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Past Shows
February 16, 2008
 Download an MP3 of the entire program (22MB).
Multi-tasking
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The Trouble with Multi-tasking.
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In today's hectic, demanding, and media-rich universe, we're all expected to be able to do many things at the same time. Check your email, write a document, answer your Blackberry, and listen to your iPod - all at once. Drive your car and talk on your cell phone - simultaneously. But how well are we doing each of those tasks? Well, according to neuroscientists, we're actually very bad at multi-tasking. And although we may think we're being more effective by multi-tasking, our brains might not agree.
Toronto science journalist Alison Motluk investigated the muddled mind of the multi-tasker for Quirks & Quarks. Here are the scientists she spoke to:
Dr. Gloria Mark is a professor of Interactive and Collaborative Technologies at the University of California, Irvine. She has investigated multi-tasking in the workplace, and looked at the cost to information workers from multi-tasking and disruptions. She found that, on average, workers switch among multiple tasks every 3 minutes.
Dr. René Marois is a Canadian neuroscientist and Director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He's looked at the idea of a bottleneck in the brain that only allows us to process one task at a time.
Dr. David Meyer is a cognitive scientist and Director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. He studies multi-task performance, and disagrees with the bottleneck theory. But he does say that, in many cases, multi-tasking can lead to greater inefficiency in performing each individual task. For example, using a cellular telephone while driving can lead to both poor communication and poor driving.
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Fossil Bat
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Dr. Seymour's specimen, courtesy Royal Ontario Museum and Nature Magazine |
For a long time, studying the evolution of bats has been a frustrating endeavor. While there are fossilized bat skeletons dating back to about 50 million years ago, they don't reveal much. They tend to look exactly like those of modern bats, leaving paleontologists speculating about how these creatures came about. Recently though, Dr. Kevin Seymour and his colleagues hit pay dirt in the fossil beds of Wyoming's Green River Formation. Dr. Seymour, Assistant Curator in the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum, has found an extremely well-preserved skeleton dating back 52 million years. The specimen, says Dr. Seymour, has helped researchers figure out when bats developed flight and echolocation. It demonstrates that the animals evolved the ability to fly before they could echolocate.
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Hunting Spiders
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Jumping Spider getting ready to attack, courtesy Jack Halverston and Science Magazine |
Sometimes complex ecological questions can be answered using very simple systems. Dr. Oswald Schmitz, a Canadian professor of ecology at Yale University, is interested in the relationships between grass, grasshoppers and spiders. In the natural order of things, the grasshoppers eat the grass and herbs, and in turn are eaten by the spiders. But, Dr. Oswald wanted to look a little deeper at the interactions. He found two different types of spiders that hunt in very different ways. One, sits and waits for the prey to come close, and then ambushes them. The other type of spider is a roamer, actively hunting down the spider. When Dr. Oswald set up mini ecosystems and left them for 3 years he found the type of spider present changed what plants were growing. This was because the different spider behaviours caused changes in the grasshopper behaviour, which, in turn changed what plants were being eaten. This complex interaction has implications for larger ecosystems, because it shows it's not just a numbers game. Change the way predator and prey interact, and the whole system can be shifted to different plant populations.
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Nitrogen Dead Zones
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Fish are natural nitrogen sponges, courtesy Mila Zinkova, GNU Free Documentation License |
Scientists have been tracking the decline of the world's fish stocks and it's pretty clear that, unless we ease up on how much we capture, our fish stocks will collapse. Dr. Roxanne Maranger, an aquatic biologist at Université de Montréal, has been studying the effects of declining fish stocks on oceanic chemistry. Fish, like all living creatures, take in nitrogen from the environment and use it for their metabolic needs. The more fish, the more nitrogen gets taken up. In effect, fish act as natural nitrogen sponges. Dr. Maranger says that the declining fish stocks are exacerbating the impact of nitrogenous fertilizers which make their way from our farm lands into our seas. Removing so much fish has taken away the oceans' natural ability to deal with high levels of nitrogen and is contributing to the development of lifeless dead zones.
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Science Fact or Science Fiction: Apple Seeds
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Apple seeds are poisonous. Fact or Fiction?
For the scientific answer, we reached Dr. James Kirkland, a professor of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences the University of Guelph..
Theme music copyright Raphaël Gluckstein. Creative Commons License by-nc-nd-2.0
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