Science Talk

By Scientific AmericanScience

Science Talk episodes

January 15, 2016 Sociable Chimps Get Richer Gut Microbiomes
When food is plentiful and chimps are more chummy, they harbor an increased number of different bacterial species in their bellies.

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3 min
January 14, 2016 Mammoth Find Moves Humans in Arctic Back 10,000 Years
The remains of a clearly butchered woolly mammoth in Siberia date to 45,000 years ago, 10 millennia earlier than when humans were thought to have crossed north of the Arctic circle.

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4 min
January 13, 2016 City Swans May Tolerate Humans Due to Gene Variant
More members of an urban swan population that lets humans get near have a particular genetic variant than do a rural swan group that tends to take off when humans approach.

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4 min
January 12, 2016 Roman Sanitation Didn't Stop Roaming Parasites
The University of Cambridge's Piers Mitchell, author of the 2015 book Sanitation, Latrines and Intestinal Parasites in Past Populations, talks about the counterintuitive findings in his recent paper in the journal Parasitology titled "Human parasites in the Roman World: health consequences of conquering an empire."

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9 min
January 12, 2016 Hippo Meat-Munching May Explain Their Anthrax Outbreaks
Hippos eat meat more than had been thought, a practice that could explain their susceptibility to anthrax die-offs when they consume infected animals.

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4 min
January 11, 2016 Powerball Lottery Winning Made Inevitable (If Not Easy)
Some set of numbers will definitely be drawn in the $1.3-billion Powerball Lottery, so all you have to do is make sure you hold every possible combination of numbers.

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5 min
January 08, 2016 Iceman Ötzi Died with a Bellyache
Researchers were able to determine the genome of stomach bacteria that infected the famous Iceman at the time of his death, in the process giving us clues about ancient human migrations.

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4 min
January 07, 2016 Allergies May Have Been Bequeathed by Neandertals
Many non-African humans today have genes—which apparently made it into us via Neandertals—that ramp up resistance to pathogens, but bring on allergies, too. Christopher Intagliata reports.

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4 min
January 06, 2016 Needle Exchange Programs Now Get Fed Support
More than a quarter century after the federal funding ban on needle exchange programs went into effect, it has quietly been almost completely lifted.

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4 min
January 05, 2016 Obama Notes Blocks of Gun Violence Research
In his announcement today that he was taking executive action to require more gun sellers to be licensed and to do background checks on gun buyers, Pres. Barack Obama also touched on the problems facing public health researchers who try to study gun violence and deaths.

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4 min

About Science Talk

From the publisher's feed

Science Talk is a podcast of longer-form audio experiments from Scientific American--from immersive sonic journeys into nature to deep dives into research with leading experts.