Geckos & Skin Cancer, Music in Childhood, Underwater Camera

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2022

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we discuss the connection between skin cancer and a leopard gecko named Mr. Frosty, how playing a musical instrument in childhood can affect brain function as we age, and how a new underwater camera can help us explore previously-unseen parts of the ocean.

Geckos & Skin Cancer

“This Gecko Named Mr. Frosty and His 900 Babies May Inspire Human Skin Cancer Treatments” by Elizabeth Gamillo
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reptiles-frosty-yellow-skin-may-reveal-future-treatments-skin-cancers-humans-180978075/
“Leopard Gecko Skin Tumors Traced to Cancer Gene” by Longua Guo et al.
- https://www.hhmi.org/news/leopard-gecko-skin-tumors-traced-to-cancer-gene

Music in Childhood

“Playing music in childhood linked to a sharper mind in old age, study suggests” by Guardian Staff
- https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/aug/29/playing-music-in-childhood-linked-to-a-sharper-mind-in-old-age-study-suggests
“Experience of playing music in childhood and adolescence linked to better cognitive ability in old age: Study” Edited By: Srishti Singh Sisodia
- https://www.wionews.com/science/experience-of-playing-music-in-childhood-and-adolescence-linked-to-better-cognitive-ability-in-old-age-study-511864

Underwater Camera

“MIT engineers build a battery-free, wireless underwater camera” by Adam Zewe
- https://news.mit.edu/2022/battery-free-wireless-underwater-camera-0926
“Battery-free wireless imaging of underwater environments” by Sayed Saad Afzal, Waleed Akbar, Osvy Rodriguez, Mario Doumet, Unsoo Ha, Reza Ghaffarivardavagh & Fadel Adib
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33223-x

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery.
0:09.0	Time flies when you're learning super cool stuff.
0:11.0	I'm Nate.
0:12.0	And I'm Callie. If you're dropping in for the first time, welcome to
0:15.1	curiosity where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you're
0:19.0	a loyal listener, welcome back. Today we discuss the connection between skin cancer and a leopard gecko named Mr. Frosty,
0:26.4	how playing an instrument in childhood can affect brain function as we age, and how a new underwater
0:31.8	camera can help us explore previously unseen parts of the ocean.
0:35.6	Without further ado, let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:38.9	Nate, I want to tell you about some amazing recent findings where researchers discovered that there's
0:44.3	the link between geckos and skin cancer.
0:47.0	Okay, wow, I have to say I never really thought about that correlation.
0:51.1	Me neither. But apparently a leopard gecko named Mr. Frosty
0:56.0	might hold a key to helping us improve our treatments for melanoma or skin cancer.
1:00.5	So a leopard gecko has the cure to cancer? What is a leopard gecko?
1:07.0	Okay, so leopard geckos are the most common reptiles kept as pets.
1:12.0	They're native to the Middle East and Asia, but they're also pretty easy to breed in captivity.
1:16.4	Breeders use them to create color variants and cool patterns on their skin.
1:20.1	Mr. Frosty is one of these variants known as a lemon frost leopard gecko because he has a soft lemon color with little black dots on it.
1:27.5	Okay, Mr Frosty sounds pretty cute, but I haven't heard anything about cancer yet.
1:33.0	Right. Well, Mr. Frosty was cute. So cute in fact that the breeder who created him used him to father other lemon frost babies, more than 900 of them. But over 80% of those
1:46.1	geckos grew tumors before they were five. That's a huge percentage. Exactly. So when
	...

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