Contributing correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks about what can be learned from schools around the world that have reopened during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, few systematic studies have been done but observations of outbreaks in schools in places such as France or Israel do offer a few lessons for countries looking to send kids back to school soon. The United Kingdom and Germany have started studies of how the virus spreads in children and at school, but results are months away. In the meantime, Gretchen’s reporting suggests small class sizes, masks, and social distancing among the adults at school are particularly important measures.
Read all our coronavirus news coverage.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Kirstie Thompson, a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, about increasing the efficiency of petroleum processing. If all—or even some—petroleum processing goes heat free, it would mean big energy savings. Around the world, about 1% of all energy use goes to heating up petroleum in order to get useful things such as gas for cars or polymers for plastics. These days, this separation is done through distillation, heating and separating by boiling point. Kirstie describes a heat-free way of getting this separation—by using a special membrane instead.
Read a related Insight.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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About the Science Podcast
Download a transcript (PDF)
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[Image: Kurt Bauschardt/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel
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Restoring sight to blind kids, making babies without a womb, and challenging the benefits of clinical trials
Stepping on snakes for science, and crows that count out loud
How the immune system can cause psychosis, and tool use in otters
A very volcanic moon, and better protections for human study subjects
Improving earthquake risk maps, and the world’s oldest ice
The science of loneliness, making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions safer, and a new book series
Ritual murders in the neolithic, why 2023 was so hot, and virus and bacteria battle in the gut
Trialing treatments for Long Covid, and a new organelle appears on the scene
When did rats come to the Americas, and was Lucy really our direct ancestor?
Teaching robots to smile, and the effects of a rare mandolin on a scientist’s career
Hope in the fight against deadly prion diseases, and side effects of organic agriculture
Why babies forget, and how fear lingers in the brain
A dive into the genetic history of India, and the role of vitamin A in skin repair
The sci-fi future of medical robots is here, and dehydrating the stratosphere to stave off climate change
What makes snakes so special, and how space science can serve all
What makes blueberries blue, and myth buster Adam Savage on science communication
A new kind of magnetism, and how smelly pollution harms pollinators
A new way for the heart and brain to ‘talk’ to each other, and Earth’s future weather written in ancient coral reefs
A hangover-fighting enzyme, the failure of a promising snakebite treatment, and how ants change lion behavior
Paper mills bribe editors to pass peer review, and detecting tumors with a blood draw
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