Speaker 1: Guess what mango with that will. So I feel like
Speaker 1: when I've been traveling recently, I've been noticing more support
Speaker 1: dogs traveling with passengers, and I think that's great. And
Speaker 1: I decided to look into this because I do find
Speaker 1: it an interesting field. And one of the facts that
Speaker 1: I stumbled on was that sixty of dogs that try
Speaker 1: to become guide dogs end up dropping out of school.
Speaker 1: And it's actually a pretty expensive problem. Training a guide
Speaker 1: dog cost about fifty thousand dollars a pup and it's
Speaker 1: a two year training course, so it can be both
Speaker 1: a drain on time and money. So I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there's a need for guide dogs though, so like, is
Speaker 1: there some sort of like no dog left behind policy
Speaker 1: that's getting institute, Well, not quite, but there are researchers
Speaker 1: at Georgia Tech that are trying to come up with
Speaker 1: a solution. In fact, they figured out a way to
Speaker 1: draft winners before they even go to school, and this
Speaker 1: is by using smart chew toys. So basically they put
Speaker 1: sensors in these toys and balls to monitor how the
Speaker 1: puppies work. They created profiles based on how they bite
Speaker 1: and chew and tug and play, and then use this
Speaker 1: data to pick the winners, and it's surprisingly effective. The
Speaker 1: team claims they can select dogs who will graduate with
Speaker 1: almost accuracy, and by using smart toys to weed out
Speaker 1: the duds, Georgia Tech can actually save these guide schools
Speaker 1: about five million dollars a year. And that's just the
Speaker 1: first of nine stories and science we're about to share
Speaker 1: with you. Let's dive in a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my good friend man Guesh Ticketer and
Speaker 1: sitting behind the soundproof glass showing off his collection of
Speaker 1: vintage test tubes and beakers. I know he's so proud
Speaker 1: of those things, but they really just look like regular
Speaker 1: test tubes and beakers to me. I know, but you know,
Speaker 1: let's not tell him that. But that's our PALIN producer
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil so mago. One of the things I know
Speaker 1: you and I both love but don't get to spend
Speaker 1: enough time doing is finding these weird little science stories. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: at Mental Class we used to do a ten issue
Speaker 1: every year, and for people who don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: like a weird magazine issue of lists of ten So
Speaker 1: we'd feature things like ten guys named Fred you should know,
Speaker 1: or how ten presidents popped the question, or things like that.
Speaker 1: And in the first few years we always did a
Speaker 1: ten Bright Ideas and Science and then a ten not
Speaker 1: so Bright Ideas and Science, which was, you know, a
Speaker 1: much shorter list. And I don't think people thought it
Speaker 1: was not funny, except we thought it was funny. So
Speaker 1: we just kept putting it in there. Oh man, I'm
Speaker 1: still doing and even though we're not publishing the magazine,
Speaker 1: it's still just too much fun to do well, all right,
Speaker 1: So we kicked off today's nine Things with a fact
Speaker 1: about guide dogs. So so where do you want to
Speaker 1: take it from there? Mango? How about a weirdo study
Speaker 1: out of the University of Queensland. And this claims that
Speaker 1: wild leopards make good neighbors and cities because they actually
Speaker 1: protect the population from rabies. So this is obviously super
Speaker 1: weird and the data comes from the outskirts of Bombay,
Speaker 1: where leopards apparently live in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so as the researchers were looking into the diet of
Speaker 1: these leopards on the city's fringe, they realized that feral
Speaker 1: dogs from the city actually make up forty percent of
Speaker 1: the average leopards diet. And you know, for the thirty
Speaker 1: five leopards there, that meant fifteen hundred dogs a year.
Speaker 1: It's obviously a lot of dogs. Yeah, But this is
Speaker 1: where it gets even weirder. So, I mean, my family
Speaker 1: is actually from Bombay, and this is not my experience
Speaker 1: of the city at all. From the summers I spent
Speaker 1: there in church, kid or vend or or whatever. And
Speaker 1: because you know, to me, the city doesn't feel provincial
Speaker 1: at all. It really feels more like New York City.
Speaker 1: But apparently these leopards were eating so many dogs that
Speaker 1: they were actually preventing about a thousand dog bite incidents
Speaker 1: per year and about nine cases of rabies and uh as,
Speaker 1: one of the authors told New Scientists, quote, this study
Speaker 1: is a striking example of a large carnivorous animal providing
Speaker 1: a direct benefit to humans. Now, obviously I don't think
Speaker 1: he's telling like Mayor di Blasio or other mayors, like,
Speaker 1: if your city has a rabies epidemic, go adopt some leopards,
Speaker 1: Because the scientists are pretty clear that there could be
Speaker 1: some downsides to bring in a leopard population to deal
Speaker 1: with their feral dog population. Yeah, maybe just a couple
Speaker 1: of downsides. That is such a weird one, but it
Speaker 1: is super interesting. All right. So, I know we did
Speaker 1: an episode on weather We'll ever Cure Blindness a little
Speaker 1: while back, But did you read about how Microsoft has
Speaker 1: been working to create virtual reality for blind people? No,
Speaker 1: that that's fascinating. How how's that work? Well, by manipulating
Speaker 1: a walking kane or a cane troller as they call it,
Speaker 1: it's and it's really awesome. So basically, the walking Kane
Speaker 1: uses vibrations to make the user feel like they're exploring
Speaker 1: new worlds filled with different types of objects. Plus there's
Speaker 1: a vest that presses against your body to give you
Speaker 1: the feeling of walls or other obstacles. And but is
Speaker 1: their sound design paired with this experience, it can actually
Speaker 1: create these amazing worlds. Obviously, the simulations can be used
Speaker 1: for gaming, but there are practical applications as well. A
Speaker 1: Microsoft employee expected that people will practice walking through heavy
Speaker 1: traffic or you know, get a better feel for navigating
Speaker 1: a city and a snowstorm. And I'm sure they're all
Speaker 1: sorts of things we haven't thought about, but it's amazing
Speaker 1: how well it works. People feel like they're winding through
Speaker 1: narrow pathways and navigating icy curbs even though they're just
Speaker 1: in these wide, empty spaces. That's pretty cool. So here's
Speaker 1: a quick one I think is pretty interesting, and it's
Speaker 1: that Chinese scientists have actually figured out how to make
Speaker 1: a smart wallpaper. Now, Initially, when I saw a link
Speaker 1: to the zap Boing Boing, I figured like the wallpaper
Speaker 1: was something that resisted stains. And I think that's just
Speaker 1: because that's where my mind goes, having like a four
Speaker 1: year old banksy at our house who just draws all
Speaker 1: over the walls and crayon. But you know, the wallpaper
Speaker 1: is actually much much smarter than that. So first off,
Speaker 1: it's made from a material that's found in your bone
Speaker 1: and teeth called hydroxy appetite, and according to the American
Speaker 1: Chemical Society, that material is brittle and inflexible. But if
Speaker 1: you make it into these really long, thin nano wires
Speaker 1: and then join them, it kind of ends up with
Speaker 1: the thickness of a wallpaper. And the reason it's exciting
Speaker 1: is because that material is actually fireproof, so already that
Speaker 1: makes it smarter, right, because it's protecting your walls and house.
Speaker 1: But then the scientists also equipped it with these sensors
Speaker 1: and smoke detectors. So basically, if a fire breaks out
Speaker 1: anywhere in your house, it's both equipped to set off
Speaker 1: an alarm within the house at the first instance of
Speaker 1: a fire, but it can also communicate to the outside
Speaker 1: world to like fire departments, to alert them. I mean,
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff is so cool. It's just crazy.
Speaker 1: You can take something like a chew toy or wallpaper
Speaker 1: and you know and say, like, what does it connected
Speaker 1: smart version of this really do for society? And you know,
Speaker 1: when scientists ponder these questions, they figure out ways to
Speaker 1: give the world more seeing eye dogs and save people
Speaker 1: from fires. And it's just it's just incredible, all right.
Speaker 1: So here's a study we didn't talk about in our
Speaker 1: Science of Paying killers, but scientists in Denmark have discovered
Speaker 1: that taking six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen twice a day
Speaker 1: will give you hypogonadism or or what I think they
Speaker 1: call medically. I think they call it small balls, So
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a medical term, but I do
Speaker 1: think you're gonna have to explain yourself. Well, from what
Speaker 1: I understand, the scientists were looking into fertility issues, and
Speaker 1: they got thirty one healthy guys and they had them
Speaker 1: take ibuprofen for six weeks, and across the board, the
Speaker 1: drug lowered their testosterone production. But what the scientists realized
Speaker 1: was that when the body noticed the drop, the pituitary
Speaker 1: gland kicked in another hormone and to overdrive, and that
Speaker 1: triggered more testosterone production. And because the tests were overworked
Speaker 1: to compensate for what the ibuprofen was doing, they basically
Speaker 1: shrunk significantly. So I mean, is this much of an issue? Like, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone who takes ibuprofen twice a day regularly. Well,
Speaker 1: according to the study, it can be a problem in
Speaker 1: things like sports, where you know, apparently a lot of
Speaker 1: athlet eats to take hyboprofen daily to reduce swelling. But
Speaker 1: if you're looking to go back to r T S
Speaker 1: or what we obviously know is regular testable size, all
Speaker 1: you have to do is quit taking the eyboprofen, and
Speaker 1: if you do it soon enough, it won't have any
Speaker 1: permanent damage. So I'll definitely keep that in mind. And
Speaker 1: here's one that people have been talking about for a while,
Speaker 1: but it's fun to see finally coming true and it's
Speaker 1: creating plants that glow. So for a while, scientists have
Speaker 1: been able to genetically engineer plans to express the gene
Speaker 1: that fireflies use, which is called luciferase, and it produces
Speaker 1: this sort of weak glowing light. But unfortunately it isn't
Speaker 1: particularly easy to do or effective, like the light that
Speaker 1: emerges is too dim to read by, and also they
Speaker 1: could only pull off this trick with a few types
Speaker 1: of plants. But scientists M. I. T. Have actually figured
Speaker 1: out this new method where they could basically turn any
Speaker 1: plant into a glow stick. So far, they've actually done
Speaker 1: it with a arugula, kale, spinach, water cross. I. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it's only vegetables for some reason, I
Speaker 1: was gonna but from the photos you can actually read
Speaker 1: by the plant's glow. And what's cooler is that the
Speaker 1: next iteration of this is to be able to like
Speaker 1: create a spray that sprays nanoparticles onto plants to have
Speaker 1: that same effect. So it isn't a far fetched idea
Speaker 1: like this should be able to be done fairly soon,
Speaker 1: and the result is that instead of like our neighborhoods
Speaker 1: using lamp posts, we'd have like glowing trees casting light
Speaker 1: for us. Or if you like ambient light around your house,
Speaker 1: like you might purchase tulip bulbs instead of light bulbs.
Speaker 1: It's not awesome, that's that is really cool. Or well,
Speaker 1: here's another idea I saw out of M I T.
Speaker 1: And and the backstory of this is ridiculous. And this
Speaker 1: is from new scientists, always with the great stories. But
Speaker 1: apparently a professor named Jeffrey Lipton at M I T
Speaker 1: was friends with a carpenter who accidentally cut off each
Speaker 1: of his thumbs with a saw twice. That's four thumbs, mango.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many thumbs this guy had and
Speaker 1: how that happened exactly, but I just like to leave
Speaker 1: it at that, know that he cut off four thumbs.
Speaker 1: But anyway to prevent this from happening again, you would think,
Speaker 1: like to prevent this of it happening again, would just
Speaker 1: be like, don't use this is four thumbs. This is
Speaker 1: a problem anyway. So Lipton and his team have designed
Speaker 1: a system where you submit a design for tables or
Speaker 1: sheds or frames or whatever it is, and then the
Speaker 1: team of robots cut all the pieces out for you,
Speaker 1: and it's it's pretty amazing because what you end up
Speaker 1: with is basically this personalized flat pack furniture. But the
Speaker 1: funnier part is how he built the things. So to
Speaker 1: cut wavy patterns, he attached a jigsaw to a roomba.
Speaker 1: So I really want to watch the team of machines
Speaker 1: at work. It sounds kind of amazing. Yeah, so Lipton
Speaker 1: expects you'll see these robot carpenters in the next few years.
Speaker 1: But until then, he's begging people, please don't just trap
Speaker 1: a jigsaw to a room. But unless you're a roboticistem
Speaker 1: that's pretty good advice. So we've got two more facts
Speaker 1: to do before we declare winner. But let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. First, welcome back to Part Time Genius, where
Speaker 1: we're talking about some new science studies we've been reading about. So, Mago,
Speaker 1: this is your last fact. What do you got for us?
Speaker 1: So there are a ton of studies we won't get
Speaker 1: to today, Like there was one on babies and how
Speaker 1: they actually expect adults to behave morally, like babies are
Speaker 1: kind of born with ethics, which is kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: And uh, there was one on woodpeckers possibly being communists,
Speaker 1: which I really like, Like, there's a lot of great
Speaker 1: stuff we'll get into in future episodes. But there's a
Speaker 1: study that actually kind of bothered me, and it was
Speaker 1: about how people who are more disgusted by body odor
Speaker 1: prefer to vote for authoritarian leaders. Next, there's just like
Speaker 1: so much bad news going on right now that I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted something the opposite of that. So I
Speaker 1: was looking for, like, what's the study on something that
Speaker 1: actually increases empathy? And it turns out one thing that
Speaker 1: will increase empathy is reading Harry Potter. H Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this comes from the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and
Speaker 1: this is why epacific standard. But in two different studies
Speaker 1: in Italy, kids who paid attention to Harry Potter's behavior
Speaker 1: to marginalized groups and characters actually reduced their prejudices and
Speaker 1: became more empathetic for marginalized communities. And obviously there's a
Speaker 1: lot of this in the book, right, like Harry himself
Speaker 1: as an outsider, he's making friends with people like Hagrid
Speaker 1: and these muggles and animals and house elves. And the
Speaker 1: study also showed that kids who read Harry Potter tend
Speaker 1: to have fewer homophobic tendencies, which is equally amazing to me.
Speaker 1: But all of this comes with the catch, So the
Speaker 1: empathy only increases with young readers who actually feel connected
Speaker 1: to Harry, and for those who are on Team Baltimore,
Speaker 1: the researchers didn't see the same changes. No way, is
Speaker 1: that really true. That's pretty wild. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: natural born Slytherins aren't going to look out for others,
Speaker 1: so I guess we can't be that surprised. But I
Speaker 1: do like that reading Harry Potter has this positive impact
Speaker 1: on so many people's lives. But I do have to
Speaker 1: say I also like my last fact, and yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that any type of regular reading might help you live longer.
Speaker 1: So this comes from mental flaws and it's about a
Speaker 1: study at Yale. But basically, the scientists there have looked
Speaker 1: at things like how watching TV and being a couch
Speaker 1: potato can reduce your lifespan. So they decided to turn
Speaker 1: their attention to reading and analyze people over the age
Speaker 1: of fifty. And here's how the study worked. They started
Speaker 1: by sorting the groups into people who didn't read books,
Speaker 1: people who read up to three and a half hours
Speaker 1: a week and people who read more than that. Then
Speaker 1: they followed up with them twelve years later, and after
Speaker 1: adjusting for factors like education, income, health, and a few
Speaker 1: other things, actually found that quote book readers experience the
Speaker 1: reduction and the risk of mortality over the twelve years
Speaker 1: of follow up compared to non book readers. On average,
Speaker 1: the book readers lived twenty three months more than non readers,
Speaker 1: which the author points out should make everyone want to
Speaker 1: get a library card. Oh. I like that. Hooray for reading.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of fun facts in here.
Speaker 1: But I I think the fact that we both got
Speaker 1: to plug books and reading at the end of it
Speaker 1: makes us both winners. So what do you say we
Speaker 1: share today's prize. I think that's a great idea. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it for today's episode. We'll be back with a
Speaker 1: full length episode tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening. H