- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, a company is using whole brainsāmaintained with specialized life supportāto study new drugs. Freelance science journalist Sara Reardon joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the advantages and ethical considerations of keeping brains intact but inactive. Next on the show, when some lizards lose their tails, they might regenerate new ones. But what happens to the old tail? Whereas a castoff lizard tail quickly decomposes, this isnāt the case for the castoff tube feet of […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the surprising commonalities between our immune systems and the tools bacteria use to defend themselves against viruses. These unexpected parallels have become rich ground for researchers investigating new molecular biology tools and model systems for immune research. Next on the show, Dominic Rohner, a professor of economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute and University of Lausanne, talks about the impact of cuts in international […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, Meagan Cantwell produced a segment with Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt on the fight against deepfakes. Kupferschmidt talks with Hany Farid, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, about the never-ending battle against fake imagery and why Farid is not giving up. Next on the show, building a tough, bio-compatible capsule for engineered bacteria. Tetsuhiro Harimoto talks about the challenges of keeping living bacteria inside a hydrogel capsule and the advantages of using engineered bacteria as […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, along Brazilās JuruĆ” River, local residents have been working with scientists to manage a giant fish called the arapaimaāaffecting the land, the people, and the economy. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this collaborative effort. Next on the show, how moonlight affects nocturnal animals. Carlos Camacho, a researcher at the DoƱana Biological Station, talks about the Moon-inflected habits of a nighttime foraging bird, the red-necked nightjar. His team found that […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm shares a batch of fun stories with podcast host Sarah Crespiāfrom spider hearts racing when traffic gets loud to a disease-preventing house. Staff Writer Adrian Cho hops in to help discuss the possibility of black holes without singularities at their center. Next on the show, epigenetics has become a hot topic in pop science but the ethical conversation is not keeping up. The idea that parents can pass down epigenetic […]
- by Science MagazineFirst up on the podcast, freelance science and environmental journalist Quentin Septer joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a controversial uranium mine getting fast-tracked in South Dakota. Septer chatted with locals, scientists, and regulators to learn more about the geology of the region and the promise of cleanup after the miners go home. Next on the show, looking at cells that donāt get cancer. Giulio Ciucci, a postdoctoral researcher at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, talks […]
- by Science MagazineThe final of a three-part limited ScienceĀ Podcast series that looks at the history of normal human subjects in research In episode two, we heard what happened to the normals program after church volunteers came to the U.S. National Institutes of Healthās Clinical Centerāand were surprisingly happy despite going through sometimes-painful procedures. In the decades to follow, the program got bigger as government funding expanded and started to recruit more broadly, stepping away from specific religious groups toward recruiting from colleges, […]
- 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, […]
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