Inside the Nebraska quarantine facility responding to hantavirus
Two disease outbreaks are dominating the news: Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and hantavirus, which started spreading on a cruise ship. The U.S. has a one-of-a-kind medical facility th...
29 Touko 12min
Surveying wildlife along Lewis and Clark's route, 220 years later
When Lewis and Clark crossed the United States in the early 1800s, they recorded their wildlife observations along the way. Now, more than 200 years later, an expedition is following the same route an...
28 Touko 17min
Pope Leo's encyclical on AI, and the Vatican science advisors
On Monday, Pope Leo XIV presented his encyclical, an open letter from the church, on AI. The 42,000-word document covers a lot of terrain—from screen time to resource extraction to job loss—but the co...
27 Touko 18min
Bizarre exoplanet clouds + Counting insects with weather radar
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have observed clouds on a hot gas giant exoplanet called WASP-94A b, some 700 light-years away. But these clouds aren’t your usual wisps of water vapor...
26 Touko 20min
A trailblazing geneticist reflects on her life and work
It’s common knowledge that many diseases and conditions have some kind of genetic link. But that wasn't always the case. In 1990, long before the Human Genome Project tied so many health issues to dif...
25 Touko 47min
Is that spooky old house full of ghosts, or just infrasound?
Old creepy houses are a horror cliche, but why? Why do they freak us out? According to new research, it might have something to do with infrasound: a sound that’s below the range of human hearing, pot...
22 Touko 17min
How do clinical trials work, and who can participate?
We recently got a call from a SciFri listener in Florida who has autoimmune arthritis. He told us that over the years he’d taken 10 drugs, and each out eventually stopped working. He then tried to enr...
21 Touko 21min
Use of herbicide linked to Parkinson's is on the rise in the US
The herbicide paraquat is so toxic it’s banned in over 70 countries. But its use in the U.S. is growing, despite known links to Parkinson’s disease. In southeastern Mississippi, an industrial plant is...
20 Touko 12min
