Science, Spoken

I want to analyze a scene from Star Trek Beyondbut don't want to spoil the movie. Let me set things upin the most generic way possible. If you are very allergic to spoilers, maybe you should just move along tothis nice post about radioactive bananas. You have been warned. Here is the scene: Some people have found an old starship at the top of a cliff. They want toget itflying andleave the planet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Drunk shoppers beware: Impulse buying online just got even easier. With Apple’s new MacBook Pro launched last month, all you have to do is tap your finger to the Touch ID scanner located on the Touch Bar to buy—no more searching through your wallet for the right card, no more typing in three-digit security codes and expiration dates. On the front end, the new method is faster and probably more secure than using stored credit card info online. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Do you remember President-elect Trump holding forth on the campaign trail about "China beating us at our own game"? Well, it's true, as long as the game in question is editing human DNA using Crispr/Cas9. China is now using Crispr-edited cells in living, breathing human beings. Last month, Chinese scientists at Sichuan University injected cancer-fighting, Crispr-modified white bloodcells into a patient suffering from metastatic lung cancer. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Earlier this year, James Gelsleichter got a call from the Bahamas. A group of researchers had been tracking the movements of some oceanic whitetip sharks off the coast of Cat Island, a long, thin stretch of land in the center of the Bahamas. Maybe, they thought, the sharks were moving certain directions because they were pregnant and looking for a place to give birth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Anyone who has taken introductory physics will recognize this famous question: Why can't you start your car with 8 AAA batteries instead of one 12 volt car battery? Eight AAA batteries do add up to 12 volts, but they still can't provide enough electrical current to run the starter motor. But that's not the whole story. Any battery has a limit on the maximum current it can produce. To explain why, I'll make a model to represent a real battery. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last spring, mathematician Henry Segerman found a peculiar post on Facebook. It was by a programmer who had could not conjure mental images—a condition called aphantasia. Segerman immediately recognized that he lives with the same limitation. “When I try to visualize something, I don’t see anything,” he says. Which is curious—because Segerman, 37, has made a career out of visualizing complex mathematical shapes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Yesterday, four US states voted to legalize recreational marijuana. Casual smokers in Massachusetts, Nevada, and California are now free from the social stigma—and threat of jail time—that had clouded cannabis use for decades. (Maine is still up for grabs; Arizona voters kept the status quo.) In these states, downlow smokers will become legal consumers, and formerly clandestine growers and sellers will start responding to the demands of bona fide mass market. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

An HIV diagnosis is a nightmare, but it is no longer a death sentence. Someday, vaccines might bat the virus out of your system without you ever knowing you’d been exposed. If successful, such a vaccine would effectively cure AIDS. Someday, maybe. So scientists are working on it. Like yesterday: Researchers published results to a promising study on primates infected with SIV, a monkey version of HIV. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Early in his career, the decorated biologist Richard Lenski thought he might be forced to evolve. After his postdoctoral research grant was canceled, Lenski began to look tentatively at other options. With one child and a second on the way, Lenski attended a seminar about using specific types of data in an actuarial context—the same type of data he had worked with as a graduate student. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Forget Nate Silver. There’s a new king of the presidential election data mountain. His name is Sam Wang, Ph.D. Haven’t heard of him just yet? Don’t worry. You will. Because Wang has sailed True North all along, while Silver has been cautiously trying to tack his FiveThirtyEight data sailboat (weighted down with ESPN gold bars) through treacherous, Category-Five-level-hurricane headwinds in what has easily been the craziest presidential campaign in the modern political era. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices