17 August, 2016 – Episode 580 – This Week in Science Podcast (TWIS)

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Hawking Radiation Evidence?, Force Of Nature, Contrails Not Chemtrails, Gutting Ahead, Choosy Fish, Bully Fish, Fish Pee, Marsupial Lion Elbows, Talking About Life, Salty Beaches, Precision Targeting, The Light!, And Much More…

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Disclaimer Disclaimer Disclaimer
The world you are living in has NOT,
I repeat NOT been all figured out yet.
Sure a lot of the major hurdles have been handled…
We can control electricity…
Harness it to do work and that work produces amazing advantages to being on the planet…
Like the light bulb, the computer, and the greatest of all inventions…
the dishwasher…
We have solved complex riddles of living things…
Giving us protections and treatments that manage disease and prolong our life spans…
We have delved into the atomic world that once seemed so small,
only to delve deeper and discover an even tinier world of subatomic particles…
We can manipulate this world to great effect despite having hands that are too large and clumsy for the job…
We have been to the moon and Mars and all the major bodies in our solar system…
Sent probes hurtling outside our solar system,
And have taken photos of other solar systems by the billions with Hubble…
These terrestrial eyes of ours have gazed upon galaxies that never could be seen or even imagined without our scientific advancements…
And despite all this…
The world we are living in has NOT been all figured out…
There are still greater mysteries out there…
Far further depths to delve into
And while nothing we have yet to accomplish may out awesome the invention of the dishwasher…
Anything new from here on out will be building on all past human knowledge,
And you will hear it first on
This Week In Science…
Coming Up Next…

Hawking Radiation Evidence?
Does a lab-made black hole simulation provide evidence that Hawking radiation is real? The story is compelling, but still just a simulation.

Force Of Nature
An update of this ongoing story, UC Irvine researchers have published a second paper providing evidence for their model of a protophobic X boson, a carrier of a proposed fifth fundamental force of physics.

Contrails Not Chemtrails
A survey of atmospheric scientists provides evidence against the existence of chemtrails. But, is a survey enough for the conspiracy theorists?

Go with your gut, or use your head…
They both influence each other, and not only through neural networks. Recent research implicates the immune system as well.

Female fish are choosy
Despite their fertilization being external, females can still favor the best fathers!

Male fish are bullies or cowards
Wimpy fish would rather take their chances with a predator than face up to the bully fish. How pathetic…

Fish pee deserves your thanks
Fish pee is what keeps coral reefs healthy. No, not your pee… NO, STEVE, STAY OUT OF THE REEF AND USE THE OUTHOUSE!

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Marsupial Lions?!?!
Elbow says not quite.

Recreating The Beginning
Scripps Institute researchers have evolved a ribozyme that can replicate short lengths of RNA and transcribe compex RNA structures. The development will help us investigate the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis that RNA preceeded DNA in biology.

Life Got Started
Maybe it was never a soup. Maybe it was a vent!

Salty Beaches
Increasing ocean salinity is increasing beach salinity, which might have dire consequences for intertidal life.

Precision Targeting
A species of bacteria that uses both magnetic and oxygen-level information to navigate was harnessed to deliver drug-filled nanoliposomes to low-oxygen areas of cancerous tumors.

The Light!
We may not need fluorescent markers to image DNA any longer. A new discovery found that at the correct stimulation frequency, DNA does naturally fluoresce.

Stay Healthy – Stay Home
Clock genes that fluctuate naturally on a daily and seasonal schedule might influence your immune system’s ability to protect itself from certain viruses.

Nothing can replace a mother cat’s love.
Or at least, when the kittens are in peril, it takes a female cat to save the day!

Going Borg
In an unexpected turn, virtual reality and brain-computer interfaces are changing the diagnoses of paralyzed patients.

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I'm the host of this little science show.