This week, how to avoid contaminating Mars with microbial hitchhikers, turning mammalian cells into biocomputers, and a look at how underground labs in China are creating synthetic opioids for street sales in the United States with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.

Caitlin Hicks Pries joins Julia Rosen to discuss her study of the response of soil carbon to a warming world.

And for this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck talks to Rob Dunn about his book Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future.

Listen to previous podcasts.

Download the show transcript.

Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com.

[Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Researchers predicted the places in the continental US where Zika is most likely to be transmitted are along the Mississippi delta and southern states extending northward along the Atlantic coast and in southern California.

Could unique psychological factors that hamper emotional regulation help explain differences in HIV/STI risk-related sexual behaviors among heterosexually active black youth with mental illnesses?

A new study has found that US youth infected with HIV around the time of their birth are at higher risk throughout their adolescence and young adulthood for experiencing serious health problems, poor control of the HIV virus or death.

New clinical trial results show that stem cells can restore sufficient erectile function to allow previously impotent men to have spontaneous intercourse. This is the first time stem cell therapy has produced patients who have recovered sufficient erec…