Climate Risks, Power Grid Security, Necrobiome. March 23, 2018, Part 1

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🗓️ 23 March 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

A report issued last week by the Department of Homeland Security said that throughout 2016 and 2017, Russian hackers had worked to gain access to control systems at unidentified power plants and were in a position to shut them down. Their actions have finally given Washington the political will to address vulnerabilities in the U.S. power grid. A new bill sponsored by Senator Angus King of Maine will establish a two year pilot program to develop techniques and technologies to better secure the grid. But it might just be too little, too late. After death, your microbiome continues on as the necrobiome—all of the bacteria, insects, fungi, and other organisms that are involved in decomposition. And the types of bacteria that show up on the scene follow a rather predictable pattern. Biologist Jessica Metcalf is studying this bacterial order to create a “microbial stopwatch” that could be used as a forensic tool, and joins Ira to tell him more. In the State of Science: Late last year, one of the world’s largest credit rating agencies announced that climate change would have an economic impact on the U.S. Moody’s suggested that climate risks could become credit risks for some U.S. states, including Alaska. And Popular Science editor Rachel Feltman tells Ira about the top science stories of the week in the News Round-up.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.
0:02.6	We had some sad news from the conservation world this week.
0:06.8	Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, died at the age of 45.
0:12.2	His death leaves his subspecies teetering on extinction because there are only two females remaining,
0:18.7	his daughter and granddaughter.
0:23.4	But hope remains because,
0:28.7	well, here to explain why, is Rachel Feldman, Science Editor at Popular Science. Welcome back,
0:35.6	Rachel. Thanks for having me. Give me some hope, Rachel. Yeah, so the good news here is that researchers have already been working for several years, really, to prepare for Sudan's death.
0:43.8	The thing is that neither of the two females are capable of carrying calves for various medical reasons, but they do have potentially viable eggs.
0:53.3	Sudan was still producing viable sperm up until he died,
0:59.1	and they were collecting that pretty regularly. There's also sperm from several other deceased
1:05.4	northern white rhino males. So the plan is to harvest eggs from Sudan's daughter and granddaughter, fertilize them,
1:14.3	and then implant the embryos in southern white rhinos, which is the other white rhinos subspecies,
1:20.0	and they're actually about 20,000 of them.
1:22.2	So they're quite abundant.
1:23.8	They're the only, they're arguably the most successful rhino, especially in Africa.
1:31.5	But they really want to bring back the north.
1:34.0	He's a different rhino, right?
1:35.5	Yeah, so, you know, subspecies sometimes can feel a little bit like splitting hairs.
1:40.0	And if there are 20,000 white rhinos in total, why do we care that the northern is going extinct?
1:45.7	But the southern and northern rhinos have been separated for a really long time.
1:50.8	One study estimated up to a million years.
	...

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