Talk of the Nation

The claims airline passengers make about flights are often embellished. During turbulence, for example, passengers may think a plane is dropping hundreds of feet, when it's never typically more than 20. Airline pilot Patrick Smith, writes the Ask The Pilot column for Salon.com. He sets the record straight on common air travel myths.

After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, world leaders vowed that such mass atrocities could never be allowed to happen again. In 2005, the U.N. adopted the Responsibility to Protect, a set of principles to guide the response of the international community if a government fails to protect its population.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation reversed its controversial decision to stop providing funding to Planned Parenthood. Rodger Jones, an editorial writer for the Dallas Morning Star, says that to retain the support of abortion rights opponents, Komen needs to consider different fundraising options.

The jobs numbers at the start of 2012, shed a ray of positivity on a gloomy economic picture. Some economists warn against premature optimism. While the economy is creating jobs again, it will take years to return to full employment.

In 2006, thieves stole writer Patrick Symmes' bike in broad daylight on a crowded, New York City street. This inspired Symmes to set out to catch a bike thief — any bike thief.

He tells the tale of this revenge-fueled, cross-country journey in the Outside magazine piece "Who Pinched My Ride?" The story is filled with GPS trackers, police stake-outs and undercover stings.

Reporting in PLoS Biology, researchers write that they were able to correlate words a person was hearing to specific electrical activity in the brain. Study co-author neuroscientist Robert Knight discusses future applications of this research and concerns that it amounts to mental wiretapping.

NASA's iconic images of Earth from space date back to the late 1960s--with snapshots taken by Apollo astronauts. The modern "blue marble" images are captured by machines and they're not photos. They're datasets collected by instruments aboard satellites and then translated into imagery on the ground.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are replacing boots on the ground in some wars. Commercially, UAVs are being used for things like crop-dusting and flood mapping. Experts discuss advances in drone technology and how to address legal and privacy concerns that stem from their use.

As it circles Earth, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer hunts for particles streaming in from beyond the solar system. It has intercepted hydrogen, helium, neon and oxygen atoms. IBEX principal investigator Dave McComas discusses how the abundance of those atoms hints at the Milky Way's composition.

Transcript

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. What grosses you out, the sight of maggots squirming on a rotten piece of meat? How about a cockroach running around your spice cabinet when you turn the lights on at night? How about eating strange organ meat like sweetbreads, pancreas. Maybe just a doorknob is enough to give you the chills, touched by so many hands, or a toilet seat touched by - well, you know, there must be so many germs, right.