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1.433 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Could This Be The End Of Voyager 1?
8 maart 2024 · 13 min
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2. Their mission? To explore the farthest reaches of our galaxy. Their missions were only supposed to last about four years, but it’s been almost 50. They’re now in interstellar space, navigating the region between stars. Lees meer
But since November, Voyager 1 has been sending unintelligible data back to Earth, raising concerns that it could be nearing the end of its mission.
Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead at Carbon Plan, about Voyager 1 and other science news of the week, including work on detecting neutrinos with forests, calculating the age of giant sand dunes, uncovering the origins of cells, investigating why we don’t have tails anymore, and how a man walking his dog discovered a dinosaur fossil.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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What It Takes To Care For The US Nuclear Arsenal
7 maart 2024 · 17 min
For many people in the US, the threat of nuclear weapons is out of sight and out of mind. But the nuclear complex is alive and well. In fact, the state of nuclear weapons is evolving in the US. The United States, among other countries, is giving its nuclear arsenal—which contains about 5,000 weapons—a makeover. This modernization costs around $50 billion a year, which will amount to more than $1.5 trillion over the next few decades. Lees meer
With the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in place, countries should be stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and technology. That raises the question: If nearly all countries have agreed not to nuke each other, why are nuclear arsenals being updated? And what does that signal to the world?
In her new book Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons, science journalist and author Sarah Scoles analyzes the current nuclear age, speaks with the scientists in charge of nuclear weapons, and asks, do more nukes keep us safer?
Scoles talks with Ira about why the US is modernizing its nuclear arsenal, the role of science in nuclear deterrence, and why this moment in nuclear history is so important.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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A Young Scientist Uplifts The Needs Of Parkinson’s Patients
6 maart 2024 · 18 min
"I heard elders talk about 'the shakes,' but I now know that language reflects deep historical inequities that have denied us access to healthcare, knowledge, and research that could help us alleviate burdens and strengthen our health—enough with the shakes!" —Senegal Alfred Mabry, in Cell Lees meer
Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder in the United States. According to a 2022 study, some 90,000 people a year in the US are diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It’s a progressive disease that worsens over time, producing unintended or uncontrollable movements, such as tremors, stiffness, and difficulty with balance and coordination.
Researchers are working to better understand the causes of the disease, how it connects to other health conditions, and how to slow or prevent its effects. Senegal Alfred Mabry is a third year PhD student in neuroscience at Cornell University, and was recently named a recipient of this year’s Rising Black Scientist Award by Cell Press. His research involves interoception—a sense that allows the body to monitor its own processes—and the autonomic nervous system. He joins Ira to talk about his research into Parkinson’s disease, and the importance of scientific research being connected to communities.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Snakes Are Evolutionary Superstars | Whale Song Is All In The Larynx
5 maart 2024 · 25 min
In the trees, through the water, and under the dirt: Snakes evolve faster than their lizard relatives, allowing them to occupy diverse niches. Also, researchers are working to understand just how baleen whales are able to produce their haunting songs. Lees meer
Snakes Are Evolutionary Superstars
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, new research shows that snakes deserve our recognition as evolutionary superstars. The study, published last week in the journal Science, found that snakes evolve faster than other reptiles, allowing them to thrive in a wide range of environments.
It shouldn’t be too surprising: Many of the nearly 4,000 snake species occupy extremely specialized niches in their ecosystems. The blunt-headed tree snake, for example, eats through batches of treefrog eggs in Central and South America. Pythons, which can grow to 20 feet long, can take down large mammals like antelopes.
Joining Ira to talk about the evolutionary speed of snakes is study co-author Dr. Daniel Rabosky, evolutionary biologist and curator of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan.
Whale Song Is All In The Larynx
Whale songs can be both beautiful and haunting. But the exact mechanism that the 16 species of baleen whales, like humpback and minke whales, use to make those noises hasn’t been well understood. The finer points of whale anatomy are hard to study, in part because the soft tissues of beached whales often begin to decompose before researchers can preserve and study them. And until the relatively recent advent of monitoring tags that can be attached to individual whales, it’s been hard to associate a given underwater sound with any specific whale.
For a recent study, published in the journal Nature, researchers took advantage of several well-preserved beached whales to investigate the mysteries of the baleen whale larynx and its role in whale song. Dr. Coen Elemans of the University of Southern Denmark joins Ira to discuss the work, which included a MacGyveresque contraption invol…
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What’s Behind The Measles Outbreak In Florida?
4 maart 2024 · 18 min
The United States eliminated measles back in 2000, but it still pops up every now and then. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 35 measles cases across 15 states had been reported this year as of February 22. Early last month, a measles outbreak began at an elementary school in Broward County, in southern Florida. As of February 28, the Florida Department of Health reported 9 cases for Broward County—out of 10 for the whole state. Lees meer
Measles is one of the most infectious diseases in the world, and it has a safe and effective vaccine called MMR—for measles, mumps, and rubella—that saves lives. Kids usually get the vaccine early in life, and it provides lifelong protection.
But childhood vaccination rates have declined in some areas, so preventable diseases like measles are on the rise. In Florida, the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has been criticized for how he’s handling the outbreak—for example, by not explicitly encouraging parents to get their kids vaccinated.
So how did the measles outbreak in Florida get to this point? And is it a reflection of a broader public health risk?
Ira talks with pediatrician Dr. Rana Alissa, who is vice president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and an associate professor at the University of Florida in Jacksonville. He is also joined by Dr. Paul Offit, pediatrician and director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Pythagoras Was Wrong About Music | Biochar's Potential For Carbon Capture
1 maart 2024 · 19 min
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras had specific ideas about the mathematical ratios behind music. It turns out that he was wrong. Also, the charcoal-like substance known as biochar packs carbon into a stable form, making it less likely to escape into the atmosphere. Lees meer
Pythagoras Was Wrong About Music
The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras proposed a mathematical argument for what music sounds best to the ear: According to legend, he said listeners preferred music with chords adhering to perfect mathematical ratios, like 3:2. This concept has persisted in modern Western music, specifically for building harmonies.
But new research out of the University of Cambridge disputes this idea. A set of behavioral experiments with more than 4,000 participants in the US and South Korea found that listeners actually prefer chords with a slightly imperfect mathematical ratio, particularly when played with non-Western instruments.
Tim Revell, deputy US editor of New Scientist joins Ira to talk through this story, as well as other big science stories of the week, including a big change to YouTube’s algorithm, a new battery breakthrough for electric cars, and the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas.
Farmers And Environmentalists Alike Are Excited About Biochar
In a former biomass plant in Greenville, wood chips are flowing from hoppers into long tubes about three feet in diameter.
Pat Jones is the president of Clean Maine Carbon, which burns wood in high-temperature, low-oxygen conditions known as pyrolysis. “It starts out as wood” he said. “And as you can see when we come over here what comes out the other end is biochar.”
In the quest for climate solutions, Jones is among the Maine entrepreneurs banking on this charcoal-like substance. They say it can bind up carbon for decades, and improve agricultural soils at the same time.
The end product has high carbon density, and is very stable, so less of the carbon will be released into the atmosphere than if it were left to decompose.…
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As Space Exploration Expands, So Will Space Law
29 februari 2024 · 18 min
Almost 70 years ago—in the middle of the Cold War—the United States and the Soviet Union kicked off the race to space, and that high-stakes sprint transformed humanity’s relationship with space forever. Ultimately the USSR launched the first satellite, Sputnik, and the U.S. put the first humans on the moon. Lees meer
Now we’re in a different space race. But this time, there are a lot more contenders. There are more satellites in orbit than ever before, NASA is trying to put humans on Mars, countries are still sending landers to the moon, and billionaires are using rockets as tourist vehicles. All this activity raises some serious questions: Who is in charge of space? And who makes the rules?
Journalist Khari Johnson explored these questions in a recent feature for Wired magazine, featuring experts at the forefront of these issues. Guest host Sophie Bushwick is joined by two of them: Dr. Timiebi Aganaba, assistant professor of space and society at Arizona State University, and Dr. Danielle Wood, assistant professor and director of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They discuss the role of space lawyers, what cases they may argue, and how the rules of space—and the potential for conflicts—are evolving.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Blood In The Water: Shark Smell Put To The Test
28 februari 2024 · 18 min
Sharks are somewhat notorious for their sense of smell and ability to sniff out prey deep in the ocean. There’s that persistent myth that sharks can smell a drop of human blood from a mile away. But that’s not exactly true. While sharks can smell human blood, they are more interested in sniffing out what’s for dinner: other fish, crustaceans, and molluscs. Ocean currents also play a role in how far a scent can travel. However, shark noses are just as powerful as any other fish in the sea. Lees meer
SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Lauren Simonitis, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in biology at University of Washington and Florida Atlantic University, about her shark nose research, and what questions remain about shark snoots.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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How Trivia Experts Recall Facts | One Ant Species Sent Ripples Through A Food Web
27 februari 2024 · 25 min
How can some people recall random facts so easily? It may have to do with what else they remember about the moment they learned the information. Also, in Kenya, an invading ant species pushed out ants that protected acacia trees. That had cascading effects for elephants, zebras, lions, and buffalo. Lees meer
A ‘Jeopardy!’ Winner Studied How Trivia Experts Recall Facts
When contestants play “Jeopardy!,” it can be amazing to see how quickly they seem to recall even the most random, obscure facts. One multi-time “Jeopardy!” contestant, Dr. Monica Thieu, noticed something interesting about the way that she and her fellow contestants were recalling tidbits of information. They weren’t just remembering the facts, but also the context of how they learned them: where they were, what they read, who they were with. Hypothesizing that for trivia superstars, information was strongly tied to the experience of learning it, she put that anecdotal evidence to the test. The results of her research were recently published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Thieu, a psychology researcher at Emory University, and Dr. Mariam Aly, assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University, and a co-author of the new study. They discuss the psychology of trivia, how to get better at it, and why some people seem to be much more adept at recalling fun trivia facts than others.
See if you can beat a "Jeopardy!" champ on our website!
How One Invading Ant Species Sent Ripples Through A Food Web
When people talk about the interconnectedness of nature, the usual example involves a little fish that eats a bug, a bigger fish that eats the little fish, and an even bigger fish at the top of the chain. But in reality, the interconnected relationships in an ecosystem can be a lot more complicated. That was certainly the case in a recent study, published in the journal Science, which describes how the arrival of an invasive ant species changed the num…
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OpenAI’s New Product Makes Incredibly Realistic Fake Videos
26 februari 2024 · 17 min
OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E, unveiled its newest generative AI product last week, called Sora, which can produce extremely realistic video from just a text prompt. In one example released by the company, viewers follow a drone’s-eye view of a couple walking hand-in-hand through snowy Tokyo streets. In another, a woman tosses and turns in bed as her cat paws at her. Unless you’re an eagle-eyed AI expert, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish these artificial videos from those shot by a drone or a smartphone. Lees meer
Unlike previous OpenAI products, Sora won’t be released right away. The company says that for now, its latest AI will only be available to researchers, and that it will gather input from artists and videographers before it releases Sora to the wider public.
But the fidelity of the videos prompted a polarizing response on social media. Some marveled at how far the technology had come while others expressed alarm at the unintended consequences of releasing such a powerful product to the public—especially during an election year.
Rachel Tobac, an ethical hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about Sora and what it could mean for the rest of us.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Private Spacecraft Makes Historic Moon Landing | New Cloud Seeding Technique
23 februari 2024 · 19 min
Private Spacecraft Makes Historic Moon Landing Lees meer
Thursday evening, the Odysseus moon lander successfully soft-landed on the moon, becoming the first U.S spacecraft to do so in over 50 years. The lander mission wasn’t created by NASA or another government space agency, but by the company Intuitive Machines, making it the first commercial mission to successfully soft-land on the surface of the moon. The mission was part of a NASA program called the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to make lunar missions faster and cheaper. There are other commercial moon missions planned for later this year. Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick for an update on the mission.
They’ll also talk about other stories from the week in science, including the move by some automakers toward plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, work on freezing antimatter, a strange meat-rice hybrid, and progress towards a universal snake antivenom.
A New Recipe For Cloud Seeding To Boost Snowfall In Idaho
We’re taught in school that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
“It usually happens like that in the lake or on the ground,” said Derek Blestrud, a Senior Atmospheric Scientist at Idaho Power.
But the process differs in the sky, he said. Clouds contain supercool water that doesn’t turn to ice until it reaches about -40 degrees F. That is, unless some other substance initiates the freezing.
“Water’s really dumb,” Blestrud likes to say. “It doesn’t know how to freeze unless something else teaches it how to freeze.”
That’s where scientists like Blestrud step in. They help clouds produce more snow through cloud seeding, which involves releasing tiny particles that serve as nuclei for snowflakes to form.
Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for o…
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Making Chemistry More Accessible To Blind And Low-Vision People
22 februari 2024 · 17 min
The field of chemistry is filled with visual experiences, from molecular diagrams to color-changing reactions to data displayed as peaks and waves on a spectrograph. Those experiences and representations are not very accessible to blind and low-vision people. In a recent article in the journal Science Advances, a group of researchers describes using 3D printing to create translucent raised images known as lithophanes that can represent high-resolution chemical data in a tactile and visual form simultaneously. Lees meer
Biochemist Dr. Bryan Shaw joins Ira Flatow to discuss the approach, and other techniques and tools his lab group at Baylor University is developing to make the lab more accessible to blind and low-vision researchers—from specialized devices that assist in the loading of gels for protein electrophoresis, to tiny molecular models that are best experienced by putting them on the tongue.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Understanding And Curbing Generative AI’s Energy Consumption
21 februari 2024 · 18 min
The explosion of AI-powered chatbots and image generators, like ChatGPT and DALL-E, over the past two years is changing the way we interact with technology. Their impressive abilities to generate lifelike images from written instructions or write an essay on the topic of your choosing can seem a bit like magic. Lees meer
But that “magic” comes at a steep environmental cost, researchers are learning. The data centers used to power these models consume an enormous amount of not just electricity, but also fresh water to keep everything running smoothly. And the industry shows no signs of slowing down. It was reported earlier this month that Sam Altman, the CEO of leading AI company OpenAI, is seeking to raise about $7 trillion to reshape the global semiconductor industry for AI chip production.
Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Jesse Dodge, research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, to talk about why these models use so much energy, why the placement of these data centers matter, and what regulations these companies could face.
Transcripts for this segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Which Feathered Dinosaurs Could Fly? | Some French Cheeses At Risk Of Extinction
20 februari 2024 · 23 min
How Do You Know If A Feathered Dinosaur Could Fly? Lees meer
Not all birds can fly. Penguins, ostriches, and kiwis are some famous examples.
It’s pretty easy to figure out if a living bird can fly. But it’s a bit tricker when it comes to extinct birds or bird ancestors, like dinosaurs. Remember, all birds are dinosaurs, but not all dinosaurs evolved into birds.
Scientists at Chicago’s Field Museum wanted to figure out if there was a way to tell if a dinosaur could fly or not. They found that the number and symmetry of flight feathers are reliable indicators of whether a bird or dinosaur could lift off the ground.
Ira talks with two of the study’s co-authors about their research and how it might help us understand how dinosaur flight evolved. Dr. Yosef Kiat is a postdoctoral researcher and Dr. Jingmai O’Connor is the associate curator of fossil reptiles at The Field Museum in Chicago.
Sacre Bleu! Some French Cheeses At Risk Of Extinction
There’s bad news for the Camembert and brie lovers out there: According to the French National Center for Scientific Research, some beloved soft cheeses are at risk of extinction. The culprit? A lack of microbial diversity in the mold strains used to make Camemberts and bries.
As with many foods, consumers expect the cheese they buy to be consistent over time. We want the brie we buy today to look and taste like the brie we bought three months ago. But there’s a downside to this uniformity—the strain of Penicillium microbes used to make these cheeses can’t reproduce sexually, meaning it must be cloned. That means these microbes are not resilient, and susceptible to errors in the genome. Over the years, P. camemberti has picked up mutations that make it much harder to clone, meaning it’s getting harder to create the bries we know and love.
Joining Ira to talk about this is Benji Jones, senior environmental reporter at Vox based in New York City.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefrid…
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Climate Scientist Michael Mann Wins Defamation Case
19 februari 2024 · 18 min
Climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann won a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers last week. Lees meer
The verdict was 12 years in the making. In 2012 writers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn accused Mann of manipulating his data related to his famous 1998 “hockey stick” graph, which depicts rising global temperatures after the industrial revolution. Simberg compared him to former Penn State football coach and convicted child sex abuser Jerry Sandusky in a blog post for a libertarian think tank. Steyn later referenced Simberg’s article in a National Review piece, calling Mann’s work “fraudulent.”
Reviews by Penn State (Mann’s home institution at the time) and the National Science Foundation, found no scientific wrongdoing. And in fact the iconic graph has since been supported by numerous studies.
What does this ruling signal about the public’s understanding of climate change research? And the limitations of free speech?
Ira talks with Dr. Michael Mann, professor of Earth & environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Odysseus Lander Heads To The Moon | Ohio Chemical Spill, One Year Later
16 februari 2024 · 21 min
If successful, Odysseus will be the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo mission. And, in East Palestine, Ohio, the stream that flows under residents’ houses is still polluted following a train derailment and chemical spill. Lees meer
Odysseus Lander Is On Its Way To The Moon
Just after 1:00 a.m. on Thursday, February 15, SpaceX successfully launched a commercial spacecraft from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its destination? The moon. If the lander—named Odysseus—makes it all the way there, it’ll be the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo mission, more than 50 years ago.
If successful, this mission will also mark another historic milestone: the first commercial spacecraft to touch down on the moon.
Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, about this latest lunar mission and other science news of the week, including: a satellite to detect methane leaks from space, the development of lithium-sulfur batteries, the first treatment for frostbite, the development of “heart-on-a-chip” devices, a frog with a mushroom growing out of its leg, and how eavesdropping on the love songs of Skywalker gibbons helped scientists estimate their population size.
A Year After Chemical Spill, Ohio Community Is Still Recovering
Christina Siceloff and Randy DeHaven walk down a short bank to Sulphur Run, a creek that winds between houses in East Palestine, Ohio. They make their way to a section of the stream about three-quarters of a mile from where the Norfolk Southern train derailed last February 3rd. Siceloff has brought a shovel, but she doesn’t even need one to show the condition of the stream. She just pushes her rubber boot into the sandy streambed, and an oily sheen erupts out of the muddy bottom, spreading on the top of the brownish-grey water.
“Kind of like what you would see in a puddle at a gas station,” Siceloff said.
Siceloff has brought a mask because the creek water still gives her headach…
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One Crisis After Another: Designing Cities For Resiliency
15 februari 2024 · 18 min
Over the past few years, many cities around the world have changed dramatically as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with shifts in office use and commuting patterns as well as where people choose to live, work, and play. But there are other major changes to communities on the horizon as well—such as the need to adapt to the changing climate and sea level rise, and move urban infrastructure away from dependence on fossil fuels. Lees meer
Andy Cohen and Diane Hoskins are co-CEOs of Gensler, a global architecture and design firm, and authors of the new book Design for a Radically Changing World. They join guest host John Dankosky to talk about how design can help communities adapt to global crises, and the importance of involving local communities in design decisions.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Using Sound To Unpack The History Of Astronomy
14 februari 2024 · 18 min
Looking into space can be pretty daunting. How do we make sense of the vast expanse above our heads, the millions of stars we might be able to see, and the billions more we can’t? Lees meer
Now, what about listening to space? That’s the task that Sam Harnett and Chris Hoff gave themselves, for their series “Cosmic Visions.” They’re the team behind “The World According to Sound,” a podcast that’s brought our listeners close to the sounds of science over the last few years.
This new series takes listeners through the history of astronomy and the study of the cosmos, from ancient Babylon to the Hubble Telescope. Harnett and Hoff join guest host John Dankosky to talk about why different ways of knowing are helpful for scientists, how images of nebulae share a striking resemblance to photos of the American West, and what their favorite space sounds are.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Colorectal Cancer Rates Rising In Young People | What An AI Learns From A Baby
13 februari 2024 · 24 min
Colorectal Cancer Rates Are Rising In Young People Lees meer
Gastrointestinal medicine practitioners have noticed something strange in recent years: More and more young people are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
It used to be incredibly rare for anyone under the age of 50 to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Cases were generally limited to people with excess weight who live a sedentary lifestyle. But practitioners are increasingly seeing people in their 40s, 30s, and even 20s without prior risk factors being diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
Jennifer Fijor is one nurse practitioner who has seen this rise in cases firsthand at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Seattle, Washington. Jennifer has been spreading awareness about this rise on her social media accounts.
Jennifer speaks with guest host Kathleen Davis about the warning signs of colorectal cancer, such as sudden changes in bowel movements, and how patients can advocate for themselves to get screened early.
What An AI Learns From A Baby’s-Eye View Of The World
There’s a lot to learn in the first couple of years of a child’s life—not the least of which is how to talk. But little kids don’t sit down and study a vocabulary book. They soak up language from daily experiences, which are often filled with parents and caregivers saying things like “look at the kitty cat.” Scientists wondered whether an artificial intelligence model could learn about language using a similar strategy—not by being fed a curated set of pictures and words, but by eavesdropping on the day-to-day activities of a small child.
They found that associating images and sounds from 60 hours of video captured by a camera mounted on a baby’s head could teach a computer model a set of several dozen basic nouns, such as “car,” “cat,” and “ball.” And the learning was generalizable, meaning that the computer was able to properly identify cars and cats that it had not seen before.
Dr. Wai Keen Vong, a research scientist in the Center for Data …
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A Black Physician’s Analysis Of The Legacy Of Racism In Medicine
12 februari 2024 · 18 min
Uché Blackstock always knew she wanted to be a doctor. Her mother was a physician at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. Uché and her twin sister, Oni, would often visit their mother at work, watching her take care of patients. And they loved to play with their mother’s doctor’s bag. Lees meer
The sisters went on to become the first Black mother-daughter legacy students to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Uché Blackstock, emergency physician and founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, about her new memoir, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine.
Read an excerpt from Legacy at sciencefriday.com.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Faraway Planets With Oceans Of Magma | The Art And Science Of Trash Talk
9 februari 2024 · 20 min
Hycean planets were thought to be covered by oceans of water, but a new study suggests it could be magma instead. And, author Rafi Kohan explains the psychological and physiological responses to trash talk, ahead of Super Bowl Sunday. Lees meer
Faraway Planets Could Have Oceans Of Magma
Far beyond our solar system are hycean planets—planets that have hydrogen-rich atmospheres and are covered in giant oceans. Scientists have long believed that those oceans were made of water, but a new study throws a wrench in that idea, suggesting that they could actually be oceans of magma.
SciFri’s John Dankosky talks with Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist based in NYC, about this and other science news of the week, including a new type of thunderstorm, how droughts are affecting the Panama Canal, inhalable nanoparticles that could carry antibiotics, which dog breeds live longest, and a fern whose dying leaves can sprout roots.
The Art And Science Of Trash Talk
As frivolous as it may sound, the use of trash talk has a long, hilarious history that dates back to the Bible and the Homeric poems. Fundamentally, this insult-slinging is the presentation of a challenge, and it’s found its way into sports, politics, and even cutthroat family board game nights.
But there’s a science to trash talk that explains why it’s stuck around all these millennia, the psychology behind it, and how it can either rev up or fluster an opponent.
Just in time for the 2024 Super Bowl, guest host John Dankosky talks with Rafi Kohan, author of Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage.
Read an excerpt from Trash Talk at sciencefriday.com.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Is Each Fingerprint On Your Hand Unique? | In This Computer Component, Data Slides Through Honey
8 februari 2024 · 19 min
A new study uses artificial intelligence to show that each of our ten fingerprints are remarkably similar to one another. Plus, honey could be the secret ingredient in building a more eco-friendly “memristor,” which transmits data through malleable pathways. Lees meer
Is Each Fingerprint On Your Hand Unique?
We often think about each fingerprint as being completely unique, like a snowflake on the tip of your finger.
But a new study shows that maybe each person’s fingerprints are more similar to each other than we thought. Researchers trained artificial intelligence to identify if a thumbprint and a pinky print came from the same person. They found that each of a person’s ten fingerprints are remarkably similar in the swirly center.
Ira talks with study author Gabe Guo, an undergraduate at Columbia University majoring in computer science, based in New York City.
In This Computer Component, Data Slides Through Honey
A honey bear is probably one of the weirder things you’d see in a science lab, especially in a lab making computer parts.
“It’s just processed, store-bought honey,” said Ph.D. student Zoe Templin. “Off the shelf — a little cute bear so we can put it in photos.”
But for Templin and her colleagues at Washington State University, Vancouver, the honey is key.
“It is cheap and it is easily accessible to everyone,” said master’s student Md Mehedi Hassan Tanim.
The honey also has natural chemical properties that make it a promising foundation for a new kind of environmentally friendly computer component — one that could make computing faster and more energy efficient while reducing the impact on the environment.
Read the rest of this article on sciencefriday.com.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-437…
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The FDA Approved The First CRISPR-Based Therapy. What’s Next?
7 februari 2024 · 18 min
Last month the FDA approved a new treatment for sickle cell disease, the first medical therapy to use CRISPR gene editing technology. It works by identifying the gene or genes causing the disorder, modifying those genes and then returning them to the patient’s body. Lees meer
There are now two gene therapies offered by pharmaceutical companies for sickle cell disease: Casgevy from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, and Lyfgenia from BlueBird Bio. But prices for these one-time treatments are steep: Casgevy costs $2.2 million per patient and Lyfgenia $3.1 million.
Both promise a full cure, which would be life-changing for patients with this debilitating condition. Over 100,000 Americans, mostly of African descent, have sickle cell disease.
This milestone raises more questions: What will be the next disease that CRISPR can help cure? And is it possible to reduce the costs of gene therapy treatments?
Ira talks with Dr. Fyodor Urnov, professor of molecular and cell biology and scientific director of technology and translation at the Innovative Genomics Institute, based at the University of California, Berkeley, about the future of CRISPR-based cures.
Transcripts for this segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Protecting The ‘Satan’ Tarantula | If Termites Wore Stripes, Would Spiders Still Eat Them?
6 februari 2024 · 18 min
A team of scientists in Ecuador is on a mission to describe new-to-science tarantula species to help secure conservation protections. And, undergraduate researchers pasted striped capes onto termites’ backs to see if a well-known warning sign would fend off predators. Lees meer
Protecting The ‘Satan’ Tarantula and Other Lovable Giant Spiders
A team of scientists in Ecuador is on a mission to find and describe species of an understudied, often unpopular group of critters: mygalomorphs, a group of large, stocky spiders that includes tarantulas. In late 2023, two of these researchers published a paper in the journal ZooKeys describing two new-to-science tarantula species, including one named Psalmopoeus satanas—affectionately called the “Satan tarantula” because of its erratic behavior.
Tarantulas are understudied in Ecuador, and there are many species left to describe. They’re also threatened by mining, agriculture, and the illegal pet trade. That’s what led Pedro Peñaherrera-R., a researcher at Universidad San Francisco de Quito to found the Mygalomorphae Research Group. Its members are working to describe these spiders and secure conservation protections before they possibly disappear.
Producer Rasha Aridi talks with Peñaherrera-R. and his co-author and fellow group member Roberto José León about how the Satan tarantula earned its name, how they discover and classify spiders, and why we should all show spiders a little more love.
If Termites Wore Stripes, Would Spiders Still Eat Them?
The animal kingdom is filled with colors and patterns. Sometimes, those colors are to signal to members of an animal’s own species, in a mating display for instance. In other cases, a bright color or vibrant pattern serves as a warning to potential predators—a signal saying “don’t eat me, I’m toxic.” That type of warning coloration, known as aposematism, can be seen in the bright colors of a poison dart frog, or the black, white, and yellow stripes of a monarch butterfly caterpillar.
Big…
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Scientists Are Uncovering A World Of ‘Dark Matter’ Carcinogens
5 februari 2024 · 18 min
Cancer, at its core, is a genetic disease: the result of DNA mutations that cause cells to grow out of control and develop tumors. And over the years, scientists have identified certain chemicals, called carcinogens, that are directly linked to those cancer-causing mutations, like those found in cigarettes. Lees meer
But the rates of some cancers, like colorectal and lung, are rising dramatically in certain populations, leaving scientists to wonder what carcinogens they might be missing, and how traditional models of detecting them are falling short.
Last year, a landmark study published in the journal Nature confirmed a theory that toxicologists and cancer researchers had long suspected: that certain chemicals, like those found in air pollution, may not directly lead to cancerous mutations, but instead prime already vulnerable mutated cells to become cancerous. Some scientists have dubbed these chemicals “dark matter” carcinogens; they know they’re out there, exerting some kind of effect on increasing cancer rates, but they don’t fully understand what these chemicals are.
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University, wrote about this scientific detective mystery in The New Yorker. This week, he joins Ira to talk about how scientists are rethinking their approach to identifying carcinogens, and why he’s hopeful for the future of cancer research in light of this new paradigm.
Transcripts for this segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Syphilis Cases Up 80% Since 2018 | The Largest Deep-Sea Coral Reef In The World
2 februari 2024 · 25 min
There has been a boom of syphilis cases, including a 180% increase in congenital syphilis cases, despite other STI levels staying stable. Also, the world's largest deep-sea reef stretches for hundreds of miles in near-freezing waters and total darkness, but it’s bustling with life. Lees meer
Syphilis Cases Are Up 80% Since 2018
Syphilis is rearing its ugly head again in the United States. A new report on sexually transmitted infections (STIs) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a shocking statistic: Cases of syphilis are up by nearly 80% among adults since 2018. Congenital syphilis cases, which occur when an infection is passed from parent to child during pregnancy, are up by more than 180%.
Strangely, cases of other STIs have stayed about the same or decreased in the same timeframe. Rachel Feltman, host of “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” joins Ira to talk about this and other science stories from the week, including the first cases of transmitted Alzheimer’s disease, and why closing the toilet seat doesn’t keep aerosolized viruses from contaminating other bathroom surfaces.
Revealing The Largest Deep-Sea Coral Reef In The World
Scientists recently discovered the largest known deep-sea coral reef in the world. It’s called Million Mounds, and it stretches from Miami, Florida, to Charleston, South Carolina, covering around 6.4 million acres of the seafloor.
Unlike the colorful reefs found in sunlit tropical waters, this one is mostly made up of a stony coral that’s usually found from about 650 to 3,300 feet underwater—depths where it’s very cold and pitch black.
Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Erik Cordes, marine biologist and professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who collaborated on the study. They discuss what makes deep-sea corals different from those found in shallower waters, why it’s important to map them, and what it’s like to visit one in a submarine.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show…
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Expanding Our Umwelt: Understanding Animal Experiences
1 februari 2024 · 17 min
Take a quick moment to think about your surroundings. Tune into your senses, and contemplate what’s happening around you. What do you see, hear, and smell? Now take a moment to imagine: What if you were a bat? How would you experience your environment differently? Maybe you could sense a nearby spider through echolocation, or feel minute changes in air pressure and temperature to know where to fly next. This world of perception is unique to each organism. It’s what scientists call umwelt, from the German word meaning “environment” or “surroundings,” and it is the subject of this month’s SciFri Book Club pick. Lees meer
Science writer, author, and birder Ed Yong returns to talk about how senses both familiar and foreign to us help animals experience their environment, and to tell us what he’s learned in the past year since his book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us (now available in paperback), was published.
The SciFri Book Club read An Immense World together this January, and readers joined Yong and guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross via a live Zoom Call-in for a conversation on how writing about animals changed his experience in nature, how educators can help students become better connected to the Earth, and how readers are still connecting with his work on the umwelten of the animal kingdom.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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How Signing Characters Help Deaf Children Learn Language
31 januari 2024 · 18 min
This radio interview is an abbreviated version of the full video interview, available with ASL interpretation on Youtube. Lees meer
Think back to your favorite childhood TV show—was it “Blue’s Clues”? “Little Bear”? “Winnie the Pooh”? Animated TV shows are important for kids because they can teach them to read, draw, spell, and talk. Plus, the ways these shows tell stories and create colorful, fictitious worlds can broaden children’s knowledge and capacity to imagine.
But children’s shows aren’t accessible to all deaf children, which means they could miss out on a common learning experience. Among other things, that can set kids back in learning both American Sign Language (ASL) and English language skills during their formative early childhood years.
Melissa Malzkuhn is third-generation Deaf and the founder and director of the Motion Light Lab at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Her lab is creating ASL-focused children’s media that is made by and for the Deaf community, using motion capture technology, avatars, animation, and signing storytellers. She talks with guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross about ASL access in childhood, the science of learning, and how she’s creating “Here Comes Mavo!”—the first animated TV series with signing characters.
Transcripts for this segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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‘Mysterious’ Canine Illness: What Dog Owners Should Know
30 januari 2024 · 18 min
Over the past few months, there have been reports about a mysterious canine respiratory illness. It’s easy to get a little scared: Some dogs are developing a severe illness that lasts a long time and doesn’t respond to treatment. And in some cases, dogs have died. Lees meer
In the age of social media, it’s hard to know just how widespread this actually is, and how it compares to a more familiar canine illness like kennel cough. Joining guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross to break down this potential new pathogen are Dr. Deborah Silverstein, professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, and Dr. David Needle, a pathologist at the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and a clinical associate professor at the University of New Hampshire.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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An App For People Of Color To Rate Their Birthing Experiences | How Different Animals See
29 januari 2024 · 18 min
Irth is a “Yelp-like” app to help expectant parents make informed decisions by exposing bias and racism in healthcare systems. Also, a new video camera system shows the colors of the natural world as different animals see them. Lees meer
An App For People Of Color To Rate Their Birthing Experiences
For some patients, finding a good doctor can be as simple as looking up a doctor’s degrees and accolades. But for people who are more likely to experience discrimination in a medical setting—perhaps due to their gender, disability, sexual orientation or race—credentials only tell half the story. So how do you know where to go? And who to trust?
One app aims to help Black and brown parents-to-be make informed decisions about where they choose to give birth. Black people who give birth in the United States are far more likely than their white counterparts to experience mistreatment in hospitals, develop complications, or die due to childbirth.
Irth allows parents to leave reviews about how their birthing experience went, like: Did doctors and nurses listen to them? Was their pain taken seriously? Did they develop complications that could’ve been prevented?
Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Kimberly Seals Allers—journalist, activist, and founder of Irth—about why she founded the app and how it can help people.
You can learn more about Irth and download the app on their website.
Are Roses Red, And Violets Blue? Depends On Your Species
Over the millenia, animal eyes have evolved along different paths, adding or subtracting capabilities as they adapt to specific niches in the world. The result of all that evolution is that a bee, bird, or bull doesn’t see the world the same way you do. There are differences in the spatial resolution different animals can see, in the speed of their visual response, in the depth of focus, and in the way they process color.
Dogs, for instance, can’t really see red—their vision is best at seeing things that are blue or yellow. Birds and be…
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NASA Opens Canister With Asteroid Sample | ADHD Prescription Rates Spiked During The Pandemic
26 januari 2024 · 25 min
Engineers had to design bespoke tools to open the OSIRIS-REx capsule nearly four months after it arrived back on Earth. Also, prescription rates for ADHD drugs rose by 30% from 2020-2022, with large increases among women and young people. Lees meer
NASA Finally Opens Canister Containing Asteroid Sample
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx was the first U.S. mission to retrieve fragments of an asteroid, which arrived in September 2023. There was just one small issue: NASA technicians couldn’t open the capsule, which held space rocks from an asteroid called Bennu. NASA announced this week that they finally managed to open the capsule on January 10. Engineers designed new tools to remove the final two of 35 fasteners, which would not budge.
Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, about the asteroid capsule and other top science news of the week, including chimpanzees catching human colds, advances toward a cure for autoimmune disorders and honeybee crimes.
ADHD Prescription Rates Spiked During The Pandemic–Why?
The rate of prescriptions for ADHD medications rose by 30% during the height of the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022. Most of these new prescriptions were given to people between the ages of 20 and 39. And the prescription rate for those assigned female at birth, including women and some trans people, doubled during this time as well, according to a recent study. Prescriptions for anxiety and depression medications did not rise at a similarly high rate during that time.
While it’s still not entirely clear what led to this dramatic increase, experts point to several contributing factors: The pandemic changed routines and made lifelong ADHD symptoms more apparent, content creators on social media platforms like TikTok increased awareness of symptoms, and a proliferation of online pharmacies expedited diagnosis and prescriptions for ADHD medications like Adderall.
Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross speaks with Dr. Julia Schec…
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AI Helps Find Ancient Artifacts In The Great Lakes | An Artist Combines Indigenous Textiles With Modern Tech
25 januari 2024 · 18 min
Researchers in Michigan modeled a prehistoric land bridge and used AI to predict where caribou–and humans–might have traveled along it. Also, artist Sarah Rosalena uses Indigenous weaving, ceramics, and sculpture practices to create art that challenges tech’s future. Lees meer
Using AI To Help Find Ancient Artifacts In The Great Lakes
At the bottom of Lake Huron there’s a ridge that was once above water. It’s called the Alpena Amberley Ridge and goes from northern Michigan to southern Ontario. Nine thousand years ago, people and animals traveled this corridor. But then the lake rose, and signs of life were submerged.
Archaeologists were skeptical they’d ever find artifacts from that time. But then John O’Shea, an underwater archaeologist based at the University of Michigan, found something. It was an ancient caribou hunting site. O’Shea realized he needed help finding more. The ridge is about 90 miles long, 9 miles wide and 100 feet underwater.
“Underwater research is always like a needle in a haystack,” said O’Shea. “So any clues you can get that help you narrow down and focus … is a real help to us.”
That’s where artificial intelligence comes in. He teamed up with computer scientist Bob Reynolds from Wayne State University, one of the premier people creating archaeological simulations. And Reynolds and his students created a simulation with artificially intelligent caribou to help them make predictions.
An Artist Combines Indigenous Textiles With Modern Tech
When multidisciplinary artist Sarah Rosalena looks at a loom, she thinks about computer programming. “It’s an extension of your body, being an algorithm,” she says.
Rosalena, a Wixárika descendant and assistant professor of art at the University of California Santa Barbara, combines traditional Indigenous craft—weaving, beadmaking, pottery—with new technologies like AI, data visualization, and 3D-printing. And she also works with scientists to make these otherworldly creations come to life. She involved researc…
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When The ‘Personal’ Computer Turned 30
24 januari 2024 · 31 min
When Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple Macintosh in January of 1984, the visual user interface, all-in-one design, and mouse-controlled navigation were revolutionary. Design team member Andy Hertzfeld and industry observer Steven Levy look back on the early days of personal computing, and talk about how the Macintosh came to be. Lees meer
Transcripts for each segment are available on sciencefriday.com
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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How The Moon Transformed Life On Earth, From Climate to Timekeeping
23 januari 2024 · 27 min
For almost their entire 4.5 billion-year existence, Earth and its moon have been galactic neighbors. And the moon isn’t just Earth’s tiny sidekick—their relationship is more like that of siblings, and they’re even cut from similar cosmic cloth. Lees meer
Without the moon, Earth and its inhabitants wouldn’t be what they are today: The climate would be more extreme, lunar tides wouldn’t have given rise to life on Earth, biological rhythms would be off-beat, and even timekeeping and religion would have evolved differently. The new book Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed The Planet, Guided Evolution, And Made Us Who We Are explores how our existence is tied to the moon’s.
Ira Flatow and guest host Sophie Bushwick chat with journalist and author Rebecca Boyle about how the moon came to be, how it transformed life on Earth, and how our relationship with it is changing.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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From Scans To Office Visits: How Will AI Shape Medicine?
22 januari 2024 · 34 min
Researchers continue to test out new ways to use artificial intelligence in medicine. Lees meer
Some research shows that AI is better at reading mammograms than radiologists. AI can predict and diagnose disease by analyzing the retina, and there’s even some evidence that GPT-4 might be helpful in making challenging diagnoses, ones missed by doctors.
However, these applications can come with trade-offs in security, privacy, cost, and the potential for AI to make medical mistakes.
Ira and guest host Sophie Bushwick talk about the role of AI in medicine and take listener calls with Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and professor of molecular medicine, based in La Jolla, California.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Rhesus Monkey Cloned With Modified Approach Has Survived Into Adulthood
19 januari 2024 · 13 min
This week, a research team in China reported that it had successfully cloned a rhesus monkey, which has lived normally for over two years and reached maturity. It marks the first time that a rhesus monkey has been successfully cloned. Rhesus monkeys are used widely in medical research, making the advance potentially useful for medical trials. Lees meer
Cloning of primates in general has been difficult. Six years ago researchers cloned long-tailed macaques using the technique originally used for Dolly the cloned sheep. But an attempt to use that approach to clone a rhesus was unsuccessful, producing an animal that died after 12 hours. In the new work, the research team identified flaws in placental cells of previous cloned embryos. To address those flaws, they replaced the outer trophoblast cells from a developing cloned embryo with ones from an embryo created through an in-vitro fertilization technique—essentially providing cells that would develop into a normal placenta for the cloned embryo.
Tim Revell of New Scientist joins Ira to talk about the work and its implications. They’ll also discuss other stories from the week in science, including the discovery of lots of ice buried under Mars’ equator, an AI that’s good at solving high school math challenges, and the discovery of four new species of octopus.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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3,000 Types Of Brain Cells Categorized In Massive Brain Cell Atlas
18 januari 2024 · 19 min
In October 2023, an international group of scientists released an impressively detailed cell atlas of the human brain, published in 21 papers in the journals Science, Science Advances and Science Translational Medicine. Lees meer
The human brain has roughly 171 billion cells, which makes it a herculean task to categorize them all. Scientists collected samples from different parts of the brain and have identified 3,000 different types of cells. Each cell contains thousands of genes and each cell type only expresses a small fraction of those. Cataloging cells by their gene expressions, paves the way for scientists to tailor disease treatments to target only the affected cells. This human brain cell atlas is only the first draft, but it could signal a paradigm shift in how we understand and treat neurological diseases.
Ira talks with one of the researchers who helped put together the cell atlas, Dr. Ed Lein, senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and takes listener calls.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Brain ‘Organoids’: Lab-Grown Cell Clusters Model Brain Functions
17 januari 2024 · 14 min
Brain organoids are grown in a lab using stem cells, and can mimic the functions of different regions of the brain like the cortex, retina, and cerebellum. Though it may sound a bit like science fiction, this technology is increasingly being used to better understand brain disorders and eventually develop better treatments. Lees meer
Ira talks with neuroscientist Dr. Giorgia Quadrato, assistant professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the University of Southern California, about the state of brain organoid research and her model that mimics the cerebellum.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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The Lasting Allure Of Shackleton’s ‘Endurance’
16 januari 2024 · 19 min
In a conversation from March 2023, the maritime archeologist who found the storied wreck discusses the mission and his new book. Lees meer
There are few stories about heroic survival equal to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic rescue of his crew, which turned disaster into triumph. In August of 1914, 28 men set sail from England to the South Pole. Led by Shackleton himself, the group hoped to be the first to cross Antarctica by foot. However, their ship, the Endurance, became stuck in ice. It sank to the bottom of the frigid Antarctic waters, leaving most of the men stranded on a cold, desolate ice floe.
Shackleton, with five of his crew, set out in a small boat to bring help from hundreds of miles away. Finally, after many months of fighting the cold, frostbite and angry seas, Shackleton was able to rescue all his men with no loss of life.
Over the years, there have been many attempts to find the Endurance shipwreck. None were successful until a year ago, when the wreck was located for the first time since it sank back in 1915. Ira is joined by Mensun Bound, maritime archeologist and the director of exploration on the mission that found the Endurance. His new book, The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance, is out now.
View more images of Shackleton’s last expedition from the Library of Congress.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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How Close Are We To Answers About Aliens?
15 januari 2024 · 33 min
The idea of creatures from another planet is part of our culture, from the warnings of the alien in “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” to the plaintive desire to return home in “E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” to the hulking creature of “Nope.” Aliens appear in movies, books, comics, you name it. But are they more than science fiction? And if they were, how would scientists prove it? Lees meer
The government has investigated reports of alien sightings, including in Project Blue Book, which ran from 1947 to 1969. And last summer, congressional hearings into Navy pilots’ sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) brought the search for intelligent life back into the public eye. But there’s more to the search for alien life than people spotting lights in the sky. Projects such as Breakthrough Listen are surveying the stars for signals. Advanced telescopes such as JWST are enabling us to collect data on the atmospheres of exoplanets, a first step in detecting biosignatures on distant worlds. And astrobiology projects such as the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission are looking for signs of ancient life elsewhere in our own solar system.
Dr. Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and author of The Little Book of Aliens, joins hosts Ira Flatow and Kathleen Davis to talk about the evidence for life elsewhere in the universe, and how scientists might go about trying to answer the question of whether we’re alone.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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NASA Delays Crewed Moon Missions | Top Technologies To Watch In 2024
12 januari 2024 · 25 min
With this week’s delays to Artemis II and III, astronauts likely won’t walk on the moon until 2026 at the earliest. Also, weight-loss drugs, AI, clean-energy tech and more: digging into MIT Technology Review’s annual list with executive editor Amy Nordrum. Lees meer
NASA Once Again Delays Artemis Crewed Missions To the Moon
This week, NASA announced that it was delaying two of its planned crewed missions to the moon. Artemis II, which was scheduled to launch in November 2024, was pushed to September 2025. And Artemis III, originally planned for late 2025, is now looking at a September 2026 launch date. The Artemis campaign has faced challenges with its lunar landers, spacesuits, life-support systems, and the Orion capsule’s heat shield, according to NASA. When launched, Artemis II will swing around the moon and return to Earth, while Artemis III will land on the south pole of the moon, and will mark the first time humans have walked on the moon since 1972.
Joining Ira to talk about this and other top science stories in the news this week is Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review. They talk about challenges facing the offshore wind industry, a Hawai‘i coal plant that was replaced by a battery farm, why AI weather forecasting is not ready for primetime, and a new discovery that giant apes went extinct earlier than we thought—and for a different reason.
Top Technologies To Watch In 2024
The technology world moves so fast, it can be hard to know what to pay attention to. Sometimes it’s helpful for someone to tell you straight up who the big players are, and what technologies really could change the world.
Luckily for us, MIT Technology Review compiles an annual list of the 10 breakthrough technologies they say matter most. This year, that list ranges from super-efficient solar panels to weight-loss drugs, and AI in just about everything.
Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to discuss this year’s list is Amy Nordrum, executive editor at MIT Technology Rev…
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To Get Ready For Mars, NASA Studies How The Body Changes In Space
11 januari 2024 · 18 min
It’s no longer just the realm of science fiction: It’s possible that in our lifetimes, astronauts will go to Mars. NASA is doing a lot of technological preparation for this, but the key to the success of these missions will be the astronauts involved. As Mars space missions will require months or even years on the red planet, the agency wants to better understand how our bodies are affected by time in space. Lees meer
NASA recently launched the Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research, or CIPHER. This is a suite of 14 studies astronauts will undergo on the International Space Station, measuring everything from bone health to brain activity to vision changes.
Joining Ira to talk about CIPHER and the hopes for health data collection is Dr. Cherie Oubre, CIPHER project scientist in NASA’s human research program based in Houston, Texas.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Science Journalism Is Shrinking–Along With Public Trust In Science
10 januari 2024 · 18 min
In 2023, a flood of science journalists lost their jobs. At the same time, public trust in science continues to decline. Lees meer
Last year was a tough one for science journalism. National Geographic laid off all of its staff reporters, and Wired laid off 20 people. And the most recent blow came in November, when Popular Science announced it would stop publishing its magazine after a 151-year run, and laid off the majority of its staff.
Beyond talented journalists losing their jobs, many people seem to be losing trust in science in general. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 57% of Americans think science has a mostly positive effect on society, down considerably since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Is the waning trust in science reflected in the shrinking of science journalism?
Ira talks about the current state of science journalism with Deborah Blum, science journalist, author, publisher of Undark magazine, and director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sabrina Imbler, author and science reporter for Defector.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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(Part 2) Endangered Species Act At 50: Orchids And Red Wolves
9 januari 2024 · 19 min
Continuing our exploration of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) at its 50th anniversary, we'll look at how it has helped protect a group of at-risk plants: orchids. Eight species of orchid are recognized as endangered under the ESA—and all of the world’s approximately 30,000 species are considered threatened, and entitled to trade restrictions. Ira speaks with Dr. Matthew Pace, orchid scientist and assistant curator of the Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, about threats to orchid conservation. Lees meer
And finally, Ira speaks with Dr. Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the Wildlands Network in Durham, North Carolina. Sutherland has an extensive background in red wolf conservation in the southeastern United States.
Red wolves are one of the most endangered mammals in the world, with only an estimated 20 living in the wild and 267 in captivity. They discuss the dramatic swings in federal conservation efforts for red wolves, and why Sutherland isn’t ready to give up on this endangered species.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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(Part 1) Endangered Species Act at 50: Hawaiian Land Snails
8 januari 2024 · 17 min
On December 28, 2023, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) turned 50 years old. It was enacted in 1973 with almost unanimous support in Congress, with a goal to save plants and animals from extinction. It’s considered one of the most important environmental policies in US history, and it transformed conservation. It may have even helped save one of your favorite critters, like humpback whales, bald eagles, manatees, and grizzly bears. Lees meer
To mark the ESA’s 50th birthday, we’re looking at how it works, how successful it’s been, and what its future may look like. Ira starts off by talking with Dr. Judy Che-Castaldo, biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Branch of Species Status Assessment Science Support.
Then, we head to the extinction capital of the world: Hawai‘i. Kāhuli, also known as Hawaiian land snails, live all over the Hawaiian islands. At one point, around 750 species existed, but more than half have gone extinct. Ira talks with two conservationists dedicated to saving the snails: Dr. David Sischo, coordinator of the Hawai‘i Snail Extinction Prevention Program, and Keahi Bustamente, Maui Nui field coordinator for the program.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Solar Activity Flares Up In 2024 | Underground Hydrogen Reserves And Clean Energy
5 januari 2024 · 25 min
Look out for a total solar eclipse, more solar flares, and the Parker Solar Probe’s closest approach to the sun. Also, underground hydrogen stores have raised renewable energy hopes, but can the industry overcome the logistical hurdles of distributing it? Lees meer
Solar Activity Flares Up In 2024
Look out 2024—this is going to be the sun’s year (for science, at least). There will be a total solar eclipse on April 8, and scientists are seeking volunteers to help them observe the event. Researchers also expect an uptick in solar activity—that means more sunspots and solar flares, which could increase the amount of auroras the Earth experiences and also might disrupt satellites and power systems on the ground. Plus, NASA’s Parker Solar probe is on track to make its closest pass to the sun yet in December, a mere 3.8 million miles from its surface.
Umair Irfan, staff writer with Vox, sits down with Ira to talk about these and other science stories from this week, including why greenhouse gas emissions might actually start to fall this year, research showing that apes are able to recognize each other after decades apart, and the discovery of an enzyme that makes your pee yellow.
Could Underground Hydrogen Reserves Put Clean Energy Within Reach?
In 1987, a crew in the village of Bourakébougou, Mali, was digging for water. After drilling 108 meters deep, they still hadn’t found any, but the resulting borehole produced a steady stream of wind. When a driller lit a cigarette near the hole, the wind ignited, burning the worker. It took weeks for the crew to put out the blue flame, which produced no smoke, and they eventually capped the hole. It remained sealed until 2012 when a local oil and gas company reexamined it and found that the original crew had stumbled upon an underground store of naturally occurring hydrogen. They converted a Ford engine to burn the gas and soon connected it to a generator, providing electricity for the village.
Hydrogen has long been touted as a sou…
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SciFri Reads ‘The Alchemy Of Us’
4 januari 2024 · 37 min
You may have an idea of how our inventions have changed human history and transformed our relationship with the world. But the reverse can also be true. Hear from materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez, author of The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, on the way our values and stories are baked into the things we create—and the lesser-known people who have helped bring them into reality. Lees meer
This event was a part of the SciFri Book Club read for November 2023.
Watch the live zoom event on Youtube.
Find out more about our book club on our main page.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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SciFri Reads ‘The Kaiju Preservation Society’
3 januari 2024 · 47 min
What does it take to write a believable kaiju—as well as a charming group of scientists and explorers—onto the page? The SciFri Book Club invited John Scalzi, award-winning author of our August 2023 pick, The Kaiju Preservation Society, to discuss worldbuilding on an alternative Earth; combining ecology, biology and cultural touchpoints to create new giants; and how he used a lifetime of scientific curiosity to write a sci-fi romp in five weeks during a global pandemic. Lees meer
This event was a part of the SciFri Book Club read for August 2023.
Watch the live zoom event on Youtube.
Find out more about our book club on our main page.Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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Star Trek’s Science Advisor Reveals The Real Astrophysics On Screen
2 januari 2024 · 29 min
Few pop culture properties have lasted quite as long as Star Trek. A dozen Star Trek television shows have aired over the last sixty years—not to mention countless movies, novels, and comic books. Lees meer
Science concepts have always been integral to the Star Trek franchise: from warp speed travel to dilithium. But how much does the series accurately depict?
Ira speaks with astrophysicist Dr. Erin Macdonald, science consultant for Star Trek about the legacy of the franchise, and how accurate the science is within the series.
The transcript for this segment is available at sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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A Mathematician Asks ‘Is Math Real?’
1 januari 2024 · 34 min
The concept of math has been around for a long time, developing independently in many different cultures. In 1650 BC, the Egyptians were creating math textbooks on papyrus, with multiplication and division tables. Geometry, like the Pythagorean theorem, was used in ancient Greece. And negative numbers were invented in China around 200 BC. Lees meer
Some mathematical concepts are easier to understand than others. One apple plus one apple equals two apples, for example. But when it comes to complex equations, negative numbers, and calculus, concepts become abstract. All that abstraction prompts some to wonder: Is math even real?
Mathematician Dr. Eugenia Cheng has heard this question many times over her career. The quandary is the basis of her latest book, Is Math Real?: How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths. She joins Ira from Chicago, Illinois.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
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