Science Quickly
1,974 episodes — Page 31 of 40
Birch Trees Droop at Night with No Rays in Sight
The branches of birch trees in Europe sagged by as much as four inches at night compared with daytime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Some Malaria Mosquitoes May Prefer Cows to Us
A chromosomal rearrangement may cause one mosquito species to be lured to cows instead of humans for a blood meal. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Drunk People Feel Soberer around Heavy Drinkers
Drinkers surrounded by even more inebriated people feel less drunk than a breathalyzer test indicates they actually are. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oldest Known Indigo Dye Found in Peru
Fabric dyed with indigo just found in Peru is some 1,600 years older than indigo-dyed fabrics that have been found in the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Road Noise Makes Birds' Lives Tougher
By playing road noise where there was no road, researchers were able to gauge the effect of the noise on bird behavior without having to deal with the effect of the road itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
World Wilderness Down 10 Percent in 20 Years
South America and central Africa lost the most wilderness in a decline since the 1990s that saw the planet's wild areas down by a tenth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Photonic Chip Could Strengthen Smartphone Encryption
The chip uses pulses of laser light to generate truly random numbers, the basis of encryption. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Protein Test Could Complement Crime Scene DNA Analysis
Researchers determined that the variation of a couple hundred proteins in a person's hair could be enough to single her out from one million individuals. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Shark Fins Contain Toxic "One–Two Punch"
Sharks can accumulate both methylmercury and a toxin called BMAA, which can have synergistic effects on human consumers. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program Actually Promotes It
Teenage girls who cared for infant dolls, an intervention meant to prevent pregnancy, actually had a higher risk of getting pregnant by age 20. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Color-Changing Skin Aids Climate Control and Communication
Bearded dragons modify their colors for camouflage or to maintain body temperature, or to communicate with other dragons. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Waste Amphetamines Alter Underwater Ecosystems
Using an artificial stream system, researchers found that amphetamine residues altered insect and microbial life in aquatic ecosystems. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Green Solution to Improve Indoor Air Quality
In 12 hours Dracaena plants removed nearly all the acetone from an airtight chamber, suggesting they might be put to use as air filters in nail salons. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Humans Are Superpredators in the Landscape of Fear
Badgers were far more frightened by the sounds of humans than by their traditional predators, such as bears or wolves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Voters Are Seldom Swayed by Local Campaign Stops
A survey during the 2012 election found that bus tours and visits to greasy spoons didn't do much to change voter opinions. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ancient Mexican Metropolis Engaged in Hare-Raising Activity
Upending the belief that residents of ancient Central America did not practice animal husbandry, new evidence shows that people in Teotihuacán raised and bred rabbits and hares. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Model Black Hole Re-Creates Stephen Hawking Prediction
A black hole analogue, which traps sound instead of light, generates "Hawking radiation," a key prediction by the theoretical physicist. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pigeon Pb Proxies Could Cut Kids' Blood Tests
In neighborhoods where kids have an increased chance of exposure to toxic lead, pigeons also have higher blood lead levels—making the birds potential proxies for risk assessment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Remote Door Controls Are Car Security Flaw
Researchers found that a bad actor could cheaply and easily clone a remote keyless entry system to gain entry. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Shark Is the Vertebrate Methuselah
Individual Greenland sharks appear to live perhaps a century longer than any other vertebrate, and might have life spans approaching 500 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Humans and Birds Cooperate to Share Beehive Bounty
The Yao people of Mozambique vocally signal honeyguide birds to show them the location of hives, which the people harvest and share with the birds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pesticides Act as Honeybee Contraceptives
Environmental concentrations of certain insecticides slashed honeybee drones' living sperm counts. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cut Road Deaths with Mountain Lions
Reintroducing mountain lions to the eastern U.S. could save human lives and reduce injuries by lowering deer populations and preventing car–deer collisions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Silk Road Transported Goods--and Disease
A 2,000-year-old latrine in China provides the first hard evidence that people carried diseases long distances along the ancient trading route. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Inbred Songbirds Croon out of Tune
Inbred canaries sang songs with less pure tones, and at slightly different pitches, than their outbred cousins—and female canaries seemed to be able to tell the difference. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Great Red Spot Helps Explain Jupiter's Warm Upper Atmosphere
A thermal spike linked to the solar system’s largest storm explains weather on gas-giant planets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Beaver Dams Strengthened by Humans Help Fish Rebound
Fish flourished in creeks in which human engineers helped shore up beaver dams made weak by poor timber availability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Frigate Bird Flights Last Months
Great frigate birds may stay aloft for up to two months, eating and sleeping on the wing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For Lichens, 3's Not a Crowd
Biologists have identified a third species—a yeast—in some lichens, shaking up what's always been known as a two-party system. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chicken Scent Deters Malaria Mosquitoes
The smell of a chicken wards off one species of malaria-spreading mosquito—meaning the scent compounds, or the birds themselves, might help deter disease. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Vaccinate Prairie Dogs to Save Ferrets
As was widely reported on social media, the U.S. is indeed going to use aerial drones to spread vaccine-laced pellets among prairie dogs to save endangered ferrets, although, contrary to some reports, no M&Ms will be involved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Fuel-Efficient Engines Have a Sooty Flaw
A newer type of fuel injection offers better fuel economy, but paradoxically increases black carbon emissions—meaning a pollution trade-off. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mucus Lets Dolphins Emit Their Clicks
A model of the dolphin vocal apparatus shows that they need a coating of mucus to produce their distinctive sounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bees Rank Pollen by Taste
The discerning insects returned to flowers with sweetened pollen, but avoided revisiting flowers with bitter pollen. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Menu Featured Mammoth but Diners Were Mocked
A genetic analysis of leftovers from an exotic dinner in 1951 reveals that the diners got less than they were promised. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Evolution Ed Defenders Make Rapids Progress in Grand Canyon
The National Center for Science Education's annual Colorado River trip through the Grand Canyon highlights the differences between the scientific and creationist outlooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Wildlife Can Bear with Hunters and Hikers
A new study suggests the best predictor of wildlife abundance in public lands is not human activity, but factors like forest connectivity and nearby housing density. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cats' Cunning Extends beyond the Hunt
New research suggests that our feline companions understand the principle of cause and effect. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Farmed Trout Bred to Fatten Up Fast
An aquaculturist used selective breeding to create strains of farmed fish that fatten up fast on cheap, plentiful feeds such as soybeans and corn. Emily Schwing reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Algorithm Can Predict Relationship Trouble
By analyzing the vocal patterns of couples in therapy, an algorithm was able to predict whether a relationship would get worse or improve. Erika Beras reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Is Mars Missing a Moon?
A new theory suggests the Red Planet once had a spectacular lunar system. Lee Billings reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Human Ears Can Hear Better-Than-CD Quality (Just Barely)
Listeners can tell the difference between CD-quality music and better-than-CD quality—but only if they train their ears first. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Highway Sounds Might Mask Life-Saving Birdcalls
The call of the tufted titmouse conveys important information about the presence of potential predators. But only if other birds can hear it. Karen Hopkin reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
City Lights Trick Trees into an Earlier Spring
Urban light pollution in the U.K. is pushing tree springtime behavior a full week earlier than usual. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Made Ya Look, Monkey
Over their lifetimes, macaques follow the same trajectory as humans in the amount of interest they have in observing what another individual is looking at. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Drowsy Driving Kills 6,400 Americans Annually
Charles Czeisler, director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, talked about the dangers of drowsy driving at a recent Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Forum called Asleep at the Wheel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Social Spider Groups Need Bold and Shy Members
Social spiders in artificially assembled groups of all bold or all shy members fared less well against predators than a group with some shy and some bold members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chocolate Makers Cut Fat with Electricity
Reducing fat from chocolate can gum up manufacturing equipment, making low-fat chocolate hard to produce—but an electric field can help. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Viruses Hijack the Body's Response to Mosquito Bites
When immune cells rush to the site of a mosquito bite, viruses hijack the cells and turn them into viral factories—in mice, at least. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mongooses Pile on Warthogs--to Groom Them
In the first known example of a mutualistic relationship between two mammal species in which neither is a primate, mongooses feast on ticks and other parasites infesting warthogs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices