Science

It's a bit like probiotics for mosquitoes.

When scientists infect mosquitoes with a specific bacterium, the insects become resistant to the malaria parasite.

Sounds like an easy way to stamp out malaria, right? Just introduce the infected mosquitoes into an area and let the bugs take over the natural population.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

Between the ages of 36 and 38, Sarah Elizabeth Richards spent $50,000 to have her eggs frozen. That wiped out her savings and the money her parents had set aside for a wedding, and she writes, it was the best investment I ever made. Improved technology gives women the choice to freeze their eggs when they're younger and schedule motherhood when they're ready. The experimental status of this procedure was lifted last year.

Sexual thrill-seeker. Sex-mad flatmate.

What you are about to see — and I'm not making this up — is a moth driving a car.

Bordeauxs and Burgundys haven't changed much since the days when famous wine-lover Thomas Jefferson kept the cellars of his Parisian home well-stocked with both wines.

But now, some worry that the regional rules and traditions that have defined top winemaking regions like Champagne, Burgundy and Chianti for centuries could melt away as climate change takes effect.

When I was starting my PhD studies at King's College London, I had the opportunity to meet the famous physicist John Bell. His work established that quantum mechanics — and the bizarre kind of reality it entails — happens to be the way the world is. My conversation with Bell says a lot about how the physics community at large deals with the strange predictions from quantum mechanics. It's mostly with a combination of forced indifference and fear.

The origin of some of the words we use today go back much further than scientists once thought, suggesting an Ice Age-era proto-language that spawned many of the world's contemporary linguistic groups, according to a new study by a group of U.K.-based scientists.

According to a new survey of America's beekeepers, almost a third of the country's honeybee colonies did not make it through the winter.

That's been the case, in fact, almost every year since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began this annual survey, six years ago.

Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honeybee colonies in the U.S. died off over the winter. The worst year was five years ago. Last year was the best: Just 22 percent of the colonies died.