Science Friday - Epstein-Barr Virus and MS, Agrivoltaics, Ag School Influence, Social Cues From Saliva. Jan 21, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

Scientists Are Working On A Universal COVID Vaccine As the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spike around the U.S., there are scientists working not on variant-specific boosters, but on a vaccine that might cover every possible strain, past and future. Called universal vaccines, they require a fundamentally different approach from a shot that would target Delta, Omicron, or any other variant. Instead, a universal vaccine would need to train the body to respond to something every variant has in common—or to fill in the blanks of any possible mutations. Vox senior science reporter Umair Irfan reports on the difficult path and ongoing work toward such a vaccine, and why the immune system’s T cells and B cells, more than neutralizing antibodies, will dictate our long-term future with the virus. Plus how an undersea eruption near Tonga was one of the most documented volcanic explosions in history, new research assesses the vast toll of global antibiotic resistance, and more stories from the week.   New Research Links Epstein-Barr Virus to Multiple Sclerosis A group of scientists at Harvard University says they have made a major breakthrough in understanding multiple sclerosis. For years, they have been testing out a hypothesis that the Epstein-Barr virus causes multiple sclerosis, a chronic and incurable disease of the nervous system. (Epstein-Barr is the contagious virus responsible for mononucleosis.) Researchers analyzed a dataset of 10 million active-duty military members. They found that service members who contracted the Epstein-Barr virus were 32 times more likely to later be diagnosed with MS. The research was published in the journal Science. Ira is joined by Dr. Alberto Ascherio, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston, Massachusetts, to discuss his team’s research and its broader implications.   Saliva Sharing Might Help Kids Identify Their Closest Relationships How do little kids understand who has a close relationship with them? One of the clues they use to figure it out is by noticing who they’re swapping saliva with. The closest bonds are with the people who are giving them kisses, sharing their forks, and wiping their drool. Those are the findings of a recent study published in the journal Science. Ira is joined by Ashley Thomas, the study’s lead author and a post doctoral fellow in the brain and cognitive sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.   Big Agriculture Schools Face Increasing Donor Conflicts Of Interest A major donor to the University of Illinois wondered what the heck was up. Robb Fraley, a top Monsanto executive at the time, emailed the dean of the agriculture college in 2018 complaining about a professor saying publicly that one of his company’s flagship products was causing widespread damage to crops. Monsanto was also a major donor. Fraley accused the professor of being “biased” and “prone to exaggeration.” U of I officials had spent years courting Fraley, and they had listened to him before when he’d complained about a lack of progress on an endowed chair he’d funded. But the 2018 episode highlights potentially thorny situations for public universities, which have cultivated powerful agricultural corporations as donors while public funding has stagnated. Dicamba posed a particularly critical issue to Fraley. After all, he was as responsible as anyone for leading modern agriculture into using lab-designed seeds that could withstand spraying from weedkillers. That Monsanto-branded Roundup Ready pairing of biotechnology with glyphosate herbicide revolutionized grain farming around the world. When glyphosate lost its punch — after weeds grew resistant to Roundup — Monsanto shifted to teaming different genetically modified seeds with the dicamba herbicide. But farmers who’d not adopted the new genetically engineered seeds started complaining about “dicamba drift” and of seeing their crops perish from the effects of the herbicide migrating to their fields. So when U of I weed scientist Aaron Hager spoke about a controversy as big as any in commercial agriculture in ways that didn’t sit well with Fraley, the university benefactor let the school know about his displeasure. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.   Growing Plants—And Providing Solar Energy Food is one of our most basic needs. As the population of the world grows, we’re going to need to grow more of it within the same amount of space. The United Nations estimates the world’s population will grow by 2 billion people between now and 2050. Access to fresh food is already a problem in many countries, and will likely get worse with more mouths to feed. This is where the concept of agrivoltaics could create a massive change. This farming setup mixes water, energy, and plant growth all in one space. Solar panels collect energy from the sun’s rays; underneath those panels is where the plants grow. The setup takes less water than the traditional way of farming, all-in-all creating a more sustainable way to grow food and create energy. Joining Ira to talk about the promise of agrivoltaics is Dr. Chad Higgins, associate professor of biological and ecological engineering at Oregon State University, in Corvallis, Oregon.   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 Iraflato. It's been less than a week since the eruption of the underwater volcano Hungatanga, Hunga, hapai. An international aid is only just starting to reach the archipelago that makes up the kingdom of Tonga. The blast from the eruption had the force of an estimated 10 million tons of TNT, spit volcanic debris as high as 34 miles up, and sent tsunami waves as far away as Japan and Peru. This eruption was also one of the most documented volcanoes in history. Numerous satellites and other sensors caught the explosion. And the data from those sensors may help us understand volcanoes like this one better than we ever have before. With me is Umer Airfahn, staff writer for Vox.

Welcome back, Omer. Hi, Ere, thanks for having me back. Let's talk about this disaster that hit an inhabited archipelago where only a few people were killed. What do we know about how Tonga is faring in the wake of this eruption? Well, as you noted, you know, there has only been three reported fatalities from this particular eruption. Tonga has a population of about 100,000 people. So given the scale of this, it's been quite remarkable that so few people have been hurt outright. But we've also had a very difficult

time getting in touch with Tonga because there's an undersea communications cable that was severed during this eruption. And so a lot of the feedback they've been getting from outside has been from overhead flights and things like that. And since eight flights have started getting in this week, the big concern right now is COVID because, you know, Tonga as an island nation has managed to largely avoid it. They've only had one confirmed COVID-19 case. And so they're trying to delicately balance, you know, recovery from this disaster while also making sure that they don't have to deal with public health disaster at the same time. Do we know what the impact of all this ash is to the health and ecosystems of Tonga?

Right now it's not clear, but certainly there's a tremendous amount of ash. And the worry is that this ash, you know, is slightly acidic, has compounds like sulfur and phosphorus in it. And so that if water hits it, it starts to become something that's a far more corrosive. And the fear is it can seep into drinking water into waterways and cause damage to local fish and livestock. And so they're definitely worried about trying to clean up enough ash right now. And part of the reason they weren't able to get aid supplies for such a long time is that many of the runways available were covered in ash. and only now were they cleared enough that they could start landing aircraft. You know, I mentioned that this is one of the most documented eruptions in history.

How is it so documented? Well, one has been just the pervasive, you know, explosion of technology. People in nearby islands were able to film this and, you know, see the ash cloud and even see the shockwave come away from this eruption. But this eruption was also not that big of a surprise. It started beginning in December 20th. And the big eruption happened on January 14. And so people were kind of keeping their eye on this volcano for a while

because they saw some romlings of activity. And in this area of the Pacific, there was, as you noted, this Japanese weather satellite that happened to be over the area and managed to film this from space. And so there's been a lot of documentation on the ground from space and from sensors because this has been something that had some warning signs well in advance. You know, there have been some giant volcanoes in the past like Krakatoa

that have been able to alter the climate for a while. This is not quite that big, is it? Right. You know, while there was a large explosion, the ash cloud that a lot of scientists have been tracking seems to be of the magnitude that it wouldn't affect the global climate. You know, the ash, the sulfur dioxide in there can linger in the atmosphere, and it reflects the sun's light back into space and it can lower planetary temperatures. And we've seen that with eruptions like Crackatoa or Mount Pinatubo. But in this case, scientists expect that this will not have that scale or that magnitude of an effect on the global temperature. With all the data that they're collecting, what can scientists learn that they

haven't known before about volcanoes like this? Well, you know, with a massive explosion like this, one of the key things that makes it so damaging is that there's very little in the way of warning. And so if they can find, you know, subtle signs of a potential eruption, they can get warning signs out quickly. And some of the side effects of these volcanoes, you know, like the tsunamis that have been, you know, percolating throughout the Pacific Ocean, you know, there was a tsunami that was blamed for an oil spill. off the coast of Peru tied to this volcanic eruption. And so with this data, they can better understand the warning signs ahead of time, but then also just get a bitter understanding of what's

going on deep within the earth. You know, some of the mechanisms of that actually lead to eruptions are still something of a mystery. And so there's a lot left to learn about the geology of this planet. Let's move on to our weekly COVID update. You've been reporting in Vox about a new frontier in the effort to contain COVID-19. And I'm referring to a universal vaccine, which would potentially protect us all from all current variants and any future variants. How is that coming along? And how does that work? Right. And not just variants of COVID-19. There are researchers that are working on vaccines that could potentially protect us from all coronaviruses. So they're aiming pretty wide here with this approach. And so there was a team at the U.S. Army that recently reported that they made some progress

on developing a vaccine that can target multiple variants at the same time. But the idea of targeting, you know, a broader scope of viruses is something that scientists have been wrestling with for a long time. And it's been difficult because it uses basically a different mechanism in our immune system than the one that we typically use with vaccines. And so there's two main approaches. One is where you basically put together a sampler platter of different antigens on a vaccine. So you essentially take, in the case of COVID-19, multiple spike proteins for multiple variants on a single vaccine and inject that. And the idea is that your immune system will learn to recognize those, but also fill in the blanks and potentially adapt to future variants. And the other approach is to get the vaccine to target

the parts of the virus that don't change, that stay the same between a species of virus. And that's been a bit challenging as well because the parts of the virus that don't change are also sometimes the parts of the virus that don't generate a strong immune response. And so the question is then, how do you get the immune system to recognize this and adapt and begin to counter it? And that's something that scientists are working on right now. But researchers, like including Anthony Fauci and other researchers at the National Institutes of Health say that this should be an urgent priority, that this is something that we really need to start investing in now because it will not only help us get out of this pandemic, but potentially prevent the next one. So it's urgent to develop this wide scale

vaccine as urgent as it is to try to do a more specific one. Yeah, that's right. You know, with the specific vaccines, those were the faster ones to get out. So it makes sense that we prioritize those. but, you know, we're seeing right now that, you know, the early vaccines that we have, they were targeted to some of the earliest versions of the virus, and they're losing a bit of efficacy with these new variants, and we're seeing that somewhat with Amercron with a bit more of breakthrough infections among people who are vaccinated. This brings me to another issue that you've reported on, and I'm talking about how we're even assessing our immunity to a virus like COVID-19.

It's not as simple as looking at our antibodies, which are a short-term thing. Right. You know, the main benchmark we've been using are what are called neutralizing antibodies. So these are antibodies, small proteins that bind to the virus, and they're said to be neutralizing if they can prevent infection in the first place. But we're seeing that, you know, in a lot of cases, people who have been vaccinated are still getting infected, but they're not getting severely ill. And that's because the other part of the immune system is starting to kick in, namely the memory part of the immune system, the memory B cells and the memory T cells. The B cells in your immune system generate the antibodies to begin with. And the T cells, while they don't prevent infection,

what they do is they look for cells that have been infected with the virus that have been hijacked to turn into virus factories and it eliminates those. And so what scientists are saying is that in order to assess long-term immunity over the years and to come, they need to start looking at the activity of these B cells and T-cells to see how strong they are and how good they are at, you know, recalibrating and remounting a response. So they may not prevent an infection to begin with, but they can prevent it from being too dangerous or damaging. Are there models for this? diseases that or viruses that could provide a map for some kind of ideal end result? Well, there are perhaps other coronaviruses. You know, there are a couple of coronaviruses in

circulation that cause the common cold. And, you know, they're fairly mild as illnesses because lots of people are exposed to them throughout their lives. And basically the immune system, after, you know, recognizing them repeatedly, realizes that this is a threat that they should be ready to prepare for. And so that might be an ideal scenario for COVID-19, that rather than being this super dangerous disease that lands people in the hospital, if it just leads to mild, cold-like symptoms, that seems to be progress. And so that might be one of the pathways that COVID-19 could follow as we see more broad immunity spread throughout the population via vaccination.

Yeah, and it would be great to have a vaccine that protects people from long COVID, too, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the big things is that, you know, COVID-19 tends to be, can be a chronic illness, and preventing that infection to begin with will certainly mitigate those cases. but long COVID still seems to be a little bit of a mystery. There are some evidence that there are other biomarkers that are associated with it. But, yes, preventing those infections to begin with is definitely going to be a key part of that. Let's move on to a more pessimistic note rather than what you're talking about in optimism.

There's a new large-scale survey of antibiotic resistance around the globe, and it's finding that we have a really deadly problem of antibiotic resistance on our hands, don't we? Yeah, a team of research. just published in The Lancet this week that they conducted their first global survey of antibiotic resistance, and they found that antibiotics are more dangerous, have killed more people than HIV or malaria. And so according to the model, they found, you know, looking at 471 million medical records from almost every country in the world, they said that there are at least 1.3 million deaths in 2019 that could be attributed to antibiotic-resistant infections from bacteria that were previously

vulnerable to antibiotics. You know, antibiotics are these drugs. that specifically target bacteria without harming human cells. And so they're very powerful tools, but it seems that if we overuse them, then bacteria will evolve over time to become more resistant. And the fear is that our current use patterns of antibiotics is hurting these tools and their utility in the future. And so is there any way to try to slow this down until we find some sort of new method? There are a few approaches. You know, one is simply to be smarter and more thoughtful about how we deploy these antibiotics, you know, not deploying them as, as the default option whenever somebody comes in when they're ill. Antibiotics are used a lot in livestock.

And so if we can reduce the use of antibiotics there, then we can also reduce the rate of formation of these antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But some researchers are also looking at other therapies, you know, beyond antibiotics. And one of the big ones is phage therapy. There's a group of researchers in Belgium that have used phages, which are these viruses that actually infect bacteria to treat more than 100 patients. and so this might be a treatment option for antibiotic resistant bacteria into the future

or may even become the new default. Yeah, phage therapy is very old. It dates back pre-World War II, so we're going back to the future on this one. Right. You know, there's been a little bit of a tough time for regulators to approve this, but in Belgium they had, you know, a regulatory apparatus that allowed them to experiment with this, and they've been seeing some good results so far. And no vaccines for bacterial infections?

Well, bacteria, I mean, there are vaccines that you can develop, and I think that should be the other part of the strategy as well. You know, with the advent of antibiotics, people have become a little bit complacent that, you know, we can treat these diseases so we don't need to vaccinate them. But really, the researchers here say that we need to redouble our efforts to vaccinate and prevent these infections to begin with. Well, Omer, thank you very much for taking time to be with us today, as always. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, Mayor Irfan, staff writer for Vox. He has joined us from Washington, D.C. We have to take a short break and when we come back, exploring a link between a virus and multiple sclerosis. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm I, My Rufledo. A group of scientists at

Harvard say they have made a major breakthrough in understanding multiple sclerosis. For years, they have been testing out a hypothesis that the Epstein-Barr virus causes MS. Yes, that's the same virus responsible for mononucleosis. Researchers analyzed a day. database of 10 million active duty military members, and they found that service members who contracted the Epstein-Barr virus were 32 times more likely to be diagnosed with MS. The research was published in the journal Science. To help us better understand this research, and its impact is the study's senior author Dr. Alberto Esquiero. He's a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Tell me about what you found.

How were you able to determine that people who had previously contracted the Epstein-Barr virus were much more likely to be diagnosed with MS? Right. We started with people who were not infected with the HIV virus. So we followed them over time for an average of 10 years. And basically, we found that those individuals who were not infected with EDV, they never developed a mess. So only after they got infected with EDD, there the risk of a mass jumping out over 34. Well, 10 million people, that's a pretty big sample, is it not? Yeah, it was necessary because EBV infects virtually everyone. So it's not easy to find the large population of individuals who were not infected with EDB.

So among the 10 medium, only roughly 5% were EBV negative at the beginning of the study. Now, tell us how this has changed how we understand MS as a disease. Well, MAS has been typically described even today. It's an autoimmune disease of unknown theology, meaning we don't know the cause of it. So I think that should change to say we now know that MIS is a rare condition. implication. I want to emphasize it's a rare complication of EBV infection. They don't want any listener to be scared, though I had monolucleosine and bring to get the mass. The risk is still very small. Okay, so you say it's very rare. Why do you think that EBV might be causing MS? What

is the cause? You know, we are quite confident that EBV is the cause. So it's a common setting for a virus to be relatively harmless in the majority of people, but cause a severe disease as a complication. A good example is poliomelitis. Before we had a vaccine, the poliovirus would infect virtually every child in the country, but only 1 in 400 children will get paralytic disease. Now MS is an autoimmune disease, correct? The body attacks itself. What is the mechanism you might think that EBV causes this to happen? Immunity and outimmune plays an important role as a mechanism. But I don't think the definition of immune disease give the full story. So this is the complication of a viral infection in which the immune system plays an important role in the pathology.

Now, I understand that you've had a hunch for a while that Epstein Barr was one of the main drivers of MS. Were you surprised, though, by the strength of this relationship between EBV and MS? I was surprised by how clear cap the results were. You know, I did expect a strong association, but I didn't expect to be so black and white because almost never in science you see a result that are so neat. So we look not only at testing our virus, we also had several controls in our study.

One is the CMV virus, which is a virus transmitted in a similar manner to EDB. And what we found is absolutely no association between CNV infection and the mass. Now, in addition, we did a screening of all the human virus. So we look at antibody responses against all the non-human viruses. And all the signal that came out

were a signal from EBV peptide. So it was really astonished to see there was no noise, no false signal coming from any way. else. EPD is so strong that overwhelms everything else. Now, do we know why some people, you talked about how rare it is to get EBV and then develop MS. Do we know why some people do develop MS from EBV? We know that there are some factors that once you're infected with EBD, your risk may be related to your genetic susceptibility that can increase the risk by two-threefold. We previously discovered

that vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for a mass, can double your risk. Cigarette smoking can double your risk of a mass, and child obesity may cause an increase of 40, 50%, so these factors together modulate the risk, but if it stands out with a different magnitude. Have you found a cause and effect yet, or is this basically just a relationship that you've discovered?

I believe it's the cause and effect, And, you know, some people will question that. But, as you know, even the link between smoking and lung cancer is being questioned. So there is no experimental evidence directly that you randomize people to smoke or not smoke and get or not get lung cancer. We are in the same realm of evidence. This is a longitudinal study rigorously controlled in the large population. And there is not really alternative plausible explanation. Now, when we say cause in epidemiology, we mean if we could be,

prevent the infection, we are going to prevent MS. You prevent A, B will not happen. It doesn't mean we fully understand all the molecular mechanism. That leads me to my next question, which is, how might this discovery help find better treatments or even a cure for MS? Well, the current treatment of MS. The most effective drugs are called anti-CD20 antibodies or ocrelidum up, okramus in the commercial name. So the effect of this drug is to deplete the B cells. The B cells are part of our immune

system and are the primary side of persistent of the EBV virus in our body. So EBV, once it infect one person, will remain in the B cell for the rest of this person's life. So I think Antisad 20 are so effective because they deplete the B cell and by depleting the B cells, they also take away the virus. So it would make sense. to target the virus directly in antiviral practice instead of depleting the B cells, which are an important part of the immune system. Could you target the virus as a vaccine

to prevent infection, or could you target it also after the MS has occurred? Both are possible. There is ongoing research in a vaccine. Modernized a vaccine in phase one experimentation against the BD. Now, a vaccine to prevent the MES, we have to prevent the infection. If the vaccine does not fully prevent infection, is difficult to predict what effect of the MES on MSC.

Is this modern clinical trial using an MRNA technology you're talking about? Is it very exciting for you? It is. It's a very early phase. So it will take a few years before a vaccine is ready for, large-scale experimentation. And also, because it gives infection, typically of course, in childhood, to see where it prevents the mass will take several years more. So we have to be patient. It's a long-term project. And so where do you go from here? What's your next step?

Well, we are, as I mentioned, we are collaborating with clinical groups trying to test antiviral drugs in people with the MES. We are trying to get funding for that. I think that's the most exciting, the most exciting part. In terms of the epidemiology, I think would be also very useful if you could predict

among these people who are being infected, who is going to get amaze and who is not going to get amazes. So more work on biomarker and it's also another line of the investigation that we are. You know, anytime somebody calls something a breakthrough in medicine. Other people say, wait, just a minute, that's a big term to use breakthrough.

Do you consider this a real breakthrough? I do, but it's not easy to change people's mind. Once you've been thinking on a disease in a certain way for 20, 30 years and for your entire career, it is not easy to change the mindset and accept that we have a new paradigm. What are your colleagues? What are your colleagues? saying about this. Are they excited about this? Or are they still saying, hey, you know, we need to see some more evidence? It says, you know, it's a very, very widespread go from people who are very excited at the time you agree with us. You know, then you have the people deny the evidence

and everything in between. I think, you know, it's very, very, very type person. What do you attribute your success to? Is it just dogged determination that you were going to find something here and go through all those viruses and come up with some cure? No, the right intuition, the right hypothesis in the beginning was key to this. The identification of the right population, the patients in establishing a long-series. of compass collaboration with multiple institutions and having an amazing team of collaborators here and within the military that made this possible. It was 20 years of work literally to complete this research.

There are going to be people who have MS as who were going to say, hey, there's a cure around the corner. Right. For people who are amazing, I think, yeah, I would be excited on one hand, but also understand that the timeframe for this. things that is major in years. So short term would be five years. Let me say this.

My over-optimistic view to translate this in pre-new treatment, I would give myself five years of time in the best possible scenario. And finally, does this have implications for how we understand diseases, perhaps, or the mechanisms perhaps for Alzheimer's or chronic fatigue syndrome, where, you know, a virus may be involved, and we just don't know that yet. Right. Well, it's sure that, yes, in some way, that it's so that we don't really fully understand the viruses and the fact that they have in the long term.

So we are particularly interested in a disease like Alzheimer's. There is a lot of interest in a potential effect of infection, the potential contribution of infection for Alzheimer's disease, And that is an area that our group is initiating to explore. And also in relation with ALA's, hematrophic lateral sclerosis. But we are very much behind compared to, you know, maybe I hope it will take less than 20 years, but it will take time before we can elucid the dose association.

Well, Dr. Askiero, congratulations to you on the publication of your paper, and we wish you good luck. Thank you very much. pleasure to be talking with you. Dr. Alberto Asciero, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Did you ever wonder how little kids understand who has a close relationship with them? One of the clues they use to figure it out, who are they swapping saliva with? The closest bonds, it turns out, are with the people who are giving them kisses, sharing their forks and wiping their drool. These are the findings of a new study published

in the journal Science. Joining me now to discuss her intriguing new research is Ashley Thomas, a postdoctoral fellow in Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. Nice to have you. This research really intrigues me. Of all the ways to research little kids' social connections, why did you decide to study saliva. You know, if you think about someone who you feel really close to, and then another person who you really like a lot, but you don't feel that close to, and then if you ask yourself, who would I be willing to share an ice cream cone with? Almost everyone you ask this question to will immediately say the person that they're close to. It seems to be a cue that adults intuitively

use to figure out how close two people are together. Hmm. And this is a cross-cultural thing. Everybody does it. Yeah. So of course there's some variation. But, anthropologists have found that across cultures, people who are more willing to share bodily fluids, including saliva, tend to be those who feel close to one another. All right, let's talk about little kids. How do you test if little kids were tuned into saliva sharing as an indicator of a close connection? Yeah, so we showed two different interactions. In one interaction, there is a woman with a puppet and she takes a bite of an orange,

It feeds the puppet a bite of an orange and then takes another bite of that orange. In the other interaction, there's the same puppet but a different woman and she passes a ball back and forth with that puppet. And the question is, who will respond when that puppet gets upset? And so we show both of the women on either side of the puppet. The puppet shakes and cries, puts its head on the table. And then we measure which woman that infants look at first and how long they look at either women, as though they expect something to happen in the video in that area of the video where the

woman is. And they expect the spit-bonded woman to be the one to care for her ailing companion? Yeah. So they expect the woman who had shared food in this way that implies saliva sharing to be the one to respond. So why is this important for little kids to distinguish between these very close relationships? One thing I wanted to point out is that we are not making the argument that people who don't have these relationships aren't good at taking care of children because, you know, I drop my toddler off at daycare every single day. And daycare teachers are amazing. But we don't expect daycare teachers to have these sort of long, enduring attachments with infants. And those types of relationships are likely really important. It's not sort of like an indicator of who's going to necessarily in the

moment be good at taking care of you. But it's an indicator of who's going to be around for a long time. So what does this study help us better understand about children's psychological development than social relationships? These data can't speak to how infants are using these cues in their everyday lives because we showed them people who they had never interacted with before. What this does let us know is that there's a lot going on in the minds of infants and they're really in tune to the social interactions that are around them. And they're using that to figure out what is this social world? that I've been sort of thrown into that's so complicated. Who knows each other, who's connected, and how are they connected? I know you made an effort in your research to have a more representative sample of the U.S.

population, and you actually turn to TikTok to source participants in the study. Tell me more about that. One challenge in developmental psychology is that we tend to test a really specific part of the population. It tends to be people whose parents are super educated. It tends to be overly white in terms of the makeup of the U.S. And so we wanted to, you know, take this issue really seriously. We wanted to increase the diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, region in the United States, and parental income and education.

And so what we did is we reached out to TikTok creators, and these TikTok creators were moms themselves. And they had, you know, followers who were moms. And they participated, with their own kid in the study. And then what they would do is make these wonderful videos that showed what it's like to participate in a developmental psychology study

and put a link to how other people could participate. You know, when I read your research, it finally helped explain to me why my grandkids want to share their spit-covered food and toys with me. Yeah, so our research can't directly speak to how babies are using this in their own own social interactions. But that is a very common observation that parents have. And one place we want to take this research in the future is to figure out how babies might be using these types of

interactions in their own social experiences and within their own social relationships. Well, thank you very much, Ashley, for taking time to talk with this. I will now look at my granddaughter while we're feeding it with new eyes. Great. I'm glad. Ashley Thomas postdoctoral fellow and brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We have to take a break and when they come back, a story about corporate influence in public universities and how that affects agricultural programs. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo.

And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KER News for W&O. St. Louis Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. Ag schools in the U.S. are an important place for research and innovation into how we grow our food. But the money funding these schools from taxpayers has gone down over the years. So eager to fill the gaps left behind, a lot of schools are turning to private companies to fund their programs, companies like Monsanto and Kent Corporation, who have a big interest in agricultural research.

Funding from the corporate sector into public universities has, unsurprisingly, caused some tension between those who welcome the money and those who worry about conflicts of interest. This is the basis for a series called Big Ag U from Harvest Public Media and Investigate Midwest. Dana Cronin, Agriculture and Environment Reporter for Harvest Public Media, based in Champaign, Illinois, joins us. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks, Ira. Let's talk about how much money corporations have put into agricultural schools at public universities. Yeah, so we found that corporations have given at least $170 million to ag schools here in the Midwest. I do want to emphasize that that's likely a severe undercount because it only represents donations made to four universities.

We did file records requests for donor information at almost a dozen different Midwest. Western universities, but we only got back four because many states have privacy laws in place that protect donor information. But the four schools we did get some numbers for include University of Illinois, Iowa State University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Missouri. Now, did you find that the universities seek the money, or do the corporations offer it? Or is it a combination of both? It is. It's a combination of both. Schools, for You know, over the past decade or so, the amount of federal and state tax dollars going to public universities has largely dwindled. That's part of the reason that tuition always seems to be going up.

But that's left universities in a tough spot. You know, without that public support, a lot of these schools have turned to private support. And a lot of that money has come from corporations that in many cases see an opportunity to fund research that they have. vested interest in. Some university officials that we spoke to also said that corporate funding actually keeps their research more relevant. I do want to play a clip here. This is Daniel Robeson. He's the dean of the Ag School at Iowa State University, and he originally spoke with my colleague Katie Picus. It's funding that helps keep us relevant with respect to pragmatic needs that are on the ground. And there are many, many organizations, companies that are doing fundamental

research as well. And so our ability to work with them and their interest in working with us speaks to, I think it speaks largely to our relevancy, frankly, to the industry that helps to support the production of food. Let's talk about the potential conflicts of interest between the universities and the companies funding them. One of the stories in your series talks about a specific case between Monsanto and the University of Illinois. Tell us about that conflict. Yeah, so our reporting partner, Investigate Midwest, obtained some emails between a Monsanto exec and University of Illinois officials. To back up a little bit, Monsanto, which is now called Bayer, is a big agriculture company that has donated millions of dollars to the University of

Illinois, primarily to establish an innovation center here on campus. And around the time the center opened in 2018, Monsanto was a... coming under fire publicly, maybe you heard about this, for one of its products, a weed killer called Dicamba, which was damaging farm fields across the country. So a weed scientist at the University of Illinois was really concerned about what he was seeing. And he was interviewed expressing that concern about Dicamba and the damage it was doing to the ag industry. And Monsanto wasn't happy about that. An executive at the company, ended up emailing the dean of the Ag School at the University of Illinois, saying, quote,

hate to see the U of I take these positions. The Ag School Dean ended up defending its professor, but this is just another example of the sticky situations that universities find themselves in when they accept corporate money. That's really interesting and very blatant. And I could imagine that the defense by the university, might not always be the case, right? What are people against corporate funding saying about cases like this? Exactly. That case is very blatant. But, you know, we did hear from a lot of people who were concerned that corporate money influenced the general direction of research that takes place at universities in the long term. I want to play another clip. This is Gabrielle McNally with American Farmland Trust.

It's this much more tacit sort of control over the research agenda. And so it's a way for people to say like, well, they're not controlling us. They're not our puppet masters. But we only research the crops that they're heavily investing in. Another researcher we spoke to said that he was concerned about what's not getting funded. In other words, corporations are only interested in funding research that they may ultimately benefit from in some way. And that leaves out a lot of important research that just doesn't have the same.

same level of financial backing. Wow, that is, that is difficult to hear. On the other hand, it seems like these universities are in a bit of a tight spot. I mean, if the money wasn't coming from corporations, would these programs get funded at all? Right. Well, I think that is the fundamental problem here. Universities are really in a catch-22 situation. It's not that all corporate donations come with these sort of invisible strings attached, but it's always a risk in accepting corporate money. And, you know, it doesn't seem to me like there are more federal and state tax dollars for universities on the horizon. So schools are in a tough spot. So the future looks more like the past then. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm afraid to say throughout reporting this series, I didn't get the sense that

there were any big changes to that current funding model on the horizon. I think without federal and state governments really stepping up to provide more funding to these schools, I think this corporate funding model may be here to stay. Well, thank you, Dana for your diligence on this story. It's a kind of story we all need to hear. Thank you, Ira. Dana Cronin, Agriculture and Environment Reporter for Harvest Public Media based in Champaign, Illinois. We end this hour with one of of my favorite topics, the intersection between technology and agriculture. Now, you all know that food is one of our basic needs, and I don't have to tell you that as the population of the world grows, we're going to need a lot more of it while working with the same amount of space that we've got.

That is a real challenge. And this is where my new favorite concept comes into play, Agravoltaics. This is a farming setup that mixes water, energy, and plant growth all in one space. Let me tell you what I mean. Solar panels collect energy from the sun's rays, and underneath these panels is where plants grow. So this setup takes less water than the traditional way of farming, all in all making this a more sustainable way to grow food and create energy. That's why I am so psyched to learn more about this. Joining me to talk about the promise of agrovoltaics is Dr. Chad Higgins, Associate Professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thanks, happy to be here. Nice to have you. All right, let's get into this. Let's start with just how this setup works. You know, to most people, it would seem a little backwards that plants do well grown under solar panels. Right. The reaction from a lot of people is wouldn't there be not enough sun? Right. And in certain circumstances, they would be correct. Your intuition is right there.

But where it gets interesting is that plants actually don't need full sun. And we can design arrays such that we only take the sun that the plants don't use or don't want or don't need. So what do the plants do with the extra sun normally when they have it? So what do you do when you get too hot? You sweat. You start sweating, right? Plants do the same. So they have to keep their temperature at a certain rate, a certain level, just so they can do their thing with photosynthesis.

So when they get too much sun, they get too hot. So they take more water and they sweat out that water. This is why when you take that excess energy away and you keep them in a more comfortable zone, they use less water. Wow. That really makes sense. not sweating away the unneeded water and you're not wasting water in irrigation. Now, is there a special kind of crop that works best with this setup? You know, there's many crops that could do quite well. And there's a variety of studies by myself and my colleagues in Arizona, Ohio,

Massachusetts, where they've shown that certain varieties of peppers, tomatoes do really well. We've shown that potatoes do really well. Beans, as well. well. Some of the ones that don't do quite well tend to be the ones that are like corn that can take a lot of sun and produce a lot. So, yeah, there's some that work really well and some that might not be the best choice. Because that brings me to the question when I talk about this with people, the first question they say is how do you actually harvest the plants? How are you going to get a tractor under those solar panels? So my response to that is you've only seen sun prioritizing solar arrays. haven't seen one that's built for dual use. And it's really pretty easy, technically. There's a

couple ways you can do it. One is you can raise up the panels so you drive the tractors underneath. That's the knee-jerk design reaction. It's also the most expensive way to do it. The second way is you can space out the panels wide enough so that it's wider than your typical equipment. You go between. and the one that we're investigating a lot lately is articulated panels so that they actually tilt vertical up and out of the way you make your tractor pass and then they tilt back facing the sun. Wow, okay. How much of America's farmland would you have to change to an agrovoltaic system

for us to really see the benefits of this method? Yeah, one to three percent would get us to most of the sustainable energy targets as lined out by the Green New Deal proposal and other, you know, renewable targets that have been laid out. Now, I understand that at Oregon State, you run an experimental agrovoltaic site. What are the challenges with this type of system that you need to solve to make this work? Because I can't wait to see this. Well, your question you asked was really a real pertinent one is, what's the crop? So this earth that we live on is wonderful and varied.

but that makes designing systems to work everywhere really challenging. So what we're trying to get at is, you know, understanding the physics, the biology, the chemistry that go on behind the scenes so that we can, for a place and our climates, design an array and crop combination that works together really, really well. Well, my question then is, do you think it's going to take convincing farmers to buy into this setup? You know, the beauty of this is that, number one, if done well, it is a profitable endeavor, meaning that the farmer would make substantially more money per acre than they would just growing crops. So there is, I believe free market forces will help, you know, push the sustainable technology forward. And the other thing is, is we don't have to convince everybody. It's only 1 to 3% of the farmlands.

That's, you know, 1 in 100, 1 in 30. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Wow. And are there any federal or state tax incentives like I got when I put my solar panels on my roof? Same. And, you know, I can't speak to every state, but here there's tax incentive programs

and rebates for solar. Those tend to change year by year, and your listeners would probably want to check with their local bylaws and tax. laws and so on, but pretty much in the vast majority of states, there's some incentive for the solar beyond just the money that you would make from selling electricity as a crop. Well, my next question is, I don't have a farm. I have a backyard garden. Will it be possible for me to go into Lowe's or a big box store and buy a setup from my own garden? And looking forward,

if enough people do this, could you get that one to three percent of the population instead of just the farmers? You know, I'll have to do that calculation. I actually haven't done that calculation yet, but I can get back to you on that area. I don't know if you can buy one yet, but I know of at least five startup companies that are working to design that kind of setup for home enthusiasts. And in your garden, those of you who are master gardeners, you might think of things like co-planting, and using overstory and understory crops. It's a very similar idea about the overstory is the solar panels. And tell me about where you see this going. Can you lay out a plan or a schedule for adopting agrovoltaics?

What's it going to take? There's a couple things that it takes. The one thing that the technical limitation right now has to do with the larger power grid that we have in our nation. As an example, a farmer comes to me, a grower comes to me, and says, hey, Chad, you know, I really want to try this on an acre and see if it works for me. And if it works and I make the money that your calculations should all expand it out. And the first thing I have to do is I say, okay, where's your farm?

And I look and I see where's the closest substation to them. And if that substation is too far away from their farm more than a couple miles, then I have to say, you know, it's probably not worth it because you would have to put in a whole bunch of power infrastructure to get to the substation. The next thing I do is I have to look at the substation because some of them are full. The pipes are full. You can't put more power through them. So even if a substation is there, you might not be able to send power to it. So that's the big technical limitation is having our American family farmers have access to the grid in a way that they would need to.

And that hopefully will be built out in some of the infrastructure deals that are going on. Chad, we have run out of time. I'm really looking forward to this idea and you making some progress and farmers around the country making progress with this. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thanks, Ira. It was a pleasure to be here. Dr. Chad Higgins, Associate Professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Once again, we have run out of time for this hour. Here's Daniel Peter Schmidt with some of the folks who made this show possible.

Thanks, Ira. John Dankowski is our Director of News and Radio Projects. Belissa Marez is our office manager. Charles Berkwist is our radio director. Kyle Marion Viterbo is our engagement producer, and I'm digital producer, Daniel Peter Schmidt. Thanks for listening. BJ Leiderman composed our theme music, and of course, if you missed any part of this program, or you'd like to hear it again. Subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And our SciFri Book Club is about to kick off for spring. We are reading Sarah Stewart Johnson's book, The Sirens of Mars, all about space exploration, life on other planets, and how you study a world you can't see or touch yourself, starring, you guessed it, Mars. The book again is Sirens of Mars by Sarah Stewart-Johnson.

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