Carve first, scoop later--that's just one of the tips from Maniac Pumpkin Carvers Marc and Chris. Based in Brooklyn, these professional illustrators switch to the medium of pumpkin during October. They carve hundreds of pumpkins each fall, which go for a few hundred bucks and rarely end up on stoops. They gave us some tips for how to bring our pumpkins to the next level this Halloween.

Despite their speed and power, Avalanches are not entirely unpredictable forces of nature. Using field tests and deep understanding under how to identify weaknesses in the snow pack, staff from the Utah Avalanche Center forecast avalanches and take preventative measures.
http://www.sciencefriday.com
Produced by Erika Sutter
Filmed by Manjula Varghese
Music by Audio Network
Additional Photos and Video by Shutterstock.com and the Utah Avalanche Center

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What happens when you give hundreds of puppies a single bowl of food? Mechanical engineer, David Hu, is trying to solve this problem with physics…and maggots.

Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Brandon Swanson
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage ands Stills Provided by David Hu, Olga Shishkov,
Grubbly Farms, Pond5, and Levi Anderson (CC BY 2.0)

http://www.sciencefriday.com/cephalopodweek
We all know that squids use ink to disguise themselves while making a quick getaway, but what other uses might ink serve? Stephanie "Stephalopod" Bush, a scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), suggests that these crafty cephalopods might use ink to attract a mate, repel a predator, or even confuse their prey.
Produced by Christian Baker
Music by Audio Network
Pygmy squid footage courtesy Dr. Noriyosi Sato
Additional Squid Footage by MBARI

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The guests at the WorMotel check in with a plop. Each guest has a private room, cozy and controlled temperatures, and enough food to last a lifetime. There’s just one catch: They can never leave. Featuring a silicone plate with an array of 240 wells that host tiny nematodes, the WorMotel is the creation of researchers in the Fang-Yen Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers to study thousands of the worms at a time in the hopes of revealing which of their 20,000 genes control aging.

Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Daniel Peterschmidt and Audio Network
Additional Stills Provided by Matt Churgin and Chris Fang-Yen
Special Thanks to the Fang-Yen Laboratory

http://www.sciencefriday.com
We expect that our clothing won't tear or fade after one wearing and its dyes won't bleed in the wash. But confidence in our clothing shouldn't be taken for granted. It owes much to an oft-overlooked field of study - textile quality assurance. Professor Sean Cormier of the Fashion Institute of Technology details the rigorous yet fun tests that ensure your clothing doesn't just match your aesthetic standards - but meets a universal criteria for durability, color-fastness, construction and safety.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills and Video Courtesy of Prelinger Archives Shutterstock

In 2014, Manhattanhenge will be on May 29-30 and July 11-12. Find out more info on the American Museum of Natural History's site: http://www.amnh.org/our-resear....ch/hayden-planetariu

Twice a year, the sunset lines up with New York City's street grid -- making for spectacular views. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, identified the cosmic event over a decade ago and coined it Manhattanhenge. In this video from 2009, we watched the sun from 42nd Street, along with about 50 other astronomical enthusiasts.

Music by SYNTHAR.
Production assistance from Laura Pelcher.
Shot and produced by Flora Lichtman.

MC Frontalot, aka Damian Hess, makes a living rapping about data encryption, rare diseases, video games and the nerd life. When we stopped by his Brooklyn apartment, Frontalot described Nerdcore, his name for the genre, as "the inversion of the shame of geekery... into pride." Dr. Awkward, a California-based nerdcore rapper, says that people assume nerd rap is a joke: "But it's not really about the juxtaposition of those two worlds -- nerdiness and hip-hop -- it just happens to be nerds expressing themselves through hip-hop."

MC Frontalot joins Science Friday (3//1): http://www.sciencefriday.com/s....egment/03/01/2013/ra

In 2004, pediatric audiologist Allyson Sisler-Dinwiddie plunged into a world of silence after a car accident damaged her hearing. Under the care of hearing researcher Rene Gifford, she became one of the first test subjects of a new technique to improve cochlear implants, devices that use electrodes to stimulate cells in the inner ear. Since then, Sisler-Dinwiddie and Gifford have worked together to restore other patients' hearing. Watch the pair and their team at Vanderbilt University as they develop a resounding remedy to help people hear again.
A film by Science Friday. Produced in collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Produced by Emily V. Driscoll and Luke Groskin
Directed by Emily V. Driscoll
Filmed by Jeff Nash
Edited by Erika Sutter
Music by Audio Network
Photographs by Vanderbilt University, Rene Gifford, Allyson Sisler-Dinwiddie
Hearing and Cochlear Implant Animations provided by MED-EL Jack Noble, and Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center

Vanderbilt Team and Patients: Stephen Ball, Tim Davis, David Haynes, Kendall Hill, David Lewellen, Jack Noble Alejandro Rivas, and Morgan Stansberry

Project Advisors: Laura A. Helft, Laura Bonetta, Dennis W.C. Liu and Sean B. Carroll - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Special Thanks to Rene Gifford, Allyson Sisler-Dinwiddie, Keli S. Lawrence, Kate Carney, Charles Johnson, Christian Skotte, Danielle Dana, Ariel Zych, and Jennfier Fenwick

Science Friday/HHMI © 2016

Ever wondered how to milk a spider? In this archival video from 2007, Dr. Greta Binford, a researcher at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, extracts venom from a sleeping spider's fangs.
Video courtesy of Dr. Greta Binford and Vanessa Fawbush

Ask a child with an imaginary companion if their pretend friend is real, and often they'll tell you, "I just made them up!" Of course, moments later they'll regale you with stories of the latest adventures with their companion with the utmost conviction. In the second episode of The Real Guide to Imaginary Companions, a trip into the lab of developmental psychologist Jaqueline Woolley reveals how children can become so enamored of their pretend friends that they blur the lines between reality and fantasy. Woolley also investigates whether a child's orientation toward fantasy play has ties to real-world creativity.
Produced by Science Friday with generous support from the John Templeton Foundation
Produced, directed, and narrated by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Katie Graham, Luke Groskin and Patrick Pelham
Editor by Erika Sutter
Animations by Gabe Darling and Candice Aquino
Music by Audio Network
"Fairy Godmother" voiced by Annie Nero
Additional footage provided by
Pond5.com, A Lost World (1925), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,
Special Thanks to Danielle Dana, Jennifer Fenwick, Becky Geer, Tracy Gleason, Elizabeth Delucia Landon, Alex Riviello, Jenny Shalant, Christian Skotte, Marjorie Taylor, and Jacqueline Woolley.

Creating the scintillating scents and sensations of a perfume presents a lesson in molecular chemistry and craftwork. With the help of the Institute of Art and Olfaction, we'll take you on tour of how perfumes are made and how they can be creatively scattered for artistic means.

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For more about this work head to Dr. Lydia Bourouiba's Webstie : http://lbourouiba.mit.edu
Although we all know that sneezes and coughs transmit infections, little research had been done to model how they work. To address this knowledge gap, Dr. Lydia Bourouiba and Dr. John Bush of MIT's Applied Mathematics Lab used high speed cameras and fluid mechanics to reveal why we've grossly underestimated the role of gas clouds in these violent expirations.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Video and Stills by
Lydia Bourouiba
John Bush
Shutterstock
Prelinger Archives

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Climbing Kilamanjaro, blasting asteroids, and stopping time to destroy robots are just some of the amazing activities people can experience at VR World NYC. VR World’s Head of Content Tommy Goodkin explains how advances in VR technology have allowed them to transcend an arcade-like atmosphere and redefine what a theme park experience can be.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network.com
Video Game Captures by VRWorld NYC
Featuring Icaros, Google Tilt Brush, The Climb by Crytek GmbH,
Arizona Sunshine by Intel, Raw Data by Survios,
Job Simulator by Owlchemy Labs, and Richie’s Plank Experience
Special Thanks to Jessica Gray, Alexa Lim, Johanna Mayer, Xochitl Garcia, and Rachel Bouton

Scientists are experimenting with pumping CO2 deep beneath the sea floor. See the borehole where they practice.

A hawk moth (Manduca sexta) feeds by hovering in front of flowers and slurping nectar through a proboscis, basically a body-length straw. To understand how these moths keep such a precise position in the air, Tyson Hedrick, a biomechanist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tried destabilizing moths in a variety of different ways and tracked their responses using high speed cameras.

Photographer Colin Legg makes time-lapse movies of celestial scenes, from auroras to eclipses. Photographing mostly in remote parts of Australia, where human-made light doesn't compete with starlight, Legg describes some of the challenges of this type of photography -- from babysitting cameras for days and nights on end to running electronics in the backcountry.

Get a tour of General Motor's new concept car--the Chevy Volt. Plus Dinah Shore singing Chevy's praises.

We had the VP on the radio show that week too (April 6) along with some other green car experts. Lively show - you can listen here: http://www.sciencefriday.com/p....ages/2007/Apr/hour2_

Behold lighting bugs of a different color! SciFri listener Chris Lavin stumbled upon fluorescing blue millipedes during an evening stroll near her home in Canyon, California and sent along video documentation. Glowing-millipede specialist Paul Marek, an entomologist at the University of Arizona, identified the millipedes, and explained what's known about their mysterious glow.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Science Friday attended the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and had a conversation with Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia, the directors of the feature documentary film, "Web Junkie." Their film follows several teenage boys in a Chinese "Internet addiction" rehabilitation camp.
"Web Junkie" directed by Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia.
All footage from Web Junkie © Dogwoof Global.
Produced by Annie Minoff
Interview filmed by Manjula Varghese
Edited by Luke Groskin