Science Talk

By Scientific AmericanScience

Science Talk episodes

June 15, 2015 Ant Smells Like Blue Cheese for a Reason
The "odorous house ant" smells like blue cheese or rotten coconut because it produces chemical compounds similar to those found in its nose-sakes. Cynthia Graber reports

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3 min
June 12, 2015 Mars Surface Glass Could Hold Ancient Fossils
Scientists have found ancient "impact glass" on the surface of Mars, which formed when asteroids struck, a billion or more years ago. If anything was alive at the time, biological materials could be trapped inside. Christopher Intagliata reports

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4 min
June 11, 2015 Is Lying a Good Strategy?
A new documentary film presents the science behind when and why people lie. Daisy Yuhas reports

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3 min
June 09, 2015 Wild Chimps Seen Drinking Alcoholic Beverage
In west Africa researchers observed wild chimps seek out and drink fermented tree sap left outside by humans. Karen Hopkin reports

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4 min
June 09, 2015 Color You Remember Seeing Isn't What You Saw
People tend to remember a color they saw, for example green-blue teal, as being closer to a more stereotypical variant, such as straight blue or green. Karen Hopkin reports

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4 min
June 06, 2015 Ancient Human Migration Route Marked by Snail Shell "Bread Crumbs"
Fragments of edible marine snail shells found in Lebanon support the idea that ancient humans went from Africa to Europe through the Levant. Cynthia Graber reports

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3 min
June 05, 2015 "Brainprints" Could Be Future Security ID
We all emit slightly different brain waves in response to stimuli, and researchers say that an individual’s specific "brainprints" could be used to validate our identities. Christopher Intagliata reports

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5 min
June 04, 2015 Frenzy-Feeding Black Hole Makes Galaxy Most Luminous
A galaxy 12.5 billion light-years away gives off the light of 300 trillion suns, because its feeding black hole produces enough heat to set the whole galaxy's dust glowing. Lee Billings reports

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4 min
June 03, 2015 Vaccine Aims at Fly Host of Disease Parasite
An experimental leishmaniasis vaccine relies on eliciting an immune response to a protein from the saliva of the sand fly that carries the leishmania parasite, rather than on anything from the parasite itself. Cynthia Graber reports

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3 min
June 02, 2015 Take a Bite out of the Math of Math
Mathematician Eugenia Cheng, tenured in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. and currently Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago talks about her new book How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics

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22 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.