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Pull out your art supplies because it’s time to get crafty—with agar! We’re beginning Arts Week at the intersection of biology and art. Therein lies a creative medium that’s actually alive. Scientists and artists practice etching designs on petri dishes with bacterial paint that can grow and multiply. This encore episode, Aaron talks with science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce about her foray into the agar art world. Love the science powering another craft? Email the show at shortwave@npr.or…
about 1 year ago
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The ruling is the latest twist in a long-running dispute over where dozens of federally-supported former research chimps should live out the remainder of their days.
about 1 year ago
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Testing pregnant people’s blood to look at free-floating DNA can tell doctors about the health of the fetus. But these tests sometime turn up DNA that might be shed by cancerous cells.
about 1 year ago
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Geologists rely on tiny crystals of the mineral zircon to understand the timing of key events in Earth’s early days, like the rising of continents and the emergence of oceans.
about 1 year ago
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The year 2022 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Gregor Mendel. He’s known as the father of genetics, so scientists exhumed Mendel’s body and examined his DNA.
about 1 year ago
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To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, a group of scientists decided to dig up his body and sequence his DNA.
about 1 year ago
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The mineral zircon is the oldest known piece of Earth existing on the surface today. The oldest bits date back as far as 4.37 billion years — not too far from the age of Earth itself at about 4.5 billion years old. And, unlike other minerals, zircon is hard to get rid of. This resilience enables scientists to use zircon to determine when major geological events on Earth happened. As part of our series on time, host Aaron Scott talks to science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce about why this mi…
about 1 year ago
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Policymakers have long grappled with how to handle experiments that might generate potentially dangerous viruses. Now, officials are considering whether oversight needs to be expanded.
12 months ago
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The James Webb Space Telescope is by far the most powerful space-based telescope ever deployed by the United States. But it is only one instrument, and scientists all over the world have to share. The JWST’s managers received more than 1,600 research proposals for what the telescope should look at. When an astronomer or a team does get some much-coveted telescope time, they currently get exclusive access to whatever data they collect for a full year. But there is a movement in astronomy to make…
12 months ago
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A plane loaded with scientists and their equipment has been flying through frozen skies this winter, sampling cloud particles to improve predictions of which storms will wreak havoc on the ground.
11 months ago
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Scientists are finally publishing all the details of what happened when a NASA spacecraft smashed into an asteroid to try to push it off course in September of 2022.
11 months ago
