Using Urine to Build a Moon Base, Musicians and Audiences Sync Brain Activity, and Why “Size Matters” for Narwhal Tusks

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2020

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Learn about how astronauts may build the first moon base with help from their own urine; how musicians and audiences synchronize their brain activity; and more than you ever thought you wanted to know about narwhal tusks.

Astronauts may use their own urine to help build the first moon base by Cameron Duke

Astronaut urine to build moon bases. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/f-sf-aut032720.php
How to build a Moon base. (2018). Nature.com. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07107-4
Pilehvar, S., Arnhof, M., Pamies, R., Valentini, L., & Kjøniksen, A.-L. (2020). Utilization of urea as an accessible superplasticizer on the moon for lunar geopolymer mixtures. Journal of Cleaner Production, 247, 119177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119177
What is Artemis? (2019). NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/what-is-artemis

Musicians and their audiences sync their brain activity by Grant Currin

Young, E. (2020, March 23). Musicians and Their Audiences Show Synchronised Patterns of Brain Activity. Research Digest; British Psychological Society. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/03/23/musicians-and-their-audiences-show-synchronised-patterns-of-brain-activity/
Hou, Y., Song, B., Hu, Y., Pan, Y., & Hu, Y. (2020). The averaged inter-brain coherence between the audience and a violinist predicts the popularity of violin performance. NeuroImage, 211, 116655. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116655
Taylor, J.M. (2016, July 25). Mirror Neurons After a Quarter Century: New light, new cracks. Science in the News. Harvard University. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/mirror-neurons-quarter-century-new-light-new-cracks/

Why do male narwhals have tusks? Because the ladies love 'em by Grant Currin

For narwhals, the “unicorn of the seas,” size matters for sexual selection. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/asu-fnt031220.php
The longer the better: evidence that narwhal tusks are sexually selected | Biology Letters. (2020). Biology Letters. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0950
Narwhal Tusk Research -- Anatomy and Morphology of the Tusk. (2012). Narwhal.org. https://www.narwhal.org/anatomy.html
Sexual Selection | Learn Science at Scitable. (2010). Nature.com. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/sexual-selection-13255240/

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity daily from
0:05.0	Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about how
0:09.2	astronauts may build the first moonbase with help from their own urine, how musicians and audiences
0:15.0	synchronize their brain activity, and more than you ever thought you wanted to know about
0:19.6	Narwal Tusk's. Building a moonbase sound while tusks. Well, it's satisfying some curiosity.
0:23.7	Building a moon base sounds like the stuff of science fiction, or maybe something a supervillain
0:28.6	would be into.
0:30.0	But in fact, there are tons of scientists and engineers working hard to make this a reality right now.
0:36.0	It's not going to be easy, and the potential solutions are going to have to be creative and weird.
0:41.0	You're about to learn about one of those solutions and it involves
0:44.8	astronaut pee. Here's the deal. A good moon habitat is obviously going to have to be
0:50.6	insulated and airtight. We don't want anyone burning, freezing, or suffocating up there.
0:56.5	Less obvious but still crucial is protection from solar radiation. The simplest solution might
1:02.1	be to build habitats out of thick concrete, but that poses its own problems.
1:07.0	The good news is that most of the ingredients for concrete are already there.
1:12.0	Lunar soil will do just fine for making concrete.
1:14.8	But we'd want to 3D print the container and to do that we'd need to soften the
1:19.8	concrete mixture using compounds called plasticizers. That's where the astronaut pee comes in.
1:25.6	Urine is made mostly of water and a chemical called urea and researchers have
1:31.2	discovered that urea makes an excellent plasticizer.
1:34.0	That's because urea is great at breaking the hydrogen bonds that bind water molecules to
1:39.2	other molecules. And of course the other main component of urine is water, and that's another key ingredient in concrete.
	...

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