What we learned from a seismometer on Mars, why it’s so difficult to understand the relationship between our microbes and our brains, and the first in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture
First up this week, freelance space journalist Jonathan O’Callaghan joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the retirement of NASA’s Mars InSight lander. After almost 4 years of measuring quakes on the surface of the Red Planet, the lander’s solar panels are getting too dusty to continue providing power. O'Callaghan and Crespi look back at the insights that InSight has given us about Mars’s interior, and they talk about where else in the Solar System it might make sense to place a seismometer.
Also this week, we have a special issue on the body’s microbiome beyond the gut. As part of the special issue, John Cryan, principal investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, wrote a commentary piece on tightening the connections research has made between microbes and the brain—the steps needed to go from seeing connections to understanding how the microbiome might be tweaked to change what’s happening in the brain.
Finally this week, we have the first installment of our series of author interviews on the science of food and agriculture. In this inaugural segment, host and science journalist Angela Saini talks to Ousmane Badiane, an expert on agricultural policy and development in Africa, and a co-author of Food For All In Africa: Sustainable Intensification for African Farmers, a 2019 book looking at the possibilities and reality of sustainable intensive farming in Africa.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Illustration: Hannah Agosta; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: overlapping drawings of microbial populations]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jonathan O’Callaghan; Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.10.1126/science.add1406
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Space-based solar power gets serious, AI helps optimize chemistry, and a book on food extinction
Snakes living the high-altitude life, and sending computing power to the edges of the internet
Climate change threatens supercomputing, and collecting spider silks
Linking violence in Myanmar to fossil amber research, and waking up bacterial spores
Giving a lagoon personhood, measuring methane flaring, and a book about eating high on the hog
Can wolves form close bonds with humans, and termites degrade wood faster as the world warms
Testing planetary defenses against asteroids, and building a giant ‘water machine’
Why the fight against malaria has stalled in southern Africa, and how to look for signs of life on Mars
Using free-floating DNA to find soldiers’ remains, and how people contribute to indoor air chemistry
Chasing Arctic cyclones, brain coordination in REM sleep, and a book on seafood in the information age
Monitoring a nearby star’s midlife crisis, and the energetic cost of chewing
Cougars caught killing donkeys in Death Valley, and decoding the nose
Invasive grasses get help from fire, and a global map of ant diversity
Probing beyond our Solar System, sea pollinators, and a book on the future of nutrition
Possible fabrications in Alzheimer’s research, and bad news for life on Enceladus
The Webb Space Telescope’s first images, and why scratching sometimes makes you itchy
Running out of fuel for fusion, and addressing gender-based violence in India
Former pirates help study the seas, and waves in the atmosphere can drive global tsunamis
Using waste to fuel airplanes, nature-based climate solutions, and a book on Indigenous conservation
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