Reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, and taking the heat out of crude oil separation

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Contributing correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks about what can be learned from schools around the world that have reopened during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, few systematic studies have been done but observations of outbreaks in schools in places such as France or Israel do offer a few lessons for countries looking to send kids back to school soon. The United Kingdom and Germany have started studies of how the virus spreads in children and at school, but results are months away. In the meantime, Gretchen’s reporting suggests small class sizes, masks, and social distancing among the adults at school are particularly important measures. Read all our coronavirus news coverage. Also this week, Sarah talks with Kirstie Thompson, a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, about increasing the efficiency of petroleum processing. If all—or even some—petroleum processing goes heat free, it would mean big energy savings. Around the world, about 1% of all energy use goes to heating up petroleum in order to get useful things such as gas for cars or polymers for plastics. These days, this separation is done through distillation, heating and separating by boiling point. Kirstie describes a heat-free way of getting this separation—by using a special membrane instead. Read a related Insight. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) ++ [Image: Kurt Bauschardt/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is supported by the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, one of America's leading research medical schools.
0:07.8	Icon Mount Sinai is the academic arm of the eight hospital Mount Sinai health system in New York City.
0:13.9	It's consistently among the top recipients of NIH funding.
0:18.0	Researchers at Icon Mount Sinai have made breakthrough discoveries in many fields vital to
0:23.0	advancing the health of patients, including cancer, COVID and long COVID, cardiology, neuroscience, and
0:30.4	artificial intelligence. The Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we find a way. Morgan State
0:37.3	University, a Baltimore, Maryland,
0:39.4	Carnegie R2 doctoral research institution, offers more than 100 academic programs and awards
0:45.4	degrees at the baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral levels, is furthering their mission of
0:50.4	growing the future leading the world. Morgan continues to address the needs and challenges of the modern urban environment.
0:57.4	With a four-year quadrupling of research, more than a dozen new doctoral programs,
1:02.4	and eight new national centers of excellence, Morgan is positioned to achieve Carnegie R1
1:07.8	designation in the next five years.
1:10.4	To learn more about Morgan and their ascension to R1, visit morgan.edu slash research.
1:22.8	Welcome to the science podcast for July 17, 2020.
1:26.7	I'm Sarah Crespi.
1:28.3	First up this week, contributing correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks about reopening schools
1:33.6	during the coronavirus pandemic.
1:35.9	What do we actually know about infections in kids and how to prevent them in schools?
1:41.5	Next, researcher Kirsty Thompson talks about changing the process that is typically
1:46.5	used to separate crude oil into things like gasoline and plastic precursors, changing it from
1:53.6	an incredibly energy-intensive process called distillation to a low-heat, low-energy approach
	...

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