Science Friday

For years, Asheville, North Carolina, has been billed as a “climate haven,” a place safe from the touch of climate change-exacerbated disasters. But last month, Hurricane Helene called that label into question. Some of the worst damage of the storm occurred inland, in Western North Carolina.

Data visualization designer David McConville lived in Asheville for about 20 years, before moving to California.

“Watching people idealize Asheville was a little bit crazy-making,” McConville says. “There were very clear patterns of the combination of the topography and hydrology, weather patterns, and development patterns that were creating these dangers,” he says, referring to the extreme flooding and damage brought on by Hurricane Helene.

Resilience and adaptation for communities hit hard by storms is a huge area of conversation for cities. And for places hit hard consecutively, like Florida’s coast after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, that need is even more pressing. Joining Ira to talk about this is Dr. Jesse Keenan, associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana; and Dr. Jola Ajibade, associate professor of environmental and climate justice at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Can You Read A Bar Graph?

Bar graphs seem like one of the simplest ways to represent data. Many people assume that the longer the bar, the bigger the number it represents. Sometimes bar graphs represent an average not a total count, which is trickier to understand.

And because bar graphs are everywhere, psychologists from Wellesley College wanted to determine how well people can actually read and interpret bar graphs. Turns out, one in five people in their study misunderstood the data the bar graphs intended to show. And sometimes simple-looking graphs actually make it harder to understand the data they are based on.

Ira talks with Jeremy Wilmer, associate professor, and Sarah Horan Kerns, research associate, at Wellesley College’s department of psychology, based in Wellesley Massachusetts about their bar graph research and curriculum to improve data literacy.

Two decades ago, scientists announced they had sequenced the human genome. What you might not know is that there were gaps in that original sequence—about 8% was completely blank.

Now, after a years-long global collaboration, scientists have finally released the first fully complete assembly of the human genome. Researchers believe these missing pieces might be the key to understanding how DNA varies between people.

Six scientific papers on the topic were published in a special edition of the academic journal Science this week.

Ira talks with Karen Miga and Adam Phillippy, co-founders of the Telomere to Telomere Consortium, an international effort that led to the assembly of this new fully complete human genome.

Karen Miga is an assistant professor of bimolecular engineering and the associate director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, based in Santa Cruz California. Adam Phillippy is head of the Genome Informatics Section and senior investigator in the computational and statistical genomics branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

After a month of non-stop Mars science, what questions do you still have about the Red Planet? SciFri producer Christie Taylor and co-host Stephanie Sendaula interview planetary scientist and Sirens of Mars author Sarah Stewart Johnson. Plus, they take your questions about the planet’s poles, its magnetic field, and the progress of the Perseverance rover.

The most wonderful time of the year has arrived: Cephalopod Week, Science Friday’s annual tradition of spotlighting all things octopus, squid, and cuttlefish.

One of the many things that make cephalopods special is their ink. What’s it made of? Why do they shoot it at their predators? And why did they evolve this incredible skill?

To talk all about inking, guest host Annie Minoff is joined by Dr. Lauren Simonitis, research and biological imaging specialist at Florida Atlantic University.

Learn more about how to get involved in Cephalopod Week!

Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The foot-long meteor passed through the Earth’s atmosphere near the Statue of Liberty. Don’t worry, it was fine. Also, the follow-up to the 1996 movie “Twister” is a whirlwind of tornado science. A weather expert decodes its lingo—and real-life tornado trends.

A Small Meteor Blazes Over New York City

Tuesday morning, some New York area residents heard a loud boom and saw a daytime fireball streaking overhead. According to observers, a small meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere over New York City, passed by the Statue of Liberty, and proceeded west to New Jersey, moving at some 38,000 miles per hour. Meteor experts said that the object, estimated to be around a foot in size, posed no threat, as debris from an object that small would have burned up before reaching the ground.

Science Friday’s Charles Bergquist joins guest host Rachel Feltman to talk about the overhead display, and about other science news from the week, including a newly planned mission to fly by a near-Earth asteroid. They’ll also talk about a new pool of data for human genetics research, efforts to predict rogue waves, and the challenges of making food taste right in orbit.

The Tornado Science To Know Before Seeing ‘Twisters’

“Twisters,” the long awaited follow-up to the 1996 movie “Twister” drops in theaters today, July 19. It’s about a scientist (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who goes back to her home state of Oklahoma to try and stop a massive tornado outbreak from wreaking havoc on its citizens. On the way, she meets a quirky cast of storm chasers, and butts heads with a band of unorthodox “tornado wranglers” led by a YouTube personality (Glen Powell). “Twisters” delights in name-dropping tornado jargon, and its science advisory team said they hoped to make the movie as accurate as possible.

The movie makes science thrilling, but it also shows the ways that tornadoes affect people’s lives in the real world. For example, earlier this week, the Chicago area was hit with multiple tornadoes during a night of extreme weather, leaving thousands without power, and four tornadoes hit upstate New York, killing one person. This comes after a powerful, and some say unusual, tornado season in the Midwest. But just how tornadoes will continue to change is still unknown.

Digital producer Emma Gometz talks with Dr. Bill Gallus, a meteorology professor at Iowa State University, to decode some of the science from “Twisters” and understand how real-life tornadoes are changing.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The company has genetic data of 15 million people, which could be shared with a future buyer. Here’s how to delete it. Plus, an experimental coating could make golf balls roll more reliably on greens with different conditions.

After 23andMe Bankruptcy, Customers Urged To Delete Their Data

If you’re one of roughly 15 million people who used 23andMe to unlock information from their DNA, consumer advocates have a message for you: Delete your data. On Sunday, the company, which has customers send saliva samples for DNA analysis, filed for bankruptcy. While many customers submitted their saliva for the purpose of ancestral analysis, 85% of customers also consent to their data used for genetic disease research.

As the company searches for a buyer, consumer advocates, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, have urged customers to delete their data from 23andMe’s website. 23andMe and other genetic testing companies are not subject to HIPAA, meaning health and medical records kept by 23andMe could be shared with a future buyer.

Producer Kathleen Davis joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss this and other top science stories of the week.

Chemists Make A Coating That Can Slow A Golf Ball’s Roll

With spring here, the days are getting warmer and longer, meaning conditions are perfect for a trip to the golf course. And while golf is certainly a game of physics—force, angles, parabolas—this week researchers presented work showing that chemistry could play an important role on the golf course as well. Speaking at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego, researchers described a high performance coating that could be incorporated into the polyurethane shell of a golf ball.

The hydrophilic (water-loving) coating would make tiny bits of water stick to the surface of the golf ball and sheet off, modifying the way the ball interacts with the grass of the green. That interaction, says Tom Kennedy, owner of Chemical Innovative Solutions Inc., would lead to the ball rolling more slowly and reliably, especially on “fast,” closely-cut greens in dry and windy conditions.

Kennedy joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the technology, and how hydrophilic coatings could find a home in other applications, including solar cells.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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