Science Friday Folgen

The Science Behind Why You Should Ask For Help Sometimes asking for help—even for the smallest of favors—can feel awkward, or like you’re inconveniencing someone else. But the odds are, you’re probably wrong. Studies show that people are much more willing to lend a helping hand than you would think, and both parties usually end up happier. Guest host Shahla Farzan talks with Dr. Xuan Zhao, a psychologist at Stanford University, about the psychology behind asking for help.   A Possible Achilles Heel For Troublesome PFAS Chemicals Long-lasting chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are used widely in everything from firefighting foam to microwavable popcorn bags. The chemicals are a popular component of polymer coatings that resist heat, grease, stains and water. PFAS compounds (a family that includes roughly 12,000 different substances are often called “forever chemicals” in popular science coverage, because they’re designed to be super stable and don’t break down in the environment. But what makes them last “forever” from a chemistry perspective? And what can we do about it? Current PFAS disposal methods are expensive and labor-intensive, blasting the chemicals with temperatures over 1,000 degrees C in a high-pressure environment. But a research study published in Science has found a possible Achilles’ heel: a weak spot in the chemical bonds. The research points to a new possible method for disposing of PFAS chemicals, which uses special reagents to knock off a group of oxygen atoms at the tail end of PFAS, triggering a cascade of reactions that breaks the PFAS chemicals down into harmless components. The paper’s lead author, Brittany Trang, joins guest host Shahla Farzan to discuss this development in PFAS research.   Engineered Bacteria Might Help The Dream Of Mixed Plastic Recycling We’ve all been there—standing by the recycling bin, holding some sort of plastic object, and trying to figure out if it can go in the bin. There are many different types of plastic out there, from the film that wraps the meat at the grocery store, to the plastic in your milk jug. But they all differ in their ability to be recycled, and in the specific procedures and recipes that it takes to process them. Writing in the journal Science, a team of researchers describes a demonstration process that can break down a mixed bag of plastics, even dirty ones, and produce a single chemical output that could be used in industry. The process starts with a catalytic oxidation process involving metal salts, an acetic acid solvent, heat, and oxygen. That process is essentially a “controlled combustion,” says Dr. Gregg Beckham of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The oxidation process breaks the plastics in the reaction into a blend of liquid chemicals. Then, that blend of products is fed to a strain of engineered bacteria that have been designed to be able to eat each of those chemical breakdown products, and use them to make a specified product. Beckham says that in the initial experiment, they created two different products—one a biodegradable plastic, and one a precursor to a type of recyclable nylon—but the method could conceivably be adapted to any product that bacteria can be enabled to grow via synthetic biology. Beckham joins SciFri’s John Dankosky to talk about the demonstration, and the challenges of moving this technology out of the laboratory and into an operating recycling process.   How Understanding Depression Goes Beyond The Scientific Method Science has yet to pinpoint exactly why some people experience depression and others do not. And it may never be able to give a fully satisfying answer. While people with depression may have similar symptoms, each person’s story is just a little different. And there’s no “one size fits all” treatment. Guest host John Dankosky talks with John Moe, who has spent a lot of time thinking about the nuances of depression through a humorous lens. Moe is the host and creator of the podcast Depresh Mode and author of The Hilarious World of Depression, which shares a name with his previous podcast.    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.

A Boost For U.S. Electric Vehicle Battery Production This week, the Biden administration announced it would issue grants totaling some $2.8 billion to increase U.S.-based production of electric vehicle batteries and mining of the minerals used in their manufacture. The grants would go to companies in 12 states to help boost domestic production of key battery ingredients such as lithium, graphite and nickel, reducing the country’s reliance on China and other foreign battery producers. Casey Crownhart, a climate and technology reporter at MIT Technology Review, joins John Dankosky to talk about the plan and the road ahead for U.S.-based electric vehicles. They also talk about a surge in renewables use in Europe, new options for COVID vaccine boosters, charges of environmental racism against the state of Louisiana, and new research into why some of us seem to be magnets for mosquito bites.   Climate Change’s Toll On Our Social Fabric Climate change is already driving many visible effects in our world, from extreme flooding to the extinction of species. It threatens agriculture and life on coastal lands. But researchers predict a changing climate can also affect humans in other, more nuanced ways, including changes in human behavior and mental health. Co-host Shahla Farzan talks to Stanford researcher Marshall Burke, whose research has looked at the link between climate extremes, including heat waves and drought, and historic and contemporary conflicts. Plus, John Dankosky interviews Queens College neuroscientist Yoko Nomura about her work finding high rates of childhood psychiatric disorders among children whose mothers were pregnant, and under extreme stress, during 2012’s Superstorm Sandy—a hint at the generational toll of intensifying disasters. They discuss why the answer to both challenges may be providing more social and economic support to those most vulnerable to stress as the globe warms.   The Mysterious Case Of Alaska’s Crabs For the first time ever, the Bering Sea snow crab fishery will not open for the upcoming season. Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game announced the closure Monday afternoon. The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will also be closed this year — for a second year in a row. Gabriel Prout co-owns the F/V Silver Spray with his dad and brothers. The Silver Spray is a 116-foot steel crabber that’s homeported in Kodiak. He said he wasn’t surprised that Fish and Game closed the king crab fishery — in a normal year, he’d go out for king crab, too. But numbers have been on the decline and that fishery didn’t open last year, either. “The real shocking part is the total and complete collapse of the snow crab fishery which no one expected last year when it happened, and a complete closure this year was equally as shocking,” Prout said. Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist with Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game, said the sudden decline in snow crab came as a shock to biologists as well. Back in 2018, there was record recruitment in the Bering Sea snow crab stock. Those numbers started to go down in 2019, and there was no survey in 2020 due to the pandemic. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com. In Hawai’i, Conservation Has Also Provided Fishermen Economic Benefits Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, along the northwestern Hawaiian islands, has been under some kind of conservation protection since the days of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. It is a deeply sacred place to native Hawaiians. And at more than 583,000 square miles, it’s also the world’s largest fully protected no-fishing zone, after its expansion under the Obama administration in 2016. Marine protected areas like Papahānaumokuākea are designed to provide refuge to fish and other marine mammals that have been overexploited and otherwise threatened by human activities. But research has remained inconclusive on if these protections provide enough benefits to nearby areas to blunt the economic impact of exclusion zones. This is especially debated in the case of big, mobile, migratory species like Hawai’i’s all-important bigeye and yellowfin tuna. Now, new research from an interdisciplinary team of economists and ecologists looked at how well Hawaiian tuna fishermen did when they fished close to the monument, and further away. And they found, to their surprise, that there was a strong benefit, which increased in the years after the monument’s expansion. Fishermen near the monument caught more tuna, for the same amount of effort, than fishermen further away. Co-host Shahla Farzan talks to first author Sarah Medoff about the surprising findings, and why the economics of a marine protected area might matter to conservation decisions.   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.

Burying Green: Eco-Friendly Death Care On The Rise Dying, it turns out, isn’t carbon neutral. Like many of the choices we make in our lifetimes, the choice to cremate or preserve our bodies after death comes with tradeoffs as well. With preservation and burial, there’s the carbon cost of cemetery space, the materials to make a coffin, and the chemicals required to prevent decay. With cremation, the body’s carbon is released into the atmosphere through the burning of natural gas. This is one of the reasons why companies are starting to offer more eco-friendly options, such as water-assisted cremation. Composting human bodies is another option, allowing our carbon to be sequestered in the soil, and providing nutrients for ecosystems or gardens. But in the United States, these lower-carbon funereal options are often against the law. Now, that’s slowly changing, with pressure from people who wish to use those options for themselves when the time comes. Producer Kathleen Davis discusses these issues and more with mortician Caitlin Doughty and Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose, a company that has pioneered the practice of human composting. Plus, the relationship between grief, ritual, and the choices we have for our mortal remains.   This Brain Prosthesis Could Improve Memory Loss When people hear the word “prosthetic,” they’ll probably think of an arm or a leg. But what about a prosthetic for the brain? A team of neuroscientists is designing a device that could “zap” the brain into remembering information better, and it’s targeted for people with memory loss. They’re doing so by studying the electrical patterns involved in memory, then mimicking them with electrodes implanted in the brain. Ira speaks with Dr. Robert Hampson, neuroscientist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who is working on the implant.     Making a Meal Fit For An Astronaut Life on the International Space Station throws some wrenches into how food and eating work. There’s very little gravity, after all. And there are big differences between nutritional needs on Earth and in space. Astronauts must exercise two hours each day on the International Space Station to prevent bone and muscle loss, meaning daily caloric intake needs to be somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 calories. Sodium must also be reduced, as an astronaut’s body sheds less of it in space. Astronauts also have an increased need for Vitamin D, as their skin isn’t able to create it from sunlight as people on Earth do. So, how do all these limitations affect the food astronauts eat? Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to answer these gustatory questions is Xulei Wu, food systems manager for the International Space Station in Houston, Texas. 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.