Lifeboat Foundation

How one researcher created a pirate bay for science more powerful than even libraries at top universities.

In 2018, Putin approved a national research strategy that stretches to 2024. It calls for more money, extra support for early-career scientists, and some 900 new laboratories, including at least 15 world-class research centres with a focus on mathematics, genomics, materials research and robotics. Last year, the government completed a sweeping evaluation of scientific performance at its universities and institutes; it has vowed to modernize equipment in the 300 institutes that made the top quartile. And it says it wants to strengthen previously neglected areas, including climate and environmental research (see ‘Russia’s climate-science ambitions’).

Some researchers see promise in planned reforms.

Along with academic research departments around the world, private sector medical technology companies are getting in on the action, seeking ways to increase longevity and health span.

Reversing aging with gene therapy:

Check out http://InspiredInsider.com — Insider Stories with Top Leaders and Entrepreneurs on INspiredINsider.com with Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

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An atomically thin materials platform developed by Penn State researchers in conjunction with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab will open a wide range of new applications in biomolecular sensing, quantum phenomena, catalysis and nonlinear optics.

“We have leveraged our understanding of a special type of graphene, dubbed epitaxial graphene, to stabilize unique forms of atomically thin metals,” said Natalie Briggs, a doctoral candidate and co-lead author on a paper in the journal Nature Materials. “Interestingly, these atomically thin metals stabilize in structures that are completely different from their bulk versions, and thus have very interesting properties compared to what is expected in bulk metals.”

Traditionally, when metals are exposed to air they rapidly begin to oxidize—rust. In as short as one second, metal surfaces can form a rust layer that would destroy the metallic properties. In the case of a 2-D metal, this would be the entire layer. If you were to combine a metal with other 2-D materials via traditional synthesis processes, the chemical reactions during synthesis would ruin the properties of both the metal and layered material. To avoid these reactions, the team exploited a method that automatically caps the 2-D metal with a single layer of graphene while creating the 2-D metal.

Journalist Chip Walter visited our friends at Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library earlier this month to discuss his new book, “Immortality, Inc.” Walter discusses the resources (both the brilliant people and astonishing amount of money) being dedicated to seeing if people do, in fact, have to die.

Advocates for diversity in STEM have a saying: You can’t be what you can’t see. We need to do a better job of celebrating the accomplishments of underrepresented scientists, so that the next generation can more easily imagine themselves joining the ranks of the scientific community.

To close out Black History Month, we wanted to take a moment to highlight just a few of the many incredible black scientists we’ve featured so far on the show. Their bios are below, along with links to the episodes they appear in.

On Short Wave we strive to make the diversity of our guests reflect the diversity of our audience. If there’s a scientist from an underrepresented group that you know of who’s doing awesome science and you think we should feature them in an episode, drop us a line at shortwave@npr.org.

Even with the revisions, scientists warned, the new regulation would let the federal government dismiss or downplay seminal environmental research.

Revised version greatly expands reach of controversial rule, analysts say.