Tagged: science

A government lab announced earlier this month that it’s been operating a quantum internet at Los Alamos for the past two years. Which led us to wonder, um, WHAT IS A QUANTUM INTERNET???  Joining us to explain it is Rob Fleischman, Chief Technology Officer at Xero-Cole, and the guy we call to help us understand things like, you know, quantum technology.

Impaired sight often requires glasses – impaired hearing, a hearing aid.  But what about people who suffer from an impaired sense of smell or taste?  Depending on the source, somewhere between two and five million people suffer in varying degrees from anosmia, the loss of the sense of smell.  Here to tell us more is rhinologist Dr. Carl Philpott – Director of the Smell and Taste Clinic at James Paget University in Norfolk,  the only clinic devoted to smell and taste disorders in the United Kingdom. 

We read about his work in New Scientist, and invited him on the program to tell us more.

Nearly 10 million cases of food poisoning occur in the United States every year. Moreover, one in five outbreaks of food-borne illnesses are caused by food that people eat in their homes. A new report looked at the parts of the kitchen most and least likely to harbor bacteria and the results might not be what you’d expect. Here to discuss the matter is Lisa Yakas, Microbiologist and Manager of NSF International's  Home Product Certification Program and co-author of the report.

Over seventy years ago, mankind completed an ambitious map unlike any other - the periodic table of the elements – which contained and organized all the known elements at the time. Like other maps, the period table has changed as the geography of its contents - especially since 1941, when researchers at the University of California, Berkeley produced the first man-made element… plutonium.  Many more elements have been added to the list, and efforts to create and research new ones continues –here to discuss this difficult scientific quest is Rob Dunn, biologist and writer in the Department of Biology at North Carolina State University. He recently wrote about element hunting for National Geographic.

A new study by German researchers sheds light on men’s inability to read the expressions of women.  It seems that males are better wired to interpret the non-verbal signals of other men.  Here to add neurological and historical context to our understanding of male/female communication is Tom Jacobs, staff writer for Pacific Standard, who wrote about the study.

Drive south of the Massachusetts border this summer and you’re bound to hear the deafening buzz of the 17-year cicada.  From the Carolinas to Connecticut, residents can expect a full-on plague of these large, loud, winged creatures to emerge after nearly two decades of underground hibernation.  We wanted to better understand these bizarre bugs – called “brood-two” cicadas - so we called biologist Joe Hanson, host and writer of PBS digital studios’ It’s Okay To Be Smart.

And if you're interested in a cheap snack this summer, David George Gordon is author of The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook.  We called him to ask, what does a Cicada taste like?