New targets for the world’s biggest atom smasher and wood designed to cool buildings
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built with one big goal in mind: to find the Higgs boson. It did just that in 2012. But the question on many physicists’ minds about the LHC is, “What have you done...
23 Touko 201924min
Nonstick chemicals that stick around and detecting ear infections with smartphones
The groundwater of Rockford, Michigan, is contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals found in everything from nonstick pans to dental floss to—in the case of Rockford—waterproofing...
16 Touko 201923min
Probing the secrets of the feline mind and how Uber and Lyft may be making traffic worse
Dog cognition and social behavior have hogged the scientific limelight for years—showing in study after study that canines have social skills essential to their relationships with people. Cats, not so...
9 Touko 201925min
The age-old quest for the color blue and why pollution is not killing the killifish
Humans have sought new materials to make elusive blue pigments for millennia—with mixed success. Today, scientists are tackling this blue-hued problem from many different angles. Host Sarah Crespi tal...
2 Touko 201929min
Race and disease risk and Berlin’s singing nightingales
Noncancerous tumors of the uterus—also known as fibroids—are extremely common in women. One risk factor, according to the scientific literature, is “black race.” But such simplistic categories may act...
25 Huhti 201929min
How dental plaque reveals the history of dairy farming, and how our neighbors view food waste
This week we have two interviews from the annual meeting of AAAS in Washington D.C.: one on the history of food and one about our own perceptions of food and food waste. First up, host Sarah Crespi ...
18 Huhti 201926min
A new species of ancient human and real-time evolutionary changes in flowering plants
The ancient humans also known as the “hobbit” people (Homo floresiensis) might have company in their small stature with the discovery of another species of hominin in the Philippines. Host Sarah Cresp...
11 Huhti 201922min
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. Controversy over the final resting place for the slightly ra...
4 Huhti 201925min
