Ending Covid
It will take some time, but rest assured: a coronavirus vaccine is coming, and it will work.
The biopharmaceutical industry will be able to make a Covid-19 vaccine—probably a few of them—using various existing vaccine technologies. But many people worry that Covid-19 will mutate and evade our vaccines, as the flu virus does each season. Covid-19 is fundamentally different from flu viruses, though, in ways that will allow our first-generation vaccines to hold up well. To the extent that Covid does mutate, it’s likely to do so much more slowly than the flu virus does, buying us time to create new and improved vaccines.
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
Coronavirus ‘Cure’ Claims Get FTC Warning, So Maybe Don’t Drink Silver
Companies are offering dubious cures and treatments for COVID-19, or coronavirus, as misinformation
Amongst the mess of misinformation around coronavirus, claims promising cures and treatments for the virus are rife. On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Food and Drug Administration took action, warning seven companies about their ads for products promising to help combat coronavirus.
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility
The novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading around the world rapidly and declared as a pandemic by WHO. Here, we compared the ABO blood group distribution in 2,173 patients with COVID-19 confirmed by SARS-CoV-2 test from three hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen, China with that in normal people from the corresponding regions. The results showed that blood group A was associated with a higher risk for acquiring COVID-19 compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O was associated with a lower risk for the infection compared with non-O blood groups. This is the first observation of an association between the ABO blood type and COVID-19. It should be emphasized, however, that this is an early study with limitations. It would be premature to use this study to guide clinical practice at this time, but it should encourage further investigation of the relationship between the ABO blood group and the COVID-19 susceptibility.
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
Arizona man dies after attempting to take Trump coronavirus 'cure'
Wife survives after couple in their 60s ingested chloroquine phosphate, which Trump falsely claimed was approved to treat coronavirus
A Phoenix-area man has died and his wife was in critical condition after the couple took chloroquine phosphate, an additive used to clean fish tanks that is also found in an anti-malaria medication touted by Donald Trump as a treatment for Covid-19.
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
New York hospitals will trial using antibodies to treat coronavirus cases
It's a relatively simple means of potentially helping the worst cases.
Back in our exhaustive review of potential treatments for SARS-CoV-2 infections, we mentioned one option that was relatively quick, easy, and required no further approval for use: transfer of blood plasma from those who had previously had an infection. The reasoning behind this is that this plasma will contain antibodies that could neutralize coronaviruses in the blood stream, severely limiting the progression of an active infection. Now, trials of this method are starting in New York City, the hardest-hit location in the US.
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
Blood from people who recover from coronavirus could provide a treatment
Plasma is being studied as a way to fight off the virus
An old idea for fighting infections — an approach most physicians know about only from medical lore — is being revived as people wait for drugs and vaccines to thwart the novel coronavirus. If it works, the blood plasma of people who have recovered from covid-19 would be used to protect health-care workers and help sick people get well.
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
Michigan doctors see success in COVID-19 treatment but say more clinical trials are needed
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Scientists across the country were still in search of a cure for the coronavirus disease 2019 on Tuesday, March 31, 2020. Clinical trials were underway as doctors tried to find a way to treat the deadly virus.
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
Likelihood of survival of coronavirus disease 2019
A case fatality ratio of an infectious disease measures the proportion of all individuals diagnosed with a disease who will die from that disease. For an emerging infectious disease, this ratio is thus a very important indicator not only of disease severity but also of its significance as a public health problem. For instance, WHO estimated a case fatality ratio of approximately 14–15% for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003,1 and approximately 35% for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012.2
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From Episode: Virology, Epidemiology and the Covids with just Ciaccio
Air Force Pushes Ahead On ‘Flying Car’ Challenge
"Now is the perfect time to make Jetson's cars real," says Air Force acquisition head Will Roper.
PENTAGON: The Air Force will release a request for proposals Feb. 25 for a ‘flying car’ that could eventually transport soldiers and supplies to the battlefield, says service acquisition head Will Roper.
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From Episode: Aviation and Aerospace with Winston Carter!
DARPA’s competition to find a rapid rocket launch provider ends without a winner
Astra came super close
DARPA’s competition to find a rocket company that can rapidly send satellites to space ended without a winner on March 2nd when the final team failed to launch by the contest’s deadline. Rocket startup Astra came within less than a minute of launching its brand-new rocket for the competition out of Alaska, but it had to halt the mission due to some bad data from the vehicle. As a result, the company lost out on winning up to $12 million — and now, no one will win the money prize.
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From Episode: Aviation and Aerospace with Winston Carter!
Google’s Larry Page is backing the new BlackFly personal flying machine and it looks unreal
Are you ready to take one for a ride?
What is it about billionaires and reaching for the stars or at least the skies? Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin, while Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic. Now, Google’s Larry Page has backed his second flying vehicle startup. Although Canada’s Opener doesn’t promise a trip to space like the other ones, it does offer something much closer to becoming a reality, according to Business Insider.
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From Episode: Aviation and Aerospace with Winston Carter!
Are flying taxis ready for lift-off?
To supporters, they are the solution to congestion. To critics, they’re just billionaires’ toys. So are they the answer to urban travel?
It’s right up there with meal pills, jetpacks, robot butlers and colonies on Mars. Since at least 1962, when the TV cartoon characters George, Jane, Elroy and Judy Jetson first took to the skies, flying cars have been a staple of speculative visions of the future. Designs for dozens of small, affordable, personal flying machines were unveiled in the latter half of the 20th century. Few became airborne and none took commercial flight.
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From Episode: Aviation and Aerospace with Winston Carter!
NASA’s Fuel-less Space Engine Has Been Tested
Spaceflight is hard. Blasting heavy cargo, spacecraft, and maybe people to respectable speeds over interplanetary distances requires an amount of propellant too massive for current rockets to haul into the void. That is, unless you have an engine that can generate thrust without fuel.
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From Episode: Aviation and Aerospace with Winston Carter!
Baboons Survive for Half a Year after Heart Transplants from Pigs
The cross-species heart procedure brings human trials into view
In four adjacent enclosures transplantation researcher Bruno Reichart kept four happy baboons. “They can hop around, eat, drink and they are enjoying life,” he says. “They watch TV—their favorite is the cartoon with the chipmunk.” Most importantly, he says, they were healthy and normal—which is astonishing, given the fact that the hearts beating life in their chests were anything but normal for a baboon.
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From Episode: Baboon Hearts, Head Transplants and Medical Science with Gary Petersen!
Scientists Got Adult Frogs to Regrow Limbs. It's a Step Toward Human 'Regeneration'
Scientists got African clawed frogs, similar to this one, to regrow limbs in the lab.
Millions of people live with amputated limbs that are gone forever. But that might not be the case in the future. For the first time, scientists have shown that adult frogs can regrow amputated legs. They say the approach can work in humans, too. “There is no reason that human bodies can’t regenerate,” said Tufts University biologist Michael Levin, who led the new research.
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From Episode: Baboon Hearts, Head Transplants and Medical Science with Gary Petersen!
Scientists Just Transplanted Lab-Grown Lungs into Pigs
Eventually, could all human organ transplants be lab-grown too?
Scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch just successfully transplanted lab-grown lungs into pigs — an exciting development towards being able to bioengineer lungs for humans someday, too.
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From Episode: Baboon Hearts, Head Transplants and Medical Science with Gary Petersen!
Two surgeons in China developing a method to transplant a human head
Italian scientist Sergio Canavero and Chinese surgeon Xiaoping Ren are developing a plan to transplant a human head — right down to neck bolts and electricity.
Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero wants to carry out the first human head transplant operation and believes it could help people who have been paralyzed from the neck down to walk again.
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From Episode: Baboon Hearts, Head Transplants and Medical Science with Gary Petersen!
Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft just bombed an asteroid
Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has begun the asteroid mining era with a bang. Earlier this morning, hovering 500 metres above the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, it shot a copper projectile packed with explosives towards the rocky landscape. Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2198839-japans-hayabusa-2-spacecraft-just-bombed-an-asteroid/#ixzz6EWq8PPUC
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From Episode: Asteroids, Astrophysics and Quantum Conjecturing with Jake Kroeger!
Facebook and CMU’s ‘superhuman’ poker AI beats human pros
‘It can bluff better than any human.’
AI has definitively beaten humans at another of our favorite games. A poker bot, designed by researchers from Facebook’s AI lab and Carnegie Mellon University, has bested some of the world’s top players in a series of games of six-person no-limit Texas Hold ‘em poker.
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From Episode: A.I., Androids, Cyborgs and Robots with Mike Roe!
‘PigeonBot’ is the first robot that can bend its wings like a real bird
New insights into flight could pave the way for more nimble aerial robots
Pigeons may be considered rats of the sky, but some scientists have found greater value in these urban birds: the blueprint for a new generation of flying machines.
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From Episode: A.I., Androids, Cyborgs and Robots with Mike Roe!
Oceans Melting Greenland
Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) is a NASA Mission led by JPL Scientist Josh Willis to understand the role that the ocean plays in melting Greenland’s glaciers. From the sky and the sea, OMG gathers data about water temperatures and the glaciers all the way around Greenland to get a better idea of just how fast the ice is melting, and how fast global sea levels will rise.
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From Episode: OMG, Climate Update 2020! with Josh Willis!
THE OCEAN CLEANUP SUCCESSFULLY CATCHES PLASTIC IN THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH
Today, we announced that System 001/B is successfully capturing and collecting plastic debris. After one year of testing, we have succeeded in developing a self-contained system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that is using the natural forces of the ocean to passively catch and concentrate plastic, thereby confirming the most important principle behind the cleanup concept that was first presented by Boyan Slat at a TEDx conference in October 2012.
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From Episode: OMG, Climate Update 2020! with Josh Willis!
Listen to the Recreated Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy
Media outlets have likened the sound to a “brief groan,” a “long, exasperated ‘meh’ without the ‘m,’” and “rather like ‘eeuuughhh’”
In the nearly 200 years since his mummy’s arrival at the Leeds City Museum in northern England, an ancient Egyptian priest named Nesyamun has slowly but surely revealed his secrets.
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From Episode: OMG, Climate Update 2020! with Josh Willis!
Maths says you need coarser coffee grounds to make a perfect espresso
A more efficient way of making an espresso could reduce the amount of coffee wasted per cup, potentially saving billions of dollars every year.
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From Episode: OMG, Climate Update 2020! with Josh Willis!
Living robots built using frog cells
Tiny 'xenobots' assembled from cells promise advances from drug delivery to toxic waste clean-up
Scientists repurposed living frog cells -- and assembled them into entirely new life-forms. These tiny 'xenobots' can move toward a target and heal themselves after being cut. These novel living machines are neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. They're a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.
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From Episode: OMG, Climate Update 2020! with Josh Willis!
Earth may be 140 years away from reaching carbon levels not seen in 56 million years
Total human carbon dioxide emissions could match those of Earth's last major greenhouse warming event in fewer than five generations, new research finds. A new study finds humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate nine to 10 times higher than the greenhouse gas was emitted during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a global warming event that occurred roughly 56 million years ago.
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From Episode: The Solar System Gets Bigger, Neptune's Moon's Mini-Moon, Weird Twins, A Tiny T-Rex and More!
Earth scientists plan to meld massive databases into a ‘geological Google’
Deep-time Digital Earth aims to liberate data from collections such as the British Geological Survey’s
The British Geological Survey (BGS) has amassed one of the world’s premier collections of geologic samples. Housed in three enormous warehouses in Nottingham, U.K., it contains about 3 million fossils gathered over more than 150 years at thousands of sites across the country. But this data trove “was not really very useful to anybody,” says Michael Stephenson, a BGS paleontologist. Notes about the samples and their associated rocks “were sitting in boxes on bits of paper.” Now, that could change, thanks to a nascent international effort to meld earth science databases into what Stephenson and other backers are describing as a “geological Google.”
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From Episode: The Solar System Gets Bigger, Neptune's Moon's Mini-Moon, Weird Twins, A Tiny T-Rex and More!
Climate rewind: Scientists turn carbon dioxide back into coal
New technique can efficiently convert CO2 from gas into solid particles of carbon
Scientists have harnessed liquid metals to turn carbon dioxide back into solid coal, in research that offers an alternative pathway for safely and permanently removing the greenhouse gas from our atmosphere. The new technique can convert carbon dioxide back into carbon at room temperature, a process that's efficient and scalable. A side benefit is that the carbon can hold electrical charge, becoming a supercapacitor, so it could potentially be used as a component in future vehicles.
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From Episode: The Solar System Gets Bigger, Neptune's Moon's Mini-Moon, Weird Twins, A Tiny T-Rex and More!
Italy’s Antivaccine Government – The Attack on Experts Continues
Anti-vaccine Italian government fires its entire Health Council. This is unfortunately part of a bigger trend against expertise and reality-based policy.
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From Episode: Vaccines vs Pseudoscience! with Amy Albert Cobb!
Antivaccine pseudoscience disguised as autism advocacy in the Minnesota legislature
Recently, Sen. Jim Abeler of Minnesota created the MN Autism Council, an advisory panel tasked with advising the legislature on autism policy. A closer look at the story reveals that Sen. Abeler is a chiropractor, two of the members are antivaxers, and one of them was a founding member tasked with forming the council. This is how antivaccine activism is disguised as autism advocacy.
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From Episode: Vaccines vs Pseudoscience! with Amy Albert Cobb!
Questioning the Science Behind Vaccines?
NEW OUTBREAKS OF DISEASES LIKE MEASLES SHOW THE URGENT NEED TO NIX BAD SCIENCE, WHEREVER VACCINES ARE CONCERNED
As the end-of-summer approaches, in the past few weeks millions of parents have shuttled their children to multiple doctors’ appointments, often stressing over the pressure to remain compliant with school district-specific vaccination schedules. It’s a hassle, to say nothing of the difficulty many parents experience while watching their children recoil in pain from needle pricks, or the confusion many have over common misunderstandings about the ingredients in various vaccines.
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From Episode: Vaccines vs Pseudoscience! with Amy Albert Cobb!
Thimerosal in Vaccines
Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that has been used for decades in the United States in multi-dose vials (vials containing more than one dose) of medicines and vaccines. There is no evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site. However, in July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure.
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From Episode: Vaccines vs Pseudoscience! with Amy Albert Cobb!
VACCINE MYTHS DEBUNKED
U.S. public health officials and physicians have been combating misconceptions about vaccine safety for over twenty years. They’ve had mixed success. Despite the fact that numerous studies have found no evidence to support the notion that vaccines cause autism and other chronic illnesses, a growing number of parents are refusing to vaccinate their children.
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From Episode: Vaccines vs Pseudoscience! with Amy Albert Cobb!
Ten threats to global health in 2019
The world is facing multiple health challenges. These range from outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and diphtheria, increasing reports of drug-resistant pathogens, growing rates of obesity and physical inactivity to the health impacts of environmental pollution and climate change and multiple humanitarian crises.
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From Episode: Vaccines vs Pseudoscience! with Amy Albert Cobb!
Layered cocktails inspire new form of male birth control
For decades, women have shouldered most of the burden of contraception. However, long-term use of female birth control pills could increase the risk for side-effects such as blood clots or breast cancer. Now, inspired by colorful layered cocktails, researchers have developed a medium-term, reversible male contraceptive.
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From Episode: The Antarctic King, A New Galaxy, A Denisovan Cave, China's Moon Lander, AI Satire, An Alzheimer’s Breakthrough and Is a Cure For Cancer Coming Soon?
This rediscovered Bolivian frog species survived deadly chytrid fungus
The species was feared to be extinct, except for one lonely male
Save for one “lonely” survivor in captivity, the Sehuencas water frog hadn’t been seen in the wild since 2008. That’s when its numbers collapsed, primarily due to chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease that has devastated frog populations worldwide. Fearing the species might be extinct, some scientists spent 10 years searching the Bolivian mountain forests for the amphibians. Now, they’ve found a tiny population of five.
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From Episode: Saturn's Rings, Antarctic Water Bears, George the Loneliest Bolivian Frog and Alligator Skeleton Robots
Saturn’s rings are surprisingly young and may be from shredded moons
Data from the Cassini spacecraft show that the gas giant didn’t always have its iconic icy bands
Saturn’s iconic rings are a recent addition. Final data from the Cassini spacecraft, which flew between the planet and the rings this year before plunging into the gas giant’s atmosphere, show the rings are around a few hundred million years old and less massive than previously thought.
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From Episode: Saturn's Rings, Antarctic Water Bears, George the Loneliest Bolivian Frog and Alligator Skeleton Robots
Cassini Reveals the Surprisingly Young Age of Saturn’s Rings
Using observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, researchers have found that Saturn’s rings are actually much younger than the planet itself. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
During NASA’s Cassini spacecraft’s Grand Finale, the craft dove between the planet and its rings. In doing so, it collected new insights into the ringed planet, including the surprising age of Saturn’s rings. According to a new study, scientists have found that Saturn’s rings are actually much younger than the planet itself. And they most likely formed in the last 100 million years.
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From Episode: Saturn's Rings, Antarctic Water Bears, George the Loneliest Bolivian Frog and Alligator Skeleton Robots
Miles Davis is not Mozart: The brains of jazz and classical pianists work differently
Even when playing the same piece of music
A musician's brain is different to that of a non-musician. Making music requires an interplay of abilities which are also reflected in more developed brain structures. Scientists have discovered that these capabilities are embedded in a much more finely tuned way than assumed: The brain activity of jazz pianists differs from those of classical pianists, even when playing the same piece of music.
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From Episode: The Science of Music with Elizabeth Hayhurst! Synesthesia, AI Music, Jazz Brains, Dementia and Mathmagic Land
How police witnesses could be misled by a simple wave of the hand
How easy do you think it would be for someone to convince you that you’d seen something that never really happened? What about them doing this without actually saying anything misleading? That would almost be impossible, surely? Well, research into verbal and nonverbal influence suggests this can happen, and that we’re actually far more suggestible than we might like to think.
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From Episode: Forensic Psychology with Stephanie Streisand! Live from The Pack Theater in Hollywood!
Positronium
Positronium (Ps) is a system consisting of an electron and its anti-particle, a positron, bound together into an exotic atom, specifically an onium. The system is unstable: the two particles annihilate each other to predominantly produce two or three gamma-rays, depending on the relative spin states. The orbit and energy levels of the two particles are similar to that of the hydrogen atom (which is a bound state of a proton and an electron). However, because of the reduced mass, the frequencies of the spectral lines are less than half of the corresponding hydrogen lines.
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From Episode: Nuclear Physics with Dr Kevin Peter Hickerson! Ghost Black Holes, Ant Man Atoms, Free Will and Fast Radio Bursts
A Spree of Signals From Across the Universe
Scientists still don’t understand “fast radio bursts,” but they’ve gotten a lot better at discovering them.
About a decade ago, astrophysicists discovered an overlooked signal in some old telescope data: a flash of cosmic energy lasting only a few milliseconds. The signal seemed to have experienced a long and bumpy ride to Earth. Its radio waves had become distorted and were spread across a range of frequencies. This suggested that the radiation had traveled for billions of years, slowing down here and there as it sped through lush galaxies and luminous clouds of gas and dust.
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From Episode: Nuclear Physics with Dr Kevin Peter Hickerson! Ghost Black Holes, Ant Man Atoms, Free Will and Fast Radio Bursts
Bio of Dr Steven Kaye, MD
Cofounder and CEO of BRC, Dr. Kaye holds over 35 years experience in experimental electrotherapeutic methods, which began with research under electrophysiology pioneer Robert O. Becker, MD . His lifelong clinical research experience in electrotherapeutic methods has culminated in the successful launch of the ODIN 1®. Prior to his commitment and investment in BRC, Dr. Kaye owned and spearheaded a prolific medical practice with 12 locations across California. With more than 15 years of experience in managed care as CEO and cofounder of an Independent Physician Association, Dr. Kaye brings scientific context, practical insight, passionate drive, and depth of understanding as the leader of BRC.
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From Episode: Medical Science with Jason Kaye and Dr Steven Kaye, MD! New Neurons, Electrical Healing, False Memories and Crygenics!
GERONTOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP
Our Mission: Slow and ultimately reverse age related decline
July 31, 2018; The world's oldest verified person, Chiyo Miyako, died on July 22, 2018, at the age of 117 years, 81 days. She became the oldest verified living person in the world on April 21, 2018, following the death of fellow Japanese woman Nabi Tajima.
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From Episode: Medical Science with Jason Kaye and Dr Steven Kaye, MD! New Neurons, Electrical Healing, False Memories and Crygenics!
A new generation of pain medications
Researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Zuse Institute Berlin have developed a new generation of pain medications. The researchers used computer simulations to develop new opioids that will only work at sites affected by injury or inflammation. These drugs can prevent the occurrence of brain- and gut-related side effects typically associated with conventional opioids and have been shown to be successful in preclinical studies. Results from this research have been published in Pain* and Scientific Reports**.
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From Episode: Medical Science with Jason Kaye and Dr Steven Kaye, MD! New Neurons, Electrical Healing, False Memories and Crygenics!
A MAJOR VICTORY FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE BURGER, THE VEGGIE ‘MEAT’ THAT BLEEDS
THE IMPOSSIBLE BURGER seems too good to be true—an entirely plant-based “meat” that looks and smells and tastes like beef (at least, according to some folks). Hell, it even bleeds like meat. That’s thanks to a yeast modified to carry genes for the soy leghemoglobin protein, which you’d normally find in the roots of soy plants. The engineered yeast can then churn out a vegetarian version of heme, the metallic-tasting substance you also find in your blood and muscle.
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From Episode: Food Science with Katie Molinaro! Old Cheese, Spider Burgers, Angel-Kissed Rum and Clean Meat
Would You Eat a Tarantula-Topped Burger?
A tarantula — "lightly salted and oven-baked" — tops a burger at a Durham, North Carolina restaurant, testing "the most daring of taste buds."
Top this: A burger restaurant in Durham, North Carolina, is offering a peculiar addition to its selection of toppings this month — alongside the usual array of cheeses, vegetables, sauces and other condiments, one special burger is presented topped by a tarantula.
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From Episode: Food Science with Katie Molinaro! Old Cheese, Spider Burgers, Angel-Kissed Rum and Clean Meat
Oldest Cheese Ever Found in Egyptian Tomb Read
Italian researchers also found traces of disease-causing bacteria in what they believe is probably extremely aged cheese.
Last month, archaeologists cracked open a tomb excavated in Alexandria, Egypt, revealing three skeletons bathing in an crimson pool of sludgy sewage. In response, tens of thousands around the world immediately petitioned for the right to sip from the freshly uncorked casket of amontillado. (Spoiler: It hasn’t worked out.) But fear not, coffin connoisseurs: There’s a new artisanal artifact in town—the world’s oldest solid cheese, over 3,000 years in the making.
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From Episode: Food Science with Katie Molinaro! Old Cheese, Spider Burgers, Angel-Kissed Rum and Clean Meat
Wikipedia: Laetoli Footprints
Laetoli is a site in Tanzania, dated to the Plio-Pleistocene and famous for its hominin footprints, preserved in volcanic ash. The site of the Laetoli footprints (Site G) is located 45 km south of Olduvai gorge. The location and tracks were discovered by archaeologist Mary Leakey in 1976, and were excavated by 1978. Based on analysis of the footfall impressions "The Laetoli Footprints" provided convincing evidence for the theory of bipedalism in Pliocene hominins and received significant recognition by scientists and the public. Since 1998, paleontological expeditions have continued under the leadership of Dr. Amandus Kwekason of the National Museum of Tanzania and Dr. Terry Harrison of New York University, leading to the recovery of more than a dozen new hominin finds,[1] as well as a comprehensive reconstruction of the paleoecology.
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From Episode: Movie Pitches with Dave and Jesse! Probing the Sun and The Anthropology Anthology
Wikipedia: Lucy (Australopithecus)
Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, several hundred pieces of bone fossils representing 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis. In Ethiopia, the assembly is also known as Dinkinesh, which means "you are marvelous" in the Amharic language. Lucy was discovered in 1974 in Africa, near the village Hadar in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
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From Episode: Movie Pitches with Dave and Jesse! Probing the Sun and The Anthropology Anthology
The Complete Guide to the John Muir Trail
The John Muir Trail is the premier hiking trail in the United States.The trail starts in America's treasure, Yosemite National Park, and continues 215 miles through the Ansel Adams Wilderness, Sequoia National Park, King's Canyon National Park, and ends at the highest peak in continental United States, Mount Whitney at 14,496 ft.
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From Episode: NASA JPL Open House with Leo Shvedsky and Heidi Lux! Mars Rovers, Space Telescopes, Exoplanets, Yosemite Camping and Astronaut Ice Cream!
How Science Is Helping Us Understand Gender
Freed from the binary of boy and girl, gender identity is a shifting landscape. Can science help us navigate?
When Massachusetts twins Caleb (left) and Emmie (right) Smith were born in 1998, it was hard to tell them apart. Today Emmie says, “When we were 12, I didn’t feel like a boy, but I didn’t know it was possible to be a girl.” At 17 Emmie came out as transgender, and recently she underwent gender-confirmation surgery. She plays down its significance: “I was no less of a woman before it, and I’m no more of one today.”
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From Episode: Gender Studies with Reed Brice! Transgender Science, LGBTQ Science, Hormonal Therapies, Confirmation Surgeries, Penis Transplants and Much More: Part 1 of 2!
Scientists create a new form of matter—superionic water ice
Scientists created a new form of water—called superionic ice—that acts like a weird cross between a solid and a liquid, The New York Times reports. The substance, which consists of a fluid of hydrogen ions running through a lattice of oxygen, was formed by compressing water between two diamonds and then zapping it with a laser. That caused pressures to spike to more than a million times those of Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures to rise to thousands of degrees, conditions scientists had predicted may lead to the formation of superionic ice. This kind of water doesn’t exist naturally on Earth, the scientists report in Nature Physics, but it may be present in the mantles of icy planets like Neptune and Uranus.
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From Episode: Space Madness with Diana Wright! Uranus Stinks, Space Twins, Theoretical Ice and Random Sci-Fi Reviews!
Study Reveals Uranus Smells Of Farts
Uranus, the first planet discovered in modern times, has the poetic name of the Greek god of the heavens. In the English language, it is, unfortunately, the literal butt of every astronomy joke and I’m afraid that this latest discovery will make things worse. Astronomers have discovered that the upper atmosphere of Uranus is dominated by hydrogen sulfide, a molecule that smells like rotten eggs and is often found in human flatulence. I’ll give you a moment to crack a few jokes.
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From Episode: Space Madness with Diana Wright! Uranus Stinks, Space Twins, Theoretical Ice and Random Sci-Fi Reviews!
CRISPR fixes disease gene in viable human embryos
Gene-editing experiment pushes scientific and ethical boundaries.
An international team of researchers has used CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing — a technique that allows scientists to make precise changes to genomes with relative ease — to correct a disease-causing mutation in dozens of viable human embryos. The study represents a significant improvement in efficiency and accuracy over previous efforts.
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From Episode: Genetic Revolution with Tiffany Aleman! CRISPR, PCR, Armed Dolphins and Human Immortality
CRISPR ISN’T ENOUGH ANY MORE. GET READY FOR GENE EDITING 2.0
IN FEWER THAN five years, the gene-editing technology known as Crispr has revolutionized the face and pace of modern biology. Since its ability to find, remove, and replace genetic material was first reported in 2012, scientists have published more than 5,000 papers mentioning Crispr. Biomedical researchers are embracing it to create better models of disease. And countless companies have spun up to commercialize new drugs, therapies, foods, chemicals, and materials based on the technology.
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From Episode: Genetic Revolution with Tiffany Aleman! CRISPR, PCR, Armed Dolphins and Human Immortality
Explainer: How PCR works
What a photocopier does for images and text on paper, PCR does for snippets of DNA
Copy machines are handy in schools and offices because they can quickly duplicate pages from all types of sources. Similarly, biologists often need to make many, many copies of genetic material. They use a technology called PCR. It’s short for polymerase (Puh-LIM-er-ase) chain reaction. Within just a few hours, this process can make a billion or more copies.
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From Episode: Genetic Revolution with Tiffany Aleman! CRISPR, PCR, Armed Dolphins and Human Immortality
CRISPR fixes disease gene in viable human embryos
Gene-editing experiment pushes scientific and ethical boundaries.
An international team of researchers has used CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing — a technique that allows scientists to make precise changes to genomes with relative ease — to correct a disease-causing mutation in dozens of viable human embryos. The study represents a significant improvement in efficiency and accuracy over previous efforts.
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From Episode: The End of Humanity with Anne Yatco! Animal Robots, Eye Worms, Crayfish Virgin Birth, Cloverfielding Humans
Ten Fun Facts About Falcons, the Birds
As the Atlanta Falcons prepare to play in the Super Bowl, learn about the remarkable raptors behind the nam
They’re the consummate hunters of the avian world—able to spot, chase and kill prey quietly and efficiently. They’ve given their name to one of the most famous Marvel superheroes, and humans have relied on them for millennia as effective hunting partners. Now, Smithsonian.com is sharing a few facts about theperegrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) in honor of the species’ coming appearance in the Super Bowl.
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From Episode: Welcome to Science AF! Space X, Falcons, Mars Bowie and Eagle Chickens
Success! SpaceX Launches Falcon Heavy Rocket on Historic Maiden Voyage
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first Falcon Heavy rocket built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX soared on its maiden voyage today (Feb. 6) — a historic test flight that also sent a car toward Mars and included two confirmed booster landings.
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From Episode: Welcome to Science AF! Space X, Falcons, Mars Bowie and Eagle Chickens
SpaceX oddity: how Elon Musk sent a car towards Mars
A Starman sitting in a tin can is currently navigating the heavens, soundtracked by David Bowie. How did it – and we – get there?
It takes a beat or two for the brain to compute. The image is startling, incongruous, barmy. A car floats in space. At the wheel is a spacesuit, seatbelt on. Earth hangs behind it. The two objects don’t work together. The image jars like bad Photoshop. But it is real.
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From Episode: Welcome to Science AF! Space X, Falcons, Mars Bowie and Eagle Chickens
New ‘mutant’ crayfish species is entirely female and don’t need no man
Something incredibly bizarre is going on right now in the world of crayfish, and it all started back in 1995. A single female slough crayfish spontaneously spawned an entirely new species thanks to her ability to essentially clone herself and create offspring without the need for genetic material from a mate. Now, the new species, called the marbled crayfish, is devastating areas where it has been introduced, and scientists aren’t sure how to stop it.
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From Episode: The End of Humanity with Anne Yatco! Animal Robots, Eye Worms, Crayfish Virgin Birth, Cloverfielding Humans
Google’s AlphaGo AI beats the world’s best human Go player
Google’s AlphaGo AI Go player has defeated Ke Jie, Go world champion, in the opening match of a three game series that will include matches with Jie on Thursday and Saturday. The win was by a narrow margin, but AlphaGo has been programmed to ensure victory, not to run up the score or devastate its opponent, so the margin by which it wins isn’t necessarily a good indicator of how easy or hard it was for the computer player to win.
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From Episode: AIpocalypse with Richee Aaron! GO Supremacy, Cheating Algorithms, Suicidal Q-Berts, Robots in Limbo
DeepMind AI is learning to understand the ‘thoughts’ of others
The firm’s new artificial intelligence has developed a theory of mind, passing an important psychological assessment that most children only develop around age 4
MACHINES are getting to know each other better. An artificial intelligence, developed by Google-owned research firm DeepMind, can now pass an important psychological assessment that most children only develop the skills to pass at around age 4. Its aptitude in this key theory of mind test may lead to AIs that are more human-like.
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From Episode: AIpocalypse with Richee Aaron! GO Supremacy, Cheating Algorithms, Suicidal Q-Berts, Robots in Limbo
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