Naturally Speaking

Episode 44: Her Majesty’s Caecilian Collector

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We caught up with the self-professed Majesty’s Caecilian Collector and former University of Glasgow lecturer to relive the highlights of a life studying caecilians. Listen to find out all about these unusual and enigmatic animals, from unique aspects of their biology to the people who study them.

You can see footage of caecilians displaying a unique parental care behaviour below. Mark helped collect this footage in Brazil for the BBC Life in Cold Blood documentary series.

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Intro and outro music sampled from: “The Curtain Rises” and “Early Riser” Kevin MacLeod [CC BY 3.0]

Episode 43: Living with anthrax in Africa—interviews with Maasai communities in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

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This week, the Naturally Speaking team takes you to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) in northern Tanzania where for hundreds of years Maasai communities have depended on a close connection with their livestock. If you are a Maasai in the NCA, you grow up very quickly. By the age of 6, you will already be in charge of caring for the small livestock. At 17 you come of age, taking on responsibility for the highly valuable cattle. Your chores do not simply involve grazing your livestock, but also protecting them from wildlife attacks. Encounters with wildlife often leave visible scars, a sign of strength and courage. But in these harsh and remote environments, invisible threats may prove to be more deadly. Diseases that in western countries have become relegated to history and legend remain a daily reality.

One such disease is anthrax. The word ‘anthrax’ conjures images of bio-terrorism and of a terrifying sickness where victims succumb to sudden death with external haemorrhaging. While this disease solicits major funding and response when cases occur in developed countries—such as the bioterrorist attacks in the United States in 2001—in reality, human deaths due to anthrax only occur in these countries under extremely exceptional circumstances. Meanwhile, anthrax remains largely ignored in parts of the world where it represents a daily reality that needs to be somehow coped with. A reason for this neglect is that the disease affects mainly communities with limited visibility and political voice.

Anthrax is caused by a spore-forming bacterium and primarily affects herbivorous livestock and wildlife. People can contract anthrax by ingesting the meat of animals that have died from the disease, or by getting spores into an open wound while handling contaminated animal products. The risk of human illness is therefore higher in communities such as in the NCA, where people, animals and contaminated soil harbouring anthrax spores co-exist.

Researchers Taya Forde, Tiziana Lembo and Rhoda Aminu, as part of their work on anthrax in northern Tanzania, recently facilitated a workshop in the NCA, supported through a University of Glasgow-funded Knowledge Exchange initiative. During this workshop, they spoke to some of the participants about what it is like to live in an anthrax-endemic area like the NCA, hoping to give a voice to the communities most scarred by this neglected disease.

Click to view slideshow.

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Intro and outro music sampled from: “The Curtain Rises” and “Early Riser” Kevin MacLeod [CC BY 3.0].

Behind every scientific achievement lies a complex journey, marked by trials, discoveries, and steadfast resolve. The career of distinguished University Professor Rita Colwell (@rcolwell2), of the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, typifies the ups and downs of a great scientific journey: it began when very few women conducted research, and led her to become a world authority on cholera and director of the National Science Foundation. In this episode of Naturally Speaking Shorts, Taya Forde (@TayaForde) and Karen Hotopp (@KarenHotopp) catch up with her to talk about the impact of her work on water quality and the changing opportunities for women in science.

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Intro and outro music sampled from: “The Curtain Rises” and “Early Riser” Kevin MacLeod [CC BY 3.0]

Episode 41: Conversations with an R Jedi

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As much as we love it or hate it, programming plays an increasingly important part in biological research. But, saving the world one data point at a time is no easy task. In this episode of Naturally Speaking Shorts, Laurie Baker (@llbaker1707) speaks to Hadley Wickham, Chief Scientist at RStudio, about the ins and outs of programming. Hadley’s job, put simply, is writing software that helps people make sense of their data — making programming and data analysis in the statistical programme R less painful.

…to describe Hadley as “kind of a big deal in the world of data science” is a bit of an understatement.

As a developer of several famous and widely used R packages including ggplot2, dplyr, tidyr and ggvis, to describe Hadley as “kind of a big deal in the world of data science” is a bit of an understatement. His packages are helping researchers around the world to eradicate polio, fight crime, save endangered rhinos, and predict climate change hundreds of years into the future. He’s also an incredible teacher, presenting workshops across the globe.

In this podcast, Hadley talks about how he became a developer in R; the interesting data sets he’s working on currently; and his advice for how you too can become an R Jedi.

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RStudio screen pictures courtesy of Laurie Baker and Jenn Wiggins. Intro and outro music sampled from: “The Curtain Rises” and “Early Riser” Kevin MacLeod [CC BY 3.0].

Episode 40 The sex life – or lack of it – of Trypanosomes: Interview with Dr Willie Weir

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“Zero Sex is a Killer” “Bug’s Weird Sex Life could make it go extinct, say Scottish Scientists”:  Dr Willie Weir, a researcher from the Institute—and one of the Scottish scientists responsible for these recent headlines—joins Steve Larcombe on this episode of Naturally Speaking Shorts.

Weir tells Steve about his latest research on the trypanosome worms that cause African sleeping sickness, and how his new paper has caused a stir in media outlets worldwide.

Find out why we should care about what parasites get up to behind closed doors, and what it is like for a researcher to have their work heavily publicised and take on a life of its own.

Find out more about Willie Weir and Annette Macleod.

For further reporting of their findings a selection of links are provided below:

Scientific American; Eureka Alert

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Feature image: Trypanosoma brucei brucei [CC BY-NC-ND], The Wellcome Library. Intro and outro music sampled from: “The Curtain Rises” and “Early Riser” Kevin MacLeod [CC BY 3.0].