The Pulse

With the year’s biggest meal upon us, we look at the science of Thanksgiving dinner. On the menu is the gluten in dinner rolls, salt’s roll in cooking a moister turkey, and for dessert…what else, but tryptophan. Pulse Host Maiken Scott delves into the science behind some of your favorite dishes with Carolyn Beeler. 

It’s a week into round two of open enrollment under the Affordable Care Act, and it is off to a smoother start compared to last year. Even so, some who were already enrolled in plans are facing some surprising price jumps for 2015, while others are finding affordable options for the very first time. We sent Elana Gordon out to an enrollment to check in with folks trying to secure healthcare plans.

The Philadelphia judge handling the proposed settlement between the NFL and retired players with brain injuries held a hearing in federal court this week to evaluate its fairness. Pulse Host Maiken Scott is joined in studio by attorney Michael Kaplen, who specializes in traumatic brain injury cases, to discuss the current status of the class-action lawsuit and what’s next for players and the league.

If you suffer a heart attack today, your odds of surviving are far better than they were even a decade ago. What’s responsible for this improvement? Technology? Science? Better care? The answer is all of the above…plus “time.” Todd Bookman explains.

In this week’s installment of our regular segment Patient Files: Your stories of illness, healing and recovery, we hear from theology teacher and ultra-marathoner Miriam Gilbert about a routine medical procedure that went horribly awry.

Science not only helps us understand how to make a tastier Thanksgiving dinner, but it also helps brewers preserve the beverage we so love to consume as we watch the football game after the big dinner. How so? By controlling tiny, flavor-changing microbes. Aaron Moselle reports.

A Philadelphia woman diagnosed with leukemia will likely celebrate many more Thanksgivings thanks to a bone marrow donor. Francesca Lynch has been cancer free for a year thanks to Loresa Wright of New York, who signed up with the National Marrow Donor Program’s Be the Match registry. The women—both African American—met for the first time two weeks ago at the nonprofit group’s annual meeting in Minneapolis. Matt Sepic of Minnesota Public Radio was there.

President Obama’s carbon reduction agreement with China this week was criticized by Republican leaders including Mitch McConnell, who say it puts too much onus on the United States and doesn’t demand enough from China. With Republicans in control of Congress and climate change now playing a major role in both domestic and foreign policy, Carolyn Beeler takes a look at the Republican party’s stance on climate change in the long run up to the 2016 presidential election.

They’re called “cool red giants,” and they are the most distant stars in our galaxy. How far away are they? Well, you need 18 zeroes behind the number of miles they are away from Earth. But John Bochansky, a professor of physics at Rider University near Trenton, New Jersey found them anyway! Together with his team, he discovered two cool red giants, and he joins Maiken to discuss how these discoveries could impact our understanding of the Milky Way.

People diagnosed with a serious illness often say that they don’t remember what their doctor said, how they said it, or many of the actual details of the conversation. The truth of the matter is that doctors struggle with these conversations, too. So, for about two decades, Dr. Bob Arnold of the University of Pittsburgh has been honing in on ways to help doctors become better communicators. Elana Gordon attended one of his training sessions in an attempt to understand where the disconnect happens.

In the post-Astroturf era, artificial turf fields have come a long way. They look like grass, and they feel like the natural stuff, too. You can even wear cleats on the stuff. But some are starting to wonder if the downside of fake grass isn’t greater than its benefits. Injuries, staph infections, and heat exhaustion have landed these fields in the news in recent years, and now some local officials are wondering if there could be a cancer connection to playing sports on these bright-green expanses. Laura Benshoff goes in search of some answers.

Villanova University recently opened a new interactive classroom called the Cave comprised of wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling video screens. Picture field trips to the bottom of the ocean or a tour of the human brain. We sent Todd Bookman to explore this new immersive learning experience.

New research takes a radically different approach to cancer, describing it as a sort of “safe mode” for our cells when being attacked by an outside threat. That’s the theory of physicist Paul Davies who was recruited by the National Institutes of Health to study a subject that physicists seldom attempt to tackle, and what he found is both fascinating and controversial. He joins Maiken to discuss his unique ideas about battling the Big C.

Also on this week’s show, landing spacecraft on distant comets, the genetic differences between domesticated house cats and their wild ancestors, and the story of Leslie Handler’s battle with tongue cancer.

Easy access to prescription pain pills has led millions of adults to addiction over the past two decades. Opioid addiction has hit the Northeast particularly hard in recent years, which has many wondering what’s around for treatment. Suboxone has emerged as a favorite drug in the war against addiction, but in rural areas in the Northeast, it can be hard to find a doctor to prescribe it. Reporter Carolyn Beeler has the story of a man struggling to find treatment, and an entrepreneurial medical school student trying to make access easier.

Healthcare providers are moving quickly to get staff up to speed and trained on dealing with ebola. With fears about spreading the virus moving even faster, Camden County in New Jersey recently gathered first responders for a training session. The Pulse’s Taunya English joined the EMS workers, firefighters and police for a lesson in life-saving.

Just six short seconds after lift-off on Tuesday, the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded in dramatic fashion. Nobody was injured, but the incident could be perceived as fodder for anyone skeptical of the commercialization of space travel. Former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao is not one of them. He thinks for-profit space travel is the way of the future.

Last year, prescription drug sales in the U.S. totaled well over $300 billion. Medications are pricey—especially newer drugs, which often come with huge price tags—but these days consumers can cut down drug prices with the help of coupons. Yep, just like the ones you use in the supermarket. But who is really picking up the tab? Pulse host Maiken Scott does some digging.

Starbucks serves a coffee beverage sure to elicit equal parts cheers and derision. The Pumpkin Spice Latte is a seasonal favorite—with more than 200 million sold since the drink’s launch in 2003—but, as reporter Todd Bookman found out, there’s some controversy brewing over the safety of its ingredients.

Trick or treat…It’s candy time! On Halloween parents everywhere will pull the most passive-aggressive move in child-rearing—first, allowing their children to collect a gigantic bag of candy, and then immediately restricting access to the loot. But if asked why candy is so bad, what would parents say? Reporter Gray Tennis investigates.

Also on this week’s show: in honor of Halloween we watch flesh-eating beetles make a contribution to science, we take our turn at creating some extra creepy tunes on the ancient and inimitable theremin, and we hear a ghost story a century in the making.

Observation is an important life skill—especially when it’s your job to save lives. It’s the first and most basic tool doctors use to reach a diagnosis and choose a treatment for their patients. Reporter Aaron Moselle reports that one Philadelphia hospital is using art to help physicians keep this simple skill sharp.

Communicating with toddlers is an art form all to itself. Deciphering their cute little noises as they relate to a conversation takes focus and fun, and those “chats” can be as rewarding as they are exhausting. Researchers and educators have long thought the number of words a young child hears is instrumental in language development and setting that child up for success. But Elana Gordon reports that new research indicates that quality of interactions may just trump quantity.

Dealing with serious mental illness can be terrifying. Alaina Mabaso is an editor and freelance writer who’s been struggling with depression and chronic pain for years. When she was hospitalized last summer, she decided to write about her experiences on the psychiatric unit at Johns Hopkins. We paired her with psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg, author of “The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic,” for an honest conversation on a tough topic.

The HBO documentary “Private Violence” debuted this week, expanding the conversation on domestic violence beyond just the NFL’s latest scandal. Reporter Taunya English has been tracking efforts by area police departments to better understand when a situation is about to escalate from bad to far worse… and she also spoke with the survivor and advocate featured in Private Violence, let’s hear her report.

In the Southbridge neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware, residents find themselves face to face with the realities of climate change. Facing rising sea levels and increasingly powerful coastal storms, the community is planning for the flooding they’ve experienced for generations to go from bad to worse. Reporter Carolyn Beeler has this story.

Ebola continues to be front and center in the news, with Nigeria and Senegal declaring their themselves ebola free, while the virus continues to ravage Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, with more than 4,000 deaths reported so far. The whole crisis has spurred a lot of music about the virus, and reporter Elana Gordon reports on how one group feels their musical homage to this scurge is different from the rest.

Also on the show: a conversation about stemming the “bro” culture of the tech world, a local sustainability entrepreneur pitches investors on her big idea, and a specialized nasal cell helps a paralyzed man walk again.

Dear Science,

This week, our Pulse team sat down to craft a special show that’s like a love letter to you.

Of course you must know that we love you, because we talk about you so much, and we dedicate so much time of our show every week to preach your gospel. (Oh, do you hate that metaphor? Sorry.)

But we really wanted you to know that we appreciate the many ways, big and small, that you make our lives richer and better. You combat disease and stave off death, allow us to grasp the vastness of the universe and tiniest of organisms. Your achievements illuminate our houses, computer screens, and our minds.

There isn’t a letter long enough that could even begin to describe all the reasons we love you, so we tried to curate a few, humble examples in an effort to express our affection.

On this week’s show we gently untangled the processes of hearing and understanding what we hear, we ate jelly beans to get a better idea of how researchers are returning the sense of smell to those who’ve lost thiers, we got some life tips from the behaviors of the Caribbean flamingo at the Philadelphia Zoo, and we found out what it’s like to explore the wilds of Patagonia and discover a new dinosaur—one that’s seven times the size of tyranasaurus rex.

We also went behind the scenes of a Broadway production to see how singers who belt out songs at full volume night after night keep their vocal chords healthy, and while we were in and around the larnyx, we also investigated the strange and annoying phenomenon of vocal fry.

We talked to a “human blockhead” about safely shoving nails into his face for the love of the circus, we addressed the fear-mongering surrounding the ebola outbreak on U.S. soil, we cranked up a half-century-old LED light that inspired a Nobel Prize, and to put the icing on the cake, we ask an evolutionary geneticist when humans will finally grow wings. And he had an answer.

So, dear science, thank you for all you do, and please, stay fabulous.

With warm affection and much admiration,

xoxo 

Team Pulse 

When you have a serious illness, and you’re confronted with several treatment options, who should choose the best path? You? Your doctor? There’s a culture shift in medicine and lots of support these days for something called “shared decision making.” The idea: that doctors and patients decide together on the best treatment. Reporter Taunya English found out that individual patients have varying appetites for wading into the muck and detail of medical probabilities and treatment risks.

This week was the groundbreaking on what will be the world’s largest and most powerful telescope when it opens sometime in the next decade. The TMT—or “Thirty-Meter Telescope—will sit atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s highest peak, where access to heavenly bodies is almost direct. The telescope will feature a 30-meter mirror assembled from 492 meter-square hexagonal pieces that will help astronomers peer far into the outer reaches of our universe. But many native Hawaiians are taking issue with its placement on one of their truly sacred places. We sat down with astronomer Derek Pitts to learn more.

The constant stream of news about the ebola outbreak can be overwhelming and somewhat terrifying. And, unbeknownst to many, Philadelphia is home to thousands of Liberians and other west African immigrants, which means all that tragic news is really hitting home for people in our region. Elana Gordon brings us the story of one individual who’s been on the front lines here and abroad in dealing with the emotional impact of this outbreak.

Disease epidemics and misinformation sometimes go hand in hand. Our intrepid producers happened upon a pop-up history lesson of sorts in Philadelphia’s Old City recently to learn about the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, when ten percent of the city’s population died of a mysterious illness. We now know that mosquitos were the cause, but back then citizens fingered a batch of discarded, rotting coffee on Ball’s Wharf as the culprit.

If you catch a little television this evening, or drive past a highway billboard or even listen to WHYY for a while, you’ll eventually get hit with an advertisement for some type of healthcare. The Rothman Institute and Virtua, two providers in our region, recently got into a fight over one such ad related to joint replacements. Their dispute brings to light bigger issues about medical advertisements, the claims they make, and how they impact patient decisions. Reporter Todd Bookman dug deeper.

Field trip! We visit a quiet oasis just North of I-95 and the Philadelphia airport called the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. Acres of open water fed by Darby Creek and the Delaware River are surrounded by marshes of cat tails and wild rice. It’s a tranquil setting, but it’s part of an ecosystem that’s long faced threats: first, from human development, and now, brought on by sea level rise. Carolyn Beeler looked into the history of the Tinicum marsh and efforts to understand just how long it can survive.

This week, we also take you to a singing competition, but there was no snappy british judge at this one—it’s called Philadelphia’s Recovery Idol, and features people in drug and alcohol recovery who are committed to staying sober. Every year the competition culminates in a concert in front of thousands of people at Penn’s Landing, and we take you there to hear the dulcimer tones.

Chances are, in all your visits to the doctor, you’ve been helped, at least once, by a physician assistant, or PA. As new patients stream into mainstream healthcare on the back of the implementation of Obamacare, this relatively new profession is taking off. New training programs are popping up left and right, and nationally, the number of PAs has more than doubled in the last decade to over 100,000. Elana Gordon reports on the role of the physician assistant and how it has been changing and expanding.

Have you ever wondered if osteopaths are real doctors? If you have, says Ken Veit, dean of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, you aren’t alone. DOs are fully licensed physicians, just like MDs. They have all the attributes of an normal doctor, but their emphasis is on the musculoskeletal system. But the point is, they, too, are in demand. Pulse host Maiken Scott talks with Veit about his work in a field growing increasingly more competitive.

Random question: how many emails are in your inbox? 50? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Add to that all of your Instagram and flickr photos, Facebook posts, tweets, documents and now you’re talking about a lot of data. So, a follow-up question: where do you think all of that stuff lives? It’s called “The Cloud,” but it’s a much less fluffy, quiet, peaceful place than the name would indicate. The reality is, the Cloud is a massive network of loud, hot data centers scattered across the country, and it takes more than two percent of the nations power to keep them going. Reporter Zack Seward visited with some researchers who are experimenting with one way to make the whole thing more energy efficient by putting waste back to work.

Opera in Philadelphia is currently getting an infusion of innovation and technology with the help of engineer Youngmoo Kim. He’s on a yearlong sabbatical from Drexel University, where he runs the Excite Center, to help Opera Philadelphia enliven an ancient musical art form by bringing more technology and audience participation into opera productions. He joins host Maiken Scott to talk about his mission, its challenges, and the future of an art form he loves.

This month, in Philadelphia, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University opens “Chocolate: The Exhibition,” which documents the huge economic and cultural reach of the chocolate industry and also explores how chocolate comes to be. One aspect of that is an important interaction between the cocoa plant and insects, which scientists are still working to fully understand. We sent senior reporter Taunya English to the museum to find out more.

Every day, about eight million people travel by plane. Up in the stratosphere, hurtling along in a metal tube, those people will do some pretty strange things. Like spend 10 bucks on a beer, watch back-to-back episodes of the latest ABC sitcom, or buy something—anything—from SkyMall. With the help of reporter Steven Jackson, we look at one of aviation’s most enigmatic behaviors: drinking tomato juice. The thick savory drink isn’t so popular at sea level, but for many airplane passengers, it’s their first choice. What is that all about? There’s actually a scientific explanation.

In this week’s installment of Patient Files—your stories of illness, healing and recovery—we meet 13-year-old Alyse Nichols and her grandmother Debra Dantzler of West Philadelphia. Danztler has diabetes, but her illness has brought her closer to her granddaughter. Producer Jeanette Woods captured a slice of their special relationship.

Recently, several of our WHYY colleagues joined 9,000 or so others and rode their bikes 100 miles—from Cherry Hill to Ocean City, New Jersey—as part of a fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The organization has been doing these long distance bike rides for more than 30 years to raise money for a cause. NewsWorks Tonight Producer Shai Ben-Yaacov was among the thousands of cyclists to make the journey, and he sent us an audio postcard.

Usually, when we talk about climate change, we’re talking about things that might or might not happen 50 or 100 years from now. But this week, Carolyn Beeler brings us the story of climate change landing right on the doorstep of a Delaware farmer in the form of salt leeching through his soil. A modern-day conundrum that could prove devastating to his livelihood.

Stress is bad for us—study after study has shown the terrible impact it has on our physical and mental health. But a new business named Halcyon Floats in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia wants to offer an escape. Clients can float, meditate and relax in “escape pod” tanks—each filled with 10 inches of water and 850 pounds of Epson salt, which renders a soaker completely buoyant. There’s no light, there¹s no sound, and the water is kept to skin temperature, so clients don’t receive any sensory input. Host Maiken Scott spent 90 minutes on the inside and tells us about her experience.

Some musicians describe the bass as the scaffolding of modern music—a superstructure that supports the melody. These deep lower notes are the foundation of music, yet, it’s almost impossible to name a tune by hearing it’s bass line alone. What’s going on there? If we can’t recognize it right away and whistle along, why is it even in there? Does our ear hear it differently? Reporter Todd Bookman takes us deep inside the inner ear.

No matter what the “it” song was when you were a kid, chances are—even if you haven’t heard it in a long, long time—you still know all of the words…right? Music and memory are deeply linked in the brain, and music therapists find that, for the elderly, music from earlier times not only helps people socialize and relax, but it can also help those with dementia “orient” their minds to the present by connecting with who they were in the past. Producer Laura Benshoff took a field trip to one of these classes to find out more.

This week was a big one for the Red Planet. Nearly simultaneously, American and Indian missions arrived in Mars’ orbit to conduct various scientific experiments. NASA mission planner Joe Guinn sat down to tell us about the U.S. mission, which will focus on the planet’s uppermost atmosphere, where it will look for water droplets and clues as to the planet’s mysterious past.

Science seems like something that happens in the sterilized laboratories of universities and chemical companies, but it doesn’t have to be that distant from our everyday lives. Pulse contributor Dr. Bethany Brookshire is currently blogging about something she’s calling “cookie science.” She’s embarked on a series of scientific experiments in her own kitchen, and she joins us to share the results of her tasty experiments.

Maps have more uses than simply getting you from Point A to Point B.  For some researchers, they are an effective tool to find answers and solutions to big questions. This week, we take a look at groups using mapping technology to improve their communities—like helping city officials decide where to open a new health clinic, or suggesting that the local food-stamp office should be located under the same roof as the neighborhood day care center. Reporter Taunya English met up with a mapmaker who tracks the city’s flooding problems to see how maps can help.

Fifteen seconds. That’s all it took to raze a 16-story public housing high-rise in Philadelphia last weekend. Only an implosion—an uncommon but highly precise form of demolition—could take down a building so fast and provide such a visually stunning demise. But, how does it work? We sent reporter Aaron Moselle to ground zero to find out.

Scientists often toil for years and years under the flourescent lights of their dusty labs without the world ever taking much notice. But for some, one phone call can change all that, dragging them, and their work, into the spotlight. University of Pennsylvania innovation professor Danielle Bassett got that call this week. She has been selected as one of 21 MacArthur fellows—an award referred to as the Genius Grant. Along with being called a “genius” by every media agency in the free world, she also gets $625,000 to pursue her work…no strings attached. We had her in our studios to discuss her work.

Overdoses from opioids and heroin have surged around this region and the country. As a result, first responders and some community members now carry the drug Narcan, which, if given soon enough, can reverse an overdose on the spot. In our regular segment Patient Files, we’re going to hear the story of John Dooling who received this treatment. It both saved and changed his life forever.

Our next story takes us to Pennsylvania’s Susquehenna River watershed, a key location in the state’s $3 billion fishing industry. But for the last 10 years, a mystery has been unfolding here. Young smallmouth bass have been found with open sores and lesions, and many of the male fish that make it to adulthood have female sexual characteristics. With the population of smallmouth bass dropping, we sent reporter Katie Colaneri to find out what’s going on.

Starting this fall, we will all be invited to spit into palm-size clear plastic viles, and then to send our saliva to New York City. No joke. It’s part of a genetic screening project to find what organizers are calling “unexpected heroes”—people whose genes say they should be sick but aren’t. The Resilience Project, as it’s been named, is an attempt to develop new treatments for rare diseases, and, as reporter Carolyn Beeler found out, this massive undertaking is possible now because of advances in genetic sequencing and supercomputing.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how to keep people out of the hospital and curb the use of costly care that may be better delivered elsewhere or avoided altogether. A study out this month took a closer look at returning patients to the emergency room and why they are returning so soon after an initial visit. As Elana Gordon reports, the reasons may not be what you think.

How do you feel about mice? If you’ve had the little rodents wreak havoc in your cupboards and brazenly dash across your kitchen countertops, you might not be a fan. But Dr. Elizabeth Becker’s research into mouse behavior might change your opinion. In our latest installment of “So What Do You Do?” Anthony Stipa talks to Dr. Becker about her research, which offers insights into the nature-nurture debate so often at the forefront of human child-rearing practices.

Scientists hold the keys to our future, though few of them succeed at holding our attention long when they’re discussing their work. With a monotone voice and incomprehensible jargon, they manage to bore us on topics ranging from climate to space to medicine. Sure, Neil deGrasse Tyson can captivate an audience, but how come we don’t teach more of our scientists to communicate their ideas better? – doesn’t anybody teach scientists how to present their work? Or is it not really their job to be good communicators? Reporter Susan Phillips looks into the art of talking science.

We all associate Nobel Prize-winning American author Ernest Hemingway with hard drinking, straight talking, and masterworks of the English language like “The Old Man And The Sea.” But did you know he also dabbled in some marine science? Turns out “Papa” was an avid sport fisherman, and for six weeks in 1934, he hosted two Philadelphians on a scientific expedition on his boat in the Florida Straits. Reporter Carolyn Beeler has a look at the unexpected connection between the author and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

A new national report from the Audubon Society paints a very grim picture for the country’s bird populations: Global warming and climate change threaten the survival of hundreds of bird species in the continental United States and Canada. Many birds in our region are threatened as well, including the ruffed grouse and the bald eagle—the state bird of Pennsylvania and the national bird of the United States, respectively. Why are bird populations particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change, and what can we do to reverse the trend of shrinking populations? We ask Pennsylvania Audubon’s Keith Russell to walk us through the group’s findings.

Typically, at a doctor’s appointment, there are two people in the room—the doctor and the patient—they are discussing symptoms and potential solutions. But some doctors say they are convinced that the booming voice of government is crowding out that intimate conversation The Pulse’s Taunya English spoke with some physicians about their concerns over what they call “legislative intrusion.” 

Atlantic City’s glitzy star seems to be fading. The three big casinos have closed, including Trump’s Taj Majal, and that’s having a big time ripple effect, forcing the layoffs of around 8,000 casino workers. Cooks, card dealers, servers, and cleaners were all casualties of this massive bomb to the local economy. Fortunately, the ACA means the now-unemployed workers have a safety next, but, as reporter Elana Gordon found out, they’re encountering a mix of promise and confusion.

The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia has attracted the curious and the squeamish for its vast display of pathological body parts, many suspended in jars. WHYY’s Peter Crimmins tells us how this nineteenth century medical science museum is also a magnet for artists looking for inspiration.

According to the American Nurses Association, between ten and fifteen percent of nurses in the United States have a substance abuse problem. For the general population, that number is around 8 percent. With access to drugs and big responsibilities on the job, when nurses struggle with addictions, the challenges that arise are unique. Laura Benshoff reports.

And this week in our series Patient Files, we hear from Susan Chase, a ballerina who learned she had breast cancer in her mid-40s. The diagnosis shattered her world, and some years later, she turned her experience into a one-woman performance called “Susan’s Undoing.” It’s part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival this year. Susan joined us to tell her story.

A quick reminder that you don’t have to be sitting in your car to listen to the pulse…or NPR for that matter. Sure, you can find us on iTunes, and yes, we stream our show on our website, but now there’s a great new way to get your WHYY fix without being stuck in traffic—the new NPR One app for your tablet or smartphone. Convert your phone or your iPad into a mini public radio station and take our show and hundreds of others with you anywhere. And let us know if you like it. Send us an email: [email protected].