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A new study done by researchers in Sweden and China suggests that wolves were first domesticated some 16,000 years ago in Asia. The scientists also say there is evidence that the motive may not have been companionship or protection, but hunger. We speak with Peter Savolainen, a lead scientist on the study and geneticist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. (Photo by Ya-Ping Zheng) Download MP3 Singapore is laying the foundation for a future economy based on science. It’s sending its own citizens abroad for a top education, and enticing some the world’s best minds in science to its shores. Reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro has more.
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A new study by scientists in Germany has confirmed that when people get disoriented in the woods or other natural environments, they really do tend to walk in circles. The researchers sent volunteers into a German forest and the Sahara Desert and tracked their movements with a GPS. When the hikers had no visible sun or distant landmark to guide them, they circled back on themselves while thinking they were walking in a straight line. David Baron reports on this newly published study. (Photo: Jan Souman) Click here for a large Google Earth image of “walking in circles” >>> See more photos from the experiment
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In the latest World in Words podcast, Patrick Cox and Clark Boyd select their top five language-related stories from July. Among them: Slovakia passes a law banning Hungarian in official communications in some of its Hungarian-speaking regions; new research seeks to show why babies and toddlers are so adept at learning two languages simultaneously; the trangressive nature of swearing helps when it comes to tolerating pain; and Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy has come up with a device that claims to translate dog noises into human language. But do we ready want to know what pooch is saying? Plus, our favorite hated words! Download MP3
Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that cooking is the key technology that allowed us to become human. He’s spent decades doing research on primates in Africa, and he says cooking gave us access to a wider range of foods, helped our brains grow, and – because we no longer had to eat berries and leaves for six hours a day — gave us leisure time to develop tools and technologies.
Researchers in Sweden have come up with a technique to use radioactive carbon in the atmosphere — a leftover from nuclear testing in the 1950′s and 60′s — to figure out the age of unidentified dead bodies. The scientists measure levels of carbon-14 in teeth. The World’s David Baron has the story. Download the MP3
The World’s Science Correspondent David Kohn explains how hurricanes and “slow earthquakes” are related. Listen Find out more here.
Anchor Lisa Mullins tells us about a new addition to the periodic table of elements. It’s called “ununbium.” Because it decays so quickly, scientists have only seen it four times. Listen
Anchor Marco Werman explores one of the proposals that came out of President Obama’s speech in Cairo yesterday: global science envoys. Marco speaks with Vaughan Turekian, head of the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Listen
