WEBVTT - Science! A 2013 Year in Review 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:07.240 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:14.840 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking. The 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:18.000 podcast said looks at the future and says she blinded 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.480 me with science. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Focal, I'm 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.240 Joe McCormick. I feel you've already done that one. It's okay, 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:27.160 I'll do it again because you know what we're doing. 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.880 Science were and we're looking back on science. It is 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:35.559 the end of two thousand thirteen. We wanted to look 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.120 back at some of the big stories of two thousand 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.200 thirteen that kind of relate to stuff we've talked about 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:42.639 all throughout the year on Forward Thinking. Yeah, because it's 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.479 been an awesome year for for science and technological development. 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:49.160 Amazing year. If you look at just a small list 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:51.600 of the stuff that happened in two thousand thirteen, you'll 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.080 realize that this podcast, if we were to try and 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:57.720 cover all of them, would last approximately seventeen hours. So 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:00.240 we have decided that we're going to just pick that 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:02.920 leapt out at us. These are not necessarily the most 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:07.200 important or most world changing stories. It's not a comprehensive 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:09.319 list by any means, but this is the we We 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:11.360 each took a section of the year and kind of 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.320 looked at some of the big stories that happened during 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:15.959 that part of the year and singled out some stuff 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.360 that we really wanted to talk about and just kind 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:21.120 of give an overview of some of the amazing things 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:24.160 that have happened so far in two thousand thirteen. Also, 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.960 I should say we are actually recording this on December seventeen, 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:30.880 two thousand thirteen, so there's still some of two thousand 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:33.960 thirteen left to go. Yeah, if the Aliens land sometime 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:38.520 between now and December or so when this show airs, yeah, 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.160 it won't make the list. And also it's because the 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:44.720 Aliens don't want us to talk about it. So uh, 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.760 it turns out that I I drew the first part 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:49.840 of the year, the first third of the year. So 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.840 let's start off with January. And January started off like 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:57.360 gang Busters and the astronomy world guys, I mean like 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.840 crazy amounts of astronomy going on, Like people were just 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.000 constantly looking up and wondering what was out there and 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.000 finding new stuff. Well, you know, in December you get 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:10.320 a solstice and and that's that's fun for people who 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:14.720 are obsessed with the sky, and but by come January, 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.280 you're you're recovering from that. Okay, what else is out there? 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:21.560 What's going on? So lots of different reports that all 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.320 kind of are related came out in January. For example, 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:30.040 Caltech researchers reported that based upon the information that we 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:34.840 have gleaned from the Milky Way, that uh, they figured 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:38.760 that for every star that's in the Milky Way, there's 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.840 probably at least one planet, not necessarily meaning that every 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:43.959 star has a planet in orbit around it, but that 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:46.720 that's the ratio that works out, which means that we 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:50.200 probably have between a hundred and four hundred billion exo 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:52.560 planets out there in the Milky Way and the Milky 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.160 Way galaxy, just in our galaxy. Harvard Smithsonian Center for 0:02:56.200 --> 0:03:00.520 Astrophysics estimated that there are at least quote seventeen billion 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:04.240 end quote Earth sized exo planets in the Milky Way. Now, 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:06.400 that does not necessarily mean that these plants are in 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:09.000 what we call the Goldilocks zone, though there was an 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:11.600 interesting paper about that. Later this year, yep Uh and 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:15.440 some Kepler astronomers discovered an earthlike exo planet called k 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.639 O I one seven two point oh two, which could uh, 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.080 it was similar to Earth. It was in that Goldilocks 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.200 zone and they say, so far as of January of 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:28.280 this year, it was the most likely candidate for a 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.320 planet that could potentially support alien life. A lot of 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:34.560 qualifiers there, because obviously right now we can't tell if 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.240 in fact there is anything there. But it was one 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:39.040 of those where they said, look, here's an example of 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.480 a plant that could potentially be a planet supports life 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.400 as we understand it here on Earth. Big exciting news 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:47.800 and all of that, of course kind of related, which 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.320 is why I grouped them together. Also in January, did 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:54.000 you guys see the story about scientists figuring out how 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:58.320 to cool down gas to quote below absolute zero end quote? 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:02.000 I have not. I don't even understand. I don't think that. Okay. Yeah, 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:05.560 First of all, I sort of object to that particular 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:09.800 type of reporting, saying below absolute zero. Absolute zero essentially 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.240 means that you have a system where there is no 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:16.279 energy there, you have no molecular movement. Yeah, it's essentially 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:18.880 a universal constant, the way that the speed of light. Yeah, 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:20.800 it's like the it's like the coldest something can get. 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.400 If you think of cold as movement within a system. 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:30.200 So this particular research study used lasers and some evaporative 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:35.479 cooling on atoms to create negative temperature. And in this case, 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:37.400 what they mean by negative temperature is if you think 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.120 of a classic system, all right, most of the atoms 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:44.640 in a classic stable system are low energy atoms. Okay, 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.200 if you add energy to that system, some of those 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.440 atoms jump up to a higher energy level and they 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.080 get a little chaotic, get a little crazy, start moving 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.800 all over the place. So in a negative temperature system, 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.800 it's the opposite. In your average system, most of the 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.120 atoms are high energ g. So the only atoms that 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.600 are not really adhering to this are the few low 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.120 energy atoms. So if you add energy into a negative 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:12.240 temperature system, you then boost those few low energy atoms 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.680 up into high energy and it becomes more stable. So 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:17.680 it's the opposite of what we would think of with 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.040 a classic system with positive temperature. And that's what they 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:24.600 really mean by this negative temperature. It's that the physics 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:27.760 themselves behave in a way opposite to what we would 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:31.040 see in a classic system. So it's not that it's 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.080 colder than absolute zero that somehow you have negative movement. 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.120 It's that the actual laws of how the system behave 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:39.520 is inverted from the way it would be in a 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.760 classic system with a lot of low energy atoms. So 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:45.279 I think in this case there was a lot of 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:51.119 confusing reporting going on where uh, you know, some terms 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:54.680 we're getting used in a very casual manner that ended 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.960 up confusing things. But generally speaking, I mean it's an 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:00.200 amazing news story. I just don't know the it was 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:04.680 necessarily reported in the most understand as many deep science 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.600 news stories happen to. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we can't 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.320 all be forward thinking, right, I mean we can't. I 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:17.719 just told us to a higher standard. I am joking people, 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.240 so don't don't get mad at me. Another great story 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.800 in January, so any C and Corning paired up to 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:25.560 create a multi core fiber optic cable that was capable 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:29.800 of transmitting one quadrillion bits of data also known as 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.280 a pet a bit in one second. That's a huge 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.640 amount of information. Yeah, one thousand terror bits of information 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.000 in one second over a cable. They said that this 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.520 has the potential of being able to maintain a speed 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:46.560 like that over a cable that's as long as fifty kilometers. 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:48.359 I believe We talked about this in our speed of 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.120 Communication video, and it's pretty phenomenal stuff, right, I mean, 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.160 this is this is where you're able It's it's you know, 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:56.320 we all know that really this is going at the 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:59.680 speed of light essentially more or less, but it's the 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:01.920 amount of information that you're able to pass through. Is 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.280 the throughput as opposed to the speed, Right, that's what 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:06.440 That was the point we made in that episode. And 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:08.440 in fact, a lot of the things I'm talking about 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:10.480 kind of relate to episodes we've talked about in the past, 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:12.000 which I just thought it was kind of cool to 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:13.960 look back on this stuff. The way they did this 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:17.480 was they created a triangular structure inside the fiber optics 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:19.640 that would allow you to have multi phases of light 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:21.640 passed through at the same time, so that the different 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:23.800 light would not interfere with one another. So you could 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.480 pass multiple pieces of information through the same core all 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:29.840 the all the same time, and of course at at 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.600 light speed. So it's pretty phenomenal stuff. Uh. January was 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.160 also in deep space Industries announced that they had plans 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:40.640 for asteroid mining. He had a big episode on asteroid mining. UH. 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:43.000 They would launch the first spacecraft, the plan is to 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.960 launch it in twift and that is not necessarily a 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:50.480 mining spacecraft, but a survey spacecraft. UM. The School of 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.240 Medicine at the University of St. Andrew's used the geometry 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.120 of light to pull objects towards the source of light. Man, 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:59.400 we should have done an episode about tractor beams, Yes, 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.520 we did. Yeah, a lot of these were kind of 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.800 the inspiration for those early forward thinking episodes, and so 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:07.840 you should definitely go back and check those out, and 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.240 we've done. We did a full podcast about this too. 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.679 We talked about tractor beams, both the science fiction version 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:15.720 and the science fact version, which is pretty cool. I 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.000 believe that's the one where we consulted Wiki PA. Yes, yes, 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:21.040 And I think, Lauren, I think you have something that 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:22.640 you want to talk about in January two before I 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:24.880 move on to February, Yeah, I wanted to mention that 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:28.360 was the month that that Rice University researchers announced that 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:30.560 they had created this or well, that they had used 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:34.240 a wet spinning method of creating carrent carbon nanotube thread 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:36.880 that UM that can be used to both suspend and 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.000 power a lamp. And and I've talked about this before. 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.920 I'm seriously infatuated with it. Um that the wet spinning 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.319 method lets you dissolve clumps of carbon nanotubes and kind 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:46.360 of squish them out into a thread, then wind it 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.000 up and dry it out. And um, the resulting thread 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.120 is macroscopic. It's like human hair sized. It can be 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:55.920 hundreds of meters long. It has the connectivity of metal, 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:58.679 the strength of carbon fiber. And yeah, you can you 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:01.760 can watch a video of them both suspending and powering 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.600 a lamp with it. And this is super cool because 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.480 you know, before creating carbon nanotubes was one of those 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.360 processes where we couldn't do a lot of it, and 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.560 certainly not very long carbon nanotube chains of them would 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.960 be would still be microscopic or even smaller than microscopic. Yeah, 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:20.960 so this was an incredible development and has the potential 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.400 to be truly transformative in future applications. In many applications. 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.520 I mean, we we just did an episode about clothing, like, like, 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.120 imagine entire pieces of cloth that are woven out of 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:34.480 out of this kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, that's 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.400 it's hard to imagine, to tell you the truth. It 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.520 would be amazing to see and this could potentially be 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.120 the groundwork for that. So moving on to a February, 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.080 that's when the curiosity rover. You remember that little guy, 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.640 he's adorable or it's adorable, shitt and anthropomorphize it. Uh, 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:55.960 the wheeling around on Mars Chicken out for possible signs 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.160 of Martian life, as well as just doing surveys geological surveys. 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:01.520 Really it's a geologic coal device, but you know it's 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.440 looking for other stuff too. Uh. It used a drill 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.280 to get a deep rock sample. Is the first time 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:09.240 we ever got a deep rock sample from a plant 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:12.000 that was not Earth, So that's kind of cool. It 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.240 bore a six point four centimeter hole into a target 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:21.160 rock and scooped out dust for analysis and determined it well. 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.280 It was able to determine the age of the rock, uh, 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.280 within a within a narrow range. That narrow range being 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.840 between three point eight six and four point five six 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.120 billion years old. Sounds like it's about as old as 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.480 the Earth. To give it take a billion years on 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:38.000 that one. That's a pretty well anyway, it's kind of cool. 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.200 Also in February, the Large Hadron Collider shut down for maintenance, 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.920 which was a planned shut down, although not just maintenance, 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.400 but also to uh to address some problems that were 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.640 kind of a faulty design issues so that they can 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.040 fix that up. Once that all gets fixed up and 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.080 it ends up coming back online, it's gonna be a 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.760 two year hiatus, but once it comes back online, it 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:03.360 will be operating at approximately twice as much power as before, 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:06.640 so we'll be able to have much higher power collisions. 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:09.840 And as you collide these particles at higher and higher 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:13.320 energy levels, you get to see more stuff. So, uh, 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:16.200 you know, they already that this kind of dips into March, 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:20.400 but they already had announced that they felt fairly certain 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:23.800 that the mysterious particle they had detected with the Large 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.320 Hadron Collider was in fact the Higgs boson, which is 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:30.480 the particle that explains why matter has mass. So you know, 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.040 you can only maybe we'll start to learn more about 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.679 dark energy and dark matter once it comes back online 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:40.160 in two years. UM. Now, as far as the scientists 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:43.480 who work at CERN, don't worry about them. Their jobs 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.600 are secure because they have terabytes and terabytes and terabytes 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.880 of data to sift through while the LHC is offline, 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:54.280 so they've got plenty of work. And the last story 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:56.679 I have for February is that this is a this 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:58.760 is my feel good feature because this is one of 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:02.319 those things that I want is Victor Mattivets is a 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.600 computer science grad student at the University of Illinois Chicago 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.760 built a body suit that has haptic feedback system built 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.240 into it and he calls it the spider Since Suit 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:16.719 after our favorite friend Web Slinger. Yeah, spider Man. So 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.319 so the Spidy Sinse suit has haptic feedback built into 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.040 it and can detect when you come close to an 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:25.920 obstacle or something is coming close to you. And the 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.040 way he tested it was he took people who were 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.400 wearing the suit, put blindfolds on them and had people 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:33.800 rush up to them, and gave all the people with 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:36.920 the body suit little cardboard ninja stars, and he said, 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:39.640 of the time they were throwing the stars right at 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:42.200 the people who are coming at them, because the feedback 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.000 would be located in the same like giving you an 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:49.199 idea of what direction the person or thing was coming from. 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.120 And while this was kind of a funny way of 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:55.120 showing off this technology, the plan is to use it 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:57.040 for people who have visual impairment so that they can 0:12:57.040 --> 0:12:59.880 get around their environments better, and it actually uses ultra 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:04.520 sound technology. It projects out ultrasound signals and has tiny 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:07.560 little microphones embedded in the suit that pick up the 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.840 reflection of the signals. So it's kind of like echolocation 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:12.520 in a way. I was going to say, this sounds 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.000 a lot more to me like Daredevil than Spider Man specifically. 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.480 But well, the spiky sense of someone about the swing 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:19.880 of a fist that your head, I don't know. I 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.480 get it. I get it was the comics movies. But 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:24.280 I was thinking you were going to say that the 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.640 suit allows you to capture insects and liquefy them into 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.960 precious fluids that you then derived nutrition from. No, not 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.920 this one. I kind of want that suit. Yeah, that 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.760 kind of relates back to our our discussion about bug burgers. 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:42.240 But yeah, let's let's move on show we Okay. March 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:45.280 um So March, you know I mentioned arid the Higgs boson. 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.440 That's when certain announced that the particle they had discovered 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:50.440 they were reasonably certain it was the Higgs boson. But 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:54.199 March was also the month when there was a report 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.480 about another research project from cal Tech, this time one 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:03.760 involving self healing circuits. Now I once again I kind 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.760 of object to the terminology here. Uh, it's super awesome 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.360 work that was done. I don't necessarily think of it 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:12.520 as self healing unless you think of the circuit as just, 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.320 you know, it heals in that it's still capable of 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.160 doing what it's supposed to do even after its suffered damage, 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.000 because it's not that it repairs the damage. What happens 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.520 instead is that they built circuits that if you were 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:25.440 to damage the circuits and they used a laser to 0:14:25.480 --> 0:14:28.720 do it, it could reroute whatever was going on, so 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.840 that the circuit could still fulfill its function even with 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.080 that damage there. So it's not like it fixed the damage. 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:38.120 It was just able to work despite the damage. I 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:41.200 really just thought of it as resilient. Yeah, I don't 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:43.440 have any specific bullet points on them. But later in 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.920 the year, there was a lot of interesting polymer research 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.800 into you know, non conducive materials, but materials that could, 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.360 in fact, given given a certain amount of stress, that 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.200 nickel alloy that would repair micro tears if you were to, 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.560 uh to apply kinetic pressure to the alloy. That was 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:05.800 really cool stuff too. But April that's when the Massachusetts 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:09.880 General Hospital scientists grew rap kidneys in a lab. So 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.160 what they what they did was they took some kidneys 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:15.720 from deceased rats. They used detergent to strip away all 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.440 the cells, the kidney cells, so what was left was 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.440 the connective tissue like the blood vessel tissue and everything 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:24.040 else that was left. But everything else was stripped away. 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.440 They then used some a combination of human umbilical vein 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:32.920 cells to line the blood cell connective tissue and kidney 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:37.880 cells collected from newborn rats to try and rebuild kidneys. 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.520 And then they implanted those new rebuilt kidneys into living 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.920 rats and it worked. Now, this is actually worked. That's 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:47.040 been done for a while. It's not like this was 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:50.040 just done. Now. The work was published this year, but 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.400 it dates. The project itself dates back to two thousand eight. Uh. 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:57.360 Couple downsides. The rebuilt kidneys do not work as well 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:00.280 as your normal kidneys would. In fact, for the rats, 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:02.760 that works at about a third of the efficiency. But 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:09.120 you know, for for dialysis, the percentage of efficiency is 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.560 somewhere around fIF before you get put on dialysis, so 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.080 it's actually above the dialysis threshold. So it already meets that. Now, 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:18.520 granted this is for rats, it's not for humans, and 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.280 the scientists were very quick to point out that elite 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:24.800 from rat to human is incredibly complex and that that 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.200 this approach would not be something that they could easily 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:30.320 pour over to humans. It's more of a a you know, 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.560 learning as we go. Uh. They said that in order 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.440 for it to make a true working human kidney, they 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:38.800 would need to learn more about steering stem cells so 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.560 that they developed into very specific types of tissue so 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:46.920 that way you have a good possible transplant oregan. So 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.080 we're still years away. In fact, the scientist says that 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:53.480 he thinks we're decades away from seeing this being used 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.400 as a way for human transplant, you know, to actually 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.240 grow replacement organs. However, he says, we're gonna learn so 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.600 much along the way about how these organs repair themselves 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.960 that that alone will be really useful. And um, that's 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:08.719 all I have. I'm ready for someone to pick up 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.119 in May. I mean, I could mention the fact that 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:15.520 IBM made this cute stop motion animation by manipulating single 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.679 atoms and taking pictures of the single atoms using an 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:22.280 electron uh telling microscope. And it was a boy in 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.520 his atom and it was adorable. But that's just my 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:28.000 own favorite little story from me. It sounds like you 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:31.840 did mention it. I guess I did. Ye. So in May, 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:37.239 pretty big breakthrough human stem cells created by cloning, right, 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.160 that's huge. Yeah. So it was a paper presented called 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:44.520 human embryonic stem cells derived by somatic cell nuclear transfer 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.880 and that was by schukrat me tell Ipo. I think 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.480 I said that right, hopefully, But basically he was working 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.240 at the Organ Health and Science University in Beaverton. Oregan 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:00.240 and his team was able to create embryon extend stem 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:04.960 cells specific to the patient through cloning. So big for 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:10.240 therapeutic cloning in the future, big research promise there. In 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.960 June they had the initiation of Google's Project Loon, right, yeah, 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:17.200 Google Loon was, uh it still is a project that 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.040 Google is looking into to provide WiFi too hard to 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:25.560 reach locations using these balloons that carry the transmitters essentially 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.840 and they float in the stratosphere and you would use 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.000 hundreds of these things to create WiFi networks into areas 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.359 that otherwise would never get this this kind of service. 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:37.920 Lauren and I talked about this on an episode of 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.879 tech Stuff and we were absolutely I don't know if 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:44.040 Charmed amused by the story of the the Alpha launch, 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:47.040 where all right, we're basically Google men in black showed 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:50.120 up at this nice sheep farmer's house in New Zealand 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.320 and said, Uh, we want to install this thing. We 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.400 can't tell you what it does. Yeah, we just want 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:56.920 to put this thing on your roof, but we can't 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:58.600 tell you what it's for, what it does. We can't 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.359 tell you who you're with or who we're with. Do 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:05.200 we less do it? And they said, right, and look 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.399 into this light. Yeah. So then they installed it and 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:10.840 then uh tested it out and everything was working, and 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.479 then they told they came back and they said, hey, 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.400 you've got WiFi. Yeah, They're like wow, And so they 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:18.359 hooked up their computers to the WiFi and it worked. 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:23.000 So it's a a project that is still being uh 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:28.080 kind of unfolded. It's really interesting stuff. Though. Also in June, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.800 didn't we have a really big Supreme Court ruling? Yes, 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:34.200 we did place out on the science turf. Yeah. In fact, 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.280 this is one of those things that that I know 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:38.720 a lot of scientists and doctors were very eager to 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:43.000 see happen because it settled a question about whether or 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:47.679 not companies could patent human genes. I mean, genetic study 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.159 is is hitting you know, a furious pace right in 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:54.399 research facilities. There's a lot of potential to treat various 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:58.280 diseases or to diagnose diseases, and there there's a lot 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:01.159 of incentive for companies to develop ways of doing this 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:05.159 because it's you know, it's a complicated UH area that 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.680 very few companies can get a head start in. But 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:11.040 of course if you have that ability to head start, 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.000 then you want to protect that by patenting the heck 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.440 of the stuff, including human genes. Well, there was a 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:20.360 Supreme Court hearing where some scientists and doctors challenged patents 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.920 held by a company called Myriad Genetics and specifically the 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:27.399 genes that they were interested in correlated to risk of 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:31.600 hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. And the sciences doctors were saying, 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:33.600 we want to be able to develop our tests so 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.399 that we can test women for this and and screen 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.000 them for it effectively. But if you hold, if this 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:41.040 company holds the patents on it, we can't do that 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.080 without first going through this company. So it's restricting people, 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:48.280 uh and their ability to get quality healthcare. And so 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:51.920 the Supreme Court sided with the scientists and doctors. It 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.679 was a unanimous decision. They said that you cannot patent 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:59.119 something that is occurring naturally. You can't do that. So 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:02.200 you can't discover something that no one was able. Even 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:04.560 if you were able to isolate that gene, you can't 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:07.080 patent the gene because it occurs naturally. What you can do, 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.520 they said, was if you create something synthetically, like you 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:13.280 create synthetic d n A, and you create genes this way, 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:15.800 some sort of synthetic gene that you can patent, So 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:18.880