The Nature Podcast highlights of 2023

In this episode:00:54 Franklin’s real roleWhen it comes to the structure of DNA, everyone thinks they know Rosalind Franklin’s role in its discovery. The story goes that her crucial data was taken by James Watson without her knowledge, helping him and Francis Crick solve the structure. However, new evidence has revealed that this wasn’t really the case. Rosalind Franklin was not a ‘wronged heroine’, she was an equal contributor to the discovery.Nature Podcast: 25 April 2023Comment: What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure14:37 An automated way to monitor wildlife recoveryTo prevent the loss of wildlife, forest restoration is key, but monitoring how well biodiversity actually recovers is incredibly difficult. Now though, a team has collected recordings of animal sounds to determine the extent of the recovery. However, while using these sounds to identify species is an effective way to monitor, it’s also labour intensive. To overcome this, they trained an AI to listen to the sounds, and found that although it was less able to identify species, its findings still correlated well with wildlife recovery, suggesting that it could be a cost-effective and automated way to monitor biodiversity.Nature Podcast: 25 October 2023Research article: Müller et al.27:11 Research HighlightsThe first brain recording from a freely swimming octopus, and how a Seinfeld episode helped scientists to distinguish the brain regions involved in understand...

Source: Nature Podcast - December 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: Springer Nature Limited Source Type: podcasts