50 years ago, Canada joined the nascent space race, and became the third nation in space with the launch of the Alouette 1 satellite. It was a pioneering effort that put our nation on the technological map. In today's program we'll speak with
one of the pioneers who built Canada's first satellite.
Before that, we'll hear about one species of snail where
the father carries all the weight of parenting on his back;
We'll discover how bumblebees figure out
the most efficient route from flower to flower;
and we'll find out why
"memories of chocolate" might be more than a marketing slogan.
But first -
that's no skin off my back.
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 African Spiny Mouse, courtesy J Goheen
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The African Spiny mouse takes its name from the stiff hairs on its back, giving it the appearance of a tiny hedgehog. To avoid the grasp of a predator, the spiny mouse is able to shed or tear away its skin, in order to escape. The very weak skin can be torn in numerous small chunks or much larger pieces. A new study by Dr. Ashley Seifert, a post-doctoral fellow from the Department of Biology at the University of Florida in Gainesville has found that this mouse can lose up to 60% of its skin, and survive. The skin, including hair follicles, begins the early stages of healing within days, eventually healing completely without scaring. It is hoped that the skin rejuvenation method in these mice could someday be applied to humans.
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In the Animal kingdom, absentee fatherhood is very much the norm. It's only rarely that fathers do as much or more parenting than the female of the species. However, on occasion, biologists do discover cases in which males are paragons of parenthood. One such case has been described by Canadian biologist
Dr. Stephanie Kamel, a postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues. They've been studying a marine snail in which the female glues fertilized egg capsules to the shell of the male after mating, sometimes covering his entire shell. The male must then carry the eggs until they hatch. Compounding his misfortune is the fact that female snails are extremely promiscuous, so only a fraction of the eggs he's carrying are actually his offspring.
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Flight is energetically expensive for a bumblebee, so it needs to be efficient when establishing a route through the hundreds of flowers it may visit each day. A new study by
Dr. Nigel Raine, from the school of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway University of London in England, has found that bumblebees are able to determine the shortest route through the flowers they visit, in a relatively short time. After only a few hours, and an average of 20 foraging flights, the bumblebees were able to find the most energy-efficient route through a course of 5 artificial flowers, using a system of trial and error. The study suggests that the relatively small bumblebee brain is capable of solving complex problems related to navigation.
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Memories of Chocolate
 Courtesy Ken Lukowiak/JEB
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Snail memories seem to be enhanced by a key ingredient in chocolate. Dr. Ken Lukowiak, who studies memory in the Dept. of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Calgary, and his group have investigated several chemicals that help enhance simple memories in snails. One of the strongest they've studied is a flavinoid called epicatechin, which helps snails retain simple memories for more than six times longer than they would normally do. They suspect that the chemical directly influences neurons in a way that could well operate similarly in humans.
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Alouette 1 at 50
 Dr. Colin Franklin, Keith Brown and Dr. John Barry with the satellite - April, 1961. Courtesy Communications Research Centre Canada
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50 years ago, on September 29, 1962, Canada became the third nation in space with the launch of the Alouette 1 satellite. Only satellites built by the United States and the Soviet Union had entered Earth orbit prior to this. Alouette 1 was designed to explore the ionosphere - the layer of charged particles at the top of the atmosphere, which was of interest because of its significant impact on radio communications, particularly in the North. The ambitious and state-of-the-art satellite was a smashing success, operating for more than 10 years before it was turned off. Dr. Colin Franklin was the chief electrical engineer on the Alouette 1 satellite. He describes the crash program that built it, and how it established Canada's reputation as a leader in the Space Age.
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Theme music bed copyright Raphaël Gluckstein, Creative Commons License by-nc-nd-2.0
Saturdays at noon, Mondays at 11:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. (in some markets only)
Arriving on schedule, copyright Vladimer Shioshvili
Courtesy Ken Lukowiak/JEB
We're coming to Halifax in early June for our annual Quirks Question Roadshow, and we want to see you there. Stay tuned to this space for details.
Saturdays at noon, Mondays at 11:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. and Fridays at 5:00 a.m. (ET)
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