Will Steffen discusses the processes that define the planetary boundaries framework: a safe operating space within which humanity can still thrive on earth. Jenna Jambeck examines the factors influencing how much plastic debris a nation contributes to the ocean. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Bo Eide Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on studying marijuana use in teenage twins, building a better maze for psychological experiments, and a close inspection of the bugs in our homes. Science News Writer Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the potential for a ninth planet in the solar system that circles the sun just once every 15,000 years.  [Image: Gilles San Martin/CC BY-SA 2.0]

Listen to stories on how once we lose cartilage it’s gone forever, genetically engineering a supersniffing mouse, and building an artificial animal from silicon and heart cells, with Online News Editor David Grimm.  As we learn more and more about exoplanets, we find we know less and less about what were thought of as the basics: why planets are where they are in relation to their stars and how they formed. Kevin Wagner joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the latest unexpected exoplanet—a young jovian planet in a three-star system.  [Image: Hellerhoff/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0;Music: Jeffrey Cook]

News stories on our earliest hunting companions, should we seed exoplanets with life, and finding space storm hot spots with David Grimm.  From the magazine Two years ago, 43 students disappeared from a teacher’s college in Guerrero, Mexico. Months of protests and investigation have not yielded a believable account of what happened to them. The government of Mexico claims that the students were killed by cartel members and burned on an outdoor pyre in a dump outside Cucola. Lizzie Wade has been following this story with a focus on the science of fire investigation. She talks about an investigator in Australia that has burned pig carcasses in an effort to understand these events in Mexico.   [Image: Edgard Garrido/REUTERS/Music: Jeffrey Cook]

This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—eating rats in the Neolithic, growing evidence for a gargantuan 9th planet in our solar system, and how to keep just the good parts of a hookworm infection—with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Alexa Billow talks to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Maria Zuber about NASA’s GRAIL spacecraft, which makes incredibly precise measurements of the moon’s gravity. This week’s guest used GRAIL data to explore a giant impact crater and learn more about the effects of giant impacts on the moon and Earth.   Listen to previous podcasts.   [Image: Ernest Wright, NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

About 8000 years ago, people were drawing dogs with leashes, according to a series of newly described stone carvings from Saudi Arabia. Online News Editor David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about reporting on this story and what it says about the history of dog domestication. Sarah also interviews physicist Brad Marston of Brown University on surprising findings that bring together planetary science and quantum physics. It turns out that Earth’s rotation and the presence of oceans and atmosphere on its surface mean it can be described as a “topological insulator”—a term usually reserved for quantum phenomena. Insights from the study of these effects at the quantum level may help us understand weather and currents at the planetary level—including insights into climate change and exoplanets. Listen to previous podcasts.

Hoping to spot subatomic particles called neutrinos smashing into Earth, the balloon-borne Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) detector has circled the South Pole four times. ANITA has yet to detect those particles, but it has twice seen oddball radio signals that could be evidence of something even weirder: some heavier particle unknown to physicists’ standard model, burrowing up through Earth. Science writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the possibility that this reading could lead to a big change in physics. Next, host Meagan Cantwell asks researcher Ben Dalziel what makes a bad—or good—flu year. Traditionally, research has focused on two factors: climate, which impacts how long the virus stays active after a sneeze or cough, and changes in the virus itself, which can influence its infectiousness. But these factors don’t explain every pattern. Dalziel, a population biologist in the Departments of Integrative Biology and Mathematics at Oregon State University in Corvallis, explains how humidity and community size shape the way influenza spreads. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

It’s incredibly difficult to get an inkling of what is going on inside gas giants Saturn and Jupiter. But with data deliveries from the Cassini and Juno spacecraft, researchers are starting to learn more. Science Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about new gravity measurements from Cassini’s last passes around Saturn. Using these data, researchers were able to compare wind patterns on Saturn and Jupiter and measure the mass and age of Saturn’s rings. It turns out the rings are young, relatively speaking—they may have formed as recently as 10 million years ago, after dinosaurs went extinct. Megan Cantwell then talks to science writer Laura Spinney about how researchers are fighting conspiracy theories and political manipulation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the country’s ongoing Ebola outbreak. In a first, the government, nongovernmental organizations, and scientists are working with community leaders to fight misinformation—and they might actually be winning. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Stuart Rankin; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2. Many companies and researchers are rushing to design and test this type of treatment, which proved effective in combating Ebola last year. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here, and all of our Research and Editorials here. And Karen Holl, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins Sarah to discuss the proper planning of tree-planting campaigns. It turns out that just putting a tree in the ground is not enough to stop climate change and reforest the planet. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF).

Rotch Library - GF75.H69 2019

Hayden Library - QH75.S257 2019

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Rotch Library - QH541.5.C6 S45 2018

Berners-Lee, Mike, author

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Hayden Library - TP447.M4 W87 2019

Rotch Library - HT361.U7178 2018

Rotch Library - HT241.T56 2019

Kutílek, Miroslav, author

NASA on Wednesday announced that scientists have discovered an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star's habitable zone, the area around a star where a rocky planet could support liquid water. It added that a team of transatlantic scientists using reanalyzed data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, made the discovery.

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Hayden Library - TL795.7.M67 2018

Dewey Library - TL789.8.U6 P95 2019