Science, Quickly

Latest Episodes:

Political and Industry Leaders Make a Case for Basic Research Oct 24, 2015

Show notes

At the “Innovation: An American Imperative” symposium October 20 on Capitol Hill, industry leaders and members of Congress talked about shoring up federal support for basic research and development

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TV Crime Shows Influence Sex Consent Views Oct 22, 2015

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College students who watched episodes of the various Law & Order episodes had a better understanding of sexual consent issues than those who watched two other crime procedural franchises

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Fall Foliage Timing Comes into Clearer Focus Oct 20, 2015

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Researchers picked apart satellite imagery from two New England forest ecosystems to get a better handle on exactly what factors influence the timing of the color changes of the autumn leaves

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Babies Move Tongue to Learn New Tongues Oct 15, 2015

Show notes

Infants seemed to be able to differentiate between two different "D" sounds in Hindi—but only when their tongue movements weren't blocked by a teething device. Christopher Intagliata reports

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Pluto Mission Targets Next Kuiper Belt Object Oct 14, 2015

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Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons Mission, explains that with Pluto in the rearview mirror, the spacecraft will continue on to a smaller Kuiper Belt body

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Wildlife Tourism Could Be "Domesticating" Wild Animals Oct 09, 2015

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Human tourism—no matter how well-intentioned—might desensitize wild animals to poachers and predators, affecting their odds of survival. Christopher Intagliata reports

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Babies Just Want to Be Smiled at Oct 08, 2015

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By studying the interactions of babies and their mothers, researchers determined that babies smile in hopes others will smile at them. Erika Beras reports

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2015 Nobel Prize in Physics Oct 06, 2015

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The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for the discovery that one kind of neutrino can change into another, which shows that neutrinos have mass

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2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Oct 05, 2015

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The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for their studies leading to novel therapies against infections caused by roundworm parasites and to Youyou Tu for her work developing a novel therapy against malaria

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MacArthur Genius Grant Winner Probes the Pruning Brain Oct 01, 2015

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Harvard neuroscientist Beth Stevens wins a MacArthur Fellowship for studies of how microglia cells prune away excess neuronal synapses during brain development and how that necessary function might go awry in neurodegenerative diseases

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