On this week’s show: The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope hint at the science to come, and disentangling the itch-scratch cycle
After years of delays, the James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of December 2021. Now, NASA has released a few of the first full-color images captured by the instrument’s enormous mirror. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these first images and what they mean for the future of science from Webb.
Next on the podcast, Jing Feng, principal investigator at the Center for Neurological and Psychiatric Research and Drug Discovery at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, discusses his Science Translational Medicine paper on why scratching sometimes triggers itching. It turns out, in cases of chronic itch there can be a miswiring in the skin. Cells that normally detect light touch instead connect with nerve fibers that convey a sensation of itchiness. This miswiring means light touches (such as scratching) are felt as itchiness—contributing to a vicious itch-scratch cycle.
Also this week, in a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Paul Bastard, chief resident in the department of pediatrics at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris and a researcher at the Imagine Institute in Paris and Rockefeller University. They talk about his work to shed light on susceptibility to COVID-19, which recently won him the Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STSCI; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: James Webb Space Telescope image of image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9123
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Rebuilding Louisiana’s coast, and recycling plastic into fuel
Why muon magnetism matters, and a count of all the Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived
Magnetar mysteries, and when humans got big brains
Fighting outbreaks with museum collections, and making mice hallucinate
Social insects as models for aging, and crew conflict on long space missions
COVID-19 treatment at 1 year, and smarter materials for smarter cities
Next-generation gravitational wave detectors, and sponges that soak up frigid oil spills
The world’s oldest pet cemetery, and how eyeless worms can see color
Measuring Earth’s surface like never before, and the world’s fastest random number generator
All your COVID-19 vaccine questions answered, and a new theory on forming rocky planets
Building Africa’s Great Green Wall, and using whale songs as seismic probess
Looking back at 20 years of human genome sequencing
Calculating the social cost of carbon, and listening to mole-rat chirps
Counting research rodents, a possible cause for irritable bowel syndrome, and spitting cobras
An elegy for Arecibo, and how our environments may change our behavior
The uncertain future of North America’s ash trees, and organizing robot swarms
Areas to watch in 2021, and the living microbes in wildfire smoke
Breakthrough of the Year, top online news, and science book highlights
Making ecology studies replicable, and a turnaround for the Tasmanian devil
How the new COVID-19 vaccines work, and restoring vision with brain implants
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
DNA Today: A Genetics Podcast
Museum of the Missing
Strange by Nature Podcast
Sasquatch Chronicles
Hidden Brain