Latest news with #BobMcDonald
CBC
19-04-2025
- Science
- CBC
Apr 19: What the dinos did, and more...
On this week's episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald: There's not a more vulnerable creature in nature than a baby bird. Tiny and immobile, they're easy pickings for predators. But the chicks of the white-necked jacobin hummingbird have evolved a unique defence. They disguise themselves as poisonous caterpillars to discourage those that might eat them. Jay Falk, an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado and Scott Taylor, director of the Mountain Research Station and associate professor at the University of Colorado, studied these birds in Panama. Their research was published in the journal Ecology. Seals can dive at length to tremendous depth thanks to some remarkable adaptations, like the ability to collapse their lungs, and radically lower their heart rate. Chris McKnight, a senior research fellow at the University of St Andrews Sea Mammal Research Unit in Scotland, led a study looking to see if tweaking oxygen and C02 levels changed the seals' dive times. The researchers discovered that the seals have the unique ability to measure the oxygen levels in their tissues, so they can anticipate when they need to return to the surface before they get into trouble. The research was published in the journal Science. As the joke goes, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Researchers recently demonstrated that fruit flies enjoy more than just aged produce. Using a custom carousel built to fly scale, scientists found that some, but not all, of their fruit flies would play on it, enjoying an activity that had nothing to do with the necessities of life. This brings up the possibility of variability in personality for fruit flies. Wolf Hütteroth is an associate professor at Northumbria University, Newcastle and was part of the team, whose research was published in the journal Current Biology. Krill, the small, shrimp-like creatures that swarm the world's oceans and are particularly abundant in southern oceans, play a big role in marine food webs, connecting microscopic organisms with many of the oceans' larger animal species. Researchers in Australia investigated how krill respond to predator cues, like the smell of their feces. Nicole Hellessey, from the University of Tasmania, said the mere whiff of penguin feces affects the Antarctic krills' feeding behaviour and causes them to take frantic evasive action. The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. Dinosaur bones can tell amazing stories about these prehistoric beasts, but how do we piece together how they behaved? A new book dives into the many lines of evidence that can shed light on the behaviour of these extinct creatures. From fossils, to tracks they left behind, to their modern day descendents, paleontologist David Hone from Queen Mary University of London explores how scientists develop robust theories about how dinosaurs lived in his new book, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior: What They Did and How We Know.
CBC
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
SFU's Trottier Observatory celebrates 10 years of connecting people to the stars
To mark the occasion, CBC's Bob McDonald, host of Quirks and Quarks, is giving a special talk titled, What if Everything We Know is Wrong? CBC's Darius Mahdavi has more.
CBC
05-04-2025
- Science
- CBC
Apr 5: Our bodies and brains fight weight loss, and more...
On this week's episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald: A Canadian team is developing minimally-invasive micro-tools for brain surgery that can be operated by magnetic fields from outside of the skull. The tools, including scalpels and forceps, will enter the cranium through small incisions, and then be controlled by focused and precise magnetic fields. Eric Diller is associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Toronto and his team's research was published in the journal Science Robotics. In recent decades scientists have discovered animals from primates to birds and marine mammals can use tools — a capacity once thought to be exclusive to humans. Now scientists have discovered fish using hard surfaces to crack open hard-shelled prey and get at the meaty meal inside. The research, led by Juliette Tariel-Adam from Macquarie University, included recruiting divers and scientists from around the world to report any sightings of tool use, which led to 16 reports across five species of wrasses. The results were published in the journal Coral Reefs. WATCH: Tool use by a yellowhead wrasse in South Caicos Island: For a hardy few, soaking in cold water has long been held out as being healthful and invigorating. Well, unfortunately, the latest research suggests that they're right. Volunteers who soaked in cold water for an hour a day for a week showed improvements in autophagy, an important cellular clean-up function that typically declines with age. Kelli King is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Ottawa and was co-lead on this study, published in the journal Advanced Biology. The narwhal is a small whale distinguished by its long spiral horn — an elongated tooth. Researchers have long speculated about what the ostentatious bit of dentition is actually for, but the elusive narwhal has, until now, been hard to study. Now scientists, including Cortney Watt from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, have used drones to learn that the horn is used in several ways: to play, explore and forage. The research was published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. New research is revealing why it's so difficult to keep weight off after you've lost it. One study in Nature found that genes in the fat cells of people who lost a significant amount of weight through bariatric surgery largely continued to behave as if they were still obese. Ferdinand von Meyenn, from ETH Zurich, said that despite these individuals becoming, in many respects, much more healthy, genes that became active during obesity remained active, and genes that were turned off, remained turned off, predisposing them to regain lost weight. In formerly obese mice, their fat cells remained much better at taking up sugars and fats. In addition, another study revealed that neurons in a primitive part of the brain hold onto memories of fat and sugar that can drive our cravings, according to a study on mice in Nature Metabolism. Guillaume de Lartigue, from the Monell Chemical Senses Center and the University of Pennsylvania, said specific neural circuits in the brain light up, depending on whether the gut received sugar or fat. Removing these neurons protected the mice from diet-induced weight gain, something de Lartigue is hoping to translate to humans to dial down impulsive eating behaviour.
CBC
08-03-2025
- Science
- CBC
Feb 8: The rapidly changing Arctic, and more
On this episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald A little bit of scratching can do some good, but too much can hurt Scratching an itch can feel great, so scientists decided to dig into why that is the case since we know too much scratching isn't good for us. Dr. Dan Kaplan, a professor of dermatology and immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, said they found that scratching drives inflammation to the skin, which, in light moderation, helps to fight bacterial skin infections. But he warns that continual or excessive scratching can prolong an itch and potentially damage the skin. Their study is in the journal Science. A wildlife manager in the US has found that drones can be a safe and effective way to discourage problem bears from troubling human habitation and livestock. Wesley Sarmento started working in the prairies of Montana to prevent bear-human conflicts, but found the usual tricks of the trade were not as effective as he wanted them to be. Previously he tried to use noisemakers, dogs, trucks, and firearms, but buzzing bears with flying robots turned out to work much better. Now a PhD student at the University of Montana, he published an article about his hazing research in Frontiers in Conservation Science. Wildlife manager says drones are 'magic tools' to help reduce bear-human conflicts 29 days ago Duration 0:42 Research biologist and former wildlife manager Wesley Sarmento started using drones to chase bears away from people, and found that it was much safer and more precise than traditional methods. Ants can remember and hold grudges against those who trouble them When ants fight with those from another nearby colony, it makes an impression. A new study has found the insects can remember the chemical signature of the aggressors, and will respond more vigorously and violently the next time they cross paths. Volker Nehring, a researcher at the University of Freiburg, Germany, describes the phenomenon as "the nasty neighbour" where ants are most aggressive to ant colonies closest to them, and says this is due to resource protection. Nehring and his team's research was published in the journal Current Biology. Scientists on the front line of permafrost thaw describe changes in the Arctic The acceleration of change in the Arctic due to global warming is transforming the landscape on a year-to-year basis, often in surprising ways. That's according to scientists who've been studying the effects of climate change in the North. One study found that lakes in Western Greenland shifted from pristine blue to dirty brown from one year to the next due to increased permafrost melting and runoff. Jasmine Saros, a lake ecologist from the University of Maine, said they were astonished by the magnitude of change they saw in all 10 lakes they studied and how quickly it happened. That study was published in the journal PNAS. We also speak with William Quinton, a permafrost hydrologist from Wilfrid Laurier University and the director of the Scotty Creek Research Station in southern Northwest Territories, an area he describes as "the frontline of permafrost thaw." Quinton was part of a research team, led by Anna Virkkala from the Woodwell Climate Research Centre, that found that 34 per cent of the Arctic Boreal Zone — a region where carbon was safely locked up in the permafrost for thousands of years — has now become a carbon source. That study is in the journal Nature Climate Change.
CBC
06-03-2025
- Science
- CBC
Mar 1: The recipe for finding life on other planets, and more...
On this week's episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald: We've learned a lot about the remarkable intelligence of birds like crows and parrots, but not much work has been done on large flightless birds. A new study that explored the problem-solving abilities of emus, ostriches and rheas suggests that some of these birdy behemoths have impressive cognition too. In a first-of-its-kind study, a team led by University of Bristol's Fay Clark trained the birds to use puzzles to get food, and they found that the rheas and emus were able to solve the puzzle easily, though the ostriches did not. The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports. Researchers have done a lot of work to try and understand how astronauts can best prepare for and compensate for the muscle and bone atrophy that they will experience after long periods in microgravity. A new study, led by Marco Chiaberge at Johns Hopkins University, suggests that a workout that includes jumping might be beneficial. The researchers found that by training mice to repeatedly jump up from one level to another increased their knee cartilage thickness by 26 per cent. The research was published in the journal npj Microgravity. Sheep are among the animals that humans domesticated first, in the Middle East during the dawn of agriculture. A new genetic study of hundreds of ancient sheep remains, which date across 12 millennia, is shedding light on the intertwined history of sheep and humans. The work, led by geneticist Dan Bradley of Trinity College Dublin, tells the story of how the sheep's domestication not only gave us clothes but also milk and meat which fueled our spread around the world for thousands of years, and how humans molded sheep by selecting them for colour and wool. The research was published in the journal Science. The tiniest member of the great ape family — the group that today includes the chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, gorillas, and us — has been identified from fossils found in Germany. Nearly 12 million years ago, the 10-kilogram animal would have shared its environment with another, larger great ape species, something researchers didn't think was possible. David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, said its two fossilized teeth and a single knee bone indicated that Buronius manfredschmidi had its own ecological niche high up in the trees. The study was published in the journal PLOS One. In the last two decades we've discovered literally thousands of planets orbiting nearby stars. Our technology has now advanced to the point where we can investigate whether there's life on those planets. We speak to astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, the founder of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute, about her work trying to answer that question, and her book Alien Earths: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos.
