Science Selections
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This series of podcasts is intended to keep you up to date on the whole spectrum of scientific progress without losing you in technospeak or abstract concepts. It features selections from the more popular scientific journals, such as Scientific American Magazine, but also takes its material from such sources as the Los Angeles Times or the New Yorker, when appropriate. The articles read range from methane on Mars and cosmic radiation to our sense of smell and the intelligence of ravens.
| Title | Podcast Description | Author/Reader | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robot Pills - August, 2010 Scientific American | "Robot Pills. A voyage through the human body is no longer mere fantasy. Tiny devices may soon perform surgery, administer drugs and help diagnose disease." By Paolo Dario and Arianna Menciassi. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:14:52 |
| The Streetlight Effect - July/August 2010 Discover Magazine | "The Streetlight Effect. Researchers tend to look for answers where the looking is good, rather than where the answers are likely to be hiding. The result: a lot of dubious science." By David H. Freedman. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:17:41 |
| How Babies Think - July 2010 Scientific American | "How Babies Think. Even the youngest children know, experience and learn far more than scientists ever thought possible." By Alison Gopnik | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:24:43 |
| War of the Machines - July, 2010 Scientific American | "War of the Machines. Robots on and above the battlefield are bringing about the most profound transformation of warfare since the advent of the atom bomb." By P. W. Singer. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:46 |
| Isaac Newton and the Philosopher's Stone - July/August 2010 Discover | "For centuries some of the world's greatest geniuses struggled in secret to turn base metals into gold. In a sense they succeeded: In their restless quest, they unlocked some of nature's greatest secrets." By Jane Bosveld. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:11 |
| Winged Victory - July 2010 Scientific American | "Winged Victory. Modern birds, long thought to have arisen only after the dinosaurs perished, turn out to have lived alongside them." By Gareth Dyke. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:18:02 |
| The Beatles: Rock Band - September 2009 IEEE Spectrum | "The making of 'The Beatles: Rock Band.' How two MIT geeks created a video-game phenomenon that reinvents the Beatles." By David Kushner. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:21:26 |
| Washing Carbon Out of the Air - June 2010 Scientific American | "Washing Carbon Out of the Air. Machines could absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, slowing or even reversing its rise and reducing global warming." By Klaus S. Lackner. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:21:23 |
| The Insanity Virus - June 2010 Discover Magazine | "The Insanity Virus. Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes or even bad parents. Wrong! says psychiatrist Fuller Torrey. The real culprit, he claims, is a virus that lives entwined in every person's DNA." By Douglas Fox. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:41 |
| It's Alive!!! - June 2010 Discover Magazine | "It's Alive!!! Is anything stirring on the dusty surface of the Red Planet? A few bold scientists say we need speculate no longer: We have already found strong evidence of life on Mars." By Andrew Lawler. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:34 |
| Is Time an Illusion? - June, 2010 Scientific American | "Is Time an Illusion? The concepts of time and change may emerge from a universe that, at root, is utterly static." By Craig Callender. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:30:23 |
| Uncanny Sight in the Blind - May 2010 Scientific American | Some people who are blind because of brain damage have "blindsight," an extraordinary ability to react to emotions on faces and even navigate around obstacles without knowing they can see anything. By Beatrice de Gelder. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:21:39 |
| Through Neutrino Eyes - May 2010 Scientific American | "Through Neutrino Eyes. Neutrinos are no longer just a curiosity of physics but a practical tool for astronomy." By Graciela B. Gelmini, Alexander Kusenko and Thomas J. Weiler. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:22:49 |
| Your Inner Healers - May 2010 Scientific American | "Your Inner Healers. Reprogramming cells from your own body could give them the therapeutic power of embryonic stem cells, without the political controversy." By Konrad Hochedlinger. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:29 |
| Terminators - May 2010 Discover Magazine | "Terminators. In the skies above Afghanistan and along the roadsides of Iraq, unmanned military machines are changing the nature of combat. The battlefield of the future may belong to the robots, not the humans." By Mark Anderson. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:24:06 |
| The Body Shop - May 2010 Discover Magazine | "The Body Shop. No longer the fancy of science fiction, androids are here right now - draped in fleshlike rubber and programmed to ease our fears." By Bruno Maddox. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:10:59 |
| Truffles - April 2010 Scientific American | "The Hidden Life of Truffles. Not just for gourmands, truffles play essential roles in the health of ecosystems." by James M. Trappe and Andrew W. Claridge | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:22:03 |
| Breaking the Growth Habit - April 2010 Scientific American | "Breaking the Growth Habit. Society can safeguard its future only by switching from reckless economic growth to smart maintenance of wealth and resources." by Bill McKibben | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:30 |
| Regaining Balance (and Vision) - April 2010 Scientific American | "Regaining Balance (and Vision) with Bionic Ears. Electronic implants in the inner ear may one day restore clear vision and equilibrium in some patients with disabling unsteadiness." by Charles C. Della Santina | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:09:58 |
| Who Wrote the Book of Physics? - April 2010 Discover Magazine | For many years we have assumed that the laws of the universe have never changed and never will. But what if that is not so? What if evolution is at work not only in biology but also in the cosmos? by Adam Frank | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:16 |
| Fusion's False Dawn - March 2010 Scientific American | "Fusion's False Dawn. Scientists have long dreamed of harnessing nuclear fusion - the power plant of the stars - for a safe, clean and virtually unlimited energy supply." by Michael Moyer | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:15 |
| Evolution of Minerals - March 2010 Scientific American | "Evolution of Minerals. Looking at the mineral kingdom through the lens of deep time leads to a startling conclusion: most mineral species owe their existence to life." by Robert M. Hazen | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:37 |
| Worm Charmers - March 2010 Scientific American | "Worm Charmers. As Charles Darwin had suspected, earthworms that flee from ground vibrations do so to escape hungry moles - even though sometimes it is humans chasing them." by Kenneth Catania. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:16:17 |
| Interviewing "The Guinea Pig Doctor" - March 2010 Discover Magazine | "The Discover interview of Barry Marshall. The medical elite thought they knew what caused ulcers and stomach cancer. But they were wrong - and did NOT want to hear the answer that was right." By Pamela Weintraub. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:09 |
| The Picasso of DNA - March 2010 Discover Magazine | "The Picasso of DNA. George Church is learning to redraw the genetic code. Medicine may soon look totally different - and so could Homo Sapiens." by Ed Regis | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:09 |
| The Brain (and Vision) - March 2010 Discover Magazine | "The Brain. We take visual imagination for granted. But the blank inner world of a patient called MX demonstrates the rich neural processes needed to create the images in our heads." by Carl Zimmer | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:13:32 |
| Star Formation - February 2010 Scientific American | "Cloudy with a chance of stars. Making a star is no easy thing." by Erick T. Young | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:03 |
| Seeing Forbidden Colors - February 2010 Scientific American | "People can be made to see reddish green and yellowish blue - colors forbidden by theories of color perception. These and other hallucinations provide a window into the phenomenon of visual opponency." by Vincent A. Billock & Brian H. Tsou | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:20 |
| The Naked Truth - February 2010 Scientific American | "The Naked Truth. Recent findings lay bare the origins of human hairlessness - and hint that naked skin was a key factor in the emergence of other human traits" by Nina G. Jablonski | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:07 |
| Google Chrome O.S. - January 2010 IEEE Spectrum | "Google Chrome, the Conqueror. Google's new online operating system could be the Windows killer" by Sally Adee | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:18:39 |
| The Rise & Fall of Nanobacteria - January 2010 Scientific American | "The Rise and Fall of Nanobacteria. Once believed to be the smallest pathogens known, nanobacteria have now proved to be something almost as strange. They do play a role in health - just not the one originally thought" by John D. Young and Jan Martel | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:11 |
| Next 20 Years of Microchips - January 2010 Scientific American | "The next 20 years of microchips. Designers are pushing all the boundaries to make integrated circuits smaller, faster and cheaper." by Scientific American Editors | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:54 |
| Violent Origins of Continents - January 2010 Scientific American | "Violent Origins of Continents. Did asteroid strikes during the earth's youth spawn the earliest fragments of today's landmasses?" by Sarah Simpson | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:22:10 |
| Biology's Next Leap - Jan/Feb 2010 Discover | An interview of J. Craig Venter on "Biology's Next Leap," digitally designed life-forms that could produce novel drugs, renewable fuels, and plentiful food for tomorrow's world. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:13:29 |
| Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural? - June 2007 Lecture | Climatologist S. Fred Singer's June 30, 2007 lecture at Hillsdale College presents the view that concern over man-caused global climate change is misplaced and that governmental action is not required. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:22:02 |
| Portrait of a Black Hole - December 2009 Scientific American | "Portrait of a Black Hole - By adapting a global network of telescopes, astronomers will soon get their first look ever at the dark silhouette of a black hole" by Avery E. Broderick and Abraham Loeb. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:20 |
| Computers That Behave as a Brain - December 2009 Discover | An interview of Henry Markram: Using computer processors that behave like neurons in the neocortex, Markram is inching closer to building a simulated human brain - a truly conscious machine. By David Kushner | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:22:23 |
| Out of Eden - December 2009 Discover | "Out of Eden: The sobering message from an extraordinary ancient Syrian settlement. Urban civilization and organized warfare emerged hand-in-hand" by Andrew Lawler | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:37 |
| Dawn of the Black Holes - December 2009 Discover | "Dawn of the Black Holes: Long known for their obliterating power, black holes may also have been a creative force: New evidence suggests that they helped sculpt the structure of the early universe" by Andrew Grant | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:08:59 |
| The Everything T.V. - November 2009 Scientific American | "The Everything T.V.: The Internet stands ready to upend the television-viewing experience, but exactly how is a matter of considerable dispute" by Michael Moyer. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:04 |
| Siblings of the Sun - November 2009 Scientific American | "The Long-Lost Siblings of the Sun: The sun was born in a family of stars. What became of them?" by Simon F. Portegies Zwart | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:14 |
| Sustainable Energy - November 2009 Scientific American | "A Path to Sustainable Energy: Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world's energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here's how!" by Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:26:26 |
| Digital Exposure - November 2009 Discover Magazine | "Digital Exposure: As data mining becomes a potent force in business, politics and government, our "private" information is becoming more public every day." by Elizabeth Svoboda. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:19:24 |
| Squeezing Oil From the Ground - October 2009 Scientific American | "Squeezing More Oil From the Ground. Amid warnings of a possible "peak oil," advanced technologies offer ways to extract every last possible drop." by Leonardo Maugeri | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:24:10 |
| The Ig Nobel Awards - from Improbable.com | The Ig Nobel Awards are awarded each year for serious Scientific publications that also have a humorous slant. Example: a paper showing that cows who have names give more milk. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:18:55 |
| Cosmic Collision - October 2009 Discover Magazine | "What Lies Beyond the Edge of the Universe? Cosmic Collision: Our universe may be one of a multitude - and it may bear the scars of past run-ins with its neighbors." by Zeeya Merali | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:21:14 |
| Thinking Machine - October 2009 Discover Magazine | "Thinking Machine. Can we build an artificial brain? The future of computing may depend on embracing the chaos that defines the human brain" by Douglas Fox | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:29:11 |
| Buzz Off - October 2009 Discover | "Buzz Off: Where Have All the Bees Gone? The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all: Industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point." by Morgen E. Peck | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:13:50 |
| Origin of Life - September 2009 Scientific American | "Origin of Life On Earth: Fresh clues hint at how the first living organisms arose from inanimate matter" by Alonso Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:40 |
| Origin of the Universe - September 2009 Scientific American | "Origin of the Universe: Cosmologists are closing in on the ultimate processes that created and shaped the universe" by Michael S. Turner | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:30 |
| Origin of Computing - September 2009 Scientific American | "The Origin of Computing: The information age began with the realization that machines could emulate the power of minds" by Martin Campbell-Kelly | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:24:15 |
| Twilight of the Neandertals - August 2009 Scientific American | "Twilight of the Neandertals: Paleoanthropologists know more about Neandertals than any other extinct human. But their demise remains a mystery, one that gets curiouser and curiouser." By Kate Wong. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:21:05 |
| Iron Key to Superconductivity? - August 2009 Scientific American | "An Iron Key to High-Temperature Superconductivity? The discovery that compounds known as iron pnictides can superconduct 50 degrees above absolute zero has reignited physicists' quest for better high-temperature superconductors and may offer clues to unlocking a 20-year mystery" by Graham P. Collins | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:26:10 |
| Return of the Invisible Man - July/August 2009 Discover | Stephen Hawking, the master of time, space, and black holes, steps back into the spotlight to secure his scientific legacy - and to explain the greatest mystery in physics. By Tim Folger | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:35:10 |
| Adventures in Curved Spacetime - August 2009 Scientific American | The possibility of "swimming" and "gliding" in curved, empty space shows that, even after nine decades, Einstein's theory of general relativity continues to amaze. By Eduardo Gueron | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:00 |
| Grassoline at the Pump - July 2009 Scientific American | Scientists are turning agricultural leftovers, wood and fast-growing grasses into a huge variety of biofuels - even jet fuel. But before these next-generation biofuels go mainstream, they have to compete with oil at $60 a barrel. By George W. Huber and Bruce E. Dale. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:21:10 |
| Nukes Underground - June 11 2009 Whyfiles.org | "Nukes Underground: How do we know? North Korea pops second nuke; test is immediately detected" from www.whyfiles.org | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:16:00 |
| The Science of Bubbles and Busts - July 2009 Scientific American | "The Science of Bubbles and Busts: The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has prompted a reassessment of how financial markets work and how people make decisions about money" by Gary Stix. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:55 |
| From the Moon to Mars - July 2009 Scientific American | Forty years ago this month the lunar surface reverberated with life for the first time. The only scientist and field geologist ever to visit the moon offers some pointers to those who will one day visit Mars. By Harrison H. Schmitt | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:26:35 |
| Phosphorus: A Looming Crisis - June 2009 Scientific American | "This underappreciated resource - a key part of fertilizers - is still decades from running out. But we must act now to conserve it, or future agriculture will collapse." By David A. Vaccari. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:14:50 |
| Stepping Stone to Mars - June 2009 Discover Magazine | "Stepping stone to Mars: A bizarre moon could hold the keys to the history of the solar system - and the future of human space exploration" by James Oberg | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:11:45 |
| Vaccination Nation - June 2009 Discover | "Vaccination Nation: The decade long controversy surrounding the safety of vaccines is over - or is it? A fierce debate continues over what really puts our children at risk." By Chris Mooney. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:32:40 |
| Improbable Planets - June 2009 Scientific American | "Improbable Planets: Astronomers are finding planets where there were not supposed to be any." by Michael W. Werner and Michael A. Jura | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:18:15 |
| The Taming of the Cat - June 2009 Scientific American | The Taming of the Cat: Genetic and archeological findings hint that wildcats became house cats earlier - and in a different place - than previously thought. By Carlos A. Driscoll, Juliet Clutton-Brock, Andrew C. Kitchener and Stephen J. O'Brien. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:55 |
| Powering Nanorobots - May 2009 Scientific American | Powering Nanorobots: Catalytic engines enable tiny swimmers to harness fuel from their environment and overcome the weird physics of the microscopic world. | Authors: Thomas E. Mallouk & Ayusman Sen, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:05 |
| Sketching Sunspots - June 2009 Discover | Field Notes: Astronomers at the Mount Wilson Observatory sketch sunspots every day, continuing a tradition started by Galileo. | Author: Dava Sobel, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:09:57 |
| How to Make Anything Disappear - April 2009 Discover | How to Make Anything Disappear. From invisibility cloaks to optical computers, engineers are turning the laws of physics upside down. | Author: Fred Hapgood, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:30:06 |
| Fuel For Thought - April 27, 2009 Weekly Standard | Current proposals to make electricity even more expensive through cap and trade taxation, and to spend the revenue on the least productive alternatives, is counterproductive. Cheap nuclear-generated electricity is the "green energy" we really need. | Author: Halbert Fischel, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:13:55 |
| Dark Energy - April 2009 Scientific American | Does Dark Energy Really Exist? Maybe not. The observations that led astronomers to deduce its existence could have another explanation: that our galaxy lies at the center of a giant cosmic void. | Authors: Timothy Clifton & Pedro G. Ferreira, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:58 |
| The Biocentric Universe - May 2009 Discover | Biocentrism should unlock the cages in which Western science has unwittingly confined itself. Allowing the observer into the equation should open new approaches to understanding cognition and solving problems associated with quantum physics and the Big Bang. | Authors: Robert Lanza & Bob Berman , Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:16:18 |
| Saving the Honeybee - April 2009 Scientific American | The mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder has wiped out large numbers of the bees that pollinate a third of our crops. The causes turn out to be surprisingly complex, but solutions are emerging. | Authors: Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:21 |
| Building a Better Brain - April 2009 Discover Magazine | Today's mind-altering drugs can already improve your memory, increase your alertness, and smooth your mood. Just wait until you see what tomorrow's drugs can do! | Author: Sherry Baker, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:29:02 |
| The PTSD Trap - April 2009 Scientific American | A growing number of experts insist that the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder is itself disordered and that soldiers are suffering as a result. | Author: David Dobbs, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:49 |
| The Perfect Kilogram - March 2009 Discover | Within a secure climate-controlled vault in France, the perfect kilogram watches over every weight measurement in the world. | Author: Dava Sobel, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:10:20 |
| The Greenhouse Hamburger - Feb 2009 Scientific American | Producing beef for the table has a surprising environmental cost: it releases prodigious amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. | Author: Nathan Fiala, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:10:17 |
| Entangled Life - Jan 2009 Discover | Quantum forces may explain photosynthesis, our sense of smell, even consciousness itself. | Author: Mark Anderson, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:15:57 |
| The Father of Dark Matter - Jan 2009 Discover | Fritz Zwicky, an oddball to a generation of astronomers, got there first on dark matter, neutron stars, and supernovas. His daughter wants him to get the recognition he deserves. | Author: Richard Panek, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:50 |
| Darwin's Living Legacy - Jan 2009 Scientific American | A Victorian amateur undertook a lifetime pursuit of slow, meticulous observation and thought about the natural world, producing a theory 150 years ago that still drives the contemporary scientific agenda. | Author: Gary Stix, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:21 |
| Three Short Articles - Dec 2008 Discover | Nomadic Hand-Me-Downs by Emily Anthes, Last Frog Hopping by Julianne Pepitone, Rebuilding the Internet by Mark Anderson | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:09:34 |
| Career Opportunities for Persons With Visual Impairment (Part 2) - July 2008 BAMS | Technology, adaptive strategies, full access to information and programs, and reasonable accommodations allow people with visual impairments to be productive in the highly visual field of atmospheric science. | Author: Imke Durre, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:35:30 |
| Career Opportunities for Persons With Visual Impairment (Part 1) - July 2008 BAMS | Technology, adaptive strategies, full access to information and programs, and reasonable accommodations allow people with visual impairments to be productive in the highly visual field of atmospheric science. | Author: Imke Durre, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:56 |
| Can HIV Be Cured? - Nov 2008 Discover | Eliminating HIV from the body would require flushing the virus out of its hiding places and preventing those reservoirs from being refilled. A tall order but perhaps not impossible. | Author: Mario Stevenson, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:46 |
| A Universe Built For Us - Dec 2008 Discover | Our cosmos seems inexplicably well-designed for life. According to a controversial theory, that's because nature had 10 to the 500th tries to get it right. | Author: Tim Folger, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:02 |
| Quest for a Second Earth - Nov 2008 Discover | Planets orbiting other suns are astonishingly common. Now the race is on to devise telescopes that can determine if any of them are enough like Earth to support life. | Author: Robert Kunzig, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:32:07 |
| The Perfect Plague - Nov 2008 Discover | The next killer germ could burst from the African rain forest - or from your family pet. | Authors: Jared Diamond and Nathan Wolfe, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:25:24 |
| Web Science Emerges - Oct 2008 Scientific American | Studying the Web will reveal better ways to exploit information, prevent identity theft, revolutionize industry and manage our ever growing online lives. | Authors: Nigel Shadbolt and Tim Berners-Lee, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:51 |
| Follow the Bouncing Universe - Oct 2008 Scientific American | Our universe may have started not with a big bang, but with a big bounce - an implosion that triggered an explosion, all driven by exotic quantum-gravitational effects. | Author: Martin Bojowald, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:02 |
| How to Keep Secrets Safe - Sept 2008 Scientific American | A versatile assortment of computational techniques can protect the privacy of your information and online activities to essentially any degree and nuance you desire. | Author: Anna Lysyanskaya, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:16 |
| Beyond Fingerprinting - Sept 2008 Scientific American | Security systems based on anatomical and behavioral characteristics may offer the best defense against identity theft. | Authors: Anil K. Jain & Sharath Pankanti, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:16:14 |
| The Icarus Syndrome - Sept 2008 Weekly Standard | Should we pay any price to avoid the consequences of global warming? | Author: Jim Manzi , Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:16:44 |
| The Gonzo Scientist - sciencemag.org | How Astronomers Have Fun - Chasing the 2008 solar eclipse | Author: John Bohannon, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:15:26 |
| Mental Fitness - September 2008 Discover | Want a sharper memory and a more agile mind? The solution might be just one video game away. | Author: Kathleen McAuliffe, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:16:23 |
| The Vatican's Secret Science Club - September 2008 Discover | The Pontifical Academy of Sciences - a little-known meeting ground for science and religion - includes some of the greatest minds of our age | Author: Michael Mason, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:32:42 |
| A Discussion of Gravity | This discussion from Dr. Odenwald's web site should clear up many misconceptions of the nature of gravity. Trekkies beware! Can you handle the truth? | Author: Dr. Sten Odenwald, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:22:57 |
| Sounds From Space | Sounds from space and the magnetosphere - from the web sites of NASA and the University of Iowa | Authors: NASA and University of Iowa, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:10:41 |
| Why Migraines Strike - August 2008 Scientific American | For the more than 300 million people who suffer migraines, the excruciating pain that characterizes these debilitating headaches needs no description. Biologists finally are unraveling their medical mysteries. | Authors: David W. Dodick and J. Jay Gargus | 00:25:32 |
| What Fills the Emptiness? August 2008 Discover | The fate of the universe rests in the endless expanse of nothing called the vacuum | Author: Tim Folger, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:15:11 |
| The Self-Organizing Quantum - July 2008 Scientific American | Quantum theory and General Relativity are famously at loggerheads. A new approach provides a novel way to apply existing laws to the motes of spacetime - they fall into place of their own accord, like molecules in a crystal, suggesting that spacetime shades from a smooth arena to a fractal on small scales. | Authors: Jan Ambjorn, Jerzy Jurkiewicz and Renate Loll | 00:24:59 |
| Traces of a Distant Past - July 2008 Scientific American | Scientists can trace the path of human migrations by using bones, artifacts and DNA. Ancient objects are hard to find, so DNA from contemporary humans is compared to determine how long an indigenous population has lived in a region; from this they postulate "migration superhighways!" | Author: Gary Stix, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:27:00 |
| Sight Lines, July 2008 Discover Magazine | Can a blind rock climber "see" through pulses delivered to his tongue? Climber Erik Weihenmayer, sightless by age 13, helps test a prototype of an amazing bit of technology. | Author: Buddy Levy, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:09:56 |
| Better Planet Solutions - June 2008 Discover Magazine | Better Energy: We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear, Better Water: The Groundwater Replenishment System will serve as a model for other places struggling to meet their water supply needs | Authors: Gwyneth Cravens and Jennifer Barone, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:19:08 |
| Movie Camera to the Stars - May 2008 Discover Magazine | Movie Camera to the Stars - Coming soon: an Epic film of the cosmos, produced by the fastest telescope on Earth | Author: Laurence Marschall, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:24:49 |
| The Tunguska Mystery, Scientific American, June 2008 | Finding a piece of the elusive cosmic body that devastated a Siberian forest a century ago could help save the earth in the centuries to come | Authors: Luca Gasperini, Enrico Bonatti, and Giuseppe Longo | 00:25:38 |
| Cosmic Origins of Time's Arrow - Scientific American, June 2008 | One of the most basic facts of life is that the future looks different from the past. But on a grand cosmological scale, they may look the same. | Author: Sean M. Carroll, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:32:06 |
| Reigning In The Weather - Discover, June 2008 | In this age of killer hurricanes, monster tornadoes, and ravaging floods, taking the edge off weather extremes has never been so vital. | Author: Donovan Webster, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:21:24 |
| Book Review from the Weekly Standard, May 12, 2008 | Balancing Act, Symmetry is more than a mathematician's conceit, A review of "Symmetry, A Journey into the Patterns of Nature," by Marcus du Sautoy | Author: David Guaspari, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:11:56 |
| The Weekly Standard April 28, 2008 | Food Riots Made in the USA - There's a better solution to our energy problems than ethanol. It's called nuclear energy. | Author: William Tucker, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:20:15 |
| Scientific American - May 2008 | The Genesis of Planets - Long viewed as a stately procession to a foregone conclusion, planetary formation turns out to be startlingly chaotic | Author: Douglas N. C. Lin, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:31:46 |
| Scientific American - May 2008 | Science 2.0 - Is posting raw results online, for all to see, a great tool or a great risk? | Author: M. Mitchell Waldrop, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:19:43 |
| Scientific American - May 2008 | Hooked From the First Cigarette - New findings reveal that cigarette addiction can arise astonishingly fast. But the research could lead to therapies that make quitting easier | Author: Joseph R. DiFranza, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:23:37 |
| Scientific American - Apr 2008 | The Doping Dilemma - Game theory helps to explain the pervasive abuse of drugs in cycling, baseball and other sports | Author: Michael Shermer, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:28:09 |
| Opinions, Scientific American - Mar 2008 | Adam's maxim and Spinoza's conjecture - belief, disbelief and uncertainty, Nothing to sneeze at - and other interesting results from researchers with some operating room. | Authors: Michael Shermer and Steve Mirsky, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:12:13 |
| Scientific American - Mar 2008 | An Accelerating Universe Wipes Out Traces of its Own Origins. Future cosmologists will not have access to observations that would allow them to deduce the beginning of the universe in a fiery big bang. | Authors: Lawrence M. Krauss, Robert J. Scherrer, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:26:31 |
| LA Times Science File | Middle-aged and miserable?, Deep brain stimulation boosts memory, Science Briefs. | Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:11:21 |
| Scientific American, Nov 2007 | WeirdoNomics and Quirkology: How the curious science of the oddities of everyday life yields new insights. | Author: Michael Shermer, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:06:32 |
| The Weekly Standard Oct 29, 2007 | You Tube U: Now you can sleep through lectures in the comfort of your own home. | Author: Andy Kessler, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:07:59 |
| The Weekly Standard, Nov 5, 2007 | Poverty of Ideas: Review of the Book 'The Persistence of Poverty' by Charles Karelis. | Author: Joel Schwartz, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:13:31 |
| Scientific American, Nov 2007 | News Scan: Water droplets encased in fat simulate cell membranes; Liability fears trump science for ulcer beating silicone. | Authors: Gary Stix and Melinda Wenner, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:11:19 |
| Scientific American, Oct 2007 | The Really Hard Science: To be of true service to humanity, science must be an exquisite blend of data, theory and narrative. | Author: Michael Shermer, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:06:25 |
| The Weekly Standard, Oct 8, 2007 | The Nose Knows: Should our sense of smell, neglected and even disdained as part of our animalistic past, be elevated to the status of sight and sound? | Author: Emily Yoffe, Reader: Joe Jurca | 00:08:24 |
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