Living Lab Radio

Coral reefs around the world face a host of threats from human activities – from destructive fishing practices, to pollution, and of course, climate change. Reefs in the Caribbean have been in decline. Close to half of the corals on the Great Barrier Reef died during a two-year heat wave starting in 2016. And scientists have said that the vast majority of reefs could be gone by 2050.

In the fall of 2017, actor Alyssa Milano responded to accusations of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein by tweeting. “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet,” she wrote.

So, it happened. And you probably didn’t notice. But the long-awaited, new definition of the kilogram went into effect this past week. The metal cylinder that has defined the kilo for over a century has now been replaced with a mathematical equation based on a number known as the Planck constant. It was the last physical artefact defining any unit of measurement in the international system, so its replacement marks an important point in efforts to define those units in ways that are permanent

On Living Lab Radio this week: Scientists are working on a new definition of the second. A study started as the MeToo movement ramped up, suggests that women sharing their stories may have helped alleviate the stigma of reporting sexual harassment on the job. Hundreds of thousands turned out for the March for Science in 2017. Those numbers have dwindled, but the impact hasn’t been lost. Ocean warming is devastating coral reefs around the world. But some reefs can take the heat, and they may

Imagine losing an arm or leg and thinking “No problem! It will grow back.” Now, imagine finding a bump on your big toe one day, only to have it grow into a complete clone of you that buds off and walks away. Laughable, right? But that’s exactly what earthworms and their aquatic cousins can do. Duygu Özpolat, a fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory, wants to know how, and why not all animals can do the same. Özpolat hasn’t always worked with worms. She started with chicken embryos. “They are

Nine out of 10 elementary schools in Europe offer children the opportunity to learn multiple languages, but only a quarter of American elementary schools offer instruction in a language other than English. And enrollment in language classes at the secondary and college levels have been falling in recent years. But Americans may not be as language depauperate as we think. We’ve just been holding the bar too high.

In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” the word of the year, and many have since embraced the idea that we are living in a post-truth era. But Morgan Marietta, a political scientist at UMass Lowell and co-author of One Nation, Two Realities , says it’s not truth that’s disappeared. It’s a shared perception of facts and reality that’s declined in recent years. “Reality is still there. Truth is there, if we can get to it,” Marietta said. “Facts, unfortunately, are social approximations

“If you cut them into small pieces, each of those pieces will become a whole new worm, instead of dying. And, in addition to that, they also can make clones of themselves. So, imagine one day you see a little bump on your feet, and then that gradually grows into a whole new you and buds off. This is the kind of things they do.” - Duygu Özpolat This week on Living Lab Radio: Political scientist Morgan Marietta, co-author of One Nation, Two Realities , says dueling perceptions of reality are now a

The Internet and artificial intelligence are changing the way we live. That’s not a surprise. We fret about how distracted we've become, or about whether robots will take our jobs. Those are real concerns. But the impact of computing technology could be even bigger and deeper – forcing us to reckon with our place in the world and our ability to understand it. “I certainly do not want to be in a position of denying science - that's an easy starting point - or the sorts of laws that science has

Dozens of species of fish and shellfish are caught in New England’s waters. But only a handful show up in most seafood retailers. You can probably list them: cod, haddock, scallops, clams, lobster. Now, it’s not just anecdotal. A citizen science initiative has found that five species dominate at New England seafood counters and that some of the species that are most common out in the ocean are the rarest in our markets.