Three new space missions are set to reinvigorate studies of Earth’s long-neglected neighbor, potentially revealing how and why it became our planet’s evil twin.
— Scientific American (@sciam) August 18, 2021
Learn more about how NASA is lifting the "Venus curse" in our September issue: https://t.co/kElcwTd5p6 pic.twitter.com/z8Jyrcrp2u
Category Archives: Science
Previews: New Scientist Magazine – August 21
Science: Research Paper Translation, Sustainable EV’s & Giant Centipedes
A team is creating bespoke words for scientific terms in African languages, and the sustainability of the electric car boom.
00:46 Creating new words for scientific terms
Many words that are common to science have never been written in some African languages, or speakers struggle to agree what the right term is. Now a new project aims to change that, by translating 180 research papers into six languages spoken by millions of people across the continent of Africa.
11:48 Research Highlights
A rainbow of biodegradable inks derived from brown seaweed, and the enormous centipede that preys on baby birds.
Research Highlight: From drab to dazzling: seaweed yields sparkling coloured inks
Research Highlight: The giant centipede that devours fluffy baby seabirds
13:58 How sustainable is the electric car boom?
As electric cars become more ubiquitous, manufacturers will have to up the production of batteries needed to power them. But that begs the question – can they be mass produced in a sustainable way?
News Feature: Electric cars and batteries: how will the world produce enough?
24:06 Briefing chat
We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, how a tusk-based ‘chemical GPS’ revealed details of a mammoth’s enormous journeys , and why the Perseverance rover’s first efforts to collect a Mars rock sample didn’t go according to plan.
Nature: Mammoth’s epic travels preserved in tusk
Nature: Why NASA’s Mars rover failed to collect its first rock core
Science: California Plants That Survive Wildfires
Front Covers: Harvard Magazine – Sept/Oct 2021
Magazine Views: Science News – August 14, 2021
Science: Wooly Mammoth Tusks & Ice Age Extinction
A woolly mammoth that roamed Alaska 17,000 years ago covered enough ground in its 28-year lifetime to nearly circle the globe twice, an analysis of one of its tusks suggests.
Science: Vitamin D Trial In Asthmatic Children, Risks to Machine Learning
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.
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