11 September, 2019 – Episode 738 – Palindromatic Science!

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What is in the This Week in Science Podcast?

Not Your Future Home, What Is Habitable?, Crater Lake, Age Reversing Drugs, Snake Skin Surprise, T Rex A/C!, Better Antibiotics?, CAR-T For Hearts, Bubble Blowing Black Hole, So Super Cool, Shocking News!, Robot Skin, And Much More…

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DISCLAIMER, DISCLAIMER, DISCLAIMER!!!

Humans are interesting people
Just look around, if you happen to have them about…
On any given city street…
Anywhere in the world
You can observe the human species going about their daily routines
With heads full of thoughts…
So many thoughts!
Thinking about the tasks at hand
Thinking about getting to or from work
Thinking about the things they want to accomplish
Thinking about the next meal they would like to prepare
Thinking about the next leisure time activity
Thinking about the time or money it will take to do these things
Thinking about the song in their ear buds, or the news on tv
Thinking about problems, theirs, societies, problems of all sorts.
And while all of this thinking is going on most everywhere on the planet at once
There is another mode of thinking that is also taking place
Thinking that momentarily pushes human ego aside and looks for solutions
to increase our understanding of the world beyond the bony confines of our brains…
though often within it as well
Scientific thinking
The likes of which you may not see taking place on any given city street anywhere in the world
But you will find at the intersection of here and now on
This week in Science,
Coming up next…

First up, the BIG science news stories of the week!

Not Your Future Home
NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope found a smallish Neptune-sized exoplanet around a small red dwarf about 110 light years away. Astronomers looked at the data and were able to find water vapor in the atmosphere. Now people are going crazy about habitability. Let’s discuss why this is not our next Earth.

What Is Habitable?
Harvard researchers have put some bounds on the planet sizes that can maintain water and support life.

Crater Lake
More like explosion lake! A new model of lake formation on Titan suggests some may have formed from explosions caused by vaporizing liquid nitrogen.

Age reversing drugs
Drugs reverse aging

And, now it’s time for Blair’s Animal Corner!… with Blair!

Aquatic snakes breathe through their heads!
No, not through their mouth. Well, yes, through their mouth in the conventional way… But this is more like gills. But on the top of their head… Just listen to the story?

T Rex A/C!
Holes on the T Rex’s head don’t appear to be for big bite muscles, modern alligators point to a special form of temperatire regulation as the reason instead.

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This Week in What Has Science Done for me Lately?!?

“Science helped me get a new ACL so I could play Ultimate again. Many cool things made that happen, the MRI was pretty bad ass. Donor ligament. The screw that attached the donor ligament. The tools used to do the surgery through a couple tiny holes in my skin. Also crazy how weak I got after surgery and how PT was able to get me back playing.
-Mike”

Let us know what science has done for you lately, and we will read it on the show!

Now, let’s continue with more SCIENCE NEWS!…

Looking for better antibiotics where we already looked for them
But, in a different way.

CAR-T For Hearts
A new use for Car-T therapy might be in treating scar tissue that forms in hearts after myocardial infarction. So far, it seems to work well in mice. We will see how it performs in humans.

Our black hole is blowing bubbles
Is it like burping after a good meal?

So Super Cool
Scientists successfully supercooled human livers, extending their viability by slightly more than a day. This has tremendous potential for human organ transplantation… far more than drone delivery.

Shocking News!
About a new species of electric eel.

Robot Skin
A new design for robot skin promises to give sensation to the automata, and could lead to clothing for haptic feedback and motion capture.

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