Science Quickly
1,942 episodes — Page 24 of 39
Powder Pulls Drinking Water from Desert Air
A structure known as a metal organic framework traps water vapor by night, then releases it when heated the next day. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ancient Clan War Explains Genetic Diversity Drop
Some 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, the diversity of Y chromosomes plummeted. A new analysis suggests clan warfare may have been the cause. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Saying "This May Hurt" May Make It Worse
Warning a child that something, like a vaccine shot, will hurt can actually increase their perception of the pain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mongooses Gift Grooming for Guard Duty
Humans and other primates often reciprocate good deeds. A new study suggests a nonprimate, the dwarf mongoose, does so, too, even after a delay. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Some Trees Beat Heat with Sweat
During extreme heat waves, a species of eucalyptus copes by releasing water and taking advantage of evaporative cooling. Other trees may do the same. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Computers Go Head-to-Head with Humans on Face Recognition
The best facial-recognition algorithms are now as good as the best forensic examiners are. But the best results come by combining human and computer skills. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pinnipeds Don't Appreciate Biped Disturbance
Sea lions and fur seals in Uruguay have become a tourist attraction—but the animals have become less, not more, accepting of humans. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Computers Predict Pop Chart Success
An evolutionary analysis of pop tunes revealed that over the past 30 years songs have grown sadder—but the big hits buck that trend. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Doc's YA Novel Treats Life-and-Death Issues
Pediatric cardiologist Ismée Williams discusses her young adult novel, Water in May, about a teenage girl whose newborn has a life-threatening heart condition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Google's AI Assistant Does Your Talk Tasks
The new Google AI voice assistant, called Duplex, highlights the intricacies of carrying out a mundane human-style conversation, as it keeps you off the phone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Great Ape Makes Good Doc
Orangutans were observed to use plant extracts to treat their own pain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stool-Pigeon Poop Reveals Bird-Racing Fouls
Racing pigeons is big business—and doping is common. Now scientists have devised a way to detect doping in the avian athletes. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Radar Scans Detail North Korean Nukes
Scientists have added radar info to seismic data, isotope measurements and optical imagery to study covert nuclear tests. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hunting Rules Have Changed Mama Bear Care
Hunting regulations in Sweden prohibit killing brown bear mothers in company of cubs—causing mama bears to care for their young longer. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jupiter and Venus Squeeze Earth's Orbit
Sediment records have confirmed that Jupiter and Venus change Earth's orbit from virtually circular to noticeably elliptical and back every 405,000 years. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mars Lander Will Peer Inside the Red Planet
The InSight Mission will look at Mars's seismic activity and latent heat to find out more about how planets get made--and how humans might live there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Plants Can Sense Animal Attack Coming
Tomato plants detected snail slime in soil near them and mounted preemptive defenses, even though they were not directly touched. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Archaeologist Makes a Case for Seafaring Neandertals
Ancient tools on Mediterranean islands could predate the appearance of modern humans—suggesting Neandertals took to the seas. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Africa: Future Worldwide Science Hub
Thierry Zomahoun, president of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, talks about the potential and needs of science on the continent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Healthful Eating Requires Supermarket Smarts
Advice from an N.Y.U. food policy symposium: eating healthfully means you can't ever let down your guard when shopping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Culture Shapes Kids' Views of Nature
In a study of children interacting with toy animals Native American kids and non-Native kids imagined the animals very differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bad Audio Can Hurt a Scientist's Credibility
Listeners gave more credence to a scientist’s radio interview when the audio was good quality than they did to the same material when the audio was poor. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bill Gates Announces a Universal Flu Vaccine Effort
Today in Boston, Gates announced a $12-million initiative to foster the development of a vaccine effective against all flu strains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Drumming Beats Speech for Distant Communication
The Bora people in the northwestern Amazon use drums to send languagelike messages across long distances. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bees Have a Goldilocks Lawn Mow Schedule
Lawns mowed every two weeks hosted more bees than lawns mowed every three weeks. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If Singing's Tough, Try Whistling
A new study claims it's easier to accurately whistle a melody than to sing it. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Traffic Deaths Increase after 4:20 P.M. on 4/20
A look at a database of fatal traffic accidents found a 12 percent increase on the informal marijuana holiday 4/20 after 4:20 P.M. compared with nearby dates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
NYC Mice Are Packed with Pathogens
Mice trapped in New York City apartment buildings harbored disease-causing bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mine Social Media Posts to Predict Flu
Researchers used Twitter searches for nonflu words associated with behavior to predict flu outbreaks two weeks in advance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Planting Milkweed for Monarchs? Make Sure It's Native
Non-native milkweed species planted in the southern U.S. could harm monarch butterflies as temperatures rise. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Internet Needs a Tune-Up
Princeton University's Jennifer Rexford talks about optimizing the internet for the uses it got drafted into performing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Glacier Suddenly Goes Galloping
Researchers try to figure out why every 20 years a Pakistan glacier moves roughly 1,500 times faster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Some Habitable Zone Exoplanets May Get X-Rayed Out
Red dwarfs are a popular place to hunt for small exoplanets in the habitable zone—but the stars' radiation bursts might fry chances for life as we know it. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Right Whales Seem to Think before They Speak
Rather than always making the same call in response to the same stimuli, North Atlantic right whales are capable of changing their vocalizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Old New England Underground May Be Spry after All
The U.S. Northeast may be more geologically active than was previously thought, according to a seismic sensor network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Brain Scan Might Reveal Appetite for Risk
Volunteers willing to place riskier bets tended to sport larger amygdalas—a region associated with processing fear. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Neandertal Face Shape Was All Over the Air
The jutting midface of Neandertals seems to have evolved to help get large volumes of air into an active body that needed lots of oxygen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Rev Up Photosynthesis to Boost Crop Yields
Photosynthesis actually is an inefficient process, but a biological chemist is trying to crank it up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
13,000-Year-Old Footprints under West Coast Beach
Several feet below a beach in British Columbia, archaeologists discovered soil trampled by human feet—the oldest footprints found so far in North America. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Math Cracks a Knuckle-Cracking Mystery
The source of knuckle cracking sounds is much debated—but new mathematical models may reconcile two opposing views. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Rotting Flesh Offers Insight on Fossilization
To learn more about decay and fossilization, researchers conduct unorthodox experiments—like dissecting decomposing animals in the lab. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ravens Crow with Individual Flair
Ravens produce different types of calls depending on their age and sex—which might help ravens size up other individuals. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
U.S. Flu Spread Counts On Southern Cold Snaps
A multifactorial analysis finds that the ignition of a flu epidemic stems from a blast of colder weather striking an otherwise warm, humid, urban environment, and driving people indoors into close quarters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Louise Slaughter Was Congress's Food Safety Champion
Upstate New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, who worked for decades on issues such as overuse of antibiotics in agriculture and food safety in general, died March 16 at the age of 88. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Arctic Heat Waves Linked to Snowpocalypse-Like Storms
An analysis of more than six decades of daily temperature and snowfall data linked warmer arctic temperatures to cold snaps at lower latitudes. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Gut Parasites Have Their Own Gut Microbiomes
The whipworm lives in the human gut, mooching microbes from its host to build its own microbiome. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Drones Could Help Biologists Tally Birds
Counting by drone not only saves time and effort, but yields better data on species numbers—a definite plus in terms of conservation. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Saliva Protein Might Inhibit Intestinal Anarchy
A protein found in spit prevents bad bugs from binding to intestinal cells in the lab, pointing to a possible way to lower the chances of dysentery. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Searching the Heavens for Mountains
Exoplanet hunters are moving beyond simply finding new planets into trying to know what they look like and whether there's surface or subsurface activity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Human Echolocators Use Tricks Similar to Bats
People who use echolocating mouth clicks to compensate for low vision increase the number and intensity of clicks when objects are harder to detect. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices