Category: ScienceNews

A dinosaur with metre-long spikes has been discovered. The species, Spicomellus afer, is from the Jurassic Period and is the oldest example of a group of animals called ankylosaurs.

The scientists behind the research have dubbed the new dinosaur the ‘punk rock dinosaur’, which led the Unexpected Elements team to go out searching for the science on all things punk, rock, and heavy metal.

First up, we find out what other punks might be lurking in the fossil record. And meet a pair of unconventional molluscs.

Next up on the set list, we investigate the physics underpinning mosh pits and the implications this could have for crowd control.

We speak with Anirudh Patel, an astrophysicist from Columbia University, who is scouring deep space to find out more about the origins of heavy metals.

And we dig into the unexpected link between water pipes and IQ.

All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Camilla Mota and Meral Jamal Producers: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, with Lucy Davies and Robbie Wojciechowski

Mars is known for its barren desert landscape and dry climate. But two recent studies in the journals Nature and Science go beneath the surface, exploring the interior of the red planet using seismic data from NASA’s InSight mission. And now, this data is also giving scientists a glimpse into the planet’s history – to see how Mars evolved over billions of years and how its inner structure compares to that of Earth. 

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Despite the relatively low magnitude, earthquakes in Afghanistan this week have left more than1000 dead. Afghan researcher Zakeria Shnizai from the University of Oxford unpicks some of the main causes of the country’s vulnerability to earthquakes.

Also this week, we talk to the climate scientist who led a 400+ page rebuttal to the US Department of Energy’s report on climate change.

We hear about research which has mapped the activity of over 600,000 neurons in 279 regions of the mouse brain to learn more about how decisions are made.

And we get the latest updates on 3I/ATLAS, the latest interstellar comet streaking its way across our solar system, just before it disappears behind the sun.

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Ella Hubber Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

(Image: Magnitude 6.0 earthquake strikes eastern Afghanistan. Credit: Anadolu via Getty Images).

In our news wrap Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully terminated Harvard's research grants, Florida is moving to become the first state to eliminate all vaccine mandates for children to attend school and President Trump is defending a military strike on a boat in the Caribbean, saying it will prevent further attempts to bring drugs into the country. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Few countries in the world are considered more vulnerable to the impact of rising sea levels and climate change than Bangladesh, a nation of 175 million people squeezed into a landmass the size of Iowa. In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, Fred de Sam Lazaro traveled to Bangladesh to look at efforts to build resilience in the face of the escalating consequences. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

For a long time, scientists have suspected that stuttering — a common speech condition that affects an estimated 1 in every 100 people — could be heritable. Despite how common it is, it's still a remarkably understudied condition.

Geneticists Piper Below and Dillon Pruett were determined to fix that. With the help of 23andMe data, they recently identified 57 genetic regions linked to stuttering in the human genome. Their findings represent a new breakthrough in how researchers think about speech conditions, genetics and the conditions that are linked to them. They're what some are calling a "quantum leap" in the field.

Interested in more human biology and genetics episodes? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
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Many Americans who want to get the newest COVID vaccines may now have a harder time doing so. The Food and Drug Administration limited approval for the shots to adults 65 and older or those who are "high risk" for severe disease. The vaccine was previously available to individuals six months of age and older. Amna Nawaz discussed the changes with Dr. Katelyn Jetelina of Your Local Epidemiologist. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

As an anthropologist, Victor Buchli has one foot in the Neolithic past and another in the space-faring future. A professor of material culture at University College London, his research has taken him from excavations of the New Stone Age site at Çatalhöyük, Turkey to studies of the modern suburbs of London to examinations of life on -- and in service to -- the International Space Station.

It is in that later role, as principal investigator for a European Research Council-funded research project on the "Ethnography of an Extraterrestrial Society," that he visits the Social Science Bites podcast. He details for interviewer David Edmonds some of the things his team has learned from studying the teams -- both in space but more so those on Earth -- supporting the International Space Station.

Buchli describes, for example, the "overview effect." The occurs when which people seeing the Earth without the dotted lines and map coordinates that usually color their perceptions. "When you look down," he explains, "you don't see borders, you just see the earth in its totality, in a sense that produces a new kind of universalism."

He also reviews his own work on material culture, specifically examining how microgravity affects the creation of things. "It is the case within the social sciences, and particularly within anthropology, that gravity is just assumed. And so here we have an environment where suddenly this one single factor that controls absolutely everything that we do as humans on Earth is basically factored out. So how does that change our understanding of these human activities, these sorts of human institutions?"

Buchli has written extensively on material culture, serving as managing editor of the Journal of Material Culture, founding and managing editor of Home Cultures, and editor of 2002's The Material Culture Reader and the five-volume Material Culture: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. Other books he's written include 1995's Interpreting Archaeology, 1999's An Archaeology of Socialism, and 2001's Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past.

More than 1 in 10 people in the United States take an antidepressant. And the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant are SSRIs — or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That includes drugs like Zoloft, Prozac and Lexapro. But what happens when some patients decide they want to stop taking their SSRIs? While doctors know stopping SSRIs can sometimes cause unpleasant short-term side effects – like dizziness, anxiety, insomnia and nausea – some people report symptoms that last months, even years. So, with investigative reporter Emily Corwin and professor of clinical psychology Michael Hengartner, we’re diving into the research around the long-term effects of going off your antidepressants – what it shows and its limits. 


Read more of Emily Corwin’s reporting on the topic here. 


Want more stories on mental health? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.


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Trisomy 18, also known sometimes as Edwards syndrome, is often fatal within weeks after a baby is born. But now, parents and doctors are finding ways of getting more time with those children with greater interventions and incredible commitments. Stephanie Sy discussed the difficult ethical questions around it with Dr. Sheri Fink. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy