Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for Science, talks with host Sarah Crespi about a risky trial of vitamin D in asthmatic children that has caused a lot of concern among ethicists.
They also discuss how the vitamin D trial connects with a possibly dangerous push to compare new treatments with placebos instead of standard-of-care treatments in clinical trials.
Next, Birhanu Eshete, professor of computer and information science at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the risks of exposing machine learning algorithms online—risks such as the reverse engineering of training data to access proprietary information or even patient data.
The Senate has passed the first part of President Joe Biden’s mammoth plan, which is now tied to a far more ambitious part two. We examine their prospects for passage.
Zambia is undertaking a pivotal election—but it seems far from a fair fight to oust the incumbent. And our Germany-election tracker cuts through reams of data and tricky electoral politics.
Researchers uncover how grid cells fire in a 3D space to help bats navigate, and a fabric that switches between being stiff and flexible.
In this episode:
00:47 Mapping a bat’s navigation neurons in 3D
Grid cells are neurons that regularly fire as an animal moves through space, creating a pattern of activity that aids navigation. But much of our understanding of how grid cells work has involved rats moving in a 2D plane. To figure out how the system works in a 3D space, researchers have mapped the brain activity of bats flying freely around a room.
09:59 A flexible fabric that transforms from soft to rigid (and back again)
Researchers have created a ‘tunable’ fabric, inspired by medieval chainmail, that when compressed changes from flexible to rigid. The stiffened structure can hold 30 times its own weight, and the team behind it suggest this material could be used to build temporary shelters or have medical applications.
This week the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its long awaited report detailing compiling the latest climate science data. Nature’s Jeff Tollefson joins us to discuss the report and the warnings it contains for our warming world.
As Greece’s wildfires show no sign of abating, we speak to a correspondent on the ground. We also check in with Lynne O’Donnell in Kabul for the latest on the rapid Taliban advance. Plus: astrology in print.
Inoculation or testing requirements are spreading nearly as fast as the Delta variant. But it is not clear they will actually drive more people to get vaccinated.
A broad semiconductor shortage has hit plenty of industries; we examine supply-chain subtleties that have made it particularly bad for carmakers. And why Mumbai is suffering from a plague of snakes.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report on climate change this morning. It shows that warming is happening more quickly than we realized, and calls the connection between human activity and global warming “unequivocal.” It’s the strongest stance by global scientists on climate we’ve seen yet.
Plus, the pandemic has changed our relationship with trash.
And, Ina Fried’s big takeaways from covering the Olympic games.
Guests: Axios’ Andrew Freedman, Hope King, and Ina Fried.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, open-source intelligence comes of age, why regulators should treat stablecoins like banks (10:50) and how predicting viral evolution may let vaccines be prepared in advance (17:00).
International News Editor Martin Enserink talks with host Sarah Crespi about a moratorium on prion research after the fatal brain disease infected two lab workers in France, killing one.
Next, Abhay Goyal, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, talks with intern Claire Hogan about his Science Advances paper on figuring out how to reduce the massive carbon footprint of cement by looking at its molecular structure.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Ansuman Satpathy, assistant professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of supporting early-career research and diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
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