Afleveringen
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Read this article at: or watch at: https://youtu.be/C11YMSLV_e4
Summary: Researchers wanted to discover how the genomes of the humpback whale have evolved to help them avoid developing cancer.
Abstract: Every day, the cells in your body are super busy growing and dividing. When something goes wrong, mutations appear. Our immune system usually detects cells with mistakes and kills them before they become a problem. But sometimes they go undetected and the rogue cell multiplies, turning into cancer. So, if an animal has more cells and a longer life, it should get more cancer. Whales have up to 1,000 times more cells than humans and some live for over 200 years. But their cancer rates are no higher than ours! To figure out why this is, we compared the humpback whale and other whale genomes to other mammal genomes. Our DNA analysis showed that in whales there was duplication of cancer-suppressing genes. We also found that whales have the slowest rate of genetic changes. Our findings help us understand the role of DNA in preventing cancer. It could also help us fight cancer in humans!
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Summary: Researchers wanted to see if AI assistants can improve online political discussions.
Abstract: Imagine a world where everyone can talk and share their ideas. Even if they don't agree, they listen to each other. This is what should happen in a democracy. But sometimes, when people chat online, things can get a bit mean. We wanted to see if artificial intelligence (AI) could make online talks kinder.
So, we did an online experiment with pairs of people discussing a tricky topic: laws about who can own guns. One participant in each pair had an AI assistant that made suggestions. The participants could accept or ignore the suggestions. Most participants took the AI's advice, which made people more positive and polite. Even if they disagreed, they understood and respected each other. The good thing is that the AI didn't change the topic, it just helped people to talk to each other more kindly.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-can-doctors-treat-endometriosis/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/LWDUiEuk-GY
Summary: Researchers studied how different types and amounts of macrophages affect endometriosis in mice.
Abstract: Normally, the tissue that makes up each of your bodyâs organs only grows in the place it should. But thatâs not the case for people with endometriosis. With this disease, tissue that lines the uterus grows outside the uterus as lesions. These cause pain and infertility. Endometriosis affects about 10% of women worldwide as well as some trans people. On very rare occasions it has been detected in men.
Scientists know that people with endometriosis have high levels of a type of white blood cell called macrophages. We wanted to find out how macrophages affected the growth of lesions as well as pain in people with endometriosis. So, we studied mice with endometriosis in a laboratory. We changed the number and type of macrophages present in the mice to learn how these cells affect the development of lesions. We discovered that certain types of macrophages may help to treat endometriosis. Others encourage the development of lesions. Our findings could lead to new treatments for endometriosis patients!
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-do-bumble-bees-play/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/gT0LECbcxHk
Summary: Researchers wanted to find out whether bumble bees take part in object play.
Abstract: Have you watched cute cat videos or funny dog compilations? Or primates âmonkeying aroundâ? Then you know that mammals love to play. Even the dancing cockatiel has gone viral! But have you ever considered whether insects play âfor funâ?
We did an experiment to test whether bumble bees take part in object play. We wanted to see whether they would interact and play with wooden balls. We found that the bumble bees did play with a ball-rolling action. Their behavior fulfilled our expectations of play in animals. What's more, they also found it rewarding! We ruled out the possibility that the ball rolling was an attempt to look for food or to mate. This suggests that bumble bees may be more capable of feeling than we had thought!
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-can-we-tell-whether-we-are-talking-to-a-computer-or-a-person/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/ST2dC1eQT64
Summary: Researchers studied the rules of thumb people use to tell computer-generated and human-made text apart, and found that people often used rules of thumb that were wrong.
Abstract: How can you tell if you are talking to a computer? New computer programs called language models have gotten very good at mimicking people. It can be really hard to tell if youâre talking to a person or a computer. We wanted to know how people try to recognize computer-generated text and if they could do it accurately. We learned that people unconsciously use rules of thumb to figure out whether they are talking to a computer. These are often wrong, which means that people are vulnerable to scams.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-have-the-life-choices-of-women-in-india-changed-over-time/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/4ZI4Ye9tDQ8
Summary: Researchers analyze data to determine if the life trajectories of young women in India have changed over time.
Abstract: What do you think you will be doing 10 years from now? Do you have a job? Are you married? Do you have children? Throughout your life, there will be decisions to make that determine your path through life. This life trajectory is often affected by different factors. These factors are different from one country to another. They can include social status, religion, and government policies. Life trajectories can affect the success of a country. That is because they can determine how many people are part of the workforce. They also determine if the countryâs population grows.
We analyzed survey data to determine how the life trajectories of women in India changed over time. We learned that more women are graduating from high school, so they are getting married later. We also found out that social status and religion affect their decisions about having children and getting a job.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-do-animals-behave-during-a-solar-eclipse/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/KsAYuSCgE9U
Summary: Researchers examined the behavior of zoo animals during a total solar eclipse.
Abstract: When was the last time you were at the zoo? You probably saw lots of animals doing lots of different things there. We wanted to know what zoo animals do when a solar eclipse happens. People have observed animals during solar eclipses before. But these were mostly just casual observations.
We designed a study to observe 17 different types of animals at the zoo. First, we observed their normal behaviors. Then we recorded what happened during a solar eclipse. We saw that a lot of animals did something that wasnât normal. Most of them started behaving like it was nighttime â in the middle of the day! Some of them even seemed anxious â like the eclipse stressed them out. This helps us understand how complex animal behavior can be.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-do-dolphin-mothers-speak-with-their-babies/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/PDoq8jMBb4g
Summary: Researchers investigated how bottlenose dolphin female whistles change when they are with their calves.
Abstract: Have you ever noticed that people speak differently to babies and toddlers? Caregivers, particularly mothers, change their speech when talking to young children. How? Their speech includes higher pitches. They also use a wider pitch range and shorter sentences. Scientists call these changes in speech patterns child-directed communication, but you can think of it as baby talk. We wanted to find out if bottlenose dolphins also use child-directed communication. We analyzed the sounds made by female dolphins and found that they used higher frequency whistles when they were with their calves. We also found that the frequency range of their whistles increased. Like humans, bottlenose dolphins speak differently to youngsters than to adults.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/what-do-parenting-and-brain-size-have-to-do-with-each-other/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/dNyShbldjGU
Summary: Bird species that spend more energy on their young have larger brains than those with less parental care.
Abstract: Big brains are useful, but they need time and energy to grow. So why do some animals have big brains and others donât? We looked at 1,176 bird species to see how different things affect brain size. We found that parental provision had the largest impact on brain size. This includes egg size and caring for and feeding babies. We think parental care allowed larger brains to evolve. And not just among birds! This could also explain why human brains are so big!
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-does-fear-speech-spread-on-social-media/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/Fe2RIr9I7Yo
Summary: Researchers examined the rise of fear speech on social media.
Abstract: Are you on social media? There are lots of fun things on social media, but there are also some bad things. Social media platforms try to manage hurtful content like hate speech. But there are other types of hurtful content that are harder to manage. One of these is fear speech. This is when people use words to create fear about a group.
We wanted to know how common fear speech is on social media. So we created a model to identify fear speech and hate speech from 21 million social media posts. Then we examined things like how connected users were, how they interacted with people who didnât post hurtful things, and the characteristics of their posts. We found that users who post a lot of fear speech are more connected to others. Fear speech posts also have a lot more activity than hate speech posts. This could contribute to the spread of fear speech on social media.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-does-the-way-we-think-affect-our-choices-about-vaccines/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/UNkZcX-tYTM
Summary: Researchers want to explore whether the way people think is connected to vaccine hesitancy.
Abstract: Vaccines save millions of lives each year. Yet there are more and more people who are unsure about getting them. Why is that? So far, studies have looked at issues related directly to vaccines. But we think it might be something else. Could it have to do with how people's minds work? To find out, we asked 356 people different questions about what and how they think, and what they believe.
What did we discover? People who like to trust their feelings and believe in supernatural things are more likely to be against vaccines. But those who think carefully and have some scientific knowledge generally trust vaccines. It seems the way our minds work can affect what we think about vaccines. This is important to remember when we talk about the importance of vaccines.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/why-are-women-hunters-important/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/bXcOQ94P63Q
Summary: Researchers investigated the role of women hunting in foraging societies.
Abstract: Have you heard that women should make dinner for their family? Or that only men should work outside the home? Unfortunately, many people believe in these ideas about gender roles. It makes it hard to look at new situations without bias.
For a long time, scientists have thought that in foraging societies, men are hunters and women are gatherers. We questioned these ideas. We investigated how often women take part in hunting, what they hunt, and how they hunt. We found that women do hunt intentionally in a lot of foraging societies. They sometimes hunt with different tools than men. We also found women are more flexible in whom they hunt with. They often take dogs and children with them. We can use this information to rethink our historical biases about the role of women in hunting.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-can-humans-and-ai-work-together-to-detect-deepfakes/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/jcYwojytZbk
Summary: Researchers wanted to test whether humans or AI programs were better at detecting deepfake videos.
Abstract: Fake news is not new on the internet, and people often change images and videos for a joke. However, deepfakes arenât only meant to make you laugh. Instead, they can spread misinformation or discredit a person or a group. As more deepfakes find their way onto the internet, we need to find the best way to detect these harmful videos. We tested whether the leading AI model or humans were better at detecting deepfakes online. We found that humans and the AI model were each good at identifying certain types of deepfakes. Maybe we could merge the abilities of both AI and humans to create the best deepfake detection model!
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-does-dark-energy-affect-galaxies/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/OpMe1Gyqey4
Summary: Researchers found a way to quantify the effect dark energy is having on our universe.
Abstract: Scientists have known for a while that the universe is expanding, and itâs doing so faster and faster. This strange phenomenon is caused by something we call dark energy. To understand this better, we need to think about a special number called the Cosmological Constant. It helps us describe how things move in space.
In our research, we aimed to uncover how dark energy causes objects like stars and galaxies to interact. As an example, weâve been studying our neighbor galaxy â Andromeda. By looking at how it moves and at its mass, we can see how dark energy affects it.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/what-are-the-benefits-of-growing-multiple-crop-species-together/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/dGIoWE18w8U
Summary: Researchers tried to determine if intercropping is a good technique for growing food by comparing it to sole cropping.
Abstract: Did you know there are different ways to grow food? One way is sole cropping, which occurs when a field only has one species of crop. Another method is intercropping, which is when many species are grown together in the same field. We wanted to compare sole cropping and intercropping. We found that intercropping produces less of each type of crop on a field than sole cropping. But intercropping produces more diverse food choices. It also can save land space and reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer needed to grow food. That is why intercropping is an important agricultural technique to consider for the future.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-does-your-address-affect-your-chances-of-being-evicted/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/Y3GuYt-hcV0
Summary: Researchers found that renters with longer travel times to court are more likely to receive judgments in favor of their landlord, often leading to eviction.
Abstract: he idea of losing your home is scary. If a renter struggles to pay their landlord, the landlord may start the legal process of eviction. The renter has the opportunity to present their case in court, but they typically must show up in person and on time. And if they donât? In some places, the landlord will receive a default judgment. This allows them to move forward with the eviction.
We wondered about renters traveling to the courthouse using public transportation. Does their travel time affect their probability of receiving a default judgment? We studied 200,000 eviction cases across fifteen years in Philadelphia, PA. We found that renters with longer travel times to the courthouse are more likely to receive a default judgment in favor of their landlord. But this effect was not present during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because renters could attend their court hearing virtually, via video call. Our findings show that the location and accessibility of a courthouse can affect the outcomes of individual cases.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-can-nanoparticles-help-coral-reefs/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/sVOTF1mBi-0
Summary: Scientists made tiny nanoparticles to help prevent bleaching and keep coral reefs healthy.
Abstract: Did you know that coral reefs are like incredible underwater cities built by corals? They protect coastlines and provide homes for many marine species, including tiny algae that live inside the coral. These algae have a special deal with the coral â they share nutrients and give the coral its colorful beauty. But there's trouble! Rising ocean temperatures from climate change stress the corals. This makes coral lose their colorful algae partners in a process called coral bleaching. It's bad news for both the corals and the reefs.
We made a drug for the algae to help fight the harmful effects of stress. The algae are small, so we made ceria nanoparticles that the algae can easily absorb. This protected the algae from harm, even when seawater temperatures were warm!
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-can-super-recognizers-help-police-investigations/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/W_aMwbbMWpQ
Summary: Researchers used real police materials to test the abilities of super-recognizers to identify criminals.
Abstract: Did you know that some people are really good at remembering and matching faces? They are called super-recognizers. Police want to use super-recognizers to help with their cases. They could sort through camera recordings of crimes and identify criminals. But their abilities have never been tested using real police material.
First we used tests to identify super-recognizers. Then we used real police material to see if super-recognizers could identify criminals. We found that the tests could indeed identify super-recognizers. Super-recognizers did a good job at finding criminals. Much better than regular people! We can use this information to help solve crimes and keep people safe.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-do-some-fungi-turn-insects-into-zombies/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/lL24Va5Py1o
Summary: Scientists wanted to explore the mechanisms behind host behavior manipulation by zombie-making fungi.
Abstract: Did you know that certain fungi can turn insects into zombies, just like in the movies? These "zombie-making" fungi control the insectsâ behavior and make their hosts do strange things like walking a long way, climbing tall plants, and hanging onto high surfaces. This is so the fungi can make their infectious spores spread further. There are many types of zombie-making fungi, and most have evolved independently. Yet they change the insectsâ behavior in a similar way. How do they do this and why is it so common?
We reviewed previous studies on zombie-making fungi to search for an answer. These fungi use both mechanical and chemical processes to control their hosts. And while the changed behavior is very similar, the ways they achieve it vary greatly among the different species of zombie-making fungi. Each one has its own unique way of manipulating insects to change the same behaviors! We believe these same behaviors are changed by all these different fungal species because these manipulations are the best way to infect as many other hosts as possible.
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Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/how-well-can-a-computer-think/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/Y96gVN_1vX0
Summary: Researchers treated a computer program called GPT-3 like a participant in a psychology experiment to learn about how it âthinksâ.
Abstract: What do chatbots, voice assistants, and predictive text have in common? They all use computer programs called language models. Large language models are new kinds of models that can only be built using supercomputers. They work so well that it can be hard to tell if something was written by a person or by a computer!
We wanted to understand how a large language model called GPT-3 worked. But we wanted to know more than whether GPT-3 could answer questions correctly. We wanted to know how and why. We treated GPT-3 like a participant in a psychology experiment. Our results showed that GPT-3 gets a lot of questions right. But we also learned that GPT-3 gets confused very easily. And it doesnât search for new information as well as people do. Knowing how and why large language models come up with wrong answers helps us figure out how to make even better versions in the future.
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