Why research into ‘forever chemicals’ in...

On Jan. 28, 1986, NASA’s 25th space shuttle mission, Challenger, left the launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Seventy-three seconds into flight, Challenger exploded over the Atlantic Ocean as millions of people watched. All seven people on board died. Now, forty years later, jo ... Show More

This past weekend, Winter Storm Fern struck the States. Sleet, snow and ice battered Americans all the way from New Mexico to New York. Scientists predicted its arrival in mid-January, and in anticipation of the storm, more than 20 state governors issued emergency declarations. B ... Show More

Listener Shabnam Khan has a problem: Every time she works in her garden, she’s visited by lizards and frogs. Shabnam has lived in the metro Atlanta area for decades, and she says this number of scaly, clammy visitors has exploded over the past few years. Frogs croak at night; liz ... Show More

Recently, a group of world-leading scientists called for a halt on research to create ‘mirror life’ microbes amid concerns that the synthetic organisms would present an ‘unprecedented risk’ to life on Earth. Ian Sample tells Madeleine Finlay about why this work initially seemed e ... Show More

Guest: Dr. Filipe Pereira is an Associate Professor at the Lund Stem Cell Center at Lund University. The Pereira lab studies how hematopoietic cell fate is specified, maintained, and eventually modified or reversed. Inspired by the fields of stem cell biology, immunology, and can ... Show More

<p>You’re probably familiar with the concept of handedness—a glove made for your left hand looks basically like the one for your right hand, but won’t fit—it’s a mirror image. Many of life’s important molecules, including proteins and DNA, are chiral, meaning they can exist in ei ... Show More

Mitochondria are known as the powerhouse of the cell—but new research suggests they might be far more complex. Columbia University’s Martin Picard joins Scientific American’s Rachel Feltman to explore how these tiny organelles could be communicating and what that might mean for e ... Show More

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a method for growing and connecting single neurons using geometric patterns to route the neurons more precisely, cell by cell. The article, “Assembly and Connection of Micropatterned Single Neurons for Neuronal Network Formatio ... Show More

If DNA is just a string of letters, could AI learn to read it … or even write it? Bioengineering researcher Eric Nguyen reveals how AI has upended the rules of biology, potentially creating a future where disease is cured with personalized medicine, extinct species are resurrecte ... Show More

<p>An Abrupt Departure For Biden’s Science Adviser</p> <p>This week, Eric Lander, the Presidential science advisor and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/eric-lander-resignation/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast& ... Show More

<p>Decoding Quantum Computing</p> <p>The computer chips that are delivering these words to you work on a simple, binary, on/off principle. There’s either a voltage, or there’s not. The ‘bits’ encoded by the presence or absence of electrons form the basis for much of our online wo ... Show More

<p>In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, Dr. Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and Dr. K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute “for the development of click chemistry and <a href="https://www.sciencefr ... Show More