Science, Quickly

Latest Episodes:

Healthful Diet Switch Helps Even Late in Life Jan 19, 2016

Show notes

At a Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health forum on diet and health, Walter Willett, chair of the school's nutrition department, said that adoption of more healthful eating habits even late in life still has benefits.

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Better Gut Microbiome Census through Computing Jan 18, 2016

Show notes

Sophisticated computational techniques make it possible to analyze gene samples from all the bacteria in the gut at once to take a census of the species present.

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Sociable Chimps Get Richer Gut Microbiomes Jan 15, 2016

Show notes

When food is plentiful and chimps are more chummy, they harbor an increased number of different bacterial species in their bellies.

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Hippo Meat-Munching May Explain Their Anthrax Outbreaks Jan 12, 2016

Show notes

Hippos eat meat more than had been thought, a practice that could explain their susceptibility to anthrax die-offs when they consume infected animals.

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Powerball Lottery Winning Made Inevitable (If Not Easy) Jan 11, 2016

Show notes

Some set of numbers will definitely be drawn in the $1.3-billion Powerball Lottery, so all you have to do is make sure you hold every possible combination of numbers.

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Iceman Ötzi Died with a Bellyache Jan 08, 2016

Show notes

Researchers were able to determine the genome of stomach bacteria that infected the famous Iceman at the time of his death, in the process giving us clues about ancient human migrations.

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Allergies May Have Been Bequeathed by Neandertals Jan 07, 2016

Show notes

Many non-African humans today have genes—which apparently made it into us via Neandertals—that ramp up resistance to pathogens, but bring on allergies, too. Christopher Intagliata reports.

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Needle Exchange Programs Now Get Fed Support Jan 06, 2016

Show notes

More than a quarter century after the federal funding ban on needle exchange programs went into effect, it has quietly been almost completely lifted.

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Obama Notes Blocks of Gun Violence Research Jan 05, 2016

Show notes

In his announcement today that he was taking executive action to require more gun sellers to be licensed and to do background checks on gun buyers, Pres. Barack Obama also touched on the problems facing public health researchers who try to study gun violence and deaths.

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Asphalt Roads Could De-Ice Themselves Dec 31, 2015

Show notes

Researchers engineered bitumen—the sticky black stuff in asphalt—to release its own salt, to battle the formation of ice. Christopher Intagliata reports

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