Science Friday Folgen

New Device Helps People With Paralysis Walk Again Spinal cord injuries are notoriously difficult to treat, especially for those who have been paralyzed for several years. Now, researchers have developed a new implant that is able to reverse paralysis in patients with complete spinal cord injuries. The device uses specially designed electrodes, which bring the brain back into communication with the patient’s lower body. The findings were recently published in the academic journal Nature Medicine. Ira talks with the study’s co-authors, Jocelyne Bloch, a neurosurgeon at Lausanne University Hospital, and Grégoire Courtine, professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.   Could Protein-Based Vaccines Help Close The Global Vaccination Gap? A new generation of COVID-19 vaccines are being developed and distributed around the world. They’re called recombinant-protein vaccines. But the tech is actually not at all new. In fact, It’s been used to produce hepatitis C and pertussis vaccines for decades. These protein-based vaccines have an edge over mRNA vaccines in a few ways. They’re just as effective, cheaper and simpler to manufacture, and easier to distribute. So why, two years into the pandemic, have they just started gaining traction? And can recombinant-protein vaccines help close the global coronavirus vaccination gap? Ira discusses these developments with Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi, the co-creator of Corbevax, a patent-free protein-based vaccine, for which she was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She’s also the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, and a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, based in Houston, Texas.   How Cuba Developed Five COVID-19 Vaccines Cuba was able to quickly produce five coronavirus vaccines, thanks to the island’s robust biotech industry. For decades, Cuba has produced its own home-grown vaccines and distributed them to neighboring countries. But sanctions and political dynamics have complicated Cuba’s ability to distribute their COVID-19 vaccines with the world. Ira talks with Helen Yaffe, senior lecturer of economic and social history at Glasgow University, and author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World.   Fish Make More Noise Than You Think One of the most famous films of undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau was titled The Silent World. But when you actually stop and listen to the fishes, the world beneath the waves is a surprisingly noisy place. In a recent study published in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology, researchers report that as many of two-thirds of the ray-finned fish families either are known to make sounds, or at least have the physical capability to do so. Some fish use specialized muscles around their buoyancy-modulating swim bladders to make noise. Others might blow bubbles out their mouths, or, in the case of herring, out their rear ends, producing “fish farts.” Still other species use ridges on their bodies to make noises similar to the way crickets do, grind their teeth, or snap a tendon to sound off. The noises serve a variety of purposes, from calling for a mate to warning off an adversary. Aaron Rice, principal ecologist in the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, walks Ira through some of the unusual sounds produced by known fish around the world—and some mystery noises that they know are produced by fish, but have yet to identify.     Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Third Person Cured From HIV, Thanks To Umbilical Cord Stem Cells The third person ever, and the first woman, has been cured of the HIV virus, thanks to a stem cell transplant using umbilical cord blood. While the invasive, risky bone marrow transplant process may not prove the answer for large numbers of people, the use of cord blood may open up pathways to new treatment options for a wider variety of people than the adult stem cells used to cure the two previous patients. Vox staff writer Umair Irfan explains why. Plus how President Biden is using executive orders for decarbonizing new parts of the economy, new research on the climate origins of the mega-drought in the American West, a prediction for even more rapidly rising sea levels from NOAA, and how orangutans—some of them at least—might be able to use tools.   How To Close Gaps In Healthcare Access When a public health crisis strikes, a natural instinct is to turn to a strong leader. The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example: We want someone who can calm our fears, tell us what to expect, and what steps we can take to make things better. But leadership does not happen overnight—and it will take a brave person to step into the shoes that guide the country through the next stage of the pandemic. Dr. David Satcher is used to adversity. Born into poverty in Anniston, Alabama, Satcher contracted whooping cough at two years old. The town’s only Black doctor, Dr. Jackson, treated Satcher, but did not expect him to live. Overcoming this illness launched him into a lifetime of public health work, with an emphasis on health equity. Satcher speaks to Ira about his work as former assistant secretary for health, surgeon general of the U.S., and director of the Centers for Disease Control under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. They also discuss his leadership work at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and his advice for getting the country towards a more equitable healthcare system.   New Energy Record Set By Fusion Reactor The promise of a human-made, sustained, controlled nuclear fusion reaction has always seemed to be “just a few decades away.” But now recent results from JET, the Joint European Torus experiment, have researchers hopeful that practical fusion may indeed be possible as soon as 2035. In the experiment, a high-temperature plasma made of equal parts deuterium and tritium was confined in a magnetic containment vessel known as a tokamak. The run produced 59 megajoules of energy over a fusion “pulse” of five seconds, considerably longer than previous attempts. While the experiment did not produce more energy than it took to produce the extreme conditions needed to induce fusion, researchers took the run as a proof of concept that an upcoming reactor called ITER should be successful. Alain Bécoulet, head of the engineering domain for the ITER project and author of the upcoming book Star Power: ITER and the International Quest for Fusion Energy joins Ira to discuss the recent advance at JET and the prospects for producing a sustained, controlled nuclear fusion reaction—what Bécoulet calls mastering a small piece of the sun.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

How Grief Rewires The Brain Being a human can be a wonderful thing. We’re social creatures, craving strong bonds with family and friends. Those relationships can be the most rewarding parts of life. But having strong relationships also means the possibility of experiencing loss. Grief is one of the hardest things people go through in life. Those who have lost a loved one know the feeling of overwhelming sadness and heartache that seems to well up from the very depths of the body. To understand why we feel the way we do when we grieve, the logical place to turn is to the source of our emotions: the brain. A new book explores the neuroscience behind this profound human experience. Ira speaks to Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, a neuroscientist, about adjusting to life after loss.   One Step Closer To Curing Cancer Two cancer patients treated with gene therapy a decade ago are still in remission. Thousands of patients have undergone this type of immunotherapy, called CAR-T Cell therapy, since then. But these are the first patients that doctors say have been cured by the treatment. The findings were recently published in the academic journal Nature. Ira talks to Dr. Carl June, co-author of the study, and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.   Team USA’s Skiers Are Using Battery-Heated Shorts At The Olympics Team USA’s Alpine Ski Team is wearing custom-designed heated shorts to stay warm on the freezing slopes at the Beijing Olympics. But these aren’t your average shorts. They use a lithium-ion battery, and the thread they’re sewn with serves as the heat conductor. Ira talks with Josh Daniel and Lauren Samuels, graduate students at the University of Oregon’s sports product management program, who came up with the cutting-edge design.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.