Synopsis
Welcome to Science Sessions, the PNAS podcast program. Listen to brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in PNAS, plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us.
Episodes
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Math learning through videos
20/03/2023 Duration: 10minStanislas Dehaene and Marie Amalric investigate whether short online videos are sufficient to teach mathematics concepts.
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Impressionism and air pollution
06/03/2023 Duration: 09minAnna Lea Albright and Peter Huybers describe how optical effects consistent with air pollution appear in the paintings of Claude Monet and J.M.W. Turner.
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How lizards adapt to urban living
14/02/2023 Duration: 09minKristin Winchell explains the genetic basis of anole adaptation to urban environments.
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Revisiting the history of animal extinctions
30/01/2023 Duration: 07minResearchers document animal extinctions in the Ediacaran Period that may have preceded the earliest known mass extinction.
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The music of Mesozoic bush crickets
16/01/2023 Duration: 10minBo Wang and Chunpeng Xu describe how fossilized katydids provide insight into the role of insect sounds in the Mesozoic.
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How a neural network taught itself chess
03/01/2023 Duration: 07minTom McGrath describes how the neural network AlphaZero taught itself how to play chess without observing a human game.
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Honeybees: Nature’s puzzle solvers
19/12/2022 Duration: 07minOrit Peleg, Golnar Fard and Francisco López Jiménez explain how honeybees overcome geometric constraints to construct honeycombs.
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Cultural identity in sperm whales
05/12/2022 Duration: 10minTaylor Hersh explores how patterns of clicks produced by sperm whales suggest the exchange of cultural information between the whales.
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Tuning into nature’s music
14/11/2022 Duration: 19minResearchers discuss what animal soundscapes can tell us about the health of ecosystems.
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Point sources of methane emission
31/10/2022 Duration: 10minDaniel Cusworth discusses combining aircraft-based and satellite-based measurement to identify methane emission point sources.
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How climate warming releases ocean methane
17/10/2022 Duration: 10minSyee Weldeab describes what researchers can learn from ancient global warming about the risks posed by ocean floor methane hydrates.
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U-turn in occupational gender segregation
03/10/2022 Duration: 10minLing Zhu and David B. Grusky explore intergenerational factors influencing occupational gender segregation in the United States.
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Activated patients reduce implicit bias
19/09/2022 Duration: 10minIzzy Gainsburg and Veronica Derricks discuss how patient activation can disrupt implicit bias in physician-patient interactions.
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How bumblebees respond to noxious stimuli
06/09/2022 Duration: 09minMatilda Gibbons, Lars Chittka and Jonathan Birch discuss the possibility that bumblebees may feel pain.
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Science of Misinformation
15/08/2022 Duration: 20minResearchers explore how misinformation spreads and what can be done to stop it.
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Bias and the placebo effect
01/08/2022 Duration: 09minLauren Howe and Alia Crum explore the interactions of societal biases with the placebo effect.
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Epigenetic clocks for humans and dogs
18/07/2022 Duration: 13minSteve Horvath and Elaine Ostrander explain the usefulness of epigenetic clocks in humans and dogs.
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Peopling of the Americas
27/06/2022 Duration: 19minResearchers explore how and when humans first arrived in the Americas.
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How the saw sings
13/06/2022 Duration: 10minL. Mahadevan, Petur Bryde, and Suraj Shankar explain the otherworldly sounds of the musical saw.
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Underrepresentation of women in economics
31/05/2022 Duration: 13minGuido Friebel discusses the lack of gender parity in academic positions in economics.