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NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with Maria Godoy and Regina Barber of the Quick Wave podcast a couple of new Nipah virus outbreak, Australian pink diamonds and the mating lifetime of cockatoos.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And it’s time for this week’s science roundup with our pals at NPR’s Quick Wave podcast – Regina Barber and Maria Godoy – within the studio. Hey there, you two.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: Hey.
REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: Hey.
KELLY: So you may have introduced us three science tales – three that caught your eye this week. What have you ever bought?
GODOY: Nicely, we have got an outbreak of the Nipah virus in Kerala, India…
BARBER: What mysterious pink diamonds in Australia in the present day inform us about what occurred on Earth lots of of hundreds of thousands of years in the past…
GODOY: And the way cockatoos woo their lovers by moonlighting as drummers.
KELLY: (Laughter) OK, so virus, pink diamonds and romantic cockatoos. I bought to go for the third one first. Maria, inform me concerning the wild palm cockatoos. They’re drumming out love songs?
GODOY: Yeah. That is as fabulous because it sounds. So these palm cockatoos solely reside in distant components of northern Australia and lowland New Guinea, some offshore islands. Feminine cockatoos solely lay one egg each two years.
BARBER: Which implies they should be tremendous choosy about selecting a male mate.
GODOY: Proper. And as TLC taught us all within the ’90s, they do not need no scrubs, which implies…
BARBER: (Laughter).
GODOY: …The male palm cockatoos should go all-out to persuade the females to mate with them. Rob Heinsohn has been learning these birds for many years. He is a conservation biologist at Australian Nationwide College, and he says the males placed on a fairly unbelievable present. They begin off by whistling and making plenty of calls and noises to catch her eye.
ROB HEINSOHN: And on the similar time, he is erecting his large crest. And he is blushing his crimson cheeks, and he is bobbing and dancing on the department, twirling, doing every little thing he can to get her consideration.
KELLY: OK. I’ve crimson cheeks imagining him erecting his large crest…
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: …On his head, proper?
GODOY: On his head.
KELLY: Oh his head.
GODOY: Sure, on his head.
KELLY: OK.
GODOY: It is a household present.
KELLY: So fast-forward to the drumming – what occurs?
BARBER: Nicely, that is the massive finale, proper? After he is been whistling and bobbing, the male cockatoo goes out on a limb and makes an enormous present of chopping off the largest tree department. And he does it together with his invoice to principally present how sturdy he’s.
GODOY: After which he whittles that department down together with his beak and begins drumming. And in a brand new examine printed by the Royal Society, researchers report that every fowl really has his personal most popular fashion of drumstick. Some like them brief and fats. Others choose lengthy and thin. Typically they use seed pods, too. However they every have their very own signature instrument fashion.
BARBER: Not solely that – every fowl has its personal signature drumming fashion, too. Heinsohn says he can acknowledge which male palm cockatoo is drumming simply by listening – type of like individuals say you possibly can inform when Keith Moon is drumming on a Who album.
(SOUNDBITE OF PALM COCKATOO DRUMMING)
KELLY: OK, I am unsure The Who’re dropping any sleep over that, however, Maria, inform me what the feminine cockatoos are doing whereas all this is occurring.
GODOY: Yeah. Nicely, so Heinsohn says this complete elaborate musical mating show is how male palm cockatoos present they’ve the brains and creativity to be worthy as mates. So the females watch this intently the entire time, and the males do these shows again and again till they lastly get the woman.
KELLY: Till they get the woman – so a cheerful ending. That’s pleasant.
Talking of pleasant – pink diamonds. That is our subsequent subject – pink diamonds in Australia – Regina.
BARBER: Yeah. So for a very long time, the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia loved a bounty of pink diamonds. Till they closed in 2020, they had been the main provider of them. However the entire time, geologists have been stumped by how the diamonds bought there and when.
GODOY: Yeah. See, pink diamonds are lovely, however they’re very uncommon. Like, when you scooped up 500 random diamonds from Argyle…
KELLY: As you do.
GODOY: Yeah, precisely – just one can be pink. They usually’re much more uncommon at different mines, which makes them fairly coveted stones. Should you’ll keep in mind, Ben Affleck gave J.Lo a pink diamond throughout their first engagement within the early aughts.
KELLY: So many engagements in the past. OK, so pink diamonds – you mentioned they’re very uncommon. Why?
BARBER: It is as a result of they require a special type of physics to be made. So you may have your traditional, colorless diamond, and that is produced from pure carbon put below excessive strain. However one of many researchers, geologist Hugo Olierook, says pink diamonds are broken diamonds.
HUGO OLIEROOK: You possibly can injury a diamond. You possibly can really take that diamond and twist it and bend it somewhat. And when you bend it and twist it simply the correct quantity, it turns pink.
BARBER: And the constructions inside a diamond get compressed, and the sunshine touring by means of the pink diamond makes it that colour.
GODOY: So geologists have lengthy identified that diamonds are usually shaped deep down.
BARBER: Greater than 90 miles deep down.
GODOY: Contained in the Earth’s crust. They usually tended to type again when there have been supercontinents on the floor of the earth.
KELLY: OK, grasp on, ‘trigger I am attempting to maintain up right here. Supercontinents – that is once they had been all smushed collectively, like a gazillion years in the past?
GODOY: Yeah, precisely. So Pangea is the newest one. There was one other supercontinent referred to as Nuna, and scientists suppose that these pink diamonds had been created throughout the formation of the Nuna supercontinent some 1.8 billion years in the past.
BARBER: Yeah. And Hugo and his colleagues wrote about this within the journal Nature Communications this week. And thru extra exact relationship, they had been ready to determine that when Nuna broke aside 500 million years later, the diamonds spewed out. The subcontinents banged collectively and stretched, which brought about a volcanic eruption of diamonds.
KELLY: A volcano of diamonds.
BARBER: Sure.
KELLY: Wonderful.
GODOY: Signal me up.
KELLY: OK, now our remaining story that you’ve got delivered to us – it is somewhat bit extra of a downer, however it’s an fascinating detective story.
BARBER: Yeah.
KELLY: That is an epidemiological thriller. It’s in southern India. It is an outbreak of a virus referred to as the Nipah virus. Inform me extra.
GODOY: Proper. Nicely, so Kamala Thiagarajan wrote concerning the outbreak for NPR’s Goats and Soda weblog. It is the fourth outbreak within the state of Kerala since 2018. There’s been two deaths – the primary one was on the finish of August – and 6 circumstances thus far.
KELLY: Six circumstances thus far – and what does it do to you?
GODOY: Nicely, it is a virus that jumps from animals to individuals. Fruit bats are the first hosts, and it is on the World Well being Group’s listing of viruses with pandemic potential. And the standard signs can embrace extreme respiratory issues like pneumonia, even encephalitis, which is mind swelling, and that may convey fevers, complications, typically disorientation and even result in coma.
BARBER: And the virus may be lethal, too. There was an enormous outbreak in Malaysia within the late ’90s that killed over 100 individuals.
KELLY: Ugh. OK, this sounds terrible. Do we all know how this present outbreak – the one in India – started?
GODOY: Nicely, scientists know that Nipah can unfold from bats to people when bats contaminate issues individuals eat or drink. In some previous outbreaks in Bangladesh, that is been by means of the sap of date palm bushes. And when individuals drank the palm sap, they bought sick. Researchers are testing bats in Kerala for the virus to see if that may be the case right here, however they have not found out but precisely how this outbreak began.
BARBER: However they do know that when this explicit pressure of Nipah virus jumps from animals to individuals, it could actually unfold from human to human by means of bodily fluids or contaminated meals.
GODOY: And a number of other circumstances on this outbreak are linked to a hospital the place the primary one that died was getting handled. So plainly the contaminated particular person went to the hospital, and it started to unfold from there. Now, containment measures have been put in place, and docs in Kerala are optimistic.
KELLY: Me too – very a lot wishing them luck in containing that specific outbreak. Maria Godoy and Regina Barber from NPR’s science podcast, Quick Wave, which is the place you possibly can find out about new discoveries and on a regular basis mysteries and all of the science behind the headlines. Regina, Maria, thanks.
GODOY: Oh, thanks.
BARBER: Thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SLVR SONG, “BACK N FORTH”)
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