Category: ScienceNews

A Chinese survey of diseased animals farmed for their fur – such as mink, foxes and raccoon dogs - has revealed high levels of concerning viruses, including coronaviruses and flu viruses, many of which appear to jump easily from species to species. John Pettersson of Uppsala University discusses the threat to us humans.

We learnt early on in the Covid-19 pandemic how important the genetic details of the virus were in tracking the spread and spotting new variants. The vaccines were designed from gene sequences shared electronically long before any biological samples became available. Virologist Emma Hodcroft has teamed up with researchers around the world to develop a new virus database, Pathoplexus, to speed up the sharing of gene sequences.

Mpox outbreaks are causing concerns in Central and West Africa - particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A smallpox vaccine has started arriving, giving some protection against mpox. But there’s good news this week in an experimental vaccine developed especially for mpox by Moderna – one of the companies that brought us the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19. Galit Alter, vice president of immunology research at Moderna, tells us animal tests show that it appears to be highly effective.

And we discuss embryonic eavesdropping with Francisco Ruiz-Raya of Glasgow University. In the yellow-legged-gull, baby bird embryos that have chattier parents tend to come out chattier themselves – and likely receive better care because of their enhanced communication.

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Jonathan Blackwell Production co-ordinator: Andrew Rhys Lewis

(Image: A mink in a mink farm in the hands of a man. Credit: Neznam/Getty Images)

Short Wave producer Hannah Chinn has adult-onset eczema. They're not the only one. Up to ten percent of people in the United States have it, according to the National Eczema Association — and its prevalence is increasing. Despite its ubiquity, a lot about this skin condition remains a mystery.
So today, Hannah's getting answers. They sat down with Raj Fadadu, a dermatologist at UC San Diego, to ask: What is eczema? What triggers it in the first place? And might climate change make it worse sometimes?

If you liked this episode, check out our episode on the science of itchiness. Also, follow us! That way you never miss another Short Wave episode.

Interested in hearing more about climate change and human health? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear your feedback!

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Listening to the ongoing debate about artificial intelligence, one could be forgiven for assuming that the technology is either a bogeyman or a savior, with little ground in between. But that’s not the stance of economist Daron Acemoglu, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, with Simon Johnson, of the new book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. Combining a cogent historical analysis of past technological revolutions, he examines whether a groundbreaking new technology “augments” the status quo, as opposed to merely squeezing out human labor.

“[M]y favorite term is ‘creating new tasks’ because I think it really clarifies what the quote unquote augmenting needs to take the form of,” he tells interviewer David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast. “It's not just making a worker more productive in tightening the screws, but it's really creating new jobs that didn't exist.” And so, he explains to those perhaps afraid that a bot is gunning for their livelihood, “Automation is not our enemy. Excessive automation is our enemy.”

This is not to depict Acemoglu as an apologist for our new silicon taskmasters. Current trends such as the consolidation of power among technology companies, a focus on shareholder returns at the expense of all else, a blind trust in companies to somehow muddle through to societal equilibrium, and a slavish drive to automate everything immediately all leave him cold: “I feel AI is going in the wrong direction and taking us down with it.”

His conversation doesn’t end there, thankfully, and he offers some hopeful words on how we might find that modus vivendi with AI, including (but by no means only relying on) “the soft hand of the state in tipping the scales one way or another.”

Acemoglu is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the British Academy of Sciences, the Turkish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association, and the Society of Labor Economists. He is also a member of the academic-cum-policymaker group of economic movers and shakers known as the Group of 30.

Besides Power and Progress, his books include the popular bestseller Why Nations Fail: Power, Prosperity, and Poverty written with James Robinson. Acemoglu has received a number of prizes, including two inaugural awards in 2004, the T. W. Shultz Prize from the University of Chicago and the Sherwin Rosen Award for outstanding contribution to labor economics. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in 2012, and the 2016 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award, as well as the Distinguished Science Award from the Turkish Sciences Association in 2006 and a Carnegie Fellowship in 2017.

Humans hallucinate. Algorithms lie.

At least, that's one difference that Joy Buolamwini and Kyle Chayka want to make clear. When ChatGPT tells you that a book exists when it doesn't – or professes its undying love – that's often called a "hallucination." Buolamwini, a computer scientist, prefers to call it "spicy autocomplete." But not all algorithmic errors are as innocuous. So today's show, we get into: How do algorithms work? What are their impacts? And how can we speak up about changing them?

This is a shortened version of Joy and Kyle's live interview, moderated by Regina G. Barber, at this year's Library of Congress National Book Festival.

If you liked this episode, check out our other episodes on facial recognition in Gaza, why AI is not a silver bullet and tech companies limiting police use of facial recognition.

Interested in hearing more technology stories? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to consider your idea for a future episode!

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Humans hallucinate. Algorithms lie.

At least, that's one difference that Joy Buolamwini and Kyle Chayka want to make clear. When ChatGPT tells you that a book exists when it doesn't – or professes its undying love – that's often called a "hallucination." Buolamwini, a computer scientist, prefers to call it "spicy autocomplete." But not all algorithmic errors are as innocuous. So today's show, we get into: How do algorithms work? What are their impacts? And how can we speak up about changing them?

This is a shortened version of Joy and Kyle's live interview, moderated by Regina G. Barber, at this year's Library of Congress National Book Festival.

If you liked this episode, check out our other episodes on facial recognition in Gaza, why AI is not a silver bullet and tech companies limiting police use of facial recognition.

Interested in hearing more technology stories? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to consider your idea for a future episode!

To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

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Just in time for the return of the school year, we're going "Back To School" by revisiting a classic at-home experiment that turns lemons into batteries — powerful enough to turn on a clock or a small lightbulb. But how does the science driving that process show up in household batteries we use daily? Host Emily Kwong and former host Maddie Sofia talk battery 101 with environmental engineer Jenelle Fortunato.

Want us to cover more science basics? Email us your ideas at shortwave@npr.org — we might feature them on a future episode!

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Just in time for the return of the school year, we're going "Back To School" by revisiting a classic at-home experiment that turns lemons into batteries — powerful enough to turn on a clock or a small lightbulb. But how does the science driving that process show up in household batteries we use daily? Host Emily Kwong and former host Maddie Sofia talk battery 101 with environmental engineer Jenelle Fortunato.

Want us to cover more science basics? Email us your ideas at shortwave@npr.org — we might feature them on a future episode!

To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

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It would be quite a superpower to regrow entire body parts. CrowdScience listener Kelly started pondering this after a discussion with her friend on whether human tongues could regrow. Finding out that they couldn't, she asked us to investigate the extent of human regenerative abilities.

Presenter Alex Lathbridge travels to Vienna, a hotbed of research in this area. He meets an animal with much better powers of regeneration than humans - the axolotl. In Elly Tanaka’s lab he finds out how she studies their incredible abilities – and shows off his new axolotl tattoo.

Why can these sweet-looking salamanders regrow entire limbs while we can’t even regrow our tongues? Palaeontologist Nadia Fröbisch has looked into the evolutionary origins of regeneration, and it goes a lot further back than you might think.

And in fact, even humans are constantly regenerating, by renewing the building blocks of our bodies: cells. New cells grow and replace old ones all the time – although, in some parts of the body, we do keep hold of the same cells throughout our lives.

However, cell turnover isn’t the same as regrowing entire organs or limbs. But can we grow new body parts in the lab instead? We meet Sasha Mendjan, who creates heart organoids using our cells’ innate ability to self-organise. How far off are we from implanting organs, grown from a patient’s stem cells, back into the human body?

Contributors: Dr Elly Tanaka, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) Prof Martin Hetzer, Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) Prof Nadia Fröbisch, Natural History Museum Berlin Dr Sasha Mendjan, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA)

Presenter: Alex Lathbridge Producer: Florian Bohr Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Bob Nettles

Following anti-tourism protests across popular Spanish cities and towns, we are looking for the world's most unwelcome visitor. Our panellists (and producers) are pitching their terrible tourists to see who really is the worst of them all. Some of our contenders include...

The wild boars who's unanticipated vacay to Rome has gone on for so long and caused so much carnage that researchers are putting them on birth control.

The microbes potentially hitching a ride to the moon via space probes and astronauts' poo

The multi-destination parasite who wreaks havoc as it interrails through snails (castrating them on the way), frogs (making them spout multiple limbs) and birds.

But there are some instances when tourists can be a good thing - and this is especially the case in the human body when we want to grow a baby. How is in that we are able to protect what should be an 'unwelcome visitor' from a hyperalert, hostile immune system? Our expert Edward Chuong explains.

Plus, we uncover the DNA origins of the world's most popular coffee bean, hear the freeloading activities of the male angular fish, and read out a selection of your wonderful emails.

Presenter: Caroline Steel Panellists: Phillys Mwatee & Christine Yohannes Producer: Julia Ravey Production team: Emily Knight, Noa Dowling Studio manager: Emma Harth

From Indonesia to Wisconsin, farmers all over the world struggle with a huge problem: pests. On top of that, it's tough for farmers to identify where exactly they have the pests and when. Reporter Lina Tran from NPR member station WUWM in Milwaukee joins host Emily Kwong to tell the story of how researchers in the Midwest are inventing new forms of pest detection that involve eavesdropping on the world of insects. Plus, hear what aphid slurping sounds like.

If you liked this episode, check out behind-the-scenes photos of Insect Eavesdropper experiments in Lina's digital story!

Interested in hearing more insect news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

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