Building The World’s Largest Animal Crossing Outside of LA There’s a spot on Highway 101 in Agoura Hills, it’s pretty inconspicuous. There’s brown and green rolling hills on either side of the highway. Homes are sprinkled here and there. And then a small metal gate that leads off on a hiking trail. You probably wouldn’t know it, but soon this spot will be the location of the world’s largest animal crossing. This crossing will reconnect habitats that have been cut off from each other for three qu...
Apr 22, 2022•47 min•Ep. 470
Celebrating Earth Day With Sustainable Action Today is Earth Day, when many people around the world are taking time to think about their relationship with the planet and to focus on activities helping to mitigate the existential problems our environment faces. And we will be doing the same: devoting our program to Earth Day stories, ideas, and issues . Sara Kiley Watson, assistant editor at Popular Science in charge of their sustainability coverage, joins Ira to talk about some challenges facing...
Apr 22, 2022•47 min•Ep. 469
FDA Approves First Breathalyzer COVID Test The FDA approved a new COVID breathalyzer test , which gives results in just three minutes. It’s the first test that identifies chemical compounds of coronavirus in breath. The testing unit is about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage and is intended to be used in medical offices and mobile testing sites. Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor at WNYC Radio based in New York City, talks with Ira about this new COVID test and other science news of t...
Apr 15, 2022•47 min•Ep. 468
Did ‘Soylent Green’s’ Predictions About 2022 Hold Up? In the spring of 1973, the movie Soylent Green premiered. The film drops us into a New York City that’s overcrowded, polluted, and dealing with the effects of a climate catastrophe. Only the city’s elite can afford clean water and real foods, like strawberry jam. The rest of the population relies on a communal food supply called Soylent. There’s Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow… and a new product: Soylent Green. The year the film takes place? 2022...
Apr 15, 2022•47 min•Ep. 467
The Future of Sustainable Farming Could Be Cold Plasma Plasma is a fascinating medium. It’s considered the fourth state of matter—alongside solid, liquid and gas—and it’s everywhere. In fact, more than 99.9% of all matter in the universe is assumed to be in plasma form. You may be most familiar with plasma as the material inside those glowing novelty lamps found in museum gift shops, but it’s naturally found in the sun, lightning, and the northern lights. Research into plasma and how it intersec...
Apr 08, 2022•48 min•Ep. 466
FDA Convenes Panel On COVID Boosters And New Vaccines This week, the FDA convened a panel of independent experts to discuss COVID-19 boosters and possible variant-specific vaccines . This comes after last week’s authorization of a second booster for people over the age of 50, and some immunocompromised people. Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, about the latest on boosters and other science news of the week , including a new p...
Apr 08, 2022•48 min•Ep. 465
Can You Read A Bar Graph? Bar graphs seem like one of the simplest ways to represent data. Many people assume that the longer the bar, the bigger the number it represents. Sometimes bar graphs represent an average not a total count, which is trickier to understand. And because bar graphs are everywhere, psychologists from Wellesley College wanted to determine how well people can actually read and interpret bar graphs. Turns out, one in five people in their study misunderstood the data the bar gr...
Apr 01, 2022•47 min•Ep. 464
Why Another Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapsed On March 15, the Conger ice shelf, a piece of ice half the size of Rome, collapsed in eastern Antarctica . It’s the first time that side of the continent experienced a major loss of ice in the 40-year history of satellite observations. Previous collapses of shelves have until now occurred in western Antarctica. Meanwhile, researchers are reporting temperatures more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average, while parts of the Arctic are beating aver...
Apr 01, 2022•47 min•Ep. 463
How Has The War In Ukraine Shaped The Global Energy Market? Russia’s war on Ukraine sent shock waves through the global energy market. The United States and the United Kingdom stopped importing Russian oil and gas, and the European Union set a target of reducing their reliance on Russian fossil fuels by two thirds. In the short term some countries may start relying more on dirty fossil fuels like coal to cushion the economic impact of the shifting energy market. However, some experts believe the...
Mar 25, 2022•47 min•Ep. 462
How Vampire Bats Evolved To Drink Blood Vampire bats subsist solely on blood: In technical terms, they’re what’s called “obligate sanguivores.” And the three species of vampire bats are the only mammals to have ever evolved this particular diet. Living on blood is hard work. Blood is a low-calorie food with a lot of water volume, and very little of it is fat or carbohydrates. To survive this lifestyle, vampire bats have made numerous physical adaptations— stretchy stomachs, tricks to deal with h...
Mar 25, 2022•48 min•Ep. 461
The James Webb Telescope Releases Its First Focused Image This week eager astronomers got an update on the progress of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched last December. After a long period of tweaking and alignment, all 18 mirrors of the massive orbiting scope are now in focus . In a briefing this week, Marshall Perrin, the Webb deputy telescope scientist, said that the team had achieved diffraction limited alignment of the telescope. “The images are focused as finely as the l...
Mar 18, 2022•48 min•Ep. 460
Flower Power: Floating Sensors Inspired By Dandelions Dandelions’ white puff balls are irresistible—kids delight in blowing on them until the seeds break free, floating away. But, dandelion seeds’ ability to travel through the air is not just aesthetic. Like many other plants, they rely on the wind for seed dispersal. The traveling success of those floating dandelion seeds inspired engineers at the University of Washington to design a new ultra-light sensor. It’s solar powered and weighs just 30...
Mar 18, 2022•47 min•Ep. 459
Will Russia’s War In Ukraine Finally Spur A Clean Energy Revolution? This week President Biden tightened sanctions on Russia, cutting off imports of Russian oil to the United States in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The conflict has put a sudden, sharp pressure on an already strained energy system, causing uncertainty—and rising prices. However, in a recent Quinnipiac poll, 71% of Americans said they favored cutting off Russian oil imports, even if it resulted in higher prices at the pump....
Mar 11, 2022•47 min•Ep. 458
As Mask Mandates Drop, COVID Cases Increase In Some Parts Of World Later this month, Hawai’i will become the 50th and final state in the U.S. to drop its indoor mask mandate, as those and other COVID-19 protections tumble down nationwide and in places like the United Kingdom and Austria. But as the winter omicron surge eases in some places, an omicron subvariant called Ba.2 is joining the viral mix. And the pandemic is far from over elsewhere. Science journalist Roxanne Khamsi reports on rising ...
Mar 11, 2022•47 min•Ep. 457
The Tyrannosaurus Rex Is Having An Identity Crisis There are few creatures, present or extinct, that hold the iconic status of the Tyrannosaurus rex. In museums and dinosaur media, this powerful, lumbering reptile often plays a starring role. But new research argues that the T. rex should really be classified into three separate species : Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrannosaurus imperator, and Tyrannosaurus regina. This paper has been met with a wide range of reactions: some paleontologists have said th...
Mar 04, 2022•47 min•Ep. 456
Where Are The Black Physicists? Black scientists make up less than one percent of physics PhDs in the U.S. And since 1999, most physics departments in the country have failed to graduate more than one or two Black undergraduates. Furthermore, the share of Black students in physics is declining: If the number receiving a bachelor’s degree in physics had kept pace with the rising popularity of the major, there would be 350 Black physicists graduating every year. Instead, in 2020, that number was 2...
Mar 04, 2022•47 min•Ep. 455
Pittsburgh’s Bridge Collapse Spotlights America’s Infrastructure Woes Our modern world is made up of infrastructure: Roads, buildings, and bridges all play a big role for many people’s daily lives. If these structures do their jobs well, we don’t think much about them. That is, until infrastructure fails. Bridge collapses are especially scary, like the structural failure in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last month. These events are shocking, and cause people to wonder how this could be allowed to hap...
Feb 25, 2022•48 min•Ep. 454
Paul Farmer, Global Health Leader, Dies At 62 Paul Farmer, physician and co-founder of the humanitarian medical organization Partners in Health died unexpectedly this week in Rwanda at the age of 62 . Farmer was widely known for his compassion, and his conviction that all people around the world, regardless of their means, deserved access to quality medical treatments and interventions. Sarah Zhang, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins John Dankosky to remember Paul Farmer and his work around the...
Feb 25, 2022•48 min•Ep. 453
New Device Helps People With Paralysis Walk Again Spinal cord injuries are notoriously difficult to treat, especially for those who have been paralyzed for several years. Now, researchers have developed a new implant that is able to reverse paralysis in patients with complete spinal cord injuries . The device uses specially designed electrodes, which bring the brain back into communication with the patient’s lower body. The findings were recently published in the academic journal Nature Medicine...
Feb 18, 2022•48 min•Ep. 452
Third Person Cured From HIV, Thanks To Umbilical Cord Stem Cells The third person ever, and the first woman, has been cured of the HIV virus, thanks to a stem cell transplant using umbilical cord blood . While the invasive, risky bone marrow transplant process may not prove the answer for large numbers of people, the use of cord blood may open up pathways to new treatment options for a wider variety of people than the adult stem cells used to cure the two previous patients. Vox staff writer Umai...
Feb 18, 2022•48 min•Ep. 451
How Grief Rewires The Brain Being a human can be a wonderful thing. We’re social creatures, craving strong bonds with family and friends. Those relationships can be the most rewarding parts of life. But having strong relationships also means the possibility of experiencing loss. Grief is one of the hardest things people go through in life. Those who have lost a loved one know the feeling of overwhelming sadness and heartache that seems to well up from the very depths of the body. To understand w...
Feb 11, 2022•47 min•Ep. 450
An Abrupt Departure For Biden’s Science Adviser This week, Eric Lander, the Presidential science advisor and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, resigned following an investigation into bullying behavior towards his subordinates . In an apology, Lander acknowledged being “disrespectful and demeaning” towards staff. Lander, a mathematician and genomics researcher, was previously the head of the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT. Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor for WNYC R...
Feb 11, 2022•54 min•Ep. 449
Phasing Out “Problematic” Plastics Plastic packaging is just about impossible to avoid. Getting takeout? You’ll likely wind up with a plastic container, or cutlery. Grabbing a coffee? Plastic stirrers and straws are hard to evade. These items are tough to recycle, and most sanitation systems aren’t equipped to process them. That means they go into the trash, or worse, waterways. Last week, the U.S. Plastics Pact released a much-anticipated list of “Problematic and Unnecessary Materials” that pac...
Feb 04, 2022•47 min•Ep. 448
Date Set For International Space Station’s Burial At Sea The International Space Station was never going to last forever. And its expiration date had already been moved from 2024 to 2030. But NASA finally released the plan for what happens after the end of United States support for the orbiting research lab. In a report released this week, NASA announced the station, once decommissioned, would orbit into the ocean in 2031 . More specifically, it would end at a place between New Zealand and the s...
Feb 04, 2022•47 min•Ep. 447
Beware Of Fake Pop-Up COVID Sites In recent months, mobile COVID-19 testing tents and vans have sprouted on urban sidewalks and street curbs as demand has skyrocketed in response to the rapid spread of the omicron variant. Some of the sites run by private companies offer legitimate, timely and reliable results, but others are more like weeds. High demand and scarce supply opened the door to bad actors, and officials in some states are having a hard time keeping up their oversight amid the prolif...
Jan 28, 2022•47 min•Ep. 446
Space-X Booster To Hit The Moon, After Years Of Hurtling Through Space A Space-X rocket booster is on track to slam into the moon , which scientists predict will happen on March 4. The rocket was originally launched in 2015 to deploy a space weather satellite. Now, it’s a piece of space junk that’s been caught in limbo for the past seven years. Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American , joins guest host Miles O’Brien to talk about that and other science stories of the week , inc...
Jan 28, 2022•48 min•Ep. 445
Scientists Are Working On A Universal COVID Vaccine As the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spike around the U.S., there are scientists working not on variant-specific boosters, but on a vaccine that might cover every possible strain, past and future . Called universal vaccines, they require a fundamentally different approach from a shot that would target Delta, Omicron, or any other variant. Instead, a universal vaccine would need to train the body to respond to something ever...
Jan 21, 2022•48 min•Ep. 444
Identifying Animals Through Airborne DNA In recent years, the technique of eDNA—environmental DNA, or samples taken from the environment, as opposed to from a specific animal—has changed ecology research. Scientists have learned how to obtain eDNA from water samples, soil, and even the intestinal tract of other animals. Writing recently in the journal Current Biology , two different groups report that air samples collected with filters in a zoo can provide enough DNA to paint a partial picture o...
Jan 21, 2022•48 min•Ep. 443
A Debate Over How The Universe Began Even though it’s commonly accepted today, the Big Bang theory was not always the universally accepted scientific explanation for how our universe began. In fact, the term ‘Big Bang’ was coined by a prominent physicist in 1948 to mock the idea. In the middle of the 20th century, researchers in the field of cosmology had two warring theories. The one we would come to call the Big Bang suggested the universe expanded rapidly from a primordial, hot, and ultra-den...
Jan 14, 2022•47 min•Ep. 442
A Replacement Heart, From A Pig This week, doctors reported that they had successfully transplanted a heart taken from a pig into a human being , a type of procedure known as xenotransplantation. The pig had been genetically modified to lack a certain protein thought to be responsible for organ rejection in previous transplant attempts. The patient, a 57 year-old man, will be monitored for any sign of rejection or infection with a porcine virus—but doctors are hopeful that the work will lead to ...
Jan 14, 2022•47 min•Ep. 441
