New clinical trials for treatments of an always fatal brain disease, and what happens with pests when a conventional and organic farm are neighbors
First up on this week’s show, a new treatment to stave off prion disease goes into clinical trials. Prions are misfolded proteins that clump together and chew holes in the brain. The misfolding can be switched on in a number of ways—including infection with a misfolded prion protein from an animal or person. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about new potential treatments—from antisense nucleotides to small molecules that interfere with protein production—for these fatal neurodegenerative diseases.
Next on the show: Freelance producer Katherine Irving talks with Ashley Larsen, associate professor of agricultural and landscape ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about the effects of organic farms on their neighbors. If there are lots of organic growers together, pesticide use goes down but conventional farms tend to use more pesticides when side by side with organic farms.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving; Meredith Wadman
LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z91m76v
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A risky clinical trial design, and attacks on machine learning
A freeze on prion research, and watching cement dry
Debating healthy obesity, delaying type 1 diabetes, and visiting bone rooms
Blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease, and what earthquakes on Mars reveal about the Red Planet’s core
Science after COVID-19, and a landslide that became a flood
Scientists’ role in the opioid crisis, 3D-printed candy proteins, and summer books
Preserving plastic art, and a gold standard for measuring extreme pressure
Does Botox combat depression, the fruit fly sex drive, and a series on race and science
Keeping ads out of dreams, and calculating the cost of climate displacement
Finding consciousness outside the brain, and using DNA to reunite families
Cicada citizen science, and expanding the genetic code
Cracking consciousness, and taking the temperature of urban heat islands
Ecstasy plus therapy for PTSD, and the effects of early childhood development programs on mothers
Cutting shipping air pollution may cause water pollution, and keeping air clean with lightning
Chernobyl’s ruins grow restless, and entangling macroscopic objects
Storing wind as gravity, and well-digging donkeys
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
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