Healing a Hole in a Heart * Titan's Craters Swallowed by Swamps * The Uphill March of the Penguins * Formation Flying and Avian Efficiency * Prairie Dogs Do "The Wave" * Organic Flow Battery
CBC Radio | Posted: January 18, 2014 5:00 AM | Last Updated: January 18, 2014
On today's show, we'll speak to a Canadian researcher who has looked to the lowly sandcastle worm to help develop a glue that can mend a broken heart; we'll find out why Saturn's moon, Titan, has so few craters; we'll hear why many migrating birds choose to fly in formation; we'll discover why prairie dogs like to do the wave; we'll learn why emperor penguins have taken to high ground; and we'll hear about a new kind of battery that could provide power when the sun don't shine.
Sutures and staples have been used for decades to close holes in the human body, but they have a lot of drawbacks -- especially when it comes to repairing something as small and delicate as a newborn baby's heart. Canadian scientist Dr. Jeffrey Karp, Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, helped lead a team that has developed an alternative to staples for fixing a hole in infant's heart. Inspired by creatures that stick to wet surfaces, they came up with a blood-resistant, flexible glue that can secure a patch over a hole in a heart, even while it's beating.
Related Links
- Paper in Science Translational Medicine
- News release from Boston Children's Hospital
- CBC News article
- MIT Technology Review article
- Dr. Karp previously on Quirks & Quarks
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is, in one sense, not very moonlike. Titan seems to lack the craters that characterize our moon, and many of the other satellites in the solar system. And those craters it does have are shallower and more degraded than on other moons. Now, Dr. Catherine Neish, a Canadian scientist and Assistant Professor of Physics and Space Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, thinks she may know why. Dr Neish has determined that many craters have been partially or fully covered up by soggy sediments and wetlands, similar to the way craters on Earth may be covered by oceans. Of course, on Titan, the "wet" in these wetlands is liquid methane, not water.
Related Links
Antarctica's emperor penguins are known for being the biggest penguins in the world and for the heroic lengths they go to, in order to raise chicks in one of the harshest environments on Earth. The penguins breed almost exclusively on sea ice, which is expected to melt away as greenhouse gas-driven climate change continues to warm the Earth. Scientists feared that could spell doom for the emperor penguin. But a recent satellite image analysis by Peter Fretwell, a geographer with the British Antarctic Survey, has surprised scientists by showing that when the sea ice isn't stable, some emperor penguins can climb up and breed atop ice shelves as high as a ten-storey building.
Related Links
- Paper in PLoS ONE
- Release from the British Antarctic Survey
- Article from BBC News
- Peter Fretwell previously on Quirks & Quarks
Many larger birds migrate in groups, using the iconic "V" formation, and scientists have long known this saves the birds energy. They haven't, however, had a full understanding of how. It's been thought that the trailing birds ride the "upwash" of air from the wings of the birds in front of them. Now, Dr. Steven Portugal, a post-doctoral researcher in the Structure and Motion Laboratory of the Royal Veterinary College in England, and his colleagues, have discovered the details of this strategy. The birds ride the upwash from the trailing edges of the wing in front, by flapping their wings in careful coordination with the bird in front, essentially riding the wave the bird in front creates as its wings cycle up and down.
Related Links
- Paper in Nature
- Royal Veterinary College release
- Not Exactly Rocket Science blog
- Northern Bald Ibis reintroduction project
Prairie dogs do something remarkably similar to "the wave" that ripples through the audience stands at hockey or football games Like standing up and sitting down during "the wave", the prairie dog version, known as jump-yips, are contagious - once one prairie dog jumps up and yips, others take their turn in sequence. Dr. James Hare, Associate Head and Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Manitoba, thinks he's figured out why prairie dogs do this -- to test how well their neighbours are paying attention and looking out for predators.
Related Links
- Paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B
- University of Manitoba release
- CBC news story
- National Geographic video and story
Flow batteries are a battery design that is well suited for backing up intermittent renewable energy generators, like solar and wind. They allow storage of electricity, in liquids, that can be stored separately from the power-conversion part of the battery, allowing larger amounts of energy to be stored than in a conventional solid battery. Flow batteries, however, have been handicapped by the fact that the energy storage system uses expensive metals. Now Dr. Michael Aziz, the Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues, have developed a new chemistry for energy storage in flow batteries. It's an organic molecule called a quinone that is inexpensive, and, in early testing, seems to have great promise.
Related Links
- Paper in Nature
- Harvard release
- Nature News
- CBC News story