Science Friday - Shutdown and Science, Smartphone and Overdoses. Jan 11, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

The partial shutdown of the U.S. government is approaching its third week, and it has caused a backlog for scientists employed or funded by the government. Scientists have had to leaving data collection and experiments in limbo. The Food and Drug Administration has had to suspend domestic food inspections of vegetables, seafood, and other foods that are at high risk for contamination. Journalist Lauren Morello, Americas bureau chief for Nature, puts the current shutdown in context to previous government stoppages. Morello also tells us how agencies and scientists are coping during this time and what we might see if the shutdown continues. And Science Friday producer Katie Feather reports back from the American Astronomical Society conference about how the shutdown has affected the meeting and the work of scientists. Last year, about 47,000 people in the United States died from an opioid overdose, including prescription and synthetic drugs like fentanyl, according to the CDC. And as the epidemic of opioid abuse continues, those looking to reduce death rates are searching for ways to keep drug users safer. But what if your smartphone could monitor your breathing, detect early signs of an overdose, and call for help in time to save your life? Researchers writing in Science Translational Medicine this week think they have just that: smartphone software that can ‘hear’ the depressed breathing rates, apnea, and changes in body movement that might indicate a potential overdose. University of Washington PhD candidate Rajalakshmi Nandakumar explains how the software, which uses smartphone speakers and microphones to mimic a bat’s sonar, can ‘hear’ the rise and fall of someone’s chest—and could someday even coordinate with emergency services to send help. Starting January 1, 2019, hospitals have been required to post online a machine-readable list of detailed prices for materials and procedures—from the cost of an overnight stay in a hospital bed, to a single tablet of Tylenol, to the short set of stitches you get in the emergency room. The new requirement is a Trump administration expansion of Obama-era rules growing out of the Affordable Care Act, which required that this list of prices be made available upon request. But while the increased availability of this pricing information might seem like a win for consumers, it’s not actually all that useful in many cases. First, the price lists don’t give a simple number for common procedures, but break down each part of every procedure item by item, in no particular order, and labeled with acronyms and abbreviations. Second, the price lists, called ‘Chargemasters,’ are the hospital equivalent of the car sticker price—they represent what the hospital would like to be paid for a service, not the price that most consumers actually do pay, or the prices that may have been negotiated by your insurance company. Julie Appleby, senior correspondent at Kaiser Health News, joins Ira to explain what the price lists actually show, why they matter, and what consumers might be able to do to get a better estimate of potential health care costs. 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 Plato. Later in the hour, we'll be talking about the government shutdown and its effects on the scientific community. So we want to hear from you. Are you a scientist or in a science-related industry or contractor that has been affected by the shutdown? We want to hear from you. And our phone number, 844-724-8255. 844-724-8255. You can also tweet us at SciFRI.

But first, one of the places, that was shut down, that the shutdown was evidence, in evidence this week, was at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. No federal scientists there, but hundreds of other astronomers were in attendance. And among the topics of discussion was a set of new observations of fast radio bursts, strange millisecond long, high-energy blips of radio energy from billions of light years away. Scientists reported spotting 13 new bursts, including the second repeating source, ever again. identified, they did not rule out its being intelligent life. Joining me to talk about that, Ryan Manlobom's already guffawing at that. Science writer and Gizmoto here in New York.

Welcome, Science Friday. Welcome back, Ryan. It's always good to be here, Ira. So is it that crazy that it could have been... No, I was just waiting for you to say that it might have been aliens. So they're not going to rule out aliens. I'll tell you it's not aliens, but you know, you could think whatever you'd like. So, I mean, it was a Chime Telescope in Canada, which, you know,

know, sort of very quickly after it turned on, found these new sources of radio pulses that, you know, they're high-powered, they're coming from outside of the galaxy, they're definitely strange. They could be maybe from neutron stars or maybe from chaotic events, but then the weird one is this repeating one. It's like, why would we keep getting this radio burst over and over again from this source? Might be something we would send out if we were searching, or putting out, repeating. I'm going to move on because I can say, you know what,

making a face. Maybe. I mean. How are they observing them? If they're happening so fast, how do you observe? Right. So you have a special telescope. It's a, you know, a radio detecting telescope, radio telescope that would look for these.

So the chime telescope in Canada. Hmm. It's chime. Chim writing. So we don't know what's causing them. You know, there's plenty of theories and ideas. Again, the strongest one may be magnetized neutron stars. But for these repeaters, I think that hopefully, you know, now that we know that there's two,

maybe there's however many more hundreds, thousands, who knows. So we have to just keep observing and then look for patterns and come up with theories and test them and pick out the sort of data from the noise. Can never only be one or two of anything. Right, right. Let's move on. You have a story this week about a kind of grisly effect of climate change in certain birds. I know you're a birder.

You keep track of this stuff. I do. So I don't know if you've heard of a great tit. It's a common bird in Europe that looks like a big chickadee. They have been observed killing. Well, they've been observed having dead flycatchers in their nest boxes. So they haven't been observed killing them, but they think that because of climate change, these great tits are killing these other birds, pied flycatchers, and then eating their brains.

Because they're, I can skip that part, but because they're... We want the details. It's okay. The migration patterns of the pied flycatchers are slowly moving back as things warm. And then the great tits, they react very. strongly to changes in weather. So they're coming into contact a little more. So is this a story about competition then between two species?

Right. Yeah, exactly. It's about climate change, sort of changing the timing of these two species' life cycles to the point that they're coming into conflict more, or they could maybe come into conflict more in the future. Why would they be eating the brains? I want to go back there because it's so interesting. They're not the only birds that eat brains.

I know that there are woodpecker species that eat brains. I mean, brain eating isn't the weirdest thing in the animal kingdom. Who knew? I guess I did. So is the population going to be affected? Actually, as of yet, that's sort of the big caveat of the paper is that they think that the ones that have been going are the, the pied fly catchers are these late arriving males. And so because it's sort of excess males who are being killed, it's not affecting the population. But if this continues and it's possible that maybe it will, we just haven't seen any effects on the population quite yet.

All right, continuing on the theme of flying things. There's news this week about the monarch butterfly. Tell us about that. Yeah, so California's Western monarch butterfly population hit a record low this year when they counted them. And so 86% lower than last year. And it's already sort of precipitous decline since the 1980s. So it's not good. No.

Wow. Do we know why? Is it a climate change thing or something else? In fact, the reason that I saw in the New York Times report was that monarchs need to eat milkweed. And urban development alongside pesticide and even the drought in California has been harming the milkweed population. And so if you're living on the West Coast and you're worried about your monarchs, then you should plant milkweed. And I don't know. Have you been to Santa Cruz during the monarch migration?

No, I wish I had. There's a lot of butterflies. But I can tell you, have a lot of milkweed. I could chip it out there and be very happy to eat it. There's a story this week about an ancient woman and a bit of blue pigment. Connect the dots for us on that. Oh, this one was pretty amazing. Scientists accidentally uncovered the remains of a woman with flex of blue lapis lazuli in her teeth.

So they did the radiocarbon dating. It would have been during about 1,000 AD. And so you wonder, okay, why does she have this mineral in her teeth? And it's likely because she was like an artisan scribe. So, you know, one of the people who would create these beautiful. religious texts that you see at the museum. Incredible. So it was a random find.

I mean, they didn't expect to find this. They didn't expect to find this. I mean, they were looking at her teeth to see what she was eating, you know, because that could be an interesting way to learn about lifestyle, and they found this blue stuff. And where would the blue come from? What would she be doing with? Well, the interpretation that I read was that perhaps she was licking the tip of her brush. Oh, she was a painter?

Right, a scribe, yeah. She's a scribe. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, good at wet-suit. It's a pointy, makes it pointing. Yeah, and it's actually pretty cool is that, so this dye ultramarine that's made from Lappas-Luzuli was perhaps one of the most expensive pigments. And so not only was she an artisan in a field that, you know, I guess, over history, people have traditionally assumed men were dominating, but she was probably a really good one. You know, she was using such an expensive pigment in her work.

So, you know, you normally think that it's a group of monks who are scribes. So this sort of says there are other people more around. it's actually an increased body of evidence now that's leading towards sort of this conclusion. Wow, thank you, Ryan. Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer at Gizmoto here in New York, and happy birding to you. Thank you. Whatever we can do. Now it's time to play Good Thing, Bad Thing, because every story has a flip side.

Now, if you've ever been shocked by your hospital, you know, you look at, you see the jaw-dropping prices they've charged you when you got out? There's good news and bad news. Since the start of the new year, hospitals have been publishing detailed lists of, of prices for materials and procedures online, from the cost of an overnight stay in a hospital bed to that giant price on the single tablet of Tylenol to the short set of stitches you get in the emergency room, right? But there is a catch. Joining me now to talk about it is Julie Appleby, senior correspondent at Kaiser Health News in Washington. Welcome to the program. Hi, Ira. So that's the good news here is that we can see what they're charging us. That's the good news.

are now available online, where it's before you might have to ask for them. And what does a charge look like when you look it up? So these are things called charge masters, and they're basically these long sort of all-a-cart lists of every good and service that a hospital offers, right? So it's a list, and hospitals are putting them up online in generally Excel format. So they're basically these long lists of all the things they offer. And, you know, it can be a little confusing because they'll put some things in fairly easy, you to understand information like, you know, a per day room charge.

But then they'll have some things that are in medical abbreviations that are really hard to understand. So that's the bad news here. You can read it, but you may not understand it. Yeah. And basically, the other bad news is it's not useful for most consumers most of the time because they don't pay those charges. They don't.

What do they pay? Yeah. Well, most patients who have insurance, for example, their insurers have negotiated discounts off those charges, so they're not paying those prices. where folks who are affected by these prices are the folks who are uninsured, or if you go to a hospital where you're out of network and you then get a bill later, and this is where people are often surprised, your insurer pays a portion towards that bill, but then you might be responsible for the difference between that and these charges. And that's the other folks that might pay it. They might be hit for the difference between what their insurer paid and for the charges if they're out of network. I have been there, done that.

I know exactly how much, how that feels. So this list won't tell you how much a hip replacement is. It'll tell you how much each bit of the procedure costs. Right. It's sort of like an all-a-cart menu, right? You would have to assemble the whole meal, so to speak, so you would have to know, how many stitches you're going to get, how many folks are going to be working on your operating room, all the kinds of things, what kind of drugs are you going to get? So it's almost impossible for a person to figure it out. Now, that said, some hospitals are also posting sort of bundles of payments that are based on groups of coverage. So the whole thing, how much would the whole thing cost you? And that's an average. So that might be a little bit more useful. But just the the a la carte list itself could be very difficult to try to figure out how much something's going to cost. So what's a consumer to do? Is there any way to get a better sense then of the real pricing? Well, these can be useful. So it might be a starting point. Like if you are uninsured, you might want to look at this to see if there's a difference in your local hospitals. If you have a service, you know that's coming up that's elective. I mean, remember, a lot of times you're being hauled to the hospital in an ambulance, right? So you're not going to do any shopping. But a consumer who has insurance, their first stop should be with their insurer. Call them up and ask them, where are you at and you're deductible?

How much have you paid this year? How much might this procedure cost? What will be my share of it? So that's one place to start. If you are uninsured or if you end up in that out-of-network thing, it's a little bit more difficult. You could look at these as charges. And then you can go on some other websites. There's a website called Health Care Blue Book, for example.

There's something called Fair Health. You can type in the name of the procedure or if you have the code, you can look it up. And there you're going to get sort of an average of what insurers pay towards these types of procedures. Now, it's not going to be individual to you. It's not going to be necessarily specific to a hospital. It would be more like an average price paid in a region. But it would give you some idea so that when you go back and you might have to negotiate to try to get a discount off what the hospital's charging you, you might have an idea of what private insurers pay.

It's sort of like buying a car, used car. It's a little bit like that, only more confusing. more confusing. Thank you. Thank you, Julie Appleby, senior correspondent, that Kaiser Health News in Washington. And before you ask, Kaiser Health News is not affiliated with the Kaiser Permanente Hospital chain. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, how the government shutdown is quietly seeping into science. If you're a scientist or someone who is involved with scientific research affected by the shutdown, give us a call 844-724-8-255. You can also tweet us at SciFri. We've had all kinds of people already calling in and tweeting us.

We'll go through them during the show. Stay with us. We'll be right back after the break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. As of Saturday, the government shutdown will be the longest one on record, and the shutdown is government-wide. We all know that. But we wanted to focus at the details.

Look at the details of how this shutdown is affecting science, because the shutdown is trickling down, into places you may not have imagined. For example, the big meeting this week of the American Astronomical Society that happened in Seattle, about 15% of the scientists and the presenters who had planned to go couldn't because, well, they worked for the government. Our producer Katie Feather was there, and she's here with us now to tell us how that meeting was impacted by the shutdown. Welcome, Kate.

Hi. Okay, could the scientists not go because the travel budgets were cut? No, so actually the flights were already paid for. Their hotel rooms were booked. People registered for this conference months ago. The reason why they couldn't go was because federal scientists are not able to do any work while the government is shut down. And attending this conference would be considered part of that. They're not allowed to represent the government in any sort of official public capacity.

That is quite a shame because this is really a pretty big conference, isn't it? Yeah, this is the biggest conference of the year for astronomers and astrophysicists, Usually about 3,000 people attend, but this year, because of the shutdown, nobody from NASA or the National Science Foundation could go. And this was a huge loss because NASA especially is one of the biggest players at this conference. Organizers said that probably close to 400 people had to cancel their plans because of the shutdown. And that's likely a conservative estimate. And the conference itself had to bend some of its own rules. Right. The conference organizers did the best they could given the situation.

They allowed co-authors to give presentations or talks if a lead author was unable to make it. They streamed their big plenary sessions online so people who had to cancel could still watch from home. I sat in on one talk where they had a presenter from NSF give his talk over web conference. It wasn't exactly successful, but I appreciated the effort. Really, though, the thing that saved the conference from being torpedoed by the shutdown was university scientists and NASA contractors who were not affected by the shutdown. stepping in for their public sector colleagues in a really big way. Now, I know you talk to some of the attendees there about their thoughts on the shutdown. Yeah, so I mentioned NASA contractors because of how they're funded, we're still able to attend the conference.

And I talked to a couple of scientists with the University's Space Research Association, who are in charge of a space research telescope that gets flown on a Boeing 747. It usually flies three to four times a week, they said. but the plane is operated by NASA employees, so even the plane's security guards can't work, so the shutdown has grounded this telescope. There are several observations that we're supposed to do in the coming months that are time-critical observations.

Yeah, we have to have comets. They're fleeting observations like comets. And as that time goes up, we can't make up that time. So they just lose their science. I also talked to John O'Meara, chief scientist at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, who said, you know, forget the science for a second. this is having a real human impact on my NASA colleagues.

I can call them up and ask how their day is going, but I can't call them up and even ask them to think about a science thing because that's work, and they're not allowed to. And I start to worry about some of the people, especially the junior people in the field who they pay rent and now they don't have money to pay for food. You know, that's something we don't really think about when we talk about scientists is that the shutdown seems to be having effects

that we don't think about. Yeah, and another important thing I wrote about this conference, is that this is where a lot of the business of science starts. Aerospace contractors like Ball, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, they send folks to this conference to show off their latest engineering tech and hopefully strike up some business with NASA. But NASA wasn't there. So it's not like this is the only chance these companies have to make a government deal this year, but it's an important networking event for them, and it's been lost because of the shutdown. Great reporting, Katie. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for going there. Producer Katie Feather.

You've heard that non-essential employees are being asked to stay at home. Parks are open, but they're understaffed. Agencies like the FDA have cut back on food inspections. So the shutdown is also reaching into issues like health and safety. And also in Waze may not have imagined. The devil is in the details, and my next guest has compiled the list of those details as well as what might happen if the shutdown continues indefinitely. Lauren Morello is the America's Bureau Chief for Nature.

She's here with the details. And I want to shout out to everybody who's listening. If you're a scientist or in a science-related industry that has been affected by the shutdown, and we want to hear from you. A number is 844-724-8255. 844-724-8-255. You can also tweet us at SciFri. Lauren, welcome to Science Friday.

Hey, thanks for having me. Now, the shutdowns have happened. The last one that happened was in, 2013. Can you put this one in context of the bigger shutdown picture? Sure. So there are two main differences between that shutdown and this one. The 2013 shutdown hit a wider array of agencies, the National Institutes of Health, which does biomedical research, and the Energy Department, which operates national labs like Los Alamos, were affected by the 2013 shutdown. This time they've escaped.

But this shutdown has gone on for 25% longer or a week longer than the 2013 shutdown did. And you hear that non-essential employees are being furloughed. And in terms of science, who is essential and who is non-essential? You know, agencies have a bit of leeway to decide that. There's a really wonkily named government law, the Anti-Deficiency Act, that lays out what happens during a shutdown. and the general guideline for who gets to be considered essential is your essential if you're necessary to protect life or property or both. And for example, at the U.S. Weather Agency, NOAA, that means that about 5,000 weather forecasters are staying on the job. But at the National Science Foundation, which has a very small staff and basically hands out grants to researchers and universities, they're only keeping 60 of 2,000 people.

working during the shutdown. And the EPA? The EPA is an interesting one. They did some interesting accounting. They used what's called no-year money or multi-year money. These are horrible, wonky names, to keep the agency going for a couple of days after everything else started shutting down.

They went about six days, and then they ran out of that money, and they had to wind down. So there are about 14,000 people at EPA who are on furlough or in forced leave, and something like 750 who are allowed to keep working right now. That's interesting. And what's ironic is that after two years, we finally have a science advisor,

but he's shut down too, is he not? Yeah, it's, you know, President Trump has gone longer than any other first-term president since at least Eisenhower in getting a science advisor into office, and he was confirmed by the Senate last week. And when we talked to him, he said, I'm talking with the White House counsel to determine whether I can go in and start work. Because I don't know if my job is considered essential. And you also talk to some scientists who had to cancel their field seasons. Yeah, it's, you know, they're really heartbreaking stories.

Just yesterday we put out a story. There's been a study going on for 60 years in a little island in the United. Lake Superior in Michigan. It's a study of predators and prey. It's the longest running study. Scientists have been tracking how wolves and moose on this island have been faring. And they can't get to the island this year because the National Park Service manages it and they're not letting anybody on. So these researchers are university researchers. They have $100,000 in GPS-enabled moose collars that they were going to go put on animals while they tracked them. And if this goes on much longer they won't be able to collect data this year because the way they track the wolves

and the moose is primarily by looking for their paw prints or hoof prints in the snow. Yeah, and that'll be gone. On the line, we have Lupita Montoya, who is a research associate, civil, environmental and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado and Boulder. She has a project working with bringing new heating technology to communities in the Navajo Nation, and it has been put on hold due to the shutdown. Hi, Dr. Montoya. Hello, everybody, and thank you for having us here.

Well, tell us how you've been impacted. Well, this project that we've been working on for over here, about six years now, is been working closely with the U.S. EPA, the Navajo EPA, and the Nene College, which is one of the tribal colleges, specifically to identify appropriate heating technologies for this community. A first study, which started a while back, was published already, and it was an analysis where we looked at perception, culture, and technical assessment to look at why it was appropriate for this community in terms of bringing them to cleaner technologies for heating. And our recommendation was that they needed a new technology, basically a hybrid stove that could burn both wood and coal. such technology did not exist.

And working with the U.S. EPA and our colleagues at the reservation, we were able to find a company in the Northeast that designed such a stove with the input from the Navajo Nation, some of my own students in the summers when I worked there. And now that technology is USC certified, and it's been brought into the community. The people are accepting it as part of a stock exchange program that is being paid by a settlement agreement. And so that study, of course, can only occur during the wintertime when the heating season happens. So our study specifically looked at how to document the air quality and the respiratory health improvements associated with the use of this new technology, which is a first of its kind in this country. So now that's been shut down. That has been shut down.

I mean, in multiple ways we've been affected. For example, we have weekly meetings that we have held for multiple years. Now our U.S. EPA colleagues cannot attend those meetings. They are not allowed to work in any way. Legally, they're prohibited from doing that. Also, our funding, which was approved by the U.S. EPA, funding paperwork arrived at the University of Colorado, notifying them the money is coming. but it did not come.

The shutdown came before the money, so now we don't have that. I have a student who's funded through that, and so myself, and so we don't have that funding. Well, Dr. Montoya, I'm sorry to hear that, and we hope this is over soon for your sake and for a lot of other people's sake. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. I wanted to just mention one last thing,

that this research has been done by minority faculty and minority researchers, like myself, members of the society for the advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans directly impact communities of color, and these communities rely on the few of us who are out there to do our work. Okay. I can see that... Yeah, it goes beyond the science. It goes into the affecting our communities as well.

You know, a lot of people forget that scientists are people, and that they help people too. Thank you, Dr. Montoya. On number 844-8-25, also talking with Lauren Moran. Boy, what a story that was, Lauren. Yeah, that was awful. I mean, there are so many stories like that that we've been hearing, and it's really horrible. We talked to a computational biologist at the University of Rhode Island. So he's finished graduate school, but he doesn't have a faculty job yet.

He's got funding from the National Science Foundation to do research. But because NSF has shut down, he's not being paid. NSF doesn't consider him an employee. They consider him a contractor. And the university that he's at doesn't consider him an employee. So he's not eligible for unemployment. And his wife is working. It's not enough to pay the bills.

They've got a two-year-old little boy. And he told us he doesn't know how he's going to make his housing payments or his car payments or feed his son after the end of the month. I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios talking with Lauren Morillo, nature who did a really great roundup of how this is being affected. And I asked for people to phone us and tweet in. We have lots of tweets that came in. Let me read a few of them. Here's it, Dear Side Friday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is operating from a rainy

day fund from user fees. When the fund is depleted, it may shut down. That will take about a month, I think. A tweet from KRF says, I work for a mid-sized company with 50% of our work is funded by multi-fed contracts. We're all concerned if this goes on much longer, our jobs and the health of our company will be in jeopardy. Contractors will not receive back pay. Our salary is based on Fed pay grade. And that's a question to ask you, Lauren, how much, you know, of these scientists, can they get retroactive pay? So no federal employee is guaranteed retroactive pay after the government reopens. For that to happen, Congress has to specifically like write that into law past that.

And they've done that in every previous shutdown. So I think people feel like that's going to happen. But federal contractors don't get back pay. So they're really suffering. And contractors include, I think, people like that postdoc that, you know, I was telling you about. And even for people who are certain that they're going to get back pay when the shutdown is over, the problem is just that this one has gone on

so long, you mentioned at the top of the show that if it goes on until tomorrow, it'll be the longest one in U.S. history. And it'll be, you know, they're going to their second pay period without a paycheck. Uncharted territory. Let's go to the phones before the break to Patty in New Jersey. Hi, Patty. Hi. I just wanted to mention that there is a well-known X-ray crystallography beam line. So this is a very complicated piece of machinery that has to be funded. I'm not going to mention which one. They are waiting for their funding from National Institutes of Health

because they do basic biomedical research that could help with treating Alzheimer's, not a small problem in our country. And not only do these people not know if that beam line will ever be reactivated, and there are people coming postdocs mentioned, people coming from all over the world to do research, at that beam line. So these people don't even know if their research will ever see the light of the day. This is vital loss. And not only that, it's not, they're not even worried about their back pay. They're absolutely worried about whether this beam line will ever reopen and whether they will

ever have a job. These are people doing some of the most, these are some of the smartest guys on the planet. And they're just worried about can they ever work again. All right. Interesting. Thank you for calling. Interesting perspective on that, Lauren. There are lots of medical, you know, clinical trials probably, Lauren, that are not going to be happening with new medicines. Actually, in this shutdown, the biomedical research and clinical trials are doing okay so far because the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, is not affected by the shutdown. That's good news. There's one little part of NIH that does superfund toxic research with EPA that shut down, but that's it. And the FDA has been able to keep about 60% of its employees working in part because they collect user fees.

When people apply to get new drugs or medical devices approved, they have to pay a fee. And so FDA has been using that money to keep the kind of medical side of the work it does going. We're going to take a break and come back and talk more with Lauren Morello and talk with you on the phone. Our number 844724825. You can also tweet us at SciFry talking about how the shutdown is affecting you as a scientist or someone who works in the science and technology industries. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Flato. We're talking this hour about the partial government shutdown and its effects on science. My guest is Lauren Morello, the Americas Bureau. Chief of Nature, the journal, 8447248255. Let's go for one last call to the phones in the segment. Let's go to Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Adi Wilson-Pow, is that your name? That's right. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having me, Ira. It's a pleasure to be here.

Go ahead. So I am a neuroscientist who studies how cannabis can alleviate the opioid overdose epidemic. and I use rodent models. So I very routinely inject drugs like PHC and morphine into animals to study how we can reduce the negative impacts of opioids. I'm at a really critical transition point in my career. I'm trying to jump from mentored trainee, like a postdoctoral junior faculty, to a full-blown, you know, assistant professor position.

and I'm working on the very last experiment I need to make that jump. Unfortunately, the last time I put in an order for THC to inject into my animals, we were told that it was indefinitely back-ordered because the DEA is not there to verify that our Schedule 1 license to possess this drug is indeed valid. So although my grant, which is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, although that's all operational, I'm still at a point where I'm going to need to sacrifice all of these animals because they'll be too old to use by the time the DEA approved our drug order. Wow. Sorry to hear that. Yeah, I mean, it's really unfortunate. You know, I've been, I've been listening in and hearing all the talk of all the personnel impacts, and of course, all of that is extremely important.

But animal welfare in this country is also extremely important. I take that very seriously. And for these animals to have no purpose, this is also quite tragic. All right. Thank you, Dr. Po for calling in. Good luck with your work. So Lauren Morello of nature, as this drags on, is it going to seep down even further into places? I think so because, you know, the rules and the policies that govern how science agencies and

other agencies operate during a shutdown seem to kind of implicitly. assume that these things are going to be short, and we're in record territory now. We've talked to a number of groups that run big science facilities like NSF telescopes as government contractors, and they generally get paid in like one-month chunks, and so we're coming, you know, we're closing in on that one-month mark, and they're talking to the, you know, folks left at NSF to see what they can do. The Smithsonian runs the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is for NASA, which is a spacecraft that looks at things like black holes and quasars, and they've got emergency funding that they want to use to keep the spacecraft going, but they've got to get approval from NASA

to keep using those emergency funds beyond a certain point. NASA's got to probably say we need to keep the spacecraft going. And the reason that they might be able to justify that is the spacecraft is 20 years old, and there's some worry that if they put it into sleep, essentially, what they call safe mode, it might be really hard to wake it up. Right. We received a tweet from a fellow at the FDA who asked to remain anonymous, and he said, I'm a postdoc fellow at FDA.

Luckily, we are not furloughed, but we are not allowed to work on our government-funded projects. This is a big deal not only because we are not able to do our scientific work, but also because our work significantly influences the safety and efficacy of drugs. Delays as long as several weeks cause delays in approvals and even analysis of consumer complaint samples. Eventually, there will be an impact on the health and safety of Americans who rely on prescription drugs for their health and well-being. Overall, the shutdown is risking the lives of people as it is prolonged. Lauren, that's... Yeah, I think actually...

the inside. Yeah, there's another concern with the FDA, which is that they've pretty much stopped inspecting food. Like they do dairy and vegetables and seafood. Meat is done by USDA, and I think they're still going. But the FDA director Scott Gottlieb has been talking about trying to find a way to inspect at least the most high-risk foods starting next week to put at least some of the FDA food inspectors back on the job, because especially with things like seafood, like you can imagine. with shellfish. It's really not great to not have government inspectors making sure that those fish are safe to eat. All right. We've run out of time. You know, we have so many calls, so many tweets we could go on forever, and we just hope this doesn't go on forever, and we're here next week talking about it. Lauren Morello, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks, Sarah. She is the America's Bureau Chief for Nature. The number of deaths from opioid overdoses continues to rise in the U.S. The CDC estimates that 47,000 people

fatally overdosed in 2017. That is up nearly 10% from 2016. And while some experts are looking for ways to reduce opioid dependence, others are looking for new ways to prevent the deaths. For example, opioid overdoses are easily reversed by administering the drug naloxone. If the person overdosing is treated in time,

Now, how might you catch an overdose in time? Well, it turns out there's an app for that. University of Washington Ph.D. candidate Rajalakshmi Nanda Kumar has helped develop some software that turns a phone's microphone into a kind of sonar that can detect when a person's breathing has slowed or even stopped. The research was published this week in science translational medicine, and she joins me now to explain the project. Welcome to Science Friday. Hello. Tell us how this works. What is the idea behind this?

So this app works by transforming the phone into an active sonar system. So you can imagine like a bat or a dolphin communicates. We send inaudible sound signals using the phone speaker. And these signals get reflected off a person. And in this case, they're moving chest when they're breathing. So these reflected signals from the chest are recorded using the phone's microphone, and when it's processed, you can actually get the breathing signal. What made you decide to tackle this opioid crisis with technology this way? As you mentioned, opioid overdose is a massive public health epidemic today, and studies have shown that 115 people die every day due to a massive public health epidemic today, and studies have shown that people, studies have shown that 150 people die every day due to

opioid overdose. So as computer scientist, we wanted to use technology to solve this problem and connect people to these life-saving interventions like Noloxone. Now let's say, okay, so the software on the phone is sensitive enough to detect the change in my chest heaving up and down when I breathe? Yeah, so it can detect using just a speaker and microphone, it can detect like up to a seven millimeter motion. So we are talking about this mineworthy. breathing motion. And you have tested this out? Yes. We tested it at

Inside, at Vancouver, British Columbia. It is a supervised injection facility, and we tested it with around 200 people who come to the facility and engage in this high-risk behavior. Okay, so let's say that the software detects a possible overdose. What happens next? Does it immediately call 911? That's a great question. So what we do is that when we see that the person has stopped breathing, the phone first emits an alarm, say basically to stimulate and wake up the patient.

If they fail to wake up and engage with a phone, we then call, automatically connect them to a preset emergency contact, like it could be a family or a friend with naloxone or sometimes emergency services. You know, this sounds very much like the heart monitoring devices, some of the smart watches have now, that they can detect if you have a heart problem and then do the same thing. Sure. That is one of the great example, I guess. Okay, so let's say, you know, you're developing the app. Who do you target at? Who is the app for someone who plans to keep using opioids or someone who doesn't want to overdose?

So the app is targeted for people who have an opioid use disorder today so that they can keep themselves safe while they engage in this high-risk behavior. And this is kind of like a harm reduction technique where they are safe enough to actually then kind of go for the next level treatment to solve their problem. Let's talk about the technology of how the phone is used. Do you have to place it on your body? Do you have to put it on a table? How does it detect your slowdown in breathing?

So it can detect the breathing in a contactless fashion. So we envision that, say, when the person is actually engaging in the highest behavior, when they are setting up their equipment on a table, they just place the phone on the table and then just turn on the app. Is that right? So what about people who want to kick their dependence on? this? Can that aid them in getting through this? Sure. So one of the things we are as a next step, we are planning is to actually connect them to

inpatient or outpatient rehabilitation centers. And this app could also help them kind of monitor through this process of beating the addiction. You know, it's funny because I didn't know my phone could do sonar. What frequency are we talking about here? We get technical with this on a show. So we are talking about higher frequencies which are typically inaudible to people, kind of 18 kilohertz to 22 kilohertz in close to the

ultrasonic band. Isn't that the dog dog hearing range? Yes, it is a dog hearing range. So is all the dogs are going to come? I mean, and sort of send me seriously about that. So we emit these signals in a very low volume. You could like imagine this as like a static sound in a TV. So it, we have actually

while we were testing it and inside people brought their dogs and the dogs were fine. So why a smartphone app? A lot of people have, for example, Fitbits, those tiny little wrist devices, something that's touching a person's body. Wouldn't that be more accurate or sensitive if you wore it on your wrist? So our app, we first targeted it in smartphones because this is a population where smartphones are ubiquitous and you don't need kind of any additional hardware. That said, our app can even run on like Fitbits or smart watches or pretty much any device which has a speaker and a microphone. And since it works in a contactless fashion by looking at the reflections, it doesn't. matter if you're wearing it or if it's anywhere within a meter from you.

Amira Flater, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with Rajalakshmi Nada Kumar. I also would probably think that people who are injecting opioids are not going to want to wear a wristband of some sort. Yeah, that is also true. So when we were conducting the study, one of the things they liked about it is that they just have to like place it on a table and it doesn't like come in the way of them finding a vein or their usual process. Now I know that you know this sounds to me like you could have all kinds of different applications for a sonar like this for example. You were talking about

with developing an app to help diagnose sleep apnea because what? Could you not detect when people are not breathing? Sure. So our team has worked on diagnosing sleep apnea using smartphones where we can monitor the breathing and then while they are sleeping and then identify specific apnea events like central apnea where they stop the breathing or obstructive apnea and the other apnea events yes so any condition which involves monitoring the respiration of a person can be enabled on a phone I would imagine sleep apnea is probably easier Because, yeah. Yes, it's true.

Because we do the sleep apnea in a constrained environment where the person is actually sleeping. So though people kind of toss and turn occasionally during sleep, it's still they are not active. They are not moving compared to an opioid overdose situation where the person is injecting, moving forward and stuff. So when are we going to see this ready for prime time? Our hope is to make the app available, let's say, within a year after the proper FDA approvals. And, you know, all this reminds me of that scene in one of the recent Batman movies where they do something very similar with the cell phones, using the microphones to physically map the entire city of Gotham. Is that a little too far-fetched at this time? Can we do that now?

I think we can do that now. Is that right? Yeah, I think if we put together all the smartphone, use all the microphones and speakers. I think we can do that now. Anything else on your menu of things that you can do with the sonar system on phones? Are you working on? Sure.

Our lab has worked on developing other systems using sonar. One of the interesting projects was we called Finger Ivo, which is a fine-grained finger tracking system. So basically the devices like smart watches are becoming smaller in size. and their screens are small to type anything on them. So the finger IOS system can provide an alternative means to interact with these devices. You can just use your finger, write something on the air, or draw anything on the air. Or like anywhere around the device, it could be a table, it could be your hand,

and then the device can detect it and use it as an input. So the sonar will detect the movement of your finger and air, see what you're drawing. You don't have to touch anything anymore. Wow. You don't have to. Could you draw your own name in the air and then log on somehow? Yeah, you could draw your name. You could possibly, like, say, map your screen to another place.

You could draw even a picture, and it can be detected by the smart watch or any other device like a smartphone. Well, you're one smart scientist, Dr. Nanda Kumar. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Rajalakshmi and Nanda Kumar is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle. That's about all the time we have for this hour. Charles Burkwist is our director, a senior producer, Christopher and Taliatta. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather.

We had technical and engineering help today from Rich Kim, Sarah Fishman, Kevin Wolfe. And we're active all week on all the social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And if you have a smart speaker and you can ask it to play Science Friday whenever you want, It'll play the latest episode of the show. So every day now is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in New York.