Vaping Sickness, Teaching Science. Aug 30, 2019, Part 2
Over 10 million Americans vape, or smoke electronic cigarettes. E-cigarettes are also the most popular tobacco product among teenagers in this country. Some of them are marketed with bright colors and fun flavors like chocolate, creme brulee, and mint—or they’re advertised as a healthier alternative to regular cigarette smoking. But last week, public health officials reported that a patient in Illinois died from a mysterious lung illness linked to vaping. In 29 states across the country, there are 193 reported cases of this unknown illness as of August 30.
Most patients are teenagers or young adults and have symptoms like difficulty breathing, chest pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and fatigue. Patients with more severe cases have to be put on oxygen tanks and ventilators—and some may suffer from permanent lung damage. “Acute lung injury happens in response to all kinds of things, like inhaling a toxic chemical or an infection. This is similar to what we’d see there. The lungs’ protective response gets turned on and doesn’t turn off,” Dr. Frank Leone, a professor of medicine and the director of the Comprehensive Smoking Treatment Program at the University of Pennsylvania, tells Science Friday in a phone call earlier this week. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is still investigating the cause, but the illness is raising questions about the health effects of a growing smoking trend and how it should be regulated. “It’s sort of a Wild West out there,” Anna Maria Barry-Jester, a senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News, tells SciFri on the phone about current regulation of electronic cigarettes. Ira talks with Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Dr. Frank Leone about the illness and vaping’s health effects.
It’s back to school season for everyone: students, teachers, and Science Friday. Our Educator Collaborative is back with nine teaching resources from nine amazing educators—all inspired by Science Friday media. From a lesson in sauropod digestion, complete with simulated poop (yes, it’s gross), to inventing a way to get plastic out of the oceans, these resources offer learners in the classroom or at home chances to engage directly with complex science and engineering topics.
Program member Andrea La Rosa, an eighth-grade science teacher from Danbury Connecticut, joins Ira to talk about a topic near to our hearts: analog and digital technology. She explains how she used a drawing activity to help her students understand how the two kinds of signals are different. Plus, in a world that’s getting increasingly complicated, with more concepts to learn every year, how do you make the most of students’ time in science class? Science Friday education director Ariel Zych talks about the ways educators are teaching young learners to learn, think critically, and take on increasingly high-tech concepts.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Available Results
Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.
Choose Template
Pick the result you want. You can review provider and model before generating.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Scientific findings, mechanisms, studies, hypotheses, and the limits of the evidence discussed.
Technologies, AI models, technical methods, capabilities, limitations, and adoption implications.
Investment theses, assets, catalysts, valuation reasoning, time horizons, and risks.
Chronologies, actors, causes, consequences, turning points, and competing historical interpretations.
Policies, proposals, stakeholders, arguments, implementation constraints, and predicted effects.
Career paths, skills, hiring signals, workplace decisions, transitions, and limitations of the advice.
Behavioral mechanisms, biases, motivation, habits, emotions, interventions, and evidence limitations.
Economic mechanisms, incentives, indicators, market structure, forecasts, and uncertainty.
Leadership principles, team systems, organizational design, culture, feedback, and failure modes.
Audience, positioning, messaging, acquisition, retention, experiments, metrics, and failed approaches.
Teaching methods, learning strategies, practice, feedback, assessment, and effectiveness evidence.
Theses, premises, arguments, objections, values, thought experiments, and unresolved questions.
Communication patterns, conflict, boundaries, expectations, repair methods, and contextual limitations.
Books, papers, authors, courses, and other learning resources mentioned in the episode.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
Memorable statements and important claims with attribution and source context.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.