Science Friday - Undersea Rovers, Swimming Sperm, Teen Inventor, Soil Judging. Sep 23, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Sperm Swim Together To Help Each Other Reach The Egg New research is complicating our understanding of how, exactly, sperm are able to reach eggs. The predominant theory is that sperm compete against each other, with the strongest swimmer fertilizing the egg. But a new study, using cow sperm, suggests that sperm might actually swim together, forming clusters to help each other swim upstream to reach the egg. Researchers created a device that has some of the features of a female reproductive tract, which they tested using a polymer substance that mimics cervical mucus. The intensity of the flow of this mucus-like fluid influenced how well the sperm clustered together. The faster the flow, the more likely the sperm were to band together to swim upstream. Ira talks with Dr. Chih-Kuan Tung, associate professor of physics at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University about his research on sperm motility, and how it could improve infertility testing in the future.   Mars Rover, Move Over: Making A Rover To Explore The Deep Sea   When you hear the word ‘rover,’ it’s likely your brain imagines another planet. Take Mars, for instance, where the steadfast rolling science labs of Perseverance and Curiosity—and the half dozen robotic rovers before them—slowly examine the geology of the Red Planet for signs of past habitability. But Earth has rovers too. The autonomous, deep-sea Benthic Rover II, engineered by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), trawls a desolate surface too—this one 4,000 meters below the surface of the ocean, on a cold abyssal plain, under the crushing weight of 6,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. Deep beneath the surface, the rover is seeking data about carbon: What carbon sources make it down to such a deep sea floor? And does that carbon return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, where it might contribute to global warming, or sequestered safely as an inert part of the ocean sediment? Ira Flatow talks to engineer Alana Sherman and ecologist Crissy Hufford, both of MBARI, about the work it takes to make a rover for the deep sea, and the value of its data as we look to the future of our oceans.   Ukraine’s Ongoing Tragedy Inspires Teenage Inventor To Locate Landmines Igor Klymenko is a 17-year-old inventor from Ukraine, and he recently won the Chegg.org Global Student Prize—a $100,000 award given to a young change-maker. Klymenko won it for his invention, the Quadcopter Mines Detector, which is designed to locate underground landmines. The issue of unexploded landmines cannot be understated—some estimates show there could be about 100 million of them scattered across the globe. Klymenko is a student at both the University of Alberta in Canada and the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in Ukraine. He joins Ira this week to talk about the Quadcopter Mines Detector, and how he’s trying to help his home country, Ukraine, through engineering.   Getting the Dirt On The World Of Competitive Soil Judging If you’re looking for a new sport or hobby to try, forget about rock climbing or kitesurfing. If you don’t mind getting a bit dirty, consider competitive soil judging—a contest in which contestants work to best analyze, identify, and describe the layers of soil in a 5-foot-deep trench dug into a field. People can compete either individually, or in a team format, where different members of the team work to describe the soil’s characteristics—from color, to grain size, to how it interacts with water. Clare Tallamy, a senior at Virginia Tech majoring in environmental science, recently won the individual competition in an international soil judging contest held in Scotland as part of the 2022 World Congress of Soil Science. She joins Ira to describe how soil judging works, gives an introduction to soil taxonomy, and explains the practical significance of being able to excel at judging a sample of soil.   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 am I Refledo. Later in the hour, we're experts at sending rovers to Mars, but did you know, we also have rovers deep down in the ocean, yes, and how a 17-year-old inventor from Ukraine is trying to use drones to clear landmines. But first, we're continuing our look at the science behind reproductive health. This week, we're focusing on a different piece of the reproductive process, sperm. On average, one teaspoon of semen contains, about 200 to 500 million sperm. And how does all that sperm window down to a single winner? Think back to your high school biology textbook.

Or maybe you talked about it in health class. Specifically, that chapter about human reproduction, the one everyone in class was just a little embarrassed to read. Well, the story may have gone something like this. Those millions of sperm race against one another. the strongest swimmer gets to the egg first, beating out all the competing sperm. However, new research in cows suggest that sperm may actually swim together, forming clusters to help each other swim upstream to reach the egg.

Joining me now to share his fascinating physics of the swimming sperm is my guest, Dr. Chi Kuan Chung, Associate Professor of Physics at North Carolina A&T, State University based in Greensboro, North Carolina. Dr. Tong, welcome to Science Friday. This is my pleasure. All right, let's talk about this. Let's start with the basics. Your previous research showed that sperm will swim together in groups, right? How did you originally discover this? So the thinking was that when we want to analyze sperm utility, we really want to look at how sperm swim in an environment that better resemble the environment sperm will encounter naturally in the female reproductive tract.

So we started to use some microfluidic devices to mimic several features that will present in the female reproductive system. Sperm swimming in mucus. They don't swim in those watery, that medium that we prepare. So we started to add polymer into some long check. molecules into the solution to create this mechanical property we call viscoelasticity. The word means that the fluid is both viscous, means it flows slowly. And elastic at the same time, elastic means that in some short time scale, the fluid

has a shape that it wants to come back. Regular fluid, say water, the shape is the container you put that in. But once we did that, we put the polymer to increase viscal elasticity of the fluid, we started to see sperm swim very close to each other, mostly in parallel, and forming those groups. Would it be fair to say that what you did was trying to imitate the fluid that sperm swim in? And by getting a better analog to that fluid, you discovered that they swim in groups? Yes, that's exactly what we did.

So we also did some measurement to compare the polymer solution we used with the cervical mucus. And I mean, biological sample, they are not identical every time. But they are kind of in both parts similarities. So the fluid that the sperm are swimming through during actual conception is cervical mucus, correct? Part of it, yes, through cervix. And then there is some different mucus in uterus and different fluids in ovaduct. And you took a sample of cervical fluid from a cow and then tried to get as close as you could by making a polymer, a long chain of molecules?

Yes, yes, in some way, yes. And your latest research looks at how bovine sperm swim and cluster in different conditions. What did you find? So there is actually a natural flow generally speaking outward in the female reproductive system. So this is quite relevant physiologically. So typically when sperm swim close to a solid surface, they will naturally form circular trajectories. And without anything else, they will just do that. And in the no-flow situation, we found that they don't do those tight circle, but they are,

it's either a very large circle or basically the trajectory will become linearized. So there are more direction, or they don't just circle somewhere. and we started to increase the flow rate. And there is some range of flow that the sperm will start to align against the flow. So there is this flow range that when the sperm orient against the flow, we saw that the cluster sperms are actually better aligned against the flow than the individually swimming sperm. And then finally, we keep increase the flow rate to it's higher. and there we can see typically 20 to 30% reduction of sperm being removed once they are in clustered.

So there's an advantage you found to sperm clustering together when there's more mucus like liquid flowing? In all flow rate, there is some different kinds of advantage that we found. Why is it an advantage then? What is there about the fluid then, the way they're swimming, that when they cluster, they do a better, job of getting where they want to go? The mechanical question, how exactly this happens, is still remain to be studied that we cannot answer for sure. But it does look like there is some kind of helping each other in this process. Do all sperm swim in groups or some swimming solo? I mean, do you see an intrepid sperm out there

trying to push past the group and get to the egg first? There are different kinds of collective behaviors that have been reported across different species. So the one we use is with bull sperm, a lot of different kinds of mice, they're having reported of different kinds of, say, the head will attach to each other or the head can hook up to a tail or some guinea pig that can form different structure to swim together. So there are a lot of reports regarding how sperm actually cooperate with each other to reach the goal of fertilization. Interesting. I understand that you originally were using your physics expertise in cancer research. How did you end up studying the physics of sperm? It was potentially accidental. I was at Cornell University at the time, and the initial project got me there was a project for cancer cells to build a device to see how the flow within the tissue influenced the cancer cell migration.

That was a skill I acquired earlier as a PhD students. And then the sperm project came up. They wanted someone to build a device. So that's basically how I got into this. So you became the expert at building the device to mimic the female reproductive track. Initially, it was just building some devices. And I listened to people what you want me to build. And so they brought you in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how it happened. And how long have you been doing this? Our first paper related to sperm was published in 2014, I believe. So a little while now. Yeah. So you really have a niche expertise in this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There aren't many people who know how to do this like you do. Has this research changed how you think about how sperm swim? A lot. I learned a lot through this process. I never thought about it. I guess the common picture that sperm just compete with each other and then one wing is so deeply rooted. But since I started, I realized the whole process is so complicated that I never knew anything about. So for example, whatever we talk about here is probably more relevant in the lower part of the female reproductive tract, saying cervix or uterus.

because in order for them to cluster, you need a higher number of counts. So we are probably not talking about something closer to the fertilization site, which is in the OBITDA. And yeah, and the whole process is just so much more complicated than we learning, say, high school. Yes. Do you have physicians and people who are interested in fertility of patients who study fertility, have you found them asking you about your research? Yeah, we talked to clinicians at conferences and those. And I actually heard from one person who told me that when they look at the sperm samples

after the intercourse from the female body that they actually saw sperm swim like next to each other, but because it wasn't something they were interested in, so it was never like explicitly reported. There were some interesting conversation along the line, yes, certainly. Well, I would think that maybe you could have a fertility test, perhaps, about sperm. Yeah, that's the goal down the line. So at the moment, we are generating some knowledge of how those behaviors help the goal of reaching the egg. So the first thing is that we would like to use these knowledge to develop a better. diagnosis tool for, say, male infertility, because right now the cement analysis has not been

very helpful in quite a bit of cases, those situations that is called unexplained. Once we can get there, potentially we can also talk about maybe we can do some sperm selection for infertility treatment, but that's further down the road and require a lot more other expertise that I do not currently have myself. Well, I'm sure you'll find that expertise from teach it yourself like this or you'll find it from someplace else. Dr. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Chi Kwan Tong, Associate Professor of Physics at North Carolina A&T State University based in Greensboro. I know the days are getting shorter, but we've got a great way to bring some extra sun into your life. For five weeks, starting October 19th, we're hosting Sun Camp for families and educators with kids ages five to nine. You get to talk with Sun scientists, get hands-on activities to try on your own, and yes, it's free. We even have materials available. If you want to learn more and sign up, visit our website at ScienceFriiday.com slash suncamp, sciencefriiday.com slash Sun Camp. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, the deep sea is more mysterious

than our own moon. So why not send a rover to investigate? It is a very challenging environment for a robot in many ways. The pressure and the seafloor where we operate is 6,000 pounds per square inch. You also have the corrosive effects of seawater and is also very, very cold. So these are all challenges that taken together are hard to replicate in the lab. So it makes for the need for doing very robust engineering to make it out there for a year at a time. We'll talk about it on Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. When you think of a rover, I bet your mind lands on Mars, right? Dusty red rocks and the noisy whore of the wheels of a rolling laboratory, slowly, patiently examining a strange planet to understand its past. Well, I do

when I think of it. But did you know that we have rovers right here on Earth? 4,000 meters, that's about 2.5 miles below the surface of the ocean, exploring the depths of an abyssal plane, is one such rover, the benthic rover 2, and it's not looking for signs of past life. No, instead, it's looking for data that might tell us about our future on a warming uncertain planet. Here with me to talk about this deep sea explorer and the work it's patiently doing year after year after year of my guests. Dr. Alanis Sherman, head of the electrical engineering group at Embari. That's the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Dr. Chrissy Hufford, senior research specialist and ecologist at Embari. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you. Thanks for having us. First of all, tell us what this rover looks like, Alana. Well, the rover is about the size of a small SUV, and it's a tracked vehicle like a tank. So it has two treads, one on each side of the rover. And it has these large titanium spheres that are about 17 inches in diameter. And those spheres, there's three of them on the rover, and they carry the electronics and the batteries for the rover. And then it has flotation, which helps the rover not be too heavy underwater. And that flotation actually, it looks like plastic and it's a type of foam, but it is very solid.

And so it's brightly colored so that when the rover comes to the surface, we can see it at a surface. Yeah, it's good to have that. Christy, you know, when I looked at it, it looked to me like that cartoon Wally a little bit. Do you anthropomorphize it to look like people? You know, we do think of it as a pretty charismatic team member, you know, in the lab. And we do definitely notice that it has these little foam packs right in front that look like eyes. So, yeah, we add a little human nature to it. We used to joke that, you know, the rover was my baby because I worked on it for so long.

And then I had two non-robotic babies, and I realized that it was by far my most, my one child that actually did what I said to do. And it's rolling around on the sea floor. Give us a little mental picture of the abyssal plane environment, where it is, what surrounds it? Chrissy? So the abyssal plane covers a very large portion of our earth. The Venthek Rover 2 operates at the base of a feature called the Monterey Deep Sea Fan, where that meets the abyssal plane. And the abyssal plane on Earth is a big, expansive, muddy, open, relatively flat habitat compared to what we're used to seeing on land. And what kinds of stuff is down there?

What kind of cool stuff does it see? Well, our idea of what's charismatic really changes based on the habitat we're looking in. In the deep sea, we have many animals that deep sea ecologists consider pretty charismatic. We have swimming sea cucumbers. We have very large-eyed fish. We have squat lobsters or little crabs that have little spiky projections all over them. It's a really different set of animals compared to what we're used to seeing in shallow waters. And Alana, is this an easy environment for a robot or not? I mean, two and a half miles down,

it's tremendous water pressure and all kinds of stuff that could get into trouble with. It is a very challenging environment for a robot in many ways. You named the pressure, which is true that the pressure and the seafloor, where we operate, is 6,000 pounds per square inch. You also have the corrosive effects of seawater, and it's also, very, very cold. So these are all challenges that taken together are hard to replicate in the lab. So it makes for the need for doing very robust engineering to make it out there for a year at a time. Would you say it's more difficult to engineer this than maybe one of the Mars rovers? Well, I don't want to say that because I think there's a whole slew of challenges involved in making the Mars rover.

But they do have the advantage that they can communicate with it daily and they can potentially, you know, interact with the software there. Whereas once we deploy our rover for a year, we have very limited communications and no way to really, very little ways to change what is operating. Oh, is that right? So it's like it's really a robot. It's autonomous. It's not like you have a little hand controller that you're working two and a half miles above. We often debate whether we should like make a little robotic hand in there that can press buttons, but we haven't gotten to that point yet. But it is truly autonomous. The most we do is we occasionally send another autonomous robot to check on our autonomous robot. This is a surface vessel that can go there and speak with it acoustically. But that's a very limited bandwidth.

And it also does not work very well in heavy sea states. And, Chrissy, what is its mission? I mean, what is it doing down there? What is it collecting? What is it learning? So the Bentha Grover's core mission is to help us understand how much carbon is being consumed in the deep sea. And so it does this with little respirometry chambers that measure oxygen drawdown. And from that, we can calculate carbon consumption.

But one of the advantages of the rover is that it also has this space. to put on other types of sensors and other ways of collecting the data and understanding the DC. So it has cameras, a fluorescence imaging system. It has a current meter. And with these other data sets, we're able to get a pretty decent picture of what's happening down there. We can tell when lots of food is coming down. We can tell when the animal community changes through its pictures of the seafloor. and we can tell the influence of these changes in the carbon cycle on changes in things like, for example,

oxygen concentration in the nearby waters. This time series is over 30 years old, and every time we bring the instruments up, we find something completely new. Not stuck to the instruments. No, luckily not. And why are robots better than people to do this? kind of research? Well, it would be very hard to have a person living resident at 4,000 meters, walking around,

taking measurements with an oxygen sensor. So robots are able to endure in these environments like the Mars rover that are hard for people to exist in. And, Chrissy, tell me about what you're really trying to understand. You said something about you're trying to understand. And you said something about you're trying to understand the carbon cycle in the oceans. Why do you need to know that? What is the ultimate, you know, bit of knowledge you want to grasp here?

Yeah, so as we know, humans have put a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And a big question that scientists have generally is where does that carbon go? And the ocean takes up a large amount of that carbon dioxide, 25% of the ocean. of the carbon dioxide we've put into the atmosphere has been taken up by the ocean. And a lot of that makes its way into the deep sea. And if carbon makes its way to the deep sea in a way that it won't exchange again with the atmosphere anytime soon, that can qualify as deep sea carbon sequestration. So when the deep sea takes up carbon, it pulls it away from the atmosphere where it won't

warm us and, you know, continue to do the harm that we think of as associated climate change. So we're measuring how much carbon makes its way to the very deep sea, 4,000 meters depth, which is the average ocean depth. And we're also interested in what happens to that carbon once it gets there. Does it get consumed right away, which is what the benthic rover tells us? Or might it actually, might some of it be stored in the sediments over longer time periods? In the surface water, phytoplankton can take that carbon dioxide and turn it into food. When that food sinks, it brings that carbon down as food to the deep sea, which is an important base of the food chain down there. And when that food is eaten in the deep sea, the microbes and organisms,

animals down there take in that food and they respire carbon dioxide down there. And that dissolves into the seawater, and it makes the seawater acidic down there. So the deep sea is experiencing ocean acidification just like the surface waters are. We're trying to figure out how much of that carbon makes its way down there and what its role is ecologically, whether it gets eaten right away or it might get stored in the sediments. Would it be possible to sequester extra CO2 we have above the surface down deep down there? Well, the big challenge is doing that in a way that doesn't harm deep sea ecosystems. And if we dump lots of carbon into the deep sea in any way, shape, or form that could be treated as food, then that carbon will be eaten

and that will be released into the deep sea as carbon dioxide and it'll acidify our deep ocean. It will also take up lots of oxygen, and so that will deoxygenate our deep ocean and potentially lead to dead zones. The times when we see some carbon might be stored in the sediments, that's just periods when there's so much coming down in these very brief, what we call pulse events, that the animal and micro communities can't keep up, and there's a little bit left over. And these pulse events are happening? Why? Good question. We think this is traced back to what's happening in the surface and our climate. As the land is heating up more, it's driving stronger, seasonal winds off of our shores, which is driving stronger upwelling and phytoplankton growth

and surface waters. And that just brings more food into the ocean. And some of that makes its way to the deep sea. But what exactly determines how much of these pulse events make their way to the deep sea, we still are trying to figure out. Interesting. You know, the bottom of the ocean, the deep parts of the ocean, we've said for many years that we know more about the surface of the moon, maybe now about the surface of Mars than we know about the bottom of the ocean. Do either of you ever feel a bit like you're helping explore another planet, or does it feel unfair to compare the oceans to another planet or to the moon? For me, as a biologist, I don't think of this as this alien habitat, these alien life forms, I think of them as my neighbors. You know, I'm closer

right now to a whale or some of these deep sea animals than I am to a grizzly bear, our state animal. And so I feel very linked to these animals through my actions and through what happens in the climate and the surface waters. And what I do can, you know, a breath, one out of every four breaths that I exhale are taken up by the ocean. And some of that carbon from me might make its way to the deep sea. Wow. I've never heard that explain quite like that. Alana, what about you? Other planets or the ocean? Oh, well, I would say the ocean personally. I mean, unlike Chrissy, I don't know if I feel like it's another planet, but it is definitely so right for exploration and discovery, you know, as Chrissy said, every time we bring up the instruments, we find something

new. It is stuff we're finding that's relevant to our existence, you know. I find that is very motivating. And it's fascinating at so many levels, biologically, the chemistry, the geology, all of it is pretty exciting. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking to Alana Sherman and Chrissy Hufford about sending rovers to the bottom of the sea. If you had a blank check, which I have back here in my pocket, if you can reach it, and you could use it to build instruments or to do something with it to answer questions that you can't now answer, build a new kind of robot. Alana, what would you do with it?

When I first started my career, someone suggested that the ideal would be a robot that could follow a piece of marine snow from the surface to the seafloor. And I think that's a goal we're still kind of working towards. So I would build an autonomous underwater robot that had the ability to track an object, whether it was marine snow or an animal, and be able to stay with it for long periods of time. A lot of the questions that we try to answer in the ocean require, just like the rover does, the sustained observations. otherwise you miss the most important thing like the pulses that Chrissy mentioned.

If the rover wasn't there all the time, we would miss these pulses that may only be a few days out of a year. And that's true of other phenomena in the ocean. Okay. Now, Chrissy, Alana's decided to share her blank check with you. Of course. And I absolutely love what Alana has chosen to do with that blank check because I share that same desire for sustained, tracked observations. So many of the questions that we have about animals in the deep sea and ecosystems relate to time. The Station M time series has given us this long perspective of how climate has changed the deep ocean. And the next questions we have are how and through

what mechanisms. But we're even trying to get a basic information like how long do animals live. We don't know that for almost all deep sea organisms. And the technologies that Alana described would help us get at that. And you also have, you know, a lack of people knowing what you're actually doing down there, right? Everybody sees pictures from Mars and the rovers. We don't see much coming up from the ocean bottom. And your rovers are any kind of exploration, deep sea exploration, until somebody sent something to the Titanic or something like that. I think that the ocean provides From an engineering perspective, I think it provides a lot of really interesting challenges. And I certainly, when I was in engineering school, did not know about this area of engineering.

And I think from a science perspective, it's very relevant to our lives. And I think it's so ever-present that maybe we kind of forget about it. Alana, what got you into this kind of engineering in the first place? I mean, sending scientific instruments into the ocean. Well, I really wanted to build scientific instruments, and I thought that maybe that would mean working in some biotech laboratory or something like that. But I had heard about Embari. That really aligned with my desire to use engineering towards making scientific discoveries. But I never stepped foot on a boat until my first week here. And that was an exciting day due, which I don't have time to tell you about. We don't have time for it either. I'm sorry. we've run out of time. I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thanks for having. That was our pleasure.

Dr. Alana Sherman, head of the electrical engineering group at Embari, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and Dr. Chrissy Hufford, senior research specialist and ecologist at Embari. Up next, we talked to a 17-year-old inventor from Ukraine, who invented a drone that can locate landmines. It's an issue all too personal to him. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey there, podcast listeners. I were here with a simple request. If you're listening to this podcast, learning something, enjoying yourself, please go to

ScienceFriday.com slash support to make a donation. Our work and this podcast depends on public support from listeners like you. You know that. You're here listening, which means you find our programming valuable. Any amount makes a different. even two bucks, but the lasting gifts are the ones we can count on sustaining donations which we can rely on every year. So please go to sciencefriady.com slash support to make your gift. Again, that's science friday.com slash support.

And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. If you listen to this show, you know we love highlighting young inventors. and this week the winner of the Chegg.org Global Student Prize was announced. It's $100,000 awarded to a young changemaker, and it went to 17-year-old Igor Clemenko from Kiev-Ukraine. His invention, the quadcopter mines detector is designed to identify the location of landmines.

The issue of unexploded landmines cannot be understated. Some estimates show there could be about 100, million of them scattered around the world. And Igor brings a certain personal urgency to his invention because of the war in his home country, Ukraine. Igor is a student at both the University of Alberta in Canada and the Igor-Sikorsky-Keev Polytech Institute in Ukraine. And he joins me now from New York. Igor, welcome to Science Friday. Hello. So thank you very much for this opportunity. It's pleasure for me to speak to you today. Well, congratulations. How does it feel to win this competition. Oh, I'm so excited because a lot of opportunities open it for me now. Now I can

speak with other top finalists and we can make a community. So we can find solutions not for only educational problems that are common in the world, but also for other problems. Also, I'm so excited because yesterday I had been had speech on the Clinton Global Initiative. And I spoke with a lot of leaders of education around across the world. So I'm so excited to have this opportunity to change the world for better. Igor, what inspired you to invent the quadcopter mines detector? The idea came to me in 2014 when Russia attacked Grimnia. I was nine and I thought that how can I, usual student, help my people who are defending

my country, help my people who are fighting in on borders of my country. And after that, I realized that I can come up with some innovation. I can create some machine that can save lives that can help people. And I started researching problems, common awful problems that were connected to Ukraine at that time. And one of them was the land mining problem. I heard about consequences of that problem. They were really awful. And after that, I started thinking about solutions.

I said thinking about robotics for the mining territories. And in 2020, I was interested in drones. And I started working on this project on a drone for the technology. landmines remotely. So how does the drone find the landmines? Its drones implemented with the metal detectors, they are moving along trajectory and transmitting signal remotely to the user.

After that, the signal is calculated by the algorithms that I have created by myself, and it's providing exact coordinates of the landmines. Also, I have created a program that is not only calculating the coordinates, but also creates a mock-up map, which can be put on the satellite, photo and provided two suppers to the military. And now we are working on bigger prototype.

It will be a drone which will not only give coordinates and mock-up map, but also provide the exact type of the landmine and the way of safety removal. Also, this drone will spray paint on the exact location of the landmine. So we are going to use the artificial intelligence to add this function to the new drone to make this process much safer and much faster. Wow. So this So this drone can detect mines underground and create a map of where they are. And now you're working on getting this drone to sense what kind of landmine is there, which will let people know how to deactivate it. That is amazing, and I know it could save a lot of lives.

And I imagine the current war in Ukraine has influenced your work on the drone and made it even more urgent for you, right? Yes, yes. After the February 24th, I have a year. my family moved to the countryside. We were living in the basement for several months. And after three awful weeks when I heard missiles, sounds of missiles, sounds of planes, and we were just really scared in the basement, I just realized that I shouldn't stop. I should just continue working on my project because I was the most determined than ever before

to create this device, to create this product. Because I heard a lot about people who are defending my country. And after that, we also started volunteering. with my parents, with my family, we started preparing and delivering food. So we just started working more and more to develop this project faster. And you're working on this during the war right in a basement, you say, with other people living there? Yes, I was sheltering with eight people for several months after the beginning of active part of the war in Ukraine. It was really hard because that day we took our grandparents and moved to our countryside to the city of Baselkiv. And there was living I and eight people. It was really hard, but I was with

my family, so we were close to each other. But unfortunately, there were a lot of friends, my friends who were in different cities of Kiev, in Kerson, in Kiev, just in different parts of Ukraine. And I was nervous about them. And I had been teaching students, and one of my students was from her son and the city was occupied by Russian. So it was really hard for us to read news, to get new information from my friends who were in cities attacked by the Russian. It was really hard. So now that you've won this $100,000 prize, what's next for the quadcopter and your other possible inventions? So now I'm going to invest most parts of the money to own developing this project with this prototype because I think that my mission in life is to create this prototype

for detecting landmines. And another prototype for removing landmines. So my big plan is to finish with the drone for detecting landmines, provided, certificated in Ukraine. After that, I spoke with Ukrainian factory, which is creating the military equipment. And they told me that if I will have

minimum viable product, MVP, they can just make a mass production and help me to provide most of the military in Ukraine with this device. So, and after that, I want to start another project, a drone, for removing landmines, to avoid using human factor while the mining process at all, to save more lives as we can, because I think the human life is the most valuable things that we have.

Before we go, tell me what it means to you to help Ukraine through this invention. Oh, it's pleasure for me. It makes me happy and inspired because I can save human lives. I can help my people who are defending my country. This time, this is a really hard time for Ukraine, but with support of Ukrainians, with support of the other countries, we can defend our country. And it just makes me happy that I can help my people. I can provide this device to them. And I can save life of somebody's father, somebody's brother or just somebody's son. And that makes me happy.

And that makes me just inspiring. Well, Igor, well wishes to you and your family in Ukraine, and thank you for taking time to join with us, and congratulations again to you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Igor Climenko, a 17-year-old inventor from Ukraine and student at the University of Alberta in Canada and the Igor Sikorsky Keev Polytech Institute in Ukraine. For the rest of the hour, a scientific sport, competitive soil judging. I said competitive soil judging. Surely not an Olympic event quite yet. It's all about being able to correctly analyze, describe, and classify different cross-sections of soil. Claire Talami is a senior in environmental science at Virginia Tech, and earlier this year, she won the individual,

international soil judging title at a competition in Scotland. Welcome to Science Friday, and congratulations. Good to be here, Ira. Thank you. I got to say I never heard of competitive soil judging. Just what is that? Yeah, a lot of people really haven't heard of it. So soil judging is like you said, we identify and classify soils based on certain physical and chemical properties that we're identifying in a cross section or a pit that's dug out at these contests. So when you say judging, it's not this soil is great, this soil is bad, it's classification and analysis, right? Correct. So soils aren't really good or bad, but they are good or bad. bad for different things. So that's what we're looking for. We're looking at properties that make the soil what it is. Soils differ across the landscape, and they might be good for crops, they might be

good for building buildings, or they might just be good for just staying as is as forest or a field or something. So we're really looking at what the soil can be used for and how it looks and how it has developed. Okay, so you dig a trench, which, what, four or five feet deep? Then you get into this pit so you can see cross sections. Is that what you're looking for, the different layers of soil? Yeah, so the pits are four to five feet deep. Some of them come up to my head. I am pretty tall.

But it's really fun to get in there and look at how the soil differs with depth. So we're delineating the layers, or we call them soil horizons. And their differences are based on soil structure, soil color, and soil texture. And also we're looking for maybe rock fragments or geologic horizons. So if you're looking at layers of soils, does each type of soil have like a name? I mean, what's an example of a common soil name? How does that work? Yeah, soils do have names. Our classification system in the United States is called soil taxonomy. And so we're classifying down to, I believe, the great group. So think of it like if you're classifying a lion or something, we have a kingdom phylum class order genus species. So we're classifying down to essentially the genus. of the soil. So an example would be one that we get a lot here in Virginia would be like a hapludalt. So it sounds like a made up word, but I swear it's not. And so it's broken down, yeah, it's broken down into three parts.

So there's hapla, which is the first part of the word. It means simple. So it's a pretty generic version of this type of soil. And then UD stands for Udick or the soil moisture regime. And there are different soil moisture regimes across the U.S. but in Virginia it's Utic. And then the end of the word is Alt, which stands for Altasols, and those are highly leached soils. I think those really rich red Piedmont soils that we get in the southeast. So the whole word would be a hapludult, and that's an example of a soil taxonomic class.

So when your soil scientists get together, do you have like a conversation with all these funny words in them? Oh, yeah. It took me a really long time to learn all the jargon. And even now I'm learning things. I think when my parents hear me talk about soil, they really have no idea what I'm talking about. But yeah. Now, what is the practical application of knowing all of this stuff and even competing in soil judging?

So there's a lot of benefits to competing in soil judging. Not only does it look good on my resume as a college student, but it gets you practical field skills to get jobs, especially for government work. Really, soil judging is skills used for soil mapping and soil description. Soil maps are used for farmers or civil engineers or city planners. They're using soils to actually create a human environment or create agricultural systems. You can also go into academia and do a lot of research. That's personally what I want to do. Or if you just want to be outside and know more about the environment around you,

I know my parents rely on my skills for their garden a lot looking at soil fertility or using soil mapping or looking at soil maps and saying, oh, like I said before, this is a haplu adult, then I can look at the natural fertility of the existing soil and use that to create a better soil. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. And how does soil judging become a team sport? It sounds like it's just one person there in the pit working on the layers. Soil judging is a group contest as well. And it's actually my favorite part because you get to work with your team. teammates to create a cohesive description and kind of learn from each other and work together as a machine to describe the soil. So for Virginia Tech, we have different teams that kind of work on

different parts of the soil description. So I was personally on the pit description team. So I would be describing the layers and I'd be doing the taxonomy portion, so identifying the soil. But then we had other teams working on doing soil texture, soil color, doing calculations, looking for structure, wetness features. Is this all in the same pit altogether? at the same soil? Yeah, so it's actually kind of hard to fit 13 people in one soil pit, but we make it work. Wow, wow. You know, I have a question I have to ask you this. Every time we have a soil scientist on, and that question is, what's the difference between dirt and soil? That's a really good question. I think it's a heavily maybe debated question, but I did just read an opinion piece

about taking, I guess, the pretentiousness out of soil science and kind of reintroducing the word dirt back into it. But if you want the real, I guess, difference. Yeah, yeah. Give me the real thing. So soil has a very long definition and my professor can argue about it all the time. But soil is an institute kind of blanket that covers the earth. It has to be connected to the outer environment and be affected by soil forming factors like climate, water tables, organisms, all those things that make soil different across the landscape. And then it also has to be in place long enough to experience pedogenic development or kind of soil development. And so that's not just geologic deposits creating layers. That's actual movement of secondary particles through time. So

thinking about clay moving through soil with time, humus moving through soil with time. So it has to have those soil layers, not necessarily geologic layers. People can argue that it has to support plant life as well. And dirt is just crushed rock or something? Dirt could be anything, I feel like. Dirt could be rock. Dirt could be like schmutz on your face after being in the field. It's kind of like soil but not in the context of the environment. So like potting soil isn't soil.

Potting soil is just in a vessel and it's not really connected. So that would be dirt. Right. Speaking of vessel, is there a soil judging trophy you get to take home? Oh, yes, kind of. It's kind of like the Stanley. Cup, the one from the international contest. So it's a big traveling trophy. Currently, it's at the headquarters of the AA Soil Science Society of America. I don't have it. I really wanted to drink

something out of it, but unfortunately they wouldn't let me. But it's pretty big. It's pretty cool. When did you first discover that you wanted to get your hands dirty with soil? I think the complicated, maybe whimsical answer is when I was a kid who doesn't want to play in dirt, you know, you're outside and you just are so curious about the world around you. And I think I just didn't stop being curious. I love learning about things. Soil is infinitely complex. And so it makes it really interesting to study because I don't have to confine myself to one field. I could study soil physics, soil microbiology, soil chemistry, soil description, soil ecology. So, when I study soil, I essentially study the environment, the ecosystem, and the world

around me. Yeah, that's a good place to end because that's exactly how it works. We're all connected together. Claire Tellamey, thank you for taking time to be with us today. And congratulations once again. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Claire Talami is a senior in Environmental Science of Virginia Tech and this year's individual international soil judging champion and you can see some pictures of soil judging. I'll bet you never thought you could. And some soil activities on our website,

sciencefriday.com slash soil. And that's about it for this week. If you missed any part of this program, we'd like to hear it again. Subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And we are available to chat all week on social media, Facebook, Twitter,

Instagram, or if you'd like, you can email us the old-fashioned way, SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. And please send us feedback. Tell us what you'd like us to cover, too. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.