Science Friday - Alzheimer’s Research Fraud, Extreme Heat Health, Piping Plovers, Octaglove. July 29, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Decades Of Alzheimer’s Research Could Be Based On Fraudulent Data Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating brain disorder that slowly affects memory and thinking skills. For many people who worry that loved ones may succumb to this disorder, the possibility of research in the field of Alzheimer’s is a balm of hope. However, a massive report from Science Magazine highlights a startling discovery: that decades of Alzheimer’s research are likely based on faulty data. Alzheimer's researchers are grappling with the revelation, and what it means for future research of the disease. In other science news of the week, scientists have identified pits on the moon that are a comfortable temperature: averaging 63 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t plan that space vacation yet—research finds that air pollution from space-bound rockets has an exorbitantly high effect on global warming—much more than traditional airplane travel. Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to discuss these stories is Maggie Koerth, science writer for FiveThirtyEight based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They also discuss how childhood vaccinations have dropped dramatically during the COVID pandemic, and why this is likely tied to New York’s first Polio case in nearly a decade.    Higher Temperatures Are Bad For The Body Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people have been dealing with extreme heat. The three most populated countries in the world—China, India and the United States—have been gripped by heat waves throughout the summer. Extreme heat isn’t just uncomfortable: it can be deadly, putting strain on the organs and systems that keep us in equilibrium. Heat is especially dangerous for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, pregnant people, and those without access to air conditioning. In the United States, heat is responsible for more deaths than any other type of weather event. Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about what high temperatures do to the body, and how we can protect our health and safety in a heat wave is Chris Uejio, associate professor of public health at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.    Protecting Piping Plovers Isn’t A Walk On The Beach July is nearly through, and so is the piping plover’s nesting season. It's make-or-break time for these small, endangered shorebirds. There are roughly 8,000 piping plovers in the entire world. To put that in context, birders often get really excited to see a rare bird like a snowy owl. But there are about 28,000 snowy owls in the world, three times the number of piping plovers.  Since piping plovers make their nests along the water and out in the open, their chicks are very vulnerable to being gobbled up by predators. And a major reason for their decline in numbers is human development along the beaches, lakes, and rivers where piping plovers lay their eggs.  SciFri radio producer Shoshannah Buxbaum went out to Fort Tilden in Queens, NY to report on a volunteer-run conservation effort along the New York City coastline. And later in the segment, Michigan radio reporter Lester Graham talks with guest host Sophie Bushwick about the unique challenges and triumphs of the piping plovers who nest along the Great Lakes.   This Glove Takes Inspiration From An Octopus’ Arm Octopuses have more than 2,000 suckers on eight arms, and each one is controlled individually, making these critters incredibly dextrous. So when a team of researchers wondered how to design a glove that could hold onto slippery objects underwater, they turned to octopuses for inspiration. Ultimately, they created something they’re calling an octa-glove. Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Michael Bartlett, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, about his team’s engineering, and what they learned from the ambidextrous creatures.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Sophie Bushwick, in for Ira Flato this week. I'm technology editor at Scientific American, and I'm glad to be back on your radios today. A bit later in the hour, we'll talk about how extreme heat affects the human body, and we'll take you on a beach vacation to visit the homes of piping plovers. But first, Alzheimer's disease is a devastating brain disorder that targets the brain's ability to hold on to memories and thinking skills. For people worried about their loved ones or themselves getting Alzheimer's, research provides hope that the disease could someday be a thing of the past. But a massive report from Science magazine highlights a startling discovery that decades of Alzheimer's research may be based on faulty data. Researchers are grappling with the revelation and what it means for the future of studying the disease.

Joining me today to talk about this and other science stories of the week is my guest, Maggie Kerth, Science Writer for 538, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Welcome back to the show, Maggie. Thanks for having me. Let's start with this big story about Alzheimer's written by Charles Pillar. What does the story say? Well, first off, I want to give a brief recap of this amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's because this is really at the center of what's going on. And the basic idea with this is that this degenerative brain disease happens when something causes a protein called amyloid beta to clump up in the brain, kind of like a hairball in your shower drain. This is an idea that's gotten a ton of attention.

It's gotten the bulk of the investment money of the last three decades. It's basically sucked all the air out of the room in the field of Alzheimer's research. And that's even though as multiple drugs that were designed to kind of draino out all that amyloid beta, build up have really failed to help patients. So this is something that's not standing by itself. You know, when we're looking at this report in science that is showing that there's probably some kind of malfeasance happening, that's not an isolated issue with this hypothesis. There's also other people who have long thought that maybe this was not a correct understanding of how Alzheimer's works. Tell us a little more about the protein that's implicated

amyloid beta. What is this protein and what does it typically do in the brain? So this is a protein that can occur when a bigger protein called an amyloid precursor protein gets cleaved in a certain way. And people are still trying to understand what that precursor protein does in your brain exactly, just like they're trying to figure out still what beta amyloid does. What we do know is, that beta amyloid is sticky. There was a blog entry that an organic chemist called Derek Lowe wrote for science where he really described it as something that was just really hard to work with and synthesize because it's just this gummy thing that sticks to everything. And we know it's definitely found in these plaque-like clumps in the brains of people who've been autopsied after dying from Alzheimer's.

So there are good reasons why people think it's involved. It's just not super clear whether it's the causative agent. And what seems to be the origin of this misinformation about the cause of Alzheimer's? Yeah. So the science piece is basically this whistleblower went public with evidence that suggests at least a couple of the studies important to beta amyloid hypothesis have been deeply flawed. The whistleblower, who is a Vanderbilt neuroscientist named Dr. Matthew Shrag, he does not describe this as proof of fraud or misconduct. But he's basically identified a bunch of red flags. that really point in that direction. And one of these issues involves Sildane Lesne.

He's a researcher at the University of Minnesota, and his work appeared to show that beta amyloid could cause dementia in rats. This is something that was supposed to be kind of the silver bullet that proved beta amyloid hypothesis was right, and it really went unquestioned for about 16 years, until Shragge found tons of evidence that Lesne's data and images have been altered, including situations where it looks like images of results were pasted together from different experiments to produce a more favorable outcome. And these findings affect about 20 papers that Lesney's

been involved with over the years. Have we heard anything from the people responsible for these iffy papers? Lesne does not seem to have publicly commented. One of his co-authors on that 2006 paper, she said that she wants to retract the study in its entirety, you know, the confidence in it's been undermined. But she also said that she still thinks the beta amyloid hypothesis is not flawed in itself. And do we know just how much Alzheimer's research may be impacted? I think we're still trying to figure that out. This is definitely something that really is going to be a challenge for people going forward. You know, there's a lot of other theories about how Alzheimer's works, and there have been other reasons to suspect that maybe the beta amyloid hypothesis doesn't fully explain it for a long time.

And this is going to give more of an opening to people who really feel like their work has been ignored and that other hypotheses have been ignored. What happens next? Next, I think the big thing that needs to happen is somebody needs to go into the raw data in those Lesney papers. So one of the reasons why Shrag doesn't want to describe this as fraud yet is because all he's seen is these images that were published. He has not seen the raw data. So this is basically a red flag that says we need to dig a little bit deeper into what's going on. And let's move on to another health-related story. We know that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted a lot of things in our lives.

Work schedules, child care arrangements, dog ownership. But it turns out that childhood vaccine schedules have been really impacted by this, too. Tell us about that. Yeah. So there's been a decrease in uptake of childhood vaccines. It's happening globally. And this is something that got onto my radar a little bit because we had a polio case in the U.S. last week that was announced. It happened earlier this year.

But a man actually was paralyzed by polio in Rockland County, New York. and this is the first time that there's been a polio case in the U.S. in a decade. It's also happening in a county that has been home to vaccine resistance in recent years, and this is also the county where back in 2018-2020 they had that big measles outbreak. So this is kind of something that probably is tied into vaccine resistance. The single case is also significant because it calls attention to this larger problem that extends well beyond Rockland County. So globally, childhood vaccination rates have decreased or stagnated during the COVID pandemic.

It depends how much based on which vaccine you're talking about. But for example, the one that covers diphtheria and tetanus, that's fallen by five percentage points, which is the largest decrease in uptake in 30 years. Experts are blaming a combination of factors, and that includes supply chain issues, economic problems, natural disasters that have happened around the same time, but also these efforts to undermine trust in public health campaigns that have been tied to how people feel about COVID. How do we get back on track to make sure that kids are adequately protected against disease? Get them vaccinated?

Yeah, that seems like a good solution to this problem. When I come up with a deeper solution, I will have a higher pay grade and I will let you know. Let's head to space for our next story, specifically the moon. It turns out that there are some places up there that are actually pretty comfortable. Tell us about that. Yeah. So one of the big issues with lunar exploration and particularly any kind of long-term habitation plans has always been temperature. The moon has these huge swings in the temperature on its surface because it doesn't have an atmosphere.

So temperatures can be as high as like 250. degrees Fahrenheit, days are two weeks long, and when the two-week nighttime comes, that can drop to negative 208 degrees Fahrenheit. And these temperatures are even higher and lower on the surface of the moon, depending on what location you're at. So when we sent astronauts to the moon years ago, they were surviving there partly because their trips were timed to be at lunar dawn when it wasn't too hot or too cold. So this has always been a big, big issue.

And now NASA has found these pits on the moon's surface that they are finding the temperature hovers around 63 degrees Fahrenheit all the time. These pits are probably collapsed lava tubes. And at least a couple of them look like they might lead into the mouth of a cave, which is really exciting because it could be a great place to locate a base for future exploration for space tourism. But there is always a great big butt. A different study came out the same week that found that rocket travel, especially the kind of frequency of rocket travel you would need if you were doing space tourism, is real, real bad for this planet. So that study looked at air pollutants that were released during the 103 space launches that happened in 2019.

And it found chemicals that can damage the ozone layer, other chemicals that are enhancing climate change. To give you an example, the study concluded that soot released directly into the upper atmosphere by a rocket launch is 500 times as efficient at heating the planet as soot released during when you're burning fuel in an airplane. And it also concluded that a decade of regular space tourism could claw back 16% of the improvements made to the hole in the ozone layer since 1987. Oh, wow. Yeah. I guess I should cancel my trip to hang out in a 63-degree moon pit. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's not time for moon cave people.

Well, let's end with a very summary story that will be pretty relevant to anyone who likes an outdoor grill. It turns out that there is a mathematically optimal number of times to flip a burger on the grill. So what's the magic number? Yeah, so the summer is more than half over, but mathematician Jean-Luc Thifold has, published calculations that will help you cook burgers faster in the time you have left. And his calculations are based on the fact that you have a piece of meat on a grill. One side is always gaining heat. That's the side facing the fire.

And one side is always losing heat, the side facing the sky. So regular flipping means more even heat and faster grilling. And he found that flipping a burger three or four times can reduce the cook time by as much as 29%. If you flip more than that, you aren't really gaining any more. more cooking speed, there's a limit to this. You can't infinitely flip a burger and infinitely get it to cook instantaneously, right? So it's that three to four times that seems to make the difference. Now, this work is theoretical. And even worse, it is based on a theoretical burger that is well done. So I know that there'll be a lot of quibbles with that decision. Right, right. Three or four,

you know, it may be less than that if you have a burger that's actually edible. But it does line up with real-world cooking analysis that Jay Kenzie Lopez-alt did at Series Eats back in 2019 when he found that flipping a burger every 15 seconds reduced the cooking time by nearly a third. That's all the time we have for now. I'd like to thank my guest, Maggie Kerth, Science Writer for 538 based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thank you so much. This is Science Friday. I'm Sophie Bushwick. Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people have been dealing with extreme heat.

The three most populated countries in the world, China, India, and the U.S., have been gripped by heat waves over the past few weeks. Extreme heat isn't just uncomfortable, it can be deadly, especially for our most vulnerable populations. In the United States, heat is responsible for more deaths than any other type of weather event. joining me to talk about what high temps do to the body and how we can protect our health and safety is my guest, Chris Uwejo, Associate Professor of Public Health at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me. Walk me through what happens in the body when we're exposed to extreme heat.

I know from personal experience that I get covered in sweat and my face turns red, but what's going on inside? How do human organs and systems react to heat? Sure. Wonderful question. So humans are warm-blooded creatures, so we have to maintain a consistent core body temperature to function properly. So essentially, this is an energy balance problem when we're exposed to extreme heat for a long period of time.

We essentially don't want our body's heat storage or to gain heat that's going to increase our core body temperature to dangerous levels. So our body is pretty good at coping with heat and environmental threats. So the skin and the central nervous systems have thermal receptors that can sense when it needs to respond by two primary mechanisms. Release sweating just as you mentioned, which is our most effective and energy efficient method. And the second one, which we don't think about as much, is increasing blood flow and trying to dissipate heat from the core of our body to our skin. So sweating leads to evaporative cooling, which can be kind of miserable, what is really our most effective way to cool, our bodies down. But when there are hotter and our humid conditions, we can start to see that

that is restricting the rate of our sweat being able to evaporatively core body, and that can lead to dehydration. Increasing blood flow and heat to the skin is kind of a complex mechanism, but essentially increases our heart rate, our heart's ability to contract, the amount of blood being pumped to our skin, and essentially since her body and our cardiovascular system have to work harder, that can lead to an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks or strokes. And how do those effects change when the heat wave lasts for many days or even weeks? Great question. We know that heat waves, periods of anomaly hot and or human conditions for more than two days, consecutive days, can strain the human body further. There's unfortunately not a lot of evidence from laboratory studies.

there's some preliminary evidence that suggests that there is a cumulative effect of heat gain in the body over a multiple day period. So essentially, being stressed over multiple days doesn't give the body the ability to dissipate that heat to cool down to restore some of those normal bodily functions and to rehydrate. So these longer and prolonged periods of heat can stress our bodies over both the short term and over the long period, which is really an exciting area of research that's going on right now. And what about heat stroke? When does the body's reaction to heat sort of cross that line and become heat stroke? Yeah. So while the symptoms between heat exhaustion and

heat stroke are fairly similar, our sort of gold standard is when your core body temperature is rising above 103 degrees Fahrenheit on its way to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. And that's going to be accompanied by some of the same symptoms as heat exhaustion, such as some mental health and confusion, dizziness, nausea. It can be accompanied by either excess sweating or, if one is getting dehydrated, losing the ability to sweat, and potentially blacking out or losing consciousness. And how fatal is heat stroke? Sure. So heat stroke, if not treated in a rapid fashion, can be quite fatal. It is essentially overwhelming multiple organelles, so the cardiovascular, respiratory, renal systems. But that being said, sports medicine and a variety of other medical professions have

some pretty tried and true techniques to cool the body down rapidly. For example, the Corey Stringer Institute in the United States has pioneered some techniques to cool the body down, essentially put someone in an ice bath or barring having an ice bath, filling a bag and putting someone in a bag full of ice until their core to body temperature is lowered to a safe level before transporting them to a health care facility for further care. So it sounds like that's essentially just a very, very cold bath. It is. It's the type of thing that's great for a polar bear, but can be life-saving. And who is most at risk for adverse health effects in the heat?

So everyone faces some risks from extreme heat, particularly during the hot, prolonged and human periods that you had mentioned. But we are most concerned about some groups. That includes older adults and people with pre-existing health conditions, since heat affects many of those body systems that we discussed. Older adults also store heat for a longer period of time and are less capable of dissipating it. They also have a lower ability to detect when they're thirsty. There are some other key risk groups as well for heat. Those include low-income households who essentially have difficulty paying for electricity.

Some of the poorest households spend about 16% of the, their income on electricity, which is comparable to the amount spent on food or transportation. We're also worried about people who are outdoors, whether that's outdoor workers or people who exercise outdoors during these hot or human periods, people who are unhoused and do not have the ability to access safer, cooler spaces. And finally, pregnant people and younger children. And you mentioned a couple things the body does to try to cool itself down. sweating and having blood flow to the skin. But can you go into a little more detail about how that

works? How does an uncomfortable layer of sweat help my body stay cool? Yeah, great question. So when you're essentially drenched with sweat, perhaps one way to think about it would be to compare if you've ever visited more of a dry desert heat versus a hotter and human more heat. Let's just say it's the same temperature, roughly, say something like 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In a dry desert, heat, you would start to become sticky because the sweat is evaporating almost instantaneously off your body. And then you are cooling down fairly effectively. But your next concern then will be replacing those fluids and avoiding dehydration and some of the challenges that that may bring. In contrast, when you're in a hot and humid climate and your body is sweating and you're

drenched with sweat, it will continue to sweat essentially because it's not cooling down fast enough. It's saying, I know this is my best card to play. I'm going to keep playing it. And that's when your body starts to be drenched with sweat. Depending on the conditions and the difference between the moisture on your skin and in the air, essentially how humid it is, that would sort of dictate if your body can reach some sort of balance or if you need to go to an air-conditioned space to reach that balance. What happens if your body, if you're in a humid environment, so your sweat's not really

evaporating as much as it needs to to cool you off, but you don't have an AC. What happens to your body if it's unsuccessful in this cooling effort? Great questions. So essentially, the body will continue to gain heat, and that's going to increase our core body temperature. The body's still going to try to push on these two levers of increasing its sweat rate and increasing blood flow to the skin. But then essentially, a lot of our key body systems start to not function as well or face some challenges. And those include our cardiovascular system, our respiratory system, our kidneys. So essentially, our body starts to shut down. I want to talk about other parts of the world outside the United States.

There seems to be a misconception out there that traditionally warmer countries like India or Pakistan are better equipped to handle heat waves. But both of those countries have been really struggling with this heat. What's going on here? So there appears to be a misconception that people in hotter and more humid climates, such as the tropics, are innately more suited to cope with extreme heat. But there's no evidence based on the human body's physiology that people in these hotter or more humid climates, tropical climates, are innately more able to cope with heat. So as stated in another way, it's much more likely that there is a substantial burn of extreme heat on these communities. already and it's just not being measured.

And only 8% of India's population has air conditioning. How does AC access affect how countries are equipped to deal with heat waves? Great question. In this area of climate change where climate change is raising average temperatures, it's making our extreme heat events more frequent, intense, longer lasting and geographically widespread, air conditioning has transitioned, unfortunately, from being more of a luxury to being absolutely critical for some of these key subgroups in places with hot and or hot and humid climate. So for better, for worse, air conditioning is our most effective intervention to prevent heat-related illness and death.

So you mentioned climate change increasing the need for air conditioners. What are your other big concerns as climate change makes heat waves more and more common? Sure. Extreme heat challenges public health, and that's, What I'm most concerned about, but extreme heat has some really profound implications for our functioning of our economies. We know that it relatively regular or everyday conditions in much of the world, that extreme heat is sufficiently hot to impair productivity, to lead to more accidents and injuries, impair cognitive functioning, limit the ability of our children to learn in schools.

This is sort of an all-encompassing challenge that we need to step up to the plate to. You've worked with some cities to address this to make heat resiliency plans. What are some strategies for keeping cities cool? Cities are in the early stages of pioneering some neat strategies to equitably and justly address extreme heat. So, for example, New York City, during the United States, during, COVID-19 and its subsequent waves decided that it wasn't safe to open their cooling centers or refuges. And these are, for context, are historically probably the most common method that cities have used to adapt to extreme heat would be to open a city-owned space like a library,

two people to cool down for a few hours. New York City switched to handing out portable air-condition units to about 70,000 people, including giving vouchers so that they not only have an air-conditioning unit, but they have the ability to pay for it. There's a variety of non-air conditioning-based techniques and priorities people are looking at. Probably the most popular one is tree planting initiatives and green infrastructure or cooling infrastructure. And pretty uniformly across the U.S. people are interested in these, whether it's a place like Orlando, Florida that is trying to increase its tree canopy cover up to 40% by the middle of the century, places like Miami-Dade County, which has the world's first chief heat resilience officer in Jane Gilbert.

So there are many innovative strategies, but they're just starting to get off the ground. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're talking to Chris Uwejo, who studies climate change and human health at Florida State University in Tallahassee about how people and cities can deal with extreme heat. And do these strategies apply to all cities? are there exceptions? For example, do these strategies work just as well in New York as in Los Angeles? Yes, excellent point. So the strategies in general can be somewhat transferable if they're tailored to a specific location. So running with the issue of tree planting, a place like Phoenix, Arizona,

where Dave Hondula and a variety of others are working on adapting to extreme heat, They're also going to be considering some of the all more complex tradeoffs with tree planting. So in an area like Phoenix, which is also seeing challenges due to water availability, they'll also perhaps prioritize trees that don't require a lot of extra water, which primarily is going to be native vegetation, but that does provide a lot of shading. In a place like Miami, someone may have to think about which trees are also resilient to storm surge, or some saltwater exposure too when you're planning some of these efforts. And what if someone's in a situation where the cities are super hot, but they don't have trees or even AC?

Are there other methods that they can use to keep themselves cool? Great question. Unfortunately, the sort of last resort strategy that we have at the moment, and even this is still under development, we know the pace of climate change is outpacing our ability to build solid evidence. to adapt to it. So one of these strategies would be partially immersing part of your body, whether that's putting your leg or an arm into, say, a room temperature body of water, it doesn't have to be particularly cold, but just turning on the cold water or room temperature for a certain number of minutes, say 20 minutes, to provide some heat relief. That being said, one of the challenges

is that a lot of people who suffer from extreme heat do not necessarily know our as cognizance that they're experiencing those symptoms. Maybe they just feel a little off that day. So it will still be one of the challenges for them to recognize that it could be extreme heat and to take some action. And in that case, how do you even know that you have heat stroke? Great point. Somewhat like COVID, we have to look at multiple converging lines of symptoms.

So, for example, if one has dizziness, thirst, heavy sweating or recently were heavy sweating and it stopped, nausea or weakness, it's best to err on the side of caution and then start to call for help, whether that's from a neighbor, from who's checking in on you, or calling 911, particularly if you move to more confusion or more of the severe symptoms of heat stroke. If one has the ability to take their temperature, that also could help. But looking collectively at the symptoms and erring on the side of caution can make a lot of sense. That's all the time we have for now. I'd like to thank my guest, Chris Uwejo, Associate Professor of Public Health at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Thanks for joining us, Chris. Thanks, Sophie. Speaking of how our warming climate changes the world around us, we've got a book recommendation. This one comes from Science Friday Book Club member Tom in Duluth, Minnesota. The book I'm looking forward to reading this summer is by Erica Geis, and it's called Water Always Wins, going with the flow to thrive in the age of droughts, floods, and climate change. These days in the face of climate change, as we build more and more areas and lay down more pavement, we need to think about how we can slow the flow of water through our landscapes

and reduce impacts on our infrastructure. I'm hoping this book will be a very interesting read. Thanks. If you'd like to join Tom in our SciFri Book Club, head to ScienceFriiday.com slash book club. Our book clubbers are currently reading Upgrade by Blake Crouch. You can join the conversation and see what we're reading next. That's all at Science Friday.com slash book club. This is Science Friday. I'm Sophie Bushwick. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. July is nearly through and

So is the piping plovers nesting season. It is make or break time for these small endangered shorebirds. And I heard that sci-fri producer Shoshana Bucksbaum is a piping plover super fan. Hi, Sophie. Yes, you are correct. I mean, I've been obsessed with them ever since I first learned about them six years ago. I know that it's pretty rare to see a piping plover flit across the beach, but just how many of them are left. So there are roughly 8,000 piping plovers in the entire world, and to put that in context,

birders often get really excited to see a rare bird, like a snowy owl, but there are about 28,000 snowy owls in the world, which is still not enough and not a lot. But that's over three times the number of piping plovers. Oh, wow. Why are there so few piping plovers? How do they become an endangered species? Yeah, so piping plovers like to nest along the water. out in the open, which makes their babies very vulnerable to say a predator just gobbling them up. But a really big factor here is well, us.

Oh, no. I know. We're taking a prime nesting real estate on the beach. Good news, though. There are people out there who are trying to protect the plovers. And you actually got to go see some plovers up close. Yep, that's right. Hands down, the highlight of my year.

Last week I went to visit a protected area out on Fort Tilden. It's a New York City beach out in the Rockaways and some of the toughest terrain for these tiny birds. And I got to talk with the volunteers dedicated to keeping them safe. We're getting close. This will be my first piping clover IRL ever. Oh my gosh. You are in for a treat.

I'm so excited. I've seen so many photos of them. I get excited every single time I see them. Yeah, there's the adult. And there's the chick. Right there. That chick's getting pretty big. That's a really nice size chick.

Oh, my god, it's so little. They just like scamper. It looks like they're almost floating about the sand. Yeah. They're going so fast. Watch the adult. It moves one of its feet in the front to get things to come up in the sand.

And if you watch the little chick as well, it's watching its parent to do the same thing. And one of the things too is that they, They respond to certain calls, but just like human children, they don't always listen to their parents. If you've never seen one, piping plover sort of look like a cotton ball, plopped on top of two sticks, the little black ring around their necks. They're tiny and really easy to miss if you aren't looking for them. But luckily, I had an experience guide. I'm Chris Elieri.

I'm the founder of NYC Plover Project. I grew up on the beaches of South Jersey, on the southern tip of Long Beach Island in Holgate, New Jersey, which happens to be now. the most important place for blovers in New Jersey. But I'd never seen them up close. And fast forward to the beginning of the pandemic, I was out here in March of 2020, and I saw a piping plover run by me. And then another, and then another. I saw like six or seven. And they were at close range. And then I saw dogs off leash. I saw kids up in the dunes. I saw no signage. And it was just like, what is going on? I mean, I'm like shaking my fist, and I'm like shaking in excitement and also anger. So Chris decided to channel that anger into action, and he founded the NYC Plover project. By the next

spring, he partnered with the National Park Service to set up closures all along the Rockaway Peninsula. They're staffed by a bevy of dedicated volunteers. And now in its second year, the nonprofit has roughly 75 volunteers, and they've clocked about 2,000 hours so far this season. So we're a volunteer, Leanne. Hi, nice to meet you. She's stepping at our closure right now. What's the story right now? There was somebody in the roped-up area. We had one runner kind of like blow through and I was like, hey, this is a, there's an endangered bird over here. They were like outside of the roped off area for a while. This is what happens. When they do close the beach, the chicks and

the birds will immediately exit the closure because it's like not sufficient. They're like, no, no, no, we meant the whole beach. The volunteers have a deceptive. hard job. They're the enforcers. And if someone goes through the closed off area, tries to bring in their dog, which is a no-no, they have to tell them politely to walk around to another path. Most people are respectful, but this is New York after all. And right now, it's the very end of the breeding season. And Chris, he's not taking any chances. And it's like at this point in the season, it's, uh, we're not at a high tolerance mode. We're, um, we're, um, we're, um, we're, um, You know, you're going to get a talk.

You know, you're going to get a chat. In the roughly 45 minutes I was standing by the closure at Fort Tilden Beach, Chris called the park police twice. One person who walked through the closure area. And then there was a group with a dog who had already been asked to leave, but tried to enter again. And I mean, some people might think that that's heavy-handed. But here, listen, we had a chick stepped on on this beach right here two days ago.

So we cannot be too careful. And the chick was sent to a rehab facility in here. Delaware, but unfortunately, the chick didn't make it. And these plover chicks are up against a lot. Their list of predators is well, long. We're seeing ghost crabs, raccoons, feral cats, dogs. We had a drone incident where birds were attacking the drone and then everybody's chicks went everywhere. You know, when things like a drone or fireworks show up, all bets are off, right? Like, it just creates a terror event. So why then do the plovers insist on coming back every year to such a precarious place to nest? Well, the sad truth is that from Delaware up to Maine, there's very few

beaches without people. So with that, they are creatures of habit. And so they are going to keep coming back to these beaches for food sources. The piping plovers migrate up from Florida and South Carolina, some as far as the Caribbean. They arrive in March, but they don't start nesting. until April or May. This year, there are 49 breeding pairs nesting on New York City beaches and just two fledglings. That is chicks that have learned to fly. And hopefully the baby I saw on Fort Tilden Beach will be a fledgling number three. But piping clover is born on beaches surrounded by people like these city birds tend to be smaller,

have lower survival rates and just take longer to be mature enough to fly. It's hard not to get discouraged. It's hard not to get sentimental. But like in this work, there is no time for that, right? And the plovers don't have time for that, right? So like the next day, I've seen this happen multiple times. They've lost one, two, three, four of their chicks or their nest was destroyed. And then the next day they're outed again, copulating and trying it again.

And Chris takes his cue from the plovers. Just keep going. Keep advocating for more and better closures. Keep educating the public. These are large, complicated beaches, but it's not impossible. We have seen success of endangered species like the bald eagle, right? We can see bald eagles now in New York City. And the thing that really keeps Chris going, teaching that next generation.

And when I can show young people, like, that's a parent, that's a chick, like, really close by. I mean, that's like such a gift to be able to do that. I feel like I'm passing along something that someone was kind enough to pass to me. For Science Friday, I'm Shoshana Bucksbound. Thank you, Shoshana. There are actually three different regions in North America where piping plovers migrate each year. Some birds nest and lay eggs along the Atlantic coast. That includes the plovers we just heard about along New York City beaches.

Others migrate up to the northern Great Plains. And last but not least, some piping plovers breed along the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Different habitats mean different challenges and different triumphs for these tiny birds. Joining me now is Michigan radio reporter Lester Graham to tell us more about his reporting on the piping plover population in the Great Lakes region. Lester, welcome to Science Friday. Hi there, good alliteration there. Thank you. So has it been a good year for the piping plovers in the Great Lakes region?

It's been a good year simply because there were a lot of chicks this. year. We had about an average number of nesting pairs right around 71 nesting pairs across the area in four different states and Ontario and across all five Great Lakes, but most of them, like usual, are concentrated in Michigan. And how does this year's population compare to previous years? That population of nesting pairs is pretty close to what it's been for the last few years. It's kind of plateaued, but we've had some rough years because of high water on the Great Lakes. And as you know, they nest on the sand right next to the water

and it doesn't take much for their nests become inundated. You recently took a trip to the sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. What did you learn about piping plover nests there? Well, I was talking to a wildlife biologist there, Vince Cavaleri, and he basically

said they don't put a lot of effort into their nests. Simply sitting on the sand and kicking their back feet out and making a little depression in the sand. And that's where the female will lay her eggs. They then typically line the nest cup with shells or small pebbles. And that's the entirety of the nest.

We just heard about what the piping plovers are up against on New York City beaches. But what are the biggest threats to the piping plovers in the Great Lakes region? Yeah, mostly predators. I mean, we see a lot of raccoons and crows that are, you know, getting in and getting the nest or killing an adult. And recently, in the last few years, we've seen a return of an endangered falcon, the Merlin. And with that bird, they've been killing the adult piping plover.

So the wildlife officials have a lot of decisions to make. Do you kill the predator bird to save the piping plover? Or do you find some other way, non-lethal way to deal with these predators so that you have a population of piping plovers. It's a tough decision for them. And after hanging out with the Great Lakes plovers, do you feel positive about the future of this population? I really do because of the number of chicks that were hatched in the wild this year.

There were at least 231 chicks hatched in the wild. And then there were some other eggs that were saved by the biologists because a predator might have killed one of the adults. So there were an additional 11 chicks that hatched in the captive rearing center from abandoned eggs. So that's a big number. When you're talking about only 71 nesting pairs, and now you've got something like 242 chicks that have been introduced into the world, that's good news by any means. Thanks, Lester, for sharing your reporting with us. Thank you. Lester Graham is a reporter for the Environment Report at Michigan Radio, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

If there's one thing we love here at Sifry, it's cephalopods, a group of animals that includes squid. and octopuses. And yes, I know cephalopod week happened last month, but our fascination with these critters is year-round, and we're not the only ones. Earlier this month, a team of researchers unveiled the octaglove, a device that can latch on to slippery objects underwater. Here to tell us more about the octopus-inspired glove is Michael Bartlett, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, based in Blacksburg, Virginia. Michael, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Sophie. It's great to be here with you. Thank you.

Let's start at the beginning. Why did you look to octopuses for inspiration? So an octopus is an absolutely amazing creature. We know that it has eight arms, but it also has over 2,000 suckers across those arms. And it also has mechanical sensors and chemical sensors, which allowed to actually feel and taste its environment. And importantly, its brain is actually distributed throughout its body. So it can control its arms, its adhesion, and it can do all of this by getting information from the sensor and processing in its brain across its body. Does all that contribute to why it's so great at grabbing things underwater? Yeah, I really think it's that combination of that suction control, the sensing, and then the processing of that information to then control the manipulation. And what that does is it actually allows the octopus to individually control those 2,000 adhesives.

I have a hard enough time controlling my 10 fingers. I don't know how the octopus can control over 2,000 suckers on eight arms. So with our system, we have an adhesive which can mimic those suckers. We then use micro-lidar sensors, which allow us to mimic those mechanical sensors. We can take all that information and then process it in a microcontroller. So that allows us to have this synthetic nervous system, this adhesion control. So that combination is what really got us started with the octa glove. And walk me through what the final product with this glove looks like and how it works.

Yeah, so what we have is we first needed to develop the suckers or the adhesives. And this consists of a rubber stalk about the size of a raspberry that has a thin membrane on top. And if we change the shape of that membrane, we can quickly turn off and turn on adhesion. So we use what's called a microlidar sensor. And what that microlidar sensor allowed us to do was put it next to an adhesive. and we could actually then see the environment. When you have the optic glove on, what you have is an adhesive with a sensor

at each of your fingertips. So all you have to do is with this glove on is move towards an object underwater. At that point, the sensor will be looking to detect what's near it. And as soon as you get close to an object, it automatically turns on the adhesion or the suckers, and you are then attached to whatever was beneath your hand with adhesion.

So the user doesn't, even have to grip onto the object. The glove does it all. That's incredible. What kind of stuff can it pick up? Yeah, that's exactly right. All we have to do is get close and then we can grip that object automatically. So that allows us to pick up all kinds of things. So in our testing, we picked up plastics and metals. We picked up flat objects and curved objects. And we picked up hard and soft things. So for example, was we were actually able to put a little toy car at the bottom of the fish tank. And as you approach it with the octa glove with just a single fingertip, you can pick up that toy car and move it around in the water, and then it will automatically release that car as

soon as you're done. Oh, wow. And how do you hope people will use this technology in the future? So I think, you know, one of the most compelling potential use cases would be for some kind of rehabilitation or assistive devices. So if a user had this glove on and let's say they needed some help picking up objects, maybe taking a drink of water. If the user could just get their hand close to an object, the optic glove would just attach to that cup, for example. And then the user could actually then not have to grip that or squeeze that, but just use the glove. I also think it could be fun in situations underwater. Things like scuba diving, maybe even different kinds of biosampling underwater. You know, what's kind of fun for us, too, is what if we could make a robot that was soft and deformable

just like the octopus, and then took this adhesion and sensing approach, and then put that across that robot. Then we would have this really, I think, amazing biomimetic system that looked like an octopus, gripped like an octopus, and maybe someday, you know, can swim through the ocean like an octopus. A little octopus robot. Exactly. Michael, thank you for joining us. Sophie, thank you so much for having me. Michael Bartlett is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, based in Blacksburg, Virginia. Thank you.