Category: ScienceNews

The COVID-19 has exposed longstanding and massive health disparities in the U.S., resulting in people of color dying at disproportionately higher rates than other races in this country. Today on the show, guest host Maria Godoy talks with Usha Lee McFarling about her reporting — how new funding and interest has led to increased attention to the topic of disparities in health care and health outcomes, but also left out or pushed aside some researchers in the field — many of them researchers of color.

You can follow Maria on Twitter @MGodoyH. Email ShortWave@NPR.org.

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Cockroaches - do they get a bad rap? Producer Thomas Lu teams up with self-proclaimed lesbian cockroach defender Perry Beasley-Hall to convince producer/guest host Rebecca Ramirez that indeed they are under-rated. These critters could number up to 10,000 species, but only about 30 are pesky to humans and some are beautiful! And complicated! And maybe even clean.

What insect do you think gets a bad rap? Write us at ShortWave@NPR.org. You can follow Thomas on Twitter @ThomasUyLu and Rebecca @RebeccalRamirez.

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n December 2020, China's Chang'e-5 mission returned to earth carrying rock samples collected from the moon – the first lunar samples to be collected since the American Apollo and Luna missions to the moon in the 1970s.

Laboratory analysis has revealed that these are the youngest samples of rocks to be collected from the moon. Lunar geologist Katherine Joy explains what this tells us about the moon’s volcanic past. Also on the programme, a recent study reveals that the hepatitis B virus has been infecting humans for at least 10,000 years.

Denise Kühnert from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History shares what the evolution of the virus tells us about human evolution, as well as the rise and fall of civilisations. In the wake of Cyclone Shaheen, we also speak to Princeton University’s Ning Lin about how climate modelling can help us predict tropical storms in the Arabian Sea, and Fredi Otto joins us to discuss the 2021 Nobel Prizes for Science.

Snails are a major enemy of gardeners around the world, invading vegetable patches and gobbling prize plants. CrowdScience listener Alexandre reckons he’s removed thousands of them from his garden, which got him wondering: apart from eating his garden to the core, what’s their wider role in nature? Would anyone or anything miss them if they suddenly disappeared?

And for that matter, what about other creatures? We all know how complex biodiversity is, but it seems that some animals are more important than others in maintaining the balance of life on earth. Is there anything that could go extinct without having knock-on effects?

CrowdScience heads to the Hawaiian mountains, a snail diversity hotspot, to discover the deep value of snails to native ecosystems there. Researchers and conservationists are working together to protect these highly endangered snails, and their natural habitats, from multiple threats. We hear why all snails – even the ones munching Alexandre’s petunias – have their role to play in the natural world, and get to grips with cascading extinctions: how the loss of a single species can trigger unpredictable effects on a whole ecosystem.

(Image: Getty Images)

Snails are a major enemy of gardeners around the world, invading vegetable patches and gobbling prize plants. CrowdScience listener Alexandre reckons he’s removed thousands of them from his garden, which got him wondering: apart from eating his garden to the core, what’s their wider role in nature? Would anyone or anything miss them if they suddenly disappeared?

And for that matter, what about other creatures? We all know how complex biodiversity is, but it seems that some animals are more important than others in maintaining the balance of life on earth. Is there anything that could go extinct without having knock-on effects?

CrowdScience heads to the Hawaiian mountains, a snail diversity hotspot, to discover the deep value of snails to native ecosystems there. Researchers and conservationists are working together to protect these highly endangered snails, and their natural habitats, from multiple threats.

We hear why all snails – even the ones munching Alexandre’s petunias – have their role to play in the natural world, and get to grips with cascading extinctions: how the loss of a single species can trigger unpredictable effects on a whole ecosystem.

With contributions from Imogen Cavadino, Dr Norine Yeung, Dr Kenneth Hayes, Dr David Sischo, Jan Kealoha, and Professor Ian Donohue.

Presented by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Cathy Edwards for the BBC World Service

[Image credit: Getty Images]

How did humans evolve some key cooperative behaviors like sharing? NPR Science Correspondent Jon Hamilton reports back from a bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where scientists are trying to answer that very question. (Encore episode)

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In December 2020, China's Chang'e-5 mission returned to earth carrying rock samples collected from the moon – the first lunar samples to be collected since the American Apollo and Luna missions to the moon in the 1970s. Laboratory analysis has revealed that these are the youngest samples of rocks to be collected from the moon. Lunar geologist Katherine Joy explains what this tells us about the moon’s volcanic past.

Also on the programme, a recent study reveals that the hepatitis B virus has been infecting humans for at least 10,000 years. Denise Kühnert from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History shares what the evolution of the virus tells us about human evolution, as well as the rise and fall of civilisations.

In the wake of Cyclone Shaheen, we also speak to Princeton University’s Ning Lin about how climate modelling can help us predict tropical storms in the Arabian Sea, and Fredi Otto joins us to discuss the 2021 Nobel Prizes for Science.

(Image: Getty Images)

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Samara Linton

Why do some songs can stick with us for a long time, even when other memories start to fade? Science reporter (and former Short Wave intern) Rasha Aridi explains the neuroscience behind that surprising moment of, "Wow, how do I still remember that song?!"

Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

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Humans have scalp hair. But why is human scalp hair so varied? Biological anthropologist Tina Lasisi wanted to find out. And while completing her PhD at Penn State University, she developed a better system for describing hair — rooted in actual science.

To hear more from Tina, check out these webinars: Why Care About Hair (https://bit.ly/3liJZ96) and How Hair Reveals the Futility of Race Categories (https://s.si.edu/3Dik6g8). And to dive deep into Tina's research, we recommend her paper, The constraints of racialization: How classification and valuation hinder scientific research on human variation (https://bit.ly/3DfDrOS)

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“Convict criminology,” Jeffrey Ian Ross explains in this Social Science Bites podcast, is “a network, or platform, that’s united in the perception that the convict voice has been either neglected or marginalized in scholarship or policy debates in the field of criminology in general, and corrections in particular.” Ross, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Baltimore, is one of the originators of the concept, he tells interviewer David Edmonds. Seeing “a big gap” in the work of criminology and corrections, in the early 1990s he and Stephen Richards focused on tapping “the lived experience of convicts” for this academic work. Both men had experience with the corrections system – Ross had worked for several years in a correctional institution and later was a social science analysts with U.S. Department of Justice, while Richards had spent three years in federal prison for marijuana distribution before becoming a professor.

About half of the people in the field of convict criminology are either ex-convicts, have impacted by the prison system or are prison activists who have or are in the process of getting a PhD in criminology, Ross says. “Many people who have a criminal conviction try to keep it quiet,” Ross says about jobseekers in academe (or anywhere), and he’s proud of the strides convict criminologists have made. “We’ve managed to forge a beachhead and produce very impressive scholarship,” he says, all the while offering authenticity and degree of inside knowledge.

Convict criminology, he details, rests on three pillars: scholarly research, mentorship, and some sort of service or activism. All three pillars arise from a “desire and goal to make a meaningful impact on prison conditions.”

So mentorship, for example, might involve having ex-cons be mentors in re-entry programs, while scholarly research benefits from both having an inside view that pays extra dividends when interviewing incarcerated or formerly incarcerated subjects and in understanding the nuances of their accounts.

Ross has written, co-written or edited a number of books on criminology, including the Routledge Handbook of Street Culture and Convict Criminology for the Future, both out this year.

He has received a number of awards over the years, including the University of Baltimore’s Distinguished Chair in Research Award in 2003; the Hans W. Mattick Award, “for an individual who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of criminology and criminal justice practice,” from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2018 Last year he received both the John Howard Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Division of Corrections and the John Keith Irwin Distinguished Professor Award from the American Society of Criminology's Division of Convict Criminology.

Our colleagues at the TED Radio Hour introduce us to forager and TikTok influencer Alexis Nikole Nelson. She shares how the great outdoors has offered her both an endless array of food options and an outlet to reconnect with her food and her culture.

Listen to the full TED Radio Hour episode, The Food Connection: https://n.pr/3DeRmEU

Follow TED Radio Hour and host Manoush Zomorodi on Twitter:
- TED Radio Hour: https://twitter.com/TEDRadioHour
- Manoush Zamorodi: https://twitter.com/manoushz

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