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A radioactive waste standoff and science’s debt to the slave trade
A single factory in Malaysia supplies about 10% of the world’s rare earth oxides, used in everything from cellphones to lasers to missiles. Controver…
6 years, 9 months ago
Mysterious racehorse injuries, and reforming the U.S. bail system
Southern California’s famous Santa Anita racetrack is struggling to explain a series of recent horse injuries and deaths. Host Meagan Cantwell is joi…
6 years, 9 months ago
Vacuuming potato-size nodules of valuable metals in the deep sea, and an expedition to an asteroid 290 million kilometers away
Pirate’s gold may not be that far off, as there are valuable metals embedded in potato-size nodules thousands of meters down in the depths of the oce…
6 years, 9 months ago
Mysterious fast radio bursts and long-lasting effects of childhood cancer treatments
Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Daniel Clery about the many, many theories surrounding fast radio bursts—extremely fast, intense radio sign…
6 years, 9 months ago
Clues that the medieval plague swept into sub-Saharan Africa and evidence humans hunted and butchered giant ground sloths 12,000 years ago
New archaeological evidence suggests the same black plague that decimated Europe also took its toll on sub-Saharan Africa. Host Sarah Crespi talks wi…
6 years, 10 months ago
Measuring earthquake damage with cellphone sensors and determining the height of the ancient Tibetan Plateau
In the wake of a devastating earthquake, assessing the extent of damage to infrastructure is time consuming—now, a cheap sensor system based on the a…
6 years, 10 months ago
Spotting slavery from space, and using iPads for communication disorders
In our first segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (Science’s publisher) in Washington, D.C., host Sarah Crespi talks with Cathy Binger of Universi…
6 years, 10 months ago
How far out we can predict the weather, and an ocean robot that monitors food webs
The app on your phone tells you the weather for the next 10 days—that’s the furthest forecasters have ever been able to predict. In fact, every decad…
6 years, 10 months ago
Possible potato improvements, and a pill that gives you a jab in the gut
Because of its genetic complexity, the potato didn’t undergo a “green revolution” like other staple crops. It can take more than 15 years to breed a …
6 years, 11 months ago
Treating the microbiome, and a gene that induces sleep
Orla Smith, editor of Science Translational Medicine joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what has changed in the past 10 years of microbiome resear…
6 years, 11 months ago