Learn about how blind and low-vision gamers are taking the “video” out of video games, with Cornell University Professor Andrew Campana. Then, learn about a newly discovered mammoth fossil that shatters the record for the oldest DNA we’ve ever found.
Learn about how blind and low-vision gamers are taking the “video” out of video games, with Cornell University Professor Andrew Campana. Then, learn about a newly discovered mammoth fossil that shatters the record for the oldest DNA we’ve ever found.
Additional resources from Andrew Campana:
New kind of mammoth fossil shatters the record for oldest DNA by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/blind-gamers-take-the-video-out-of-video-games
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how blind and low-vision gamers are taking the “video” out of video games, with Cornell University Professor Andrew Campana. Then, you’ll learn about a newly discovered fossil that shatters the record for the oldest DNA we’ve ever found.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Video games are huge right now — and I'm not just saying that because I'm a gamer. In 2020, people spent nearly 12 billion dollars on gaming in the US alone. But not everyone gets to join in on the fun. Blind and low vision players have to use workarounds to play video games — I mean, "video" is right in the name. But there's a revolution happening, and today's guest is going to tell us all about it. Andrew Campana is an assistant professor of modern and contemporary Japanese literature in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University, and he's been researching how communities of blind and low-vision players stay in the game. Here's what he told us when I asked him how blind people are playing video games.
[CLIP 3:58]
If you're interested in trying one of these games, one that Andrew highly recommended was "A Blind Legend," which is available on iOS and Android. Again, that was Andrew Campana, an assistant professor of modern and contemporary Japanese literature in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University. He'll be back tomorrow to tell us the fascinating ways that blind gamers have a leg up on sighted gamers.
We’ve got big news in the ancient genome sequencing department. For the first time ever, researchers have sequenced million-year-old DNA. Not only that, but the animal the DNA came from? It’s a brand new kind of mammoth!
Why’s this such a big deal? Well, for a couple of reasons. First, sequencing old DNA is tough. When an animal dies, the chromosomes in all its cells — you know, where the DNA is? — those start breaking apart. The pieces get smaller and smaller over time. That makes it harder and harder for researchers to find and interpret the information encoded in all those tiny fragments of DNA.
Researchers have been getting a lot better at piecing together these DNA puzzles, though. And solving one that’s 1.6 million years old is a huge accomplishment. The previous record was between 560,000 and 780,000 years old, so it’s quite a jump.
But this is way more than a technical achievement — it also taught scientists a lot about the evolutionary history of mammoths. The oldest teeth the team examined were 1.65 million years old and 1.3 million years old, respectively. The shapes of those teeth told researchers that they had belonged to steppe mammoths, which are a kind of precursor to woolly mammoths that hailed from Europe.
While the younger tooth did appear to be from a wooly mammoth ancestor, the older tooth was a surprise. It appears to have belonged to a species researchers had not previously encountered. The tooth was found in Russia, but its DNA accounts for about half of the genome of a North American species, the Columbian mammoth.
That’s not just a fun fact — it marks a tiny step forward for evolutionary theory. See, it looks like this newly identified species of mammoth interbred with the other ancestors to the Columbian mammoth about 420,000 years ago. That makes this the first time that ancient DNA has been used to support an idea that’s gaining traction among evolutionary biologists. It’s called “hybrid speciation,” and it means that completely new species can emerge when different species come together, breed, and mix their genetic lineages to form something new.
New breakthroughs in genetic technology might make it possible for researchers to sequence samples that are even older than these mammoth teeth. But there is a limit. Samples this old have to be preserved in permafrost, and the Earth’s most ancient permafrost is about 2.6 million years old.
But there’s definitely still plenty of good stuff frozen away.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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CODY: Today’s last story was written by Grant Currin. Script and audio editing by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Bake a cake! And then join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!