Becky Fogel

Production Assistant at PRI's Science Friday working with our radio, web, and video teams. Former reporter at 103.3 KWBU FM, the NPR-member station in Waco, Texas. I've covered everything from immigration and women's health to exploration on Mars and big data.

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Picture of the Week: Zinc Sparks

Romantic chemistry can be hard to quantify, but when sperm and egg meet, sparks do fly—in the form of billions and billions of zinc atoms, that is.

Every cell in nature (that we know of) contains zinc, but a mammalian egg cell accumulates an unprecedented amount of the element—20 billion atoms—during the 12 hours before ovulation. “Most cells couldn’t take up such a large amount of zinc. They would die,” says Teresa Woodruff, the director of the Women’s Health Institute at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

More here.

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Show, Not Tell: The Rise of the Infographic 

One could argue that the progenitor to infographics (think, data + image) dates back 10,000 years, to a Native American carving of Idaho’s Snake River, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Gareth Cook. Jump to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and we can thank William Playfair, a Scottish engineer and political economist, for a couple little concepts known as bar graphs and pie charts. Yet, while such images provide a visual way to interpret data, they’re not always the most effective at educating the public. “Sometimes those [bar and pie charts] say ‘don’t read me’ or don’t convey the distinctiveness of the topic,” says Bill Marsh, graphics editor for the New York Times’ Sunday Review. Enter the modern infographic, which—if done well—provides a memorable visualization of interesting information.

More here.

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The Race to Contain, Rather Than Cure, Ebola 

This week Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, passed away. A Dallas-area hospital initially turned him away, and his death has raised questions about what might have happened if he had been diagnosed and admitted to the hospital sooner. As healthcare workers are forced to wait for symptoms of Ebola to materialize before they can treat patients, Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that rapid diagnostic testing tools could be a game changer in this ongoing outbreak.

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Functional Faces: The Evolution of the Human Face 

Many species depend on scent to identify individuals, but humans tend to rely on facial recognition. So while you might mutter about the shape of your mouth, our varied facial features allow us to differentiate one from another. Michael J. Sheehan, co-author of a study published in Nature Communications this week, explains how human social interaction may have been the reason faces evolved to be unique.

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Food Failures: Concocting Condiments 

How do you turn the bright, sweet taste of fresh peppers into the smoky spice of hot sauce? Or mix up mustard that packs a punch without toasting your tastebuds? In this episode of our “Food Failures” series, Ali Bouzari—a culinary scientist—discusses how to avoid condiment crises like greasy mayo and soupy ketchup.

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When a pesky fruit fly flits about your kitchen, it might be difficult to marvel at the insect as a piece of an evolutionary puzzle hundreds of millions of years in the making. But that’s not the case for Michelle Trautwein at the California Academy of Sciences. She specializes in Diptera—or flies—and was one of 100 researchers to work on a multinational study examining insect evolution, published in Science this week. Trautwein discusses new insight into when the first winged insects might have appeared on earth and other findings from the study. (The A.V. Club's Podmass highlighted this segment in its roundup of the best podcast ep.'s in November 2014.) 

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Your cat that cuddles up to you might just as soon hunt you. Genetically speaking, domestic cats have a lot in common with their wild counterparts, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. Where the two differ, says geneticist Wes Warren, an author on the study, is in tameness. Alex Cagan, at Germany’s Max Planck Institute, has also found genetic variation between tame and aggressive rats. Warren and Cagan discuss the possible genetic differences that make certain cats and rats more docile.

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In 2009, scientists announced that they had detected large amounts of methane on Mars. NASA’s Curiosity rover found little evidence to back up those claims after its landing in 2012. But in late 2013 and early 2014, the rover detected a 10-fold spike in the amount of methane in its vicinity. This planetary “burp,” along with the discovery of the first Martian organics, are helping scientists piece together an increasingly detailed picture of early Mars. John Grotzinger, the NASA Curiosity rover’s chief scientist, talks about what these new findings might mean for life on Mars. 

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Michio Kaku Imagines 'The Future of the Mind'

A "brain pacemaker," videos of our dreams, and an internet of human emotions. Michio Kaku explores cutting edge research that sounds like the stuff of science fiction. 

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Solving Life's Everyday Problems, With Data

The secret ingredient for finding a delicious burger? Data. 

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Ben Franklin: Sonic Explorer 

An NYU PhD candidate recreates a sound experiment Ben Franklin first attempted over 240 years ago. 

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Texas Fertilizer Plant Explodes; Unknown Number Killed 

Contributing to a report on the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion for NPR. 

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Visit Original Link

A growing number of people are biking in Waco, and they don't feel especially safe. 

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Visit Original Link

Orangutan skype sessions provide a way to connect mother and child at Waco Zoo. 

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Visit Original Link

Eloisa and Nick Haynes face an uncertain future. Eloisa, who immigrated to the US from Mexico as child, learned that she could be deported despite being married to an American citizen. 

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Visit Original Link

One Texas man is debunking camel myths and bringing to light a little known experiment in U.S. Military history. 

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Meet the Mohawk Behind NASA's Curiosity Mission 

Bobak Ferdowsi, the man with the mold-breaking mane seen round the world during the Mars Curiosity landing in 2012, has become a science communicator for all things space.