Science

Animal CSI: Inside The Smithsonian's Feather Forensics Lab

editor — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:16:00 +0000

Carla Dove smiles as she tears open a small, flat cardboard box. She is sitting at a lab bench in her office at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

"It's kind of like Christmas for me because I never know what's going to be in the packages," she says.

Inside the box are a bunch of sealed sandwich-size bags. Dove counts the bags.

"Eight samples today," she notes. Each sample consists of grayish pieces of feathers, and sometimes bones, all from inside the stomachs and intestines of Burmese pythons.

Dove is an ornithologist and a forensic expert of sorts.

How To Make Museums More Inviting For Kids With Autism

editor — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Last January, Noelle Murphy and her family were on their way to the Please Touch Museum for children in Philadelphia. Right before they arrived, 3-year-old Dylan had an accident.

"He wet himself," Murphy said, "And we were thinking, 'Oh no, how are we going to deal with this?' "

Dylan has autism, and his mom, Noelle, tends to choose at-home activities over unpredictable outings like a day at the museum. If Dylan becomes overwhelmed by his surroundings, he might yell loudly, or drop to the floor and refuse to get up.

Isn't That King David? Nope, It's Just Dave

Robert Krulwich — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:48:00 +0000

Usually they're naked, ancient and stony. But all of a sudden, they could live next door.

The Paris-based designer Leo Caillard had, as he wrote me, "the idea conception" and took the photographs. Alexis Persani dressed them. (Not actually; it was done on a computer, as you can see here. I know that putting modern clothes on classical sculptures isn't a new idea.

How Men's Choice Of Mates May Have Led To Menopause

editor — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:44:00 +0000

A dapper older gentleman spurns his mate of a certain age to take a fresh-faced young lover. You've seen that movie before, right?

Well, this choice of youth may turn out to be more than a Hollywood trope.

3-D Printer Brings Dexterity To Children With No Fingers

editor — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:14:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB53-D_N8Uc

The Human Voice May Not Spark Pleasure In Children With Autism

Jon Hamilton — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:37:00 +0000

The human voice appears to trigger pleasure circuits in the brains of typical kids, but not children with autism, a Stanford University team reports. The finding could explain why many children with autism seem indifferent to spoken words.

The Stanford team used functional MRI to compare the brains of 20 children who had autism spectrum disorders and 19 typical kids.

Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis

Robert Krulwich — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:39:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdIRrmNN_CQ

Will The Court's Gene Ruling Stifle Bio Innovatioon?

editor — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:01:00 +0000

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that patenting natural human genetic material must stop. But the court also ruled that synthetically produced DNA is fair. The decision was prompted by patents on a gene test for breast cancer which was issued to Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City. We're joined now in our studio by Arthur Caplan, who's head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU's Langone Medical Center.

Rule Would List All Chimps As Endangered — Even Lab Animals

editor — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 22:12:00 +0000

This week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a new rule that would extend "endangered species" protections to chimpanzees held in captivity. Nearly half of all the chimps in the U.S. live in research facilities, and the regulation changes would make it more difficult to use these animals in medical experiments.

But don't expect an outcry among most scientists.

Archaeologists Discover Lost City In Cambodian Jungle

Scott Neuman — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:56:00 +0000

Australian archaeologists using remote-sensing technology have uncovered an ancient city in Cambodia that has remained hidden for more than a millennium under dense jungle undergrowth.

The discovery of Mahendraparvata, a 1,200-year-old lost city that predates Cambodia's famous Angkor Wat temple complex by 350 years, was part of the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire that ruled much of Southeast Asia from about 800 to 1400 A.D., during a time that coincided with Europe's Middle Ages.

Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney's archaeological research center in Cambodia, and a small group