Category: ScienceNews

After the comic malfunctions of a self-driving car, which drove its passenger/prisoner in endless circles, Unexpected Elements rounds its attention on the humble circle. Explore how one man calculated the circumference of the Earth 2,000 years before GPS was invented, then be spellbound by the Magic Circle and the mysterious woman who broke into it. And as we hit the five-year anniversary of the Covid pandemic, we take a look at the cycle of infection and mutation, before asking, 'why don’t we have one antiviral pill that kills them all?' We’re joined by evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar, who calculated Dunbar’s number; that is, the maximum number of folks you can hold onto in your circle of friends... five? 500? 5,000? Robin reveals how many REAL friends science says you can have. Presenters: Marnie Chesterton, with Camilla Mota and Phillys Mwatee Producers: Harrison Lewis, with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell and William Hornbrook

Imagine the tree of life. The tip of every branch represents one species, and if you follow any two branches back through time, you'll hit an intersection. If you keep going back in time, you'll eventually find the common ancestor for all of life. That ancestor is called LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, and there is no fossil record to tell us what it looked like.

Luckily, we have Jonathan Lambert. He's a science correspondent for NPR and today he's talking all things LUCA: What we think this single-celled organism may have looked like, when it lived and why a recent study suggests it could be older and more complex than scientists thought.

Have other questions about ancient biology? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

In a previous version of this episode, we said that the research team used carbon-dated fossils to calibrate a molecular clock aimed at estimating the age of LUCA. In fact, the researchers used radio isotopic-dated fossils for that purpose.

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New types of snake-bite anti-venoms are designed by AI. Also, how much meat did human ancestors eat? How the Baltic Nord Stream gas pipeline rupture of 2022 was the biggest single release of methane ever caused by humans, and that Pluto met Charon, not with a bang, but more of a kiss.

Using a high precision technique for spotting different isotopes of Nitrogen, Tina Lüdecke of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry has concluded that a group of early hominin Australopithecus living in South Africa were predominantly vegetarian, putting the date that human ancestors started eating meat (and thence growing bigger brains) to more recently. The technique, she thinks, can enlighten prehistoric food webs and ecologies from millions of years ago.

Last year’s Nobel prizes showed the potential new techniques of AI to design synthetic proteins. Timothy P Jenkins and colleagues decided to try designing treatments for snakebite venoms, with remarkable apparent success. It could save many thousands of lives a year.

Since the September 2022 explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic sea, many different analyses of how much methane was released have provided a variety of estimates. This week, scientists at the UNEP International Methane emissions observatory – including Stephen Harris - published a study estimating it to be a little under half a million tonnes, making it by far the single biggest human caused release of this most dangerous greenhouse gas. Yet, they say, even that is a tiny fraction of what is released overall around the world every year.

And Finally, a new analysis of the original formation of the Pluto-Charon binary Dwarf Planetary system suggests they – and possibly many other Kuiper belt pairing – were born of a gentle astronomical dance and a peck on the cheek, rather than the catastrophic collision we associate with the earth-moon’s fiery first date. And it may have lasted just a matter of days, according to author Adeene Denton of the University of Arizona.

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

(Photo: Gorilla feeding. Credit: WLDavies/Getty Images)

When you picture a dinosaur, what does it look like? For Jingmai O'Connor, paleobiologist and associate curator of reptiles at the Field Museum of Chicago, the dinosaurs she studies look a lot more like birds.

"If you looked at an artist's reconstruction of something like Velociraptor or Microraptor ... you would see that it pretty much looks the same as a bird," Jingmai says. "In terms of the plumage, the soft tissues covering the body, it would have looked very, very birdlike."

In this episode, Short Wave delves into the dinosaur-avian connection. Which dinosaurs had feathers? Were they using them to fly? And once and for all – what are those ancient dinosaurs' relationship to birds today?

Have other dinosaur questions you want us to unravel? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

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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.

Questions about vaccines or the respiratory season? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

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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.

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!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

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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)