Category: ScienceNews

There's a surge in cases and deaths from H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia - we hear what's the driver and how concerned we should be. Erik Karlsson, Head of Virology at the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh and director of the WHO’s H5 Reference Laboratory has been watching the uptick.

An interstellar interloper has been spotted entering our solar system. Most likely a comet, and possibly visible in the sky, it’s just the third such visitor we’ve ever seen. Josep Trigo of Spain’s Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC) and the Catalan Institute for Space Studies is one of many astronomers keeping his eye out.

DNA from an ancient Egyptian buried in cave 2,500 BCE, the oldest to date, tell a tale of travelling ancestors, according to research led by Adeline Morez of Liverpool John Moore’s University and published in Nature.

Also, Corey Allard of Harvard university has been looking at a particular type of sea slug. Published in the journal Cell, the work has been trying to work out how these slugs effectively nurture and manage stolen chloroplasts – stolen from ingested plant cells - within their own bodies. Artfully, they may use these “Kleptoplasts” to dodge periods of food shortage.

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jazz George

Photo Credit: Institut Pasteur du Cambodge

The Andromeda galaxy lies just beyond (...OK, about 2.5 million light-years beyond) our galaxy, the Milky Way. For the past hundred years or so, scientists thought these galaxies existed in a long-term dance of doom — destined to crash into one another and combine into one big galactic soup. But today on the show, Regina and computational astrophysicist Arpit Arora explain why a recent paper out in the journal Nature Astronomy suggests this cosmic game of bumper cars may never come to a head at all.

Interested in more space episodes? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.

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Provisions in the GOP policy bill would end a host of tax credits for renewable energy, including one that allows homeowners to recoup 30 percent of the cost of a rooftop solar system. Businesses say it could deal a serious blow to the industry. Geoff Bennett discusses the potential with Dan Conant of Solar Holler, a solar installation company in West Virginia, for our series, Tipping Point. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Flexibility is a cardinal virtue in physical fitness, and according to political psychologist and neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod, it can be a cardinal virtue in our mental health, too. How she came to that conclusion and how common rigid thinking can be are themes explored in her new book, The Ideological Brain.

“I think that from all the research that I've done,” she tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast, “I feel that what rigid thinking does is it numbs people to the complexity of their own experience, and it simplifies their thinking. It makes them less free, less authentic, less expansive in their imagination.” And while she acknowledges there are times being unbending may be seen as an asset, “rigid thinking is rarely good for you at an individual level.”

In this podcast, she details some of the work – both with social science experimentation and with brain imaging – that determines if people are flexible in their thinking, what are the real-life benefits of being flexible, if they can change, and how an ideological brain, i.e. a less flexible brain, affects politics and other realms of decision-making.

“When you teach or when you try to impart flexible thinking, you're focusing on how people are thinking, not what they're thinking,” Zmigrod explains. “So it's not like you can have a curriculum of ‘like here is what you need to think in order to think flexibly,’ but it's about teaching how to think in that balanced way that is receptive to evidence, that is receptive to change, but also isn't so persuadable that any new authority can come and take hold of your thoughts.”

Zmigrod was a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University and won a winning a Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College there. She has since held visiting fellowships at Stanford and Harvard universities, and both the Berlin and Paris Institutes for Advanced Study. Amond many honors the young scholar received are the ESCAN 2020 Young Investigator Award by the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, the Glushko Dissertation Prize in Cognitive Science by the Cognitive Science Society, . the 2020 Women of the Future Science Award and the 2022 Women in Cognitive Science Emerging Leader Award, and the 2022 Distinguished Junior Scholar Award in Political Psychology by the American Political Science Association. 

Independence Day is approaching! Imagine in a few days, someone has procured illegal fireworks from a couple of states over. Are you:
A) first in line to light them
B) content to watch while others set them off
C) going to find a fire extinguisher — just in case — while loudly condemning the activity?

Ken Carter, a psychologist at Oxford College of Emory University, says everyone has a different level of sensation-seeking. This episode, we get into the factors at play, like people's brain chemistry, when deciding whether or not to do an activity, like setting off fireworks. Plus, he and Emily reveal their scores to his forty-point scale.

Ken's 40-point sensation seeking survey can be found in his book, Buzz!.

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The Advisory Committee on Immunization Policy, an influential CDC committee that shapes U.S. vaccine policy, has become a flashpoint in recent weeks. Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members and replaced them with 7 new members — many of whom do not have deep expertise in vaccines, and some of whom have spread vaccine misinformation. NPR public health correspondent Pien Huang was at the new working group's first meeting last week. This episode, she talks with Emily about the sweeping changes they promised to how vaccine policy is made in the U.S. — and resurrected issues that have been advanced by groups that question vaccines.

Read more of Pien's reporting on this topic.

Want us to cover more twists and turns in U.S. health policy? Or less? Either way, tell us by emailing shortwave@npr.org! We'd love to know what you're hearing — and want to hear from us!

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Humpback whales are some of the largest creatures on Earth and live in every one of the planet’s oceans. Their seasonal migrations are among the longest of any mammal, stretching thousands of miles. Now, scientists are using AI-powered facial recognition technology to track the whales on their journeys, offering new insights into their habits and health. John Yang reports. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

No one really cares that CrowdScience listener Sam has a younger brother, but they do care about his sister. In fact, they’re fascinated by her. That’s because Sam and his sister are fraternal twins.

He’s been wondering all his life why he’s treated differently. Could it be cultural? Twins have long appeared in classical mythology, revered literature, and playful comedies—captivating artists and audiences alike across time and continents. Or is there something more scientific behind our fascination? Why are twins special?

Anand Jagatia investigates with Karen Dillon from Blackburn College in the USA, who says it’s more complicated. Over the years we have created stereotypes of who and what twins are. Our perception has been warped by history and pop culture. As an identical twin herself, she knows firsthand how stereotypes can shape a twin’s identity.

Philosopher Helena De Bres from Wellesley College in the USA believes these stereotypes play on human anxieties. Their similarities and differences are derived from their biology, maybe our genes have more of an influence over our personalities and behaviours than we like to think?

And Nancy Segal agrees, Director of the Twin Studies Centre at California State University in the USA. She has spent her career studying twins. She’s found that nearly every trait, whether it be behavioural or physiological, has a genetic component to it.

Anand is sure to leave you thinking that Sam, his sister and all the other twins across the globe, really are special!

Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Harrison Lewis Series Editor: Ben Motley

(Image: Twin girls (8-10) wearing matching coats and pigtails. Credit: Jade Albert Studio, Inc via Getty Images)

This week, Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae has been unveiled at London's Natural History Museum. This newly described herbivorous dinosaur has inspired us to take a stomp through the science of ancient animals, mass extinctions and fossils.

First up, we hear about a shepherd who recently found a South African dinosaur, which has helped shed light on the period between the Triassic and Jurassic.

We then take a look at some new theories that suggest the mass extinctions that wiped out ancient creatures may not have been as massive as we thought.

But one extinction definitely is currently underway, according to ecologist Professor Dave Goulson. And that’s the mass extinction of insects.

Plus, we find out the latest theory of why the Tyrannosaurus rex had such tiny arms, and we meet the rat ancestors that munched on dinosaurs.

All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements. Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Candice Bailey and Camilla Mota Producer: Margaret Sessa Hawkins, with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell and Minnie Harrop

Since 2004, scientific research has shown that a full night of sleep may lend itself to a burst of insight in the morning. But what about the earlier stages of sleep? And what about just a nap? A research team based in Germany found that even a 20-minute nap could deliver a "eureka" moment, and published their findings in the journal PLOS Biology this week.

Have a question about sleep? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

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