How much do we know about the world's bacteria?

We're somewhere around 1% with respect to Interococcus.

It boggles the mind, really, what's left in that 99% that hasn't been ever seen before.

It's Tuesday, March 12th, but of course, it's Science Friday.

I'm SciFRI producer Charles Bergquist.

Researchers are collecting soil and poop samples from around the world

and searching them for new species of enterococcus bacteria.

They hope the work will help them better understand how antibiotic resistance came to be

and how it moved from the soil into people.

Coming up, we'll talk about that project, but first, if you haven't noticed, we're in an election cycle again.

Can science help monitor the upcoming elections?

Here's Ira Flato.

It's not just pollsters and campaign

operatives who are preparing for the elections. Scientists are two. The Union of Concerned

Scientists has an election science task force at operation looking at everything, from ballot

design to disinformation to voting security. Joining me now to talk about that is Dr. Jennifer

Jones, the program director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concern

Scientists. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Tell us about the project.

In a nutshell, what is, what's your aim here? Well, I, first off, we want folks to know that science really

matters for our democracy, that all of us should be able to show up and participate in our democracy

and that our vote should count. It should matter. And so we really want to use science, data, and evidence to help create that free,

fair, and transparent election system that we need. So we're doing that by looking at a number of

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