Staff Writer Meredith Wadman and host Sarah Crespi discuss what to expect from the two messenger RNA–based vaccines against COVID-19 that have recently released encouraging results from their phase III trials and the short-term side effects some recipients might see on the day of injection.
Sarah also talks with researcher Xing Chen, a project co-leader and postdoctoral scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, about using brain stimulation to restore vision. Researchers have known for about 70 years that electrical stimulation at certain points in the brain can lead to the appearance of a phosphene—a spot of light that appears not because there’s light there, but because of some other stimulation, like pressing on the eyeball. If electrical stimulation can make a little light appear, how about many lights? Can we think about phosphenes as pixels and draw a picture for the brain? How about a moving picture?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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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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