Science Friday - Galaxies ‘Dance’ In Stunning New JWST Image | Why Some Cats Scratch Furniture

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

As the James Webb Space Telescope marks two years of operations, NASA unveils a new image of two galaxies interacting. And, new research shows that cats’ tendency to scratch is affected by stress, certain kinds of play, and how active they are at night.Galaxies ‘Dance’ In Stunning New JWST ImageThe James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope created by humans, has been successfully operating in space for two years now. Since its launch, the telescope has dazzled astronomers and the public with new kinds of scientific data about the universe and with stunning, highly detailed pictures. And on its two-year anniversary, the telescope continues to return impressive visuals: NASA released a mesmerizing image today of two intermingling galaxies nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg.Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos, joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about that and other top science stories of the week, including a new study that shows that children with autism have a unique microbiome, new FEMA rules that factor in climate change when rebuilding in flood-prone areas, and how invasive insects use hitchhiking to spread their populations.Why Some Cats Scratch Furniture So MuchIf you have a cat, you’ve probably endured your fair share of unwanted furniture scratching. Maybe you’ve purchased scratching posts, rearranged your furniture, or played with your cats before bed, to try to prevent it. And yet, you wake up to shredded upholstery or bedding.Furniture scratching is often a stress response, and cats who live with kids or are more playful and active at night are more likely to scratch.SciFri producer Kathleen Davis spoke with Dr. Yasemin Salgirli Demirbas, a physiology professor at Ankara University in Turkey and visiting fellow at the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, about her recently published study which tracked why some cats are more prone to scratching destruction than others and explored the best way for cat owners to achieve a mostly intact living room.Transcripts for each segment will be available 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.

Are you stressed about your cats scratching your furniture? Well, scratching is a perfectly normal natural behavior for cats. It's Friday, July 12th, and you guessed it, today is Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Bucksbaum. Sadly, I've got a lot of experience with this topic. My cats tore up a hand-woven rocking chair that I spent countless hours making. They sometimes really test my patients, but a new study, explains what drives some cats to scratch more than others. And we'll give you some tips to keep

your cats happy and save your furniture. We'll get to that story in just a bit. But first, here's guest host Kathleen Davis with the biggest science stories of the week. The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope in history, has been successfully operating in space for two years now. Since its launch, the telescope has dazzled astronomers and the public with stunning visuals and new kinds of scientific data about our universe. And on its two-year anniversary, the telescope continues to return impressive pictures. NASA released a mesmerizing image today of two intermingling galaxies, nicknamed the penguin and the egg. Here to tell us about that and other top stories in science this week is my guest, Jason Dyn, climate editor at Atmos. He is

based in Washington, D.C. Jason, welcome back. Thanks for having me. So happy second birthday to the JWST. Jason, what was in this new image? Yeah, so this image shows two galaxies that have been interacting with each other for 25 to 75 million years. And they're now connected by this haze of stars and gas. As you mentioned, they're called the penguin and the egg.

It turns out the penguin used to be a spiral of arms, but that's kind of unwound. So now it kind of has the shape of like a bee. and a head and a tail, so it resembles its namesake a little bit. Okay. It also sounds like we're talking about like Batman villains here, but I'm sure that's not what we're talking about. And I hear that the telescope also has some new information on a far-off ocean. Yes. So there was a new study that just came out using the James Webb telescope, which focused on an exoplanet named LHS 1140B. It suggests that this planet might have a liquid ocean. That's about half the size of our Atlantic Ocean.

And it might even have a nitrogen atmosphere like we have on Earth, both of which would be pretty huge discoveries in our search for extraterrestrial life. So this planet is about 48 light years away from Earth. And it orbits its star in what's called the habitable zone or sometimes called the Goldilocks zone, where it's just the right temperature to host liquid water. The authors actually say it's the first time scientists have detected signs of an atmosphere on a rocky exoplanet in a Goldilocks zone. And they go as far as saying that this is possibly our best bet at finding water beyond our solar system.

Okay, very cool. So our next story is also sort of about space. There was a group of volunteers who lived in a NASA-created Mars replica habitat for over a year. And it sounds like they just left, right? Yeah, they just emerged. So these four volunteer crew members included an engineer, a doctor, a biomedical scientist, and a microbiologist. and they were living in this facility meant to simulate life on a settlement in Mars. And last Saturday at 5 p.m., they emerged.

It's a 1,700 square foot facility called Mars Dune Alpha at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. It was actually 3D printed using the technology that they think they'll have to use to build settlements when they're actually out in space or on Mars. Yeah, you can find videos of this on NASA's website. I think it's kind of fun to watch. they kind of look like big soft-serve ice cream machines that are like laying down the layers for the walls and floors of this building. And the goal of all of this was to figure out how to feed and communicate with a future settlement on Mars, how to deal with risks like isolation and confinement, and how all of that affects human health. Yeah, I mean, I got to say it seems like

this would be as much of a psychological challenge as a scientific one. But it seems like these scientists fair at all right, it sounds like? Yeah, definitely. It was both psychological and scientific. So most of what they were actually doing was nutrition studies on this trip. So they grew and harvested their own food. They maintained a strict meal plan and they dealt with these like programmed resource limitations. And they also kind of practice some fake missions that they might do on Mars like operating robots. But the volunteers made it out totally okay. They seemed, you know, in high spirits when they got out of there. And they're actually not done yet. So they have about two weeks of post-mission data collection before they're actually allowed to go home. Oh, wow. Okay. Let's move on to our next

story here, which is very timely considering lots of parts of the U.S. experience flooding this week. FEMA has some new rules around climate change and flooding. Jason, what are these new rules? Yeah, so Grist really did some great reporting on this. They come from the Biden administration, which they finalized in an executive order, and they're going to go into effect in September. Essentially, the new rules ensure that FEMA, which is the government agency that rebuilds things like schools and hospitals after natural disasters, take into account future climate change when they're rebuilding. So in the past, they had to build out of what's called the 100-year floodplain, which is land that has a 1% risk of flooding in any given year. That system relies on history

to estimate risk. But as climate change is strengthening storm surges, that kind of backward-looking approach is really systematically underestimating how dangerous any given area is. So now with these new rules, FEMA has to take into account future sea level rise and coastal erosion when they're placing down new buildings. In areas where that's hard to predict, they actually have to play it safe and build beyond the 500-year floodplain rather than the 100-year floodplain of the past. And financially speaking, this is like a pretty big deal because by the end of the decade, flood damage is expected to cost $40 billion per year.

double every decade after that. Wow. Yeah, that seems hugely important. And Houston has actually implemented some of these standards, and they've had them for a while, right? Yeah. So after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Houston prohibited construction in the 500-year floodplain. And now scientists actually think that that rule prevented thousands of homes from being flooded last week when Hurricane Barrel made landfall. Mm, okay. So let's move on to our next story. We have some new microbiome news this week. There was a recent study done on children with autism, and it turns out that their gut flora are unique. Tell me about this. Yeah, so the scientists are really excited about this study because it might be a way to more objectively diagnose autism. So right now, to diagnose a

child with autism, usually start with a parent describing their behavior, professional observation, and some questionnaires. And as you can imagine, there's a lot of human error baked into that assessment. It's also really challenging to diagnose young children before they turn four. So now there's this new study that suggests it might be possible to diagnose children more objectively and earlier in their lives by using their gut microbiome. So the team analyzed over 1,600 stool samples from kids anywhere from 1 to 13. And they looked at the bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses. and then they used machine learning to detect these 31 signatures in that data set that were correlated with autism.

They built a model using those 31 traits, and then they tested it on a totally new set of stool samples. And they wanted to know if that model could predict whether those new donors had autism or not. And it turns out it did so successfully almost all of the time. Okay, let us move on to our next story. We haven't heard updates about the bird flu virus in a little bit, which has infected chickens, cows, and a handful of people lately. But there's a controversial new study that takes a look at how well it's adapted for humans. Tell us about this. This study is quite controversial. So it really

depends on who you ask here. So as you mentioned, the bird flu has been found in dairy cows in about 12 states. And there's growing concern that it could adapt to humans. And this new study in nature, these researchers wanted to know if that current strain of bird flu could bind to the receptors that they might encounter in a human's respiratory tract, which would be a pretty big risk factor for species spillover. So they synthesized the building blocks for that human receptor, and then they lined plastic plates with them, and they doused those receptors in H5N1, and they measured how much of the virus stuck. And in the study, they found that the virus did bind to those human receptors. This stirred up quite a bit of debate because there's actually another team that's doing a very

similar study right now, but isn't published yet. And what they're saying is that they found, that this current viral strain is actually quite bad at binding to the human receptor according to their data. So they got an opposite result. The scientists from both groups say that it's really critical to figure out why they're getting different results. It could be due to differences in their methods. And they want to figure out what that discrepancy might mean for the real world.

But in the meantime, the researchers of this study say that we should ramp up our monitoring and surveillance efforts for people who are most at risk at disease, like farm workers, or dairy workers. Okay, we're going to close out here with a pair of stories that both involve invasive insects. And researchers found that some insects like to hitchhike on cars. Yes, so there were two studies that happened on opposite sides of the world that suggests that invasive insects are spreading their range by hopping onto our personal vehicles. The first was a citizen science project in Taiwan, where the researchers sorted through

Facebook posts looking for reports of ant infestations on cars, and they found 52 cases where ants were really getting into the nooks and crannies in the interior and even the engine. And of the nine species, they found seven of those were invasive. And of course, we're dealing with invasive species here in the U.S. too. There was another totally separate study that showed that spotted lanternflies might be up to the same trick. So these are, as you know, crop pests that cause millions of dollars of agricultural damage each year. And in the decade that they've been in the US, they've already spread to 18 states, which is quite confounding because they can't fly long distances. So scientists wondered if they were spreading by hopping onto cars. This new study

wanted to test in the lab whether or not lanternflies could hang on to a car while it experienced high winds like it would on a highway. So they took a white 2011 for escape and put a big box fan in front of it that could blow wind up to like 62 miles per hour. And that kind of simulated the conditions of a highway driving car. They found that the lantern flies that they put on the car could hold on to all sorts of different places on the vehicle. And even at the highest wind speeds of 62 miles per hour, they were able to hold on at every stage of life.

And that last part is really concerning because it means that one female that had just made could, in theory, hop into a car carrying 300 fertilized eggs, move to a totally new state, and start a whole new population with her progeny. I mean, is there any way to slow this down or stop this from happening? Yeah, there are some, like, policies that the government could put in place, but they say that the best bet right now is that if you live in an infested population, check your car and take off any spotted lanternflies that you might see before you take off. Oh, brother.

Well, thank you, Jason, for bringing us these stories. Appreciate you as always. Thanks. Always a pleasure. Jason Dyn, climate editor at Atmos. We're going to dig into a topic that, unfortunately, I am very familiar with, cats scratching the furniture. You take one look at my dining chairs and you'll know that I have cats that scratch. If you have a cat, you probably know what I'm talking about. Maybe you've purchased scratching posts or rearranged your furniture or tried to play with your cats before bed. And still, you wake up to destruction. My next guest recently published a study that tracked why some cats are more prone to scratching destruction than others, and the best way to achieve a mostly intact living room furniture set.

Dr. Yasiman Salgirley Demerbas is a physiology professor at Ankara University and a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you very much for your invitation. So first of all, why do cats like to scratch in the first place? Oh, cats actually scratch for many reasons. One of the reasons the cat scratch is this is a physical exercise actually for the cats. They are stretching their muscles. they are practicing extension and withdrawal of the clothes, and they are also removing the outer sheet of their nails. And another reason, and this is very important,

actually, scratching is a communication way for cats, and it includes visual and olfactory messages in order to mark their environment and also to feel safe in their own environment with their own smell, a cat scratch. So this is a perfectly natural behavior. And if they feel stressed or threatened,

we see that the level of scratching increases because now they need to mark their territory for the others because they are territorial animals, although they are social. And also, as I mentioned, feeling their own smell, make them feel more secure. So there are lots of reasons for cats to scratch. And you have actually seen.

studied this academically. So what did your research find? What are the factors that increase the desire to scratch for cats? We found a link between a long play duration or extended play duration and an increased level of scratching. This is important because we know that play is essential for all living beings to foster a positive emotional state. And in particular for cats, structured and routine play is crucial. Organized play sessions which mimic hunting are crucial for their well-being. Let me give an example like if we let our cats play with laser pointers for a long time, they keep chasing the red dots without any success. So at the end, they become an unsuccessful hunter. So this may induce stress. And the main reason of this stress is

of course, frustration. And you also added over-stimulation and now our cats get hyper-roused. So optimal approach involves offering short but repetitive and successful play sessions to them. Okay, so it is good to play with your cat, but not too much without that payoff of catching something at the end, right? Not too much without a context. This context is very important for cats. Yeah. So another finding in your research was that cats who live with kids tend to be more stressed and they scratch more. I mean, I can kind of come up with a few guesses as to why, but what did your research show about why this is? What I can say about this is that the presence of children can definitely influence cat's stress level, but it's a complex situation. When you think about young children, they tend to move quick. and unpredictably, and this can be challenging for cats. If they are taught to respect and the humble cats properly,

they are less likely to stress the cats out. And the environment also plays an important role here. If we provide enough spaces for cats to retreat to a safe and quiet area, then they can manage their stress better. Okay, so for the cat parents that are listening at home, if they have a cat that's scratching up their couch, What do you suggest they do? First suggestion from my side is that for them to understand that scratching is a perfectly normal natural behavior for cats.

So we need to provide some appropriate items to let them scratch on them. And in our previous research, for example, we showed that using some pheromone products have to decrease the level of scratching punishments or yelling at the cat, these are not helpful. These make this behavior going worse. If you punish them for a natural behavior or normal behavior, which makes no sense from their perspective, so you increase the level of stress, so you increase the probability of this behavior. And we need to understand that companion animals and caregivers' welfare, are interconnected and we need to respect both sides. Well, this has been so fascinating. Thank you so much

for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation. Dr. Yasmin Salgirli, Demir Basse, is a physiology professor at Ankara University and a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown. And that's all the time we have for now. lots of folks help make the show happen, including Emma Gomez, Annie Niro, George Harper, and many more. On Monday, we'll talk about the health and environmental impacts of congestion pricing, but for now, I'm SciFRI producer Shoshana Bucksbell. Have a great weekend. Catch you next time.