Science

No 'Universal' Best Practice To Save Yourself From Tornadoes

6:11pm June 01, 2013

by NPR Staff

When you're caught in a tornado's path, should you run or hide? The tornado in Moore, Okla., and the storms that tore through the Oklahoma City area Friday provide contradictory answers.

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Grace Aber stands in the shade of a mango tree with her children in the remote village of Tumangu in northern Uganda. Four of Aber's nine children have been diagnosed with nodding syndrome, starting with Partick (front), who first showed symptoms in 2002.

After Years Of War, Ugandan Children Face New Deadly Threat

8:27am June 01, 2013

by Matthew Kielty

Uganda has lost one generation to a brutal, decades-long war. Now, a second generation is jeopardized by a strange disease known as nodding syndrome, which affects only children in parts of Africa and has no known cause.

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A screen grab from an animation explaining the lung gizmo.

Gizmo Uses Lung Cells To Sniff Out Health Hazards In Urban Air

9:23pm May 31, 2013

by Richard Harris

Scientists are trying to figure out how chemicals in the air interact with each other to make people sick. So they're building an instrument — a "lung in a box" — that goes way beyond the usual chemical monitors.

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Researchers Revive A Plant Frozen In Time

12:09pm May 31, 2013

It sounds like something from the movies — scientists uncover a sample of plant material frozen inside a glacier for hundreds of years, bring it back to the lab, and watch as it comes back to life. Catherine LaFarge describes the work, and what it means for plant scientists.

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Teacher Feature: Ethnobotanist Tom Carlson

12:09pm May 31, 2013

"Office hours are some of my favorite hours of the week," says professor Tom Carlson, a medical doctor, ethnobotanist and instructor of 1700 students annually at the University of California, Berkeley. One of Carlson's former students, SciFri associate senior producer Christopher Intagliata, says Carlson's class got him on the path toward science. In this "Teacher Feature," Intagliata tells his former teacher what the class meant to him.

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Science

With Chemical Tweaks, Cement Becomes A Semiconductor

12:09pm May 31, 2013

With the right chemistry, cement can take on some of the properties of a metal, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Chris Benmore, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, explains why a semiconducting cement might be useful.

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Bright charged particles spin along magnetic field lines above the surface of the sun in the image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Solar flares like this one shoot high energy protons and radiation into the solar system.

Headed To Mars? Watch Out For Cosmic Rays

8:42am May 31, 2013

by Adam Cole

The dose of radiation an astronaut would experience on a trip to Mars is higher than the annual limit set for workers at nuclear power plants. But Mars enthusiasts say the radiation threat isn't high enough to cancel the trip.

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Channel-billed toucans are important seed dispersers in rain forests.

Science

Big-Mouthed Toucans Key To Forest Evolution

8:34am May 31, 2013

by Christopher Joyce

As humans have cut into Brazil's forests, the toucan population has taken a dive. The trees, in turn, have changed, too: Without large-billed birds to eat fruit with big seeds, only trees with small seeds thrive. Eventually, one scientist says, "the impacts on the forest could be quite dramatic."

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How OxyContin's Pain Relief Built 'A World Of Hurt'

12:40pm May 30, 2013

New York Times reporter Barry Meier's new e-book explores opiate painkillers and the consequences that come with long-term use. He focuses in particular on OxyContin, how it came to be prescribed for chronic pain, what the consequences have been, and how it became a street drug.

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Cooking With Cicadas: No Weirder Than Eating Cheese?

7:18pm May 29, 2013

by Maria Godoy

We know, eating bugs sounds strange, but 2 billion people already do it — and the U.N. has made the case for insects as a key protein source. For U.S. East Coasters, the coming of the 17-year cicadas provides an opportunity to cook with bugs. If you want to try your hand at it, there's a cookbook to guide your way.

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