Science Quickly
1,942 episodes — Page 8 of 39
How Is This Ancient Cattle Breed Fighting Wildfires in Portugal?
Portugal is one of the most vulnerable countries in Europe to climate change. Straddling the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic regions, it’s part of a climate change hot spot. Some of the biggest fuels are shrubs. One study found that shrubland covers 1.6 million hectares in Portugal—about 18 percent of the nation’s land area. And those shrubs are gaining ground. That’s because, for decades, people have been moving out of rural communities such as the one Tommy Ferreira lives in. Most leave to pursue better-paying jobs in the cities or in wealthier European Union countries. Portugal has lost 30 percent of its rural population since 1960. The same trend is occurring across the Mediterranean region. Abandoning these farmlands is increasing wildfire risk, according to an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report released last spring. When people who work the land leave it, grazing pastures and farm fields become thick with fuels. But these ancient Maronesa cattle can help solve both of these modern-day problems. It was a solution hiding in plain sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Government's Former UFO Hunter Has a Lot to Say
For the last decade, reports of UFO sightings have filled headlines and news broadcasts, and some of these have from a surprising place—the Pentagon. Former defense officials have made a number of claims about, and released videos of, strange sightings made by military pilots. These days, the objects are officially called “UAPs”—unidentified anomalous phenomena. But regardless of the new branding, Congress has demanded answers on them, especially after one former official this summer claimed that he believed that the U.S. possessed “nonhuman” spacecraft and possibly their “dead pilots.” We talk to the former intelligence official and physicist, Sean Kirkpatrick, who until December headed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon office that Congress told to find some answers to all this. He recently published an op-ed in Scientific American called "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Quantum Computers Might Make All of Your Private Data Less Secure
Experts are starting to plan for the moment when a quantum computer large enough to crack the backbone of the math that keeps things secret will be turned on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
New IVF Test Could Increase Chances of Pregnancy Success
Today’s episode covers a topic that many parents-to-be have struggled with: fertility. In vitro fertilization offers a path to pregnancy for people fortunate enough to be able to access it. But predicting the success of an implanted embryo is hard. Now researchers are developing a test that could make it easier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Save Indigenous Languages
From Papua New Guinea to the Andaman Islands, Indigenous languages are under threat. An Indian linguist helped preserve one language family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Can AI Predict When You Die?
A new study used machine learning on 6 million Danish people to "autocomplete" their life trajectories –— and when they might kick the bucket. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Best Way to Use Home COVID Tests Right Now
In today’s episode, we want to talk about some of the current challenges with using home COVID tests. When you first have symptoms, a change in how your body reacts to the virus could lead to a test result showing you’re negative when you’re actually infected. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
From Drunken Stupor to Sober with One (Hormone) Shot
We all have our tricks for sobering up after a night of drunken revelry: maybe a pot of black coffee or an ice-cold shower. But for mice in a certain lab in Texas, all it takes is a shot. No, not more alcohol—it’s an injection of a hormone called fibroblast growth factor 21, or FGF21. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Does the World’s Largest Seabird Know Where to Fly?
Imagine for a moment that you’re a very hungry bird soaring over 30-foot ocean swells in high winds, with no land for thousands of miles. How do you know where you’re going? If you’re a wandering albatross, you listen. But listen to what, exactly? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Without the Moon, You Wouldn't Exist (Probably)
The moon has guided our movements and cultures, and though we may think we know it well, it still guards some of its deepest secrets from us. A new book from Rebecca Boyle take us on a deep dive into our sister celestial orb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Strange and Beautiful Science Of Our Lives
Nell Greenfieldboyce discusses her new book Transient and Strange, the intimacy of the essays and the science that inspired them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Surprising Health Benefits of Dog Ownership
Dogs are good for you, science says Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Podcasts of the Year: Cleo, the Mysterious Math Menace
In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she’s an urban legend. But who was she? 2023 editor's pick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Podcasts of the Year: Talking to Animals using Artificial Intelligence
Advanced sensors and artificial intelligence could have us at the brink of interspecies communication Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Avoid Holiday Hangovers
The holidays are a time for indulgence, but there are ways to drink alcohol without suffering the painful effects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Podcasts of the Year: What Better Gift for the Holidays Than a Monstrous Mystery?
We’re looking back at 2023 for our favorite podcast shows and one about the largest bird to ever fly the skies just flew to the top of the list. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Are Orca Whales Friends or Foes?
The stories we tell about orcas might say more about us than about them Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Turns Out Undersea Kelp Forests Are Crucial to Salmon
The beloved fish that feed orcas and humans depend on kelp forests’ unique habitat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Researchers Just Created the World's First Permafrost Atlas of the Entire Arctic
The Arctic Permafrost Atlas, which took years to create, is both beautiful and sobering, given the pace of climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A New Type of Heart Disease is on the Rise
Problems with the heart, kidneys and metabolic health are all connected Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AI Can Now Read Your Cat's Pain
Thanks to researchers, new AI tech is delving into feline feelings to see when cats could need medical help. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These Researchers Put Sperm Through a Kind of 'Hunger Games'
The research focused on figuring out what enables certain sperm to gain some competitive advantage over millions of others fighting for the same prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Is Too Little Play Hurting Our Kids?
A long-term decline in unsupervised activity may be contributing to mental health declines in children and adolescents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Misinformation Spreads through Conflict
Three experts break down how misinformation and propaganda spread through conflict and how to debunk it yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Why Childhood Vaccination Rates Are Falling
Fewer kids got their routine childhood vaccines since before the pandemic. Are lack of access and a loss of trust in science to blame? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Climate Adaptation Can Backfire If We Aren't Careful
The choices we make in how we adapt to climate change can sometimes come back to bite us Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Members of This Reservation Learned They Live with Nuclear Weapons. Can Their Reality Ever Be the Same?
The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara peoples are learning more about the missiles siloed on their lands, and that knowledge has put the preservation of their culture and heritage in even starker relief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What Would It Mean to 'Absorb' a Nuclear Attack?
The missiles on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota make it a potential target for a nuclear attack. And that doesn’t come close to describing what the reality would be for those on the ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If You Had a Nuclear Weapon in Your Neighborhood, Would You Want to Know about It?
The Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota has had nuclear missile silos on its land for decades. Now the U.S. government wants to take the old weapons out and replace them with new ones, and it’s unclear how many living there know about that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Just One U.S. Reservation Hosts Nuclear Weapons. This Is The Story of How That Came to Be
15 nuclear missiles deployed in underground concrete silos across the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. It took displacement and flood to get them there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Did Nuclear Weapons Get on My Reservation?
A member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation digs into a decades-long mystery: how 15 intercontinental ballistic missiles came to be siloed on her ancestral lands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Quick Naps Are Good for Your Brain
Daytime naps of about 30 minutes really improve your thinking and may spark creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Funding for Research on Psychedelics Is on the Rise, Along with Scientists' Hopes for Using Them
As interest and support for psychedelic research grows, scientists share their hopes for the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Do You Need to 'Trip' for Psychedelics to Work as Medicine?
Psychedelic researchers are engaged in heated debate over whether the mind-altering effects of the drugs are necessary for realizing their therapeutic potential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Search for New Psychedelics
As companies join the hunt, can the field of mind-altering synthetic substances stay true to its original pioneering spirit of wonder, curiosity and connection? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What Are Ultraprocessed Foods, and Are They Bad for You?
More than half of our diet consists of foods that have been industrially processed in some way, and they may be harmful to our health Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These Creatures Are Probably the Closest Thing Nature Has to Real Werewolves
Under the right conditions, the spadefoot tadpole will transform into a voracious predator of its own species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The World's Most Frightening Animal Sounds like This
Lions, tigers, bears: this creature sends all of those beasts running for the hills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Tale of the Rotifer That Came Back to Life after 25,000 Years in an Icy Tomb
Can something spring back to life if it last moved around when woolly mammoths roamed the earth? The answer appears to be yes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Generative AI Models Are Sucking Up Data from All Over the Internet, Yours Included
In the rush to build and train ever larger AI models, developers have swept up much of the searchable Internet, quite possibly including some of your own public data—and potentially some of your private data as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Some Parents Show Their Kids They Care with a Corpse
If you’re a silphid beetle, a dead body is all your children really want, and it’s your job—no matter how difficult—to get one for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Handle This New COVID Season
The dangerous virus is still here. Here’s how you can stay safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
As Arctic Sea Ice Breaks Up, AI Is Starting to Predict Where the Ice Will Go
Sea ice is changing fast. Are forecasts created by artificial intelligence the best way to keep up with the pace of a warming climate in the far north? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Scientists Argue Conservation Is under Threat in Indonesia
Researchers have been banned from working in Indonesia’s tropical rain forests after the government disagreed with their scientific conclusions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Soggy Mission to Sniff Out a Greenhouse Gas 'Bomb' in the High Arctic
A needlelike tower, hung with sensors, “sniffs” the air above the Arctic Circle for signs of catastrophic thaw in the sodden ground below. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Indigenous Community Records the Climate Change That Is Causing Its Town to Erode Away
In a tiny village north of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, the Inuvialuit of Tuktoyaktuk have taken climate science into their own hands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Journey to the Thawing Edge of Climate Change
What is a permafrost thaw slump? Just imagine a massive hole with an area the size of more than nine football fields—and growing—where ice-cold ground once stood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Popular Decongestant Doesn't Work. What Does?
The popular decongestant phenylephrine is not effective, an FDA panel found. Here’s what to use instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The State of Large Language Models
We present the latest updates on ChatGPT, Bard and other competitors in the artificial intelligence arms race. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Song of the Stars, Part 3: The Universe in all Senses
An astronomy festival in Italy opted to make all of its events and workshops multisensory. The organizers wanted to see whether sound, touch and smell can, like sight, transmit the wonders of the cosmos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices