- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, quantum computers require extremely low temperaturesāless than 1Ā°C away from absolute zero. But getting down to those temperatures has usually required dilution fridges using the extremely rare and increasingly expensive isotope helium-3. Freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss up-and-coming technologies that can drive down temperatures while staying helium-3āfree. Next on the show, Nizan Packin, a professor of law at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, talks about prediction […]
- by Science MagazineLast time on The Normals, we learned that in the 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) wanted to recruit many healthy volunteers for basic research. Two peace churches, the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, had an excess of healthy human volunteers. The āNormalsā recruited from these Anabaptist churches were surprisingly happy, even as they went through sometimes painful procedures. In this follow-up episode, we hear about how the sources of normal human subjects changed in the 1960s […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss NASAās plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars in less than 3 years. Having not launched a fission reactor to space in more than 60 years, the organization faces many technical and bureaucratic hurdles to make that deadline. Next on the show, Aaron Sandel, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the Ngogo […]
- by Science MagazineHow do we know what's normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start studying normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchersāit was the healthy human bodies NIH didn't have. How do we know whatās normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the U.S. National Institutes […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, a new path to calculating the Hubble constant. This value for the universeās speed of expansion is typically determined in one of two ways, one favored by cosmologists, the other by astronomers. But the resulting values from these methods are consistently different. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how reappearing bursts from deep space, lensed by gravity, could resolve the dispute over the speed of the expanding universe. Next on the […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink talks about so-called resurrection plants. These specialized plants can survive up to 95% water loss, whereas most plants struggle when their water levels dip below 60%. We also hear from Jill Farrant, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town, about her work dissecting the desiccation survival pathways in resurrection plants and how they might be repurposed to protect crop plants from drought. Next on […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, we discuss a finding thatās likely to reignite debate over how humans first spread through the Americas. In the late 1990s, a site in southern Chile called Monte Verde forced archaeologists to adjust their views of the peopling of South America because it dated to about 14,500 years before present, which challenged the prevailing idea of when human inhabitants appeared on the continent. Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss new results […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, freelance journalist Evan Howell traveled to Cape Blossom, Alaska, where the receding coastline has revealed an ancient trove of glacial ice that may have survived for 350,000 yearsāmaking it the oldest ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Now researchers just need to figure out how to date it. Next on the show, tracking wolves and ravens in Yellowstone National Park shows the birds donāt follow the wolves in hope of a meal, but instead remember and […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, a peek into the roiling seas of U.S. science policy. ScienceInsider Editor Jocelyn Kaiser talks about shifting leadership at the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as a dip in funding rates by the National Institutes of Health. Staff Writer Robert F. Service covers proposed restrictions on access by international researchers and students to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall talks about the […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell talks to Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall about his visit to Brazil, where he observed firsthand what it takes for researchers to understand why bird populations in the Amazon and beyond are shrinking. Next on the show, Raouf Belkhir, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his Science Advances paper on a newly refined way to map awake patientsā […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox, Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko, and intern Perri Thaler share their experiences from the AAAS annual meeting in Phoenix. Christie recorded on location with David Rand regarding his prize-winning Science paper on using a large language model to combat conspiracy theories. Check out the live version of his teamās Debunk Bot. Michael chats with host Sarah Crespi about the foggy outlook of science in the United States as funding levels […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, more than half of all dogs going through service animal training donāt make it to graduation. Producer Kevin McLean journeys with Online News Editor David Grimm to Canine Companions, one of the biggest organizations in the United States for training working dogs. At the facility, they meet puppies in preparation and learn about the behavioral testing and genetics that could be used to improve service animal schooling. Also appearing in this segment: Emily Bray, assistant […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, host Sarah Crespi and Staff Writer Adrian Cho talk football and the latest science behind helmets engineered to reduce head injuries. Have better materials and testing led to fewer concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy in players? Next on the show, more than 100,000 people die from opioid overdoses in North America per year. Although much study has gone into addiction research, less attention has been paid to the biological details of overdose itself. John Strang, […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, how do we protect astronauts when they leave the shelter of Earthās protective magnetic fields and face the slow, constant bombardment of space radiation? Freelance science journalist Elie Dolgin joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what we know about the damage from high-velocity particles and the research being done to curb their biological toll. Next on the show, modeling the fall of fossil fuels during the decarbonization of energy systems, with civil engineer and environmental […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up with Jennie Erin Smith, Scienceās new senior biomedicine reporter, we delve into: autobrewery syndrome, when microbes inside the human gut make too much alcohol; how doctors can use a public repository, the Mexican Biobank, to guide patient care; and preliminary findings that surgery on the brainās plumbing shows promise for Alzheimerās disease. Next on the show, itās tough to calculate when and where deorbiting spacecraft might enter the upper atmosphere and then eventually hit the ground. Benjamin Fernando, […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Sofia Quaglia talks about her visit to the GalĆ”pagos archipelago and how researchers there are working to restore the islands to their former ecological glory. *Note this episode has been updated to reflect that the Ecuadorian government is not responsible for primarily funding these efforts. Next on the show, Antarcticaās deep ice coating obscures the hills and valleys on its surface, making the continentās response to climate change one of the biggest […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, scholars are on a quest to find Leonardo da Vinciās DNA. With no direct descendants, the hunt involves sampling the famous polymathās papers, paintings, and distant cousins. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone talks with host Sarah Crespi about what researchers hope to learn from Leonardoās genes and the new field of āarteomics.ā Next on the show, new evidence for poisoned arrows from 60,000 years ago complicates our picture of hunting during the Pleistocene. Sven Isaksson, a […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, the best images of exoplanets right now are basically bright dots. We canāt see possible continents, potential oceans, or even varying colors. To improve our view, scientists are proposing a faraway fleet of telescopes that would use light bent by the Sunās gravity to magnify a distant exoplanet. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss where to aim such a magnificent telescope and all the technological pieces needed to put it together. […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this yearās best online news storiesātop performers and staff picks alike. Together they journey the scientific gamut, from bird feedersā influence on hummingbird beak evolution to the use of āartificial spacetimesā to guide tiny robots through their environments. Next on the show, a discussion of this yearās pick for Breakthrough of the Year with producer Meagan Cantwell and News editor Greg Miller. They […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, weāve likely only found about half the so-called city-killer asteroids (objects more than 140 meters in diameter). Freelance science journalist Robin George Andrews joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the upcoming launch of NASAās Near-Earth Object Surveyor, an asteroid hunter that will improve our ability to look for large objects that might crash into Earth, particularly those hiding in the Sunās glare. Next on the show, freelancer producer Elah Feder talks with Wendy Valencia-Montoya, an […]
Mass spectrometry websites, social media, journal feeds, and other links and items of interest to the mass spectrometry community.
