Episoder
-
A slight diversion from the usual format today. But hey, do we know how to turn out a science podcast or what? Chris and JD talked about everything from cigarette smoking kids to self-administered colonoscopies. And of course, this episode was custom-made for all the Whovians out there. You know WHO you are.
On This Weekâs Show More kids in Europe are starting to smoke tobacco We have a heaping helping of Nuclear Pasta California Announces that itâs gonna launch its own damn satellite The Ig Nobel Prize winners for 2018 Doctor Who! The Pub Quiz Science News with Chris MacAlister and JD Goodwin More Children In Europe Have Started Smoking Chris MacAlisterHas anyone got a light?
The questionâs rhetorical since I am a part of a statistical majority of European non-smokers. This is largely a good news story as the number of people who are taking up smoking in Europe has been greatly declining since 1980 onwards but, you know, there are some people out there who canât just let good news be good news. People who think every silver lining has a cloud; and on this occasion these people have found that smoking levels have actually gone up in one age group: 11 to 15 year olds.
The idea of 11 to 15 years olds smoking makes my head spin even before we start talking about an increase and any signal like this in the youngest bracket of our population should set alarm bells ringing. Is this indicative of an emerging cultural shift?
I wouldnât be getting too concerned just yet. The number of cases that we are looking at small and there are some massive unknowns associated with this data. For example, the study does not look at how frequently people smoke, it does not take into account whether these kids regular smokers or are just experimenting, hell, it doesnât even know whether these kids are smoking conventional or e-cigarettes!
However, this did make me think of one cultural risk that could surround this issue. Such great efforts have been made to stop glamorisation of smoking and this, along with other strategies have clearly been effective at reducing smoking levels. But most smokers do not provide glamour. Your stereotypical image of a smoker is probably not a suave sophisticated figure in lounge jacket, itâs probably something a bit less healthy and possibly more sleazy and definitely more smelly. With these images fading too we are losing both the carrot and the stick of influence.
This potentially leaves you with what I like to call the Google+ school of promotion, which says that if no old people are doing it then just maybe young people will think it is cool. It hasnât worked for Google and hopefully it wonât work for smoking either. But the older generation is not going out of its way to stop you from using Google; and there is nothing more tempting to a teenager than forbidden fruits; so the story may well not be over yet on this one...
ScienceNordic
Nuclear Pasta In Neutron Stars JD GoodwinThis is from an article in New Scientist, and itâs about pasta! But this is nuclear pasta, and itâs my guess that it would fully absorb any sauce you throw at it
In report in Physical Review Letters this nuclear pasta is said to be really strong stuff. Breaking it would require 10 billion times the force needed to break steel.
This pasta is found in neutron stars. Neutron stars form when a dying star explodes, leaving behind a neutron-rich remnant that is squished to extreme pressures by powerful gravitational forces, resulting in materials with strange properties.
A kilometer or so below the surface of one of these stars atomic nuclei are packed together so close that they merge into clumps of nuclear matter, a dense mixture of neutrons and protons. These theoretical clumps are thought to be shaped like blobs, tubes or sheets, and are named after types of pasta such as gnocchi, spaghetti and lasagna.
Even deeper in the neutron star, the nuclear matter fully takes over. The burnt-out starâs entire core is nuclear matter, like one giant atomic nucleus. This nuclear pasta is incredibly dense, about 100 trillion times the density of water.
Researchers used computer simulations to stretch nuclear lasagna sheets and explore how the material responded.
Neutron stars tend to spin very rapidly, and, as a result, might emit ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, which scientists could detect at facilities like the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO. But the spacetime ripples will occur only if a neutron starâs crust is lumpy â meaning that it has âmountains,â or mounds of dense material either on the surface or within the crust. A stiffer, stronger crust would support larger mountains, which could produce more powerful gravitational waves. Due to the intense gravity of neutron stars, their mountains would be a far cry from Mount Everest, rising centimeters tall, not kilometers. Previously, scientists didnât know how large a mountain nuclear pasta could support.
The results of the simulations suggest that nuclear pasta could support mountains tens of centimeters tall â big enough that LIGO could spot neutron starsâ gravitational waves. If LIGO caught such signals, scientists could estimate the mountainsâ size, and confirm that neutron stars have amazingly strong materials in their crusts.
New Scientist
California To Launch Its Own Damn Satellite Chris MacAlisterWe go from looking to space for some super strong stuff to looking to space for something much less fragile, our climate. Yes, in the sad absence of Tom Di Liberto this week it falls to me to delivery your regular climate update.
Weâve discussed the feasibility of California being its own nation a few times on this show, albeit from a purely theoretical position; but it seems that Jerry Brown may be taking things a step further.
The Governor of California has announced something not entirely unlike a Californian space programme. Whilst there are only about 13 space agencies in the world (Europe has even had to club together to make theirs). This wouldnât be too much of a stretch for the state whose economy would be the 5th largest in the world if it were a sovereign nation.
The mission that Gov. Brown has announced is a satellite to monitor carbon levels in the atmosphere. Whilst NASA is already doing this, it may come as no surprise that the Trump administration are doing their best to demobilise this operation.
Whist this news is quite remarkable itself, the thing that I love the most about it is how it came to be. In the wake of the withdrawal from Paris climate accord and the bloody disregard that Trump and his lackeys clearly have for this one sanctuary for life in an otherwise infinite universe of death; thousands of mayors, regional leaders and corporate executives have come together in San Francisco for a Global Climate Action Summit. This was basically a forum for every American with a position of influence and a shred of moral integrity to come together and say: Balls to you Donald; not on my flaming watch!
I should just clarify that this really isnât a Californian space programme. The satellites will be purchased from a company called Planet Labs. This firm was started by 3 ex-NASA employees who have developed a fleet of micro-satellites. But the important point here is that by going private, California can sidestep the influence that the state has; a luxury that is not afforded to state funded organisations such as NASA.]
San Francisco Chronicle
2018 Ig Nobel Prizes JD GoodwinEvery year, this time of year, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts a special ceremony is held. And last week it was once again time for the Ig Nobel Prizes, put on by the esteemed journal The Annals of Improbable Research.
So letâs get right to it: The Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to researchers who discovered that riding roller coasters may be an effective method for dislodging kidney stones.
The inspiration behind the roller-coaster research began several years ago when one of Prof David Wartinger's patients at Michigan State University's College of Osteopathic Medicine returned from a holiday trip to Walt Disney World in Florida.
The patient reported that one of his kidney stones became dislodged after a ride on the Big Thunder Mountain ride. Wondering whether it was caused by the ride or a coincidence, the patient went on the ride several more times and each time a stone popped out.
Intrigued by the story, Dr. Wartinger built a silicone model of his patient's renal system, including artificial kidney stones, and took it with him on numerous rides. He discovered that Big Thunder Mountain was indeed effective - more so than other rides such as Space Mountain
Dr. Wartinger concluded that this was because Big Thunder Mountain involves more up and down and side to side movements that "rattle" the rider.
Japanese gastroenterologist Akira Horiuchi won the medical education prize for an experiment in which he reviewed the comfort and efficiency of self-colonoscopy in the sitting position by performing a colonoscopy on himself while seated. He reported only âmild discomfort.â There are pictures of him performing this procedure. Of course there are.
Other winners included a team that demonstrated that most people who use complicated products do not read the instruction manual (Literature Prize).
For the Ig Nobel Peace Prize researchers surveyed Spanish drivers to determine the frequency, motivation, and effects of shouting and cursing while in a car.
The Economics prize went to a group that investigated whether using Voodoo dolls to retaliate against abusive bosses makes employees feel better.
Finally, the Chemistry prize was awarded to a team that tested the effectiveness of a âspit shineâ by cleaning 18th century sculptures with saliva and and compared the results to several alcohol-based cleaners. Spit won.
Science, BBC Science and Environment
Doctor Who Returns! JD GoodwinNormally we donât cover entertainment news on this podcast...unless of course, it has to do with Star Wars, Star Trek, or other significant sci-fi stuff. Among that venerable stuff is Doctor Who.
I tip my hat to the producers of this incredibly long running television program because this next series we will be welcoming a new Doctor among that pantheon of Time Lords. Whatâs special about this is that the new doctor is a woman.
Honestly, Iâm surprised it took this long. But this is one among many glass ceilings Iâm happy to see broken.
Broken? I mean shattered. I just read that the woman playing the new Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, is getting paid the same as what the boys did.
This is significant because thereâs been quite a row recently about pay disparity among female and male BBC employees. Thankfully, such is not the case with Doctor Who.
When asked about this by Metro News, Jodie Whittaker replied, âI absolutely know that Iâm not being paid less than any other Doctorâ.
Iâm talking about Doctor Whoâs who go all the way back to William Hartnell, to Tom Baker, to Paul McGann, to David Tennant and all those in between.
Quite a Whose Who of Whoâs, isnât it?
Iâm really looking forward to beginning this next journey with the new Doctor, and that begins on 7 October with the episode titled The Woman Who Fell To Earth.
Donât miss it. Doctor Who on 7 October!
Science, BBC Science and Environment
Pub Quiz On what date did the very first Doctor Who premiere? Why was this a particularly unfortunate date to debut a television show? Who played the very first Doctor? The fourth Doctor, played by the inimitable Tom Baker, is known for a particularly extreme version of what item of clothing? What did the fifth Doctor, played by Peter Davison, wear on the lapel of his jacket? Peter Davison has a famous son-in-law. Who, and I repeat, Who is it? The 11th Doctor, played by Matt Smith, had a favorite food. What was that? What does TARDIS stand for? Alex Kingston was among four actors who played the character River Song. Who are the parents of River Song? What is the planet of the Time Lords? Why does the TARDIS make that awful screeching sound?And todayâs winner is: Chris MacAlister!
How did YOU do?
In Next Weekâs EpisodeBe sure to mark your calendars, because next week we present our own award episode. You didnât know we had an awards show? We have one every month. Itâs the Blue Streak Science A****** of the Month!
In ClosingThat concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Thanks to Chris MacAlister
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show A better late than never physics prize for 1967 pulsar discovery The International Space Station gets drilled Fishermen haul in the huge skull and antlers of an extinct elk Governor Moonbeam takes California into the future with clean energy The Climate Lounge Pub Quiz Science News with Chris MacAlister and JD Goodwin Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins big physics prize for 1967 pulsar discovery Chris MacAlister
This is the exciting news about the discovery of something sending sweeping beams of radio wave pulses through space. It is thought that these beams are originating from expired suns; neutron stars. These small but massive bodies produce radio wave signals like the ones that weâre talking about and the spinning of these neutron stars produces the sweeping waves which have been detected. These bodies are being referred to as pulsars.
Iâm sorry? Whatâs that? Youâve heard all this before and itâs not really science news? Well, I grant you that this discovery was made in 1967 so there is a chance that you may come across it before. So why are we talking about this in our news section? Because Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the Cambridge graduate student who made the discovery, is finally receiving an award for this work.
Now, I donât think that anyone would argue that this work deserves a big prize like this (and it is a big prize; a $3 million big prize), but what gives with waiting so long to award it? If you thought that it took a long time to get a Nobel prize, thatâs nothing in comparison to this 50 year wait.
To be fair to the issuers of this prize, the Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics, it was only founded in 2012 and since that time it has been only been awarded 3 other times: for the theorising of Hawking radiation and the discoveries of the Higgs Boson and gravitational waves. All of which, I think that you will agree, are pretty big deals.
Of course, 50 years on and Burnell is no longer actively researching so she has decided to donate the money to initiatives that promote diversity within the sciences.
Science News, Washington Post, BBC News Science and Environment
ISS: Spacecraft hole could be 'deliberate' JD GoodwinRemember last week when we reported on the air leak on the International Space Station? There was some speculation that it could have been caused by a micrometeoroid.
Well, that doesnât seem to be the case.
According to Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency, it looks as though this little hole was created by a drill and not some hypersonic space pebble. Furthermore, Rogozin suggested that this may have been âdeliberateâ.
If you remember from the story last week this leak was not catastrophic. It was more of an annoyance. And they patched it up with space duct tape.
Rogozin said, "There were several attempts at drilling,â and if you look at the pictures you can tell this is true because it was a shi**y job of drilling...the drill bit apparently skipped on the surface before biting through.
The discussion right now seems to be on where this hole was drilled...as in, did this happen in space, or did the unauthorized drilling occur on the ground?
The good money says it happened on the ground. They expect that a technician goofed, and covered up his hole with some kind of adhesive, which eventually dried up and fell away.
However, in a televised interview Mr. Rogozin seemed to go all-in when he said: "What is this: a production defect or some premeditated actions? We are checking the Earth version. But there is another version that we do not rule out: deliberate interference in space."
An investigation is going on right now and they intend to identify whoever did this, by name, accident or not. Russian politician Maxim Surayev even suggested that it could be one of the cosmonauts who wanted to cut short his or her low orbit holiday. He said, âWeâre all human and anyone might want to go home.â
Iâve a feeling this isnât the last weâre gonna hear about this story.
Watch this space. Get it?!
BBC Science and Environment, Smithsonian
Fishermen Haul in Monstrous Skull and Antlers of Extinct Irish Elk Chris MacAlisterLet me paint a picture for you. Youâre at sea, on a fishing ship. Working long hours and lacking in sleep. So how quickly do you believe your own eyes when your net comes out of the sea containing a skull. Iâm not a commercial fisherman but Iâd imagine that they pick up random stuff from the sea floor all the time, but this time is was different. This was no ordinary skull.
The skull was 6 feet wide! Let me stress that again: 6 FEET WIDE! This was due to two massive antlers sticking out of it.
Now, I must admit that this story isnât completely accurate. The fishing boat was actually only about half a mile from shore and the water was no more than 20 foot deep, but thatâs where my liberty taking ends: everything about the skull is true.
It turns out that this skull is at least 10,500 years old and it is the remains of an Irish Elk and I guess that the people who originally discovered this species did not want anyone to be in any doubt about its size when they dubbed it Megaloceros giganteus. For those of you not up on your latin and greek, let me translate: Large Horns Gigantic. Subtle, donât you think? And appropriate as these are the largest example of this type of animal ever discovered.
I can poke fun at the name as much as I like but itâs a damn sight better than the common name: Irish Elk as the animal was not exclusively irish and it wasnât even an elk! This DEER lived throughout Europe, Northern Asia and Northern Africa, itâs just in Ireland where most examples of it have been discovered.
The local irish authorities ares still working out where this skull will eventually call home. Until then Raymond McElroy, who found it, has it safely preserved for posterity...in his garage.
Live Science, The Irish Times
California governor signs law for clean energy by 2045 JD GoodwinCalifornia, the land of fruits and nuts, and probably the most sensible place in the United States when it comes to climate change.
My home state just passed a bill, signed into law by our governor Jerry Brown, that commits us to using 60% carbon free electricity sources by 2030, and to using exclusively carbon free electricity by 2045. Governor Brown also pledged to abide by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
Iâm sure the Trump administration is thrilled by this...NOT...especially after they pulled the United States out of the same Agreement.
This is no empty gesture. If California were its own country, an idea that sound more appealing with each day, if we were our own country weâd have the fifth strongest economy on the planet.
Predictably most Californians are very happy with this new law, but there has been some predictable opposition by utility companies. A statement from a Pacific Gas & Electric spokesperson stated that this wouldnât be affordable or sustainable.
Most homes in California can meet ALL of their electricity needs by installing solar. Solar is already being required by building codes in many areas, and it wonât be long before having solar and a home battery will be just another part of owning a home. Free electricity from the sun, and a way to store it on site.
Now you can see why utility companies are against this.
Also, this new law has been enacted with a bit of good timing.
This week Governor Brown is hosting the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, which started yesterday and ends tomorrow.
The Climate Lounge Climate Change and Hurricanes - Whatâs the Deal? Tom Di LibertoThis episode in The Lounge we are going to talk hurricanes. Mostly because the tropics have gone absolutely nutso with tropical cyclones right now. There are nine storms spread across the Atlantic and Pacific right now with a potentially historic and horrible hurricane currently churning in the Atlantic bound for the east coast of the United States. The other reason I want to talk hurricanes is that well, though I host The Climate Lounge and work in climate communication and science, I originally got started with this whole atmosphere thing as a meteorologist. So talking about the current forecasts for hurricanes is sorta my thing too. Donât worry Iâll get to the climate angles eventually⊠like⊠RIGHT NOW
Hurricanes and climate change. What can we say? Iâm sure youâre thinking Iâll say that you canât attribute any one storm to climate change but as Iâve said before, thatâs just a really silly way to frame this. You canât really attribute one storm to natural causes entirely either⊠which means that your framing of that question is dumb. So letâs not do that.
Instead let me quickly list the ways that climate change affects hurricanes and their impacts. Then I can get into all the weather info about hurricane Florence.
Sea level rise has made coastal flooding easier and more dangerous. This is one of those sorta obvious things. If you start with a higher sea today than two storms on that occurred 50 years ago and one today wouldnât have the same flooding impacts. Todays storm would push water higher than the storm 50 years ago. And our coastal infrastructure wasnâtbuilt for that. We canât say if the number of storms themselves are increasing but we can say that the stronger storms are getting stronger globally. Research suggests a roughly 8m/s increase in wind speed per degree celsius of warming. Warmer oceans mean more moisture in the air which means heavier rains from hurricanes. Research here suggets a roughly 7% increasein moisture in the air for each degree Celsius of increase in SSTs.This is all pretty conclusive science without getting into more complicated nitty gritty stuff like how storms are tracking farther to the north and will continue to do so since SSts are warming up enough to sustain them.Or that there is research that suggests that a warming arctic may lead to more stalling storms.
So with just that we can see that climate change can have an impact. But letâs talk about this current storm briefly and a concept that is important in a world that will experience more weather/climate extremes.
Hurricane Florence, as of this recording has 130mph winds and is expected to make landfall near the South Carolina North carolina border as a major category 3 hurricane around September 14 and then stall out somewhere. Depending on where it stalls out and for how long could mean the difference between 5-10 inches of rain or an absurd 20-40 inches of rain. And while we often talk about winds when it comes to impacts from hurricanes, itâs actually water (storm surge and inland flooding which kills most people in a storm.
So how do some people stay and dont evacuate? Beacuse people often fear wind more than water and often have difficulty comparing once in a lifetime events to anything else. After all, how do you imagine the impacts of something thatâs never been seen before.We often see quotes from people being rescued that say âbut ive never seen it this badâ. But even then, the people who donât leave are often those who canât. The poor, immobile, eldery. They donât have the ability to up and run when a storm is coming. They donât have access to local disaster plans. They might live in old flood prone areas. And that gets into topics of environmental justice.
So letâs hope for the best with hurricane Florence and everywhere else affected by hurricanes. But letâs keep in mind that these extreme events also help to make much more visible the sort of environmental vulnerability that exists in our societies that often times are hidden away on a sunny day.
Pub Quiz What was the last year in which Atlantic hurricanes were named exclusively after women? In 1979 the new era of giving hurricanes male as well as female names began, and it did so with the second named storm of that year. What was that hurricaneâs name? Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 until 2017, made news recently. Why? A rare disease that's related to smallpox has shown up in the United Kingdom for the first time. What disease is this? Staying in the U.K., the childrenâs novel âWind In The Willowsâ features a character named Ratty, based upon a real-life mammal. The real-life version of Ratty has just been reintroduced to a stretch of river in Somerset. What mammal is this? In ClosingAnd that concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories.
If you have an iOS device like an iPhone or an iPad you can get the Blue Streak Science app from the App Store.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Our hosts today were Chris MacAlister, and Tom Di Liberto.
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
Manglende episoder?
-
The observation of a decaying Higgsâ Boson | Skull tunnels | Troubleshooting on the International Space Station | Rates of STD infections in the United States go way up |The Climate Lounge |Pub Quiz
Science News with Nevena Hristozova and Chris MacAlister Physicists Observe the Higgs Bosonâs Elusive DecayWe struggled for 50 years to detect it, and now we canât wait to see it die! Itâs the Higgs. The boson, not the Professor! Luckily, Professor Peter Higgs is still alive and well at the age of 89.
And Iâm talking about the decay of the higgs boson - because only by knowing how a particle is born and how it dies one can truly understand it - Iâm so poetic! But itâs true.
Now the two largest experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva ATLAS and CMS have found another manner via which the boson decays - into bottom-antibottom quarks. This most common decay pattern was surprisingly hard to detect, even if more than 50% of the time the higgs decays like this. Previous observations included its decay into two photons and an electronâantielectron pair, when counterintuitively this is predicted to happen just about 0,2% of the time.
But then again, I never claimed that theoretical and particle physics were in any way intuitive to me!
Nature, Science, Scientific American
Newfound skull tunnelsWe did indeed, so let me return to our tale of brains, bones and blood.
Humankind has been examining all aspects of our bodies, both inside and out, for as long as we have had them, which makes it even more remarkable that we are still finding new features in it. The most recent being a network of tiny tunnels within the cranium.
These tunnels are like a window to the bone marrow which is immensely important for a variety of reasons but notably, it is where our blood is made. Not only our red-blood cells but also the white blood cells that form the backbone of our immune system (no pun intended).
It used to be believed that first response white blood cells (neutrophils to be precise) travelled from all areas of the body to wherever they happen to be needed. Note the âused to beâ guess whatâs coming next!
By providing the cranial marrow with fluorescent dye the team from Harvard were able to measure the proportion of these cells that were appearing in the brains of stroke sufferers, where the immune system is having a field day. What they found was that most of the cells, by far, had originated in the cranium rather than elsewhere in the body.
So the question was now; how do the neutrophils get from the marrow to create this sprinkler system of a immune response? This is what inspired the search that eventually discovered these tunnels.
A key part of the bodyâs standard immune response is inflammation. Whilst it does a great job, there can be times where it causes more problems than it solves and the brain tends to be one of these cases. Additional pieces of information like this about how the immune system works within our brains could eventually lead to advancements in the treatment of conditions such as Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis.
Science News, The Scientist
Air Leak on the ISSOh oh! Weâre in trouble! This is how the international space station would have sounded like few days ago if there was enough atmosphere up there to sound like anything at all.
A small dip in cabin pressure was noticed by ground control on Wednesday 29 august. Then the astronauts started searching for the hole. Turned out, the leak was via a 2-millimeter-wide hole in one of the two Russian Soyuz spacecraft that's currently docked to the orbiting lab.
As of today, the damage is repaired and no risk threatens the integrity of the ISS or the life of the astronauts.
Russian space officials have said that the puncture was caused by a micrometeoroid, but NASA has not confirmed this. Was it may be a piece of space debris? Or may be normal wear and tear of the materials? Or an alien laser weapon?
What I was most curious is HOW you find a 2mm hole in a 108.5 meters by 72.8 meters pace ship covered with insulation, thousands of pipes, tubes, instruments etcâŠ. I tried to find out, JD, but it didnât say⊠I place my bet on releasing some compressed air with a colorant in it and following where does it escape from. If NASA or the ISS are listening - call us - we want to know!
Scientific American, Space.com
S.T.D. Diagnoses Reach Record 2.3 Million New Cases in U.S.Well, JD; what have I got for you. Chlamydia, how does that suit you? No? Not for you? Okay, what about syphilis? Gonorrhea? Take your pick, Iâve got them all.
I mean, not me personally; but my story has, because this is the news that sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in the United States.
Not only are they on the rise, they have just hit a diagnosis record with 2.3 million new cases in 2017. In the previous 4 years syphilis cases have increased by 76%. So what the hell is going on?
Itâs often tricky to make a direct link between cause and effect and in science we must always remember that correlation does not equal causation, but that said. Here are some fun correlations:
Screening and diagnosis is improving. If you are checking more people in more effective ways then you are bound to discover more cases. And this then inflates because as you diagnose new and expecting mothers you then go on to check their new babies who are getting diagnosed as well. Online dating is increasing and it is successful. So when more swipey-swipey leads to more bouncy-bouncy then you get more itchy-itchy. Condom use is decreasing. Can you believe that in this day and age we are actually going backwards in this? This could in part be down to men assuming that women are taking control of contraception but it could also be linked to correlation number 4... The Centers for Disease Control and Preventionâs STD budget has been slashed by 40% since 2003. Now we give the Trump administration a fair bit of stick on this show, and rightly so, but multiple administrations bare some responsibility for this one. Trump may claim to be different from his predecessors but even he has a further 17% cut lined up for next year.Some may argue that people donât need telling about how STDs spread so no budget is needed, but not everyone realises that you can spread one far and wide before you even present any symptoms. Thatâs exactly why these diseases spread so well.
They say that the world needs more love and I stand by that sentiment, but for pitties sake people; be careful when you go out to do your bit.
The Atlantic, New York Times
The Climate LoungeWelcome! Letâs start todayâs Climate Lounge with a poetry reading. More like a poetry line reading from one of the poems that the US makes its high students read. John Donne, Meditation 17. No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent. But plenty of places are whatâs called Urban Heat Islands. (geez what a forced opening line. I know the poem is about something deeper.. I get it, not my best, but itâs hot where I am and thatâs the best Iâve got).
An urban heat island is a metropolitan area that becomes much hotter than its surrounding areas due to built up human infrastructure. Things like concrete and asphalt can absorb radiation during the day and re-radiate it not only throughout the day but also at night leading to drastically warmer daytime and nighttime temperatures in cities compared to surrounding areas. Now if you donât want to take my word for it. Test this out the next time itâs hot outside.Stand on an asphalt pavement and then walk over to a grassy shaded area and tell the difference in heat. Thereâs a difference. Or just take my word for it and donât bother making yourself feel uncomfortably hot and get all sweaty and gross and yuck.
In the summer, this can mean hot days that tip to extremely and dangerously hot days affecting the elderly, sick and young. In fact excessive heat is seen as the greatest weather-related cause of death in the United States.
Now satellites have been able to map this on a large scale but scientists with NOAA, Portland State and the Science Museum of virginia has started doing on the ground heat island studies to map just how different conditions can be from neighborhood to neighborhood. This level of detail is missed out on satellites and can have profound effects on how cities deal with heat in the future as temperatures continue to warm due to human caused climate change. Washington DC for instance averages 5 days a year over 95. That could jump to 20 days by 2030, 40 days by 2050 and 80 days by 2100.
Recently, these scientists along with citizen scientists and volunteers in Washington DC and Baltimore maryland, headed out with temperature sensors mounted to their car windows to monitor conditions through different transects through each city at three times during the day, morning 6am, peak heating during the mid afternoon 3pm and evening 7pm. Soon enough scientists will be able to look through the data and see exactly which areas are hottest due to the urban heat island.
But we donât have to wait to see this sort of impact. A similar study led by the same scientists, Jeremy Hoffman, and Dr. Vivek Shandas was completed last year for Richmond,VA. They found a 16 degree difference 87 to 103 at the hottest part of the day in the same city! And more importantly, they were able to show that the neighborhoods that tend to get smacked hardest by the urban heat island are poorer neighborhoods and areas where ambulances are already called more often to deal with heat related problems.
Now we can fix this. Cities can use more reflective materials when building, remove pavement for grass, plant trees, add living roofs but itâs an effort that has to be taken at a city-county-state and federal level to deal with. And this sort of study is just the first step in helping cities find out just exactly where things are the worst and where actions need to be taken immediately to help community members. Because often times the folks hardest hit, are often already the most vulnerable people in our communities.
So let me end with the final lines from that poem I started off with as I think itâs a great reminder in our climate changed worlds.
Any manâs death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
Our Climate bell is ringing.WAMU Climate.gov
Pub Quiz According to a Swiss study published last week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology children born through in vitro fertilization may have higher risk of what? Researchers reporting in the journal Science on 30 August announced that using CRISPR/Cas9 techniques in a dog model have fixed a genetic mutation that causes what disease? There is a species of corn native to Oaxaca, Mexico that stand over 5 meters tall. Thatâs about twice the height of typical corn you see being cultivated. And sticking out from the stalks are aerial roots, which look like red fingers. And theyâre covered in gooey slime. Why are scientists excited about this corn? This past Sunday a 200 year old science and antiquities museum was gutted by a huge fire in what country? While a subway was being excavated in Melbourne, Australia workers discovered a gruesome cache of over 1,000 human teeth in the sediment. How did those teeth get there?And todayâs winner is: Nevena!
How did YOU do?
In ClosingThat concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Our hosts today were Nevena Hristozova, Chris MacAlister, and Tom Di Liberto.
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
Seriously, an empathy expert under fire for bullying? | Mama is a Neanderthal and Daddy is a Denisovan | Earth's Quick Flippin' Magnetic Field | Ancient Turtle Had No Shell | A****** of the Month: Tokyo Medical University | Pub Quiz Science News with Amrita Sule and Sophie McManus Empathy Researcher Accused of Bullying
I think this story deals with a very important issue in academia which is often not reported: bullying. Tania Singer, a 48 year old neuroscientist, director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany has been accused of bullying and intimidation by her former colleagues.
She is one of the worldâs leading experts on empathy research and has spent her entire career studying and understanding human nature.
Max Planck institute was brought to notice about this bullying behavior last year. They started investigating the allegations last year and allowed her a year long sabbatical. However, they plan to bring her back to the lab and this is when the current and former lab members spoke to Science.
In an interview with science magazine, 8 former and current researchers from Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences have accused Singer for manipulative and abusive behavior. The allegations include but are not limited to emotional abuse. Many one on one meetings have ended in tears for the lab members. Also, singer frowned up any female members getting pregnant and made no allowances for any medical appointments among others.
This is also ironical because one of Singerâs goals emphasized in a book she wrote in 2013) is to bring more attention to compassion in our society.
More and more bullying cases are surfacing every now and then. A leading cancer geneticist Nazneen Rahman from Institute of Cancer research UK faced harassment and bullying allegations which dated around 12 years back. She is quitting her job next month.
But letâs not forget that the onus is is on the institutions to take these matters more seriously and also create a work environment where employees can fearlessly report such instances.
Washington Post
Mama is a Neanderthal and Daddy is a DenisovanResearchers have analysed DNA from the fragment of an ancient childâs bone. This bond represents the first example of a first-generation hybrid human - Dad was a Denisovan, Mum was a Neanderthal. The girl, named Denisovan 11, affectionately nicknamed Denny, died 90,000 years ago. The study is published in the journal Nature.
The team, led by palaeogeneticists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, conducted the genome analysis on a single bone fragment recovered from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Russia. This cave gives its name to âDenisovansâ, a group of extinct humans first identified on the basis of DNA sequences from the tip of a finger bone discovered there in 2008.
Scientists already knew that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and homo sapiens interbred in the past - but this discovery is the first example of genetic material from the first generation of these couplings. In fact, Svante Paabo, one of the leaders of the study, thought his colleagues must have âscrewed upâ when they first told him what they had found.
The group knew the bone fragment came from a girl because they checked the bone fragmentâs sex chromosomes. The density led them to estimate Denny was at least 13 years old when she died. The scientists even know which parental side was Neanderthal, and which was Denisovan, by looking at the boneâs mitochondria - the âpowerhousesâ of cells. The genetic material in the mitochondria was recognised as Neanderthal. This shows the girlâs mother was Neanderthal because we only inherit mitochondrial DNA from our mothers. This finding corresponded with the fact that half her genomic DNA was matched to a Neanderthal. The Denisovan dad was confirmed by comparing the remaining genetic material to samples of Denisovans, homo sapiens and Neanderthal. Sort of like an ancient and elaborate dot-to-dot.
âTo find a first-generation person of mixed ancestry from these groups is absolutely extraordinary,â - quote from population geneticist Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London. âItâs really great science coupled with a little bit of luck.â As ever, scientists need that little bit of luck!
Science News, Nature
Ancient Fossil Turtle Had No ShellA 228 million year old fossil of a turtle has been discovered in Guizhou province of south west China. The almost complete fossil is around 2 meters long and has been named Eorhynchochelys sinensis which means "dawn-beaked turtle from Chinaâ.
What is so special about this discovery? This turtle fossil lacks the iconic turtle shell but has a toothless beak (which is seen in modern day turtle as well). This fossil had a long tail and probably lived near shorelines.It is possible that its broad ribs, flattened shape and strong limbs were adapted for digging the mud to hide itself , bury eggs or find food.
This is the earliest turtle ever found with a sign of turtle -like beak. It joins the list of other fossils discovered previously. A fossil aged 220 million years old Odontochelys semitestacea had a partial shell but no beak. Until now there have been many gaps in the evolution of turtles.
But, this discovery will help scientists in filling the gaps in the evolutionary puzzle. The fact that Eorhynchochelys developed beak before odoctochelys but not the shell indicates that some traits can evolve independent of each other.
Modern day turtles have both beaks and shells, but the evolution did not take place in straight line. Some predecessors only had the beak while some had shells. This fossil discovery is going to prove helpful for scientists to understand how present-day turtles have evolved.
Even though this discovery offer new insights into turtle evolution, scientists are still not sure where they will fit in the evolutionary tree. Past genetic studies have placed crocodiles, dinosaurs and modern birds as the close relatives of turtle.
Studying this fossil will shed more light on the evolution of the turtle body plan and how turtles relate to other reptiles.
BBC Science and Environment
Earth's Magnetic Field Can Reverse Poles Ridiculously QuicklyOur planet is shielded by a magnetic field, which protects us from the hottest radiation thrown out by the Sun, thereby preventing Earth from deteriorating into a barren wasteland (although stay tuned for the next Climate Lounge to hear how we are achieving that goal all by ourselves!)
The magnetic field is thanks to the molten iron core of the Earth. So far, so good!
However, a few times every million years or so, Earth's magnetic field reverses polarity. Imagine an enormous magnet inside our planet gets flipped upside down - the magnetic North Pole would become the magnetic South Pole, and the energy field that typically makes up our planet's magnetic armour would weaken and break. Studies modelling this suggest that such an event would reduce the shield's protective strength by up to 90 percent. Hmm, do visions of an electrified wasteland beckon.
The last full reversal of the field was around 800,000 years ago and took hundreds of years to unfold. But wait - maybe we should worry! A new study is out in PNAS, suggesting such reversals may occur more rapidly than previously thought. Uh oh.
The team of scientists analyzed millenia of geomagnetic history coded into the atoms of an ancient stalagmite in China. This story written in stone told them that once, about 98,000 years ago, the planet's magnetic field suddenly flipped polarity in as little as 100 years â roughly 30 times faster than the generally expected rate, and 10 times faster than what was thought to be the fastest rate possible.
For now, we donât have to worry - but if such a magnetic field reversal occurred in tandem with a solar storm, the likely result of this solar tantrum would be power outages on a scale never seen before.
Live Science, Space.com
A****** of the Month Tokyo Medical UniversityIn Japan the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been boasting about its program of âwomenomicsâ (women economics?). This has been more of a goal than a reality certainly as, according to the World Economic Forumâs rankings of gender equality, Japan remains mired down at number 114 out of 144 countries.
So it came as a shock to some, and not shocking at all for others, when it was announced that Tokyo Medical University has been subtracting scores for womenâs exams to get into this prestigious medical school. This has been going on for more than a decade.
An investigation showed they were subtracting scores for women applicants in a deliberate effort to keep their numbers down, and also falsifying exam scores to help specific men get into the school, like the sons of politicians.
The managing director of the university, Tetsuo Yukioka said, âWe have caused a great amount of trouble to everyone and betrayed the trust of society. I apologize from my heart."
Hereâs how the manipulation worked: in the essay section of the entrance exam, which was scored out of 100, they first subtracted 20 percent from all marks. Then it gave 20 bonus marks to men who had taken the exam three times or less. So if a woman and a man had both taken the exam and scored 70 out of 100, the woman was given a score of 56 while the man was given a score of 76.
The proportion of women admitted to Japanese medical schools has risen steadily when it peaked at 34 percent in 2003, but hasnât moved since then.
Interesting fact: Japanese women have a higher pass rate on entrance exams for almost every other university subject.
However, in medicine the pass rate is 6.85 percent for men and 5.91 percent for women.
Even with these incredible obstacles women pass the the test at less than one percentage point less than men.
Why the hell would they want to keep their best and brightest out of medicine?
Sources at the university have stated:
This was done because women are more likely to leave medicine when they have children which puts pressure on already overworked doctors. The University has the legal right to accept whoever they want.Iâm ignorant of Japanâs maternity leave structure, but one good step towards making the above point moot is to provide both mothers and fathers equal time of paid leave when a new child comes into their homes.
In any case, this policy of institutional suppression is complete bull**** and must be ended immediately, and there better be some jail time as a result of this.
Tokyo Medical University, youâve been crowned the month of Augustâs Blue Streak Science A****** of the Month.
Pub Quiz A mind-bending problem in pasta physics was finally solved last week, but the solution comes with a twist. What am I talking about? Scientists have discovered that female narwhals and beluga whales have something in common with human women. What is it? Scientists found a strange new type of neuron in human brains: what are they calling it? A beach in France was closed recently due to the amorous behavior of what animal? Secret tunnels were discovered! In the human body! Where? In ClosingThat concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected].
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
And our hosts today were Amrita Sule, and Sophie McManus.
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
We talk with crow researcher Kaeli Swift about a really interesting aspect of crow behavior Science News The Climate Lounge with Tom Di Liberto The Pub Quiz Science News with Sophie McManus and Chris MacAlister Cancer drugs may help the liver recover from common painkiller overdoses
Painkiller overdoses can be lethal. In America, these overdoses occur around 100,000 times a year, both accidentally and in suicide attempts. Consequently, such overdoses are the leading cause of acute liver failure.
A study published in Science Translational Medicine raises hope that experimental cancer drugs may alleviate the damage caused by painkiller overdose - and do so better than the current antidote, N-acetylcysteine, which must be administered within four hours to avert death or avoid the need for transplant. The new drugs were still effective 12 hours after overdose had occurred.
The cancer drugs tested appear to work by blocking action of a common molecule, TGFbeta, which in this case is activated by inflammation and can cause liver cells to enter senescence - a pre-death state.
Itâs hoped this strategy might be effective in clinical trials, thereby buying doctors in A&E some extra time with which to deal with OD.
Science News
Earliest galaxies found 'on our cosmic doorstep'When you think about the oldest known galaxies in the Universe then your thoughts may be drawn to MACS1149-JD. I know that mine is!
This is the most distant galaxy ever observed. Over 13 billion light years away and thanks to the speed of light we know that itâs over 13 billion years old.
So how bizarre would it be to learn that there are galaxies just as old, if not older, right here neighbouring the milky way? This bizarre because that is exactly what is happening! Theyâve been discovered by a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics at Cambridge.
Now if you are like me then you will be thinking, how can they tell that these galaxies are so old? Well Iâm glad that you asked; it comes down to their luminosity function, which is a measure of the radiation that they generate.
The luminosity of these galaxies has a distinct signature consistent with that theorised to be produced in the cosmic dark ages. This was a unique period of the universeâs history when atoms first formed and the cosmic microwave background, along with all other electromagnetic radiation started to form.
BBC News Science and Environment
Crows Tidy Up Amusement Park in FranceCrows have been taught how to tidy! It's a shame more people havenât. Rooks will be deployed this week at Puy du Fou, a French park that hosts events and re-enactments. The birds were bred in captivity and then trained by Christophe Gaborit, a falconer and project manager with the park's Academy of Falconry.
These birds are highly intelligent and you might see them around sifting through bins to try and find something to eat. Because of this intelligence and ability to sort items, Christophe decided to turn this behaviour to good use. He raised and trained his first pair of trash-collecting rooks in 2000, with a little help from a special cabinet â when the birds deposited rubbish in the drawer, a second compartment would be opened to reward them with a tasty treat. Repeating this action led the rooks to associate rubbish removal with food.
Sometimes theyâd try to trick the system by dropping bits of wood in the box instead of rubbish. Gaborit explains all this on his blog.
The logic behind employing rooks instead of humans is interesting - Gaborit hopes that the sight of crows picking up litter will prompt people to be a bit more thoughtful in how they dispose of rubbish. After all, it isnât hard to drop something in the bin...
Live Science
Interview with Dr. Kaeli Swift about Crow ThanatologyFirstly, congratulations to Dr. Kaeli Swift! Kaeli successfully defended her dissertation and was awarded her Ph.D. between the time we talked last week and the date this episode was released. How awesome is that?
So please have a listen to the podcast as we talk about crow thanatology. What's crow thanatology? Ain't tellin'! You gotta listen!
The Climate Lounge The Earth Is One Heck Of A Resilient placePower was finally restored to everyone in Puerto Rico recently but todayâs voyage into the Climate Lounge is going to take a different tack on my usual Puerto Rico storyline. Today, Iâm going to talk to you about re-birth.
In a beautiful article in the Huffington Post, Kaia Findlay reports on just how resilient ecosystems (both natural and human-influenced) in Puerto Rico have been in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The story also comes with unbelievable videos of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the storm.
El Yunque Rain Forest[caption id="attachment_1405" align="alignright" width="400"] El Yunque Rain Forest[/caption]
Letâs start with the rainforests. Forests cover 60% of Puerto Rico and are a vital part of what makes Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico. And after Maria, an estimated 23 to 31 million trees were killed or damaged. The famed El Yunque rainforest was turned a shocking brown. Just listen to this quote.
âIt was a toothpick forest...like a bomb hit,â said Grizelle Gonzalez, a soil scientist at the International Institute of Tropical Forestry.
As someone who adores autumn and the leaves changing color, and who loves a nice winter stroll through a barren forest, that last quote got me.
But, you canât keep El Yunque down. You canât keep nature down. Nature has a long history with the weather. And itâs ecosystem is already rebounding because itâs adapted to do so. Plants who love the sun quickly rose up under the brand new open canopy of the rainforest. Eventually they will grow tall enough to offer enough shade for the shade loving plants to flourish. And the rainforest begins anew.
Tabonuco TreeTake the Tabonuco tree. One of the larger trees in the rainforest, they are found along the higher ridges, in areas more susceptible to high wind speeds during hurricanes. Yet after Maria, there they stood. Leaf-less but alive. How?They have evolved to the risk of storms by having a large interconnected root system which help to anchor them all. And once the storm passes, they can quickly grow back their leaves.
There are more resilient tree species like the Cecropia schreberiana which can rapidly grow 50 feet in the post-Maria landscape. Six months after Maria hit, all of those sun-loving plants had already begun to cover the rainforest floor with trees already poking through the undergrowth. In 10 to 15 years, a visitor wonât be able to tell that anything happened. And in 100, it would take hard scientific research to even know a hurricane came through.
Farmer Prepares for StormThatâs nature though. But there are farmers in Puerto Rico who have taken this natural adaptation of Puerto Ricoâs land and applied it to their farms. Ian PagĂĄn Roig woke the day after Maria to see his farm decimated, trees down, surrounding forest denuded, pools of water everywhere. Yet a month after Maria, there he was producing crops again.
How? Prior to the storm, Pagan took important steps like digging trenches for water drainage, removing the roof of his greenhouse to allow for the wind to blow through. And prior to the hint of any storm, Pagan built permanent infrastructure like ponds and a greenhouse to make returning to normalcy quicker. And most important, his farm equipment ran on grass not fuel. While fellow farmers waited hours and hours on line for gas, his two oxen where out plowing land. Combining these choices with natural agricultural practices that enhanced his soil vitality had his farm up and running so quick after Maria.
The main thing is that the earth is resilient. And people can be too⊠if we put the effort in.
HuffPo
Pub Quiz Using data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument, scientists have identified three specific signatures that definitively prove there is what on the surface of the moon? This week, a consortium of more than 200 scientists from 20 countries published the first fully annotated sequence of the genome for what very important species of plant? What food was recently found in a 3,200 year old Egyptian tomb? A 'Fireball' 40 Times Brighter Than the Moon was seen streaking across the sky of what U.S. state? A purple celestial phenomenon, recently discovered by citizen scientists, has been given a name. What name?How did YOU do?
In Next Weekâs EpisodeHey, you donât wanna miss next weekâs episode. We have science news, the Climate Lounge, Pub QuizâŠ.and...the Blue Streak Science A****** of the Month!
In ClosingThanks to Dr. Kaeli Swift for joining us today. And best of luck on your future work with Canada Jays.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected].
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Our hosts today were Sophie McManus, Chris MacAlister, and Tom DiLiberto.
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
Dr. Amber Stuver of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory Blue Streak Science News The Climate Lounge Pub Quiz Science News with Chris MacAlister and Nevena Hristozova New Horizons Sees Glow at Edge of Solar System
Itâs time for another update from my favourite little space probe; New Horizons. The explorer who brought us Pluto in all of its glory; with its heart and fart dunes, has something new to report on its way to its next rendezvous with Ultima Thule, an ultraviolet glow.
So what could be causing a glow in deep space? Well the experts are all in agreement. Itâs aliens. Aliens people, theyâve finally come! If only we had a space force to save us.
Sorry, my error. Itâs not aliens, itâs Hydrogen. The general consensus is that this glow is emanating from the edge of the heliosphere.
The heliosphere is our solar systemâs bubble, created by the sunâs solar winds blowing out through the solar system and it keeps interstellar matter from drifting in. So this glow is thought to be where the winds stop. Forming a hydrogen wall at the point where the wind gets weak enough for the universe to push back.
Science News, Live Science
New Drug for Relapsing MalariaMalaria is a disease caused by a total of 170 plasmodium species. Some infect humans, other - other animals, some cause slightly different symptoms of the same disease. In the majority of cases, the malaria plasmodium is transmitted by mosquitoes, and one species is known to be transmitted to humans via small primates. An estimated 600 million people worldwide are affected by malaria and about one to three million die each year.
The good news is that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved tafenoquine for malaria prophylaxis.
Some of the malaria-causing plasmodia can remain dormant in the liver of affected patients and cause recurring infections of the patient months after the initial condition, and what is worse - they are also potentially contagious if a mosquito bites them.
This new drug was specifically developed against this recurring species.
It also has a strong negative side-effect though. For people with a X-chromosome related genetic condition causing deficiency in the glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase enzyme which protects the red blood cells from oxidative damage, taking this pill can cause hemolytic anemia - destruction of their red blood cells, so thatâs a pretty significant drawback.
The approval of FDA comes with the conditions for the pharma companies that make the drug to carry out further extensive pharmacovigilance tests once the drug is on the market and provide detailed reports of the results.
Pharmacy Times, PR Newswire, Science News
Debate On How People Arrived in The AmericasDuring the last ice age, pioneering humans crossed the Bering Strait on an ice bridge and became the first human population in the New World. Simple, eh?
Maybe not. Once on the continent there is still the small matter of making your way south and there are some conflicting ideas about how this would have happened.
One theory says that the explorers would have hugged the coast on their way down, whilst the other says that a more inland route would have been taken, passing between two ice sheets.
There is evidence to support each case, and we all know what happens when you have conflicting theories in science; fiiiiiiggggghhhhht!
Mercifully, a international team of multidisciplinary experts have come together to try and shed some light on this puzzle and stop some of the carnage and bloodshed.
Archeology, geology, anthropology and genetics have all been put to task to try and solve this question once and for all, the results are in, and the winner isâŠ..La La Land. Sorry wrong card. The winner isâŠ..we donât know!
[caption id="attachment_1383" align="alignright" width="300"] Amber Stuver, Ph.D.[/caption]
Interview with Amber Stuver, Ph.D. - LIGODr. Amber Stuver is an assistant professor of Physics at Villanova University and is also a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, better known as LIGO. Dr. Stuver has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 1999. Sheâs also a terrific science communicator having done videos with Tedx Talks and Ted-Ed.
Please have a listen to our conversation about this completely new way of discovering our universe.
The Climate LoungeWelcome to the lounge! I see that last week we covered how the death toll for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was finally increased⊠something that should have occurred a long time ago. I was going to say that it should be a scandal. But it IS A SCANDAL. Even if most of the media has moved on and people have moved on. Iâm imploring you to not move on. The island still have years, decades even left ahead in its rebuild. Is it going to be a climate resilient rebuild, or a patchwork effort that will lead to failure the next time a storm hits? I sure hope these stories reach the light of day⊠Ok.. onto this weeks science story. Let me set the stageâŠ
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, if by galaxy, I mean region and if by region I mean Central America, I digress, a predominant technologically advanced civilization crumbled into non-existence due to, according to a new study, a change in the climate. God, please donât let this be foreshadowing on all of us.
Ok, Iâm talking about the Mayans here. An incredibly, for their time, advanced civilization when it came to math and astronomy and agriculture and lore located in the Yucatan peninsula. Built up over a thousand years, the Mayan civilization collapsed in just a few hundred potentially during the 8th and 9th centuryish. What the heck happened? (pedantic note, technically we are talking about how the Mayans abandoned they massive cities in the southern lowlands of their territory over just a couple hundred of years. They didnât vanish. And some form of mayan civilization continued for hundreds of years)
Stop me if youâve heard this before, but scientists have lots of theories. Disease, Over-population, deforestation, aliens to name a couple but one theory I want to talk about today involves a change in climate. Specifically, a stupidly bad drought.
In a new paper published in Science, scientists attempted to quantify just how bad the drought was that impacted the region during the Mayan Collapse. It was called âQuantification of drought during the collapse of the classic Maya Civilizationâ. THREE CHEERS TO NOT PRETENTIOUS OR CONFUSING RESEARCH TITLES.
(another pedantic note: this paper didnât discover this drought, they just quantified it. Probably lots of things caused the collapse)
To do this, scientists took sediment cores from Lake Chichancanab. Basically, just like an ice core, layers of soils can hold within them clues about the precipitation and temperature.
What did the paper whose first author was Nick Evans a graduate student at Cambridge (have to give shout outs to first author grad students HUZZAH) find? There was a 50% decrease in annual precipitation for over 100 years from 800 to 1000 AD. And at worst, it was as much as 70%.
How did they figure this out? Basically as water in the soil evaporates, lighter elements go first, leaving heavier elements behind. During particularly bad droughts, gypsum crystals form keeping within them lake water. The chemical properties of this fossilized lake water is what Nick Evans and colleagues looked at to determine how bad the drought was.
A pretty amazing climate detective case. Now we still donât know what caused the drought. It could ahve been changes in the atmospheric circulation. Maybe there were more long lasting and bad El Ninos which lead to drought? Maybe something with the Medeval warm period, a time with less volcanic activity and a stronger sun. But really that is sorta besides the point.
Whatâs interesting for us today in a world impacted daily by human-caused climate change is just how easy it potentially was for a natural climate event, drought, to upend a thousand year old civilization. And all of those people had to go somewhere.
Now think about the implications today for areas that potentially could dry out over the next century due to climate change. Add on a natural drought and you get a particularly bad scenario. And then you have millions of climate refugees. Are we are a society prepared for that? Iâll leave that one hanging. But Iâm sure you might have answered that for yourself already.
WaPo
Pub QuizTaking part in the pub quiz today are: Chris MacAlister, Nevena Hristozova, and Tom Di Liberto
There was an annually occurring meteor shower last week. What is it called? What dangerous substance has The United States Environmental Protection Agency proposed to allow for the approval of "new uses"? A study published in Nature Scientific Reports last week suggests that cremated human remains from Stonehenge most likely came from whe In honor of it being the Dog Days of Summer, something I take Sirius. I have a question about dogs. A new study suggests that some dogs may be lying about something when they have a pee. What are they lying about? New archaeological research from The Australian National University has found that Homo erectus, an extinct species of human, went extinct, at least in part, because they were what?How did YOU do?
In Next Weekâs EpisodeWeâll be talking with Kaeli Swift of the University of Washington who has been studying some really interesting behavior about my favorite birds...crows! We may have to re-think what it means to be a bird brain after this. Donât miss it!
In ClosingThanks a million to Amber Stuver!
Thanks to our audience, especially our Patreon supporters. Weâve only recently begun our Patreon campaign, but soon weâll be offering some incentives. Perhaps extra content. Live streaming? Maybe the opportunity to sit in with us while we record the podcast? Or even a completely new Patreon-only live stream. Weâre looking at all these ideas. So, watch this space, and get in early!
That concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the podcast directory of your choice.
If you have an iOS device like an iPhone or an iPad you can get the Blue Streak Science app from the App Store.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Our hosts today were Chris MacAlister, Nevena Hristozova, and Tom Di Liberto.
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
Hurricane Mariaâs death toll in Puerto Rico over 1,100 The Trump Administration Proposes to Scrap Automobile Fuel Efficiency Standards Also, Donald Trump picks a White House science officer The US state of California Hits Its Emissions Target Years Early! Interview with Dr. Grant Ballard, Chief Science Officer of Point Blue Conservation Science Science News with Nevena Hristozova and JD Goodwin Hurricane Mariaâs death toll in Puerto Rico over 1,100
It is a story we keep mentioning and we will keep mentioning for as long as itâs necessary. Puerto Rico - the American territory which seems to be completely forsaken by the American administration, probably because they donât have fancy golf courses there right now. The government claims 64 deaths between landfall in September 2017 and December 2017, while the official average comes to about 1140 people who lost their lives. Talk about fake news the government seems to be the best in cooking these up. Next to that the, months-long power shortages, the contaminated water supplies, the extreme flooding are part of the daily struggles of the people of Puerto Rico a year after the hurricane hit. Good job, to president Trump and his cabinet for taking care of their own people...]
LA Times, New Scientist
GOP Administration Proposes to Scrap Automobile Fuel Efficiency StandardsLast Thursday, Donald Trump released a proposal to scrap federal fuel-efficiency standards for passenger vehicles. His administration has also threatened to remove Californiaâs ability to set its own emissions guidelines.
The reaction from the science community, as well as government officials in California was swift and negative. On Twitter, Governor Jerry Brown wrote, âCalifornia will fight this stupidity in every conceivable way possible.â
Whatâs the Trump administrationâs argument?
Current standards drive up vehicle prices these standards would increase the number of deaths from traffic accidents by encouraging consumers to keep driving older cars that arenât as safe as new ones.According to John DeCicco, a University of Michigan engineer who studies the environmental impact of vehicles, âI donât believe the administration has any solid engineering or economic ground to stand on. It is basically political opportunism.â
With Trumpâs new proposal the projected CO2 emissions would increase by roughly 20% compared to the projected output under the current regulations.
Trumpâs plan would also revoke a waiver granted to California that allows the state to set air-quality standards that are stricter than those enacted by the federal government. The waiver also lets other states to adopt California's standards.
Even car makers are advising the GOP administration to back off because this could create a legal mess that could get dragged out for years.
Weâre not gonna let this happen.
Nature, New York Times
New Pick for White House Science Office is Not BadOur next story takes us back to you know who! Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump assumed office more than a year and half ago. Among his accomplishments is the fact that he has gone longer without a science adviser than any first-term president since 1976.
Hereâs the biggest surprise. His choice to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is not a d*%#head.
He is a meteorologist and his name is Kelvin Droegemeier. Heâs an expert on extreme-weather events, and has been the vice-president for research at the University of Oklahoma since 2009. Kelvin Droegemeier also served on the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, under presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
This guy is a good choice.
Granted, heâll be stepping into an Office of Science and Technology Policy that has been eviscerated from a staff of 130 employed by President Obama to that of only 50 by Donald Trump.
But this one appointment is a good choice, and Donald Trump should be commended for it.
Science, Scientific American
California Hits Its Emissions Target Years Early!JD, for a country that pulled out of the Paris agreement, showing nothing but disregard for scientific and popular opinions by the office running it, your own state is doing really well! California set a goal in 2006 to reduce its greenhouse emissions to levels equal those of 1990 by 2020. A recent study published by the Air Resources Board reviewing data from 2016 shows that California has already hit that target with few years to spare!
Emissions from the power sector mark the biggest drop - around 35%. At the same time Californiaâs economy was still growing, mind you - for those who believe that degrowth is the only way to return to healthier planet. And also, for those who believe the greener future is a poorer future - you are wrong and California just proved you wrong with very convincing numbers!
Japan Times, Green Matters
Dr. Grant Ballard, Chief Science Officer Point Blue Conservation ScienceIt was my privilege today to talk with Grant Ballard, the Chief Science Officer of Point Blue Conservation Science. We discussed the history, mission, and current projects being undertaken by this many-faceted conservation organization.
Point Blue is a leader in climate-smart conservation, helping to ensure that wildlife and our own communities continue to thrive in the decades to come. We believe that our collaborative climate-smart conservation actions today can lead to ecosystems that sustain healthy wildlife and human communities well into the future. As leaders and innovators in conservation science, we have the vision, scientific rigor, passion, and ability to inspire others to act to make positive conservation outcomes possible for a healthy blue planet.
Point Blue Conservation Science website Recommended by The TeamBook: Unthinkable - And Extraordinary Journey Through the World's Strangest Brains
Author: Helen Thomson
In Unthinkable Helen Thomson tells the stories of nine extraordinary people. From the man who thinks he's a tiger to the doctor who feels the pain of others just by looking at them.
This is a terrific book that helps us to understand ourselves by helping us to understand the unique brains of some extraordinary people.
In Next Weekâs EpisodeInterview with Dr. Amber Stuver of Villanova University
We talked all about LIGO and gravitational waves.
Don't miss it!
In ClosingThanks to Grant Ballard of Point Blue Conservation Science
And that concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories. And if you have an iOS device like an iPhone or an iPad you can get the new Blue Streak Science app from the App Store.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
And our hosts today were Nevena Hristozova, and me!
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
General Relativity passes the black hole test A day by the lake...on Mars The Climate Lounge And more! Science News with Amrita Sule and JD Goodwin Animals Frozen for 42,000 Years Wriggle to Life
Not a lot of us are excited when we hear the phrase, "blast from the pastâ. But this time we do have news that goes about 40,000 years back.
A team of researchers revived 2 nematodes from samples of permafrost in Siberia. Scientists claim that these two nematodes have been frozen since the Pleistocene, thousands of years!Previously, nematodes that were frozen for about 39 years and also tardigrades frozen for about 30 years have been revived. However, this is the first time a complex organism like a nematode has been revived after thousands of years of frozen dormancy.
For this new study Russian scientists worked in collaboration with Princeton University researchers and found two viable nematodes while analyzing about 300 soil samples collected from the melting permafrost. Both are believed to be females.
One permafrost sample about 32,000 years old came from northeastern part of Yakutia in Russia and the other about 42,000 years old permafrost sample came from the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia.
As these isolated worms warmed, they started moving and eating.A number of organisms native to Arctic and Antarctica are known to undergo cryo-protective dehydration i.e when they encounter freezing temperatures they rapidly dehydrate â remove water from their cells. This prevents damage to their tissues which could occur otherwise when the water in their cells could freeze and form crystals.
More information would be indeed vital to understand how these two nematodes survived for thousands of years in frozen state. They would also be key in understanding evolutionary divergence between ancient and present nematode populations.Live Science, Smithsonian Mag
Einstein theory passes black hole testThe theoretical physicists come up with these elegant equations to explain everything in the universe from the very small to the very large. But it takes scientists who can design experiments to find out if the predictions of these theories line up with whatâs out there in the real world.
General Relativity has been experimentally confirmed many times. But one of the best things you can do with a scientific theory is to test it in the most extreme conditions to see if holds up. If it doesnât then you have to scrap it, or revise it if possible.
For the first time scientists have been able to test Relativity with an extremely massive object. How massive? Is 4 million times the mass of the Sun big enough for ya?
Weâre talking about the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. This black hole is known as Sagittarius A.
In particular, thereâs one star called S2. And S2 goes around Sagittarius A in an elliptical orbit every 16 years at 3% of the speed of light.
There are other stars in the area, and only a few years ago observing these would have been impossible. But these four telescopes, located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, can overcome distortions from the earthâs atmosphere. By bringing the light together from all of them it creates a virtual super telescope.
What they were looking for is a gravitational redshift. Thatâs when the light from this star gets stretched out as a result of a strong gravitational field.
Gravitational redshift is predicted by General Relativity, and has been observed before, but not from such a massive object with its intense gravitational field.
Until now.
These astronomers followed S2 before and after it streaked by Sag A on 19 May and they measured it every hour.
And they saw that the light from S2 was stretched, that is red-shifted, by the black hole exactly as predicted by the Theory of General Relativity.
Theyâre not done looking at S2. The more we observe this unusual star whipping around Sagittarius A the more we can learn about the extreme conditions so close to a supermassive black hole.
These results are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Science, Science News, BBC Science and Environment
Mars May Have a Lake of Liquid WaterWater is the most essential requirement for life. When planets are explored for the possibility of life, scientists first look for evidence of slightest amount of water.
And much to their surprise the Italian scientists working on the European Space Agencyâs Mars Express mission announced that the Mars orbiter has found a lake of liquid water below the southern ice sheets on Mars.
In the past, there have been indications of presence of tiny amount of water on Mars. However, this is the very first evidence of a liquid lake that spans 20 km across and sits under the planetâs southern polar cap.
Temperatures below the ice sheet could be as low as -68 degree C and pure water would freeze at such low temperatures. There is probably lot of salt dissolved in the water- thereby lowering its freezing point.
This lake was discovered by the The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument, or Marsis instrument developed by the Italian space agency. This instrument bounced radar beams on the ice sheets and the reflection revealed presence of a triangular region beneath the sheets â speculated to be a basin into which water had flown.
The Italian scientists matched these radar measurements to similar ice lakes in Greenland and Antarctica on earth to confirm their observations.
So, is this the evidence of life on Mars weâve been looking for all along? Not yet. More confirmation is needed. If this holds true, it would be substantial in understanding if any organisms can, or have survived.
Since, no other orbiter has detected this in spite of using a similar technology, for example NASAâs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, there might be debate about this and a assessment of this martial polar region might follow.
BBC Science and Environment, Science News, The New York Times
Carrie Fisher will be Leia again in âStar Wars: Episode IXâLast Friday the cast for the next Star Wars film was announced. And guess whoâs in it?
Hint: âHelp me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.â
Not just Princess Leia Organa...but Carrie Fisher herself is playing Princess Leia. This is no little hologram or CGI generated image of her, either!
Yes, Carrie Fisher died in 2016. That really happened.
How are they going to do this?
Star Wars: Episode 9, directed by JJ Abrams, is going to use previously unused footage from the filming of Episode 7: âThe Force Awakensâ.
According to Abrams this has the blessing of Fisherâs daughter Billie.
âEpisode 9,â begins shooting next month, and is scheduled to be released December 2019.
Another notable casting appearing in the new film will be Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian.
Washington Post, The New York Times
The Climate Lounge Heatwaves and wildfires: What is going on?This week in the lounge we are just going to take a quick tour of the planet and see how things are going. Iâm just going to, um, open up a browser real quick here, surely youâre impressed with my preparation, alright, let me type in weather disasters into this here google search...and. Oh god. The worldâs on fire⊠letâs talk about this
First, Europe. Europe has been sitting under a dome of high pressure that has basically let the continent slow cook. Temperatures reached into the 30s C or 90F as far north as the Arctic Circle...normal.. England has been baking. So has France.. So has⊠you get the picture itâs hot. A preliminary study suggests the heat wave was made 5 times more likely in northern Europe thanks to climate change. In Greece, the recent hotness combined with unusually strong west winds caused wildfires near Athens to grow incredibly out of control. The kineta fire to the west burned through rural areas and didnât cause too much damage. But the Rafina fire 10 miles to the west was horrible. The hot dry gusty winds made the fire grow rapidly and even worse unpredictably. The fire quickly overtook the seaside resort towns near Rafina including Mati on July 23 forcing residents onto the narrow streets which quickly became clogged with cars. This led people to rush to the beaches and into the sea to protect themselves as the fires burned all the way to shore. Videos of the residents in the water while ash clouds the sky and fire burns in the distance were terrifying. Over 90 people died with dozens still missing. Making it the 5th deadliest wildfire in the past century and the deadliest in Europe. Itâs a horrible shocking thing. And this happened in a place that, to be honest, wasnât that dry. The winds were the unusual part. The European Commissionâs Joint Research Centre released in January a report specifically looking at the risk of wildfires in Europe in a future dominated by man-made climate change. The report found that for the Mediterranean region, the fuel needed for fires will become even drier increasing the risks for weather-driven forest fires. Making matters worse, drying conditions will extend farther north from the Mediterranean, while the large source of moisture found in the Alps will decrease as temperatures warm.
In the US, hot weather has led to dumbly (is that a word, it should be) hot temperatures in California. Redding hit 110 on July 26. And itâs been hot and dry for quite awhile. A bit different than Greece. But similarly, fires broke out and rapidly grew in size. The Carr fire has burnt 110,000 acres andis only 27% contained and has burned into Redding itself. It has destroyed over 1200 buildings and killed 7 people so far including two firefighters. The freaking fire even creating this rotating fire hellscape that was like a tornado. It created its own weather. There is even a photo of a steel pipe wrapped around a tree. Meanwhile, the Ferguson fire near Yosemite killed two firefighters and caused the largest park related fire closing since 1990 burning nearly 57,000 acres. Country-wide, so far this year the burned area is 25% above-average. Thatâs alot
Air quality in California as a result of all of the fires has been incredibly dangerous for those outside as well.
Climate change⊠itâs making this worse but Iâve never felt comfortable saying ânew normalâ but I never was eloquent enough to say why. Thank god for smarter people. So let me quote Crystal Kolden a fire scientist at the University of Idaho. She noted that the behaviour of the Carr fire is not the behavior firefights are used to seeing in the middle of the night, instead itâs more normal during the hottest parts of the day. She saysâ That sort of extreme, itâs something we have seen a lot in the past couple years, but itâs something weâve been seeing more frequently with a greater magnitude ofr the last 20, 30 years. â But she pushed back on saying this is a new normal because âThat implies that itâs not going to get that much worse. But what our projections tell us is that itâs going to get worseâ
Of course sheâs right. SHEâS A FREAKING FIRE SCIENTIST. As temperatures warm, the fire seasons get longer, the fuel gets drier, and drier more plentiful fuel means if fires form they grow fast and large. Not surprisingly, In recent research looking at trends in weeks where conditions are favorable for very large fires, scientists found that the potential for the development of very large fires is expected to be up to six times as likely by mid-century (2041-2070) compared to 1971-2000 in the mountain west. 2 to 4 times in California.
It hasnât been lost on me that Iâm doing another story on wildfires and the host of this podcast JD has gone through the terrifying ordeal himself after his home burned down last year. Fires that grow large so fast and going to encroach on that urban wild interface. Another bit about how infrastructure is not built for the extremes we are ALREADY seeing, let alone what may happen in the future.
Wunderground Wunderground climate.gov WaPo Axios
Pub QuizTaking part in the pub quiz today are: Amrita Sule and Tom Di Liberto.
What are the rules? The first rule of Pub Quiz is you do not talk about Pub Quiz.
I ask a science question and our panel of dangerous intellectuals provide their brilliant answers along with some witty reparteeâ.
A pair of papers posted on the preprint server arXiv last month suggests that this cosmological Theory results in far fewer universes than previously thought. What Theory am I talking about? On Friday, 27 July what notable celestial event took place? A bite from this animal can make a person deathly allergic to red meat. This week researchers announced that its bite may also be linked to coronary artery disease. What animal is it? In recent weeks hundreds of dead fish, seabirds and sea turtles have been washing up on the beaches of what U.S. state? According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience on 23 July, the oldest evidence for life on land was found in what country?Thatâs it for the Pub Quiz!
How did YOU do?
What? You want the answers? Then you're just gonna have to listen to this episode!
Recommended by The TeamAre there any birders out there? Of course there are! Well, I have an awesome way for you to waste 90 minutes of your life.
On Twitter thereâs a thing called TrickyBirdID. Itâs #TrickyBirdID. Itâs run by Jason Ward, and you can find him at JasonWardNY.
This is a daily contest on Twitter. Jason posts pictures of birds, and you try to guess what they are! Itâs not always easy because the pictures may be backlit, blurry, or maybe a partial picture. Itâs meant to be a challenge, and it it.
He gives everyone 30 minutes to give their answers, and whoever answers correctly first wins that round. There are a total of three rounds.
I was in rare form on Monday and won two of the three rounds. That last one was a white-eyed vireo, but I answered with yellow-throated vireo.
Still, this is a great way for birds nerds to waste time, and for that reason I recommend hashtag TrickyBirdID on Twitter.
#TrickyBirdID on Twitter
In Next Weekâs EpisodeDr. Grant Ballard, the Chief Science Officer of Point Blue Conservation Science.
In ClosingAnd that concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories. And if you have an iOS device like an iPhone or an iPad you can get the new Blue Streak Science app from the App Store.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
And our hosts today were Dr. Amrita Sule, and Tom Di Liberto.
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us.
And remember...follow the science!
-
Our first political endorsement! The Blue Streak Science News The Climate Lounge The Asshole of the Month Pub Quiz Political Endorsement Dr. Shannon Hader, Democrat for the 8th Congressional District in Washington
Weâre coming up on that silly season again, but this time around it seems so much more urgent because so many of us failed to see the reality that we faced during the last election. Part of that reality is that the anti-science and alternative-truth segment of our society have seized power. And folks, theyâre making the most of it to roll back scientific progress and education.
[caption id="attachment_1215" align="alignright" width="263"] Shannon Hader[/caption]
However, in November we have a chance to slow them down. If we can elect candidates into Congress who understand the importance of science and critical thinking in good government then that will go a long way toward slowing down the damage to our nation and the world that is current happening unabated.
So this election season the Blue Streak Science Podcast will be endorsing candidates who hold true to the values of science, equality, long-term economic progress, and the preservation and restoration of our natural heritage, both in America and worldwide.
The first candidate weâre endorsing is Dr. Shannon Hader who is running to represent the state of Washingtonâs 8th Congressional District in the House of Representatives. Dr. Hader is the former director of the Division of Global HIV & TB at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Do you want to know what the Trump administration is doing to the CDC? Their 2018 budget slashed its funding by $1.2 billion. That a 17% reduction.
Dr. Hader also worked for three years as director of the HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD and TB Administration at the District of Columbia Department of Health.
In making her announcement Dr. Hader said, "Science-based decision-making is under assault at NASA, at the EPA and the CDC, where I felt its effects directly.â
Well, we can turn this around by supporting Shannon Hader in her run for Congress. If you live in District 8 of Washington state I strongly urge you to vote for Dr. Hader in the primary on 7 August. If you donât live in the district then you can show your support for science and good government by contributing to her campaign at: www.drshannonforcongress.com
Science News Baby snake 'frozen in time'I have Christmas come early, but not as we know it. For most of us, Christmas presents come in boxes and nice wrapping, with little bow on top. But if you are a paleontologist then Christmas present come wrapped in amber. And things have come along a bit since Jurassic Park and John Hammondâs preserved mosquito on his walking stick since now weâre starting to get fossilized vertebrates, mostly from Myanmar. So far weâve had a bird wing, a chick, a lizard and even a feathered dinosaur tail!
This time itâs a snake. Rather tragically it is a baby snake that didnât get a great run at life, but the upshot of this is that a lot of the animal has been preserved inside.
Remains like this are like russian dolls: a fossil within a fossil, as the amber itself is a fossil of tree resin. The fact that it started life as a thick sticky tree sap is how creatures come to be trapped in it in the first place, preserved in a stone considerate enough to be transparent and so beautifully that it could make a pharaoh blush!
Although the head is missing, there is enough animal left for it to be identified as a new species. (Xiaophis myanmarensis). It would have lived about 99 million years ago and appears to be a very primitive member of the snake lineage.]
BBC Science and Environment, Live Science, Nature
A New Geologic AgeYou might wonder - anyone can subdivide the time of Earthâs existence in periods entirely up their will and imagination. But thatâs not how official geology works! Also, dividing the Earthâs history into eons, eras, periods and ages is much less arbitrary than you might think, and âŠ. well⊠much more scientific! Go figure!
So how does it work, you ask? It rocks! A new geological period is defined when significant chemical trace different from the period before is found in the rock deposits of the Earthâs crust. Deposition of such chemicals usually relates to some pretty major climatic event on the planet, which is naturally worthy of marking the start of a new geological period.
The newly categorised period we live in now is called Meghalayan. The name comes from Meghalaya, a northeastern state in India, whose name means "the abode of clouds" in Sanskrit. And a rock scientists analyse from there actually made them consider updating their historical nomenclature for earthâs periods. By analyzing a stalagmite growing on the ground of a cave in the Indian state, geologists found that each layer had different level of oxygen isotopes (versions of oxygen with different numbers of neutrons). This change marked the weakening of monsoon conditions from that time. And the change they estimated was significant - between 20-30 percent decrease of monsoon rainfall, so that def qualifies as a new era, Iâd say! It apparently started about 4200 years ago and some scientists think itâs still too soon to start classifying it as a new era, since itâs not well established how widespread the effects of these changes are, but if we have evidence for something for 4200 years, why not take it as rather established.
Live Science, Science News, BBC Science and Environment
International Chronostratigraphic Chart
The Great British Butterfly CountCalling all my fellow Brits, this is an urgent call to action; Sir David Attenborough needs you. I get two stories this week and I get to mention a different Attenborough brother in each, fantastic!
The legendary Sir David is calling people to take part in the Great British Butterfly Count. This is a massive citizen science survey of British butterfly populations. Itâs been happening seasonally since 2010 and this year it is running from the 20th of July to the 12th of August, so it really isnât too late to get involved.
The reason that this year in particular is so important is because the conditions at the start of this year means that we should be having a bumper year for butterflies, but in case you havenât noticed; itâs recently been very hot and very dry. Drought really isnât a friend of butterflies and with hose pipe bans starting to be seen we could be running into tricky conditions for caterpillars. This means that this could be a really important year for monitoring how conditions affect these beautiful lepidoptera.
You donât need to be a lepidopterist to take part. If you get over to bigbutterflycount.org then they have all of the information that you need there for you to help out. Itâs also a great thing to do with your kids, I intend to get out there with Matilda.
But this does remind me of a question that Iâve never found an answer to, so if anyone listening can help, please get in touch. Why do caterpillars get a fancy name when all other larvae just get called a âwhatever it isâ larvae?]
The Guardian, The New York Times, NPR
Big Butterfly Count
Researchers use 36 years of bike race footage to illustrate Belgium's changing climateNow first I gotta say a big thanks to Amrita for alerting me on this story because I have missed it and to JD for letting me talk about it.
Since I live in Belgium for 6 years now, this feels like home and Iâm dying to cover interesting science from around here cause for such a small country the universities and research centers are doing pretty darn well!
Anywho! To the story! Once upon a time, there was a very observing climatologist, who was also a passionate cyclist (for the record half of Belgium (the northern half, closer to the Netherlands are) called Pieter De Frenne. He works in the department of water and forest management in the Gent University.
He had the brilliant idea to use archive footage of Tour of Flanders from decades back to do a comparative study on the changing climate of the region through the years. This race is one of the most regular ones - always taking place early April each year and always in the same area if not exactly the same route.
So he and his colleagues went through more than 2000h of footage since 1981 until today and selected several landmarks that appear in all the footage through the years and compared them. They mostly settled for trees as these are most easily traceable/recognisable.
What they noticed is that the majority of the trees in the early 80 had barely any leaves yet in early April. Compared to back then, now almost every year most of the trees were well leafed up, meaning that spring is consistently coming much earlier than just two decades ago.
While this might sound like a pleasant thing, itâs not necessarily a good thing on a big ecological scale. The consistent changes in the tree part of the ecosystem has a significant effect on all other parts too - insects, birds and other animals in the area whose life is somewhat related/dependant on the trees. For migratory birds for example it can have quite dramatic effects - if they arrive to the usual destination after trees have bloomed, they might be unpleasantly surprised by the fact that their food (larvae or eggs of insects) have already matured/hatched and are either completely gone or much harder to catch and feed the birdâs hatchlings.
Also, all vegetation which grows under the trees will be affected - if the tree crown is already in full bloom by the time gras, bushes and flowers show up, they might have much less access to light to be able to complete their life cycle which in turn affects other animals relying on them for food and so on and so forth - the whole ecosystem can change quite dramatically, quite fast.
The scientists then went on to compare their results with other already published scientific data for the ecology of the region and established that they are in fact right and that this âout of the boxâ method is actually valid and working. They published their own data in the Methods of Ecology and Evolution.
CBC, Methods in Ecology and Evolution
The Climate LoungeTodayâs story time feature in the lounge is sure to Tickle you brain. It will certainly help you tick off things on your âTo-Learnâ lists. It definitely wonât have you bored listening to the tick tock of the clock. This story is about ticks.
Iâm not a big bug person so youâll excuse me if I donât paint an incredibly intricate picture of what a tick is. But itâs a small arachnid whose big fame in the United States is as a carrier for Lyme disease. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States and found generally throughout the Mid-Atlantic into the Northeast United States (Think Washington DC to Boston) as well as around the Great Lakes. I grew up in New York and can attest to the fear of lymeâs disease. Short story, my older brother was at a soccer tournament when we were young and I, being a dick, hid and scared him into some woods. The rest of his 10 year old boy teammates when in after him. And we never saw him again...No of course not, he walked out the other side and was back to the team in 3 minutes. But in those three minutes in the woods, 4 or 5 kids came back with ticks on them. So knowing whatâs going on with ticks is sorta important. Lyme disease can be a debilitating bacterial infection affecting the joints, heart and nervous system.
Enter Nathan Nieto and his lab at Northern Arizona University. From August 2016 to January 2017, his lab ran a pretty cool deal. If you found a tick, you could send it to his lab and he would give all the info you need on the little evil thingie (Iâm adding irrational personal feelings here so donât yell at meâŠ). For tick research, they normally get 100 ticks at a time by pretty basic methods like dragging a piece of fabric behind a truck, any adrenaline loving ticks hop on.. TO THEIR DOOM for science. For this public science effort, they budgeted for 2400 ticks, yet received nearly 16,000! They just published their results in PLOS One.
Dr. Nietoâs lab were sent ticks from 49 states (no Alaska) and Puerto Rico. Once received they tested them for 4 pathogens including Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. They found some rare ticks but also ticks capable of carrying Lyme disease in 83 counties where they hadn't been recorded before.This really shows the power of citizen science as tick research can be incredibly difficult. A study of this size could never have been done without public involvement.
How does this tie to climate change? Ticks occur on earth. Moving on⊠No really, ticks rely on warm temperatures to live. As temperatures warm, as winters shrink, as spring comes earlier and fall lasts longer, ticks can be out there for longer. Plus, warmer temperatures can enhance the rate at which a baby tick becomes fully developed. Tick development rates have increased by two times in the US and 5 times in Canada.
Not surprisingly, the rate of Lyme disease has doubled since 1991, from about four cases per 100,000 people to eight.And where does the name come from, since Iâm sure youâre wondering? Well Lyme Regis in southern England, indirectly. The first case diagnosed as lyme disease occurred in Old Lyme, CT, named after Lyme Regis. Not to go off too far on a tangent but itâs interesting so here we go. The northeast US is scattered with town names in reference to England (I grew up in a town called Smithtown inNY) but things get really weird near new york as english settlers ran into dutch settlers who founded New Amsterdam (after stealing land from the native population) which later became New York after the dutch lost to the english in 1674. But the dutch left a legacy in New York as many neighborhoods still bare dutch names. Brooklyn, Bronx, Coney Island, Harlem are all dutch. And even common words used in the US like boss come from the dutch. Ever wonder why Americans call them cookies and the english call them biscuits. THE DUTCH. Fascinating stuff. Tangent over.
NPR CBSnews SierraClub VOX
Asshole of the MonthDonald Trump, President of the United States
In 1962 when I was a year old, Rachel Carson published her landmark book on environmental science called âSilent Springâ. That lit a fire in the American consciousness about the environment.
In the 1960âs the air in our cities was awful. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire in 1968. Seriously, it caught fire!
I remember hearing about how birds of prey were disappearing because of pesticide pollution. In particular, the pesticide DDT (or more accurately its breakdown product DDE) would move up the food web getting more concentrated with each step, until it was consumed by apex predators such as California Condors, ospreys, and peregrine falcons. The effect of DDT on these raptors was that it caused them to lay eggs with very thin shells, or no shells at all. Those thin shells would crack under the weight of incubation. And this caused their populations to plummet. The iconic bald eagle was nearly extinct in the contiguous states in the 1960âs and 70âs, as was the peregrine falcon and many other birds.
As a result of increased environmental awareness we made real progress with the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
The Endangered Species Act.This is the single most important piece of legislation in the United States for conserving biodiversity and slowing down the extinction of species. The Act was passed in 1973 with overwhelming bipartisan support (the House voted 355-4 in favor of the law), and it was done so at the urging of a Republican president, Richard Nixon. How times have changed.
Since its passage, the Endangered Species Act has helped reverse the impending extinction of species from the magnificent Grey Wolf to the Schausâ Swallowtail Butterfly of the Florida Keys. Still, over the decades the law has been criticized by big business and agricultural interests who feel that the Act limits their ability to generate a profit, and to do whatever the want with their property.
Enter the Trump Administration. Last week they proposed to severely restrict the scope of the Endangered Species Act.
This led to Congressional hearings on the Act and has raised the alarm nationwide that one of the nationâs best ideas is about to be eviscerated.
Consider this:
A 2011 Harris Poll showed that 84% of Americans support the Endangered Species Act, with Democrats having the strongest support at 93%. 64% of Americans believe it acts a safety net and a balanced solution to save wildlife, plants and fish that are at risk of extinction. 63% of Americans believe decisions about whether to remove the Endangered Species Actâs protections should be based on science, and not politics. 92% of Americans agree that decisions about wildlife management and which animals needs protection should be made by scientists, not politicians.Seriously, 92% of Americans donât agree that the sky is blue on a sunny day! Yet the same number actually agree that this is a decision that should be made by scientists, and not politicians. There are some issues like gun control and reproductive rights which are terribly partisan, but the Endangered Species Act is not one of those issues.
So, for going against the will and interest of the American people, and for selling out our countryâs natural heritage to special business interests for a profit, Donald Trump, you are the the Blue Streak Science Asshole of the Month.
Pub QuizJoining us today are the Chris MacAlister, Nevena Hristozova, and Tom Di Liberto.
Hereâs how it works. I ask a science question and our team of science dweebs offer up their witty answers.
Remember the online name search last year for that research ship? The consensus was Boaty McBoatface, but they decided to name it after Sir David Attenborough. Thereâs another naming contest going on in the science world...whatâs it for? This past week a paper came out that suggests Neanderthals could do something the rest of us can do quite easily. What is that? It was announced this week that a fossil of Bigfoot has been found. But thatâs just what theyâre calling it. What kind of animal was it really? What gelatinous pink species is invading the waters of the American Pacific Northwest? A Chinese tree shrew loves to eat this food that most animals avoid, but oddly enough, many humans crave. What food is it?For the answers to today's Pub Quiz just have a listen to the podcast! Ain't we sneaky that way?
Recommended by The TeamTom: Itâs not science but itâs still fascinating. If you are curious to learn more about the Dutch influence on New York City and on thus on the United States, I highly recommend reading The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto. Even as a New Yorker, the history of New Amsterdam is glossed over in our history books, but the legacy of dutch culture, you could argue, has given New York City the identity it has to this day as a cultural melting pot. Plus, itâs crazy to see a place as terraformed as Manhattan depicted as it likely was to Native Americans when the first European colonizers reached it.
Where Have We Been?Chris: Iâve been to a roundabout in Chester. I little bit random Iâll grant you, but Iâm afraid that it gets no less random when I say that I went there to play a gig to a guy on a treadmill!
Whatâs actually going on is that a guy called Steve Hughes is on a mission to raise funds to build the UKâs first supertrees. They have some magnificent ones in Singapore.
They are essentially big hollow metal trees and they can be used a frame for plants to grow up, they create habitats for all manner of flora and fauna in the middle of city, returning some biodiversity to places where it has been all but eradicated.
The ones that Steve are trying to fund are nowhere on the scale of Singapore but they will also provide an space for people to come and learn about the trees and what they do, as well as containing weather stations.
So far Steve has run 7 marathons in 7 days in 7 countries and last weekend he ran 100km in 10 hours on a treadmill. He made an event of it, this why I was playing.
If you want to know more or support him the you can check him out on chestersupertrees.org.
Nevena: Just coming from a panel discussion on cities and urban life beyond growth - how can cities be drivers of change in production practices and consumption patterns.
Tom: If you find yourself in Washington DC you might catch me in an improv comedy show with the Washington Improv theater.
JD: I attended another lecture at Bodega Marine Lab. This one was titled âSaviors of the reef? Context-dependent control of algae by coral reef fishesâ. The speaker was Mike Gil, who is a postdoctoral researcher in Environmental Science and Policy. He is working on coral reef ecology projects in Thailand.
Where Are We Going?Nevena: Going to a bi-weekly civic hack night - organised by the Civic Hack lab BXL. This edition will be about InfluencAir - citizen science project to measure air quality in Brussels. Never been part of a citizen science project so Iâm very curious and excited to see whatâs it about!
Tom: So on Saturday August 4th at 6pm, my science improv comedy team The Hypothesis will be performing at the 12th annual Baltimore Improv festival. Weâre a team made up of all different types of scientist and science enthusiasts who like to walk on the funnier side of science and the sciencier side of comedy.
JD: Itâs back to the Bodega Marine Lab for me. âPhototaxis and phototropism in symbiosisâ by Dr. Shawna Foo of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In ClosingIâd like to thank our newest Patreon supporter, our friend Sam Danby from Norway! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
And that concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories. And if you have an iOS device like an iPhone or an iPad you can get the new Blue Streak Science app from the App Store.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Our hosts today were Chris MacAlister, Nevena Hristozova, and Tom Di Liberto.
Iâm JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us. And remember...follow the science!
-
Conversation with Michael MacFerrin, Research Glaciologist Science News The Climate Lounge Pub Quiz Science News with Nevena Hristozova and Chris MacAlister An Origin of Cosmic Rays Discovered
In a galaxy far far awayâŠ
For real though - itâs really far - 4 billion light-years away. My calculations show that with the current tech for space flight we have, we could get there in 76.32 trillion years so it is freaking far!
But anyway, the point is that this galaxy is a blazar - a type of an active galactic nucleus with a relativistic jet directed very nearly or directly towards Earth. These jets are essentially ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light. Relativistic beaming of electromagnetic radiation from the jet makes blazars appear much brighter than they would be if the jet were pointed in a direction away from the Earth. So far we knew that blazars are powerful sources of emission across the electromagnetic spectrum and are sources of high-energy gamma ray photons.
Now though we know something new - because thatâs the whole point of science! It appears, according to the latest data coming from the so called The IceCube Collaboration, that this blazar galaxy is a source of high-energy neutrinos - one of the most elusive particles in the universe! Their article was published in Science under the title Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A.
The astrophysicist Francis Halzen of the University of WisconsinâMadison, a leader of IceCube, himself said that so far no one was able to pinpoint the source of this type of neutrinos.By basically tracing the trajectory of the heavy neutrinos detected in the IceCube, the scientists could determine its place of origin somewhere close-by Orion. In intergalactic distances, this is probably like searching for a sand grain in all the oceans on our planet. But employing a bunch a telescopes including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, theyâve found the blazar TXS 0506+056 (Iâm so naming my firstborn like this!). And the best part is that we were able to trace this neutrino back to home because it is essentially so elusive! Neutrinos (as their name shows) have no charge so they travel through the universe without much effect from other matter in it. Exactly this reluctance to interact with other matter is the reason why generally neutrinos are so hard to detect and study⊠Itâs a beautiful catch 22 in this case!
Science News, BBC News
Cancer Fighting Cancer CellsThey say that you canât fight fire with fire, but this isnât true if youâre smart about how you use your fire. Controlled burning is best measure available for controlling wildfires. So could the same be said for cancer? Can you have a little bit of controlled cancer to protect you from the main article? Maybe so, if youâre clever enough. It appears that Clemens Reinshagen and a team at Harvard are clever enough as they appear to have pulled this off, in mice.
They have done this by turning cancer cells into double agents. Cancer cells loose in the bloodstream can detect and home in on other tumours and this is the key skill that the team use.
Once our double agent cancer cells have infiltrated the tumour, they commence the next stage of their operation. They release a protein that triggers cell death in the cancer cells; that is, all the cells except our double agents. CRISPR based technology has been used to alter these cancer cells to provide them with protection, so that they can continue their job.
But even once the job is done, youâre still left with a patient full of cancer cells, which is clearly less than ideal. So for the final part of the process, a drug is used to prompt the altered cancer cells to do the honourable thing and kill themselves off.
So there we have it; double-agent, assassin, samurai cancer cells. You heard it here first people!]
Science Translational Medicine, Science News
Earliest Evidence of Humans Outside of Africa2 million years ago! This is a long time ago! Much longer than we thought the early hominids have ventured out of Africa. 2.12mln to be precise - precision is important!
At the same time, a giant rodent weighing nearly 700 kg used to live in South America, just to give you a perspective how different the world was back then.
Nonetheless, there were already established members of the genus Homo who decided that Africa is old news and they went travelling, reaching as far as China.
This is known now thanks to some stone tools unearthed at Chinaâs Shangchen site. They were dated to roughly quarter million years before what was previously thought to be the oldest evidence of Homo genus on the Eurasian continent. Unfortunately, no hominid fossils have ever been discovered from this period in the site. Until they do find similarly dated hominid fossils in the area, weâll not know for sure if the representative was a Homo erectus or an earlier hominid.]
Nature, Science News
Otziâs Last MealI reckon that you guys should all come over to mine for a big Blue Streak Science get together sometime. Iâm already having some ideas for what Iâm going to cook you. We could start off with some cereal, followed by a nice piece of venison, and Iâll serve that with some poisonous fern. How does that sound?
You know what? Iâm thinking that maybe cuisine has come along a bit in the last 5,300 years. This is the story that the stomach contents have been analysed of a man who was naturally mummified in about 3,100 BCE, a man known as Otzi the Iceman,.
His diet of cereal, Ibex and deer was probably pretty standard for him. Itâs unlikely that treated himself to a lavish last supper as it looks like he was killed in a surprise attack.
With that in mind, the really confusing part of these findings is the poisonous ferns. Why would he be eating poisonous plants? The leading theories that the team have is that it may have been medicinal, to help combat internal parasites, or that he may have wrapped his other food in it leaving some toxic spores behind to be consumed. The team donât know if the food that Otzi ate was fresh or not, so maybe wrapping it in something toxic could help prevent spoilage, or to ward off scavengers.
Although, considering the amount of smoking and recreational substance abuse that still goes on today, maybe it was just what all the cool kids did back then. He may not even have known that it was toxic.
Either way, the amount of detail we are getting about Otzi, over 5000 years after he died, is incredible. And as if this isnât amazing enough, the next objective is to use this information to try and recreate what Otziâs gut microbiome may have looked like, providing another way to peer back in time and see what his life have been like.]
Scientific American, Live Science
The Climate Lounge Weâre not getting any Younger (Dryas) over here!Sometimes the news just makes me want to go back to a simpler time. A time without the internet, meddling and farcical meetings. Iâm not talking the 20th century either. Iâm thinking even farther back. About 13,000 years back when the human population was less than 1 million, and boy did the environment think that was swell, and things were a bit chillier. The planet was just coming out of an ice age. And that meant temperatures were on the upswing along with oceans. It was a wonderful active timeâŠ. Geologically. Painfully slow changes humanely.
ThenâŠ. All of a sudden (and I donât mean SUDDEN geologically, I mean human sudden like several decades suddenly), the northern hemisphere was plunged back into a colder climate that lasted for a thousand years. A well known abrupt climate change whose cause has been studied and questioned and fought over (scientifically so itâs friendly) for years. Itâs what is known as the Younger Dryas, named for a flower whose official name is latin mc-latinface⊠or dryas octopetaia. Either one.
Anyways, recent research led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute or WHOI has a new claim as to what happened. They took sediment cores in the eastern Beaufort sea near where the Mackenzie river empties into the ARctic Ocean which also happens to be near the border of the Yukon and Yellowknife territories. By looking at oxygen isotopes in the shells found in the cores, they determined that a massive glacial flood occurred there near the time of the abrupt Younger Dryas. This truly humongous flood would have dumped tons of fresh water into the Arctic that the researchers say would have made its way into the Atlantic Ocean.
Where did the water come from? Melting glaciers. Specifically the Laurentide Ice sheet. As it melted it formed massive lakes including Lake Agassiz, a ginormous lake in the middle of modern day canada.. But as the ice sheet melted, what kept those lakes in place suddenly disappeared, allowing them to empty. Now for awhile, the water flowed south through the Mississippi. But eventually, it shifted to flow north. Some researchers have thought it emptied through the St Lawrence seaway into the Atlantic. What makes this research novel is that the meltwater instead flowed north into the Arctic. Now, not all scientists agree...they never do⊠but regardless of where the meltwater entered the Northern atlantic/Arctic, itâs what it does afterwards thatâs interesting.
Why does that matter? Well it makes more sense as to the mechanism that actually caused the cold change. All of that freshwater slowed or stopped the giant Atlantic ocean conveyor belt known as the âAtlantic meridional overturning circulationâ (or AMOC) which brings warm water to Europe. Normally, that conveyor belt of water becomes saltier as it moves north, becoming denser and sinking. The injection of freshwater in the Arctic/North Atlantic disrupts this by freshening the water and not letting it sink. This slows down the conveyor belt which means less warm water to Europe and a plunge into coldness.
Why do we care now? Well there is a HUGE amount of freshwater locked into Greenland. As it melts, it is also depositing fresh water into the North Atlantic, albeit much slower than the sudden Younger Dryas event. However, there is research that says the AMOC is slower than it used to be. While scientists donât think a shutdown is imminent, past events like the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling can give interesting insight into just how our climate system works, especially if we stress it in certain ways. The climate is super duper complex and what may seem like a small regional climate change somewhere can easily snowball (pun intended for this story) into something much bigger, like hemispherically bigger. Letâs also keep that thought in mind whenever we talk about geoengineering.
WHOI WaPo
Interview with Michael MacFerrin, GlaciologistThis past winter I had the privilege to chat with Michael MacFerrin, glaciologist, and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. We talked about his work and discoveries on the Greenland's immense ice sheet. Science is hard work, folks! But the rewards and experiences last a lifetime and beyond. Join us as Mike shares his incredible experiences from this frozen wilderness.
Pub QuizAll in favor of doing the Pub Quiz say âayeâ! The ayes have it!
Joining us today are the incredibly intelligent Nevena Hristozova, the immensely imaginative Chris MacAlister, and the intermittently inclement Tom Di Liberto.
Hereâs how it works. I ask a science question and our team of incomprehensible intellectuals initiate their ingenious answers.
Itâs all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
What animal possesses the most massive eyes? Swiss physician Adolf Fick is credited with fitting the first what in 1888? What is the worldâs most common eye color? This eye color is in what part of the eye? When you go to an ophthalmologist for an eye exam, you are often asked to look at a chart that has rows of letters in decreasing sizes, with a very large "E" at the top, followed by other letters. What is the name of this chart? Which eye disorder causes an opacity, or clouding in the lens? Your doctor says you have an orbital ecchymosis. What would just about everyone else call it? What would a pirate wear to improve his/her eyesight? Our eyes can detect about 500 shades of what? People of this eye color have a common ancestor who lived about 10,000 years ago. No, what color eyes?How did YOU do?
Where Have We Been?Nevena: A bit of shameless self-promotion - I was invited on the 3rd of July to a panel discussion as part of the plenary session of the summer school Let's talk science. It's a collaboration between the Flemish universities and includes half day plenary talks on scicomm topics and 2 or 3 days of workshops on various scicomm skills. I was one of the six reps of universities representing my university as sort of a scicomm role model (yeah baby). So we had a discussion on what's scicomm for us all, what it gives us and why we do it, what's our fav media for scicomm and apparently I stirred the audience by saying that I myself am my fav media because I just love the most to sit and talk with people about science. It was extremely cool and it felt a great honor to have been part of this.
SGS Food Webinars
Chris: Iâve been to family wedding in Cornwall, which is limited in its level of scientific interest if Iâm completely honest. But whilst I was there I was talking to by wifeâs cousin who is a tattoo artist. This conversation included tattoos, how training tattoo artists need to practice on themselves and the inevitable spectre of unwanted or regretted tattoos. This compelled me to go into science communication mode and share the findings of a surprisingly recent study on why tattoos last for as long as they do, considering how quickly our skin gets replaced. The key is our immune system. The tattoo ink gets locked inside white blood cells that try, in vain, to destroy the ink. This actually ends up preserving them inside and as each immune cell dies, a new one takes its place to continue the preservation. The useful thing about knowing this is that immunosuppression can be used to aid the tattoo removal process.
Tom: Iâve been taking a 2.5 year old to gymnastics classes where they attempt to get a bunch of toddlers to play group games together. My toddler disagrees and immediately makes a run for the balance beam. In good news, he has great balance and is seemingly indestructable. In bad news, for the other kids, he tends to bounce off everything even other children. Those kids arent so lucky.
Where Are We Going?Nevena: On the 19th of July, Thursday I'll be attending an online seminar by SGS. It's a Food safety webinar entitled 'How to Improve Food Authenticity, Traceability and Safety using Next Generation Sequencing'. If it's not too late for our listeners with interest in knowing how can authorities can use latest technologies to ensure that what we eat is what the label says. It's at 10am Central European time @sgseventsenter webpage.
In the BlogosphereNevena: If I may - an episode of my other podcast, the one I actually produce is just out - it's only our 4th and it's with guests from an account on Twitter called Latino labs promoting diversity in academia. You can listen to it on my blog incubatorium.eu of the right hand side directly or anywhere you catch your podcasts if you search for the Scicomm JC podcast.
Chris: In addition to recent posts about whether dogs can smell fear and how to recreate radiation using a skipping rope. This week, on Matildaâs Lab Iâve finally dealt with a subject that Iâve been meaning to for a long time: Uncertainty. One of the big misunderstandings of people who question modern science is that we donât prove things; only Mathematicians can do this, instead; all we can do is to minimise our uncertainty about things and accept that what we know can change depending on where the evidence takes us. Ultimately, we are in a non-ending war against ignorance. Ignorance is our default state, so if you (like so many people) are fearful or ashamed about your ignorance, donât be, we all have it. Instead, get out there and do something about it!.
In ClosingThanks to Michael MacFerrin for sharing his amazing work in the frozen (but thawing) north.
And that concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any of the usual podcast directories such as Overcast. And if you have an iOS device like an iPhone or an iPad you can get the new Blue Streak Science app from the App Store.
And please check out our website is at bluestreakscience.com
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
And our hosts today were Nevena Hristozova, Chris MacAlister, Tom Di Liberto, and JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us. And rememberâŠfollow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show We get an inside look on fossil restoration and paleontology with Mariana di Giacomo of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Science News The Climate Lounge Pub Quiz Science News with Chris MacAlister and Dr. Amrita Sule Wetlands Protection Rule put âtoo much emphasisâ on science, Trump officials complain
Itâs time for the continuing adventures of the Trump administration and their valiant efforts to protect you from the scourge of the environment and its evil plans to keep you healthy and alive!
As scientists we shouldnât make assumptions about things but I reckon itâs pretty safe to bet that if youâre taking time to this science podcast then you probably arenât a fan of White House at the moment. So Iâll try to avoid preaching to the converted because there is some other interesting stuff going on.
The broad picture is this. The United States has a Clean Water Act. Itâs a law that gives isolated wetlands and waterways automatic federal protection. Whilst this may be one of the few environmental protection measures that Trump isnât scrapping, his administration argues that the interpretation of this law is not in keeping with its wording.
To be fair to them, they have a point; the law is impressively vague. The Act says it should apply to "navigable waters of the United States". âWhat do they mean by that?â you may ask. The Act defines them as "waters of the United States." Iâm sure glad that they clear that up! The Supreme Court has attempted to decide what that phrase means 3 times and how far have they got with this? Theyâre split.
To cut a long story short; the Obama administration interpreted the law in a way that not only protected the areas in question but also protected the waters that feed into these waters. After all, whatâs the point in putting your valuables into a safe and then leaving the door wide open? But it is this interpretation that the White House is questioning stating that Obamaâs Environment Protection Agency (the EPA) put âtoo much emphasis on scienceâ. Ken Kopocis, who lead the agency at the time, said that "It's baffling for a science-based agency to say that they relied too much on science" and I can see his point. You wouldnât accuse Roger Federer of paying too much attention to Tennis.
But the reason why this accusation is being made is because EPA should rely both on science and law when developing regulation. The defence of the EPA is that, with such a vague law to work with, whatâs left to rely on other than the science.
For me, the really worrying thing isnât that this argument is being made, itâs why is this argument being made? Why would you want to remove protection from these areas; what possible better use could they put it to? Donât go all Big Yellow Taxi on me America, it may not be paradise but we donât need another parking lot!
Science
Human Implants Invaded by MicroorganismsThis story definitely makes me think of the time when I had a screw and a rod in my ankle due to a fracture. But who knew that when these implants were removed a year later they had likely become home to number of microorganisms found in the human body.
Implants like screws from joints, pacemakers, or plates from skulls when first implanted are completely sterile â which makes sense because you donât want any infection. But recent studies showed that, once in place, they start being colonized by fungi and bacterial species which naturally occur in the body.
Previously there have been studies on microorganisms on implants surrounded by infected tissue. However, this is the first time studies have been carried out on implants from people with no such complications.
This study, which was carried out at Costerton Biofilm Center at the University of Copenhagen, looked at around 100 implants from infection free patients. They also looked at implants from patients who were due to have them removed, as well as from deceased patients.
The group found that about 70% of implants were covered with microorganisms. These are not harmful as they had not attacked by the bodyâs immune system.
This is pretty cool because although it is be well known that human bodies are home to microorganisms it has been thought that our tissues and blood are free of them. But given this observation that might not the case, as one possibility is that the bacteria and fungi reach the implants via blood stream.
More studies need to be done to answer questions like â What is the role of these microorganisms who make these implants their home OR Does this colonization by good bacteria/fungi prevent infections?
ScienceNordic
The End of the Road for Kepler Space TelescopeOne of our great eyes in the sky is about to close for the last time. The Kepler Space Telescope is about to run out fuel. Supplies have got so low that it has been put into hibernation until the start of August when it gets its slot on the Deep Space Network. At this point it will awake, use the last of its fuel to point its antenna toward Earth, transmit its final message, and then it will be goodnight Kepler. So here at Blue Streak Science, weâd like to take this opportunity to celebrate Kepler and all that it has achieved.
This NASA mission was named after Johannes Kepler, a 17th century German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer (no oneâs perfect). He formulated the laws of planetary motion and was one of the giants whose shoulders Newton, in his own words, so famously stood upon.
Kepler was launched in 2009, charged with the task of discovering Earth sized exoplanets. It cost six hundred million dollars, and do you want to know what you get for that kind of money? One instrument: but, oh what an instrument; itâs photometer can monitor the brightness of 150,000 stars at once, watching for those characteristic dips in radiation caused by a passing satellite.
So how did this one trick pony perform? Well its earthbound predecessor, the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, has discovered 134 exoplanets but itâs had a five year head start. Keplerâs total is 2,512 with 5,011 candidates still awaiting confirmation.
Keplerâs legacy will be the confirmation that exoplanets are very common. And this has massive implications for the greatest question of humanity; are we alone in the Universe? Because the more planets that there are out there, the more chances there are that something may be living on one.
But the search does not stop here, TESS the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in April of this year (as was so expertly covered on this podcast) and should have started collecting data last month. It is expected to discover another 20,000 exoplanets, which is great news for anyone looking for work in exoplanet astrology. You guys are gonna be busy!
Space.com
Raptors of a FeatherLetâs go back in time guys. We have a story from the Jurassic World. So, who is it this time? The RAPTORS â my personal favorites, who have made appearance in the entire Jurassic park franchise yet.
Now in the movies we have seen how these intelligent Velociraptors work together and hunt in packs. But did they do that in real life as well??
Velociraptors as they have been called were similar to another animals called Deinonychus. Bonebeds of Deinonychus surrounding bones of herbivores have indicated that they worked in packs to hunt the prey however this notion has been questioned over years.
But there is another line of evidence, which comes from their tracks which also indicates the same at least in part. In 2008 paleontologists described that velociraptor âlike animals walked side by side for a time.
The imprints discovered had the signature of two-toed imprints - with the killing claw held off the ground, indicating that they belonged to deinonychosaurs. And just this year another set of deinonychosaur tracks indicating signs of similar interaction was found.
These tracks are among the aggregation of 300 dinosaur footprints in the Early Cretaceous rock of eastern China. There are four trackways with 15-18 foot prints and alongside each other in the same direction.
Theses footprints initially look single toed but then if you think of modern ostriches â who have two toes but them most of their body weight rests on one toe â making an imprint look like single toed.
These footprints were pretty small about 10 cm in length thus likely made by a smaller animal. The most important thing that stood out was that these tracks are very close to each other and go in same direction. At one point you see that one track crossed the other and that one Deinonychosaur was lagging behind but more or less they followed same path.
Now, from these tracks it is difficult to say if this particular pack was hunting or just out on a stroll. Well I guess for this moment back in time, birds of feather were just flocking together.
Scientific American
The Climate LoungeThanks JD! Itâs summer in the climate lounge, so weâre going to talk about summery things. Cold drinks with umbrellas. A relaxing day at the beach. And scorching temperatures that have caused horrible things across North America and serve as a scary reminder at what may be not a rare event come the next 50-100 years. Things jumped up a notch there at the end huh? Yeah, I know. Here in the climate lounge we go from 0 to 50âŠ.celsius REAL QUICK.
So over the last several weeks a giant heat dome has sat itself in the upper troposphere over much of North America. This has led to sinking, warming air, and a lack of clouds allowing for the summer sun to simply bake the continent. Now it hasnât done all of this in the same place at the same time. The focus of the dangerous heat has shifted across North America (and even been located in Europe).
Chris: [Tell me about it!]
First, temperatures were hot over eastern North America. Temperatures in Washington DC didnât drop below 80 for a couple of days. But the scarier stuff happened farther north in Canada. The hot temperatures in Quebec have led to at least 54 deaths, 24 of which were in Montreal as scorching temperatures descended on a region that is simply not used to that sort of heat. Many of those who died were older and lived in places without air conditioning. Temperatures in montreal stayed near 35 C for nearly a week, the longest period of warmth since 1965. Long lasting heat and warm nights are a very bad combo for the elderly and young. The body simply has no time to recover.
Moving west, the heat dome led to some frankly startingly temperatures out in California. On July 6, the temperatures set all-time recor in 6 locations in southern California. Including 117 in Van Nuys, 118 in Riverside and 111 at UCLA. Downtown LA only hit 108 a daily record that beat the old one by 14 degrees. According to the USâs National Weather Service, it hit 120 at Chino which would be the highest ever temperature recorded by an automated site in the region of southern California (coastal or valley). Thatâs absurd. Itâs sorta hard to explain why because my jaw literally dropped when I first saw that and has remained that way. I mostly subside now on bugs that mistakenly fly into my mouth. Itâs a living.
What makes this nuts is that California normally sees its hottest temperatures in September when dry winds called the Santa Anas zoom down the mountains and warm as they compress, leading to hot temperatures. To be setting temperature records like this in early july is again, absurd.
So it was hot. Who cares? Its weather right NOT climate. Thatâs sorta missing the point. But listen to an expert Michael Wehner of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "[i]n probabilistic terms, climate change increased the chances of the heat wave by about 20 to 50 times," adding that there is at least a 99% likelihood that human-induced climate change "increased the severity of this heat wave."
Climate change is affecting temperatures now. Itâs beginning to show its weather cards on the table⊠As temperatures continue to warm, events like this will become more and more common. And while some folks who are used to hot temperatures may be thinking Psht I can handle that, the last two weeks show some pretty big vulnerabilities. During the heat wave in California, electricity demands skyrocketed and power went out for 12-24 hours. Yes. It was 115 degrees in a place that normally gets hot. And the power still went out.
But even scary is what happened in Canada. Simply put, itâs a region not used to the type of heat wave that may be common in 50 to 100 years. And because of that, many residents simply donât have the technology that people more used to the heat do, like air conditioning. And when that happens, sadly people die.
Now it will get hot every summer. It is summer after all. But every year we see glimpses of what in the future we may see as normal. And that could mean drastic changes to the way people, cities and regions exist. Now that is not fatalistic. Iâm not saying weâre doomed. What Iâm saying is, letâs acknowledge what we are seeing, and take steps to make it not so bad. Oh and maybe think about who among us will be most affected the quickest thanks to climate change. A little empathy goes a long way...
CNN CBC Wunderground
Interview with Mariana Di Giacomo, paleontologistToday's interview with Mariana Di Giacomo was like getting a personal behind-the-scenes tour in a science museum. And our tour guide is a paleontologist who specializes in fossil restoration at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. What a treat!
Have a listen to this interview!
Pub QuizJoining us for this humdinger of a hootenanny are the hippest of hipsters Chris MacAlister, the humble and housebroken Tom Di Liberto, and the heartwarmingly highfalutin Amrita Sule.
Hereâs how it works. I ask a science question and our horse stable of highbrow hotshots heartily holler back.
Itâs not just the letter H today. Itâs animals that begin with the letter H.
Sharp-shinned, Shikra, red-tailed, and the Cooperâs are all types of what? Naturally occurring only in Asia, Africa, and Europe there are 17 species of this small spiky mammal. Any of several species of low-flying diurnal raptors or a British military aircraft. There are four species of this carnivore that range from Africa to southern Asia. One species might be welcome in the audience of a comedian. The name of this species means âwater horseâ? What is it? What birds have the highest metabolic rate of any homeothermic animal? Name any insect from the taxonomic Order Hymenoptera. What is the only known comet visible to the naked eye that may appear twice in a human lifetime? This hard-shelled invertebrate, named for its resemblance to equine footwear, is related to arachnids and evolved about 500 million years ago. This type of whale ranges from 12 to 16 meters in length and weighs around 25 to 30 tons, and was featured prominently in the film Star Trek IV âThe Voyage Homeâ. What is it?How did YOU do?
Recommended by The TeamThe British History Podcast
Host Jamie Jeffers takes us on a history adventure. Well, not exactly. Yes, itâs a history adventure, but itâs also a storytelling adventure with every episode.
Itâs a chronological retelling of the story of Britain beginning in the most recent Ice Age and it goes forward from there. Thatâs a lot of ground to cover! But Jamie makes every episode worth listening to...sometimes more than once.
So I highly recommend you begin at the beginning, episode one, or you may become lost without the stories that lead up to the current episodes.
You can find that on Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher.
Weâll put links in the show notes.
Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Website
Where Have We Been?Chris: As I mentioned last time I was on; Iâve been to the Lake District, a little way from Penrith and whilst I never got around to making it to Beatrix Potterâs house I managed to capture another type of experience. On our first night at the campsite I took my dog, Cassini, for a short walk before the sun completely set. Iâm so glad that I did as I soon became aware that we were not alone. All around me, darting through the air were bats, pipistrelles. âWowâ I thought, âMatilda would love this!â And then responsible parenting thoughts kicked in: âAgh, weâve just put her down to sleepâ. But sod responsible parenting, thereâs bats everywhere, so I went to get my daughter out of bed. Now I should probably explain at this point that Matilda LOVES bats. Spooky moods in kids TV are ruined because every time a colony of bats emerge unexpectedly Matilda is delighted! We are so lucky to have one of the best zoos in the UK on our doorstep, Chester Zoo, and Matildaâs favourite place in the zoo is the bat cave, where Rodrigues Fruit bats and Sebaâs short-tailed bats are free to fly around you, and possibly shit on you. So the expression on Matildaâs face as the pipistrelles started to emerge before her eyes is something that I will never forget. It was one of those moments that reminds me exactly why I do science communication, because there is no greater spectacle than the wonder of nature and no greater feeling than sharing that with someone.
Where Are We Going?JD: Going to a lecture at Bodega Marine Lab in stunningly beautiful Bodega Bay, California. Itâs titled âSaviors of the reef? Contextâdependent control of algae by coral reef fishesâ. The speaker is Mike Gil of the University of California at Davis, and this will be happening on Wednesday, 18 July.
In ClosingOnce again, our thanks to Mariana Di Giacomo for sharing her stories from the field and the lab
And that concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any of the usual podcast directories such as Overcast. And if you have an iOS device like an iPhone or an iPad you can get the new Blue Streak Science app from the App Store.
And please check out our website is at bluestreakscience.com
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
And our hosts today were Chris MacAlister, Amrita Sule, Tom Di Liberto, and JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us. And remember...follow the science!
-
Today we begin our pivot towards doing more interviews on the podcast. And we could not have chosen a better person to talk with than our good friend and science outreach superstar Chris Ryu. We had a terrific time talking about the Dorset Science & Technology Centre and the Atom Club. Chris' passion is in science, technology, and coding and his mission is to share this with children and adults in some of the more rural areas of southern England. We applaud the hard work and dedication of everyone involved in this important science outreach development.
On This Weekâs Show Interview with Chris Ryu of the Dorset Science and Technology Centre Science News with Sophie McManus and JD Goodwin The Climate Lounge Pub Quiz Science News with Sophie McManus and JD Goodwin Crow vending machine skills 'redefine intelligenceâLast week a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports revealed further evidence for their cognitive abilities, and shows that these so-called âbird brainsâ can memorize tool shapes and even recreate them from memory. The subject of the research is the New Caledonian crow. Theyâve been studied for quite some time now. In their native habitat theyâll fashion hooks to very precisely snag grubs and other tasty treats from holes and crevices.
Where does this behavior come from? Are they just copying other crows without thinking about it? Is this a hard-wired behavior that all of these crows possess as instincts? It also could be possible that these crows are memorizing tool designs, and recreating them.
This research was led by Dr. Sarah Jelbert, a post-doctoral research associate in psychology at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Jelbert and her team designed this experiment to see if this behavior, this cumulative cultural evolution, is happening with these crows. They had 8 subjects, and the first order was the train them to recognize what a proper tool looks like. The one thatâll âdo the trickâ. In this case the right tool for the job was a correctly sized piece of paper. The experimenters offered the crows differently sized pieces of paper that they could use on a specially made vending machine...one that dispensed meat.
The crows had to figure out if the larger pieces of paper would release the delicious treat, or a smaller piece of paper. When the correctly sized paper was put into the slot a hidden experimenter opened the hatch and a tasty treat would come rolling out. So the birds were conditioned to understand which size of paper would do the trick.
Hereâs the best part.
The crows were then given larger sheets of paper. Instead of giving up they used their gray matter to figure it out. The crows began to use their bills and talons to tear and shape the paper into the properly sized tools. They were trained to know what sized tool was needed. This information had to be stored as memory. Then they had the ingenuity to take that information and create the right tool for the job.
This is just one experiment. But it has given researchers a lot to go on for further testing and also observation of crows in the wild. For instance, how long does this memory last? Can a completely different reward experiment be done, and would the crows remember how this one worked when presented with it later? But right now, it looks like one more unique human trait is falling by the wayside.
Nature, BBC Science and Environment, New York Times, ScienceAlert
Scientists are counting seal pups in the Thames EstuaryMaybe a glimmer of good environmental news, for a change!
First we go back in time 60 years, when Londonâs Thames estuary was declared âbiologically deadâ. The river was dirty and almost devoid of wildlife. Since then, things have turned around to some extent - and today we have 3500 seals in the Thames. There are two species, harbour and grey seals. Some of them are about to give birth, so scientists are doing a count to work out how theyâre doing.
Thea Cox, conservation biologist at the Zoological Society of London, says that "Knowing how many there are is a really good indicator of the health of the estuary, what habitat is available to them, what food source is available to them."
This good news story has a sting in the tail - although the river is generally less polluted, we naturally do have to worry about plastic pollution, in particular microplastics, both for our own health as well as that of the seals.
BBC Science and Environment, iNews - Environment
Marshmallow test re-visitedDo you know what the marshmallow test is? Itâs a test that was first conducted by Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel to see if there is any correlation between early childhood self-control and later childhood success.
Hereâs how it worked. The experimenter placed a marshmallow on a table in front of a preschool aged kid. Then the grownup promised to give the kid two marshmallows if they could resist stuffing the first one in their cute little face for 15 minutes.
They did these tests in the 1960âs on 90 children in a local Stanford preschool. Decades later they came back to their test subjects to measure their success over the years. And yes, there seemed to be a greater degree of success in kids who resisted marshmallow temptation, including higher test scores and a lower body mass index.
The results of this research were published in 1990 and has been a measure of childrenâs willpower since that time.
But a new paper published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that this test, the marshmallow test, may just be a lot of fluff.
The new study was led by Dr. Tyler Watts of New York University, and Dr. Greg Duncan and Haonan Quan, both of the University of California-Irvine. And these researchers made a few changes to the test. They increased the sample size from 90 to 900, and they also included a much greater diversity of kids. And these background factors were given consideration when they analyzed the results.
And according to Dr. Watts the results showed that once the kidâs backgrounds were factored in, any differences in delaying gratification didnât result in any statistically meaningful increases in success at a later age.
The results suggest that a childâs ability to resist a marshmallow is more influenced by their socio-economic backgrounds. Think about it. If youâre growing up not sure about anything in your life, including when your next meal is happening...then you better grab any food while you can. Also, such a background is more likely to sow distrust in adults promising to give them something...like that second marshmallow. And their future success in school and in life is probably far more influenced by the economic disadvantages of their childhood than by any ability to resist a marshmallow, or other food reward.
Science News, Science, Smithsonian
Poliovirus could treat brain cancerGlioblastoma is a devastating form of brain cancer - itâs the most common type of malignant brain tumour and patients typically do not live for long after diagnosis - best-case scenario is around 20 months. A study published last month by a team at Duke University indicated that a modified form of poliovirus may have some benefits in prolonging life expectancy.
But how would POLIO help with brain cancer? The polio treatment is one of several âoncolytic virusesâ being investigated as anti-cancer agents. So researchers have long viewed such viruses as potential tools for directly killing cancer - and the virus kills tumour cells and they now suspect that the viruses might be more effective at marshaling the body's immune system against malignancies, according to the National Cancer Institute. As I said, the virus has been modified, so it will not cause polio (this being a horrible disease, causing paralysis and possibly death). Itâs modified as follows - the part of the virus that targets and kills nerve cells during a polio infection was swapped with a piece of the common cold virus.
Of 61 people with recurring glioblastoma who were treated with the modified virus, 21 percent were alive after three years. In a âhistoricalâ comparison group of 104 patients, who would have been eligible for the treatment but died before it was available, 4 percent lived as long.
The paper is in New England Journal of Medicine. It is an early phase trial and will naturally face much scrutiny in months and years to come.
Science News, Washington Post, LiveScience
The Climate LoungeToday in the Lounge, I wanted to step back from climate change per-se and talk about an interesting climate feature. DUST! Specifically, Saharan dust that gets transported thousands and thousands of miles across the tropical Atlantic Ocean, causing all sorts of issues.
Every year hundreds of millions of tons of dust gets picked over West Africa and blow west by the trade winds over the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the dust is born at the Bodele depression in north central Chad at the southern end of the Saharan desert. It is actually a dry lake bed that is the lowest point in chad. Winds get funneled through nearby mountains, accelerate through and pick up dry diatoms (microorganisms) left over from a time when the lake was an actual lake and transport them west with the prevailing winds.
Now this dust causes some unbelievable sunsets across the Caribbean but provides a gross hazy view during the day. The view is like when you mistakenly touch the lenses part of your glasses and then put the glasses back on. The dust is your wayward fingers.
But you might be thinking, Iâll deal with a hazy day for a good sunset. Well, the dust can also combine with the normal every day human-caused pollution emitted near cities to create extremely hazardous air quality days. In Dallas Texas, 7000 miles away from Africa, the dust combined with human pollution to cause levels of pm2.5 (particles that smaller than 2.5 microns or 0.0001 inches) which were highly elevated.
Why care? Outdoor air pollution, dominated by PM2.5, is responsible for around 4.5 million deaths a year (Landrigan et al. 2017), half of which are in China and India. These particles are such a danger because of just how small they are. At less than 2.5 micrometers, the particles are able to penetrate deep into lungs and even your bloodstream. Extreme exposure to a large amount of PM2.5 can lead to nonfatal heart attacks, irregular heartbeats, reduced lung function, aggravated asthma, and increased respiratory symptoms. In the most vulnerableâthose with pre-existing heart or lung diseaseâexposure to PM2.5 can even lead to death.
But there are some positives, Saharan dust, specifically those diatoms, helps to fertilize the Amazon rainforest with nutrients and helps build beaches across the Caribbean. This dust also lives in what is known as the Saharan Air Layer as it moves across the Atlantic, a layer of air that is hot and dry. This hot and dry air mass also helps to kill off any potential tropical cyclone from developing usually leading to a reduced number of storms. Which is good!. And Itâs part of the natural climate ecosystem with dust storms happening at the bodele depression about 100 days a year. But it still can cause issues, especially when combined with those non-natural parts of the climate ecosystem.
So the next time you watch a video that brings a tear to your eye and you want an excuse, donât just say you have dust in your eyes, say you have diatoms from the bodele depression in your eyes. Youâll be super cool I promise.
Wunderground
Interview with Chris Ryu Pub Quiz In ClosingThank you Chris Ryu for sharing with our audience all the great things youâre doing at the Dorset Science and Technology Centre, and the Atom Club. This is true grassroots science outreach, and they deserve your support. So please check them out at Atom.club.
That concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Our hosts today were Sophie McManus, Tom Di Liberto, and JD Goodwin.
Thank you for joining us
Follow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show A**hole of the Month A Farewell to Koko Whereâs all the Matter? Three places struggling to control HIV and AIDS Science News with Sophie McManus and JD Goodwin A Farewell to Koko Sophie McManus
Koko, the famous âtalking gorillaâ, has died in California aged 46.
Koko was born in 1971 in San Francisco zoo and when she became ill she needed hand-rearing. The student for the job was Penny Patterson, who also taught her some American sign language. In a couple of years Koko learned 80 signs, before she was moved to Stanford University.
It is claimed she could understand 2000 English words and knew 1000 different signs. Apart from that, Penny Patterson described evidence for a sense of humour and a charming and creative sense of word play - she referred to a zebra as a âwhite tiger,â a Pinocchio doll as an âelephant baby,â and a mask as an âeye hatâ. Koko famously loved cats - her favourite kitten was called All Ball, and the way she handled her kittens is obviously full of care. She tickled Robin Williams back in 2001 and it was claimed she âgrievedâ when told of his death.
Kokoâs life and treatment attracted scepticism and criticism as well as plaudits. The former arose from overinterpretation of the results she gave scientists - after all, she was taught to sign, mainly to respond to humans, it was not a spontaneous desire to communicate or chit-chat as human infants have. There is also the danger of projecting human emotions onto animals. For example, my family has dogs, and although we think they show emotions like jealousy (like when one tries to steal the otherâs food), this may partly be our projections. (Secretly still convinced the young one gets jealous). The fact Koko trembled her lip when told Robin Williams was dead may not be crystal clear signs of grief. An example of projection and over-inference in animal studies is that of the horse Clever Hans.
The criticism was also born of her environment and diet - although she was given many toys (and pets), obviously her home was entirely unnatural for a gorilla, her diet was humanised, she was given many different supplements by a ânaturopathâ, and she didnât have the chance to socialise with other gorillas. Slate published a fantastic article summarising the many criticisms of ape sign studies.
Her species, the western lowland gorilla, is considered critically endangered today. Today, studies into ape communication such as the study of Kokoâs life are less likely to receive ethical approval. Quote from Barbara King, an anthropologist - it's not very respectful of the world's biodiversity to insist upon making apes into furry versions of ourselves. Koko taught us so much about the great ape mind, even while she paid a cost, in her own daily life, for our scientific curiosity.
So generally then, Koko was a star, but we shouldnât be looking to replace her.
The New Yorker, NPR, BBC News, Science News, National Geographic
Great article in Slate
Have scientists finally found the universe's missing matter? JD GoodwinMost of us have heard that everyday matter, the stuff that we can observe like atoms and molecules, make up only a small percentage of the universe. Dark energy comprises about 70%, and dark matter is about 25%. Although we donât know exactly what they are we can calculate their mass by their effects on what we can observe. But thereâs that roughly 5% of everything that is ordinary matter, more accurately known as baryons. We know this from observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. So weâre on pretty solid ground there.
After years of observing galaxies, and using every tool in the cosmologistsâ toolkit weâve only been able to observe half of the predicted baryonic matter, the ordinary matter, that the universe should have.
Last week a paper was published in Nature that just may very well account for the missing baryonic matter in our universe. The paperâs lead author, Fabrizio Nicastro said: âThe missing baryons represent one of the biggest mysteries in modern astrophysics.â
But progess has been made over the years. Astrophysicists have calculated the mass of all the stars in the universe. They then added in the interstellar gas inside of galaxies and this up to about 10%. Iâm not talking 10% of the mass of the universe, just 10% of the expected mass of baryons, which as you now know, comprises only about 5% of the universeâs total mass.
Still with me here?
Okay, weâre up to 10% of baryonic matter. Now add in the gas that surrounds galaxies like gigantic haloes. Then toss in the even hotter gas that fills galaxy clusters. That now brings us up to almost 20%. Better, but not particularly satisfying.
Through some different observational techniques astronomers then turned their attention to the super colossal gas filaments that run between galaxy clusters. And that brought up to 60% of the predicted baryonic matter.
Now weâre getting somewhere.
And hereâs where the this new paper by Nicastro and his team comes into play. They didnât just start looking last week, by the way. Theyâve been at this for almost 20 years. The team used the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory to observe a quasar. A quasar is a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its core that emits intense radiation in the form of x-rays all the way to visible light. According to Nicastro, âAfter combing through the data, we succeeded at finding the signature of oxygen in the hot intergalactic gas between us and the distant quasar, at two different locations along the line of sight. This is happening because there are huge reservoirs of material â including oxygen â lying there, and just in the amount we were expecting, so we finally can close the gap in the baryon budget of the Universe.â
This was one paper, although it took them 20 years to get to this point. Still, they have plans to look at more quasars with the XMM-Newton and NASAâs Chandra space observatories.
Also, better space observatories are scheduled to be launched in the late 2020âs that will provide even more data. But right now it seems we have found all the ordinary matter in the universe.
European Space Agency, SciTech Europa, Outer Places,
These three places show the AIDS epidemic is far from over Sophie McManusFlorida, Russia and Nigeria. Different corners of the world, united by the fact they are all struggling to up the ante against HIV and AIDS infection.
These are the metrics we can use to gauge progress made in the fight against HIV, as explained in an excellent article published in Science. How many people are living with the virus? What is the rate of new infection? What percentage of infected people are receiving antiretroviral drugs, which both stave off disease and prevent transmission? How many infected people have progressed to AIDS and how many have died from it? And how many children are infected by their mothers?
Nigeria, Russia and the American state of Florida stand out from their neighbours because they are âfirstâ for at least one of the metrics I just mentioned. They all face differing challenges. For example, Nigeria has a high rate of mother-to-child HIV transmission, Russia has a high death rate. Florida has a high new infection rate, partly because many people there with HIV are unaware of their status, as testing isnât as widespread as it could be.
If you are a data nerd, you should look up the article called âEnding AIDS? These three places show the epidemic is far from overâ published on the 14th June on the Science website. There are some great interactive charts and graphics that elegantly sum up the data.
Science
A**hole of the Month Elliot Sudal, publicity seeker and shark abuserHave you seen the headlines? "World's Sexiest Shark Wrangler? Jaws Are Dropping Over this Ab-Tastic Ocean Expert's Instagram". That was from People Magazine in May.
From the Daily Mail also in May, "Picture of shark wrangler holding a 12-foot hammerhead goes viral â but it's not for the reason you're thinking". Iâll tell you the reason. Yes, itâs his rippling abs!
Iâm talking about Elliot Sudal, the latest internet sensation who hooks and captures these menacing monsters from the deep and wrestles them ashore, all the while looking ABSolutely fabulous doing it. But this is 2018, and the good guys donât slaughter sharks any more.
After wrestling the fearsome beasts on to the beach Mr. Sudal does what any modern day muscle-man would do. He poses alongside, and sometimes sits on these vanquished creatures. He even invites other people to do the same, especially if they look really awesome in a bikini. Being the good guy, Mr. Sudal applies a tag to the shark before dragging it back into the water, after the photo op of course, and lets it go back into the deep.
What a great guy!
According to the Daily Mail, âHe works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,â and that âSudal's job takes him to exotic locations like the Bahamas and Nantucket catching anything from bull sharks to sting rays.â
Letâs hear what his employer, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration has to say about their star employee and shark hunter Elliot Sudal:
âMr. Sudal is not and has never been an employee of NOAA Fisheries nor is he formally affiliated with any of the agencyâs programs.
The agency remains concerned with Mr. Sudalâs shark and sawfish handling practices. Physical handling should be minimized, all species should be kept in the water while tagging and then released quickly. During tagging, sharks should not be dragged onto dry sand...for any reason.
Mr. Sudalâs tagging of an endangered smalltooth sawfish caught in Florida in April 2017 was investigated by NOAA and resulted in a compliance assistance letter from NOAAâs Office of General Counsel informing him of the Endangered Species Act issues and the safe handling protocol for sawfish.â
This public notification by NOAA is highly unusual, and reflects the seriousness of the situation. Mr. Sudal has been presented in the media as an employee of NOAA. That is false. Mr. Sudal has been claiming to be a conservationist. Mr. Sudal has violated nearly every guideline of NOAAâs shark tagging guidelines. But hey, those pictures and the viral videos are awesome, huh?
So awesome that theyâve landed Elliot Sudal on the beach as the Blue Streak Science A**hole of the Month.
The Atlantic, Adventure Sports Network, ABC News, Daily Mail, NOAA shark tagging guidelines, NOAA press release
Where Have We Been?JD: I visited Point Blue Conservation Science. Point Blue is a private conservation science organization that is, honestly, far bigger and more wide-ranging that Iâd thought. They used to be known as the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, but they took on the moniker of Point Blue Conservation Science because their scope is much wider than just birds. They are certainly California-centric with research going on all over the Bay Area, offshore including the Farallone Islands, and as far away as Alaska all the way down to Antarctica!
I met several of their key staff members who seemed quite keen to share their research, and hopefully weâll be sharing that with you, our audience.
Where Are We Going?JD: I have nothing planned, except to practice some video techniques with my new gimbals.
In ClosingAnd that concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories, or you can listen to us directly on the Blue Streak Science website where you can check out the show notes for links and other good stuff for each episode.
That website is at bluestreakscience.com
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Thank you for joining us
And remember...follow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show The melt rate of the Antarctic...the news ainât good, folks Mars Rover Opportunity Hunkers Down for the Big Dust Storm Animals Are Doing their best to avoid us, and staying up late Stephen Hawkingâs ashes buried in Westminster Abbey The Pub Quiz There is no Climate Lounge today. Tom Di Liberto and his wonderful wife have just brought a new scientist into the world! Listener feedback
Will Simmonds: "Just wanted to say I love the show, gives me great information and entertainment on my runs. Iâm especially loving the pub quizzes, but maybe try expand on the answer with a fact, etc. The New Arsehole of the Month is a fantastic addition. However, I'm rather baffled at how some of these people acquire these high state positions."
Science News with Dr. Amrita Sule and Chris MacAlister Antarctic Melt Rate Has Tripled in the Last 25 YearsAntarctica is a continent roughly the size of United States and Mexico combined. It is covered with ice sheets. If all of this ice were to melt it would increase the water levels by 60 meters. Although this is not going to happen overnight and these ice sheets have more or less remained in place for past 10,000 years.
Antarctic Petrel
But Antarctica is indeed melting!! Reports published recently revealed that Antarctica has lost around 3 trillion tons of ice in just the past 25 years, and this ice loss has accelerated rapidly over the last five years. This is pushing up the global sea levels by 0.6 mm annually â which might seem pretty small but itâs not if you look at cumulative increase.
For this new study, satellite measurements have been used to track changes in ice sheets since the early 1990s. These satellites scanned Antarctic ice sheets with altimeters to gain information about its volume. Another type of satellite measurement tracked the speed at which it moves towards the ocean. Some satellites are equipped to weigh the ice sheet by sensing gravitational pull of earth. These measurements are helpful in telling you what is its sea level contribution.
There has been some uncertainty associated with regional differences in Antarctica. This study helps clear that up. For example, West Antarctica and Antarctic peninsula, have been known for some time to lose ice but not east Antarctica, which has been stable for most time. Therefore East Antarctic has always caught the attention of people who deny the science of Global Warming. But recent studies show higher melt rates in certain regions east Antarctica as well. So there you go!
The majority of losses do come from melting of West Antarctic ice sheets due to warm ocean water melting some glaciers from the bottom up. In 25 years, this has caused about 8 millimeters of sea level rise and about 40% of this rise has happened in past five years. This definitely increases our concern about what the future may hold.
BBC Science and Environment, Live Science, Scientific American, New York Times,
Mars Rover Opportunity Hunkers Down for the Big Dust StormDid you guys ever see the Martian, with Matt Damon? Despite the lead character being a botanist and the wealth of good science that is in the film; the main event that triggers the plot of the film, the big Martian storm is not so scientifically accurate. Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth so Martian storms donât reach anything like the severity of our storms. That said, this story is about the Mars rover, Opportunity being put at risk by a Martian storm. And not just any Martian storm but the biggest one ever recorded!
The threat to Opportunity isnât from the physical impact of the storm itself, but from the Martian dust that is getting blow around in it. Opportunity is solar powered and a big storm like this will seriously reduce the amount of sunlight that makes it down to planetâs surface. Now, this storm was predicted so Opportunity has been put into maximum power saving mode and now all that the guys at NASA can do now is hope that the batteries can outlast the storm.
This isnât the first time the Opportunity has had to endure a storm like this but there are two crucial differences on this occasion. First, as I said earlier, this is the biggest storm seen to date on Mars, and second; Opportunity is no spring chicken anymore. It is staggering to think about what Opportunity has achieved in its time on Mars. The roverâs mission was initially given a duration of 90 days; this mission is now at well over 5000 days and counting! No other rover has ever covered more distance off world. Opportunity completed a Martian marathon 3 year ago and then kept going!
Opportunity will remain in hibernation for a few weeks so we wonât know anything until the time comes to rouse it from its slumber. But even if this does spell the end for the opportunity mission, that little rover owes nothing to anyone. It has vastly outperformed anything that anyone ever expected of it and it will have deserved a very well earned rest.
Live Science, Live Science, LA Times, Space.com, National Geographic
Humans Forcing Animals To Become NocturnalComing back to earth, letâs see what are WE up to and by WE... I mean human beings. Looks like we have now managed to annoy some animals to an extent that they rather sleep through the day and stay up at night just to avoid us.
Count me in too. We âhumansâ have now impacted about 75% of earthâs land surface and therefore animals have opted to adapt to a different lifestyle especially when they are in proximity of cities or areas buzzing with human activity. Many animals fear humans and we do come across as noisy and dangerous to them. So they often try to avoid us. But it is becoming more and more difficult for them to migrate to a human free space. Why? Because WE are everywhere.
A study published in Science this week pointed out that mammals across the globe not just limited to coyotes, elephants and tigers have altered their sleep schedules and are becoming increasingly nocturnal to avoid increased human presence.
This kind if behavioral activity has been tracked over last couple of decades by satellites, GPS telemetry or camera traps. This study is a result of meta-analysis of 76 papers about 62 different species spanning six continents.
They looked at a share of nocturnal activity that was conducted by animals living in regions with low and high levels of human impact or disturbance. Regions with higher human activity correlated with increased nocturnal activity. And theses observations or trends were consistent across continents, habitats, types of animals and even types of human activity.
The author of this study makes a point that, this kind of behavioural shift could have large impacts on ecosystem thus reshaping species interaction. Competitions between predator species could threaten their survival. Also, the animals that are not opting for nocturnal lifestyle could be endangered due to human presence.
It's important to remember that we are not alone on earth, and more effort should be made to conserve human disturbance free zones especially for most vulnerable and sensitive mammal species.
LA Times, New York Times, Nature,
Stephen Hawking buried in Westminster Abbey, between Darwin and NewtonIn the preparation for this show, JD shared his recollection of a biography on Charles Darwin. It contained a chapter about his burial in Westminster Abbey and was entitled âThe Agnostic in the Abbeyâ; well, it would appear that Darwin has now been trumped as the atheist, Stephen Hawking was also interred there last week.
The best way to explain what a privilege it is for Hawking to be buried here is to consider who else has also been bestowed the honour. He rests alongside 18 past monarchs, Geoffrey Chaucer, Oliver Cromwell, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and Laurence Olivier there are 5 other people from a scientific background; Margaret Cavendish, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, J. J. Thomson and now Stephen Hawking.
Now there may be critics who say that Hawking doesnât deserve to be laid to rest with the likes of Newton and Darwin. The established works of those two men still form significant pillars within our body of current scientific understanding whereas Hawkingâs work is still to have its accuracy verified and he hasnât even won a nobel prize. Well guess what, neither did Newton or Darwin! By the time that Darwin died, On the Origin of Species had only been published for 20 years; not nearly enough time to test the theories that he presented. This puts Hawkingâs ideas very much at the same level.
But we canât just look at the science here. The true power of Stephen Hawking was as a communicator. Itâs seems so poetic that a man who spent half of his life without a voice has been one of the greatest science communicators of all time. Regardless of his scientific credentials (which are pretty phenomenal) the people honoured in Westminster Abbey are people who have created a lasting legacy in the UK and I canât think of anyone who I have met who has not been inspired by the life of Stephen Hawking.
But I think that we can only end a piece like this by sharing a few pieces of classic Hawking dialogue, like: âI have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the roadâ, and âNext time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.â And finally, âHowever bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hopeâ. And even though Stephen Hawkingâs life may now be over, the hope that he has brought to so many people lives on.
Live Science, The Guardian, Westminster Abbey
PatreonThe Blue Streak Science Podcast is a listener-supported podcast.
And we would like to thank those listeners who understand that science and science communication are more important today than they have ever been.
Science denialism and scientific illiteracy are huge problems, and itâs because of the financial support of our listeners that weâre able to present the latest discoveries in science, and to illuminate those who stand against science.
So, thank you.
And if youâd like to support our podcast all you gotta do is head over to bluestreakscience.com and youâll find several options there.
Yes, we do have a lot of fun doing this, but itâs also important work. And we thank you for supporting us.
Thank you!
The Effin' Pub QuizDropping the f-bombs today are the fittingly fashionable Amrita Sule, and the fabulously flamboyant Chris MacAlister!
Hereâs how it works. I ask a science question and our faction of fantastic friends furnish their flashy answers along with some fanciful feedback.
This fine fellow was born in Danzig, Poland in 1686 and invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709, and the mercury thermometer in 1714? What was his name? While writing the above question I learned of a word that just may soon become my favorite word in the English language. And that brings me to question 2. I mentioned that Fahrenheit used a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride to determine his first temperature reference point. What is that type of mixture called? What do we call the emission of light by a substance following the absorption of light or other energy by the substance? The preserved impression or remains of an animal or plant whose living tissue has been replaced by minerals is better known as a? Who is this person? An English biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer born in London in 1920 and discovered that DNA crystallizes into two forms. Where might I find the Tevatron? What is a facula? In the human body this is the longest bone. What is it? What do we call a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei of low atomic number fuse to form a heavier nucleus with the release of energy? Sleeps on one leg, filters its food, and is pink. What is it?How did YOU do?
Where Have We Been?JD: Last week I took a trip out to Point Reyes National Seashore again. I trundled over to the Fish Docks on the beautiful Drakeâs Bay. Met up with some other birders and searched for the Lawrenceâs Goldfinches. No dice. I did get great views of many other birds such a lesser goldfinches, a soaring peregrine falcon. The highlight was a large male California sea lion emerging at the surface with a fat chinook salmon in its mouth. It then shook the salmon, tearing it apart, with salmon roe flying everywhere. It was immediately joined by a host of western gulls to help clean up the mess.
Where Are We Going?JD: Nothing on the agenda, but more birding. I may go back to Point Reyes on Wednesday to give the Lawrenceâs Goldfinches another shot. I hope to be up to speed by then on the new gimbals I have for taking smooth video with my iPhone. I may even do some audio recording as well.
Chris: Camping in the Lake District.
In the BlogosphereChris: Iâve been doing some homework following last weekâs show. Sunlight takes 5.3 hours to reach Pluto. JD, you are correct; it takes 8 minutes for light to get to Earth and my figure of 8 minutes is actually the time that it takes light to reach Mercury.
Iâve also been investigating Space Suit malfunctions. It appears that the worst spacesuit malfunction occurred in 2014 and it was not necessarily what you may have expected as the danger to astronaut Luca Parmitano was of drowning! Now the use of this word isnât some technical definition of suffocation; it actually means drowning in water, in space!
A blocked filter in the space suit caused a leak and his helmet started filling with water from the suitâs cooling system during a spacewalk. This eyes, ears, nose and parts of his mouth all filled up with water. He could barely see and had to feel his way back to the air lock.
Why does the suit hold so much water and why a cooling system is needed when it is -270 Celsius outside, but this is because spacesuits need a lot of insulation to protect astronauts so it can get pretty toasty in there so they even have clothing that draws sweat away from the body and then cools it.
Even though NASA have never seem to figure out what caused the failure, they have taken protective action by installing snorkels into helmets now!
This week I am writing about a subject very close to me, sunburn. Not just why it happens but also why its red, when nothing else ever goes red when it gets burnt.
In ClosingThanks to our intrepid hosts, Amrita Sule and Chris MacAlister!
But most of all, thank you, our wonder audience.
That concludes this episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast.
If you have any suggestions or comments email us at [email protected]
You can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and any number of podcast directories, or you can listen to us directly on the Blue Streak Science website where you can check out the show notes for links and other good stuff for each episode.
That website is at bluestreakscience.com.
This show is produced by the Blue Streak Science team, and edited by Pro Podcast Solutions.
Thank you for joining us
And remember...follow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show New Horizons wakes up to explore the Kuiper Belt Hurricanes are slowing down Dogs and the flu virus The Climate Lounge The Pub Quiz Science News with Nevena Hristozova and Chris MacAlister Organic molecules found on Mars
Mars stinks. Or at least it ought to, based on the fact that in has methane in its atmosphere. Truth is though, that the concentration of methane in the martian air is almost 2000 times lower than the one on earth. But why methane is of interest to scientists is because, on earth at least, itâs existence is related to the activity of living forms. Now, methane comes again in the spotlight of researchers, because theyâve finally had a breakthrough - theyâve finally detected a pattern in the concentration variations of the gas in the martian atmosphere. Curiosity observed changes in the methane content when travelling cross the planet from north to south. The original hypothesis was that this change is due to chemical conversion of molecules with the help of the strong radiation of the Sun. The counter argument is that while this is possible, its not plausible, or at least not explaining the phenomenon in full. The models predict only about 20% increase in methane if the conversion is due to only sun-catalysed chemical conversions in the summer, while the practically observed increase is with up to 300%. Alternative hypothesis is that there might be methane deposits in the deep ice on Mars, which gets released once the ice and soil get warmed up by the summer sun. It is still very interesting to find out though where did this methane came from in the first place and future ESA missions will look exactly into that - they will be able to drill much deeper in the martian soil and analyze the carbon composition of the methane found there to establish if thereâs a chance it was made/left behind by living forms.
BBC Science and Environment, LA Times, Science News, National Geographic, New York Times
New Horizons wakes up to explore the Kuiper BeltLast week I spoke about the discoveries coming from New Horizonsâ 3 year old data and before weâve even finished with all of that data; here comes some more!
After the success of the Pluto flyby the mission was extended for further studies in the Kuiper belt, and why not; after the 9 years getting there?
Plutoâs home, the Kuiper belt may be less famous than asteroid belt between Mars & Jupiter but it is a damn sight bigger! Despite covering some 3.5 billion kms to get to Pluto, its taking New Horizons a further 3 years and 1.6 billion miles to complete this leg WITHIN the Kuiper belt!
The new target is called Ultima Thule (much catchier than its official title 2014 MU69). The name, given in March of this year, means; beyond the borders of the known world. Ultima Thule is exciting for a couple of reasons. It could be both the most distant oldest object ever studied, it is believed to have been orbiting since the very early days of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.
A 20km wide rock may not seem too exciting. But if Pluto has taught us anything t is that surprises are waiting out there to be discovered. And who doesnât get excited about exploring a new world?
Iâm ready to get excited again. As with your own tech, if youâre not going to use it for some time you may switch to standby mode and this is exactly whatâs happened to New Horizons. Waking it up means that itâs time for the discovery to start again. I think the missionâs principal investigator Alan Stern summed it perfectly when he simply said âITâS HAPPENING, ITâS HAPPENING!â]
Science News, Space Flight Insider, Space.com, NASA Space Flight
Hurricanes are slowing downIâm getting into deep waters here - this is entirely Tomâs turf but my nameâs not Nevena if I donât do my best so here goes nothing!
Yes - a paper published recently in the journal Nature shows that hurricanes are moving slower and that seems to be a very very bad thing. Hereâs why - having both typhoons and hurricanes move slower means that they drag along for longer in a specific area and respectively cause more damage. The warmer air and water also pump more water into the storm so they tend to be much more prominent and drop much more rain for prolonged periods one one place causing more frequently and worse floods. Another research paper published by the NSF analysed 22 storms and modeled how would they develop if they were to happen in the climate conditions of the late 21 century. And it was not pretty! The predictions showed that the rising global temperatures will only cause cyclones to slow down further, making them even more deadly and devastating for the areas affected by them, calculating as much as 25% more rainfall for all the biggest storms analysed in this study. Now you might think - ok rain would be worse but since itâs travelling slower at least the damage from the winds will be significantly smaller, but youâd be very wrong - the winds in the storms apparently remain with comparable speed to the ones today. And according to some estimations, this slowing down of storms transitions is very significant, some calculating as much as a third loss of speed for just over half a decade.
These two publications both point to the same outcome using two very different methods - one is analysing historical data, and the other one is making predictions based on computer modeling. The fact that both have similar disturbing conclusions is a hint at the much more versatile unexpected negative effects of global warming we are yet to discover in full.
LA Times, National Geographic, Nature, New York Times
Dogs and the flu virusYouâve got your bird flu, your swine flu, now get ready for dog flu!
Bird flu made the case that flu is not just what you called in sick with when you have a bad cold but could actually be a serious, life threatening disease. I could talk all day about the complexities and risks of the flu virus but I wonât. Instead weâll focus on the headline points.
Is your dog in danger? No. This story is about discovering that dogs already have many different types of flu virus in them, including some novel ones; not that dogs are dying. Are you in danger? No. So why are we even talking about this?
The reason why people get a flu shot every year is because the flu virus is eternally changing. Antibiotic resistance is not a patch on the flu virus. Flu is a pandemic on a never-ending migration and as flu season sweep around the globe it keeps on changing. It mutates, swaps genes with its hosts and it swaps genes with other varieties of flu. All of this genetic bodging means that the flu that hits you one season can be significantly different from the one that hit you last season, dodging your immune system. So your flu vaccine is guesswork, predictions of what strains will be doing the rounds in the coming season.
The reason this dog story is big news is that all these flu strains together makes for a breeding ground for new strains as they all go about swapping genetic material; increasing the chance of something dangerous like bird flu emerging. Bird flu never transferred directly between humans and was rare as you had to live closely alongside infected birds to get it. But dogs live very close with us, not only raising the potential for infection, but also giving the virus more chance of adapting to infect humans. This has led to claims that we should start vaccinating our dogs for flu, not to protect them but to reduce the number of strains that they are carrying and minimise all this mixing.
JD: This winter we had our dog, Amy, vaccinated against canine flu. It seems there was some of it going around here on the west coast of North America, and it is quite serious if your dog is unlucky enough to contract it. Also, our veterinarian told us that the series of two injections should protect her for life.
Science News, Live Science, National Geographic
Thanks to Nevena Hristozova, the mastermind behind the incubatorium blog. All things sciencey, at incubatorium.eu.
And Chris MacAlister who is the creator of Matildas Lab, whose most recent post is about strapping fake tails to chickens.
The Climate LoungeDid you know that according to a new paper in Nature, hurricanes are slowing down because of climate change? You do? Because Nevena already covered it really well? How about that science huh? Let me look at my watch...Ok that was only 20 seconds. Give me a word!
Which connects me to... CARBON DIOXIDE. Letâs talk CO2! Because we did it guys! Woo! We are number 1! Humans Humans Humans!
This April and May, the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere measured at Mauna Loa in Hawaii reached 410 parts per million. The highest monthly averages ever recorded. Mayâs average was 411.25 ppm, which is like super high.
How high is that? Well itâs likely the highest since the Pliocene around 3 million years ago. Whatâs the Pliocene? Itâs an era of time. Whatâs time?Dudeeee thatâs deep. Anyway, the pliocene was known to have sea levels 16 to 131 feet higher (5 to 40m), the poles were 10 C or 18F higher with global temps more like 3-4C warmer (5-7F). And giant ground sloths and mastodons roamed the planet, not 7.6 billion humans.
Suffice to say, yikes.
Now this is where I usually get into some super sciency details but Iâd like to end with a story instead, if you guys donât mind. Around 3.5 years ago I was lucky enough to get invited to give a talk at a climate resilience conference in Hawaii focusing on the Pacific Islands. And like any normal person, I extended this trip to do some sightseeing with my then pregnant wife (we had just found out a month earlier that we were expecting our first child). Our travels took us the big island, the youngest of the islands and the one thatâs currently erupting. Now when you are there, the suggestions on things to do usually boil down to 1) see the volcano and 2) Get to the top of Mauna Kea to see the stars and telescopes that peer out into space. We did #1 but thought, Psshhhht space. We instead did the much less traveled adventure and drove up Mauna Loa. Because we wanted to see where the famous Keeling Curve observations (the co2 measurements that i mentioned earlier) were taken. So beforehand, I emailed the NOAA scientists up there and said âHey, can we come visit?â They said Sure! And gave us the code to the front gate. So on a sunny typically beautiful hawaiian day, my pregnant wife and I drove a rented 4wheel drive jeep up switchback roads to the Mauna Loa observatory. We walked around the machines by ourselves for a little bit before running into one of the scientists. He showed us around making sure to stop at the old famous machines,then pointing out where the steady stream of data was coming in and finally making us sign their guestbook (which contained all sorts of more famous names). But then he surprised us and took us out onto the roof, he grabbed an air sample bottle that they obviously kept for situations like this, when random visitors show up and he let us take air samples on Mauna Loa ourselves and seal the jars. We then went back down and wrote down the current CO2 levels in ppm. 401.23 ppm. A terrifying number back then. It was a time when breaking 400ppm seem unfathomable. And now 411.25ppm, rising and my son is now 2.5 years old
I often get asked how I keep going in such a field like climate science. Communicating it can be so tough. Things can seem so polarized, hopeless. And nowadays, I donât think we alone own that hopeless mantle. But I always say, you have to remind yourself why you keep doing what you are doing
Yes it can be tough, and on some days it can seem impossible to keep going. But on those days, I look to the shelf right above my computer at work, to the photo of my wife and I on our wedding day, to the image of my son showing off the worldâs largest grin. And smack dab in between them is that little glass tube, full of that brilliant hawaiian air with ugly amounts of CO2 in it.
And as I say these words, at any minute I could get a call telling me my wife is in labor with boy #2. So even though things can seem depressing. Remember, thereâs A LOT worth fighting for. Keep those things close and letâs get to damn work.
Also, donât be afraid of bringing tourist dollars to Puerto Rico and definitely donât forget to keep talking about the island. Itâs hurricane season and lots of places still donât have roofs.
NOAA, YaleE360
Pub Quiz What is the study of biological processes that have or could have evolved outside or away from the planet Earth? What do we call a global event that arises from large-scale interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere between the southeastern tropical Pacific and the Austral-Indonesian regions? What is the branch of biology that deals with the interactions and relationships between organisms and their environment? What do we call a subatomic particle that carries a negative charge in atoms or molecules? Microorganisms belonging to the domains Bacteria and Archaea that can live and thrive in extreme environments are called what? In thermodynamics, a closed system evolves toward a state of maximum what? Published in 1859, Darwinâs âOn The Origin of Speciesâ, probably the greatest writing in the history of the biological sciences. What was the final word of the final chapter? What do we call organisms who have relatively large cells that have internal membrane-bound structures called organelles, including a cell nucleus? When a species that once existed no longer exists anywhere it is said to be? The study of the inheritance and regulation of gene expression that is independent of the DNA sequence of an organism is called? Recommended by the TeamWe highly recommend a great podcast called âDeath in Ice Valleyâ. Itâs a co-production of BBCâs World Service and Norwayâs public radio service, NRK.
In 1970, in a remote valley in Norway two girls found the body of a woman, badly burnt and surrounded by some strange objects. Her identity has remained a mystery ever since.
Investigative journalist, Marit Higraff, and British BBC radio documentary maker, Neil McCarthy, have spearheaded this most recent investigation, and their goal is to find answers that have evaded police, journalists and crime novelists for the past 47 years.
This is a wonderful podcast and I urge you to have a listen.
Death In Ice Valley
Where Have We Been?Nevena: Last week, here in Brussels, was held the yearly international forum on food and nutrition from the BCFN foundation. It is an event founded to provide an open space for interdisciplinary discussion on issues of nutrition and sustainability. Experts, international opinion-makers and young research fellows met to share evidence, scientific data and best practices, with the goal of creating a model of sustainable food to reach the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
The talks and keynotes tried to lay out effective solutions on urgent issues such as the relationship between hunger and obesity, the proper use of natural resources, the reduction of food waste, the promotion of sustainable diets, the environmental impact of agriculture and the effects of climate change.
And the best part of this event was that it was free to register so anyone who wanted to attend and was fast enough could go (obv they had a somewhat limited number of seating). But talk about open science that was really it!
JD: Last week I spent a morning at Point Reyes National Seashore. This is truly a remarkable piece of land. Itâs about 280 square kilometers and its peninsula juts about 15 kilometers out into the Pacific.
From the Outer Point you can see the Farallones, an archipelago thatâs about 50 km away. On a clear day you can also see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, also about 50 km distant.
There are lots of black-tailed deer, huge tule elk, bobcat, coyotes and mountain lions. I was doing some birding there and saw several peregrine falcons soaring and then swooping around the lighthouse, driving the common murres crazy. I only learned afterward that a pair of Lawrenceâs Goldfinches are nesting in the area...quite rare for this location.
Chris: This week I have been building. I am building a LIMS (Laboratory Integrated Management System). Our lab records are on old Microsoft Access databases that are slowly grinding to a standstill. A colleague and I visited another lab to look at their off the shelf LIMS and we thought; thereâs nothing going on here that we couldnât build ourselves, in MS Access. So that is what we are doing; building an all-singing-all-dancing bespoke database system from scratch. Whilst this has been going on for more that the last week, last week we did build some parts of the system that we feared would be the most difficult so Iâm feel remarkably chuffed with myself at the moment.
Where Are We Going?Nevena: Another interesting event which I hope to be able to attend is a meeting called Antitrust and competition issues in the life science sector on July 3rd here in the European Parliament, in Brussels. DG COMP organises a panel to provide an overview of recent developments by DG COMP and the National Competition Authorities in the life science industry, including excessive pricing, market definition, pay-for-delay, and mergers.
This event follow the launch of DG COMPâs Pharmaceutical Sector Inquiry in 2008, in which inquiry was the interplay between competition law and the life science sector. A broad range of investigations have taken place, and a number are on-going. DG SANTE will be reporting on biologicals and biosimilars from a regulatory perspective. The event is virtually free since it's 25 euros per person but it also includes a lunch served as it's a lunch meeting followed by the report presentation.
JD: Summer is a slow time of year for lectures and such, so I have nothing planned this week. However, thereâs a lot of wildlife to be seen in the area and Iâm certainly going back to Point Reyes to have a look at those goldfinches, and anything else that wanders in front of my binoculars.
Chris: This week I am writing about spacesuits and the full range of jobs that they perform. Some functions of them are obvious but some are less so, which is something that is not helped by the less than rigorous application of scientific principles in the television and movie making industry.
I will also start turning some attention to this medium myself. Iâve long planned on producing video content to go alongside my blog and as yet never quite got around to it. I plan to start trying to be more active in pushing this project forward which is leaving me both inspired and full of dread in equal measures.
In ClosingFollow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show Evidence for a new fundamental particle Pluto has dunes CRISPR Gene-Editing Pioneers Win Kavli Prize for Nanoscience Oldest Known Lizard Fossil Discovered This Week in Science History Pub Quiz Listener feedback
We heard from our good friend, Sam Danby, in Norway. Sam is a new father, a cancer researcher, and a footballer. Sam writes, "Once again, great to have you back with the podcast, and thereâs something interesting every week. The new âwhere you been, what you doingâ feature is great!"
Sam also asked about what to do all summer to entertain his 1 year old. Make it a science summer! Two of the best virtual and real places we know of for that are Matilda's Lab, Atom Club, and the Dorset Science and Technology Centre!
Science on!
Science News with Amrita Sule and Chris MacAlister Evidence Found for a New Fundamental ParticleTime for some news from the world of Particle physics. Since past couple of days news headlines have been flashing about â evidence of a new fundamental particle or how an experiment just detected a particle that shouldn't exist.
What is all this fuss about and what particle is this? The MiniBooNE which is short for Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment carried out at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago have detected âsterile neutrinosâ.
Sterile neutrinos are particles that only interact via gravity and not via any other fundamental interactions of the standard model.
Neutrinos in general are part of matter particles and are nearly massless. They interact through weak nuclear forces and barely interact with matter. They oscillate between three known types or flavors, electron, muon and tau.
In the MiniBooNE experiment, a beam of muon neutrinos was shot towards a giant oil tank. On its way some of these muon neutrinos transform into electron neutrinos and are detected when they interact with oil molecules. These have different masses which allows their detection. In its 15-year run, MiniBooNE has registered a few hundred more electron neutrinos than expected.
This could be because some of the muon neutrinos oscillate into the heavier 4 kind of neutrino â sterile nuetrino (which never interact with anything that isnât a neutrino) and some of these got transformed into electron neutrinos which were detected by the MiniBooNE. A neutrino excess like this was 1st recorded in the 1990s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico with a different apparatus however the count wasnât as big as miniboone.
This is very exciting as it has been long thought that sterile neutrinos make up the dark matter. Detection of sterile neutrinos could take us a step forward in the direction of understanding dark matter. However, several physicists remain apprehensive and are not fully convinced as sterile neutrinos have not been detected in many other experimental set ups and the evidence of their existence has been weak.
I guess we should let the physics world mull over this.
Science News, Quanta, Live Science
Pluto Has DunesThis story gets really interesting when you understand how dunes are made and that is that tiny, individual grains of sand get blown around in the wind until they run into something that stops them. Whatever stops them will likely stop many other grains of sand causing a mound. This mound then stops even more sand until you end up with full blown dune. So to distill this down to an equation that even can understand; sand + wind = dunes; and this is what has made it so surprising that dunes have now been discovered on the dwarf planet Pluto.
Pictures from NASAâs New Horizon spacecraft taken 3 years ago have seen dunes on Pluto. This is confusing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, no one expected anything to be moving on Pluto due to the extreme cold there. Pluto is so cold that even the water there is frozen harder than rock; itâs certainly far too cold to have sand lying around. We also have a problem with the wind, or lack of. Wind is just our atmosphere moving around, but Pluto doesnât really have an atmosphere. It has 0.0001% of the atmosphere that Earth has which means that winds on Pluto are weaker than the beer in a student bar!
To put this into context, if you were to fart on Pluto this would create a hurricane the likes of which that dwarf planet has never seen; at least it would if the fart didnât freeze the moment it left your arsehole. Pluto is so cold that it can freeze farts. And really, this is the solution the puzzle. As any school child will tell you, farts contain methane; and this is what Plutonian dunes are made of. Even if you freeze methane into individuals grains, they are still as light as air; so even Plutoâs meagre winds can shift them to create dunes.
So there we have it: Plutoâs fart dune created by the lightest breezes known in the solar system.
BBC News Science and Environment, Science News, Scientific American, Nature, National Geographic
CRISPR Gene-Editing Pioneers Win Kavli Prize for NanoscienceDo you guys know about the World Science Festival (WSF)? Happens around end of May every year. I attended it 2 years ago and was a lot of fun. Itâs an excellent opportunity to hear about cutting edge research from the scientists itself. The Kavli prize which recognizes scientists for their contributions in three research areas; astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience and is announced every year at the WSF.
This year the nanoscience committee awarded the Kavli prize for. Any guesses?? Itâs CRISPR-Cas9, a precise nanotool for editing DNA; to Emmanuelle Charpentier at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley (UC-Berkeley), and Virginijus Siksnys at Vilnius University in Lithuania.
CRISPR system, - is primarily used by microbes as a defense against invading viruses. The microbes record and target the DNA sequences of these invading viruses. Teams lead by duo Charpentier and Doudna and separately by Ć ikĆĄnys first showed that this CRISPR system from bacteria can be used with an enzyme Cas9 to alter free floating DNA in test tubes â thus making them molecule scissors for tailoring genes. This system, has now evolved into a modern day tool for gene editing.
Charpentier and Doudna were first to publish in Science hence received more attention. Bad luck for Ć ikĆĄnys, whose paper was rejected by Cell even though it was submitted before those two. Nevertheless, work from all three labs set a foreground that Cas9 can be used as nano-sized scissors to selectively cut pieces of DNA.
The CRISPR/Cas9 system has since then been exploited by scientists around the world to explore its potential in avenues ranging from biomedical sciences to agriculture.
I came across a comment from Cori Bargmann who is a scientist at Rockefeller and a Kavli prize winner herself. She compares such prizes/awards to winning an Oscar which will push people to see that particular movie. Here a prize for CRISPR could tell the non-science community to be more informed about this as it could very well be a part of their life soon. I am sure I am not the only one rooting for a Nobel prize for CRISPR!!
Quanta, Scientific American, Genome Web
Oldest Known Lizard Fossil DiscoveredIn creationist news this week; evolutionists have once again changed their mind about the theory of evolution. This time theyâve change the date that they think reptiles first appeared. By how much you may ask? 10, 15 years? No, by 75 million years! Can you believe it?
Well, back in the world of rational and responsible science reporting we can justify this change because we have a reptile fossil that is 75 million years older than anything previously discovered. To put this into context, itâs moved the date back from 168 million years ago to 240 million years ago.
This is not a new discovery. This fossil of Megachirella wachtleri has been on the books for about 20 years already. What is new is the lizard classification. Small fossils can be trickier to work with than large ones. They are more fragile, harder to find and seem to occur less often. This fossil is half concealed in rock stopping full examination, CT scanning has finally allowed paleontologists to see the full creature.
Itâs not widely appreciated outside of taxonomic circles how precise the distinctions between some pretty major categories of animals is {Insert Chrisâ Quiz here}. The divide between reptiles and amphibians is complicated due to the sparse fossil record at this time, thatâs why the lizard classification is so important.
It suggests that reptiles were around during the mass extinction that ended the Permian period. Forget dinosaurs, this was the big daddy extinction wiping out 96% of all life. There could be parallels with mammals. The dinosaur extinction paved the way for the mammals to diversify, maybe the Permian-Triassic extinction did the same for reptiles?
Science News, Live Science,
PatreonI have fantastic news. We have our very first Patrons!
They are John and Louise Richardson, are hereby declared official Blue Streakers, with all honors and benefits accorded thereof.
A national holiday will be declared in their honor, and I request that all governments of the world follow suit, and give everyone a day off.
Thank you, John and Louise.
If you also want to help support our podcast and keep this thing rolling you can do so.
We need it. We owe people money! And the way weâre getting support is through Patreon.
Weâve crafted the campaign to give you different levels at which you can give us some support. You can donate as little as a dollar per episode at the Patron Level, all the way up to the Associate Producer Level. Any amount of support that you can give us will help tremendously!
I encourage you to check out our Patreon page at bluestreakscience.com/patreon
On behalf of the Blue Streak Science Team
Thank you!
This Week In Science History...in 1859, T.H. Huxley gave his first public defense of Charles Darwinâs âOn The Origin of Speciesâ when he presented his paper to the Royal Institution titled 'On the Persistent Types of Animal Life'. Later when asked why he chose this scientific theory to defend, he replied, âIt was the natural selectionâ.
...in 1965, In a classic case of Cold War one-upsmanship American astronaut Ed White spent 20 minutes on a spacewalk outside his Gemini 4 space capsule only 3 months after Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov took a 10 minute stroll outside his space capsule.
Six weeks after astronaut Ed Whiteâs spacewalk cosmonaut Ivan Yurkenov took his Siberian husky Misha for a spacewalk and a frisbee toss. However, a malfunction in one of the Sovietâs poop bags cut short the otherwise pleasant outing.
...in 1942, Owing to the ongoing Second World War silk was in short supply, so the U.S. military needed a suitable alternative for the manufacture of parachutes. Fortunately, the newly invented material Nylon was available. And so was pilot and stunt parachutist Adeline Gray. Making her 33rd jump Miss Gray convinced the army and the navy that nylon parachutes were safe and durable.
...in 1975, the discovery of imprints of large, soft-bodied, toothless marine worms radiometrically dated to be 620 million years old, was reported in the New York Times, making them the oldest fossils in the United States. The fossils held their place until recently when another even older, toothless, soft-bodied fossil was discovered in the both the swamps of Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
And the rest is science history.
Pub QuizToday itâs the letter D.
Joining us are the delightful Amrita Sule and debonaire Chris MacAlister.
Hereâs how it works. I ask a science question and our denizens of deduction deduce the answers.
Name an English naturalist and geologist born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire in 1809. This molecule is a linear polymer of four building blocks called nucleotides arranged in a double helix. What is a substance or entity that is derived from the breakdown or division of another. For example, a product of the radioactive decay of an element; or cells that are derived from the division of a parent cell? What type of matter can only be inferred only by it gravitational interactions? What is another word for mass per unit of volume? What do we call a region where rivers reach lakes, seas, or the ocean, and deposit their sediment in a broad, flat plains? The change in observed frequency due to relative motion between the source and the observer is also known as? The bending or spreading of light waves when they meet a change in density. Whatâs that called? He was a mathematician and philosopher born in France in 1596, and invented analytical geometry and developed a system which describes geometry in term of algebra. Who is he? Another word for ancestry or heritage?How did YOU do?
Answers available in the episode.
Where Have We Been?Chris: The most interesting thing that happened to me in the las week is that the big ISO17025 assessment that I talk about last week didnât happen, so I have another 2 months to wait for that to come around again.
JD: On Monday I was supposed to attend an event at the California Academy of Science on exoplanets. A busy schedule and heavy traffic intervened, so I had to give that a miss.
Where Are We Going?Chris: Iâm going to start investigate the bizarre cases that we talk about off-air last week. Nevena has inspired me to follow up my leads so I will be writing about the people who strapped a fake tail onto a chicken, for science. I also need to build a new rain catch for my daughterâs rain station as I seriously underestimated the amount of rain that falls in the UK!]
JD: Iâm heading to the Bodega Marine Lab once again for a lecture titled âPrimary drivers and consequences of ecological change in marine communities of today and tomorrowâ by Tye Kindinger, Postdoctoral Scholar from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As usual it will be preceded by some birdwatching on the Sonoma Coast and a crab sandwich.
In ClosingUntil next time...follow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show The Nipah virus The journal Scientific Reports retracts a paper...oops! The mysterious case of the stolen asteroid Speaking of asteroids, we learn how birds may have dodged the one that rubbed out the rest of the other dinosaurs The Blue Streak Science A**hole of the Month And the Pub Quiz Listener feedback
NeilNextGen from London: ânice to see you guys back and podcasting every week. This is my favorite science podcast all time. I gotta say my favorite part has been the pub quiz. Keep up the good work.â
Neil, thank you so much for those words of encouragement.
Science News with Chris MacAlister and Nevena Hristozova Introducing the Nipah VirusLast time I covered an amphibian pandemic, this time we have a possible human one. Thereâs not much room for a jovial attitude for this story.
In the wake of health scares such as HIV, bird flu, Ebola and Zika there is a reason why governments consider a pandemic as one of the top threats to their population. The new virus on the block is Nipah. Discovered just before the turn of the century in Malaysia and Singapore, and is on the WHO priority list of emerging diseases.
Recent case in Southern India: 11 fatalities & 25 hospitalisations.
The symptoms: fever, vomiting, disorientation, mental confusion, encephalitis and fatal in up 70% of cases.
How likely are you to catch it? Mercifully not very. The primary source of the virus is fruit bats. Other risks are from infected pigs and humans. Unlike Ebola, Nipah does not vertically transmit that easily.
Why is the WHO so concerned? Due to the range of fruit bats and the potential for mutation. The risk is heightened by the lack of any cure or vaccine.
Science News, Live Science
Scientific Reports retracts paper claiming neurological damage from HPV vaccineThatâs the type of story I really like seeing - itâs about a retracted study allegedly showing that the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine causes neurological damage.
The paper is question was submitted and published by a group led by Toshihiro Nakajima of Tokyo Medical University, and became available online in November 2016. It describes impaired mobility and brain damage in mice given an enormous dose of HPV vaccine along with a toxin that makes the blood-brain barrier leaky.
After many complaints by peers that the experimental setup of the study is flawed and the conclusions are not of sound scientific integrity, the publisher decided to retract the paper despite the disapproval of the original authors.
Unfortunately, the damage might already be done, since the generally low HPV vaccination rates in Japan, had further plummeted since the conclusions made the headlines in the country. Much like what happened with the MMR vaccination rates and the retracted many years ago paper by the practice-banned MD Andrew Wakefield, whose antivax movement is single handedly responsible for the death of many people, including many children from vaccination-preventable diseases.
The main opponents of the Japanese paper are currently criticizing the publishers for taking so long to investigate the publication and retract it, since its publication itâs been unfortunately already cited over 20 times and has made the rounds in public madia scaring needlessly many away from a vaccine that is able to save numerous lives from cervical cancer - a very aggressive form of the disease which is reported to affect more than half a million new subjects every year.
Proud to say that one of the leading experts trying to debunk the paper is a professor from the University of Antwerp here in Belgium. Prof. Vorsters also pointed out that since there doesnât seem to be a working method yet to counteract the antivax scare tactics, may be researchers and health professionals should rather focus on pointing out the usefulness of vaccines, rather than wasting efforts to disprove antivax claims.
Science
Asteroid: Stolen From Another Sun?Another month, another intergalactic visitor. But whereas Oumuamua was a tourist just passing through, asteroid 2015 BZ509 appears to be a bona fide immigrant to our solar system.
I want to take you on journey with me, of skepticism. When faced with a headline like this, my first thought is âHow can anyone possibly draw that conclusion about a piece of rock orbiting our Sun?â Oumauamua was fine; it came from outside the solar system a swiftly pissed off again, but a resident asteroid?
My doubts were not helped when I found out that this conclusion is based on the asteroids retrograde (i.e backwards) orbit around the sun that seems to last the same time as Jupiterâs. That doesnât seem like much to go off.
Now comes the modern day black magic; computer modelling. These models attempted to recreate the conditions that would allow this kind of orbit to form. The most surprising result from this model is that it suggests that the orbit has most likely been established for about 4.5 billion years.
4.5 billion years ago the planets themselves were only newly formed and as such it is not expected that there would be any resident retrograde orbits. Put all of this together and the most plausible explanation appear to be that a passing visitor has been caught in the gravity of our young solar system and has remained here ever since.
Royal Astronomical Society, LA Times
How birds may have escaped the dinosaur-killing asteroid impactThis story is a tribute for âthe ones who made it outâ. Recent re-evaluation of plant residue and fossil data shows that the birds might have escaped a narrow mass-extinction when the asteroid which killed off most dinosaurs hit Earth. We know that the Cretaceous era asteroid wiped out most dinosaurs, but we donât rly think that it actually killed off 3/4s of life in general - including plants.
This new look into the data led Daniel Field at the University of Bath in the UK to hypothesise that the birds that made it out of the extinction were in fact the ground-dwelling ones - ancient ancestors of ducks, chickens, and ostriches for example, while the ones whose species perished were the ones relying entirely on vegetation for food, shelter, nesting⊠Two types of data hinted to the conclusion - one showed that the lineages of today's ground-dwelling birds are much more vast than the ones living in/on vegetation, but also the fact that in fossils layers laid immediately after the asteroid impact, almost entirely seeds of plants belongs to only a small number of species of ferns.
Once the forests developed gradually again, they presented a massive free ecological niche, which was taken once more by birds choosing to make use of these new habitats.
BBC News Science and Environment, Nature, National Geographic, Science News
A**hole of the MonthWhen I first got the idea for the A**hole of the Month for the month of May I initially had one person in mind, a member of the United States House of Representatives.
Specifically, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
But the more I read about this, the more I realized that the entire Republican-side of this committee is one colossal, flatulent asshole.
To be fair, there are Democrats on the committee, but they lack any real power since theyâre the minority party, are probably as aghast and incredulous as I am.
Itâs the Republicans on this committee...let me repeat the name of that committee. Itâs the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. These Republicans wouldnât know science if it came up behind them and bit them on their collective ass.
One thing I can guarantee, by the way, is that if we continue on the path recommended by this committee..science will indeed bite us all on the ass, for many generations.
Last week this committee held a hearing on how technology could be used to help us adapt to climate change.
One of the experts at the hearing was Philip Duffy, who is the president and executive director of the venerable Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. His is also a former senior adviser to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Dr. Duffy served as a Senior Advisor in the White House National Science and Technology Council, and as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Heâs held senior research positions with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. And he holds a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford.
The guy has science chops, in a big way.
So, a lot of the questions and comments at this hearing were directed toward Dr. Duffy.
Representative Lamar Smith of Texas showed a chart which showed that rates of sea-level rise have only increased slightly compared with the rate of fossil fuel use.
To which Dr. Duffy pointed out that the chart was from a single tide gauge station somewhere near San Francisco, and that sea levels worldwide rise at different rates.
Strangely enough, Representative Smith somehow forgot to show any charts or graphs that reveal rising atmospheric CO2 levels or temperatures, both of which have climbed at a steady rate in recent decades, right in line as fossil fuel emissions have increased.
So in response to the chart Dr. Duffy replied, "The rate of global sea-level rise has accelerated and is now four times faster than it was 100 years ago.â
A smug Representative Smith asked."Is this chart inaccurate, then?"
To which Duffy replied, "It's accurate, but it doesn't represent what's happening globally; it represents what's happening in San Francisco."
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California said he was concerned that established climate science (read that as actual science, and not made up bullshit)... he said he was concerned that science has not been questioned more by the committee.
This is a committee, by the way, which has accused federal climate scientists of fraudulently manipulating climate data and has even subpoenaed their records.
But the biggest blast of antiscience flatulence came when Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama questioned Dr. Duffy on the various factors that cause sea level rise, you know, peer-reviewed, testable, and repeatable science.
Instead he offered his own ideas as the why sea levels are rising.
Brooks actually put forth the proposition that erosion is a key factor in sea-level rise.
He said the California coastline and the White Cliffs of Dover tumble into the sea every year, and that contributes to sea-level rise. He also said that silt washing into the ocean from the world's major rivers contribute to sea-level rise.
"Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up."
Duffy responded: "I'm pretty sure that on human time scales, those are minuscule effects."
I might add that we know the seafloor spreads at the mid-ocean ridges, and that seafloor is dragged back into the mantle at subduction zones.
Mountains rise, they get eroded, the earthâs crust spreads and it gets drawn back inside the mantle. Oh, and the earth is billions of years old...not 6,000 years.
Brooks doubled-down on his ignorance. Remember, this guy is a member of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
He doubled-down by saying that Antarctic ice is growing.
To which Dr. Duffy replied, "We have satellite records clearly documenting a shrinkage of the Antarctic ice sheet and an acceleration of that shrinkage,"
Brooks, arguing with the scientist countered, "I'm sorry, but I don't know where you're getting your information, but the data I have seen suggestsâŠâ
Duffy interrupted, informing Brooks of his sources, "The National Snow and Ice Data Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."
As an aside, earlier this year, NASA researchers determined that Antarctica's ice loss has accelerated in the last decade. Sea ice extent at both poles were at record lows last year.
There was another representative that brought up the notion that scientists in the 1970âs believed the earth was cooling.
This is a widely believed meme by the antiscience fringe thatâs based on a fake Time Magazine cover from the 1970âs. Thatâs right I said FAKE. It was fake. It didnât happen. It was a fake cover that suggested scientists were really concerned about global COOLING back then.
They werenât.
Other media outlets picked this up and and ran with it like it was real. It wasnât. It never was.
And there are even more morons today who cite that as evidence. The only thing itâs evidence of is science illiteracy, an abject failure of basic education.
Actual science from the 1970âs â certainly not as comprehensive todayâs science on the subject â in reality was sounding the alarm about just the opposite idea, that global warming is what we need to be concerned about. Even in the 1970âs the idea of global warming was not new. It was already decades old.
Yet in 2018 there are members of the, I still canât get over it, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that lack even the most basic understanding of science.
In fact, they are unabashedly hostile to science.
And for that, you, the Republicans on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology are the Blue Streak Science A**holes of the Month.
Science
Pub QuizToday itâs a cacophonous celebration of the letter C
Joining us in this cheerful ceremony are the chisel-chinned Chris MacAlister, and the captivating and convivial Nevena Hristozova.
A group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body is also known as? We all know of the technology known as CRISPR or CRISPR/Cas9. Itâs a family of DNA sequences in bacteria and archaea, and this technology is used to edit the genomes of even more complex organisms. Question: What does the C in CRISPER stand for? Carcinology is the study of what? What is the largest living rodent in the world? What is the name of the very large flightless birds that live in tropical forests of northeast Australia and New Guinea? Who was the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences? What space mission ended on 15 September, 2017 with the so-called Grand Finale as it plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn? What island-filled ocean basin is bordered by Mexico and Central America to the west and south west, the Greater Antilles to the north, to the east by the Lesser Antilles, and to the south by the north coast of South America? Diamond and graphite are different allotropes of what element? What is the geologic period that spans 79 million years from the end of the Jurassic Period to the beginning of the Paleogene Period 66 million years ago? Where Are We Going?/Where Have We Been?JD: Last week I attended a lecture at the University of California Davisâ Bodega Marine Lab. It was titled âDeveloping and evaluating solutions-based approaches for mitigating global change impacts in aquatic ecosystemsâ. The speaker was David Koweek, Postdoctoral Researcher, Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science. It presented some interesting strategies for dealing with issues such as apoxia, and lowered pH as a result of anthropogenic global warming.
They have these lectures on Wednesday afternoons at the Marine Lab, which is located in a stunning setting on the Sonoma coast. I may attend these a lot more often. Go birding in the morning. Crab sandwiches at Spud Point Marina for lunch, a little more birding, attend a lecture. Sounds like retirement to me.
JD: Next week Iâm attending a talk at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco titled âAre We Alone in the Universe?â The speaker is Lisa Kaltenegger of Cornell University. Sheâs gonna discuss exoplanets and how we can determine which ones might be suitable for life, as well as techniques and future missions that could detect life on these worlds.
Chris: I visited a laboratory trade show for the first time last week which was a truly eye opening experience. Iâve been celebrating practical microbiology by running a charity beer festival and Iâve been exploring the rather trivial question of whether God exists on the blog.
Chris: This week I have an ISO17025 assessment at my lab, this is the international standard for testing and calibration laboratories. I will also be getting ecological with Matilda. We joined the RSPB at the weekend and we shall be making the most of their support to explore the living world around us.
In ClosingUntil next time...follow the science!
-
On This Weekâs Show Megafauna Also, Mount Kilauea is still at it...now with a another thing to worry about Ebola is back in the news I gotta a gut feeling about one of these stories
And letâs not forget the Climate Lounge with Tom Di Liberto
Science News Diverse and abundant megafauna documented at new Atlantic US Marine National MonumentDid you know today is the International Biodiversity day? And this story touches on the biodiversity of our vast oceans and deep seas.
To my understanding, documenting deep-sea marine life can be extremely challenging. Often times, marine biologists have to go aboard an airplane to survey some of these regions.
One such hotspot which was surveyed recently, lies on the edge of the continental shelf, where the shallow seas off New England drop sharply into the deep waters of the northwestern Atlantic.
This region is called as Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument and is the first American marine national monument in Atlantic waters. this status was designated by President Obama in 2016. I think of it as when a park or a forest area is given a national park status. So itâs seems pretty important to me.
Scientists from the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium have surveyed this region aerially three times, since the Summer of 2017. On their latest survey they observed hundreds of Bottlenose dolphins, dozens of whales including the rare Sowerby's beaked whales and dolphins of various species.
These scientists find that such abundance of marine fauna is extraordinary for such a small area. These aerial sightings will help them to study how different species use this biodiverse habitat at different times of the year. These waters, which harbor wide diversity of corals, deep water fishes, and invertebrates FORM a FRAGILE ecosystem which needs to be well protected.
But you see, new policies recommend that such waters should be opened for offshore drilling which is NO GOOD for the precious marine life in waters like Northeast canyons.
Science Daily
Hawaiian volcano spews ballistic blocksI first read this story title as âHawaiian volcano spews ballistic bollocks.â I did. My first thought was, therefore, oh. Is that literal? What does that even mean? My second thought was âah, I canât read! Wonderful! Writing my thesis is going to be so much fun!â
But what are ballistic blocks? (And ballistic bollocks). They are, terrifyingly, just massive chunks of rock the size of appliances. Not ideal. These are being chucked out by Kilauea, the volcano that has been in a state of continuous eruption on Hawaii since the 80s.
The caldera (bowl where the lava pools) is deflating, increasing stress at the volcano base. There have been 4.4 magnitude earthquakes. The ash plume can be seen from the ISS. This ash can obviously cause health issues when itâs breathed in. The locals also have to contend with VOG. Thatâs some sort of horrible gas mix that has sulphur dioxide - highly toxic - mixed in.
So we spoke about Kilauea recently but the Hawaiiansâ problems are going nowhere for now!
BBC, Popular Science
Congo confirms first urban Ebola case, raising possibility of âexplosive increase in casesâEbola, a word that we wish to hear no more. But it has resurfaced again, this time in Congo in the city of Mbandaka, home for 1.2 million people. Congo health officials reported that so far there have been there have been 44 suspected cases of Ebola since April and 25 people have died.
The disease causes internal bleeding and is transmitted to humans through the consumption of contaminated meat or close contact with an infected person.
This makes it extremely difficult to contain Ebola in an Urban setting like Congo, as the number of contacts can amplify much quickly.
Also, the city of Mbandaka lies on the bank of the Congo River which is frequently used by the local people for transportation, increasing the chances of the virus spreading down the river over long distances.
Ebola epidemic which first started in 2014 in West Africa was worst ever recorded and resulted in infecting more than 28,000 and killing more than 11,000. The WHO was blamed then in part for not acting on time.
However, this time WHO is doing everything to contain this outbreak before it gets out of proportion. A vaccination drive has begun on Monday in the city of Mbandaka. More than four thousand doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine developed by Merck have been shipped to Congo. This is an experimental vaccine which proved quite effective in Guinea in 2015-2016.
Their game plan is that, Whenever a new Ebola case is diagnosed, all the people who might have a made recent contact with the affected individual will be traced and vaccinated so the disease remains contained. Weâll just have to wait and watch how this plays out.
But most importantly we should take a pause and appreciate the health workers and doctors without borders who are volunteering in this hard hit area for all their hard work.
Washington Post, NPR
How the gut influences neurologic diseaseWe donât give our guts nearly enough thought. I am not talking about those awful yoghurt adverts. Your gut is a hugely complex organ system which also has effects on your brain - the crosstalk between the brain and the gut is still being unravelled.
A new study in Nature regarding the link between neurological disease and the gut - using a combination of human cells and animal models. There is a growing body of work on how byproducts can influence the brain - the context for this group in particular is MS.
The new research, from Brigham and Womenâs Hospital, focuses on the influence of gut microbes on two types of cells that play a major role in the central nervous system: microglia and astrocytes. Microglia are part of the body's immune system, responsible for scavenging the CNS - they are a sort of cleaner cell, hoovering up plaques, dead cells and other rubbish in the brain. But microglia can also secrete compounds that can damage the astrocytes - another type of brain cell, also key to maintenance and support in the brain, in different manners to the microglia. This damage to astrocytes from microglia is apparently thought to contribute to many neurologic diseases, including multiple sclerosis.
However, in this paper, the team reports that byproducts that microbes produce when they break down dietary tryptophan -- an amino acid found in turkey and other foods -- may limit inflammation in the brain through their influence on microglia. So the gut *MAY* be helpful in mitigating inflammatory damage in the brain - at least in the mouse models they used, which had MS. They found evidence for the same sort of pathways in human brain samples.
Science Daily, Nature
The Climate Lounge National Park service quietly releases Sea level Rise projections. Letâs talk LOUDLY about it!Earlier this year, drafts of a report on sea level rises impact on national parks became public mainly for what had been taken out of them... The one thing just so happened to be the main thing that was causing sea level rise in the first place. Climate Change. Yup, every mention of human caused climate change was removed. Itâs like taking a running leap into thorn bushes thinking that if I just close my eyes at the end, the thorns will disappear. The thorns wonât disappear. Because thatâs a stupid way of thinking.
Fast forward a month and a half and the report has finally been released⊠quietly with all of the mentions of climate change kept in it but without all of that silly little thing like publicity from outlets such as... the agency it came fromâŠ
Ok, so what was this report about again that led to its âoddâ treatment? It was a write up created to help 118 coastal parks across the United States prepare for the impacts a changing climate will have on the natural resources and history within those parks. How horrible right? UGH!
Anywaysss, what did the report find? Not surprisingly, as global temperatures heat up, sea levels are expected to rise. And that means for many national parks located along coastlines, problems could quickly worsen over the next century.
The worst hit parks are along North Carolinaâs outer Banks. In particular, near the Wright Brothers National Memorial, if we continue to keep emitting greenhouse gases, sea levels could rise 2.7 feet by 2100. Nearby, large portions near the Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout seashores would also be underwater. But that is just one park and one area. Many parks from Historic Jamestowne and Assateague Island, Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas, the Florida Everglades and Jean Lafitte National Historic Park in New Orleans and even the national parks, right here where I live in Washington DC would be pretty vulnerable.
The Parks service even included a graphic of what Roosevelt Island in the middle of the Potomac River in Washington DC would look like if a category 3 hurriane made landfall. Hint, the park looks blue⊠because itâs covered in water.
This report is just another in a long list of studies that show just how vulnerable our coasts are to a rising sea because we continue to belch greenhouse gases in the air and do little to change our ways.
For instance, NOAA (in full disclosure I work there but had no hand in this report) issued a report earlier this year that simply looked at how nuisance flooding, minor floods that do little damage but are annoying and occur simply during high tides, would change in various emissions scenarios. The results were pretty shocking. For many places including San Francisco, Boston, New York, Miami, nuisance flooding, that is flooding only due to the tides could happen EVERY DAY by the end of the century if we keep emitting greenhouse gases. And these numbers could increase to over 100 days by 2040-2050, a mere 20-30 years. Thatâs effectively NOW for planning purposes.
Weâve already done enough damage to ourselves. Hows about we finally stop it, and start getting to work on the healing process.
Reveal News, National Park Service
Pub Quiz Speaking words of wisdom, letter B Africanized bees, also known as killer bees, first arrived in the Americas in what country? What is the class of subatomic particles in which protons and neutrons are included? Calculated in bits per second, this is the amount of data that can be sent through a connection. What is it more commonly known as? This principle in fluid dynamics states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy. What is the name of this principle? A solution consisting of a weak acid and its conjugate base, or vice versa, that is used to maintain the pH value constant in many chemical application is also known as a? A genus of gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria that is a member of the phylum Firmicutes is a? What Beatles album was released on the 8th of May in 1970? Insects of the Order Coleoptera are better known as? Where would you find the nearest corpus callosum? What word in the English language contains the greatest number of the letter âBâ?Did you enjoy this bookish badinage?
In ClosingThank you, everyone.
And remember, follow the science!
-
On This Week's Show Science News Origins of amphibian-killing fungus uncovered How California becomes the first US state to mandate solar on new homes New discoveries about some ancient reptiles Science News Origins of amphibian-killing fungus uncovered
This is a detective story. The chytrid fungus, also known as Bd (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) has been decimating amphibian populations globally for a good 20 years now after it was first discovered in dying frogs in Queensland, Australia.
The fungus causes excessive skin shedding which makes the animals die of âthick skinâ. Skin is such an essential organ to amphibians with many processes such as absorbing additional oxygen and releasing toxins. Itâs a bit like amphibian eczema.
The impact of the disease has been so great due to the huge amount of global trade of amphibians. With animals moving before people realised that there was a problem, by the time people noticed the problem it was already everywhere. This has made tracking its origins hard. So far the origin has been narrowed down to Asia, Africa, North America or South America.
This mystery is now getting solved thanks to the combined global efforts of 10 years of field and lab work by 35 institutions. The conclusion is that the disease originated between 50 to 120 years ago in East Asia.
They figured this out by sequencing the fungal DNA from within amphibian genomes. Over 200 samples were used to draw this conclusion but sometimes less than 1% of sample material gave any usable results. Understanding the origin of this disease and how it links to other similar fungi could help plan for future risks.
Science News, BBC
California becomes first US state to mandate solar on homesCalifornia first US state to mandate solar panels on new construction homes built after 1 January, 2020. That includes apartment buildings as well.
Already state law that requires that 50% of electricity to come from non carbon-emitting sources by 2030.
Critics point out that mandate to add between $8,000 and $12,000 to the cost of a home. Average cost of home in California is about $440,000, about 2 œ times the national average. According to Energy Commission homeowners will only see an additional $40 to monthly mortgage payments.
Californians pay some of the highest electric rates in the country already. However, residential customersâ monthly average bills are about $96, among the lowest in the country.
How?
Because California ranks 49th in the nation in per capita electricity consumption. Largely driven by the stateâs strong commitment to energy efficiency, and the climate. Few people near coast have air conditioners. Cool summers.
Nearly 16% of Californiaâs electricity last year came from solar.
Mandate still has to get through the Building Standards Commission. Decision later this year.
Remember when I said that there already exists a state law that requires that a full 50% of all electricity to come from non carbon-emitting sources by 2030? According to the Public Utilities Commission the state will likely meet goal of 50% generation of non-carbon electricity about 10 years ahead of schedule.
Currently rebuilding our home that was destroyed in the October 2017 wildfires.
Are we putting solar on it? Hell yes.
BBC News
Jurassic fossil tail tells of missing link in crocodile family treeThe latest missing link that has been discovered links crocodiles with the pelagosaurus genera. Pelagosaurus were reptiles of the open seas that lived for about 8 million years before going extinct about 175 mya. Whilst they would have resembled crocodiles they were more like whales and dolphins in their overall body structure.
The new species is called Magyarosuchus fitosi after the amateur collector who discovered it, Attila Fitos. It is estimated to have been about 5m long. The first signs that a new species was on the cards were unusual vertebrae; these turned out to be a part of its tale fin, a feature previously only found on the Pelagosaurus. But unlike a Pelagosaurus, the creature also had heavy armour, more associated with land going crocodyliforms.
Sometimes with fossils it can be challenging to work out when you genuinely have a new species on your hands, but when you have discoveries as apparent as this one there leaves very little room for debate.
Science Daily, University of Edinburgh, PeerJ
What The Hell Was That?This is where Iâd normally put the conclusion and answer to last weekâs WTHWT
Since we donât have a quorum we are going to delay the fun until next week!
This Week In Science HistoryIn a slight departure from our usual TWISH format Iâm gonna to talk about one of the greatest scientists in history.
100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Feynman
Was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in quantum mechanics as well as in particle physics
For his work quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, along with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirĆ Tomonaga were award the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.
He developed the Feynman diagrams which were used as a representation for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles. Feynman was also one of the great popularizers and spokespersons for science.
So today Iâm gonna to rattle off four selected quotes from an article this week in Science News celebrating Richard Feynman
1. âThere is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.âAn expression of the importance of atoms from the opening pages of Feynmanâs lectures.
2. âFrom my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.âThat comes from a set of lectures compiled in book form as The Character of Physical Law,
3. âI think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.âPerhaps Feynmanâs sentiment might better be expressed by saying that anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics, doesnât.
4. âThe first principle is that you must not fool yourself â and you are the easiest person to fool.âThe best advice to scientists and anybody else who seeks the truth about the world. The truth may not be what youâd like it to be, or what would be best for you, or what your preconceived philosophy tells you that it is. Unless you recognize how easily you can be fooled, you will be.
Bonus quote:
âPhysics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
PromotionMatildaâs Lab
In ClosingUntil next time...follow the science!
This episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from San Francisco, California; and Chester, England.
-
Coming up on this weekâs show
The Climate Lounge with Tom Di Liberto
The return of the What the Hell Was That game!
Science News:
Kilauea Volcano Erupts How birds got their beaks Kew Gardens Glasshouse Reopens Stephen Hawking's Final Theory About The Multiverse Science News with Sophie McManus and Nevena Hristozova Kilauea Volcano EruptsCan you imagine living on top of an active volcano?! I am sure you are aware, but Kilauea has been kicking off lately. Nearly 2000 people have been evacuated around the south side of the island. They will probably move back soon, depending on developments, obviously. Move back to live on top of their active volcano.
So, what happened?
A series of small earthquakes was recently followed by a quake with mag 6.9 last Friday. A new fissure then opened up and started letting out hot lava. Kilauea is one of the worldâs most active volcanoes and has been in a state of eruption for the past 35 years.
Tropical Visions video (co. Paradise Helicopters) is amazing to watch. It is like the cartoons of volcanoes you see as a child. Spectacular bright red lava fizzing everywhere and engulfing cars. Less appealing, by the sounds of it, are the emissions of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide. Kinda toxic. Thatâs why the people have been evacuated. Also the lava.
A nice quote by the excellently-named Mika McKinnon, volcanologist and disaster researcher, âHawaiian volcanoes can be extremely deadly, but itâs a hazard you can walk away from.â This explains the footage of people strolling away from the lava flows. I mean strolling as a relative term.
In other Hawaiian news, Hawaii became the first state to ban sunscreens that contain chemicals harmful to marine life. Letâs hope that Kilauea calms down a bit - and that other places follow the lead on the sunscreen front.
How Birds Got Their BeaksThis story comes from Yale University and itâs telling us how scientists were able to reconstruct a missing link. Not between apes and humans, but between dinosaurs and birds. This bird-like dinosaur had wings and a breastbone which look very much like the ones of modern birds and it had a beak too, but very much like reptilian dinosaurs. Itâs mouth was apparently full of teeth.
This species is not new. Itâs been known to scientists for over 150 years, but due to the bad condition of the fossils it was hard to reconstruct its head to get more details. In 2014 though, a new fossil of the Ichthyornis dispar was found and this time it had a perfectly preserved skull. A 3D reconstruction showed that it could move its upper part of the beak independently, like birds today can and reptilian dinosaurs definitely can't. The fossils also showed these indentations on the surface of the skull, which are were a rather strong set of muscles were attaching, to allow the ancient dino-bird to grab, hold on to and chew its food with the help of its sharp teeth. Having such strong muscles operate a beak that is also capable of performing some of the tasks a hand sound have also probably played a role in freeing the front limbs to be used for flight.
Kew Gardens Glasshouse ReopensThis is great news! A few days ago, Kew gardens reopened its glasshouse (Temperate house). It houses 10,000 plants from the âGoldilocksâ zone - some of these are exceedingly rare and the glasshouse represents a final refuge. I remember going to Kew a long time ago to the glasshouses. Temperate house is the worldâs LARGEST glasshouse, and it is beautiful.
In an interview with the BBC, the naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough said he had first visited Kew Gardens "back when it cost a penny...When I had an office job at the BBC, when I used to be stuck in the office and get really depressed, I would come here at the weekend and take a deep breath, because there was a smell of the tropics.â He reiterated the importance of such institutions in avoiding extinctions.
Stephen Hawking's Final Theory About The MultiverseOne of the last (so far) legacies of Prof Hawking is an article submitted just days before his passing. He has worked on this for almost 40 years and itâs a theory which tries to explain how is it possible for the Big Bang to have created an infinite number of Universes, more or less similar to ours.
Originally, his work with James Hartle worked out how, based on principles of quantum mechanics the Big Bang could have potentially created an infinite number of universes; some very similar to our and others so different that even the laws of physics wouldnât be the same.
Later on, further developing the math to solve this problem, Hawking with the help of Professor Hertog from Belgium, used principles from String Theory to work out the math. By doing so, the two physicists came up to a solution according to which the Big Bang created a bunch of parallel universes, but they all have distinct similarities. Meaning that there might be a universe out there where Iâm skinny and can sing, another one where dinosaurs still exist and yet another one where Professor Hawking never went to grad school but became a world famous tap-dancer!
One of the implications of the theory that parallel universes emerging as a result of the Big Bang exist based on the String Theory principles rather than the quantum physics ones, is that we might be able to actually detect parallel universes, since their basic physical laws will be very similar. Itâs still doubtful though that weâd be able to travel through them.
The Climate Lounge with Tom Di Liberto Thwaites Thwaites Don't Tell Me!Welcome to the Lounge! Of course, the first thing anyone gets to hear when they enter the lounge is an update on Puerto Rico. Less than 50,000 people are still without power a month before the hurricane season starts. And every week stories come out that are shocking but get completely overlooked due to the ongoing madness. For instance, did you know that the Puerto Rico Department of Public Health found that the overall suicide rate in Puerto Rico increased 29% in the first months after hurricane Maria? Or how about this quote about rebuilding Puerto Ricoâs power grid from a former energy executive whose has dealt with natural disasters from hurricane Sandy, to severe storms in Jamaica to earthquakes in California, âIâve never seen anything like that--not in a developed nationâ said Ed Muller. So yeah, still a disgrace.
Lately Iâve been talking about interesting research, new papers that have come out, and that has been fun. But I wanted to take you this week on a little journey to a story about getting the data needed to make cool new studies. On April 30, the largest American/British joint science expedition to Antarctica in 7 decades was launched to look at the Thwaites glacier, a terrifying âwhat ifâ glacier which if it completely melts would raise global sea levels by 10 feet. As David Holland, one of the principal researchers on this project said in an article in the Washington Post âFor global sea-level change in the next century, this Thwaites glacier is almost the entire story,â. Right now, basically, scientists fear only a bump in the sea floor is helping to hold the glacier in place. But itâs hard to know how precariously things are because well...
The one issue with the Thwaites glacier is that, like, Antarctica, is like, super hard to get to. This expedition will fix that. So whoâs going? There will be 6, countâem 6 field expeditions going along with two computer modeling studies. And they are pulling out all the celebrity stops. One of the submersible research vessels will even be BOATY MCBOATFACE!
They are going to study this glacier from all directions. Holland will be drilling holes near the grounding line (where the ocean, bedrock and ice meet), and put a remotely operated vehicle in see whats going on.
Sridhar Anandakrishnan, a Penn State geoscientist will be doing seismic surveys detonating small explosive devices within the Thwaites glacier to measure the echoes of the sound waves. This will help determine what the glacier is flowing over and help figure out the glaciers rate of retreat.
There will also be ships and planes with radars, and remote sensing, ocean gliders, subs and more drilling. This research expeditions will come back with an absolute treasure trove of data which can then be fed into computer models to determine better projections for what lies ahead.
Itâs a daunting task, in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. But over 100 scientists are heading out because they know just how dire things will be for humanity if the Thwaites glaciers retreats all the way back to the south pole. So you know, not a heavy research trip at all. Just another walk in the glacial parkâŠ.
What The Hell Was That?We rummaged through the hallway closet and found an old game. Listen next week to see who can guess what the hell that sound was.
In ClosingIn 2004 when asked about his IQ, Professor Stephen Hawking replied, âI have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losersâ.
This episode of the Blue Streak Science Podcast comes to you from San Francisco, California; Cambridge, England; Washington, D.C.; and Brussels, Belgium.
- Vis mere
