Category: ScienceNews

Horseshoe crabs have been around for 450 million years — nearly unchanged. And their blood has helped the medical world make some fascinating discoveries. Emily Kwong talks with Ariela Zebede about these living fossils and their role in making medicine safer.

Get in touch! You can email Short Wave at ShortWave@npr.org.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Why does hair turn gray? Stress? Age? Genetics? We turn to dermatologist Dr. Jenna Lester for answers.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Today, NPR Health Correspondent Allison Aubrey offers perspective on how to think about the latest coronavirus news. On one hand, half of U.S. adults have been vaccinated and as of this week, everyone 16 years old and up is eligible to be vaccinated. At the same time, the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been paused and many are still hesitant to get vaccinated.

Coronavirus on your mind? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — with your questions about the latest developments.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

When you think of mathematicians, do you think of lone geniuses scribbling away at complex equations? This myth is one mathematician Ranthony Edmonds actively tries to dispel in her classroom as a post-doc at The Ohio State University. Instead, Ranthony focuses on the community aspects of math — the support systems behind each mathematician and the benefits of a collaborative, inclusive environment for math innovation.

Think we should consider math more? Let us know by emailing shortwave@npr.org.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Grief is universal. It is something almost all of us will go through at some point. And it is something that the people we love will experience when we die.

Grief can be all consuming, it can make everyday tasks like getting out of bed, feel impossible. Which makes listener Oliver from Australia wonder - what is the point? It doesn’t bring what we lost, back.

Why have we evolved to be so affected by loss? Be it the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Does it serve any purpose? Or perhaps it is just the price we pay for being a social species with such strong connections.

Image: Families Mourn Victims of The Tamaulipas Massacre in Tuilelén, Guatemala Photo by Josue Decavele/Getty Images

Produced by Caroline Steel and presented by Marnie Chesterton for BBC World Service.

(Encore episode.) Archival records may help researchers figure out how fast the sea level is rising in certain places. Millions of people in coastal cities are vulnerable to rising sea levels and knowing exactly how fast the water is rising is really important. But it's a tough scientific question. NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer explains how scientists are looking to historical records to help get at the answer.

If you'd like to help transcribe old tidal data, you can get started here.

For more of Lauren's reporting, follow her on Twitter @lesommer. Email us at ShortWave@npr.org.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Two weeks ago several G7 leaders called for an international treaty on Pandemic Preparedness for the future. This week 175 prominent leaders called for lifting the IP on vaccine design. And former UK PM Gordon Brown called on the G7 to finance vaccines for the world in the next two months. But are there technical difficulties that limit the pace of manufacture?

Anthony McDonnell is an economist at think tank Centre for Global Development who has been looking at the problem since last year. He suggests, amongst other things, one limit is the human expertise in manufacturing these brand-new technologies, with another being a level of vaccine nationalism that is seeing a lack of exports of components involved in manufacture.

Professor Trudie Lang heads the University of Oxford’s Global Health Network, and looks at health research across the world. She says in most countries there is no lack of public health or infrastructure potential for rolling out the vaccines, if only the supply existed.

The volcano that erupted explosively on St Vincent last week has led to many thousands of people being evacuated. Dr Joan Latchman of the University of West Indies Seismic Research Centre - who has monitored Caribbean volcanos for several decades - describes from Trinidad how the layers of ash mean recovery will take a long time, even if the explosions and pyroclastic dangers subside reasonably soon. Back in The UK, Prof Jenni Barclay and colleagues are examining rocks from the early part of the eruption, before the explosive phase began, to see if there are clues in the microstructure that could provide clues to the future.

And how do our brains so quickly tell a scream of delight from a scream of horror? Or of pain? Prof Sascha Frühholz of the University of Geneva has written in the journal PLOS Biology this week about work looking at how we identify the nature of different human screams. One finding is that we perceive joy quicker than fear..

(Image: Getty Images)

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield

(Encore episode.) Earlier this year, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by the city of Baltimore against more than a dozen major oil and gas companies including BP, ExxonMobil and Shell. In the lawsuit, BP P.L.C. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, the city government argued that the fossil fuel giants must help pay for the costs of climate change because they knew that their products cause potentially catastrophic global warming. NPR climate reporter Rebecca Hersher has been following the case.

Read Rebecca's digital piece about the Supreme Court case here.

Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

(Encore episode.) Global Witness documented that 212 environmental and land activists were murdered in 2019. Over half of those documented murders took place in Colombia and the Philippines, countries where intensive mining and agribusiness has transformed the environment. NPR Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong speaks with three activists about the intersection between natural resource extraction and violence, and what keeps them going in their work.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

(Encore episode.) As sea levels rise from climate change, coastal communities face a greater risk of chronic flooding. Climate scientist Astrid Caldas and her colleagues have looked at where it's happening now and where it could happen in the future as the tides keep getting higher.

Follow host Maddie Sofia on Twitter @maddie_sofia. Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy