This is the Science Podcast for June 9th, 2023. I'm Sarah Crespi. First up this week, a step towards controlling cat populations. Online News Editor, David Grimm, is here to talk about a single shot cat contraceptive. Also on this week's show, Science Editor, Jake Yeston, and researcher, Yerzhan Zholdassov, join me to discuss going back to the age of the mortar and pestle. We take a look at mechanical chemistry. This is using physical force to push molecules together.
Yeah. Well, it's funny because this is an interesting backstory. We have somebody who was sort of studying ovarian cancer as we're trying to figure out in mice in hopes of figuring out people, sort of what's happening in the ovaries and what hormones are doing what. And this guy named David Pepin, he was working with this hormone called anti-müllerian hormone. He wasn't really sure what it did. It seemed to have some impact on ovaries.
For the most part, the cats seemed pretty normal. They seem to be going through the normal hormonal cycles. The researchers aren't exactly sure how the AMH is working here. They think it might, like it sort of does in the mice, somehow disrupting the follicles, the formation of the follicles, and so they're not maturing enough to produce the eggs. And if you don't have eggs then there's nothing to fertilize when the male cat mates with the female.
David Grim is the Online News Editor for Science. You can find a link to the article that we discussed at science.org/podcast. Up next we hear from Editor, Jake Yeston, and researcher, Yerzhan Zholdassov, about dry mechanical chemistry. It's a lot more juicy than it sounds.Here's a question for you chemists out there. Why did the mortar and pestle go out of style? Why don't we just mix chemicals together dry with some grinding, and see what we get from that.