This weekend, Spain and England face off in the Women’s World Cup Finals in Sydney, Australia.
The first Women’s World Cup was in 1991, and the games were only 80 minutes, compared to the 90-minute games played by men. Part of the rationale was that women just weren’t tough enough to play a full 90 minutes of soccer.
This idea of women as the “weaker sex” is everywhere in early scientific studies of athletic performance. Sports science was mainly concerned with men’s abilities. Even now, most participants in sports science research are men.
Luckily things are changing, and more girls and women are playing sports than ever before. There’s a little more research about women too, as well as those who fall outside the gender binary.
SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Christine Yu, a health and sports journalist and author of Up To Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes, about the gap in sport science about women.
Using Stem Cells For Cornea Repair Is Worth A LookEach year in the US, over 40,000 people receive transplants of the cornea—the clear front part of the eye that light goes through first. Still more patients with damaged corneas might receive artificial corneas to help restore clear vision. But if an eye has been damaged by a chemical burn or another severe eye injury, neither of those treatments may be possible.
Now an early, Phase 1 clinical trial is reporting positive results using a stem cell technique called CALEC. It grows cells from a patient’s healthy eye, and then grafts them back into the damaged eye, either to support corneal tissue regrowth or as a foundation for a traditional transplant.
Dr. Ula Jurkunas, associate director of the Cornea Service at Mass Eye and Ear, and Dr. Jerome Ritz, the executive director of the Connell and O’Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core Facility at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, join Ira to talk about how the process works, and the challenges of manufacturing stem cell tissues in the lab for use in the human body.
From Skyscrapers to Sand Thieves—Digging Into The World Of SandWhen you think of sand, thoughts of the ocean and sand castles probably come to mind. But sand can be found in much more than beachfronts. Sand is a key ingredient in concrete for skyscrapers, silicon for computer chips, and the glass for your smartphone.
Vince Beiser, journalist and author of the book The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization, traveled to sand mines in India and beach nourishment projects around the world to follow the story of how sand has become a vital resource. He talks about the many uses of sand in our everyday lives and some of the consequences that come from our dependence on this natural resource.
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Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
787: Right-To-Repair Laws Gain Steam In State Legislatures
786: Starliner Crewed Test Flight Rescheduled | Slugs And Snails Like Cities
783: Your ‘Biological Age’ Could Be Different Than How Old You Are
782: High-Speed Rail Gets A Boost In The U.S.
781: Using A Lab On Wheels To Study Weed From Dispensaries
780: Jelly Creatures That Swim In Corkscrews | Keeping Wind Turbines Safe For Birds
779: Zapping Nerves Into Regrowth | Celebrating the Maya Calendar In Guatemala’s Highlands
778: Fine-Tuning Grapes For Iowa’s Wine Industry
777: How To Recycle Rare Earth Elements
776: New Evidence Questions Dark Energy’s ‘Constant’ Nature
775: New Guidelines Recommend Earlier Breast Cancer Screening
773: New Rule Sets Stage For Electric Grid Update | Harnessing Nanoparticles For Vaccines
772: How Climate Change Is Changing Sports
771: Why Is Tinnitus So Hard To Understand And Treat?
770: Finding Purpose In A ‘Wild Life’
769: Archeopteryx Specimen Unveiled | Trees And Shrubs Burying Great Plains' Prairies
768: JWST Detects An Atmosphere Around A Rocky Exoplanet | Boeing Plans To Fly Humans To The ISS Next Week
767: Challenging The Gender Gap In Sports Science
766: What Martian Geology Can Teach Us About Earth
765: How Louisiana Is Coping With Flooding In Cemeteries
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