Science, Spoken
2,361 episodes — Page 19 of 48
Climate Change Is Turning Cities Into Ovens
A new model estimates that by 2100, cities across the world could warm as much as 4.4 degrees Celsius. It’s a deadly consequence of the “heat island” effect. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
These Adorable Fish Robots Form Schools Like the Real Thing
Meet Bluebot, a friendly swimming robot with big camera eyes. Put a few in a tank together and they’ll collaborate to complete surprisingly complex tasks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Drone Sniffs Out Odors With a Real Moth Antenna
Researchers slap a living antenna on a drone to give the machine an insanely keen sense of smell. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the “Smellicopter.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In a Pandemic, Medical Illustrators Made Science Accessible
With lots of research, arrows, and an inviting color palette, artists helped transform complex research into useful information. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Bold Plan to Save the Last Whitebark Pines
The high-altitude tree is vital to its ecosystem, but it’s being decimated by a fungus. Its admirers are fusing old and new methods to bring it back. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A New Field Guide for Earth’s Wild Microbes
The most massive database of microbial gene sequences so far shows that the tree of life is much larger than we knew. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
2020 Was a Breakout Year for Crispr
Between glimpses of a medical cure and winning science’s shiniest prize, this proved to the gene-editing technology’s biggest year yet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Unique Alliance Could Help Warn Us of Toxic Algae
In Washington state, scientists, coastal communities, and state agencies are banding together to manage the growing threat of harmful algal blooms. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Could Carbon Dioxide Be Turned Into Jet Fuel?
A team at Oxford University has reverse engineered fuel from the greenhouse gas—but so far just in the lab. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Universe Is Expanding Faster Than Expected
Astronomers get their wish—new ultra-precise distance measurements between Earth and the stars—but that only intensifies a cosmic crisis. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Wildfire Smoke Is Loaded With Microbes. Is That Dangerous?
Researchers are putting out a call to study the potential effects of bacteria- and fungi-filled haze on human health. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Super Slow Computer Programs Reveal Math's Fundamental Limits
The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program. Its pursuit has surprising connections to profound questions in math. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
All the Stuff Humans Make Now Outweighs Earth’s Organisms
Anthropogenic mass—concrete, metal, and other human creations—has grown to be heavier than plants, animals, and microbes combined. Planet Earth is not happy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Vaccines Are Here. We Have to Talk About Side Effects
Disinformation could thwart distribution before government messages have a chance to push back. Debunking might turn out to be everyone’s job. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Rocket From 1966 Has Found Its Way Back to Earth’s Orbit
More than 50 years after its course correction failure, Surveyor 2’s rocket booster seems to have reappeared. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Atlas Reveals Climate Change Is Pushing Birds Further North
Data from 120,000 birdwatchers in 48 countries shows forest birds have expanded their range while area occupied by farmland birds has shrunk. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Physicists Are Closer to Knowing the Size of a Proton … Sort of
A new and potentially improved measurement of a proton’s charge radius brings scientists closer to an answer. But the issue is still unresolved. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Bees Paint Animal Poo on Their Homes to Repel Giant Hornets
What at first seems like terrible housekeeping turns out to be a clever ploy to fend off huge predators, which can otherwise easily destroy a hive. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Who Will We Be When This Is All Over?
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought incalculable suffering and trauma. But it also offers ways for people—and even societies—to change for the better. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
For the Second Time Ever, an Asteroid Sample Returns to Earth
The Japanese Hayabusa2 mission to asteroid Ryugu marks a major milestone this weekend with the return of pristine space rock. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Another Victim of Global Warming: The Great British Bake Off
Increasing summer temperatures are proving a menace to butter, chocolates, and baked Alaska. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Underground Brine Could Be a Source of Oxygen on Mars
A new study tests a device that can efficiently split the resource’s water into pure oxygen and hydrogen in Martian conditions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Incredible Journey of the Electronic Plastic Bottle
Researchers loaded containers with trackers and released them in the Ganges and the Bay of Bengal, giving new insight into how plastic pollution travels. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Endangered Vancouver Island Marmots Are Making a Comeback
Canada’s most endangered mammal is back from the brink of extinction—and offers hope as an “ambassador” for the conservation of less adorable species. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What's a Semi-Log Plot and How Can You Use It for Covid Data?
It is very useful for showing data that spans different orders of magnitude—like case numbers in South Korea compared to the numbers in the United States. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Physicists Pin Down the Nuclear Reaction Just After the Big Bang
The newly measured rate of a key nuclear fusion process that forged the first atomic nuclei matches the picture of the universe 380,000 years later. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Meet the Microbes Living on Da Vinci’s Iconic Sketches
Think you’ve got an interesting microbiome? Your body ain’t got nothing on what’s accumulated on Leonardo’s drawings over 500 years. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Squishy 3D-Printed Human Heart Feels Like the Real Thing
A clever technique allows scientists to scan a heart and reconstruct it in a soup of gelatin. It's like making jello, only way more useful for surgeons. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Climate Change Is Intensifying the Tsunami Threat in Alaska
As glaciers retreat and permafrost thaws, massive landslides threaten coastal communities. Those, in turn, could trigger giant sea waves. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Solar-Powered Rocket Might Be Our Ticket to Interstellar Space
The idea for solar thermal propulsion has been around for decades, but researchers tapped by NASA just conducted a first test. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
An Enormous Iceberg Is Headed for South Georgia Island—Again
If they collide, it could cause big problems for breeding penguins and seals by cutting off their access to the open sea. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Physics of Materials at Minus 80 Degrees Celsius
Pfizer's new vaccine has to be stored at extremely low temperatures. Here's how things work when it gets that cold. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
‘Godzilla’ Wasp Swims—So Its Young Can Burst Out of Caterpillars
In non-election news, Microgaster godzilla dives to find a caterpillar, forces it to the surface, and injects it with a baby that eats the host from the inside out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Fireball Is Werner Herzog’s Ode to Space Rocks
A new documentary from the German auteur examines the influence of meteorites on cultures around the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Confused About Covid Brain Fog? Doctors Have Questions, Too
Physicians have seen this recovery symptom before, but they still don’t know why so many coronavirus survivors are being affected. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Reduce (but Not Eliminate) Covid Risk at Holiday Gatherings
With a surge in cases, there is no safe way to travel or gather for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But if you must, here are some ways to lower your risk. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Genome of Your Pet Fish Is Extremely Weird
Unlike most domestic animals, the goldfish is purely decorative. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Want to Fight the Zombie Fire Apocalypse? Weaponize Math
Peat fires smolder in the ground for months, suddenly emerging as surface wildfires. New simulations reveal their strange life, death, and reanimation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Winning Trust for a Vaccine Means Confronting Medical Racism
The US has a long history of abusing minorities for pharmaceutical profit. Messaging for a Covid-19 inoculation will have to overcome that past. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
These Oceanographers Want to Turn Marine Slime Into Drugs
A California team will use a robotic vehicle to study tiny seafloor creatures, hoping they might yield new compounds to fight viruses and cancer. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What Happens When You Fly a Science Plane Through Wildfire Smoke
Aboard a decked-out C-130, researchers measure how smoke transforms from “fresh” to “stale” and begin to parse what that means for humans downwind. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Humanity Spent Its First 20 Years in Orbit Aboard the ISS
Two decades ago, three explorers arrived at the International Space Station and marked the beginning of a permanent human presence beyond Earth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In Embryos, Crispr Can Cut Out Whole Chromosomes—That's Bad
The DNA-cutting tool has been hailed as a way to fix genetic glitches. But a new study suggests it can remove more than scientists bargained for. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Octopuses Use Their Suction Cups to Taste Through Touch
A new study reveals that the invertebrates use a novel kind of receptor embedded in their suckers to explore their ocean habitats. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A New Way to Plug a Human Brain into a Computer: via Veins
Electrodes threaded through the blood vessels that feed the brain let people control gadgets with their minds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What to Wear When You’re Battling Giant, Venomous Hornets
The suits worn by Washington state entomologists aren't "official" hornet-fighting armor. But they were affordable—and came up in an Amazon search. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mark Kelly’s Been To Space. Can He Make it to Capitol Hill?
Mark Kelly isn’t the first former NASA astronaut to run for office, but if he’s elected he’ll be the only one to make it to Congress on his first shot. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Babies May Be Drinking Millions of Microplastic Particles a Day
Scientists discover that baby bottles shed up to 16 million bits of plastic per liter of fluid. What that means for infants’ health, no one can yet say. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Your Brain Prefers Happy Endings. That’s Not Always Smart
People tend to focus on whether an experience ends on an up note or a sour one, even if it leads us to make bad decisions. A new study examines why. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Can Placebos Work—Even When Patients Know They’re Fake?
Researchers showed that a saline spray “treatment” reduced people’s emotional distress, even though the study subjects knew the spray wouldn’t do anything. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices