May 16, 2017 • 9 mins
Research into missing limbs indicates that our brains control function differently than we thought. Underground mole rats can live without oxygen. Plus, the mysteries of Blood Falls have been solved.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to has To Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
a researcher and writer. Here it has To Works. Every week,
I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology and culture.
This week, it turns out that underground critters called naked
mole rats can switch their biochemistry to survive when oxygen
(00:23):
supplies run low. And unrelated, the researchers have cracked the
mystery of the pigmentation responsible for blood falls, A waterfall
with an aptly dramatic name, but first, Senior editor Katherine
Born and our freelance writer Alia Hoyt explore new research
into how our brains control our movements. The results run
counter to what we thought we knew about motor function,
(00:45):
and it's all thanks to patients with missing limbs. Recent
research published in the journal Current Biology is poised to
transform whole scientists understand the brain, specifically which section control
which body parts. Researchers from University College London looked at
seventeen people born without a hand, along with twenty four
(01:07):
people born with two hands as a control group. The
participants were all video recorded doing five everyday tasks such
as wrapping presents, while their brains were scanned using functional
m r A. Science has generally posited that a certain
area of the brain was in charge of hand function,
but the researchers learned that when other body parts were
compensating for a missing hand, like the foot, mouth, or arm,
(01:30):
that hand area of the brain just as effectively lit up,
so instead of that section of the brain being hands specific,
it appears to be actually functioned specific, although this is
just a working theory. The concept is illustrated by six
year old Zian Lee Aguila Valle of Kennesaw, Georgia, who
was born without arms. Zian mostly uses his feet to bathe, dress,
(01:52):
and eat, as well as to write, paint, play with legos,
or help his mom cook dinner. He carries around small
packages of cleansing wipes to d german his feet before eating.
He also loves skateboarding, swimming, and baseball. Interestingly, Zan's brain
is better equipped to adapt his missing limbs than that
of a person who loses a hand later in life.
James Giordano, a neurology and biochemistry professor at Georgetown University,
(02:16):
says the brain is very adaptive, so if a function
needs to be done, another part can be recruited to
fill in for the one that's missing. If the limb
loss occurs later in life, Jordana says, another appendage can
be trained to fill in, but it's much more difficult
because the brain has to basically rewire its connections. Neurophysical
rehabilitation and high tech approaches like magnetic stimulation can encourage
(02:38):
the brain to adapt. The study we mentioned earlier demonstrates
the brain is more plastic than we had imagined. The
study could help scientists determine how the brain could control,
for instance, a prosthetic arm using the brain area that
would have controlled that missing arm. Next step, steph it
(03:00):
aor Christopher Hassiotus and our freelancer Jesceline Shields bring us
into the bizarre world of the naked mole rat, which
can run its body basically like a plant when it
doesn't have enough oxygen to live like a mammal. Learning
interesting facts about animals is like reading evolution celebrity gossip rag.
(03:22):
There's a delightfully voyeuristic thrill that comes with learning that
a star nosed mole can smell underwater by blowing bubbles
and then sucking them back in its nose, or that
a sea otter has so much hair and has the
approximate surface area of a hockey rink. But have you
heard about the naked mole rat. You're gonna want to
sit down. So the naked mole rat heterocephalous glaber looks
(03:44):
about like you'd expect a hairless mole crossed with a
hairless rat crossed with a chest bursting creature from alien.
But this subterranean African mammal is by far the longest
living rodent. It's cold blooded, and it's immune to cancer.
It's practically pervious to most types of pain, and shows
very few signs of aging during its life. Like some insects,
(04:06):
naked mole rats are use social, meaning a group of
them has a queen that takes on all the reproductive
responsibilities for the group, while other females are sterile and
have jobs like finding food or fending off predators. A
single queen naked mole rat might live thirty years and
have nine hundred babies in her lifetime. And finally, these
little animals can survive for long periods without oxygen by
(04:28):
basically turning into plants wait seriously under normal oxygen rich conditions.
The naked mole rat runs itself on glucose like every
other self respecting mammal on the planet, and mammals need
oxygen to fuel this process. But in the absence of oxygen,
according to a new study published in the journal Science,
it turns out naked mole rats can switch over to
(04:49):
a different biochemical process using fructose, the same sugar that
powers plants. Now, scientists have known for a while that
because they live in large groups in tight underground space
is where plentiful oxygen supplies aren't given like they are
here above ground, naked mole rats have evolved to withstand
shockingly low oxygen situations. Until now, however, nobody has quantified
(05:11):
the extent to which these hideous little wizards can abstain
from breathing air. The team of international researchers discovered the
little animals can chill for five or more hours at
a time in extremely low oxygen environments, and for up
to eighteen minutes with absolutely no oxygen whatsoever. To figure
this out, the team put both naked mole rats and
(05:33):
regular mice in a chamber with no oxygen. As you
might expect the mice died immediately, But although the naked
morats quickly lost consciousness and their heartbeats slowed from two
hundred to only fifty beats per minute, after being introduced
back into the air, a full eighteen minutes later, they
completely recovered and went about their naked mole rat business.
(05:54):
So exactly how do the animals manage this? According to
the studies lead author Thomas Park, who's a professor of
biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the
naked mole rat has simply rearranged some basic building blocks
of metabolism to make it super tolerant to low oxygen conditions.
There are other animals who can metabolize fructose in the
(06:16):
absence of oxygen, but only in limited parts of the body,
like the gut. It's naked mole rats that have emergency
fruito services set up in all of their organs, even
their brain and their heart, making them unique among mammals
in that regard, at least as far as we know
right now. Finally, this week, managing editor Alison louder Milk
(06:42):
and our freelancer Kate Kirshner explain how researchers solved the
mysteries of a blood red waterfall flowing out of the
middle of a glacier. If you were to say that
the blood red color of an Antarctic waterfall was only
the second most interesting thing about it, it might be
(07:03):
hard to take you seriously. After all, one look at
blood falls and you're probably pretty focused on the horrifying
carry prom scene nestled in the ice of Taylor Glacier.
You're not looking for much else to catch your eye.
But while that horror seene hue undoubtedly pulls you in,
scientists have now figured out the source of the blood,
(07:24):
so to speak, and it's arguably more fascinating than the
ghoulish falls itself. When geologist and all around adventure Thomas
Griffith discovered the geological wonder back in nineteen eleven, the
prevailing idea was that a type of algae was causing
the distinctive red bloom, sort of like the harmful algal
blooms or red tides that have been known to plague
Florida's Gulf coast. But a two thousand three analysis found
(07:48):
that it was actually high levels of iron that tinged
the water, so distinctively the iron turns to rust in
the water. But this presented another mystery. So I just
weren't sure where the salty in laden liquid water was
coming from that's been feeding the waterfall. So they decided
to investigate the subsurface of the glacier with radar signals,
(08:09):
and when they did, researchers found a subsurface lake, complete
with a flowing path of water that supplied the briny,
iron rich water to the falls. Second mystery solved. This
discovery is particularly interesting because it confirms that flowing water
can persist inside a glacier as cold as tailor, something
researchers weren't quite sure was possible. And in case you're
(08:30):
wondering how liquid water can exist in a clearly freezing glacier,
it's actually the process of freezing that keeps it moving.
As water freezes, it releases heat that can melt the
ice around it. Add in some salty water that freezes
at a lower tempt and you have flowing water in
a glacier. That's our show for this week. Thank you
(08:52):
so much for tuning in further thanks to our audio
technical brown, our producer Dylan Fagan, and our editorial liaison
Alice in louder Milk. Subscribed to out Now for more
of the latest science news, and send us links to
anything else you'd like to hear his cover, plus what
historical figure do you find endlessly fascinating? Let us know?
You can send us an email at Now podcast at
how stuff works dot com, and of course, for lots
(09:13):
more stories like these, head on over to our home
planet Now dot how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to has To Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
a researcher and writer. Here it has To Works. Every week,
I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology and culture.
This week, it turns out that underground critters called naked
mole rats can switch their biochemistry to survive when oxygen
(00:23):
supplies run low. And unrelated, the researchers have cracked the
mystery of the pigmentation responsible for blood falls, A waterfall
with an aptly dramatic name, but first, Senior editor Katherine
Born and our freelance writer Alia Hoyt explore new research
into how our brains control our movements. The results run
counter to what we thought we knew about motor function,
(00:45):
and it's all thanks to patients with missing limbs. Recent
research published in the journal Current Biology is poised to
transform whole scientists understand the brain, specifically which section control
which body parts. Researchers from University College London looked at
seventeen people born without a hand, along with twenty four
(01:07):
people born with two hands as a control group. The
participants were all video recorded doing five everyday tasks such
as wrapping presents, while their brains were scanned using functional
m r A. Science has generally posited that a certain
area of the brain was in charge of hand function,
but the researchers learned that when other body parts were
compensating for a missing hand, like the foot, mouth, or arm,
(01:30):
that hand area of the brain just as effectively lit up,
so instead of that section of the brain being hands specific,
it appears to be actually functioned specific, although this is
just a working theory. The concept is illustrated by six
year old Zian Lee Aguila Valle of Kennesaw, Georgia, who
was born without arms. Zian mostly uses his feet to bathe, dress,
(01:52):
and eat, as well as to write, paint, play with legos,
or help his mom cook dinner. He carries around small
packages of cleansing wipes to d german his feet before eating.
He also loves skateboarding, swimming, and baseball. Interestingly, Zan's brain
is better equipped to adapt his missing limbs than that
of a person who loses a hand later in life.
James Giordano, a neurology and biochemistry professor at Georgetown University,
(02:16):
says the brain is very adaptive, so if a function
needs to be done, another part can be recruited to
fill in for the one that's missing. If the limb
loss occurs later in life, Jordana says, another appendage can
be trained to fill in, but it's much more difficult
because the brain has to basically rewire its connections. Neurophysical
rehabilitation and high tech approaches like magnetic stimulation can encourage
(02:38):
the brain to adapt. The study we mentioned earlier demonstrates
the brain is more plastic than we had imagined. The
study could help scientists determine how the brain could control,
for instance, a prosthetic arm using the brain area that
would have controlled that missing arm. Next step, steph it
(03:00):
aor Christopher Hassiotus and our freelancer Jesceline Shields bring us
into the bizarre world of the naked mole rat, which
can run its body basically like a plant when it
doesn't have enough oxygen to live like a mammal. Learning
interesting facts about animals is like reading evolution celebrity gossip rag.
(03:22):
There's a delightfully voyeuristic thrill that comes with learning that
a star nosed mole can smell underwater by blowing bubbles
and then sucking them back in its nose, or that
a sea otter has so much hair and has the
approximate surface area of a hockey rink. But have you
heard about the naked mole rat. You're gonna want to
sit down. So the naked mole rat heterocephalous glaber looks
(03:44):
about like you'd expect a hairless mole crossed with a
hairless rat crossed with a chest bursting creature from alien.
But this subterranean African mammal is by far the longest
living rodent. It's cold blooded, and it's immune to cancer.
It's practically pervious to most types of pain, and shows
very few signs of aging during its life. Like some insects,
(04:06):
naked mole rats are use social, meaning a group of
them has a queen that takes on all the reproductive
responsibilities for the group, while other females are sterile and
have jobs like finding food or fending off predators. A
single queen naked mole rat might live thirty years and
have nine hundred babies in her lifetime. And finally, these
little animals can survive for long periods without oxygen by
(04:28):
basically turning into plants wait seriously under normal oxygen rich conditions.
The naked mole rat runs itself on glucose like every
other self respecting mammal on the planet, and mammals need
oxygen to fuel this process. But in the absence of oxygen,
according to a new study published in the journal Science,
it turns out naked mole rats can switch over to
(04:49):
a different biochemical process using fructose, the same sugar that
powers plants. Now, scientists have known for a while that
because they live in large groups in tight underground space
is where plentiful oxygen supplies aren't given like they are
here above ground, naked mole rats have evolved to withstand
shockingly low oxygen situations. Until now, however, nobody has quantified
(05:11):
the extent to which these hideous little wizards can abstain
from breathing air. The team of international researchers discovered the
little animals can chill for five or more hours at
a time in extremely low oxygen environments, and for up
to eighteen minutes with absolutely no oxygen whatsoever. To figure
this out, the team put both naked mole rats and
(05:33):
regular mice in a chamber with no oxygen. As you
might expect the mice died immediately, But although the naked
morats quickly lost consciousness and their heartbeats slowed from two
hundred to only fifty beats per minute, after being introduced
back into the air, a full eighteen minutes later, they
completely recovered and went about their naked mole rat business.
(05:54):
So exactly how do the animals manage this? According to
the studies lead author Thomas Park, who's a professor of
biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the
naked mole rat has simply rearranged some basic building blocks
of metabolism to make it super tolerant to low oxygen conditions.
There are other animals who can metabolize fructose in the
(06:16):
absence of oxygen, but only in limited parts of the body,
like the gut. It's naked mole rats that have emergency
fruito services set up in all of their organs, even
their brain and their heart, making them unique among mammals
in that regard, at least as far as we know
right now. Finally, this week, managing editor Alison louder Milk
(06:42):
and our freelancer Kate Kirshner explain how researchers solved the
mysteries of a blood red waterfall flowing out of the
middle of a glacier. If you were to say that
the blood red color of an Antarctic waterfall was only
the second most interesting thing about it, it might be
(07:03):
hard to take you seriously. After all, one look at
blood falls and you're probably pretty focused on the horrifying
carry prom scene nestled in the ice of Taylor Glacier.
You're not looking for much else to catch your eye.
But while that horror seene hue undoubtedly pulls you in,
scientists have now figured out the source of the blood,
(07:24):
so to speak, and it's arguably more fascinating than the
ghoulish falls itself. When geologist and all around adventure Thomas
Griffith discovered the geological wonder back in nineteen eleven, the
prevailing idea was that a type of algae was causing
the distinctive red bloom, sort of like the harmful algal
blooms or red tides that have been known to plague
Florida's Gulf coast. But a two thousand three analysis found
(07:48):
that it was actually high levels of iron that tinged
the water, so distinctively the iron turns to rust in
the water. But this presented another mystery. So I just
weren't sure where the salty in laden liquid water was
coming from that's been feeding the waterfall. So they decided
to investigate the subsurface of the glacier with radar signals,
(08:09):
and when they did, researchers found a subsurface lake, complete
with a flowing path of water that supplied the briny,
iron rich water to the falls. Second mystery solved. This
discovery is particularly interesting because it confirms that flowing water
can persist inside a glacier as cold as tailor, something
researchers weren't quite sure was possible. And in case you're
(08:30):
wondering how liquid water can exist in a clearly freezing glacier,
it's actually the process of freezing that keeps it moving.
As water freezes, it releases heat that can melt the
ice around it. Add in some salty water that freezes
at a lower tempt and you have flowing water in
a glacier. That's our show for this week. Thank you
(08:52):
so much for tuning in further thanks to our audio
technical brown, our producer Dylan Fagan, and our editorial liaison
Alice in louder Milk. Subscribed to out Now for more
of the latest science news, and send us links to
anything else you'd like to hear his cover, plus what
historical figure do you find endlessly fascinating? Let us know?
You can send us an email at Now podcast at
how stuff works dot com, and of course, for lots
(09:13):
more stories like these, head on over to our home
planet Now dot how stuff works dot com.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.