Science Friday

How Past Extinctions At The La Brea Tar Pit Can Teach Us About Our Climate Future If you drive through Los Angeles, you’ll pass by some of California’s most iconic sites—the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Universal Studios, the Santa Monica Pier. But if you don’t look for it, you may miss the La Brea tar pits —a place where Ice Age life from around 50 thousand years ago got trapped and preserved in stick...

Why Contraceptive Failure Rates Matter In A Post-Roe America Birth control options have improved over the decades. Oral contraceptives are now safer, with fewer side effects. Intrauterine devices can prevent pregnancy 99.6% of the time. But no prescription drug or medical device works flawlessly, and people’s use of contraception is inexact. “No one walks into my office and says, ‘I plan on missin...

Using Family Photos Of Fall Foliage To Track Climate Change Leaf-peeping, or tourism based on observing the colors of fall foliage, is a big industry in parts of the Northeast. So as leaves continue to change across the northern United States with the turning of the seasons, researchers are working to better understand how climate change may be affecting fall colors—changes that may affect the bot...

Why Do Cats Purr? An Investigation Into A Purr-fect Mystery Science Friday recently received a voicemail from a listener named Violet from Maui, Hawai’i, who wanted to know: Why do cats purr? We wanted to see what other cat lovers knew about cat purring. So we sent our talented SciFri colleagues Diana Montano and Kyle Marian Viterbo to the Meow Parlor, a cat cafe in New York City to find out. Gues...

Don’t Trust What You See On TikTok This Election Season Midterm elections in the United States are just under two weeks away. And new research suggests a significant risk of misinformation for American social media users—particularly from the video-sharing platform TikTok. Cybersecurity researchers at NYU published their findings after submitting misleading advertisements to YouTube, Facebook, and...

The Science Behind Why You Should Ask For Help Sometimes asking for help—even for the smallest of favors—can feel awkward, or like you’re inconveniencing someone else. But the odds are, you’re probably wrong. Studies show that people are much more willing to lend a helping hand than you would think, and both parties usually end up happier. Guest host Shahla Farzan talks with Dr. Xuan Zhao, a psych...

A Boost For U.S. Electric Vehicle Battery Production This week, the Biden administration announced it would issue grants totaling some $2.8 billion to increase U.S.-based production of electric vehicle batteries and mining of the minerals used in their manufacture . The grants would go to companies in 12 states to help boost domestic production of key battery ingredients such as lithium, graphite...

Burying Green: Eco-Friendly Death Care On The Rise Dying, it turns out, isn’t carbon neutral. Like many of the choices we make in our lifetimes, the choice to cremate or preserve our bodies after death comes with tradeoffs as well. With preservation and burial, there’s the carbon cost of cemetery space, the materials to make a coffin, and the chemicals required to prevent decay. With cremation, th...

Scientists Are Trying To Study Human Neurons… In Rat Brains? Scientists have a tricky time studying neurons, partially because they are remarkably difficult to grow in a lab. They need other cells around them, and they don’t replicate or reproduce like other cells do. In a new study in Nature , researchers figured out that they can take a ball of human brain tissue and frankenstein it into a rat’s...

The Politics Of Science: Voters Have An Important Voice This November’s general election season covers every level of government, from Congress at the federal level, to state governors and local ballot initiatives. Also on the ballot are many issues where understanding science better might result in better policy —think zoning questions about building next to rising seas or fire-prone wildlands, o...

Hurricane Ian Destroys Iconic Florida House Meant To Survive Hurricanes The Cape Romano Dome House, built in 1982, was an iconic—if more recently unsightly—piece of Florida architecture. The six interconnected domes located in Collier County, Florida, were built to be hurricane resistant and self-sustaining, with solar power, rainwater harvesting, and other innovations. However, erosion and rising...

New Alzheimer’s Drug Reduces Cognitive Decline, Say Biotech Firms This week, the biotech firms Biogen and Eisai released preliminary data from the clinical trials for their new Alzheimer’s drug, lecanemab. The companies said that the drug slowed cognitive decline by 27% in patients treated with the intravenous medication. It’s likely the drug will get the FDA’s approval by the end of the year. Thi...

After Hurricane Ian, Robots To The Rescue Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwest Florida Wednesday, with winds over 150 miles per hour , high storm surge and heavy rains. As the storm, now weaker, is projected to move northward, search and rescue operations are setting out to assess the damage – with help from robots, both flying and swimming. Producer Christie Taylor talks with David Merrick, w...

Sperm Swim Together To Help Each Other Reach The Egg New research is complicating our understanding of how, exactly, sperm are able to reach eggs. The predominant theory is that sperm compete against each other, with the strongest swimmer fertilizing the egg. But a new study, using cow sperm, suggests that sperm might actually swim together , forming clusters to help each other swim upstream to re...

Biden Declares The COVID-19 Pandemic Over. Is It? During an interview with 60 minutes last weekend, President Joe Biden said “the pandemic is over.” “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with covid, we’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one is wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape, “ Biden said at the Detroit auto show. This...

Pulling Water From Thin Air? It’s Materials Science, Not Magic. You’ve probably seen a magic trick in which a performer makes a playing card, coin, or even a rabbit appear out of thin air. Writing in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at UT Austin describe an experiment where they seem to pull water out of dry air—but it’s not magic, and it’s not a trick. Carefully applied materials sc...

Why The Owner of Patagonia Gave Away The Whole Company Earlier this week, the founder and owner of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard—the company known for their famous puffer jackets and outdoor gear— gave away the whole company . Who’d he give it to? The Earth. “Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Chouinard told Dav...

COVID-19’s Lingering Toll On The Heart As new omicron-specific boosters against COVID-19 unroll in cities around the US, research is revealing more about the longterm consequences of even one infection with the SARS-CoV2 virus. Writing this week in Nature Medicine, a team of researchers from Germany describe finding long-lasting signs of heart disorders in the majority of recovered patients in the...

The Hot And Cold Past Of The Air Conditioner In the Northeast, the leaves have started changing colors, heralding the season of pumpkins, sweaters, and the smell of woodsmoke. But in some parts of the country, the heat hasn’t let up. In cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami, temperatures were up in the high 80s and low 90s this week—and with climate change, the U.S. is only getting hotter. But hu...

New, Extra Protective COVID Vaccines Are On The Way Earlier this week, the FDA approved brand new COVID-19 vaccines from both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech that are designed to better protect people from the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants . At the same time, the U.S. is scaling back free testing and precautionary measures, putting more pressure on vaccines. Casey Crownhart, a climate and technolo...

Why Is It So Hard To Agree On When Human Life Starts? After decades of deliberations involving physicians, bioethicists, attorneys, and theologians, a U.S. presidential commission in 1981 settled on a scientifically derived dividing line between life and death that has endured, more or less, ever since: A person was considered dead when the entire brain—including the brainstem, its most primitive...

California Accelerates Its Push For Electric Cars This week, air pollution regulators in California voted to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles, with a complete ban on gas car sales by 2035 . The decision could have a larger impact on the automobile industry, however, as many states choose to follow California’s lead with regard to air quality and emissions decisions. Sophie Bushwick...

Attracting Birds To Prime Habitat By Playing Recordings Of Their Calls How do you know a restaurant is good? If the parking lot is full of cars, that’s a pretty good indication. If it’s empty, you probably won’t bother stopping. In this case, the restaurant is a newly restored wetland in Michigan and the customers are rails. The birds migrate at night, so if they don’t hear other rail calls in an...

Teen Innovator’s New AI Tool Helps Create Affordable Drugs The U.S. has some of the highest prescription drug prices in the world, which can push patients into bankruptcy over medications they cannot afford. More than three in four American adults think the prices of prescription drugs are unaffordable, prompting the Senate to recently pass a bill intended to help lower prescription drug costs for...

Will A Colorado River Drought Dry Up Energy Supplies? This week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency that manages water in the Western U.S., started the process of cutting water use allotments along the Colorado River after seven states missed a deadline for coming up with their own reduction plan. The area has been under a long-running drought—and with water in demand for everything...