Is the National Weather Service Ready for an Extreme Summer?
The dedicated staff of the National Weather Service are responsible for the data that underpin your weather forecast and emergency alerts. DOGE Service cuts to the NWS are putting the collection and communication of those data at risk right as we enter a dangerous season of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and extreme heat in the U.S. Senior sustainability editor Andrea Thompson joins host Rachel Feltman to explain what the NWS does, why we need its expertise and what we risk when that expertise is lost.
Recommended reading:
How Trump’s National Weather Service Cuts Could Cost Lives https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-trumps-national-weather-service-cuts-could-cost-lives/
Why This Hurricane Season Has Experts on Edge
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/with-a-busy-2025-hurricane-season-forecast-staffing-cuts-and-warm-oceans/
E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!
Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.
Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Andrea Thompson. Our show is fact-checked by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
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14:21
Megalodon Diets, Teeth Sensitivity and a Bunch of Vaccine News
The measles outbreak in West Texas is slowing. Health officials think an increase in vaccination rates contributed to the slowdown, but Texas lawmakers have pushed a new bill to make it even quicker and easier for parents to exempt their children from vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention goes counter to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists by removing recommendations for COVID vaccines for pregnant people and children without underlying health conditions. The first vaccine for gonorrhea debuts in England and Wales, with early results suggesting it is 30 to 40 percent effective against the disease. Your sensitive teeth may have origins in the dentin in the exoskeletons of ancient fish. Plus, researchers use fossils to discover what megalodons may have eaten.
Recommended reading:
See the Dramatic Consequences of Vaccination Rates Teetering on a ‘Knife’s Edge’
Fun Facts about Teeth across the Animal Kingdom
Love the Ocean? Thank a Shark
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E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!
Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.
Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
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8:00
Diagnosing Male Infertility with a Mechanical Engineering Twist
Male infertility is undercovered and underdiscussed. If a couple is struggling to conceive, there’s a 50–50 chance that sperm health is a contributing factor. Diagnosing male infertility is getting easier with at-home tests—and a new study suggests a method for testing at home that would be more accurate. Study co-author Sushanta Mitra, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, joins host Rachel Feltman to discuss how lower sperm adhesion could be used as a proxy for higher sperm motility.
Recommended reading:
Read the study:
https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/admi.202400680
Are Sperm Counts Really Declining? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-sperm-counts-really-declining/
Wiggling Sperm Power a New Male Fertility Test https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wiggling-sperm-power-a-new-male-fertility-test/
Tell us what you think! Take our survey for the chance to win some SciAm swag!
http://sciencequickly.com/survey
E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!
Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.
Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
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10:39
Could We Speak to Dolphins? A Promising LLM Makes That a Possibility
Dolphins have a broad vocabulary. They vocalize with whistles, clicks and “burst pulses.”This varied communication makes it challenging for scientists to decode dolphin speech. Artificial intelligence can help researchers process audio and find the slight patterns that human ears may not be able to identify. Reporter Melissa Hobson took a look at DolphinGemma, a large language model created by Google in collaboration with the Wild Dolphin Project and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The project seeks to unravel the clicks from the whistles and to understand what dolphins chat about under the waves.
Recommended reading:
Read our article about DolphinGemma: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-ai-let-us-chat-with-dolphins/
Watch our video about the project: https://www.tiktok.com/@scientificamerican/video/7499862659072871723
Keep up with Hobson’s reporting:
http://www.melissahobson.co.uk/
Tell us what you think! Take our survey for the chance to win some SciAm swag!
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E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!
Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.
Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was co-hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
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19:07
Do Mitochondria Talk to Each Other? A New Look at the Cell’s Powerhouse
Mitochondria are known as the powerhouse of the cell—but new research suggests they might be far more complex. Columbia University’s Martin Picard joins Scientific American’s Rachel Feltman to explore how these tiny organelles could be communicating and what that might mean for everything from metabolism to mental health.
Check out Martin Picard’s full article in the June issue of Scientific American.
Tell us what you think! Take our survey for the chance to win some SciAm swag!
E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!
Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.
Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
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Host Rachel Feltman, alongside leading science and tech journalists, dives into the rich world of scientific discovery in this bite-size science variety show.
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