Category: ScienceNews

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine generates enough of an antibody response to protect against severe disease for six months. But other vaccines offer years-long — even lifelong — immunity, such as the measles or yellow fever vaccines. Is there a way for scientists to tell how long a person's immunity will last? A team at Stanford Medicine might have found a way to do just that — with the help of some of the cells found in our bone marrow.

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Air quality in the Los Angeles region has plummeted due to smoke from the ongoing wildfires. With all that smoke comes possible risks to human health. So what actually is smoke and why is it so harmful? Jessica Gilman, an atmospheric chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, explains what smoke is made of, how it behaves in the atmosphere and smoke's role in climate change. Plus, tips for how to lessen your exposure.

Check out the CDC's recommendations for avoiding smoke inhalation here. Read more of NPR's coverage of the fires.

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In the past stout beer has been touted for its supposed health benefits. Is there any truth to those claims - and what happens if you take the alcohol out?

CrowdScience listener Aengus pondered these questions down at the pub, after noticing most of his friends were drinking non-alcoholic beers. He wondered how the non-alcoholic stuff is made – what’s taken out and what’s added in – and whether the final product is better for you than the alcoholic version.

It’s a question that takes us to Belgium, home to the experimental brewery of a global drinks company which takes the growing market for alcohol-free beer very seriously. David De Schutter, head of research and development, shows host Marnie Chesterton how to take alcohol out of beer without spoiling the flavour.

We also find our way to a yeast lab in Leuven, Belgium where Kevin Verstrepen and his team have found another way to make alcohol-free beer with the help of industrious microbes: yeast varieties that brew beer without producing any alcohol in the first place. And how do they compare to the alcoholic versions? We discuss the importance of aromas in our perception of beer’s taste.

So should listener Aengus stick to non-alcoholic stout? We speak to scientist Tim Stockwell about the health drawbacks of alcohol, even in moderation. And gut microbiome researcher Cláudia Marques fills us in on her delicious pilot study, which looked at the effects of both non-alcoholic and alcoholic beers on our digestive tract.

Along the way, Marnie taste-tests what's on the market, and asks the experts why this particular grocery shelf has become so much bigger and more flavourful in recent years.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Sam Baker Editor: Cathy Edwards Production co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Technical producers: Giles Aspen, Andrew Garratt and Donald MacDonald

(Image: Close-up of waitress holding craft beer at bar, Brazil Credit: FG Trade via Getty Images)

Team Unexpected have been digging into their mind palaces to pull on the scientific research that has stuck with them most over the past year. We hear from Professor John Parnell, geologist at the University of Aberdeen, about the role of plankton in forming ancient mountains. How ocean bubbles play a role in climate regulation with bubble physicist Dr Helen Czerski from University College London. Would you know how to measure the size of a bubble? We also participate in some memory sports with Jonas von Essen who is a two-time world memory champion. He helps us construct a mind palace in order to memorise really long strings of digits. Plus we look into the backstory of the human buttocks with science journalist and reporter Heather Radke. She answers the question ‘why do we humans have such large behinds?’ And we hear from Professor Andre Isaacs at the College of the Holy Cross who has filled his chemistry lab with music and dance in order to change perceptions about who can be a scientist. That, plus many more Unexpected Elements.  Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Jonathan Blackwell and Harrison Lewis with Imaan Moin and Alice Lipscombe-Southwell

Over 29,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area are on fire right now. The fires emerged after the Santa Ana winds swept into the Los Angeles area Tuesday. The largest is the Palisades fire, which is quickly burning through the Pacific Palisades and Malibu communities. It's one of four ongoing critical fires — only one of which is partially contained. Ahead of the windy week, a Red Flag Warning was issued for an increased fire risk due to the strong winds, low humidity and higher temperature. Today, we dig into the Santa Ana winds: What they are and how they combined with other factors to create conditions for the most destructive fire in Los Angeles' history.

Questions, story ideas or want us to dig more into the science underpinning natural disasters? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

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H5N1 bird flu is still spreading across farms in the USA and this week claimed its first human life in North America - an elderly patient in Louisiana infected by backyard poultry. But last week, Sonja Olsen, Associate Director for Preparedness and Response in the CDC’s flu division, and her colleague Shikha Garg, published new analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine summarizing the human cases and epidemiology so far.

A lab study underscoring a suspected link between the virus responsible for cold sores, and Alzheimers, the most common form of dementia, has been published in Science Signalling this week. The study, by Dana Cairns of Tufts University, looks at whether repetitive brain trauma – another risk factor - adds to the evidence that latent herpes simplex can be involved.

Song Lin, a chemist at Cornell University who has won prizes for pioneering the use of electrical currents to drive chemical reactions rather than heat, has teamed up with Cornell micro engineer Paul McEuen to power up a new kind of chemistry and invent another kind of SPECS – an acronym for Small Photoelectronics for Electrochemical Synthesis. They outlined their first generation device and the promises it brings in Nature this week.

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

(Photo: Chickens eating feed. Credit: San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images)

Fluoridating the public water supply has been common practice for nearly 80 years in the U.S. It's an acclaimed public health intervention that helps prevent cavities. For just as long, some have raised concerns about the practice that can veer from evidence-based to unsubstantiated conspiracy. An analysis by government researchers, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, is adding to the debate. The research found that exposing babies and kids to high levels of fluoride might be associated with neurodevelopmental harm. Frankly, it's a lot to digest — so we invited health correspondent Pien Huang onto the show to wade through the debate.

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Some weapons used by the U.S. military are so powerful they can pose a threat to the people who fire them. Today, we meet two Marines, William Wilcox and Michael Lozano, who spent years firing missiles and rockets, then developed the same rare brain condition: arteriovenous malformation, or AVM. The condition sends high pressure blood from a tangle of abnormal blood vessels directly into fragile veins, which can leak or burst. Most AVMs are caused by genetic changes that affect the growth of blood vessels, so the connection between weapon blasts and AVM isn't always immediately clear. But NPR's brain correspondent Jon Hamilton reports that recent research suggests that blast waves can alter genes in the brain — and that the evidence is even stronger for less extreme blood vessel changes.

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There is a natural desire on the part of governments to ensure that their future citizens -- i.e. their nation's children -- are happy, healthy and productive, and that therefore governments have policies that work to achieve that. But good intentions never guarantee good policies.

Here's where economist Janet Currie steps in. Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where she co-directs, with Kate Ho, the Center for Health and Wellbeing. In this Social Science Bites podcast, the pioneer in assessing the nexus of policy and parenting explains to interviewer David Edmonds how programs like Head Start in the United States and Sure Start in the United Kingdom provide real benefits over time to both their young clients as youths and later on in life.

After looking at a variety of programs and interventions, she details that "the general conclusion [is] that the programs that were spending more money directly on the children tended to have better outcomes."

Her findings suggest this holds true even when similar approaches don't have the same effect on adults. "[I]n the United States," she says, "if you give health insurance to adults who didn't have health insurance, they use more services, and they are happier about that, that they get to use services. But it doesn't actually seem to save very much money. On the other hand, when you cover children from a young age, that is cost effective, that does save money, and in fact, the costs of the program probably pay for themselves in terms of the reduction in illness and disability going forward."

In addition to her work at Princeton, Currie is also co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Program on Families and Children. She has been president of the American Economic Association for 2024 and has also served as president of the American Society of Health Economics, the Society of Labor Economics, the Eastern Economic Association, and the Western Economic Association. Two years ago, she received the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize "for her foundational work on the influence of context such as policy decisions, environment, or health systems on child development."

There are hundreds of atomic clocks in orbit right now, perched on satellites all over Earth. We depend on them for GPS location, Internet timing, stock trading ... and space navigation?

Today on the show, hosts Emily Kwong and Regina G. Barber learn how to build a better clock. In order to do that, they ask: How do atomic clocks really work, anyway? What makes a clock precise? And how could that process be improved for even greater accuracy?

For more about Holly's Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock, check out the OASIC project on NASA's website.
For more about the Longitude Problem, check out Dava Sobel's book, Longitude.

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