Science On Top
The Australian Podcast putting Science on Top of the agenda

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu

00:00:23 For bonobo males, sex is often done under mother's watchful eye. But it's not quite that creepy - the mother's are helpful, allowing the primates to copulate in peace!
00:04:33 Detecting lung cancer in the early stages can be tricky even for very experienced radiologists. But a huge test using Google's AI computers found that the algorithms performed better than humans, and made fewer false positives.
00:18:45 There's a climate change emergency, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are increasing rapidly. Fortunately, the trees are adapting to help us out, and a new study has found that the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by plants is also increasing. But it's not keeping up and won't won't last.
00:28:35 The contents of a small pouch, made from three fox snouts stitched together, have been analysed and may be the earliest evidence of the use of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant preparation.


This episode contains traces of Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis and Mathew Ingram discussing Elon Musk's Starlink project, on This Week in Google.

Direct download: SoT_0333.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:09pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Jo Benhamu

00:00:34 Penny gives us a trip report on her recent trip to Lake Mungo - a dry lake in remote Australia that's known for the discovery of 20,000-60,000 year old human remains.
00:09:58 All we know about Denisovans - a species of hominid that split off from the human lineage alongside the Neanderthals - comes from a little finger bone, three teeth and a sliver of bone. But now the discovery of a jawbone, found two and a half thousand kilometers away suggests they might have been quite widespread throughout Asia.
00:15:50 Scientists at University College London accidentally invented a material that could revolutionise a wide range of technologies, such as batteries.
00:27:41 As the antibiotic resistance crisis deepens, scientists are turning to genetically modified viruses as a treatment for bacterial infections.
00:49:57 Millions of species of fungi and bacteria work together to form a vast, interconnected web of organisms throughout the world's forests. Now scientists have mapped this “wood wide web” using a database of more than 28,000 tree species in more than 70 countries.

This episode contains traces of Megan Dice from News12 reporting on the declaration of New Jersey's official state microbe.

Direct download: SoT_0332.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:39pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Kirsten Banks

00:00:49 For the first time ever, astronomers have taken a photo of the silhouette of the event horizon of a black hole!
00:06:39 The Event Horizon Telescope captured 5 petabytes of data - which is a lot!
00:09:08 XKCD compared the size of the event horizon of M87 with the size of our solar system.
00:11:36 Veritasium expertly described how the photo was taken, and all the permutations that could have happened to give us different photos.
Kirsten Banks is an astronomer, science communicator and Physics student.
This episode contains traces of Alan Duffy "losing his mind" talking about the Black Hole image on ABC Breakfast News.

Direct download: SoT_0331.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:58pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Kate Naughton, Peter Miller

00:00:40 An extraordinary must-read article in the New Yorker has an in-depth look at the few hours after a meteor hit the Yucatán Peninsula and probably wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. It also follows an amazing discovery that could answer many questions about the appearance of dinosaurs and whether or not they were already dying out.
00:18:51 A study led by a team at the Duke University Clinical Research Institute has found that treatment recommendations that US doctors use when managing heart patients - less than 10 per cent of those recommendations are based on the best available evidence.
00:33:52 As computer graphics and robotics get more and more realistic, there's a point where an avatar or android is so close to real but not quite, and it's unsettling. That's the Uncanny Valley. But we don't often talk about it's auditory counterpart, and how there's an Uncanny Valley for artificial voices as well.
00:47:19 "Pumpkin toadlets" are tiny poisonous frogs in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. They're only about 15mm long, and their skeletons are fluorescent under a UV lamp!


This episode contains traces of Q, a 'genderless' artificial voice.

Direct download: SoT_0330.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:05pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Chris Curtain-Magee

00:01:22 In 450 B.C., the "Father of History", Herodotus, wrote a 23 line account of a type of Egyptian cargo vessel. This was widely thought to be a fabrication, but a discovery in an ancient Egyptian port city indicates the account was truthful.
00:08:03 The earliest undisputed evidence of humans in Australia comes from a rock shelter in northern Australia and dates back to 65,000 years ago. Now investigations at an ancient midden - a trashpile - in the country's South could potentially double that time-frame.
00:14:18 Lots of animals, from birds to turtles to fish, can detect magnetic fields. But until now we've never thought humans had that ability. A new study suggests that a small number of people may be able to register magnetic field changes, but on a subconscious level.
00:21:03 Science on Top
This episode contains traces of Mark Robinson narrating 'Why is Herodotus called "The Father of History'?" from Ted-Ed.

Direct download: SoT_0329.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:48am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:32 Some fish can survive the freezing cold waters of Antarctica thanks to a gene that makes anti-freeze. But how do fish in the Arctic, in the Northern hemisphere, also have the same gene?
00:08:33 Some people can smell when people are sick. Could these 'super-smellers' help diagnose Parkinson's Disease early on?
00:21:26 DNA is made of four nucleotides: G, A, T, and C. Now an interdisciplinary team of researchers has doubled that genetic code by creating synthetic DNA that uses eight letters.
00:27:55 NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is currently orbiting the asteroid 101955 Bennu. But it turns out Bennu is no ordinary asteroid... it spits!
 
This episode contains traces of 6abc Action News hosts Brian Taff and Jeannette Reyes discussing a cheesy Swiss experiment.

Direct download: 328.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:19pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Sean M Elliott

00:01:11 Science educator, communicator and performer Sean M. Elliott has a new show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Tesla: Death Rays & Elephants!
00:11:00 For a long time it's been believed that having some potted plants around the house will help filter out pollutants and toxins. But now the evidence suggests that houseplants do very little or even nothing at all when it comes to cleaning the air.
00:17:56 There's around 200 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and probably least one planet orbiting each of them. But a new study suggests there could be an additional 50 billion rogue planets, that aren't orbiting any stars at all.
00:27:17 Our nearest big galactic neighbour, Andromeda, has long been thought to be the much larger and more massive than the Milky Way. Now, new data from the Gaia mission and the Hubble Space Telescope indicates the Milky Way could be significantly bigger than we thought.
00:39:48 A new study published in the journal Science finds that before agriculture, when humans were nomadic hunter gatherers, languages didn't have the same sounds that they do now - in fact some sounds just weren't even possible.


Sean M. Elliott is a science educator, communicator and performer with a new show starting this weekend at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Tesla: Death Rays & Elephants!


This episode contains traces of TMRO's Jade Kim giving yet another reason why space travel might not be such a great thing for humans.

Direct download: SoT_0327.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:57am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely

00:01:16 NASA's InSight probe begins drilling into the Martian surface - and stops.
00:17:11 Twins are either identical (one egg splits into two copies) or fraternal (two eggs fertilised at the same time). But that's not always the case - as a mother in Queensland found out when she had sesquizygotic twins.
00:25:44 Timothy Ray Brown, who was known as The Berlin Patient, was the first person to be "cured" of HIV. Now a second man appears to have also been cured, using the same bone marrow transplant technique.
00:33:32 Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is also the only moon known to have a thick, dense atmosphere. But now, thanks to the Rosetta probe's studies of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the origins of Titan's atmosphere may have been revealed.

Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely is an instrument scientist for the WOMBAT high-intensity powder diffractometer at ANSTO, Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.


This episode contains traces of Loudwire's Toni Gonzalez reporting on an Australian study of people who listen to Death Metal.

Direct download: SoT_0326.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:16pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:57 As the world becomes more and more urbanised, we hear a lot about the dangers to wildlife from humanity's sprawl. But new research finds Australia's koalas may actually be less stressed in cities - provided adequate green spaces are provided.
00:07:43 For the first time ever, a spacecraft built by a private company and designed to carry people has docked with the International Space Station. The success of SpaceX's "Crew Dragon" sets the stage for an alternative to the Russian-made Soyuz capsules.
00:19:54 Researchers have been looking at the family dynamics stressed meerkat mothers. They've found the daughters become more helpful - at their own expense - but the sons don't.
00:25:28 Two new papers provide even more weight to the Planet Nine hypothesis - that a large planet, more than ten times the mass of Earth, could be lurking on the distant edges of our solar system, well beyond the orbit of Pluto.


This episode contains traces of the NASA stream and enthusiastic commentary of the SpaceX Crew Dragon module being opened in space for the first time.

Direct download: SoT_0325.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:20pm AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:01:18 Hyabusa 2, Japan's latest sample return mission, has briefly landed on the asteroid Ryugu. It's an ambitious mission looking at the building blocks of the solar system.
00:16:14 And what's the point of dragging samples all the way back to Earth, when we can send whole labs to celestial bodies?
00:20:59 Echidnas are cute but spiky Australian native animals, with rather strange mating habits. But they're in high demand on the illegal pet trade, so wildlife forensic scientists have developed a technique to track where they've been smuggled from.
00:28:34 The commercial arm of the Mars One plan to colonise the red planet has filed for bankruptcy. Was this an interplanetary Fyre Festival?
00:35:56 Australian scientists may have found a way of developing a universal flu vaccine, that would work against all strains and eliminating the need for yearly flu shots.


This episode contains traces of Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp answering questions in a company-produced interview back in 2015.

Direct download: SoT_0324_fixed.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:42am AEDT