Hear the latest science news, brought to you by Benjamin Thompson and Shamini Bundell. This week, exploring two very different issues surrounding genomic sequencing, and the latest results from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
In this episode:
00:45 The GenomeAsia 100k project
Researchers have released the first data from an ambitious project to sequence the genomes of 100,000 people from populations across Asia. Research Article: GenomeAsia100K Consortium
08:56 Research Highlights
Bare riverbanks make meanders move, and human activity affects picky penguins. Research Highlight: The meandering rivers that speed across barren landscapes; Research Highlight: Climate change splits two penguin species into winners and losers
11:18 Curbing the rise in genetic surveillance
Concerns are growing around the use of commercial DNA databases for state-level surveillance. Comment: Crack down on genomic surveillance
20:02 News Chat
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has sent back the most detailed information yet about the birthplace of solar wind. News: Sun-bombing spacecraft uncovers secrets of the solar wind
Researchers are using artificial intelligence techniques to invent medicines and materials—but in the process are they upending the scientific method itself? The AI approach is a form of trial-and-error at scale, or “radical empiricism”. But does AI-driven science uncover new answers that humans cannot understand? Host Kenneth Cukier finds out with James Field of LabGenius…
tes of Health’s largest loan repayment program was conceived to help scientists pay off school debts without relying on industry funding. But 
Listen to the latest science updated, brought to you by Nick Howe and Shamini Bundell. This week, delving into the results of the latest graduate student survey, and assessing ageism in science fiction literature.
Who among us hasn’t wished we could read someone else’s mind, know exactly what they’re thinking? Well that’s impossible, of course, since our thoughts are, more than anything else, our own. Private, personal, unreachable. Or at least that’s what we’ve always, well, thought. 
You may have seen the aftermath of a landslide, driving along a twisty mountain road—a scattering of rocks and scree impinging on the pavement. And up until now, that’s pretty much how scientists have tracked landslides—roadside observations and spotty satellite images. Now, researchers are hoping to track landslides systematically by instrumenting an entire 
Byer also helped develop the quietest, most stable laser in the world, called the diode-pumped YAG laser. YAG lasers are today found in everything from communications satellites to green handheld laser pointers, which Byer co-developed with two of his graduate students and cites as one of his favorite inventions (he had joined Stanford in 1969). YAG lasers also form the main beams of the gravitational wave-detecting instrument, LIGO, which in 2015 achieved the most precise measurement ever made by humans when its antenna detected the tenuous spacetime fluctuations generated by two colliding black holes 1.3 billion light-years away.
One summer morning in 1964, Byer drove the hour from Berkeley down to Mountain View for a job interview at a California company called Spectra Physics. He walked in to find an empty lobby but could hear clapping and cheering in the back of the building. After politely waiting for several minutes, he followed the commotion to a darkened room filled with men whose jubilant faces were illuminated by a rod of red-orange light that seemed to float above an instrument-strewn table
Benjamin Thompson brings you the latest science news. This week, an antibiotic that targets difficult to treat bacteria, and a roundup of the latest science news.
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