Monitoring a nearby star’s midlife crisis, and the energetic cost of chewing

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s show: An analog to the Maunder Minimum, when the Sun’s spots largely disappeared 400 years ago, and measuring the energy it takes to chew gum We have known about our Sun’s spots for centuries, and tracking this activity over time revealed an 11-year solar cycle with predictable highs and lows. But sometimes these cycles just seem to stop, such as in the Maunder Minimum—a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 with little or no sunspot activity. News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a nearby star that appears to have entered a similar quiet period, and what we can learn from it about why stars take naps. Also this week on the show, Adam van Casteren, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester, joins Sarah to talk about measuring how much energy we use to chew up food. Based on the findings, it appears humans have turned out to be superefficient chewers—at least when it comes to the gum used in the study—with less than 1% of daily energy expenditure being spent on mastication. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA/SDO; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of the largest sunspot from our latest solar cycle with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4241 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Introducing Peak Scientific. With over 25 years of expertise, Peak leads the industry in providing
0:06.8	reliable, high purity gas generators for LCMS and GCMS. Whether you're in the lab conducting
0:13.2	groundbreaking research or pushing the boundaries of science, trust Peak Scientific to supply
0:18.7	gas for undisrupted workflows.
0:24.4	When it comes to your LC or G.C, don't settle for less. Choose the solution that is tested, validated, and approved by leading instrument manufacturers globally.
0:31.4	Visit peak scientific.com and quote science podcast to receive special offers.
0:37.2	This podcast is supported by the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai,
0:41.4	one of America's leading research medical schools.
0:44.8	Icon Mount Sinai is the academic arm of the eight hospital Mount Sinai health system in New York
0:50.0	City.
0:50.9	It's consistently among the top recipients of NIH funding. Researchers at ICONMount
0:56.4	Sinai have made breakthrough discoveries in many fields vital to advancing the health of patients,
1:02.1	including cancer, COVID, and long COVID, cardiology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.
1:09.2	The Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we find a way.
1:18.9	This is the science podcast for August 19th, 2020.
1:22.9	I'm Sarah Crespi.
1:24.3	Each week we talk about the most interesting news and research from science and the
1:28.3	sister journals. First up this week, news intern Zach Silvitzki. We talk about our son entering its
1:33.8	middle age and what we could learn from a nearby star that seems to be a little bit further along
1:39.0	on this journey. Also this week we have researcher Adam Van Castrin. He joins me to discuss his science advances paper on how much time and energy we spend chewing
1:50.0	our food.
1:51.2	Turns out it's not that much, but our ancestors probably spent a lot more.
	...

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