Brain Junk

The Sandbox tree, Water Hemlock, and Giant Hogweed are the mean girls of the plant world. They don't care about your feelings. If you get too close you might experience rashes, blindness, third degree burns, and/or death. These plants say, touch me, I DARE YOU.

Show Notes:

Sandbox Tree info on Britannica

Animalogic YouTube with exploding Sandbox tree seedpods

Water Hemlock is terrible

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Giant Hogweed WARNINGS

Trigger warning for this last link. Photos of a leg burned with Giant Hogweed sap

Turns out, in less than 20 years of pumping underground water sources for agriculture and drinking water, we've changed the tilt of the Earth. Yikes! Need some cheering up? Listen to the Quahog Wild episode!

Show Notes:

258: Quahog Wild

Advanced Earth and Space Sciences paper (Geophysical Research Letters): Drift of Earth's Pole Confirms Groundwater Depletion as a Significant Contributor to Global Sea Level Rise 1993–2010 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL103509

The Smartless podcast

Known locally as a valtoare, this bowl built into a river has been used to wash clothes for hundreds of years. Click the links, it's something to see! This week we start in a river washing clothes and dive into the history of washing machines. It's so much clean fun. (Get it? CLEAN 'cause its about washing clothes? Hehehe we'll see ourselves out).

Show Notes:

TikTok video of a Romanian Whirlpool in action

YouTube of ladies washing with a valtoare

WorldRecordAcademy.org article

Peasantartcraft.com about Romanian lifestyle

From Trace's weird word origin deep dive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine)

https://www.etymonline.com/word/mangle

In Northern Europe, up to 30% of men over the age of 60 can be affected by Dupuytren's Disease. Hand and finger tendons thicken and contract causing permanent loss of mobility. Turns out this disease is a leftover from Neanderthal genes.

Show notes:

Molecular Biology and Evolution article: Major Genetic Risk Factors for Dupuytren's Disease Are Inherited From Neandertals June 2023

Dupuytren Contracture: what exactly is it and how does it affect a person's hands

Nature Ecology and Evolution article: Encounters with archaic hominins Nov 2018

The sailor's handshake and syphilis

Amy mentioned the book The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels and how it led her on a deep dive into handshakes

Okay this title is a reach, but it was too good to not use. Turns out coastal critters are hitching rides around the world on our floating trash. From dramatic events like Japan's 2011 tsunami, to the stuff we toss into the garbage, we are changing the world and it's ecology in unexpected ways.

Show Notes:

Science.org: Tsunami-driven rafting: Transoceanic species dispersal and implications for marine biogeography

Nature Article on Trash

Marine Debris Program: article and video

Science Alert

Coastal Debris

Welcome to the wonderful "ology" created when bored and curious scientists were trapped in their apartments by the pandemic. It's Oreology! Is the creamy filling a liquid or a solid? Grab a bag of Oreos and help us answer burning questions surrounding this tasty snack.

image Mooss from Pixabay

Show Notes:

Youtube of How It's Made: Oreo (go to 3:30 for cream being placed on the cookies!)

Physics of Fluid: On Oreology, the fracture and flow of “milk's favorite cookie®”

Crystal Owens GitHub Oreometer

Quicksand IS a non-Newtonian fluid!

We're circling back to the African Giant Pouched Rat! Turns out, in addition to being super great at detecting land mines, these rats also have very interesting vaginas.

Show Notes:

Step into the way back machine and give our 100th episode a listen(we talk about bomb sniffing rats)!

Cornell Ed article on vaginal plasticity

Phys Org article by Laura Gallup: Bomb-sniffing rodents undergo 'weird' vaginal transformations

Just incase you NEED to know more about thr African Giant Pouched Rat and their stretchy cheeks. Journal of Mammology: Evolution of Cheek Pouches in African Pouched Rats (Rodentia: Cricetomyinae)

YES the FB movie of the snacking rat

P.S. We aren't really looking for someone to organize our episode contents. Not because we don't need it. It's mostly because we run this show on the shoe-stringiest of shoe string budgets

Amy protecting all those precious brain wrinkles (special appearance by her husband, Chris). Turns out more isn't always better-- for optimal brain function, at least for people, we need just the right amount of brain folds. Kind of like Goldilocks. To avoid things like epilepsy we need not too many, and not too little, just right.

image of brain coral just for comparison to the human brain (credit samkerridge on pixabay268

Show Notes:

PNAS: TMEM161B modulates radial glial scaffolding in neocortical development

UC San Diego Today article: Study Identifies Cause for Excessive Folding of Gyri in Human Cerebral Cortex

Alzheimer's and Nun study from Wikipedia

Photo of the Difference in brain folds rats vs humans

Amy asked for zombies. Next to Cordyceps (and the Last of Us), Toxoplasma gondii comes pretty close to taking over mammal brains. A 2022 study in Yellowstone showed wolves are affected by toxoplasmosis in unexpected ways.

Show Notes:

Communication Biology: Parasitic infection increases risk-taking in a social, intermediate host carnivore

Scientific American: Are Cats responsible for "Cat Ladies"?