Quirks and Quarks
CBC
Radio: CBLA-FM CBC Radio One Toronto
Categories: Science & Medicine
Listen to the last episode:
Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace
We know knights in shining armor rode powerful horses, but remains of those horses are rare. Now, researchers studying equine remains from a site near Buckingham Palace have built a case, based on evidence from their bones, that these animals were likely used in jousting tournaments and battle. Archeologist Katherine Kanne says the bone analysis also revealed a complex, continent-crossing medieval horse trading network that supplied the British elites with sturdy stallions. This paper was published in Science Advances.
In an ice-free Arctic, Polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage
Researchers using drones to study ground-nesting birds in the Arctic have observed entire colonies being devastated by marauding polar bears who would normally be out on the ice hunting seals – except the ice isn’t there. What’s more, now they’re enabling a second predator – hungry gulls who raid the nests in the bears’ wake. Andrew Barnas made the observations of this “gull tornado” following around polar bears in East Bay Island in Nunavut. The research was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, due to launch this fall, is set to explore the jewel of our solar system: Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The mission’s focus is to determine if the icy moon, thought to harbour an ocean with more water than all of the water on Earth, is amenable to life. However, postdoctoral researcher Fabian Klenner, now at the University of Washington, led a study published in the journal Science Advances that demonstrated how the spacecraft may be able to detect fragments of bacterial life in a single grain of ice ejected from the surface of the moon.
Pollution is preventing pollinators from finding plants by scent
Our polluted air is transforming floral scents so pollinators that spread their pollen can no longer recognize them. In a new study in the journal Science, researchers found that a certain compound in air pollution reacts with the flower’s scent molecules so pollinators — like the hummingbird hawk-moths that pollinate at night — fail to recognize them. Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples, said the change in scent made the flowers smell “less fruity and less fresh.”
An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic
During the last ice age sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today, which means vast tracts of what are currently coastal seafloor were dry land. Geologists and archaeologists are searching for these lost landscapes to identify places prehistoric humans might have occupied. These included a country sized area of Australia that could have been home to half a million people. Archaeologist Kasih Norman and her colleagues published their study of this now-drowned landscape in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Another example is an undersea wall off the coast of Northern Germany that preserves an underwater reindeer hunting ground, described in research led by Jacob Geersen, published in the journal PNAS.
Previous episodes
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608 - An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more... Thu, 28 Mar 2024
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607 - The future of freshwater — will we have a drop to drink, and more. Fri, 22 Mar 2024
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606 - How animals eating, excreting and expiring is like the world's bloodstream, and more Fri, 15 Mar 2024
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605 - How disabled primates thrive in the wild and more… Fri, 08 Mar 2024
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604 - The boreal forest is on the move, and we need to understand how, and more... Fri, 01 Mar 2024
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603 - Icelanders reap the costs and benefits of living on a volcanic island and more… Fri, 23 Feb 2024
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602 - A post valentine’s look at humpback mating songs and a marsupial that’s sleepless for sex Fri, 16 Feb 2024
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601 - Scientists explore which came first, the chicken or the egg, and more… Fri, 09 Feb 2024
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600 - An ancient tree’s crowning glory and more… Fri, 02 Feb 2024
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599 - The aftermath of a record-smashing volcano: Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai two years later, and more... Fri, 26 Jan 2024
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598 - Can diet and exercise be replaced by pills and more… Fri, 19 Jan 2024
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597 - Could buried hydrogen help save the world, and more… Fri, 12 Jan 2024
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596 - A Cave of bones could rewrite the history of human evolution, and more… Fri, 05 Jan 2024
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595 - Our annual holiday question show Fri, 29 Dec 2023
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594 - Seasonal science with reindeer, special stars and miracle babies… Fri, 22 Dec 2023
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593 - The Quirks & Quarks holiday book show! Fri, 15 Dec 2023
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592 - A young carnivorous dinosaur’s last meal and more Fri, 08 Dec 2023
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591 - Cat facts — the latest science on our feline companions Fri, 01 Dec 2023
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590 - How biodiversity contributes to human health and more… Fri, 24 Nov 2023
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589 - Alien blobs in the Earth’s mantle, and much more Fri, 17 Nov 2023
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588 - Eating fossil fuels, sea stars get a head, Right whale diet, music soothes pain and does biology suggest we lack free will? Fri, 10 Nov 2023
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587 - AI research prize and risks, football and lifespan, smart glasses see with sound, most powerful solar storm and killer whale contamination Fri, 03 Nov 2023
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586 - Antarctic ice will melt for a century, the necrobiome recycles your corpse,how apes hang around, brain waves characterize false memories, and finding the biosignatures of long COVID Fri, 27 Oct 2023
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585 - NASA’s metal mission, hungry hippos chew badly, music synchronizes us, cicada boom is trees bane and risks and rewards of deep sea mining Mon, 23 Oct 2023
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584 - Quantum dot Nobel, super-hot supercontinent, lunar laser paving, neanderthal lion hunt, and evolving Eve Fri, 13 Oct 2023
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583 - Nobel for vaccine key, human voices scare wildlife, baby black holes, fire and extinctions and concrete is a hard environmental problem. Fri, 06 Oct 2023