Science Friday Folgen

Scientists Reach Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion This week, researchers announced a big breakthrough in the field of nuclear fusion. Scientists have been slamming atoms into each other for decades in the hope that they will fuse together, and release more energy than was put in. And for the first time ever, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory did just that in early December, using very powerful lasers. But just how quickly will the mission to develop scalable nuclear fusion become a reality? Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, about that and other top science news of the week, including an uptick in methane, an investigation into telehealth data sharing practices, and the newly-identified snake clitoris.   A Promising New Treatment Emerges For Multiple Myeloma Multiple myeloma is an incurable blood cancer that affects cells inside a patient’s bone marrow. Nearly all multiple myeloma patients will relapse at some point in their treatment, becoming resistant to first one, then another frontline intervention. But a new kind of therapy, a bispecific antibody called Talquetamab, has been showing promise in clinical trials—both in treating the cancer, and keeping patients in remission longer. A bispecific antibody works as a kind of bond between a T-cell that might otherwise not be doing its job and the myeloma cell itself, forcing the T-cell to attack the cancer. Ira talks to Dr. Ajai Chari, who is leading the clinical trials of Talquetamab, about the historic difficulty of treating multiple myeloma, and why this new therapeutic approach may lead to more patients living longer lives.   Growing Christmas Trees In A Warming World For those who celebrate Christmas, the decision over a Christmas tree can be hotly debated. For those who hold out for a real tree, there are dozens of species available for American consumers—catering to Douglas fir aficionados, Fraser fir fans, and Noble admirers. But climate change could soon affect the selection at a tree lot near you. Chal Landgren, a Christmas tree specialist at Oregon State University, manages a program that for decades has bred and developed seedlings raised to become Christmas trees. Oregon is responsible for growing 25% of all Christmas trees in the country, but heatwaves and drought have made this future tenuous. “My kind of anecdotal information is that between this summer and the heat dome, we probably lost 50% of the seedlings that were planted,” Landgren told Science Friday. Read more at sciencefriday.com.   Ready, Set, Play: 2022’s Best Science Fiction Games There were many exciting science fiction and science gaming titles released this year. Whether you enjoy video games, board games, learning about mendelian genetics, getting immersed in hard tactical sci-fi, or just want to be a cat wandering around a gorgeous cyberpunk city, we have you covered. Joining us to discuss our favorite sci-fi and science-y games this year (and the slightly recent past) are Maddy Myers, Deputy Editor of Games at Polygon and co-host of the gaming podcast Triple Click, and Mandi Hutchinson and Suzanne Sheldon of Salt And Sass Games.   See the full list at sciencefriday.com. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Medicine Is Failing Disabled Patients. Meet The Doctors Pushing For Change “More than sixty-one million Americans have disabilities, and increasing evidence documents that they experience health care disparities.” That’s the conclusion of a series of studies, in which researchers pulled back the curtain on how doctors perceive disabled patients. A study from last year found that more than half of surveyed physicians do not feel fully confident that they can provide disabled and non-disabled patients the same level of care. And in another paper, some doctors went as far to say that if you have a disability then “I am not the doctor for you.” So how do we change that? Ira talks with two researchers, who are disabled themselves, about how the medical field needs to better serve the disabled community. He hears from Dr. Lisa Iezzoni, an author on those studies and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who is based at the Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Also joining Science Friday is Dr. Feranmi Okanlami, a physician and assistant professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. To Stop Whale Strikes, Ships Were Asked to Slow Down. It Worked. The Santa Barbara Channel is like an underwater national park with marine mammals, seabirds, fish and even shipwrecks. Ocean currents from the north and south meet and mix here to create an ideal feeding grounds for marine life. “Just the other day I was flying over the channel and we counted over 40 humpback whales in a rather small region feeding on fish,” said Sean Hastings, the Policy Management and Information Officer for the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary—part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA. We met at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, close to his office, and sat in the museum’s library which is filled with books that are different shades of blues and greens—the colors you’d expect books about the ocean to be. Hastings continues his story about a recent flight over the channel spotting all those whales. To read the rest, visit sciencefriday.com.   How The Transistor Transformed The World 75 years ago this month, research scientists working at Bell Labs first created, then unveiled to the world a new device—the point contact transistor. Some call it the greatest invention of the 20th century. That first transistor was a clunky looking thing, with two gold contacts on a plastic wedge pressed against a crystal of germanium. But that early device had a magical property: A voltage in one part of the device could control the flow of electrons in another part of the transistor. It could be a switch, or an amplifier. That device and the ones that followed and improved on it would become an essential part of modern life. From the first transistor radios to modern computers, hearing aids, and more, transistors are everywhere, in great numbers. An ordinary cell phone today likely has billions of transistors in it. In fact, the transistor has become so ubiquitous that one estimate puts the number of transistors on the planet as about three million per square foot. The three researchers credited with the invention of the transistor, William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain, went on to share the Nobel Prize in Physics—but they saw limited financial gain from their creation, and had a rocky personal relationship. Michael Riordan, a physicist, science historian, and coauthor of “Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age,” joins Ira to look back on the invention, the scientists who got credit for the device, and where transistor technology has gone since 1947. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Science Behind The Psychedelics Boom There’s been an explosion of new research into therapeutic uses for psychedelics. This includes drugs like psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical found in “magic mushrooms,” and ketamine—which was originally used as an anesthetic, and later became a popular party drug also known as “special K.” Esketamine, a form of ketamine, was approved by the FDA in 2019 for use in treatment resistant depression. And just last month Colorado residents voted to legalize medicinal use of psilocybin. Following on the heels of Oregon’s legalization in 2020, which is now in the process of being implemented. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed promising results in using psilocybin to help patients with treatment-resistant depression. About a third of those who received the highest dose were in remission 3 weeks later. This was the largest look at psilocybin’s effect on depression to date, involving 233 participants across ten countries in Europe. Ira talks with Dr. Steve Levine, senior vice president of patient access and medical affairs at COMPASS Pathways, the company that funded the study. Later, Ira takes a closer look into the latest psychedelic research and takes listener calls with Dr. Gerard Sanacora, professor of psychiatry and director of the Yale Depression Research Program at the Yale School of Medicine, and Dr. Alissa Bazinet, Clinical Psychologist, Co-Founder and Director of Research and Development at the Sequoia Center, and Associate Director of the Social Neuroscience and Psychotherapy Lab at Oregon Health and Science University.     How Will AI Image Generators Affect Artists? Back in August, controversy erupted around the winning submission of the Colorado State Fair’s art content. The winning painting wasn’t made by a human, but by an artificial intelligence app called Midjourney, which takes text prompts and turns them into striking imagery, with the help of a neural network and an enormous database of images. AI-based text-to-image generators have been around for years, but their outputs were rudimentary and rough. The State Fair work showed this technology had taken a giant leap forward in its sophistication. Realistic, near-instant image generation was suddenly here—and reactions were just as potent as their creations. Tech enthusiasts lauded the achievement, while artists were largely concerned and critical. If anyone could make a painting in just a few seconds, why would someone need to commission an artist to produce an illustration, or even bother spending years learning art at all? Read the rest on sciencefriday.com. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.