Mikroscope

Please join us for this seasons last episode where we reminisce on all of the wonderful topics discussed this season!! We also consider the fate of our species and what needs to be done about climate policy to really help give us the best chance for survival! Learn more at www.mikroscopwepodcast.com and @_mikroscope_ on Instagram.

Join us this week as we discuss an alternative method to improve crop production.. Manipulating a plants microbiome! We focus on five key aspects of where the research is going/ needs to go for this technology to be used widely. While we stray a bit from our normal hard core dissection of climate change research; we hope that this will help bring you a stronger understanding of the microbial life that lives beneath your feet!

Increasing temperatures are already effecting populations of domesticated and wild plants and animals, but what happens when these factors come together to effect people?  Mike and Kevin explore a recent publication predicting how bee populations drive the suitability of Latin American regions to coffee production under different climate change scenarios.

Join us for the first official episode with our new co-host Kevin!! Saving the earth is all good and fun, but when it really comes down to it the luxuries we indulge in at hope keep up said (at least for me it does!). This week we zero in on how climate change will affect the availability and price of barley, a major ingredient in BEER! Without revealing to much, it may seem that happy hour beer special will not be so “happy”! 

Join us in round two as we attempt to piece apart another way to educate the public on the effect climate change has on their lives. We piece apart a study that was done by a group out of North Caroline, which looked at how teaching climate change to your children can help to foster climate change concern in their parents. This study was tremendously done, and we talk about all the different variable they took into consideration, which in turn makes their results that much stronger. It really is true when people say children are the future!

Please join us as we talk with Kevin, a third year PhD student who studies the “microbial forests” that cover arid regions. We start off by discussing the journey Kevin took from wanting to be a high school teacher all they way to his current work on how how microbes produce their own sunblock! We shift focus to talk about Haboobs...yes Haboobs, which are giant dust storms which wreak havoc on arid regions, such as the south west of the US and the Middle East. As more developers build neighborhoods in Arizona,  Haboobs become more frequent as people destroy biological soil crusts which hold down the soil. Join us as we discuss the importance of biological soil crusts in arid ecosystems and how you can prevent their destruction.

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 We kick this week’s episode of “Mikroscope” off with a congratulations to Mike for using metagenomics to provide insight into novel bacteria from the Amazon!!  What this means is that he was able to reconstruct the genomes or “directions” of these bacteria. Next up we dive straight into the psychology of climate change. Sam and Mike discuss the relationship between personal experience and a belief in or understanding of climate change. Unfortunately most Americans don’t believe that climate change is currently happening. Our hosts delve into why that might be by talking about belief certainty, which is understanding that something WILL happen, as well as preconceived beliefs vs personal experience. They get into how living in different regions of the country can affect your belief certainty due to climate change drastically affecting certain areas more than others. Finally they get into how YOU can make a change, specifically by listening to podcasts, following Instagram pages such as National Geographic, and reading publications such as The Week.

In this episode Mike and Samantha are joined by Bianca Cruz, an ASU PhD working to understand the role that very small phytoplankton play slowing down climate change!! Join us in taking a look at the life of a marine microbial ecology, on the deep ocean and what goes into marine science. We then talk about the role marine snow, phytoplankton poop, plays in the sequestration of CO2 from the atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean. We take an in-depth look at how climate change will effect marine snow, and how the size of phytoplankton are drivers in understanding where marine snow is. Lastly we talk about the very interesting, and evolutionary conundrum, of prochlorococcus. Sunscreen is bad!

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In this episode, Mike and Samantha explore Microbiology. They start by discussing the different communities of bacteria that can grow, such as red snow on glaciers. Then they translate that into how lichen, the moss found on rocks, affects us everyday. If you listen closely you’ll even hear some hot tea on RuPaul’s Drag Race! They dig into a study out of the University of Leeds about the red snow and how it is causing the glaciers to melt faster. Finally they get in to how YOU can help save the planet. For instance, don’t flush anything but waste and toilet paper down the toilet, and don’t leave the water running while you brush your teeth.

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 On this episode of Mikroscope Sam and Mike discuss different ecosystems and how differently each will be affected by climate change. Together they comprehensively explain the movement of species between ecosystems as temperatures and sea levels rise. Learn how you can help conserve fragile ecosystems the next time you go on a hike. Hear how scientists are using predictive models of species movement to inform conservationists and laws protecting a wide variety of endangered species.

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