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Nature Podcast
Colossal 'jets' shooting from a black hole defy physicists' theories
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Astronomers have spotted a pair of enormous jets emanating from a supermassive black hole with a combined length of 23 million light years — the biggest ever discovered. Jets are formed when matter is ionized and flung out of a black hole, creating enormous and powerful structures in space. Thought to be unstable, physicists had theorized there was a limit to how large these jets could be, but the new discovery far exceeds this, suggesting there may be more of these monstrous jets yet to be discovered.
Research Article: Oei et al.
The knitted fabrics designed to protect wearers from mosquito bites, and the role that islands play in fostering language diversity.
Research Highlight: Plagued by mosquitoes? Try some bite-blocking fabrics
Research Highlight: Islands are rich with languages spoken nowhere else
Making metal alloys is typically a multi-step process that creates huge amounts of emissions. Now, a team demonstrates a way to create these materials in a single step, which they hope could significantly reduce the environmental burdens associated with their production. In a lab demonstration, they use their technique to create an alloy of nickel and iron called invar — a widely-used material that has a high carbon-footprint. The team show evidence that their method can produce invar to a quality that rivals that of conventional manufacturing, and suggest their technique is scalable to create alloys at an industrial scale.
Research article: Wei et al.
How AI-predicted protein structures have helped chart the evolution of a group of viruses, and the neurons that cause monkeys to ‘choke’ under pressure.
Nature News: Where did viruses come from? AlphaFold and other AIs are finding answers
Nature News: Why do we crumble under pressure? Science has the answer
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Strange gamma-ray flickers seen in thunderstorms for the first time
30:55|00:46 Physicists spot new types of high-energy radiation in thunderstormsPhysicists have identified new forms of γ-ray radiation created inside thunderclouds, and shown that levels of γ-ray production are much higher on Earth than previously thought.Scientists already knew about two types of γ-ray phenomena in thunderclouds — glows that last as long as a minute and high-intensity flashes that come and go in only a few millionths of a second. Now, researchers have identified that these both occur more frequently than expected, and that previously undetected γ-ray types exist, including flickering flashes that share characteristics of the other two types of radiation.The researchers hope that understanding more about these mysterious phenomena could help explain what initiates lightning, which often follows these γ-ray events.Research Article: Østgaard et al. Research Article: Marisaldi et al. Nature: Mysterious form of high-energy radiation spotted in thunderstorms10:00 Research HighlightsAncient arrowheads reveal that Europe's oldest battle likely featured warriors from far afield, and why the dwarf planet Ceres’s frozen ocean has deep impurities.Research Highlight: Bronze Age clash was Europe’s oldest known interregional battle Research Highlight: A dwarf planet has dirty depths, model suggests12:09 A complete wiring diagram of the fruit fly brainResearchers have published the most complete wiring diagram, or ‘connectome’ of the fruit fly’s brain, which includes nearly 140,000 neurons and 54.5 million connections between nerve cells.The map, made from the brain of a single female fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), reveals over 8,400 neuron types in the brain, and has enabled scientists to learn more about the brain and how it controls aspects of fruit fly behaviour.The FlyWire connectome: neuronal wiring diagram of a complete fly brainNature: Largest brain map ever reveals fruit fly's neurons in exquisite detail22:16 Briefing ChatHow researchers created an elusive single-electron bond between carbon atoms, and why bigger chatbots get over-confident when answering questions.Nature: Carbon bond that uses only one electron seen for first time: ‘It will be in the textbooks’Nature: Bigger AI chatbots more inclined to spew nonsense — and people don't always realizeSubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.Audio long read: A day in the life of the world’s fastest supercomputer
20:19|The world's fastest supercomputer, known as Frontier, is located at the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This machine churns through data at record speed, outpacing 100,000 laptops working simultaneously.With nearly 50,000 processors, Frontier was designed to push the bounds of human knowledge. It's being used to create open-source large language models to compete with commercial AI systems, simulate proteins for drug development, help improve aeroplane engine design, and more.This is an audio version of our Feature: A day in the life of the world’s fastest supercomputerChildren with Down's syndrome are more likely to get leukaemia: stem-cells hint at why
21:58|In this episode:00:46 Unravelling why children with Down’s syndrome are at a higher risk of leukaemiaChildren with Down’s syndrome have a 150-fold increased risk of developing leukaemia than those without the condition. Now, an in-depth investigation has revealed that changes to genome structures in fetal liver stem-cells appear to be playing a key role in this increase.Down’s syndrome is characterised by cells having an extra copy of chromosome 21. The team behind this work saw that in liver stem-cells — one of the main places blood is produced in a growing fetus — this extra copy results in changes in how DNA is packaged in a nucleus, opening up areas that are prone to mutation, including those known to be important in leukaemia development.The researchers hope their work will be an important step in understanding and reducing this risk in children with Down’s syndrome.Research Article: Marderstein et al. News and Views: Childhood leukaemia in Down’s syndrome primed by blood-cell bias11:47 Research HighlightsHow taking pints of beer off the table lowers alcohol consumption, and a small lizard’s ‘scuba gear’ helps it stay submerged.Research Highlight: A small fix to cut beer intake: downsize the pintResearch Highlight: This ‘scuba diving’ lizard has a self-made air supply14:12 Briefing ChatHow tiny crustaceans use ‘smell’ to find their home cave, and how atomic bomb X-rays could deflect an asteroid away from a deadly Earth impact.Science: In the dark ocean, these tiny creatures can smell their way homeNature: Scientists successfully ‘nuke asteroid’ — in a lab mock-upSubscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.Ancient DNA debunks Rapa Nui ‘ecological suicide’ theory
41:41|In this episode:00:45 What ancient DNA has revealed about Rapa Nui’s pastAncient DNA analysis has further demonstrated that the people of Rapa Nui did not cause their own population collapse, further refuting a controversial but popular claim. Rapa Nui, also known as Easter island, is famous for its giant Moai statues and the contested idea that the people mismanaged their natural resources leading to ‘ecological suicide’. Genomes sequenced from the remains of 15 ancient islanders showed no evidence of a sudden population crash, substantiating other research challenging the collapse idea.Research Article: Moreno-Mayar et al.News and Views: Rapa Nui’s population history rewritten using ancient DNANews article: Famed Pacific island’s population 'crash' debunked by ancient DNA17:03 Research HighlightsThe extinct bat-eating fish that bit off more than they could chew, and how manatee dung shapes an Amazonian ecosystem.Research Highlight: Ancient fish dined on bats — or died tryingResearch Highlight: The Amazon’s gargantuan gardeners: manatees19:29 A macabre parasite of adult fruit fliesDespite being a hugely-studied model organism, it seems that there’s still more to find out about the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, as researchers have discovered a new species of parasitoid wasp that infects the species. Unlike other parasitic wasps, this one lays its eggs in adult flies, with the developing larva devouring its host from the inside. The miniscule wasp was discovered by chance in an infected fruit fly collected in a Mississippi backyard and analysis suggests that despite having never been previously identified, it is widespread across parts of North America.Research article: Moore et al.32:04 Briefing ChatHow a dye that helps to give Doritos their orange hue can turn mouse tissues transparent, and an effective way to engage with climate-science sceptics.Nature News: Transparent mice made with light-absorbing dye reveal organs at workNature News: How to change people’s minds about climate change: what the science saysThe baseless stat that could be harming Indigenous conservation efforts
14:29|The often repeated claim that "80% of the world's biodiversity is found in the territories of Indigenous Peoples" appears widely in policy documents and reports, yet appears to have sprung out of nowhere. According to a group of researchers, including those from Indigenous groups, this baseless statistic could be undermining the conservation efforts of the Indigenous People it's meant to support and prevent further work to really understand how best to conserve biodiversity.Two of the authors joined us to discuss how this statistic gained traction, the harm it could cause, and how better to support the work of Indigenous Peoples.Read more in a Comment article from the authors: No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territoriesLong-sought 'nuclear clocks' are one tick closer
31:24|In this episode:00:45 Why a 'nuclear clock' is now within researchers’ reachResearchers have made a big step towards the creation of the long theorized nuclear clock, by getting the most accurate measurement of the frequency of light required to push thorium nuclei into a higher energy state. Such a timekeeper would differ from the best current clocks as their ‘tick’ corresponds to the energy transitions of protons and neutrons, rather than electrons. Nuclear clocks have the potential to be more robust and accurate than current systems, and could offer researchers new insights into fundamental forces present within atomic nuclei.Research Article: Zhang et al.News and Views: Countdown to a nuclear clockNature News: ‘Nuclear clock’ breakthrough paves the way for super-precise timekeepingEditorial: Progress on nuclear clocks shows the benefits of escaping from scientific silos10:10 Research HighlightsThe star that got partially shredded by a supermassive black hole, not just once, but twice, and how heatwaves could mangle bumblebees’ sense of smell.Research Highlight: This unlucky star got mangled by a black hole — twiceResearch Highlight: Bumblebees’ sense of smell can’t take the heat12:11 How engineered immune cells could help limit damage after spinal injuryBy harnessing T cells to fine-tune the inflammation response, researchers have limited the damage caused by spinal injury in mice, an approach they hope might one day translate into a human therapy. Following injury to the central nervous system, immune cells rush to the scene, resulting in a complex array of effects, both good and bad. In this work researchers have identified the specific kind of T cells that amass at the site, and used them to create an immunotherapy that helps the mice recover more quickly from injuries by slowing damage to neurons.Research article: Gao et al.20:36 Briefing ChatHow unprecedented floods in Brazil have helped and hindered paleontologists, and the ‘AI scientist’ that does everything from literature review through to manuscript writing, to an extent.Nature News: The race to save fossils exposed by Brazil’s record-setting floodsNature News: Researchers built an ‘AI Scientist’ — what can it do?Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.Audio long read: So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it?
17:44|The 'file-drawer problem', where findings with null or negative results gather dust and are left unpublished, is well known in science. There has been an overriding perception that studies with positive or significant findings are more important, but this bias can have real-world implications, skewing perceptions of drug efficacies, for example.Multiple efforts to get negative results published have been put forward or attempted, with some researchers saying that the incentive structures in academia, and the ‘publish or perish’ culture, need to be overturned in order to end this bias.This is an audio version of our Feature: So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it?Covert racism in AI chatbots, precise Stone Age engineering, and the science of paper cuts
20:40|In this episode:00:31 Chatbots makes racist judgements on the basis of dialectResearch has shown that large language models, including those that power chatbots such as ChatGPT, make racist judgements on the basis of users’ dialect. If asked to describe a person, many AI systems responded with racist stereotypes when presented with text written in African American English — a dialect spoken by millions of people in the United States that is associated with the descendants of enslaved African Americans — compared with text written in Standardized American English. The findings show that such models harbour covert racism, even when they do not display overt racism, and that conventional fixes to try and address biases in these models had no effect on this issue.Research Article: Hoffman et al.News and Views: LLMs produce racist output when prompted in African American EnglishNature News: Chatbot AI makes racist judgements on the basis of dialect07:01 How ancient engineers built a megalithic structureThe 6,000-year-old Dolmen of Menga is a marvel of ancient engineering. New research reveals new insights into the structure and the technical abilities of the Neolithic builders who constructed it. The work shows that a setup of counterweights and ramps may have been used to correctly position the massive sandstone blocks that make up walls of the structure, which were each tilted at precise, millimetre-scale angles. The researchers suggest that this construction shows that the Neolithic people who built the dolmen had a working understanding of physics, geometry, geology and architectural principles.Nature News: Stone Age builders had engineering savvy, finds study of 6000-year-old monument12:28 Spider makes fireflies flash as baitOrb-weaving spiders (Araneus ventricosus) use ensnared male Absocondita terminalis fireflies to trick more insects into their web. A bite from the spider causes the flashing pattern of the trapped firefly to shift to one resembling a female looking to mate, leading others into an ambush. Exactly how this system works is unclear, but researchers say it is a rare example of a predator altering the behaviour of its prey to catch others.Science: Spiders force male fireflies to flash like females—luring more males to their death16:35 The physics of paper cutsBy combining experiments and theoretical work, a team has unraveled the mystery of why only certain types of paper can cut into human skin. Their work shows that paper that is too thin will buckle without cutting, while paper that’s too thick will distribute force over a relatively large area without inflicting damage. The research suggests that the sweet spot for slicing is paper with around 65 micrometres in thickness, which includes the kind used to print certain high-profile journals…Research Highlight: What Science and Nature are good for: causing paper cuts