Science Friday Folgen

A news story was circulating a few months ago—a woman in Australia came into the hospital with abdominal pain. She was increasingly forgetful and struggling with depression. Her doctors were stumped for over a year. What was causing her symptoms? Turns out she had a three-inch parasitic worm living in her brain. They took it out, and she recovered.How do doctors crack cases like this? How do you even know to check for a brain worm? This is the specialty of Dr. Joe DeRisi. When doctors run into a diagnostic dead end they call him. In his world, brain worms aren’t even that rare. (Ask him about brain-eating amoebas.)Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. DeRisi, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine and president of the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub San Francisco, about his fascinating work solving some of the most vexing medical mysteries, and how it may even help detect the next pandemic-inducing pathogen.  To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

An mRNA Advance Wins A Nobel PrizeThis week, a handful of scientists scattered around the world got surprise telephone calls announcing that they will be receiving Nobel Prizes. On Monday, the prize in medicine or physiology was announced. It went to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, scientists who developed the modifications to mRNA that made the biomolecule a viable strategy for creating vaccines. On Tuesday, the Nobel in physics went to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier, who created techniques to illuminate the movement of electrons using attosecond-length pulses of light. And on Wednesday  Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov learned that they had won the prize in chemistry for their work with tiny bits of semiconductor material known as quantum dots.Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about the winners and their advances, and to share other stories from the week in science, including an FCC fine for a satellite company’s space junk, concerns over drought in the Amazon rainforest, and a tale of fighting a coral-threatening algal bloom using hungry crabs. Venus Lightning Debate Gets LitVenus is an inhospitable place. The longest any spacecraft has survived on the planet’s surface is thought to be around two hours. It’s blazing hot. It has bone-crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds made of sulfuric acid. But is there lightning?Flybys of Venus have detected electromagnetic signals in the radio spectrum called “whistler waves” that, on Earth, are associated with lightning strikes. So some experts speculated that Venus might have lightning too—perhaps a lot of lightning. But there was no hard proof. The question of Venusian lightning has been a topic of electric debate among scientists for some 40 years.A study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last month used data from the Parker Solar Probe to argue that the whistler waves around Venus may have a different cause. Research scientist Dr. Harriet George and space plasma physicist Dr. David Malaspina of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder join guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about the finding, and what it could tell us about planets elsewhere in the galaxy.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

The Science Behind The Placebo EffectEarlier this month, a Food and Drug Administration panel concluded that a common decongestant ingredient used in drugs like Sudafed and NyQuil doesn’t work. The panel agreed that while the ingredient, called phenylephrine, isn’t dangerous, it doesn’t work any better than a placebo.That made us wonder: How well do placebos work? And why do they work even when people know they’re getting a placebo?Ted J. Kaptchuk, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, joins guest host and musician Dessa to talk about what’s new in placebo research. They discuss the benefits placebos can offer for chronic illness management, and when doctors might start using them in treatments. Where Technology Meets AbleismWith all the bad news on our feeds, a feel-good story can be a welcome reprieve. But what happens when that story comes in the form of coverage of disability technology?You might’ve seen the videos online of a person with a physical disability being fitted with an exoskeleton, essentially “wearing” a robot, to help them walk. Onlookers cheer in the background, dramatic music swells, and we get the sense we’re watching something inspirational and empowering—a victory of the human spirit.This might seem like a triumph of scientific innovation, but our guest asks us to look again at what’s actually going on in narratives like this one.Dr. Ashley Shew, associate professor at Virginia Tech, studies the intersection of disability and technology and how our collective fixation on these fancy, supposedly transformative gadgets could be doing more harm than good. In her new book, she coins the term “technoableism” to get to the heart of the matter.Guest host and musician Dessa talks with Dr. Shew about her book Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement, about what disability technology is, what the future should look like, and even how disability intersects with space travel and climate change. Sour Times For Florida’s CitrusFlorida is known for citrus, particularly its fresh-squeezed orange juice. But citrus trees in the state are struggling. For the last two decades, crops have been struck with a devastating disease called “citrus greening.” And Florida orange production has dropped some 94% over that period.                                              Citrus greening is caused by an invasive insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, which is threatening to wipe out the citrus industry in the state. One of the effects of the disease is a bitter, acidic fruit. Scientists are hard at work devising possible solutions to save Florida’s crop.Guest host and musician Dessa talks with Dr. Yu Wang, associate professor of food science at the University of Florida’s Citrus Education and Research Center, about her recent advances in making infected orange plants sweeter. Making Neuroscience Into MusicWhen composer Sarah Hennies learned about a neurological theory called “motor tapes” from Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia, the concept stuck with her for years. The theory comes from neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, who posited that many of our thoughts, memories, and physical movements operate via a series of “looping tapes,” with the goal of reducing the amount of energy the brain uses while doing common, repetitive tasks.The concept resonated with Hennies, who is also a visiting assistant professor of music at Bard College. Most of her compositions use heavy amounts of repetition, and Llinás’ theory fit with how she experienced her own memories and the evolution of her identity. Her piece “Motor Tapes” premiered in early August, performed by Ensemble Dedalus.Hennies joins guest host and musician Dessa to talk about repetition in music, how to translate neuroscience into art, and what that pairing can reveal about our bodies and the world around us. To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.