Show Notes
Heatwaves in the pacific ocean have had a devastating effect on seabird populations in the north eastern US. Julia Parrish and colleagues publish this week 4 million deaths of Alaskan common murres attributable to rising water temperatures during 2014-16, representing half the population. One idea is that the fish on which the birds feed swim at deeper depths to find cooler temperatures, taking them below the depth the birds can dive. Worse, the reduced population numbers have endured almost ten years later. Pre-eclampsia affects up to 5 percent of pregnancies across the world. It reduces blood flow through the placenta, endangering mother, and even hindering the development of the foetus. But a promising approach to a possible therapy is described by Kelsey Swingle and colleagues this week. Much like some covid vaccines, by using a sort of lipid nanoparticles to deliver mRNA directly to the placenta in pregnant mice has resulted in healthier outcomes by widening the placental capillaries, allowing blood to flow more normally. Angie Rasmussen updates Roland on some of the work reported at a conference in Japan this week, pointing more directly to the covid-19 pandemic originating from wild animals at the Wuhan market. And in two coordinated papers published in the journals Science and Nature this week, scientists have narrowed down the period of time in history that modern humans and neanderthals interbred, leading to nearly everyone outside of sub-Saharan Africa sharing up to 2% of European Neanderthal DNA today. The question remains as to whether it was a benefit or not to the resulting hybrid population. Co-author Manjusha Chintalapati and colleagues describe how not all the neanderthal crossovers went on to survive pre-history to count as our direct ancestors. But one period of time, around 47,000 years ago is stamped on (nearly) all of us. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth and Josie Hardy (Image: Group of common murres on a breeding colony in Alaska. Credit: Sarah Schoen/USGS)
More from Science In Action
As anti-science leaves research reeling, does evidence-based policy in a scientific society have much of a future? Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, Angie Rasmussen and Deb Houry discuss some of the sources and motivations that perhaps belie the current state of scientific affairs. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: The End street sign. Credit: Sanfel via Getty Images).
As two species of coral are killed off by the 2023 heatwave in the Florida reefs, the abilities of different plankton species to cope with rising CO2 remain crucially unknown. Also, retrospective research shows a strong suggestion that mRNA covid vaccination might serendipitously boost certain types of cancer immunotherapy. And, if you can’t identify changing agricultural crop types from satellite observations, why not just strap a camera to your bike helmet? Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Photo: Dead elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata). Credit: Rolf von Riedmatten/Getty Images)
Ten years on from the Paris climate agreement, has it helped? Also, an international drought experiment, insights from 2D water, and social distancin in ants.
The 2025 Nobel prizes are announced this week – how did Science in Action’s predictions fare? Science author and thinker Philip Ball judges. The Whitley Fund for Nature this week hosted a “People for Planet” summit, exploring possible solutions to save nature. Amongst the speakers was Prof Martin Wikelski, of ICARUS, who has spent many years tracking wildlife around the world using tiny radio sensors. As he describes to Roland, he shortly hopes to launch a network of satellites to enable a global system to help us learn how hundreds of species are faring. Also, a new “Human Disease Blood Atlas” gets a boost, as described by Mathias Uhlén of SciLifeLab. Could an annual blood sample become a standard primary healthcare routine, mapping key proteins and their concentrations to provide early warning of hundreds of diseases? Meanwhile Nozair Khawaja of Free University of Berlin has been revisiting data from the Cassini mission to Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, back in 2008. His new analysis increases the prospects of habitable conditions deep on the ocean floor beneath the icy crust. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennet-Holesworth (Image: Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry explains a model during a press conference. Credit: Jonathan Nackstrand via Getty Images).
Scientists detect for the first time an unknown source of GPS interference coming from space. Also, as AI begins to design more and more DNA sequences being manufactured synthetically, how can those manufacturers be sure that what their customers are asking for will not produce toxic proteins or lethal weapons? And… how camera traps in polish forests reveal that the big bad wolf is more scared of humans than anything else. For that last few years instances of deliberate jamming and interference of GNSS signals has become an expected feature of the wars the world is suffering. Yet this disruption of the signals that all of us use to navigate and tell the time nearly always emanate from devices on the ground, or maybe in the air. But in ongoing research reported recently by Todd Humphreys of University of Texas at Austin and colleagues around the world is beginning to reveal that since 2019 an intermittent yet powerful signal has been causing GPS failures across Europe and the North Atlantic. The episodes have been thankfully brief so far, but all the signs suggest it comes not from soldiers or aeroplanes, but from a distantly orbiting satellite somewhere over the Baltic Sea. It may not be malevolent, it could be a fault, but the net of suspicion is tightening. A team of scientists including some from Microsoft report today in a paper in the journal Science an investigation to try to strengthen the vetting of synthetic DNA requests around the world. As AI-designed sequencies increase in number and application, the factories that produce the bespoke DNA are in danger of making and supplying potentially dangerous sequences to customers with malicious intents. But how do you spot the bad proteins out of the almost infinite possible DNA recipes? Tessa Alexanian of the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science, and one of the authors explains some of the thinking. Finally, Liana Zanette of Western University in Ontario and colleagues have been hanging around in Polish forests scaring wolves. Why? Because as wolf numbers rise in protected reserves, more and more human-wolf interactions occur. And a suspicion has arisen that the legal protection they enjoy has led to them losing their fear of humans in a dangerous way. Not so, says Liana’s team, blowing away the straw arguments and setting fire to the political motivation to reduce their protection status. Wolves are still terrified of Nature’s apex predator – us. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Simulation screen showing various flights for transportation and passengers. Credit: Oundum via Getty Images).