Petri Dish

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On this week's episode, we complete our series on desalination by discussing the near future technologies that are coming to either improve or attempt to supplant the current front runners that we discussed last week. We will also discuss the downsides of desalination and work that is being done to try to minimize or circumvent them!

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Hi Everyone!

We're interrupting our series on desalination to put out a quick rerelease of one of our episodes on Fungi! We're doing this in honor of the season 1 finale of The Last of Us, which heavily features a fungus called Cordyceps, which we covered in this episode. Check it out and learn more about cordyceps, similar fungi, and much nicer fungi that improve human life rather than turning us into freaky zombies.

Climate change is happening, two billion people don't have a reliable and safe supply of fresh water, and the problem isn't likely to get a whole lot better on its own!

Desalination is the process of making fresh water from salt water, but what is the current state of the technology? Find out on this episode of Petri Dish! Next time, we will discuss the near-future iterations on desalination!

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While science and medicine have come a long way over the centuries, there are still illnesses that cannot be explained -- and many of them are autoinflammatory disorders. Many people all over the world have been inflicted with these disorders with no clear cause.

But recently, scientists were able to find a mutation that can help explain what some of these people are going through, a mutation that led to the identification of an autoinflammatory disorder now known as VEXAS. Tune in to learn more!

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Occasionally we do episodes where we speak about a couple different topics that don't have a specific underlying theme -- they're just fun science papers that have cropped up recently! This time we discuss the confluence of two different hot technologies, CRISPR base editing and CAR T cells. We also do a little dive into Roman Concrete!

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We return with our second episode on Death, the final frontier! What is it? Actually though, like what determines the moment when someone dies? This question has actually had a different answer through the years, and we dive into the definition and how it has changed as technology has advanced. We finish with an example of cutting-edge technology that may further muddy the line between alive and dead!

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On our first episode about Death, we look into a paper published a few years that described the reanimation of a pig brain! Spooky! Let’s get into the science behind it and some of its implications for humans!

This winter season the world is dealing with not two but three respiratory illnesses at the same time. While these are familiar names at this point, they’re definitely different from one another, so let’s get into COVID, the flu, and RSV!

Hi Folks! Part 2 of our series on coffee focuses on how coffee beans can be imparted with different flavors through their picking and processing!

We mentioned this in the show notes for the last episode, but we will be going on a couple month hiatus while Nathan and Stacey take a vacation in Korea! We will be re-releasing some of our older episodes in the meantime, in case people are really itching to listen to our dulcet tones.

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