An update on what's happening with the show. The quick version: we're still here, but the world's on fire and things are a bit tough. We'll be back. Stay safe everyone.   Wednesday 5 August 2020

Science On Top

A quick update

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:28 Good news in quarantine, two pandas in Hong Kong have finally mated! It only took them ten years! 00:04:29 Lots of moons in our solar system seem to have subsurface oceans, and now it looks like Pluto does too! 00:13:59 Soy is everywhere these days, but there are environmental concerns with it. Now a new study suggests fava beans could be a more environmentally friendly source of plant protein. This episode contains traces of Trevor Noah discussing pandas mating in Hong Kong.

SoT 357: You Get An Ocean!

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:39 When it comes to giving birth in the animal world, there's mostly only two options: live babies, or eggs. But very rarely, it can be both! Such is the case with the yellow-bellied three-toed skink. 00:06:37 Imagine solar power that worked at night! That's (kind of) the promise of a new type of solar cell being developed by two American researchers. 00:19:50 If you want to train a robot dog, there's the hard way and there's the easy way. The hard way is manually coding everything you want the dog to do. The easy way is to develop machine learning software that learns from watching other dogs! This episode contains traces of Michael Rowland and Lisa Miller discussing Singapore's robot dog technique of enforcing physical distancing, on ABC News Breakfast.

SoT 356: The Same... But Opposite

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:40 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany have used a machine-learning algorithm to finally answer one of science's most confounding puzzles: Is that mouse over there happy? Or afraid? Or disgusted? 00:07:54 Astrophysicists from the University of Florida and Columbia University have figured out that a violent collision of two neutron stars released many of the heavier atoms that went on to form our solar system. This episode contains traces of Greg Milam, US correspondent for Sky News, on the Pentagon's release of videos showing unidentified flying objects.

SoT 355: E-mouse-icons!

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely 00:03:36 NASA's Mars InSight probe has finally managed to drill into the Martian rock and soil - thanks to a traditional repair technique! 00:13:04 The idea that glass is a liquid that flows is largely a myth.... sort of. It's an amorphous solid, so it does flow but very very slowly. Now an analysis of amber has shed some light on the disordered molecules that make glass a "liquid in suspended animation". 00:26:36 When our fishy ancestors slithered onto land nearly 400 million years ago, they had hands and feet. But fingers and toes took a little longer to develop. The discovery of a complete skeleton of a fish from around that time gives some clues about the evolution of fingers. Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely is a planetary scientist working at ANSTO, Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. She is the co-author of the children's book I Love Pluto. This episode contains traces of the panel on Have I Got News For You discussing an astrophysicists attempts to make a device to stop you touching your face.

SoT 354: They Smacked It With A Shovel

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:35 Professor Maria Croyle from the University of Texas in Austin has been working on alternative delivery mechanisms for vaccines without giant needles. And one promising method she's developed is a lot more palatable! 00:08:15 The formation of our moon is something of a mystery to astronomers. But now new research into the moon's composition further strengthens the most widely accepted theory. This episode contains traces of the SARS-COV-2 virus translated into "surprisingly beautiful" music.

SoT 353: Crazy Finds A Way

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:27 How do you study wibbly wobbly jellyfish, without damaging them or stressing them out? You give them a noodly hug, of course! 00:08:27 When a satellite runs out of fuel, it's sent up into a graveyard orbit where it can pose a threat to any spacecraft leaving Earth. But a recent test of the Mission Extension Vehicle could mean satellites can be refuelled, extending their lifespan significantly. 00:21:25 People are attaching sensors to plants, and translating the electrical conductivity of the plants into "music". It's not very good music, but the idea is to change how people think about plants as living organisms. 00:29:45 Astronomers have found a new planet outside our solar system, with a new technique. They looked for the radio signals from aurorae on the exoplanet! This episode contains traces of ABC science journalist Tegan Taylor and physician Dr. Norman Swan answering children's coronavirus questions on Coronacast.

SoT 352: Noodle-Fingered Hugs

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:28 An Australian research team has come up with a luxurious plan to save endangered seahorses. 00:04:54 A more precise method of determining the methane produced by human activities draws a timeline of industrialisation. 00:15:07 Remains dating back 65,000 years ago demonstrate that the earliest Australians enjoyed slow-cooking. 00:20:28 Have you thought about the environmental impact your death and burial or cremation will have? There could be more planet-friendly options when it comes to 'deathcare'. This episode contains traces of Bill Gates, speaking to Vox four years ago, about his greatest fear.

SoT 351: Air Sea'n'Sea

As the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 sweeps the world, the only thing spreading quicker is panic and misinformation. So we caught up with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist, writer and podcaster to find out what's really going on with COVID-19. For more information, we recommend: Australian Department of Health World Health Organisation Centers For Disease Control This Week In Virology podcast Coronacast podcast   And you can follow Gideon on Twitter.

SoT Special 28 – Coronavirus with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:14 A team at Howard Hughes Medical Institute has been working with Google, and has just announced that they have mapped the “connectome” in the central region of brain of a fruit fly. That's means they've worked out the precise meanderings of 25,000 neurons and their 20 million connections. 00:15:14 About 2 billion years ago, a giant meteorite smacked into the thick glaciers that then were covering Western Australia. The result could have been the end of a 'snowball event' and the beginning of complex life! 00:24:15 Parkinson's Disease affects more than 10 million people worldwide, yet we know so little about it. But we do know that a build of a protein, alpha-synuclein makes it worse. Now researchers in the US claim to have developed a compound that can target and reduce the levels of alpha-synuclein. 00:28:40 Usually one of the top ten brightest stars in the night sky, the orange giant Betelgeuse has been dimming a lot in the last few months. So is it, like many media outlets have proclaimed, on the verge of going supernova? This episode contains traces of This episode contains traces of actress Taraji P. Henson, who played NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson in the film "Hidden Figures", describing some of the highlights of a remarkable life. Johnson passed away on February 24, 2020, aged 101.

SoT 350: Rocks Were Never Not Great

Here's a little taste of the sort of thing to expect when Science on Top returns very soon - on hot days are you better off drinking hot or cold drinks?

SoT Bites 001 - Hot Drinks In Hot Weather

Have you missed us? Looking forward to another season of Science on Top? Here's something to whet your appetite - a story of cute cephalopods, curious scientists and 3D glasses!

SoT Bites 001 - Cuttlefish Watching 3D Movies

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Ass/Prof Mick Vagg 00:00:48 The switch to agricultural societies 12,000 years ago may have changed how we talk, introducing the 'f' and 'v' sounds. 00:04:58 The cane toad is an introduced pest in Australia, with no real natural predators. Until recently, when a small group of water rats learned how to eviscerate them with surgical precision! 00:06:38 The search for Planet Nine continued this year, and a new hypothesis was proposed: it might not be a planet, but a tiny primordial black hole. 00:11:28 The first ever image of a black hole's accretion disk was revealed this year. 00:15:30 NASA's InSight lander has been trying to drill a heat probe into the Martian surface, but it's been a heartbreaking story of progress and setbacks. 00:19:38 DNA testing has found that the same variety of grapes used 9,000 years ago to make wine are still being used today by some winemakers in France. 00:25:29 Researchers painted cows to look like zebras to find out if they were less likely to be bitten by flies. They were! 00:28:47 Scientists found that rats who had been taught to drive tiny electric cars were 'happier' and less stressed. 00:31:34 Australian scientists have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that developed a new flu vaccine. 00:36:59 Some people can smell when other people have early stages of Parkinson's Disease. Thanks to the help of one of these “super-smellers", researchers were able to identify volatile compounds produced by sufferers. 00:40:39 A crater on Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has begun to fill up - but with water, not lava. Associate Professor Mick Vagg is a consultant in rehabilitation and pain medicine.

SoT 349: Our Favourite Science Stories of 2019

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:56 As unprecedented bushfires ravage Australia, Forbes published an article declaring koalas are "functionally extinct". And while they do face considerable threats, the situation is not quite that dire. 00:11:38 Chinese scientists have discovered a black hole that, according to our current understanding of black-hole formation, is so large it shouldn’t exist. Called LB-1, the black hole has a mass 70 times that of our sun, three times more massive than previously thought possible. 00:25:11 Parked in space and deactivated since 2017, the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft has long finished it's scientific mission. But it's still making discoveries, detecting dozens of tiny impacts on the spacecraft and giving valuable data about cosmic dust. This episode contains traces of the cast and creators of The Expanse, now on Jeff Bezos' Amazon Prime, talking with engineers from Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin.

SoT 348: Massive Stars Are Fluffy!

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:24 For the first time, doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have purposefully put at least one human patient in suspended animation. This could be a great help to surgeons dealing with traumatic emergencies such as gunshot or stab wounds. 00:10:06 The first geomorphologic map of Saturn's moon Titan has been released. Showing lakes (of liquid methane), dunes (of organic molecule particles) and exposed icy bedrock. 00:12:49 NASA’s Curiosity rover has been analysing the air above Mars’ Gale Crater and found unexpected, and fluctuating, levels of oxygen. 00:20:10 An international team of astronomers have announced the direct detection of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter's fourth largest moon Europa for the first time. This is the strongest evidence yet that liquid water exists beneath the Europa's surface. 00:26:46 Molecular astrophysicist Clara Sousa-Silva has written an article in Scientific American calling for more research into the signatures of gases that could indicate the presence of life on other planets. 00:32:53 Palaeontologists in Argentina have excavated a number of nearly 100 million year old snake fossils. Interestingly, these snakes had hind legs, but not front legs. This episode contains traces of BBC One Breakfast hosts discussing an innovative technique used by the Russian Ministry of Agriculture to boost dairy production.

SoT 347: Carbonite

The Australian podcast about science, health and technology news. Join Ed Brown and his panel of co-hosts each week as we talk about the latest and coolest research and discoveries in the world of science. We're joined by special guests from all over the science field: doctors, professors, nurses, teachers and more.

hubhopper

Science On Top

hubhopper