Transcript

10.22.26 · Science Show KY

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Radio Eye's Diary of Science and Nature. Your
0:04
Speaker 1: reader is Kelly Taylor. I'll have stories on science and nature,
0:07
Speaker 1: but first, a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service
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Speaker 1: intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities
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Speaker 1: that make it difficult to read printed material. First up,
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Speaker 1: we have an article from BBC Wildlife. This is dated
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Speaker 1: June 18th, 2026, and the headline is, What's the Most
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Speaker 1: Dangerous Animal in the USA? And just how deadly is
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Speaker 1: it to humans? Defining most dangerous can be tricky as
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Speaker 1: it depends on what you mean. If we simply mean
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Speaker 1: which animals kill the most Americans per year, the answer
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Speaker 1: would be insects, more specifically stinging insects, such as wasps, bees,
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Speaker 1: and hornets. This is because many people are allergic to
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Speaker 1: their stings and die from anaphylaxis. Between 2011 and 2021,
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Speaker 1: 788 people died as a result of these types of
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Speaker 1: stings in the USA. However, if we're talking about which
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Speaker 1: animal is the most likely to kill you in a
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Speaker 1: single encounter, a top contender would be the North American
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Speaker 1: brown bear, though the total number of deaths from brown
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Speaker 1: bear attacks is not high, cited at 82 since 1784.
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Speaker 1: This is certainly an animal you wouldn't want to get
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Speaker 1: too close to. It is considered to be one of
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Speaker 1: the more aggressive bear species, especially when defending its young,
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Speaker 1: and possesses fearsome claws up to 10 centimeters long. Thankfully,
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Speaker 1: it tends to avoid contact with humans and only attacks
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Speaker 1: when it feels threatened. Other top contenders for the USA's
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Speaker 1: most dangerous animal include venomous snakes. The country is home
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Speaker 1: to numerous species of potentially deadly snakes, including rattlesnakes, copperheads,
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Speaker 1: and coral snakes. An estimated 8,000 people are bitten by
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Speaker 1: venomous snakes every year in the USA. Fatalities are pretty rare, however,
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Speaker 1: with just five per year. The key factor for survival
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Speaker 1: is good medical care. Deaths are much more common in
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Speaker 1: poorer rural regions where easy access to hospitals and anti-venom
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Speaker 1: treatments might not be available. Though not to be trifled with,
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Speaker 1: what all these examples show is that despite the ample
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Speaker 1: wilderness of the USA, wild animals don't pose that much
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Speaker 1: of a threat. In fact, the vast majority of animal-related
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Speaker 1: deaths result from encounters with domestic animals, farm animals in particular.
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Speaker 1: The average United States citizen is much more likely to
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Speaker 1: be trampled by a cow than mauled by a bear
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Speaker 1: or kicked by a horse than bitten by a snake.
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Speaker 1: In terms of the numbers of fatalities attributed to one animal,
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Speaker 1: the top spot is taken by deer. These animals do
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Speaker 1: not go on the rampage. The danger associated with them
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Speaker 1: is their subpar road crossing abilities. Road traffic accident data
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Speaker 1: reveals that a significant number of collisions have involved people
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Speaker 1: hitting deer at high speeds. Deer collisions are thought to
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Speaker 1: be responsible for as many as 440 human deaths per year.
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Speaker 1: From this, we can conclude that the most dangerous animal
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Speaker 1: in the USA is the shy and retiring deer. Now
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Speaker 1: we go to BBC Science Focus magazine. This article is headlined,
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Speaker 1: Space Diamonds. Diamonds' position as the hardest known material has
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Speaker 1: been unchallenged for thousands of years, but that could be
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Speaker 1: about to change. Researchers in China recently synthesized a material
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Speaker 1: called Lund's Delight, also known as hexagonal diamond, in sizable
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Speaker 1: amounts for the first time. Lund's Delight was first discovered
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Speaker 1: in 1967 in fragments of the Canyon Diablo meteorite that
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Speaker 1: struck modern-day Arizona some 50,000 years ago. Like regular diamond,
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Speaker 1: it's made up solely of carbon, but with its atoms
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Speaker 1: arranged in a hexagonal rather than cubic lattice. The specific
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Speaker 1: conditions of the impact likely transformed carbon in the meteorite
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Speaker 1: into tiny diamond crystals with this rare hexagonal form. According
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Speaker 1: to some simulations, Lonsdalite's structure could make it more than
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Speaker 1: 50% harder than normal diamond. If that can be confirmed
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Speaker 1: and its manufacture can be scaled up, then hexagonal diamond
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Speaker 1: could lead to a range of new industrial tools, mining
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Speaker 1: equipment of unparalleled hardness, ultra wear-resistant machine parts, and unrivaled
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Speaker 1: cutting tools. Even if you're not a miner or manufacturer,
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Speaker 1: this would still impact the world around you. Synthetic diamond
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Speaker 1: has a huge influence on the objects that fill our
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Speaker 1: everyday lives. Quote, every single one of us will touch
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Speaker 1: something that's been touched by industrial diamonds many, many times
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Speaker 1: a day, says Daniel Twitchent, chief technologist at the British
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Speaker 1: company Element 6, one of the world's biggest developers of
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Speaker 1: synthetic diamond materials. Own a piece of Ikea furniture? Wood
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Speaker 1: glue is highly abrasive, so it was likely cut with
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Speaker 1: a diamond tip saw. Use an iPhone? The cases of
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Speaker 1: some models were machined using diamond. If you're lucky enough
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Speaker 1: to have granite floor tiles, those will have been cut
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Speaker 1: with diamond too. Quote, it's something that's made a big impact.
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Speaker 1: Pull down the cost of cars. Pull down the cost
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Speaker 1: of manufacturing, Twitchin says of synthetic diamond. It's estimated in
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Speaker 1: the U.S. that diamond in some way or another impacts
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Speaker 1: a trillion dollars worth of industry, end quote. This influence
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Speaker 1: is about to get a lot bigger. As well as
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Speaker 1: its hardness, Diamond is an incredible thermal conductor. It can
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Speaker 1: also be manipulated to conduct electricity. Data centers, cell phone networks,
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Speaker 1: and satellites could soon exploit these characteristics to push their
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Speaker 1: capacities further. Diamond can even be modified to have quantum properties.
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Speaker 1: Some estimates value the synthetic diamond industry at $ 20 billion
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Speaker 1: and suggest it could more than double in value over
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Speaker 1: the next decade as the material's versatility and usefulness make
6:51
Speaker 1: it a staple in next-generation technologies. Our internal catchphrase is,
6:57
Speaker 1: a diamond's not a girl's best friend, but an engineer's
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Speaker 1: best friend, Twitchin says. Synthetic diamond was born in the
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Speaker 1: aftermath of World War II. A lot of things needed rebuilding.
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Speaker 1: and the world needed hard-wearing tools to do this. Diamond
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Speaker 1: mines couldn't keep up with demand. Quote, an early strategic
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Speaker 1: importance for diamond was actually tungsten filament wire, says Twitchin.
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Speaker 1: To make a filament for a light bulb, you extrude
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Speaker 1: the metal through a hole, he explains. You want that
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Speaker 1: hole to be very, very rigid and very slow wearing.
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Speaker 1: This kind of need drove money into synthetic diamond research.
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Speaker 1: And in 1955, the U.S. company General Electric announced it
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Speaker 1: had a working method for turning graphite, another form of
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Speaker 1: pure carbon, into diamond. An industry was born. Transforming graphite
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Speaker 1: into diamond requires changing how its atoms are arranged. Because
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Speaker 1: of how many electrons it has, carbon can make up
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Speaker 1: to four bonds with other atoms. In graphite, it only
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Speaker 1: makes three. forming flat hexagonal lattices of carbon held together
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Speaker 1: by weak intermolecular forces, which is what makes graphite so soft.
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Speaker 1: But in diamond, four strong bonds lock carbon atoms together
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Speaker 1: in a tight-knit three-dimensional structure. Changing from one arrangement to
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Speaker 1: another takes energy. This happens naturally in the Earth's mantle,
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Speaker 1: where high pressures and temperatures compress carbon or carbon-containing fluids
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Speaker 1: into cubic diamond. Scientists have essentially replicated these conditions in
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Speaker 1: the lab since the 1950s, using incredibly powerful industrial presses.
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Speaker 1: It takes a lot of material science and sophistication to
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Speaker 1: get that right, says Twitchin. You're trying to hold this graphite,
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Speaker 1: this is something the size of a can of Coke,
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Speaker 1: at 1300 degrees Celsius, plus or minus a very small temperature,
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Speaker 1: in the middle of about 6,000 tons of load. The
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Speaker 1: Chinese teams produced Lonsdaleite by modifying this process. In one experiment,
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Speaker 1: scientists at Zhengzhou University put a form of graphite with
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Speaker 1: highly ordered layers into an industrial press, subjected it to
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Speaker 1: 20 GPA of pressure, roughly 200,000 times that of our atmosphere,
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Speaker 1: and raised temperatures to 1,900 degrees Celsius, or 3,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Speaker 1: beyond the melting point of steel. High-temperature, high-pressure processes like
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Speaker 1: this are used to create the majority of synthetic diamonds
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Speaker 1: used today. But this only produces small diamonds, useful for cutting, grinding,
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Speaker 1: and drilling tools, but which aren't large enough for electronics.
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Speaker 1: For that, a newer method is used, chemical vapor deposition.
9:55
Speaker 1: In the crudest terms, it's fancy microwave oven heating up
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Speaker 1: methane and hydrogen If you get the chemistry right, you
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Speaker 1: can end up producing diamond over graphite, says Twitchett. As
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Speaker 1: well as making purity much easier to control, this creates
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Speaker 1: diamonds big enough to cut into wafers, thin slices of
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Speaker 1: material that can be integrated into microchips and other electronic devices.
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Speaker 1: This has created a whole new technological frontier. Data centers
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Speaker 1: face a conundrum. To increase the capacity of AI systems
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Speaker 1: and other technologies that rely on them, they need to
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Speaker 1: use ever more powerful microchips. Placing chips closer together also
10:35
Speaker 1: increases their capacity, so much so that engineers are now
10:39
Speaker 1: moving towards something called 3D integration, putting chips and other
10:43
Speaker 1: components not just side by side, but in layers on
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Speaker 1: top of one another. Quote, it makes a smaller footprint,
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Speaker 1: but also increases the performance, says Martin Kubal, professor of
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Speaker 1: physics at the University of Bristol. The wires get shorter.
10:59
Speaker 1: How you switch devices gets better, end quote. But packing
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Speaker 1: all this processing power into such small spaces creates heat.
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Speaker 1: As chips get hotter, their performance declines. If they overheat,
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Speaker 1: they must be switched off altogether. This presents a cost,
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Speaker 1: as does keeping them cool. If you can drop the
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Speaker 1: temperature by one degree, you save a data center in
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Speaker 1: the region of 1.8% of its operating cost, says Twitchit.
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Speaker 1: At some future time, we'll also reach a point where
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Speaker 1: building more powerful chips hits the wall, says Kubal. Heat
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Speaker 1: management will become even more important, as it will be
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Speaker 1: the limiting factor when trying to increase data center power.
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Speaker 1: This is where Diamond can help. Diamond is the best
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Speaker 1: thermal conductor currently known, which makes it an excellent heat
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Speaker 1: spreader for electronic setups. Companies such as California's Akash Systems
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Speaker 1: and Element 6 are designing systems where chips can be
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Speaker 1: mounted on pieces of diamond to whisk heat away. These
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Speaker 1: are beginning to be rolled out. At the system level,
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Speaker 1: you gain a lot of benefit, which easily pays back
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Speaker 1: the increased costs, says Kubal. But a difficulty is that
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Speaker 1: a semiconductor mounted on a diamond heats and cools. It
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Speaker 1: expands and contracts much more than the material it's sitting on. Quote,
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Speaker 1: if the chip is very large, which a processor is,
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Speaker 1: the challenge is how to prevent that delaminating, says Kubal.
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Speaker 1: A key piece of research right now is how to
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Speaker 1: create better interfaces for connecting electrical components to diamond wafers.
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Speaker 1: Buying a piece of diamond is easy. Attaching it, I
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Speaker 1: would say, is the difficult part, says Kubal. Nevertheless, this
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Speaker 1: is the direction electronics is heading in. Quote, there are
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Speaker 1: some chips and especially lasers that are already integrated with
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Speaker 1: diamond heat spreaders, says Mark Newman, or Newton, professor in
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Speaker 1: experimental physics at the University of Warwick. It's tip of
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Speaker 1: the iceberg time, but because these new wafers are coming,
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Speaker 1: this is going to be transformational. In Newton's view, Diamond
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Speaker 1: cooling will become the standard within advanced electronics in the
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Speaker 1: next five years. It is the solution to a rate-limiting problem.
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Speaker 1: Data centers aren't the only place where diamond cooling can help.
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Speaker 1: Radio frequency communications between a signal tower and your cell
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Speaker 1: phone or between a ground station and a satellite is
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Speaker 1: another area where high-powered electrical components are struggling with heat. Radar, too.
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Speaker 1: Communications devices are all about power, says Kubal. How much
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Speaker 1: energy they can produce and how fast they can pulse
13:43
Speaker 1: it dictates the strength of a signal and how much
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Speaker 1: information it can carry. Silicon is not powerful enough for
13:50
Speaker 1: many modern applications, so developers have moved over to another
13:54
Speaker 1: semiconductor material that can handle greater voltages, such as gallium nitride.
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Speaker 1: It's only by using such materials that even faster communications technologies,
14:04
Speaker 1: like 6G mobile, will become possible. But with these two,
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Speaker 1: developers are increasingly having to look for cooling solutions to
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Speaker 1: prevent overheating and performance drop-offs. Quote, they're basically sticking diamond
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Speaker 1: to the galley of nitride because it helps suck the
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Speaker 1: heat out, says David Moran, professor of advanced semiconductors at
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Speaker 1: the University of Glasgow. Quote, people have shown that you
14:28
Speaker 1: can get three times the performance just by doing that,
14:32
Speaker 1: end quote. Yet in Moran's eyes, this is an imperfect solution.
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Speaker 1: At some point, it just becomes diminishing returns because the
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Speaker 1: cooling system becomes larger than the actual system itself. Moran
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Speaker 1: believes there could be another way. What if you actually
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Speaker 1: made the whole system, the whole device from diamond? The
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Speaker 1: reason materials like gallium nitride are favored over silicon is
14:54
Speaker 1: because of the size of their band gap, an inherent
14:57
Speaker 1: property of materials that's determined by their electron arrangement. Gallium
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Speaker 1: nitride has a larger band gap than silicon, so can
15:05
Speaker 1: handle more voltage. Diamond's band gap is larger still. If
15:10
Speaker 1: you introduce impurities into diamond, known as doping, you can
15:15
Speaker 1: turn it from an insulator into a semiconductor. Then, thanks
15:19
Speaker 1: to its wide band gap, it can handle very large voltages,
15:23
Speaker 1: with the bonus of being much better at getting rid
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Speaker 1: of heat. This would also get around global shortages of
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Speaker 1: materials like gallium, which is almost entirely produced by China
15:33
Speaker 1: and has been subject to export controls. Diamond electronics could
15:39
Speaker 1: be incredibly useful in places where high performance is needed,
15:43
Speaker 1: but space for cooling is severely limited, such as on satellites.
15:48
Speaker 1: A further bonus is that diamond is also less susceptible
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Speaker 1: to disruption by radiation in space, which can cause heat
15:54
Speaker 1: spikes or even break semiconductors entirely, thanks to its larger
15:59
Speaker 1: band gap. Broadly speaking, the higher that number, the more
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Speaker 1: transparent the material is to radiation, Moran says. Yet, while
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Speaker 1: there's clear promise, it's proving tough to get this technology
16:10
Speaker 1: to work. Manipulating Diamond for electronics is an engineering nightmare,
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Speaker 1: Moran says. The larger the band gap, the harder it
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Speaker 1: is to do, Kubal says of doping. For this reason,
16:21
Speaker 1: he believes Diamond's greatest potential lies in cooling. Now we
16:28
Speaker 1: have an article from New Scientist magazine. Why the Worst
16:33
Speaker 1: El Nino Killed Millions and How We Can Avoid a Repeat.
16:38
Speaker 1: This is from October 12th. To read of the great
16:42
Speaker 1: famine that swept the globe in the 1870s is to
16:46
Speaker 1: read of a hellscape worse than your imagination could conjure.
16:51
Speaker 1: In China, India, Brazil, and beyond, after years of drought
16:55
Speaker 1: and failed harvests, millions died of starvation. People rioted, begged, stole,
17:03
Speaker 1: murdered for food. They knowingly ate diseased animals, tree roots, mud, pets,
17:11
Speaker 1: and strips of leather in desperate bids to stay alive.
17:15
Speaker 1: By many contemporary accounts, cannibalism was rife. Children were sold
17:20
Speaker 1: or sacrificed for a meal. Corpses were bricked into their
17:25
Speaker 1: homes by family members to stop them being pillaged and
17:29
Speaker 1: eaten by hungry neighbors. Bodies littered the roadsides. The chaos
17:36
Speaker 1: didn't stop at just hunger. Those who had fled famine
17:40
Speaker 1: took shelter in filthy camps and shanty towns, which were
17:44
Speaker 1: then struck by deadly outbreaks of cholera, smallpox, and other diseases.
17:49
Speaker 1: In China, when winter came and there was no money
17:52
Speaker 1: for fuel, people burned their own houses. The desperate then
17:57
Speaker 1: crowded together in underground pits for warmth. society all but
18:01
Speaker 1: fell apart. Once the poor had died in a region,
18:05
Speaker 1: the wealthy succumbed. When the rains finally returned, there was
18:09
Speaker 1: barely anyone left to sow the crops. The total death
18:13
Speaker 1: toll across India, China, and Brazil between 1876 and 1879
18:19
Speaker 1: is estimated at 20 million to 30 million. Globally, there
18:24
Speaker 1: may have been 50 million deaths. As historian Mike Davis
18:29
Speaker 1: writes in the book late Victorian holocausts. This was a
18:33
Speaker 1: disaster of truly planetary magnitude. The root cause of this catastrophe?
18:39
Speaker 1: A supersized El Niño event, which released vast amounts of
18:44
Speaker 1: heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, triggering severe disruption
18:49
Speaker 1: to global weather patterns. Of course, scientists in 1877 weren't
18:55
Speaker 1: aware of the El Niño, southern oscillation cycle, There was
18:59
Speaker 1: rudimentary meteorological data collection underway. Sea surface temperatures were collated.
19:06
Speaker 1: Rain gauges were monitored. Barometric pressure was observed. Scientists knew
19:12
Speaker 1: something strange was happening to global weather patterns, but the
19:14
Speaker 1: cause was far from clear. In the immediate aftermath of
19:19
Speaker 1: the 1877-78 El Nino, many researchers were convinced sunspots were
19:25
Speaker 1: to blame. Quote, As a scientific topic, this was the
19:29
Speaker 1: Stone Ages for El Nino. No one in the scientific
19:32
Speaker 1: community knew about this problem. The only ones who probably
19:36
Speaker 1: knew about it were Peruvian fishermen, says Michael McFadden at
19:40
Speaker 1: the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It wasn't until
19:46
Speaker 1: the 1920s that physicist Gilbert Walker first identified the seesaw
19:51
Speaker 1: of atmospheric pressure across the tropics known as the Southern Oscillation.
19:57
Speaker 1: Then in 1969, meteorologist Jacob Berkness connected changing sea surface
20:04
Speaker 1: temperatures in the Pacific to the southern oscillation and mapped
20:08
Speaker 1: out the global dynamics of an El Nino. That was
20:11
Speaker 1: the big bang for El Nino research, says McFadden, ushering
20:16
Speaker 1: in the idea that with the right data and equipment,
20:19
Speaker 1: El Ninos could be identified in real time and even
20:21
Speaker 1: predicted in advance. Of course, El Ninos had occurred before 1877.
20:29
Speaker 1: Authorities in China and India held grain reserves for when
20:33
Speaker 1: monsoon rains failed, But the 1877-78 El Nino was stronger
20:38
Speaker 1: than anything that had come before. Boyan Wong, also at NOAA,
20:43
Speaker 1: and his colleagues have used modern data analysis methods to
20:47
Speaker 1: estimate just how strong it was. The analysis uses sea
20:51
Speaker 1: surface data from ships, buoys, and modern floats organized to
20:55
Speaker 1: reconstruct a temperature record stretching back to 1850. Quote, from
21:00
Speaker 1: our data reconstruction, we did find the El Nino signature
21:04
Speaker 1: and it is a very strong El Nino, he says.
21:07
Speaker 1: The strength of an El Nino is usually measured by
21:09
Speaker 1: how far sea surface temperatures in a specific region of
21:13
Speaker 1: the tropical Pacific have deviated from normal. In 1877-78, after
21:19
Speaker 1: accounting for the background ocean warming trend observed since then,
21:22
Speaker 1: temperatures in the index were 2.88 degrees Celsius above average,
21:29
Speaker 1: Wong's research indicates. This suggests it was among the strongest,
21:33
Speaker 1: if not the strongest, event in modern history. The 1877-78
21:37
Speaker 1: El Nino resulted in droughts around the world. The situation
21:41
Speaker 1: was most acute in northern China, which suffered its worst
21:44
Speaker 1: drought in 300 years. In northeastern Brazil, India, South Africa,
21:49
Speaker 1: and northern Africa. In some of these locations, drought had
21:54
Speaker 1: begun even before El Nino hit, triggered in part by
21:58
Speaker 1: unusually cool conditions in the tropical Pacific area. immediately before
22:02
Speaker 1: the arrival of El Niño. The result was three or
22:05
Speaker 1: more years of very little rain and repeated crop failures.
22:10
Speaker 1: But the impact of the droughts was made far worse
22:12
Speaker 1: by the ineptitude of government's official response. In India, colonial
22:17
Speaker 1: rulers continued to collect taxes, hoard grain, and enforce food
22:22
Speaker 1: exports to England, despite widespread starvation among local populations. In China,
22:29
Speaker 1: corrupt officials raided grain supplies, and poor transport links made
22:34
Speaker 1: it difficult to get food to those who needed it.
22:37
Speaker 1: Water levels on the Grand Canal, a vital transport link
22:40
Speaker 1: into the hardest-hit Shaanxi province, dropped so low that it
22:45
Speaker 1: was unnavigable. There were no railways, and the mountain roads
22:49
Speaker 1: into Shaanxi thronged with bandits who killed the livestock being
22:53
Speaker 1: used to transport grain before they could reach the starving.
22:58
Speaker 1: Because of the workings of the imperial economy at that time,
23:01
Speaker 1: those droughts translated into colossal famines with millions of dead
23:06
Speaker 1: in India and China, says Richard Seeger at Columbia University
23:10
Speaker 1: in New York. For more than a century, the 1877-78
23:15
Speaker 1: El Nino has stood as the strongest in history. But
23:19
Speaker 1: this year, a super El Nino has once again erupted
23:23
Speaker 1: in the tropical Pacific, And on current forecasts, it looks
23:26
Speaker 1: set to outstrip even 1877-78 in its intensity. Current predictions
23:33
Speaker 1: forecast sea surface temperatures in the El Nino region of
23:38
Speaker 1: the Pacific peaking at 4 degrees Celsius above normal in November.
23:44
Speaker 1: The big difference this time is that we already know
23:47
Speaker 1: the event is occurring. Scientists have been able to forecast
23:50
Speaker 1: El Nino events months in advance since the 1990s. That
23:54
Speaker 1: affords governments, emergency services, farmers, and citizens vital time to
23:59
Speaker 1: prepare by increasing water storage, sowing drought-resistant crops, improving warnings.
24:07
Speaker 1: If you know something is coming and it can have
24:09
Speaker 1: really damaging impacts, you have some choices to make, says McFadden.
24:15
Speaker 1: Models began to hint at a coming El Nino in
24:17
Speaker 1: February 2026, and by April there were clear signs that
24:21
Speaker 1: a strong event was looming. That gave governments a three-month
24:25
Speaker 1: head start before the El Nino even began and at
24:29
Speaker 1: least six months of warning before impacts would be felt.
24:32
Speaker 1: Improvements in El Nino forecasting with the help of AI
24:36
Speaker 1: mean it could soon be possible to predict a coming
24:39
Speaker 1: El Nino two years in advance, says McFadden. The longer
24:43
Speaker 1: you have to prepare, the more options you have and
24:45
Speaker 1: the better off you may be in the end, he says.
24:48
Speaker 1: But although there are prospects to improve El Nino forecasts
24:51
Speaker 1: even further, it comes at a time when U.S. federal
24:54
Speaker 1: funding for climate research and global aid has been severely curtailed.
24:59
Speaker 1: In January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive
25:04
Speaker 1: order shutting down a U.S.-funded famine early warning system. Six
25:09
Speaker 1: months later, it was reinstated, but data reporting since then
25:12
Speaker 1: has been patchy. The U.S. has also severely cut funding
25:16
Speaker 1: to the World Food Program, which provides emergency food relief.
25:20
Speaker 1: Other high-income countries, including the U.K., have also scaled back
25:24
Speaker 1: their overseas aid budgets in recent years. Meanwhile, the U.S.
25:29
Speaker 1: war with Iran and blockade in the Strait of Hormuz
25:32
Speaker 1: has pushed up fuel and fertilizer prices, while Russia's war
25:36
Speaker 1: in Ukraine has curtailed the global wheat trade. This El
25:40
Speaker 1: Nino is happening at a very bad time, says Seager. Nevertheless,
25:45
Speaker 1: early preparation, coupled with a more comprehensive global trading network,
25:49
Speaker 1: Better transport links and modern agricultural methods means the world
25:53
Speaker 1: is much, much better prepared to deal with a monster
25:56
Speaker 1: El Nino than it was 150 years ago. Quote, we
25:59
Speaker 1: have much better public health systems, says McFadden. We have
26:03
Speaker 1: much better understanding of disease and disease controls, and we
26:06
Speaker 1: have humanitarian organizations, and we have social safety nets that
26:10
Speaker 1: will not let 50 million people die like happened in 1877-78,
26:13
Speaker 1: end quote. We have an article now from Fox Weather.
26:21
Speaker 1: Monarch butterflies head to Mexico as scientists unlock new way
26:25
Speaker 1: to track their journey, dated October 19th. Monarch butterflies are
26:30
Speaker 1: nearing the end of their annual fall migration to Mexico,
26:33
Speaker 1: with the journey continuing through late October. Each fall, millions
26:38
Speaker 1: of monarchs from Canada and the United States travel thousands
26:41
Speaker 1: of miles to reach their winter home in the mountain
26:44
Speaker 1: forests of central Mexico. Their migration begins in regions across
26:48
Speaker 1: North America, including Minnesota, California, Indiana, and Iowa. The journey
26:54
Speaker 1: typically begins in late summer and early fall when a
26:56
Speaker 1: special generation of monarchs emerges from its pupae, or chrysalids.
27:02
Speaker 1: According to Monarch Watch, these butterflies are biologically and behaviorally
27:06
Speaker 1: different from those that emerge in the summer, allowing them
27:09
Speaker 1: to survive the long journey south. As they migrate, monarchs
27:13
Speaker 1: stop to feed on nectar, and actually gain weight along
27:17
Speaker 1: the way. Some researchers believe that butterflies conserve energy during
27:22
Speaker 1: flight by gliding on air currents as they travel south.
27:26
Speaker 1: Experts consider the migration one of the most remarkable journeys
27:29
Speaker 1: in the insect world, with some monarchs traveling as far
27:33
Speaker 1: as 3,000 miles. But this year's migration comes with a
27:36
Speaker 1: new tool that could offer scientists an unprecedented look at
27:40
Speaker 1: the butterfly's movements. According to Monarch Joint Venture, Lightweight solar-powered
27:46
Speaker 1: tracking devices have allowed scientists to follow individual monarchs in
27:50
Speaker 1: near real time for the first time. The tiny transmitters
27:56
Speaker 1: use solar power and can be detected by smartphones and
28:00
Speaker 1: other receivers as the butterflies travel. The resulting data helps
28:04
Speaker 1: researchers map individual migration routes and better understand how monarchs
28:09
Speaker 1: navigate their long journey south. Well, that's all for today's
28:13
Speaker 1: Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader was Kelly Taylor.
28:16
Speaker 1: Now stay tuned for further programming on Radio Eye.