Episodes
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Episode 553 - E.coli to the rescue and boosting geothermal power
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Monday Oct 09, 2023
E.coli is one of the most studied and versatile bacteria, so how can we make it work for us? Bacteria's ability to generate electricity is well known, but often requires complex conditions. How can we use E.Coli to generate electricity without a complicated setup? Geothermal systems seem to promise unlimited power but sometimes a cold water 'short circuit' ruins the plan. How do you carefully control the efficiency of geothermal power in the extreme temperatures and pressures of the earth?
References:
- Mohammed Mouhib, Melania Reggente, Lin Li, Nils Schuergers, Ardemis A. Boghossian. Extracellular electron transfer pathways to enhance the electroactivity of modified Escherichia coli. Joule, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2023.08.006
- Qitao Zhang, Arash Dahi Taleghani. Autonomous fracture flow tunning to enhance efficiency of fractured geothermal systems. Energy, 2023; 281: 128163 DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.128163
Friday Aug 11, 2023
Episode 546 - What’s going on with whale’s behaviour
Friday Aug 11, 2023
Friday Aug 11, 2023
When whales and humans interact the results can be confusing and messy for both sides. Whether it be noisy boat propellers, or orcas on a collision course, humans and whales don't always get on. How can we monitor and track how whales respond to humans. The best ways of monitoring animals is often with tags, but the very act of tagging can ruin what you're trying to study.
- Lars Reiter Nielsen, Outi M. Tervo, Susanna B. Blackwell, Mads Peter Heide‐Jørgensen, Susanne Ditlevsen. Using quantile regression and relative entropy to assess the period of anomalous behavior of marine mammals following tagging. Ecology and Evolution, 2023; 13 (4) DOI: 10.1002/ece3.9967
Monday Jun 12, 2023
Episode 538 - Colossal volcanic eruptions taking out satellites
Monday Jun 12, 2023
Monday Jun 12, 2023
When a volcano erupts we're used to imagining damage from lava, ash and even tsunamis. So why were satellites taken out? The colossal eruptions at Hunga-Tonga in 2022 caused pressure waves that caused damage 1000s of km away and even to satellites. Satellites, long distance radio and GPS all rely on the ionosphere, but large eruptions can wreck havoc and cause disruptions. When a pressure wave spreads out from a volcanic eruption, we can also get similar disruptions to the ionosphere. Sometimes even before shock wave hits. The way our ionosphere protects and responds to stellar radiation can be influenced by big events down here on Earth.
- Atsuki Shinbori, Takuya Sori, Yuichi Otsuka, Michi Nishioka, Septi Perwitasari, Takuo Tsuda, Atsushi Kumamoto, Fuminori Tsuchiya, Shoya Matsuda, Yoshiya Kasahara, Ayako Matsuoka, Satoko Nakamura, Yoshizumi Miyoshi, Iku Shinohara. Generation of equatorial plasma bubble after the 2022 Tonga volcanic eruption. Scientific Reports, 2023; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-33603-3
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Episode536 - Taking pollution out of the atmosphere
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Humans are filling the atmosphere with more and more pollution. How does it get out of the air and where does it go? For complex pollutants in the atmosphere, having a bit of hydroxide around helps break it down but where does it come from? Hydroxide can spontaneously generate in droplets but it doesn't seem to need sunlight's or photo-chemistry. Spontaneous generation of hydroxide in water droplets helps clean up our atmosphere. Which trees are best at cleaning up the air around them? From conifers to broad leave trees which help keep our air clean the best? C is for conifer, and their leaves and needles help capture pollution out of the air. Broadleaf trees are well...broad and this helps them capture lots of air pollution.
References:
- Kangwei Li, Yunlong Guo, Sergey A. Nizkorodov, Yinon Rudich, Maria Angelaki, Xinke Wang, Taicheng An, Sebastien Perrier, Christian George. Spontaneous dark formation of OH radicals at the interface of aqueous atmospheric droplets. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023; 120 (15) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220228120
- H. Pleijel, J. Klingberg, B. Strandberg, H. Sjöman, L. Tarvainen, G. Wallin. Differences in accumulation of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) among eleven broadleaved and conifer tree species. Ecological Indicators, 2022; 145: 109681 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.109681
Wednesday May 24, 2023
Lagrange Point Episode 535 - Trees growing faster during droughts
Wednesday May 24, 2023
Wednesday May 24, 2023
As our climate changes extreme weather events become more common, but what does this mean for ecosystems? Ecosystems and plants that have adapted to on extreme climate, can thrive in another. An adaption that helps you survive in extreme cold can be very helpful when there is a drought. There is a balancing act between choosing when to grow and when to conserve energy. Plants carefully manage their resources in extreme drought and extreme cold.
- Joan Dudney, Andrew M. Latimer, Phillip van Mantgem, Harold Zald, Claire E. Willing, Jonathan C. B. Nesmith, Jennifer Cribbs, Elizabeth Milano. The energy–water limitation threshold explains divergent drought responses in tree growth, needle length, and stable isotope ratios. Global Change Biology, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16740
Friday May 12, 2023
Episode 533 - Bacteria melting ice and changing the planet
Friday May 12, 2023
Friday May 12, 2023
How can tiny bacteria change the entire planet? Greenland is beautiful and covered in glaciers, but they are turning more and more dark and black. Black algae is tinting glaciers in Greenland darker, and causing changes in our climate. The more our climate changes, the easier it is for algae to thrive in glacier runoff and change the colours of the glaciers. Algae can survive in strange locations on earth, what can that teach us about microorganisms across the solar system?
- James A. Bradley, Christopher B. Trivedi, Matthias Winkel, Rey Mourot, Stefanie Lutz, Catherine Larose, Christoph Keuschnig, Eva Doting, Laura Halbach, Athanasios Zervas, Alexandre M. Anesio, Liane G. Benning. Active and dormant microorganisms on glacier surfaces. Geobiology, 2022; 21 (2): 244 DOI: 10.1111/gbi.12535
Monday Feb 27, 2023
Episode 523 - Sinking carbon out of seawater and carbon storage in wood
Monday Feb 27, 2023
Monday Feb 27, 2023
Our oceans and waterways are our largest carbon sinks and they're overflowing with CO2. Too much CO2 in our waterways can cause tremendous local damage, but there may be ways to clean that up. Using a cyclic process without messy membranes you can get water to release the CO2 captured inside. Extracting excess CO2 from oceans could be possible with only some clever chemistry cells with no waste byproducts. Now that you've got CO2 out of the ocean, what are you going to do with it? Make it work for you. Carbon sequestration can be more useful than just pumping it into the ground. With the right techniques you can use excess CO2 to improve construction materials.
- Seoni Kim, Michael Nitzsche, Simon B Rufer, Jack R. Lake, Kripa Kiran Varanasi, T. Alan Hatton. Asymmetric chloride-mediated electrochemical process for CO2 removal from oceanwater. Energy & Environmental Science, 2023; DOI: 10.1039/D2EE03804H
- Soumyabrata Roy, Firuz Alam Philip, Eliezer Fernando Oliveira, Gurwinder Singh, Stalin Joseph, Ram Manohar Yadav, Aparna Adumbumkulath, Sakib Hassan, Ali Khater, Xiaowei Wu, Praveen Bollini, Ajayan Vinu, George Shimizu, Pulickel M. Ajayan, Md Golam Kibria, Muhammad M. Rahman. Functional wood for carbon dioxide capture. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2023; 4 (2): 101269 DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101269
Monday Feb 20, 2023
Episode 522 - Making hydrogen greenly from Seawater
Monday Feb 20, 2023
Monday Feb 20, 2023
Hydrogen comes in all kinds of colours but what does that mean? Hydrogen has a role to play in a decarbonised world as long as we can produce it greenly. It's no good producing green hydrogen if you use up another valuable resource or create another kind of waste. Water water everywhere, but not a drop to electrolyse. Using seawater to make hydrogen has challenges. How can we use the abundant seawater resource to make green energy sources without producing nasty by products?
- Suraj Loomba, Muhammad Waqas Khan, Muhammad Haris, Seyed Mahdi Mousavi, Ali Zavabeti, Kai Xu, Anton Tadich, Lars Thomsen, Christopher F. McConville, Yongxiang Li, Sumeet Walia, Nasir Mahmood. Nitrogen‐Doped Porous Nickel Molybdenum Phosphide Sheets for Efficient Seawater Splitting. Small, 2023; 2207310 DOI: 10.1002/smll.202207310
Monday Jan 16, 2023
Episode 517 - Cute green balls of algae and a changing climate
Monday Jan 16, 2023
Monday Jan 16, 2023
In the northern reaches of Japan in a idyllic lake, cute green balls of algae are battling for survival. It sounds like an anime, but cute green algae balls, Marimo, are battling stellar forces. Too much sunlight can endanger the cute green algae balls, the Marimo. Having too much sunlight can be just as bad for algae as too little. How can brown algae help fight back against climate change? Algae have changed the climate once before, so can they do it again? If you were to quantify the carbon sequestration of algae, would it really make an impact globally?
- Akina Obara, Mari Ogawa, Yoichi Oyama, Yoshihiro Suzuki, Masaru Kono. Effects of High Irradiance and Low Water Temperature on Photoinhibition and Repair of Photosystems in Marimo (Aegagropila linnaei) in Lake Akan, Japan. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2022; 24 (1): 60 DOI: 10.3390/ijms24010060
- Hagen Buck-Wiese, Mona A. Andskog, Nguyen P. Nguyen, Margot Bligh, Eero Asmala, Silvia Vidal-Melgosa, Manuel Liebeke, Camilla Gustafsson, Jan-Hendrik Hehemann. Fucoid brown algae inject fucoidan carbon into the ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 120 (1) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2210561119
Monday Jan 02, 2023
Episode 516 - How plants handle too much or too little light
Monday Jan 02, 2023
Monday Jan 02, 2023
Too much or too little light can cause serious problems for plants. Light levels are not simply a feast or famine equation when it comes to photosynthesis. Plants must carefully manage the amount of light coming in to ensure smooth photosynthesis. The way genes in leaves responding to rapidly changing light conditions help them make the most of photosynthesis. Your eyes have to rapidly respond to opening curtains in a dark room, just like leaves of a plant. What about plants that have abandoned the need for light at all? Can a plant survive or thrive without light or photosynthesis?
- Thekla von Bismarck, Kübra Korkmaz, Jeremy Ruß, Kira Skurk, Elias Kaiser, Viviana Correa Galvis, Jeffrey A. Cruz, Deserah D. Strand, Karin Köhl, Jürgen Eirich, Iris Finkemeier, Peter Jahns, David M. Kramer, Ute Armbruster. Light acclimation interacts with thylakoid ion transport to govern the dynamics of photosynthesis in Arabidopsis. New Phytologist, 2022; 237 (1): 160 DOI: 10.1111/nph.18534
- Kenji Suetsugu, Shun K. Hirota, Tian-Chuan Hsu, Shuichi Kurogi, Akio Imamura, Yoshihisa Suyama. Monotropastrum kirishimense (Ericaceae), a new mycoheterotrophic plant from Japan based on multifaceted evidence. Journal of Plant Research, 2022; DOI: 10.1007/s10265-022-01422-8
Monday Dec 05, 2022
Episode 512 - Analyzing aftershocks and predicting earthquakes
Monday Dec 05, 2022
Monday Dec 05, 2022
Forecasting an earthquake is serious business, but it's not like the weather. Why are earthquakes so hard to predict? Knowing when an earthquake will occur is hard enough, but what about predicting aftershocks? Aftershocks can create huge stress and compound damage after a quake so what can be done to predict them? Building huge scale models out of granite can help researchers better understand aftershocks. Sliding slabs of granite, plastic blocks and quartz dust help researchers understand aftershocks. When an earthquake combines with another disaster, the compound effect is devastating. How good are modern risk assessment tools at managing compound disasters?
- Sara Beth L. Cebry, Chun-Yu Ke, Srisharan Shreedharan, Chris Marone, David S. Kammer, Gregory C. McLaskey. Creep fronts and complexity in laboratory earthquake sequences illuminate delayed earthquake triggering. Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34397-0
- Misato Uehara, Kuei-Hsien Liao, Yuki Arai, Yuta Masakane. Could the magnitude of the 3/11 disaster have been reduced by ecological planning? A retrospective multi-hazard risk assessment through map overlay. Landscape and Urban Planning, 2022; 227: 104541 DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104541
Monday Nov 07, 2022
Episode 508 - Finding your way as a fish along rivers and into the deep
Monday Nov 07, 2022
Monday Nov 07, 2022
How can fish keep themselves stable in a fast flowing river? What's the best way to stay on track as a fish? To swim straight ahead fish often end up staring downwards. The riverbed is way easier to track than a fast flowing current. How did fish manage to make their way into the deepest parts of the ocean? What climatic factors drove fish to explore deeper and deeper? What changed in Earth's history to encourage fish to thrive in the deepest parts of oceans?
- Emma Alexander, Lanya T. Cai, Sabrina Fuchs, Tim C. Hladnik, Yue Zhang, Venkatesh Subramanian, Nicholas C. Guilbeault, Chinnian Vijayakumar, Muthukumarasamy Arunachalam, Scott A. Juntti, Tod R. Thiele, Aristides B. Arrenberg, Emily A. Cooper. Optic flow in the natural habitats of zebrafish supports spatial biases in visual self-motion estimation. Current Biology, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.10.009
- Elizabeth Christina Miller, Christopher M. Martinez, Sarah T. Friedman, Peter C. Wainwright, Samantha A. Price, Luke Tornabene. Alternating regimes of shallow and deep-sea diversification explain a species-richness paradox in marine fishes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (43) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2123544119
Monday Oct 24, 2022
Episode 506 - Assimilating all microbes in it’s path to chow down on Methane
Monday Oct 24, 2022
Monday Oct 24, 2022
How have microbes changed the course of life on our planet? How has our atmosphere changed as a result of bacteria and archaea? Assimilation can help enhance single cellular life. Archaea can collect long strings of extra genes just in case. Finding the right gene at the right moment can help Archaea make the most of available food.
- Basem Al-Shayeb, Marie C. Schoelmerich, Jacob West-Roberts, Luis E. Valentin-Alvarado, Rohan Sachdeva, Susan Mullen, Alexander Crits-Christoph, Michael J. Wilkins, Kenneth H. Williams, Jennifer A. Doudna, Jillian F. Banfield. Borgs are giant genetic elements with potential to expand metabolic capacity. Nature, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05256-1
Monday Oct 17, 2022
Episode 505 - Complex ocean currents sustaining life across the depths
Monday Oct 17, 2022
Monday Oct 17, 2022
Ocean currents can have global impacts shaping our climate and life in the seas and onshore. How do the ocean currents circulate and vary not just on the surface but beneath the waves? It's easy to picture different layers of clouds, but the same is true for our oceans. Large circulating patterns of currents called Gyres govern the oceans. Tiny phytoplankton keep our oceans alive but how do they get enough food themselves? The middle of a gyre gets baked in sun and seems to lack nutrient sources, so how do microbes survive there? When phytoplankton die they rain down nutrients and carbon to lower layers of the ocean as marine snow.
- Mukund Gupta, Richard G. Williams, Jonathan M. Lauderdale, Oliver Jahn, Christopher Hill, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, Michael J. Follows. A nutrient relay sustains subtropical ocean productivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (41) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2206504119
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Episode 500 - Forest helping pump water and create rain
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Plants harness the energy from the sun for so much more than photosynthesis. You have a beating hart to pump around your blood, but what do plants. Plants' vascular systems aren't pressurized so how do they power their circulation? Just how much energy do plants use globally each year to pump water out of the ground and into their leaves? Plants use incredible amounts of energy each year just to pump water out of the ground into their leaves. The fresh scents of plants are organic compounds that can reveal a lot about a plants condition. The scents of plants can play a role in influencing the climate around them.
- Gregory R. Quetin, Leander D. L. Anderegg, Alexandra G. Konings, Anna T. Trugman. Quantifying the Global Power Needed for Sap Ascent in Plants. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2022; 127 (8) DOI: 10.1029/2022JG006922
- Joseph Byron, Juergen Kreuzwieser, Gemma Purser, Joost van Haren, S. Nemiah Ladd, Laura K. Meredith, Christiane Werner, Jonathan Williams. Chiral monoterpenes reveal forest emission mechanisms and drought responses. Nature, 2022; 609 (7926): 307 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05020-5
Monday Aug 01, 2022
Episode 494 - Mass extinctions and recovery in our oceans
Monday Aug 01, 2022
Monday Aug 01, 2022
What happens when most life in the ocean just dies off? Our oceans have seen many mass extinctions in the past, how long does it take to recover? What happened at the end of the Permian that caused massive extinctions in the ocean? What creatures were best able to survive when 80% of the rest of life in the ocean died? Burrowing and feeding on mud at the ocean depths helped soft bodied creatures survive a mass extinction. What lurked in the north Pacific that heated up the oceans? What was 'The Blob' and how were seals able to uncover it's secrets in the North pacific?
- Xueqian Feng, Zhong-Qiang Chen, Michael J. Benton, Chunmei Su, David J. Bottjer, Alison T. Cribb, Ziheng Li, Laishi Zhao, Guangyou Zhu, Yuangeng Huang, Zhen Guo. Resilience of infaunal ecosystems during the Early Triassic greenhouse Earth. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (26) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo0597
- Rachel R. Holser, Theresa R. Keates, Daniel P. Costa, Christopher A. Edwards. Extent and Magnitude of Subsurface Anomalies During the Northeast Pacific Blob as Measured by Animal‐Borne Sensors. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2022; 127 (7) DOI: 10.1029/2021JC018356
Monday Jul 04, 2022
Episode 490 - The history of fire on Earth
Monday Jul 04, 2022
Monday Jul 04, 2022
The history of fire on earth from the first wildfires to the first use to cook. We all know you need fuel and oxygen for fire, but when did the first fires occur on Earth. When did the first wild fires occur on earth? What was there to burn on early Earth if there weren't any large trees or plants? Giant mushrooms and large fields of moss, early Earth was very different but it could still have wildfires. When did the first hominids use fire as a tool? How can we identify if something that was burn was done so deliberately or accidentally. We know at some point hominids used fire as a tool, but when exactly - 200,500 800 million years ago?
- Zane Stepka, Ido Azuri, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Michael Chazan, Filipe Natalio. Hidden signatures of early fire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (25) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2123439119
- Ian J. Glasspool, Robert A. Gastaldo. Silurian wildfire proxies and atmospheric oxygen. Geology, 2022; DOI: 10.1130/G50193.1
Tuesday Jun 28, 2022
Episode 498 - Clean air, captured carbon and paper sensors
Tuesday Jun 28, 2022
Tuesday Jun 28, 2022
Where is the cleanest air on the planet? How do oceans help capture carbon from forest fires? Where does all that carbon go after a forest fire? How do you find the cleanest air, by measuring microbes. The southern ocean air is not polluted by aerosols or ice forming particles. The air above the Southern Ocean is clean and crisp with not much microbes in side it. How can you turn a paper into a simple carbon dioxide sensor?
- Matthew W. Jones, Alysha I. Coppola, Cristina Santín, Thorsten Dittmar, Rudolf Jaffé, Stefan H. Doerr, Timothy A. Quine. Fires prime terrestrial organic carbon for riverine export to the global oceans. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16576-z
- Hui Wang, Sergei I. Vagin, Bernhard Rieger, Alkiviathes Meldrum. An Ultrasensitive Fluorescent Paper-Based CO2 Sensor. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2020; 12 (18): 20507 DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c03405
Tuesday Jun 14, 2022
Episode 487 - Feeding the planet without damaging it
Tuesday Jun 14, 2022
Tuesday Jun 14, 2022
As our climate changes, feeding the planet without making things worse is a big challenge. How do plants work together to survive extreme weather events? When there is a large drought or extreme weather event what works better, single species or mixed? Plant diversity can help plants weather the storm of climate change and come out stronger. How do cover crops help 'fix' nitrogen in the soil and reduce negative climate impacts. Excess fertiliser is not only expensive for farmers but damaging to the local and global environment. How can cover crops help soil recover and reduce negative climate change impacts of mono cropping.
- Yuxin Chen, Anja Vogel, Cameron Wagg, Tianyang Xu, Maitane Iturrate-Garcia, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen, Alexandra Weigelt, Nico Eisenhauer, Bernhard Schmid. Drought-exposure history increases complementarity between plant species in response to a subsequent drought. Nature Communications, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30954-9
- Nakian Kim, Chance W. Riggins, María C. Zabaloy, Marco Allegrini, Sandra L. Rodriguez-Zas, María B. Villamil. High-Resolution Indicators of Soil Microbial Responses to N Fertilization and Cover Cropping in Corn Monocultures. Agronomy, 2022; 12 (4): 954 DOI: 10.3390/agronomy12040954
- Nakian Kim, Chance Riggins, María C. Zabaloy, Sandra Rodriguez-Zas and María B. Villamil. Limited impacts of cover cropping on soil N-cycling microbial communities of long-term corn monocultures. Frontiers in Microbiology, 2022 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.926592
Monday May 30, 2022
Episode 485 - Plants race against rising sea levels
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
How can plants adapt to a changing climate and strange volcanic soils. By tracking the divergent evolution of Thale Cress, scientists can track the genetic changes needed to thrive in weird soil. Volcanic soil can have benefits along with risks, but how can plants adapt quickly to odd soil types? How did plants learn to thrive on a volcanic island, Pico de Fogo. What can a long running study tell us about plants adapting to a changing climate. Extra CO2 is good for plants...to up to a point. For plants in wetlands its a race between rising sea levels and extra CO2.
- Emmanuel Tergemina, Ahmed F. Elfarargi, Paulina Flis, Andrea Fulgione, Mehmet Göktay, Célia Neto, Marleen Scholle, Pádraic J. Flood, Sophie-Asako Xerri, Johan Zicola, Nina Döring, Herculano Dinis, Ute Krämer, David E. Salt, Angela M. Hancock. A two-step adaptive walk rewires nutrient transport in a challenging edaphic environment. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (20) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm9385
- Chunwu Zhu, J. Adam Langley, Lewis H. Ziska, Donald R. Cahoon, J. Patrick Megonigal. Accelerated sea-level rise is suppressing CO 2 stimulation of tidal marsh productivity: A 33-year study. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (20) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn0054