Science, Spoken
2,361 episodes — Page 12 of 48
Why Was the Tonga Eruption So Massive? Scientists Have New Clues
Early theories suggested an underwater landslide caused a catastrophic mix of magma and seawater. Recent evidence reveals an explosion unlike anything studied before. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Story of Abortion Pills and How They Work
Mifepristone and misoprostol are a safe and effective way to end a pregnancy, but many people around the world still don’t know these drugs exist. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Undersea Cables Are Carrying Scientific Secrets
Rumbles and tides create tiny, detectable disturbances in fiber optics. The world’s cables could form a vast network for detecting earthquakes and tsunamis. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Puzzling Quantum Scenario Appears to Violate a Law of Physics
By resolving a paradox about light in a box, researchers hope to clarify the concept of energy in quantum theory. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Wetlands Are Drowning
A long-term study of a marsh was meant to ask whether rising levels of CO2 could help wetlands thrive despite rising seas. The plants aren’t keeping up. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Is Where Dirty Old Cars Go to Die
The electric vehicle revolution is gathering speed—but what happens to all those polluting cars already on the road? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Carbon-Rich Peat Is Disappearing. But Is It Also Growing?
Scientists have discovered “proto-peat” forming in the Arctic as the Earth naturally sequesters carbon, but it could take centuries to mature. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
With Dusty Solar Panels, InSight’s Days on Mars Are Numbered
After the InSight lander studied the strongest marsquake ever detected, scientists gave the space robot a negative prognosis because of its dwindling solar power. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Gene Mutation Breaks the Immune System. Why Has It Survived?
Two new studies found genetic mutations that cause severe immune deficiencies are common in some remote populations, leaving them highly vulnerable to viruses. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Powerful ISS Instrument Will Hunt for Minerals in Dusty Lands
NASA’s EMIT mission will better analyze the grime from dust-spewing regions, a critically understudied factor in climate change. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Researchers Grew Tiny Plants in Moon Dirt Collected Decades Ago
The seedlings sprouted in the regolith scooped up in the 1960s and ’70s, but astronauts won’t be harvesting lunar spuds anytime soon. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Elusive Gravity Signal Could Mean Faster Earthquake Warnings
Tiny wobbles in Earth’s gravitational field could help detect big tremors faster, but they’re hard to tease out from the planet’s seismic noise. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
These Nanobots Can Swim Around a Wound and Kill Bacteria
Researchers have created autonomous particles covered with patches of protein “motors.” They hope these bots will tote lifesaving drugs through bodily fluids. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Ticks Are Spreading in the US—and Taking New Diseases With Them
The vast majority of tick-borne disease goes unrecorded, meaning life-threatening pathogens are traveling under the radar to new locations. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Delegates at the United Nations Have Begun Forging New Rules for Space
International experts are using earthly policies as models to hash out regulations for orbiting spacecraft, from preventing conflict to limiting trash. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Burning Crops to Capture Carbon? Good Luck Finding Water
The technique uses plants as fuel and sequesters the emitted CO2, removing it from the atmosphere. But scaling up would use gobs of water and land. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Desert’s Fragile Skin Can’t Take Much More Heat
Climate change and human activity are destroying the layers of fungi, lichen, and bacteria that protect deserts from erosion. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Vast Underground Water System Helps Drive Antarctica’s Glaciers
Scientists have finally found Antarctica’s missing groundwater, which will help them predict ice flows on the continent. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
You Don’t Have to Quit Meat to Save the Planet—Just Eat Less
If everyone ate just 20 percent less beef, deforestation rates by 2050 could be half as bad. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Australia Moves Ahead Cautiously With '3-Parent IVF'
The nation follows the UK in permitting mitochondrial donation, which aims to prevent the transmission of rare but often fatal conditions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Everyone Wants to Build Green Energy Projects. What's the Holdup?
Proposals for wind, solar, and battery storage projects are running into a logjam of paperwork and grid connection issues. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Give Fitbits (of Sorts) to the Trees
You can tell a lot about a tree by its sway, so scientists are outfitting them with accelerometers. That could help the West better manage its water. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Hepatitis Cases in Kids Have Scientists Hunting for Answers
Young children across the world are inexplicably coming down with the liver illness, putting parents and doctors on alert. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Blood Test Detects Cancer in Dogs. But Do You Want to Know?
A startup just showed that its OncoK9 test accurately sounds the alarm for aggressive and advanced cancers. The catch? These often have no cure. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Surprising Climate Cost of the Humblest Battery Material
Graphite is made in blazing-hot furnaces powered by dirty energy. Until recently, there has been no good tally of the carbon emissions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Making Science More Open Is Good for Research—but Bad for Security
The open science movement pushes for making scientific knowledge quickly accessible to all. But a new paper warns that speed can come at a cost. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
For mRNA, Covid Vaccines Are Just the Beginning
With clinical vaccine trials for everything from HIV to Zika, messenger RNA could transform medicine—or widen health care inequalities. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Drones Have Transformed Blood Delivery in Rwanda
The autonomous aircraft have shuttled blood to rural, mountainous areas for years. A new analysis proves they’re faster than driving. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Energy Crisis Is Pushing Solar Adoption—for Those Who Can Pay
Rooftop solar panels are gaining popularity as the UK faces higher energy prices. But lower-income people are being left behind once again. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
NASA Rolls Back Its SLS Rocket for Repairs
After three attempts to run through a test of the Space Launch System, engineers spotted a leak and a faulty valve. The fixes may delay the first Artemis moon mission. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
For Kids Fleeing Ukraine, Wartime Trauma May Leave Lasting Wounds
Volunteers are rushing to provide online counseling, art therapy, and stress relief for the more than 2 million Ukrainian children who have become refugees. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Chernobyl Was a Wildlife Haven. Then Russian Troops Arrived
The area around the defunct power plant has been an unexpected rewilding success story. Now attempts to monitor progress are hampered by the war. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Does a Newt Cross the Road? With Lots of Human Help
Brigades of volunteers are coming to the rescue of thousands of Pacific newts that perish each year as they migrate to their breeding grounds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Global Boom in Fences Is Harming Wildlife
Barriers are going up rapidly as border projects and livestock farming increase, but they impede wildlife migrations and genetically isolate threatened species. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The First Drug-Releasing Contact Lens Is Here
The FDA has approved daily disposables that release anti-allergy medication. Experts hope lenses could one day help treat cataracts and glaucoma. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Killer Parasite Is Wiping Out Hordes of Ants—in a Good Way
A microsporidian pathogen is annihilating tawny crazy ants, an invasive menace of the highest order. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Companies May Soon Have to Reveal a Hidden Risk: Carbon Emissions
Big businesses set splashy climate targets but don’t always reveal their data. The Securities and Exchange Commission wants to change that—to protect investors. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Bold Idea to Stall the Climate Crisis—by Building Better Trees
Changing the genetic makeup of trees could supercharge their ability to suck up carbon dioxide. But are forests of frankentrees really a good idea? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Math’s ‘Oldest Problem Ever’ Gets a New Answer
A new proof significantly strengthens a decades-old result about the ubiquity of ways to represent whole numbers as sums of fractions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Boa Constrictors Can Breathe Even as They Crush Their Prey
New research shows the snakes activate different sections of their rib cage, using their lungs as bellows to pull in air. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Farthest Star Sheds New Light on the Early Universe
A cosmic fluke helped Hubble spy Earendel, a giant star at the edge of the known universe that could tell us more about what happened after the Big Bang. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Navigate Online Mental Health Resources
Finding therapy and support can be confusing. Here are some tips on how to get help, from understanding insurance websites to keeping track of the bills. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Scientists Map Yellowstone’s Plumbing With … a Helicopter
For the first time, scientists get a look at what's going on under the park's geysers. It may even help them better understand the origin of life on Earth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Cheetah Robot Taught Itself How to Sprint in a Weird Way
Researchers got the machine to run nearly 13 feet per second. It ain't graceful, but this powerful technique is preparing robots for the chaos of the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Astronomers Tally the Growing Carbon Footprint of Space Science
Observatories require electricity and computing power to process data from deep space. Is there a way to make them run greener? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Tell If Your Spaghetti Is Done Using Just a Ruler
Keep throwing noodles against the wall if you want, but this tactic ensures the pasta's texture is just right every single time. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Scientists Watch a Memory Form in a Living Brain
While observing fearful memories take shape in the brains of fish, neuroscientists saw an unexpected level of synaptic rewiring. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Climate Change Is Disrupting the Global Supply Chain Too
Extreme weather, from floods to wildfires, is increasingly hammering ports, highways, and factories. It’s expected to get worse. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The War Puts Ukraine's Clinical Trials—and Patients—in Jeopardy
Hundreds of trials have been disrupted in the medical research hub. Some patients are at risk of losing their last chance at survival. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
4 Years On, a New Experiment Sees No Sign of ‘Cosmic Dawn’
Astronomers tried to confirm a signal from the birth of the first stars after the Big Bang. They saw nothing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices