If Higgs Boson Calculations Are Right A Catastrophic Bubble Could End Universe

"For a universe so old and so illustrious, the end may be boring and lightning quick: According to one Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician, if what we know about the Higgs boson subatomic particle is true, the universe may come to an end when another universe slurps us up at light speed."

"'If you use all the physics that we know now and you do what you think is a straightforward calculation, it's bad news,' Joseph Lykken said at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Monday. 'It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out. This has to do with the Higgs energy field itself.'"

Armory Show That Shocked America in 1913 Celebrates 100

"On Feb. 17, 1913, an art exhibition opened in New York City that shocked1913 the country, changed our perception of beauty and had a profound effect on artists and collectors."

"The International Exhibition of Modern Art — which came to be known, simply, as the Armory Show — marked the dawn of Modernism in America. It was the first time the phrase "avant-garde" was used to describe painting and sculpture."

"On the evening of the show's opening, 4,000 guests milled around the makeshift galleries in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue."

Victims of Cyberattacks Now Going On Offense Against Intruders

"U.S. companies that have their networks routinely penetrated and their trade secrets stolen cannot be surprised by a new National Intelligence Estimate on the cyber-espionage threat. The classified NIE, the first-ever focusing on cybersecurity, concludes that the U.S. is the target of a major espionage campaign, with China the leading culprit."

"Private firms and government agencies have struggled with cyberattacks from China and other countries for years. Many are angry about the constant intrusions into their networks, and in frustration some want to turn the tables on their attackers."

"'There is no way that we are going to win the cybersecurity effort on defense,' says Steven Chabinsky, formerly the FBI's top cyber-attorney. 'We have to go on the offensive.'"

Why Even Radiologists Can Miss a Gorilla Hiding In Plain Sight

"This story begins with a group of people who are expert at looking: the professional searchers known as radiologists."

"'If you watch radiologists do what they do, [you're] absolutely convinced that they are like super human,' says Trafton Drew, an attention researcher at Harvard Medical School."

"About three years ago Drew started visiting the dark cave-like "reading rooms" where radiologists do their work. For hours he would stand watching them, in awe that they could so easily see in the images before them things that to Drew were simply invisible."

Jim and Jamie Dutcher: Hidden Life of Wolves

From 1990 to 1996, Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived among a pack of gray wolves just outside Idaho's Sawtooth Wilderness. During these years of observation, the Dutchers say they found these often misunderstood animals to be highly social, communicating and bonding with family in a way humans could easily understand. Their new book, accompanied by Jim's photography, documents their findings and argues that the gray wolf should not have been removed from the endangered species list.

Royal Recovery Remains ID'd As Those of King Richard III

"Remains found under what's now a parking lot in the English city of Leicester have been confirmed to be those of King Richard III, researchers at the University of Leicester announced today."

"NPR's Philip Reeves tells our Newscast Desk that the skeleton of the ruler immortalized by William Shakespeare was identified thanks to a DNA match with a distant relative. The 15th century warrior king, as All Things Considered reminded us last Septemberwhen word emerged that his long-lost remains may have been recovered, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth. He was about 32 at the time."

Kris Kristofferson: On Writing For and Outliving His Idols

"Kris Kristofferson writes the kind of songs that people love to sing: songs like 'Help Me Make It Through The Night,' from 1970. Jerry Lee Lewis recorded a version, as did Joan Baez — and even Elvis."

"Kristofferson has had a long career, writing songs covered by the likes of Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin. He's a country music Hall of Famer with a few movies to his name, too. He's 76 now, and still writing songs. When he's not out touring, he's back home in Hawaii. Success, he says, has not gone to his head."

"'I spend most of my time on my tractor, mowing the grass around there,' Kristofferson says. 'That's my therapy. No one can mess with me on the tractor.'"

Killer Kitties: Cat Kill Billions Every Year

"The battle between cat lovers and bird lovers has been going on for a long time. Cats and birds just don't mix. But trying to get a handle on how many birds and other animals are being killed by cats isn't easy. Just figuring out how many cats there are is tough enough."

"'Cats are really hard to count,' says Pete Marra, an animal ecologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. He and his colleagues actually got a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to try to estimate the number of animals being killed by people, including through the effects of human activities, buildings and pets. They looked at things like wind turbines, cars, pesticides and — domestic cats."

"Marra says Americans own about 84 million of them. 'And of those, about 40 to 70 percent are allowed to go outside," Marra says. 'And we estimate that about 50 to 80 percent of those are actually hunters.'"

Oysters Rebound in Popularity With Man-Made Bount

"In Colonial Virginia, oysters were plentiful; Capt. John Smith said they lay "thick as stones." But as the wild oyster harvest has shrunk, Weekend Edition food commentator Bonny Wolf says the market for farm-raised oysters is booming."

"The local food movement is expanding from fertile fields to brackish waters."

"Along the rivers and bays of the East Coast, where wild oysters have been decimated by man and nature, harvests of farm-raised oysters are increasing by double digits every year. At the same time, raw oyster bars are all the rage."

"Shore Gregory, vice president of Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, Mass., says when his oysters first went to market in 2001, just five Boston restaurants served oysters. Island Creek now works with 70 local restaurants and 300 chefs around the country. His company began with harvests of 50,000 oysters. Today, it's closer to 5 million."

New Norovirus Strain Rips Through the US

"It's here. A variant of norovirus first spotted in Australia is now sweeping the U.S."

"The wily virus causes stomach upset, vomiting and diarrhea. The sickness is sometimes referred to as the stomach flu, though influenza has nothing to do with it."

"Since the strain called 'GII.4 Sydney' was identified in Australia last March, it's been getting around. The U.K. has had a bang-up norovirus season with more than a million people sickened. The new strain has also struck in France and New Zealand."

Shall I encode Thee In DNA Sonnets Stored On Double Helix

"English critic Samuel Johnson once said of William Shakespeare "that his drama is the mirror of life." Now the Bard's words have been translated into life's most basic language. British scientists have stored all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets on tiny stretches of DNA."

"It all started with two men in a pub. Ewan Birney and Nick Goldman, both scientists from the European Bioinformatics Institute, were drinking beer and discussing a problem."

"Their institute manages a huge database of genetic information: thousands and thousands of genes from humans and corn and pufferfish. That data — and all the hard drives and the electricity used to power them — is getting pretty expensive."

"'The data we're being asked to be guardians of is growing exponentially,' Goldman says. 'But our budgets are not growing exponentially.'"

New Reading Standards Aim to Prep Kids For College But At What Cost?

"Once upon a time, in the long ago world of high school reading, Holden Caulfield was perhaps the epitome of angst: a young man suddenly an outcast in the world he thought he knew. The antihero of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye was about to enter a perilous journey of self-discovery."

"Fast forward to high school reading today, and you might find that a lot of high school English teachers are identifying with Holden more than their students are identifying with him. Reading scores for American students have dropped dramatically, and the solution could see their world change as well."

"'So many kids, often as many as 50 percent, graduate high school ... demonstrably not ready for the demands of a first-year college course or job-training program,' says David Coleman, president of the College Board, a nonprofit membership organization that administers standardized tests like the SAT."

Half Truths We Live With

"Say it isn't so. Various news organizations have recently reported that on occasion the Subway sandwich chain's $5 footlong measures 11 inches instead of 12 — as advertised. Sure enough, the bacon, lettuce and tomato jewel we bought Friday fell a little short."

"But it was delicious. And Subway did explain to CNN and the world that methods of baking the bread can cause a slight size differential. Makes sense."

"Perhaps the point is, things may not always be exactly what they seem and — perhaps more precisely — we already know that. We go on."

Understanding Climate Change With the Help From Thoreau

"Modern scientists trying to understand climate change are engaged in an unlikely collaboration — with two beloved but long-dead nature writers: Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold."

"The authors of Walden and A Sand County Almanac and last spring's bizarrely warm weather have helped today's scientists understand that the first flowers of spring can continue to bloom earlier, as temperatures rise to unprecedented levels."

"If you take the old historical records of Thoreau and Aldo Leopold and use those to sort of predict when plants will be flowering in an astonishingly warm year like we had in 2012, the flowering time of plants is exactly what you would predict using this historical data," says Boston University biology professor Richard Primack."

Bad Flu Season Overshadows Other Winter Miseries

"Dr. Beth Zeeman says she can spot a case of influenza from 20 paces. It's not like a common cold."

"'People think they've had the flu when they've had colds,' Zeeman, an emergency room specialist at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Mass., tells Shots. 'People use the word 'flu' for everything. But having influenza is really a different thing. It hits you like a ton of bricks.'"

"Joachim Santos, a carpenter from Brazil in a nearby examining room, says he's never been as sick in all his 57 years. "I worry that it's going to get more serious and I could die," he says."

After Tragedy Nonbelievers Find Other Ways to Cope

"The Mile High Gliding facility at the Boulder Airport in Colorado is one of Carol Fiore's favorite haunts. And it's a perfect day for flying: clear, breezy and with a gorgeous view of the Rocky Mountains."

"Fiore used to fly gliders regularly, but a few years ago she stopped. Flying them had become painful."

"'I felt, in a way, that I was searching for something that wasn't there,' Fiore says. 'I was looking for that laughter and that incredible time that I had flying with Eric, and he wasn't in the plane with me. I was by myself.'"

"Eric was Fiore's husband for 20 years. After they married, he flew F-15s in the Air Force. Then the couple moved to Wichita, Kan., where he was a test pilot for the airplane manufacturer Bombardier."

Losing Our Religion: The Growth of the Nones

"This week, Morning Edition explores the "nones" — Americans who say they don't identify with any religion. Demographers have given them this name because when asked to identify their religion, that's their answer: 'none.'"

"In October, the Pew Research Center released a study, 'Nones' on the Rise, that takes a closer look at the 46 million people who answered none to the religion question in 2012. According to Pew, one-fifth of American adults have no religious affiliation, a trend that has for years been on the rise. (A more recent Gallup pollshows the uptick in religious nones slowed a bit from 2011 to 2012.)"

The Oldest Rock in the World Tells Us a Story

"It's hard to imagine how this teeny little rock — it's not even a whole rock, it's just a grain, a miniscule droplet of mineral barely the thickness of a human hair — could rewrite the history of our planet. But that's what seems to be happening."

"What is this? It's a zircon, from the Persian word "zargun" meaning "golden colored," an extremely durable mineral found all over the world. This one turned up in a dry, hilly region of Western Australia. It was sitting inside a larger rock, and when scientists checked, it turns out this little grain formed around 4.4 billion years ago. That would make it the oldest rock we've ever seen on this planet, old enough to know secrets about early earth, old enough to tell us a little something about how life started here."

"After all, this planet, geologists say, is only 4.5 or 4.6 billion years old. So this little grain has been around since almost the beginning — but not quite."

What Do You Pack For a Seven Year Trip?

"Paul Salopek is already a well-traveled journalist — a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who has spent most of the past two decades roaming across Africa, Asia, the Balkans and Latin America."

"This, apparently, has not sated his wanderlust. So now he's in a dusty village in Ethiopia's Rift Valley, ready to launch a seven-year, 21,000-mile journey on foot that will take him from Africa, across the Middle East and through Asia, over to Alaska and down the Western edge of the Americas until he hits the southern tip of Chile."

"Why?"

Can You Get a Flu Shot & Still Get the Flu

"This year's flu season started about a month early, prompting federal health officials to warn it could be one of the worst in years. They're urging everyone to get their flu shots."

"But like every flu season, there are lots of reports of people complaining that they got their shot but still got the flu. What's up with that?"

"Well, as Michael Jhung of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains, there are lots of possible reasons."