Alle afleveringen
666 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
-
An elegy for Arecibo, and how our environments may change our behavior
14 januari 2021 · 26 min
Science Senior Correspondent Daniel Clery regales host Sarah Crespi with tales about the most important work to come from 57 years of research at the now-defunct Arecibo Observatory and plans for the future of the site. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with Toman Barsbai, an associate professor in the school of economics at the University of Bristol, about the influence of ecology on human behavior—can we figure out how many of our behaviors are related to the different environments where we live? Barsbai and colleagues took on this question by comparing behaviors around finding food, reproduction, and social hierarchy in three groups of animals living in the same places: foraging humans, nonhuman mammals, and birds.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: University of Central Florida; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
-
The uncertain future of North America’s ash trees, and organizing robot swarms
7 januari 2021 · 27 min
Freelance journalist Gabriel Popkin and host Sarah Crespi discuss what will happen to ash trees in the United States as federal regulators announce dropping quarantine measures meant to control the emerald ash borer—a devastating pest that has killed tens of millions of trees since 2002. Instead of quarantines, the government will use tiny wasps known to kill the invasive beetles in hopes of saving the ash. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with Pavel Chvykov, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the principles for organizing active matter—things like ant bridges, bird flocks, or little swarms of robots.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Donald Macauley/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gabriel Popkin
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Areas to watch in 2021, and the living microbes in wildfire smoke
31 december 2020 · 28 min
We kick off our first episode of 2021 by looking at future trends in policy and research with host Meagan Cantwell and several Science news writers. Ann Gibbons talks about upcoming studies that elucidate social ties among ancient humans, Jeffrey Mervis discusses relations between the United States and China, and Paul Voosen gives a rundown of two Mars rover landings. Lees meer
In research news, Meagan Cantwell talks with Leda Kobziar, an associate professor of wildland fire science at the University of Idaho, Moscow, about the living component of wildfire smoke—microbes. The bacteria and fungi that hitch a ride on smoke can impact both human health and ecosystems—but Kobziar says much more research is needed.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Christopher Michel/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons; Jeffrey Mervis, Paul Voosen
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Breakthrough of the Year, top online news, and science book highlights
17 december 2020 · 45 min
Our last episode of the year is a celebration of science in 2020. First, host Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor David Grimm about some of the top online news stories of the year—from how undertaker bees detect the dead to the first board game of death. (It’s not as grim as it sounds.) Lees meer
Sarah then talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about the Breakthrough of the Year, scientific breakdowns, and some of the runners-up—amazing accomplishments in science achieved in the face of a global pandemic.
Finally, Book Review Editor Valerie Thompson joins Sarah to discuss highlights from the books section—on topics as varied as eating wild foods to how the materials we make end up shaping us.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: ISS Expedition 7 Crew/EOL/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Catherine Matacic; Valerie Thompson
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Making ecology studies replicable, and a turnaround for the Tasmanian devil
10 december 2020 · 25 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[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 -
How the new COVID-19 vaccines work, and restoring vision with brain implants
3 december 2020 · 23 min
Staff Writer Meredith Wadman and host Sarah Crespi discuss what to expect from the two messenger RNA–based vaccines against COVID-19 that have recently released encouraging results from their phase III trials and the short-term side effects some recipients might see on the day of injection. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with researcher Xing Chen, a project co-leader and postdoctoral scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, about using brain stimulation to restore vision. Researchers have known for about 70 years that electrical stimulation at certain points in the brain can lead to the appearance of a phosphene—a spot of light that appears not because there’s light there, but because of some other stimulation, like pressing on the eyeball. If electrical stimulation can make a little light appear, how about many lights? Can we think about phosphenes as pixels and draw a picture for the brain? How about a moving picture?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Keeping coronavirus from spreading in schools, why leaves fall when they do, and a book on how nature deals with crisis
26 november 2020 · 42 min
Many schools closed in the spring, during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Many opened in the fall. Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what was learned in spring about how coronavirus spreads in schools that might help keep children safe as cases surge once again. Lees meer
Also this week: What makes leaves fall off deciduous trees when they do—is it the short, cold nights? Or is the timing of so-called “leaf senescence” linked to when spring happens? Sarah talked to Constantin Zohner, a lead scientist at the Institute of Integrative Biology at ETH Zurich, about his tree leaf timing study. Sarah also spoke with commentary author Christy Rollinson, a forest ecologist at the Morton Arboretum, about how important these trees and the timing of their leaf drop is for climate change.
In the books segment, host Kiki Sanford talks with Ruth DeFries about her book, What Would Nature Do? A Guide for Our Uncertain Times.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Joe Cheng/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Fish farming’s future, and how microbes compete for space on our face
19 november 2020 · 41 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: Erik Christensen/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook, Podington Bear]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
How the human body handles extreme heat, and improvements in cooling clothes
12 november 2020 · 26 min
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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
++Meta
[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 -
What we can learn from a mass of black hole mergers, and ecological insights from 30 years of Arctic animal movements
5 november 2020 · 31 min
First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about new gravitational wave detections from the first half of 2019—including 37 new black hole mergers. With so many mergers now recorded, astrophysicists can do different kinds of research into things like how new pairs of black holes come to be and how often they merge. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with Sarah Davidson, data curator at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, about results from an Arctic animal tracking project that includes 3 decades of location information on many species, from soaring golden eagles to baby caribou taking their first steps. The early results from the Arctic Animal Movement Archive show that researchers can use the database as a baseline for future Arctic investigations and to examine the effects of climate on ecosystems in this key region.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: N. Fischer, H. Pfeiffer, and A. Buonanno/Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Collaboration; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Adrian Cho
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Taking the politicians out of tough policy decisions; the late, great works of Charles Turner; and the science of cooking
29 oktober 2020 · 47 min
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? Lees meer
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.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Early approval of a COVID-19 vaccine could cause ethical problems for other vax candidates, and ‘upcycling’ plastic bags
22 oktober 2020 · 26 min
First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Jon Cohen about some tricky ethical questions that may arise after the first coronavirus vaccine is authorized for use in the United States. Will people continue to participate in clinical trials of other vaccines? Will it still be OK to give participants placebo vaccines? Lees meer
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Bert Weckhuysen, a professor at Utrecht University, about a process for taking low-value plastic like polyethylene (often used for packaging and grocery bags) and “upcycling” it into biodegradable materials that can be used for new purposes.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Zeev Barkan/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jon Cohen
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Making sure American Indian COVID-19 cases are counted, and feeding a hungry heart
15 oktober 2020 · 23 min
First up, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute and chief research officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board. Echo-Hawk shares what inspired her journey in public health and explains the repercussions of excluding native people from health data. This story was originally reported by Lizzie Wade, who profiled Echo-Hawk as part of Science’s “voices of the pandemic” series. Lees meer
Next, host Sarah Crespi interviews Danielle Murashige, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania, about her Science paper that attempts to quantify how much fuel a healthy heart needs.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
++Meta
[Image OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Lizzie Wade
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Visiting a once-watery asteroid, and how buzzing the tongue can treat tinnitus
8 oktober 2020 · 26 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr/NASA/Goddard; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
FDA clinical trial protection failures, and an AI that can beat curling’s top players
1 oktober 2020 · 31 min
Investigative journalist Charles Piller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his latest Science exclusive: a deep dive into the Food and Drug Administration’s protection of human subjects in clinical trials. Based on months of data analysis and interviews, he uncovered long-term failures in safety enforcement in clinical trials and potential problems with trial data used to make decisions about drug and device approvals. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with Klaus-Robert Müller, a professor of machine learning at the Technical University of Berlin, about an artificial intelligence (AI) trained in the sport of curling—often described as a cross between bowling and chess. Although AI has succeeded in chess, Go, and poker, the constantly changing environment of curling is far harder for a nonhuman mind to adapt to. But AIs were the big winners in competitions with top human players, Müller and colleagues report this week in Science Robotics.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
++Meta
[Image: Cory Denton/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Charles Piller
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
-
How Neanderthals got human Y chromosomes, and the earliest human footprints in Arabia
24 september 2020 · 24 min
Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons talks with host Sarah Crespi about a series of 120,000-year-old human footprints found alongside prints from animals like asses, elephants, and camels in a dried-up lake on the Arabian Peninsula. These are the earliest human footprints found so far in Arabia and may help researchers better understand the history of early hominin migrations out of Africa. Lees meer
Continuing on the history of humanity theme, Sarah talks with Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, about her team’s efforts to fish the elusive Y chromosome out of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. It turns out Y chromosomes tell a different story about our past interbreeding with Neanderthals than previous tales told by the rest of the genome. Read a related Insight article.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ann Gibbons
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Performing magic for animals, and why the pandemic is pushing people out of prisons
17 september 2020 · 26 min
Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how jail and prison populations in the United States have dropped in the face of coronavirus and what kinds of scientific questions about public health and criminal justice are arising as a result. Lees meer
Also this week, Elias García-Pelegrín, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, talks with Sarah about his article on watching animals watch magic tricks. Do animals fall for the same illusions we do? What does it say about the way their minds work?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Alien hunters get a funding boost, and checking on the link between chromosome ‘caps’ and aging
10 september 2020 · 27 min
First up this week, Senior Correspondent Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about how Breakthrough Listen—a privately funded initiative that aims to spend $100 million over 10 years to find extraterrestrial intelligent life—has changed the hunt for alien intelligence-link. Lees meer
And as part of a special issue on the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project, Brandon Pierce, a professor in the Departments of Public Health Sciences and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago, joins Sarah to discuss his group’s work on variation in the protective caps at the end of our chromosomes. The gradual shortening of these caps, also known as telomeres, has been associated with aging.
Read more from the GTEx special issue.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dan Clery
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Fighting Europe’s second wave of COVID-19, and making democracy work for poor people
3 september 2020 · 32 min
First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about rising numbers of coronavirus cases in Europe. Will what we’ve learned this summer about how the virus is transmitted and treated help prevent a second peak? Lees meer
Read all of our coronavirus news coverage.
And as part of a special issue on democracy, Rohini Pande, a professor in the department of economics at Yale University, joins Sarah to discuss her review that asks the question: Can democracy work for poor people? Read more from the special issue on democracy.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Mattias Berg/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Arctic sea ice under attack, and ancient records that can predict the future effects of climate change
27 augustus 2020 · 34 min
Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how Arctic sea ice is under attack from above and below—not only from warming air, but also dangerous hot blobs of ocean water. Lees meer
Next, Damien Fordham, a professor and global change ecologist at the University of Adelaide, talks about how new tools for digging into the past are helping catalog what happened to biodiversity and ecosystems during different climate change scenarios in the past. These findings can help predict the fate of modern ecosystems under today’s human-induced climate change.
And in our books segment, Kiki Sanford talks with author Carl Bergstrom about his new book: Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Wildlife behavior during a global lockdown, and electric mud microbes
20 augustus 2020 · 27 min
First up this week, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how wildlife biologists are taking advantage of humanity’s sudden lull. Scientists are launching studies of everything from sea turtles on suddenly quiet beaches to noise-averse birds living near airports to see how animal behavior changes when people are a little less obtrusive. Lees meer
Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.
Next, as part of our special issue on mud—yes, wet dirt— Senior Correspondent Elizabeth Pennisi talks about her story on electric microbes that were first found in mud and are now found pretty much everywhere. Why do bacteria need to move electrons around and what does it mean that they do it all over the planet?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Image: Lars Riis-Damgaard and Steffen Larsen; Music: Jeffrey Cook
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi; Erik Stokstad
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
A call for quick coronavirus testing, and building bonds with sports
13 augustus 2020 · 30 min
Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a different approach to COVID-19 testing that might be useful in response to the high numbers of cases in the United States. To break chains of transmission and community spread, the new strategy would replace highly accurate but slow polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests with cheaper, faster tests that are less accurate but can be administered frequently. Such tests cost between $1 and $3 compared with more than $100 for diagnostic PCR tests and give results in less than 30 minutes instead of days. Lees meer
Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.
Also this week, Salma Mousa, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, joins Sarah to talk about an experiment that added Muslim players to teams in a Christian soccer league in northern Iraq. The goal of the study was to see whether this type of social contact would change how the Christians—a threatened minority in the region—behaved toward Muslims, on and off the field.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Kate Brady/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Robert Service
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Why COVID-19 poses a special risk during pregnancy, and how hair can split steel
6 augustus 2020 · 30 min
Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risk of the novel coronavirus infection to pregnant women. Early data suggest expectant women are more likely to get severe forms of the infection and require hospitalization. Meredith describes how the biology of pregnancy—such as changes to the maternal immune system and added stress on the heart and lungs—might explain the harsher effects of the virus. Lees meer
Also this week, Sarah talks with Gianluca Roscioli about his experiments with commercial razor blades and real human hair. By using a scanning electron microscope, he was able to show how something relatively soft like hair is able to damage something 50 times harder like stainless steel.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: G. Roscioli et al., Science 2020; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman
Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/why-covid-19-poses-special-risk-during-pregnancy-and-how-hair-can-split-steel
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
-
Fighting COVID-19 vaccine fears, tracking the pandemic’s origin, and a new technique for peering under paint
30 juli 2020 · 38 min
Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his editorial on preventing vaccine hesitancy during the coronavirus pandemic. Even before the current crisis, fear of vaccines had become a global problem, with the World Health Organization naming it as one of the top 10 worldwide health threats in 2019. Now, it seems increasingly possible that many people will refuse to get vaccinated. What can public health officials and researchers do to get ahead of this issue? Lees meer
Also this week, Sarah talks with Science Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen about his story on Chinese scientist Shi Zhengli, the bat researcher at the center of the COVID-19 origins controversy—and why she thinks President Donald Trump owes her an apology.
Finally, Geert Van der Snickt, a professor in the conservation-restoration department at the University of Antwerp, talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on a new process for peering into the past of paintings. His team used a combination of techniques to look beneath an overpainting on the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck—a pivotal piece that showed the potential of oil paints and even included an early example of painting from an aerial view.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: van der Snickt et al., Science Advances 2020; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
How Hiroshima survivors helped form radiation safety rules, and a path to stop plastic pollution
23 juli 2020 · 28 min
Contributing Correspondent Dennis Normile talks about a long-term study involving the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Seventy-five years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the two cities in Japan, survivors are still helping scientists learn about the effects of radiation exposure. Lees meer
Also this week, Sarah talks with Winnie Lau, senior manager for preventing ocean plastics at Pew Charitable Trusts about her group’s paper about what it would take to seriously fight the flow of plastics into the environment.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: MPCA Photos/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dennis Normile
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
-
Reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, and taking the heat out of crude oil separation
16 juli 2020 · 28 min
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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
++
[Image: Kurt Bauschardt/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
A fast moving megatrial for coronavirus treatments, and transferring the benefits of exercise by transferring blood
9 juli 2020 · 27 min
Contributing correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about the success of a fast moving megatrial for coronavirus treatments. The UK’s RECOVERY (Randomized Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy) trial has enrolled more than 12,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients since early March and has released important recommendations that were quickly taken up by doctors and scientists around the world. Kai discusses why such a large study is necessary and why other large drug trials like the WHO’s SOLIDARITY trial are lagging behind. Lees meer
Also this week, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Saul Villeda, a professor in the Department of Anatomy at University of California, San Francisco, about transferring the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain from an active mouse to a sedentary mouse by transferring their blood.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: eyesplash/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Kai Kupferschmidt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
An oasis of biodiversity a Mexican desert, and making sound from heat
2 juli 2020 · 23 min
First up this week, News Intern Rodrigo Pérez-Ortega talks with host Meagan Cantwell about an oasis of biodiversity in the striking blue pools of Cuatro Ciénegas, 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. Lees meer
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.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
++
[Image: David Jaramillo; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Rodrigo Pérez-Ortega, Sarah Crespi
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Stopping the spread of COVID-19, and arctic adaptations in sled dogs
25 juni 2020 · 44 min
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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[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 -
Coronavirus spreads financial turmoil to universities, and a drone that fights mosquito-borne illnesses
18 juni 2020 · 28 min
Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how universities are dealing with the financial crunch brought on by the coronavirus. Jeff discusses how big research universities are balancing their budgets as federal grants continue to flow, but endowments are down and so is the promise of state funding. Lees meer
Read all our coronavirus coverage.
Mosquito-borne infections like Zika, dengue, malaria, and chikungunya cause millions of deaths each year. Nicole Culbert and colleges write this week in Science Robotics about a new way to deal with deadly mosquitoes—using drones. The drones are designed to drop hundreds of thousands of sterile male mosquitoes in areas with high risk of mosquito-borne illness. The idea is that sterile male mosquitoes will mate with females and the females then lay infertile eggs, which causes the population to decline. They found this drone-based approach is cheaper and more efficient than other methods of releasing sterile mosquitoes and does not have the problems associated with pesticide-based eradication efforts such as resistance and off-target effects.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/coronavirus-spreads-financial-turmoil-universities-and-drone-fights-mosquito-borne-illnesses
++
[Image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jeffrey Mervis
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
The facts on COVID-19 contact tracing apps, and benefits of returning sea otters to the wild
11 juni 2020 · 29 min
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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Why men may have more severe COVID-19 symptoms, and using bacteria to track contaminated food
4 juni 2020 · 28 min
First up this week, staff writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe coronavirus infections in men. New support for this idea comes from a study showing high levels of male pattern baldness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Lees meer
Read all our coronavirus coverage.
Next, Jason Qian, a Ph.D. student in the systems biology department at Harvard Medical School, joins Sarah to talk about an object-tracking system that uses bacterial spores engineered with unique DNA barcodes. The inactivated spores can be sprayed on anything from lettuce, to wood, to sand and later be scraped off and read out using a CRISPR-based detection system. Spraying these DNA-based identifiers on such things as vegetables could help trace foodborne illnesses back to their source.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
A rare condition associated with coronavirus in children, and tracing glaciers by looking at the ocean floor
28 mei 2020 · 43 min
First up this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about a rare inflammatory response in children that has appeared in a number of COVID-19 hot spots. Lees meer
Next, Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and professor of physical geography at the University of Cambridge, talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about tracing the retreat of Antarctica's glaciers by examining the ocean floor.
Finally, Kiki Sanford interviews author Danny Dorling about his new book, Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration―and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Scott Ableman/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel; Kiki Sanford
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
How scientists are thinking about reopening labs, and the global threat of arsenic in drinking water
21 mei 2020 · 25 min
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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
++
[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 -
How past pandemics reinforced inequality, and millions of mysterious quakes beneath a volcano
14 mei 2020 · 28 min
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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
++
[Image: Ian Aiden Relkoff/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Making antibodies to treat coronavirus, and why planting trees won’t save the planet
7 mei 2020 · 25 min
Staff writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2. Many companies and researchers are rushing to design and test this type of treatment, which proved effective in combating Ebola last year. Lees meer
And Karen Holl, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins Sarah to discuss the proper planning of tree planting campaigns. It turns out that just putting a tree in the ground is not enough to stop climate change and reforest the planet.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: Ian Dick/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Blood test for multiple cancers studied in 10,000 women, and is our Sun boring?
30 april 2020 · 21 min
Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins Sarah to talk about a recent Science paper describing the results of a large study on a blood test for multiple types of cancer. The trial’s results suggest such a blood test combined with follow-up scans may help detect cancers early, but there is a danger of too many false positives. Lees meer
And postdoctoral researcher Timo Reinhold of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research joins Sarah to talk about his paper on how the Sun is a lot less variable in its magnetic activity compared with similar stars—what does it mean that our Sun is a little bit boring?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Solar Dynamic Observatory/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
From nose to toes—how coronavirus affects the body, and a quantum microscope that unlocks the magnetic secrets of very old rocks
23 april 2020 · 25 min
Coronavirus affects far more than just the lungs, and doctors and researchers in the midst of the pandemic are trying to catalog—and understand—the virus’ impact on our bodies. Staff writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what we know about how COVID-19 kills. See Lees meer
all Science news coverage of the pandemic here, and all research papers and editorials here.
Also this week, staff writer Paul Voosen talks with Sarah about quantum diamond microscopes. These new devices are able to detect minute traces of magnetism, giving insight into the earliest movements of Earth’s tectonic plates and even ancient paleomagnetic events in space.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/nose-toes-how-coronavirus-affects-body-and-quantum-microscope-unlocks-magnetic-secrets-very
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: Meteorite ALH84001/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman; Paul Voosen
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
How countries could recover from coronavirus, lessons from an ancient drought, and feeling tactile waves in the hand
16 april 2020 · 35 min
Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about countries planning a comeback from a coronavirus crisis. What can they do once cases have slowed down to go back to some sort of normal without a second wave of infection? See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here. Lees meer
As part of a drought special issue of Science, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins Sarah to talk about water management and the downfall of the ancient Wari state. Sometimes called the first South American empire, the Wari culture successfully expanded throughout the Peruvian Andes 1400 years ago.
Also this week, Yon Visell of the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on the biomechanics of human hands. Our skin’s ability to propagate waves along the surface of the hand may help us sense the world around us.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Kai Kuperferschmidt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Does coronavirus spread through the air, and the biology of anorexia
9 april 2020 · 26 min
On this week’s show, Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new National Academy of Sciences report that suggests the novel coronavirus can go airborne, the evidence for this idea, and what this means for the mask-wearing debate. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here. Lees meer
Also this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins Sarah to talk about a burgeoning understanding of the biological roots of anorexia nervosa—an eating disorder that affects about 1% of people in the United States. From genetic links to brain scans, scientists are finding a lot more biology behind what was once thought of as a culturally driven disorder.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/does-coronavirus-spread-through-air-and-biology-anorexia
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
How COVID-19 disease models shape shutdowns, and detecting emotions in mice
2 april 2020 · 32 min
On this week’s show, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about modeling coronavirus spread and the role of forecasts in national lockdowns and other pandemic policies. They also talk about the launch of a global trial of promising treatments. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here. Lees meer
Also this week, Nadine Gogolla, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, talks with Sarah about linking the facial expressions of mice to their emotional states using machine learning.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: Damien Roué/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Why some diseases come and go with the seasons, and how to develop smarter, safer chemicals
26 maart 2020 · 31 min
On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg gets an update on the coronavirus pandemic from Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen. In addition, Cohen gives a rundown of his latest feature, which highlights the relationship between diseases and changing seasons—and how this relationship relates to a potential coronavirus vaccine. Lees meer
Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Alexandra Maertens, director of the Green Toxicology initiative at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, about the importance of incorporating nonanimal testing methods to study the adverse effects of chemicals.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
++
[Image: Let Ideas Compete/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Joel Goldberg; Jon Cohen; Meagan Cantwell
Listen to previous podcasts http://www.sciencemag.org/podcasts
About the Science Podcast http://www.sciencemag.org/about/podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Ancient artifacts on the beaches of Northern Europe, and how we remember music
19 maart 2020 · 25 min
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. Lees meer
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.
Download a transcript (PDF)
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
[Image: Sebastian Reinecke/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Meagan Cantwell, Joel Goldberg, Andrew Curry
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Science’s leading role in the restoration of Notre Dame and the surprising biology behind how our body develops its tough skin
12 maart 2020 · 33 min
On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Lesté-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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: r. nial bradshaw/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Lesté-Lasserre
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Dog noses detect heat, the world faces coronavirus, and scientists search for extraterrestrial life
5 maart 2020 · 33 min
On this week’s show, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how dogs’ cold noses may be able to sense warm bodies. Read the research. Lees meer
International News Editor Martin Enserink shares the latest from our reporters covering coronavirus.
And finally, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Jill Tarter, chair emeritus at the SETI Institute, about the newest technologies being used to search for alien life, what a positive signal would look like, and how to inform the public if extraterrestrial life ever were detected.
Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/dog-noses-detect-heat-world-faces-coronavirus-and-scientists-search-extraterrestrial-life
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
An ancient empire hiding in plain sight, and the billion-dollar cost of illegal fishing
27 februari 2020 · 47 min
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. Lees meer
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.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
++
[Image: Christian Hipólito; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Brickmaking bacteria and solar cells that turn ‘waste’ heat into electricity
20 februari 2020 · 33 min
On this week’s show, staff writer Robert F. Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about manipulating microbes to make them produce building materials like bricks—and walls that can take toxins out of the air. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with Paul Davids, principal member of the technical staff in applied photonics & microsystems at Sandia National Laboratories, about an innovation in converting waste heat to electricity that uses similar materials to solar cells but depends on quantum tunneling.
And in a bonus segment, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with online news editor David Grimm on stage at the AAAS annual meeting in Seattle. They discuss how wildfires can harm your lungs, crime rates in so-called sanctuary states, and how factors such as your gender and country of origin influence how much trust you put in science.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
NIH’s new diversity hiring program, and the role of memory suppression in resilience to trauma
13 februari 2020 · 27 min
On this week’s show, senior correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant program that aims to encourage diversity at the level of university faculty with the long-range goal of increasing the diversity of NIH-grant recipients. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with Pierre Gagnepain, a cognitive neuroscientist at INSERM, the French biomedical research agency, about the role of memory suppression in post-traumatic stress disorder. Could people that are better at suppressing memories be more resilient to the aftermath of trauma?
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Fighting cancer with CRISPR, and dating ancient rock art with wasp nests
6 februari 2020 · 27 min
On this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a Science paper that combines two hot areas of research-link—CRISPR gene editing and immunotherapy for cancer—and tests it in patients. Lees meer
Sarah also talks with Damien Finch, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, about the Kimberly region of Australia and dating its ice age cave paintings using charcoal from nearby wasp nests.
Episode page
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
A cryo–electron microscope accessible to the masses, and tracing the genetics of schizophrenia
30 januari 2020 · 22 min
Structural biologists rejoiced when cryo–electron microscopy, a technique to generate highly detailed models of biomolecules, emerged. But years after its release, researchers still face long queues to access these machines. Science’s European News Editor Eric Hand walks host Meagan Cantwell through the journey of a group of researchers to create a cheaper, more accessible alternative. Lees meer
Also this week, host Joel Goldberg speaks with psychiatrist and researcher Goodman Sibeko, who worked with the Xhosa people of South Africa to help illuminate genetic details of schizophrenia.
Though scientists have examined this subject among Western populations, much less is known about the underlying genetics of people native to Africa.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
About the Science Podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices