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Are Electric Scooters Actually Good For The Environment?

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Are Electric Scooters Actually Good For The Environment?

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The electric scooters? DEFINITELY. But the company who didn't think this through that the juicers, the people who charge the Birds, Limes, JUMPs, they thought that they would actually make an impact, but in this case, currently, no. Why? It's because the juicers use gas guzzling pickup trucks and cars. I mean, what's the point then? Just to get money? I mean, there isn't a great impact, but the people are doing a better impact than the company, because the people are getting the scooters in their electric cars (there's a bigger amount of regular people than juicers, and at least a small percent of the civilian juicers use electric cars. So, the civilians who charge the electric scooters in their homes get a good credit onto their electric bill, so hooray. A solution might be what I just suggested above, or that juicers (the guys who are paid for the job) get electric pickups or something, so we can get money and a less-dying Earth. Win-win.
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/are-electric-scooters-actually-good-for-the-environment/

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1) Post the link to the Science Friday podcast that you chose for this week.
2)Share details about your podcast and include at least ONE interesting fact you learned from the podcast. Be sure to share why this podcast was interesting to you.
3) OPTIONAL: Comment on other student's posts

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What’s The Charge… For An Electric Car Charge?

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What’s The Charge… For An Electric Car Charge?

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This podcast is about electrical car charging and the price of the the charge. Before charging stations charged on time. They would charge based on how long the cars charge but different cars charge at different times. The podcast talks about what the people who run the chargers are doing to stop the complaining. The people who are running the chargers have charge the price of the car charge. Instead of charging by time they charge by the kilowatt hour(1,000 Watts an hour). The easier way of saying this is people who run the chargers are turning the charging stations into a gas station because gas stations charge by the gallon and the charging stations have a similar concept. the podcast also explains the business of the car charging company’s and how hotels are getting more visitors. The podcast explains that hotels with charging stations can get their guests to come. People who have electric cars want to stay in a hotel with a charging station instead of driving somewhere just so they change their car.

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Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: Now we're going to move on to check in on the state of science.

SPEAKER 1: This is KERA News.

SPEAKER 2: For WWNO.

SPEAKER 3: St. Louis Public Radio.

SPEAKER 4: Iowa Public Radio News.

IRA FLATOW: Local science stories of national significance. Many states are trying to get more drivers to use electric cars, but here's something we haven't quite figured out yet. How should drivers be charged for a charge? A new law in North Carolina will change how electric charging stations in the state operate to make them more like gas pumps.

David Boraks is an environment and energy reporter at WFAE in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's here to fill us in. Hi, welcome to Science Friday.

DAVID BORAKS: Hello, Ira. How are you?

IRA FLATOW: Fine. Let's talk about this. Before the law, how did the price of electric charging stations work now in North Carolina?

DAVID BORAKS: Well, the way it works right now is that owners of electric vehicle charging stations, if they want to get paid for this, they have to charge users by the amount of time it takes to fill up your battery with electricity. And that's a little bit of a problem because not all cars charge at the same speed, and there are lots of variables there.

IRA FLATOW: So there's really- so if I have a fast speed charging car, I'll get more electricity in the same time, and that's not equitable, basically.

DAVID BORAKS: That's right. And folks who run these charging stations in the industry say it's not fair to charge that way, and that includes Tesla, which is kind of the big guy in the field right now.

IRA FLATOW: Mhm. All right. So how's charging going to work from now on?

DAVID BORAKS: Well, the law in North Carolina and many other states now is changing to allow them to charge by the kilowatt hour. And you could think of that as much the same as charging per gallon of gas the way it comes out of the pump for your gas guzzler right now. So that should change the picture entirely, and that will be much more lined up with the amount of energy that you use to charge.

IRA FLATOW: So are there any concerns about how well this will work, whether it's going to be rolling out smoothly or not?

DAVID BORAKS: Well, there's a lot to be done before we get here in North Carolina. There are a few places around the country that already have charging stations that are metered by the kilowatt hour. But in North Carolina, all the stations up until now have had to operate according to the time.

And so the owners of these stations now, their next task will be to update their equipment or get new equipment to do this. And then there's the whole question of how much we'll pay for this.

IRA FLATOW: Mhm. So this actually could work for gas stations, let's say, who want to put a charging station in there because they know that there are more Tesla's than other cars on the road. I mean I have one. I'm sure a lot of people are buying them. But they could start to make money from the charging, right?

DAVID BORAKS: They could. And actually, it's a great question. Why haven't we seen this yet? Why haven't some of the big gasoline chains put in at least one charging station there?

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. So but now, if you give them an incentive that they can make some money, right, and they can charge by the gallon, so to speak, or the kilowatt hour.

DAVID BORAKS: Yes.

IRA FLATOW: This is a way for them to make some dough also.

DAVID BORAKS: And that's really why North Carolina legislators decided to change the law and why the governor signed the bill. There are a lot of companies lined up to compete in this area, so we're going to see a lot of evolution in the next few years. But we could see separate stations. We could see existing gas stations doing this. And of course, there's all the places where you find a charger right now, which are everywhere from your grocery store parking lot to your company office garage.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. I know I stayed at a hotel recently because I had to travel 200 miles to get there. And I picked that little hotel because they had a charging station, right, as part of the hotel. I guess that could be more of a trend here because you could not only have gas stations, but you could have hotels that could charge for it.

DAVID BORAKS: Absolutely. And some of the companies that are active in the charger space, they're actually selling chargers to anybody who wants to install them. And so it has become popular for some businesses to offer this as an add on. And oftentimes, at these places, it's free. I don't know what you paid at your hotel there. But oftentimes they do that as an extra service, as an add on. I think we'll more and more begin to see this as a moneymaking opportunity for people who operate chargers.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, mine was free. I mean, they actually put their own real Tesla charger in there, a couple of them. I mean, that's the way they got people in there. Let's move on to another aspect of this because you've reported on how there's such a demand for electric cars, and North Carolina is reopening its lithium mines.

DAVID BORAKS: Yeah, that's right. There's a company that has been looking in Western North Carolina at a site that used to be a lithium mine. Back from the 1940s up to the 1980s, there were lithium mines about 30 miles west of Charlotte. And that was at a time when the main uses for lithium were as like an industrial grease, as an additive to ceramics to make them stronger. And everybody's familiar with lithium as an antidepressant drug.

But that industry looked elsewhere to South America and Australia for lithium until we got to this point now where everybody has a lithium battery in all their devices and their automobiles. And so that's caused some investors to take a look at these old mines in this area west of Charlotte and begin testing.

And there's a company called Piedmont Lithium that I have written about, which is looking at an area that stretches from the tip of one county all the way to the South Carolina border. And they have acquired about 2,200 acres of land or contracts on land. And they foresee about a 25 year supply of lithium here. And they're talking it up as the biggest supply in North America right now of traditional lithium deposits.

IRA FLATOW: Wow, because it is very rare, David. Thank you. Thank you very much. This is interesting stuff. We'll have to have you back soon. Thanks for taking the time.

DAVID BORAKS: All right, thanks.

IRA FLATOW: You're welcome. David Boraks, environment and energy reporter at WFAE in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Copyright © 2019 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday's programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

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What's The Charge... For An Electric Car Charge?

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Segment Transcript IRA FLATOW: Now we're going to move on to check in on the state of science. SPEAKER 1: This is KERA News. SPEAKER 2: For WWNO. SPEAKER 3: St. Louis Public Radio. SPEAKER 4: Iowa Public Radio News. IRA FLATOW: Local science stories of national significance.

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How The Allies Sabotaged The Nazi Atomic Bomb

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How The Allies Sabotaged The Nazi Atomic Bomb

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Now in my opinion I love history in any way shape or form. You all should read about this article because it is really interesting, although it is a 45 min article, but in my opinion probably some of the most fun you will have listening to any of the articles. My favorite part was in the beginning with Moe Berg. I won’t spoil it but in my opinion is a very fun character all around person and is now my favorite baseball player because of who he was. An interesting fact I learned was that he learned to be a spy, then an assassin, to try and assassinate the Most famous German Nazi scientists to ever live, Werner Hisenburg. So be sure to check it out. To find it go to history and arts page 2 if interested. Click here to go to Science Friday . (If you don’t know what the allies are here are the main ones, the French, Us, Australia, the British, Russia, and New Zealand. The Axis's were German Nazis, the Japanese, and the Italians.)
Thank You to all who read this Post.

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Science Friday is your trusted source for news and entertaining stories about science. It's brain fun for curious people

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This podcast was so fascinating and interesting, I highly encourage you to listen to what they have to say. The podcast is about what happened to all of the apple orchards in one of the best apple growing states. In the early 1800s, everyone loved apples and there were about 1,400 different varieties across the United States. Colorado was great for growing apples because of their high altitude which made them sweeter and their apples even won medals! But when settlers started moving, they wanted to plant apple trees wherever they were headed so they brought along apple seeds. However, one type of apple, the Red Delicious, was heavily marketed everywhere in the United States. But for some reason, it didn’t grow well in Colorado and when they were planted, they got hit by disease. Another declining event was that people were bringing apples for cider, not for eating them fresh. About 3/4 of the apple “population” were used for cider and 1/4 were used for actual eating. Lots of species are endangered and could go extinct. There are so many varieties of apples: skin like sandpaper, shiny, as large as a grape fruit, and so many more. An interesting fact I learned was that an apple called the Surprise, actually has a yellow exterior but a red flesh. And the flesh actually tastes similar to a Sour Patch Kid! As you can see from this post, you can learn so much about the history of one of the world’s most known fruit and even learn some things you never knew even existed!
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/colorado-apple-mystery/

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What is the best way to recover after a workout?

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What is the best way to recover after a workout?

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https://www.sciencefriday.com/topics/health/page/2/

If you are someone who enjoys working out outside or at the gym, you have to get used to the aches and pains that follow. Even though many of us have experienced soreness and tight muscles, we always have something to go to to relieve that pain. Maybe you use foam rollers or massage to help your tight muscles or maybe you ice. However, recent studies have shown that these things don’t actually help the recovery process at all! Although you may feel better for a short time after these things, it is your brain subconsciously telling you that it worked. Science writer Christie Aschwanden explains that most of things we do after the workout slows down the process of healing. For example, icing doesn’t help, all it does is help numb the inflammation, but inflammation is an important part of the healing process. Also, however I disagree, she says that stretching doesn’t help! I personally can feel the difference if I stretched one day and not the other, but she says that you can see or feel a-difference if stretch. So the next time you workout, you may want to rethink what you’ll do after you get home.

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gym abs full body chest flat stomach fitness home leg cardio female

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Are Firefly Populations 'Blinking Out'? 

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Are Firefly Populations 'Blinking Out'? 

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This article was very interesting. It was about fireflies. I recommend this article for many different reasons, one of which being because the two guests that he had on were very good at explaining and answering questions. They understood that there are young viewers listening so they made sure to be extra clear. They said that the fireflies light up when they're feeling unsafe, and there are two chemicals that spread throughout the body which makes the firefly light up, which is also meant to tell other insects and animals to not eat it because it is toxic.
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/

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Welcome to one of the Most Deadly Labs in the World...

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Welcome to one of the Most Deadly Labs in the World...

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https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/deadliest-lab-in-the-world/

I was so fascinated by this podcast, it felt like I was watching a movie like this couldn't possibly be real life. It was a fantastical plethora of information. Hearing these intellectual people talk about the Ebola research lab in San Antonio was amazing. Dr. Ricardo Carrion talked about the process of becoming a scientist that can even step foot in the lab. The FBI conducted back-round checks on all the Chemists making sure they wouldn't sabotage the experiment. He also spoke about the suits that they must wear to make sure that they are never infected or exposed to the deadly viruses, enough to kill one million people. The suits have on outlet and one outlet only, the oxygen hose, it;s a long tube that provides oxygen to the important scientists while they work for hours on end. The last really important thing that I learned was that the San Antonio lab has been conduction Ebola vaccine labs for the past ten years, and although they are not FDA approved, there are some doctors using them as clinical trials in Africa and seeing some amazing results.

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Are Electric Scooters Actually Good For The Environment? 

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Are Electric Scooters Actually Good For The Environment? 

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This podcast is about electric scooters and if they are good for the environment or not. In the article they talk about the scooters compared to cars and they say state that electric scooters are in fact better for the environment than cars but cars are still being used to love scooters from place to place. After the sun sets people called "chargers" are taking the scooters home to charge them. Although that is a great idea, it defeats the purpose of using cars less.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/are-electric-scooters-actually-good-for-the-environment/

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Food failures: the scoop on perfecting your ice cream and frozen desserts 

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Food failures: the scoop on perfecting your ice cream and frozen desserts 

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https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/food-failure-ice-cream-chemistry/
This podcast is about how to make the perfect ice cream with no crystallization. To know how to prevent crystallization in your ice cream you first have to understand what make crystallization happen. Crystallization (in ice cream) forms because water molecules are moving in the ice cream. This causes crystallization because in ice cream there is always a little crystallization but when the water molecules are moving they stick onto the small bit of crystallization witch makes crystal ice covering on top ice cream. If your like me you don't like that you'd prefer rich and creamy ice cream. if you want to prevent crystallization when making homemade ice cream make sure that after you've mixed the ingredients in to a soft serve texture freeze the ice cream asap for around 24 hours (depending on the amount of ice cream and the container size). This prevents crystallization from occurring because it freezes the water molecules in place. The only other thing to be careful of is to not let your ice cream melt because if the ice cream melts and you refreeze it there will be some crystallization.

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A Spike In Tree Loss Puts The Amazon Rainforest At Risk

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A Spike In Tree Loss Puts The Amazon Rainforest At Risk

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The amazon rainforest is actually known as the lungs of the world because they produce one fifth of the world's oxygen. The National Institute for Space Research in Brazil has been using satellite images of tree cover to monitor the Amazon’s deforestation. In the last seven months, the deforestation increased by 50% since last year. The spike in tree loss coincided with the election of the new Brazilian president, Jair Bolsanaro. When he got into office he slashed environmental protection. The most interesting fact that I learned was that without the amazon is that climate scientists warn deforestation is pushing the Amazon rainforest to a tipping point that would disrupt both its ecosystem and the global climate.
Source: A Spike In Tree Loss Puts The Amazon Rainforest At Risk
Image: Deforestation in Para, Brazil from 1984 – 2018

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Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

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Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

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https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/mars-life-australia One interesting fact about this podcast is that eventually they are going to be bringing stuff back from mars.

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One Million Animals and Plant Species are at Risk for Extinction 

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One Million Animals and Plant Species are at Risk for Extinction 

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I was interested in this podcast because it is about world problems and how they effect species around the world. One million or more species are endangered because of deforestation, poaching and hunting, climate change, changes in use of land and sea, pollution, and a number of human activities. Of this million 40% are amphibians, 33%  are carls and 10% are insects.
I love learning about the earth and how i can change my lifestyle to help animals or the environment. One thing that i thought was very interesting is that is that scientists are afraid that some species and going to go extinct before they discover it. There are a lot of controversy between  the subject if there are 8 million species in the world. Some people think that, that number is exact but some people think there are many more species out there. Personally based on a ton of studies I believe that there are many more species that are undiscovered.

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Is Chemical Sunscreen Safe? Scientists Aren’t Sure

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Is Chemical Sunscreen Safe? Scientists Aren’t Sure

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This podcast was really interesting to mr when I first saw it because I use a lot of sunscreen in a day because I am always outside, so I have to. One thing that learned to day about sunscreens is that Chemical sunscreens include chemical molecules that absorb UV A, UV B, or both. So UV A and UV B include oxybenzon, avonbenzon, actocrylene, and ecamsule- the four sunscreen ingredients studied in the JAMA research study (and are common in most sunscreens). Because these sunscreens often only cover small areas of the UV spectrum, manufacturers use a combination of different chemicals to provide a wide range of UV coatings to protect the skin.

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Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. It is summertime. It is a time when doctors have been telling us to wear sunscreen. They've been telling us to do this for decades now, right?

And for good reason, melanoma is one of the most dangerous forms of cancer. And while some of us might slather or spray it on before a day at the beach, others are even more diligent and use a little bit of sunscreen every day. We asked you to tell us on the Science Friday VoxPop app what you've been told about sunscreen and how you use it.

RICHARD: I've been told by my dermatologist to use it, use it, use it. I've tried to use it, but I don't use it that often. I try and just stay covered up as much as I can.

ANDREW: Recently, I read an article suggesting that sunscreen doesn't actually block the cancer-causing UV, but it does block the UV that causes you to get sunburned.

BILL: My understanding is that you need both UVA and UVB protection, probably at least SPF 30 or greater, although I've been told that anything above that probably doesn't offer you that much more protection, it's just hype.

IRA FLATOW: Well, we're going to talk about that. And those were listeners, Richard in Wisconsin, Andrew in New Zealand, Bill in Oregon on the Science Friday VoxPop app. So I'm asking you, now again, what have you been told about sunscreen? Do you use it?

Download the Science Friday VoxPop app and leave us a little voice message there, like they did, to let us know. And also, you can call us now at 844-724-8255. 844-724-(SCI)-TALK. Or, of course, you can tweet us @scifri.

One thing that we're probably all been told is that sunscreen can prevent sunburn, even skin cancer. But listen to this, a recent study conducted by the FDA put sunscreen safety in question. My next guest was not part of the FDA study, but is here to discuss what we need to know in light of it.

Kanade Shinkai is a professor of dermatology and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association Dermatology. Just to note, we did reach out to the FDA for this segment, but they said no one was available to join us today. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Shinkai.

KANADE SHINKAI: Thank you so much for having me on the show.

IRA FLATOW: That's great. We know that we should use sunscreen, but exactly how does it protect our skin from the sun?

KANADE SHINKAI: Well, sunscreen is used for two purposes. The first is to prevent sunburn. And the second is to prevent skin cancer when you are exposed. There's really two types of sunscreens. And I think consumers have noticed this when they go shopping to look for purchasing a sunscreen.

The first type is mineral sunscreen. These are literally minerals, things like titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. They coat the skin, and that causes reflection or refraction of ultraviolet rays, so they literally bounce off the skin surface and are blocked from entering the skin.

The second type are chemical sunscreens. These are chemical filters that are used typically in combination with each other to provide a broad spectrum, or meaning coverage over the UVA and UVA spectrum. And these absorb ultraviolet light.

IRA FLATOW: Now, the FDA tested four chemical sunscreens that are sold in stores today. Now, what did they see?

KANADE SHINKAI: Well, they used four commercially available formulations of sunscreen and applied them on a small number of human subjects. There were four groups of six in the study. And these are subjects that were kept in a climate-controlled environment and were asked to apply the medication four times a day to 75% of body surface area, so akin to what you would do if you followed the sunscreen label and perhaps were at the beach. So you're basically covering all the exposed areas of skin.

And then what they proceeded to do was to measure the blood levels of the specific sunscreen ingredients. They looked at four ingredients- oxybenzone, octocrylene, ecamsule, and avobenzone- and looked at how the body absorbed these sunscreens over time.

And the medications were applied four times a day for four days. And what was striking about the study was they saw systemic absorption as early as day one. And they saw absorption that persisted into day seven, so three days after the sunscreen application had stopped, for all of the four sunscreens that were tested.

IRA FLATOW: And those are the chemical sunscreens, right, not the mineral sunscreens?

KANADE SHINKAI: That's correct. These are all four chemical sunscreens.

IRA FLATOW: Do the mineral ones work differently? I mean, do they get absorbed into the bloodstream like the chemical ones?

KANADE SHINKAI: That has been tested, and the answer is clearly no. So titanium dioxide and zinc oxide are not absorbed into the bloodstream.

IRA FLATOW: Now, did the FDA say there was any reason to give up sunscreens, these chemical ones, after they were found in increasing levels in the bloodstream and above FDA limits, correct?

KANADE SHINKAI: That's right. So what's striking about the study is that the levels of sunscreen that were detected in the subjects' bloodstreams exceeds a level that has been set by the Food and Drug Administration to be a threshold for testing, and that testing is 0.5 nanograms per milliliter of blood.

And what that threshold is is that any medication that's sold in the US, an over-the-counter medication, no matter how it's ingested or taken, if it exceeds that threshold, it needs to undergo a safety testing, specifically to look at cancer risk and whether that medication has any impact on reproduction and other biological functions.

IRA FLATOW: Well, now that it has exceeded that threshold, is the FDA going to test these substances?

KANADE SHINKAI: Well, it's important to recognize the Food and Drug Administration is not a testing agency. They're a regulatory agency. So their role, in human medicine or in health, is to really set the standard for how things should be examined.

It's really up to the drug makers to provide the evidence that all of these tests have been done. So the first test is whether or not it's absorbed and whether it exceeds that threshold that we just talked about. And then the second, if it is absorbed, the drug manufacturers are obligated to provide standard testing results, things like the cancer risk and reproductive harm.

IRA FLATOW: So are they required now to go out and do these tests?

KANADE SHINKAI: That's correct. And in fact, there's a proposal that's been put forth by the Food and Drug Administration that they would like this to happen before November of 2019, so that's soon, in just a couple of months. However, this conversation has been going on for decades.

So the Food and Drug Administration has regulated sunscreens since the 1970s. And in the late 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration asked sunscreen manufacturers to provide the safety data about systemic absorption. And for many years, they've gone back and forth, and for various reasons, they have not seen the results yet.

IRA FLATOW: So this has been a dance that's going on for decades?

KANADE SHINKAI: That's right. It really has to do with, really, it gets at the heart of how over-the-counter medications are regulated in the US. I'm not an FDA member. I'm not a drug regulatory expert. But my understanding is that all over-the-counter medications are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, so that's important to recognize.

Sunscreen isn't just a cosmetic here in the US, it's a medication. And that's different. In other countries, sunscreen is sold as a cosmetic agent, so it does undergo different testing outside of the US. But in the US, it's considered a medication and, therefore, it does have to fall under all the same regulations that other medications that we take do here in the US.

But that retesting has never happened. And it has a lot to do with the fact that sunscreens were initially approved as medications many, many decades ago, before a lot of this modern era of drug regulation really took place. It's really now, in more recent years, that we have clear standards for how all over-the-counter medications are tested.

IRA FLATOW: I'm just going to assume that we should assume that what is past is also going to be happening in the future, that we're not going to get these tests. Why suddenly should we be getting these tests? And if we're not getting these tests, what do you, as a dermatologist, recommend that people do about themselves and their kids?

KANADE SHINKAI: Well, what we know right now is that these four, at least these four chemical sunscreens that were studied in this particular research article, are absorbed into the bloodstream. What we don't know, and this is so important for listeners to understand, is that we don't know if they have any human harm in terms of health impacts or health effects.

So the first really important issue is that we need to do these studies. Either the sunscreen industry needs to do them or medicine needs to do them. And that's really the first and foremost point I wanted to make.

The second is for listeners to recognize that there's many different forms of what we call sun protection, or many different steps of how we protect ourselves from the sun, and sunscreen is just one of them. It's very important for people to wear protective clothing. That includes hats, sunglasses, long-sleeved shirts, long pants when we're outdoors when possible, and then to use sunscreen on the areas that are exposed.

People have a lot of control over when they do their exercise, for example, avoiding direct sun during the peak hours of the sun, which are defined as 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM in the afternoon, and seeking shade when possible. So these are all parts of a sun protection regimen that people can participate in.

The other is that there still are sunscreens that we know are safe. These are the mineral sunscreens that I mentioned earlier, the titanium dioxide and the zinc oxide. Those are widely available throughout the US and make up a good portion of the sunscreens that are available here in the US and have been tested and deemed safe. So those are a great option for people who have any concerns about the chemical sunscreens.

IRA FLATOW: What about bringing in sunscreens from other countries? If you're in Great Britain or wherever, you, can you just go into Boots or someplace and stock up on them?

KANADE SHINKAI: That's absolutely right. For those who are lucky enough to travel outside the US, they've probably noticed that when they try to purchase sunscreen in a different country that the sunscreen agents that are available there are very different from those that are available here in the US. We've really had kind of a standstill in terms of new sunscreen filters being approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US.

And it wasn't until 2014, under President Obama, that there was a Sunscreen Innovation Act, which really put forth a roadmap for how new sunscreen ingredients would be approved into the US while being regulated. There are many different agents out there in sunscreen ingredients that are available worldwide. That is definitely one option.

We also don't know a lot about the testing on those because, as I mentioned before, they are regulated as cosmetics elsewhere. So I think it's really going to set forth a big self-reflection of the sunscreen industry in terms of thinking about how we should be testing these things, how we should be regulating them. And these are all really important questions that have been raised by the current study.

IRA FLATOW: See if we can get a few phone calls in because, of course, everybody's concerned. Michael, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hi.

MICHAEL: Hello.

IRA FLATOW: Go for it.

MICHAEL: Hey, yeah. About 10 years ago, I got a sunspot on my neck. I think it came back twice. The doctor told me definitely wear sunscreen. I work outside. I wear sunscreen. I put it on at least three times a day. I mean, I lather it on like crazy.

I'm concerned that that's not enough. The guest there kind of answered my question. But if it's just a sunscreen and not going to protect me from cancer, should I be- it's hot down here in Arkansas, but I've considered wearing long sleeves and just completely covering my body- is that the best option if I do have concerns about cancer? I do have a father and grandmother that have had cancer spots removed from their forehead and neck.

IRA FLATOW: OK. Good question. Covering up, as you say, even though it's hot-

KANADE SHINKAI: That's right-

IRA FLATOW: -may be the better thing to do.

KANADE SHINKAI: Well, covering up is definitely an option. And we're lucky to have so many different ways of doing that. I think the fashion around it has also improved. There's much more fashionable sun clothing available, and it's widely available at really common stores, not just the sports stores. So I definitely encourage people to do that.

You mentioned the spot on your neck, and there are things, they're called neck buffs, they're like scarves, but not made out of wool that we wear in the winter, but they're made out of different types of lighter, breathable materials that can cover the neck and will really allow you to be able to work outside and under hot conditions. And I really liked what your caller said about reapplying.

What we don't know from this study, as I mentioned, the study showed people who were kept in a more climate-controlled environment, but what we don't know is how much of sunscreen is absorbed in real-world conditions, for example, when we are working outside, when we're sweating, when we're swimming, doing exercise.

We don't know whether that systemic absorption would go up or down relative to those research subjects that were studied in this article. So definitely love the idea of covering up. I love the idea of reapplying the sunscreen, especially if you're working and sweating.

IRA FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking about sunscreens with Dr. Kanade Shinkai. Tell us about SPF factors. They go from what? 5 to 100.

KANADE SHINKAI: Well, I remember growing up, we had sunscreen SPF 2, 4, 8, and maybe 15 was the highest it went. And now, I've seen sunscreens as high as 110 SPF. SPF is really a factor that allows us to measure how much protection we have in terms of time outdoors.

If you're likely to burn within a certain amount of time, SPF 2 would allow you to be outdoors or under direct sun exposure for twice the length of your normal burn rate. Obviously, that's going to be different for every individual who uses sunscreen. But the recommendation is that SPF 30 is a good thing to shoot for when you're out purchasing a sunscreen because that works for most people and essentially blocks almost 95% to 97% of all the UV that you're being exposed to.

IRA FLATOW: So you don't have to go for 50 or 70, you're saying, or anything above 30?

KANADE SHINKAI: Well, that's the party line. SPF 30 is definitely the party line. However, we do know from many scientific studies that in real-world use, many users don't apply the sunscreen thick enough. And if you don't apply the sunscreen adequately, you're actually getting less SPF protection because you're just dosing yourself with less of the medication. So one of the purposes of looking at an SPF that's 50 or higher can be that if you use half the amount, you're essentially getting the right amount, right?

IRA FLATOW: Interesting.

KANADE SHINKAI: However- yeah- and I think also, too, that it gives you a little bit more wiggle room in terms of some of the factors that we don't have a lot of control over, for example, how much of your sunscreen gets rubbed off, or how much of it washes off when we're swimming or sweating.

IRA FLATOW: But if you do it the right way- and that's an important thing that you brought up- you have to put enough of it on your skin.

KANADE SHINKAI: That's right.

IRA FLATOW: Sometimes I think I don't want to waste it, or I don't want to use the whole tube up, so I put a thin layer on, right?

KANADE SHINKAI: That's right. Well, for the average-sized adult, the recommendation is to use one ounce, or a shot glass if that helps your listeners kind of visualize how much of that sunscreen would be. And most sunscreens that we purchase in a store, at least a regular-sized tube of sunscreen, would be about four ounces.

So if you can imagine an adult going out to the beach, and they're going to apply the medication to their entire body, and they're going to put it on four times a day, which is what it says on the sunscreen label, that that bottle is going to go pretty quickly. It's going to be pretty much used up within a day or two. And as we probably all would admit, that usually doesn't happen. So it means to say that all of us are probably not using enough.

IRA FLATOW: And of course, you want to put it on again as it wears off, so that bottle is not going to last, even all day. Yeah. This is really interesting stuff. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today.

KANADE SHINKAI: My pleasure.

IRA FLATOW: Dr. Kanade Shinkai is a professor of dermatology and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association Dermatology section.
Copyright © 2019 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday's programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

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Is Chemical Sunscreen Safe? Scientists Aren't Sure

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Segment Transcript IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. It is summertime. It is a time when doctors have been telling us to wear sunscreen. They've been telling us to do this for decades now, right? And for good reason, melanoma is one of the most dangerous forms of cancer.

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How much worse can the measles outbreak get? 

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How much worse can the measles outbreak get? 

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You've probably heard in the news or through an adult that measles is back in the Unites States. In April, there were a reported 600 cases in 22 states, and now multiple here in California. This podcast was very interesting to me because the scientists really got into the facts and broke down what is going on. One thing that was very interesting to me was that when thinking about the measles outbreak, many people don't take into consideration all the little babies that are too young to get vaccinated could get the disease. In 2014 the level of vaccinated vs unvaccinated was dangerous, so it is believed that helped contribute to this outbreak. In most places where there are outbreaks, there are either very large numbers or very small. Since this disease is so contagious, it is better where there are small outbreaks. It amazes me that this is still happening when there is a solution to the pain and suffering you are essentially putting your kids through because you believed a tabloid. In 2000, there were enough vaccinations to eliminate measles in the US, but now that's gone. Because of this, multiple states have started making laws to make  vaccines a requirement.  https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/how-much-worse-can-the-measles-outbreak-get/

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What's the charge for an electric car charge?

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What's the charge for an electric car charge?

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North Carolina and many other states are beginning to charge electric car owners for charging their cars, understandably. They have to pay for the land that the charging stations are on and the electric bill for the stations. The electric cars will be charged by the kilowatt hour, not unlike gas cars are charged for the gallon. These kilowatt hour prices will go up and down, just like gas prices for cars. These changes, although sensible, may dissuade people from buying electric cars.

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Trying to Find Life on Mars? Start in the Australian Outback

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Trying to Find Life on Mars? Start in the Australian Outback

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The Mars 2020 Mission plans to send a rover with upgraded instruments to study the red planet.  But what is it looking for? Ancient Aliens, obviously. No, NASA hasn't gone insane. Stromatalites, one of the earliest lifeforms on Earth, was abundant 3.5 billion years ago. Stromatolite fossils are only found in a few areas of the world today, such as the western Australian Outback. In order for a stromatalite to grow on Mars, the conditions would have to be similar to Earth. This includes water. The rover would land on a crater in Mars called Jezero Crater. The crater was thought to have been flooded a long time ago, meaning that Stromatolites could have formed. NASA plans to bring back samples of it if they find any, meaning that the Mars 2020 missions would be the first mission to bring back samples from another planet.

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Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Later in the hour, we'll be discussing how land and soil can be used to both hurt or help the environment. But first, NASA's Mars 2020 mission is now just around the corner. Next fall, the next Mars Rover is scheduled to launch with an upgraded suite of instruments to study the red planet in a way that curiosity and opportunity never could.

Now one of its main objectives when it gets to the Martian surface will be to search for and identify signs of ancient life on the red planet. But how will it know what to look for? Well, one sign of Martian life could look pretty familiar- evidence of ancient stromatolites. Those are one of the earliest lifeforms ever discovered on Earth. Stromatolite fossils are found today only in a few areas around the world, including the remote outback of Western Australia.

That's where NASA scientists headed this week to study them, hoping to gather clues about whether this organism could have also lived on ancient Mars. Here to tell us more about what they're looking for this week, coming to you all the way from Pilbara region of Australia is my guest Mike Schulte, Mars 2020 program scientist. Welcome to Science Friday.

MITCH SCHULTE: Good morning.

IRA FLATOW: Good morning to you. Thank you for joining us. Also joining me from JPL headquarters in Pasadena, California is Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for the Mars 2020 mission. Welcome, Katie.

KATIE STACK MORGAN: Thank you.

IRA FLATOW: Mitch, let me ask you first. You're with a group of NASA and European scientists down in Australia, right? Why is Australia such a great place to go looking for them?

MITCH SCHULTE: So Australia is a great place to look for these because it contains in the rock record some of the most ancient evidence for life on Earth. These rocks here in Western Australia are 3 and 1/2 billion years old. And they contain these stromatolites, these micro fossils that we see in the rock record. And this is one of the very few places in the world that has this old rock record that contains these traces of ancient life.

IRA FLATOW: So are you sort of like taking photos of them, so that when the Rover sends back a photo, you might be able to compare them, for example?

MITCH SCHULTE: Well, so mythology is only one clue that we use to determine whether something is evidence of life on a rock record. In this particular case, one of the big clues, though, is how they visually look. A lot of times, people see these in two dimensions, and they're not convinced by the biogenicity any of these things. And so really getting out into the field to see them in three dimensions to study the rocks and what the rocks tell us about the environments is also very key to really helping us decide that these are evidence of life.

IRA FLATOW: So what are the conditions on Mars in which a Martian stromatolite would have grown? Same as Earth?

MITCH SCHULTE: Well, we think so. There are a variety of environments here on Earth where we see stromatolites forming today and where we see in the rock record, again, the environments being told from the story of the rocks. And so we think that similar kinds of conditions would have existed on Mars. So for example, we see stromatolites forming today in hot spring environments. And we see evidence on the surface of Mars that there may have been hot springs in its ancient past.

We also see a lot of stromatolites forming in lacustrine, our very shallow marine kinds of environments. And we interpret those from the rock record for these ancient rocks, and we think, especially where Mars 2020 is going to land, that there was an ancient lake environment where the Rover will be landing.

IRA FLATOW: That is cool. Katie, the 2020 Mars 2020 mission is designed also to look for a few different signatures of life, not just stromatolites, right?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: That's right. So Mars 2020 is headed to a place called Jezero Crater. It's an ancient crater on Mars. And what's really exciting about the comparison between the rocks in Jezero and the rocks in Australia is that we're talking about rocks of about the same age or even older on Mars. And so the kind of life that we're seeing in the rocks preserved in Australia may very well be similar to the type of sign of life that we could expect to find in Jezero Crater on Mars with 2020.

IRA FLATOW: Well, let's talk about- we've had rovers on Mars for a long, long time now. How is this mission different from all the other rovers, Katie?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: Yeah, so Mitch talked a little bit about how the shape of the rocks and the shape of the stromatolites is only one way you can identify a potential biosignature. The Mars 2020 Rover has, as part of its instrument payload, a series of instruments that can not only take images of the rocks, but also map out their composition and whether they have organics in them.

And that's really exciting in terms of building a case for a biosignature. It's not just what you see, but also what the rocks are made of and whether they have organics.

IRA FLATOW: OK, let's say you find stromatolites. Any way to get them back to Earth? You've now found some valuable information, right?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: Yep, well, Mars 2020 is the first mission in a potential series of missions whose objectives is to bring Mars samples back to Earth. And so our job with Mars 2020 is to find the best possible samples we can in Jezero Crater and cache them and collect them on the surface for a possible future mission to go pick them up.

IRA FLATOW: And so are you saying that you can positively identify a stromatolites with the equipment that you have on the Rover?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: We can make a really good case for one. But we're not going to be able to positively identify the signs of life likely until we get those samples home if we get them home.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Mitch, how are you going to know how old the Martian stromatolite fossils are if you find them?

MITCH SCHULTE: Well, there are a variety of ways of doing that. One of the things that we see here in Australia is that there are different kinds of rocks in which these microfossils are encased. And there are minerals in those that can be radiometrically dated. The other way that we can do that is look at layers above and below where the microfossils exist, and we can often date those kinds of minerals as well.

So on Mars, what we'll try to do is collect some rocks that contain these kinds of minerals that we can radiometrically date so we can actually try and pin down the dates of those microfossils if they exist.

IRA FLATOW: All right, Katie, what about the recent detection of methane on Mars? Does that make you feel like you might find stromatolites or any forms of other kinds of former life?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: Well, the methane detection by the Curiosity Rover in Gale Crater is very exciting from an astrobiological perspective. We don't quite know exactly why we're seeing that signal on the timescales that we are in Gale, but I think it does increase our excitement about the chances of finding life, and for us on Mars 2020, ancient life on the surface of Mars.

IRA FLATOW: Is it basically thought amongst scientists, geologists who now work on Mars that it's a given there might have been life on Mars one time or another, given that all the water and the evidence of water there has been, Mitch?

MITCH SCHULTE: Yeah, so that's really one of the reasons that we are excited about Mars, is because we do see this evidence on Mars' surface that there was water in Mars' past. And knowing that Mars and Earth are sort of similar geologically, some of the kinds of environments that we think existed on Mars long ago are the kinds of environments that we see this evidence preserved here on Earth. So it is very exciting, and the possibility we think is there that life could have started on Mars as well.

IRA FLATOW: How far is this Rover going to rove around? How many days? What is the length? Is this a three hour tour? I mean, what are we talking about here?

MITCH SCHULTE: So the prime mission is currently for one Mars year, which is about two Earth years. So and that has the capability to traverse about 20 kilometers. We've seen from our previous rovers that they're capable of doing better than that, but that the mission design is for 20 kilometers, so that gives us a lot of range to be able to do that. And having the mission be for one Mars year gives us a lot of time.

IRA FLATOW: And are you putting the Rover down in a spot that you think is most likely to find evidence of life?

MITCH SCHULTE: Yeah, that's the idea. And so selecting the landing site was a process that involved the entire science community. So we had a series of workshops to define what would be the best place to send the Rover. And so through this series of workshops and then making the decision at NASA headquarters, we've chosen Jezero Crater, partly because we see evidence of a river coming into what was once a lake that filled this crater that Katie talked about. And so we see various types of minerals in from orbital data that also indicate that there were environments that would've been conducive to hosting life at least.

IRA FLATOW: How did it go out on the field there, Mitch, this week in Australia?

MITCH SCHULTE: It was really great. So as you mentioned, we had both the Mars 2020 and the ExoMars 2020 Rover teams here. And there was a lot of great collaboration and great cross talk. And I think it really opened people's eyes to see these rocks firsthand, because you read about these. If you're a geologist like I am, this is one of those bucket list places you have to go to see some of the oldest evidence of life on Earth. And I think the scientists were really excited to come here and see these rocks for themselves. So it's been a really great week.

IRA FLATOW: Do you have a bunch- Katie, is there a cavalcade of instruments on board this Rover? I mean, what kinds of instruments will it have?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: Yes, there are. We have a bunch of new instruments and some updated instruments from the Curiosity Rover. So we have improved cameras. We have some geochemistry instruments, as well as the mapping instruments I talked about. We also have the ability to see into the subsurface with our radar instrument. And we have a technology demonstration to produce oxygen from CO2 in the Martian atmosphere.

IRA FLATOW: All right, let me back that up again. You're going to make oxygen out of the CO2?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: That's right.

IRA FLATOW: And is that a demonstration of possibly inhabitation and making your own oxygen?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: Well, it's a technology demonstration thinking about the future of humans to Mars, so preparing for that. So of course, if we were to send humans to Mars, we would need oxygen both to breathe, but also particularly for the fuel to get those astronauts home. And so we're demonstrating that technology on the surface of Mars with this mission and are excited to see us do that on the surface of Mars.

IRA FLATOW: What kind of fuel would you make out of the CO2?

KATIE STACK MORGAN: So it would be oxygen, oxygen based fuel.

IRA FLATOW: Such as hydrazine or something? I'm just guessing.

KATIE STACK MORGAN: I'm not- I think that's a pretty good guess.

IRA FLATOW: [LAUGHS] Mitch, do you have any thoughts about that?

MITCH SCHULTE: Yeah, so the oxygen, of course, in order to burn things, you need an oxidant. And so oxygen is a really powerful oxidant. So we would combine the oxygen with some other fuel source, such as- and so for the rockets that go to Mars, they typically burn either hot liquid hydrogen or kerosene. That's the reduced form of the fuel. And then you need an oxidant to burn it. So in order to get the people off the surface, you'd have to have some reduced form of fuel, but making the oxygen would be a really great step to be able to get them off the ground.

IRA FLATOW: All right. We're going to watch this very closely, and thank you for giving us a heads up on this mission. Mitch Schulte, Mars 2020 program scientist with NASA. Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for the Mars 2020 mission. Thank you, both, for taking time to be with us today.

We're going to take a break. When we come back-

MITCH SCHULTE: Thanks, Ira.

IRA FLATOW: You're welcome. We're going to talk about using land in making a climate change maybe from worse to better. There's a way to turn around climate change using the soil. We're going to talk about it after this break. Stay with us.

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Looking To Earth's Primordial Past For Signs Of Past Life On Mars

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Segment Transcript IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Later in the hour, we'll be discussing how land and soil can be used to both hurt or help the environment. But first, NASA's Mars 2020 mission is now just around the corner.

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I was interested in this podcast because it explained that businesses and loss of trees in the Amazon can have a huge impact on our environment and if we lose lose the Amazon we will be losing a vital piece of the fight against climate change. The Amazon is responsible for taking bad carbon out of the atmosphere also, giving back oxygen into the atmosphere. One interesting fact that I learned is that the record number of fires since last year -2018- has increased by 83%. An estimated 9,500 fires has covered over cities such as São Paulo due to the tragic amount of trees lost since last week. The main cause of this would be because of cattle ranchers and loggers looking to clear the land for their own use. Researchers suspect that it is all human caused and that President Jair Bolsonaro has something to do with it because of his campaign promise to explore the Amazons economic potential.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/amazon-rainforest-fire/
- The smoke of the fires in several states within Brazil.

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Food Failures: The Scoop On Perfecting Your Ice Cream And Frozen Desserts

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Food Failures: The Scoop On Perfecting Your Ice Cream And Frozen Desserts

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This podcast was mainly about different ways you can perfect making ice cream and the complications of making it chemically.
This indicates that it can be extremely hard to make ice cream, especially the freezing process.
The freezing process is probably the most difficult part of the whole process because depending on the amount of egg whites you use in your ice cream (or gelatin for vegans) it has to freeze for a certain amount of time.
An interesting fact that I learned from this podcast was that the reason ice cream crystalizes is because of water. Depending on how frozen your ice cream is, water can cause it to crystalize due to the water molecules in the ice cream.

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Segment Transcript

MOLLY WEBSTER: This is Science Friday. I'm Molly Webster. Ira Flatow is away. Later in the hour, we'll be talking about how online communication has changed the way we write. It's a topic of a new book, Because Internet.

But first, summer means it's time for ice cream. Have you ever had one favorite flavor you keep ordering, and then you thought to yourself, you know what? I could probably make this. Admittedly, I've never had that thought. But if you were the person that had that thought, you got home, you mixed all the ingredients together, and then you kind of got, like, a frozen vanilla ice cube or a chocolate chunk that was just like a chunk of chocolate.

Ice cream and all frozen desserts are not just delicious, they're very complicated chemically. They're a mix of ice crystals, and emulsifiers, and a lot of air bubbles. So my next guests are here to tell us about the science behind these frozen treats and to help you get the perfect homemade scoop each time.

So I would like to welcome to the table Matt Hartings, a professor of chemistry at American University in Washington, DC. He's a home ice cream maker and author of the book, Chemistry in Your Kitchen. And Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream based here in New York.

And if you have had a frozen dessert fail, we want to hear from you. What are your science questions about getting the perfect ice cream or frozen custard? You can give us a call. Our number is 844-724-8255. That's 844-SCI-TALK. Or tweet us at @scifri.

So Matt, I'm going to start with you down there in DC. You call ice cream a mesh network, something I've never heard ice cream described as before. What do you mean by that, and what do you mean by that scientifically speaking?

MATT HARTINGS: Right. Well, think about just a sponge, right? And when a sponge is dry, right, it's sort of dry and crumply. But when you put it in water, it soaks all that water up. And it's squishy, and it has a completely different texture. And not only does the sponge change in texture, but the water changes in texture, too, right? You go from liquid water that sloshes around, and now it's stuck inside of that sponge.

And that's kind of what ice cream is, is we kind of want to stick that water into place and keep it from moving around so much. And it makes a really nice, smooth, rich taste on your tongue.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Matt, at what point did you start thinking about ice cream scientifically?

MATT HARTINGS: [LAUGHS] Well, it's one of the burdens of being a chemist, right, is I'm always thinking about things scientifically. Probably when I really started making my own ice cream, when I wanted to start doing it better. Again, I think of things in terms of science. And so when I started making ice cream and wanted to do better, my immediate thing was to start thinking a little bit more about what was happening. And that helped me a lot.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Hm. So Ben, what's the difference between- this is really my question- is what is the difference between ice cream soft serve and frozen custard? Because when I go to the ice cream truck, it definitely doesn't taste like ice cream I get out of my freezer.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: So frozen custard and soft serve would be ice cream. Soft serve tends to be lower in fat and highly stabilized, meaning there's a lot of gums and sometimes natural, sometimes unnatural compounds that are used. And the reason you need to do that with soft serve is because it's a sort of on-demand frozen product. It's constantly spinning around in this partially frozen barrel.

And if you don't have a lot of stabilizers in there, the fat's actually going to churn out, and you're going to get butter. So the only way to really do soft serve well is if you have really high velocity, if a lot of it's coming out and you're selling a lot of it. So we actually tried to do soft serve years ago, but it didn't work because we weren't selling enough. So it just sat in the barrel and overchurned.

And frozen custard is defined, at least by the New York State Department of Agriculture, as having more than 1.3% egg yolks. So if you have more than that in your product, you have to either call it frozen custard or French ice cream. Our ice cream, depending on the flavor, is 5% to 8% organic egg yolks. So we call it French ice cream.

And then ice cream is the sort of definition of all of those things, including people often ask me what the difference between gelato and ice cream is. And gelato means ice cream in Italian. You can make it in all sorts of different ways.

MOLLY WEBSTER: [LAUGHS] Matt, I think this has been a controversial statement on your end, something about ice cream and gelato- are they different? Are they the same? Is it just the Italians being awesome?

MATT HARTINGS: [LAUGHS] Well, the Italians are awesome, and gelato is awesome. And I think there's a lot of bickering back and forth between people who make this. But I think the biggest difference between ice cream and gelato is the temperature that you serve it at, all right? So gelato is served at a higher temperature than ice cream is. And so you can make it differently.

But I have seen recipes from Italian cookbooks that look just like ice cream recipes. And I have seen recipes from non-Italian cookbooks for ice cream that look just like gelato. So really, the biggest difference is the temperature that you serve it at. And that temperature difference gives you a little leeway in what you can do with bringing out flavors and making something creamy, or smooth, or whatever you're looking for.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: And the only way you can serve it at a higher temperature is if it's pretty stabilized. So if it has a lot of gums- natural ones would be guar gum, carrageenan, locust bean gum. So those sort of old fashioned gelato recipe- or Italian ice cream recipes we can call them that Matt was referring to, which is it's such a good point. They'll have more egg yolks than any recipe you've ever seen and a super high butter fat. Those served at a higher temperature wouldn't work as well because they might collapse without the stabilization.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Hm. So much to know here. So we've been collecting listener questions all week through our VoxPop app. And so here's one on crystallization from Ronnie in Pennsylvania.

RONNIE: Why does ice cream sometimes crystallize?

MOLLY WEBSTER: Pretty cut and dry. Ben, do you want to start with that one?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Sure. So the crystallization you're tasting is usually going to be from water freezing. And the bigger the ice crystals are in the frozen water, the more detectable they'll be on your palate. The way you prevent that sort of ice crystally taste is by freezing the ice cream really, really quickly.

So the example I always use is if it's snowing on a warm day, the snowflakes are really big because it takes them a long time to turn from water to solid to ice. So the crystals sort of slowly build and become very large. If they rapidly cool on a freezing cold day, the snowflakes are super small. And the same thing happens with ice cream.

So in the production facility we use- and it would be the same for a home ice cream maker- when you spin the ice cream from your mix, your sort of liquid base, into a soft serve consistency, after that, you want to do what's called hardening, and you put it into a freezer. And the faster you harden it, the smaller the ice crystals are going to be.

But the crystallization you're tasting at home is usually happening with the failure in what's called a cold chain, which is like a supply chain that's cold. So if your ice cream is being delivered to the local grocery store, and the delivery trucks arrive and puts the pallet of ice cream onto the loading dock, and it sits in 90 degree heat for even 20 minutes, it might melt. And then when it re-freezes, it's going to freeze really slowly. And you're going to get some ice crystals.

MOLLY WEBSTER: And you get that weird, like, film on the top that's, like, ice crystally?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Yeah, exactly.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Matt, what would you say to Ronnie?

MATT HARTINGS: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, a lot of times, when, again, as a chemist, I think of molecules moving around all the time, right? And so the warmer things are, the faster things move around. And so those water molecules are still moving around in your ice cream when they warm up just a little bit.

And so those water molecules can go from liquidy water, and they move around a bunch, and then they find an ice crystal to stick to. And it just gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And so you can stop that motion by freezing it down really quickly.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Ben, when you're making ice cream, is there a magic frozen point that you're going for or a speed in which you want to freeze it by?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Well, you want to freeze it as quickly as possible.

MOLLY WEBSTER: But is that seconds, or minutes, or hours?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Hours. So theoretically, the faster you do it, the smoother it's going to be. But there's sort of a point where the value, you kind of top out at how much better it's going to taste. So one example is some ice cream makers are using liquid nitrogen to freeze the ice cream. And theoretically, it makes it creamier, but to me, you're going to be able to achieve the same creaminess with a really good formula.

But exact time- so we like to pull our ice cream out of the ice cream making machine at around 21 degrees, which is fairly low. And then we put it in what's called the hardening freezer. And depending on the size of container we're putting it in, it takes anywhere from four hours to 24 hours to harden.

Because our ice cream is so high in fat- we're 18% butter fat- and super high in egg yolks, we can take longer to harden it and still get a really awesome texture. If we were a super low fat ice cream, you would have to harden it really, really rapidly and put it through what's called a hardening tunnel.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Mm. Matt, I think you're actually one of those people that experiment with liquid nitrogen.

MATT HARTINGS: I am.

MOLLY WEBSTER: And I was going to ask you anyway, I don't know a ton about how all this stuff folds together, so what does an egg actually do in ice cream?

MATT HARTINGS: Right, so this gets back to that mesh I was talking about earlier, right? When you make any kind of custard, all right, whether it's creme brulée, or ice cream, or scrambled eggs, you're taking the coiled up proteins in that egg, and as you heat them, they sort of unravel and start to stick together. And that's where they make this mesh, right? This sort of network inside of your whatever liquid it is you're cooking.

And so that's really what's going on with those eggs, is you really want them to sort of set up into a custard. And in effect, that's what helps to slow the water molecules down as you're freezing it, so that they can't find one another. They have a hard time finding one another. Because they keep running into these little pockets of egg protein.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Hm. Ben, I think your ice cream has a lot of eggs in it. It's something like five times the usual amount. Can you talk about that?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: So, as Matt just described, using tons of eggs combats the potential iciness. But when we formulated our ice cream- we started 12 years ago- we actually had a basic understanding of that. But the reason we used more eggs is because we like the taste more. And so using a ton of egg yolks gives it this amazing chewiness that we've not been able to achieve without using a lot of egg yolks. And we really, really love that.

MATT HARTINGS: It's such a good flavor. It really is.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Yeah.

MOLLY WEBSTER: That's great. So we're here talking about ice cream. After the break, we'll be talking more about the science behind ice cream and taking your questions. So call us, stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I'm Molly Webster. We're talking this hour about the science of ice cream and other frozen desserts. My guests are Matt Hartings, a professor of chemistry at American University in Washington, DC, and author of the book Chemistry in Your Kitchen, and Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream here in New York.

And if you've had a frozen dessert fail and have questions, we want to hear from you. Give us a call. Our number is 844-724-8255. That's 844-SCI-TALK. Or tweet us at @scifri. Matt, before we went to the break, we were talking about eggs, using eggs in ice cream. Are there alternatives that we can use in ice cream?

MATT HARTINGS: Yeah, absolutely. And Ben, I was looking at all your recipes earlier before I came in. And I'm curious at how close in texture your vegan options are, right? There's lots of different options that you can use for stabilizers. Many of them come from different plants. Corn starch is one of them. And I believe Ben uses locust bean gum. So you have a lot of options, right? Gelatin is another one. Lots of different options that you can find in your regular grocery store for replacing egg.

MOLLY WEBSTER: So it's great that you actually brought up all the different types of flavors of Ben's ice cream because we happen to have a box here in the studio.

MATT HARTINGS: Oh, I hate you people.

MOLLY WEBSTER: And Matt, I'm very sorry we couldn't ship any to you down in DC. We should have said the bring your own bowl should have been a requirement. So I'm opening something now. It's beautiful. It's called Earl Grey. This is my first cooking demonstration ever. I'm tasting it. And then Ben, you're going to tell me a little bit about how you make Earl Gray happen. Maybe you can say that while I'm eating it.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: So the Earl Grey is a dairy flavor. So we start with milk, cream, sugar, and organic egg yolks, and we heat that up in a big 200 gallon kettle. And then we use mesh nylon bags and fill them with an amazing organic black tea with bergamot citrus oil, which is what makes it Earl Grey from Rishi Tea. And we steep that tea as we're cooking the custard. And we pull the teabags out, we homogenize it, we cool it, and then we put it through the ice cream freezer.

MOLLY WEBSTER: So you actually cook it- like, you steep the tea in the mess of the making it, like in the middle of everything?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Yeah, in the big custard making cauldron.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Mm. And Earl Grey, I mean, it is like a very pungent flavor as a tea. But you do have to steep it for a long time. How do you get a subtle flavor like that to actually come through in ice cream and not get drowned in eggs?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: So we slightly oversteep it. We don't oversteep it to a point where you're getting too many tannins. But we steep it more, and we use more per volume than if you were just making a cup of tea. Because as you pointed out, there's 8% egg yolks, 18% butter fat, really muting a lot of the flavors.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Yeah. Matt, now that we're talking about flavors, I just wonder once you start mixing flavor into the chemistry, how that affects things, or if there are flavors that are really hard to do.

MATT HARTINGS: Right. So one of the things that you need to think about when you're making ice cream is that it's cold, right? The ice cream is cold, and that low temperature really affects how you taste the flavors, right? And so they're not as strong when we taste them cold. So one of the reasons why Ben can oversteep is because those flavors don't come through as strong when we're eating cold ice cream versus a hot tea. And so sometimes you need to over flavor to really have something that you're going to get on your palate.

Another thing is it's fun to play with different flavor combinations, right? And there are all sorts of things that you can do, all sorts of crazy things that you can try. And I love the idea of playing around with flavors and finding new things that no one's ever thought of before.

MOLLY WEBSTER: So we're going to bring in a caller who has a flavor question. This is Deborah from Ohio. Deborah from Ohio, do you want to tell us what your question is?

DEBORAH: Yes, my question is I make a custard with egg, and cream, and all the good stuff- Madagascar vanilla, et cetera. My problem is that-

MOLLY WEBSTER: You're doing it.

DEBORAH: -I like to fold in fresh fruit. I use the old fashioned ice cream freezer. But my problem is when I'm hardening the ice cream, my chunks of fruit seem harder than the ice cream around it.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: So yeah, 100%. And if you're using fresh fruit, it's going to be impossible to avoid that. I mean, Matt probably has even more data on percentages, but the fruit is going to get really icy because of the water and sort of the lack of sugar in it. So what you could do is you could lightly compote the fruit. But really, what works even better is sort of macerating it with a lot of sugar, cooking it a little bit to get the water out, and then you're going to get a sort of smooth texture on the fruit, instead of a hard, icy texture.

MOLLY WEBSTER: And Matt, what would you say in your data driven-

MATT HARTINGS: Absolutely. I would echo what Ben said. That is exactly what you want to do, is you want to pull some of the water out of the fresh fruit. And it's sad because you want that flavor of fresh fruit, and when you macerate it, you lose that a little bit. But it's the playoff you have to take when you're trying to make ice cream.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: What I would do on that is do the vanilla ice cream, and then just put the fresh fruit on top. So then you're getting the perfect texture on the fresh fruit and the perfect vanilla.

MOLLY WEBSTER: I feel like this is a good segue way for me to have more ice cream, which is the Cookie Crumble Strawberry Jam. We were talking about fruit, so it felt appropriate. While I'm sampling this, Ben, you said that strawberry might have been one of your hardest flavors to make good.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Strawberry was a really hard flavor to master. We were adding strawberries, which is increasing the overall volume of the mix. But you're adding no fat, so the fat drops. And I'm not sure why it took us so long to get to this point, but five years in, we said we shouldn't be using any milk in this product. In order to as much strawberry taste as we wanted, we had to add so many strawberries that the butter fat would come down. So now we use only cream, strawberries, and sugar.

And the lady who just called in from Ohio, if you want to do a fruit flavored ice cream, better to incorporate the fruit fully, and then you have sort of complete control over your fat and sugar level of the entire mix because it's uniform. So you can get the fruit flavor. And for us, because we're not using stabilizers, we always want to stay above 16% butter fat and around 12% sugar.

MOLLY WEBSTER: And this strawberry ice cream I just ate is vegan.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: Yes, so-

MOLLY WEBSTER: Tell us about how challenging it is to make vegan ice cream or not, I guess.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: I mean for us, it's pretty easy. We started making vegan ice cream seven years ago, which was five years into our business. And the goal was to make delicious ice cream that happened to be vegan, not delicious vegan ice cream. So we tried to match the solids, fat, and sugar levels to our classic ice cream. All of the ingredients behave differently, so we had to tweak it.

But we're making the vegan ice cream with cashew milk, coconut milk, raw cocoa butter, which is the fat from chocolate, organic coconut oil, and a little bit of locust bean gum, or we call it carob gum, which is an organic stabilizer. And we use that not as a way to make it creamier, but a way to sort of give it more body, because we're not using eggs in the vegan.

MOLLY WEBSTER: We're going to take a call from Jordan in Phoenix, Arizona. Jordan, what's your question?

JORDAN: Is it possible to overturn sorbet? And if so, how can you do it?

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: No. If it's a fat free sorbet, it's impossible. And no sorbets I've ever seen have dairy in them, so yeah, impossible.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Matt, for someone who cooks at home- I know that you do this- talk to me about getting ingredients from stores. Are you just looking at the ingredients you're throwing into the bowl, or are you paying attention to what's in those ingredients?

MATT HARTINGS: Right. So that's a great question. And Ben alluded to this just a minute ago, when he started talking about making vegan ice cream. Right? So I have a little thing up online with Science Friday talking about how I look at changing ice cream recipes. And you want to try to get your fats the same, and your proteins, your thickeners the same, your sugar amounts the same. And so really paying attention to what's on the nutritional labels is a great way to start with understanding how to change a recipe.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Hm. Interesting. OK, one more call, Dustin from Salt Lake City.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Dustin, what's your call?

DUSTIN: Hi, I have a question about sugar and corn syrup. I've made ice cream from recipes in America's Test Kitchen cookbooks, and they suggest using part corn syrup to make it smoother. And I want to know how the chemistry works behind that.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Matt, do you want to lead?

MATT HARTINGS: Yeah, so corn syrup has a lot of fructose or invert sugar in it. And so that doesn't crystallize as much in terms of the sugar crystallizing out. But it also prevents, in general, the ice cream from crystallizing as well. And so you can dampen that a little bit. I haven't used that just because the recipes that I use, I don't see much crystallization from the regular sugar. But that is definitely one way to try to get its smoothness.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Ben, any final thoughts? You're nodding.

BEN VAN LEEUWEN: I just don't think it's necessary for home use. If you're going through temperature shock, that can help, but when you're making a few pints of ice cream at home, I don't think it's necessary to use the corn syrup. Because it's harder to find, and it's certainly harder to find an organic version of, too.

MOLLY WEBSTER: All right. Thank you so much. I would like to thank my guests and thank everyone for the ice cream. It was awesome. So we have Ben Van Leeuwen, co-founder of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream based here in New York. And Matt Hardings is a professor of chemistry at American University and author of the book Chemistry in Your Kitchen. And Matt wrote up an article about chemistry tips for perfecting your ice cream. You can read it on our website at ScienceFriday.com/icecream.
Copyright © 2019 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday's programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

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Food Failures: The Scoop On Perfecting Your Ice Cream And Frozen Desserts

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Segment Transcript MOLLY WEBSTER: This is Science Friday. I'm Molly Webster. Ira Flatow is away. Later in the hour, we'll be talking about how online communication has changed the way we write. It's a topic of a new book, Because Internet. But first, summer means it's time for ice cream.

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Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.
Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying to find life of Mars? Stat with the Australian Outback. 

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Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.
Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying To Find Life On Mars? Start In The Australian Outback.

Trying to find life of Mars? Stat with the Australian Outback. 

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One interesting fact I learned was that jezero crater, which is millions of years old ATLEAST, is as old as some rocks found in The western Australian Outback. It’s believed that the same stromatolite that is in The Australian out back is also on mars! Crazy huh?! The Mars 2020 project has rovers that can scan for organics in the rocks. So if the world ends anytime soon we have a fail safe! Haha just kidding, you get the point! https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/mars-life-australia/

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Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Later in the hour, do you know what's in your sunscreen, and that it moves from your skin into your blood? We'll talk about that. But first, the Amazon rainforest is often called the planet's lungs. In the process of growing and breathing, its trees suck up a quarter of the Earth's carbon and produce a fifth of the world's oxygen.

So new data from the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil is of great concern. Researchers monitoring satellite images of Amazon tree cover found an alarming spike in the Amazon's deforestation. In the first seven months of 2019, the rainforest lost 50% more trees than during the same time last year.

That spike in tree loss coincides with Brazil's new president, [INAUDIBLE] Jair Bolsonaro, taking office. And since January, he's slashed environmental productions and has reportedly called the new deforestation data a lie. But climate scientists warn deforestation is pushing the Amazon rainforest to a tipping point that would disrupt both its ecosystem and the global climate. Dr. Carlos Nobre is a climate scientist at the University of Sao Paulo's Institute of Advanced Studies. He joins us via Skype. Welcome to Science Friday.

CARLOS NOBRE: Thank you very much.

IRA FLATOW: So put this in perspective, would you? How alarming are these new numbers on deforestation?

CARLOS NOBRE: The numbers are very worrying because Brazil, with most of the other Amazonian countries, for about 10 years, from 2004 to 2012, 2013, they were declining, over 70% deforestational rates. They were really moving towards almost a zero deforestation. And still, the production of agricultural products were increasing. So deforestation has nothing to do with agricultural production. So everybody was happy.

But after 2014, deforestational rates started to climb back again. And this year, the last 12 months, have seen a spike, have seen a surge, a very troublesome serge. Very likely the last 12 months, we will see increase of 40% to 50% in deforestational rates in Brazil. Also, deforestational rates in Colombia are increasing.

So this is a sign that we might be closer to the tipping point for the Amazon. If we deforest more than 25% of the forest in the Amazon basin, we might really ruin the Amazon forest with the move to a new system in which it becomes irreversible to maintain the forest, over 56% of the basin.

IRA FLATOW: And now this spike in deforestation has happened under Brazil's new president, Jair Bolsonaro. Does he understand this, that this is a danger?

CARLOS NOBRE: I'm not sure the current president and his mostly- the ministers associated, particularly the Minister of Environment, have a full understanding of the risks that Brazil and the Amazon countries are under. Because you see the Amazon forest provides a lot of ecosystem service, for instance, recycling water vapor and increasing rainfall, keeping temperatures 2, 3 degrees cooler than without the forest.

So these are all benefits, even for agricultural production south of the Amazon. And solely for the forest, it disappears. The life, the agricultural, the life of the people will be much worse without the forest. So I don't think the president and his Minister of Agriculture understand the full consequences of continuing to deforest the Amazon. I think that their policies are aimed at the very short term gains in pushing the agricultural frontier, cattle, farms, and also soy plantations, into the Amazon.

IRA FLATOW: So is it all about the money then?

CARLOS NOBRE: It's about short term gains. It's about, really, seeing opportunities to increase production of those agricultural goods. But this is very short term because without the Amazon forest, even the productivity of cattle farms or crops will be diminished up to the point that you might not have suitable agricultural crop lands or grazing lands for cattle in the near future, and lasted 20, 30 years.

IRA FLATOW: And what about the indigenous communities and their land in the Amazon? What are his policies on their rights?

CARLOS NOBRE: Actually even when he was a House member for 28 years- the president was a House member- for a long time, he has defended the idea that the indigenous lands are too large in extent. They should not be demarcated anymore. And also now as the president, he's tried to convert indigenous cultures into a different culture, into, let's say, our culture- farmers, cattle ranchers.

But that really goes very much against the cultural inheritance of these more than 300 different indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon. They want to keep their culture, which is a steady force culture, which is not only good for them, for their culture, but it's also very important for the maintenance of climate stability for the planet. If the Amazon forest disappears, we will almost impossible to reach the targets of the Paris Agreement to keep the temperature of the planet less than 2 degrees warmer.

IRA FLATOW: Well, is there going to be a tipping point in the rainforest where that happens?

CARLOS NOBRE: A lot of scientific studies- and I've been involved in those studies for almost 30 years- they indicated that if we exceeded 20% to 25% of deforestation in the whole Amazon, or if we keep global warming unchecked and that the temperature in the Amazon region increased 4 degrees Celsius, we might really exceed and tip this balance and to transform 50%, 60%, up to 70% of the forest into a degraded savanna, with much less carbon, with much less biodiversity.

So we are now currently at total deforestation is about 50%, 60% in the basin. And the Amazon is about 1.5 degrees warmer. So if we continue the deforestation rates as they are in the last few years, the tipping point will be exceeded, reached in something like 20 years.

IRA FLATOW: And do you find anything, besides President Bolsonaro, in your way or in the way of making sure that doesn't happen?

CARLOS NOBRE: Well, we hope that he will listen to the voices of the people, of the Brazilian people, the Amazonian people. Because all polls conducted in the last 20 years, including polls conducted after he was elected, 90% of the Brazilians are against Amazon deforestation. So we hope democracy will have the last word. Every Brazilian, almost all Brazilians, nine out of 10, are against Amazon deforestation. So I hope eventually democracy will prevail, and he will listen to the voice of the people, including his electors, his voters, also against Amazon deforestation.

IRA FLATOW: Well, let's talk about it. If the rainforest does become a savanna, what does happen to the global climate?

CARLOS NOBRE: Well, initially, there will be over the course of this transition, which might take between 30 and 50 years, a tremendous loss of carbon. The forest stores a lot of carbon underground, in the trunks, branches, et cetera. It's a lot of carbon. It's about 120 to 150 pounds of carbon per hectare. There are 10,000 square meters.

A degraded savanna that might replace the forest is store something like 30 to 40. So we lose 70 to 80 tons of carbon per hectare that will end up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, again, complicating the global climate crisis. So if all this carbon ends up in the atmosphere, keeping, meeting the targets of the Paris Accord will become much, much less difficult, perhaps even impossible. So this is a very important fact.

And also degraded savannas contain much less biodiversity. So we are talking about extinction of tens of thousands of species that exist only in the tropical forest. And the last but not less important, is the fact that perhaps one million people living in indigenous lands with their culture or their forest culture might be at the risk of losing the forest.

IRA FLATOW: Are you hopeful about this? It seems very scary.

CARLOS NOBRE: Well, I'm hopeful that first, of course, Brazil and all other Amazonian countries that are democracies, so people go out and vote. So I hope because this issue became so urgent, so critical with the increase in deforestational rates in the last few years, particularly in the last 12 months, that the voice of the people will be heard by all politicians, not only Brazil, but all Amazonian cultures, and that they will eventually start thinking harder and find ways of developing our countries without deforestation.

IRA FLATOW: All right, we have to leave it there. And we hope we share your optimism. Dr. Carlos Nobre, climate scientist at the University of Sao Paulo's Institute of Advanced Studies.
Copyright © 2019 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday's programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

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Where The Amazon Rainforest Stands In 2019

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Segment Transcript IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Later in the hour, do you know what's in your sunscreen, and that it moves from your skin into your blood? We'll talk about that. But first, the Amazon rainforest is often called the planet's lungs.

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Our Ancient Obsession With Capturing the Moon

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Our Ancient Obsession With Capturing the Moon

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https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/moon-art-history/

My article is about our ancient obsession with the moon.  Since the beginning of time with wondering about the mystery of space but we’ve also wondering about one specific thing, the moon. The moon enforces gravity and pushes and pulls the tides.  It’s one of the many wonders of the world that we’ve seeked answers about since ancient times.
One of the very first movies was about the moon, it was extremely inaccurate,  but about the moon none the less.  Galileo and 1609 made his own conception of what the moon was like after looking through a telescope. Since then people at the side of the moon as a perfect, unblemished orb.  Until scientist proved them wrong of course.  The moon helped understand when to harvest, plant crops, etc…  it’s stirred fascination.  This article was interesting to me because the moon influence the imagination of humans and I wanted to know why.

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I chose this podcast because I have heard about the Amazon being on fire for the past couple weeks, and I wanted to learn more about it. Something that was pretty fascinating to me was how there are currently over 70,000 fires happening in the Amazon. The even more bizarre part is that they are suspected to be on purpose. Normally, one would think that it would be crazy to set the worlds biggest forest on fire, right? Apparently not. Cattle ranchers and loggers have been encouraged by Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro. President Bolsonaro built his campaign on how he would better Brazil's economy and explore the Amazon's economic potential. The amazon is responsible for taking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but also returning that with oxygen being put out into the atmosphere. With the forest being on fire, it is constantly sucking away this oxygen, making the fire bigger, but giving back carbon dioxide in return. These fires are reversing what this forest has done for so many years.

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Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazon is burning. The Brazilian rainforest is experiencing a record number of fires this year, an 83% increase over 2018. 70,000 fires. How do you set them that fast? 70,000 have blocked out the sun for thousands of miles, covering cities like Sao Paulo in a dark cloud.

Environmental agencies and researchers suspect the fires have been set by people, cattle ranchers and loggers perhaps who are looking to clear the land to grow cash crops. And they've been encouraged to do so by Brazilian president Bolsonaro, who campaigned on a promise to help Brazil's economy by exploring the Amazon's economic potential.

Joining us to tell us about this unprecedented burning of the Amazon rainforest, as well as other short subjects in science, is Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer for Gizmodo. Welcome back, Ryan.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: It's good to be back, Ira.

IRA FLATOW: Let's talk about the Amazon. What's happening there right now?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: So the Amazon is burning at an alarming rate. We're talking maybe a soccer pitch sized area every few minutes, 82% more fires than last year. This is more extreme, and sort of 2016 was an extreme case.

And as far as we know, it is due to sort of the business because of clearing of the land and Bolsonaro's government. Brazil's new president Bolsonaro is sort of scaling back the enforcement of the illegal burning of the forest. And it is encouraging businesses to then go in and then start clearing what is essentially the lungs of the planet.

IRA FLATOW: Just, it's amazing. It's scary, isn't it?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: I mean, I lose sleep over it. This is as bad as it gets.

IRA FLATOW: And of course this has everything to do with climate change, too. Doesn't it?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: That's right. I mean, the Amazon is responsible for taking carbon out of the atmosphere. It's responsible for putting oxygen back into the atmosphere. And this is the kind of thing that if we lose the Amazon, we're losing a vital piece of the fight against climate change.

IRA FLATOW: I know you love to talk about astrophysics. I know you feel like I do, that you got to talk about the Amazon because it is life on Earth. But let's talk about physics for a little bit. Let's talk about LIGO scientists who are reporting that they have detected what they think is a black hole colliding with a neutron star. Why is that a big deal?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Well, so LIGO's already detected the evidence of two black holes colliding. And that was a huge deal because of the gravitational waves that we found here on Earth. And then shortly after, they discovered two neutron stars colliding, where a neutron star is a dead star about the diameter of a city that's even heavier than the sun.

And so this is completing that trifecta. So we've got two black holes, two neutron stars, and now a black hole and a neutron star. And I mean, it's exciting to see new things. And again, the detection is based on the gravitational waves, and it's more stuff coming from LIGO.

IRA FLATOW: Isn't that fun?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah, it's great. I mean, I like this.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, it's a fun thing to think about. And for people who don't remember what a neutron star is, what is a neutron star?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, so it's a super dense object. It's about, let's say, the same size as like Brooklyn across. But then it's as massive as the sun. So it's just mind boggling to think about these things existing, but it's the corpse of a star that's died.

IRA FLATOW: That's a good way to put it. And there must be many of these going on, and this might be just the first one that-

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah. So there actually has already been a couple of potential detections of this kind of event. And this seems to be one of the strongest ones, but LIGO is now running full steam ahead. So the hope is that we continue to detect these weird kind of events, and then hopefully, one day, actually see if there's a electromagnetic light component to this with our telescopes.

IRA FLATOW: Let's continue on our weird, OK? Because let's go talk about chemists actually creating a different kind of carbon.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Ira, you like graphene, right?

IRA FLATOW: I love it.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: You love graphene. So this is-

IRA FLATOW: I use it every day.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Every day, right. So graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon, which just is- it's just carbon. And diamond is a three-dimensional network of carbon. So now scientists have created and looked up close at a single dimensional ring of carbon. So it's just carbon in a ring, 18 carbon atoms.

And they are using atomic force microscopy, so they use these- it's this microscope with an atomic sized tip. And they make a precursor molecule, and they knock off the scaffolding. And then they have this crazy single dimensional carbon ring.

IRA FLATOW: People don't realize they can make their own graphene with some scotch tape-

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, scotch tape.

IRA FLATOW: -and a pencil.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah. This is just another- this carbon ring is another cool kind of carbon, and it's showing all the weird ways that we can make carbon into these different forms. And then they have these interesting electronic properties. So the hope is maybe these carbon rings will be useful for like a low energy computing.

IRA FLATOW: All right. Let's move on to some more- we have a lot of exciting stuff.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: The NASA's Europa Clipper mission is moving into the final phase. Remind us about what that mission is about. That's exciting also.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, yeah. So Jupiter's moon Europa has potentially a liquid water ocean underneath. And we know thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope that it actually has these plumes of water that it spews into the air over Europa. Now the hope is that if it has a water ocean, well, then maybe there is some sort of biological stuff going on. Maybe there's life down there. And if we had a Clipper, we could fly by Europa and maybe either sample the plumes, look at this moon up close, and look if there's any sign of something interesting going on down there.

IRA FLATOW: Mhm. It seems like the search for life is big out there in the solar system these days.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah, I mean, the Earth is only one way we know that life could be formed. Maybe there's other- I mean, in the bottom of our own ocean, we have such interesting life forms that rely on the sort of chemistry- the chemical potentials in order to live. And maybe that's happening deep in Europa. Who knows?

IRA FLATOW: And because we know there are some really hardy organisms living right here on Earth are impervious to all kinds of insults, maybe they could be out there also, right?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, extremophiles they call them, right? So they live in the salt. They live in the heat. It's awesome.

IRA FLATOW: Great. Thank you, Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer for Gizmodo.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Thanks, Ira. Always good to be here.

IRA FLATOW: Good to have you back.
Copyright © 2019 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday's programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

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Segment Transcript IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazon is burning. The Brazilian rainforest is experiencing a record number of fires this year, an 83% increase over 2018. 70,000 fires. How do you set them that fast?

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I chose this podcast because I have been really interested in hurricane Dorian. One fascinating thing that I found is that the category of a hurricane (1,2,3,4,5) doesn't determine how deadly it can be.  One reason I have been interested in Dorian is because this hurricane is so unpredictable. Meteorologists say Dorian has literally been all over the map. At the start they thought it was a tropical storm, but they also thought it was going to hit Puerto Rico. Thankfully, it didn't hit Puerto Rico because they are still recovering from Hurricane Maria from 2017, making it a deadlier hit for them. As the tracking went on they upgraded it from a tropical storm to a category 1 hurricane. At this time the east coast is expecting a category 4 hurricane to hit. So as you can see this hurricane is messing with everybody's head. They also explain that Dorian is moving a mile per hour, humans on average walk 3 miles per hour. So Dorian is moving very slowly also making it unpredictable. Dorian last hit is still unknown.

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The Trump Administration has announced that they would be rolling back energy efficiency requirements for light bulbs that would be taking effect in 2020. The rules intended to get rid of incandescent and halogen bulbs used in decorative lighting contraptions like electric candles and bathroom vanities. These requirements were set up by the Bush administration, but were only finalized during President Obama's time in office. They wanted America to stop using energy inefficent lighting to save energy.

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The Results Are In From The Distant Asteroid Ryugu- Date : 03/22/2019

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The Results Are In From The Distant Asteroid Ryugu- Date : 03/22/2019

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This podcast was absolutely fascinating if you Love learning about space and asteroids as much as I do I definitely would recommend it! And maybe its the start of us finding out how life came on earth?  https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-results-are-in-from-the-distant-asteroid-ryugu/

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What we know and don’t know about the mysterious vaping illness. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/vaping-illness-death/

This podcast shared a lot about how vaping is affecting our body’s. Over 10 million Americans vape or smoke electronic cigarettes. E-cigarettes are the most popular among teenagers. One patient in Illinois has died from this mysterious illness. There are 193 recorded cases of this illness as of August 30. Symptoms may include difficulty breathing, chest pain, fatigue, vomiting, and some may suffer permanent lung damage. First cases have been reported as of late June. As of treatment steroids may be given to patients with this illness. Using tobacco and vaping together is known to be worse than just vaping. I sure hope people will hear about this illness and stop vaping not only for them self but for others too.

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How Much Worse Can The Measles Outbreak Get?

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How Much Worse Can The Measles Outbreak Get?

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You have probably heard that the measles are back in the United States. The ranks of the unvaccinated have grown and are still growing at a fast rate. First off, I learned that there were up to 4 million cases before and during 1963. That was something that shocked me too see that we have advanced in many ways since the 1900’s. Another thing that I learned was that it took 4 decades, but then by 2000 enough people have become vaccinated that the measles virus was eliminated in the U.S. but soon brought back this year. One in every thousand cases will develop a fatal complication of encephalitis or swelling of the brain. Medical Professionals predict that sooner or later, in the next 20 years someone in the U.S. will die from this disease. I really enjoyed and thought this podcast was interesting by the way it is broken down while being listened to and was being explained.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/

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The Amazing Rainforest is burning! The Brazilian forest  is receiving a record number of fires this year. There has been an 83% increase of fires over 2018. A lot of the fires have created so much smoke that it created dark clouds over cities and completely blocked out the sun! The fires unfortunately started because people wanted to clear the land to grow their crops. The president of Brazil, Bolsonaro, is encouraging businesses to come in and set the forrest on fire to create more space to use. This is really bad because we need the Amazon Rainforest. It is the “lungs of the earth”. Without them, it wouldn’t be good and it definitely would make climate change a lot worse. These fires have gone up 82% than last year. It’s really sad. We must protect the Amazon. It is home to many creatures and it plays an important role on this earth.

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Segment Transcript

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazon is burning. The Brazilian rainforest is experiencing a record number of fires this year, an 83% increase over 2018. 70,000 fires. How do you set them that fast? 70,000 have blocked out the sun for thousands of miles, covering cities like Sao Paulo in a dark cloud.

Environmental agencies and researchers suspect the fires have been set by people, cattle ranchers and loggers perhaps who are looking to clear the land to grow cash crops. And they've been encouraged to do so by Brazilian president Bolsonaro, who campaigned on a promise to help Brazil's economy by exploring the Amazon's economic potential.

Joining us to tell us about this unprecedented burning of the Amazon rainforest, as well as other short subjects in science, is Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer for Gizmodo. Welcome back, Ryan.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: It's good to be back, Ira.

IRA FLATOW: Let's talk about the Amazon. What's happening there right now?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: So the Amazon is burning at an alarming rate. We're talking maybe a soccer pitch sized area every few minutes, 82% more fires than last year. This is more extreme, and sort of 2016 was an extreme case.

And as far as we know, it is due to sort of the business because of clearing of the land and Bolsonaro's government. Brazil's new president Bolsonaro is sort of scaling back the enforcement of the illegal burning of the forest. And it is encouraging businesses to then go in and then start clearing what is essentially the lungs of the planet.

IRA FLATOW: Just, it's amazing. It's scary, isn't it?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: I mean, I lose sleep over it. This is as bad as it gets.

IRA FLATOW: And of course this has everything to do with climate change, too. Doesn't it?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: That's right. I mean, the Amazon is responsible for taking carbon out of the atmosphere. It's responsible for putting oxygen back into the atmosphere. And this is the kind of thing that if we lose the Amazon, we're losing a vital piece of the fight against climate change.

IRA FLATOW: I know you love to talk about astrophysics. I know you feel like I do, that you got to talk about the Amazon because it is life on Earth. But let's talk about physics for a little bit. Let's talk about LIGO scientists who are reporting that they have detected what they think is a black hole colliding with a neutron star. Why is that a big deal?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Well, so LIGO's already detected the evidence of two black holes colliding. And that was a huge deal because of the gravitational waves that we found here on Earth. And then shortly after, they discovered two neutron stars colliding, where a neutron star is a dead star about the diameter of a city that's even heavier than the sun.

And so this is completing that trifecta. So we've got two black holes, two neutron stars, and now a black hole and a neutron star. And I mean, it's exciting to see new things. And again, the detection is based on the gravitational waves, and it's more stuff coming from LIGO.

IRA FLATOW: Isn't that fun?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah, it's great. I mean, I like this.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, it's a fun thing to think about. And for people who don't remember what a neutron star is, what is a neutron star?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, so it's a super dense object. It's about, let's say, the same size as like Brooklyn across. But then it's as massive as the sun. So it's just mind boggling to think about these things existing, but it's the corpse of a star that's died.

IRA FLATOW: That's a good way to put it. And there must be many of these going on, and this might be just the first one that-

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah. So there actually has already been a couple of potential detections of this kind of event. And this seems to be one of the strongest ones, but LIGO is now running full steam ahead. So the hope is that we continue to detect these weird kind of events, and then hopefully, one day, actually see if there's a electromagnetic light component to this with our telescopes.

IRA FLATOW: Let's continue on our weird, OK? Because let's go talk about chemists actually creating a different kind of carbon.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Ira, you like graphene, right?

IRA FLATOW: I love it.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: You love graphene. So this is-

IRA FLATOW: I use it every day.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Every day, right. So graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon, which just is- it's just carbon. And diamond is a three-dimensional network of carbon. So now scientists have created and looked up close at a single dimensional ring of carbon. So it's just carbon in a ring, 18 carbon atoms.

And they are using atomic force microscopy, so they use these- it's this microscope with an atomic sized tip. And they make a precursor molecule, and they knock off the scaffolding. And then they have this crazy single dimensional carbon ring.

IRA FLATOW: People don't realize they can make their own graphene with some scotch tape-

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, scotch tape.

IRA FLATOW: -and a pencil.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah. This is just another- this carbon ring is another cool kind of carbon, and it's showing all the weird ways that we can make carbon into these different forms. And then they have these interesting electronic properties. So the hope is maybe these carbon rings will be useful for like a low energy computing.

IRA FLATOW: All right. Let's move on to some more- we have a lot of exciting stuff.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: The NASA's Europa Clipper mission is moving into the final phase. Remind us about what that mission is about. That's exciting also.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, yeah. So Jupiter's moon Europa has potentially a liquid water ocean underneath. And we know thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope that it actually has these plumes of water that it spews into the air over Europa. Now the hope is that if it has a water ocean, well, then maybe there is some sort of biological stuff going on. Maybe there's life down there. And if we had a Clipper, we could fly by Europa and maybe either sample the plumes, look at this moon up close, and look if there's any sign of something interesting going on down there.

IRA FLATOW: Mhm. It seems like the search for life is big out there in the solar system these days.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Yeah, I mean, the Earth is only one way we know that life could be formed. Maybe there's other- I mean, in the bottom of our own ocean, we have such interesting life forms that rely on the sort of chemistry- the chemical potentials in order to live. And maybe that's happening deep in Europa. Who knows?

IRA FLATOW: And because we know there are some really hardy organisms living right here on Earth are impervious to all kinds of insults, maybe they could be out there also, right?

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Right, extremophiles they call them, right? So they live in the salt. They live in the heat. It's awesome.

IRA FLATOW: Great. Thank you, Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer for Gizmodo.

RYAN MANDELBAUM: Thanks, Ira. Always good to be here.

IRA FLATOW: Good to have you back.
Copyright © 2019 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday's programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

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Segment Transcript IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazon is burning. The Brazilian rainforest is experiencing a record number of fires this year, an 83% increase over 2018. 70,000 fires. How do you set them that fast?

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https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/rats-hide-and-seek/
This podcast shared a lot about social play. For example, how social play is when an animal plays with another animal, when you see these things you get closer to understanding social interactions between people, and how the brain controls social interactions. Another example for how I learned more about social play by listening to this, is based on how the animals, Rats specifically not only cared about the social reward at the end, but would sometimes try to ignore the social reward so that they could continue playing. I learned a whole lot more on Social Play from this podcast, and mainly from these two examples.

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Rethinking Recycling In Philadelphia Suburbs

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Rethinking Recycling In Philadelphia Suburbs

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This podcast that I’ll be talking about will be about China taking 40% of the US taking are Recycables but stopping because of the type of material and saying it needs to be nothing less than 99.5% pure. They’ve been more restrictive for a few months, and then turned it around and started relaxing the standards again. China has been stating that it will be tougher to accept America’s trash. Recycling programs are now having a challenge about finding a way to undo habits. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/rethinking-recycling-in-philadelphia-suburbs/

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Trump draws on a board with a sharpie to indicate where the hurricane is going. He shows that the hurricane is heading towards Alabama. The National Weather Service Office in Birmingham, Alabama tweeted that Alabama is NOT at risk for hurricane Dorian. They are completely safe. Trump did not like that. They got in trouble for making that tweet. Sounds kind of crazy to me. When Trump makes false claims about the weather, that’s really bad. We need people to trust the weather reports for their safety. If people can’t trust the weather reporters, them their lives could possibly be at risk. We need to know accurate weather reports so that we can prepare ourselves for what is to come. In conclusion, Trump cried wolf. If he tells the truth next time and nobody believes him, then lives are at risk. -Julia Kelley

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Segment Transcript

This is Science Friday, I'm Ira Flatow. In the weeks following the National Weather Service contradicting President Trump's prediction about the path of hurricane Dorian, also known as #sharpiegate, there have been reported threats or firings and suppression of science at the agency. Here to fill us in is Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American. Welcome back, Sofie, always good to see you.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Thank you.

IRA FLATOW: So let's talk about this. What happened in the weeks after Dorian? How has that administration and agency handled this?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Well the president and his support staff have doubled down on the idea that Alabama really was at risk from Hurricane Dorian, and then this was contradicted when the National Weather Service office in Birmingham tweeted that Alabama was in no danger. Which makes a lot of sense in terms of preparation, you don't want people making runs on stores or thinking they have to evacuate if there's no danger.

And then the New York Times has recently reported that the Secretary of Commerce then threatened NOAA- the National Weather Service is part of NOAA- and they threatened to fire the political appointees if they didn't issue a corrective to the message. And so as a result, there was an unsigned memo that NOAA released, sort of saying that the Alabama office shouldn't have tweeted out that Alabama wasn't going to be in danger.

IRA FLATOW: So they were really asking politics to triumph over science in this case.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That's correct. And this really kind of points out the danger of a post-truth era, right. Like it's one thing if you're arguing about the size of a crowd, and it's another thing when you're talking about people's lives at risk. I mean, knowing accurately where a hurricane is going to strike, and what areas are in danger, and which areas are not, is really vital to saving people's lives and also to preventing damage.

And if you can't rely on that, and if you so distrust of the Weather Service, that's potentially extremely dangerous.

IRA FLATOW: And so, because for the next time, you may think it's a hoax, also.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Exactly. Exactly. If you can't trust an accurate hurricane forecast, then you're not going to take action in the best possible way.

IRA FLATOW: All right. Let's move on to another story. Another interesting story about a test for PTSD.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes. This one is really interesting, because there still, today, is a lot of stigma around post-traumatic stress disorder. Many people don't, if they're experiencing symptoms, they might not want to admit it or to go seek the treatment they need. So the military obviously has- a lot of soldiers are often exposed to traumatic situations, and they want to have some way of screening for PTSD that wouldn't just rely on people self-reporting.

And so they've investigated. They supported research that has found a potential blood test that could be used to screen for PTSD. So basically, they chose about a million different biomarkers- so biomarkers are just things that could be like heart rate, or proteins, or molecules in the blood- and they compared these biomarkers in two groups of veterans. It was about 150 people, all of them had served overseas and had experienced a potentially traumatic event in battle.

And about half of them had symptoms of PTSD and the other half did not, so by comparing these biomarkers in the two groups, they narrowed down to a list of 28 different biomarkers. So 27 substances in the blood and heart rate, that could be used to differentiate between the groups.

IRA FLATOW: And was it pretty accurate in predicting?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: It was. It was about as accurate as some other screenings. It was about 81% of the time it could distinguish between these groups when they tested it. And the idea is that this wouldn't be- you wouldn't just take this test and be like, oh, I have PTSD, but it would be, oh, this person potentially has PTSD. And it would allow that person to then go into a psychological evaluation or undergo further screening.

IRA FLATOW: It's not quite ready, then, for prime-time.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: No, it's not quite ready yet. First of all, they only tested it in a quite small group, right, like about 150 people initially. And then they tested it on a different smaller group. And the second thing is, it was only men in this group and it was only veterans. So if you wanted to use it in, say, the general population, or in women, you'd want to do a lot more testing. And indeed, the research group does plan to test it further.

IRA FLATOW: Interesting. Let's move on to the Indian Space Organization, Space Research Organization, launched a lunar lander but they sort of lost contact with it, right? You know, it's a sad story.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: It's a little sad, but there's a silver lining. So the lander was supposed to land, it would be the first lander to land near the south pole of the moon. And unfortunately, when it was about two kilometers above the surface, the Indian Space Research Organization lost contact with it and so they thought it might have crashed. But just recently- so this was a two-part mission, there was an orbiter as well as a lander- and the orbiter photographed a part of the surface of the moon. And the Indian Space Research Organization has said they found where the lander is and now they're trying to re-establish contact.

IRA FLATOW: But the Indian program doesn't get a lot of press here. They're really very serious about space, aren't they?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes, absolutely. They've sent an orbiter to Mars, they're only the- they've landed a previous mission, they sent an orbiter around the moon and it crash landed at the end of its mission. And then this was their attempt at a soft landing. And if they'd achieved it, they would have only been the fourth nation to ever have a soft landing on the moon.

IRA FLATOW: Let's keep our fingers crossed for reestablishing a connection.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: I will.

[LAUGHTER]

IRA FLATOW: Finally, your last story is shocking. I'm shocked because it's about electric eels. Scientists found a new electric eel species?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So basically what happened was, we had just assumed that electric eels were all one species. And this study took about 107 different electric eels and they compared their head shapes and their DNA, and they say, no, there's actually three different species we're looking at here. And one of them, my favorite- electrophorous volti, I think, I might be getting the genus name wrong. But this species is the most shocking of all, it can release 860 volts in a shock.

IRA FLATOW: Wow!

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: For comparison, a defibrillator that can shock your heart back to life is about 1,000.

IRA FLATOW: Do we know why it's so big, and how big it got that- why, you know?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: So basically, the way that electric eels produce these shocks are with organs made up of electric current producing cells. And the idea is, if you have more cells they act kind of like batteries in a series and they can strengthen and increase the output of the shock.

IRA FLATOW: Very interesting, Sophie. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Always good to have you.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Thanks for having me.

IRA FLATOW: Sophie Bushwick, a technology editor at Scientific American.
Copyright © 2019 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday's programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/

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Segment Transcript This is Science Friday, I'm Ira Flatow. In the weeks following the National Weather Service contradicting President Trump's prediction about the path of hurricane Dorian, also known as #sharpiegate, there have been reported threats or firings and suppression of science at the agency.