Science In Action

• Who runs science?

  The Lancet this week features a paper calling for a financially sustainable network of influenza labs and experts across Europe. Marion Koopmans was one of the 32 expert signatures, and she describes how Europe needs to learn some lessons from the model developed previously in the US. The ongoing worries around avian H5N1 would be a great example of why funding for that sort of frontline strategic science needs not to be reliant on ad-hoc, potentially political, funding grants.This weekend, a conference is taking place in Asilomar, CA, to mark 50 years since the 1975 conference there at which scientists developed some rules and guidelines around the future practice of genetic science. The historic Asilomar conference is celebrated by many as the moment scientists first demonstrated that they could spot risks, and self-regulate their activities, around novel and disruptive technologies. Author and scientist Matthew Cobb of the University of Manchester, and Shobita Parthasarathy of the University of Michigan discuss how perhaps other perspectives on the Asilomar legacy should be considered.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Image: Herbert Boyer (UCSF) and Paul Berg (Stanford) at a conference at Asilomar, February 26, 1975. Credit: Peter Breining/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

  --------  

  36:28
• Hits from space

  This week the recently spotted asteroid 2024 YR4 had its odds of missing us “spectacularly” slashed by 1 percentage point. Still nothing to worry about maintains Patrick Michel of the International Asteroid Warning Network, and he expects that with better tracking data in the next few months (even courtesy of the JWST) that tiny chance of collision will fall further. However, as he explains, it’s very comforting to know that we now have such a sophisticated tracking network, and even better, thanks to NASA’s DART mission, even a demonstrable method for doing something about it if the numbers go the other way…But other extraterrestrial bombardments are harder to detect at all. This week scientists of the KM3NeT collaboration report in the journal Nature their detection of the most energetic neutrino ever noticed. Almost countless numbers travel through the earth – and us – every second, but this little beauty arrived from deep space, plummeting through hundreds of miles of rock and sea (via Malta) to collide with a single molecule of water in the Mediterranean sea. As Paschal Coyle of Aix Marseille University happens to run a cubic kilometre of neutrino observatory in that area explains their huge instrument was barely begun when the record breaker smashed through the area in February 2023.Finally, years of breeding rice cultivars for higher yield may have subtly changed the plants relationship with the microbes in the paddies in which they grow, inadvertently boosting the amount of methane released into our atmosphere. New research, including 3 years of field trials in China have produced a new cultivar, breeding in some of the older stocks, with just as high yields yet up to 70 percent lower methane released. This could make a serious difference to global methane emissions, as Microbiologist Anna Schnürer of Uppsala BioCenter in Sweden describes.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Josie Hardy(Photo: Asteroid 2024 YR4 as observed by the Magdalena Ridge 2.4m telescope Credit: AFP/NASA/New Mexico Institute of Technology)

  --------  

  36:47
• Earthquakes swarms and whale chart toppers

  The mystery swarm of small earthquakes near the island of Santorini beg for more data collection. Also, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US goes offline and whales learn song like kids learn language.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Josie Hardy(Photo: Greece earthquake. Credit: AFP)

  --------  

  32:35
• Make science great again

  Nasa's OSIRIS-REx mission to collect a sample from an asteroid has been a great success. Asteroid Bennu's sample yields a watery pool of history, thanks to an international team of scientists including the London Natural History Museum's Sarah Russell. Also, in a week of tumultuous changes to federal funding and programmes, we hear from some US scientists affected and concerned by Executive Orders from the White House. Betsy Southwood, formerly of the Environmental Protection Agency, is worried not just about the government employees’ careers, but the environment itself and the whole of environmental science in the US and the world. Chrystal Starbird runs a lab at the University of North Carolina and is worried about the fate of grants aimed at diversifying scientific expertise, but also that some grant schemes are getting erroneously included in the anti-DEI clampdown. And Lawrence Gostin is an eminent health lawyer, proud of the NIH and all it has achieved.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Photo: OSIRIS-REx Sample Return. Credit: Nasa/Getty Images)

  --------  

  40:41
• Arctic carbon starting to flip

  Thirty per cent of the Arctic is switching from carbon sink to carbon source. But could future fertilizer be made deep underground using less resources? Also, how and perhaps why globally 2024 had the highest number of fatal landslides in over 20 years, and an unexpected sound from space prompts a re-evaluation of how the earth’s magnetic field interacts with the environment around it.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Photo: Magnificent icebergs. Credit: MB Photography/Getty Images)

  --------  

  26:29

Weitere Wissenschaft Podcasts

Trending Wissenschaft Podcasts

Über Science In Action

Science In Action: Zugehörige Podcasts