Headful Science

On today’s episode Shawn talks with Dr. Houri Ziaeepour from France about her work studying Gravitational Wave Event GW-17-0-8-17. Dr. Ziaeepour explains what we know about the event, including: the structure of the binary neutron stars that collided and the resulting electro-magnetic emissions from the colossal explosion. Then we discuss her latest novel, The Life Network.

On today’s episode Sarah is talking with Ben Adelstein about his work in the field of microfluidics designing experients and industrializing the manufacturing procedures of biological material. And, yes, it’s a cool as it sounds. They discuss what microfluidics are, some example applications, and the future of the industry. How about creating vitamins in space for astronauts? Or how about the democratization of pharmaceutical manufacturing? This isn’t science fiction folks, this is your world and Ben is going to us all about it today. You have to listen to this episode!

We talk to Todd about how the molecules in pharmaceuticals (the medicines we take to cure our ailments) interact with the molecules of our cells. We also talk about the immune system, the pharmaceutical research industry, and, of course, we wrap up the conversation by talking about robots.

Today Sarah and I are talking about how climate change effects the microbiome and how the microbiome effects the climate.

Ever wonder about metagenomics? Ever heard of metagenomics? Today Sarah is gonna tell us all about that. She’s also going to tell us about her company, Argonox, who is doing deep sea exploration of microbiomes all over the world, looking for little critters living in remarkable places that just might change the world. Then, in our “Science Gossip” segment Sarah and I go off the rails for a moment and discuss ethics in research and I give my favorite ant-hill analogy.