Science Friday - Gas Stoves, Next Gen Vaccines, Printed Violins. January 20, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Why Are Gas Stoves Under Fire? If you were online at all last week, you probably encountered conversations about gas stoves. The sudden stove discourse was sparked by a comment made by a commissioner on the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to a Bloomberg reporter, in which the commissioner discussed plans to regulate gas stoves. Those comments morphed via repetition into inaccurate rumors of an impending ban on stoves fueled by ‘natural gas,’ or methane, currently used in around 38% of US homes. The CPSC later clarified that the agency was “researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks,” but was not looking to ban gas stove use. That said, studies have found that gas stoves are a major source of indoor air pollution, and can emit nitrogen oxides that have been found to exacerbate asthma symptoms. Last summer, the American Medical Association adopted a resolution informing physicians of the stoves’ link to asthma. A report published in December estimates that over 12% of childhood asthma cases may be attributable to gas stove emissions. The stove debate flares beyond asthma, however. Some municipalities, including New York City, are moving to phase out the use of natural gas in new construction for reasons related to climate change. And Washington state has put in place rules mandating the use of electric heat (with fossil fuel-derived heating allowed as a backup option) in new construction this year. Rebecca Leber, senior reporter covering climate at Vox, joins Ira to explain the heated words over gas stove use, and how they fit into a larger battle over fossil fuel usage and climate change. What Will The Next Generation Of COVID-19 Vaccines Look Like? The first COVID-19 vaccine was approved just over two years ago. Since then, the virus continues to mutate. With each new variant, the virus seems to evade our current vaccines more effectively, faster than we can make effective new mRNA boosters. Coronaviruses frequently spill over from animals to humans, like the original SARS and MERS viruses, which are both types of coronaviruses. Researchers are working on the next generation of coronavirus vaccines that aim to protect us against multiple emerging variants—and even prevent future pandemics. Ira talks with Dr. Pamela Bjorkman, professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, about her work to develop a vaccine that would protect against several types of coronaviruses. And later, Ira talks with Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University, about the nasal vaccine she’s researching and the hurdles in bringing it to market.     The Sweet Song Of The $7 Violin Stringed instruments can be a joy to the ears and the eyes. They’re handcrafted, made of beautiful wood, and the very best ones are centuries old, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or sometimes even millions. But there’s a new violin in the works—one that’s 3D-printed. It costs just a few bucks to print, making it an affordable and accessible option for young learners and classrooms. Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Brown is a concert violinist and the founder and director of the AVIVA Young Artists Program in Montreal, Quebec, and she’s been tinkering with the design of 3D-printed violins for years. She talks with Ira about the science behind violins, the design process, and how she manages to turn $7 worth of plastic into a beautiful sounding instrument. Learn more about the project, as well as its progress, beta testing, and release date at www.printaviolin.com. 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 Ira Flato. Later in the hour, a look ahead to the next generation of vaccines and exploring what gives a violin its sound, including how to 3D print a plastic good-sounding violin. But first, if you were online all last week, you probably heard at least some discussion of gas stoves. A study linked the use of gas stoves to over 12% of childhood asthma in the U.S. that's similar to the level caused by secondhand smoke. But the issue of gas stoves goes a lot deeper. And we thought this would be a good time to untangle all the information and misinformation you've been getting.

Joining me now to talk about the issue is Rebecca Lieber, senior reporter at Vox. She covers climate in Washington, D.C., and she's been reporting on stoves and the gas industry for years. Welcome back to Science Friday, Rebecca. Hello. All right, let's get into this. What happened last week with the Stokes? So the Consumer Product Safety Commission said that it was going to look into the risks around gas stoves and consider regulation.

This wasn't particularly new. They announced this in December, but what I think changed this for a lot of people is a commissioner for the CPSC said that a ban was on the table. That combined with the study you just mentioned, triggered a bit of a panic around castoves and instantly transformed this into a new culture war. On one side, people were worried that they were going to have their gas stove taken away from them. And then there were a lot of people who were just encountering the science that gas poses health problems for the first time. Yeah, so there was this study, as you say, linking stoves to asthma. What did it say exactly so we can cut through the new?

The study was building on prior research that finds a clear link between the nitrogen dioxide from the gas stove and asthma, specifically childhood asthma. So it said looking nationally that about 12 to 13 percent of childhood asthma is linked to this nitrogen dioxide that comes from the gas stove. In states that are heavily relying on gas, that number can be even higher. And how solid are these health findings? You can quibble about the numbers, but I think if you take this study in the larger context of decades of research on nitrogen dioxide and gas appliances, there is really convincing evidence that this is an overlooked problem,

particularly for vulnerable populations like children, the elderly people with prior existing conditions. So this was a study. building on decades of prior research, finding all sorts of links between respiratory problems and nitrogen dioxide. Some of these studies were observational. Some were based on surveys and other types of analysis. And in this case, they were drawing from previous peer-reviewed research and then looking at asthma rates in the U.S. and coming up with a number for the first time that puts this on a level of secondhand smoke.

So it's basically a form of indoor air pollution, right? The emissions indoors, and we know that air pollution in general is bad for respiratory diseases. Exactly. Indoor air is this problem that we just as a society overlook because we don't really have regulators who keep track of the quality of our indoor air. Gas supplies is particularly overlooked here, and I think what I've heard from a lot of people in my reporting is that they didn't even realize that when they turned their gas stove or oven on, that they were combusting a fossil fuel right in their kitchen. Yeah. Now, to reiterate, though, no one is actually saying, now that stoves will be banned for health reasons, no one's coming to your home to take your stove.

But it is possible they'll be phased out down the road or there might be regulations around their use. Yeah, exactly. There is no ban, especially for existing stoves. But I would also say that a ban on new appliances is very much down the road. That's something that the CPSC has already come out quite strongly on, that they're not considering a ban. And there's actually a whole range of other regulations they can undertake here that can make gas stoves a little bit safer. So, I I think it's really unlikely that they'll start with the ban. So I'm interested in hearing that. What other kinds of regulations are you talking about? Well, right now there aren't really any regulations when it comes to gas stoves. So one thing that improves outcomes for people is improving ventilation. And we know that a lot of people don't have the kind of ventilation that actually makes their indoor air safer.

So that can include a range hood that actually, sense that dirty air outdoors. A lot of people either don't have it, they don't use it, or it's not working. So one thing that the agency could require is that all gas stoves that are sold have to meet certain requirements for ventilation. Another interesting proposal is they can make sure that gas those are sold with air monitors just so people are aware of when their home is reaching on safe levels, there also could be more warnings around the risks. And this is just some of this range of options that the CPSC can take. But we also know that the Biden administration is trying to incentivize people to electrify their homes using tax breaks and rebates. So we can have this kind of

carrot here that nudges people in this electrified direction, while agencies also look at regulating the appliance. And so if there are cities and states which are restricting already the use of gas entirely in new construction, they're phasing it out to shift us away from fossil fuels. Yeah, there's this two-pronged approach happening. One is the gas stove health debate about our indoor air quality, and then there's also the climate problem of gas appliances. And most of these are really interrelated here, but when it comes to climate change, a buildings that run on gas are a huge problem. They're running on methane, which is a really polluting greenhouse gas, far more polluting than CO2 in the short term. And our buildings are contributing to about 12% of U.S.

greenhouse gases. So in order to address climate change, we have to get our buildings off of these fossil fuels. When you look at all of these different sources, of gas and buildings, you're basically running what political scientist Leah Stokes is called mini fossil fuel plants all over your home. So if we're going to tackle climate change, it makes sense to start shutting down those mini fossil fuel plants. Gas stoves themselves are a pretty small part of that problem. Boilers and furnaces actually contribute a lot more to that methane, but the gas stove usually comes in a bundle. If you're running on gas for cooking, you're probably running on it for other appliances. So that's why this debate is all mixed up together.

I've been looking into moving away from gas for my gas range because I'm trying to get away from fossil fuels. And I've been looking into induction stoftops and I'm not replacing my whole stove top to begin with, but buying these portable little induction hot plates that you can get that are very efficient. So you can try to do a few things on your own here. Totally. I rent and I understand where most people are coming from that they can't immediately renovate their kitchens or they're just not in a position too. And there's a lot you can do that doesn't mean ripping out your gas stoves. One is this hot plate that you just mentioned. There's a lot of options out there from higher end to running well under $100 and that you're just plugging in to an outlet. And I've heard some great reviews of the that just to replace some of that stove top cooking. Yeah. And they also say, you know, I can

control the temperatures so much better on my gas range than I can with my electric range. But that's old stuff. These new induction cooktops have like 20 different settings you could put on them

and you can get very fine control with them. It's not your father's electric range anymore. Yeah, I love that. I hear the concerns when people think about the learning curve with induction versus gastos, but I've talked to a lot of people who've made the switch. And here are lots of great reviews about the precision, how fast it is, the stove top, the actual glass piece doesn't even really get hot.

So there's a lot of bonuses for switching to induction. And I get there's a learning curve, but I think it's a lot. smaller than people realize. Other things you can do, at least in terms of improving your indoor air quality, is open a window. If you have a range hood that you aren't turning on, please start turning that on, being more mindful about your use of the kitchen. There's plenty of other ways we are electrifying our kitchens from using electric kettles to toaster ovens. I have a gas stove myself that I'm not too happy with and I try to less than. I try to less in my use as much as possible. Yeah. And people have such an attachment to gas. I guess we should not

be surprised at that, because it goes way back to when gas lighting lit our streets and our homes, all the way to cooking on your backyard grill, right, with propane. Yeah, there's this fascinating history here that I've done into going back a century of this battle between electric cooking and gas cooking. And as the gas industry was trying to gain market share, marketing was really important to do that. So the very expression, cooking with gas, that actually comes from the gas industry, and they had the comedian then Bob Hope use that in his routines. Is that right? Yeah, that's one of the fun fact. Over the decades, they've had celebrities and in newspaper ads posing with their gas stoves talking about this as healthy cooking,

cooking of the future. And in our modern times, they, the gas industry has actually hired social media influencers to do the modern version of this. And I think there is this sense of gas stoves as this fashionable icon and this status symbol, almost. And this is what the gas industry is capitalizing on the gas stove because people have an emotional attachment to it, unlike their furnace. Well, Rebecca, thank you for going through all of this and educating us all about electrical heating and gas heating. Thank you. Thank you. Rebecca Lieber, senior reporter at Vox covering climate.

You can learn more about this topic and find links to her reporting. It's all there on our website, ScienceFriday.com slash gas stoves. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, the next generation of COVID vaccines, look into how new vaccines using old ideas might better protect us against new variants and even future pandemics. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo. It's been a little over two years since the first COVID vaccine was approved.

And since then, we've seen the virus continue to mutate. And with each new variant, the virus seems to evade our current vaccines more effectively, faster than we can make effective new MRNA boosters. What's more, coronaviruses frequently spill over from animals to humans. Think the original SARS and MERS viruses, both are coronaviruses. So how can we make vaccines to better protect us against the emerging variants and even prevent future pandemics? Researchers are working on the next generation of coronavirus vaccines that do not depend solely on the

mutating spike proteins. Joining me now to talk about her work on a new type of vaccine, which offers protection against COVID-19, as well as a large group of other coronaviruses, is Dr. Pamela Borkman, Professor of Biology and Bioengineering at Caltech based in Pasadena, California. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me. Nice to have you. Let's start off. Can you explain how your vaccine works? I understand you create a nanoparticle. from eight different types of coronaviruses? That's right. First, let me just say that the theory behind this is that if we could make a vaccine that would

direct our immune system to recognize the conserved parts of various coronaviruses, then we would, in theory, be protected against whatever might spill over in the future or whatever variant of the current SARS-CoV-2 virus that's causing the COVID-19 pandemic. right now. So you're basically creating a vaccine that attacks the parts of the virus that don't mutate, that don't change very much. That's right. There's parts that tend to stay the same. And we studied this for quite a while structurally looking at the three-dimensional structures of these spikes. When we inject this into animals in our animal test experiments, we actually do raise these conserved antibodies. But if we inject the homotypic nanoparticles, we raise what's usually raised by the

current vaccines, which is the more variable antibodies. So how effective does your work show that any new variant that shows up, people would be protected using your new vaccine? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, we'd have to actually do all of those protection experiments in people to prove that. So we'll be doing a clinical trial that's funded by CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiative. But that hasn't happened yet. But what we can do is we can extrapolate because when we started this work, there were no SARS-COVID variance. I mean, we started at the beginning of the pandemic. We didn't know about alpha or beta or any, Delta or any of the omacrons.

But as those arose, we started using those in laboratory evaluations. and we're observing neutralizing activity against the variants that didn't even exist when we started. When do you think you could do the studies in humans? Well, it's scheduled for some time in 2024. There's a lot of regulatory things and manufacturing things. It's a complicated vaccine to make. And I did want to be careful about we've observed neutralization of sarbico viruses, meaning SARS-like beta-coronaviruses, but the conservation between viruses doesn't extend to, say, common cold viruses or to MERS,

which is a different type of beta coronavirus. So this is not a universal coronavirus vaccine by any means. I'm not sure it would even be possible to make one of those, although people are trying. We've reported on the show the monoclonal antibodies we've relied on this far in the pandemic to treat people with severe infections are no longer effective on current variants. I understand that your research could also lead to better treatments. Is that correct? Well, the great thing is when we inject the Mosaic 8 nanoparticles into mice, we can make monoclonal antibodies that target conserved regions and that would work against new

variance because as long as you target that conserved region, it's not going to matter for the most part, the variations that occur in these places that are separated from the conserved region. And the monoclonal antibody therapeutics were targeting the more variable regions. Will you be making them? Well, we're certainly going to make them in the laboratory. You know, I run an academic lab. We don't manufacture products for use in people, but I'd be very happy for this technology to be used. Well, maybe when people hear about this. Yeah, maybe. Some companies listening. Maybe. You might get some interest. Speaking of things that aren't working as well anymore, we've now had several rounds of

MRNA COVID-19 boosters, and I'm talking about those from Pfizer and Moderna. What are the drawbacks of that approach versus looking into other kinds of vaccines like the ones you're working on? The problem here, again, is even though the mRNA technology is so fast, you can't possibly keep up with the variants these days. You could do that. You can keep changing it, but you're just fighting a losing battle. But we think our approach would just not need updating. And that's what your competitive advantage is, is that your vaccine, your technology is not just chasing new variants, but you're just, you're there for anything new that comes up. Yeah, I think so. But our evidence is we tested it against very distant sarbicoviruses that are found in bat caves in Russia,

for example. So really distant from SARS-Co2. These have not spilled over into humans, but they could. And in fact, these sarbico viruses spill over into humans all the time. So people who live near bat caves, if you look at their blood, you find they make antibodies. against these bat viruses because they've been exposed. But fortunately, they don't transmit the viruses or even get sick. And then every once in a while, unfortunately, a virus transmits that's able to then infect someone else. And then if it's a transmissible enough virus, we end up with a pandemic. And so we have no idea when the next one is going to happen. And so we'd like to provide protection ahead of time to prevent. another pandemic. And you think this would do it? We hope so. We definitely hope so, yes.

Well, Dr. Bjorkman, thank you for taking time to be with us today. Fascinating research. Thanks for describing it. Well, thank you. It was a pleasure. Dr. Pamela Bjorkman, professor of biology and bioengineering at Caltech in Pasadena. And now I want to talk about another promising next-generation COVID vaccine, nasal vaccines, hope is that this type of vaccine will offer broader protection used in conjunction with the currently available mRNA vaccines. But nasal vaccines have faced major roadblocks in getting approval, unlike the original shots from Pfizer and Mirderna, which benefited from funding and support from Operation Warp Speed, which no longer exists. Joining me now to talk more about her work on a nasal

vaccine is my guest. Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University based in New Haven, Connecticut. She's also a co-founder of Zanadu Bio, which has licensed her nasal vaccine technology. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to have you. Okay, let's start off by explaining to me how the nasal vaccine you've develop works in conjunction with the MRNA vaccines many of us have already received? So the vaccine strategy that we developed is called Prime and Spike. And it leverages the immune responses that are already developed by the mRNA vaccines and directs that immune response to the nasal cavity by using a nasal spray booster that works in conjunction with the current

vaccines. So now that we have all received multiple doses of vaccines or have been infected prior with SARS-CoV-2 virus, we now have existing immune responses that are circulating throughout the body. But very little is actually maintained within the nasal cavity and the throat where the virus actually enters our own body. So what we want to do is to convert that systemic immune response by using a nasal vaccine to prime. a mucosal immunity in the nose. So you want to attack it basically as it enters the body in the nose. Exactly. We want to have the shield place right where the virus actually attacks us. And we've been discussing new variants of COVID-19, how they've been cropping up faster than scientists can

develop MRNA boosters to attack them. Would your approach solve this problem? Yeah, so we think that our approach of nasal booster will solve part of that problem because the nasal immunity relies on a different kinds of antibody called IGA. And IGA, unlike the IgG, which is circulating throughout the body that's induced by conventional vaccines, IGA has four arms to attach to the virus surface, whereas the conventional antibodies are two arms. And we think that having the forearms to attach to a virus means that there is more ability of that cross-reactive response provided by IGA. And we're hoping that that would cover some of the mutating variants of concern.

Well, so what you're saying, if I understand you correctly, is that while the vaccines we have now prevent us from getting severe diseases, you know, from going to the hospital, possibly, your nasal vaccine would prevent the initial infection. Is that correct? Yeah, that is what we want to achieve. can prevent all the infection, at least reduce the amount of infection. And also that means that we can reduce the amount of transmission that a person can have if you're vaccinated in this way. And you published your research in science last year showing your vaccine is effective in reducing

transmission of the virus and hamsters, but you have faced some pretty major roadblocks, have you not, in moving forward with the next stage of research? Please tell me about that. Right. So the preclinical animal studies look really promising and we're very happy to proceed with that. But as you said, because we don't have a warp speed type of effort anymore, we are just sort of back to the normal speed of vaccine development, which normally takes years. So some of the broad blocks include the fact that we don't have funding to be able to start a phase one clinical trial, as well as not having access to the MRI vaccine. that are currently kind of thrown out when they're not used. We don't have access to that kind of MRA vaccine in order to even do a further studies in the animal models. Wait a minute. You can't get the MRNA vaccine that they're throwing out, that Pfizer and

Moderna may be checking out? That's correct. So the providers of vaccines have signed a contract with the government saying that they will not be using the remaining vaccines for any other use. And that was put in place, I believe, in the very beginning of the pandemic in order to prevent misuse of the vaccine. But that contract still exists, which means that we cannot use the wasted vaccine for our research purposes. So you had to pay a lab, you had to pay for it to create mimic vaccines, I understand. That's correct.

There are companies that are making mimic vaccines that people like myself and other scientists are having to use. use in order to do more research in this in this MRA vaccine field. So if you could do more research and and move forward, how soon could you begin clinical testing in people? Well, if we are to somehow miraculously raise enough money to. How much money are we talking about raising? I think we are talking about tens of millions of dollars because that's what it takes to develop a GMP quality material, which is fit for.

use in human clinical trials. And of course, you have to pay a lot of other, you know, parties in order to develop a first-phase clinical trial. So, you know, it's not something that a research lab can easily do. So you need a partner, right? Yes, yes, absolutely. So you're desperately seeking one? Yes, desperately seeking partners who are able to help us launch a first-phase clinical trial of our promising vaccine approach. This is Science Friday from W. NYC Studios. If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Yale immunobiologist at Kiko Iwasaki about her work on developing a nasal COVID vaccine. Nasal vaccines, as you say, are newer. Are you still working out the best way to measure how effective they are?

Yeah, so that's the other, not a hurdle, but something that we have to work out as a scientific community is to be able to measure mucosal immunity in a standardized way. Because for the circulating antibody levels, there are standard ways of measuring antibody levels and potentially correlates of immunity. But for nasal vaccines or any mucosal vaccines, we don't have a mucosal correlate of immunity yet. So what we need to do is first find out what is the standard method, what is the best method to measure these antibodies and what are the levels of antibodies needed to prevent infection and transmission. It seems like your vaccine would be especially important given now that we're

again seeing a new variant dominating. I'm just surprised to see why we are in seeing the type of investment, as you say, that we saw with Operation Warp Speed, which generated the original COVID vaccines. Yes, I'm equally puzzled and frustrated for not being able to move faster with our vaccine strategy. We're not even asking for a warp speed. we're asking for lightning speed to be able to bring this to a human clinical trial as soon as possible. You know, people are tired of talking about COVID, right? I mean, and it seems like the government has less appetite to push these things through. There's money even stalled in Congress for moving forward with COVID issues.

Absolutely. So that's the other issue that we're dealing with is that part of the society has sort of decided that this is no longer a priority. but we are still in the pandemic. It's not over yet. And we are also seeing some very concerning consequences of having even a mild infection with COVID, turning into long COVID. And so that's the other reason we want to promote nasal vaccine that will prevent any diseases downstream. As I wrap up here, I want to broaden a bit, if you will. I mean, how can what you and other researchers are learning with these next generation vaccines?

be used for other viruses? Yeah, that's a great question. Our approach can be adopted to any other respiratory viruses because all we're doing is to leverage the existing immunity that's developed by either immunization or infection and really, you know, strengthening the nasal, mucosal immune responses. So we are currently expanding our approach to influenza virus and other respiratory viruses to be able to see if we can combine these kinds of approaches for other respiratory diseases. We have run out of time, Dr. Iwosaki. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today, and good luck in finding the funding you need on this really interesting research. Thank you so much, Ira.

Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular cellular and developmental biology at Yale University, of course, based in New Haven, Connecticut. We have to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll hear from a virology, violinist who's designed a cheap but beautiful-sounding violin by 3D printing. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. Strange instruments can be adjoid to the ears and the eyes, handcrafted, made of beautiful wood, and the very best ones are centuries old and worth hundreds of thousands,

maybe even millions of dollars. Except for that violin you just heard. What if I told you it cost just a few bucks, and it's made of plastic. Now, why would you want a plastic violin? As I said, violins can get really expensive, and even the beginner ones might cost you a couple of grand, and that hefty price tag makes them inaccessible

for a lot of families and classrooms. But my next guest has a plan to get more violins into children's hands by 3D printing them. Yes, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Brown is a concert violinist and the founder and director of the Aviva Young Artist Program, based in Montreal, Quebec. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me. Nice to have you. How a violin sounds all comes down to physics, right? It does. It's all about how acoustics function and how those sandwaves transfer and play in the resonating body of the

instrument. And you translated that science into an instrument that can be 3D printed. Please, tell me, walk me through the process here. We are now about five years. into this story. We started by asking this question about five years ago, well, if you can print a bone or a portal vein, why can't we print a violin? And so I started working with an interdisciplinary team based in Ottawa. We developed instruments for use in the context of a symphony orchestra and to play concertos with a symphony orchestra. Our good friends at the Toledo Symphony Orchestra sort of took the baton from there and started to do some work in looking at whether you could recycle material and use recycled plastic to make 3D instruments. And then most recently, the ball has come back to

Canada and we've started to look at how we can make it more accessible using at-home 3D printers and less expensive materials like PLA. What is the model? What model do you use? How do you actually know what to print on the 3D printer? Well, we get our information from a whole bunch of different sources. So we started with a basic kind of violin shape. And then from there, we pulled the measurements from a strad various made in 1704. It's called the Betts strad. And you can actually have a look at it on the Library of Congress's website. So we pulled the measurements from that instrument and ran some printing tests, decided that we liked a lot of it. And then we started to play with the curvature of the front and back of the instrument. What we would say is the belly of

the instrument. If you look at a violin, you see that it slants up in curves in the middle of the face of the instrument and the middle of the back. So we took some curvature measurements from a violin maker, a violin making family, I should say, who was working in Naples at about the same time as Strad, the Galliano family. We incorporated those, and that's how we got our most latest iteration. Do you have to manipulate the printing material so you get the exact shape and consistency that you want? We do. So a lot of that comes down to the sort of material you use and how it's printed. So in this case, we use polylactic acid, which comes in a great big reel. It looks like a big spool of yarn. And it gets fed into a printer that melts it and draws tiny little lines. They're about

0.4 millimeters thick. And we manipulate that using a computer to print. the violin with tiny little spaces that resonate in between. Those spaces are made in the shape of a square. So like a tiny little checkered board shape inside the instrument because that's what helps it to resonate best. Oh, so the square shape makes better sound. It does. There's actually been some really interesting research recently about plastic polymers and the various shapes, the internally printed shapes that sound best. So a square pattern definitely. sounds better than, for example, a honeycomb pattern or a star shape. Wow. So you must have printed a lot of violins before, a lot of trial and error here

before you got what you wanted. Indeed. And there have been some really great flocks along the way. Things that have sounded like tin cans, the most recent ended up looking a little bit like a mound of pink spaghetti in the middle of my 3D printer. There are lots of different versions of trial and error. Wow. And so what's the design that you ended up with? And how much does it cost? So the current design is made all in PLA. It's in two parts that fit together. So a child size instrument, a fractional size instrument, costs about seven U.S. dollars to print. Wow. Wow. And the goal, of course, in printing this is to make violins that people can afford to practice on and use in schools. Absolutely. And can be recycled when they're done. I hadn't thought about that. Now let's get to the all-important

question, you know, sort of a drum roll moment. What about the sound? Mary Elizabeth, can you play both violins, your beautiful old Italian one and the one you made for seven bucks and see if I can guess which one is made of plastic? Okay. Option number one. Okay, that was option number one. Here's number two. Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay, Ira, what do you think? Oh, I, oh my goodness. I have no idea. If I had to, guess, I would just guess the first one was the older violin and the second one was the 3D printed one. You are right. But but there was so close it was just a guess. You're right. And so the difference here being that probably less about how it sounds and more about how it feels to play. You know, they feel a little bit different that way. But they're hard to tell the part. You're the first person

who's been able to guess that one right? Well, it was just a guess. You know, I could tell in the second one, it seemed like it was a little more difficult to play from the way I heard it. You know, I never played a violin in my life, so I could not tell. But to a trained musician like yourself,

what is the difference? Is it just the difficulty? Because the sound was excellent. Well, so it's exactly the same piece of music. And if anyone is curious about what that is, That's a piece of music called The Meditation, and it's from an opera called Taise. The playing is a lot about physics. And it's about how we take horsehair, so that's what stretched across the bow, and how we rub it against metal, and then that transfers into the body of the instrument.

And so a skillful violin player is able to do a number of things with the bow. So we will adjust the rate of speed at which the hair travels across the string and how much pressure we use to sort of rub the hair across the street. So how much friction we create and where between the bridge and the beginning of the fingerboard, the contact point that we use. So those are the three kind of basic factors that are involved in violent playing or in sound production, I should say. And so on a 3D printed instrument, we have to use substantially less weight and a little bit more speed of the bow to help to kind of draw out this sound, as opposed to my Italian instrument, which is sort of like, you know, opening up a wonderful painter's palette full of color. I imagine wood, especially beautiful old wood, sounds very different from plastic, right? How did you account for that difference? So wood is porous. And one of the considerations that we needed to to account for was the fact that plastic is not. And so when we talk about this relationship between wood and plastic, we come back

to that research about the internally printed spaces, whether they're square shaped or star-shaped within the printed PLA. So that gives us. a degree of flexibility, a degree of space and air pockets in the material that gets sort of as close as we could to printing what would be the equivalent of wood. We go back to the idea of total flops. There are PLA spools that are composites of polylactic acid and bamboo. That was another disaster where it was not strong enough to withhold the weight of the bridge. So we had a great big hole in the middle of an instrument that was not so good either. Yeah, I hate it when that happens, you know.

I know. That's really interesting. That's part of the discovery process. But as you say, the point of your 3D printing is not to make a comparable instrument as much as it is to make a serviceable one that, new players, amateurs can learn on, right? Exactly. And I'm very fortunate that I have been able to play on this very fine Italian instrument for quite a long time. It's a real joy to play on. But a beginning violinist doesn't

need that. And the goal of this has never been to replace or replicate that. The goal has been to create an instrument that is easy to maintain, that's durable, and that gives people a really easy access point to music education. Yes. So what does it mean to you then as a violinist and educator to be able to make something that can end up in children's hands? You know, I've been very, very lucky. You know, I will go and lead a rehearsal for a production of Puccini's opera Laboam later today. I live my life in this wonderful sea of beautiful music. But had I not done that, had I done something else with my life, the very very, very, very serious musical education that I had would have served me well in so many ways.

And I think that it is a wonderful opportunity for young people to learn everything from focus and discipline to setting and hitting goals to working well with other people as we play together in the orchestra or in chamber music. There are just so many things that we learn. And so if I can in some way help more young people to come to that, I think that would be a wonderful thing. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Dr. Mary Elizabeth Brown, a concert violinist who is designing 3D printed violins for kids. When can we expect these violins to be made widely available? I mean, will it be a day where I can take, you know, the design and put it into my own 3D printer and make a violin?

Well, that's really the idea. And at the moment, we are in the final stages, the final iterations. As somebody who is a professional violinist and a teacher, I would like to make sure that it has my stamp of approval on every element of it before we start our beta testing, which we hope to start later in the spring of this year. And hopefully we'll have these out and available by the end of 2023. Now, I know the 3D printed instruments have been made before. So what makes your violin different from other models? That's a good question. I think the main difference is that we have really dug into the disciplines of physics and acoustics and violin making. And we've involved researchers from all around the world in this process.

I think also coming to this as a professional musician, coming to this as somebody who plays on a very fine instrument, and looking for the closest possible sound in that gives us a different sort of view or helps us to see that or hear that through a different lens. I think lastly, most of this is about finding fractional sized instruments. Most of the instruments that people are printing these days are for adults. But ideally, we start children when they're quite young. So we have been printing 10th and 16th size instruments, which are small enough for the average 6-year-old. So you really went above and beyond to make this super easy for kids to use. Yeah. One of the big things that's different about this model of instrument is that the bridge and the soundpost are printed in.

So nothing on a violin on a regular violin is glued. So everything's held in place by tension. And that means that if you need to have anything done, you really need to go and see a luteje to do that for you. And the inspiration from this came from one of my dear students who lives on a sailboat off the coast of New Zealand and plays the violin very well. And her bridge started to warp

as they were starting a sort of two-week sale where they would not, you know, come to port. And so her mom and I sort of cowboy steaming a bridge using boat repair tools and a clamp and a tea kettle. Lots of MacGyvering here. We really did MacGyver this. And it really got me thinking, you know, we're going to put, it's one thing to put instruments into the hands of young people. it's another thing to then sort of saddle them with the cost of continued maintenance and having continued repairs and other things. So a lot of this last iteration, especially with the little instruments,

had to do with printing in the bridge and the soundpost so that there would be limited MacGyvering needed wherever they ended up. Do you have to paint it to look like a violin? I mean, does it come out? It must come out in a multitude of color. Well, the one that I play to you today is white, but I have pink, iridescent thermoplastic filament in my printer at the moment. So the next one that gets printed is going to be a sort of fuchsia color. So it can come in any kind of color you like.

Well, I would imagine that's a plus when you're introducing kids to violins. It looks kind of cool, right? It doesn't look scary. Exactly. I had a student just this morning who's eight, who said, you know, hey, Miss Mary Beth, which is what they've called me for like the last 20 years. You know, hey, Miss Mary Beth, could you print me a blue one? I think I might play more scales if it were blue.

That's a great anecdote. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mary Beth for taking time to be with us today. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Yes, and good luck to you. Dr. Mary Elizabeth Brown is a concert violinist and the founder and director of the Aviva Young Artist Program based in Montreal.

Quebec. And that's about it for this hour. If you missed any part of the program, or you would like to hear it again. Yeah, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And you can say hi to us all week on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or if you'd like to contact us through email, you can do it the old-fashioned way. SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. Send us feedback. Tell us what you'd like us to cover. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.