An Off Day on Uranus, a Wildfire in Prospect Park and Dispatches from COP29

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A wildfire in Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Prospect Park was in part linked to drought conditions nationally. Plastic waste is set to grow with our expanding economy, but potential solutions look promising. Drops in gonorrhea and early-stage syphilis point to the first decline in sexually transmitted infections in 20 years. Voyager 2’s fly-by of Uranus in the 1980s collected data that led scientists to believe the planet’s moons were inactive. A reassessment of those data shows that Uranus could have just been having an off day. Plus, Alec Luhn reports from the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) in Azerbaijan. Recommended reading: Melting Glaciers Are Causing Billions of Dollars of Damage The U.S. Has Its First Plan for Plastic Pollution. This Is What’s in It This Astoundingly Simple Ancient Technique Is Helping to Beat Back Drought E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest associate editor Andrea Thompson. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Here's the truth about AI.
0:02.0	AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into.
0:05.0	ServiceNow puts AI to work for people across your business,
0:09.0	removing friction and frustration for your employees,
0:12.0	supercharging productivity for your developers,
0:15.0	providing intelligent tools for your service agents to make customers happier.
0:19.0	All built into a single platform you can
0:21.9	use right now. That's why the world works with ServiceNow. Visit ServiceNow.com
0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people. Happy Monday listeners. For Scientific American Science quickly,
0:34.3	I'm Rachel Feldman. Let's get the week started by catching up on a few science
0:38.3	stories you might have missed. First, you might remember that last week I mentioned that an
0:49.3	unprecedented number of U.S. states were experiencing drought. Those dry conditions have helped wildfires take
0:55.4	hold, including in surprising spots like Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Here to tell us a little bit more
1:01.0	about that situation is Andrea Thompson, a scientific American associate editor who covers the
1:06.2	environment, energy, and earth sciences. So a lot of us are used to wildfires out west, especially in places like California in
1:13.5	recent years, but there's been more than 500 fires since October 1st in New Jersey.
1:19.0	There's been about 200 brush fires in Massachusetts in October, which is a 1,200% increase
1:25.9	over the average. So, you know, it's clear that this is really unusual.
1:30.2	And the reason it's happening is because of the drought conditions there.
1:34.3	And actually in a large part of the country, in terms of population, it's actually about
1:38.7	half of the country, about 149 million people.
1:42.8	The reason we're seeing the drought in the east right now
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scientific American, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scientific American and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.