Category: ScienceNews

COVID-19 cases are on the rise in the last month due to the Delta variant. NPR correspondent Allison Aubrey talks with Emily Kwong about where the virus is resurging, how some public health officials are reacting and what they are recommending. Also, with a spate of outbreaks at summer camp, officials are weighing in on what parents can do before they send children to camp.

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As a kid, Jasmin Graham was endlessly curious about the ocean. Her constant questioning eventually led her to a career in marine science studying sharks and rays. But until relatively recently, she had never met another Black woman in her field.

That all changed last year when she connected with a group of Black women studying sharks through the Twitter hashtag #BlackInNature. Finding a community was so powerful that the women decided to start a group.

On today's show, Jasmin talks with host Maddie Sofia about Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS) and how it's uplifting women of color through hands-on workshops and community building.

To see pictures of MISS's first workshop check out their website.

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Anyone who has ever taken the Christmas lights out of the cupboard, only to discover they’re hopelessly tangled, will sympathise with this week’s listener Eric. He has a 45m garden hose that always seems to snarl up and snag when he waters his garden, and he wonders what he’s doing wrong?

Marnie starts by discovering the important difference between tangles and knots, as she scales a cliff with an experienced climber who explains the way you tie rope is a matter of life and death.

Physicists are also fascinated in how string becomes jumbled up and one man has even won an IgNobel award for his work in this field. Doug E Smith discovered that if you put a piece of string in a box then spin it around, its length, thickness and how long you shake the box for, all determine whether it will tie itself up. Not only that, the more the string becomes twisted, the more likely it is to cross over itself and become impossible to untangle.

While tangles might be annoying in hair or cables, they’re also a fundamental part of human life. Our DNA is constantly folding itself to fit inside tiny spaces – there are two metres of the stuff inside every cell, where it’s packed down tightly, before it must untangle and duplicate for those cells to divide. It does this with the help of specific enzymes, and when the process goes wrong it leads to cell death. But scientists are also studying molecular tangles that might benefit us humans, and creating nano-sized knots that can be turned into nets or meshes with incredible properties. Producer: Ilan Goodman Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

July is National Ice Cream Month — and Sunday, July 18 is National Ice Cream Day (in the US)! Flavors range from the classics — vanilla and chocolate — to the adventurous — jalapeño and cicada. But for some people, including ice cream scientist Dr. Maya Warren, flavor is only one part of the ice cream allure. So in today's episode, Emily Kwong talks with Short Wave producer Thomas Lu about some of the processes that create the texture of ice cream, and how that texture plays into our enjoyment of the tasty treat.

You can follow Thomas on twitter @thomasuylu and Emily @emilykwong1234. Email the show with suggestions or thoughts at ShortWave@NPR.org.

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This week the UK parliament voted to accept the Government’s continued cap on Official Development Aid. This disappointed many researchers around the world, funded directly and indirectly through various scientific funding structures enabling international collaboration on some of the global challenges facing all of us. These funding mechanisms make for a small fraction of the overall amount, but they have been hit hard, with many projects closing altogether.

There had been hope amongst the scientific community that the cap – from 0.7% down to 0.5% of the UK’s Gross Domestic Income – might have been in place just for a year. But it seems like the criteria set to judge when the level of aid might rise again imply that it is unlikely to happen for several years at the earliest.

What, asks Science in Action, does that mean to the world of scientific collaboration on such topics as climate change, contagious disease, and emergency planning?

Researchers Chris Trisos and Jenni Barclay, with journalist Robin Bisson of Research Professional News, update us on the story.

In Zambia, where covid testing remains scarce, a project run by Boston University’s Christopher Gill has been estimating the prevalence of covid in the capital Lusaka by taking nasal swab samples from the noses of around one in five of those recently deceased, in the morgue of a major hospital. Tantalisingly, his team have seen over the last few months a sharp rise in cases to the extent that in June, nearly 90 percent of the cadavers tested positive for covid. But as Chris describes, unrelated to the UK cuts, their funding has now run out, so where the graph leads from here we may not learn for a long time.

Presented by Roland Pease Produced by Alex Mansfield.

(Image: Getty Images)

Delta is quickly becoming the dominant coronavirus variant in multiple countries. The variant has spread so fast because it is more contagious than the variants that came before it. At the same time, the U.S. is equipped with highly effective vaccines. Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, talks with Maddie about the interaction between the variants and the vaccines and how that will be crucial in the months ahead.

Reach the show by emailing shortwave@npr.org.

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Contrary to sci-fi depictions in shows like Iron Man and Star Wars, getting from point A to point B in space is a tough engineering problem. NPR Science Correspondent Geoff Brumfiel explains how space propulsion actually works, and why some new technologies might be needed to get humans to Mars and beyond.

Follow Geoff Brumfiel and Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong on Twitter. Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

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At the height of the pandemic, routine cancer screenings declined by 90 percent. Screenings are resuming and doctors are diagnosing later-stage cancers — cancers that might have been caught earlier. NPR science correspondent Yuki Noguchi of talks about whom this affects most, and about the ripple effects that missing cancer screening may have for years to come.

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On the mountaintop glaciers of the Pacific Northwest lives a mysterious, and often, overlooked creature. They're small, thread-like worms that wiggle through snow and ice. That's right, ice worms! NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce talks to Emily about how they survive in an extreme environment and why scientists don't understand some of the most basic facts about them.

For more of Nell's reporting, you can follow her on Twitter @nell_sci_NPR. You can follow Emily @emilykwong1234.

Email the show with suggestions or thoughts at ShortWave@NPR.org.

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Standing takes less energy than walking, so why does it feel more tiring? At least, it does for CrowdScience listener Nina. She can march for hours without getting tired, but her legs and feet get achy after just a short time standing still.

It’s one of three walking-themed questions CrowdScience is tackling this week. Taking inspiration from our active listeners, Marnie Chesterton walks up a hill with Caroline Williams, author of a new book about why humans are designed to move. We find out how our whole system – body and brain – works better when we’re walking, compared to standing still. We’re probably set up this way because of our evolutionary history: hunting and gathering needed us to be ‘cognitively engaged endurance athletes’.

We stop for a break.. but is it true that we shouldn’t sit down to rest during a walk? Our listener Sarah is a keen hillwalker but likes to take the weight off her feet every now and again. Her hillwalking friends disapprove, saying she should rest on her feet. Is this a myth CrowdScience can bust?

And finally a question from listener Matteo: is walking or running better for your health? Numerous studies show significant benefits to both forms of exercise, but in the end, the best kind of exercise is the one you’re motivated to do.

With Caroline Williams, Dr François-Xavier Li, Professor Dick Greene and Professor Duck-Chul Lee.