Transcript

11.13.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Hello, this is Kelly Taylor. I'll be your host for
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Radio Wized Diary of Science and Nature. I'll have some
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articles on the topics of science and nature. But first
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a reminder that RADIOI is a reading service intended for
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people who are blind or have other disabilities that make
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it difficult to read printed material. From Popular Science. We
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have this first article Meat, Blue and Gold, NASA's first
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twin satellites bound for Mars, written by Andrew Paul. This
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is dated November sixth. NASA is readying the first dual
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satellite mission to another planet, currently scheduled to launch no
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earlier than Sunday, November ninth, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The
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Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers acronym ESCAPADE are
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a pair of identical spacecraft tasked with traveling to Mars.
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Once in the red planet's orbit, the spacecraft will create
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three dimensional maps of our cosmic neighbor's upper atmosphere, ion,
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a sphere, and magnetic fields. ESCAPADE is overseen by the
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University of California, Berkeley, who named the spacecrafts on board
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satellites blue and Gold after the school's colors. In addition
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to its primary objectives, the spacecraft will be the first
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to reach Mars using a new trajectory path. Pass missions
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to its closest planetary neighbor have relied on a seven
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to eleven month long route known as the Homan Transfer.
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While fuel efficient, the trajectory necessitated extremely narrow launch windows
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that typically only a few weeks every twenty six months.
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Instead of harnessing the home and Transfer, Escapade will first
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travel to lagrange point, or a location in space where
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the gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun are equal.
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From there, it will arc in a kidney being shaped
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twelvemonth orbit back towards Earth. In early November twenty twenty six,
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Escapade is scheduled to engage its engines and slingshot around
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our planet and use that momentum to carry to Mars.
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The Martian satellites are expected to arrive in early twenty
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twenty seven, at which point Blue and Gold will fire
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up its instrument arrays and data processing computers, as well
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as deploy boom arrays. A comprehensive map of the red
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planet's magnetic fields is necessary to help humans step foot
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on Mars in future missions. Unlike Earth, Mars lost its
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atmosphere around four billion years ago. Without it, the planet
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is routinely bombarded by the Sun's high energy particle radiation.
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Last year, for example, NASA's Curiosity Rover recorded a solar
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storm that generated one hundred day's worth of the Milky
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Way normal background radiation, or the span of a single day.
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Solar storms are bad enough to fry electrical grids on
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Earth even with its atmosphere, but they would be outright
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deadly to anyone lacking proper protection on Mars. According to
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Escapade principal investigator Robert Lillis, the satellites will make space
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weather measurements necessary to understand the system well enough to
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forecast solar storms whose radiation could harm astronauts on the
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surface of Mars or in orbit. Previous missions missions showed
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that although it no longer possesses a global magnetic field
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like Earth, Mars still has localized magnetic fields generated by
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its highly magnetized crust. These remain capable of pushing solar
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wind as much as nine hundred and thirty two miles
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away from the planet's surface, where they could interfere with
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communications abilities. Quote understanding how the eyeonosphere varies will be
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really important part of understanding how to correct the distortions
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in radio signals that we will need to communicate with
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each other and to navigate on Mars, said Lilis. Although
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blue and gold will travel together to Mars, they'll set
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off on separate orbits to supply a three D view
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of the Martian atmosphere as it encounters blasts of million
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mile per hour solar wind. To understand how the solar
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wind drives different kinds of atmospheric to escape is a
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key piece of the puzzle of the climate evolution of Mars,
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explains Lilis. Escapade gives us what you might call a
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stereo perspective, two different vantage points simultaneously. And now from
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Scientific American we have an article from November eleventh titled
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the world's largest wind turbine will smash previous records. The
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world's largest wind turbine, currently being tested off the coast
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of Chinina, as blades that are more than twice as
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long as a Boeing seven seventy seven's wingspan. It can
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generate twenty six megawatts of energy, more than double the
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global average for individual turbines, but its record is about
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to be smashed to Smithereens. Another offshore wind turbine that
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is twice as powerful has been announced by ming yangs
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Smart Energy, a company based in southern China, with a
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capacity of fifty megawats. This supersized structure is designed to
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float on the ocean's surface and can withstand typhoons, according
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to the company, which plans to start making the turbine
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later this year and to deploy it next year. Though
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Western manufacturers such as Siemens Gamesa are also pushing for
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bigger and bigger turbines, the trend has been particularly dominant
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in China after the government stopped subsidizing offshore wind farms
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in twenty twenty two, forcing developers to find ways to
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save money. Using bigger turbines means that fewer of them
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will be needed to generate the same amount of power.
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Says a researcher at yang yang Jing Offshore Wind Energy Laboratory, quote,
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you can save on transport, construction and installation fees, which
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counts for seventy to eighty percent of the cost of
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building an offshore wind farm. Experts say in general, the
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turbine with a larger capacity is also physically bigger. This
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is because you need longer blades to catch more wind
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and generate more electricity per s week. The current record
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holding turbine, made by Dongfang Electric, is so enormous that
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its tower is as tall as a sixty three story skyscraper.
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But ming Yang is taking a different approach. Its megamachine
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will have not one, but two sets of engines and blades,
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each capable of generating twenty five megawatts of energy. They
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are supported by a y shaped tower on a single platform.
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Each of its blade aage, is one hundred and forty
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five meters long, roughly three times the height of the
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Statue of Liberty. The design builds on that of the
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world's first twin headed turbine, the sixteen megawat version that's
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currently operating in the South China Sea. If successful at
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this scale, this model can be a game changer in
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the floating wind industry, says Umang Meroda, an offshore wind
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analyst at the Norwegian research firm rice Stad Energy. A
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researcher of renewable energy at the California based nonprofit Global
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Energy Monitor, is most impressed that Minyang intends to increase
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a turbine's capacity by more than twenty megawats in one go,
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are outpacing the industry's average rate of increase, which is
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two to three megawatts each year. Minyang says that the
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megawat turbine will have a strong ability to counter typhoons,
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but hasn't yet provided more details on how it will
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do so. The sixteen megawat model, which is supposed to
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serve as a prototype, has survived multiple typhoons over the
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past year, including more than one hundred and fifty kilometers
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per hour winds from Typhoon Redaza. Some of its resilience
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is because of the fact that it is tethered to
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the ocean floor at a single point, so we can
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rotate three hundred sixty degrees like a weather vane and
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stay balanced during high winds. The feature also means that
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the turbine can be installed in deeper waters farther away
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from shore, where wind is stronger and more consistent. But
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the new model will be significantly bigger, so there could
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be a lot of risks, and there are potential technical
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difficulties in ensuring that the two rotors generate power smoothly
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because they are so close together on a single platform.
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A representative of Minyang did not respond to requests for
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comment from Scientific American. Now in Popular Science, we have
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an article written by Jennifer Burne dated November seventh and
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headlined how squirrels actually find all their buried nuts. As
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someone who routinely hides things from myself, car, keys, receipts,
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even my phone while I'm actively talking on it, I
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felt instantly validated by Sarah Silverman's joke that squirrels forget
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where they bury eighty percent of their nuts, and that's
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how trees are planted. Silverman concludes in her twenty twenty
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one Netflix special A Speck of Dust. If these bold,
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bushytailed little train wrecks are able to thrive despite that
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kind of chaos, I figured there might be hope for me.
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Turns out it was too good to be true. Quote.
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I appreciate Sarah Silverman's comedy, but actually they're remarkably good
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at it. Says doctor Noah Perlut, professor at the University
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of New England School of Marine and Environmental Programs, who
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leads a long running gray squirrel research on campus. Quote.
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You can't be an average squirrel, or you'll die. It's
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only the above average squirrels that survive and make babies
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end quote. Every fall, squirrels spend weeks racing against winter
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to stash hundreds of nuts and seeds across their territories.
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When food becomes scarce, they rely on these caches to
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survive the cold months. So how do these exceptional squirrels
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relocate the hundreds of nuts they've hidden? According to Perlot,
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squirrels don't use a single strategy to recover their stashes. Instead,
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they draw up on a skill set that includes smell,
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sight and even cues from other squirrels' movements and scent marks.
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They use the whole toolkit, Perlet says. But when it's
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time to dig food back up, spatial memory seems to
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do much of the heavy lifting. In one field experiment,
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scientists tried to trick squirrels into misplacing their meals. They
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created fake nut stashes that looked identical to the real ones,
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and even swapped the grassy patches between them so the
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impossible carried the real scent. The result, the squirrels didn't
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waste time going down that rabbit hole. Almost without fail,
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they ignored the impostors and dug up their actual caches
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decades of research from that nineteen ninety nine experiment to
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earlier field work on gray squirrels all point to the
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same conclusion. Squirrels are far better at recovering stored food
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than Silverman's viral joke suggests. One nineteen eighty urban study
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estimated that gray squirrels retrieve roughly eighty five percent of
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their cached nuts. More recently, a twenty twenty three study
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reports that red squirrels living in an urban park quickly
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found the majority of nuts they cased, even when faced
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with stiff competition from other squirrels. Another common misconception all
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squirrels stashes are buried underground. We commonly think of these
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caches as being buried in the ground, but imagine being
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a gray squirrel and living in a place that has
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a lot of snow or ice. Perlet says, you can't
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go out and dig through two feet of ice every
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time you want a single acorn. Instead, squirrels in colder
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climates store food in tree hollows and branches, further evidence
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of how sophisticated their mental maps can be. They have
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to rely on remembering where inside many trees they've placed food.
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Perlet says, Most tree dwelling squirrels, including the familiar Eastern
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gray that's common in the eastern and midwestern United States,
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are what biologists call scatter hoarders, stashing hundreds of nuts
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across a wide area rather than keeping them all in
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one place. Other species, like red squirrels, prefer larder hold quarting,
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a fancy scientific term for stockpiling food in a single
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defended pantry. Considering the average squirrel's home range spans six
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to eight acres, roughly the size of four football fields,
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and can include several nests. That's a lot of terrain
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to keep track of. And they're not only tracking their
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own assets, they're keeping tabs on everyone else's dinner plans too. Quote,
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squirrels are not territorial, and they are watching each other's
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cashing behavior, stealing their food and then cashing them in
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other places. Perlit says. Their memory, in other words, isn't
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just about where did I put my food, but also
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where did that other squirrel put theirs. Now we have
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an article from the Guardian, and this one is headlined
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the tigers are hungry, endangered but deadly the world's largest
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big cat is sowing fear in Siberia's villages. This is
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from November tenth, written by Patrick Greenfield. The attacks seemed
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to come from nowhere. At first, the tigers snatched guard
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dogs on the edge of villages in Russia's Far East,
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emerging from the forest at night to pray. Others went
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for livestock, going after horses cattle. Then the attacks on
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people began. In January, an ice fissure was mauled at
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night and dragged away by a big cat, just weeks
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after a forester had been killed. In March, another man
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was attacked and partly eaten by a tiger. It was
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the deadliest winter for tiger attacks in Siberia for decades.
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For years, the tiger, also known as a Siberian tiger,
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was so rarely seen in Russia's Far East that it
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was considered a ghost of the forest. The world's largest
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big cat, celebrated for its power and resilience, is also
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one of the most endangered. A few hundred kling on
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in a remote fragment of the Siberian Tiger and a
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sliver of the Russian Chinese border, remnants of a historic
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territory that once spanned the Korean Peninsula and northeast China.
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Since twenty twenty, however, amer tigers have left the forest
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in unprecedented numbers, sparking fear among the communities that live
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alongside them. African swine fever, a disease that is almost
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always fatal to most pig species, has swept through the region.
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The disease has been described by scientists as an ecological disaster,
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driving a number of wild pig species toward extinction, with
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enormous knock on effects for ecosystems and other species. It
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has killed vast numbers of wild boar, a main food
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source for the tigers and particularly popular with females with cubs.
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The virus probably came over the border from China, where
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millions of pigs died after an outbreak that began in
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twenty eighteen. Unrestricted poaching of deer and increased logging in
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the tiger's ranges have contributed to a perfect storm to
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push the predators out of their forests in search of food.
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Some regions have seen a one thousand percent increase in
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human tiger conflict incidents as African swine fever has spread.
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In a typical year, a handful of tiger deaths and
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captures take place. Yet, between October twenty four and September
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of this year, at least seventeen am Or tigers have
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been killed and twenty seven captured, of which three later died.
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According to analysis seen by The Guardian. Of the captured cats,
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many were found emaciated and dehydrated, or suffering from the
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effects of gunshot wounds or trauma injuries from a vehicle collision. Quote.
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The tigers are hungry. That that is why we are
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seeing these incidents, says an Amor tiger expert, whom The
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Guardian has not named to protect their identity. As tiger
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conservation has become increasingly politicized in Russia, some experts fear
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speaking published publicly on the issue. Quote. People want to
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highlight this to the government, but they do not want
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to listen. They say. There are no figures on the
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number of wild board that have died from African swine
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fever in Eastern Russia, although there are frequent reports from
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people who come across carcasses in the forest during mushroom
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and nut gathering troops. Doctor Matthias Markov, a researcher at
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Cologne Zoo, is part of a group of international experts
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working to better understand the global impact of the virus
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on wild species. Quote, pigs die in ninety to one
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hundred percent of circumstances. It's really fatal. In Asia, there
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are lots of pig species restricted to small islands, so
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it's having catastrophic consequences. We have already come across examples
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in Sumatra and Malaysia where they are having more tiger conflicts,
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he says, speaking out about the recent human tiger conflicts
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in Russia Far East can be dangerous. In twenty two
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thousand and eight, the Russian President Vladimir Putin threw his
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weight behind AHM or tiger conservation efforts, pledging to increased
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numbers of the big cat. Officially, authorities say there are
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now about seven hundred and fifty in the wild, a
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significant increase from the nineteen forties when numbers were as
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low as forty. While few trust the accuracy of official numbers,
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many experts say the push from the Russian leader has helped,
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but many conservationists also suspect the big cats are in
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far more trouble than authorities recognize. The Aymer Tiger Center,
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the main body responsible for their conservation, was established by Putin.
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The board for their conservation is overseen by Justice Minister
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Constantine Chuchenko, who has been sanctioned by Western countries over
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his role in the invasion of Ukraine. Kaarin Nisel, a
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former Foreign minister for Austria and a close ally of Putin,
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is an international ambassador on tiger protection. Few independent researchers
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and conservation groups are allowed to work on the amer
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tiger's protection, experts say. At a recent event, Sergei Aramileev,
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the Director general of the amer Tiger Center, played down
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concerns about issues with amor tigers. Quote, human deaths in
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amer tiger attacks are extremely rare. From twenty ten to
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twenty twenty four, twenty attacks on humans were recorded, resulting
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in thirteen injuries and seven deaths. Of these, twenty eighteen
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were provoked by humans. EA skipped two recent cases in
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twenty twenty five were consistent with the overall statistics. Both
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tigers had multiple gunshot wounds. Therefore, the claim of unprovoked
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aggression by a tiger toward a human is far fetched
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and exist only in unreliable online publications. The amer Tiger
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Center did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment.
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But some have chosen to raise the issue online regardless
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of the risk. In January, residents in one village used
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social media to complain about the impact of a tigris
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hunting dog in their town. Others have pledged to boycott
20:03
local elections until they get more protection from tigers. Experts
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working on the project says more must be done to
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protect the forests that are home to the tigers, including
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inducing the impact. I'm sorry, reducing the impact of logging
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and mining. Quote. If we keep the ecosystem, we keep
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the tigers. African swine fever wouldn't be such a big
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problem if the forest was in good condition, one says,
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Now we go to a national geographic. This is an
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article from November seventh, written by Mary Bates and headlined
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rats wage war on bats. In stunning new footage in
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a dark cave in northern Germany, an invasive brown rat
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stands upright, balancing with its tail. Suddenly, it reaches into
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the night sky, plucks a bat from the air and
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crunches down on it. At first, Miriam North's child was
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shocked by the scene, captured with infrared surveillance video as
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part of her research. Nornchchild head of the Behavioral Ecology
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and Bioacoustics lab at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin,
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thought it could be an isolated incident until her investigation
21:22
at another German bat cave turned up more macabre evidence.
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We observed the same situation with rats patrolling the entrances
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and exits of the cave, and we found caches of
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more than fifty dead bats that rats had stored. She says.
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It makes us think that this is not a unique
21:39
problem after all. Nornchchild and her team returned to the
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two caves, both important urban hibernation sites for bats, to
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document the extent of the rodent menace. Their findings suggest
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that invasive rats are an underappreciated threat to city living bats.
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This and other recent research on the war between rats
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and bats has a larger implication for the spread of
22:06
disease to humans, says rain Of Plowwright, a professor of
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public and ecosystem health at Cornell University. Quote. Rodents, particularly rats,
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tend to do very well in areas that humans modify
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or inhabit, says Plowwright. As we move into landscapes, we're
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bringing rats with us, and these rats have the potential
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to become a bridging host to take viruses from nature
22:31
into human populations. Brown rats are adaptive, opportunistic, and one
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of the world's most widespread invasive predators. At their study sites,
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norns Child and colleagues observed rats using different strategies to
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successfully intercept bats in flight and target hibernating bats all
22:55
in total darkness. Rats are smart and fascinating creature, says Nornschild.
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I don't have anything particularly in particular against rats. It's
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just when there are a lot of them, they can
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wreak havoc. The researchers estimate that even a small number
23:12
of rats could kill thousands of bats in a single year.
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At a time when bat species are already under pressure
23:18
from habitat loss, climate change, and disease. This added predation
23:22
could push fragile populations over the edge. In fact, it's
23:27
already happened. Invasive rats are responsible for decimating some island
23:32
dwelling bat species or worse. The New Zealand greater short
23:37
tailed bat is one such casualty. It was last cited
23:41
in nineteen sixty seven, likely driven to extinction following an
23:45
invasion of ship rats to prevent urban rats from suffering.
23:49
I'm sorry urban bats from suffering a similar fate Nornschild
23:54
and colleagues recommend stronger measures to manage invasive rodents at
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important hibernation and sights. These include ratproof waste containers, blocking
24:03
rodent access to cave entrances, and public awareness campaigns that
24:08
discourage littering and the feeding of urban wildlife. Elsewhere, bats
24:14
are showing they are capable of adapting and possibly even
24:17
coexisting with invasive rodents. At Tel Aviv University in Israel,
24:24
researchers maintain a semi natural, open colony of Egyptian fruit bats.
24:29
This set up allows bats to fly out to forage,
24:31
and return to roost as they please. Researchers make the
24:35
space even more bat friendly by setting out fruit every
24:38
day before sunset. But the promise of an easy meal
24:42
also attracts black rats you'll see. Yovel, head of the
24:46
university's bat lab, says that black rats do more than
24:50
just steal the bat's food. They kill and eat fruit
24:53
bat pups. To understand how bats respond to this complex threat,
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Jovel and his team analyzed video of bat rat interactions
25:03
over seven months. The results show that fruit bats perceive
25:08
rats as dangerous. When rats occupied the food platform, bats
25:13
tended to avoid it. When they did land and there
25:18
was a rat nearby, the bats took longer to consume
25:20
the fruit because they were spending more time vigilant, looking
25:24
around and moving their ears. This remind This resulted in
25:27
a huge drop in foraging success, says Joville. The fruit
25:31
bat's response is changed when the season and situation. In winter,
25:37
bats acted more cautiously. In the spring, an abundance of
25:41
leftover fruit led to increased rat activity. In this context,
25:45
when competition was more intense, some bats actually fought back
25:49
and attacked the rats. This means that bats made strategic
25:53
calculations about wind to flee, whind to fight, and how
25:55
to feast instead of merely avoiding rats out of fear.
25:59
This behavior flexibility may allow the bats to live alongside
26:02
potentially dangerous rodent neighbors. And Now in Time magazine we
26:11
have an article headline how climate change can lead to
26:14
earthquakes from November twelfth. Climate change does its damage in
26:19
a lot of ways, birthing hurricanes, heat waves, floods, droughts,
26:22
and wildfires. Now add to that list earthquakes, continental rifting
26:27
or breakup and magma production. That's the conclusion of a
26:32
new paper in Scientific Reports, which adds to a growing
26:36
agreement among scientists that the Earth's atmospheric processes can affect
26:41
its geological processes in surprising ways. Quote Ultimately, plate tectonic
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forces play the dominant role in driving continental rifting, says
26:50
geologist James Muirhead. However, our study shows that climate plays
26:55
a key role in modulating the rate of continental rifting,
26:58
which can drive phases of greater earthquakes or volcanic activity.
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Merehead and his colleagues base their conclusions on studies they
27:07
conducted of Lake Turkana, a body of water one hundred
27:10
and fifty five miles long eighteen miles wide in northern Kenya.
27:15
That portion of the country is found in a part
27:17
of the continent known as the East African Rift Valley,
27:20
an area home to numerous deep lakes and technoic fractures.
27:24
The researchers collected data on twenty seven faults below Turkana,
27:29
looking back over the course of the past ten thousand years,
27:33
a time horizon that saw a lot of changes in
27:35
East Africa. Water levels in Lake Turkana reflect regional hydro
27:41
climates says Chris Scholz, Professor of Earth Sciences. During wetter
27:47
intervals approximately ninety six hundred to fifty three hundred years ago,
27:50
the lake was hundreds of feet higher than today. That
27:54
in turn had an impact on the earth below. The lakes.
27:56
Water's heavy, weighing twenty two hundred pounds per cubic meter,
28:00
which adds up fast in a lake the size of Trcana.
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All of that water weight exerts a steady downward pressure,
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suppressing rifting and magma flow, and keeping the subterranean region
28:13
relatively quiet. Well that's all for to day's diary of
28:17
Saints in Nature. Your reader was Kelly Taylor. Now stay
28:21
tuned for more programming on a radio e