Episodes
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Episode 411 - Lightning fast eyes and looking for hidden spots
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Monday Dec 28, 2020
How do our eyes process the continually barrage of photos so efficiently? What happens in our eyes that enables us to respond so quickly to stimulus like light or signs of danger? Why do zebra-fish swim towards the light so quickly? How does your brain process and map a room? Does the way your brain processes a space change when you're searching for something rather than exploring?
References:
- Matthias Stangl, Uros Topalovic, Cory S. Inman, Sonja Hiller, Diane Villaroman, Zahra M. Aghajan, Leonardo Christov-Moore, Nicholas R. Hasulak, Vikram R. Rao, Casey H. Halpern, Dawn Eliashiv, Itzhak Fried, Nanthia Suthana. Boundary-anchored neural mechanisms of location-encoding for self and others. Nature, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03073-y
- Yvonne Kölsch, Joshua Hahn, Anna Sappington, Manuel Stemmer, António M. Fernandes, Thomas O. Helmbrecht, Shriya Lele, Salwan Butrus, Eva Laurell, Irene Arnold-Ammer, Karthik Shekhar, Joshua R. Sanes, Herwig Baier. Molecular classification of zebrafish retinal ganglion cells links genes to cell types to behavior. Neuron, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.12.003
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Episode 410 - Mysterious Volcanoes, Plates and Subduction
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Just how old are continental plates? When did plates sliding around and over each other really take off? What can rocks in the Canadian tundra tell us about the ages of the continents? The formation of continents led to a transformation of our planet and it's atmosphere - so when did it start? How can Australia have so many volcanoes on it's east coast despite being so far from the Pacific ring of fire? What causes Australia's mysterious volcanoes? Volcanoes in Alaska may be linked together in one super volcano. The Aleutian islands many volcanoes may be more linked than we thought.
References:
- Sarah M. Aarons, Jesse R. Reimink, Nicolas D. Greber, Andy W. Heard, Zhe Zhang, Nicolas Dauphas. Titanium isotopes constrain a magmatic transition at the Hadean-Archean boundary in the Acasta Gneiss Complex. Science Advances, 2020; 6 (50): eabc9959 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc9959
- American Geophysical Union. (2020, December 3). Cluster of Alaskan islands could be single, interconnected giant volcano. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 20, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201203094531.htm
Monday Dec 14, 2020
Episode 409 - Stellar Weather, Life on other planets and Space Dust
Monday Dec 14, 2020
Monday Dec 14, 2020
What is the space around the sun like? Cold? Hot? Dusty? How does the space around the Sun change over time? Does the Sun suck up dust in the solar system, or blow it out? What can we learn about stellar weather in our neighbouring stars. Red Dwarfs are one of the most common stars in our Galaxy, but also produce lots of flares. Are rocky planets in Red Dwarf's habitable zone safe from stellar weather?
- Andrew Zic, Tara Murphy, Christene Lynch, George Heald, Emil Lenc, David L. Kaplan, Iver H. Cairns, David Coward, Bruce Gendre, Helen Johnston, Meredith MacGregor, Danny C. Price, Michael S. Wheatland. A Flare-type IV Burst Event from Proxima Centauri and Implications for Space Weather. The Astrophysical Journal, 2020; 905 (1): 23 DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abca90
- University of Colorado at Boulder. (2020, December 10). A look at the sun's dusty environment. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 10, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201210112131.htm
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Episode 408 - Life in deep sea soil, and blending in amongst leaves
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Life underneath the sea floor at the deepest parts of the ocean. How can life survive in deep sea with no light and at incredible temperatures? Have you ever thought about life beneath the beneath the sea? How can life survive in soil hotter than boiling water? If a tree feels out of place, it's microbes on leaves tend to blend in with the crowd. What happens to the microbes on the iconic maple leaves as the trees go further north? Feel like a fish out of water, or a maple amongst conifers? Maybe its time to blend in. How can we use plant based compounds to help keep plants safe from bacterial infection?
- Verena B. Heuer, Fumio Inagaki, Yuki Morono, Yusuke Kubo, Arthur J. Spivack, Bernhard Viehweger, Tina Treude, Felix Beulig, Florence Schubotz, Satoshi Tonai, Stephen A. Bowden, Margaret Cramm, Susann Henkel, Takehiro Hirose, Kira Homola, Tatsuhiko Hoshino, Akira Ijiri, Hiroyuki Imachi, Nana Kamiya, Masanori Kaneko, Lorenzo Lagostina, Hayley Manners, Harry-Luke McClelland, Kyle Metcalfe, Natsumi Okutsu, Donald Pan, Maija J. Raudsepp, Justine Sauvage, Man?Yin Tsang, David T. Wang, Emily Whitaker, Yuzuru Yamamoto, Kiho Yang, Lena Maeda, Rishi R. Adhikari, Clemens Glombitza, Yohei Hamada, Jens Kallmeyer, Jenny Wendt, Lars Wörmer, Yasuhiro Yamada, Masataka Kinoshita, Kai Uwe Hinrichs. Temperature limits to deep subseafloor life in the Nankai Trough subduction zone. Science, 2020 DOI: 10.1126/science.abd7934
- Geneviève Lajoie, Steven W. Kembel. Host neighborhood shapes bacterial community assembly and specialization on tree species across a latitudinal gradient. Ecological Monographs, 2020; DOI: 10.1002/ecm.1443
- Hong-Wu Liu, Qing-Tian Ji, Gang-Gang Ren, Fang Wang, Fen Su, Pei-Yi Wang, Xiang Zhou, Zhi-Bing Wu, Zhong Li, Song Yang. Antibacterial Functions and Proposed Modes of Action of Novel 1,2,3,4-Tetrahydro-β-carboline Derivatives that Possess an Attractive 1,3-Diaminopropan-2-ol Pattern against Rice Bacterial Blight, Kiwifruit Bacterial Canker, and Citrus Bacterial Canker. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2020; 68 (45): 12558 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.0c02528