#prxstem

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Transistor: Episode 17

Science and violin-making meet to try to create an electric violin that sounds like a Stradavarius.

In music, everything seems to have another digital life. Pianists can play with different voicings on an electric keyboard. Guitarists can filter their instrument’s signal through a pedal or amp to create various effects. Why shouldn’t violinists be able to digitally harness the sound of a Stradivarius? For starters, it takes an incredible feat of engineering to make an authentic-sounding digital violin. Radio reporter (and violinist!) David Schulman takes us to visit a top violinmaker who has been working with a physicist and two engineers to create a prototype digital violin.

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Transistor: Episode 21

The hosts of Radiotopia's Criminal created this science-y episode of their show for us.

What does it mean when a woman commits a crime and attributes her actions to PMS? We revisit the court case for — and the science behind — the first use of the “PMS defense” in this country, back in 1981. Featuring the true crime show, Criminal.

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Transistor: Episode 18

An episode of our science podcast that we love.

Told by the couple who lived it, this is a story of how Crohn’s disease can change lives when you least expect it. And it’s a story of how science can present multiple paths to — hopefully — relief or recovery.

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Transistor Episode 15: Science's Blind Spots

One of the things we assign to science is that there are true, absolute facts. But scientists are human and, it turns out, as prone to blind spots in their thinking as the rest of us, especially when

What if everything you knew about reproduction..... was wrong?

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Drs. Jane Rigby (L) and Michelle Thaller gaze up at a giant piece of machinery at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center that will be used to test the James Webb Space Telescope before its launch in 2018. Hear more in the latest episode of PRX’s science podcast, Transistor: The Ultimate Wayback Machine.

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New episode from our Transistor podcast series! For one disease, poop — yes, human poop — is nothing short a miracle cure. Microbiologist Christina Agapakis takes a look at what happens when you take poo from a healthy person and transplant it into the gut of a really sick person. Listen here.

(Photo from the front door of Open Biome)

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Please VOTE for this iSeeChange session at SXSWEco!

If your senses are tingling, good. Something big is coming. The combination of citizen sensor data and NASA satellite data presents an opportunity to cultivate a culture of experimentation and democratize earth observation information. As the digital landscape evolves, sensors are bridging the virtual online with the physical world and introducing a whole new kind of storytelling.

1. What is citizen sensor journalism, and who is doing/has done it?

2. What is satellite data, what can it tell us, and how can we access it?

3. How could open networked sensors and satellite data potentially provide new kinds of information for communities addressing climate change, food production, and coastal sea level rise?

4. What problems can we solve that we haven't even thought of yet? What are some ways that we can approach the issue of data quality?

Read more here.

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What's that, you say? A PRXSTEM piece turned into video? Feast your eyes on this! Reid Frazier's 'Tracking the Secret Life of Soot,' visualized.

from the Allegheny Front & Josh Kurz