A Moment of Science: Audio show

A Moment of Science: Audio

Summary: You have questions and A Moment of Science has answers. These two-minute audio podcasts provide the scientific story behind some of life's most perplexing mysteries. There's no need to be blinded by science. Explore it, have fun with it, but most of all learn from it. A Moment of Science is a production of WFIU Public Media from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

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  • Artist: A Moment of Science (amomentofscience.org)
  • Copyright: Copyright 1998-2009

Podcasts:

 Every time you eat a fig, remember a fig wasp lost its wings | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Figs have their thousands of individual flowers folded up inside them, so they can't rely on bees or wind to pollinate them with a male fig's pollen. That's where the fig wasp comes in.

 Study links air pollution and a decline in cognitive function | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Has your brain been feeling foggy lately? Or maybe, smoggy? If you live somewhere affected by air pollution, there might be a connection.

 The jellyfish that never grows old | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Scientists once thought that aging and death were the inevitable fate of all complex living things. But then, by accident, they discovered they were wrong.

 The great cilantro debate | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

On today's Moment of Science, we'll be sniffing our way through a controversial culinary conundrum: the great cilantro debate.

 Elephant grandmothers means more elephant calves | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Grandmother elephants are important for the survival of baby calves.

 Looks delicious! The connection between appearance and taste | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

English is full of phrases that connect appearance to taste. However, scientists have been discovering that the connection between the two runs deeper than simple metaphors.

 Escaping alive from a frog's stomach | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Sometimes, when a frog eats a large insect, you can see it squirming in the frog’s belly, desperate to escape. Lack of air, acids, and digestive enzymes seal its inevitable doom.

 Copy your neighbors, but only when they're successful | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Scientists looked at the nestbox choices of pied flycatchers after the birds observed the "success" of nesting great tits.

 Why are operating rooms so cold? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Is there a reason operating rooms are always so cold and drafty?

 Starfish are all heads, no tails | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Colorful or plain, skinny or chubby, big or small, the nearly 2,000 species have it all.

 Skeptics think about vaccines differently | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Vaccine skeptics might see vaccines the way they do because they tend to overestimate the likelihood of rare negative events.

 Walked or swam? An index can answer | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

How do scientists figure out even basic facts such as whether an animal walked on land or swam in the sea?

 Play and the brain | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Researchers classify an animal behavior as play when it doesn’t involve an external reward, such as food, seems to serve no purpose, occurs repeatedly, and happens when the animal is relaxed and not facing threats.

 What we can learn from ancient climate records | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Scientists find clues to how the earth's climate is changing by looking to the past.

 Tetrataenite as a solution to the rare earth crisis | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 02:00

Demand for rare earth elements is soaring, and it will continue to grow in the future.

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