Link to the Show / Show NotesAdelaide Institute develops new optical fibres
The institute has developed new kinds of optical fibres with nanoscale holes. These holes can suck up fluid and opens a new field of sensing. An application is in assessing the quality of aircraft fuel which is susceptible to degradation. Another is measuring wine quality in barrels. And there are applications in medicine.
The amazing behavior of octopuses and dolphins
Mark Norman has found an octopus in Indonesia which uses coconut shells as a designer shield. If threatened, it assembles the shells and hides inside. This fits the definition of tool use! So does the octopus learn? Or is the memory retained in some other way. And dolphins have been observed preparing cuttlefish for dinner. They remove the ink sack, and later strip the skin and allow the bone to be removed.
Tanya Ha - Germ phobia
Tanya Ha looks at our approach to the bacteria commonly known as germs. You´d think we were at war with these organisms, but many are essential to our bodies and our health.
Recalcitrant ants forced back to work
Jürgen Liebig has ants from India, Florida, Arizona and Brunei. He studies their life cycles and uses their behavior for insights into the evolution of cooperative behavior in animals. In most species, worker ants don´t mate, but they do produce offspring by parthenogenesis, a pathway not involving sex. But if a worker ant competes with the queen, they can be detected, through a chemical marker, and will be dragged around by the workers, damaging their reproductive potential, forcing the recalcitrant ant back to work.
New phase of stems cells for regenerative medicine
Embryonic stem cells saw the birth or regenerative medicine. The stem cells create the environment in which healing can occur. Now in the US, patients with spinal cord injury are being treated with stem cells in clinical trials. Some trials have seen tumors develop. This is because stem cells are very similar to cancer cells. Paul Fairchild is looking at preventing the rejection of cells and tissues derived from embryonic stem cells. This is seen as one of the major barriers to regenerative medicine. The most important recent development in regenerative medicine is in the field of induced pluripotency. It allows a patient´s cells to be reprogrammed into embryonic stem cells. From here, potentially any bodypart can be made. This gets around the problem of rejected.
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