12.18.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, This is Kelly Taylor, and I'll be your host
for radioize Diary of Science and Nature. We'll have articles
on the topics of science and nature. But first a
reminder that RADIOI is a reading service intended for people
who are blind or have other disabilities that make it
difficult to read printed material. First up, we have an

(00:23):
article from Scientific American dated December sixteenth. The headline is
these orcas are on the brink, and so is the
science that could save them. This is written by Kelsoe Harper.
Like many people who visit San Juan Island, I came

(00:44):
here for the orcas. This little patch of forest and
farmland off the coast of Washington State is one of
the best places in the world to encounter them. But
you can't schedule an orchest sighting. So on a sunny
July day, I was killing time one during a lush
meadow when a bolt of adrenaline struck. I had missed

(01:04):
three calls from Deborah Giles, a researcher at the Sea
Dock Society, a marine science nonprofit. The Southern Residents had
been spotted nearby for the first time in months. I
had forty minutes to meet her. On the far side
of the island. The Southern resident Orcas have lived off

(01:26):
the coast of the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years.
They don't associate with any of the estimated fifty thousand
other orcas living around the world, even those who share
the same home waters. They have their own language, customs,
and culture, and they are the most studied population of
orcas on Earth. But because of human encroachment on the

(01:47):
shores and waters of their territory, they are in dire trouble.
I arrived at Giles's mooring just moments before she did.
She lives on whale time, meaning she will drop anything
to get on the water. With Southern residents the focus
of her research. She told me that she hasn't taken
a vacation away from San Juan Island in years. It's

(02:09):
just not relaxing. What if the Southern residents appear while
she's gone. Come on, pup, let's go, Giles called urging
a little brown and white dog down the metal dock.
The pup, named Eba, appeared immune to being rushed and
trotted behind at the farthest extent of her leash, tongue lolling,
black eyes squinting in the afternoon sun. As Giles climbed

(02:33):
into a small motor boat and took her place behind
the wheel. Her husband and research partner, Jim Rephold, lifted
Eba onto the bow, placing her on a carpeted platform
that he builds especially for her. Giles's research assistant, Aisha Rashid,
handed everyone life vests and strapped a peach one around Eba.

(02:53):
I hunkered down in the back near the boat's onboard
wet lab, a large metal box that holds as sooner infuge,
various vials, and other research equipment. We sped off through
Harrow Strait on the western side of the island. The
Southern residents used to spend so much time swimming up
and down this channel that the locals took to calling

(03:15):
it the routine, calling the routine the West Side Shuffle.
The whales would use the strait's steep underwater canyon to
corner their preferred cuisine, big fatty chinook salmon. But as
chinook populations have declined, so have Southern resident sightings near
the island. Over the past century, the world around these

(03:36):
whales has changed dramatically. Metropolitan centers bloomed on their coastlines,
and their core habitat transformed into a bustling waterway. The
Salish Sea grew toxic from pollutants, and the fish the
orc has evolved to hunt with deadly precision became scarce.

(03:57):
In a single whales lifetime, humans have put the Southern
residence on a path toward extinction. Giles and other scientists
have devoted their careers to understanding and reversing the decline
of this ancient population. By building out a picture of
the whales health, habits, and diet. Researchers are deciphering the
many ways humans impact their lives and guiding conservation actions

(04:20):
that may mean life or death for the orcas. But
the research itself is now at risk too. Actions by
the Trump administration threatened to stall, diminish, or stop a
swath of conservation studies at a crucial juncture for Southern
residents and for other populations that hang by a human
made thread. The science is endangered now. Giles said, just

(04:43):
like the whales, orcas, like humans, are cosmopolitan animals. We
live on every continent. Orcas live in every ocean, much
like us. The whales have adapted to environments from the
they see Antarctic to the balmy Gulf of California. By
being smart social creatures, they pass down knowledge about where

(05:08):
to forage and how to hunt. They share food, and
collectively care for their young. They even have their own
cultural trends. In nineteen eighties, as human teens donned parachute
pants and legwarmers, Southern resident adolescents took to wearing dead
salmon hats on their heads. With big, wrinkly brains and

(05:29):
high levels of intelligence, orcas seem likely to have complex
internal lives.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Quote they're clearly very smart animals.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
They're just different from us, says Amy Van Seese and Assist,
a professor at the University of Washington who studies orcas
and other cetaceans.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Killer whales don't write books, but killer whales can echo locate.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Can you echo locate en? Quote.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
In twenty eighteen, a Southern Resident whale named Tahaliqua made
headlines for carrying her deceased newborn for seventeen days in
what became known as a tour of grief. The mother
traveled nearly one thousand miles with her baby draped over
her forehead or held gingerly in her mouth. In January
twenty twenty five, when another calf died, Telequo repeated the ritual. Also,

(06:21):
like us, orcas are deeply familial creatures. Resident killerwell offspring
stay with their mothers for their entire lives, forming a
nearly inseparable family group called a matriline. A handful of
matrilines together form a pod, pods or led by older
females who can live for a century, more than twice

(06:44):
as long as most males. The Southern residents comprise three pods, J, K,
and L. Historically, the pods spent much of April through
October in the Puget Sound and near the San Juan Islands,
often gave gathering as a superpod. In colder months, the
pods tend to split up and spend more time on

(07:05):
the outer coasts of Washington State, Oregon, and even California.
No matter how far apart, though, the pods are tied
together by their shared language, diet, habits, and behaviors, a
culture distinct from that of any other population. Humans and
killer whales share a long, complicated history. Indigenous communities of

(07:28):
the Pacific Northwest lived peacefully alongside orches for thousands of years.
Each tribe has its own relationship with the animals, whom
they generally view as sacred, often as guardians of the
sea or as family members under the waves. But settlers
who arrived in the eighteen hundreds took a different view.
Orcs became feared and reviled as a source of competition

(07:52):
for fissures, a vermin species to be avoided or, better
yet exterminated. Then, in nineteen sixty five, the world world's
first captive performing orca, Namou, opened hearts and wallets at
the Seattle Marine Aquarium. The whales surprisingly gentle nature. He

(08:12):
even let his captor, ted Griffin, ride on his back.
Shocked and enraptured onlookers. Soon aquariums around the globe began
putting in orders for their very own killer whale, and
over the next decade, more than fifty orcas were captured
from the Salish Sea or killed in the process. Most
of these whales were Southern residents. By the time the

(08:35):
practice ended in the mid nineteen seventies, the population had
shrunk to just seventy one whales. Scientists initially had hope
that the Southern residents would recover their numbers rebounded to
ninety eight whales by the mid nineteen nineties. Then all
of a sudden, we started to see this decline, says
Kim Parsons, supervisory research biologist at the time. Part since

(09:00):
was studying the Southern Residence as an undergraduate and could
recognize every individual. Over the course of six years, a
fifth of Southern residents died, including Parsons' favorite whale j III.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
He had this really cool dorsal fin. Parson says, it
almost looked like it was on backward. The precipitous decline
couldn't be explained by the generational losses of the captive
era alone. What was going on with the Southern residents.
After millennia of relative quiet, the Salish Sea is now

(09:36):
one of the busiest waterways in North America. Around nine
million people live in the surrounding drainage basin, meaning ample urban,
industrial and agricultural runoff has made its way into the water.
When researchers began digging into the Southern Residence decline, they
found an alphabet soup of toxic chemicals in the whale's blubber,

(10:00):
polychlorinated by phenyls PCBs polybrominated diphenyl ethers PBDEs, dichloro diphenol, trichloroethane,
or need et. Pollutants accumulate in the flesh of animals
at every level of the food chain, but they get
concentrated at higher levels, and orcas sit at the very top.

(10:24):
But this couldn't have been the full story because neighboring
orcas that share much of the same habitat didn't experience
the same decline. These other whales, known as transients also
called Bigs killer whales after pioneering orca researcher Michael Bigg.
They eat mammals which are a higher level, which are

(10:45):
a level higher on the food chain than the fish
eaten by residents, so they tend to accumulate even more pollutants.
The key difference transient orcus had plenty to eat Southern
residents did not transience favor prey such as seals, Sea lions,
and porpoises have proliferated since the Marine Mammal Protection Act

(11:06):
of nineteen seventy two made hunting them illegal, but a
combination of river damming, habitat destruction, over fishing, and pollution
has caused numbers of the Southern residents preferred prey chinook
salmon to plummet Since the nineteen eighties, eight populations of
chinook made their way onto the Endangered and Threatened Species

(11:26):
list before the Southern residents joined them in two thousand
and five. In her early research, Giles found that the
Southern residence lack of prey is compounded by the nearly
constant disturbance the orca's experience from boats in and near
the Salish Sea. The jetlike sounds of container ship engines
can reverberate for miles, and many boat engines emit noise

(11:49):
in the same frequency range that the whales used to communicate.
In two thousand and eight, Giles helped to develop an
acoustic device that she attached to the backs of orcas
within suction cups, allowing her to eavesdrop on the whales
as they hunted. She found that in noisy waters, females
would just say screw it, I'm not even going to
try to forage.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
She says.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Males will try but miss because if vessel noise is
too loud, it masks the whale's ability to echo, locate
and find food. The northern resident killer whales provide another comparison.
They spend more time in quieter, less polluted waters off
the coast of British Columbia, and their numbers have doubled
since the capture era. Today, seventy four Northern or Southern

(12:35):
residents remain. Decades of research have identified these three factors pollution,
vessel disturbance, and lack of food as central to the
decline of the Southern residence. But each of these evolving
threats is a universe unto itself, with countless variables and unknowns. Now,

(12:55):
we have an article from Popular Mechanics China planted seventy
eight billion new trees and seriously messed up its water cycle,
written by Darren Orf from December twelfth. It's no secret
that China is particularly adept at building things. The world's

(13:16):
largest dam in China, largest high speed rail network, that
would be China, largest wind farm, China, solar array Argentina.
Really Nope, it's also china largest ancient landmark.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
You get the picture.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Alongside all of that building, China has also been growing.
Taking inspiration from that last infrastructure accolade, China began growing
the Three North Shelter Belt or the Great Green Wall
in nineteen seventy eight as an effort to combat soil
erosion and decrease desert storms. The project, the country's state

(13:54):
sponsored media announced, was finally complete as of last year.
According to Reuter's, China grew one hundred and sixteen thousand
square miles of trees, increasing the country's total forest coverage
from ten percent in nineteen forty nine to roughly twenty
five percent in twenty twenty four. But a new study
published in the journal Earth's Future shows that all those

(14:17):
additional trees, roughly seventy eight billion, come with some unforeseen
consequences for China's water distribution. Scientists from Tianjin University, China's
Agricultural University in Beijing, and Utrecht University in the Netherlands
found that between two thousand and one and twenty twenty,

(14:37):
increased vegetation reduced water resources in both the Eastern Monsoon
region and the Northwestern arid region. That's a big deal
considering these areas make up roughly seventy four percent of
China's total land area. According to the study, re greening
efforts like the Great Green Wall, along with other tree

(14:58):
planting initiatives so such as Grain for Green Program and
the Natural Forest Protection Program, both started in nineteen ninety nine,
have increased evapo transpiration, which is a portmanteau of evaporation
and transpiration, the process through which plants release water vapor

(15:18):
through tiny pores known as stomata. These shifts caused changes
in precipitation, directing more moisture to the Tibetan Plateau, which
saw an increase in water availability, the authors wrote. In contrast,
eastern and northwestern China experienced a decrease in water availability,
with the northwest losing the most due to substantial moisture

(15:42):
moving to the Tibetan Plateau. By studying these rapid land
use cover changes, the authors also note that certain zone transitions,
such as grasslands to forests or crop lands to grasslands,
impacted evappo transporation, precipitation rates, and water availability at varying rates.

(16:06):
For example, grasslands transformed into forests increased evappo transporation and precipitation,
but negatively impacted water availability. Unfortunately, China's water availability isn't
conveniently distributed for its population. According to the study of
the country's northern regions contain roughly forty six percent of

(16:27):
its population and more than half of the arable land,
but only twenty percent of water availability. The authors argue
that these altered hydrological cycles need to be taken into
account when planning future reforestation efforts. Quote our findings highlight
that land cover changes can redistribute water resources between regions.

(16:52):
The authors wrote, understanding these effects is crucial for planning
sustainable land and water management in.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
An article from earth dot com dated December fourteenth, written
by Jordan Joseph, the headline is new sodium battery promises
more than five thousand hours of useful life. Engineers in
Australia have built a sodium battery that keeps working for
more than five thousand hours in lab tests. It uses

(17:27):
a solid, plastic like core instead of flammable liquid, which
makes the whole system much harder to overheat. The prototype,
developed at the University of Queensland, targets battery banks for
storing renewable energy on the grid. By swapping scarce lithium
for common table salt sodium, it promises lower costs and

(17:49):
less supply chain stress for many countries. Sodium sits just
below lithium on the periodic table, but it is more
abundant and easier to source. Several research groups now argue
that sodium based batteries could cut material costs for large
storage projects. The work was led by doctor Chang Jong
at the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.

(18:15):
His research focuses on solid state batteries that pair safer
electrolytes with low cost metals such as sodium. Traditional sodium
metal cells use liquid electrolytes that often grow dindrites, tiny
metal spikes that pierce internal battery layers. These spikes can
short circuit the cell, waste stored energy, and in worse cases,

(18:39):
start fires.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Inside. Every battery sits.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
An electrolyte, a material that lets charged ions move between
the two electrodes. Quote Most batteries use a liquid electrolyte,
but these liquids are flammable and can overheat, says doctor Jong.
Solid electrolytes trade that fluid for a solid layer, which
improves safety and removes the need for heavy packaging. Earlier

(19:05):
work showed that perfluoro polyether based polymers can support stable
sodium cycling at high temperature. The problem is that a
solid must be both strong enough to block growing metal
and open enough inside for ions to slip through. Many
candidate materials either crack under stress or slow the ions

(19:28):
so much that the battery becomes too sluggish for real use.
The Queensland team tackled that trade off by redesigning the
electrolyte at the molecular level. Rather than simply swapping one
salt for another, they wanted a plastic that could flex
with the electrodes yet maintain organized pathways for sodium movement.

(19:49):
Deep inside. The new material is a block copolymer, a
long chain made from two different repeating segments joined together.
One part of the chain grabs sodium ions while the
other part stays slippery and fluorinated, so the polymer does
not burn. When processed correctly, The chains form a body

(20:13):
centered cubic structure, a three D pattern with connected pockets
for the ions. These pockets link up into tunnels, so
sodium ions can move with low resistance without letting filaments
much through. In full cells using a sodium vanadium phosphate cathode,
the device kept more than ninety one percent of its

(20:35):
starting capacity. It maintained that level after a thousand rapid
charge and discharge cycles at one hundred seventy six degrees fahrenheit.
Unlike many lithium batteries, sodium metal designs do not need
cobalt or nickel in their cathodes. That reduces pressure on
supply chains linked to pollution and labor concerns in certain

(20:56):
mining regions. For a power grid with solar panels and
wind turbines, stationary batteries help smooth periods when generation drops.
Cells that keep high capacity over years can sit in
container sized packs at substations and soak up electricity. Because
sodium comes from common sources such as sea water and

(21:18):
rock salt, countries without lithium reserves can build large battery
projects that diversity in materials can make the global energy
system less vulnerable to sudden commodity shocks or export bands.
Lab tests often run batteries at elevated temperatures to boost
ion movement, but real devices must perform well at ordinary

(21:41):
room conditions, and Energy and Environment Science Review notes that
keeping sodium batteries efficient across wide temperatures remains a key
barrier to commercialization. Quote This kind of long term performance
is essential for grid level energy storage said doctor Jeng.
For the Queensland prototype, the obvious next step is to

(22:02):
boost its efficiency when it runs its standard indoor temperatures.
On the material side, the team experimented with several internal
patterns before settling on the one that carried sodium most smoothly.
We tested a variety of internal structures to find the
one that would give us the best battery performance.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Ju said.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
The study is published in the Journal of the American
Chemical Society. Now turning to Smithsonian, we have a headline
that reads gas stoves or poisoning Americans by releasing toxic
fumes associated with asthma and lung cancer, written by Sarah Kuta,

(22:48):
dated December eleventh. A hidden danger may be lurking in
your kitchen. Many Americans are breathing in nitrogen dioxide, a
harmful pollutant that's been clinked with asthma and lung cancer,
from fumes emitted by their gas stoves. A new study
published this month in the journal PNAS Nexus suggests that

(23:10):
gas stoves are the main source of indoor nitrogen dioxide
pollution in the United States, responsible for more than half
of some americans total exposure.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
To the gas. Quote.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
We've spent billions of dollars cleaning up our air outdoors
and nothing to clean up our air indoors. Study co
author Robert Jackson, environmental scientists at Stanford University, says, quote,
as our air outdoors gets cleaner and cleaner, a higher
proportion of the pollution we breathe comes from indoor sources
in quote. Scientists and public health experts have long known

(23:45):
that nitrogen dioxide is bad for human health. The reddish
brown gas can irritate airways and worsen or even contribute
to the development of respiratory diseases like asthma. Children and
older individuals are particularly sceptible to its effects. Nitrogen dioxide
is a byproduct of burning fuel, so most emissions come

(24:06):
from vehicles, power plants, and off road equipment. However, indoors,
the primary culprit is the gas stove, the household of
plants that burns natural gas or propane to produce controlled
flames under individual burners. It's relatively easy to keep tabs
on outdoor nitrogen dioxide concentrations and estimate their corresponding exposure risks,

(24:29):
thanks to satellites and ground level stations located across the country.
By contrast, however, indoor sources are quote neither systematically monitored
nor estimated in quote. For the study, Jackson and his
colleagues performed a zip code level estimate of how much

(24:49):
total nitrogen dioxide communities are exposed to. Information came from
two databases tracking outdoor nitrogen dioxide concentrations and a building
energy use database, which helped the team construct characteristics of
one hundred and thirty three million residential dwellings across the
country along with their home appliances.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Among individuals who use.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Gas stoves, the appliances are responsible for roughly a quarter
of their overall nitrogen dioxide exposure on average. For those
who cook more frequently or for longer durations, gas stoves
can be responsible for as much as fifty seven percent
of their total exposure.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Our research shows that if you use a gas stove,
you're often breathing as much nitrogen dioxide pollution indoors from
your stove as you are from all outdoor sources combined,
says Jackson in a Stanford statement. Individuals who use gas
stoves are exposed to roughly twenty five percent more total

(25:54):
residential nitrogen dioxide over the long term than those who
use electric stoves, which do not emit the gas. Total
exposure tends to be highest in big cities, where people
often have small living spaces and outdoor levels are also high.
Switching from a gas to an electric stove would help
roughly twenty two million Americans dip below the maximum nitrogen

(26:17):
dioxide exposure levels recommended by the World Health Organization. The
authors recommend replacing gas stoves with electric models whenever possible.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
You would never willingly stand over the tailpipe of your
car breathing in pollution. Why breathe the same toxins every
day in your kitchen, says Jackson Dylan Plumber, acting Deputy
director for Building Electrification for the Sierra Club, a non
profit environmental organization, agrees. Plumber, who was not involved with

(26:49):
the research, says, years from now, we will look back
at the common practice of burning fossil fuels in our
homes with horror. If swapping stoves is not possible, experts
have some other tips for reducing nitrogen dioxide exposure.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
One thing people could do is to minimize the time
the stoves are on, says Jamie Allen, toxicologist at Michigan
State University who was not involved at the research quote.
Another suggestion would be to increased ventilation, such as by
turning on the range hood and opening a window. Other

(27:25):
suggestions by The New York Times as Rachel Wharton include
using a portable induction countertop unit or electric kitchen gadgets
like tea kettles, toaster ovens, and slow cookers. Well, that
would be all for today's Diary of Science and Nature.
Your reader was Kelly Taylor. Thanks for listening and invite

(27:51):
you now to stay tuned for further programming on RADIOI