Learn about the energy limit of the human body; how they make meat-like burgers from plants; and the surprisingly advanced technology behind your favorite fireworks shows. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Scientists Have Pinpointed the Energy Limit of the Human Body — https://curiosity.im/2Xq9Hh1 How Do They Make Meat-Like Burgers From Plants? — https://curiosity.im/2MJJN3J There's Surprisingly Advanced Technology Behind Your Favorite Fireworks Shows — https://curiosity.im/2MLboSb Want to support our show?Register for the 2019 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. After you register, simply select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2019 Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about the energy limit of the human body; how they make meat-like burgers from plants; and the surprisingly advanced technology behind your favorite fireworks shows.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Want to support our show? Register for the 2019 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. After you register, simply select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2019
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/fireworks-technology-human-bodys-energy-limit-and-making-meat-like-burgers-from-plants
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the energy limit of the human body; how they make meat-like burgers from plants; and the surprisingly advanced technology behind your favorite fireworks shows.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Scientists Have Pinpointed the Energy Limit of the Human Body — https://curiosity.im/2Xq9Hh1 (Ashley)
Scientists have pinpointed the energy limit of the human body. Basically, they’ve figured out the maximum mileage we can get out of our gas tank. And although our bodies may not be sports cars, you’re still gonna want to buckle up, because the human equivalent of miles-per-gallon is here. Okay, so you know how you burn more calories when you’re working out than you do when you’re sitting at your desk? Well there’s a thing called your basal metabolic rate, and that’s basically how fast your body uses energy when you’re at rest. It varies from person to person depending on their weight, sex, and other characteristics. You use more energy as you become more active. And the ratio between your active metabolic rate and your basal metaboloic rate is known as your metabolic scope. The closer to 1 that number is, the closer you are to your resting rate; the higher that number, the more energy you're using. Humans generally max out at a metabolic scope of 5, but some species can get as high as 7.
For the study I’m talking about that was published last month in the journal Science, researchers wanted to find the human body’s maximum sustained metabolic scope — in other words, the point where the body’s rate of energy use over time outweighed its ability to absorb food and turn it into energy. To do that, they studied 6 runners participating in an event called Race Across the USA: a 20-week, race from Los Angeles, California to Washington D.C., spanning more than 3-thousand miles, or nearly 5-thousand kilometers. The researchers had the runners drink doubly labeled water, which is H2O that's been replaced by harmless but rare isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen — specifically, deuterium and oxygen-18. As the isotopes came out in the runners' sweat, urine, and breath, the researchers could measure how much carbon dioxide they produced and, therefore, how many calories they were burning. The team made these measurements before the race began, then again during the first week, and again during the final week. And they found that the runners' metabolic scope went from 1.8 before the race to 3.8 after a week of running. But by week 20, it had leveled off to 2.8, due to the runners' bodies simply using less energy. Some of that was due to the runners just losing weight and running fewer miles per day as the race wore on, but the remaining 600 or so calories per day couldn’t be explained by any obvious factors. It seemed their bodies were adjusting to ensure they could cover the long road ahead, since they would have petered out around 10 weeks if they’d kept their initial energy usage — but they didn’t. The big surprise in this study happened when researchers compared these challenging athletic events to a more everyday challenge: pregnancy. While pregnant humans don't experience that initial spike in metabolic scope, it turns out that their bodies burn energy at about the same rate as an ultra-endurance athlete late in their event. The takeaway from this study is that pregnancy isn't that different from an ultramarathon. So for your next baby shower, you might want to bring some Gatorade.
How Do They Make Meat-Like Burgers From Plants? — https://curiosity.im/2MJJN3J (Cody) [FREELANCER]
Listen up, vegetarians: a better veggie burger is here! Just in time for grilling season here in the U.S. Meat substitutes are booming due, in part, to a new crop of plant-based foods that are scientifically designed to taste better.
One of those plant-based foods is the Impossible Burger, which you can find in hundreds of eateries, including White Castle. Chris Davis is the Director of Research and Development at Impossible Foods, and according to him, a cow is just a technology to transform the proteins, sugars, and fats in plants to a format we enjoy eating. From that point of view, Impossible researchers built a database of all the features of beef and looked at available plant-based proteins to determine which would work best. Then they figured out the exact ingredient that makes meat taste like meat: an iron-rich molecule called heme [HEEm]. After that, all they had to do was engineer yeast to mimic a plant-based heme source, along with the flavor profile of beef, “to generate some flavor chemistry,” as Davis puts it.
Of course, there's the fat which provides the sizzle and the taste, and they simulated using coconut oil.
Another plant-based burger you can find in the meat section of grocery stores is called Beyond Burger, and that’s made primarily with pea protein, canola, and coconut oils — and it even contains beet juice to approximate the bloodiness of beef.
These burgers are just the tip of the animal-product alternative iceberg. Perfect Day is taking the genetic information encoded in the genome of a cow, inserting it into yeast, and creating milk that aims to be identical to cow’s milk in terms of protein composition and taste.
And a nonprofit called New Harvest is working on something called cellular agriculture, which is the process of using a cell culture to make food products like meat, eggs, fish and milk.
In the labs at Impossible, they're also working on creating plant-based chicken and fish and even the elusive bacon. But Davis has other Impossible dreams. His end goal is to make great sashimi — and once he achieves that he claims he’ll really feel like he knows what he is doing. Bon apetit! [ad lib]
There's Surprisingly Advanced Technology Behind Your Favorite Fireworks Shows — https://curiosity.im/2MLboSb (Ashley) [FREELANCER]
The United States has been shooting off fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July since 1777. But the fireworks that’ll be used to celebrate today’s Fourth of July are a lot more advanced than those at George Washington's backyard barbecue. It's not just about new colors and bigger explosions; it's also that modern fireworks shows are composed like symphonies. So let’s talk about the technology of fireworks.
It was during the Italian Renaissance that pyrotechnicians realized they could get additional colors for fireworks by adding ingredients like charcoal and steel. Today, they can conjure virtually any color imaginable by packing the gunpowder in various metal salts. — copper for blue, barium for green, and strontium for red. [add from end]
Besides color, there’s also size, sound and shape, which are all controlled by the design of the shell. Cramming a lot of gunpowder into a small container creates a huge bang, while a whistle is created by slow-burning chemicals pushing a steady stream of gas through a narrow tube. For a crackling sound, the firework is full of lead oxide, which pops and fizzles as it vaporizes in the air. The shape of the explosion depends on the arrangement of explosive studs that spark into the actual points of light.
New ingredients and shell designs may have opened a world of colors and shapes, but digital innovations are what really make modern fireworks displays possible. Programs such as Finale Fireworks make creating a show a lot like composing a piece of music. You choose a soundtrack and backdrop, then simply drag and drop different types of fireworks to create the show, which can then be exported to a computerized firework-firing system. The result? Incredible shapes in the sky that couldn't be drawn without the precision of a digital system. That's how we finally got the smiley-face-shaped explosions the Founding Fathers could only dream of.
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, we want to thank our supporters for bringing you today’s ad-free episode. A very special thank you to Maksmillian Dikarev, Dan Paterniti, Diane Carter, Michael Kovitch, Sergio Moreno, Reid, and Durant! And if you’re listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily FOR FREE, then you can nominate us as a finalist for the 2019 Podcast Awards!
ASHLEY: Yes, the Podcast Awards are back! Last year our show was recognized as the Best Science & Medicine Podcast at the 13th Annual Podcast Awards, and we would LOVE to win another award this year. It only takes a minute or two to nominate us, and you can check the show notes for a link with instructions. But basically, visit podcast-awards-dot-com, follow the instructions on the website to register, and then once you’re signed up, just click on the drop-down menus to vote for Curiosity Daily as one of the nominees.
CODY: We’d love to be finalists for the categories of People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Voting in other categories is optional. Again, that’s podcast-awards-dot-com. It’s free to vote and really will go a long way in supporting our show. But enough about that. Let’s recap what we learned today.
ASHLEY: Today we learned that pregnancy isn’t that different from running an ultramarathon.
CODY: And that there are lots of ways to make plants taste like meats.
ASHLEY: And fireworks displays are composed like symphonies.
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Ashley Hamer.
CODY: And I’m Cody Gough. Happy Independence Day!
ASHLEY: And stay curious!