Category: ScienceNews

In several major cities, public health officials work every year to monitor the flu. It's called sentinel surveillance. And as early as mid-February, the government had a plan to use that system to find early cases of the coronavirus, by testing patients with flu-like symptoms.

But NPR's Lauren Sommer reports the effort was slow to get started, costing weeks in the fight to control the spread of the virus. Read more from Lauren's reporting here.

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Remdesivir a drug eventually rejected as a treatment for Ebola seems to have aided recovery in a trial with more than a thousand Covid -19 patients. Researchers are cautious but hopeful; a leading health official in the US has made comparisons with the impact of game changing drugs used to treat HIV.

In contrast an organisation researching the mechanisms by which bat coronaviruses infect humans has had its funding cut following criticism from President Trump.

A scheme to help manufacture ventilators and protective equipment worldwide has seen some success with a simple ventilator they developed, now in use in hospitals.

And we look at climate change –with this year set for extreme weather

(Image: Liberian photographer Alphanso Appleton took this picture of a schoolgirl and sent it to the Wellcome Trust, to express thanks for their and others’ efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. Credit: Alphanso Appleton/Wellcome Trust)

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Julian Siddle

Spring is in the air — and so are black bears coming out of hibernation. Rae Wynn-Grant, a large carnivore biologist, explains there's a lot more going on during hibernation than you might expect.

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Optimism is often thought as a disposition, something you're born with or without. So can it be learned? On today's show, Maddie talks with Alix Spiegel, co-host of NPR's Invisibilia, about "learned optimism." We'll look at what it is, the research behind it, and how it might come in handy in certain circumstances, like maybe a global pandemic?

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Humans have a long history of inventions: electricity, telephones, computers, music — the list goes on. It's clear we're shaping the world around us.

But as Ainissa Ramirez explains in her new book, The Alchemy of Us, those inventions are shaping us, too.

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The current pandemic has and will continue to mutate the social landscape of the world, but amid the lost lives and spoiled economies in its wake has come a new appreciation of what science and scientists contribute.

“You don’t have to go back many months,” says Hetan Shah, the chief executive of the British Academy, “for a period when politicians were relatively dismissive of experts – and then suddenly we’ve seen a shift now to where they’ve moved very close to scientists.

“And generally that’s a very good thing.”

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Shah details how science, and social science in particular, has come to be deployed, how it’s been a force for good throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it can help policymakers understand and shape a better tomorrow.

Arguably, even before coronavirus the British Academy, a national body of humanities and social science scholars, has served in similar roles. In addition to its well-known body of fellows, the academy funds new research and serves as a forum to discuss humanities’ and social science’s role and impact beyond academe. Shah took the reins of the academy in February, having headed the Royal Statistical Association for the eight years previous.

Given that his time at the academy roughly mirrors COVID’s arrival on the world stage, he’s had to hit the ground running. “It’s also been very interesting to see the government using the term, ‘We are following the science.’”

This has been a prime opportunity for social science to show its importance for the public, but also a chance for the public to consider what science is and isn’t.

“There isn’t a single monolithic thing called ‘The Science,’” Shah explains, adding, “I think governments have recognized that the pandemic is not just a medical phenomenon but a social and economic one.”

But even within the subcommunities of science there’s no single ‘Answer’ to any given challenge. “It does feel to me the public has seemed to cope quite well and understood the level of uncertainty of the science. It’s an argument for treating the public as grown-ups.

“We are making decisions at speed. That data are limited and being gathered as we speak. This is how science happens. There may well be settled science on these matters [someday] – but that might take really quite a lot of time.

“This is why none of us envy our decisionmakers. They’re having to make decisions on imperfect knowledge.”

Even without those capital-A answers, established social science has been deployed to good effect already, Shah says.

“Anthropologists who wouldn’t have been surprised at all by the panic buying of toilet paper. They have known for a long, long time, rooted in the work of people like Mary Douglas, the cultural and symbolic importance of things like cleanliness and security in times of crises. “

As other examples he offers the campaigns detailing how best to wash your hands, the crafting of the United Kingdom’s economic package along needs rather than party lines, and how to enforce social distancing. It was social science that shows that rather than shaming – in essence, promoting -- the few people who are breaking rules, compliance increases if you praise those who are keeping the rules. And social science also helps address wicked problems that predate COVID but which now have new facets, such as the unequal impact the disease has on ethnic minority communities.

There’s even a lesson in how science gets applied, he suggests. Like those anthropologists …  “[A]nthropology seems like it’s for other people -- ‘Other people have strange customs; we’re normal in the West and what we do is normal’ – but I think the key is to bring an anthropological lens to our own behavior. What are the practices that we have and how can we change them?”

Arenas like critical thinking and psychology are also brought to bear tellingly on the home front: “Our leaders share our biases,” he tells Edmonds, before detailing a number of logical traps policymakers and the populace currently share.

The podcast closes out with a look to the future, both through specific initiatives Shah is part of, and in general. “I think there will be all sorts of fascinating data about how the pandemic has affected us,” including, he made clear higher education and academic research itself. Shah, meanwhile, is acting chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute, which while looking at technical solutions to COVID also draws on social science insights, i.e. in digital contact tracing, it was revealed that those most vulnerable to COVID were also least likely to have a smart phone.

And the British Academy itself, he noted, has a group of scholars assembled who will provide a rapid response to government inquiries and needs, as well as looking at some of the other implications of the future “that the government doesn’t have the bandwidth for.”

During the pandemic, ventilators have been considered a vital medical tool to treat critically-ill COVID-19 patients. But more and more evidence is suggesting that those who go on a ventilator — don't end up surviving. NPR Science Desk correspondent Jon Hamilton tells us about how these machines work, and how, for patients who do survive, recovery can be a long road.

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President Trump has repeated unfounded claims that scientists created Covid-19 in a lab. Rigorous scrutiny of the genetics of the virus reveals no evidence for such a claim.

And Brazil’s President Bolsonaro is at odds with his own health advisors – splitting public opinion and action over lockdown measures needed to control the virus.

We also look at why Covid -19 seems to be associated with so many different symptoms, from diarrheal infections to complicating kidney disease, to heart attacks

And some potentially good news from HIV research, a new target to stop that virus in its tracks, which might also be useful in the fight against other viruses.

If you're an exercise fan, you'll know that sweating is how our bodies keep us cool, but how much water we lose and which bits of us get wettest depend on a whole host of factors.

Jamaican listener Andre wants to know why he sweats in a heart-shape when he hits the gym, and we find out how everything from the clothes he wears to the moves he's doing explain his unusual perspiration patterns.

In Kenya we meet a woman whose permanently clammy hands cause her to drop her mobile phone, and sweaty feet start to stink when she spends too long in shoes.

Hyperhidrosis is a condition affecting millions of people worldwide but an expert explains some of the treatments for this mysterious condition.

Image: President Trump (rhs) with Brazilian President Bolsonaro (lhs). (Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images)

If you're an exercise fan, you'll know that sweating is how our bodies keep us cool, but how much water we lose and which bits of us get wettest depend on a whole host of factors.

Jamaican listener Andre wants to know why he sweats in a heart-shape when he hits the gym, and we find out how everything from the clothes he wears to the moves he's doing explain his unusual perspiration patterns.

In Kenya we meet a woman whose permanently clammy hands cause her to drop her mobile phone, and sweaty feet start to stink when she spends too long in shoes.

Hyperhidrosis is a condition affecting millions of people worldwide but an expert explains some of the treatments for this mysterious condition.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Marijke Peters

Image Credit: Getty Images

The U.S. may need 100,000 people trained in the public health practice of contact tracing — tracking and isolating people who've been in contact with someone who tests positive for the coronavirus. NPR health policy reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin explains how it works, and why it's a key part of the fight against the pandemic.

Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

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