Living With Wildfire, 7,000 Steps A Day Okay, Kids’ Mars Questions. Sept 17, 2021, Part 1

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🗓️ 17 September 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Scientists Potty Train Cows To Lower Greenhouse Gasses

Scientists have known it for a long time: Cattle are a major source of nitrogen emissions, contributing to the global warming crisis. Alternatives have been tossed around for years: from eating less meat to feeding cows seaweed. Now, a new study out of Germany and New Zealand has a more outside-the-box solution: potty-training calves.

Scientists trained cows to pee in just one spot—dubbed the “MooLoo”—so their urine can be cleaned before it seeps into the environment. Most calves got the hang of it within 20-25 pees.

Joining guest host Umair Irfan to talk about this and other science stories of the week is Roxanne Khamsi, science journalist based in Montreal, Quebec.

With Worsening Wildfire Seasons, How Can We Learn To Live With Them?

It’s another record year for fire in the American West, with more than two million acres already burning in the state of California, and the Dixie Fire alone well on its way to a million acres—if it gets that big, it would be the second “gigafire” on record, after 2020’s August Complex fire.

As climate change and human habitation collide in worsening fire seasons, what is the long-term outlook? Guest host Umair Irfan talks to fire scientist Crystal Kolden about the way fires are changing as we change the landscape, and what coexisting with fire can look like—including learning from the time-proven burning and forestry practices of Indigenous peoples of the West.

Do I Really Need 10,000 Steps A Day? Scientists Say 7,000 Is Fine

You’ve probably heard someone say that they have to “get their steps in.” But does the number of steps you take in a day actually matter? For years, there was a mythology around the health benefits of walking 10,000 steps a day.

But it turned out that number wasn’t based on actual data—it grew out of a marketing effort in Japan from a pedometer company in the 1960s. Now, Amanda Paluch, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has published a paper—based on actual data—to help answer this question in the academic journal JAMA Network Open.

Mining data collected by the CARDIA cohort study, they compared the overall health outcomes of people who walked less than 7,000 steps a day, those logging 7,000 to 10,000 steps, and those trekking over 10,000. They found that people who walked over 7,000 steps a day had a significant decrease in mortality, compared to people who took fewer steps. They’re still trying to tease out exactly what health benefits the steps may bring.

Paluch joins guest host Umair Irfan to talk about the research, and what you should know about how walking might improve health.

NASA Scientist Answers Kids’ Questions About The Mars Rover

It was big news last week when the Mars rover Perseverance collected its first rock samples.

And just in time, we invited young listeners in our audience to ask research scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory some of their most pressing questions about the Mars 2020 mission. Questions like, “How do samples get back to Earth from Mars?” And, “How does Perseverance dust itself off … if it can?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Omar Irfan. I may science reporter at Vox and a regular guest on the show. This week, I'm hosting the program while Ira is away.
0:09.6	Later this hour, we'll talk about how we can learn to live with wildfires. And why sign to say 10,000 steps a day may not be the right benchmark for fitness.
0:18.6	But first, the COVID-19 pandemic has rippled throughout American political life.
0:23.4	Case in point, a new report says that more than half of the states have rolled back public health powers during the pandemic.
0:29.6	While this has obvious effects for our current pandemic, these rules could also have consequences for the future of public health in this country.
0:36.0	Joining me now to talk about this story and other science news of the week is my guest, Roxanne Hamsey, a science journalist based in Montreal, Quebec. Welcome back Roxanne.
0:44.8	Thank you so much, Omar. It's great to be here.
0:46.8	Let's start with this news about states rolling back public health measures. It seems contrary to logic given the state of the pandemic, but of course politics have been an undercurrent throughout this ordeal.
0:56.0	Why are these rollbacks happening and how are states justifying this?
1:00.0	Well, yes, I completely agree with you. And I think it is fascinating that this is happening right now given the pandemic that we're in.
1:07.2	And what happened was Kaiser Health News did a review of all these recent legislative changes.
1:13.6	And they found that 26 states, which is a lot, it's more than half, have pushed through laws that permanently weaken the government's authority to protect public health.
1:24.0	So we're talking about at least 16 states have limited the power of public officials to do things like order masks and quarantines or insist on isolation.
1:33.2	And there's other measures of regards to vaccine passports and vaccine mandates. So this is an example of politics colliding with public health.
1:42.0	And it kind of couldn't come at a worse time.
1:45.6	So what is the rationale behind this?
1:48.0	Well, I think that's a really good question. I think obviously there's a large contingency of people that believe in their rights are being infringed upon.
1:56.8	But at the end of the day, the public health officials are really concerned about the long term effects of these changes.
2:02.8	And some of these changes are really not in consequential. So in Arkansas, for example, legislators banned mask mandates in places except for private businesses or state run healthcare facilities.
2:14.8	So I mean, that is like a big impediment to stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the COVID virus.
2:23.6	The rationale is unknown to a lot of scientific minds. I think it's definitely an example where people with a lot of public health expertise are scratching their heads.
2:33.6	And frankly, leaving some of these positions because of frustration.
	...

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