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Copyright: © Richard Jacobs
Returning guest and theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel joins the podcast for an eye-opening and incredibly informative discussion that will lead you to question one of the most fundamental aspects of existence: how the universe began. Scientists and laypersons alike almost always point to the Big Bang theory, which posits that 13.8 billion years ago, all matter and energy that would give rise to the entire universe as we observe it today was condensed into a single dense point before starting to expand. In simple terms, the Big Bang theory was developed by extrapolating backward from what we observe today—an expanding universe that's becoming less and less dense as wavelengths are elongating and objects are getting further apart.
So, what's the problem with the Big Bang theory? If you were to ask Ethan Siegel that question, he would respond with some questions of his own: "Why is the universe the same temperature in all directions to one part in 30,000? Why is the universe perfectly spatially flat and balanced between expansion rate and all energy in the universe? And why are there no high-energy relics left over from this early, hot, dense state if the temperatures got arbitrarily high?" According to Siegel and many other cosmologists who study the universe for a living, these are some of the puzzles that the widely accepted theory simply cannot account for. He explains each of these questions in detail (what exactly they mean, how they've come to be asked, and why it's important to answer them), and also what we need to do in order to move beyond this theory. What would a new theory capable of replacing the Big Bang theory even look like? And how would we go about determining if it gives correct predictions? Siegel discusses all of this, drawing from a seemingly endless wealth of information and making for a fascinating conversation that'll take you out of this world.
Interested in diving deeper into this topic? Siegel is writing a whole book on it, which is set to be released during the first quarter of 2020 (and maybe even earlier). In the meantime, check out his blog, Starts With A Bang!
In an attempt to combat the Great Chinese Famine in the 1950s, the Chinese government ordered the cull of huge numbers of sparrows in order to preserve the grain that comprised the majority of their diet, but in the absence of sparrows, the insect population exploded, decimating crops and leading to the death of millions of people; this is just one example of ecological restoration gone wrong, and the catastrophic consequences of uninformed action.
With the use of big data analytics and machine learning tools, Thomas Crowther, Ph.D. is making the most of data that was previously unavailable to us—data that will allow us to make better, more ecologically-informed decisions that will aid in the restoration of the planet's ecosystems and circumvent the potentially disastrous consequences of ecological reform gone wrong. Whether 'restoration' means changing the composition of soils, removing farm animals from sections of land in order to allow for the return of natural vegetation, or simply planting trees will depend on the geographical location in question and the nature of the ecosystem present.
The Crowther Lab app is informing various restoration efforts around the world by allowing them to select and zoom in on a particular geographical region, and identify which form of action would best serve the ecological system. "We are a single location that brings together the full holistic ecological status of the system. There are lots of researchers around world working on soil microbes, soil bacteria, trees, etc., and we are providing a platform where we bring all of that information together," explains Dr. Crowther.
Press play to hear the full conversation and learn more about ongoing research and restoration efforts by visiting crowtherlab.com
In all likelihood, you directly interact with at least three phases of matter on a daily basis—gas, liquid, and solid. But the same can't necessarily be said about plasma, the fourth phase of matter. In fact, some people might be inclined to say that plasma doesn't relate much to our daily lives at all…but they'd be mistaken. To understand the impact of plasma, it's only necessary to understand the impact of satellites—spacecraft that orbit Earth's atmosphere and allow for global telecommunications, navigation, weather forecasting, environmental forecasting, and so much more.
Historically, the noble gas xenon has been the primary source of fuel for electric satellite propulsion, but the team at Phase Four is creating plasma propulsion technology that's allowing for cheaper, more efficient, and more flexible satellite missions. Phase Four technology allows for electric satellite propulsion to be fueled by any neutral gas (e.g., xenon, argon, and krypton) as well as novel propellants, such as water vapor, air, and methane. The ability to use such novel propellants will remove the necessity of carrying earthbound fuels into space, and allow for the use of locally available fuels, thereby making for cheaper and lengthier missions.
CEO of Phase Four, Beau Jarvis, joins the podcast to discuss the ins and outs of this new technology, as well as a number of other interesting topics, such as the imminence of megaconstellations and the potential for space-delivered internet in the coming years.
Interested in learning more? Tune in and visit phasefour.io.
Phil Deschamps, President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Helius Medical Technologies delivers an overview of brain function and brain stimulation.
Phil Deschamps has been on board with Helius Medical Technologies since 2013. Deschamps has amassed an impressive 28 years of continuous experience in the growing pharmaceutical and healthcare industry and has worked with major corporations such as Bristol Myers Squibb, GSW Worldwide, and MediMedia Health. Deschamps has overseen the strategic development of multiple companies and is a seasoned veteran and noted authority in the industry.
Deschamps discusses his work at Helius and the new, advanced portable neuromodulation stimulator they refer to as simply, PoNS. He provides a detailed overview of how external stimulation of the brain works, with an emphasis on neuroplasticity. Helius focuses on noninvasive platform technologies, with the intent to provide outstanding new treatment options for many patients by amplifying the human brain's innate ability to actually heal itself. PoNS is a medical device that looks very promising in various clinical trials. Deschamps speaks about their work with traumatic brain injuries, but he states that over time they hope to be cleared to provide solutions for many more medical areas such as MS, Parkinson's, stroke, cerebral palsy, etc.
The medical technology expert discusses rehabilitation in regard to brain function. He describes the exercises in physical therapy that help a patient recover, and how PoNS can enhance the physical therapy to provide permanent improvements. He delves into the design of their device and how it works, but he underscores that clinical trials are ongoing and with each new trial they continue to learn more about the benefits of this new technology. Scientifically, there is much to learn still, but researchers are working steadily to progress the tech to help many patients.
Deschamps talks about their clinically significant results and their review process with the FDA. Additionally, he provides information on the various groups that they have worked with in regard to physical therapy. He discusses placebo and blinding, and the other means they use to gather the most honest data they can in their clinical trials. He expounds further upon specific trials and discusses some of their surprises, as well as some of the expectations they went into the trials with, that were met. He states that they found some significant brain changes that have been very encouraging.
Down the road, Deschamps hopes to find even more advanced ways to help patients affected by neurological symptoms caused by trauma and disease.
The age of fifth generation cellular technologies is upon us, which means faster connectivity by three to 10 orders of magnitude, lower latency by 10 orders of magnitude, virtual and augmented reality capabilities, and within a few years, connectivity to IoT, including personal computers, vehicles, manufacturing plants, and homes.
Ignacio Contreras is the director of 5G product marketing at Qualcomm, a company that has expedited the deployment of 5G technologies in response to unexpected and substantial consumer demand for greater data capacity and smartphone capabilities. He explains the evolution of cellular technologies over the years, starting from the 1980s when 1G—the first analog cell phones—was the breakthrough technology that the world had never seen before. He also details the fundamental differences between 5G and all previous generations of cellular technology, underscoring the globally transformative potential of 5G.
Launches start this year across the US, Europe, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and China.
Tune in and visit https://www.qualcomm.com/ to learn more and stay current on the latest developments.
On December 1, 2017, China passed a policy banning the import of plastics from several foreign countries, including the US. For over a year now, this policy has been in effect and the plastic has been piling up, with much of it actually being redirected to other developing countries. In other words, the problem of plastic waste and what to do with it is not new—it's just shifting to other parts of the world. But it's also forcing Americans to face what's becoming an increasingly pressing question: how do we go about handling the millions of pounds of plastic waste we're producing each year?
Sahadat Hossain, Ph.D., P.E., is a professor at the University of Texas Arlington Department of Civil Engineering who is working on a solution that utilizes a characteristic of plastic which makes it particularly problematic in landfills: non-degradability. Since plastic does not degrade, it takes up a significant amount of space in landfills and prevents other materials from degrading, which just worsens the problem. However, the non-degradability of plastic makes it a particularly useful material in civil engineering pursuits, and this is the focus of Dr. Hossain's work.
His work in this realm began with an investigation into the use of plastic waste for slope-stabilizing pins, which led to a well-funded project in 2013 that proved immensely successful. With one pin containing about 500 plastic bottles, and 600 pins used in just one project, Dr. Hossain and his team recycled about 300,000 plastic bottles. Now, imagine how much plastic waste could be recycled if a similar technique was used in the construction of roadways. This is exactly what Dr. Hossain is focusing his research efforts on now, and he joins the podcast to discuss all the details of what this would entail the challenges that must be overcome and the current, ongoing application of this technique in India.
Interested in learning more? Tune in and visit http://www.uta.edu/faculty/hossain/Home.html.
Most of us are familiar with the self-righting movement of tortoises and turtles—it's a display that serves as entertainment for some, and wonder for others, but for Alex Abramson, it served as inspiration for a new drug delivery system for insulin and other biologic drugs. He has engineered an ingestible, self-orienting pill that is designed to deliver tiny injections in the stomach wall, thereby removing the need for subcutaneous injections such as those that diabetics have to self-administer. How does it work? Once the pill is swallowed, it is designed to land at the bottom of the stomach within five minutes and orient itself toward the tissue wall where the drug needs to be delivered. Equipped with a hydration-based actuator, the pill senses the humidity of the stomach environment and inserts a drug-loaded post directly into the stomach tissue with a needle less than one millimeter in diameter. The post then dissolves and allows for systemic uptake comparable to subcutaneous injection.
Abramson is a Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering at MIT, and for the past four years, he's been working closely with Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that has sponsored this project. The project has been published, multiple studies using large animal models have been completed, and they are looking to bring the product into clinical trials within the next two years. Among other topics, Abramson joins the podcast to discuss how the shape and density distribution of the pill was inspired by the shape and density distribution of self-righting tortoises, what prevents perforation of stomach tissue with injection, why the sensor was designed to detect humidity rather than acidity, and the many benefits of this system of drug delivery that you probably haven't even thought of.
Tune in for all the details, and follow this link https://youtu.be/w7UTwEPYD4M to watch a video on how exactly the pill works.
Addiction, relapse, and acute overdose are the three core features of cocaine abuse, and researchers have figured out a way to make lab mice completely immune to them. How is this possible? Xiaoyang Wu and Ming Xu are researchers at the University of Chicago who have joined forces to tackle the problem of cocaine addiction, for which there is currently no FDA-approved treatment.
The key to their method involves the naturally-occurring cocaine-degrading enzyme known as butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), CRISPR gene editing, and skin grafting. The procedure involves removing a patch of skin from a donor mouse, genetically modifying the skin cells within that patch of skin to produce high amounts of BChE, and then grafting those genetically-modified skin cells back onto the same mouse. Once the enzyme hits the bloodstream, it reaches every location in the body that requires a blood supply, and therefore reaches the central reward center where cocaine addiction develops. By degrading cocaine faster than it can accumulate in the mouse's system, the high levels of this enzyme protect the mouse from cocaine overdose, addiction, and relapse. Wu and Xu offer fascinating and informative insight on what could potentially be the first-ever FDA-approved treatment for cocaine addiction.
Press play for all the details.
Toshihiro Shioda, MD, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School and is a Member, MGH Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Shioda discusses his lab's work in regard to cellular biology.
Shioda's lab studies a wide variety of issues such as the various roles and actions of certain estrogens and antiestrogens pertaining to breast cancer in humans, pharmacogenomics and toxicogenomics of estrogens as well as xenobiotic environmental estrogenic substances, and the impact of environmental materials and bioactive food elements on fetuses during early development, just to name a few.
Shioda discusses primordial germ cells in detail, commonly referred to in the scientific community as simply, PGCs. As he states, PGCs are the basis for study for much of their lab research. By generating PGC-type models, the lab team members are able to study many areas related to cellular science. Shioda has published on multiple topics related to the field. The Harvard researcher is particularly interested in the various ways that primordial germ cells produced, and tested, within his lab are similar to typical, natural germ cells. Shioda talks about the possibilities for his team's research, and how, notably, these types of cultured cells could provide a useful model in which to intensively study germline epimutations produced by an assortment of exposures.
Continuing, Shioda talks about chemotherapy and the effects on men and women. He details some of the papers they have published on their studies of epigenetics. Epigenetics is defined as the study of heritable phenotype changes, changes that don't require or pertain to alterations within the DNA sequence.
Shioda explains some of the difficulties researchers encounter. Specifically, in regard to fully comprehending germline exposure risks, there is a greater need for effectual, reliable models for important mechanical studies. Shioda and his research team utilize the most advanced tools related to stem cell biology as well as deep sequencing technology to produce germ cell models, with the intent of performing more toxicological tests that hopefully will provide answers to impact human health in a positive way, for cancer research and more.
"The fascinating thing about the [termite] mound is that…it's not just this big pile of dirt; it has complex architecture, it's differentiated in structure…and it has a function—it serves to capture wind energy in the environment, and that helps power the gas exchange needs of the termite colony located underground, so it's literally a lung made from soil," says J Scott Turner, explaining one of his well-known discoveries that contributed to the theory of collective intelligence. His discoveries not only led to a greater understanding of a South African species of termite and their enormous mounds which pepper the Cape Town landscape, but opened the door to many more questions which would influence the direction of his career moving forward.
As a physiologist, professor, and author, J Scott Turner has made it his life's work to understand where and in what way physiology, adaptation, ecology, evolution and philosophy intersect. He joins the podcast to discuss what he's learned over the years, including the different ways in which organisms construct and adapt to their environments in ways that resemble superorganism assemblage, animal architecture as expressions of physiological needs, the ways in which human gut flora interact with their environment, the cellular cooperation and mutual accommodation that's present in the development of malignant cancers, and the fluid relationship between hereditary memory and function.
Tune in for all the details, and learn more about his work by visiting jscottturner.com or reaching out with questions via jsturner@syr.edu.
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