Science, Spoken
2,361 episodes — Page 13 of 48
The EPA May Extend the Use of Pesticides that Paralyze Bees
Later this year, the agency will decide whether to allow four chemicals, which have been banned in Europe, to continue being used on US farms. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The War in Ukraine Is Threatening the Breadbasket of Europe
Millions of tons of grain may not make it out of the country this year. The shortfall could spread hunger and civil unrest worldwide. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
To Test Cancer Drugs, These Scientists Grew ‘Avatars’ of Tumors
Growing organoids in dishes and xenografts in mice lets scientists re-create a living person’s tumor—and test dozens of drugs against them at the same time. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Are These Chimpanzees Using Insects as Medicine?
Researchers observed chimps in Gabon applying insects to wounds—and it’s raising big questions about animal altruism and self-medication. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Amazon Rainforest May Be Nearing a Point of No Return
Satellites spot troubling signals that may portend a transformation from rainforest to savanna, with profound implications for the planet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Iceland Bets on Herd Immunity
The island nation's government joins several other European countries in dropping Covid restrictions—but not everyone is sure the timing’s right. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Offshore Wind Turbines Could Mess With Ships’ Radar Signals
A new study finds that turbines can muddle ships' navigational systems, obscuring the location of smaller boats or creating misleading images on radar screens. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Pandemic Tanked Rates of Childhood Vaccination—for Everything
Routine shots are down for everything from measles to tetanus to polio, leaving kids unprotected and raising the risk of outbreaks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Genetic Databases Are Too White. Here’s What It’ll Take to Fix It
Most genetic research is done on people of European descent. That’s led to misdiagnoses, inaccurate tests, and missed opportunities for new treatments. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Cities Are Unlikely Yet Powerful Weapons to Fight Climate Change
The UN's latest IPCC report paints a dire picture for the species of Earth. But it also suggests how urban areas can help humanity face down the threat. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Neural Noise Shows the Uncertainty of Our Memories
The electrical chatter of our working memories reflects our lack of confidence about their contents. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In Alaska, Beavers Are Engineering a New Tundra
Once nonexistent in the northwest part of the state, beavers are both benefiting from and changing a warming landscape. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What Neurodivergence Teaches Us About How to Live
Scientist and writer Camilla Pang explains what the rationality of science showed her about making better decisions, processing feedback, and feeling like an outlier. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Air Pollution May Keep Insects From Stopping to Smell the Flowers
Researchers ran an outdoor experiment to see if diesel exhaust and ozone would interfere with pollinators’ search for floral scents. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What It Would Take to Bring the ISS Back to Earth in One Piece
NASA plans to deorbit the International Space Station in 2031 by crashing it into the ocean. But is there another way? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Plastic Dot Sniffs Out Infections Doctors Can’t See
Keeping wounds covered can help them stay clean. But if bacteria grow beneath the bandages, things can get dangerous. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Gene-Edited Brain Organoids Are Unlocking the Secrets of Autism
Harvard researchers used lab-grown clumps of neurons called organoids to reveal how three genes linked to autism affect the timing of brain development. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Any Single Galaxy Reveals the Composition of an Entire Universe
In computer simulations, researchers have discovered that a neural network can infer the amount of matter in a whole universe by studying just one galaxy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
DeepMind Has Trained an AI to Control Nuclear Fusion
The Google-backed firm taught a reinforcement learning algorithm to control the fiery plasma inside a tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Serious, Salty Trouble Is Brewing Under Antarctic Glaciers
Alarming new research suggests warm seawater is rushing under the ice, perhaps doubling the rate of melting. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Huge Sponges Are Eating an Extinct Arctic Ecosystem
Thousands of years ago, hydrothermal vents fed worms deep below the ice. Scientists have found 300-year-old sponges feeding on the worms’ fossilized remains. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
They Lived in a Pandemic Bubble. Now Covid Has Arrived
Some remote Pacific island nations haven't had a single case of Covid-19 for the past two years. Now they're reopening to the world, but can they handle an outbreak? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Astronomers Want to Save Dark Skies from Satellite Swarms
The International Astronomical Union launched a new organization tasked with limiting reflected light and radio interference from big satellite networks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Brutal Reason Some Primates Are Born a Weird Color
When species have babies with conspicuous fur, it can attract good attention—or bad. A new theory could explain why. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality
The same phenomenon by which an opera singer can shatter a wineglass also underlies the very existence of subatomic particles. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A New Database Reveals How Much Humans Are Messing With Evolution
Some animals and plants are rapidly adapting to our warming, polluted world. How alarming that is depends on your perspective. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Extreme Heat in the Oceans Is Out of Control
More than half of the sea now logs temperatures once considered extreme, threatening countless species, livelihoods, and the air we breathe. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Maybe Green Energy Needs ‘Information Batteries' Too
Researchers are exploring whether tech giants can precompute certain data when the grid is humming with solar or wind power, then stash it away for later use. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Deal With Rocket Boosters and Other Giant Space Garbage
As an errant SpaceX rocket booster careens toward the moon, here are some of the ways space agencies and companies are trying to deal with huge pieces of debris. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Kombucha Cultures Could Be the Key to Better Water Filters
A study found that filtration membranes formed from SCOBYs are more effective at preventing bacterial growth than commercial equivalents. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Inside the International Effort to Save One Tiny Mexican Fish
Scientists and schoolchildren worked together to bring the tequila fish back from extinction in the wild. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What It's Like to Give Up Air Travel to Curb Climate Change
These three families gave up flying to reduce their emissions. Here's how it's shaping their relationship to people and places. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Politicians Say It’s Time to Live With Covid. Are You Ready?
As countries declare endemicity and drop restrictions, how does a battered and bruised society embrace a sudden return to normality? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
NASA’s Newest Spinoff Tech Comes Back to Earth
While the space agency didn't actually develop Tang, its R&D includes everything from robot gloves to vertical farming—with commercial benefits back home. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Bird Flu Is Back in the US. No One Knows What Comes Next
The fast-moving pathogen, which has already invaded Europe, was found in East Coast ducks. The last outbreak that tore through the US killed 50 million birds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Got an Invasive Army of Crayfish Clones? Try Eating Them
The marbled crayfish is a threat to the native species, but the “Berlin lobster” may also offer a sustainable food source and help stop the spread of parasites. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What Happens If a Space Elevator Breaks
These structures are a sci-fi solution to the problem of getting objects into orbit without a rocket—but you don’t want to be under one if the cable snaps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Europe Is in the Middle of a Messy Nuclear Slowdown
Germany has almost finished phasing out nuclear plants, and aging infrastructure is leading neighbors down the same path. But will green energy goals suffer? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Injection of Chaos Solves a Decades-Old Fluid Mystery
In the 1960s, drillers noticed that certain fluids would firm up if they flowed too fast. Researchers have finally explained why. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Prepare for Climate Change's Most Immediate Impacts
The effects of the climate crisis are happening right now. From natural disasters to supply chain shortages, here's how to cope. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Astronomers Discover a Strange Galaxy Without Dark Matter
New, high-resolution observations of a faint, fluffy galaxy suggest that dark matter’s not as ubiquitous as scientists thought. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Pregnant People Are Still Not Getting Vaccinated Against Covid
Misinformation and muddled public health messaging have failed expectant parents. Now Omicron's surge is putting both carriers and babies at risk. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Explosives, a Robot, and a Sled Expose a Doomsday Glacier
Thwaites Glacier is crumbling, and fast—if it melts entirely, it could add 10 feet to sea levels. Now Antarctic scientists are racing to survey the damage. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Do You Design a Better Hospital? Start With the Light
A new trend in patient-centered design focuses on making environments more comfortable and less scary. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Could Being Cold Actually Be Good for You?
Researchers are exploring the health benefits of literally chilling out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Scientists Settled a Century-Old Family Drama Using DNA From Postcards
Swiss forensic geneticists analyzed DNA recovered from postage stamps dating back to World War I and solved a century-old paternity puzzle. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Body Farms and Human Composting Can Help Communities
Like every other aspect of our society, how we handle death and dying needs to change in the face of climate change. This method may be a path forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
At the Dawn of Life, Heat May Have Driven Cell Division
A mathematical model shows how a thermodynamic mechanism could have made protocells split in two. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Paleontologists Are Getting Into Florida’s Oyster Business
Conservationists are teaming up with fossil experts to help the bivalves—and the state’s oyster economy—survive. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Where Parents Can Get Help with Climate Anxiety
If you're looking to the future and wondering exactly how to prepare your children for a changing world, these resources can help. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices