Transcript

2.13.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
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Kelly Taylor. I have articles related to the topics of
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science and nature. But first a reminder that radio Eye
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is a reading service intended for people who are blind
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or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
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printed material. Well, let's start out from Scientific American. The
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next viral plague. This is from February the eleventh. At
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four point thirty on a chilly morning in Australia, head
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lights burn through a dark forest in Central Woodford, a
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small rural town fifty miles north of Brisbane, Queensland. Hundreds
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of flying foxes, magnificent fruit eating bats with big eyes,
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fluffy coats and a wingspan nearly that of an eagle,
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had just returned from foraging and dangled on tree branches
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like gigantic Christmas ornaments. Below them, rather incongruously, a large
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plastic sheep covered the ground. It had been placed there
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by a team of ecologists to collect urine and feces
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that the animals dropped. The scientists from Griffith University in
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Brisbane were probing bat droppings because of a grave human
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health concern. Plagues now come at us from the skies.
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Viruses carried by the world's only flying mammals, bats have
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infected people in the past decades. A series of viral attackers,
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many of them deadly, have been found in or linked
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to bats, Marburg, Ebola, Hindra, Nepa, Sar's CoV I, MERRS covy, and,
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most recently, Sar's Covy two covid. The disease at last
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virus causes has killed more than seven million people across
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the world. Bat derived viruses seem to threaten our health
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with disturbing frequency. But why bats and why now? After
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decades of searching for clues and putting together puzzle pieces
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involving evolution, ecology, and climate, scientists have come up with
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a good answer. Bats have evolved a unique immune system
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that lets them coexist with a horde of otherwise harmful viruses,
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a development that seems tied in surprising ways to their
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ability to fly. But when people destroy their habitats and food,
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and trigger disturbing changes in climate, all of which have
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coincided recently, bats immune systems can be strained to the
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breaking point. The animals can no longer keep viruses in check.
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Their burgeoning population of microbes rains down on other animals
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and eventually infects people. The search for fur their evidence
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to bolster this hypothesis, as well as early warnings of
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bat virus outbreaks, had brought the Griffith team to Woodford
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last year. The investigators were looking for signs of nutrition
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problems or biomarkers of impaired immunity in the bats, among
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other indicators. Alison Peel, one of the ecologists, carefully transferred
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puddles of bat urine from the plastic sheet into test tubes.
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Then she felt something hard land on her back. Great,
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I just got hit by batpoop, she said with a grimace.
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The first light of dawn began filtering through the dense
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forest canopy. The team will be spending several years in
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the field trying to pick up causes of virus shedding
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that can be easily obscured in a wild environment. Quote
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such long term studies are extremely hard, but absolutely critical,
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says James Wood, infectious disease ecologists at the University of Cambridge,
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who has been working on hindra like viruses in African
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bats in Ghana and Madagascar. The basic links between environmental
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stress on bats an increased spread of disease were documented
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in twenty twenty two in a landmark paper in Nature.
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It connected climate variability, deforestation, and food shortages over a
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quarter of a century to pulses of heightened virus infections
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in bats, other animals and people. One of the authors
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of the paper was rain a plow Write and infectious
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disease ecologist at Cornell University who has been studying flying
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foxes and viruses for two decades. The interwoven nature of
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these causes, she says, means that any public health intervention
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to prevent future pandemics will need to tackle the whole
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environmental tapestry, not just put on a single thread quote.
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Halting deforestation and climate change will help address the root cause,
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she says. On March March evening in two thousand and six,
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Powwright was in the bushland in Northern Australia's knit Miluk
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National Park when she felt that something was not quite right.
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She had set up a finely meshed net under the
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forest canopy to capture flying foxes, then sat back and
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stared at the sky. Plow Wright, a graduate student at
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the time, was waiting for what she called a flying
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river of animals hundreds of thousands of them, rushing from
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their roosts to feed as the sun went down, letting
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out a cacophony of high pitched calls. Quote. It's absolutely spectacular,
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she says. Quote they are the wildebeasts of the Northern
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Territory end quote. But that twilight was eerily quiet. Plower
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I could barely find a trickle of frime flying foxes,
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let alone a gushing river. It was extremely unusual. Where
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have the bats gone? She recalls, windering. Plow Right was
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part of a team trying to understand why flying foxes
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had been spreading the Hindra virus to horses and people.
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Hindra had killed two humans at that point, and it
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had killed and sickened many more equines, threatening an industry
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worth several billions of dollars to Australia. The scientist's job
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was to periodically measure the extent of virus infection in
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wild bats and monitor their health. When the researchers finally
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managed to capture a few bats, they realized all was
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not well. The animals were skinny and in bad shape.
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It looked as if they had not been eating. The
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bats were basically starving and in really poor health, Plowwright says,
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and even though it was just after the mating sea season,
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none of the captured females as pregnant. The team couldn't
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detect any Hindra genetic material in the animals, which is
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notoriously tricky to do, but nearly eighty percent of the
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bats had immune system antibody proteins against the virus. That
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was nearly twice the level measured the year before, and
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it meant the bats had caught the pathogen. Quote it
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was the first clue that nutritional stress may have a
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role in an increased susceptibility to virus infection, Plowright says. Hindra,
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the virus that plow Wright and others were tracking, had
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made its fearsome debut on the outskirts of Brisbane in
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the state of Queensland. In September nineteen ninety four. On
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a breezy spring afternoon, a thoroughbred mare named Drama Series
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started to look sickly while grazing at a paddock near Hindra,
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a sleepy area known for its resources. Drama Series deteriorated
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precipitously and she died two days later, says Peter Red
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equined veterinarian who treated her. Within a few days, a
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dozen more horses fell ill, most of them had shared
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a stable with Drama Series. Soon some died and the
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rest were euthanized to prevent possible transmission to humans, but
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it was too late, Reid says. Within a week flew
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like the symptoms descended on Drama Series trainer, who eventually
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succumbed to respiratory and kidney failure. Around the same time,
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another outbreak killed two horses in Mackay, six hundred miles
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north of Brisbane, but the cause remained a mystery until
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their owner died fourteen months later. Medical examinations showed that
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the cause of his death and that of his horses
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was the same viral pathogen that launched the deadly attacks
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in Indra, the same virus in two deadly eyes breaks
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six hundred miles apart. This gave context for scientists to
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form it to find an ominous clue to the pathogen
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source quote. We started to consider the possibility that the
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virus was transmitted by a flying animal, says lynfo Wong,
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infectious disease expert who was then at the Australian Animal
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Health laboratory, but which animal scientists decided to focus their
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attention on insects, birds and bats. These creatures were the
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airborne members of a long list of wild animals, including rodents, snakes,
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and marsupials, that field researchers had been trapping and another
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team of molecular biologists had been analyzing. Their goal was
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to pinpoint the source of the disease. Wong now at
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Duke National University of Singapore Medical School, says the work
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soon paid off. Blood samples from all four of the
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flying fox species in Australia had antibodies to HINDRA. In
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the ensuing years, the team managed to isolate the virus
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from a bat and obtained the full sequence of its genome.
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The discovery focused attention on bats as virus carriers, and
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scientists have since discovered dozens of bat born pathogens. They learned,
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for instance, that bats are vectors for the NEPA virus,
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which killed around one hundred people and led to the
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culling of a million pigs in Malaysia in nineteen ninety
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eight ninety nine. In the aftermath of TSARS in two
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thousand and five, Wong and his colleagues in China, Australia,
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and the US reported that bats might be the source
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of the new contagion. These discoveries posed a conundrum. Nepa,
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Hindra and other viruses can make humans and other animals sick,
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often with devastating consequences, yet bats seemed to tolerate them well.
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Wong wanted to understand why. He was shocked when he
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realized how little was known. It was like stepping into
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a void. Wong says, our understanding of bat immunity was
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almost zero. It was a void the beginning in the
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early two thousands, he and other scientists started to fill.
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In two thousand and eight, the Australian government gave Wong
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a coveted Blue Sky Research Grant, one awarded to scientists
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deemed on a path toward breakthrough discoveries. With around two
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million dollars to spend over five years, he could do
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whatever he wanted. There was only one thing on his mind. Quote.
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I wanted to be the first person in the world
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to sequence bat genomes, he said. What he didn't expect
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was that the effort would lead to a fascinating link
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between bat's unusual immune system and their even more unusual evolution.
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Of the six four hundred or so living mammalian species,
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bats are the only ones that can fly. More than
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one in five mammalian species is a bat. It is
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one of the most diverse groups in the class, second
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only to rodents. Bat's life spans are extraordinary. Some bats
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weigh only a few grams but can live as long
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as forty years, equivalent to humans living for almost one
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thousand years. Despite such longevity, bats rarely developed cancer. How
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and when the only flying mammals evolved wings and became
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airborne is still unclear. The oldest fossils of bats that
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quote have all the hallmarks of a flying creature are
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dated to fifty two and a half million years ago,
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says Nancy Simmons, a mammalogist at American Museum of Natural
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History in New York City. The signs of wings and
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other flight features on the fossils indicate the animal's unique
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path to the skies began to evolve millions of years earlier,
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and the lineage probably split from other mammalian species before
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the massive asteroid impact that wiped out dinosaurs and around
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seventy percent of all species sixty six million years ago. Quote.
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The advantages of flight are tremendous because you can cover
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much larger areas than similarly sized animals that can't fly.
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Simon says it opened up a whole new set of
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resources that were now available to those that were not
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available to those that couldn't fly. Bats became birds of
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the night, occupying many of the same ecological niches as birds,
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but avoiding competition with them by being nocturnal. This high
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flying lifestyle requires a lot of energy in flight. Some
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species of bats increased their metabolic rate more than fifteenfold.
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Body temperatures can rise from around ninety five fahrenheit to
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one hundred and four degrees fahrenheit, and their heart can
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speed up from a resting pace of two hundred to
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four hundred beats per minute to eleven hundred beats. From
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their roost sites, they often travel dozens of miles to
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feed in one night. Some migratory species can travel up
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to twelve hundred and forty miles from their summer locations
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to winter ones. The use of so much energy releases
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a large amount of metabolic byproducts, such as damaged DNA
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and highly reactive chemicals. These substances trigger inflammatory responses similar
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to those caused by microbial infection quote. Bats must have
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an efficient system to deal with the insults that come
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with flight, says Wong. It's all about damage control quote.
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With his Blue Sky grant, Wong set out to systematically
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study how bats were physiologically different from other mammals. By
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collaborating with BGI, a Chinese genomics company that it already
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sequenced the genomes of organisms such as rice and the
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giant panda, Wong and his colleagues got the first chance
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to read the genetic book of two types of bats,
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a small insect eating species from northern China and a
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big fruit eating black flying fox from Australia. It was
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like hitting the jackpot, Wong says, writing in Science in
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twenty thirteen, the team reported that bats have more genes
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responsible for repairing DNA damage than other mammals such as
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mice and humans, possibly allowing the flying creatures to be
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more adept at fixing the molecular wear and tear caused
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by their high metabolism. It's becoming increasingly clear that disease
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emergence from flying mammals is about the alignment of several elements.
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The virus reservoir such as a bat colony has to
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be infected and bats have to shed significant amounts of virus. Vironment,
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including factors such as temperature and precipitation level, has to
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support pathogen survival and infection Victims such as horses and
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people must come in contact with bats or the virus
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that they shed quote. All of these things have to
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align to create the perfect storm. Plow Write says. El Nino,
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global warming and habitat loss have conspired to catalyze this
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alignment with an increasing frequency. Some researchers suspect the combination
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might also have contributed to the emergence of COVID, although
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investigations into the origins of that disease are ongoing. If
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the link to food shortages continues to hold up, scientists
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may be able to predict the risk of virus shedding
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by simulating ecological factors, climate conditions, and bat physiology. The
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environmental connection could also be tested to see how it
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affects the spread of other bat born viruses, especially DEPA,
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one of the World Health Organization's top ten priority diseases
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for research, killing up to three quarters of the people
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it infects. Unlike high INDRA, capable of human to human transmission.
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The virus has caused frequent outbreaks in South and Southeast
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Asia since it emerges in nineteen ninety eight. Now ago
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to Popular Science and the headline reads, five hundred year
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old Transylvanian diaries detail the peril of the Little Ice Age.
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This is from February eleventh, with centuries old primary source documents.
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A team of researchers in Romania are exploring how a
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region best known for vampire legends was drastically altered by
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the effects of the Little Ice Age. This period of
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colder than usual temperatures from the early fourteenth century CE
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to the mid nineteenth is known for major socialists, people
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famine in play. According to these first person accounts, geographical
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regions of the continent also appear to have experienced major
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weather changes at different times, and humanity responded. The findings
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are detailed in a study published February twelfth in the
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journal Frontiers in Climate. The Little Ice Age was a
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period of global cooling that began during an around thirteen
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hundred CE, lasted until about eighteen fifty. Average temperatures in
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the northern hemisphere dropped by about one degree fahrenheit. Scientists
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are still not certain what phenomenon caused the Little Ice Age.
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Reduced solar output, changes in the circulation of the atmosphere,
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and increased volcanism on Earth may have played a role.
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Mountain glaciers expanded in several locations across Europe, North and
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South America, and Oceania. Famine was widespread as crops failed
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due to the cold, social uprisings, even witch trials increased
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in response to the weather induced devits station To piece
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together Earth's history from this time, scientists can use ice cores,
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sediment samples, and pollen. This natural archive can tell us
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a fair amount about sea level temperature history, storms, glacier positioning,
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and more. Society's archive, written reports and observations about local
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climates or chiseled warnings like hunger stones, can help corroborate
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what nature's archive says. In this new study, a team
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used documents from people who lived in present day Transylvania
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during the sixteenth century CE. We show that the climate
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was marked by significant variability, including prolonged periods of drought,
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heat waves, and episodes of intense rainfall and flooding, says
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tutor Cutsiura Kutziura, a study co author and geographer at
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the University of Oradia in Romania. Quote. The study illustrates
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the complex interplay between heat waves, droughts, floods, and their
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cascading impacts on agriculture, public health, and societal stability, emphasizing
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the significant role of climate change in shaping human history.
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From the documents, it appears that the first half of
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the sixteenth century was particularly hot and dry. A passage
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describing the summer of fifteen forty reeds the springs dried
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up and the rivers dwindled to mere trickles. Livestock fell
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in the fields, and the air was thick with despair
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as the people gathered in processions praying for rain in quote.
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This vivid account underscores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of
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living through climate extremes, said Cassiora. The second half of
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the sixteenth century saw heavy rainfall and flooding, picularly during
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the fifteen nineties. Other parts of Europe were still cooling
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significantly when the Little Ice Age's effects began to intensify
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and temperatures dropped. However, hot weather was recorded much more
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frequently than colder weather in sixteenth century Transylvania. Quote. This
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makes us believe the little ice age could have manifested
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itself later in this part of Europe, says Cassiora. Additionally,
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some later writings describing severe winters and cold waves support
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this thesis. These weather variations often resulted in major catastrophes,
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including the Black Death, numerous famines, and locust invasions that
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were directly and indirectly related to climate. The team believes
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that these weather extremes and the resulting upheaval could have
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driven changes in settlement patterns. Towns might have adopted flood
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resistant infrastructure or migrated to more favorable areas. The challenges
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might also have spurred technological innovations, such as improved irrigation
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systems or storage facilities. While the diaries do reveal how
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people understood and responded to these impact impactful events, there
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are several limitations with the study. Not many people at
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the time could read or write, records can be fragmented,
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and reports are often subjective on a local scale, so
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we're not getting a very holistic view of the time.
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These writings still provide scientists with a glimpse of the
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socioeconomic consequences of extreme weather events and how they have
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constantly shaped human history quote. Studying climate records from the
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society's archive is as crucial as analyzing natural proxies, said Casiora.
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It provides a human centric perspective on past climactic events
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and will turn to NPR. January wasn't expected to break
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global temperature rec but it did. The planet has been
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shattering heat records for the past two years that was
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expected to ease in January, and the fact that it
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didn't as climate researchers worried. January twenty twenty five was
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officially the hottest January ever recorded globally, according to new
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data released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
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one of the federal agencies tasked with keeping track of
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the world's weather and climate. Both twenty twenty three and
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twenty four shattered previous temperature records, hovering near or above
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one point five celsius above the Earth's temperature in the
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late eighteen hundreds, a time before humans began burning vast
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amounts of fossil fuels that have inexorably heated up the planet.
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But the forecast was projected to ease slightly, primarily because
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of strong al Nino A part of a natural climate
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cycle that had contributed to the intense heat has faded
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by late last year. During El Nino, the planet is
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often warmer than usual, but during the other half of
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the cycle, called La Nina, it usually cools down. Earth
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flipped into La Nina phase last year, but the expected
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reprieve hasn't shown up. Instead, January broke yet more records.
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Noah reported the month was the hottest January in their
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one hundred seventy six year long record. Copernicus, the European
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meteorological service that tracks global climate change, reported that January
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was one point seventy five celsius above historic levels. Quote.
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There's a pretty dramatic jump in temperature that started in
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mid twenty twenty three, and it has really persisted through
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the present, says Zeke Housefather, a climate scientist with the
24:53
group Berkeley Earth. The persistence, he says, has surprised many
24:58
climate scientists and cause them to wonder if climate change
25:02
may have begun to push Earth's oceans and temperature atmosphere
25:07
into new, potentially unforeseen behaviors. A hot January doesn't mean
25:12
the rest of the year will necessarily keep on breaking records.
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House Father says, but it does increase the odds that
25:19
twenty twenty five could continue the extraordinary pattern from the
25:23
past few years. The fundamental reason behind the records setting
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temperatures from the past few years as well as this
25:31
January is simple, says Samantha Burgess, the director of Copernicus
25:36
Climate Change Service. We've burned a lot of fossil fuels,
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We've deforested and urbanized a lot of areas, and this
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has changed the chemicals the atmosphere on the land and
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in the ocean, causing the planet as a whole to
25:50
heat up. Burgess says, but the progression isn't always perfectly smooth.
25:57
Sometimes warming sloes and other times it jumps forward. The
26:02
upper trend is clear, says Columbia University climate scientists Radley Horton.
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Quote the last ten years have been the ten warmest
26:12
years on record, a direct outcome of ongoing fossil fuel emissions.
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Horton says, now from Wired magazine, Why people act so
26:24
weirdly at airports? Many of us have witnessed unusual and
26:29
even anti social behavior at an airport or on a flight.
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These may range from benign acts such as sleeping on
26:36
the floor doing yoga in front of the flight information
26:39
display system, to serious incidents like early morning drunken arguments
26:44
or trying to open the airplane doors mid flight. These
26:48
more sinister problems appear to have worsened over recent years
26:51
with increasing air rage incidents and flight diversions. But what
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is it about airports that make us behave differently? Let's
26:59
take a look look at the psychology. Many vacationers feel
27:03
that the adventure begins at the airport, putting them in
27:06
a different frame of mind than normal. They're eager to
27:08
begin their one or two weeks of relaxed hedonism with
27:12
a flourish. Others are anxious about flying, which may make
27:16
them act out a character or take refuge in alcohol.
27:20
The noise and crowds of airports doesn't help either. As
27:24
the field of environmental psychology is demonstrated, human beings are
27:28
very sensitive to our immediate surroundings and can easily become
27:32
overloaded by stressors such as crowds and noise. Stress and
27:37
anxiety produce irritability, both on a temporary and ongoing basis.
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In my view, we also need to look at the
27:43
airport from a psychogeographic perspective. Psychogeography studies the effect of
27:49
places on people's emotions and behavior, particularly urban environments. In
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the modern technological world, airports can also be seen as
28:00
ten places. They are liminal zones where boundaries stayed on
28:04
a littoral level. National borders dissolve once we pass through security.
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We enter a no man's land between countries. The concept
28:13
of place becomes hazy. Well that's all for today's Diary
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of Science and Nature. Your reader is Kelly Taylor. Now
28:22
stay tuned for the Health Corner on RADIOI