Science Friday

Two years ago, energy companies scrambled for offshore wind contracts. At a recent auction, the demand was significantly lower. Plus, artist Sarah Rosalena uses Indigenous weaving, ceramics, and sculpture practices to create art that challenges tech’s future, in a segment from earlier this year.

Maine Offshore Wind Auction Draws Few Bids

Offshore wind is coming to the Gulf of Maine. Earlier this week, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held an auction for eight leases to develop wind projects off the coast of Maine. But companies bid on only half of the available leases.

Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter for MIT Technology Review about that and other top science news of the week including; bird flu found in pigs, AI’s electronic waste problem, what’s in your black plastic spatula, and giant rats fighting the illegal wildlife trade.

An Artist Combines Indigenous Textiles With Modern Tech

When multidisciplinary artist Sarah Rosalena looks at a loom, she thinks about computer programming. “It’s an extension of your body, being an algorithm,” she says.

Rosalena, a Wixárika descendant and assistant professor of art at the University of California Santa Barbara, combines traditional Indigenous craft—weaving, beadmaking, pottery—with new technologies like AI, data visualization, and 3D-printing. And she also works with scientists to make these otherworldly creations come to life. She involved researchers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab to make 3D-printed pottery with simulated Martian clay. And she collaborated with the Mount Wilson Observatory to produce intricately beaded tapestries based on early-1900s glass plates captured by the observatory’s telescope, which women mathematicians used to make astronomical calculations.

And that’s also a big focus for Rosalena: spotlighting the overlooked contributions women made to computer science and connecting it to how textiles are traditionally thought of as a woman-based craft. When she first started making this kind of art, Rosalena learned that the Jacquard loom—a textile advancement in the 1800s that operated on a binary punch card system which allowed for mass production of intricate designs—inspired computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace when she was developing the first computer program. “[They] have this looped history,” she says. “And when I weave or do beadwork, it’s also recalling that relationship.”

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Great news for the nearly-extinct monarch butterflies, which will pass through the area as they migrate back to Mexico. Also, to find out how blood affects aging, scientists can surgically connect two animals and let blood circulate between them.

After California’s Park Fire, A Second Bloom of Milkweed

Don Hankins examines a bright yellow-green patch in the meadow. The land all around is charred by fire. But here, there’s a sort of miracle at work. Native milkweed has sprung up and bloomed for the second time this year. This is not something these plants, Asclepias eriocarpa, also known as Indian milkweed, are known to do.

They bloomed in late spring and early summer and had already done so this year when the Park Fire roared through. But the fire seemed to happen at just the right time to coax a second flowering, one that is likely to line up with the return migration of the monarch butterflies south to overwinter in Mexico. Monarchs rely on these flowers to complete their life cycle. For researcher Don Hankins, this is a surprise delight.

“We may be coming back into some knowledge here that hasn’t been practiced in a long time,” said Don Hankins, a professor at Chico State, who teaches classes in geography with a focus on fire. He is also a California Plains Miwok traditional cultural practitioner.

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Inside The ‘Creepy’ Procedure That Taps Into Young Blood

While fictional vampires suck the blood of the young to live forever, some researchers have found that certain elements in young blood actually can improve the health of the old. This is possible through a spooky procedure called parabiosis, in which the circulatory systems of two animals are joined, letting the blood flow from one into the other.

By connecting old mice and young mice through parabiosis, researchers have observed how different molecules in the blood impact symptoms of aging. While some outcomes have excited experts, enthusiastic biohackers attempting to defy their own aging might have jumped the gun. There’s a long way to go before we understand how elements of young blood might be harnessed to treat aging humans.

Emma Gometz, SciFri’s digital producer of engagement, talks to Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray, a neurology professor at Stanford University who has used parabiosis (which he once described as “creepy”) to help reveal how components of our blood affect our cognition as we age. They discuss parabiosis, vampires, and how far the field has to go before humans can benefit.

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

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Did you know that there are ten quintillion—or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000—individual insects on the planet? That means that for each and every one of us humans, there are 1.25 billion insects hopping, buzzing, and flying about.

A new book called The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture celebrates the diversity of the insect world, as well as the many ways it has changed ours—from fashion to food to engineering.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with entomologist and author Dr. Barrett Klein about the beauty of the insect world, how it has shaped human history, and what we can learn from these six-legged critters.

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

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Leading up to the November election, Science Friday is covering top science issues on the ballot. For voters, those top issues include abortion.

Since the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, many states have curtailed access to abortion, and 13 states have a total abortion ban.

The election season in particular, there’s been a focus on abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy. Some of the political rhetoric is inflammatory and false. But even among politicians who support abortion rights, there’s a tendency to deflect attention away from these procedures later in pregnancy.

Though third trimester abortions are rare, they make up about 1% of abortions in the United States and are often the most stigmatized. They are legal in only a small number of states, and just a fraction of providers perform them.

To better understand the real science behind abortions later in pregnancy, guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Dr. Katrina Kimport, professor of obstetrics, gynecology & reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco; and Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal and fetal medicine physician who specializes in high risk pregnancy and complex abortion care, based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Walter Byrd remembers the first time sewage came bubbling out of his toilet like it was yesterday.

“It was just pumping up through there,” Byrd says. “One of the bathrooms was so full of waste, at least 4 inches high in there. It smelled just like a hog pen.”

He sopped up the murky, foul-smelling water and doused the floor with bleach. But the sewage kept coming. On rainy days, it overflowed from drainage ditches into his yard, carrying wads of toilet paper and human waste.

The eight-bedroom home in Cahokia Heights, Illinois, had been a source of pride for Byrd when he first built it in 1996. He spent a lot of time outside, caring for his vegetable garden and watching wildlife wander through the backyard. But trying to stop the sewage backups quickly became his main focus, consuming countless hours and thousands of dollars of his savings.

“It was a dream house, until the floods came,” says Byrd, now 67. “That house broke me down.”

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