Science Me Now!: Recent Episodes
Chris Stewart
The science story you should be paying attention to today, instead of wasting your brain cells on all that front-page rubbish.
Political dinosaurs dominate the news, but you can ignore them for a few minutes: here's a story about real dinosaurs and their footprints, which show that their global dominance may have resulted from a catastrophic extinction event. Original Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03996-1
While Trump, Macron & May scrable to justify throwing missiles at Syria, here's a science story of a much healthier kind of warfare: using graphene in the fight against bacterial infection in surgical implants.
The US and Russia continue their game of chicken, the UK hacks ISIS and China is Top Executioner Of The World. Take a few minutes away from the news with a positive story about frogs — and who doesn't like frogs?! Good news: after years of decline, they're on the way back in Central America.
Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/vumc-srd041118.php
Original Paper: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6383/1517
The US and Russia are threatening to trade twitter insults for actual missiles, and the IMF is describing the global trade outlook with the words "Dark" and "Clouds", so it's probably a good time to look away from the news. Here's a science story to cheer things up: record-breaking quantum scientists!
Original Source: https://www.alphagalileo.org/en-gb/Item-Display/ItemId/162049
Research paper: https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.021012
With Zuckerberg in front of congress, Cosby back in court, and a certain President's personal lawyer raided by the FBI, it's better to close down your browser tabs and listen to a science story instead — especially if you're partial to vaping. You might want to think a bit harder about your e-liquid flavour choices in future.
Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/ps-tpb040918.php
Original Paper: Free Radical Biology and Medicine, Volume 120, 20 May 2018, Pages 72-79
Three stories from the weekend, all from the American Heart Association, and all from the Department of Research That Surprises No One At All.
Our un-evolved politicians are attacking each other across the globe, but you can safely ignore that for a few minutes to ponder this: just how did vampire bats evolve to live on a diet of blood alone?
Original Paper: Nature Ecology & Evolution (2018) doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0476-8
Source: www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=185088&CultureCode=en
Turn off the swamp-draining and manure-slinging for a bit — here's a science story from Estonia that should be in the news instead: draining marshlands releases laughing gas, and it's NOT funny.
Original paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03540-1 Source: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/erc-asb040418.php
Use the newspaper front page to light a warm fire, curl up and enjoy todays science story about Norway's not-so-carbon-neutral wood-burning ways.
Original paper: Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 3299 (2018) Find it at: www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21559-8
Instead of the usual bleak headlines, ponder the mystery of the Galaxy with the Missing Dark Matter.
Original paper by van Dokkum et al in Nature, at https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25767
Hubble Space Telescope images of the mysterious galaxy: http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-16