose to invest in these accounts.
In the United States, gun injuries kill more children annually than pediatric cancer, but funding for firearm research pales in comparison. On this week’s show, host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Meredith Wadman and emergency physician Rebecca Cunningham about how a new grant will jump-start research on gun deaths in children.
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*Correction, 27 December, 5 p.m.: The interview on studying gun deaths in children in the United States incorrectly says that NIH spent $3.1 million on research into pediatric gun deaths. The correct figure is $4.4 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
275. The universe’s star formation history and a powerful new helper for evolutionЧт, 29 ноя 2018[-/+] In a fast-changing environment, evolution can be slow—sometimes so slow that an organism dies out before the right mutation comes along. Host Sarah Crespi speaks with Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi about how plastic traits—traits that can alter in response to environmental conditions—could help life catch up.
Also on this week’s show, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Marco Ajello a professor of physics and astronomy at Clemson University in South Carolina about his team’s method to determine the universe’s star formation history. By looking at 739 blazars, supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies, Ajello and his team were able to model the history of stars since the big bang.
Finally, in this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Christine Du Bois about her book Story of Soy. You can listen to more book segments and read more reviews on our books blog, Books et al.
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276. Exploding the Cambrian and building a DNA database for forensicsЧт, 22 ноя 2018[-/+] First, we hear from science writer Joshua Sokol about his trip to the Cambrian—well not quite. He talks with host Megan Cantwell about his travels to a remote site in the mountains of British Columbia where some of Earth’s first animals—including a mysterious, alien-looking creature—are spilling out of Canadian rocks.
Also on this week’s show, host Sarah Crespi talks with James Hazel a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Genetic Privacy and Identity in Community Settings at Vanderbilt University in Nashville about a proposal for creating a universal forensic DNA database. He and his co-authors argue that current, invasive practices such as law enforcement subpoenaing medical records, commercial genetic profiles, and other sets of extremely detailed genetic information during criminal investigations, would be curtailed if a forensics-use-only universal database were created.
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277. The worst year ever and the effects of fastingЧт, 15 ноя 2018[-/+] When was the worst year to be alive? Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons talks to host Sarah Crespi about a contender year that features a volcanic eruption, extended darkness, cold summer, and a plague.
Also on this week’s show, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Andrea Di Francesco of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, about his review of current wisdom on fasting and metabolism. Should we start fasting—if not to extend our lives maybe to at least to give ourselves a healthy old age?
In a special segment from our policy desk, Deputy Editor David Malakoff discusses the results of the recent U.S. election with Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis and we learn what happened to the many scientist candidates that ran and some implications for science policy.
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278. A big increase in monkey research and an overhaul for the metric systemЧт, 08 ноя 2018[-/+] A new report suggests a big increase in the use of monkeys in laboratory experiments in the United States in 2017. Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss which areas of research are experiencing this rise and the possible reasons behind it.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell talks with staff writer Adrian Cho about a final push to affix the metric system’s measures to physical constants instead of physical objects. That means the perfectly formed 1-kilogram cylinder known as Le Grand K is no more; it also means that the meter, the ampere, and other units of measure are now derived using complex calculations and experiments.
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279. How the appendix could hold the keys to Parkinson’s disease, and materials scientists mimic natureЧт, 01 ноя 2018[-/+] For a long time, Parkinson’s disease was thought to be merely a disorder of the nervous system. But in the past decade researchers have started to look elsewhere in the body for clues to this debilitating disease—particularly in the gut. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with Viviane Labrie of the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about new research suggesting people without their appendixes have a reduced risk of Parkinson’s. Labrie also describes the possible mechanism behind this connection.
And host Sarah Crespi talks with Peter Fratzl of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, about what materials scientists can learn from nature. The natural world might not produce innovations like carbon nanotubes, but evolution has forged innumerable materials from very limited resources—mostly sugars, proteins, and minerals. Fratzl discusses how plants make time-release seedpods that are triggered by nothing but fire and rain, the amazing suckerin protein that comprises squid teeth, and how cicadas make their transparent, self-cleaning wings from simple building blocks.
Fratzl’s review is part of a special section in Science on composite materials. Read the whole package, including a review on using renewables like coconut fiber for building cars and incorporating carbon nanotubes and graphene into composites.
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280. Children sue the U.S. government over climate change, and how mice inherit their gut microbesЧт, 25 окт 2018[-/+] A group of children is suing the U.S. government—claiming their rights to life, liberty, and property are under threat from climate change thanks to government policies that have encouraged the use and extraction of fossil fuels. Host Meagan Cantwell interviews news writer Julia Rosen on the ins and outs of the suit and what it could mean if the kids win the day.
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Andrew Moeller of Cornell University about his work tracing the gut microbes inherited through 10 generations of mice. It turns out the fidelity is quite high—you can still tell mice lineages apart by their gut microbes after 10 generations. And horizontally transmitted microbes, those that jump from one mouse line to another through exposure to common spaces or handlers, were more likely than inherited bacteria to be pathogenic and were often linked to illnesses in people.
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281. Mutant cells in the esophagus, and protecting farmers from dangerous pesticide exposureЧт, 18 окт 2018[-/+] As you age, your cells divide over and over again, leading to minute changes in their genomes. New research reveals that in the lining of the esophagus, mutant cells run rampant, fighting for dominance over normal cells. But they do this without causing any detectable damage or cancer. Host Sarah Crespi talks to Phil Jones, a professor of cancer development at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, about what these genome changes can tell us about aging and cancer, and how some of the mutations might be good for you.
Most Western farmers apply their pesticides using drones and machinery, but in less developed countries, organophosphate pesticides are applied by hand, resulting in myriad health issues from direct exposure to these neurotoxic chemicals. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Praveen Vemula, a research investigator at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Bengaluru, India, about his latest solution—a cost-effective gel that can be applied to the skin to limit pesticide-related toxicity and mortality.
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282. What we can learn from a cluster of people with an inherited intellectual disability, and questioning how sustainable green lawns are in dry placesЧт, 11 окт 2018[-/+] A small isolated town in Colombia is home to a large cluster of people with fragile X syndrome—a genetic disorder that leads to intellectual disability, physical abnormalities, and sometimes autism. Spectrum staff reporter Hannah Furfaro joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the history of fragile X in the town of Ricaurte and the future of the people who live there.
Also this week, we talk about greening up grass. Lawns of green grass pervade urban areas all around the world, regardless of climate, but the cost of maintaining them may outweigh their benefits. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with Maria Ignatieva of The University of Western Australia in Perth and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala about how lawns can be transformed to contribute to a more sustainable future.
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283. Odd new particles may be tunneling through the planet, and how the flu operates differently in big and small townsЧт, 04 окт 2018[-/+] Hoping to spot subatomic particles called neutrinos smashing into Earth, the balloon-borne Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) detector has circled the South Pole four times. ANITA has yet to detect those particles, but it has twice seen oddball radio signals that could be evidence of something even weirder: some heavier particle unknown to physicists’ standard model, burrowing up through Earth. Science writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the possibility that this reading could lead to a big change in physics.
Next, host Meagan Cantwell asks researcher Ben Dalziel what makes a bad—or good—flu year. Traditionally, research has focused on two factors: climate, which impacts how long the virus stays active after a sneeze or cough, and changes in the virus itself, which can influence its infectiousness. But these factors don’t explain every pattern. Dalziel, a population biologist in the Departments of Integrative Biology and Mathematics at Oregon State University in Corvallis, explains how humidity and community size shape the way influenza spreads.
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284. The future of PCB-laden orca whales, and doing genomics work with Indigenous peopleЧт, 27 сен 2018[-/+] Science has often treated Indigenous people as resources for research—especially when it comes to genomics. Now, Indigenous people are exploring how this type of study can be conducted in a way that respects their people and traditions. Meagan Cantwell talks with contributing correspondent Lizzie Wade about a summer workshop for Indigenous scientists that aims to start a new chapter in genomics.
We’ve known for decades that PCBs—polychlorinated biphenyls—are toxic and carcinogenic. In the 1970s and 1980s, these compounds were phased out of use in industrial and electronic applications, worldwide. But they are still in the environment—in soil and air—and in animal tissues, particularly those of killer whales. These toxic compounds start out at minute levels in tiny organisms, but as the small are eaten by the slightly larger, the PCB concentration increases—from plankton, to fish, to seals—until you are at killer whales with PCB-packed blubber. Ailsa Hall, director of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St. Andrews University in the United Kingdom, talks with host Sarah Crespi about her group’s work measuring PCB levels in different killer whale populations and calculating the effect of PCBs on those populations 100 years from now.
In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Damon Centola about his book How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions. You can listen to more books segment and read more reviews on our books blog, Books et al.
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285. Metaresearchers take on meta-analyses, and hoary old myths about scienceЧт, 20 сен 2018[-/+] Meta-analyses—structured analyses of many studies on the same topic—were once seen as objective and definitive projects that helped sort out conflicts amongst smaller studies. These days, thousands of meta-analyses are published every year—many either redundant or contrary to earlier metaworks. Host Sarah Crespi talks to freelance science journalist Jop de Vrieze about ongoing meta-analysis wars in which opposing research teams churn out conflicting metastudies around important public health questions such as links between violent video games and school shootings and the effects of antidepressants. They also talk about what clues to look for when trying to evaluate the quality of a meta-analysis.
Sarah also talked with three other contributors to our “Research on Research” special issue. Pierre Azoulay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Ben Jones of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and MIT’s Heidi Williams discuss the evidence for some hoary old scientific home truths. See whether you can guess who originally made these claims and how right or wrong they were:
Do scientists make great contributions after age 30?
How important is it to stand on the shoulders of giants?
Does the truth win, or do its opponents just eventually die out?
Read the rest of the package on science under scrutiny here.
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286. The youngest sex chromosomes on the block, and how to test a Zika vaccine without Zika casesЧт, 13 сен 2018[-/+] Strawberries had both male and female parts, like most plants, until several million years ago. This may seem like a long time ago, but it actually means strawberries have some of the youngest sex chromosomes around. What are the advantages of splitting a species into two sexes? Host Sarah Crespi interviews freelance journalist Carol Cruzan Morton about her story on scientists’ journey to understanding the strawberry’s sexual awakening.
In 2016, experimental Zika vaccines were swiftly developed in response to the emergence of serious birth defects in the babies of infected woman. Two years after the height of Zika cases, there’s so little spread of the virus in the Americas that it has stymied vaccine trials. Researchers hope to overcome this hurdle with “human challenge experiments”—vaccinating people, then intentionally infecting them with Zika to see whether they’re protected from the virus. Meagan Cantwell talks with staff writer Jon Cohen about his news story that highlights the risks and rewards of human challenge experiments.
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287. Should we prioritize which endangered species to save, and why were chemists baffled by soot for so long?Чт, 06 сен 2018[-/+] We are in the middle of what some scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction and not all at-risk species can be saved. That’s causing some conservationists to say we need to start thinking about “species triage.” Meagan Cantwell interviews freelance journalist Warren Cornwall about his story on weighing the costs of saving Canada’s endangered caribou and the debate among conservationists on new approaches to conservation.
And host Sarah Crespi interviews Hope Michelsen, a staff scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, about mysterious origins of soot. The black dust has been around since fire itself, but researchers never knew how the high-energy environment of a flame can produce it—until now. Michelsen walks Sarah through the radical chemistry of soot formation—including its formation of free radicals—and discusses soot’s many roles in industry, the environment, and even interstellar space.
Check out this useful graphic describing the soot inception process in the related commentary article.
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288. Science and Nature get their social science studies replicated—or not, the mechanisms behind human-induced earthquakes, and the taboo of claiming causality in scienceЧт, 30 авг 2018[-/+] A new project out of the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia, found that of all the experimental social science papers published in Science and Nature from 2010–15, 62% successfully replicated, even when larger sample sizes were used. What does this say about peer review? Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Kelly Servick about how this project stacks up against similar replication efforts, and whether we can achieve similar results by merely asking people to guess whether a study can be replicated.
Podcast producer Meagan Cantwell interviews Emily Brodsky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, about her research report examining why earthquakes occur as far as 10 kilometers from wastewater injection and fracking sites. Emily discusses why the well-established mechanism for human-induced earthquakes doesn’t explain this distance, and how these findings may influence where we place injection wells in the future.
In this month’s book podcast, Jen Golbeck interviews Judea Pearl and Dana McKenzie, authors of The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. They propose that researchers have for too long shied away from claiming causality and provide a road map for bringing cause and effect back into science.
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289. Sending flocks of tiny satellites out past Earth orbit and solving the irrigation efficiency paradoxЧт, 23 авг 2018[-/+] Small satellites—about the size of a briefcase—have been hitching rides on rockets to lower Earth orbit for decades. Now, because of their low cost and ease of launching, governments and private companies are looking to expand the range of these “sate-lites” deeper into space. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Deputy News Editor Eric Hand about the mods and missions in store for so-called CubeSats.
And our newest podcast producer Meagan Cantwell interviews Quentin Grafton of Australian National University in Canberra and Brad Udall of Colorado State University in Fort Collins about something called the “irrigation efficiency paradox.” As freshwater supplies dry up around the world, policymakers and farmers have been quick to try to make up the difference by improving irrigation, a notorious water waster. It turns out that both human behavior and the difficulty of water measurement are plaguing water conservation efforts in agriculture. For example, when farms find they are using less water, they tend to plant ever-more-water-intensive crops. Now, researchers are trying to get the message out about the behavioral component of this issue and tackle the measurement problem, using cheap remote-sensing technology, but with water scarcity looming ahead, we have to act soon.
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290. Ancient volcanic eruptions, and peer pressure—from robotsЧт, 16 авг 2018[-/+] Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece—known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranean civilizations of Crete and Egypt in a layer of white ash. This geological marker could be used to tie together many ancient historical events, but the estimated date could be off by a century. Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that used tree rings to calibrate radiocarbon readings—and get closer to pinning down a date. The findings also suggest that scientists may need to change their standard radiocarbon dating calibration curve.
Sarah also talks to Tony Belpaeme of Ghent University in Belgium and Plymouth University in the United Kingdom about his Science Robotics paper that explored whether people are susceptible to peer pressure from robots. Using a classic psychological measure of peer influence, the team found that kids from ages 7 to 9 occasionally gave in to social pressure from robot peers, but adults did not.
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291. Doubts about the drought that kicked off our latest geological age, and a faceoff between stink bugs with samurai waspsЧт, 09 авг 2018[-/+] We now live in the Meghalayan age—the last age of the Holocene epoch. Did you get the memo? A July decision by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which is responsible for naming geological time periods, divided the Holocene into three ages: the Greenlandian, the Northgrippian, and the Meghalayan. The one we live in—the Meghalayan age (pronounced “megalion”)—is pegged to a global drought thought to have happened some 4200 years ago. But many critics question the timing of this latest age and the global expanse of the drought. Staff writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the evidence for and against the global drought—and what it means if it’s wrong.
Sarah also talks to staff writer Kelly Servick about her feature story on what happens when biocontrol goes out of control. Here’s the setup: U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers wanted to know whether brown marmorated stink bugs that have invaded the United States could be controlled—aka killed—by importing their natural predators, samurai wasps, from Asia. But before they could find out, the wasps showed up anyway. Kelly discusses how using one species to combat another can go wrong—or right—and what happens when the situation outruns regulators.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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292. How our brains may have evolved for language, and clues to what makes us leaders—or followersЧт, 02 авг 2018[-/+] Yes, humans are the only species with language, but how did we acquire it? New research suggests our linguistic prowess might arise from the same process that brought domesticated dogs big eyes and bonobos the power to read others’ intent. Online News Editor Catherine Matacic joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how humans might have self-domesticated themselves, leading to physical and behavioral changes that gave us a “language-ready” brain.
Sarah also talks with Micah Edelson of the University of Zurich in Switzerland about his group’s research into the role that “responsibility aversion”—the reluctance to make decisions for a group—might play when people decide to lead or defer in a group setting. In their experiments, the team found that some people adjusted how much risk they would take on, depending on whether they were deciding for themselves alone or for the entire group. The ones who didn’t—those who stuck to the same plan whether others were involved or not—tended to score higher on standardized tests of leadership and have held higher military rank.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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293. Liquid water on Mars, athletic performance in transgender women, and the lost colony of RoanokeЧт, 26 июл 2018[-/+] Billions of years ago, Mars probably hosted many water features: streams, rivers, gullies, etc. But until recently, water detected on the Red Planet was either locked up in ice or flitting about as a gas in the atmosphere. Now, researchers analyzing radar data from the Mars Express mission have found evidence for an enormous salty lake under the southern polar ice cap of Mars. Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how the water was found and how it can still be liquid—despite temperatures and pressures typically inhospitable to water in its liquid form.
Read the research.
Sarah also talks with science journalist Katherine Kornei about her story on changing athletic performance after gender transition. The feature profiles researcher Joanna Harper on the work she has done to understand the impacts of hormone replacement therapy and testosterone levels in transgender women involved in running and other sports. It turns out within a year of beginning hormone replacement therapy, transgender women plateau at their new performance level and stay in a similar rank with respect to the top performers in the sport. Her work has influenced sports oversight bodies like the International Olympic Committee.
In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Andrew Lawler about his book The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
Next month’s book will be The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie. Write us at sciencepodcast@aaas.org or tweet to us @sciencemagazine with your questions for the authors.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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294. Why the platypus gave up suckling, and how gravity waves clear cloudsЧт, 19 июл 2018[-/+] Suckling mothers milk is a pretty basic feature of being a mammal. Humans do it. Possums do it. But monotremes such as the platypus and echidna—although still mammals—gave up suckling long ago. Instead, they lap at milky patches on their mothers’ skin to get early sustenance. Science News Writer Gretchen Vogel talks with host Sarah Crespi about the newest suckling science—it turns out monotremes probably had suckling ancestors, but gave it up for the ability to grind up tasty, hard-shelled, river-dwelling creatures.
Sarah also talks with Sandra Yuter of North Carolina State University in Raleigh about her work on fast-clearing clouds off the southwest coast of Africa. These immense marine layers appear to be exiting the coastal regions under the influence of gravity waves (not to be confused with gravitational waves). This finding can help scientists better model cloud behavior, particularly with respect to their influence on global temperatures.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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295. The South Pole’s IceCube detector catches a ghostly particle from deep space, and how rice knows to grow when submergedЧт, 12 июл 2018[-/+] A detection of a single neutrino at the 1-square-kilometer IceCube detector in Antarctica may signal the beginning of “neutrino astronomy.” The neutral, almost massless particle left its trail of debris in the ice last September, and its source was picked out of the sky by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope soon thereafter. Science News Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the blazar fingered as the source and how neutrinos from this gigantic matter-gobbling black hole could help astronomers learn more about mysterious high-energy cosmic rays that occasionally shriek toward Earth.
Read the research.
Sarah also talks with Cornell University’s Susan McCouch about her team’s work on deep-water rice. Rice can survive flooding by fast internodal growth—basically a quick growth spurt that raises its leaves above water. But this growth only occurs in prolonged, deep flooding. How do these plants know they are submerged and how much to grow? Sarah and Susan discuss the mechanisms involved and where they originated.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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296. A polio outbreak threatens global eradication plans, and what happened to America’s first dogsЧт, 05 июл 2018[-/+] Wild polio has been hunted to near extinction in a decades-old global eradication program. Now, a vaccine-derived outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is threatening to seriously extend the polio eradication endgame. Deputy News Editor Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the tough choices experts face in the fight against this disease in the DRC.
Sarah also talks with Online News Editor David Grimm about when dogs first came to the Americas. New DNA and archaeological evidence suggest these pups did not arise from North American wolves but came over thousands of years after the first people did. Now that we know where they came from, the question is: Where did they go?
Read the research.
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297. Increasing transparency in animal research to sway public opinion, and a reaching a plateau in human mortalityЧт, 28 июн 2018[-/+] Public opinion on the morality of animal research is on the downswing in the United States. But some researchers think letting the public know more about how animals are used in experiments might turn things around. Online News Editor David Grimm joins Sarah Crespi to talk about these efforts.
Sarah also talks Ken Wachter of the University of California, Berkeley about his group’s careful analysis of data from all living Italians born 105 or more years before the study. It turns out the risk of dying does not continue to accelerate with age, but actually plateaus around the age of 105. What does this mean for attempts to increase human lifespan?
In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck talks with Simon Winchester about his book The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World. Read more book reviews at our books blog, Books et al.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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298. New evidence in Cuba’s ‘sonic attacks,’ and finding an extinct gibbon—in a royal Chinese tombЧт, 21 июн 2018[-/+] Since the 2016 reports of a mysterious assault on U.S. embassy staff in Cuba, researchers have struggled to find evidence of injury or weapon. Now, new research has discovered inner-ear damage in some of the personnel complaining of symptoms. Former International News Editor Rich Stone talks to host Sarah Crespi about the case, including new reports of a similar incident in China, and what kind of weapon—if any—might have been involved.
Sarah also talks with Staff Writer Gretchen Vogel about the bones of an extinct gibbon found in a 2200- to 2300-year-old tomb in China. Although gibbons were often featured in historical poetry and paintings, these bones confirm their presence and the fact that they were distinct from today’s species.
Read the research.
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299. The places where HIV shows no sign of ending, and the parts of the human brain that are bigger—in bigger brainsЧт, 14 июн 2018[-/+] Nigeria, Russia, and Florida seem like an odd set, but they all have one thing in common: growing caseloads of HIV. Science Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this week’s big read on how the fight against HIV/AIDS is evolving in these diverse locations.
Sarah also talks with Armin Raznahan of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, about his group’s work measuring which parts of the human brain are bigger in bigger brains. Adult human brains can vary as much as two times in size—and until now this expansion was thought to be evenly distributed. However, the team found that highly integrative regions are overrepresented in bigger brains, whereas regions related to processing incoming sensory information such as sight and sound tend to be underrepresented.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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300. Science books for summer, and a blood test for predicting preterm birthЧт, 07 июн 2018[-/+] What book are you taking to the beach or the field this summer? Science’s books editor Valerie Thompson and host Sarah Crespi discuss a selection of science books that will have you catching comets and swimming with the fishes.
Sarah also talks with Mira Moufarrej of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, about her team’s work on a new blood test that analyzes RNA from maternal blood to determine the gestational age of a fetus. This new approach may also help predict the risk of preterm birth.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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301. The first midsize black holes, and the environmental impact of global food productionЧт, 31 мая 2018[-/+] Astronomers have been able to detect supermassive black holes and teeny-weeny black holes but the midsize ones have been elusive. Now, researchers have scanned through archives looking for middle-size galaxies and found traces of these missing middlers. Host Sarah Crespi and Staff Writer Daniel Clery discuss why they were so hard to find in the first place, and what it means for our understanding of black hole formation.
Farming animals and plants for human consumption is a massive operation with a big effect on the planet. A new research project that calculated the environmental impact of global food production shows highly variable results for different foods—and for the same foods grown in different locations. Sarah talks with one of the researchers—Joseph Poore of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom—about how understanding this diversity can help cut down food production’s environmental footprint and help consumers make better choices.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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302. Sketching suspects with DNA, and using light to find Zika-infected mosquitoesЧт, 24 мая 2018[-/+] DNA fingerprinting has been used to link people to crimes for decades, by matching DNA from a crime scene to DNA extracted from a suspect. Now, investigators are using other parts of the genome—such as markers for hair and eye color—to help rule people in and out as suspects. Staff Writer Gretchen Vogel talks with Sarah Crespi about whether science supports this approach and how different countries are dealing with this new type of evidence.
Sarah also talks with Jill Fernandes of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, about her Science Advances paper on a light-based technique for detecting Zika in mosquitoes. Instead of grinding up the bug and extracting Zika DNA, her group shines near-infrared light through the body. Mosquitoes carrying Zika transmit this light differently from uninfected ones. If it’s successful in larger trials, this technique could make large-scale surveillance of infected mosquitoes quicker and less expensive.
In our monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck talks with author Sarah-Jayne Blakemore about her new work: Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. You can check out more book reviews and share your thoughts on the Books et al. blog.
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303. Tracking ancient Rome’s rise using Greenland’s ice, and fighting fungicide resistanceЧт, 17 мая 2018[-/+] Two thousand years ago, ancient Romans were pumping lead into the air as they smelted ores to make the silvery coin of the realm. Online News Editor David Grimm talks to Sarah Crespi about how the pollution of ice in Greenland from this process provides a detailed 1900-year record of Roman history.
This week is also resistance week at Science—where researchers explore the global challenges of antibiotic resistance, pesticide resistance, herbicide resistance, and fungicide resistance. Sarah talks with Sarah Gurr of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom about her group’s work on the spread of antifungal resistance and what it means for crops and in the clinic.
And in a bonus books segment, staff writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks about medicine and fraud in her review of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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304. Ancient DNA is helping find the first horse tamers, and a single gene is spawning a fierce debate in salmon conservationЧт, 10 мая 2018[-/+] Who were the first horse tamers? Online News Editor Catherine Matacic talks to Sarah Crespi about a new study that brings genomics to bear on the question.
The hunt for the original equine domesticators has focused on Bronze Age people living on the Eurasian steppe. Now, an ancient DNA analysis bolsters the idea that a small group of hunter-gatherers, called the Botai, were likely the first to harness horses, not the famous Yamnaya pastoralists often thought to be the originators of the Indo-European language family.
Sarah also talks with News Intern Katie Langin about her feature story on a single salmon gene that may separate spring- and fall-run salmon. Conservationists, regulators, and citizens are fiercely debating the role such a small bit of DNA plays in defining distinct populations. Is the spring run distinct enough to warrant protection?
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305. The twins climbing Mount Everest for science, and the fractal nature of human boneЧт, 03 мая 2018[-/+] To study the biological differences brought on by space travel, NASA sent one twin into space and kept another on Earth in 2015. Now, researchers from that project are trying to replicate that work planet-side to see whether the differences in gene expression were due to extreme stress or were specific to being in space. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about a “control” study using what might be a comparably stressful experience here on Earth: climbing Mount Everest.
Catherine also shares a recent study that confirmed what one reddit user posted 5 years ago: A single path stretching from southern Pakistan to northeastern Russia will take you on the longest straight-line journey on Earth, via the ocean.
Finally, Sarah talks with Roland Kroger of the University of York in the United Kingdom about his group’s study published this week in Science. Using a combination of techniques usually reserved for materials science, the group explored the nanoscale arrangement of mineral in bone, looking for an explanation of the tissue’s contradictory combination of toughness and hardness.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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306. Deciphering talking drums, and squeezing more juice out of solar panelsЧт, 26 апр 2018[-/+] Researchers have found new clues to how the “talking drums” of one Amazonian tribe convey their messages. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about the role of tone and rhythm in this form of communication.
Getting poked with a needle will probably get you moving. Apparently, it also gets charges moving in certain semiconductive materials. Sarah interviews Marin Alexe of The University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K., about this newfound flexo-photovoltaic effect. Alexe’s group found that prodding or denting certain semiconductors with tiny needles causes them to suddenly produce current in response to light. That discovery could enhance the efficiency of current of solar cell technologies.
Finally, in our books segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Lucy Cooke about her new book The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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307. Drug use in the ancient world, and what will happen to plants as carbon dioxide levels increaseЧт, 19 апр 2018[-/+] Armed with new data, archaeologists are revealing that mind-altering drugs were present at the dawn of the first complex societies some 5000 years ago in the ancient Middle East. Contributing writer Andrew Lawler joins Sarah Crespi to discuss the evidence for these drugs and how they might have impacted early societies and beliefs.
Sarah also interviews Sarah Hobbie of the University of Minnesota about the fate of plants under climate change. Will all that extra carbon dioxide in the air be good for certain types of flora? A 20-year long study published this week in Science suggests theoretical predictions have been off the mark.
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308. How DNA is revealing Latin America’s lost histories, and how to make a molecule from just two atomsЧт, 12 апр 2018[-/+] Geneticists and anthropologists studying historical records and modern-day genomes are finding traces of previously unknown migrants to Latin America in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Asians, Africans, and Europeans first met indigenous Latin Americans. Sarah Crespi talks with contributing correspondent Lizzie Wade about what she learned on the topic at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’s annual meeting in Austin.
Sarah also interviews Kang-Keun Ni about her research using optical tweezers to bring two atoms—one cesium and one sodium—together into a single molecule. Such precise control of molecule formation is allowing new observations of these basic processes and is opening the door to creating new molecules for quantum computing.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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309. Legendary Viking crystals, and how to put an octopus to sleepЧт, 05 апр 2018[-/+] A millennium ago, Viking navigators may have used crystals known as “sunstones” to navigate between Norway and Greenland. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor David Grimm about how one might use a crystal to figure out where they are.
Sarah also interviews freelancer Danna Staaf about her piece on sedating cephalopods. Until recently, researchers working with octopuses and squids faced the dilemma of not knowing whether the animals were truly sedated or whether only their ability to respond had been suppressed.
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310. Chimpanzee retirement gains momentum, and x-ray ‘ghost images’ could cut radiation dosesЧт, 29 мар 2018[-/+] Two of the world’s most famous research chimpanzees have finally retired. Hercules and Leo arrived at a chimp sanctuary in Georgia last week. Sarah Crespi checks in with Online News Editor David Grimm on the increasing momentum for research chimp retirement since the primates were labeled endangered species in 2015.
Sarah also interviews freelancer Sophia Chen about her piece on x-ray ghost imaging—a technique that may lead to safer medical imaging done with cheap, single-pixel cameras.
David Malakoff joins Sarah to talk about the big boost in U.S. science funding signed into law over the weekend.
Finally, Jen Golbeck interviews author Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr on her book First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery for our monthly books segment.
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311. A possible cause for severe morning sickness, and linking mouse moms’ caretaking to brain changes in baby miceЧт, 22 мар 2018[-/+] Researchers are converging on which genes are linked to morning sickness—the nausea and vomiting associated with pregnancy—and the more severe form: hyperemesis gravidarum (HG). And once we know what those genes are—can we help pregnant women feel better? News intern Roni Dengler joins Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that suggests a protein already flagged for its role in cancer-related nausea may also be behind HG.
In a second segment, Tracy Bedrosian of the Neurotechnology Innovations Translator talks about how the amount of time spent being licked by mom might be linked to changes in the genetic code of hippocampal neurons in mice pups. Could these types of genomic changes be a new type of plasticity in the brain?
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312. How humans survived an ancient volcanic winter and how disgust shapes ecosystemsЧт, 15 мар 2018[-/+] When Indonesia’s Mount Toba blew its top some 74,000 years ago, an apocalyptic scenario ensued: Tons of ash and debris entered the atmosphere, coating the planet in ash for 2 weeks straight and sending global temperatures plummeting. Despite the worldwide destruction, humans survived. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about how life after Toba was even possible—were humans decimated, or did they rally in the face of a suddenly extra hostile planet?
Next, Julia Buck of the University of California, Santa Barbara, joins Sarah to discuss her Science commentary piece on landscapes of disgust. You may have heard of a landscape of fear—how a predator can influence an ecosystem not just by eating its prey, but also by introducing fear into the system, changing the behavior of many organisms. Buck and colleagues write about how disgust can operate in a similar way: Animals protect themselves from parasites and infection by avoiding disgusting things such as dead animals of the same species or those with disease.
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313. Animals that don’t need people to be domesticated; the astonishing spread of false news; and links between gender, sexual orientation, and speechЧт, 08 мар 2018[-/+] Did people domesticate animals? Or did they domesticate themselves? Online News Editor David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about a recent study that looked at self-domesticating mice. If they could go it alone, could cats or dogs have done the same in the distant past?
Next, Sinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge joins Sarah to discuss his work on true and false rumor cascades across all of Twitter, since its inception. He finds that false news travels further, deeper, and faster than true news, regardless of the source of the tweet, the kind of news it was, or whether bots were involved.
In a bonus segment recording during a live podcasting event at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Sarah first speaks with Ben Munson of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis about markers of gender and sexual orientation in spoken language and then Adrienne Hancock of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., talks about using what we know about gender and communication to help transgender women change their speech and communication style. Live recordings sessions at the AAAS meeting were supported by funds from the European Commission.
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314. A new dark matter signal from the early universe, massive family trees, and how we might respond to alien contactЧт, 01 мар 2018[-/+] For some time after the big bang there were no stars. Researchers are now looking at cosmic dawn—the time when stars first popped into being—and are seeing hints of dark matter’s influence on supercold hydrogen clouds. News Writer Adrian Cho talks with Sarah Crespi about how this observation was made and what it means for our understanding of dark matter.
Sarah also interviews Joanna Kaplanis of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K., about constructing enormous family trees based on an online social genealogy platform. What can we learn from the biggest family tree ever built—with 13 million members spanning 11 generations?
In a bonus segment recording during a live podcasting event at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Sarah talks with Michael Varnum of Arizona State University in Tempe about what people think they will do if humanity comes into contact with aliens that just happen to be microbes. Live recordings sessions at the AAAS meeting were supported by funds from the European Commission.
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315. Neandertals that made art, live news from the AAAS Annual Meeting, and the emotional experience of being a scientistЧт, 22 фев 2018[-/+] We talk about the techniques of painting sleuths, how to combat alternative facts or “fake news,” and using audio signposts to keep birds from flying into buildings. For this segment, David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with host Sarah Crespi as part of a live podcast event from the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin.
Sarah also interviews Science News Editor Tim Appenzeller about Neandertal art. The unexpected age of some European cave paintings is causing experts to rethink the mental capabilities of our extinct cousins.
For the monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck interviews with William Glassley about his book, A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice.
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316. Genes that turn off after death, and debunking the sugar conspiracyЧт, 15 фев 2018[-/+] Some of our genes come alive after we die. David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about which genes are active after death and what we can learn about time of death by looking at patterns of postmortem gene expression.
Sarah also interviews David Merritt Johns of Columbia University about the so-called sugar conspiracy. Historical evidence suggests, despite recent media reports, it is unlikely that “big sugar” influenced U.S. nutrition policy and led to the low-fat diet fad of the ’80s and ’90s.
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317. Happy lab animals may make better research subjects, and understanding the chemistry of the indoor environmentЧт, 08 фев 2018[-/+] Would happy lab animals—rats, mice, even zebrafish—make for better experiments? David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about the potential of treating lab animals more like us and making them more useful for science at the same time.
Sarah also interviews Jon Abbatt of the University of Toronto in Canada about indoor chemistry. What is going on in the air inside buildings—how different is it from the outside? Researchers are bringing together the tools of outdoor chemistry and building sciences to understand what is happening in the air and on surfaces inside—where some of us spend 90% of our time.
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318. Following 1000 people for decades to learn about the interplay of health, environment, and temperament, and investigating why naked mole rats don’t seem to ageЧт, 01 фев 2018[-/+] David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about the chance a naked mole rat could die at any one moment. Surprisingly, the probability a naked mole rat will die does not go up as it gets older. Researchers are looking at the biology of these fascinating animals for clues to their seeming lack of aging.
Sarah also interviews freelancer Douglas Starr about his feature story on the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study—a comprehensive study of the lives of all the babies born in 1 year in a New Zealand hospital. Starr talks about the many insights that have come out of this work—including new understandings of criminality, drug addiction, and mental illness—and the research to be done in the future as the 1000-person cohort begins to enter its fifth decade.
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319. The dangers of dismantling a geoengineered sun shield and the importance of genes we don’t inheritЧт, 25 янв 2018[-/+] Catherine Matacic—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about how geoengineering could reduce the harshest impacts of climate change, but make them even worse if it were ever turned off.
Sarah also interviews Augustine Kong of the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom about his Science paper on the role of noninherited “nurturing genes.” For example, educational attainment has a genetic component that may or may not be inherited. But having a parent with a predisposition for attainment still influences the child—even if those genes aren’t passed down. This shift to thinking about other people (and their genes) as the environment we live in complicates the age-old debate on nature versus nurture.
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320. Unearthed letters reveal changes in Fields Medal awards, and predicting crime with computers is no easy featЧт, 18 янв 2018[-/+] Freelance science writer Michael Price talks with Sarah Crespi about recently revealed deliberations for a coveted mathematics prize: the Fields Medal. Unearthed letters suggest early award committees favored promise and youth over star power.
Sarah also interviews Julia Dressel about her Science Advances paper on predicting recidivism—the likelihood that a criminal defendant will commit another crime. It turns out computers aren’t better than people at these types of predictions, in fact—both are correct only about 65% of the time.
Jen Golbeck interviews Paul Shapiro about his book, Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, in our monthly books segment.
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321. Salad-eating sharks, and what happens after quantum computing achieves quantum supremacyЧт, 11 янв 2018[-/+] David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about two underwater finds: the first sharks shown to survive off of seagrass and what fossilized barnacles reveal about ancient whale migrations.
Sarah also interviews Staff Writer Adrian Cho about what happens after quantum computing achieves quantum supremacy—the threshold where a quantum computer’s abilities outstrip nonquantum machines. Just how useful will these machines be and what kinds of scientific problems might they tackle?
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322. Who visits raccoon latrines, and boosting cancer therapy with gut microbesЧт, 04 янв 2018[-/+] David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about a long-term project monitoring raccoon latrines in California. What influence do these wild bathrooms have on the ecosystem?
Sarah also interviews Christian Jobin of the University of Florida in Gainesville about his Perspective on three papers linking the success of cancer immunotherapy with microbes in the gut—it turns out which bacteria live in a cancer patient’s intestines can predict their response to this cutting-edge cancer treatment.
Read the related papers:
Routy et al., Gut microbiome influences efficacy of PD-1–based immunotherapy against epithelial tumors, Science 2018
Gopalakrishnan et al., Gut microbiome modulates response to anti–PD-1 immunotherapy in melanoma patients, Science 2018
Matson et al., The commensal microbiome is associated with anti–PD-1 efficacy in metastatic melanoma patients, Science 2018 aan4236
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323. Science’s Breakthrough of the Year, our best online news, and science books for your shopping listЧт, 21 дек 2017[-/+] Dave Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about a few of this year’s top stories from our online news site, like ones on a major error in the monarch butterfly biological record and using massive balloons to build tunnels, and why they were chosen. Hint: It’s not just the stats.
Sarah also interviews Staff Writer Adrian Cho about the 2017 Breakthrough of the Year. Adrian talks about why Science gave the nod to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory team for a second year in a row—for the detection of a pair of merging neutron stars.
Jen Golbeck is also back for the last book review segment of the year. She talks with Sarah about her first year on the show, her favorite books, what we should have covered, and some suggestions for books as gifts.
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324. Putting the breaks on driverless cars, and dolphins that can muffle their earsЧт, 14 дек 2017[-/+] Whales and dolphins have incredibly sensitive hearing and are known to be harmed by loud underwater noises. David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about new research on captive cetaceans suggesting that some species can naturally muffle such sounds—perhaps opening a way to protect these marine mammals in the wild.
Sarah also interviews Staff Writer Jeffrey Mervis about his story on the future of autonomous cars. Will they really reduce traffic and make our lives easier? What does the science say?
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325. Folding DNA into teddy bears and getting creative about gun violence researchЧт, 07 дек 2017[-/+] This week, three papers came out describing new approaches to folding DNA into large complex shapes—20 times bigger than previous DNA sculptures. Staff Writer Bob Service talks with Sarah Crespi about building microscopic teddy bears, doughnuts, and more from genetic material, and using these techniques to push forward fields from materials science to drug delivery.
Sarah also interviews Philip Cook of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, about his Policy Forum on gun regulation research. It’s long been hard to collect data on gun violence in the United States, and Cook talks about how some researchers are getting funding and hard data. He also discusses some strong early results on open-carry laws and links between gun control and intimate partner homicide.
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326. Debunking yeti DNA, and the incredibly strong arms of prehistoric female farmersЧт, 30 ноя 2017[-/+] The abominable snowman, the yeti, bigfoot, and sasquatch—these long-lived myths of giant, hairy hominids depend on dropping elusive clues to stay in the popular imagination—a blurry photo here, a big footprint there—but what happens when scientists try to pin that evidence down? Online News Editor David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about the latest attempts to verify the yeti’s existence using DNA analysis of bones and hair and how this research has led to more than the debunking of a mythic creature.
Sarah also interviews Alison Macintosh of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom about her investigation of bone, muscle, and behavior in prehistory female farmers—what can a new database of modern women’s bones—athletes and regular folks—tell us about the labor of women as humans took up farming?
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327. The world’s first dog pictures, and looking at the planet from a quantum perspectiveСр, 22 ноя 2017[-/+] About 8000 years ago, people were drawing dogs with leashes, according to a series of newly described stone carvings from Saudi Arabia. Online News Editor David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about reporting on this story and what it says about the history of dog domestication.
Sarah also interviews physicist Brad Marston of Brown University on surprising findings that bring together planetary science and quantum physics. It turns out that Earth’s rotation and the presence of oceans and atmosphere on its surface mean it can be described as a “topological insulator”—a term usually reserved for quantum phenomena. Insights from the study of these effects at the quantum level may help us understand weather and currents at the planetary level—including insights into climate change and exoplanets.
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328. Preventing psychosis and the evolution—or not—of written languageЧт, 16 ноя 2017[-/+] How has written language changed over time? Do the way we read and the way our eyes work influence how scripts look? This week we hear a story on changes in legibility in written texts with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Sarah Crespi also interviews Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel on her story about detecting signs of psychosis in kids and teens, recruiting at-risk individuals for trials, and searching for anything that can stop the progression.
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329. Randomizing the news for science, transplanting genetically engineered skin, and the ethics of experimental brain implantsЧт, 09 ноя 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on what to do with experimental brain implants after a study is over, how gene therapy gave a second skin to a boy with a rare epidermal disease, and how bone markings thought to be evidence for early hominid tool use may have been crocodile bites instead, with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Sarah Crespi interviews Gary King about his new experiment to bring fresh data to the age-old question of how the news media influences the public. Are journalists setting the agenda or following the crowd? How can you know if a news story makes a ripple in a sea of online information? In a powerful study, King’s group was able to publish randomized stories on 48 small and medium sized news sites in the United States and then track the results.
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330. How Earth’s rotation could predict giant quakes, gene therapy’s new hope, and how carbon monoxide helps deep-diving sealsЧт, 02 ноя 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on how the sloshing of Earth’s core may spike major earthquakes, carbon monoxide’s role in keeping deep diving elephant seals oxygenated, and a festival celebrating heavily researched yet completely nonsensical theories with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi interviews staff writer Jocelyn Kaiser about the status of gene therapy, including a newly tested gene-delivering virus that may give scientists a new way to treat devastating spinal and brain diseases.
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331. Building conscious machines, tracing asteroid origins, and how the world’s oldest forests grewЧт, 26 окт 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on sunlight pushing Mars’s flock of asteroids around, approximately 400-million-year-old trees that grew by splitting their guts, and why fighting poverty might also mean worsening climate change with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks with cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene of the Coll?ge de France in Paris about consciousness—what is it and can machines have it?
For our monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck reviews astronaut Scott Kelly’s book Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.
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333. Evolution of skin color, taming rice thrice, and peering into baby brainsЧт, 12 окт 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories about a new brain imaging technique for newborns, recently uncovered evidence on rice domestication on three continents, and why Canada geese might be migrating into cities, with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi interviews Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania about the age and diversity of genes related to skin pigment in African genomes.
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334. Putting rescue robots to the test, an ancient Scottish village buried in sand, and why costly drugs may have more side effectsЧт, 05 окт 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories about putting rescue bots to the test after the Mexico earthquake, why a Scottish village was buried in sand during the Little Ice Age, and efforts by the U.S. military to predict posttraumatic stress disorder with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Andrew Wagner interviews Alexandra Tinnermann of the University Medical Center of Hamburg, Germany, about the nocebo effect. Unlike the placebo effect, in which you get positive side effects with no treatment, in the nocebo effect you get negative side effects with no treatment. It turns out both nocebo and placebo effects get stronger with a drug perceived as more expensive.
Read the research.
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335. Furiously beating bat hearts, giant migrating wombats, and puzzling out preprint publishingЧт, 28 сен 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on how a bat varies its heart rate to avoid starving, giant wombatlike creatures that once migrated across Australia, and the downsides of bedbugs’ preference for dirty laundry with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks Jocelyn Kaiser about her guide to preprint servers for biologists—what they are, how they are used, and why some people are worried about preprint publishing’s rising popularity.
For our monthly book segment, Jen Golbeck talks to author Sandra Postel about her book, Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity.
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336. Cosmic rays from beyond our galaxy, sleeping jellyfish, and counting a language’s words for colorsЧт, 21 сен 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on animal hoarding, how different languages have different numbers of colors, and how to tell a wakeful jellyfish from a sleeping one with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic, Brice Russ, and Sarah Crespi.
Andrew Wagner talks to Karl-Heinz Kampert about a long-term study of the cosmic rays blasting our planet. After analyzing 30,000 high-energy rays, it turns out some are coming from outside the Milky Way.
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337. Cargo-sorting molecular robots, humans as the ultimate fire starters, and molecular modeling with quantum computersЧт, 14 сен 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on the gut microbiome’s involvement in multiple sclerosis, how wildfires start—hint: It’s almost always people—and a new record in quantum computing with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Andrew Wagner talks to Lulu Qian about DNA-based robots that can carry and sort cargo.
Sarah Crespi goes behind the scenes with Science’s Photography Managing Editor Bill Douthitt to learn about snapping this week’s cover photo of the world’s smallest neutrino detector.
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338. Taking climate science to court, sailing with cylinders, and solar coolingЧт, 07 сен 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on smooth sailing with giant, silolike sails, a midsized black hole that may be hiding out in the Milky Way, and new water-cooling solar panels that could cut air conditioning costs with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Sabrina McCormick about climate science in the U.S. courts and the growing role of the judiciary in climate science policy.
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343. The biology of color, a database of industrial espionage, and a link between prions and diabetesЧт, 03 авг 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease in chimps, a potential new pathway to diabetes—through prions—and what a database of industrial espionage says about the economics of spying with Online News Editors David Grimm and Catherine Matacic.
Sarah Crespi talks to Innes Cuthill about how the biology of color intersects with behavior, development, and vision. And Mary Soon Lee joins to share some of her chemistry haiku—one poem for each element in the periodic table.
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344. DNA and proteins from ancient books, music made from data, and the keys to poverty trapsЧт, 27 июл 2017[-/+] This week we hear stories on turning data sets into symphonies for business and pleasure, why so much of the world is stuck in the poverty trap, and calls for stiffening statistical significance with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to news writer Ann Gibbons about the biology of ancient books—what can we learn from DNA, proteins, and book worm trails about a book, its scribes, and its readers?
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345. Paying cash for carbon, making dogs friendly, and destroying all life on EarthЧт, 20 июл 2017[-/+] This week we have stories on the genes that may make dogs friendly, why midsized animals are the fastest, and what it would take to destroy all the life on our planet with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Seema Jayachandran about paying cash to Ugandan farmers to not cut down trees—does it reduce deforestation in the long term?
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346. Still-living dinosaurs, the world’s first enzymes, and thwarting early adopters in techЧт, 13 июл 2017[-/+] This week, we have stories on how ultraviolet rays may have jump-started the first enzymes on Earth, a new fossil find that helps date how quickly birds diversified after the extinction of all the other dinosaurs, and a drug that may help reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury on memory with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic and special guest Carolyn Gramling.
Sarah Crespi talks to Christian Catalini about an experiment in which some early adopters were denied access to new technology and what it means for the dissemination of that tech.
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348. A Stone Age skull cult, rogue Parkinson’s proteins in the gut, and controversial pesticides linked to bee deathsЧт, 29 июн 2017[-/+] This week we have stories on what the rogue Parkinson’s protein is doing in the gut, how chimps outmuscle humans, and evidence for an ancient skull cult with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Jen Golbeck is back with this month’s book segment. She interviews Alan Alda about his new book on science communication: If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Sarah Crespi talks to Jeremy Kerr about two huge studies that take a nuanced looked at the relationship between pesticides and bees. Read the research in Science:
Country-specific effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on honey bees and wild bees, B.A. Woodcock et al.
Chronic exposure to neonicotinoids reduces honey bee health near corn crops, Tsvetkov et al.
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350. Slowly retiring chimps, tanning at the cellular level, and plumbing magma’s secretsЧт, 15 июн 2017[-/+] This week we have stories on why it’s taking so long for research chimps to retire, boosting melanin for a sun-free tan, and tracking a mouse trail to find liars online with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Allison Rubin about what we can learn from zircon crystals outside of a volcano about how long hot magma hangs out under a volcano.
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351. How to weigh a star—with a little help from Einstein, toxic ‘selfish genes,’ and the world’s oldest Homo sapiens fossilsЧт, 08 июн 2017[-/+] This week we have stories on what body cams reveal about interactions between black drivers and U.S. police officers, the world’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils, and how modern astronomers measured the mass of a star—thanks to an old tip from Einstein—with Online News Intern Ryan Cross.
Sarah Crespi talks to Eyal Ben-David about a pair of selfish genes—one toxin and one antidote—that have been masquerading as essential developmental genes in a nematode worm. She asks how many more so-called “essential genes” are really just self-perpetuating freeloaders?
Science Careers Editor Rachel Bernstein is also here to talk about stress and work-life balance for researchers and science students.
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353. How whales got so big, sperm in space, and a first look at Jupiter’s polesЧт, 25 мая 2017[-/+] This week we have stories on strange dimming at a not-so-distant star, sending sperm to the International Space Station, and what the fossil record tells us about how baleen whales got so ginormous with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Julia Rosen talks to Scott Bolton about surprises in the first data from the Juno mission, including what Jupiter’s poles look like and a peak under its outer cloud layers.
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354. Preventing augmented-reality overload, fixing bone with tiny bubbles, and studying human migrationsЧт, 18 мая 2017[-/+] This week we have stories on blocking dangerous or annoying distractions in augmented reality, gene therapy applied with ultrasound to heal bone breaks, and giving robots geckolike gripping power with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Deputy News Editor Elizabeth Culotta joins Sarah Crespi to discuss a special package on human migrations—from the ancient origins of Europeans to the restless and wandering scientists of today.
Listen to previous podcasts.
Download the show transcript.
Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com.
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356. Podcast: Reading pain from the brains of infants, modeling digital faces, and wifi hologramsЧт, 04 мая 2017[-/+] This week, we discuss the most accurate digital model of a human face to date, stray Wi-Fi signals that can be used to spy on a closed room, and artificial intelligence that can predict Supreme Court decisions with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Caroline Hartley joins Sarah Crespi to discuss a scan that can detect pain in babies—a useful tool when they can’t tell you whether something really hurts.
Listen to previous podcasts.
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357. Podcast: Where dog breeds come from, bots that build buildings, and gathering ancient human DNA from cave sedimentsЧт, 27 апр 2017[-/+] This week, a new family tree of dog breeds, advances in artificial wombs, and an autonomous robot that can print a building with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Viviane Slon joins Sarah Crespi to discuss a new way to seek out ancient humans—without finding fossils or bones—by screening sediments for ancient DNA.
Jen Golbeck interviews Andrew Shtulman, author of Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World Are So Often Wrong for this month’s book segment.
Listen to previous podcasts.
See more book segments.
Download the show transcript.
Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com.
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358. Podcast: When good lions go bad, listening to meteor crashes, and how humans learn to change the worldЧт, 20 апр 2017[-/+] This week, meteors’ hiss may come from radio waves, pigeons that build on the wings of those that came before, and a potential answer to the century-old mystery of what turned two lions into people eaters with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Elise Amel joins Julia Rosen to discuss the role of evolution and psychology in humans’ ability to overcome norms and change the world, as part of a special issue on conservation this week in Science.
Listen to previous podcasts.
Download the show transcript
Transcripts courtesy Scribie.com
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361. Podcast: Killing off stowaways to Mars, chasing synthetic opiates, and how soil contributes to global carbon calculationsЧт, 30 мар 2017[-/+] This week, how to avoid contaminating Mars with microbial hitchhikers, turning mammalian cells into biocomputers, and a look at how underground labs in China are creating synthetic opioids for street sales in the United States with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Caitlin Hicks Pries joins Julia Rosen to discuss her study of the response of soil carbon to a warming world.
And for this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck talks to Rob Dunn about his book Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future.
Listen to previous podcasts.
Download the show transcript.
Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com.
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364. Podcast: Human pheromones lightly debunked, ignoring cyberattacks, and designer chromosomesПт, 10 мар 2017[-/+] This week, how Flickr photos could help predict floods, why it might be a good idea to ignore some cyberattacks, and new questions about the existence of human pheromones with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Sarah Richardson joins Alexa Billow to discuss a global project to build a set of working yeast chromosomes from the ground up.
Read Sarah Richardson’s research in Science.
Listen to previous podcasts.
Download the show transcript.
Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com.
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366. Podcast: Cracking the smell code, why dinosaurs had wings before they could fly, and detecting guilty feelings in altruistic gesturesЧт, 23 фев 2017[-/+] This week, we chat about why people are nice to each other—does it feel good or are we just avoiding feeling bad—approaches to keeping arsenic out of the food supply, and using artificial intelligence to figure out what a chemical smells like to a human nose with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Stephen Brusatte joins Alexa Billow to discuss why dinosaurs evolved wings and feathers before they ever flew. And in the latest installment of our monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck talks with Bill Schutt, author of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History.
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370. Podcast: Bringing back tomato flavor genes, linking pollution and dementia, and when giant otters roamed EarthЧт, 26 янв 2017[-/+] This week, we chat about 50-kilogram otters that once stalked southern China, using baseball stats to show how jet lag puts players off their game, and a growing link between pollution and dementia, with Online News Editor David Grimm. Also in this week’s show: our very first monthly book segment. In the inaugural segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Helen Pilcher about her new book Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-extinction. Plus Denise Tieman joins Alexa Billow to discuss the genes behind tomato flavor, or lack thereof. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Dutodom; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
374. Podcast: Our Breakthrough of the Year, top online stories, and the year in science booksЧт, 22 дек 2016[-/+] This week, we chat about human evolution in action, 6000-year-old fairy tales, and other top news stories from 2016 with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to News Editor Tim Appenzeller about this year’s breakthrough, runners-up, breakdowns, and how Science’s predictions from last year help us. In a bonus segment, Science book review editor Valerie Thompson talks about the big science books of 2016 and science books for kids. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Warwick Goble; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
379. Podcast: The rise of skeletons, species-blurring hybrids, and getting rightfully ditched by a taxiЧт, 17 ноя 2016[-/+] This week we chat about why it’s hard to get a taxi to nowhere, why bones came onto the scene some 550 million years ago, and how targeting bacteria’s predilection for iron might make better vaccines, with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks with news writer Elizabeth Pennisi about the way hybrids muck up the concept of species and turn the evolutionary tree into a tangled web. Listen to previous podcasts [Image: Raul Gonzalez Alegria; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
380. Podcast: How farms made dogs love carbs, the role of dumb luck in science, and what your first flu exposure did to youЧт, 10 ноя 2016[-/+] This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—is Bhutan really a quake-free zone, how much of scientific success is due to luck, and what farming changed about dogs and us—with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Katelyn Gostic of the University of California, Los Angeles, about how the first flu you came down with—which depends on your birth year—may help predict your susceptibility to new flu strains down the road. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image:monkeybusinessimages/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
382. Podcast: A close look at a giant moon crater, the long tradition of eating rodents, and building evidence for Planet NineЧт, 27 окт 2016[-/+] This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—eating rats in the Neolithic, growing evidence for a gargantuan 9th planet in our solar system, and how to keep just the good parts of a hookworm infection—with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Alexa Billow talks to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Maria Zuber about NASA’s GRAIL spacecraft, which makes incredibly precise measurements of the moon’s gravity. This week’s guest used GRAIL data to explore a giant impact crater and learn more about the effects of giant impacts on the moon and Earth. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Ernest Wright, NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
384. Podcast: When we pay attention to plane crashes, releasing modified mosquitoes, and bacteria that live off radiationЧт, 13 окт 2016[-/+] This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories -- including a new bacterial model for alien life that feeds on cosmic rays, tracking extinct “bear dogs” to Texas, and when we stop caring about plane crashes -- with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Alexa Billow talks to Staff Writer Kelly Servick about her feature story on the releasing modified mosquitoes in Brazil to combat diseases like Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. Her story is part of a package on mosquito control. Listen to previous podcasts [Image: © Alex Wild; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
386. Podcast: Why we murder, resurrecting extinct animals, and the latest on the three-parent babyЧт, 29 сен 2016[-/+] Daily news stories Should we bring animals back from extinction, three-parent baby announced, and the roots of human violence, with David Grimm. From the magazine Our networked world gives us an unprecedented ability to monitor and respond to global happenings. Databases monitoring news stories can provide real-time information about events all over the world -- like conflicts or protests. However, the databases that now exist aren’t up to the task. Alexa Billow talks with Ryan Kennedy about his policy forum that addresses problems with global data collection and interpretation. [Image: Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
387. Podcast: An atmospheric pacemaker skips a beat, a religious edict that spawned fat chickens, and knocking out the ‘sixth sense’Чт, 22 сен 2016[-/+] A quick change in chickens’ genes as a result of a papal ban on eating four-legged animals, the appeal of tragedy, and genetic defects in the “sixth sense,” with David Grimm.
From the magazine
In February of this year, one of the most regular phenomena in the atmosphere skipped a cycle. Every 22 to 36 months, descending eastward and westward wind jets—high above the equator—switch places. The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, or QBO, is normally so regular you can almost set your watch by it, but not this year. Scott Osprey discusses the implications for this change with Alexa Billow.
Read the research.
[Image: ValerijaP/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
388. Podcast: A burning body experiment, prehistoric hunting dogs, and seeding life on other planetsЧт, 15 сен 2016[-/+] News stories on our earliest hunting companions, should we seed exoplanets with life, and finding space storm hot spots with David Grimm. From the magazine Two years ago, 43 students disappeared from a teacher’s college in Guerrero, Mexico. Months of protests and investigation have not yielded a believable account of what happened to them. The government of Mexico claims that the students were killed by cartel members and burned on an outdoor pyre in a dump outside Cucola. Lizzie Wade has been following this story with a focus on the science of fire investigation. She talks about an investigator in Australia that has burned pig carcasses in an effort to understand these events in Mexico. [Image: Edgard Garrido/REUTERS/Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
389. Podcast: Double navigation in desert ants, pollution in the brain, and dating deal breakersЧт, 08 сен 2016[-/+] News stories on magnetic waste in the brain, the top deal breakers in online dating, and wolves that are willing to “risk it for the biscuit,” with David Grimm. From the magazine How do we track where we are going and where we have been? Do you pay attention to your path? Look for landmarks? Leave a scent trail? The problem of navigation has been solved a number of different ways by animals. The desert-dwelling Cataglyphis ant was thought to rely on stride integration, basically counting their steps. But it turns out they have a separate method of keeping track of their whereabouts called “optic flow.” Matthias Wittlinger joins Sarah Crespi to talk about his work with these amazing creatures. Read the research. [Image: Rooobert Bayer /Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
390. Podcast: Ceres’s close-up, how dogs listen, and a new RNA therapyЧт, 01 сен 2016[-/+] News stories on what words dogs know, an RNA therapy for psoriasis, and how Lucy may have fallen from the sky, with Catherine Matacic. From the magazine In early 2015, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. Over the last year and a half, scientists have studied the mysterious dwarf planet using data collected by Dawn, including detailed images of its surface. Julia Rosen talks with Debra Buczkowski about Ceres’s close-up. See the full Ceres package. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
391. Podcast: Quantum dots in consumer electronics and a faceoff with the quiz masterЧт, 25 авг 2016[-/+] Sarah Crespi takes a pop quiz on literal life hacking, spotting poverty from outer space, and the size of the average American vocabulary with Catherine Matacic. From the magazine You can already buy a quantum dot television, but it’s really just the beginning of the infiltration of quantum dots into our everyday lives. Cherie Kagan is here to talk about her in depth review of the technology published in this week’s issue. [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
392. Podcast: How mice mess up reproducibility, new support for an RNA world, and giving cash away wiselyЧт, 18 авг 2016[-/+] News stories on a humanmade RNA copier that bolsters ideas about early life on Earth, the downfall of a pre-Columbian empire, and how a bit of cash at the right time can keep you off the streets, with Jessica Boddy. From the magazine This story combines two things we seem to talk about a lot on the podcast: reproducibility and the microbiome. The big question we’re going to take on is how reproducible are mouse studies when their microbiomes aren’t taken into account? Staff writer Kelly Servick is here to talk about what promises to be a long battle with mouse-dwelling bugs. [Image: Annedde/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
393. Podcast: 400-year-old sharks, busting a famous scientific hoax, and clinical trials in petsЧт, 11 авг 2016[-/+] News stories on using pets in clinical trials to test veterinarian drugs, debunking the Piltdown Man once and for all, and deciding just how smart crows can be, with David Grimm. From the magazine It’s really difficult to figure out how old a free-living animal is. Maybe you can find growth rings in bone or other calcified body parts, but in sharks like the Greenland shark, no such hardened parts exist. Using two different radiocarbon dating approaches, Julius Neilsen and colleagues discovered that the giant Greenland shark may live as long as 400 years. Read the research. [Image: James Howard McGregor/Wikimedia Commons/Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
394. Podcast: Pollution hot spots in coastal waters, extreme bees, and diseased dinosЧт, 04 авг 2016[-/+] News stories on bees that live perilously close to the mouth of a volcano, diagnosing arthritis in dinosaur bones, and the evolution of the female orgasm, with David Grimm. From the magazine Rivers deliver water to the ocean but water is also discharged along the coast in a much more diffuse way. This “submarine groundwater discharge” carries dissolved chemicals out to sea. But the underground nature of these outflows makes them difficult to quantify. Audrey Sawyer talks with Sarah Crespi about the scale of this discharge and how it affects coastal waters surrounding the United States. [Image: Hilary Erenler/Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
395. Podcast: Saving wolves that aren’t really wolves, bird-human partnership, and our oldest common ancestorЧт, 28 июл 2016[-/+] Stories on birds that guide people to honey, genes left over from the last universal common ancestor, and what the nose knows about antibiotics, with Devi Shastri. The Endangered Species Act—a 1973 U.S. law designed to protect animals in the country from extinction—may need a fresh look. The focus on “species” is the problem. This has become especially clear when it comes to wolves—recent genetic information has led to government agencies moving to delist the grey wolf. Robert Wayne helps untangle the wolf family tree and talks us through how a better understanding of wolf genetics may trouble their protected status. [Image: Claire N. Spottiswoode/Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
396. Podcast: An omnipresent antimicrobial, a lichen menage a trois, and tiny tide-induced tremorsЧт, 21 июл 2016[-/+] Stories on a lichen threesome, tremors caused by tides, and a theoretical way to inspect nuclear warheads without looking too closely at them, with Catherine Matacic. Despite concerns about antibiotic resistance, it seems like antimicrobials have crept into everything—from hand soap to toothpaste, and even fabrics. What does the ubiquitous presence of these compounds mean for our microbiomes? Alyson Yee talks with host Sarah Crespi about one antimicrobial in particular—triclosan—which has been partially banned in the European Union. [Image: T. Wheeler/Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
398. Podcast: An exoplanet with three suns, no relief for aching knees, and building better nosesЧт, 07 июл 2016[-/+] Listen to stories on how once we lose cartilage it’s gone forever, genetically engineering a supersniffing mouse, and building an artificial animal from silicon and heart cells, with Online News Editor David Grimm. As we learn more and more about exoplanets, we find we know less and less about what were thought of as the basics: why planets are where they are in relation to their stars and how they formed. Kevin Wagner joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the latest unexpected exoplanet—a young jovian planet in a three-star system. [Image: Hellerhoff/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0;Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
402. Podcast: Scoliosis development, antiracing stripes, and the dawn of the hobbitsЧт, 09 июн 2016[-/+] Listen to stories on lizard stripes that trick predators, what a tiny jaw bone reveals about ancient “hobbit” people, and the risks of psychology’s dependence on online subjects drawn from Mechanical Turk, with online news intern Patrick Monahan. Brian Ciruna talks about a potential mechanism for the most common type of scoliosis that involves the improper flow of cerebral spinal fluid during adolescence with host Sarah Crespi. [Image: irin717/iStock/Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
404. Podcast: The economics of the Uber era, mysterious Neandertal structures, and an octopus boomЧт, 26 мая 2016[-/+] Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on underground rings built by Neandertals, worldwide increases in cephalopods and a controversial hypothesis for Alzheimer’s disease. Glen Weyl joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss academics’ role in rising markets that depend on data and networks of people. We’re lucky to live in the age of the match—need a ride, a song, a husband? There’s an app that can match your needs to the object of your desire, with some margin of error. But much of this innovation is happening in the private sector—what is academia doing to contribute? [Music: Jeffrey Cook; Image: Etienne Fabre / SSAC] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
409. Podcast: Sizing up a baby dino, jolting dead brains, and dirty miceЧт, 21 апр 2016[-/+] Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on a possibledebunking of a popular brain stimulation technique, using “dirty” mice in the lab to simulate the human immune system, and how South American monkeys’ earliest ancestors used rafts to get to Central America. Kristi Curry Rogers joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss insights into dinosaur growth patterns from the bones of a baby titanosaur found in Madagascar. Read the research. [Image: K. Curry Rogers et al./Science] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
411. Podcast: Spreading cancer, sacrificing humans, and transplanting organsЧт, 07 апр 2016[-/+] Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on evidence for the earth being hit by supernovae, record-breaking xenotransplantation, and winning friends and influencing people with human sacrifice. Staff news writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how small membrane-bound packets called “exosomes” might pave the way for cancer cells to move into new territory in the body. [Image: Val Altounian/Science] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
424. Podcast: Dancing dinosaurs, naked black holes, and moreПт, 08 янв 2016[-/+] What stripped an unusual black hole of its stars? Can a bipolar drug change ant behavior? And did dinosaurs dance to woo mates? Science's Online News Editor David Grimm chats about these stories and more with Science's Multimedia Producer Sarah Crespi. Plus,Science's Emily Underwood wades into the muddled world of migraine research, and Jessica Metcalf talks about using modern microbial means to track mammalian decomposition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
432. The origins of biodiversity in the Amazon and a daily news roundupЧт, 29 окт 2015[-/+] Lizzie Wade discusses whether the amazing biodiversity of the Amazon Basin was the result of massive flooding, or the uplift of the Andes mountain range. David Grimm talks about microbes aboard the International Space Station, the fate of juvenile giant ground sloths during the Pleistocene, and singing classes as social glue. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: ©Jason Houston] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
434. Pluto's mysteries revealed and a daily news roundupЧт, 15 окт 2015[-/+] Alan Stern discusses the first scientific results from the New Horizons July 14 flyby of Pluto, which revealed details about the dwarf planet's geology, surface composition, and atmosphere; Catherine Matacic talks about dino temps, Paleo-sleeping, and editing pig organs. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
436. Safer jet fuels and a daily news roundupЧт, 01 окт 2015[-/+] Julia Kornfield discusses the design of safer jet fuel additives using polymer theory to control misting and prevent fires, David Grimm talks about building a better sunscreen, cultures that don't count past four, and does empathy mean feeling literal pain. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Image credit: Eduard Marmet/CC BY-SA-3.0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
439. Genes and the human microbiome and a news roundupЧт, 10 сен 2015[-/+] Seth Bordenstein discusses how our genes affect the composition of our microbiome, influencing our health, and David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about the origins of the Basque language, the benefits of being raised in a barn, and how some flying ants lost their wings. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Image credit: Decaseconds/CC BY-NC 2.0, via flickr Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
442. Human superpredators and a news roundupЧт, 20 авг 2015[-/+] Chris Darimont discusses the impact of humans' unique predatory behavior on the planet and Catherine Matacic talks with Sarah Crespi about whistled languages, Neolithic massacres, and too many gas giants. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Image credit: Andrew S Wright] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
443. Marmoset monkey vocal development and a news roundupЧт, 13 авг 2015[-/+] Asif Ghazanfar discusses how marmoset parents influence their babies' vocal development and Hanae Armitage talks with Sarah Crespi about the influence of livestock on biodiversity hotspots, trusting internet search results, and ant-like robots. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Carmem A. Busko, CC BY-2.5] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
445. Comet chemistry and a news roundupЧт, 30 июл 2015[-/+] Fred Goesmann discusses Philae's bumpy landing on Comet 67P, and the organic compounds it detected there, and Hanae Armitage talks with Sarah Crespi about this week’s online news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: NAVCAM/ESA/Rosetta] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
446. Ancient DNA and a news roundupЧт, 23 июл 2015[-/+] Elizabeth Culotta discusses the ancient DNA revolution and David Grimm brings online news stories about rising autism numbers, shark safety, and tiny cloudmakers. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Alexander Maklakov] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
447. AI therapists and a news roundupЧт, 16 июл 2015[-/+] John Bohannon discusses using artificial intelligence in the psychologist's chair and David Grimm brings online news stories about the age of human hands, deadly weather, and biological GPS. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img:Nils Rinaldi/Flickr] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
448. Jumping soft bots and a news roundupЧт, 09 июл 2015[-/+] Nick Bartlett discusses the challenges of building a jumping soft robot and David Grimm brings online news stories about drug violence in Mexico, pollution's effect on weather, and drugging away our altruism. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Stephen Wolfe/Flickr] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
449. The scent of a rose and a news roundupЧт, 02 июл 2015[-/+] Silvie Baudino discusses the biosynthesis of the compounds responsible for the scents of roses and David Grimm brings online news stories about hearing fractals, muon detectors, and bobcat burials. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: liz west/Flickr] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
451. Tracking ivory with genetics, the letter R, and a news roundupЧт, 18 июн 2015[-/+] Samuel Wasser discusses using genetics to track down sources of elephant ivory, Suzanne Boyce talks with Susanne Bard about why it's so hard to say the letter R, and David Grimm brings online news stories about declining devils, keeping dinos out of North America, and the tiniest flea circus. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: guido da rozze/Flickr CC BY 2.0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
456. Science in Cuba and a news roundupЧт, 14 мая 2015[-/+] Richard Stone discusses science in Cuba: isolation, innovation, and future partnerships, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Garry Balding/Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, via flickr] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
461. Mountain gorilla genomes and a news roundupЧт, 09 апр 2015[-/+] Chris Tyler-Smith discusses what whole genome sequencing reveals about the genetic diversity and evolutionary history of endangered mountain gorillas, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Berzerker/flickr/Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
462. The Deepwater Horizon disaster: Five years later.Чт, 02 апр 2015[-/+] 5th Anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster: Marcia McNutt discusses the role of science in responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Warren Cornwall examines the state of ecological recovery 5 years later. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © Bryan Tarnowski/Science Magazine] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
463. Child abuse across generations and a news roundupЧт, 26 мар 2015[-/+] Cathy Spatz Widom discusses whether child abuse is transmitted across generations. Angela Colmone has a round-up of advances in immunotherapy from Science Translational Medicine, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Luigi Mengato/flickr/Creative Commons] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
469. The planetary boundaries framework, marine debris, and a news roundupЧт, 12 фев 2015[-/+] Will Steffen discusses the processes that define the planetary boundaries framework: a safe operating space within which humanity can still thrive on earth. Jenna Jambeck examines the factors influencing how much plastic debris a nation contributes to the ocean. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Bo Eide Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
471. Mathematicians and the NSA and a news roundupЧт, 29 янв 2015[-/+] John Bohannon discusses the growing rift between mathematicians and the National Security Agency following Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations of massive eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Amos Frumkin/Hebrew University Cave Research Center] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
474. Deworming buffalo and a news roundupЧт, 08 янв 2015[-/+] Vanessa Ezenwa discusses the complex relationship between parasitic infections and tuberculosis in African buffalo and what it can tell us about human health. Online news editor David Grimm dicusses coloration in lizards, weighing earth-like planets, and how bears help meadows by eating ants. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Mark Jordahl/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
482. How hippos help and a news roundup (14 November 2014)Пт, 14 ноя 2014[-/+] David Grimm and Meghna Sachdev discuss robots that can induce ghostly feelings, the domestication of cats, and training humans to echolocate. Elizabeth Pennisi discusses overcoming hippos' dangerous reputation and oddly shaped bodies to study their important role in African ecosystems. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Kabacchi/Wikipedia] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Медиа: audio / mpeg | ↑ |
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