If you live in a historic community, should you be able to put solar panels on your front roof?

For one town's historic committee, the answer may be yes, no problem, but then for another, the answer may be no, which is where residents get really frustrated.

It's Friday, December 22nd. There are no more shopping days before Science Friday.

I'm Charles Bergquist.

Coming up, we'll talk about the challenge of balancing historic preservation and atmosphere

against the desire for modern amenities like solar panels.

But first, you don't need me to tell you that a lot has happened

this year. And the field of science is no exception. From returning a sample of an asteroid to Earth

to advances in all sorts of vaccines. Sophie Bushwick, incoming senior news editor and news

scientist, join me to talk about the urine science. Let's start with this new malaria vaccine first. How big of a deal

is this? This is a really exciting vaccine because malaria is a huge problem. It kills hundreds

of thousands of people each year. And about 80% of the people who die from it are very young

children. So last year, the first malaria vaccine was developed, but it was kind of difficult to produce

and expensive.

This year, we saw the approval of a new malaria vaccine that's cheaper.

It'll be easier to distribute a greater number of doses of this.

And that's really exciting because malaria is a really serious disease,

even if in the U.S., it's not as much on our radar. So now in the U.S., there were actually a couple of

RSV vaccines approved, including for young people. Tell me about those. That's right. So RSV is a pretty

mild disease for healthy adults, but young children and the elderly

can really suffer from it.

So these new RSV vaccines, there's one that's supposed to be for the elderly population.

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