Predicting Gun Deaths, Bat Flight, New Organ. March 30, 2018, Part 2

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🗓️ 30 March 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

According to CDC data, more than 13,000 people die from gun homicides every year—and most of them are people of color who live in urban areas. Many of them are children. But as scientists seek to understand the causes and solutions for gun deaths, can we also learn to predict them…and even intervene before they happen? One researcher may have the answer: social media analysis. Friendly neighbors. Olympic divers. Little horses with wings. No matter what you call the commonly misunderstood bat, they’re far more than simple nocturnal blood-drinkers. Bats have an impressive repertoire of noteworthy abilities—from super echolocation to agile, muscular wings. It’s a subject that has both inspired and lured scientists, like Sharon Swartz, a biologist who researches bat flight at Brown University. In this segment, she discusses how she takes a close look at the aerodynamics and wing morphology of these creatures to pin down the evolutionary origins of bat flight. Scientists have discovered a new piece of human anatomy we never knew we had—a layer of connective tissue that exists all over the body. It sits below the skin’s surface, lining the digestive tract, the lungs, and even our blood vessels. Researchers say it could be the missing link the medical community needs to move forward in a number of areas of research, including cancer and autoimmune disease.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Have you thought about your interstitium today? You never heard of it?
0:06.7	Well, apparently it's a new organ. Scientists say we never knew we had a layer of spongy connective tissue
0:13.2	that exists all over the body, including below the skin surface, lining the digestive tract,
0:20.6	the lungs, even our blood vessels.
0:23.3	And it could be the missing lengthy medical community needs to advance cancer and autoimmune
0:28.5	disease research. So why has this so-called organ remain undiscovered until now?
0:34.1	Here to share with us their discoveries as well as their theories as to what exactly the interstitium has been doing all this time.
0:41.6	Our Neil Thies, Professor of Pathology, NYU School of Medicine.
0:45.2	Welcome to Science Friday.
0:46.3	Thank you.
0:47.1	And Rebecca Wells, Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Wells.
0:52.3	Welcome to Science Friday.
0:54.0	Hi, Ira.
0:54.7	So, Neil, how did we miss this?
0:56.5	Where has it been hiding all this time?
0:58.5	Well, the gold standard for the microanatomy of the body is what we see under the microscope.
1:04.8	And what's interesting about this space is it's a fluid-filled space that's supported by this collagen bundle network or lattice.
1:15.6	And in living tissue, it's filled with fluid.
1:18.6	But when you take out tissue from the body, the first thing that happens is the tissue drains out.
1:23.6	The spaces collapse, the collagen bundles layer on top of each other. So whenever we've
1:28.2	seen this structure under the microscope for the last 150 years, it's always looked like this
1:32.8	dense wall of collagen. And that's sort of been our understanding of normal. You can sometimes
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