SUMMARY: Cancer treatment was for years dominated by just four techniques. But there is now a fifth category -- immunotherapy -- thanks to the revolutionary research of Jim Allison and Tasuku Honjo, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday. Allison joins Nick Schifrin to discuss his research and his personal connection to fighting the disease.
Sen. Rand Paul misrepresented two studies supported by federal grants, while advocating legislation he introduced to change the federal grant funding process.
In both cases, Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate and Republican from Kentucky, confused the means the researchers used to conduct their experiments with the studies' ends, or purpose. Paul also ignored the broader implications of the research.
- Paul characterized one study funded by the National Science Foundation as “bad science” because it looked at “shrimp on a treadmill.” But the scientists developed the treadmill as a means of studying how bacterial infection affects shrimp respiration during activity.
- Paul also left out the broader goal of the shrimp research: To understand how the recent decrease in water oxygen levels where shrimp and other seafood live might affect how they handle infections.
- Paul said it's “absurd” that the National Institutes of Health provided $2 million for a study on whether “kids don't like food that has been sneezed on.” But that money went to a six-year project, composed of multiple studies, on children's reasoning about foods. One study used a video of an actor sneezing on food as a means of understanding if young children can pick up on subtle cues about contamination.
Paul, who worked as an ophthalmologist before entering politics, made his remarks on Oct. 18 during a hearing on federal support for research. A day earlier, Paul introduced the BASIC Research Act, which, if passed, would make a number of changes to the way federal agencies fund basic research.
- Paul also ignored the ultimate aim of the NIH research: To contribute to developing ways to nudge kids to make safer and more healthy food choices by understanding why they make certain choices to begin with.
Paul mentioned his legislation multiple times during the Oct. 18 hearing, arguing it would help take the “bias” out of the grant review process.
Among other things, the bill would require grant review panels to include a “taxpayer advocate.” The bill defines this person as “someone whose main focus is on the value proposed research delivers to the taxpayer.”
Paul's bill would also require panels to include a least one person who is an expert in an unrelated field to the proposed grant project and hasn't been affiliated with any academic or research institution for 10 years.
To be clear, we take no position on whether or not the federal government should have funded these two research projects – that's a matter of opinion. Paul has the right to his opinion that the government shouldn't have funded them. But in advocating his legislation, he mischaracterized the purpose and scope of the two research projects.
SUMMARY: If you enjoy a beer on a summer day, you can thank yeast, the microbes that ferment sugar into alcohol and give beer its character. After innumerable generations of using just two types of yeast, a lab in North Carolina has discovered a new yeast that produces a variety of flavors, and it comes from the weirdest source, bees. Science producer Nsikan Akpan reveals what the buzz is all about.
SUMMARY: Neonicotinoids, the popular insecticide used in agriculture, can be harmful to bees, according to new papers. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss some important findings and analyses on that story, as well as a recent study that looked at the economic consequences of climate change.
SUMMARY: In our NewsHour Shares moment of the day, British researchers have monitored changes in the world's atmosphere from a remote lab in Antarctica for more than 60 years. Now, for the first time the state-of-the-art facility will close -- at least temporarily -- after a nearly 30-mile long crack opened up on the ice shelf.
SUMMARY: The next generation of nuclear power is coming, as concerns about climate change bring the industry out of hibernation. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on how new startups and young scientists are hoping to develop solutions for safely generating vast amounts of nuclear energy.
MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour): This is where nuclear power began. Welcome to the Idaho National Laboratory. It covers a vast swathe of high desert nearly the size of Rhode Island.
It is dotted with experimental nuclear reactors that wrote the textbooks on how to generate power by splitting atoms. And now a new chapter is being written here.
MARK PETERS, Idaho National Laboratory: If we're going to mitigate climate change, we have to think about how to develop new nuclear.
MILES O'BRIEN: Laboratory director Mark Peters says concerns about climate change have brought his industry out of a long nuclear winter.
MARK PETERS: We're restarting and testing infrastructure to start to develop the next generation of nuclear power. So I'm just incredibly excited about the fact that we're finally starting to get a public dialogue going now that it's important to build the next generation.
MILES O'BRIEN: The Bush and Obama administrations and Congress have concurred on that point. Together, they authorized tens of billions in loan guarantees for nuclear plant construction, and tens of millions in funding to develop what's known as Generation IV technology.
MARK PETERS: Generation IV are future reactors that are based on different concepts, different core designs, different coolants.
MILES O'BRIEN: And perhaps his most promising client is an innovator from another industry. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is among a handful of entrepreneurs with seemingly bottomless pockets making big bets on nuclear power.
In a 2010 TED Talk, he announced he had co-founded a company called TerraPower. His partner is his former chief technology officer at Microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold.
NATHAN MYHRVOLD, TerraPower: We need to have base load carbon-free power, and nuclear is a great example of something that is base load carbon-free power. Base load means 7 by 24, day and night, whenever, it's going to be there.
SUMMARY: Now legal in eight states, there are unanswered questions about the impact of recreational marijuana on public health. To maximize potency, pot can be purified for maximum THC, its psychoactive ingredient. But a lack of research and restrictions on these very high concentrations is raising concerns. Special correspondent John Ferrugia of Rocky Mountain PBS reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): With recreational marijuana now legal in eight states, a serious health and safety question about the potency of the psychoactive drug in cannabis, known as THC, are emerging. In Colorado, some marijuana products contain 90 percent pure THC, with little research documenting the physical and mental effects on consumers.
This week, the state's health department announced more than $2 million in grants to study the impacts on driving and cognitive functioning.
As John Ferrugia of Rocky Mountain PBS in Denver reports, there are concerns that the effects on some users could be deadly.
MARC BULLARD (user): 2016 is a year of something new.
JOHN FERRUGIA, Rocky Mountain PBS: In December 2015, Marc Bullard felt on top of the world. He had landed a good job in Denver after graduating magna cum laude from Southern Methodist University.
MARC BULLARD: It's been a good year.
JOHN FERRUGIA: He made video diaries to keep his family and friends updated on his life, looking forward to the New Year.
MARC BULLARD: It's time to start planning projects.
JOHN FERRUGIA: But just four months later, in April 2016, Marc Bullard took his own life. His written diary shows severe depression seems to have taken a quick hold on him.
MIKE BULLARD, Marc Bullard's Father: You know, December, he's fine, he comes home for the Christmas holiday.
JOHN FERRUGIA: And Mike and Ginny Bullard say he spent time with family and friends and showed no sign of being down.
MIKE BULLARD: And what we saw in the in the diary later, was by January the 16th, I guess, he's talking about suicide.
JOHN FERRUGIA: It was only after his death that his parents began reading his written diaries.
When did you first see the first entry about dabbing?
MIKE BULLARD: That was in the March the 5th. And that's where he talks about you know, I think I've been dabbing too much.
SUMMARY: Duke University biologist Sheila Patek has faced criticism from lawmakers over her research into mantis shrimp and trap-jaw ants, with some calling her government-funded studies a waste of taxpayer money. But according to Patek, not only do her findings have important practical applications, but scientific inquiry is most fruitful when knowledge is sought for its own sake, not to justify budgets.
SHEILA PATEK, Biologist, Duke University: I expressed the wonder of these discoveries, as well as their fundamental significance to physics, evolution, and the limits of current engineering capabilities.
A prominent lawyer from Nigeria who was in the audience that day approached me a few days later. Her first words to me were, “Your research disgusted me with such waste, studying trivial and useless problems.”
In that moment, she had voiced my most vulnerable thoughts: That the science to which I would dedicated much of my life was actually pointless.
But she added, “I realized something important, that science is about discovery, not just about solving human problems.”
She then spoke a phrase that has stuck with me over the years. She said, “I want what you have for my country.”
In her country, Nigeria, there was simply no infrastructure for this type of discovery-based research. In fact, many solutions to humans’ problems began in a scientist’s laboratory. Did you know that some of the most significant medical breakthroughs for the human brain began with research on sea slugs?
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However, engineering-related applications are not the primary reason we do this research.
The nature of discovery is that it is impossible to anticipate what you will find. That is discovery. Discovery-based research is most fruitful when new knowledge is sought for its own sake.
SUMMARY: When weather events like El Niño impose themselves, everybody on the planet feels it. Scientists are getting better at predicting El Niño, but there is still a lot they don't know amid an absence of data. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien follows along as weather scientists gather information in Hawaii by air and by sea.
Editor’s note: In the story we incorrectly identified the Jason-3 oceanography satellite as a partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency. It is in fact a four-partner mission between NOAA, NASA, France’s space agency CNES and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, with NOAA as the lead agency.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): It’s another beautiful day in sunny Hawaii. A Gulfstream G4 jet spools up its engines and taxis for departure.
The plane is the ultimate in business jet luxury, in this case minus the luxury. Nicknamed Gonzo, it is owned and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, and the business is scientific research on one of the most significant weather patterns on the planet, El Niño.
They make a beeline from good weather to bad.
MAN: Positive rate. Gear up, gear up. Heading and altitude? Verified.
MILES O’BRIEN: The cabin is filled with researchers using sophisticated equipment. They are part of a scientific campaign on multiple fronts, deploying satellites, drones, planes, balloons, surface ships and buoys, all focused on the largest El Niño in nearly 20 years.
BILL PATZERT, NASA Climatologist: El Niños come small, medium, large and what I’m fond of calling is Godzilla.
MILES O’BRIEN: Veteran NASA climatologist Bill Patzert has studied El Niño his entire career. He watches the weather from a perch in space via the Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California. Launched in January, the Jason-3 oceanography satellite is the fourth in a series NASA and the European Space Agency have deployed to monitor El Niño and sea level rise since the early ’90s.
BILL PATZERT: When these events impose themselves on the climate system, everybody on the planet feels it. And the droughts, floods are spectacular and they’re global.
MILES O’BRIEN: Here’s what makes an El Niño tick: Normally, trade winds blow from the east westward across the Pacific Ocean. This creates a mound of water near Indonesia that is as much as 10 degrees warmer and 1.5 feet higher than the water off the coast of Ecuador.
During an El Niño year, the trade winds either stop, or blow in the opposite direction, transporting the mound of warm water to the east.
SUMMARY: Wind can be a bountiful resource in Tehachapi, California, but not necessarily at the right time. There turbines generate the most energy at night, when the wind blows hardest, and the demand is the lowest. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports on the wider push for electricity storage solutions that may enable renewables to have a greater impact on the grid.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): A hundred miles north of Los Angeles, in Tehachapi, California, the wind can be a bountiful resource, but, unfortunately, not at the right time. It blows hardest at night, spooling up these wind turbines to their peak output, when the demand for electricity is at it lowest.
DOUG KIM, Southern California Edison: So, matching the output of wind to when customers really need it, that’s certainly one of the things that we’re looking at with this system that you see here, because you can store energy.
MILES O’BRIEN: Doug Kim is the director of advanced technology for Southern California Edison. The utility built this eight megawatt lithium-ion battery facility, designed to store electricity generated by the turbines.
DOUG KIM: We can certainly use this for an example, when the wind blows during the nighttime, capture that energy during the nighttime and then use it during the daytime, when the demand is high.
MILES O’BRIEN: The batteries, stacked in racks here, are equivalent to about 2,000 electric cars. It is the start of Edison’s effort to meet a state-mandated requirement to add 580 megawatts of energy storage into the grid by 2020.
It’s part of a big push to invent ways to practically store huge amounts of electricity, so that renewables so can become a more than fringe players on the grid.
DONALD SADOWAY, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: If we don’t treat the intermittency of renewables, they’re — they’re not really a solution.
MILES O’BRIEN: Electrochemist Donald Sadoway is a professor at MIT. He says lithium-ion batteries are not the answer; they pose a serious fire risk, and, as any laptop and cell phone user knows, their performance degrades fast as a speeding Tesla. In short, they are way too expensive and impractical for widespread usage on the grid.
But what are the alternatives?
DONALD SADOWAY: The issue is that we don’t have a battery technology that can meet the rigorous performance requirements of the grid, namely, super low-cost and super long service lifetime.
SUMMARY: In Sierra Leone and Liberia, where the Ebola epidemic has been a nightmare, the promise of a vaccine offers hope. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports on the challenges of conducting experimental drug trials there and the desperate need to find a fix.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now the last in our series on Ebola in West Africa — tonight, a look at new research to help stop or slow the next outbreak. The best hope may ultimately come from a new vaccine.
Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports, part of his series on Cracking Ebola’s Code.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): It’s dark and early in Freetown, Sierra Leone. A team of pharmacists is in a nondescript government building preparing the day’s supply of an experimental vaccine against Ebola.
The clock starts running when they take the vaccine out of a very deep freeze. This is likely the coldest spot in the whole country. The vaccine can only be thawed out right before it is injected, or it will lose its potency, and all of this will be a waste of time, money and hope.
So, right now, timing and temperature are absolutely critical. And then it happens.
WOMAN: The power went out.
MILES O’BRIEN: Another reminder of how hard it is to conduct a high-tech vaccine trial in one of the poorest countries on the planet. But they are ready. They have got two backup generators for the building, solar-charged batteries, and, if all else fails, a special container that maintains about 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit for five days without power.
Pharmacist Morrison Jusu is delivering the vaccine three-and-a-half miles across Freetown. After a seemingly endless national nightmare, he carries a cooler full of expectations. He knows much is riding with him.
MORRISON JUSU, STRIVE Trial Research Team: Some people lost family members. And some families were essentially wiped out as a result of this thing. And if this vaccine proves out to be something that prevents such in the future, then it’s — it’s — words cannot describe how much relief that would be to this community.
MILES O’BRIEN: While Jusu and the vaccine are wending their way, a line is growing outside their destination, Freetown’s Connaught Hospital.
The volunteers start showing up before dawn. They are health care workers. This trial is limited to them because they are, by far, the most at risk of contracting Ebola virus disease. Even though there is no evidence the vaccine poses any real danger, they must weigh the rumors and the uncertainties.
SUMMARY: Improvements in body armor have kept more soldiers alive, but many veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan have come back with debilitating injuries. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien, whose left arm was amputated last year, tests out some of the future limbs now in development.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): A report on the possibilities and limits of robotic arms and prosthetic technology.
It’s also a story with a real and personal connection for us through the experiences of our science correspondent, Miles O’Brien. One year ago, he was involved in an unlikely accident that led to the amputation of much of his left arm. Since then, he’s been reporting and exploring what might be available to help him and others.
Here’s the first of two reports.
Lots of people wonder why I don’t wear a high-tech bionic arm. It’s a fair question for an arm amputee who happens to be a reporter with more than 20 years on the science and technology beat. People expect a professional nerd like me would have an arm that approaches what Luke Skywalker or Colonel Steve Austin wore.
ACTOR: We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): Not yet, but maybe soon, as I discovered not far from my home in Washington at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Here, they’re using knowledge gained, building compact, complex systems like spacecraft and missile warheads to push the envelope in upper limb prosthetics.
MICHAEL MCLOUGHLIN, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory: This is the modular prosthetic limb. This has been designed to have most of the functionality of the human limb.
MILES O’BRIEN: Chief engineer Mike McLoughlin introduced me to the Modular Prosthetic Limb, the MPL. It’s the most sophisticated artificial limb in the world.
SUMMARY: An online job forum called Mechanical Turk has created a pool of professional survey-takers who complete hundreds of inquiries a week. For academic researchers, it’s cheap, easy to use and the response flood in fast. But how good is the data being collected? Judy Woodruff learns more from the NewsHour’s Jenny Marder.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): A look at enterprise reporting we have done online that we thought would be of interest to you.
It’s about the proliferation of scientific and academic research being done online and whether those methods may be leading to flawed or unreliable data. Much of the work was done once by students, but, these days, there is an informal work force of people who participate in studies through an online job forum known as Mechanical Turk.
The name was inspired which an 18th century fake chess-playing robot decorated in Turkish robes. It defeated almost every opponent it faced for years, but it turned out there was a hidden human chess master behind the machine.
Well, the NewsHour’s Jenny Marder reported our story. And she fills us in now.
Jenny, it’s great to have you here to talk about it.
So, first of all, tell us more about who these people are who are answering these surveys and what exactly do they do.
JENNY MARDER: Yes.
Well, this is a portion of the 500,000 workers on Mechanical Turk that we were looking at. And the workers do all sorts of jobs. The jobs have been — work has been called microlabor because the pay is often very, very low. You see a lot of jobs for 25 cents, 5 cents, even a penny.
So they’re really working for pennies on Mechanical Turk. The reason we got interested is it’s been, over the past five years, increasingly used by academic researchers as a way of getting data and finding study subjects for their research.
