Some animals have a very different relationship to aging than we do: They don’t get cancer, they never go through menopause, and they live absurdly long lives. For instance, one bat species can live for more than 40 years, which may not sound like very long but that’s about nine times longer than expected based on its size. For comparison, if we aged on that scale, we’d live for hundreds of years. These bats aren’t the only animal super-agers—there’s a whole menagerie of them.So what’s their secret? And can we learn anything from them that might help us live longer, healthier lives? Host Flora Lichtman talks with longevity researchers Vera Gorbunova and Juan Manuel Vazquez about what animals are teaching us.Guests:Dr. Vera Gorbunova is a biologist and professor at the University of Rochester, and a co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center.Dr. Juan Manuel Vazquez is a biologist and assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University studying the evolution of aging.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
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How Alphafold Has Changed Biology Research, 5 Years On
Proteins are crucial for life. They're made of amino acids that “fold” into millions of different shapes. And depending on their structure, they do radically different things in our cells. For a long time, predicting those shapes for research was considered a grand biological challenge.But in 2020, Google’s AI lab DeepMind released Alphafold, a tool that was able to accurately predict many of the structures necessary for understanding biological mechanisms in a matter of minutes. In 2024, the Alphafold team was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for the advance.Five years later after its release, Host Ira Flatow checks in on the state of that tech and how it’s being used in health research with John Jumper, one of the lead scientists responsible for developing Alphafold.Guest: John Jumper, scientist at Google Deepmind and co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
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How A Woodpecker Pecks Wood, And How Ants Crown A Queen
If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to drill a hole? A team of researchers wondered that too and set out to investigate, by putting tiny muscle monitors on eight downy woodpeckers and recording them with high-speed video as they pecked away in the lab.Integrative organismal biologist Nick Antonson, co-author of a report on the work, joins Host Flora Lichtmen to peck away at the mystery.Plus, you can take two ant eggs with the exact same genes, and one can grow up to be a queen, the other a worker. Neuroscientist and evolutionary biologist Daniel Kronauer joins Flora to share recent research into how an ant becomes a queen.Guests: Dr. Nick Antonson is an NSF postdoctoral research fellow in the department of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology at Brown University.Dr. Daniel Kronauer is the Stanley S. and Sydney R. Shuman Professor in the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior at The Rockefeller University in New York.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
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Memories Change. But Can We Change Them On Purpose?
Our memories make us who we are—just ask Barbra Streisand. But despite the lyrics in many popular songs, memories aren’t frozen in time. When we call them up, the details shift and change. And neuroscience research shows that we might be able to take that a step further—to manipulate our memories and even implant false ones.Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez joins Host Ira Flatow to explain how memory manipulation could revolutionize the way we treat brain disorders. They also discuss Ramirez’s book, How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist's Quest to Alter the Past, and how the sudden death of his friend and scientific collaborator made him rethink the role of memory.Guest: Dr. Steve Ramirez is an associate professor of psychology and brain sciences at Boston University and the author of How to Change a Memory.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
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Bearded Vulture Nests Hold Trove Of Centuries-Old Artifacts
Bearded vultures build giant, elaborate nests that are passed down from generation to generation. And according to a new study, some of these scavengers have collected bits and bobs of human history over the course of centuries. Scientists picked apart 12 vulture nests preserved in Spain and discovered a museum collection’s worth of objects, including a woven sandal that could be more than 700 years old. Host Flora Lichtman talks with study author Ana Belen Marín-Arroyo, an archaeologist who studies ancient humans, about how the nests are giving us a glimpse into vulture culture as well as the lives of the people they lived beside.Guest: Dr. Ana Belen Marín-Arroyo is an archeologist and professor of prehistory at the University of Cantabria in Spain.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
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Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday is the source for entertaining and educational stories about science, technology, and other cool stuff.
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