The Webb Space Telescope’s first images, and why scratching sometimes makes you itchy

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s show: The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope hint at the science to come, and disentangling the itch-scratch cycle After years of delays, the James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of December 2021. Now, NASA has released a few of the first full-color images captured by the instrument’s enormous mirror. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these first images and what they mean for the future of science from Webb. Next on the podcast, Jing Feng, principal investigator at the Center for Neurological and Psychiatric Research and Drug Discovery at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, discusses his Science Translational Medicine paper on why scratching sometimes triggers itching. It turns out, in cases of chronic itch there can be a miswiring in the skin. Cells that normally detect light touch instead connect with nerve fibers that convey a sensation of itchiness. This miswiring means light touches (such as scratching) are felt as itchiness—contributing to a vicious itch-scratch cycle. Also this week, in a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Paul Bastard, chief resident in the department of pediatrics at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris and a researcher at the Imagine Institute in Paris and Rockefeller University. They talk about his work to shed light on susceptibility to COVID-19, which recently won him the Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STSCI; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: James Webb Space Telescope image of image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9123 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	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
1:12.3	ascension to R1, visit Morgan.edu slash research.
1:22.1	This is the science podcast for July 15th, 2022. I'm Sarah Cresby. Every week, we talk about the most interesting
1:30.8	news and research from science and the sister journals. To start us off, we have staff
1:37.0	news writer Daniel Cleary. He's back to talk about the first full-color images from the James
1:43.0	Webb Space Telescope.
1:44.6	This is something that a lot of people have been looking forward to for a long time.
1:49.4	After that, researcher Jing Fen is here.
1:52.2	We discuss his science translational medicine paper on what's behind the vicious, itch scratch cycle.
	...

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