Linking violence in Myanmar to fossil amber research, and waking up bacterial spores

On this week’s show: A study suggests paleontological research has directly benefited from the conflict in Myanmar, and how dormant bacterial spores keep track of their environment

First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss links between violent conflict in Myanmar and a boom in fossil amber research.

Also on the show this week, we hear about how bacterial spores—which can lie dormant for millions of years—decide it’s time to wake up. Kaito Kikuchi, an image analysis scientist at Reveal Biosciences, joins Sarah to discuss how dormant spores act a bit like neurons to make these decisions.

In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Ramon Parsons, director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about his institute’s innovative approach to cancer treatment.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: (public domain); Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: micrograph of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Pérez Ortega

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf2050

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

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