Transcript

4.17.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader
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is Kelly Taylor. I have some articles related to the
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topics of science and nature. At first, a reminder that
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RADIOI is a reading service intended for people who are
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blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
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read printed material. We'll start with an article from Popular Mechanics,
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and the headline for this article reads, Archaeologists found a
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two thousand year old garden beneath a church. It may
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be the site of Jesus's tomb. This is from April fifteenth.
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At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden,
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and in the garden a new tomb in which no
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one had ever been laid, quotes John nineteen, verse forty one.
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As a literary device, ice this description of the burial
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place of Jesus Christ is effected. It offers a contrast
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between the site of jesus death at the crucifixion site
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of Calvary also called Golgotha, both derived from the Latin
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for place of the skull, and a fertile garden brimming
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with life. It also provides a cyclical shape to the
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final chapter of the Christ's narrative, which begins with his
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arrest in the garden of Gethsemone. So as storytelling, this
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single sentence from the Gospel of John, the most recently
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written of the four canonical Gospels, has a substantial power
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to its brevity, But as a historical record of where
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exactly one of the most famous men who ever lived
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was laid to rest, you'd be forgiven for finding it
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sorely lacking in detail. Yet, thanks to a new discovery
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reported in the Times of Israel, that sentence might be
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key to confirming where the real man at the center
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of the Christian faith was placed after his famous crucifixion.
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As the Times notes, the site that now hosts the
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Church of the Holy Sepulcher is held in the Christian
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tradition to encompass both the crucifixion site and the tomb
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in which Christ was buried. As such, it is beset
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upon at all times by christ following pilgrims from across
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the planet determined to worship at the site where they
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believe the Messiah lay dead for three days before his
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resurrection on Easter Sunday. But this popularity is only part
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of the problem for archaeologists hoping to examine the purportedly
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holy site. There was, also, as The Times describes, quote,
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decades of infighting between the three religious communities charged with
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managing the church, the Orthodox Patriarchate the Custody of the
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Holy Land, and the Armenian Patriarchic. When these groups finally
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came to a consensus in twenty nineteen that the Church
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of the Holy Sepulcher required renovations to replace the site's
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nineteenth century floor, a team of Italian architects with La
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Sapienza University saw their opportunity quote. With the renovation works,
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the religious communities decided to allow archaeological excavations under the floor,
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says Francesco Romana Stasola from the Sapiensa University of Rome.
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The excavations have been under Stasola's direction since they commenced
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in twenty twenty two. Quote. We take turns, but our
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team in Jerusalem always includes ten or twelve people, says Stassola,
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while noting that the bulk of their team remains in
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Rome receiving their data for the post production process. But
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this core team would occasionally be joined by specialists, including
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quote geologists archaeobotanists or archaeo zoologists. Their contributions would prove important,
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as beneath the nineteenth century floor there lies a quarry
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which dates back to the Iron Age from twelve hundred
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to five eighty six PC. During the time of Jesus,
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this quarry was a burial site, with several tombs hewn
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in the rock. It wasn't the only such site in Jerusalem,
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but when Constantine, the first emperor of Rome to convert
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to Christianity, was in power, this quarry was the one
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exalted by early Christians as the site of the burial,
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so the emperor ordered the construction of the first iteration
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of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher there. The church
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would suffer numerous attacks over the centuries before its current
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form was constructed by crusaders in the twelfth century. Whatst
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a Solist team found was that in the time between
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when the quarry was originally mined during the h Iron
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Age and the construction of the church atop it, the
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area to which the burial site is attributed had at
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one time been used for agriculture. Based on the discovery
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of two thousand year old olive trees and grape vines. Quote,
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low stone walls were erected and the space between them
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was filled with dirt, noted Stussola, who added, the archaeological
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findings have been especially interesting for us in light of
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what is mentioned in the Gospel of John, whose information
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is considered written or collected by someone familiar with Jerusalem
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at the time. The gospel mentions a green area between
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the cavalry and the tomb, and we identified these cultivated fields.
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Stassola acknowledged that a full analysis of all the artifacts
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uncovered during the excavation, which also included coins and pottery
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dating roughly to the fourth century, would take years to complete.
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As for whether this discovery definitively proved the burial site
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of Christ, Stassola chose to look at it from a
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different angle. Quote. The real treasure we are revealing is
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the history of the people who made this sight what
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it is by expressing their faith here she told the times.
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Whether someone believes or not in the historicity of the
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Holy Sepulcher, the fact that generations the people did is objective.
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The history of this place is the history of Jerusalem,
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and at least from a certain moment, it is the
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history of the worship of Jesus Christ. Next story is
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from Popular Science. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn't just
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a floating trash pile. This is from April thirteenth azure
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waves lapping against huge piles of built up junk garbage,
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mountains rising above the sea, a thick crust of filth
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coating the ocean's surface. It's easy to find striking images
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of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The problem is that
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these pictures of the GPGP are misleading and obscure the
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truth about the content of the GPGP, its origins, and
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the threat it poses to our ocean life. Visiting the
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Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not easy. For Bruno Saint Rose,
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a lead computational monitor at the Ocean clean Up, an
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organization dedicated to tackling marine waste. A trip begins by
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boarding a ship at Victoria Harbor in British Columbia, sailing southwest.
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The first thousand miles of ocean is relatively clear. Quote.
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Then all of a sudden, after three and a half
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days of sailing, you see an increase of debris sightings,
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says Saint Rose. This junk isn't piled up on the
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sea's surface. Instead, the ocean within the GPGP becomes like
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a soup of microplastics, says Saint Rose. Larger objects dot
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this broth, including tangles of ghost nets thick masses of
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abandoned fishing gear. The Ocean Clean Up estimates that as
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much as eighty six percent of the plastics in the
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GPGP come from fishing activity. The nonprofit organization reckons that
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the GPGP has grown to cover an area of ocean
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twice the size of Texas. How did this happen? As
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far back as nineteen seventy three, seafarers traveling through the
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North Pacific Ocean noticed an unusually high number of man
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made objects. While it's no surprise to find pieces of
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plastic in our seas, a twenty twenty three study estimated
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there are one hundred seventy one trillion of them, it
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was surprising to find them so far from any land mass. Quote.
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The International Space Station is actually closer to the GPGP
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most of the time than it is to the rest
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of human beings. Saint Rose points out the remote area
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of Cee, where the GPGP is located, is surrounded by
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the North Pacific geyer that spelled g y r e
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a network of rotating ocean currents. These ensnare plastic and
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other debris that enters their flow, gradually moving them across
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the ocean, eventually slowly turning borded vortices within the gyre
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draw in the debris. The GPGP is split into two
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main areas, the Western garbage Patch near Japan and the
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Eastern Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii. While the plastic
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may subsequently move between these two areas, which change in
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size and location as time passes, they are unlikely to
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escape these swirling currents. The Ocean clean Up is fighting
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against this accumulation. In twenty twenty four, the Foundation removed
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eleven and a half million kilos of garbage from the
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world's oceans and rivers. They even put a price tag
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on cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for seven
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and a half billion dollars. Saint Rose's team estimates that
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the GPGP could be cleared within a decade. Not everyone
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agrees that cleaning up the GPGP would be the best
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way to address our ocean's plastic problem. The Ocean clean
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Up uses large, net based systems to dredge junk from
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the oceans. These nets effectively remove larger plastic items, but
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over ninety percent of the plastic items in the GPGP
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are microplastics less than five millimeters in size. The net
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system has been designed to be easy for animals to
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swim out of, but as they suck up larger pieces
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of plastic from the sea, the clean up team also
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removes animals and microbes that cling onto these items. Quote
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you do see a very broad diversity of microorganisms attaching
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to the plastic, says Sonya ober Beckmann, a marine microbiologist
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at the Federal Institute for Material Research and Testing in Germany.
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Ober Beckmann says many of these microbes also live on
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natural materials, but some are quote thriving on plastic particles.
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Saint Rose points to evidence that some of these plastic
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riders are invasive species that shouldn't be present in the
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ocean in the first place. Additionally, targeting the GPGP is
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just one with the ocean cleanups approaches to their goal
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of plastic free waters. Dredge systems installed in polluted rivers
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halt debris from entering the ocean in the first place.
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These coastal cleanups are easier, less expensive proposals from local governments,
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which are more willing to fund a river based project
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that earns them a highly visible environmental wind. Securing funding
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to clean the far from home and hard to visualize
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great Pacific garbage patch is a harder sell. It's everyone's
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and no one's problem, right, concludes Saint Rose. Next will
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turn to Smithstonian and the headline says you might think
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of shrimp as bugs of the sea, but a remarkable
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discovery shows the opposite bugs are actually shrimp of the land.
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This is from April ninth. Shrimp look an awful lot
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like bugs. The exoskeletons, jointed legs, and compound eyes of
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both groups of living things give them more than a
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passing resemblance to each other, so no wonder some people
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call shrimp like crawfish mud bugs, and a tattoo reading
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shrimp is bugs became a viral meme for underscoring the resemblance,
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but the tattoo got the reality backwards. Shrimp or not bugs.
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Bugs or more properly, insects, are technically a form of crustacean.
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Biologists of many different subdisciplines categorize life in a field
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called systematics. Living things of all sorts, both extant and extinct,
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are constantly being compared and evaluated to build what we
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so commonly think of as the tree of life. The
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addition of new species and novel analyzes are constantly reshaping
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that evolutionary tree, and sometimes the category changes shift more
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than just a few twigs, but entire evolutionary branches. Birds
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are now known to be dinosaurs. For example, whales are
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technically hoofed mammals called artiodactyls, and thanks to a twenty
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twenty three study in Molecular Biology and evolution, insects have
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been shifted into the same group as shrimp and crabs,
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called pan crustacea. The realization that bugs were close relatives
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of crustaceans took almost a century of curiosity to uncover.
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Paleontologist Joanna Wolf of Harvard University, one of the authors
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of the twenty twenty three study, notes that researchers noticed
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some insects and crustaceans had the same structures in their
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eyes and nervous systems. The resemblance could have been the
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result of convergent evolution when two groups independently evolved in
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the same way, so the idea that insects are modified
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crustaceans didn't catch but the hypothesis didn't fully go away either.
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In twenty thirteen, Wolf and colleagues found that insects were
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the sister group or next closest evolutionary relatives too, crustaceans
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called remipedes, which live in undersea caves and are the
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only venomous crustaceans. Remipedes were supposed to be the odd
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balls that were shaped in strange ways due to their
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lives in caves. Now they were coming out as the
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closest relatives to the flies, mantises, bees, and other insects
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we see around us on land. Quote. At that time,
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I was shocked and thought there was something wrong with
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our results. Wolf recalls only to have additional evidence make
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the connection between insects and crustacean stronger. The twenty twenty
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three analysis, based on genetic data, found insects next to
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remipedes in the middle of the various crustacean subgroups. Specifically,
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insects fit within a wide group of crustaceans called Alotriocardia
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that not only includes remipedes but also other unusual groups
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such as shrimp like brachiopods and wormlike cephalopods sometimes called
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horseshoe shrimp. To put in another way, insects are two
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cris stations, as bats are to mammals, a subset that
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belongs to a broader group despite seeming so different from
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their closest relatives. Systematic shifts do far more than simply
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rearrange who's related to whom. Quote. Systematics allow us to
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make sense of the complexity of life, says Smithsonian National
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Museum of Natural History paleontologists ADVT. Jukar. Quote. When we
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recategorize species into new groups, we can look at patterns
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of how that group might be diversifying and the various
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environmental and ecological factors end quote. When birds work recognized
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as dinosaurs, the change did more than reshuffle their place
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on the evolutionary tree. Quote. The change showed us how
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characteristics that we typically associate with birds today, such as feathers,
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hollow bones, and air sacks, were widely found within dinosauria.
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Jukar says. Paleontologists began finding more feathered dinosaurs and dinosaurs
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with traits previously associated with birds, such as complex systems
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of air sacks as part of their respiratory systems. Once
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the connection was made, the newly understood relationship between birds
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and other dinosaurs has allowed experts to better understand why
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only birds survived the mass extinction of sixty six million
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years ago. Comparisons between birds and bird like dinosaurs revealed
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that adaptations for eating seeds and nuts that some birds
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developed during the Cretaceous allowed them to survive, while birdlike
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raptors perished. The recognition that whales or hoofed mammals occurred
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around the same time as birds were found to be dinosaurs.
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The shift had a deep effect on how paleontologists carried
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out their research, as well as the identity of the
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blubbery mammals. Prior to the nineteen nineties, the earliest whales
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were thought to have evolved from carnivorous mammals called mason
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meson I'm sorry, Masonic kids, mesnychi ds Masonic kids. The
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beasts sometimes called wolves with hoofs because they looked like
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canids with hoof like toes, or some of Earth's most
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prominent carnivores. Around fifty five million years ago, the time
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when amphibious whales such as Pakistus began swimming in the shallows,
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but genetic evidence kept grouping whales close to hippos and
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other mammals with hoofed toes called ardiodactyls. Experts debated the connection,
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but about two thousand and one, paleontologists uncovered early whale
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ankle bones that possessed traits only seen among ardiodactyls. The
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recognition shifted where whales fit in the mammalian evolutionary tree
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and recalibrated what sort of ancestral creatures paleontologists should be
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looking for, yielding the two thousand and seven discovery that
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whales most likely evolved from small deer like creatures in
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ancient India. Without the recognition that whales are ardiodactyls, the
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relevance of those ancient hoofed creatures to the origin of
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whales would have been entirely missed, and paleontologists would still
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be wondering where orcas and mink whales come from. In
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the case of the aboves wolf notes, the recognition that
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insects shared a close common ancestor with remipedes helps narrow
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down where and how insects originated. Quote for me, The
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exciting part for insects is the recognition that they do
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not come from a terrestrial ancestor, Wolf says. Until recently,
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the ancestors of insects are thought to be more millipede
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like and evolved once invertebrates began to live on land. Now,
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Wolf notes the closest relatives of insects are wiggly crustaceans
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that live in marine caves. The connection doesn't mean that
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remipedes embody the exact ancestral form of the first insects,
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but rather that their close relationship will cause experts to
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rethink where insects came from and how they evolved. The
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effort will require tracing the ancestry of remipedes and other crustaceans,
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as well as searching for insects in the fossil record,
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both from new fossil sites and perhaps misca characterized fossils
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already in collections. Quote. There's a complicated history and still
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missing pieces, she notes, but now biologists have a better
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sense of what to search for. Bugs are crustaceans, and
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now experts can begin to wonder how that came to be.
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Now to the Guardian and the headline for this article
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is gene edited non browning banana could cut food waste.
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Scientists say. This is from March seventh. Many of us
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have been guilty of binning or throwing away a mushy,
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overripe banana, but now scientists say they have a solution
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with the launch of a genetically engineered non browning banana.
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The product is the latest in a series of gene
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edited fruits and vegetables designed to have a longer shelf life.
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Scientists say the technology is emerging as a powerful new
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weapon against food waste, which occurs globally on an epic scale.
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The banana, developed by Tropic, a biotech company based in
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Norwich in England, is said to remain fresh and yellow
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for twelve hours after being peeled, and is less susceptible
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to turning brown when bunked during harvesting and transportation. Quote.
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Food waste is a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
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It's a very bad clearly, said Gelad gershaan, chief executive
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at Tropic. Bananas are the fourth biggest crop globally, but
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also one where the perishability is very high. Some estimates
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say that fifty percent of the banana's grown are never eaten.
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The company has also developed a slow ripening banana that
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has been approved in several countries, which it plans to
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launch later in the year. Other research teams are working
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on lettuce that wilts more slowly, brews resistant apples and potatoes,
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and potatoes and apples, and identifying the genes that determine
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how quickly grapes and blueberries shrivel. An estimated thirty three
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percent of the produce that is harvested worldwide is never
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consumed due to the short half life of many fruit
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and vegetable products. Bananas are among the most thrown away foods,
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and a government survey suggests that Britons routinely throw away
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one point four million edible bananas every day. Since commercially
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grown bananas lack seeds, they cannot be hybridized in the
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way most fruits can. Bananas are asexual, says Gershan, there's
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no real breeding in bananas. We're eating today the same
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bananas as our grandparents were eating in the nineteen fifties.
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The only real opportunity we have to adjust the banana
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to eat. The challenges the industry is facing is through
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gene editing. The company worked out how to disable a
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gene responsible for the production of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase,
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which causes browning. The same gene is silenced in Arctic apples,
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a genetically modified variety which has been sold in the
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US since twenty seventeen, and blocking the production of polyphenol
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oxidase has been shown to work in tomatoes, melon, kiwifruits
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and mushrooms. In the bananas, Tropic made precise changes to
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existing genes without introducing foreign genetic material. The company already
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has the go ahead to sell the non browning bananas,
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which are yet to be given a name, in the Philippines, Columbia, Honduras,
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the US and Canada. Gershan says the product is expected
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to comply with the requirements of the UK's Genetic Technology
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Precision Breeding Act, which could pave the way for the
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fruit to be sold in England. Doctor Martin Cottacotacle of
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the Khalifa Center for Genetic Engineering and Technology in Abu
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Dhabi says gene editing can be used to target several
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aspects of the ripening process. His team is investigating non
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browning and stay green genes and another pathway involved in
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the production of ethylene, a gas released by fruits that
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triggers the ripening process. We're working on tomato, lettuce, eggplant,
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he said, they're all in the pipeline in quote. Other
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teams are investigating genes that influence the waxy protective layer
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known as the cuticle that covers the surface of a fruit.
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A thicker cuticle can protect against fungal infections in apples
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and tiny cracks in soft fruits such as grapes and blueberries,
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which cause them to shrivel. Professor Kathy Martin of the
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John Innes Center in Norwich said there was increasing interest
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in developing products with a longer shelf life. Quote. The
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reason russet has been a favorite potato with McDonald's that
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is because it doesn't go brown. Non browning is definitely
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a desirable trait in quote. Now a story from the
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Los Angeles Times. Gray whales are dying off the Pacific
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coast again, and scientists aren't sure why this is. From
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April to eighth, grey whales are dying in large numbers again.
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At least seventy whales have perished since the start of
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the year in the shallow protected lagoons of Mexico's Baja
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California Peninsula. Where the animals have congregated for eons to calf,
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nurse and breed, said Stephen Schwartz, a marine scientists who
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have studied grey whales since nineteen seventy seven, and only
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five mother calf pears were identified in Laguna San Ignacio,
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where most of the wintering whales tend to congregate, at
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the lowest number of mother calf paars ever observed in
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the lagoon, according to annual reports from Grey Whale Research
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in Mexico, an international team of researchers co founded by
26:44
Schwartz that has been observing grey whales since the late
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nineteen seventies, the whales are now headed north. In just
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the last two weeks, three grey whales have died in
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San Francisco Bay, one of which was described by veterinarians
27:00
and pathologists at the Marine Mammal Center as skinny and malnutritioned.
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Evaluations on the other two deaths are still being conducted.
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Elisa Schulman Jenniger, who has led the Los Angeles chapter
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of American Cetacean Society's Gray Whales Census, said that the
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number of whales she and her volunteers have observed migrating
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north this spring and swimming south. This past winter is
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the lowest on record. Quote, we didn't see a single
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southbound calf, which has never happened in forty years, she said. Shulman,
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Jenniger and other researchers aren't sure why the whales are dying,
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although she and others believe it could be from lack
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of food based on the depleted conditions in which some
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of the whales have been found. Eastern North Pacific gray
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whales cruised the Pacific coastline every year as they migrate
27:55
six thousand miles north from the Baja Peninsula to their
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summer feeding grounds in the Arctic and sub Arctic regions. There,
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the leviathans gorge themselves on small crustaceans and amphipods that
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live in the muddy sediment of the Bearing, Chuchki and
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Beaufort seas before they head back south to Cavort and
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mingle in balmy Mexican waters. Well that's all for today's
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Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader was Kelly Taylor.
28:25
Now stay tuned for the Health Corner on RADIOI