First up on this week’s show, we hear about the skewed perception of our own hands, extremely weird giant viruses, champion regenerating flatworms, and more from Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox. Christie also chats with host Sarah Crespi about her work on a daily newsletter and what it takes to do it 5 days a week. Read more newsletters and sign up for your daily dose of Science and science.
Next on the show, AAAS Intern Andrew Saintsing learns about why trees are repulsive—to one another. Michael Kalyuzhny, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses his Science paper on why trees of the same species avoid living close together in diverse habitats such as rainforests.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Andrew Saintsing, Christie Wilcox
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk2064
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Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.
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Folge vom 10.08.2023Why some trees find one another repulsive, and why we don’t know how much our hands weigh
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Folge vom 03.08.2023Tracing the genetic history of African Americans using ancient DNA, and ethical questions at a famously weird medical museumBringing together ancient DNA from a burial site and a giant database of consumer ancestry DNA helps fill gaps in African American ancestry, and a reckoning for Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum First up on this week’s show, ancient DNA researchers and ancestry giant 23andMe joined forces to uncover present day ties to a cemetery at the Catoctin Furnace ironworks in Maryland, where enslaved people were buried. Contributing producers and hosts of the Dope Labs podcast Titi Shodiya and Zakiya Whatley spoke with authors Éadaoin Harney and David Reich about the historical significance of this work and how it may help some African American communities recover parts of their lost genealogy. Our News team also covered the paper here. Next we have a conversation with Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega about Philadelphia’s famously creepy Mütter Museum. He talks to producer Kevin McLean about his recent story on the ethics of showcasing the various medical curiosities that the museum is known for. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean, Titi Shodiya, Zakiya Whatley, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1038 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Folge vom 27.07.2023Researchers collaborate with a social media giant, ancient livestock, and sex and gender in South AfricaOn this week’s show: evaluating scientific collaborations between independent scholars and industry, farming in ancient Europe, and a book from our series on sex, gender, and science. First up on this week’s show, a look behind the scenes at a collaboration between a social media company and 17 academics. Host Sarah Crespi speaks with Michael Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication who acted as an impartial observer for Meta’s U.S. 2020 election project. Wagner wrote a commentary piece about what worked and what didn’t in this massive project, which will spawn more than 15 papers, three of them out this week in Science. Then, producer Meagan Cantwell speaks with Silvia Valenzuela Lamas about her talk about how sociopolitical changes shaped livestock in ancient Europe. Her talk was part of a session on migrations and exchanges in ancient civilizations from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting. Also this week, the latest in our book series on sex, gender, and science. Host Angela Saini talks with author Amanda Lock Swarr about her book: Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Folge vom 20.07.2023Adding thousands of languages to the AI lexicon, and the genes behind our bonesA massive effort by African volunteers is ensuring artificial intelligence understands their native languages, and measuring 40,000 skeletons Our AI summer continues with a look at how to get artificial intelligence to understand and translate the thousands of languages that don’t have large online sources of text and audio. Freelance journalist Sandeep Ravindran joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss Masakhane, a volunteer-based project dedicated to spurring growth in machine learning of African languages. See the whole special issue on AI here. Also this week on the show, Eucharist Kun, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues used machine learning to take skeletal measurements from x-rays stored in the UK Biobank. Kun discusses links from these body proportions to genes, evolution, and disease. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews Aysha Akhtar, co-founder and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, about how the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act 2.0 along with advances in technology are clearing the way for alternatives to animal testing in the development of new drugs. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7646 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices