Science Quickly (Scientific American)

Researchers studying yellow warbler responses to the parasitic cowbird realized that red-winged blackbirds were eavesdropping on the calls and reacting to them, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers found that leftovers are likely to end up in the trash, so they advise cooking smaller meals in the first place to avoid food waste. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using insurance industry models, researchers determined that wetlands prevented some $625 million in damages due to Hurricane Sandy. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers built a small, flexible device that harvests wi-fi, bluetooth and cellular signals, and turns them into DC electricity. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Engineers at Caltech discovered that for sand dunes to produce sound they need a dry layer on top that amplifies internal frequencies during sand movement. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers seeking evidence for cancer in dinosaurs found it in a collection of bones at a paleontology museum in Alberta. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Almost all southern right whale calves off the coast of Argentina’s Peninsula Valdez are being fed upon, some fatally, by kelp gulls, which was a rare occurrence four decades ago   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inflammatory bowel disease flare-ups can be traced to mental stress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we’re recapping Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation hearings. Highly pathogenic H5N9, a strain of bird flu, was found in U.S. poultry. A tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas is making headlines—but how severe is the spread? Health equity reporter Bek Shackelford-Nwanganga of the Kansas News Service and KCUR joins host Rachel Feltman to unpack the situation. Plus, we discuss fossilized puke and ice-resistant polar bear hair. Recommended reading: –Shackelford-Nwanganga’s reporting on the tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas –The Latest on Bird Flu in Humans, Cats and Chickens –RFK, Jr., Confirmation Hearing Showed 5 Ways He Threatens Public Health  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, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Post-COVID symptoms can linger for months or years, and more and more evidence points to problems with the nervous system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But those who do tweet in big cities are more prolific—tweeting more often, on average, than their small-town counterparts. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wilson Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, addressed ways to deal with the U.S. opioid epidemic at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Music made with artificial intelligence could upend the music industry. Here’s what that might look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cannabis consumers may be familiar with the paranoia that can come from taking too many gummies or smoking too much weed. New research into cannabis reveals how a lemon-scented terpene d-limonene can ease anxiety without diminishing the high.  Join Scientific American, Springer Nature and Nature Portfolio in Washington, D.C. on May 17 for Science on the Hill. Register now! Email 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, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you working really hard to learn something? Remember this counterintuitive fact, and you might improve your learning curve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What you pay for tests, vaccines, and medicine will change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researcher Matthew Austin has become a wildflower pollinator, sans the wings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ground-penetrating radar can detect tiny density differences that lead to images of ancient footprints impossible to discern by eye. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People in the Congo rainforests or in Montreal tended to react to the same piece of music in strikingly similar ways. Andrea Alfano reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beeswax residues found on shards of stone age pottery in the Mediterranean region indicate that humans were keeping honeybees as early as 9,000 years ago   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A wildfire in Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Prospect Park was in part linked to drought conditions nationally. Plastic waste is set to grow with our expanding economy, but potential solutions look promising. Drops in gonorrhea and early-stage syphilis point to the first decline in sexually transmitted infections in 20 years. Voyager 2’s fly-by of Uranus in the 1980s collected data that led scientists to believe the planet’s moons were inactive. A reassessment of those data shows that Uranus could have just been having an off day. Plus, Alec Luhn reports from the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) in Azerbaijan. Recommended reading: Melting Glaciers Are Causing Billions of Dollars of Damage  The U.S. Has Its First Plan for Plastic Pollution. This Is What’s in It  This Astoundingly Simple Ancient Technique Is Helping to Beat Back Drought  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, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest associate editor Andrea Thompson. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck.  The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Regions that send a team to the Super Bowl saw on average an 18 percent increase in flu deaths among those over 65, probably because of increased transmission due to gatherings of people at parties during the height of the flu season. Karen Hopkin reports      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2017 was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A 15-year study of where carbon lies in boreal forests has unearthed a surprising finding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meet Rachel Feltman, the new host of Science Quickly! Bringing a fresh perspective and infectious enthusiasm, Rachel will take you on audio journeys to far-off places, inspire you to ponder deep questions, and introduce you to people changing the world with science.  Email 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, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cod egg survival stays high with limited warming, but plummets when the temperature rises a few degrees Celsius in their current spawning grounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting December 16, ocean scientists will live-tweet the BBC documentary series Blue Planet II, available via Netflix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re looking back at 2023 for our favorite podcast shows and one about the largest bird to ever fly the skies just flew to the top of the list. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Six months of piano lessons can heighten kindergartners' brain responses to different pitches, and improve their ability to tell apart two similar-sounding words. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coyotes become fearless around people in just a few generations—which isn’t good for their longterm co-existence with humans in cities. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David J. Thouless, F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz split the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quantum bits, aka qubits, can simultaneously encode 0 and 1. But multicolored photons could enable even more states to exist at the same time, ramping up computing power. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Neandertals ate clams and then modified the hard shells into tools for cutting and scraping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study hints that the most energetic particles ever seen come from far beyond the Milky Way.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Red dwarfs are a popular place to hunt for small exoplanets in the habitable zone—but the stars' radiation bursts might fry chances for life as we know it. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump pointed out yesterday that if we didn't do any testing for the virus we would have very few cases, which forces us to confront the issues posed by testing in general. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mussels and crabs are two of the creatures most likely to invade Antarctica in the next 10 years, a panel of scientists say. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jimmy Carter's efforts against the horribly painful guinea worm parasitic disease have helped lower the number of cases from 3.5 million in 1986 to just 126 last year. Steve Mirsky reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quadcopters appear to be a relatively benign tool to study the behavior and numbers of wetland birds. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we take a few minutes to talk about the other virus making headlines—and then return to long COVID. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers in the happiest lab in the world tested 375 pups and found they connected with people by eight weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listeners to a person letting loose with a roar can accurately estimate the size and formidability or the human noise maker. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The dangerous virus is still here. Here’s how you can stay safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The birds are arriving in the Arctic up to 13 days earlier than they used to. But at a cost: hunger. Annie Sneed reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Yao people of Mozambique vocally signal honeyguide birds to show them the location of hives, which the people harvest and share with the birds.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The six million black people who left the South between 1910 and 1970 had better economic opportunity but a lower chance or reaching their 70s. Erika Beras reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Serving wine in larger glasses boosted sales 10 percent in an English bar, possibly because customers think they're imbibing less per glass. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By playing road noise where there was no road, researchers were able to gauge the effect of the noise on bird behavior without having to deal with the effect of the road itself.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wildfires, appearing dead in winter, are actually smoldering and then bouncing back to life in spring to consume increasingly more land in the Far North. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A star that appeared and then vanished in A.D. 1437 was an explosion in a binary star system—which now reveals clues about the life cycle of certain stars. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two of the foremost experts on witch hunts talk about the link between the formation of domestic labor and the rise of witch hunting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A subtype of H5N1 bird flu that has been found in cattle for the first time suggests that the virus jumped from birds to the animals twice. A headline-making study estimates that we have a spoon’s worth of microplastics in our brain. Streams of rock from a cosmic impact created the moon’s two deep canyons, Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck. A large study shows that people feel their best in the morning and their worst at midnight. Bonobos can tell when humans don’t know something—and try to help us. Recommended reading: The U.S. Is Not Ready for Bird Flu in Humans  Bonobos Can Tell When a Human Doesn’t Know Something  Is Snoozing the Alarm Good or Bad for Your Health?   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, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Naeem Amarsy with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Huda Zoghbi is a clinician-scientist who studies the molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration. This year she shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for discovering the genetic pathways behind serious brain disorders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The rodents’ personalities may help them to secure territory and avoid prey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

White-throated sparrows made a change to their familiar call that quickly spread across Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers activated specific brain cells in zebra finches to teach them songs they’d ordinarily have to hear to learn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hypochlorous acid is a promising disinfectant that is difficult to commercialize because it is not very shelf-stable. Senior features editor Jen Schwartz takes us through what the science of this nontoxic disinfectant is and explains why its popularity in the beauty aisle is only the beginning.  Recommended reading:  The Nontoxic Cleaner That Kills Germs Better Than Bleach—And You Can Use It on Your Skin https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hypochlorous-acid-is-trending-in-skin-care-and-cleaning-but-does-it-work/  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 Jen Schwartz. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When food is plentiful and chimps are more chummy, they harbor an increased number of different bacterial species in their bellies.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from all over, including one from Israel about what DNA reveals about the Dead Sea Scrolls’ parchment.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conny Aerts is an astrophysicist and a pioneer of asteroseismology. This year she shared the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for her research and leadership that has laid the foundations of solar and stellar structure theory, and revolutionized our understanding of the interiors of stars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans are building meaningful relationships with AI chatbots. What will the consequences be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Masquerading as a bird turd appears to protect certain arachnids from getting eaten by wasps. Karen Hopkin reports    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Light is a very dangerous, if not so obvious, threat to birds who migrate at night. But researchers are using weather radar to track birds and provide “lights out” forecasts to help keep their paths clear of visual distraction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A prototype flexible electronic mouth guard can measure lactate levels in an athlete’s saliva, tracking muscle fatigue during training and performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The branches of birch trees in Europe sagged by as much as four inches at night compared with daytime.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fragments of edible marine snail shells found in Lebanon support the idea that ancient humans went from Africa to Europe through the Levant. Cynthia Graber reports   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Equally surprising is the fact that we still do not know how birds actually stay airborne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A thin film coating can chill a vat of water to 15 degress Fahrenheit cooler than its surroundings, by absorbing—and then emitting—the sun's infrared rays. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers used Twitter searches for nonflu words associated with behavior to predict flu outbreaks two weeks in advance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nonsterile lab reagents and DNA extraction kits add their own assortment of DNA to microbiome samples. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The sounds of the Mars InSight Mission control room during the tense minutes leading to the landing on the surface. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When vampire bats feel sick, they still engage in prosocial acts such as sharing food with nonrelatives. But they cut back on grooming anyone other than their closest kin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If a weak piglet positions itself next to a strong sibling while feeding, it may get some extra nutrition from inadvertently stimulated mammary glands.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A study of adults learning a new language found that speaking primarily activated regions in the left side of the brain, but reading and listening comprehension were much more variable Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gen. John Hyten, Commander, U.S. Air Force Space Command, talks about the task of tracking all the materials in orbit and keeping them from crashing into one another. Steve Mirsky and Larry Greenemeier report     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can something spring back to life if it last moved around when woolly mammoths roamed the earth? The answer appears to be yes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Primatologists spent almost 1,100 hours watching lemurs do their business on their designated tree and concluded that urine and glandular secretions serve as posted messages. Steve Mirsky reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Micrococcus bacteria thrive on the open-air lattice of synthetic fibers—where they sit chomping on the fatty acids in our sweat, turning them into shorter, stinkier molecules. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re a silphid beetle, a dead body is all your children really want, and it’s your job—no matter how difficult—to get one for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new movie Fastball dissects the pitch from the perspective of pitchers, hitters, umpires—and scientists, who talk about everything from the physics governing the trajectory of the ball to the neuroscience of the batter’s perception and reaction—including how the ball can appear to vanish.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adults of the west African Baka people and east African Efé and Sua peoples average less than five feet tall. But while the Efé and Sua are born small, the Baka have slow growth rates in infancy   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Youths rated as attractive were less likely to have negative encounters with the criminal justice system—but only if they were women. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the “Innovation: An American Imperative” symposium October 20 on Capitol Hill, industry leaders and members of Congress talked about shoring up federal support for basic research and development   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an analysis of 14 presidential debate transcripts, two thirds of accusations of question-dodging had no merit. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The resonant properties of your skull can amplify some frequencies and dampen others—and, in some cases, affect your hearing. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Male nightingales use singing virtuosity to signal prospective mates that they will be the most doting dads. Sabrina Imbler reports   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Javelin throwers chucking replicas of Neandertal spears were able to hit targets farther away, and with greater force than previously thought to be possible. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Smoke wafting north from the Gulf of Mexico worsened the already stormy weather brewing across the southeastern U.S. on April 27, 2011. Julia Rosen reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Need a break from politics and the pandemic? You’re probably not in the Amazon rain forest right now, but we can take you there in audio. Today, in part three of our three-part audio sound escape, we ascend into the trees where howler monkeys and crimson-crested woodpeckers rule the airwaves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We could use laser light to mask our transits across the sun and thus hide Earth from any intelligent aliens looking for planets to invade   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An analysis of the movement of some 40,000 people suggests most of us frequent only 25 places—and as we sub in new favorites, we drop old ones. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The geese are wintering farther and farther north, in urban areas like Chicago—which may help them avoid hunters. Emily Schwing reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the inaugural episode of Cosmos, Quickly, we blast off with Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno of the Space Force, who is charged with protecting our space in space, particularly from Russia and China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whale ancestors probably never had teeth and baleen at the same time, and only developed baleen after trying toothlessness and sucking in prey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artist and author Geo Rutherford created Spooky Lake Month to highlight the strange and eerie waters of the world. She first fell in love with the Great Lakes during graduate school in Milwaukee. Rutherford was an early educational video creator, but it was a video about spooky lakes that skyrocketed her to viral fame. She has a new book, Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes That Dot Our Planet. Rutherford joins host Rachel Feltman to discuss art, natural wonders and the deepest lake in the world.  You can get Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes That Dot Our Planet at  www.georutherford.com/book  Watch Spooky Lakes videos at www.tiktok.com/@geodesaurus We’re still looking for listener submissions for our upcoming episode on the science of earworms. We’d love to hear a song you just can’t get out of your head. If you’re up for the challenge, sing or hum a few bars in a voice memo and send it over to ScienceQuickly@sciam.com with your name and where you’re from.  We value your input! Take our quick survey to share your feedback. 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, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Geo Rutherford. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a professional astronomer—with a passion for amateur astrophotography—and she's here to offer tips and tricks for want to get into capturing the night sky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Machine-learning algorithms allow composers to create all-new instruments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The holidays are a time for indulgence, but there are ways to drink alcohol without suffering the painful effects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices