\This video from Harvard Medical School’s HMX Fundamentals Immunology online course offers a high-level overview of the immune system at work in the context of daily life.
Category Archives: Science
Architecture: A Look At The Restoration Of Notre Dame Cathedral In Paris
Scientists lead the way in repairing the cathedral, while discovering historical insights along the way.
Top New Science Podcasts: Musical Memory, Ancient Artifacts Along Europe’s Shores (ScienceMag.org)
On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg talks with science journalist Andrew Curry about archaeological finds from thousands of years ago along the shores of Northern Europe. Curry outlines the rich history of the region that scientists, citizen scientists, and energy companies have helped dredge up.
Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Elizabeth Margulis, a professor at Princeton University, about musical memory. Margulis explains what research tells us about how our brains process music, and dives into her own study on how Western and non-Western audiences interpret the same song differently.
Top Journals: Research Highlights From Science Magazine (March 20, 2020)
Archaeology: “Blombos Cave”, South Africa – First Human “Technological Innovations” (Video)
See the first laboratory on Earth – Blombos Cave. Here our ancestors conducted the first chemistry experiments.
Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blomboschfontein Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years Before Present (BP), and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997, and is ongoing.
The excavations at Blombos Cave have yielded important new information on the behavioural evolution of anatomically modern humans. The archaeological record from this cave site has been central in the ongoing debate on the cognitive and cultural origin of early humans and to the current understanding of when and where key behavioural innovations emerged among Homo sapiens in southern Africa during the Late Pleistocene. Archaeological material and faunal remains recovered from the Middle Stone Age phase in Blombos Cave – dated to ca. 100,000–70,000 years BP – are considered to represent greater ecological niche adaptation, a more diverse set of subsistence and procurements strategies, adoption of multi-step technology and manufacture of composite tools, stylistic elaboration, increased economic and social organisation and occurrence of symbolically mediated behaviour.
The most informative archaeological material from Blombos Cave includes engraved ochre, engraved bone ochre processing kits, marine shell beads, refined bone and stone tools and a broad range of terrestrial and marine faunal remains, including shellfish, birds, tortoise and ostrich egg shell and mammals of various sizes.[20][21][22] These findings, together with subsequent re-analysis and excavation of other Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa, have resulted in a paradigm shift with regard to the understanding of the timing and location of the development of modern human behaviour.
From Wikipedia
Podcasts: “Radioactive” Actress Rosamund Pike As Marie Curie And “Neural Highways” (Nature.com)
Listen to the latest from the world of science, brought to you by Benjamin Thompson and Nick Howe. This week, Nautre speaks to Rosamund Pike about her experience portraying Marie Skłodowska Curie, and we find out how science in Russia is changing after years of decline.
In this episode:
01:43 Radioactive
British actor Rosamund Pike tells us about her new film, and her experience of portraying double Nobel-Laureate Marie Curie. Arts Review: Marie Curie biopic should have trusted pioneer’s passion
10:17 Research Highlights
The neural circuitry involved in stopping, and a jelly-like substance that cleans paintings. Research Highlight: A neural highway to human motor control; Research article: Mastrangelo et al.
12:27 Russian science
Decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian science may be having a revival. News Feature: Russia aims to revive science after era of stagnation; Editorial: The price of Russia–China research collaborations
Interviews: 97-Year Old Nobel Prize Chemist John B. Goodenough On Wisdom, Love And Life
Interview with the 2019 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry John B. Goodenough, 6 December 2019
0:07 – What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself? 0:32 – How do you recognise a good teacher? 0:58 – Do you see yourself as a mentor now? 1:33 – What qualities do you think you need to be a successful scientist? 3:04 – How do you cope with failure? 3:16 – How has your dyslexia shaped you? 3:44 – How important has nature been for you? 4:40 – Has music played an important role in your life? 5:06 – How did your interest in poetry start? 6:14 – How did you meet your wife? 7:06 – What life advice can you share? 8:30 – How do you remember so much of your life? 8:47 – How does it feel to be back in Stockholm after 80 years? 9:21 – How has living through World War II influenced you? 10:03 – What is your relationship with your lab colleagues? 11:18 – What are the characteristics of a very good team? 11:55 – What is your relationship with Akira Yoshino? 12:28 – How has the scientific landscape has changed over the years? 13:42 – What environment encourage creative thinking? 14:48 – What research are you working on now? 15:39 – What are your thoughts on sustainability? 16:37 – What future do you see for sustainable batteries?
John Bannister Goodenough born July 25, 1922) is an American materials scientist, a solid-state physicist, and a Nobel laureate in chemistry. He is a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Texas at Austin. He is widely credited with the identification and development of the lithium-ion battery, for developing the Goodenough–Kanamori rules in determining the sign of the magnetic superexchange in materials, and for seminal developments in computer random access memory.
Top New Science Podcasts: Gravity, Ancient Teeth & Containing Coronavirus
What happens if you overwater a plant? How does gravity actually work? And should we be cancelling mass events to contain the coronavirus?
It’s Q&A time on the show, and this week Phil Sansom is joined by a brainy panel of experts: plant biologist Nadia Radzman, particle physicist Chris Rogers, bioarchaeologist Emma Pomeroy, and virologist and Naked Scientist Chris Smith. Prepare to have your curiosity satisfied…
Top New Science Podcasts: Restoring Notre Dame & The Body’s “Tough Skin”
On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Lesté-Lasserre talks with host Sarah Crespi about the scientists working on the restoration of Notre Dame, from testing the changing weight of wet limestone, to how to remove lead contamination from four-story stained glass windows.
As the emergency phase of work winds down, scientists are also starting to use the lull in tourist activity to investigate the mysteries of the cathedral’s construction.
Also this week, Felipe Quiroz, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, talks with Sarah about his paper on the cellular mechanism of liquid-liquid phase separation in the formation of the tough outer layer of the skin. Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids “demix,” or separate, like oil and water. In cells, this process created membraneless organelles that are just now starting to be understood. In this work, Quiroz and colleagues create a sensor for phase separation in the cell that works in living tissue, and show how phase separation is tied to the formation of the outer layers of skin in mice.
A New Species Of “Bird-Like Dinosaur” Discovered, Preserved In Amber (Video)
A tiny new species of bird-like dinosaur has been discovered, preserved in a lump of 99-million-year-old amber. The tooth-filled skull is only 7.1mm long, suggesting that this ancient creature would have been the size of a hummingbird – far smaller than other dinosaurs known from that time. Unusual features include large, side-facing eyes and a large number of sharp teeth suggesting a predatory lifestyle. The species has been named Oculudentavis khaungraae and is evidence of previously unimagined biodiversity in the Mesozoic era.
Boomers Daily 