Jan 24: ‘Gifted’ dogs learn from eavesdropping, and more…

On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald:

How earthquake sensors could track incoming space junk for clean up

Space junk falling back to Earth can be dangerous, and often contains flammable or even radioactive materials. Researchers have come up with a new way to track this debris as it re-enters our atmosphere, using networks of seismometers that are already on the lookout for earthquakes in the Earth’s crust. The team, including seismologist Benjamin Fernando from Johns Hopkins University, found they could accurately model the trajectory of space debris as it crashed towards our planet, which would allow for fast clean up of any potentially dangerous materials. The research was published in the journal Science.

Fast-forwarding tree growth to supercharge carbon sequestration

One of the most powerful tools at our disposal to get rid of some of the excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is in our forests. In one of the world’s largest and longest-running experiments, researchers working in tropical forests in Panama discovered that by adding nitrogen to the soil, they could speed up tree growth to pull more carbon out of the atmosphere, more quickly. The work was led by Sarah Batterman, an associate scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and associate professor at the University of Leeds, and the work was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Some doggos can learn words simply by eavesdropping

Some dogs are more adept at learning language than others, but there are a rare few that can learn hundreds of new words. In science, they’re known as “gifted word-learning dogs.” Researchers studying these special dogs discovered that, much like toddlers, these smart furry canine companions can pick up words just by eavesdropping on their owners’ conversations. Shany Dror, a postdoctoral researcher at E.L.T.E. University in Budapest and the Veterinary University of Vienna, led this research, which was published in the journal Science.

Mars ‘punches above its weight’ in shaping Earth’s long-term climate

The gravity of other planets shapes the way our planet moves in space in predictable cycles that can influence how much energy Earth gets from the Sun and our planet’s climate in the long term. These cycles were previously thought to have been dictated by larger planets like Venus and Jupiter. Now, scientists say that Mars — tiny in comparison — punches above its weight to exert an outsized influence on these cycles. Stephen Kane, a professor of Planetary Astrophysics at the University of California, Riverside, led the research. It was published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Finding ways to locate prehistoric animals to salvage fragile material like RNA

The retreating Arctic glaciers and thawing permafrost are slowly exposing a wealth of prehistoric animal remains that are especially scientifically valuable. One example is a 40-thousand year old woolly mammoth that scientists have now, for the first time, managed to extract RNA that — unlike DNA — can tell us about the dying animal’s final moments.

Specimens like these are extremely rare and if scientists want to track down more animal remains like it, they’re now in a race against time. Scientists in Alberta are testing a way to speed up that search using drones to spot bone-hungry lichens that they found works on dinosaur bones, at least, in the Canadian Badlands 

We spoke with:

• Emilio Marmol-Sanchez, who extracted the ice aged RNA from an incredibly well preserved ice age woolly mammoth when he was at Stockholm University, was able to shed light on the animal’s final dying moments. The study was published in the journal Cell.

• Caleb Brown, from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, tested drone technology to spot a bright orange lichen that feasts on dinosaur bones at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta. Those results were published in the journal Current Biology.