Science, Spoken
2,361 episodes — Page 16 of 48
Scientists Could One Day Float an Aerial Robot Above Venus
Researchers recently tested whether a balloon-borne sensor could listen for venusquakes to learn about the planet's makeup. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Even the Fastest Human Can’t Outrun Your House Cat
A new model explains the forces and body design features that limit maximum sprinting speed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Exactly How Many People Have Long Covid?
Pinning down the number of “long-haulers” suffering from the mysterious condition is an important task. It’s also proving impossible. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sunny-Day Flooding Is About to Become More Than a Nuisance
Sea level rise will soon combine with a host of other environmental factors to produce dozens of floods each fall in US coastal cities. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Russia’s Latest Space Station Incident Points to Larger Issues
Nauka’s errant firings were likely the result of human error—and they raise concerns about the future of the country’s space program and its partnership with NASA. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How the Jaguar, King of the Forest, Might Save Its Ecosystem
With a new train line threatening its habitat, the big cat may be the key to protecting this Mexican reserve—and everything else in it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Dam Is Breaking on Vaccine Mandates
Hopes for a “normal” fall have been dashed by variants and low vaccine uptake. Businesses and the White House think requiring shots can turn things around. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dogs, Unlike Wolves, Are Born to Communicate With People
Wolf puppies can’t understand human gestures as well as their dog cousins. The difference could help explain what makes dogs so special. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Much Will It Cost to Prevent Deaths by Climate-Driven Heat?
A new formula measures the “mortality cost of carbon,” and how much would have to be removed from the atmosphere to save a single life. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oh Good, Now There's an Outbreak of Wildfire Thunderclouds
Huge pyrocumulonimbus clouds just formed over fires in the West. Here’s why they could become more common on a warmer planet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
DNA Has Four Bases. Some Viruses Swap in a Fifth
Dozens of viruses don't use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this is possible—and perhaps more common than we think. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Mockingbirds Compose Songs Just Like Beethoven
The birds aren’t producing sounds at random. Some of their strategies are surprisingly similar to ones used by humans. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What Causes Gamma-Ray Bursts? Their Ultrabright Flashes Hold Clues
These high-energy explosions, brighter than billions and billions of suns, have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Hungry Wild Pigs Are Worsening Climate Change
When the invasive swine root through soils around the world, they release as much carbon dioxide as a million cars. Good luck getting rid of them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Scientists Love Making Robots Build Ikea Furniture
This robot can help a human assemble a bookcase by predicting what part they’ll want next and handing it over. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Device Could Tune Your Heart—Then Dissolve Away
The latest in “electronic medicine” offers an alternative to temporary pacemakers and could help reduce tissue scarring. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Be Very Careful About Where You Build That Seawall
Walls are meant to keep out rising seas—but that water still has to go somewhere. New modeling shows it could well end up flooding your neighbors. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Iconic Yellowstone Park Faces Startling Climate Threats
A new report details global warming’s effect on the national park and its surroundings, including everything from its forests to the Old Faithful geyser. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Is How Aliens Might Search for Human Life
If habitable worlds exist around certain stars, they’d have just the right vantage point to spy on Earth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Graphene ‘Camera’ Images the Activity of Living Heart Cells
Using a novel device made from carbon atoms and a laser, researchers captured real-time electrical signals from muscle tissue. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Humans See Faces in Everyday Objects
The ability to spot Jesus’ mug in a piece of burnt toast might be a product of evolution. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Richard Branson Reaches Space on Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity
The historic flight is only the second time that the rocket plane has carried people. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Which Crops Can Survive Drought? Nanosensors May Offer Clues
The technique can be used to track how water flows through plants—which could be key to breeding more resilient crops in an increasingly hot, dry climate. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mystery Solved: How Plant Cells Know When to Stop Growing
The discovery could have a profound effect on cell research for many species of plants and animals, as well as the future of crops. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Observatory Spied on LA’s Carbon Emissions—From Space
The instrument reads sunlight intensity to determine carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Its findings could help reduce our carbon footprint. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Coelacanth May Live for a Century. That’s Not Great News
Scale markings reveal that this weird fish's lifespan is double what scientists first estimated. That also means they’re closer to extinction than we thought. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Utilities Want to Control Your Smart Thermostat Sometimes
Don’t mess with Texans’ air conditioning. Here’s why some customers in the state had their thermostats remotely controlled. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Northern Farms Are Releasing Massive Amounts of Carbon
Humans have been draining peatlands to grow crops for centuries. It's a huge, underestimated source of greenhouse gas, scientists say. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Lakes Are Losing Oxygen—and Their Inhabitants Are in Danger
Hundreds of temperate lakes around the world are showing trends toward anoxia, becoming warmer, murkier, and less hospitable to cold-water species. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What's With All This Ooey, Gooey Sea Snot?
A phlegmy film is coating the coast around Istanbul—and warmer water could be to blame. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
No, Covid-19 Vaccines Won't Make You Magnetic. Here's Why
No matter how many videos you’ve seen of people sticking spoons to their faces, that’s just not how magnets work. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Mystery of Betelgeuse's Dimming Has Finally Been Solved
Astronomers say a cold patch and a stellar burp are behind the star's strange dip in brightness. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Delta Variant and Low Vaccine Rates Could Spell Trouble
Vaccines are effective against the variant, but experts worry about states where fewer people are inoculated. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Clever Robot Spies on Creatures in the Ocean's ‘Twilight Zone’
Mesobot looks like a giant AirPods case, but it's in fact a sophisticated machine that tracks animals making the most epic migration on Earth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Challenge of Covid-19 Vaccines for the Immunosuppressed
Recent studies find transplant patients and immune-suppressed people who get the shot don’t make many antibodies. But that research is just beginning. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Do You Make a Robot Walk on Mars? It's a Steep Challenge
Meet SpaceBok, a little four-legged machine that's taking the first steps toward walking on the Red Planet's brutal terrain. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Protect Species and Save the Planet—at Once
A major new report calls on humanity to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises simultaneously. Here's what that might look like. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A New Way to Understand the Brain's Intricate Rhythm
Researchers have found evidence in humans that individual neurons time their firing to a deeper beat. But there’s a mystery: What does it mean? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Zombie-Fire Outbreak May Be Growing in the North
“Overwintering” fires smolder under the snow, reigniting vegetation in the spring. New research shows the zombies may proliferate in a warmer world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Risky Is It to Send Jeff Bezos to the Edge of Space?
Today's commercial spacecraft have a safety advantage, thanks to simpler designs and suborbital missions. But with rockets, nothing is certain. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A New Way to Shape Metal Nanoparticles—With a Magnetic Field
Making the tiny nanoparticles used in everything from electronics to paint isn't easy. But a new experiment creates order out of chaos. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Tour Clothes Spew Microfibers Before They’re Even Clothes
The clothing supply chain releases some 265 million pounds of microfibers that wash into the environment each year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Drought Is Making the Klamath River’s Baby Salmon Sick
Dry conditions are worsening a warm-water disease that’s sweeping through juvenile fish. Their deaths will create a future crisis for both fish and human populations. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
You Need to Weigh Some Water. All You’ve Got Is a Paper Clip
OK, so you might need a couple other supplies, but your best option is to do what MacGyver would do: Turn it into a scale. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Sneaky, Lying Flower That Pretends to Be a Rotting Beetle
Aristolochia microstoma finds love by smelling like death. Coffin flies can’t resist. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Peanut the Waiter Robot Is Proof That Your Job Is Safe
Restaurants are struggling to hire people, so one Jersey Shore grill employed a machine. It confirms that humans remain indispensable. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Many People Die When Polluters Exceed Their Limits?
A new report tallies the death toll from excess emissions by looking at air pollution and spikes in local ozone levels. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Climate Change Is Erasing Humanity’s Oldest Art
Extreme weather is rapidly eroding the limestone caves where people first drew images 40,000 years ago. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nature Can Save Humanity From Climate Doom—but Not On Its Own
By restoring ecosystems, conservationists can help the land sequester carbon. But it's still no substitute for drastically cutting emissions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Evolutionary Gift May Protect Coral From Climate Change
Coral in the Red Sea is unusually heat tolerant. The secret to its success may lie in the lucky confluence of geography and genetics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices