3.6.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader
is Kelly Taylor. I'll have articles related to the topics
of science and nature, but first a reminder that RADIOID
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
printed material. We'll start off today with an article from

(00:24):
Wired magazine. Appalachians are trapped in a disastrous cycle of
flooding and rebuilding. This is March first. On Valentine's Day
twenty twenty five, heavy rains started to fall in parts
of rural Appalachian Over the course of a few days,

(00:46):
Residents in eastern Kentucky watched as river levels rose and
surpassed flood levels. Emergency teams conducted over one thousand water rescues. Hundreds,
if not thousands, of people were displaced from homes and
entire business districts filled with mud. For some, it was

(01:07):
the third time in just four years that their homes
had flooded, and the process of disposing of destroyed furniture,
cleaning out the muck, and starting anew is beginning again.
Floods wiped out businesses and homes in eastern Kentucky and
February of twenty twenty one, July twenty twenty two, and
now February twenty twenty five. An even greater scale of

(01:31):
destruction hit eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina in September
twenty twenty four, when Hurricane Heleene's rainfall and flooding decimated
towns and washed out parts of major highways. Each of
these events was considered to be one thousand year flood
with a one in one thousand chance of happening in

(01:52):
a given year, Yet they're happening more often. The floods
have highlighted the resilience of local people to work together
for collective survival in rural Appalachia, but they have also
exposed the deep vulnerability of communities, many of which are
located along creeks at the base of hills and mountains

(02:13):
with poor emergency warning systems. As short term clean up
leads to long term recovery efforts, residents can face daunting
barriers that leave many facing the same flood risks over
and over again. For the past nine years, I have
been conducting research on rural health and poverty in Appalachia.

(02:34):
It's a complex region often painted in broad brushstrokes that
miss the geographic, socioeconomic, and ideological diversity it holds. Appalachia
is home to a vibrant culture, a fierce sense of pride,
and a strong sense of love, but it is also
marked by the omnipresent backdrop of a declining coal industry.

(02:58):
There is considerable local inququality that is often overlooked in
a region portrayed as one dimensional. Poverty levels are indeed
high in Perry County, Kentucky, where one of Eastern Kentucky's
larger cities, Hazard is located. Nearly thirty percent of the
population lives under the federal poverty line, but the average

(03:20):
income of the top one percent of workers in Perry
County is nearly four hundred seventy thousand dollars, seventeen times
more than the average income of the remaining ninety nine percent.
This income and wealth inequality translates to unequal land ownership.
Much of Eastern Kentucky's most desirable land remains in the

(03:43):
hands of corporations and families with great generational wealth. When
I first moved to Eastern Kentucky in twenty sixteen, I
was struck by the grave lack of affordable quality housing.
I met families paying two hundred to three hundred dollars
a month for a small plot to put a mobile
home on. Others lived in found housing, often distressed properties

(04:07):
owned by family members. They had no lease, no equity
of no insurance. They had a place to lay one's head,
but lacked the long term stability in the event of
disagreement or disaster. This really was rarely acknowledged by local
and state governments. Eastern Kentucky's twenty twenty one and twenty
twenty two floods turned this into a full blown housing crisis,

(04:31):
with nine thousand homes damaged or destroyed in the twenty
twenty two flood. Alone, quote, there was no empty housing
or empty places for housing. When resident involved in local
flood recovery efforts tole me quote it was just complete
disaster because people just didn't have a place to go
end quote. Home owners did not have flood insurance to

(04:55):
assist of rebuilding costs. While many applied to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency for assistance, the amounts they received often
did not go far. The maximum aid for temporary housing
assistance and repairs as forty two thousand, five hundred dollars
plus up to an additional forty two thousand, five hundred
for other needs related to the disaster. The federal government

(05:19):
often provides more aid for rebuilding through block grants directed
to local and state governments, but that money requires congressional
approval and can take months to years to arrive. Local
community coalitions and organizations stepped in to fill these gaps,
but they did not necessarily have sufficient donations or resources

(05:41):
to help such large numbers of displaced people with a
dearth of affordable rental's pre flood, renters who lost their
homes had no place to go, and those living in
found housing that was destroyed were not eligible for federal
support for rebuilds. The sheared level of devastation also posed challenges.

(06:05):
One healthcare professional told me quote and Appalachia, the way
it usually works is if you lose your house or
something happens, then you go stay with your brother or
your mom or your cousin. But everybody's mom and brother
and cousin also lost their house. There was nowhere to stay.
Our homelessness just skyrocketed in quote. After the twenty twenty

(06:29):
two flood, the Kentucky Department of Local Government earmarked almost
three hundred million dollars of federal funding to build new
flood resilient homes in eastern Kentucky, Yet the question of
where to bill remain as Another resident involved in local
flood recovery efforts told me, quote, you give us all
the money you want, we don't have any place to

(06:50):
build the house in quote. It has always been costly
in time intensive to develop land in Appalachia. Available higher
ground tends to be located on former strip mines, and
these reclaimed lands require careful geotechnical surveying and sometimes structural reinforcements.

(07:10):
If these areas are remote, the cost of running electric,
water and other infrastructure services can also be prohibited. For
this reason, for profit developers have largely avoided many counties
in the region. The head of a nonprofit agency explained
to me that because of this quote, the markets are broken.
We have no housing market. There is also some risk

(07:35):
involved in attempting to build homes on new land that
has not previously been developed. A local government could pay
for undeveloped plan to be surveyed and prepared for development,
with the prospect of reimbursement by the US Department of Housing.
And urban development. If housing is successfully built, but if
after the work to prepare the land, it is still

(07:57):
too cost prohibitive to build a profitable house there, the
local government would not receive any reimbursement. Some counties have
found success clearing land for large developments on former strip
mining sites, but these former coal mining areas can be
considerable distances from towns without robust public transportation systems. These

(08:20):
distances are especially prohibitive for residents who lack reliable personal transportation.
Another barrier is the high prices that both individual and
corporate landowners are asking for properties on higher ground. The
scarcity of desirable land available for sale, combined with increasingly

(08:40):
urgent demand, has led to prices unaffordable for most Another
resident involved in local flood recovery efforts explained quote, if
you paid five thousand dollars for thirty acres forty years ago,
why wouldn't you sell that for one hundred thousand dollars. Nope,
they want a million dollars. That makes it increasingly difficult

(09:02):
for both individuals and housing developers to purchase land and build.
One reason for this scarcity is the amount of land
that is still owned by outside corporate interests. For example,
Kentucky River Properties formerly Kentucky River Coal Corporation, owns over
two hundred seventy thousand acres across seven counties in the region.

(09:29):
While this land holding company leases land to coal, timber,
and gas companies, it and others like it rarely formit
residential development. But not all unused land is owned by corporations.
Some of this land is owned by families with deep
roots in the region. People's attachment to a place often

(09:49):
makes them want to stay in their communities even after disasters,
but it can also limit the amount of land available
for rebuilding. People are often hesit to sell land that
holds deep significance for their families, even if they are
not living there themselves. One healthcare professional expressed feeling torn

(10:10):
between selling or keeping their own family property after the
twenty twenty two flood. Quote, we have a significant amount
of property on top of a mountain. I wouldn't want
to sell it because my popall came from there. He
was from nothing. His generation thought owning land was the
greatest thing, and for him to provide his children and

(10:31):
his grandchildren and great grandchildren a plot of land that
he worked and sweated and ultimately died to give us
people want to hold onto that you quote, She recognized
that land was in great demand, but couldn't bring herself
to sell what she owned. In cases like hers, higher
grounds are owned locally but still remain unused. Two years

(10:53):
after the twenty twenty two flood, major government funding for
rebuildings still has not resulted in a significant number of
homes homes. The state has planned seven communities on higher
ground in eastern Kentucky that aim to house six hundred
and sixty five new homes. As of early twenty twenty five,
fourteen houses have been completed. Progress on providing housing on

(11:16):
higher ground is slow, and the need is great. In
the meantime, when I conducted interviews during the summer and
fall of twenty twenty four, many of the mobile home
communities that were decimated in the twenty twenty two flood
had begun to fill back up. These were flood risk
areas that there was simply no other place to go.
Last week I watched on Facebook a friend's live video

(11:39):
footed showing the waters creeping up the sides of the
mobile homes in one of those very communities that had
flooded in twenty twenty two, another of my friends mused,
I don't know who constructed all this, but they did
an unjustly favor by not thinking how close these towns
was to the river. Can anyone in Frankfort help us?
Or has it gone too far? With hundreds more people

(12:02):
now displaced by the most recent flood, the need for
homes on iron ground has only expanded and the weight
continues now. We have an article from CBS News dated
March the fourth Polar bears in Canada are on the
edge of extinction. Heres what's being done to protect them?

(12:26):
Just on the edge of the western Hudson Bay lies
the small town of Churchill, Manostoba. Here the sea meets
the boreal forests under the rippling northern lights. Farther to
the north, the trees stopped growing, snow coats, a harsh
landscape of Canadian shield, and the ceaseless wind cuts through

(12:46):
the willows. No roads lead to churchilland just a rail
line and an airport runway carrying the occasional charter plane.
But it attracts tourists and scientists alike because for a
short time in the fall, the kings of the Arctic
migrate through town back to their homes on the frozen sea. Ice.

(13:06):
Travelers come here from all over the world seeking one
thing to lock eyes with a polar bear. Polar bears
meander through Churchill every autumn as they wait for ice
on the beta form. Males take to the ice first,
roaming and testing out the edges, eager to travel north
where they can finally hunt for the ringed seal, their

(13:27):
primary food source. Scientists converge on Churchill because it is
the most accessible point to study polar bears. The bears
here are the most researched in the world and the
most photographed. These Arctic beasts have big personalities. They play
and cuddle and nap to pass the time. Males will

(13:47):
often spar trying to get to know each other so
that they're prepared for the charged battles in the spring.
During mating season, cubs stay close to their mothers for
two to three years before they're chased off in forced
to live on their own. For the following year, they
test the waters, sometimes struggling to survive as they learn
to hunt and sustain themselves in the tundra. In recent years, however,

(14:11):
the warming Arctic is melting their habitat on the ice,
changing the bear's behavior. Scientists from Polar Bears Internationals say
the ice is forming two weeks later than it was
in the nineteen eighties and receding two weeks earlier in
the spring. This month long change in their environment is
forcing bears to keep to shore longer, closer to humans,

(14:33):
and farther from the seal layers in the north. It's
a change sparked by the altering climate that their parents
and grandparents didn't have to face. Yes, the bears have
been constantly evolving ever since they diverged from the Grizzly
Rough the Diverse from the grizzly bear roughly five hundred
thousand years ago, but the pace of change is what

(14:56):
is alarming scientists. Chief climate scientists were Polar Bear International
Flavio Elner says because of the decline in sea ice,
the polar bear population in the western Hudson Bay is
as low as six hundred and eighteen, approximately half of
what it used to be in the nineteen eighties. That's

(15:16):
quite profound, he says. It's hard to find other places
other than maybe that have been deforested in the Amazon,
where you see such a stark change in the ecosystem
caused by climate change. Layer doesn't anticipate that the situation
will improve, and beyond the population decline, he's seeing a

(15:38):
behavioral shift. It used to be much more typical to
find mothers with triplets, which in his personal experience, is
now rare. Scientists that Polar Bear Internationals say that these
bears can only sustain themselves comfortably on land for one
hundred and eighty days. In other parts of the world,
bears have been seen hunting bird and reindeer. The scientists

(16:02):
say this high protein diet can damage their kidneys and
doesn't stop them from losing two to four pounds a
day when they're off the ice. Quote. The current pace
of change is operating too fast, says John Whiteman, chief
research scientists with Polar Bear International. Polar bears won't be
able to evolve or acclimate in time to be able

(16:22):
to deal with our current rate. Let's see ice loss.
Whiteman expects that the polar bears will stick around for
the next ten years or so in Churchill, but the
timeline starts to get fuzzy twenty to thirty years in
the future. Quote. We ultimately know if we lose sea ice,
we lose polar bears, said Quitman. Churchill has always been

(16:45):
a town at the precipice. It's lived many lives, from
home to First Nations, to trading post, to military town
to now polar bear capital of the world. It attracts
a special type of person, often one that finds pleasure
in solitude. The people who come for employment are semi

(17:06):
nomadic tourist, industry workers, or maybe they're looking for a change.
Their guides and nature enthusiasts, seasonal workers attracted to this slow,
simpler pace of life. Others like the town's mayor of
thirty years, Mike Spence, have spent their lives here. Back
when he was a kid, conservation officers in town were
shooting twenty to twenty two bears a year, but over

(17:29):
time the approach has changed. First of all, we respect wildlife,
he says. The polar bears are quite significant in the
indigenous world. It's at the top of its food chain.
There's a lot of respect in that the town is
now facing a future where the polar bear tourist season
could potentially disappear. In the interim, the community will be
forced to coexist more closely with the bears as they

(17:53):
wait for the ice to form on the bay, and
as infrastructure too, also struggles to adapt to a warming
climate and melting permafrost. Spence is one of many people
looking for solutions. We've always been challenged, Spence is, but
the community also usually finds a way. Now we'll turn

(18:14):
to BBC News. This article is headlined the world's largest
iceberg runs aground off remote island. The world's largest iceberg
has run aground in shallow waters off the remote British
island of South Georgia, home to millions of penguins and seals.
The iceberg, which is about twice the size of Greater London,

(18:36):
appears to be stuck and should start breaking up on
the island's southwest shores. Fishermen fear they will be forced
to battle with vast chunks of ice, and it could
affect some macaroni penguins feeding in the area. But scientists
in Antarctica say that huge amounts of nutrients are locked
inside the ice and that as it melts, it could

(18:58):
create an explosion of life in the ocean. Quote it's
like dropping a nutrient bomb into the middle of an
empty desert. Says Professor Nadine Johnston from British Antarctic Survey.
Ecologist Mark Belcher, who advises the South Georgia government, said
if it breaks up, the resulting icebergs are likely to
present a hazard of vessels as they move in the

(19:21):
local currents, and could restrict vessel's access to local fishing grounds.
The stranding is the latest twist in an almost forty
year story that began when the megachunk of ice broke
off the Filtscher Roaning ice Shelf in nineteen eighty six.
We have tracked its route on satellite pictures since December,

(19:42):
when it finally broke free after being trapped in an
ocean warts As it moved north through warmer waters. Nicknamed
Iceberg Alley, it remained remarkably intact for a few days.
It even appeared to spin on the spot before speeding
up in mid February, traveling about twenty miles a day.

(20:03):
Quote the future of all icebergs is that they will die.
It's very surprising to see that a twenty three a
has lasted this long and only lost about a quarter
of its area, said Hugh Griffiths, speaking to BBC News
from the Sir David Attenborough Polar Research ship currently in Antarctica.

(20:24):
On Saturday, the three hundred million, three hundred meter tall
ice colossus struck the shallow continental shelf about fifty miles
from land and now appears to be firmly launched. Quote
It's probably going to stay more or less where it
is until chunksbury off, says Professor Andrew Myers from British

(20:45):
Antarctic Survey. It is showing advancing signs of decay. Once
thirty nine hundred square kilometers, it has been steadily shrinking,
shedding huge amounts of water as it moves into warmer seas.
It is now estimated thirty two hundred and thirty four
square kilometers instead of a big, sheer, pristine box of ice.

(21:07):
You can see caverns under the edges. Professor Myers says.
Times will now be lifting it up and down, and
where it's touching the continental shelf it will grind backwards
and forwards, eroding the rock and ice. Quote. If the
ice underneath the rotten eroded by salt, it'll crumble away
under stress and maybe drift somewhere more shallow, says Professor Myers.

(21:31):
But when the ice is touching the shelf. There are
thousands of tiny creatures like coral sea slugs and sponge quote.
Their entire universe is being bulldozed by a massive slab
of ice scraping along the sea floor, says Professor Griffiths.
That is catastrophic in the short term for these species,
because he says, it is a natural part of the

(21:54):
life cycle in the region. Where it is destroying something
in one place, it's providing nutrients in food in other places.
Sea as the life cycle of icebergs is a natural process,
but climate change is expected to create more icebergs as
Antarctica warms and becomes more unstable, More could break away

(22:15):
from the continent's vast ice sheets and meltic quicker rates,
disrupting patterns of wildlife and fishing in the region. Now
will go to Popular Science dated March fourth. This article
headline reads pig organs in people the future of cross

(22:37):
species transplants. More than one hundred thousand people in the
United States are waiting for a new heart, kidney, or
some other organ Many will die waiting. Some scientists see
new hope for these people in organs from pigs that
have been engineered to work within the human body such species.

(23:00):
These to species transplants, called xeno transplantation, offer a technical
solution to a basic problem. There are more people in
need than there are organs, be they from living or
brain dead donors who go around quote. Unfortunately, as we speak,
someone is dying just waiting for an organ, says surgeon

(23:20):
Mohammed Monsieur Muhudin, director of the Cardiac xeno Transplantation program
at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Over the past
few years, a handful of people in the United States
and China have received specially modified pig kidneys, hearts, and livers,
but getting those organs to function safely in a person

(23:41):
is a huge challenge, as laid out in the twenty
twenty four Annual Review of Animal Biosciences. Now, thanks to
technological and medical advances, United Therapeutics in Silver Spring, Maryland
is starting the first official political trials of zeno transplant transplant,
and many researchers believe the procedure could eventually become routine.

(24:06):
Yet there are ongoing questions, including risks that pig organs
will transmit viruses to people, and a number of ethical
concerns here's a look at the state of play and
what may lie in After a long history of animal
transplant experiments, scientists are zeroed in on pigs or many

(24:26):
pigs as an organ source. The animals breed and grow quickly.
Their organs are about the right size. There aren't many
pathogens that infect both pigs and people. Quote. I think
a pig is almost an ideal donor for human transplantation,
says Winning Chin, senior vice president Renovation at e Genesis
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But without any special tweaks to those organs,

(24:51):
the human body will immediately attack them. This hyperacute rejection,
as it's called, is kicked off when human antibodies reac
recognize as foreign three sugar molecules on the blood vessels
of a pig organ. The antibodies stick to the cells
and set off a chain of events that clots blood,

(25:11):
blocking its flow. Quote. Within ten minutes, the organ would
turn from the color of pink to black, says Chin,
the organ is dead end quote. To solve the problem
of hyperacute rejection, companies such as e Genesis and United
Therapeutics have used the crisper c as based gene editing

(25:33):
system to modify the DNA of pigs. Genesis destroyed the
three genes responsible with those problem pig sugars, but the
human immune system still has ways to recognize and reject
the foreign organ just later on, and standard immunopriss immuno
suppressive drugs designed for human human transplants can't fully prevent

(25:55):
the response to xenotransplantation. To help address this later stage rejection,
both companies added several human genes to the big cells.
These genes make proteins that sit on the cell surface,
disguising with big cells as human. In twenty twenty three
gegenies are supported. Five out of fifteen monkeys who received

(26:18):
kidneys from the company's big survive more than a year.
One scientist says, quote it's an exciting time for the
field of zeno transplantation. I think we're going to see
some significant progress in patients in the near future. Quote.
There are ethical concerns, however, in human beings. More than
a dozen pig organ transplants have occurred so far. The

(26:40):
first transplants were short term experiments and patients who were
brain dead, so there was no further risk to human health.
In a handful of these cases, researchers reported genetically edited
big hearts could be livers made bile, and kidneys were
able to function making urine without immediate rejection. From there,

(27:01):
surgeons moved on to live organ recipients. These volunteers have
been too ill or otherwise ineligible for a human organ transplant.
Some ethicists raise questions over how these human patients are
being selected In these early transplants. Physicians approached eligible recipients
and applied for approval from FDA under the Compassionate Use

(27:24):
pathway that allows a seriously ill person to receive it.
Unapproved or untested therapeutic scientists say we're not claiming we
have a perfect solution yet, but they hope eventually zeno
transplants can become a valid supplement to the human organ supply. Well,
that's all for today's Diary of Science and Nature. Reader

(27:48):
was Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for the Health Corner
on RADIOID