Science Friday Folgen

What’s the secret to making a fluffy omelet or the perfect pie dough? In this interview from 2012, Jack Bishop, now senior content advisor at America’s Test Kitchen, debunks cooking myths and highlights some of the surprising finds from the show’s cookbook, The Science of Good Cooking.Bishop tells us that water is one of the key parts of the perfect pie crust. You need it to roll out the dough, but it also forms gluten which makes the dough chewy. So, how can your pie dough be both soft and easy to handle? Use science—and a little bit of vodka. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

It sounds like something from an advertisement for bathroom cleaner: Researchers found over 600 different viruses, most of which are new to science, in samples taken from showerheads and toothbrushes. The viruses, however, are unlikely to affect humans. They are bacteriophages, a type of virus that preys on bacteria. The expedition into bathroom biodiversity was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes.Around a hundred years ago in the former Soviet Union, there were major efforts to develop bacteriophages for medical use. The approach really didn’t catch on in Western countries, overshadowed there by the rise of conventional antibiotics like penicillin. But with some diseases developing resistance to those conventional antibiotics, there’s been increased interest in phages as part of an antibacterial toolkit.Dr. Erica Hartmann, an associate professor in the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, joins Ira to talk about what researchers found when they took a close look at a collection of bathroom samples, and how phage research has advanced in recent years.Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Researchers are connecting two ecological problems in the Northeast in hopes of reducing the risk of tick-borne illnesses. Also, a “one-of-a-kind” fossil of Navaornis hestiae helps fill a giant gap in scientists’ understanding of how bird brains evolved.Managing Some Invasive Plants Might Reduce Blacklegged TicksIn much of the eastern US, October and November usher in an autumn peak of the blacklegged tick season.For years, researchers have noticed that these ticks, also called deer ticks, are more abundant on certain invasive plant species, like Japanese barberry, that create dense thickets in the forest understory. Now, a group of scientists in Vermont and Maine is investigating how managing these plants might decrease the number of blacklegged ticks—and the risk of people developing tick-borne illnesses, like Lyme disease and Babesiosis. After getting a $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation, they’re hoping to come up with guidance for landowners.Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.Ancient Bird Fossil Offers Clues Into How Bird Brains EvolvedArchaeopteryx is the earliest bird-like dinosaur that we know of. It lived 150 million years ago, but researchers don’t know much about how the bird brain evolved from then to now.An 80 million-year-old bird from the Mesozoic Era is now helping fill in the blanks. It’s called Navaornis hestiae. Researchers uncovered a fossil of this species, which was previously unknown to science, in Brazil in 2016. That specimen has a remarkably well-preserved skull, which a team of paleontologists used to digitally reconstruct the bird’s brain. The researchers recently reported their findings in the journal Nature.Ira talks with a lead author of the study, Dr. Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.