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[ASAP] Highly Efficient Ultralow Pd Loading Supported on MAX Phases for Chemoselective Hydrogenation

ACS Catalysis
DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.0c00082




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Coronavirus | U.S. unemployment rate spikes to 14.7%, highest since Great Depression

As companies have laid off tens of millions, lives have been upended across the country.




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Britain facing no ‘dramatic overnight change’ in lockdown rules

Mr. Johnson is due to announce the next steps in Britain’s battle to tackle the novel coronavirus following a review by ministers of the current measures




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Inconceivable effects: ethics through Twentieth-Century German literature, thought, and film / Martin Blumenthal-Barby

Hayden Library - PT405.B5384 2013




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Portrait of a tongue: [an experimental translation] / Yoko Tawada ; translated from the German with an introduction and commentary by Chantal Wright

Hayden Library - PT2682.A87 P6713 2013




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Kafka, the years of insight / Reiner Stach ; translated by Shelley Frisch

Hayden Library - PT2621.A26 Z886313 2013




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All days are night / Peter Stamm ; translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

Hayden Library - PT2681.T3234 N3313 2014




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Germanistik und Kunstwissenschaften im "Dritten Reich: Marburger Entwicklungen, 1920-1950 / herausgegeben von Kai Köhler, Burghard Dedner und Waltraud Strickhausen

Online Resource




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The last days of mankind: the complete text / Karl Kraus ; translated by Fred Bridgham and Edward Timms ; with a glossary and index

Hayden Library - PT2621.R27 L4313 2015




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The Moravian night: a story / Peter Handke ; translated from the German by Krishna Winston

Hayden Library - PT2668.A5 M6713 2016




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Bright magic: stories / Alfred Döblin ; selected and translated from the German by Damion Searls ; introduction by Günter Grass

Hayden Library - PT2607.O35 A2 2016




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Drilling through hard boards: 133 political stories / Alexander Kluge ; with guest contributions by Reinhard Jirgl ; translated by Wieland Hoban

Hayden Library - PT2671.L84 B6513 2017




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Literary skinheads?: writing from the right in reunified Germany / Jay Julian Rosellini

Online Resource




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Science Podcast - Replacing the Y chromosome, the future of U.S. missile defense, the brightest gamma-ray burst, and more (22 Nov 2013)

The minimum requirements for a Y chromosome with Monika Ward; Eliot Marshall checks in on U.S.'s missile interception program 30 years later; Sylvia Zhu breaks down observations from the brightest gamma-ray burst.




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Science Podcast - Science's breakthrough of the year, runners-up and the top content from our daily news site (20 Dec 2013)

Notable highlights from the year in science; Science's breakthrough of the year and runners up.




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High altitude humans living ~11,000 years ago (24 October 2014)

Kurt Rademaker discusses his work exploring the Andean plateau for artifacts of the earliest high-altitude humans, Paleoindians that lived at 4500 meters more than 11,000 years ago. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: David-Stanley/Flickr]




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Our breakthrough of the year and this year's top news stories

Robert Coontz discusses this year's Breakthrough and letting readers have their say. Online news editor David Grimm brings the top news stories of 2014 and takes an audio news quiz. Hosted by Sarah Crespi.




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High-altitude bird migration and a news roundup

Charles Bishop discusses the "roller-coaster" flight strategy of bar-headed geese as they migrate across the Himalayas between their breeding and wintering grounds. Online news editor David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: © Nyambayar Batbayar]




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The Science breakthrough of the year, readers' choice, and the top news from 2015.

Robert Coontz discusses Science's 2015 Breakthrough of the Year and runners-up, from visions of Pluto to the discovery of a previously unknown human species. Online news editor David Grimm reviews the top news stories of the past year with Sarah Crespi. Hosted by Susanne Bard.




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Podcast: Wounded mammoths, brave birds, bright bulbs, and more

In this week’s podcast, David Grimm talks about brave birds, building a brighter light bulb, and changing our voice to influence our emotions. Plus, Ann Gibbons discusses the implications of a butchered 45,000-year-old mammoth found in the Siberian arctic for human migration. Read the related research in Science. [IMG: Dmitry Bogdanov]




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Podcast: Combatting malnutrition with gut microbes, fighting art forgers with science, and killing cancer with gold

Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on how our abilities shape our minds, killing cancer cells with gold nanoparticles, and catching art forgery with cat hair.   Laura Blanton joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how nourishing our gut microbes may prevent malnutrition. Read the related research in Science.   [Image: D. S. Wagner et al., Biomaterials, 31 (2010)]   Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm




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Podcast: Treating cocaine addiction, mirror molecules in space, and new insight into autism

Listen to stories on the first mirror image molecule spotted in outer space, looking at the role of touch in the development of autism, and grafting on lab-built bones, with online news editor David Grimm.   Karen Ersche talks about why cocaine addiction is so hard to treat and what we can learn by bringing addicted subjects into the lab with host Sarah Crespi.   [Image: Science/Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Podcast: Bumble bee emotions, the purpose of yawning, and new insights into the developing infant brain

This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—including making bees optimistic, comparing yawns across species, and “mind reading” in nonhuman apes—with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Mercedes Paredes about her research on the developing infant brain.   Listen to previous podcasts   [Image: mdmiller/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]    




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Podcast: Science lessons for the next U.S. president, human high altitude adjustments, and the elusive Higgs bison

This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—jumping spiders that can hear without ears, long-lasting changes in the human body at high altitudes, and the long hunt for an extinct bison—with Science’s Online News Intern Jessica Boddy. Plus, Sarah Crespi talks to Deputy News Editor David Malakoff about six science lessons for the next U.S. president.    [Image: Gil Menda at the Hoy Lab; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Podcast: The rise of skeletons, species-blurring hybrids, and getting rightfully ditched by a taxi

This week we chat about why it’s hard to get a taxi to nowhere, why bones came onto the scene some 550 million years ago, and how targeting bacteria’s predilection for iron might make better vaccines, with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks with news writer Elizabeth Pennisi about the way hybrids muck up the concept of species and turn the evolutionary tree into a tangled web.   Listen to previous podcasts   [Image:  Raul González Alegría; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Podcast: Scientists on the night shift, sucking up greenhouse gases with cement, and repetitive stress in tomb builders

 This week, we chat about cement’s shrinking carbon footprint, commuting hazards for ancient Egyptian artisans, and a new bipartisan group opposed to government-funded animal research in the United States with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to news writer Sam Kean about the kinds of data that can only be gathered at night as part of the special issue on circadian biology.  Listen to previous podcasts.  [Image: roomauction/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Podcast: Our Breakthrough of the Year, top online stories, and the year in science books

This week, we chat about human evolution in action, 6000-year-old fairy tales, and other top news stories from 2016 with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to News Editor Tim Appenzeller about this year’s breakthrough, runners-up, breakdowns, and how Science’s predictions from last year help us. In a bonus segment, Science book review editor Valerie Thompson talks about the big science books of 2016 and science books for kids.   Listen to previous podcasts.   [Image: Warwick Goble; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Podcast: Human pheromones lightly debunked, ignoring cyberattacks, and designer chromosomes

This week, how Flickr photos could help predict floods, why it might be a good idea to ignore some cyberattacks, and new questions about the existence of human pheromones with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Sarah Richardson joins Alexa Billow to discuss a global project to build a set of working yeast chromosomes from the ground up. Read Sarah Richardson’s research in Science. Listen to previous podcasts.   Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: Drew Gurian; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Podcast: Giant virus genetics, human high-altitude adaptations, and quantifying the impact of government-funded science

This week, viruses as remnants of a fourth domain of life, a scan of many Tibetan genomes reveals seven new genes potentially related to high-altitude life, and doubts about dark energy with Online News Editor David Grimm. Danielle Li joins Sarah Crespi to discuss her study quantifying the impact of government funding on innovation by linking patents to U.S. National Institutes of Health grants. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: artubo/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Podcast: Watching shoes untie, Cassini’s last dive through the breath of a cryovolcano, and how human bias influences machine learning

This week, walk like an elephant—very far, with seeds in your guts, Cassini’s mission to Saturn wraps up with news on the habitability of its icy moon Enceladus, and how our shoes manage to untie themselves with Online News Editor David Grimm. Aylin Caliskan joins Sarah Crespi to discuss how biases in our writing may be perpetuated by the machines that learn from them. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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How to weigh a star—with a little help from Einstein, toxic ‘selfish genes,’ and the world’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils

This week we have stories on what body cams reveal about interactions between black drivers and U.S. police officers, the world’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils, and how modern astronomers measured the mass of a star—thanks to an old tip from Einstein—with Online News Intern Ryan Cross. Sarah Crespi talks to Eyal Ben-David about a pair of selfish genes—one toxin and one antidote—that have been masquerading as essential developmental genes in a nematode worm. She asks how many more so-called “essential genes” are really just self-perpetuating freeloaders? Science Careers Editor Rachel Bernstein is also here to talk about stress and work-life balance for researchers and science students. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Chris Burns/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Odorless calories for weight loss, building artificial intelligence researchers can trust, and can oily birds fly?

This week we have stories on the twisty tree of human ancestry, why mice shed weight when they can’t smell, and the damaging effects of even a small amount of oil on a bird’s feathers—with Online News Editor David Grimm.  Sarah Crespi talks to News Editor Tim Appenzeller about a special section on how artificial intelligence is changing the way we do science.  Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: © 2012 CERN, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE ALICE COLLABORATION; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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<i>Science</i>’s Breakthrough of the Year, our best online news, and science books for your shopping list

Dave Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about a few of this year’s top stories from our online news site, like ones on a major error in the monarch butterfly biological record and using massive balloons to build tunnels, and why they were chosen. Hint: It’s not just the stats. Sarah also interviews Staff Writer Adrian Cho about the 2017 Breakthrough of the Year. Adrian talks about why Science gave the nod to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory team for a second year in a row—for the detection of a pair of merging neutron stars. Jen Golbeck is also back for the last book review segment of the year. She talks with Sarah about her first year on the show, her favorite books, what we should have covered, and some suggestions for books as gifts. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: f99aq8ove/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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A new dark matter signal from the early universe, massive family trees, and how we might respond to alien contact

For some time after the big bang there were no stars. Researchers are now looking at cosmic dawn—the time when stars first popped into being—and are seeing hints of dark matter’s influence on supercold hydrogen clouds. News Writer Adrian Cho talks with Sarah Crespi about how this observation was made and what it means for our understanding of dark matter. Sarah also interviews Joanna Kaplanis of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K., about constructing enormous family trees based on an online social genealogy platform. What can we learn from the biggest family tree ever built—with 13 million members spanning 11 generations? In a bonus segment recording during a live podcasting event at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Sarah talks with Michael Varnum of Arizona State University in Tempe about what people think they will do if humanity comes into contact with aliens that just happen to be microbes. Live recordings sessions at the AAAS meeting were supported by funds from the European Commission. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Kilo-Degree Survey Collaboration/H. Hildebrandt & B. Giblin/ESO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]  




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Chimpanzee retirement gains momentum, and x-ray ‘ghost images’ could cut radiation doses

Two of the world’s most famous research chimpanzees have finally retired. Hercules and Leo arrived at a chimp sanctuary in Georgia last week. Sarah Crespi checks in with Online News Editor David Grimm on the increasing momentum for research chimp retirement since the primates were labeled endangered species in 2015. Sarah also interviews freelancer Sophia Chen about her piece on x-ray ghost imaging—a technique that may lead to safer medical imaging done with cheap, single-pixel cameras. David Malakoff joins Sarah to talk about the big boost in U.S. science funding signed into law over the weekend. Finally, Jen Golbeck interviews author Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr on her book First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery for our monthly books segment. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Crystal Alba/Project Chimps; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Tracking ancient Rome’s rise using Greenland’s ice, and fighting fungicide resistance

Two thousand years ago, ancient Romans were pumping lead into the air as they smelted ores to make the silvery coin of the realm. Online News Editor David Grimm talks to Sarah Crespi about how the pollution of ice in Greenland from this process provides a detailed 1900-year record of Roman history. This week is also resistance week at Science—where researchers explore the global challenges of antibiotic resistance, pesticide resistance, herbicide resistance, and fungicide resistance. Sarah talks with Sarah Gurr of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom about her group’s work on the spread of antifungal resistance and what it means for crops and in the clinic. And in a bonus books segment, staff writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks about medicine and fraud in her review of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Wheat rust/Oregon State University; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Sketching suspects with DNA, and using light to find Zika-infected mosquitoes

DNA fingerprinting has been used to link people to crimes for decades, by matching DNA from a crime scene to DNA extracted from a suspect. Now, investigators are using other parts of the genome—such as markers for hair and eye color—to help rule people in and out as suspects. Staff Writer Gretchen Vogel talks with Sarah Crespi about whether science supports this approach and how different countries are dealing with this new type of evidence. Sarah also talks with Jill Fernandes of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, about her Science Advances paper on a light-based technique for detecting Zika in mosquitoes. Instead of grinding up the bug and extracting Zika DNA, her group shines near-infrared light through the body. Mosquitoes carrying Zika transmit this light differently from uninfected ones. If it’s successful in larger trials, this technique could make large-scale surveillance of infected mosquitoes quicker and less expensive. In our monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck talks with author Sarah-Jayne Blakemore about her new work: Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. You can check out more book reviews and share your thoughts on the Books et al. blog. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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The South Pole’s IceCube detector catches a ghostly particle from deep space, and how rice knows to grow when submerged

A detection of a single neutrino at the 1-square-kilometer IceCube detector in Antarctica may signal the beginning of “neutrino astronomy.” The neutral, almost massless particle left its trail of debris in the ice last September, and its source was picked out of the sky by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope soon thereafter. Science News Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the blazar fingered as the source and how neutrinos from this gigantic matter-gobbling black hole could help astronomers learn more about mysterious high-energy cosmic rays that occasionally shriek toward Earth. Read the research. Sarah also talks with Cornell University’s Susan McCouch about her team’s work on deep-water rice. Rice can survive flooding by fast internodal growth—basically a quick growth spurt that raises its leaves above water. But this growth only occurs in prolonged, deep flooding. How do these plants know they are submerged and how much to grow? Sarah and Susan discuss the mechanisms involved and where they originated. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Doubts about the drought that kicked off our latest geological age, and a faceoff between stink bugs with samurai wasps

We now live in the Meghalayan age—the last age of the Holocene epoch. Did you get the memo? A July decision by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which is responsible for naming geological time periods, divided the Holocene into three ages: the Greenlandian, the Northgrippian, and the Meghalayan. The one we live in—the Meghalayan age (pronounced “megalion”)—is pegged to a global drought thought to have happened some 4200 years ago. But many critics question the timing of this latest age and the global expanse of the drought. Staff writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the evidence for and against the global drought—and what it means if it’s wrong. Sarah also talks to staff writer Kelly Servick about her feature story on what happens when biocontrol goes out of control. Here’s the setup: U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers wanted to know whether brown marmorated stink bugs that have invaded the United States could be controlled—aka killed—by importing their natural predators, samurai wasps, from Asia. But before they could find out, the wasps showed up anyway. Kelly discusses how using one species to combat another can go wrong—or right—and what happens when the situation outruns regulators. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Melissa McMasters/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] 




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Odd new particles may be tunneling through the planet, and how the flu operates differently in big and small towns

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]




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End of the year podcast: 2018’s breakthroughs, breakdowns, and top online stories

First, we hear Online News Editor David Grimm and host Sarah Crespi discuss audience favorites and staff picks from this year’s online stories, from mysterious pelvises to quantum engines. Megan Cantwell talks with News Editor Tim Appenzeller about the 2018 Breakthrough of the Year, a few of the runners-up, and some breakdowns. See the whole breakthrough package here, including all the runners-up and breakdowns. And in her final segment for the Science Podcast, host Jen Golbeck talks with Science books editor Valerie Thompson about the year in books. Both also suggest some last-minute additions to your holiday shopping list. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Peering inside giant planets, and fighting Ebola in the face of fake news

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]




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Measuring earthquake damage with cellphone sensors and determining the height of the ancient Tibetan Plateau

In the wake of a devastating earthquake, assessing the extent of damage to infrastructure is time consuming—now, a cheap sensor system based on the accelerometers in cellphones could expedite this process. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about how these sensor systems work and how they might assist communities after an earthquake. In another Earth-shaking study, scientists have downgraded the height of the ancient Tibetan Plateau. Most reconstructions estimate that the “rooftop of the world” reached its current height of 4500 meters about 40 million years ago, but a new study suggests it was a mere 3000 meters high during this period. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Svetlana Botsyun, a postdoctoral researcher at Tübingen University in Germany, about her team’s new approach to studying paleoelevation, and how a shorter Tibetan Plateau would have impacted the surrounding area’s climate. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Martin Luff/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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How dental plaque reveals the history of dairy farming, and how our neighbors view food waste

This week we have two interviews from the annual meeting of AAAS in Washington D.C.: one on the history of food and one about our own perceptions of food and food waste.  First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Christina Warinner from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, about the history of dairying. When did people first start to milk animals and where? It turns out, the spread of human genetic adaptations for drinking milk do not closely correspond to the history of consuming milk from animals. Instead, evidence from ancient dental plaque suggests people from all over the world developed different ways of chugging milk—not all of them genetic. Next, Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-director of the Michigan State University Food Literacy and Engagement Poll, about the public’s perception of food waste. Do most people try to conserve food and produce less waste? Better insight into the point of view of consumers may help keep billions of kilograms of food from being discarded every year in the United States. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Ads on the show: Columbia University and Magellan TV Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image:  Carefull in Wyoming/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Race and disease risk and Berlin’s singing nightingales

Noncancerous tumors of the uterus—also known as fibroids—are extremely common in women. One risk factor, according to the scientific literature, is “black race.” But such simplistic categories may actually obscure the real drivers of the disparities in outcomes for women with fibroids, according to this week’s guest. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Jada Benn Torres, an associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, about how using interdisciplinary approaches— incorporating both genetic and cultural perspectives—can paint a more complete picture of how race shapes our understanding of diseases and how they are treated. In our monthly books segment, book review editor Valerie Thompson talks with David Rothenberg, author of the book Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound, about spending time with birds, whales, and neuroscientists trying to understand the aesthetics of human and animal music. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Carlos Delgado/Wikipedia; Matthias Ripp/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Hunting for new epilepsy drugs, and capturing lightning from space

About one-third of people with epilepsy are treatment resistant. Up until now, epilepsy treatments have focused on taming seizures rather than the source of the disease and for good reason—so many roads lead to epilepsy: traumatic brain injury, extreme fever and infection, and genetic disorders, to name a few. Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about researchers that are turning back the pages on epilepsy, trying to get to the beginning of the story where new treatments might work. And Sarah also talks with Torsten Neurbert at the Technical University of Denmark’s National Space Institute in Kongens Lyngby about capturing high-altitude “transient luminous events” from the International Space Station (ISS). These lightning-induced bursts of light, color, and occasionally gamma rays were first reported in the 1990s but had only been recorded from the ground or aircraft. With new measurements from the ISS come new insights into the anatomy of lightning. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Bayer; Lightstream; KiwiCo Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Gemini Observatory; Music: Jeffrey Cook]




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Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in books

As the year comes to a close, we review the best science, the best stories, and the best books from 2019. Our end-of-the-year episode kicks off with Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm talking about the top online stories on things like human self-domestication, the “wood wide web,” and more. News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins Sarah to discuss Science’s 2019 Breakthrough of the Year, some of the contenders for breakthrough, also known as runners-up, and a breakdown—when science and politics just didn’t seem to mix this year. Finally, Science books editor Valerie Thompson brings her favorites from the world of science-inflected media. She and Sarah talk about some of the best books reviewed in Science this year, a food extinction book we should have reviewed, a pair of science-centric films, and even an award-winning birding board game. For more science books, films, and games, visit the books et al blog at blogs.sciencemag.org/books. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Bayer; Lightstream; KiwiCo Download a transcript (PDF)  Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast




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Fighting cancer with CRISPR, and dating ancient rock art with wasp nests

On this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a Science paper that combines two hot areas of research—CRISPR gene editing and immunotherapy for cancer—and tests it in patients. Sarah also talks with Damien Finch, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, about the Kimberly region of Australia and dating its ice age cave paintings using charcoal from nearby wasp nests. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF).




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An ancient empire hiding in plain sight, and the billion-dollar cost of illegal fishing

This week on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a turning point for one ancient Mesoamerican city: Tikal. On 16 January 378 C.E., the Maya city lost its leader and the replacement may have been a stranger. We know from writings that the new leader wore the garb of another culture—the Teotihuacan—who lived in a giant city 1000 kilometers away. But was this new ruler of a Maya city really from a separate culture? New techniques being used at the Tikal and Teotihuacan sites have revealed conflicting evidence as to whether Teotihuacan really held sway over a much larger region than previously estimated. Sarah also talks with Rashid Sumaila, professor and Canada research chair in interdisciplinary ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. You may have heard of illegal fishing being bad for the environment or bad for maintaining fisheries—but as Sumaila and colleagues report this week in Science Advances, the illegal fishing trade is also incredibly costly—with gross revenues of between $8.9 billion and $17.2 billion each year. In the books segment this month, Kiki Sanford interviews Gaia Vince about her new book Transcendence How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF).




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Science’s leading role in the restoration of Notre Dame, and the surprising biology behind how our body develops its tough skin

On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Lesté-Lasserre talks with host Sarah Crespi about the scientists working on the restoration of Notre Dame, from testing the changing weight of wet limestone, to how to remove lead contamination from four-story stained glass windows. As the emergency phase of work winds down, scientists are also starting to use the lull in tourist activity to investigate the mysteries of the cathedral’s construction. Also this week, Felipe Quiroz, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, talks with Sarah about his paper on the cellular mechanism of liquid-liquid phase separation in the formation of the tough outer layer of the skin. Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids “demix,” or separate, like oil and water. In cells, this process created membraneless organelles that are just now starting to be understood. In this work, Quiroz and colleagues create a sensor for phase separation in the cell that works in living tissue, and show how phase separation is tied to the formation of the outer layers of skin in mice. Read the related Insight. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: r. nial bradshaw/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]