State and National News

Michelle Obama's diary of her White House garden, American Grown, debuts at No. 4.

The Yard, Alex Grecian's tale of early forensics and murder in Victorian London, debuts at No. 13.

• The London Symphony Orchestra, live at the Olympics opening ceremony? Yeah, not so much. The musicians will mime to a recording of themselves.

Brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi — whose voices and humor have shaped 35 years of Car Talk, one of the country's most beloved public radio shows — told their listeners today that they have decided to "stop and smell the cappuccino."

Alan Alda challenged scientists to explain what a flame is to an 11-year-old. Three months and more than 800 entries later he is back with the winner of the contest. Ira Flatow and guests discuss the winning entry and why the contest was an effective exercise in science communication.

Reporting in the journal Nature Communications,researchers write that they were able to track down the cells causing clogged arteries. Dr. Jill Helms, co-author on the study, discusses why stem cells are to blame and how the study could lead to more effective treatments.

Transcript

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Meet Flame, every PC owner's worst nightmare. This newly discovered malware gives an attacker remote access to your computer. It can listen in on your conversations, look through your webcam. It was first detected in the Middle East and has been infecting computers for at least two years.

Transcript

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Our next story is about one person's garbage being another person's treasure. You know how that works. Well, this one is a very interesting story. Last year, the National Reconnaissance Office, they operate America's spy satellites, well, the National Reconnaissance Office called up NASA with an offer: Would NASA like a couple of old spy telescopes? We don't need them. Could you do anything useful with them? We'll give them to you.

Transcript

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you look up in the sky at night, especially later this year, you can spot the Andromeda Galaxy, it's a small cloudy smudge in space. It's our galaxy, the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbor, about two and a half million light years away.