Hygiene Hypothesis, Ancient Coronavirus, Black Hole Eats Neutron Star
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2021
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about whether being too clean makes kids sick; an ancient coronavirus epidemic; and a black hole-neutron star merger.
Is being too hygienic making kids sick? These researchers say the public has it all wrong by Grant Currin
- Being clean and hygienic need not impair childhood immunity. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-07/ucl-bca070221.php
- Rook, G. A. W., & Bloomfield, S. F. (2021). Microbial exposures that establish immunoregulation are compatible with targeted hygiene. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 148(1), 33–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2021.05.008
- Cara, E. (2021, July 6). Being Clean Doesn’t Have to Be Bad for Our Immune System, Scientists Say. Gizmodo; Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/being-clean-doesnt-have-to-be-bad-for-our-immune-system-1847238686
Genome study reveals East Asian coronavirus epidemic 20,000 years ago by Cameron Duke
- Souilmi, Y., Lauterbur, M. E., Tobler, R., Huber, C. D., Johar, A. S., Moradi, S. V., Johnston, W. A., Krogan, N. J., Alexandrov, K., & Enard, D. (2021). An ancient viral epidemic involving host coronavirus interacting genes more than 20,000 years ago in East Asia. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.067
- Queensland University of Technology (2021, June 24). Genome study reveals East Asian coronavirus epidemic 20,000 years ago. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-genome-reveals-east-asian-coronavirus.html
We got the first ever detection of a black hole gobbling up a neutron star by Briana Brownell
- Black holes swallow neutron stars like “Pac Man.” (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/anu-bh062521.php
- Astrophysicists detect first black hole-neutron star mergers. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/nu-adf062821.php
- Abbott, R., Abbott, T. D., Abraham, S., Acernese, F., Ackley, K., Adams, A., ... & Boudart, V. (2021). Observation of gravitational waves from two neutron star–black hole coalescences. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 915(1), L5. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac082e/pdf
- Betz, E. (2020). How Big Are Neutron Stars? Discover Magazine; Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-big-is-a-neutron-star
- By Pallab Ghosh. (2021, June 29). Rare black hole and neutron star collisions sighted twice in 10 days. BBC News; BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57639520
- What Is a Black Hole? (2015). NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-a-black-hole-k4.html
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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 |
| 0:04.8 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about |
| 0:09.3 | whether being too hygienic is really making kids sick, a newly discovered coronavirus epidemic that took place |
| 0:15.5 | 20,000 years ago, and the first ever detection of a black hole gobbling up a neutron star. |
| 0:22.1 | Let's gobble up some curiosity. |
| 0:24.0 | COVID has kept everybody killing germs and sanitizing surfaces |
| 0:29.0 | for well over a year now. |
| 0:31.0 | But there's an idea out there that says maybe all that cleanliness isn't |
| 0:35.6 | protecting us and instead it might be making us sick. That's kind of confusing, which is why it's |
| 0:42.2 | good news that a team of researchers has just published a study that offers fresh insight into this idea. |
| 0:48.0 | They say that most of us are getting it very wrong. |
| 0:52.0 | Here's the down and dirty. We've known for centuries |
| 0:55.8 | that germs cause disease. It's why we wash our hands. But around the 1980s |
| 1:01.5 | researchers started to think that something else was going on. |
| 1:05.3 | They suspected that more kids were getting asthma because they were growing up in excessively |
| 1:10.0 | sterile environments that didn't give their immune systems the chance to learn from bacteria, |
| 1:14.8 | viruses, and other pathogens early in life. |
| 1:18.0 | They called this idea the hygiene hypothesis. |
| 1:22.0 | So is it better to keep the house as clean as possible? |
| 1:25.0 | Or should kids be exposed to germs for their own good? |
| 1:28.0 | A lot of people have been convinced that it's the second one. |
| 1:32.0 | After all, some studies do show that kids who grow up on farms or in houses with a lot of animals running around |
... |
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