Science On Top

Researchers have discovered the mechanism behind the link between blue-green algae and ALS, a type of motor neuron disease also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Dr. Rachael Dunlop is lead author of the paper, and she joins us to talk algae, Guam, fruit bats and General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf.

The foramen magnum is the hole in the base of your skull that the spinal cord passes through on its way to the brain. But it's position can tell a lot about how you - and your ancestors - walked.

Bacteria can absorb fragments of DNA from the environment around them. This ability could be a previously ignored mechanism of evolution.

A devastating earthquake in Pakistan created a new 'island', exciting geologists around the world. And it's already been littered with trash.

A company in the UK has developed a plant that produces both tomatoes AND potatoes. So of course, they’ve called it the "TomTato".

A new form of exposure therapy could treat people's phobias - while they sleep.

Can pasta make you drunk? A case study of a man with auto-brewery syndrome.

Curiosity rover finds much less methane than expected, crushing hopes of finding life on Mars.

A British team claims to have found evidence of extra-terrestrial life. They haven't.

The life story of a blue whale has been mapped, with information from an unlikely source.

The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that first make us laugh, then make us think. We take a look atthis year’s winners: from dung beetles to penis amputations!

MEDICINE PRIZEA team of scientists from Japan, China and the UK for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice.Classical music affects heart transplants

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZEScientists from France, the USA, UK, The Netherlands, and Poland for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive.“Beauty in the eyes of the beer holder” – people who think they’re drunk, think they’re hot

JOINT PRIZE IN BIOLOGY AND ASTRONOMYA team from Australia, Sweden, Germany, South Africa and the UK for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way.Dung Beetles Watch the Galaxy (That’s How They Roll)

ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZEAmericans Brian Crandall and Peter Stahl, for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not.Missing morsels – chewing over the results of eating a shrew

SAFETY ENGINEERING PRIZEThe late Gustano Pizzo for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers — the system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the encapsulated hijacker through the airplane’s specially-installed bomb bay doors, whence he parachutes to earth, where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival.IgNobels, 2013: The Safety Engineering Prize!

PHYSICS PRIZEScientists from Italy, UK, Denmark, Switzerland, Russia, and France for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond — if those people and that pond were on the moon.Could humans run on water?

CHEMISTRY PRIZEA team of Japanese scientists for for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realised.GM could hold back the tears

PEACE PRIZEAlexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.What is the sound of one hand clapping?

PROBABILITY PRIZEScientists from the UK, the Netherlands and Canada for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.Why do cows have their ups and downs?

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZESeven doctors in Thailand for the medical techniques described in their report “Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam” — techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck.Reattachment of the penis. Unless it was first eaten by a duck.

On Friday 13 September 2013, Dr. Pamela Gay gave a talk at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia about CosmoQuest.org and the need for citizen science. There were also some questions about black holes and supernovae.

Our thanks to Swinburne University for hosting this lecture, and our apologies for the audio quality.

Fish expert Phil Kent joins us to talk more about the pacu, the alleged testicle-eating fish allegedly found off the alleged coast of Denmark.

University of Washington researchers have sent a signal from one scientist's brain over the internet to control the hand motions of another researcher. The NSA is paying close attention.

NASA has discovered one of the largest canyons in the world underneath the ice sheet that covers most of Greenland. The ice sheet is 3km thick in some parts, and scientists are surprised it hasn't worn away the canyon that was carved out four million years ago.

The conventional understanding that babies are born sterile is being overturned in the face of growing evidence that mothers 'seed' their fetuses with bacteria from early on in the pregnancy.

Babies can learn words while in the womb, and can remember those words after being born. By monitoring the brain waves of newborns, scientists have discovered the babies recognised 'pseudowords' they heard in the womb.

A fish experiment suggests that leadership is an innate quality. 'Leader' fish could be taught to follow other fish, but 'follower' fish struggled to become leaders. Fish have more personality than you might think.

In a town with no previously recorded earthquakes, more than a hundred were recorded in one year. It's thought they were triggered by the disposal of waste water from fracking.

A new world record has been set for the smallest sequenced genome, and it belongs to a symbiotic bacteria living in leafhoppers.

Mother gibbons teach their daughters to sing, using a kind of 'baby talk'.

And ancient 'bog body' has been found with the skin intact. The body may be that of a king, killed in a ritual sacrifice. Because axes.

'Chronic excreters' could be the big obstacle preventing the global eradication of Polio.

A scientist jokes about a testicle-eating fish, and cable news anchors panic. And giggle.

Mighty Maggots v Flesh Nom Bugs was a Pozible campaign that raised $9,970 for a trial. The trial aims to assess the ability of maggots to improve the rate of healing for people with Bairnsdale Ulcer lesions.

A new malaria vaccine has a 100% success rate in a small study. While promising, there are a lot of obstacles that need to be dealt with before this could be a viable Real World treatment.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has admitted that radioactive water has been leaking from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

A material inspired by the cactus plant cleans tiny particles of oil from water.

100,000 adventurous people have signed up for a one-way trip to Mars. But did they read the timeline before signing on the dotted line?

Scientists have made "teeth-like structures" from stem cells generated from urine.

Mark Post, a Dutch researcher has made a hamburger from cow muscle grown in a lab. The Cultured Beef was cooked at a PR event in London and tastes "close to meat".

Brochosomes are tiny 'soccer-ball' structures secreted by leafhoppers that protect them from rain, spider silk and... their own waste.

A new technique developed by the CSIRO uses X-Rays to find gold in ore samples.

Fewer boys than girls were born in the months after the huge earthquake struck Japan in March 2011.

Dr. Pamela Gay is an astronomer and assistant research professor at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. She is the co-host of AstronomyCast, one of the longest running astronomy podcasts and Project Director for CosmoQuest.org. CosmoQuest is a non-profit organisation trying to engage people in both learning and doing science.

In this conversation we talk about her research on variable stars, as well as her involvement in citizen science and amateur astronomy. We discuss science education and funding, how AstronomyCast began and Pamela's inspirations.

You can find Pamela at her blog, StarStryder.com

You can learn more about CosmoQuest at CosmoQuest.org

You can listen to AstronomyCast at AstronomyCast.com

It was thought that the many eyes on a peacock's tail feathers were what impressed peahens. But a new - and really cool! - study suggests that when it comes to wooing peahens, size does matter. It's not the number of the eyes, but the width of the tail.

Do dolphins use names? Well, sort of. They may use names to refer to themselves, but we don't know if they use names to refer to each other.

Scientists at MIT have developed a technique to insert false memories into mice. 

Three new studies have uncovered the genetic mechanism which controls regeneration in flatworms.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo say they have created electronics thin and flexible enough to be considered “imperceptible.” Their first prototype, a touch sensor, is 30 times lighter than printer paper and one-fifth the thickness of sandwich wrap.