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Quirks and Quarks

Quirks and Quarks

CBC

CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks covers the quirks of the expanding universe to the quarks within a single atom... and everything in between.

647 - The rapidly changing Arctic, and more
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  • 647 - The rapidly changing Arctic, and more

    A little bit of scratching can do some good, but too much can hurt

    Scratching an itch can feel great, so scientists decided to dig into why that is the case since we know too much scratching isn’t good for us. Dr. Dan Kaplan, a professor of dermatology and immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, said they found that scratching drives inflammation to the skin, which, in light moderation, helps to fight bacterial skin infections. But he warns that continual or excessive scratching can prolong an itch and potentially damage the skin. Their study is in the journal Science. 


    Bear hazing goes high-tech with drones

    A wildlife manager in the US has found that drones can be a safe and effective way to discourage problem bears from troubling human habitation and livestock. Wesley Sarmento started working in the prairies of Montana to prevent bear-human conflicts, but found the usual tricks of the trade were not as effective as he wanted them to be. Previously he tried to use noisemakers, dogs, trucks, and firearms, but buzzing bears with flying robots turned out to work much better. Now a PhD student at the University of Montana, he published an article about his hazing research in Frontiers in Conservation Science.


    Ants can remember and hold grudges against those who trouble them

    When ants fight with those from another nearby colony, it makes an impression. A new study has found the insects can remember the chemical signature of the aggressors, and will respond more vigorously and violently the next time they cross paths. Dr. Volker Nehring, a researcher at the University of Freiburg, Germany, describes the phenomenon as “the nasty neighbour" where ants are most aggressive to ant colonies closest to them, and says this is due to resource protection. Dr Nehring and his team’s research was published in the journal Current Biology.


    Scientists on the front line of permafrost thaw describe changes in the Arctic 

    The acceleration of change in the Arctic due to global warming is transforming the landscape on a year-to-year basis, often in surprising ways. That’s according to scientists who’ve been studying the effects of climate change in the North. 


    One study found that lakes in Western Greenland shifted from pristine blue to dirty brown from one year to the next due to increased permafrost melting and runoff. Jasmine Saros, a lake ecologist from the University of Maine, said they were astonished by the magnitude of change they saw in all 10 lakes they studied and how quickly it happened. That study was published in the journal PNAS. 


    We also speak with William Quinton, a permafrost hydrologist from Wilfred Laurier University and the director of the Scotty Creek Research Station in southern Northwest Territories, an area he describes as “the frontline of permafrost thaw.” Quinton was part of a research team, led by Anna Virkkala from the Woodwell Climate Research Centre, that found that 34 per cent of the Arctic Boreal Zone — a region where carbon was safely locked up in the permafrost for thousands of years — has now become a carbon source. That study is in the journal Nature Climate Change.


    Fri, 07 Feb 2025 - 54min
  • 646 - Technology to preserve biodiversity and more…

    Bits of Bennu have building blocks of life

    NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission took six years to travel to the asteroid Bennu and return samples to Earth. Now, the first results from the analysis of these rocks are being released. Researchers found evidence of salty water, as well as the elements necessary for life, such as amino acids and the building blocks for RNA and DNA. We spoke with Kim Tait, senior curator of mineralogy at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and co-author of one of the recent studies, published in the journal Nature.


    Unlocking the secret of Polar bear de-icing

    Polar bears spend so much time going in and out of the water that they are considered marine mammals. So when they do this in the frozen Arctic, why are they not covered in ice? A new study reveals the secret turns out to lie in the unique oils they produce that covers their white fur. Julian Carolan, a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin, worked with scientists in Norway, Denmark and the U.K. on this paper published in the journal Science Advances.


    Truffle-hunting dog finds fabulous new fungus

    A chance discovery has turned out to reveal a new species of North American truffle. These fungi can be desirable and valuable delicacies. An American truffle hunter, Lois Martin, and her  trained dog Monza found a distinctive truffle in a city park that turned out to be a fungus new to science. Although native to North America, it was more similar to European truffles than any found in the Americas. Dr. Greg Bonito at Michigan State University named this new truffle Tuber canirevelatum,  meaning the ‘dog-found’ truffle in honour of Monza and other dogs who look for truffles. The work was published in the journal Mycologia.  


    Voiding your bowels can improve cognitive performance

    To maximize your cognitive function, it might be a good idea to make sure you have a poo first. That’s according to a recent study in the journal Sports Medicine and Health Science. In it, scientists found that 9 out of 13 individuals improved how well they did in a mentally taxing cognitive test if they defecated first, whereas all 13 of them improved in their performance when they took a mild laxative the night before. Chia-Hua Kuo, a professor of sports medicine and nutrition at the University of Taipei, said they also saw an increase in oxygen consumption in the test subjects’ subnavel regions as they were doing the test, suggesting a previously unsuspected link between the rectum and the brain. 


    Saving species on Earth, preserving them on the moon

    The world is in a biodiversity crisis. We’re losing species at an unprecedented rate, thanks to climate change, habitat loss, overexploitation and more. We look at some of the more out-of-the-box solutions that are currently in the works – from creating an internet of animals to monitor biodiversity, to saving samples of Earth’s biological resources on the moon.


    We spoke with:


    Martin Wikelski, the director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, honorary professor of ornithology at the University of Konstanz, and the scientific head of the ICARUS project.


    Mary Hagedorn, a senior research scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and senior author of a recent paper published in the journal Bioscience proposing a passive biorepository on the moon.

    Fri, 31 Jan 2025 - 54min
  • 645 - Solving mysteries in our solar system, and more

    Reintroducing Hawaii’s sacred crow to the wild

    The world’s most endangered crow, the Hawaiian crow or or ʻalalā, is making tentative steps towards a comeback. After going extinct in the wild, only 120 birds remain in captivity, in two facilities operated by the San Diego Zoo. Over the years, researchers have attempted reintroductions in the bird's native habitat on the Big Island of Hawaii, but those efforts have all been unsuccessful. Recently, the team tried something different - reintroducing the birds to a different island than their native home. The initial release happened in October and so far, the team, including Bryce Masuda, has high hopes and positive signs from their latest attempt.


    Lasers tell us about the pterosaur’s unique tail

    The great flying reptiles of the dawn of the age of dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, took flight with delicate but flexible internal tail structure that allowed it to work like a kite. Scientists used recently developed technology to enable them to see a lattice-like structure in the soft tissue in the early pterosaur soft tissue that was otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Natalia Jagielska, a paleontologist at the Lyme Regis Museum in Dorset, England, said their kite-like tail vane would have stood upright and could have functioned as a display and to help them in flight. The study was published in the eLife journal, Evolutionary Biology. 


    How gophers help re-seed volcanic landscape with life

    After Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980 it left a shattered, ash-covered, barren landscape behind. But the one-time reintroduction of gophers to one area led to a remarkably fast recovery of plants and other fauna. Forty-years later, changes to the environment are still being documented by  Dr. Mia Maltz, assistant professor of Microbial Ecology and Soil Earth at the University of Connecticut, and her team. They published their research in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes.


    Desert ants’ magnetic navigation

    Desert ants that navigate the endless sands of the Sahara use the Earth’s magnetic field to find their way, which is not unusual. But unlike other animals like birds and turtles they don’t appear to have an internal compass that aligns north and south. Instead they are unique in that they  use a more subtle cue – the polarity of the magnetic field. A study looking at this led by Dr. Pauline Fleischmann, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oldenburg in Germany  was published in the journal Current Biology. 


    Celestial body mysteries: dark comets and meteorites from young asteroid families 

    The thousands of small celestial bodies in our solar system are now a bit less mysterious, thanks to several recent discoveries. 

    One group of astronomers have traced back the origins of 84 per cent of all known meteorites that have pummeled Earth to just a few young asteroid families in the asteroid belt. Michaël Marsset, from the European Southern Observatory in Chile, said collisions in the asteroid belt create a collisional cascade that produces fragments, some of which end up raining down on Earth as meteorites. Two of their papers were published in the journal Nature and a third in Astronomy & Astrophysics. 

    Another group of astronomers have identified two populations of stealthy dark comets that are something in between a comet and an asteroid. They’ve found fourteen of these objects whose orbital motion is comet-like, but which lack a visible tail like regular comets. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, said they’ve found two types of these unusual solar system bodies: larger ones in an elliptical orbit out to Jupiter and smaller ones in orbit around Earth. Their study was published in the journal PNAS.

    Fri, 24 Jan 2025 - 54min
  • 644 - Climate scientists as physicians of the planet, and more

    Ancient human ancestors didn’t eat meat, and so couldn’t build big brains

    One of the main reasons scientists think we became so smart is because at some point in our evolutionary past, our ancestors started eating energy-dense meat to fuel the growth of large brains. However it hasn’t been clear when this started. Using a new technology, scientists were able to analyze the tooth enamel of seven 3.5 million year old Australopithecines to directly measure their meat consumption. Tina Lüdecke, from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, said it revealed they were primarily herbivores so meat eating would have had to come later in our evolutionary history. Their study was published in the journal Science. 


    Building a robot bee that could one day pollinate crops

    Bees do an incredibly important job pollinating crops and wild plants. Now scientists in the US are trying to emulate their skills with a tiny robot bee that has all the agility and ability of the real insect. They hope eventually they can be used in indoor factory farms where real bees can’t survive.  Kevin Chen, associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at M.I.T and PhD candidate Suhan Kim were a part of this project. Their research was published in the journal Science Robotics.


    We are made of star stuff – but how did it get here?

    Elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen that are essential to life were forged in supernovae billions of years ago. Now new research is helping to explain how these elements – especially essential carbon – were concentrated in such a way as to be plentifully available for the chemistry of life. The study, led in part by astronomer Trystyn Berg, discovered a cosmic conveyer belt funneling carbon in and out of our galaxy over billions of years. The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.


    Australia’s vanishingly rare marsupial mole gets a genetic checkup

    In the southern desert of Australia, there lives an elusive and unique animal - the marsupial mole. It lives under the sand and is so rare that very few people have ever seen it. Scientists have now published the very first genetic research on this animal in the journal Science Advances, thanks to tissue samples donated by a local museum. Sarah Lucas is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Münster, Germany, and was part of the team. 


    A climate researcher makes the case for scientist-activists

    The stereotype of a scientist is a dispassionate, objective and neutral seeker of nature’s truths, and many think that this makes a career in science incompatible with political activism. Canadian climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe thinks that this is a mistake. She sees her role more like that of a physician for the planet – diagnosing its ills and advocating for the health of her patient, and her patient’s inhabitants. She recently co-authored a paper in the journal Nature Climate Action arguing her case.


    Fri, 17 Jan 2025 - 54min
  • 643 - How crocheted hats help scientists learn about cats, and more

    Was Rome’s fall due to heavy metal poisoning making Romans dumber?

    Ice cores that preserve traces of atmospheric pollutants through history have revealed that industrial activity by Romans – particularly the use and production of lead – meant the air the Romans breathed was heavily contaminated. The levels were high enough to cause neurological problems, including a drop in cognitive function across the population. Joe McConnell and his team at the Desert Research Institute published their findings in the journal PNAS.


    Bats are surfing storms to make migration easier

    Migrating bats in Europe have to fly up to 2000km while pregnant, but they’ve figured out how to get a lift from the weather. The bats have been observed waiting for storm fronts, and then surfing the strong winds in front of the storm to save energy during their migration. Dina Dechmann from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, and colleagues, were able to tag bats with tiny specialized sensors to track their nocturnal movements during migration. Their paper was published in the journal Science.


    Squirrels have developed a taste for vole flesh

    Squirrels in California have been taking advantage of a boom in the population of tiny rodents called voles – by hunting and eating them. This widespread carnivorous behaviour was captured for the first time on videos and photos by a team led by behavioural ecologist Jennifer Smith, as a part of a long-term study of the squirrels. The researchers found dozens of instances of the squirrels killing the voles, which they say changes our fundamental understanding of ground squirrels. Their paper was published in the Journal of Ethology.


    EEG tattoos could outperform standard electrodes 

    EEG is a valuable technology that allows researchers to monitor the electrical activity of the brain, but standard EEG electrodes are cumbersome and are hampered by the difficulty of attaching them. A new temporary EEG tattoo, made by printing conductive ink on the scalp, could be a step ahead. Luize Vasconcelos, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin helped create this ink. The research is published in the Cell Press journal Cell Biomaterials.


    To monitor cat brain waves, researchers made them cute hats

    Aude Castel, a veterinary neurologist from the Université de Montréal, and her team were studying chronic pain in cats — and ways to alleviate it — when she realized that she could crochet hats for the cats and add EEG electrodes to them in order to study their brains. Their research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods. 


    When North America went to the dogs (or vice-versa)

    Researchers examining canid bones from Alaska dating to the last ice age have been intrigued by the complex picture it shows of dog domestication at the time. Their findings were published in the journal Science Advances. Signs of the animals’ diet are preserved in the bones, and shows that humans were clearly feeding their dogs, a clear sign of domestication. François Lanoë from the University of Arizona led the work.

    Fri, 10 Jan 2025 - 54min
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