Science Magazine Podcast

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Squeezing two people into an MRI machine, and deciding between what’s reasonable and what’s rational Jan 09, 2020

Show notes

Getting into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine can be a tight fit for just one person. Now, researchers interested in studying face-to-face interactions are attempting to squeeze a whole other person into the same tube, while taking functional MRI (fMRI) measurements. Staff news writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the kinds of questions simultaneous fMRIs might answer.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Igor Grossman, the director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo, about his group’s Science Advances paper on public perceptions of the difference between something being rational and something being reasonable.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

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About the Science Podcast

[Image: Amanda/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Kelly Servick, Sarah Crespi

Transcript link: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/SciencePodcast_200110.pdf

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Areas to watch in 2020, and how carnivorous plants evolved impressive traps Jan 02, 2020

Show notes

We start our first episode of the new year looking at future trends in policy and research with host Joel Goldberg and several Science News writers. Jeffrey Mervis discusses upcoming policy changes, Kelly Servick gives a rundown of areas to watch in the life sciences, and Ann Gibbons talks about potential advances in ancient proteins and DNA.

In research news, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Beatriz Pinto-Goncalves, a post-doctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre, about carnivorous plant traps. Through understanding the mechanisms that create these traps, Pinto-Goncalves and colleagues elucidate what this could mean for how they emerged in the evolutionary history of plants.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

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About the Science Podcast

[Image: Eleanor/Flickr]

Authors: Joel Goldberg, Jeffrey Mervis, Kelly Servick, Ann Gibbons, Meagan Cantwell

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Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in books Dec 19, 2019

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As the year comes to a close, we review the best science, the best stories, and the best books from 2019. Our end-of-the-year episode kicks off with Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm talking about the top online stories on things like human self-domestication, the “wood wide web,” and more.

News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins Sarah to discuss Science’s 2019 Breakthrough of the Year, some of the contenders for breakthrough, also known as runners-up, and the breakdowns—when science and politics just didn’t seem to mix this year.

Finally, Science books editor Valerie Thompson brings her favorites from the world of science-inflected media. She and Sarah talk about some of the best books reviewed in Science this year, a food extinction book we should have reviewed, a pair of science-centric films, and even an award-winning birding board game.

For more science books, films, and games, visit the books et al blog at blogs.sciencemag.org/books.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

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About the Science Podcast

[Image: Roots, Craig Cloutier/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Tim Appenzeller; Valerie Thompson

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Hunting for new epilepsy drugs, and capturing lightning from space Dec 13, 2019

Show notes

About one-third of people with epilepsy are treatment resistant. Up until now, epilepsy treatments have focused on taming seizures rather than the source of the disease and for good reason—so many roads lead to epilepsy: traumatic brain injury, extreme fever and infection, and genetic disorders, to name a few. Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about researchers that are turning back the pages on epilepsy, trying to get to the beginning of the story where new treatments might work.

And Sarah also talks with Torsten Neurbert at the Technical University of Denmark’s National Space Institute in Kongens Lyngby about capturing high-altitude “transient luminous events” from the International Space Station (ISS). These lightning-induced bursts of light, color, and occasionally gamma rays were first reported in the 1990s but had only been recorded from the ground or aircraft. With new measurements from the ISS come new insights into the anatomy of lightning.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

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About the Science Podcast

[Image: Gemini Observatory; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

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Debating lab monkey retirement, and visiting a near-Earth asteroid Dec 05, 2019

Show notes

After their life as research subjects, what happens to lab monkeys? Some are euthanized to complete the research, others switch to new research projects, and some retire from lab life. Should they retire in place—in the same lab under the care of the same custodians—or should they be sent to retirement home–like sanctuaries? Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss recently penned legislation that pushes for monkey retirements and a new collaboration between universities and sanctuaries to create a retirement pipeline for these primates.
Sarah also talks with Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) and a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, about the latest news from the asteroid Bennu. Within 1 week of beginning its orbit of the asteroid, OSIRIS-REx was able to send back surprising images of the asteroid ejecting material. It’s extremely rocky surface also took researchers by surprise and forced a recalculation of the sample return portion of the craft’s mission.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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Double dipping in an NIH loan repayment program, and using undersea cables as seismic sensors Nov 28, 2019

Show notes

The National Institutes of Health’s largest loan repayment program was conceived to help scientists pay off school debts without relying on industry funding. But a close examination of the program by investigative correspondent Charles Piller has revealed that many participants are taking money from the government to repay their loans, while at the same time taking payments from pharmaceutical companies. Piller joins Host Sarah Crespi to talk about the steps he took to uncover this double dipping and why ethicists say this a conflict of interest.
Sarah also talks with Nate Lindsey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, about turning a 50-meter undersea fiber optic cable designed to move data into a sensor for activity in the ocean and the land underneath. During a 4-day test in Monterey Bay, California, the cable detected earthquakes, faults, waves, and even ocean-going storms.
For this month’s books segment, Kiki Sandford talks with Dan Hooper about his book At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds.
You can find more books segments on the Books et al. blog.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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Building a landslide observatory, and the universality of music Nov 21, 2019

Show notes

You may have seen the aftermath of a landslide, driving along a twisty mountain road—a scattering of rocks and scree impinging on the pavement. And up until now, that’s pretty much how scientists have tracked landslides—roadside observations and spotty satellite images. Now, researchers are hoping to track landslides systematically by instrumenting an entire national park in Taiwan. The park is riddled with landslides—so much so that visitors wear helmets. Host Sarah Crespi talks with one of those visitors—freelance science journalist Katherine Kornei—about what we can learn from landslides.
In a second rocking segment, Sarah also talks with Manvir Singh about the universality of music. His team asked the big questions in a Science paper out this week: Do all societies make music? What are the common elements that can be picked out from songs worldwide? Sarah and Manvir listen to songs and talk about what love ballads and lullabies have in common, regardless of their culture of origin.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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About the Science Podcast
[Image: Martin Lewinson/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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How to make an Arctic ship ‘vanish,’ and how fast-moving spikes are heating the Sun’s atmosphere Nov 14, 2019

Show notes

The Polarstern research vessel will spend 1 year locked in an Arctic ice floe. Aboard the ship and on the nearby ice, researchers will take measurements of the ice, air, water, and more in an effort to understand this pristine place. Science journalist Shannon Hall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her time aboard the Polarstern and how difficult these measurements are, when the researchers’ temporary Arctic home is the noisiest, smokiest, brightest thing around.
After that icy start, Sarah talks also with Tanmoy Samanta, a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University in Beijing, about the source of the extreme temperature of the Sun’s corona, which can be up to 1 million K hotter than the surface of the Sun. His team’s careful measurements of spicules—small, plentiful, short-lived spikes of plasma that constantly ruffle the Sun’s surface—and the magnetic networks that seem to generate these spikes, suggest a solution to the long-standing problem of how spicules arise and, at the same time, their likely role in the heating of the corona.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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About the Science Podcast
[Image: Shannon Hall; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Unearthing slavery in the Caribbean, and the Catholic Church’s influence on modern psychology Nov 07, 2019

Show notes

Most historical accounts of slavery were written by colonists and planters. Researchers are now using the tools of archaeology to learn more about the day-to-day lives of enslaved Africans—how they survived the conditions of slavery, how they participated in local economies, and how they maintained their own agency. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about a Caribbean archaeology project based on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and launched by the founders of the Society for Black Archaeologists that aims to unearth these details. Watch a related video here.
Sarah also talks with Jonathan Schulz, a professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, about a role for the medieval Roman Catholic Church in so-called WEIRD psychology—western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. The bulk of psychology experiments have used participants that could be described as WEIRD, and according to many psychological measures, WEIRD subjects tend to have some extreme traits, like a stronger tendency toward individuality and more friendliness with strangers. Schulz and colleagues used historical maps and measures of kinship structure to tie these traits to strict marriage rules enforced by the medieval Catholic Church in Western Europe. Read related commentary.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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About the Science Podcast
[Image: Meagan Cantwell/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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How measles wipes out immune memory, and detecting small black holes Oct 31, 2019

Show notes

Measles is a dangerous infection that can kill. As many as 100,000 people die from the disease each year. For those who survive infection, the virus leaves a lasting mark—it appears to wipe out the immune system’s memory. News Intern Eva Fredrick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a pair of studies that looked at how this happens in children’s immune systems.
Read the related studies in Science and Science Immunology.
In our second segment this week, Sarah talks with Todd Thompson, of Ohio State University in Columbus, about his effort to find a small black hole in a binary pair with a red giant star. Usually black holes are detected because they are accruing matter and as the matter interacts with the black hole, x-rays are released. Without this flashy signal, black hole detection gets much harder. Astronomers must look for the gravitational influence of the black holes on nearby stars—which is easier to spot when the black hole is massive. Thompson talks with Sarah about a new approach to finding small, noninteracting black holes.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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About the Science Podcast
[Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Alissa Eckert; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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