Science Quickly
1,930 episodes — Page 25 of 39
Woodpeckers Drum to Their Own Tunes
The length and spacing of woodpecker drum rolls varies enough to tell woodpeckers apart—which could be useful to conservation biologists. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Homebodies Economize on Energy Use
Today’s work-from-home, on-demand culture means more days at home—and translates into greater energy savings, too. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Killer Whale Culture Revealed by Mimicking Us
Orcas can imitate calls from other whales and even human speech—suggesting they can transmit cultural practices, such as unique dialects. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Holiday Cheer Leads to Birth-Rate Spike
During feel-good holiday periods like Christmas and Eid-al-Fitr, romance strikes—leading to a boom in births nine months later. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ticks on Uptick Where Big Game Declines
Areas of Kenya without large wildlife saw tick populations rise as much as 370 percent—meaning more danger to humans. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Wildfires Spike Wine with Smoky Notes
Chemists are working on ways for wildfire-affected winemakers to avoid creating smoky wines. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lion Conservation Challenges Giraffe Protection
Having lions and giraffes together in protected areas means far lower survival rates for juvenile giraffes. Jason Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nobelist Crafts Light-Switchable Antibiotics
Drugs modified by chemistry Nobel laureate Ben Feringa can be turned on and off by light, which could help keep bacteria from developing antibiotic resistance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Catching Flu Also Boosts Heart Risk
Researchers found a sixfold increase in heart attacks in patients in the week following a flu. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Worldwide Effort Says Together Science Can
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, talked about worldwide scientific collaboration today at the World Economic Forum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Canada Geese Taking a Winter Staycation
The geese are wintering farther and farther north, in urban areas like Chicago—which may help them avoid hunters. Emily Schwing reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Moon's Tug Doesn't Cause Big Quakes
An analysis of more than 200 earthquakes over the past four centuries concludes there's no connection between moon phases and big earthquakes. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Social Media Helps ID Spew Source
Surveillance of Yelp restaurant reviews for terms like vomit led researchers to the sources of foodborne illness outbreaks. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Salmonella Could Have Caused 16th-Century Epidemic
Using a new algorithm, geneticists uncovered the pathogen that could have caused a massive epidemic in the Aztec empire: Salmonella bacteria. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Which Came First, the Proboscis or the Flower?
A new fossil find reveals that the sucking tongue of butterflies—or proboscis—appears to have evolved before the emergence of flowers. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You Live in a Strange Solar System
Astronomers found that other star systems tend to host similarly sized exoplanets—far different from ours. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Glow Sticks Help Ecologists Study Amphibians
Ecologists needed a way to more easily keep track of populations of amphibians, and green glow sticks lit the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Air Force Tracks Final Frontier
General Jay Raymond, Commander of Air Force Space Command, talks about keeping watch over space and cyber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You Traveled Far Last Year
Getting around the sun in 2017 was a memorable trip. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Finches Can Learn to Sing Differently Than Their Genetics Dictate
The song training that Bengalese finches received appeared to overcome tempo tendencies baked into their genes. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Baby Bats Can Learn Different Dialects
Fruit bats raised hearing different pitches of sounds vocalized in keeping with their aural environment as they matured. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mongoose Societies Are Skeptical of Strangers
It takes months for members of a mongoose breeding society to trust newcomers with important tasks like watching for predators. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pain and Weather Fail to Connect
A big data analysis involving more than 1.5 million patients could find no relationship between weather and complaints to doctors about joint or back pain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Finding Further Places for Solar Panels
Siting solar panels over rooftops, parking lots, reservoirs and contaminated land could generate heaps of energy—with minimal effects on agriculture or the environment. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Fish Emits Damaging Decibels
The Gulf corvina produces a chattering chorus that’s one of the loudest underwater animal sounds on the planet. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Repetitive Sounds Are Music to the Brain
Repeating something can render that thing melodious—even the sound of a shovel being dragged across the pavement. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Radiation Might Help Heart Regain Its Rhythm
A flash of radiation drastically reduced arrhythmia in a small group of patients, for at least a year after treatment. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dark Fiber Networks Can Sense Seismicity
Scientists are exploring the use of fiber-optic cables—like the ones that form the backbone of the internet—to monitor earthquakes. Julia Rosen reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Supermarket Snacking Boosts Sales
Noshing while shopping convinces consumers to buy the featured product more often than does simply seeing end-of-aisle displays. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Something Clicks for Dolphin Identification
Machine-learning algorithms teased seven distinct dolphin clicking patterns from a library of more than 50 million clicks, identifying one species by sound alone. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nutrition Guidelines Healthy for the Planet, Too
Following dietary guidelines would mean eating less meat and dairy—and fewer calories overall—reducing greenhouse gases and other pollution. Julia Rosen reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Invading Beavers Turn Tundra to Ponds
New beaver ponds in the Arctic may contribute to the destruction of the permafrost that holds that landscape together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sharks Rule the Reef's Underwater Food Chain
When sharks prowl shallow waters, fish quit foraging and hide—sparing seaweed from being grazed in those areas. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ancient Women Had Awesome Arms
For thousands of years, women in agricultural societies seem to have had arms stronger than members of modern rowing teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Invasive Frogs Don't Bug Hawaiian Birds
Coquí frogs are invasive species in Hawaii. But they don’t seem to bug the islands’ native and nonnative birds. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Hospitals Can Dampen the Decibels
Hospitals consistently score low on quietness surveys. An acoustician suggests a few ways hospitals could keep the peace and quiet. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Smarter Management Means More Inventions Get to Market
Rosemarie Truman, CEO of the Center for Advancing Innovation, says a better system of governance for federally funded inventions could lead to many more good ones becoming commercialized. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Computers Learn to Use Sound to Find Ships
Researchers trained machine-learning algorithms to pinpoint the location of a cargo ship simply by eavesdropping on the sound of its passing. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Yeti Claims Don't Bear Up
Analysis of alleged yeti samples found them to be from less fantastic beasts, such as bears, but also shed light on the evolution of those local bear populations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Republican Voters Not in Denial about Climate
An analysis of voter opinions finds that half of Republican voters think climate change is happening, and would support regulating CO2 as a pollutant. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tech Honcho Wants Innovation for the Bottom Billion
At the World Conference of Science Journalists in October, Nathan Myhrvold, co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, charged innovation outfits with changing the lives of the world's most disadvantaged. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bumper Stickers Make Highways More Social
A social scientist studies how car stickers turn the roads into actual information highways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chimps Able to Apprehend Another Chimp's Mind-Set
By listening to the calls of their brethren, chimps seem to be able to understand the mind-sets and perspectives of other chimps. Jason Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Even without Hands Honeybees Show Handedness
About half the honeybees in a test exhibited no sidedness, but the other half was split 50–50 between righties and lefties—perhaps to navigate obstacles more efficiently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Humpback Whale Flippers Do More Than Maneuver
Researchers attached cameras to humpback whales and found that they flap their flippers to help power forward swimming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A New Recipe for Counting Cranberries
Estimating cranberry harvests involves tedious hand-counting. But microwave analysis could change all that. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Fit Is Bitcoin?
A new analysis treats bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies as species in an evolutionary model—and finds bitcoin has no selective advantage. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Salmon Sex Changes Entire Landscape
Salmon excavate streambed holes in which to lay eggs, setting off a chain of events that has surprisingly large geographical effects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ancient 1 Percenters Were Beast-Based
New World societies long ago likely had less income inequality than those in the Old World, and the difference might have been an oxen gap. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feathers Help This Bird Sound the Alarm
The crested pigeon, found in Australia, has a modified wing feather that helps produce an alarm signal sound to warn other birds when there's trouble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices