SoT 263: There's Always An Enzyme

Hosts: Ed Brown, Dr. Shayne Joseph, Penny Dumsday

00:00:48 A study seemed to find a link between artificially sweetened drinks and serious health problems. Many media outlets quickly proclaimed that "Diet drinks triple your risk of stroke and dementia" (Daily Fail). But how seriously should that study be taken?

00:05:27 Humans produce about 311 million tons of plastic each year, a number that's is predicted to double in the next twenty years. But an accidental discovery from a Spanish bee scientist points to some caterpillars that might help break plastic down.

00:12:07 A new paper published in the journal Ecology finds that female dragonflies are faking their own deaths in order to get away from horny males!

00:17:34 A team led by Viviane Slon from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has managed to extract and sequence the DNA of ancient animals from sediment - not bone - that's up to 240,000 years old.

 

This episode contains traces of Mary Bubala and Tracey Leong talking about artificial sweeteners on CBS Baltimore.