Saturday January 31, 2009
No-Sweat Workout, Evolving Ant Avoidance, Swarming and Serotonin, Face to Face, Vampire Stars, Frog Leg Feeding Frenzy
Download this episode.
The No-Sweat Workout
One subject achieved these results in just four minutes a week.
|
Are you tired of being out-of-shape? Want all the health benefits of being an athlete, but can't commit to all those grueling hours in the gym? Well, now you can work out in just a few minutes a week! Yes, it sounds like another one of those fly-by-night fitness fads, but there's some pretty solid evidence that short, intense bursts of exercise do have some pretty impressive effects. Dr. Jamie Timmons, an exercise biologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, has been looking at how little exercise we can do and still get the protective benifits of being active -- specifically, prevention of diabetes and heart disease. Dr. Timmons has found that doing a few 30-second sprints on a stationary bike, twice a week, is as effective at preventing disease as much more time-intensive regimes.
Listen to this segment:
Related Links
Dr. Timmons' paper in BMC Endocrine Disorders:News release from Heriot-Watt University:Dr. Timmons' webpageEvolving Ant Avoidance
Dr. Langkilde & friend
|
As the invasive fire ant has established itself in the southern US, many animals have had to learn to avoid these aggressive insects. However, for some, learning is not an option. The native fence lizard, for example, ordinarily ignores ants, but ignoring fire ants is a great way to become a fire ant entree. Dr. Tracy Langkilde, assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, has found that fence lizards are developing the ability to escape from fire ants, but not through learning. Instead, they're evolving new behaviours and even longer legs to help them escape from the tiny, stinging predators.
Listen to this segment:
Related Links
Ecological Society of America science blogPenn State University news releaseEcology home page (paper will appear in the January issue)Dr. Langkilde's web siteSwarming & Serotonin
Desert Locust - from Wikimedia Commons
|
The destructive locust swarm is a plague so spectacular, it even got a place in the Bible. Locusts, however, under normal circumstances, are mild-mannered and solitary insects. Dr. Michael Anstey, a Canadian biologist and recent graduate of Oxford University in England, has been investigating what happens in a locust's tiny brain to transform it from a peaceful Dr. Jekyll to a swarming Mr. Hyde. He's found that when stimulated by overcrowding, the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin triple in the locust, causing the change in behaviour that leads to the notorious swarm.
Listen to this segment:
Related Links
Face to Face
Face illusion - courtesy PLOS one/M. Tsakiris
|
You may know lots of things as well as you know your own face. The problem is that you don't know you're own face as well as you think you do. Dr. Manos Tsakiris, a Lecturer in Psychology at the Royal Holloway University of London, has found that it's pretty easy to fool people into thinking someone else's face is their own. By touching a person's face at the same time that the person looked at a picture of a different face being touched, Dr. Tsakiris was able to convince them that their own face looked more like the picture.
Listen to this segment:
Related Links
Vampire Stars
Blue Straggler stars - courtesy J.F. Sepinsky, et al., NASA
|
Out there in the universe are a mysterious group of stars that are younger and stronger than they ought to be. They've been kept that way, according to Dr. Alison Sills, an astronomer at McMaster University in Hamilton, by sucking the life out of nearby stars, using the mass of these stars to keep themselves artificially young. They're known as blue stragglers.
Listen to this segment:
Related Links
Paper in NatureNews release from McMaster UniversityNews release from the UK's Science and Technology Facilities CouncilDr Sills' web pageFrog Leg Feeding Frenzy
Frozen frog's legs, copyright Simon Law, from
|
It's a tough time to be a frog. Over the past few decades, there has been a serious decline in frog species across the globe, due mainly to habitat loss and environmental degradation. But Dr. Ian Warkentin, a conservation biologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Corner Brook, has discovered yet another threat to the global frog population: our penchant for crunchy fried frog legs. Dr. Warkentin has compiled evidence that our culinary habits are doing frogs in; he estimates that the world harvests upwards of one billion frogs per year. Over the past few decades, demand for frog legs has exploded and, with global trade, we're eating enough of them that Dr. Warkentin says we may drive them towards extinction.
Listen to this segment:
Related Links
Theme music bed copyright Raphaël Gluckstein.
Creative Commons License by-nc-nd-2.0
Air Times
| Network | Times |
|---|---|
| Radio One | Saturdays at noon, Mondays at 11:00 p.m. and Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. (ET) |
| Sirius 137 | Saturdays at 9 a.m. & 3 p.m. and Wednesdays at 12 midnight (ET) |