Science Friday Podcasts

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Weekly podcast of 'Science Friday,' a science and technology news discussion program heard on public radio stations across the USA. Primary Format : Science Language : English Also Listed as: City : New York State/Province : NY Country : USA Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of Science Friday Podcasts Methings.com listings of Science Friday Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

Real-Life Physics Problems Star On TV The stars of The Big Bang Theory are two fictional Caltech physicists, but the physics problems they study are real. Bill Prady, the program's co-creator and executive producer, talks about including real-world science in the script, from dark matter to magnetic monopoles. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Book Recounts Challenges Of Eradicating Smallpox In Smallpox: The Death of a Disease, Dr. D.A. Henderson recounts the history of the deadly virus, from the development of the first vaccine in the late 18th century to his involvement in the successful global eradication campaign in the 1960s and 70s. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Debating Benefits, Risks Of Routine Mammograms New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommend women start getting routine mammograms at age 50, not 40. Ira Flatow and guests take a closer look at the guidelines and what they mean for women's health. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Talking Turkey About Holiday Stress The holiday season is here and for many that can mean a surge in stress. But what is stress exactly? Science Friday hit the streets of New York City to gauge stress levels and consulted with experts on the effects of stress and strategies for how to cope. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Personalizing Solar Power Researchers are hoping to improve solar energy installations by coupling a solar panel to an efficient hydrolysis unit that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. Daniel Nocera of MIT says the approach could lead to personal solar power units that could get many houses off the grid. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rethinking The Human Future In Space With NASA reporting a "significant amount" of water on the lunar surface, is it time to re-examine our priorities regarding living and working in space? Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute, talks about why and how people should venture beyond Earth. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brushing Up On Tropical Diseases Dengue fever, malaria and other tropical diseases took center stage at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene conference. Nathan Seppa of Science News offers details, including a strange story of palm trees, fruit bats and human infection. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website One-Woman Show Explores Human Side Of Health Care Actress Anna Deavere Smith traveled across the country interviewing people about their thoughts on health care. From an injured bull rider to a medical school dean, she recounts what she heard through monologues in her latest documentary-style theater production, Let Me Down Easy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Two Graphic Novels Explain Science, Colorfully Moving beyond traditional superheroes, two new graphic novels recount the epic tales of scientists and the research that made them famous. Ira Flatow talks with authors Michael Keller and Apostolos Doxiadis about their graphic novels on natural selection and logic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Clone That Smile, Digitally Researchers have figured out how to track the facial expressions of one person and map those movements onto a digital image of another person's face in real time. The result is something like a digital video puppet, which psychologists say may reveal something about human nature. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Therapists Split On Multiple Personalities Can people develop different personalities in response to abuse? Some therapists say up to one percent of the population suffer from dissociative identity disorder. Others say the disease doesn't exist, or is very rare. Two therapists discuss the controversial diagnosis. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sailing Through Space, On A Starboard Tack In the vacuum of space, photons — not wind — may someday fill the sails of lightweight spacecraft, propelling them without need for engines or fuel. Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, discusses the society's plans for a sailing spaceship prototype. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Do Moon Craters Harbor Caches Of Water Ice? A NASA rocket slammed into a lunar crater in October. A second spacecraft followed minutes later, taking inventory of kicked-up debris and sending data to Earth. Scientists have now analyzed those data, which may reveal whether the moon harbors significant quantities of water ice. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Considering Values In The Health Care Debate As health care legislation moves through Congress, bioethicist Thomas H. Murray asks if enough attention is being paid to concepts such as justice, fairness and liberty. Murray and health care economist Len Nichols discuss the role of values in the health care debate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Giving Athletes A Heads-Up On Concussions Football players take a lot of hits, but when does hard-headed play go too far? New research suggests that head trauma can do lasting damage. Two brain researchers talk about what happens in the brain when a player gets hit, and how athletes can better protect themselves. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Students Build Living Microbial Machines At the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, undergraduates from all over the world unveiled the living machines they'd created with snippets of DNA, from bacteria that change color when they detect pollutants to ones that secrete non-toxic superglue. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can Oceans Survive The Human Appetite For Seafood? Faced with declining fish stocks, many nations are looking for sustainable ways to have their fish — and eat it too. But how much fishing is too much? Oceanographer Sylvia Earle discusses this and other topics in her book The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Building A Better Lightbulb The U.S. Department of Energy is offering $10 million to the first individual or company to develop an energy-efficient LED replacement for the standard 60-watt incandescent bulb. DOE lighting program manager James Brodrick discusses the L Prize, and what makes a better bulb. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Head-Shrinker Studies The Zombie Brain Psychiatrist Steven Schlozman recently expanded his practice from humans to the inhuman. Poring over his library of classic zombie films, he came up with neurobiological explanations for the behavior of the undead, such as lack of a frontal lobe and an overactive amygdala. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Halloween: A Holiday For Gadgets For gadget lovers, Halloween is more geeky than spooky. Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of Make Magazine, talks about the geekiest do-it-yourself Halloween costumes and decorations, from spray foam guts and singing pumpkins to a fortune-teller costume built on a Segway. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website People ... People Who Eat People In her book Dinner With a Cannibal, writer Carole Travis-Henikoff documents the long — and often hidden — history of cannibalism in humans. Travis-Henikoff notes that cannibalism wasn't always taboo, whether it be eating loved ones out of respect or eating enemies out of disdain. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Why Runners Like To Feel The Burn What compels hundreds of thousands of runners to compete in marathons every year? Ira Flatow and guests discuss running research — from how humans are adapted specifically for long-distance running to why working up a sweat might be good for the brain, as well as the body. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Happy Birthday, Internet On Oct. 29, 1969, around 10:30 P.M., a message from one computer was sent over a modified phone line to another computer hundreds of miles away. Some say the Internet was born that day. UCLA computer scientist Leonard Kleinrock, who was there, gives his account. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Examining Gene Therapy As Treatment For Blindness Reporting in The Lancet, doctors found success in treating Leber's congenital amaurosis, a rare type of blindness, with gene therapy. Study author Katherine High explains how injecting a gene-carrying virus into the eye has improved vision in a handful of patients. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Did Algae Contribute To Mass Extinctions? Forget asteroids — a new theory says algae were the key to the dinosaurs' extinction millions of years ago. Ecotoxicologist John Rodgers details the evidence for the theory and explains why some algae can be harmful in large quantities, even to present day animal populations. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Seeing The Softer Side Of Nature In his new book, The Age of Empathy, Frans de Waal says nature has been wrongly depicted to justify a "survival of the fittest" attitude in humans. Drawing on examples from his primate observations, de Waal says it's time for humans to rethink how we treat each other. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Natural Selection Works On Humans, Too Mining data from the Framingham Heart Study, scientists say they've been able to tease out the effects of natural selection on humans. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns explains how evolutionary forces may produce shorter, rounder, more fertile women in the future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Seeing Through The Eyes Of An Armadillo Sam Easterson has refined the art of the critter cam. He is the curator of the Museum of Animal Perspectives — an online repository of "remotely sensed wildlife imagery." All the footage comes from cameras implanted in the landscape or strapped to the backs of animals. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Searching For The Right Hand-Scrubbing Message Researchers tried various slogans to encourage travelers to lather up after using rest stop toilets, from the disgusting — "Soap it off or eat it later" — to the educational — "Water doesn't kill germs, soap does." Hygiene expert Val Curtis reports on the most effective messages. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Solve Mystery Of Ear-Splitting Sounds Reporting in Nature, researchers write that a rare type of neuron in the inner ear may process painfully loud sounds, such as the blast of a jackhammer. Study author Paul Fuchs discusses how his team solved a mystery that had stumped auditory scientists for nearly 50 years. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Neuroscientists And Magicians Mingle At Conference Thousands of neuroscientists gathered in Chicago this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Science News writer Laura Sanders reports on the highlights, including a symposium where magicians and neuroscientists discussed their common ground: the mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Small Kids Solve Big Problems With Science The Kids' Science Challenge gives elementary school students the chance to work with biologists and engineers on real scientific problems. Jim Metzner, executive producer of the Challenge, discusses how kids can get involved, from developing low-gravity sports to building hopping robots. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rare Cancer Case Raises Questions For Doctors Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers write of the first confirmed case of a mother passing cancer to her baby in the womb. Study author Dr. Tony Ford discusses what cancer researchers can learn from the case. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Forecasting Climate Change Legislation With Congress focused on Afghanistan, the economy and health care, will there be any action on domestic climate policy before the Copenhagen climate summit in December? Eileen Claussen, of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, talks about what to expect in the coming months. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mapping The Boundaries Of The Solar System NASA launched the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft last year to investigate the edges of the heliosphere — the insulating bubble the sun creates around the solar system. IBEX principal investigator David McComas reports on the first surprising results. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Bird In Hand To Save Those In The Bush Braddock Bay, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, is a prime pit stop for migrating birds. In a converted hot dog stand near the Bay, ornithologists and volunteers capture, study and release about 10,000 passing birds each year. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Virus Tied To Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Scientists have identified a virus lurking in 68 of 101 patients diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Whether the virus — known as XMRV — causes the syndrome is unclear. Molecular biologist John Coffin describes how the findings fit with what scientists know about XMRV. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Next Stop: The Moon The moon has been getting a lot of traffic recently. Missions from the U.S., India, and Japan have all flown by, or into, our lunar neighbor. Planetary scientist Paul Spudis explains how the data collected may help make the moon a pit stop for future planetary missions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Making Memories With Fruit Flies By stimulating a specific set of nerve cells in the fruit fly brain, scientists have tricked the flies into behaving as though they felt a pain they never actually felt. Physiologist Gero Wiesenbock describes the experiments and explains why fruit fly memories matter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Veterinarians Tend To More Than Animals Being a veterinarian involves more than giving rabies shots. Four veterinarians practicing in different areas join host Ira Flatow to talk about their day-to-day work — from birthing calves, to tracking epidemics, to diagnosing a sick hamster. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Investigating The Mysteries Of Bird Migration Ira Flatow and guests discuss bird migration, including how birds orient themselves using stars and magnetic fields, what bird banding projects reveal about the lives of migratory birds and how scientists track birds during migration using Doppler radar and microphones. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Physicist Paul Dirac Is 'The Strangest Man' In a new biography, Graham Farmelo digs deep into the archives and personal papers of a little-known Nobel-winning physicist. Farmelo discusses The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom and his theory that Dirac may have been autistic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website From The Ground Up: Greening Your Lawn Lawn expert Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual, explains how to have a greener, less weedy lawn without an arsenal of lawn care products. Turf specialist Jim Baird describes his lab's efforts to breed grasses that stand up to heat with less watering. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cooking Up A River In The Lab For almost 100 years, scientists have been trying to create a meandering river in the laboratory. Christian Braudrick and Bill Dietrich of University of California, Berkeley, finally found a recipe and published it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Could Climate Change Topple Modern Civilization? Lester Brown, president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute, argues for an aggressive increase in renewable energy production, better energy-efficiency standards and a return to human-centered urban design in his latest book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Saving Bats From Wind-Farm Deaths Reporting in The Journal of Wildlife Management, researchers write about a strategy for protecting migratory bats from fatal encounters with wind farms. Study author Robert Barclay discusses the method, which halves bat fatalities without significantly reducing energy production — or profits. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Researchers Unearth A Hominid More Ancient Than Lucy Writing in the journal Science, researchers unveiled several studies of a 4.4-million-year-old fossil named Ardipithecus ramidus. Ian Tattersall, an anthropologist and curator at the American Museum Of Natural History, explains the significance of the finding. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Serenading Science In A New Rock Album In Here Comes Science, They Might Be Giants tackles the scientific process, plasma physics, the role of blood in the body and the importance of DNA, all in song. Band members John Linnell and John Flansburgh discuss the album and play some science tunes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Exploring How We Connect, And What It Means How do our friends, and friends of our friends, affect us? In their new book Connected, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler describe research into how social networks tie into health and human behavior, including obesity, smoking, voting and happiness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Saving Turtles From The Wrong Side Of The Tracks Michael Musnick is a citizen scientist who studies wood turtles in the Great Swamp — a stretch of wetland 60 miles north of New York City. He found turtles dying in the railroad tracks and proposed a solution to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority: tiny turtle bridges. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Making Science Class The Coolest Period In School Ira Flatow and guests talk about some creative ways to make science class more fun for students and teachers, including blogging about original research, using social networks with classmates, making online video presentations and doing hands-on experiments with cockroaches. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paleontologists Unveil New Fossil Finds Scientists met this week in England to share their findings at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Science News writer Sid Perkins reports on discoveries presented there, including a fossil that may explain the transition from dinosaurs to birds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website When Romance Prevailed Between Science And Poetry Author Richard Holmes discusses his new book The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. The book explores the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when scientists and artists greatly influenced each other. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Comet's Dust Holds Basic Ingredients Of Life NASA's Stardust spacecraft flew billions of miles to snatch dust from the comet "Wild 2," returning samples to Earth in 2006. Now researchers have found amino acids, the building blocks of life, in the dust. Stardust principal investigator Don Brownlee discusses the discovery. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chemical Allows Bugs To Dodge Dead Brethren Reporting in the journal Evolutionary Biology, researchers write that bugs as distantly related as cockroaches, pill bugs and tent caterpillars all respond to the same chemical messenger to steer clear of dead comrades. Evolutionary biologist David Rollo discusses this ancient trait. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Potato Famine Pathogen's DNA Deciphered Scientists have sequenced the genome of the water mold that causes "late blight" disease in potatoes, tomatoes and other food crops. Genome scientist Chad Nusbaum describes the pathogen's unique genome, and explains why decoding it may lead to new ways to fight the blight. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fossil Overturns Thinking On Tyrannosaurus A newly described dinosaur species, Raptorex kriegsteini, is one-hundredth the size of T. rex, but has all hallmark anatomical features of the larger dinosaur. Paleontologist Paul Sereno describes the find, and why it changes what scientists thought about Tyrannosaurid evolution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What's Hiding In Your Showerhead? A new study says showerheads may harbor microbes that can be harmful to people with compromised immunity. Biologist Norman Pace describes what his lab found growing inside some showerheads, and explains how shower spray may help the organisms spread. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Monkeying With Music's Impact On Apes Cellist David Teie discusses research that says monkeys and apes may respond emotionally to music. Biomusic researcher Patricia Gray talks about apes that have jammed in studio with Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Traveling To Mars On A One-Way Ticket What if the only way to send astronauts to Mars is to leave them there for good? Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University and director of the Origins Initiative, argues that a one-way trip is worth considering, and that it wouldn't be hard to find passengers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Identifying Brain Differences In People With ADHD Researchers examined the brains of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and found differences that make them less sensitive to rewards. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, discusses what the findings may mean for treatment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Video Pick: Why Do Squid Light Up? Squid (the kind served as calamari) can make their skin pulse different colors. Biologist Casey Dunn and his student Sophia Tintori were interested in how this light show works, so they asked their colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara for an explanation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Climate Change Taking A Toll On The Arctic A review article in the journal Science this week summarizes the state of research on climate change in the Arctic. Among the findings — Arctic ecosystems have been severely disturbed. Lead author Eric Post, a biology professor at Penn State, discusses the report. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website N.I.H. Director Francis Collins On Agency Goals The National Institutes of Health is comprised of 27 institutions and centers and has a budget of more than $30 billion. The newly appointed director, Francis Collins, discusses his goals for the agency in the coming years and explains how basic medical research gets funded. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Tiny Nanoparticles Are Transforming Technology From cancer treatments to self-cleaning windows and clear solar panels, nanotechnology is revolutionizing medicine, renewable energy and computing. Chemists Mark Ratner and James Gimzewski discuss what's special about nanoscale particles, and how they may shape the future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Could Hydrogen Fuel Cells Hit Rails Before Roads? Some advocates think hydrogen-powered railroads could jumpstart the hydrogen economy. One fuel-cell locomotive is already undergoing tests. Ira Flatow and guests discuss the possibility of using hydrogen, rather than diesel fuel or electricity, to power trains. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Golfing In Space, Astronaut Included The New York Hall of Science in Queens opened an unusual mini golf park this summer. Every hole illustrates a different scientific principle. Charles Camarda, a NASA engineer and former astronaut, agreed to play a round and explain some basic space science as he putted. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The 'Watchful Wait' Approach To Prostate Cancer Since the development of the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test for prostate cancer, early detection and early treatment has been the norm. Martin Sanda, author of a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, says that for some low-risk tumors, "watchful waiting" may be a viable treatment option. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website College Campuses Prepare For Swine Flu With students back on college campuses, schools are planning for swine flu outbreaks. James Turner, president of the American College Health Association, describes some of the steps educational institutions are taking, from bolstering student health clinics to preparing large-scale vaccination campaigns. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Who's Doing What Online? In the U.S., more than four in five adult Internet users make use of social media offerings at least once a month, and half use social networks like Facebook, according to a new report. Sean Corcoran, an analyst with Forrester Research, says that online life isn't just for young people anymore. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Did Cooking Give Humans An Evolutionary Edge? In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that cooking gave early humans an advantage over other primates, leading to larger brains and more free time. Wrangham discusses his theory, and why Homo sapiens can't live on raw food alone. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Testosterone Affects Some Women's Career Choices Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers write that women with higher levels of testosterone may seek riskier finance jobs. Study author Paola Sapienza discusses how hormones, not sexism, may explain the gender imbalance in banking. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fried Hollandaise Sauce: Achievable With Science Chef Wylie Dufresne, the owner of New York City restaurant wd-50, experiments with food, literally. He has lab notebooks detailing what certain chemicals do to certain dishes. Science Friday stopped in to see him prepare his scientific spin on eggs Benedict. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Multitasking May Not Mean Higher Productivity A new study says so-called "heavy multitaskers" have trouble tuning out distractions and switching tasks compared with those who multitask less. And there's evidence that multitasking may weaken cognitive ability. Stanford University professor Clifford Nass explains the work. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Science News Highlights: Ozone Layer, DNA Swap Scientists say nitrous oxide is in line to become the leading threat to the ozone layer. In other news, researchers have swapped DNA between monkey egg cells, correcting certain genetic diseases in the offspring. NPR science correspondent Richard Harris runs through the new research. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sizing Up Sustainable Food These days some shoppers are looking at more than the price of their groceries; they're also considering "food miles" — how far the grapes or pork chops traveled to get to the store. But some experts say eating food grown locally isn't necessarily the best way to go green at the grocery store. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website X-Ray Technology Rediscovers Lost Paintings Van Gogh, N.C. Wyeth and other artists recycled canvases by painting over previous works. Today museum scientists are using new x-ray technology to uncover the outline of hidden paintings, and using chemistry to fill in the colors. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Science Roundup: Worms, Snorkels, Cell Battles Science Friday highlights science news from the week, including: sea worms that drop bioluminescent bombs, how deepwater rice avoids drowning and what happens when bacteria and fruit fly immune cells meet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Folding DNA Into Tiny Circuits DNA may be the key to building smaller, faster circuits. So says a reporting in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. IBM research scientist Greg Wallraff explains how folded DNA fragments could be used in the circuitry of the future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can 'Unscientific America' Be Science Literate? Is the rift closing between scientists and the general public? Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-author of Unscientific America, discusses the challenges of communicating about science and engineering, what scientists can do to help, and why science literacy is especially important today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What's On The Horizon For Hurricane Season? Peak hurricane season typically lasts from August to October. Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, explains the climate patterns and ocean temperatures that lead to hurricanes, and offers advice on how to prepare for storms before they hit. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Chronicling' The Craft Of Cheesemaking Can chemistry explain what makes Stilton stinky and goat cheese gooey? Liz Thorpe, vice president of Murray's Cheese in New York and author of the new book The Cheese Chronicles, talks about the science and business of making cheese in America. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Singing About Mental Illness In 'Next to Normal' The Tony award-winning musical Next To Normal portrays a family struggling with mental illness and the treatments offered by modern psychiatry — with rock songs about Valium and bipolar disorder. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lasers And Glowing Dye Illuminate Ocean Processes John Dabiri, bioengineer at Caltech, has developed new techniques for studying the motion of aquatic animals. In a recent study in the journal Nature, Dabiri and colleagues explain how swimming animals contribute to ocean mixing — the process that distributes heat, nutrients and gasses throughout the sea. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Age Doesn't Mean Heart Disease For Bolivian Tribe Researchers are studying Bolivia's Tsimane tribe to better understand the effects of aging in the developed world. Gerontologist Eileen Crimmins describes a study that looked for signs of heart disease in the Tsimane, who still live a relatively traditional lifestyle. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hacking Voting Machines For Election Security Computer scientist Hovav Shacham has figured out a way to hack into older, seemingly more secure voting machines. Shacham talks about the "hack-ability" of electronic voting systems, election security and the best way to run an election with the current machines. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rep. Roscoe Bartlett On Securing The Grid America's electric grid is vulnerable to attack from electromagnetic weaponry, and building a smart grid might make it worse, says Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD). Bartlett, a former research scientist and engineer, offers his solution for securing U.S. electronics from attack. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Buzz On Bees: Coping With Vanishing Colonies Entomologist Dave Tarpy discusses beekeeping three years after colony collapse disorder appeared, and ecologist Kevin Matteson talks about urban beekeeping — it's illegal in certain cities, but some folks flout the law. Can bees in urban areas affect native bee populations? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Exploratorium Founder Profiled in New Book Physicist and Exploratorium founder Frank Oppenheimer is profiled in Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens. Author K.C. Cole, a friend of Oppenheimer's, digs into FBI files and personal memories to describe the complex man also called the "Uncle of the Atomic Bomb." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Engineering Earth's Climate Could Be Dangerous Presidential science adviser John Holdren said this year he wouldn't rule out engineering the Earth's climate as an option to slow global warming. Rob Jackson, director of Duke University's Center on Global Change, discusses the dangers of modifying Earth's climate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Should Humans Return To The Moon? The Obama administration recently appointed a committee to review NASA's plans for human spaceflight and its goal to return humans to the moon by 2020. Committee chairman Norm Augustine discusses alternative destinations, including Mars, the moons of Mars or even deep space. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Southern California Utilities Go Solar California's renewable energy laws have pushed many utilities to sign contracts with solar startups like Stirling Energy Systems. Stirling CEO Steve Cowman and National Renewable Energy Laboratory solar engineer Mark Mehos discuss the future of large-scale solar plants. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Art, Science Converge In Museum Displays Creating realistic and accurate museum exhibitions requires close collaboration between artists and scientists. Ira Flatow talks with exhibit designers about what is involved in recreating animals and environments that disappeared long ago. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website SEAPLEX Mission To Visit 'Garbage Patch' Grad students from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will visit the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," where plastics and other refuse collect. Chief scientist Miriam Goldstein outlines what the researchers hope to learn about the material dumped in the ocean. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Health Officials Brace For Fall Flu Season Experts met this week to decide who should receive the first available swine flu shots this fall. Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and University of California, Berkeley epidemiologist Dr. Arthur Reingold discuss public health preparations. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Who Really Owns Your Digital Data? Tech columnist Randy Stross discusses whether users really own the digital books and music they purchase, or merely rent them. Computer scientist Hank Levy talks about privacy software that causes e-mails and documents on remote servers to self-destruct after eight hours. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Say Some Fisheries Are Recovering A new report in the journal Science, crediting good management, says some over-fished ecosystems are improving and fish numbers are up. Marine biologist Boris Worm — who in 2006 warned that without action many fish populations could be gone by 2048 — describes the study's findings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Engineering A Band-Aid Of Beating Heart Cells Jordan Lancaster and Steven Goldman, of the Southern Arizona Veterans Administration and the University of Arizona, put rat heart cells on a piece of synthetic mesh and within a few days, the mesh started beating. The hope is that the patch could be used to treat damaged hearts. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Movie Probes Future Of Moon Travel Duncan Jones talks about his first feature film, Moon. It's an indie sci-fi flick about living on the moon. Drawing from current NASA research projects, Moon aims to paint a realistic picture of a lone astronaut in charge of mining the moon for an energy source. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Decoding The Science Of Decision Making For decades researchers ranging from economists to psychologists to neuroscientists have tried to understand how people make decisions, both mundane and major. Guest host Paul Raeburn and guests look at what happens in the mind of "the decider" when there's a choice to be made. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jovian Impact A Lucky Strike For Science A space rock smashed into Jupiter earlier this week, leaving a dark scar about the size of Earth. Australian backyard astronomer Anthony Wesley recounts his discovery of the impact, and planetary scientist Leigh Fletcher talks about what he hopes to learn by studying it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Does The Brain Decide Who To Trust? Former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite was called "the most trusted man in America." But how does the brain decide someone is trustworthy? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains the brain processes that establish trust, and why some inspire more trust than others. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cell Phone Microscope Spots Tuberculosis Bacteria Reporting in the journal PLoS ONE, scientists describe how to convert a camera-enabled cell phone into a fluorescent microscope capable of detecting and counting tuberculosis bacteria in a saliva sample. Bioengineer Daniel Fletcher discusses the technology's potential. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Some Moths Escape Bats By Jamming Sonar For over 50 million years, bats and moths have been engaged in an evolutionary arms race. A study in the journal Science identifies another weapon in the moth arsenal: the ability to jam bat sonar. Aaron Corcoran, of Wake Forest University, explains the research. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Paint The Town White Light-colored clothing is cooler in the sun, and the same goes for cities. Hashem Akbari has studied the advantages — in reduced energy use and lower carbon dioxide emissions — of switching dark-colored roofing and pavement materials for lighter, more reflective alternatives. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Weave A Camera Researchers have created a light-sensitive fabric that can take simple images without lenses, mirrors, or other conventional optics. Yoel Fink, author of a paper about the research in the journal Nano Letters, says more advanced functional fibers are on the horizon. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gene Ignites Antibody Production Reporting in the journal Science, researchers say they've identified a gene that turns on and off the production of one kind of immune cell — the CD4 T cell. Shane Crotty says the finding could aid in better understanding the immune system and in the design of new vaccines. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marking 40 Years Since Apollo 11 Humans first landed on the moon 40 years ago this July. Just three years later, the last human mission left the lunar surface. Ira Flatow talks with Apollo astronauts Alan Bean and Harrison Schmitt about their time on the moon, and whether humans should make the trip again. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Tasty Foods Change The Brain Former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler discusses how milkshakes, buffalo wings and other sugary, fatty and salty foods train the brain to overeat. Gail Vance Civille, president of food consulting firm Sensory Spectrum, talks about the most alluring flavors and textures. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Human Organ Transplant Drug Slows Aging In Mice Reporting in the journal Nature, scientists write that rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug currently used in human organ transplants, boosted the life span of old mice. Study author David Harrison discusses the findings, and the implications for human longevity. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Want To Cut Grass Out Of Your Life? Try Moss Summertime doesn't have to mean hours behind the lawn mower, at least for shade-dwellers. Forty years ago, David Benner, horticulturist and moss enthusiast, killed all the grass on his property and cultivated moss in its place. Benner has 25 different moss species growing in his garden near New Hope, Pa. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Heart Of Power' Probes Presidential Priorities In the new book The Heart of Power writer and political scientist James Morone examines how the health issues faced by past presidents may have helped shape their health care priorities and policies. From Franklin Roosevelt to Clinton, how did the personal and the public intersect? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How To Reform Health Care Reform Writing in the New York Review of Books, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and retired M.D. Arnold Relman says President Obama's health care plan won't work. Relman outlines the changes he thinks are necessary for success but missing in the plan. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pigs Harbor A Form Of Ebola Virus Reporting in the journal Science, researchers say they've found a form of Ebola virus in pigs in the Philippines. The strain doesn't harm humans, but there's concern it may mutate. USDA foreign animal disease expert Michael McIntosh explains how the virus was found and what happens next. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robert Ballard: 50 Years Exploring Deep Waters Deep-sea voyager Robert Ballard has discovered everything from 10-foot-tall tube worms to the Titanic on his ocean expeditions around the world. Ballard discusses his underwater finds and how new robotic technology allows scientists to explore the sea from ashore. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can The Mississippi Delta Survive Rising Seas? Reporting in Nature Geoscience, two coastal scientists write that rising sea levels, combined with slow Mississippi Delta growth, could drown the Louisiana coast by 2100. Delta expert Ivor van Heerden, who is not involved with the research, discusses the findings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fireworks Are Packed With Chemistry Why do some fireworks shoot golden flaming balls while others produce green sparks? It's just chemistry. Bassam Shakhashiri, chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the science of fireworks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Celebrate July 4th With Backyard Science In case you forgot to pick up some sparklers for the holiday weekend, don't despair. Ira Flatow and a team of backyard science experts explain how to (safely) make firecrackers, smoke bombs and even an Oreo-fueled rocket, all while learning some basic scientific principles. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Astronomers See A New Class of Black Hole Scientists say X-ray data collected by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft show evidence of a new type of black hole in a galaxy about 290 million light years from Earth. Astronomer Sean Farrell explains what the discovery might tell us about galaxy evolution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Reviewing Science On The Big Screen From sci-fi to documentaries, good science films tell the human story behind scientific ideas. Which films get the science right, and which don't? Physicist and movie critic Sidney Perkowitz runs down through some of this summer's top science flicks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Video Pick: An Airplane That Flies Itself Meet the V-Bat: it's about 70 pounds, eight feet tall, equipped with computers and flies without a pilot. Engineer Stephen Morris, the president and CEO of MLB Co., describes how the plane works and what it might be good for. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Could Algae Be Milked Like A Cow? Algae-based biofuel is made by grinding up algae cells and extracting the oil. Reporting in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Richard Gordon, of the University of Manitoba, and colleagues suggest that engineering algae to secrete oil might be a more efficient approach. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wind Has Soaring Potential, Study Finds Wind alone could provide more than 16 times the electricity needs of the U.S., according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Harvard professor Michael McElroy and Revis James, of Electric Power Research Institute, discuss the challenges of harnessing wind power. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Of Fuel Cells And Chicken Feathers Each year, the agricultural industry must dispose of billions of pounds of chicken feathers. Richard Wool, a chemical engineer at the University of Delaware, says when feathers are heated, they develop nano-sized caverns in which hydrogen can be stored. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fluke Footage Shows How Sperm Whales Steal For years, long-line fishermen in Alaska have complained that whales have been stealing their sablefish catch. A team of researchers mounted a video camera to a fishing line and caught a sperm whale in the act, providing new insight into whale behavior. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Same-Sex Behavior Documented In Many Animals A review of research concludes that same-sex sexual behaviors are common in many animals, including worms, frogs, flies and birds. Postdoctoral researcher Nathan Bailey describes some of the documented behaviors and explains how they may influence animal evolution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fertility Linked To The Packaging Of Sperm New research suggests that the packaging of human sperm using proteins called histones plays a bigger role in fertility than once thought. Professor of oncological sciences Bradley Cairns explains how sperm get their shape, and how that shape can affect embryonic development. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Summer Sky Highlights What's Missing This season's astronomical highlights are about what won't be visible in the night sky. Astronomer Paul Rao discusses what he describes as "the eclipse of the century," Jupiter's mysterious missing moons, the vanishing rings of Saturn and the forthcoming Perseid meteor shower. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can Health Care Reform Succeed This Time? Health care reform officially began in Washington this week, and lawmakers have been hashing out the painful trade-offs of a bipartisan plan. Guest host Paul Raeburn talks with experts about the economic and medical realities of improving care and coverage at lower costs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Secret To Slithering Is In The Scales How do snakes slither on smooth surfaces? Mechanical engineer David Hu, of Georgia Tech, filmed snakes slithering up inclines, outfitted them in jackets and photographed them through jello to better understand snake locomotion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study Says Fingerprints Aren't For Friction New research in The Journal of Experimental Biology shows that — contrary to conventional wisdom — fingerprints don't increase the friction between the fingertips and the grasped object. Biomechanics researcher A. Roland Ennos explains what fingerprints might actually be for. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The 47th Prime The 47th Prime Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Stanley Milgram 'Shocked the World' In the early '60s psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted his "obedience" experiments, showing that most people will do what an authority figure tells them to do. Psychology professor Thomas Blass details Milgram's life and work in his book The Man Who Shocked the World. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Waiting For A Superstinky Flower To Bloom Botanists at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif., are predicting that their rare and ultrasmelly "corpse flower" will bloom any day now. Botanical education manager Kitty Connolly describes the plant, and its somewhat unusual smell. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Telescopes Probe Birth Of Stars And The Universe NASA scientists Paul Goldsmith and Charles Lawrence discuss the space telescopes Herschel and Planck, which the European Space Agency launched last month. Herschel will investigate star and galaxy formation, and Planck will observe the residual glow of the newborn universe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Are The Chances Of A Planetary Collision? Writing in the journal Nature this week, scientists present scenarios in which Mercury, Venus or Mars could collide with the Earth during the next 5 billion years. Astrophysicist Greg Laughlin discusses these possibilities and why there's no need to panic yet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NASA Prepares Two Lunar Satellites For Launch NASA scientist James Garvin discusses the upcoming launch of two lunar satellites. One will map the moon's surface for future human exploration. The other will crash into a crater near the south pole, kicking up a plume of debris in which scientists hope to find water ice. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Researchers Study Vaccines For Skin Cancer Can targeted vaccines help the human immune system respond better to cancer therapies? Douglas Schwartzentruber, medical director of the Center for Cancer Care at the Goshen Health System in Goshen, Ind., describes a study of a vaccine that can help slow the progress of metastatic melanoma. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Isaac Newton: Physicist And ... Crime Fighter? Isaac Newton is best known for his studies of physics and for developing the three basic laws that describe motion. In Newton and the Counterfeiter, author Thomas Levenson describes another side of Newton: his career as the crime-fighting head of the Royal Mint. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tickling Primates To Learn About Laughter Do nonhuman primates have a sense of humor? Marina Davilla Ross and colleagues tickled baby gorillas, chimps, orangutans, bonobos and humans. Publishing in Current Biology, the researchers analyzed the sounds the primates made, looking for clues to the evolution of laughter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Manhattanhenge: Crowds Gather To See A Star Align Twice a year, the sunset lines up with New York City's street grid — making for spectacular views. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, identified the cosmic event over a decade ago and coined the name Manhattanhenge. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Will Nuclear Power Be Part Of A Climate Solution? Some environmentalists believe building more nuclear power plants today is the best way to combat climate change while solar and other renewable energy sources mature. Ira Flatow and experts discuss the economic and engineering hurdles to nuclear development in the U.S. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Laser Facility Fuels Dreams Of Nuclear Fusion A new multibillion-dollar facility in California houses the world's most powerful laser. But is it powerful enough to trigger the thermonuclear fusion reaction that occurs in stars? Some scientists are doubtful. Lab Director Edward Moses discusses the controversial project. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Artists Find Inspiration In Genetic Research Two artists delve into DNA as subject matter for their work and the results are as different as one haplogroup to the next. Lynn Fellman and Daniel Kohn talk about their experiences in the laboratory and how their art visually represents DNA. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Danica McKellar Makes Math Vacation-Friendly Students are counting down the days until the start of summer vacation, but is there a way to convince kids to do math over the break? Ira Flatow talks with McKellar, Wonder Years actress turned math book author, about sharpening students' math skills. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Dissection' Documents Med School Rite-Of-Passage New book Dissection is a collection of black-and-white photos of Victorian-era medical students posing with their cadavers. The book's co-author, medical historian James Edmonson, says the photographs detail the med school experience at the turn of the 20th century. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How The World's First Telescope Appeared Without the telescope, astronomers would be blind to many marvels of the universe. But how did the device come to be? Science historian Albert van Helden explains how a Dutch spectacle-maker's invention made its way to Galileo, enabling him to spot Jupiter's moons. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Happy Birthday, Telescope This year is the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. To celebrate its birthday, Science Friday producers hit the streets of New York City to find out what people know about the telescope and its history. Can you explain how a telescope works? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bacterial Ecosystems Abound On Our Skin Bacterial colonies flourish on human skin, occupying moist bellybuttons, oily brows and even the parched plains of the forearm. Skin scientist Julie Segre talks about mapping these diverse bacterial ecosystems — and how the bacteria populations may affect skin health. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Does The Brain Decode Speech? What happens to words after the ear picks them up? Neuroscientist Sophie Scott of University College London discusses the latest theories of speech perception, from how the brain recognizes a familiar voice to how it adjusts to each speaker's unique pitch and accent. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Belting Out A Musical Physics Lesson High school science teacher Sam Terfa wanted to demonstrate a fundamental physics principle: resonant frequency. To do so, he found the best singer at Minnehaha Academy and had him serenade a wine glass. It did not turn out well for the glass. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Will Food Shortages Reshape The World Again? Food shortages have doomed civilizations for millennia. Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, argues that environmental degradation could lead to devastating food shortages today, despite advanced farm technology and genetically engineered crops. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Native Plants Bring Wildlife To The Garden Many ornamental plants common to American yards are exotic species that local bugs haven't evolved to munch on. In his book Bringing Nature Home, entomologist Doug Tallamy encourages gardeners to invite bugs, birds and other wildlife back by planting native species. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mars Rover Finds More Evidence Of A Watery Past Steve Squyres, principal investigator on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission, reports in Science that Opportunity's road trip to Victoria Crater revealed that the crater was shaped by water long ago. Meanwhile, the twin rover Spirit appears to be stuck. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Happy Birthday, SETI@home Ten years ago, Dan Werthimer of the University of California at Berkeley helped launch a project that would let people donate processing time on their personal computers to help scientists hunt for signals from outer space. Werthimer speaks with Ira Flatow about the project. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Concrete And Global Warming: A Mixed Bag Concrete may be responsible for as much as five percent of the global carbon footprint, taking into account the energy required to make it and the CO2 emitted by the kilning process. But a new study by engineer Liv Haselbach finds that concrete may also be an important CO2 sink. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Proposed Stem Cell Rules Could Block Research In March, President Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research, ordering the NIH to create new guidelines. Patrick Taylor, deputy general counsel at Children's Hospital Boston, says the proposed rules could actually prevent research on existing stem cell lines. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website From Genes To Growls, Decoding 'The Modern Dog' Stanley Coren, author of The Modern Dog, joins other experts to discuss the latest in canine science — including how dogs influence child development, what the canine genome reveals about human cancer and a new device that allows dogs to bark at their masters over a cell phone. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Astronauts Give Hubble Telescope A Tune-Up The Hubble telescope has spent nearly two decades in Earth's orbit, capturing snapshots of the distant universe. But once in a while the Hubble needs maintenance. Jon Morse, NASA's director of astrophysics, gives an update on the current service mission. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pick Of The Week: Arizona's Ancient Agaves Perhaps best known as the source of tequila, agaves were an important crop long before the invention of the margarita. Botanist Wendy Hodgson says pre-Columbian farmers cultivated agaves for food as far back as 800 A.D. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Calculating The Physics Of The Ballpark Is the new Yankee Stadium boosting home run totals? The shape of the ballpark and the physics of the wind movement near the stadium may explain some surprising statistics from the first few games. An engineer and physicist discuss why so many balls are flying out of the park. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can A New Search Engine Outdo Google? Is there anything Google can't do? The creators of Wolfram Alpha think so. The new search engine is slated for release this month. Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, explains how Wolfram Alpha works. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Two Cultures,' Still Clashing 50 Years Later? In 1959, C.P. Snow delivered his provocative lecture "The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution," lamenting the gulf between scientists and literary types. Science journalism professor and author Charles Seife talks about why the essay stirs debate today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hobbit's Big Feet Offer Clues To Its Origin Homo floresiensis, the mysterious hominid uncovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, continues to raise questions about human evolution. Ira Flatow and anthropologists discuss two new studies in Nature that support the idea that the "hobbit" fossils represent a new species. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Does The Flu Kill? A new study investigates why some people die from flu, while others walk away with mild aches and shakes. Study author Kathleen Sullivan, professor of pediatrics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, found that the flu kills by paralyzing the immune system. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pick Of The Week: Hobbit Bones A new cast of a skeleton of Homo floresiensis — a fossil known as the "hobbit" — was unveiled a few weeks ago at Stony Brook University. Anthropologist Bill Jungers describes the hominid, which lived 17,000 years ago and was just over three feet tall. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Holdren Charts The Future Of Science How will the Obama administration ramp up science and technology in America? John Holdren, the president's chief science adviser, explains the strategy for supporting research in the U.S., lays out his plan for climate change and gives his take on the future NASA. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website CSI: Animal Kingdom Can DNA evidence prove that a walrus was poached? Who is responsible for taking down illegal caviar traffickers? A scientist from an animal forensics lab in the U.S. and a National Fish and Wildlife special agent talk about busting crimes against non-human species. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lessons From A Defrosted Baby Mammoth Two years ago, reindeer herders in Siberia discovered a 40,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth on a riverbank. Paleontologist Daniel Fisher explains what is known about the mammoth's life and how she died, and what she reveals about the period during which she lived. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website This Cockatoo Can Shake His Tail Feathers Irena Schulz filmed her sulphur-crested cockatoo, Snowball, dancing to the Backstreet Boys. It was a YouTube sensation. A couple of neuroscientists, including John Iversen of the Neurosciences Institute, saw the video and decided to look into it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Teetering On The Edge Of A Flu Pandemic? As swine flu cases surface around the world, authorities say a pandemic may be imminent. Ira Flatow and experts discuss the current outbreak, lessons learned from the scare of 1976, and whether government restrictions could tread on individual liberties if a pandemic occurs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Green DIY Projects To Reduce, Reuse, Recycle In honor of Earth Day, inventor and author Cy Tymony shares projects from his new book Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things. From a robot recycling bin to a nuclear energy simulation, many of Timony's DIY projects can be tackled with items commonly found around the house. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Better Brewing Through Synthetic Biology The science of synthetic biology is aimed at using genetic "standard parts" to create an organism with desired traits. James Collins, of Boston University, and colleagues developed models to describe how those parts fit together, and tested them by building precision-tuned brewer's yeast. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harnessing Nanoparticles For Targeted Cancer Treatment A new approach to cancer therapy uses nanoparticles of fat to deliver a working copy of a tumor suppressor gene to tumor cells, making the tumors more vulnerable to conventional cancer treatments. Esther Chang of Georgetown University Medical Center describes the research, which is now undergoing safety trials. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Skunked? Tomato Juice Is Not The Answer SciFri producer Annette Heist's terrier was sprayed by a skunk, sending her looking for a deodorizing remedy. Chemists William Wood of Humboldt State University and Paul Krebaum explain how to neutralize the stinky skunk spray molecules, and debunk the tomato juice remedy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How To Handle Hay Fever The birds are singing, the sun is shining — and for many that means sniffling, sneezing and suffering. Can science shed any light on how to manage seasonal allergies? Allergy experts sort fact from folklore, explain the science behind pollen counts and suggest remedies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Is Mars Rover Spirit Ready For Retirement? Recently, the Mars Exploration Rover "Spirit" has been sleeping through work shifts and suffering from bouts of amnesia. John Callas, rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains how changes to the rover's operating protocols may allow it to stay on the job. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Play Asks: Can Science And Religion Get Along? In End Days, playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer takes on science, religion and Elvis. Laufer explains how she uses scientific theories to explore human nature in her writing and why she wanted the same actor to play Jesus Christ and Stephen Hawking. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Garden of Invention' Profiles Plant Pioneer Luther Burbank invented over 800 varieties of plants — edible and ornamental. His Burbank potato is still the most widely grown commercial potato. Jane S. Smith, author of a new book about Burbank, describes his contributions to horticultural science and the food we eat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bacteria Survive Below Antarctica's 'Blood Falls' Blood Falls is named for the red, iron-rich material seeping from Taylor Glacier. New research in the journal Science shows how the iron also sustains a mix of bacteria in the sub-glacial water. Microbe expert Jill Mikucki explains how bacteria survive in this harsh environment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Vibrations Visualized With Sand And Sound Shake a metal plate covered in sand at certain frequencies and intricate patterns mysteriously appear. Jon Jacobsen, a mathematician at Harvey Mudd College, explains why this 200-year-old demonstration still captivates scientists and students. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Is Missile Defense Ready For Prime Time? The Bush administration poured billions of dollars into missile defense technology. But could currently deployed U.S. technology intercept a ballistic missile headed towards American soil? NPR diplomatic correspondent Mike Shuster reports on the defense system's capabilities. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study Illuminates Secrets Of Night Vision How do nocturnal creatures see after sundown? New research in Cell shines light on the mystery. Physicist Jochen Guck, of the University of Cambridge, explains how a difference in the physical structure of eye cells allows nocturnal animals to navigate the dark. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Truly Green Energy Source: Algae Ira Flatow and guests discuss the future of algae-based energy — including plans for a new algae-fueled power plant in Venice, Italy. Biologist Jerry Brand explains why biotech companies are snapping up samples from his extensive algae collection at the University of Texas at Austin. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beached Trash Tells A Story About The Oceans In oceanography's infancy, scientists launched message bottles to divine ocean currents. Today, oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, author of Flotsametrics and the Floating World, charts currents by tracking merchandise lost at sea — from sneakers to rubber duckies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NASA Astronaut Dreams Up Space Inventions NASA astronaut Don Pettit spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station and elected to spend his off-duty time performing science experiments of his own design. Pettit talks about life in space and some of the gadgets he invented while he lived there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can Scientists Predict When Quakes Will Strike? A technician at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics claims he predicted the devastating quake that hit central Italy this week by measuring radon gas seeping from the fault. U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Susan Hough discusses the technique's efficacy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Candy Corn In Space: More Than A Snack Astronauts are allowed special "crew preference" items when they go up in space. NASA astronaut Don Pettit chose candy corn for his five-and-a-half-month stint aboard the International Space Station. Find out what he did with it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brown Fat: Don't Try To Burn It Not all fat is created equal, according to several new studies. Researchers found that "brown fat," typically found in babies, is present in adults and has impressive calorie-burning powers. C. Ronald Kahn, of the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School, explains the findings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can Obama Push Climate Policy Forward? President Obama vows to move ahead in combating climate change. What hurdles will the administration face? U.S. News and World Report reporter Kent Garber discusses cap-and-trade, other climate mitigation proposals and the challenges to getting climate policies through Congress. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Decoding Latest Changes To Texas Science Standards The Texas Board of Education recently voted in new science standards for public schools. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, explains how science fared in the latest vote and what the decision means for the rest of the country. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Is There Anything Else Out There? Is the appearance of life on Earth a fluke, or is the universe teeming with alien life? In a special broadcast from Arizona State University, leading astrobiologists debate the origin of life on this planet and talk about the best places to look for other life in the universe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Using Tiny Particles To Answer Giant Questions It all started with the Big Bang, but then what? In a special broadcast from Arizona State University, cosmologists discuss the origin of the universe, how the Large Hadron Collider research fits in and what particle physics can explain about how the universe began. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Does 'Watchmen' Hold Hidden Physics Lessons? Can superhero movies teach audiences about science? Dave Gibbons, author and artist of the Watchmen comic series, discusses the science behind the superheroes in his story. Physics professor James Kakalios talks about teaching science to the Watchmen actors and stuntmen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Thinning Brain Cortex May Signal Depression A new study suggests that a thinning of the brain cortex is associated with an increased risk of developing depression. Psychiatrist and MRI expert Brad Peterson explains what the cortex does and what the study results may mean for people with a family history of depression. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Researchers Monitor Eruptions At Mt. Redoubt The Alaskan volcano Mount Redoubt erupted again on Wednesday, sending smoke and ash high into the air. David Schneider, geophysicist at the USGS Alaskan Volcano Observatory, describes the activity at the 10,200-foot volcano, which is about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alaska's Coast Disappearing At Record Rates Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers find that a portion of the Alaskan coast is eroding at a rate of 45 feet per year. Chris Arp, a research ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, explains why the coast is crumbling faster than before. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NOAA Head Jane Lubchenco On Ocean Policy What is on the horizon for the U.S. role in ocean management? Jane Lubchenco, newly-confirmed administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), discusses her top priorities for ocean policy — from forming a National Climate Service to ending overfishing. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 20 Years Since Exxon Valdez, New Ocean Threats? Two decades since the catastrophic oil spill in Prince William Sound, today's threats to the ocean — from acidification to dead zones — are harder to see. Philippe Cousteau, of EarthEcho International, and Peter Seligmann, chairman of Conservation International, discuss the ocean environment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Buckyball Discoverer Explores Nanotech Frontier In 1985, a group of chemists discovered a new class of soccer-ball-shaped carbon molecules that they dubbed "buckminsterfullerene," or "buckyballs." Harry Kroto describes the discovery that won him and his colleagues the Nobel Prize and discusses new spinoffs, such as "buckypaper." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Search For Hidden Dimensions In The Universe It's hard to imagine dimensions other than the familiar three — or four, including time — but these extra dimensions could bridge ideas in particle physics and cosmology. Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall explains the possibility of unseen dimensions and how to find them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Remarkable Creatures' Behind Darwin's Discoveries Charles Darwin didn't come to his theory of evolution alone. Sean B. Carroll, biologist and author of Remarkable Creatures, describes the naturalists that contributed to Darwin's discoveries. Field ecologist D. Bruce Means explains the work of modern-day naturalists. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Does Wall Street Need More Physicists? In better times, generous paychecks and computational challenges attracted physicists and engineers to Wall Street, but some experts now blame them for the crash. Andrew Lo, a financial engineer at MIT, discusses why Wall Street needs these number crunchers more than ever. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A New Era For Science In The U.S.? President Obama loosened restrictions on stem-cell research this week and mandated that science should inform policy. Nobel laureate Peter Agre offers insights on how scientists can guide smart policy decisions, how to engage the public on science and what science could do for diplomacy abroad. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Computer Whiz Barbara Liskov Wins Turing Award Barbara Liskov earned a doctorate in computer science in 1968, becoming the first woman to do so. Liskov speaks with Ira Flatow about winning the 2008 Turing Award — widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing" — for her lifelong achievements in programming language design. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Give It A Shake, Cornstarch Comes Alive A science fair project for the recession: combine cornstarch and water to make a fluid with bizarre physical properties. Physicists Harry Swinney and Robert Deegan explain why the mixture behaves like it has a life of its own. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can Fearful Memories Be Erased? Scientists studying how the brain forms memories have found that by targeting brain cells expressing a certain gene in mice, they can erase a fearful memory association days after the event. Steven Kushner and colleagues describe the research in the journal Science. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Batteries Of The Future May Charge In Seconds Researchers reporting in the journal Nature say that they've modified the surface of one component of a lithium-ion battery to allow the lithium ions to move more freely. Gerd Ceder of MIT explains how this advance could lead to batteries that charge in a matter of seconds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Physicists Hunt For Hidden Particles Scientists using Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator report findings on the makeup of matter. Updates include the sighting of a single top quark and progress in the hunt for one of the holy grails of physics — the Higgs boson. Fermilab's Heidi Schellman describes the news. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 300-Million-Year-Old Fish Brain Discovered Soft tissue like the brain is usually the first thing to go when an organism decomposes, but not always, according to a new discovery. Researchers working in Kansas dug up a fish skull containing an ancient fossilized brain. John Maisey of the American Museum of Natural History discusses the fossil. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anthropologist Donald Johanson On 'Lucy's Legacy' In 1974, at age 31, Donald Johanson discovered the fossil he dubbed "Lucy" — a previously unknown species of ancient hominid. Johanson talks about what the discovery meant for the human family tree and discusses his new book Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Archaeologists Unearth Earliest Known Horse Farm Archaeologists reporting in the journal Science say they've found evidence that humans raised horses nearly 5,500 years ago in present day Kazakhstan. Alan Outram presents the evidence suggesting that the Botai culture kept horses for milking and possibly riding. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website For Robots In Sand, The Secret Is In The Step Sand is difficult terrain for robots. But Daniel Goldman, a physicist at Georgia Institute of Technology, and his colleagues looked to lizards and cockroaches for inspiration, and figured out how to engineer a robot that isn't slowed by soft ground. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Could Heating Caves Save The Bats? Tens of thousands of bats have been dropping dead in the Northeast, all exhibiting symptoms of the poorly understood "white-nose syndrome." Ecologist Justin Boyles explains how installing heated boxes in caves could help hibernating bats with white-nose syndrome survive the winter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Climate Scientists Enlist Citizen Volunteers The National Phenology Network is recruiting people across the U.S. to record when trees bud, flowers bloom and migrating animals return. The project's executive director, Jake Weltzin, explains how tracking these trends can help scientists better understand climate change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Engineer Viruses To Battle Bacteria Viruses called bacteriophages make a living picking on certain bacteria. But these viruses have had limited use as antibiotics. Biomedical engineer Jim Collins explains how his team was able create a better bacteriophage, capable of attacking even antibiotic-resistant bugs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Take Step Toward Universal Flu Vaccine Flu shots keep many people healthy, but can't fight all viral strains. Now scientists may be a step closer to creating a vaccine that fights all strains. Molecular biologist Ian Wilson explains how researchers are trying to trigger the body to fight more kinds of viruses. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Report Finds Forensic Evidence Lacking A new report from the National Academy of Sciences says much of what's commonly called "forensic sciences" doesn't meet scientific standards. Experts say the country's forensics methods and systems — from fingerprint identification to bite-mark analysis — need an overhaul. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Getting To The Root Of Why Hair Turns Gray Gray hair is a common sign of aging, but just what causes locks to lose their color isn't well understood. Dr. Gerald Weissmann discusses new research suggesting that hydrogen peroxide build-up in hair follicles may bleach the color from the hair as it leaves the scalp. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Are All Calories Created Equal? Research reported this week in The New England Journal of Medicine finds that hundreds of study participants were able to drop similar amounts of weight by cutting calories, regardless of whether they followed diets heavy on fats, carbohydrates or proteins. Author Dr. Frank Sacks explains the findings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Celebrating The International Year Of Astronomy Galileo first peered through his astronomical telescope toward the heavens 400 years ago, spotting mountains on the moon and discovering the moons of Jupiter. Astrophysicist Mario Livio talks about the special events planned this year to commemorate Galileo's discoveries. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Huge Solar Facility Planned For California Desert Utility company Southern California Edison and solar startup BrightSource Energy announced a deal to build a solar-thermal plant that would generate 1,300 megawatts of power, slightly more than a modern nuclear plant, in the Mojave Desert. BrightSource CEO John Woolard discusses the project. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Animation Goes High Tech With 3-D Forget the old red and blue glasses: 3-D has been upgraded. The inventor of modern 3-D explains how the technology has evolved and where it's headed. Director Henry Selick talks about the art of animation and how he used 3-D to make his movie Coraline jump off the screen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hazardous Junk Piling Up In Space Last week, a defunct Russian satellite and a U.S. communications satellite collided in space, sending dangerous shards of debris into orbit. Mark Matney, an orbital debris scientist at Johnson Space Center, explains the hazards of space junk and what can be done to clean it up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nanoelectronics Modeled On Etch-A-Sketch Toy Researchers reporting in the journal Science have created tiny nanowires and transistors at a scale much smaller than today's silicon-based versions. Even better, these tiny electrical components can be erased and rewritten. Author Jeremy Levy explains the technique. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Telephone Gambit' Asks Who Invented The Phone History credits Alexander Graham Bell with the invention of the telephone, but inventor Elisha Gray filed papers with the patent office describing a similar device on the same day. Who should get the credit? Seth Shulman, author of The Telephone Gambit, has the 411. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Inspiring Girls To Engineer America's Future National Engineers Week is an annual event that aims to energize youngsters about engineering. Leslie Collins, executive director of the National Engineers Week Foundation, explains how "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" gets girls fired up about engineering careers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Astrophysicist Tyson On 'Pluto Files' The director of the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium and author of The Pluto Files, Neil deGrasse Tyson, talks about the future of NASA, Pluto's demotion to dwarf-planet status, and the difference between Darwin and Einstein. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Buying Into Life Instead Of Things Psychologists say people reported feeling happier when they spent their money on experiences rather than objects. Ryan Howell, a San Francisco State University psychologist who led the study, explains the results and speculates on whether the findings extend to gift-giving. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website From Dirt To Web: Fossils Go Digital Using CT scans, DigiMorph, a project run out of the University of Texas, has compiled hundreds of 3-D visualizations of fossils, skeletons and other specimens. Highlights from the collection included the famous hominid fossil "Lucy." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Surgical Advance Makes A Better Bionic Arm Doctors writing in the journal JAMA detail a surgical technique that reroutes nerves from an amputated arm to muscles on the chest. Study author Todd Kuiken explains how patients are able to control the prosthetic arm with their thoughts. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Making America's Electric Grid Smarter President Obama says America needs to modernize its electrical transmission with a "smart grid" to increase reliability, save money and facilitate the use of renewable energy. Grid experts Daniel Kammen and Kurt Yeager discuss what "smart grid" means, and how to build one. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Japanese Mission Explores Far Side Of Moon In 2007, three Japanese satellites began circling Earth's moon on the Kaguya mission. The spacecraft beamed back high-definition video, photos and data about the topography and varying gravity of the moon. NASA geophysicist Gregory Neumann surveys the discoveries from Kaguya. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website After 200 Years, Darwin's Legacy Still Evolving Feb. 12 marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Ira Flatow speaks with Darwin's great-great-grandson, writer and director Matthew Chapman, about the ongoing battle over teaching evolution in public schools and how Darwin's legacy continues to evolve. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ancient Whales May Have Given Birth On Land Paleontologists working in Pakistan have found the complete skeleton of a whale ancestor carrying a full term fetus. The cetacean is set to give birth head-first, as land animals do. Whale expert Philip Gingerich describes what the fossil find means for whale evolution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Butterfly Larvae Trick Ants With Scent And Sound Ecologists report in Science how a species of butterfly tricks red ants into caring for them. The larvae chemically "smell" like ants, and can imitate noises that the ant queens make. Ecologist Jeremy Thomas describes the intertwined natural history of these two species. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fossils Of One-Ton Snake Provide Climate Clues Scientists working in Columbia have found the fossilized remains of a giant species of snake, called Titanoboa. Individuals of the species can be over 40 feet long. Paleontologist Jason Head explains what the remains reveal about the prehistoric climate of what is now Columbia. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website High-Speed Video Reveals Physics Of Splashes Everybody knows that when a stone is dropped in water, a jet of water shoots up. Physicists Detlef Lohse and Heinrich Jaeger are combining math, theory and super high-speed videos to try to figure out the basic physics underlying the jet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Does The Future Hold For The FDA? The recent recall of salmonella-tainted peanut butter products is just the latest of a string of regulatory failures by the ailing Food and Drug Administration. Former FDA official William Hubbard discusses major problems facing the FDA and proposals for how to fix them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Google Earth Dives Into Ocean Depths Oceans and seas that were once featureless expanses of blue in Google's atlas came to life this week. Oceanographer Sylvia Earle and Google Earth guru John Hanke share the highlights and explain what home explorers can spot in this newly digitized version of the world's waters. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How To Avoid Contaminating Planetary Neighbors When the rovers Spirit and Opportunity hit Martian soil, scientists say they probably arrived with guests: thousands of bacteria. Planetary scientist Christopher McKay argues that future missions shouldn't dirty the planet in ways that subsequent generations can't clean up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harold Varmus Reflects On A Life In Science Harold Varmus wrote his college thesis on Charles Dickens. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in medicine. Last month he was tapped by President Obama to serve as a science adviser. He describes his unusual career path in his new memoir The Art and Politics of Science. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Can Scientific Reasoning Be Taught? Scientific reasoning is essential to a successful career in science. But research in the journal Science claims this skill can't be learned through memorization of facts alone. Author Lei Bao explains the findings, and how teachers can apply them in the classroom. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Dig Deep Sea Dirt Collection In the basement of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is the world's largest collection of mud from the seafloor. Marine geologist Peter deMenocal and Rusty Lotti Bond, the collection's curator, show off the collection and explain what it's good for. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Distant Planet Has An Extreme Forecast Astronomers have observed a planet orbiting a distant star that experiences temperature swings of hundreds of degrees in a matter of hours. Greg Laughlin, author on the Nature study, says weather models for the planet include glowing skies and 10,000 mile-per-hour winds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Road To Building Greener Cars The big automakers are retooling their factories to produce greener cars but many of these vehicles won't hit the road for years. Ira Flatow talks with guests about outside-the-box ideas for improving fuel efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions quickly. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Stuff Of Life' A Comic Take On Genetics BANG! POW! PHOSPHORYLATION! The Stuff of Life is a new genetic biology primer with a twist — it takes the form of a graphic novel. Author Mark Schultz explains how he turned everything from cytokinesis to parthenogenesis into comics. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Examining Climate Change On The Air What is the media's role in shaping public opinion on global warming and the environment? New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin talks with Ira Flatow about the changing climate of science reporting, and why local meteorologists may be delivering more than just the forecast. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Trees Dying In The Western U.S. Reporting in the journal Science, researchers say trees in the old forests in western America have been dying at greater rates in recent decades. Research ecologist Phillip van Mantgem explains why scientists believe the increase in tree death is linked to climate change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In Antarctica, Too, Temperatures On The Rise Researchers report in the journal Nature that temperatures across Antarctica rose an average of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. The study looked at 50 years of temperature data. Researcher Eric Steig explains why the warming trend wasn't detected until recently. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Research Towards Hearing Loss Pill Researchers manipulated a protein found on sensory hair cells in mouse ears and found that the mutant mice were better able to withstand loud noises. Researcher Paul Fuchs, author of the study published in PLoS Biology, describes how the finding could one day help human ears. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Behold The Mighty, Microscopic Water Bear Microscopic water bears, also known as tardigrades, can withstand boiling, freezing, radiation, the vacuum of space and years of dehydration. Biologist Bob Goldstein of the University of North Carolina describes the creatures and why he studies them. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Future Of American Space Flight With the shuttle on the brink of retirement and plans for replacement rockets under scrutiny, what lies ahead for space flight in this country? Space policy expert John Logsdon talks about what's next for NASA and the future of manned spaceflight to the moon and beyond. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Could Science Pep Up A Sluggish Economy? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said, "If you want to know the agenda for this new Congress, remember four words: science, science, science and science." Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Maria Zuber of MIT discuss what that might mean for science investment today. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website FDA Approves Embryonic Stem Cell Trial In Humans Biotech company Geron Corp. will conduct a human clinical trial on patients with spinal cord injuries, using a federally approved line of embryonic stem cells. The approval is the first of its kind in the world. Stem cell experts discuss the significance of the decision. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Celebrating 50 Years of Pheromone Research In 1959, two scientists coined the word "pheromone" to describe the chemicals used for communication between members of the same species. Tristram Wyatt, author of an essay in Nature detailing the history of pheromone science, highlights research milestones. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mysterious Methane Gas Found In Mars' Atmosphere This week, astronomers reported finding methane gas in the Martian atmosphere. The study, published in Science, says the gas could have been generated by geochemical activity or possibly by living organisms. Planetary scientist Michael Mumma discusses the finding. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hunters And Fishermen Accelerate Species Evolution A study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that hunting, fishing and plant gathering can speed up rates of species evolution, which may have negative effects on plant and animal populations. Study author Chris Darimont explains why. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Painting With Light, Artists Make Images That Glow Watch artists Michelle McSwain and Ryan Warnberg, collectively known as MRI, demonstrate how to paint with light. Vision expert Stephen Macknik, of the Barrow Neurological Institute, explains what the images teach us about the human visual system. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Do Science Jobs Make The Best Careers? A new survey names "mathematician" as the number one career in the U.S. Statistician, biologist and software engineer are among the top five on the list. Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com and JobsRated.com, explains the rankings and what they mean for science job seekers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Weighing The Risks And Benefits Of Eating Fish Craving sushi but worried about mercury poisoning? With different numbers coming from different agencies, the federal government's advice on how much fish to eat may not be of much help. Joshua Cohen and Jane M. Hightower sort the science from the hype on mercury and fish. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Watch Out Bacteria: Copper Kills Germs New research suggests that using copper for some surfaces could decrease infections acquired in hospitals. Michael Schmidt, a microbiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, explains the findings and how they might be applied. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Latest Efforts To Control Type 2 Diabetes Two papers published recently in the journal Cell Metabolism present different approaches to treating type 2 diabetes. C. Ronald Kahn, professor at Harvard Medical School, talks about how the animal models might lead to new treatments for human type 2 diabetes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Science Of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped Bernard Madoff's Ponzi-style scheme fooled many clever people, including an expert on the science of gullibility. Psychologist Stephen Greenspan, author of Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It, explains what psychology can teach us about the scam. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nests, Braids And Twists, On The Nano Scale New research in the journal Science details how nano-sized hairs can be made to twist themselves into tight coils and braids, or clutch an object with a sticky grip. Study author Joanna Aizenberg of Harvard University explains the nano-knotting. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pick Of The Week: Teeny Tiny Dreadlocks Under the right conditions, nano-sized synthetic fibers will spontaneously twist together to form intricate and beautiful braids. To the researcher who studies them, the nano knots evoke Medusa's braids. What do they look like to you? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Measurements Of The Milky Way Galaxy Scientists have found that the Milky Way galaxy spins faster and has more mass than previously thought, with a size rivaling that of neighboring galaxy Andromeda. Astronomer Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discusses the new measurements. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How To Make Sense Of Medical Statistics Relative risk, absolute risk, number needed to treat: medical research papers are loaded with confusing statistics. Steven Woloshin and Lisa M. Schwartz, authors of the book Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics, talk about what those numbers mean. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Is Third-Hand Smoke A Hazard? Some scientists say toxins from cigarette smoke can cling to furniture and clothing after the smoke wafts away, possibly posing a danger to infants and children. Jonathan Winickoff discusses his new paper on the public's perception of the risk of third-hand smoke. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mystified? Solve It With Science Whodunit? Was it Dr. Jones, in the lab, with the beaker? Eric and Natalie Yoder may have the answer. They are authors of One Minute Mysteries: 65 Short Mysteries You Solve With Science, a new book that uses mysteries and problem solving to get kids energized about science. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Tis The Season For Cold And Flu Both bring wintertime suffering, but how different is the common cold from influenza, scientifically speaking? Ira Flatow talks with cold and flu experts about how these viruses are transmitted, how best to dodge them, and why hand sanitizer may not be of much help. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Controlling Mosquitoes With Bacteria Biologists identified bacteria that shorten the lifespan of disease-carrying mosquitoes. Shorter lives mean less time for the mosquitoes to incubate and transmit diseases like dengue and malaria. Biologist Andrew Read of The Pennsylvania State University explains the findings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Looking Forward To A Year of Science 2009 marks 150 years since the publication of Darwin's On The Origin of Species, and the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of a telescope to study the skies. M. Lee Allison is an organizer of a "Year of Science 2009," a celebration of scientific methods and discoveries. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Birdsongs From The Arctic To The Southern Swamps The pop-up book Birdscapes catalogues the calls of birds from all over the world, from Yellow-billed Loons on remote Arctic lakes to King Rails in southern swamps. Author Miyoko Chu of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology tells the stories behind how these bird songs were collected. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shade-Grown Coffee Not Just For The Birds Shade-grown coffee is sometimes called "bird friendly coffee," but a new paper in the journal Current Biology suggests that the plantations also help maintain the genetic diversity of native tree species. Study author Shalene Jha discusses the research and its implications. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Audubon's Annual Christmas Bird Count Get out those binoculars and notepads. For the 109th year, birders throughout the Americas are navigating tropical forests and crunching through snowy meadows to tally up birds. Count director Geoff LeBaron and Cornell ornithologist John Fitzpatrick discuss the annual event. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tweets From Frolleagues And Other 2008 Lingo The language of our lives is changing faster than you can download an iPhone app. Wired magazine's "Jargon Watch" columnist (and conceptual artist) Jonathan Keats runs down the top tech jargon terms of 2008. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How To Make New Year's Resolutions Stick Are you vowing to stop smoking or start exercising on Jan. 1, 2009? Nearly half of U.S. adults will make resolutions to change in the New Year. Clinical psychologist John Norcross explains how to increase your odds for success. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Making Christmas Merry And ... Safe Are mistletoe and poinsettia really holiday hazards? Poison expert Edward Krenzelok explains how to avoid accidental poisonings this season, and keep the holidays toxin-free. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Citation Kings: Hottest Scientific Papers of 2008 What do graphene and autophagy have in common? They were two of the hottest topics in scientific literature this year. David Pendlebury, citation analyst with Thomson-Reuters, looks at the most-cited scientific papers of 2008, and explains why the research was so noteworthy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tim O'Reilly On The Future Of Social Media From Flickr to Facebook, Twitter to MySpace, social media sites help people follow the news and, in some cases, become part of the story. Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, looks back at the role of social media in 2008 and gives predictions for the future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study Shines Light On Existence of Dark Energy Astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have corroborated the presence of dark energy — a mysterious force pushing the universe outward. William Forman, an astrophysicist with the project, says the findings help explain how the universe evolved — and how it may end. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website More Evidence That Eggnog Goes Better With Booze It's a question that many people have on their minds this season: Does spiking the homemade eggnog safeguard it against salmonella? Eggnog expert and microbiologist Vince Fischetti of The Rockefeller University in New York runs some tests to find out. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Biggest Science Stories of 2008 What were the most important scientific discoveries this year? From the discovery of ice in Martian soil, to the creation of the first synthetic genome, to learning of new exoplanets, Ira Flatow and guests discuss the science stories that captured the headlines and why. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Understanding The Science Of Shopping What makes a shopper spend at one store and not others? Paco Underhill, founder and CEO of Envirosell and author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, explains how he sizes up a shop for its selling potential. Also: why spending may not slow even in a slumping economy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Finding A Formula For Movie and Music Preferences There may be a way of accounting for taste, after all. Tim Westergren, founder of Internet radio service Pandora, and Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, explain how their companies are trying to develop algorithms that predict whether someone will like a song or film. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cooler Than Fruitcake: Fruit With Fizz Looking for ways to jazz up that holiday party? Patrick Buckley, co-author of The Hungry Scientist Handbook, demonstrates how to make carbonated fruit. Materials required: fruit (the firmer the better), a pressure cooker and a handful of dry ice cubes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Examining An Amnesiac's Brain The much-observed brain of amnesiac "H.M." will be sectioned and preserved for scientists to study. Jacopo Annese, director of The Brain Observatory at University of California, San Diego and the neuroscientist in charge of the procedure, explains what researchers hope to learn. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study Finds Elephants In Zoos Live Shorter Lives A study comparing over 4,500 elephants revealed that zoo life may be harmful to elephant health. Georgia J. Mason, professor at University of Guelph in Ontario and lead researcher on the Science study, explains the findings and discusses what zoos can do to keep elephants healthy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Obama Selects His Environmental Team Barack Obama revealed his choices for several energy posts this week, including Nobel laureate physicist Steven Chu for energy secretary. Darren Samuelsohn, senior reporter for Greenwire, analyzes the picks and what the appointments may mean for future environmental policy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Edward O. Wilson Reflects On Insect Societies The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies peers into the world of ants and other social insects. Eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson and co-author Bert Hölldobler, a biologist at Arizona State University, discuss the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Study To Smile About: Happiness Is Contagious Happiness is contagious, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal. James Fowler, political scientist at University of California, San Diego, explains how happiness spreads through social networks and how to make the holidays a little brighter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Not Just For Doctors: X-Rays As Art Nick Veasey has looked inside everything from airplanes to oranges. Veasey is an X-ray photographer and recently published a collection of his work. Science Friday digital producer Flora Lichtman stopped by a shoot to see the artist in action. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Richard Preston 'Journeys to the Edge of Science' Best-selling author Richard Preston, known for his New Yorker profiles of science and scientists, talks about his latest project, Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science. Preston talks with host Ira Flatow about his craft, and about the stories and people he has covered over the years. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Will We Recognize the Future? Futurist Ray Kurzweil explains the idea of the "singularity" — what happens when technology advances so much that it's impossible to predict what happens next. Will artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnology be able to completely reshape what it means to be human? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Greener Cars Change U.S. Auto Landscape Honda plans to lease at least 200 fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. over the next three years. And automaker General Motors announced it will shift production away from large SUVs toward smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles — and close four factories in the process. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Climate Change Legislation Fails in Senate The U.S. Senate debated proposed climate change legislation on Tuesday — but the bill failed to win the needed number of votes to avoid a filibuster and was pulled from the floor. The bill would have cut greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds by the year 2050. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Shyamalan Turns to Environment for Thriller Plot Film writer and director M. Night Shyamalan discusses The Happening, his upcoming spooky thriller about people trying to save themselves from a worldwide environmental catastrophe. He talks with host Ira Flatow about the intersection between real-world environmental issues and fantasy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Monkeys Control Robotic Arm Just by Thinking Monkeys were able to use the arm to perform tasks such as feeding themselves — and, the researchers say, the monkeys appear to regard the robotic device as part of their own bodies. What could this research mean for human prosthetics? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Organism Captures and Assimilates Foreign DNA Small freshwater invertebrates known as rotifers have the uncanny ability to capture bits of DNA from other organisms and assimilate that genetic code. Researchers writing this week in the journal Science report that the genome of one class of rotifers can include DNA from bacteria, fungi, and even plants. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Meeting of the Minds at the World Science Festival Great science minds from around the world are converging on New York City this week for the five-day World Science Festival. Brian Greene, co-founder of the festival, discusses the purpose of the event and what the organizers hope to achieve. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Report Documents Effects of Climate Change in U.S. A new report published by the federal government states that climate change is already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources and biodiversity. Some forests are seeing more fires and insect infestations. Water use is on the rise, and invasive weeds are spreading. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study Waves Cautionary Flag About Nanotubes Tiny tubes made of carbon atoms have been among the main ingredients of the nanotech revolution. But researchers have found that when injected into mice, nanotubes could behave in a way similar to the way asbestos fibers behave, forming lesions that lead to cancer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Astronomers Capture Supernova from the Start Astronomers who happened to be observing in the right place at the right time recently collected new pieces of data that allow them to paint an unprecedented picture of what goes on during the initial stages of an ultra-powerful stellar explosion. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Find Internal Clock Sets at Mealtime It is well known that many organisms have a "circadian clock" — a biological time-keeping mechanism that connects the body's rhythms to external light levels. Now, researchers have found a second internal clock connected to food consumption that can overrule the regular light-based clock. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Mystery Behind the Crystal Skulls Indiana Jones is back on the big screen with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But what exactly is a "crystal skull"? Archaeologist Jane McLaren Walsh explains. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Calculating Bacteria: Real Computer Bugs? Computer logic usually consists of electronic switches, but recently, scientists have been exploring alternative means for conducting calculations. Scientists report that they have created specially-modified E. coli bacteria capable of performing a specific type of calculation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Countdown to the Mars Phoenix Landing The Mars Phoenix is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on Sunday. It will land in an arctic plane and then hunt for frozen water and possibly for signs of life. The Phoenix incorporates some of the experiments and technologies that were originally scheduled to fly on previous, failed missions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Science of Making Great Beer How do yeast, water, hops and grain combine to form a lager, pilsener or ale? The process requires careful supervision and tightly controlled conditions. Expert brewmasters explain how temperature, timing and ingredients all factor into making an excellent beer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Communities Take Action to Protect Great Lakes The five Great Lakes — Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior — are said to hold one-fifth of the world's surface fresh water. The lakes are threatened by fluctuating water levels, invasive species and pollution — and nearby communities are looking for ways to help. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Mark 25 Years of HIV Research In May 1983, the first scientific papers were published describing the possible connection between a retrovirus and the development of AIDS. The virus went on to become known as HIV. Experts discuss whether, 25 years later, scientists any closer to a cure for AIDS or to a vaccine to prevent HIV transmission. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study: Sahara Gradually Dried Up Over 6,000 Years What made the Sahara Desert go dry — and are there ancient waters still hidden below the sands? In a controversial study published in the journal Science researchers argue that the drying of the Sahara took place over thousands of years — not suddenly as was previously thought. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mysterious Memristor: Electronics' Missing Link? Introductory electronics classes focus on circuit diagrams involving combinations of resistors, capacitors and inductors. Now, researchers have discovered a fourth passive circuit element — one that fills in a gap in equations describing relationships between voltage, current and magnetic flux. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Common Weedkiller May Cause Hormonal Problems Researchers report that atrazine, the second-most-applied weedkiller in the U.S., may be able to disrupt hormonal signaling in humans. The herbicide, which has been banned in Europe, is suspected of playing a role in sexual abnormalities in fish, frogs and other aquatic organisms. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Is It Better to Eat Locally or Eat Differently? When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, what you eat may be more important than where your food comes from. A new study finds that replacing red meat and dairy products with chicken, fish or vegetables could have the same impact as shifting to an entirely locally-grown diet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TV Viewers Prepare for Digital Transition In February 2009, all full-power broadcast television stations in the U.S. will stop analog transmissions and begin broadcasting only in digital. Viewers who have cable or satellite are fine, but those who have older TVs receiving over-the-air signals may need to buy converters. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Life Expectancy Declines for Poor Women in U.S. Women living in America's poorest counties have seen their average life expectancy decline in recent years. New research shows that the gaps between the best-off and worst-off groups are widening — as much as 18 years between the two — in connection with smoking, high blood pressure and obesity. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Advances in Gene Therapy Treatment for Blindness Researchers using a gene therapy technique to treat one form of congenital blindness have reported some success. Two teams of scientists have used modified viruses injected into the eye to partially restore vision to people who have Leber congenital amaurosis, an illness that results in the degradation of the retina. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website U.S. Carbon Footprint Difficult to Reduce According to a new survey, even the people in the U.S. with the lowest energy usage have a carbon footprint about twice as high as the average global citizen. What changes can an American make to have a significant effect on emissions? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Peering into the Human Brain with fMRI Techniques What's really going on inside your head when you make a decision, make a mistake, or have a few drinks? Researchers are using fMRI techniques to monitor blood flow through the brain and are hoping to shed light on the mysterious inner workings of the human mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Salt Water Irrigation Yields Tasty Tomatoes Researchers report that growing cherry tomatoes in diluted seawater can make them tastier and richer in antioxidants. The findings could encourage the use of slightly brackish water in tomato agriculture, extending precious supplies of fresh water. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Building a More Sociable Robot Can't find anyone who wants to hang out this weekend? Help may be on the way. Inventors are working to develop robots that can interact with people on a deeper level: communicating, responding to emotion and operating under specific rules of social behavior. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website T. Rex Protein Evidence Links Dinosaurs to Birds Analysis of proteins found in a scrap of collagen from a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone provides strong evidence for the idea that dinosaurs are the ancestors of modern-day birds. Paleontologist Mary Higby Schweitzer talks about the finding and what it means for our understanding of evolution. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website PETA Offers Incentive for Test-Tube Meat Research Animal rights group PETA is offering a $1 million prize for the development of commercially-viable "test-tube meat" — real meat grown through a lab process, not from a live animal. To win, the lab-grown meat must have a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pine Forests Destroyed by Beetle Takeover Canadian forests are being hit hard by an outbreak of the mountain pine beetle. Though the beetles are small — less than 1/3 of an inch long — they're hungry, and bore through the wood of a variety of pine tree species. Ecologists are worried that the death of so many trees will have a significant impact on the carbon balance in North America. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bats Plagued by Mysterious 'White-Nose' Disease Wildlife experts are trying to determine what's causing hibernating bats in the Northeast to die en masse. The condition has been dubbed "white-nose syndrome," after a white fungus seen on bats' noses. Researchers are racing to explain the deaths and keep the disease from spreading. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sachs Explains 'Economics for a Crowded Planet' Economist Jeffrey Sachs says that the world's population, climate change, poverty and resource use are all closely intertwined. In his book Common Wealth, Sachs discusses the intersection of economics and the environment and argues that humanity must address global problems on a global scale. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Meltwater Can Quickly Crack Glaciers Scientists in Greenland have found that lakes of water on a glacier's surface can quickly cut all the way through to the base of the ice. A study in the journal Science describes an 11 billion-gallon lake of meltwater draining completely within 24 hours a flow rate exceeding that of Niagara Falls. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Do Warmer Temps. Really Yield Stronger Storms? In a 2005 paper published just weeks before Hurricane Katrina, Kerry Emanuel of MIT said that there appeared to be a statistical link between warmer temperatures and hurricane intensity. Now, using new models of the atmosphere, Emanuel and colleagues say the link may not be so clear after all. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bush Details 'Right' and 'Wrong' Climate Policy President Bush has announced a new set of national goals related to climate change and called for a stop to growth in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. Speaking Wednesday in the Rose Garden, he said that "there is a wrong way and a right way to approach reducing greenhouse gas emissions." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lack of Sleep Linked to Later Heath Problems Connections between sleep and other health conditions are the focus of the April edition of the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Research published in the journal draws connections between sleep and a variety of conditions, including ADHD, obesity and long-term mental health. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NIH to Increase Accessibility of Research New rules mandate that reports of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, the major medical research funding agency in the U.S., must be made freely available after a maximum of one year. A publication based on NIH-funded work is now required to be deposited in a public database. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Charcoal May Help Improve Soil Quality Researchers say that adding charcoal to soil may provide more benefits for long-term soil quality than compost or manure. It could also be used to sequester carbon captured from carbon dioxide emissions. Mingxin Guo discusses new applications for the technique, used more than 1,500 years ago in the Amazon basin. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Seek New Ways to Produce Biofuel Fermenting corn can make ethanol, and vegetable oil can become biodiesel -- but what other roads lead to biofuel? Researchers discuss investigations into innovative ways to harvest energy from plant materials, including gasoline-like chemicals and hydrogen production. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Massive Particle Collider Raises Hopes, Concerns Scientists are hoping the world's largest particle accelerator will provide insight into particles and interactions that have eluded scientists thus far. But a lawsuit now argues that high energy collisions could produce unusual miniature black holes that could put the planet at risk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 1860 'Phonautograph' Is Earliest Known Recording Audio historians have found a sound recording that predates Edison's phonograph by nearly 20 years. The "phonautograph" was patented in 1857 by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville; the device recorded images from sounds, tracing squiggles in black soot coating a surface. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Protections Needed in Genetic Testing, Experts Say Genetics policy experts are voicing concern over the lack of basic protections to ensure the validity of genetic tests before they go to market. The authors of a critical analysis published in Science talk about what is needed to make testing safe and dependable. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website City Planners Get Creative to Cut Energy Use In Amsterdam, the cool waters of a local lake are being used to reduce energy spent on air conditioning. In Chicago, city planners are turning to rooftop gardens to keep cool. Journalist Jim Carleton discusses the ways that nine different cities are working to cut back their energy consumption. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Using 'Phage' Viruses to Help Fight Infection In the days before modern antibiotics, some researchers saw viruses that can seek out and destroy bacteria -- called bacteriophages -- as promising candidates for fighting infections. Now, as more organisms develop resistance to existing antibiotics, phage research is finding new favor. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Discover Antibiotic-Eating Bacteria Researchers have found several hundred species of bacteria that have antibiotic-eating ability, some of which are related to bacteria capable of causing disease in humans and animals. George M. Church, who studies the soil-living bacteria, discusses the findings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hands-Only CPR Avoids Need for Mouth-to-Mouth The hands-only first aid technique involves pushing hard and fast in the center of the chest to provide high-quality chest compressions. The American Heart Association found that hands-only CPR is an effective life-saving option for individuals who aren't trained in mouth-to-mouth CPR. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Science Behind Baseball Major League Baseball began its season this week with a series between Boston and Oakland played in Japan. Guests discuss the science behind America's favorite pastime -- from statistics, to orthopedics, to the psychology of die-hard fans. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Defines a Planet? In 2006, astronomers voted to remove Pluto from the list of planets in Earth's solar system -- continuing an ongoing controversy over what exactly defines a planet. Planetary scientist Mark Sykes argues in the journal Science that a planet is simply "a round object orbiting a star." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Birds to Listen and Look For in Your Backyard Birding experts talk about the signs of spring in the avian world, from migrations, to nesting, to birdsong. They'll also weigh in on some threatened birds that enthusiasts should make a special effort to see this spring. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NASA Weathers Departure, Rumors of Budget Cuts Planetary scientist Alan Stern has announced that he is stepping down as NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, the head role in the space agency's science programs. His departure was unexpected, and the agency gave no reason for the sudden departure. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Web Privacy Concerns Prompt Facebook Changes Does it sometimes seem like the Web sites you visit know a little too much about you? While many users say they want more privacy on the Web, they are still likely to reveal data about themselves and their habits online. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sensing the Atmosphere of Distant Planets Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have been able to detect the chemical signature of methane in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star 63 light-years away. It's the first detection of an organic molecule around a planet outside the Earth's solar system. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fresh Water Out of Reach for Many Worldwide March 22nd is annual World Water Day, a tradition started by the United Nations in the early 1990s. "Every 20 seconds," says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "A child dies as a result of the abysmal sanitation conditions endured by some 2.6 billion people globally." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pi Day: An Infinite Number of Ways to Celebrate On Friday, math enthusiasts celebrate pi, the infinite number representing the relationship between a circle's diameter and its circumference. Represented by the Greek letter pi, the number is usually shortened to 3.14, so festivities take place on March 14 or 3/14. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pandemic Flu Simulations Model Outbreak A team of scientists used three different computer models to examine how a pandemic influenza outbreak might travel through a city similar in size to Chicago. What can simulations of a flu outbreak teach us about how to better respond to a real-world pandemic? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Discovery Casts Doubt on 'Hobbit' Theory Researchers say that skeletal remains discovered on the islands of Palau suggest that the so-called "hobbits" found several years ago in Indonesia may have been dwarf humans, not a separate species as previously thought. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Potential of Solar Power Megawatt-generating solar power plants are springing up in the southwestern United States. Could now barren desert lands turn into a major source of energy? As more individuals add solar panels to their homes and businesses, how much energy will solar technology be able to provide? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website With Persuasive Tech, Computers Know Best Can a computer help you quit smoking, watch less TV, or improve your eating habits? Researchers are studying how people interact with their devices -- and how "persuasive technologies" might help us stay on track. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Antarctic Glaciers Sliding Toward the Sea The massive Pine Island glacier is moving toward the ocean at about 3.5 kilometers per year; a trend mirrored by other remote glaciers also picking up speed. Glacier ice moving into the oceans around Antarctica has important implications for sea level rise worldwide. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Old Is the Grand Canyon? Scientists know the age of the rocks at the Grand Canyon, but not the age of the canyon itself. Now, new, controversial research suggests that the formation of the Grand Canyon began at least 17 million years ago, making the canyon significantly older than previously thought. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Genetic Marker Linked to Breast Cancer Researchers have discovered a genetic marker that, if present, indicates an increased risk of developing breast cancer. Women with the variation in their DNA are 1.4 times more likely to develop breast cancer during their lifetimes than women without the marker. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens in the Arctic The Svalbard Global Seed Vault aims to preserve samples of seeds from around the world to protect the planet's crop diversity. Nicknamed "the doomsday seed vault" by some, the frozen vault is now accepting seeds for storage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bacteria Assists in Formation of Ice and Snow Chances are, that pile of snow in your yard contains bacteria -- but not because it's dirty. New work in the journal Science suggests that bacteria may have played an important role in forming those snow crystals. Researchers explain the connection between microbiology and meteorology. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Animal Research: A Discussion of Ethics One of the most contentious topics in medical research is the issue of experimentation on animals. How well do animal models predict what might happen in humans? What alternatives to animal testing exist, and how well do they work? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Why Do We Have Leap Years? The actual time between two yearly solar events works out to be 365.2422 days -- resulting in almost one full extra day every four years. The federal government's chief of time and frequency explains the finer points of telling time. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Constructing Life Creates Questions of Ethics Scientists are getting closer to creating artificial life in the lab. But is society ready for custom-made organisms? Synthetic biology has the potential to dramatically change fields from agriculture to medicine to zoology. But what protections need to be in place as research proceeds? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An In-Depth Look at Genetic Variation Researchers have mapped out 650,000 common, single-letter genetic variations in 938 individuals from 51 populations. They then used that information to trace the migration of the first modern humans -- lending support to the theory that the first humans moved out of Africa across the globe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website And the Grammy Goes to -- a Mathematician? Mathematician Kevin Short shared in a Grammy award recently for his work in restoring "The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949." Short's work on compression and chaos was used to help adjust the speed and timing in the original recording, improving pitch and clarity. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Telescopes Planned for Far Side of the Moon Preliminary plans are underway for an array of new radio telescopes that would cover an area of up to two square km. The Lunar Array for Radio Cosmology (LARC) is planned as an array of hundreds of telescope modules designed to pick up very-low-frequency radio emissions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gecko Toes Inspire Design of New Medical Bandage The pads on the toes of a gecko are coated with microscopic hills and valleys, which help the lizards to cling to difficult-to-climb surfaces. With this in mind, researchers have created a sticky, strong, biodegradable surgical adhesive bandage that could be used in a variety of medical applications. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website What Makes a Stem Cell a Stem Cell? Both stem cells and cancer cells have the unusual ability to renew themselves. So what lets a stem cell know it's a stem cell, and not a cancer cell? Stem cell researcher George Daley talks about the discovery of a protein that may help give stem cells their unusual multi-function abilities. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mapping 'Hot Spots' for Emerging Diseases Outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola, SARS, HIV and avian influenza are on the rise, researchers report in the journal Nature. They say that areas in which humans and animals come in very close contact are a key grounds for emerging diseases. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Map Reveals Extensive Damage to World's Oceans Researchers have published a new map highlighting the human impact on oceans worldwide. Their findings show oceans are in serious trouble, with declining fish stocks, disappearing coral reefs, and changing water chemistry. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Political Influences Trouble Top Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists has issued a statement calling for the next administration and Congress to ensure that federal scientists can publicly communicate findings, publish work, disclose misrepresentation, censorship or other abuses, and have their technical work evaluated by peers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Much Is a Trillion? The 2009 budget proposed by President Bush weighs in at $3.1 trillion. But just how big is a trillion, anyway? $1 trillion would be enough to buy about 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for every person in the U.S. Author David M. Schwartz weighs in how to wrap your head around really big numbers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Science Behind Tornado Formation Severe weather in the south central U.S. this week spawned a string of tornadoes that killed at least 50 people. Generally, spring and early summer are thought of as prime tornado season -- but if the conditions are right, tornadoes don't pay attention to the calendar. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nanotubes Promise Faster, Smaller Electronics Chances are, the chips in the electronic device you're using to read this right now are based on silicon. As demand grows for faster, better, smaller electronics device, the question arises -- what comes after silicon? Researcher John Rogers talks about the possibilities of electronics based on carbon nanotubes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harvesting Energy from Humans in Motion Researchers have built a device resembling a knee brace that can generate usable amounts of electrical energy as a person walks. The brace, described in an article in the journal Science, stores the energy lost when a human brakes the knee after swinging the leg forward to take a step. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Environmentalists Debate the Promise of Biofuels Two recent studies suggest that growing additional biofuel crops might actually increase the amount of carbon entering the atmosphere, especially if existing forests or grasslands must be cleared for biofuel farming. Do the fuels make sense from an environmental and economic standpoint? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Much Is a Trillion? The 2009 budget proposed by President Bush weighs in at $3.1 trillion. But just how big is a trillion, anyway? $1 trillion would be enough to buy about 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for every person in the U.S. Author David M. Schwartz weighs in how to wrap your head around really big numbers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Science Behind Tornado Formation Severe weather in the south central U.S. this week spawned a string of tornadoes that killed at least 50 people. Generally, spring and early summer are thought of as prime tornado season -- but if the conditions are right, tornadoes don't pay attention to the calendar. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nanotubes Promise Faster, Smaller Electronics Chances are, the chips in the electronic device you're using to read this right now are based on silicon. As demand grows for faster, better, smaller electronics device, the question arises -- what comes after silicon? Researcher John Rogers talks about the possibilities of electronics based on carbon nanotubes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Harvesting Energy From Humans in Motion Researchers have built a device resembling a knee brace that can generate usable amounts of electrical energy as a person walks. The brace, described in an article in the journal Science, stores the energy lost when a human brakes the knee after swinging the leg forward to take a step. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Environmentalists Debate the Promise of Biofuels Two recent studies suggest that growing additional biofuel crops might actually increase the amount of carbon entering the atmosphere, especially if existing forests or grasslands must be cleared for biofuel farming. Do the fuels make sense from an environmental and economic standpoint? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Name Your Issue: Science in the 2008 Election What science-related issues do you want to hear addressed by the presidential hopefuls? Climate change? Health care? Funding for research? Spaceflight? Weigh in with your votes for the most important science-related issues in the 2008 election by e-mailing vote@sciencefriday.com. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Bright Future for Solar Energy? Solar power is often offered as one of the most promising forms of renewable energy. How effective can solar power be, and how close is the solar power industry to being able to deliver on the promise of the technology? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Science of Political Polling Why is it that sometimes election exit polls seem to be right on the money, while other times, election results can surprise even expert analysts? Polling experts explain how to conduct a reliable poll and what factors can influence a poll's outcome. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website States Grapple with Electronic Voting Technology Maryland recently announced that it will be moving away from entirely electronic systems to ones in which paper ballots are read by electronic scanners. Florida and California have also turned away from all-electronic "touch-screen" designs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Debunk 'Six Degrees of Separation' The well known "six degrees of separation" idea traces back to a 1967 experiment which tried to determine how many acquaintances it would take to pass a letter between two randomly selected people. Researchers have updated the experiment for the digital world and report that the finding doesn't hold up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Judah Folkman's Legacy for Cancer Research Medical researcher Judah Folkman died Jan. 14 at the age of 74. A central theme of his research was the idea of angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels. His ideas spurred the development of new cancer treatments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Finding '101 Funny Things About Global Warming' Is it possible to laugh about global climate change? New Yorker cartoonist Sidney Harris thinks so. Harris and his New Yorker colleagues have collaborated on a collection of cartoons that find the humor lurking behind impending environmental doom. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NASA to Launch Orbiting Carbon Observatory A satellite observatory designed to map the carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere will be launched in 2008. NASA hopes that it will allow researchers to generate precise global maps of the abundance of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere and get a better understanding of the global carbon cycle. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Are Hurricanes and Climate Change Connected? Researchers from the American Meteorological Society are meeting in January in New Orleans, the site of the hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005. Guest host Joe Palca talks with a hurricane scientist about whether there is a clear link between climate change and hurricanes and tropical cyclones. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Building Synthetic Genomes: Life from Scratch? Scientists in the lab of genome pioneer Craig Venter have built an artificial copy of a bacterium's genome. The new work, reported in the journal Science, marks another step toward being able to create artificial life by inserting an entirely synthetic genome into a bacterial cell. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NASA Flyby Captures New Images of Mercury The Messenger spacecraft made a close flyby of the planet Mercury on Monday in the first encounter with the planet in nearly 33 years. The flyby is the first maneuver in a series of steps that astronomers hope will leave the NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mercury in 2011. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Invisible Sky' Presents NASA Images in Braille A new book in Braille makes images from NASA space telescopes accessible to people with limited vision. Doris Daou, co-author of Touch the Invisible Sky discusses the project and the challenges of presenting space images through the sense of touch. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Biodiesel Hits the Big Screen in 'Fields of Fuel' A documentary film about biofuels is making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. Director Josh Tickell -- also known for traversing the country in his french fry powered "Veggie Van" -- talks about why believes that biodiesel is the key to U.S. energy independence from foreign oil. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Book Chronicles Warsaw Zoo as Refuge in WWII During the Second World War, Warsaw zoo director Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonia sheltered hundreds of Jews from Nazi forces on the grounds of the zoo and in their home. Diane Ackerman has documented the remarkable and unlikely story in her new book, The Zookeeper's Wife. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Researchers Grow Rat Heart in Laboratory Researchers report that they've been able to build an artificial beating rat heart. The new heart is weaker than an ordinary heart, but the researchers hope that the technique could one day be used to help grow replacement organs for patients needing heart transplants. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Farnsworth Invention' Recounts Origins of TV The television has become a basic part of American life -- but where did it come from? Director Des McAnuff and actors Jimmi Simpson and Hank Azaria talk about a new Broadway play that tells television's tale, starting with Philo T. Farnsworth, a boy genius from a small Idaho town. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Predicting Psychotic Disorders in Teens Researchers say that by examining a teenager's specific combination of risk factors, it is possible to predict -- with 65 to 80 percent accuracy -- whether that teen will be merely "at risk" for a disorder, or whether he or she will develop a full-blown psychotic disorder. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Studies Reveal Mechanisms of Monarch Migration What drives monarch butterflies to travel en masse thousands of miles to pine groves in Mexico? New research sheds light on the complex circadian clock mechanism in the butterfly brain, and how monarchs can use the position of the sun for navigation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brown's 'Plan B 3.0' an Environmental Call to Action Environmentalist Lester Brown has a plan to save the planet from climate change. But with calls for a carbon tax and more gasoline taxes, it's not going to be easy or cheap. Brown discusses his book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Voters Petition for Presidential Science Debate Wondering where your candidate stands on issues such as the funding of stem cell research or addressing climate change? A group of voters has started a petition calling for a science debate among the 2008 presidential hopefuls. What questions would you ask? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Author Comes to Natural Food's 'Defense' Michael Pollan discusses his latest book, In Defense of Food, in which he boils his philosophy of nutrition down to a few simple rules including: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" and "Don't eat anything that your great-grandmother would not recognize as food." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Seek 'Swish and Spit' Test for Cancer Researchers are working to develop a test that could detect the presence of certain cancers of the head and neck based on compounds found in saliva. Scientists have found that by looking at samples of saliva from patients with cancer, it was possible to detect cancer in about 42 percent of cases. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NPR News Special: After the Iowa Caucuses Iowans handed caucus victories to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas on Thursday. Neal Conan hosts a discussion of the Iowa caucuses and looks ahead to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website History's Strangest Science Experiments Guests discuss some of science's most unusual research and what it's like to be a human "lab rat." We'll hear from one woman who was blindfolded for five days in the name of science, and another participant who spent 84 days lying in bed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website South Pole Telescope Scans the Skies Physicists are using the largest telescope in Antarctica to probe the farthest edges of the universe. South Pole Telescope scientists discuss their 280-ton scope, what they hope it will show them -- and what it's like to live and work on the southernmost continent. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Documenting Wildlife Across the Globe Three world explorers -- a photographer, an acoustician and a scientist -- talk about documenting wildlife in the most remote places on Earth. We'll track jaguars through the jungles of Belize, scope out rare mountain goats in India, and eavesdrop on barking baboons in Zimbabwe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Asteroid May Cross Path of Red Planet NASA astronomers are monitoring a 164-foot wide asteroid that is headed in the direction of Mars at about 28,000 miles per hour. Scientists say that the space rock has a 1-in-75 chance of colliding with the Red Planet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Black Hole Strikes Neighboring Galaxy Astronomers have captured an image of a jet of high energy particles leaving a black hole at the center of one galaxy to strike the edge of neighboring galaxy. Black hole jets can produce high levels of radiation, potentially sparking new star formation in their path. The black hole is about 1.4 billion light years away. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Authors Investigate the Body's 'Mind of Its Own' Your brain and body use "maps" to translate incoming sensory signals into meaningful information. Science writers Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee talk about their new book, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, which explains "body maps" and their role in connecting the body and the brain. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Biggest Science Stories of 2007 How will 2007 be remembered in the science history books? From the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded for climate change work, to breakthroughs in stem cell research, guests review the top science stories of the year and discuss which discoveries slipped under the radar. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Volunteers Turn Eyes to Sky for Annual Bird Count For the 108th year, volunteer birders are fanning out across the Americas for the National Audubon Society's annual birding census. Data collected during the Christmas Bird Count help researchers monitor bird behavior and bird conservation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marathon Climate Talks Yield Bali Roadmap Delegates at a U.N. climate conference in Bali agreed to a 'roadmap' on Saturday that will guide how the international community approaches the issue of global warming through late 2009. The meeting featured widespread criticism of the United States for impeding environmental progress. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Toxins in the Home: Indoor Air Can Be Polluted Too The Environmental Protection Agency says that the air inside your house could be more polluted -- especially with lead, radon, and tobacco smoke -- than the air outdoors. Guests talk about toxic dangers in common household products and in the very materials that make up your house. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Year, New Technology: The Gadgets of '08 Technology historians might file 2007 as the "Year of the iPhone" or the "Year of Vista" -- but what will 2008 bring? Tom Merritt, a technology journalist from CNET, weighs in with top technology predictions for the coming year, from the rise of Google to a turn toward online television. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Predicting the Future of Reefs in Peril Increasing CO2 levels could greatly shift the chemistry of ocean waters, threatening the existence of most coral species. The fragile reefs also face a phenomenon called "bleaching," caused by rising temperatures and damage from overfishing, pollution, and oil exploration. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Pursuing Comprehensive Health Coverage in the U.S. One of the largest issues facing politicians in the 2008 presidential race is the topic of health care. Experts discuss what steps could be taken to improve health care access. How do other nations approach the issue -- and what can be learned from their programs? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Research Reads: The Best Science Books of 2007 From biographies, to doctors' memoirs, to discussions of stem cells and climate change, we'll talk about the best science-related books published this year. Guests and callers weigh in with their votes for notable science writing of 2007. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Biography Chronicles Life of Jesuit Geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a priest trained in geology and paleontology, was part of the 1929 team that discovered "Peking Man" -- a pre-human skull that helped introduce homo erectus to the world. Author Amir Aczel writes about the challenges de Chardin faced in combining his religion with science. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Life on Earth May Have Begun In Between Rocks A biophysicist discusses her hypothesis that in the early days of the Earth, organic compounds needed for life may have been synthesized in the tiny spaces between sheets of mica rock. Previous theories have stated that life first formed in a primordial "soup" of chemicals in an ancient ocean. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Energy Bill Seeks More Miles for Every Gallon Energy legislation currently moving through Congress could result in an increase in fuel efficiency standards for the U.S. auto fleet -- up to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Guests discuss the legislation and talk about new research that seeks to improve the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website In Texas, a Skirmish over Evolution in Schools The director of the science curriculum in Texas resigned last month after circulating an e-mail about an upcoming talk on the conflict over evolution and creationism in classrooms. Her supervisor says that forwarding the email implies agency endorsement of the speaker's position on the issue and that the agency must remain neutral. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website USDA to Allow Older Cows to Be Imported to U.S. Canadian cattle up to 8-years-old can now be imported into the U.S. -- previously only younger cattle were allowed, as older cattle are at higher risk of developing so-called "mad cow disease." The USDA says that a 1999 ban on certain types of feed make the cattle of minimal risk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Next Horizon in Stem Cell Research Last week, researchers announced a significant advance in stem cell science -- they changed skin cells into cells that seem to behave like embryonic stem cells. The work has the potential to sidestep many of the ethical concerns surrounding previous embryonic stem cell research. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Google Goes Green, Supports Alternative Energy This week, web giant Google announced a new project that aims to support the development of various alternative energy technologies to eventually make them cheaper than coal. Bill Weihl, Google's "alternative energy czar," explains the company's plan to give a boost to green energy solutions. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Tis the Season for Holiday Stress From last-minute gift shopping, to preparing for family celebrations, being of good cheer isn't always easy during the holidays. Health experts discuss the effects that stress can have on your health, and offer some suggestions for keeping your cool during this frantically festive season. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rewiring the Sense of Touch Doctors have rewired the nerves of two amputees to restore the sensation of touch to their missing hands. The amputees now experience an object touching their chest in two ways at the same time -- the expected feeling of being touched on the chest, and the sensation of being touched on a missing hand. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Did the Universe Become 'Just Right'? Why did our universe develop in such a way that we can exist? Was it by accident or by design? And is that a question science can answer? Writer, physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies discusses his theories on how the universe came to be such a perfect environment for life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Imagining a World Without Humans What would happen to the Earth if all humans suddenly disappeared? In his new book The World Without Us, author Alan Weisman discusses how long it would take for all evidence of human life to vanish from the planet. Weisman says that after just two days without human intervention, the New York City subway system would be flooded. After one year, every nuclear power plant on Earth would have failed or melted down. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Highlights from the Ig Nobel Awards Ten Ig Nobel awards were given out in early October by the editors of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research. This year's award-winning research included scientific investigations of sword-swallowing, wrinkled sheets, the effects of Viagra on jetlagged hamsters, and more. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Did the Universe Become 'Just Right'? Why did our universe develop in such a way that we can exist? Was it by accident or by design? And is that a question science can answer? Writer, physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies discusses his theories on how the universe came to be such a perfect environment for life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Imagining a World Without Humans What would happen to the Earth if all humans suddenly disappeared? In his new book The World Without Us, author Alan Weisman discusses how long it would take for all evidence of human life to vanish from the planet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Highlights from the Ig Nobel Awards Sure, there are the Nobel Prizes, but what about the Ig Nobel Prizes? Ten Ig Nobel awards were given out in early October by the editors of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The Evolving Role of Presidential Science Advisors How important are a president's advisors when it comes to making decisions that deal with science and technology? Scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. interviewed seven of the 14 most recent presidential science advisors, who served under presidents from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Terra' Paints Portrait of Earth Ecosystems in Peril In his new book, Terra, fossil hunter Michael Novacek writes that Earth is overburdened and that the planet faces a mass extinction. Novacek, a paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, discusses the history of ecosystems on Earth, and current risks to the environment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Clone Monkey Embryo, Derive Stem Cells Scientists in Oregon are the first to successfully clone a primate embryo. The research team used skin cells from rhesus macaque monkeys to create the cloned embryos. In 2004, Korean researchers fraudulently claimed to have used a similar process to clone a human embryo. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Make Advances in Extracting Hydrogen Researchers have developed a more efficient way to extract hydrogen from biological materials using a bacterial fuel cell. One of the scientists working on the project discusses the efforts, and whether the new method might change the debate over biofuels. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Phones of the Future and Google's Cell Debut Fed up with your current cell phone -- or your service provider? Mobile experts discuss what can be expected from cell phones and cell companies in the future. Google is working to develop a new kind of software that could work on many different handsets -- will it simplify the market or add to the confusion? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study Maps Activity of Swing Voters' Brains What happens in your brain when you think about politics? Researchers are using fMRI brain imaging techniques to look at how swing voters react when exposed to the current crop of presidential candidates. Can maps of brain activity provide clues to how voters will act in the polling booth? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Not All Calories Are Created Equal, Author Says Science writer Gary Taubes argues that when it comes to counting calories, dieters need to be thinking about quality, not just quantity. In his new book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes challenges widely held beliefs about the healthiest ways to eat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Diagrams of the Brain Paint a Colorful 'Brainbow' Researchers have developed a new technique to label individual neurons in the brain in different colors. This method, which the scientists have dubbed 'brainbow,' could help shed light on brain function in a way that traditional staining methods don't allow. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NASA Study Raises Concerns About Air Safety The study found that serious safety problems with air travel -- such as near collisions and runway interference -- occur far more often than previously recognized. NASA didn't initially release the results to the public, for fear that the findings would alarm passengers and harm airline profits. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Climate Solutions Sought as CO2 Levels Rise Levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere are rising faster than predicted, researchers say. Also, carbon sinks -- places that take CO2 out of the atmosphere -- aren't absorbing the gas as well as they used to. Several recent papers propose new ways to combat global climate change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robot Road Test: Navigating City Streets Several years ago, the U.S. military research agency DARPA challenged engineers to develop robotic vehicles that could successfully navigate a course in the Mojave Desert. Now, DARPA has upped the ante, asking teams to build robotic vehicles that can be trusted to safely drive on city streets. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Author Explains Mysteries of Music and the Mind Why can music sometimes remain in the brain long after other memories fade? Why is it that some people with limited language abilities can sing unimpaired? Neurologist Oliver Sacks talks about his latest book, Musicophilia, and the way music affects the brain. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Remnants of Yellowstone Supervolcano Still Active It's no secret that the Yellowstone area is still geologically active -- that's what's responsible for the geysers and hot springs that make the park famous. But researchers have been surprised by the rate at which the remnants of a supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park are rising. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How the U.S. Measures Up in Math and Science A team of researchers have re-assessed the results of several common measures of math and science education success. One researcher says that, when it comes to math and science, the study found that "American students are no worse, and often score better, than students from many leading countries." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Astronomers Investigate the Source of Cosmic Rays Astronomers have long attempted to locate the source of high-energy cosmic rays that hit the Earth's atmosphere. Now, researchers say that many of the rays can be traced to areas of the sky that contain nearby active galactic nuclei, thought to be powered by supermassive black holes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Not All Calories Are Created Equal, Author Says Science writer Gary Taubes argues that when it comes to counting calories, dieters should be thinking about quality, not quantity. In his new book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes challenges widely held beliefs about the healthiest ways to eat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Diagrams of the Brain Paint a Colorful 'Brainbow' Researchers have developed a new technique to label individual neurons in the brain in different colors. This method, which the scientists have dubbed 'brainbow,' could help shed light on brain function in a way that traditional staining methods don't allow. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website NASA Study Raises Concerns About Air Safety The study found that serious safety problems with air travel -- such as near collisions and runway interference -- occur far more often than previously recognized. NASA didn't initially release the results to the public, for fear that the findings would alarm passengers and harm airline profits. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Climate Solutions Sought as CO2 Levels Rise Levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere are rising faster than predicted, researchers say. Also, carbon sinks -- places that take CO2 out of the atmosphere -- aren't absorbing the gas as well as they used to. Several recent papers propose new ways to combat global climate change. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study: Voters Take First Impressions to the Polls A new study has found that in less than one second, people can predict the winners of political elections with 70 percent accuracy -- simply by glancing at pictures of the candidates. The study suggests that when it comes to voting, appearance and first impressions are no small factor. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Biography Chronicles von Braun, 'Dreamer of Space' Space historian Michael Neufeld talks about his new biography of scientist Wernher von Braun, chief rocket engineer of the Nazi Third Reich. After the war, von Braun became a key player in the development of the U. S. space program. Neufeld discusses von Braun's life and his influence on space exploration. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website China Launches Orbiter, Shoots for Moon by 2020 This week, China launched Chang'e One, a robotic lunar orbiter. The mission is a step in a larger plan that would land a Chinese astronaut on the moon by 2020. The launch follows a Japanese-led moon launch and India is planning to launch its own lunar mission next year. Is a new global space race under way? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Building Safer Bridges in Wake of I-35W Collapse This month, Minnesota's Department of Transportation picked a design for the new Interstate 35W Bridge, to replace the one that collapsed in August. Guests discuss new ways to build safer bridges, and why the U.S. gets a nearly failing grade when it comes to maintaining infrastructure. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Seeking Solutions to Improve Global Health In a recent issue of PLOS Medicine, the journal solicited suggestions from the world's leading public health advocates about the best ways to solve health problems around the world. They also asked people living in extreme poverty to weigh in on the most effective ways to improve health in poor areas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Vaccinations Encouraged as Flu Season Looms Clinics across the country are offering vaccinations against the viruses that experts predict will be the most serious infectious contenders this season. The government is encouraging widespread use of the vaccine. Experts discuss the upcoming flu season and efforts to improve prevention and treatment. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study Finds Drug-Resistant 'Superbugs' on Rise A study published this week shows that the prevalence of a drug-resistant bacteria, MRSA, might be twice as high as previously believed. Doctors have also identified a strain of bacteria responsible for the common ear infection that is resistant to all antibiotics approved for use in children. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Telescope Array Is Turned to the Sky Astronomers have switched on 42 radio dishes of a telescope array in Northern California. A total of 350 dishes are planned for the Allen Telescope Array, which will allow astronomers to image large portions of the sky in one exposure -- and search for extraterrestrial life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Funding Campus Research: Conflict of Interest? Each year, drug companies funnel thousands of dollars through college campuses. They provide money for clinical research, for paying professors to speak at meetings, even money to buy pizza for med students. Does that money skew the science that's done on campus? Is there a conflict of interest? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Blood Tests May Aid in Alzheimer's Diagnosis Researchers say a new blood test could help give doctors a jump start on diagnosing Alzheimer's in its early stages. By looking at blood samples from patients with Alzheimer's, the researchers say they may be able to identify the neurological disease much earlier in its course. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website New Discoveries in Deep-Sea Biodiversity Researchers have discovered tens of thousands of new species of microbes living near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. A study examining DNA from underwater vents off the Oregon coast revealed a wealth of previously unreported species. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Are Today's Hospital Patients 'Overtreated'? In her new book, Overtreated, author Shannon Brownlee argues that overuse of high-tech tests and unnecessary hospital stays result in a less efficient, more costly health care system. She says the economics of health care are upside down and could possibly be hazardous to patients. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Own Your Own Meteorite Later this month, several small meteorites will be auctioned off by a major auction house. Purchasing space artifacts has become big business, says Robert Pearlman, an expert on space-related collecting. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website How Does Cancer Spread Though the Body? Cancer researcher Robert Weinberg discusses what he calls the last frontier of cancer research -- discovering how and why cancers spread through the body. In two recent studies, Weinberg and his colleagues found clues to understanding tumor metastases. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Global Helium Shortage Causes Prices to Rise Though it's the second most abundant element in the universe, helium is hard to come by on Earth. In the U.S., a long-held "strategic reserve" of helium is being eliminated, with all but 2,900 tons of the gas slated to be sold by 2015. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Out of Ink? Try Printing Live Cells Researchers have successfully "printed" bacteria, yeast, and animal cells using common home-office inkjet printing technology. Scientists are currently examining ways to manipulate living cells using the same technology. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 'Body Farm' Yields Data on Decomposition, Death Pioneering forensic anthropologist Bill Bass has created a revolutionary laboratory dedicated to researching human decomposition. Bass is the author of Beyond the Body Farm; he discusses what decomposing bones can tell police about a crime. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website The 'Numb3rs' Don't Lie Mathematics may seem like an unusual tool to catch criminals, but real math and actual events inspire the CBS crime drama Numb3rs. Guests discuss the intersection of math-based crime solving and prime-time television. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Working on the Web: New Online Office Applications Developers are working to create new office programs that run in your web browser. Will online office applications give conventional office software a run for the money? Eric Lai, a reporter for Computerworld, weighs in. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Fuels of the Future: How Far Down the Road? Corn-based ethanol, biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol -- they're all ways to try to reduce our dependence on oil. But how close are we to growing enough fuel to make a difference? Guests discuss the future of alternative energy and biofuels. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Scientists Glean Clues from Ancient Mammoth Hair A research team has managed to extract DNA from a strand of ancient mammoth hair. What can the findings tell us about how mammoths lived? Can the technique be used to learn more about other prehistoric animals? Guests discuss the life and death of the mammoth. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Comet May Have Led to Ice-Age Extinction In a paper published this week, scientists say they have evidence that a comet or other low-density space object exploded in the upper atmosphere of the Earth about 13,000 years ago. They think the explosion may have led to the extinction of woolly mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bush Convenes Climate Conference in Washington At a U.N. meeting this week, more than 80 heads of state met to focus on the problem of climate change. President Bush did not participate in that meeting, choosing instead to convene a separate two-day conference in Washington. Will the new round of talks lead to any changes in U.S. climate policy? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Looking to Oceans to Capture Carbon Dioxide James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis, talks about his idea to spur the oceans to capture large amounts of CO2. Under the plan, large vertical tubes would bring nutrient-rich water from the ocean depths closer to the surface, feeding algal blooms that would absorb excess carbon dioxide. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sputnik I, the First Satellite to Orbit Earth, Turns 50 In 1957, a little beeping ball stunned the world. Sputnik I, launched 50 years ago on Oct. 4, set the stage for many more satellites to follow and marked the dawn of the space age. Guests discuss Sputnik and its effects on science, education, and the way we view the world. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Encouraging American Girls to Embrace Math In a new book for middle-school girls, actress and mathematician Danica McKellar argues that being good at math can be cool. Also, a team of U.S. girls recently held their own in the China Girls Mathematical Olympiad. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Study: Bad In-Flight Air Exacerbated by Passengers A new study has found that oils on passengers' hair, skin and clothing are partly to blame for stale in-flight air. Researchers show that ozone, which enters the cabin during flight, combines with oils and other materials to create potentially irritating airborne chemicals. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An Update from the Mars Orbiter Scientists have recently published papers outlining the observations of the latest Mars orbiter. Professors Alfred McEwen and Maria Zuber talk about whether the orbiter has detected any signs of water, and what future missions to the Red Planet should investigate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Competitors Build Moon Rovers for Lunar X-Prize In the 1960s, the U.S. and Soviet Union were in a race to the moon. Now, the Lunar X-Prize has challenged today's generation to a do-it-yourself space race. Backed by money from Google, X-Prize is offering as much as $30 million to the team that builds the best privately funded, robotic rover. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Way with Words: Language and Human Nature In English, we can babble, bark, bleat and bray. But we ca