First up this week, Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe coronavirus infections in men. New support for this idea comes from a study showing high levels of male pattern baldness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Next, Jason Qian, a Ph.D. student in the systems biology department at Harvard Medical School, joins Sarah to talk about an object-tracking system that uses bacterial spores engineered with unique DNA barcodes. The inactivated spores can be sprayed on anything from lettuce, to wood, to sand and later be scraped off and read out using a CRISPR-based detection system. Spraying these DNA-based identifiers on such things as vegetables could help trace foodborne illnesses back to their source. Read a related commentary piece.
In this month’s episode, we learn that human brains differentiate musical pitch a way that macaque monkeys do not. In fact, speech and music shaped the human brain’s hearing circuits. Researchers are studying these circuits with an eye on developing treatments for neurological disorders. 
This week, perfecting catalysts that split water using light, the mystery of missing matter in the Universe and how working memory ‘works’ in children.
The first results from vaccine trials are in and they are encouraging, but scientists are still urging caution. We hear the lowdown on the types of vaccines being developed and what hope there is of rolling them out any time soon. 
This week, crafting an artificial eye with the benefits of a human’s, and understanding how disk-galaxies formed by peering back in time.
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