The Conduct Science Podcast

This week on The Conduct Science Podcast, Tom and Mitch take a journey into the minds eye and look into imagination. From dreams to everyday life imagination is an integral part of how the human brain functions and how we process reality, but it is not the same for everyone. Some people possess a vivid imagination and some people have no ability to use the minds eye, a phenomenon known as aphantasia. Join us this week as we discover what imagination even is and how it changes through our lives. Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

Welcome back to The Conduct Science Podcast. With the return of Mitch back into the ranks with Tom, they both explore the effects of isolation on the mind and body. The world is in global lockdown at the moment so find out what kind of research has been done in the past how loneliness and social isolation affects people, the positives from the lockdown, things you can do, and even Tom and Mitch's experiences with it. Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, Tom takes a look at EIA's, black holes, and stupid humans. Environmental impact assessments are the scientific and legal foundation that any construction project lies upon. Its process and authorisation is a complicated, confusing, and lengthy process but get the break down here! In the future climate change could slow down human cognition due to high CO2 levels. And the collision of two black holes reveals all new findings. Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, Tom takes a look at what evolution may unfold if humans were to venture into space. Humans have been around for 200,000 years which in terms of species age is quite short. At the moment we don't understand our own evolutionary history yet but that doesn't stop us exploring our evolutionary futures. Lack of gravity, increased radiation, and enhanced mutation frequency could be in humanity's future. Or will we take it into our own hands and edit the genes ourselves? Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, Tom takes a look at an action plan set out by Carlos Duarte et al., (2020) on how to recover and maintain our oceans by 2050. In this paper they list key areas that we need to focus on such as; fisheries management, hunting regulations, and habitt protection and restoration and also how we might go about achieving these. The impact on one part of our ocean greatly affects all the other parts as well and in one unified global effort we might be able to save our oceans for future generations. Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, Tom takes a look at ethics in the research environment. Have you ever wondered what ethics process each scientist goes through when applying to conduct an experiment? Or how the ethics board decides which experiments are ethically valid? More than this Tom dives head first into the heated topic of using captive animals in experiments with a heavy focus on captive dolphins. Are they too smart for captivity or is there some benefit to using them in experiments? Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, Tom takes a look at teaching in the animal kingdom. Who can do it, where do we find it, and what is it anyway? Tom takes you on an adventure through the scientific literature and animal kingdom describing exactly what teaching is from two different points of view and the animals in which we find it in. Teaching has always been considered something unique to animals with complex cognition.... why then do we find it in ants? Stay tuned, to The Method Section. Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, Tom tackles diseases in a population. With the current activities in the world some people may be confused about what a disease is in the first place, how are they caused, through what organisms and methods are they transferred? How do the health administrations and governments of the world model disease transmission and decide what measures to implement and when do they know if it's getting better or not? Join Tom as he takes a look at the coronavirus, how it and other viruses spread, and what you can do to help prevent it spreading more. Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, join Tom as he explores why we age! Is aging an inherent process that we must go through? If so What mechanisms are in place that cause it to happen and why did those mechanisms evolve in the first place? Is it population control or is it just the selection of preferred early life characteristics that have bad late life consequences? What can we learn from looking at other animals about aging and will we be able to stop it in the next 50 years? Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.

This week on The Method Section, Tom investigates brain size and complexity and how it relates to animal intelligence. Does having a bigger brain correlate to the intelligence of an animal or is it the relative brain size and complexity that determines it? Or is it none of these? Find out a bit about the history of comparative brain size studies, what we learnt from them and why they needed to change! Tom takes a look at the marine mammals, specifically cetaceans and looks at their case of being intelligent, are they as smart as people think? Music by: Joakim Karud - https://soundcloud.com/joakimkarud.