Category: ScienceNews

There are over 400,000 species of plant on earth, they’re on every continent including Antarctica. But humans only regularly eat about 200 species globally, with the vast majority of our nutrition coming from just three species. Many of the fruits, leaves and tubers that other plants grow are packed full of toxins that are poisonous to us, and would make us very ill if we ate them. But could we take out the poisons and create new, edible crops? That’s what CrowdScience listener Marija wants to know.

Crowdscience dives into this topic, and uncovers the that many crops are poisonous, and why so few plants are eaten globally. Host Anand Jagatia finds that even the modern scientific processes of crop breeding are very slow. But science can now engineer plants at the genetic level by adding, silencing or removing specific genes. This ‘genetic modification’ is hugely controversial but can be highly effective.

Anand finds a man who has spent decades making cotton seeds edible by removing the poisons they naturally produce in their seeds. This GM crop could help fend-off starvation. But sometimes introducing poisons can be as important as removing them, as we find in the genetically modified ‘BT eggplants’ in Bangladesh. The new gene makes the vegetable toxic to a major insect pest, so they are much easier to grow.

But GM crops are not the perfect solution. They have problems of gene escape, can increase the use of environmentally damaging herbicide, and can be open to monopolisation. In some countries, particularly in Europe, GM crops are hugely controversial. Anand finds out whether these concerns stand up to science and looks at the counterpoint in developing countries in Africa, South Asia and elsewhere, where local farmers like Patience Koku in Nigeria have little time for some of the concerns around GM, particularly as they see poor harvests, poverty and starvation as the more pressing problems.

Contributors: Professor Sandra Knapp, The Natural History Museum in London Professor Julie King, Nottingham University Professor Keerti Rathore, Texas A&M University Dr Yousuf Akhond, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute Professor Matthew Cobb, University of Manchester Patience Koku, Nigerian Farmer and member of the Global Farmer’s Network Alliance for Science

Produced by Rory Galloway and presented by Anand Jagatia for the BBC World Service.

Image: Farmer with Fruits. Credit: Arif Hossain, Farming Future Bangladesh.

It's the latest installment of our series, "Animal Slander," where we take a common saying about animals and see what truth there is to it. The case before the Short Wave court today: "badgering." We look at the dark origins of the word and explore the wild world of badger biology with University of Oxford scientist Tanesha Allen.

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We wouldn’t drink dirty water so why do we put up with polluted air? Researchers are calling for a major rethink on our attitude to air quality. Professor Lidia Morawska, from the Queensland University of Technology, says attention to air quality during the Covid pandemic has shown how levels of airborne disease can be reduced.

Sam Wilson from the UK Medical Research Council, University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research has been investigating genetic mechanisms associated with susceptibility to Covid infection. His team has identified a molecule that detects SARS-COV-2 when it starts to replicate in our cells. However, not all humans have this protective mechanism, which may help explain why some people become very ill with Covid and others have little if any symptoms.

Many Europeans lack this protective molecule, whereas the vast majority of Africans have it. The difference can be seen in cell cultures. However, the lack of diversity in the cells used in experiments worldwide can be a serious problem when looking at genetic differences as Samara Linton reports.

Nuclear material buried beneath the doomed Chernobyl nuclear power plant is becoming more active Neil Hyatt Professor of Nuclear Materials Chemistry at Sheffield University says it’s a small increase but needs to be monitored.

(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the proportion of emergency department visits by children in mental health crises went up significantly during the pandemic — about 30% for kids ages 12-17 and 24% for children ages 5-11 between March and October of last year, compared to 2019. For psychiatrists like Dr. Nicole Christian-Brathwaite, this is evident in her practice and personal life. We talk to her about how this past year has taken a toll on children and their mental health, as well as her advice for helping the kids in your life cope better.

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Mud and dirt have often been treated as waste products from excavation or dredging sites. But these days, coastal communities need massive amounts of mud and dirt to protect their shorelines from rising seas. This is leading to a dirt shortage, where the demand for it is higher than supply. NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer gives us the scoop — including why one federal agency that has dirt often disposes of it instead of reusing it for these projects.

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Some colleges and universities have announced that COVID vaccination will be mandatory (with some exemptions) and the FDA has authorized the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 12 to 15. While coronavirus infections are declining in the United States, vaccination rates also appear to be slowing down, so pediatricians and public health officials say they're trying to spread the word to overcome hesitancy, and get the vaccine out to people where they go to school and shop. Emily talks with NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey about this and other topics in the pandemic news.

If you'd like to assistant on finding a vaccination site, you can dial 1-800-232-0233 or go to vaccines.gov (English) or vacunas.gov (Spanish) for more information.

Have questions about the latest coronavirus headlines? Email us at shortwave@npr.org and we might cover it on a future episode.

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"That’s such a hard question,” Gina Neff, a sociologist at the Oxford Internet Institute, responds when asked what social science research or thinker most influenced her. “It’s like a busman’s holiday for an academic, because so many things have influenced my thinking.” Her answer, by the way, was Ulrich Beck’s concept of the risk society, as explained in this 1986 book.

In this montage drawn from the last two years of Social Science Bites podcasts, interviewer David Edmonds poses the same question to 25 other notable social scientists.

For many of the guests, the answer proves difficult to pin down to just one person or work (“That’s like asking who’s your favorite kid,” was David Halpern’s first response). For a few guests, the response is instant.

“A simple answer, really,” replies Rupert Brown, naming a fellow social psychologist, Turkish-American Muzafer Sherif, and his work in the 1950s. And sociologist Les Back, too, answers instantly: “Don’t even have to think about it: WEB DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk. DuBois is the writer who captures both the heat and the passion of life and also the cool historical perspective and analysis in the most extraordinary compound of literary expression.”

Back, in turn, was mentioned by one scholar: Kayleigh Garthwaite as her great influencer.

A number of the guests cited titans from the early days of social science – Max Weber, Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, Emile Durkheim, while others named modern-era titans like Stephen Pinker, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt or Jean Piaget. And many named creators of the new canon – Jim Scott cited A.P. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, Alondra Nelson picked Troy Duster’s Backdoor to Eugenics, and Gurminder  Bhambra tabbed Danielle S. Allen’s Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education.

And no such list would be complete without a wild card, and for that we turn to Michelle Gelfand, who turned to Herodotus’ The Histories and the lessons a 2,500-year-old post-mortem of an ancient war can teach us today: “He was a brilliant cross-cultural psychologist … he also had a really interesting observation — that all humans are ethnocentric. They don’t just think that their culture is different, they think it’s better.”

This is the fourth collection in this series (and the 100th Social Science Bites podcast).

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are the first authorized vaccines in history to use mRNA technology. The pandemic might've set the stage for their debut, but mRNA vaccines have been in the works for more than 30 years. Host Maddie Sofia chats with Dr. Margaret Liu, a physician and board chair of the International Society for Vaccines, about the history and science behind these groundbreaking vaccines. We'll also ask, what we can expect from mRNA vaccines in the future?

Have a question for us? Send a note to shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear it.

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Analysis of the 78,0000-year-old fossil of a Kenyan boy reveals he was likely buried with care and attention, the body wrapped and laid to rest supported on a pillow. Maria Martinon-Torres, of the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, and a team from Kenya and Germany used techniques from paleontology and forensic science to reveal his story from the fragile remains.

A promising malaria vaccine is to enter trials which could lead to it being used globally to vaccinate children. Merheen Datoo, Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, explains malaria vaccines have been in development for 100 years. Research from these helped covid vaccine development and the success of covid vaccines may now help to speed up the rollout of malaria vaccines.

Covid vaccines may also help to treat those who have symptoms of long covid – a range of immune system issues that develop sometimes months after the initial infection. Yale University immunologist Akiko Kawasaki is embarking on a research project to assess the impact. If you’d like to take part, have yet to be vaccinated, and live in Connecticut in the US, email covidrecovery@yale.edu.

And in India scientists are calling on the government to make all data on Covid more widely available. At present Indian bureaucracy means statistics on infection rates, variants and recovery are not distributed widely. Science journalist TV Padma says greater access to the data could help more scientists come together to work on solutions to India’s Covid crisis.

And, Have you taken classes to learn a new sport or musical instrument or a language? It’s hard work! Why is it that as children we effortlessly absorb new skills and we don’t as adults?

That’s what 50-something listener Gary Grief wondered about playing guitar. Do you need to play more frequently as an adult to attain the same level of expertise? Does the 10,000-hours theory still apply?

Presenter and budding tabla-player Anand Jagatia embarks on a musical journey to discover what neuroscience can tell us about muscle memory and learning. Do musicians and sportsmen share the same challenges? By understanding what’s happening in the brain, can we learn how to learn better?

With tabla-teacher Satvinder Sehmbey, neuroscientist Dr Jessica Grahn, viola-player Dr Molly Gebrian and sports scientist Prof Yannis Pitsiladis.

(Image: An artist’s interpretation of Mtoto’s burial Credit: Fernando Fueyo)

Have you taken classes to learn a new sport or musical instrument or a language? It’s hard work! Why is it that as children we effortlessly absorb new skills and we don’t as adults? That’s what 50-something listener Gary Grief wondered about playing guitar. Do you need to play more frequently as an adult to attain the same level of expertise? Does the 10,000-hours theory still apply? Presenter and budding tabla-player Anand Jagatia embarks on a musical journey to discover what neuroscience can tell us about muscle memory and learning. Do musicians and sportsmen share the same challenges? By understanding what’s happening in the brain, can we learn how to learn better? With tabla-teacher Satvinder Sehmbey, neuroscientist Dr Jessica Grahn, viola-player Dr Molly Gebrian and sports scientist Prof Yannis Pitsiladis. Presented by Anand Jagatia Produced by Dom Byrne for the BBC World Service

[Image: Adult and Child learning Piano. Credit: Getty Images]