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:
Researchers hope that by 2021, liquid biopsies will be a part of an annual physical exam.
Oxytocin is released into the blood to help regulate several biological functions. It may also be connected to social abilities.
Zircon may be able to tell us more about the Earth's past.
Fur and feathers are just heavily modified scales.
You're walking through the forest when you come across some wild broccoli on the forest floor, except wait, wild broccoli doesn't exist! Learn more on this Moment of Science.
When you push sandpaper cross a piece of wood, the abrasive grains cut tiny shavings out of the surface. To the naked eye, these shavings look like dust, but magnified, they're just like the shavings produced by other cutting tools.
The belief in vampires is one of the most wide-spread of superstitions; "real-life" instances of vampirism having been documented for hundreds of years. How can all those eye-witnesses to these creatures of the night be wrong?
Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum is an extinct, hypercarnivore marsupial that was only recently discovered.
Iamblichus is known for having written books about the Pythagoreans--a mystical sect of early Greek philosophers who investigated numbers.
Diamonds may replace silicon as the semiconductor in cell phones.
Over one hundred and seventy different species of bird have been observed sun-bathing. They don't do it for tanning purposes. Some do it to dry there feathers, others to warm up their bodies.
Have you heard the story about how one monkey on an island figured out how to wash his food, and then other monkeys starting doing it too. That's the true story of Imo the macaque monkey!
Ask any gradeschooler to imitate an owl and you'll probably get one of two responses: the giant, staring eyes or that amazingly swivel-prone neck. As it turns out, these two characteristic features are related; they are part of an overall system owls have for catching prey.
In fact, there are several reasons, the major one being that telephones completely remove any visual cues from the process of communication. Not only do we read emotional content off the posture of a speaker's body and face, but language comprehension is aided by a subtle form of lip reading.
With all this respiration, the banana eventually processes all the starches available. And that's when it begins to die. Those brown spots are rot and decay.
