A satellite with a climate solutions mission blasted off on a SpaceX rocket Monday. It's on a mission to detect planet-heating methane pollution from the oil and gas sector.
A new study finds swapping half of your typical red meat intake for plant protein, reduces your diet-related carbon footprint by 25% and may also your boost lifespan.
Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its-kind cancer therapy to treat aggresive forms of skin cancer. It has us thinking of the long history of cancer. One of the first recorded mentions of cancer appears in an ancient Egyptian text from around 3000 B.C. And although we now know much more about how cancer begins — as a series of mutations in someone's DNA — it's a disease people are still grappling with how to cure cancers today. This episode, cancer epidemiologist Mariana Stern talks about cancer history and treatment today — plus, why some people are more prone to certain cancers and why that might matter for curing them.
Want to hear about advances in medicine? Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.
The Everglades is home to the largest mangrove ecosystem in the western hemisphere and a sanctuary for over three dozen endangered and threatened species. It also provides fresh water, flood control, and a buffer against hurricanes and rising seas for about 9 million Floridians.
In 2000, the state of Florida and the federal government struck an extraordinary deal to save the Everglades. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was the largest ecosystem restoration project in the world.
Now almost 25 years later, the Everglades is as endangered as ever, and the problems have become even more difficult—and expensive—to solve.
Today on The Sunday Story, Ayesha Rascoe talks with WLRN's Jenny Staletovich. Jenny has a new podcast series out called Bright Lit Placethat tells the dramatic story of the Everglades, what's been done to the ecosystem, and what needs to happen to save it.
Spotty internet and cell services, blackouts and the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza during Israel's war with Hamas have hampered aid and medical services and keeping in touch with loved ones.
It's a question that's been posed again and again. Carl Sagan posed it in the 1970s as a NASA mission scientist as the agency prepared to send its twin Viking landers to Mars.
And nearly 50 years after the first of two landers touched down on Mars, we're no closer to an answer as to whether there's life — out there.
Scientists haven't stopped looking. In fact, they've expanded their gaze to places like Saturn's largest moon, Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa.
The search for life beyond planet earth continues to captivate. And NASA has upcoming missions to both moons. Could we be closer to answering that question Carl Sagan asked some 50 years ago?
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The sci-fi film Dune: Part Two is out in theaters now. The movie takes place on the harsh desert planet, Arrakis, where water is scarce and giant, killer sandworms lurk just beneath the surface. But what do planetary scientists and biologists think about the science of these worms, Arrakis and our other favorite sci-fi planets?
Today on the show, Regina G. Barber talks to biologist (and Star Trek consultant!) Mohamed Noor and planetary scientist Michael Wong about Dune, habitable planets and how to make fantasy seem more realistic.
Want more of the science behind your favorite fictional worlds? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Scientists are optimistic that gene-edited animals could provide a new source of organs for transplantation. Pig organs modified to minimize rejection are now being tested in humans.
The oil and gas giant is suing investor groups that want it to slash climate pollution. Interest groups on both sides of the case say it could lead to more lawsuits against activist investors.
According to the United Nations, about ten percent of the world is undernourished. It's a daunting statistic — unless your name is Hannah Ritchie. She's the data scientist behind the new book Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. It's a seriously big thought experiment: How do we feed everyone on Earth sustainably? And because it's just as much an economically pressing question as it is a scientific one, Darian Woods of The Indicator from Planet Money joins us. With Hannah's help, Darian unpacks how to meet the needs of billions of people without destroying the planet.
Questions or ideas for a future show? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Navy Capt. Victor Glover, who spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station, will be among four astronauts to venture back to the moon for the first time since 1972.
Dinocephalosaurus orientalis's snake-like body was 16 feet long and lived in Triassic China. The newly revealed specimen allows scientists to depict the creature in full for the first time.
An Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos can be considered "extrauterine children" under state law has major implications for how in vitro fertilization, commonly called IVF, is performed. Since the first successful in vitro fertilization pregnancy and live birth in 1978, nearly half a million babies have been born using IVF in the United States. Reproductive endocrinologist Amanda Adeleye explains the science behind IVF, the barriers to accessing it and her concerns about fertility treatment in the post-Roe landscape.
