Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including whether public impeachment hearings are making President Trump more or less vulnerable, what stood out about the witnesses who testified so far, whether Trump’s Ukraine dealings are surprising or “in character” and the latest dynamics among 2020 Democrats.
Tag Archives: News
Top Science Podcasts: Researchers “Locked In Arctic Ice Flow”, “Spikes Of Plasma” Heating The Sun’s Corona (ScienceMag)
The Polarstern research vessel will spend 1 year locked in an Arctic ice floe. Aboard the ship and on the nearby ice, researchers will take measurements of the ice, air, water, and more in an effort to understand this pristine place. Science journalist Shannon Hall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her time aboard the Polarstern and how difficult these measurements are, when the researchers’ temporary Arctic home is the noisiest, smokiest, brightest thing around.
After that icy start, Sarah talks also with Tanmoy Samanta, a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University in Beijing, about the source of the extreme temperature of the Sun’s corona, which can be up to 1 million K hotter than the surface of the Sun. His team’s careful measurements of spicules—small, plentiful, short-lived spikes of plasma that constantly ruffle the Sun’s surface—and the magnetic networks that seem to generate these spikes, suggest a solution to the long-standing problem of how spicules arise and, at the same time, their likely role in the heating of the corona.
To read more: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/how-make-arctic-ship-vanish-and-how-fast-moving-spikes-are-heating-sun-s-atmosphere
Top Podcast Interviews: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon On Elizabeth Warren, Income And Economics (60 Minutes)
From a November 10, 2019 “60 Minutes” program: In an interview with Lesley Stahl, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase talks about Elizabeth Warren and the state of the global economy.
Health Care System: Life-Saving Drug Shortages At U.S. Hospitals Reach “Unfathomable” Levels
From a Becker’s Hospital Review online release:
“This is the fourth time in the last two years we’ve had to activate our hospital’s emergency operations plan for a major drug shortage,” Dr. Biddinger told NBC News. “It’s almost unfathomable in modern medicine. I never thought we would get to a point in the U.S. healthcare system where we wouldn’t have essential medicines to be able to treat patients.”
Drug shortages are increasing and lasting longer, according to an FDA report published Oct. 29. Of 163 drugs running low in 2013-17, over 62 percent were due to manufacturing or product quality problems.
Hospitals nationwide are facing shortages of crucial, lifesaving drugs, with 116 drugs currently running low, according to the FDA and cited by NBC News.
Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital is a prime example, getting as close as two weeks away from canceling a lifesaving cardiac surgery due to a lack of herapin, a blood-thinner, according to Paul Biddinger, MD, chief of the division of emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Medical Research: Single Gene Therapy Treatment For Multiple Age-Related Diseases Seen (Harvard)
From a Harvard news online release:
“The results we saw were stunning and suggest that holistically addressing aging via gene therapy could be more effective than the piecemeal approach that currently exists,” said first author Noah Davidsohn, a former research scientist at the Wyss Institute and HMS who is now chief technology officer of Rejuvenate Bio. “Everyone wants to stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible, and this study is a first step toward reducing the suffering caused by debilitating diseases.”
New research from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School (HMS) suggests that it may be possible someday to tend to multiple ailments with one treatment.
The study was conducted in the lab of Wyss core faculty member George Church as part of Davidsohn’s postdoctoral research into the genetics of aging. Davidsohn, Church, and their co-authors homed in on three genes that had been shown to confer increased health and lifespan benefits in mice that were genetically engineered to overexpress them: FGF21, sTGFβR2, and αKlotho. They hypothesized that providing extra copies of those genes to nonengineered mice via gene therapy would similarly combat age-related diseases and bring health benefits.
Housing Market: Baby Boomers Staying In Homes Longer, Reducing Supply
From a Wall Street Journal online article:
Economists say aging baby boomers are the biggest culprits because many are staying healthier later in life and choosing not to downsize. Some look around at the lack of smaller, less expensive homes and are loath to get into bidding wars with their children’s generation to get one.
Homeowners there are staying more than three years longer than they did in 2010. The inventory of homes for sale in Seattle has declined more than 50% over the last nine years, while home prices have risen more than 80%, according to Redfin.
Americans are staying in their homes much longer than before, creating a logjam of housing inventory off the market that helps explain why home sales have been sputtering.
Homeowners nationwide are remaining in their homes typically 13 years, five years longer than they did in 2010, according to a new analysis by real-estate brokerage Redfin. When owners don’t trade up to a larger home for a growing family or downsize when children leave, it plugs up the market for buyers coming behind them.
To read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-are-staying-in-their-homes-longera-big-reason-for-slower-sales-11572777001
Top Science Podcasts: Measles Wipes Out Immune System Memory, Black Holes (Science Magazine)
Measles is a dangerous infection that can kill. As many as 100,000 people die from the disease each year. For those who survive infection, the virus leaves a lasting mark—it appears to wipe out the immune system’s memory. News Intern Eva Fredrick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a pair of studies that looked at how this happens in children’s immune systems.
In our second segment this week, Sarah talks with Todd Thompson, of Ohio State University in Columbus, about his effort to find a small black hole in a binary pair with a red giant star. Usually black holes are detected because they are accruing matter and as the matter interacts with the black hole, x-rays are released. Without this flashy signal, black hole detection gets much harder. Astronomers must look for the gravitational influence of the black holes on nearby stars—which is easier to spot when the black hole is massive. Thompson talks with Sarah about a new approach to finding small, noninteracting black holes.
