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Quirks and Quarks54:00How dandelion seeds take flight, and more…
On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald:
Infrasound, not ghosts, may be why old buildings give us the heebie-jeebies
Quirks and Quarks8:45Infrasound, not ghosts, may be why old buildings give us the heebie-jeebies
Have you ever walked through an old building and felt something, well, unsettling? Scientists decided to investigate why some people get spooked. Their latest research has found that infrasound – low-frequency sound waves that can be felt but not heard – can cause irritability and increase levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Infrasound is produced by old infrastructure, like pipes and machinery, and may provide a partial explanation for why some people believe in the paranormal. Rodney Schmaltz, at MacEwan University in Edmonton, was part of the research, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.
Researchers believe the creepy feeling you might get from a spooky house may come from low-frequency sound waves – not ghosts. (Lisa O’Connor/AFP/Getty Images)These arms are made for lovin’. How male octopuses find their mates
Quirks and Quarks8:15These arms are made for lovin’. How male octopuses find their mates
Researchers at Harvard University have figured out how male octopuses feel their way to their mates. Specialized cells located in one of their arms can sense the female sex hormone progesterone and alert the male octopus to the presence of a potential partner. The arm, called a hectocotylus, isn’t used for exploring or foraging, but is devoted to fertilization. And while biologists have known about the hectocotylus for centuries, they didn’t know about its sensory skills until now. Nick Bellono and his team published their research in the journal Science.
One of the male octopus’ arms is called a hectocotylus and is responsible for fertilization. (Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images)From the archives: Donald Johanson on the discovery of ‘Lucy,’ our missing link
Quirks and Quarks4:53From the archives: Donald Johanson on the discovery of ‘Lucy,’ our missing link
Paleontologists are experts at scraping through the planet’s earthly archives, looking for early fossils of our human ancestors. Our own Quirks & Quarks archive isn’t as old, but it holds innumerable treasures. To celebrate our 50 years, we unearthed a 1979 interview with American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson about the discovery of Lucy, a three-million-year-old skeleton that’s one of the most significant fossil discoveries in history.
Donald Johanson is the American scientist who discovered the 3.2-million-year-old fossil known as Lucy. Her partial skeleton was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. She is named Lucy after the Beatles song, which the team listened to on the day she was found. (Jenny Vaughan/AFP/Getty Images)What the physics of dandelions can teach us about the spread of invasive species
Quirks and Quarks15:42What the physics of dandelions can teach us about the spread of invasive species
Who hasn’t plucked a puffy white dandelion from the ground and tried to blow off all its seeds, just for fun? But when a physicist and his young daughter recently took a walk through a field of dandelions, his mind turned towards fluid dynamics. They noticed that even the heartiest puff released only the seeds closest to them, an observation that left him with a new research topic to pursue. Chris Roh, who runs the In Vivo Fluid Dynamics Lab at Cornell University, and Jena Shields, a PhD candidate, published their research in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Dandelion flowers that transform into puff balls of seeds evolved to work with the wind to spread their seeds away from local competition. (Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images)Virtual hearts help doctors fix patients’ life-threatening irregular heart beats
Quirks and Quarks10:59Virtual hearts help doctors fix patients’ life-threatening irregular heart beats
In a new study, scientists have created digital twins of patients’ hearts so that surgeons could fix their life-threatening, irregular heart beats, called arrhythmias. Each digital replica is a personalized, 3D-model that shows all the structure and diseased tissue in the patient’s heart. The digital twin heart allows scientists to virtually probe the model for targets and develop the best treatment plan. Natalia Trayanova from Johns Hopkins University led the research. She said that after a year, all 10 patients remained arrhythmia-free, and the treatment rate improved from 60 to 100 per cent. The research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Natalia Trayanova, whose team at Johns Hopkins University developed the digital twin technology used in this clinical trial, with digital twins of hearts behind her. (Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University)Quirks Question: What’s the benefit for trees being evergreen?
Quirks and Quarks2:31Quirks Question: What’s the benefit for trees being evergreen?
Drew Schedler in Rothesay, N.B., asks: What are the evolutionary benefits and drawbacks of being a conifer versus a deciduous tree? For the answer we turned to Sally Aitken, a professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Stewardship at the University of British Columbia. She says there are tradeoffs for each, like being able to photosynthesize in the wintertime or prevent frostbite on sensitive leaves.
Swaths of trees are seen from a lookout on a logging road near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. (Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images)