Today you’ll learn about how kids’ well-being can affect adult heart health, what our ears can tell us about the cosmos, and how playing music meant for oysters can help them adapt to climate change.
Today you’ll learn about how kids’ well-being can affect adult heart health, what our ears can tell us about the cosmos, and how playing music meant for oysters can help them adapt to climate change.
Happy Healthy Kids
Hearing Data
Oystersong
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/happy-healthy-kids-hearing-data-oystersong
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how kids’ well-being can affect adult heart health, what our ears can tell us about the cosmos, and how playing music meant for oysters can help them adapt to climate change!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: So, Nate, we call childhood the “formative years,” but did you know that what happens beneath the growth spurts and acne could determine our heart health…as adults?!
NATE: Oh man, my heart health is in pre-pubescent Nate’s hands? I don’t know, I used to drink a lot of soda.
CALLI: Well, don’t worry about that, at least not right now. We’re not talking about diet but more mental well-being. We’ve talked a lot, even in the last few episodes, about how your mental health can affect your physical health, but apparently how we feel as children might affect how healthy our hearts are all the way into adulthood!
NATE: I’m listening. I count on that big muscle for a lot of things, and I really don’t want Heart Disease.
CALLI: No you don’t! It's the leading cause of death around the world. We know that stress is really hard on the heart, and that the wear and tear of life and bad habits add up over a lifetime. BUT we only really begin treating heart disease when symptoms start appearing, and that can be years after the damage is done.
NATE: I mean, that makes sense, you only get one heart, it figures that things add up. But all the way back to childhood? That’s a long time…
CALLI: Scholars already had an idea that childhood poverty and abuse could hurt your adult heart health, but they wanted to know if your mental health had any effect. They had to look at people beginning when they were children, all the way into adulthood. The 1958 National Child Development Study followed more than 17,000 English, Scottish, and Welsh children born in the same week in 1958, tracking their health, and heart, all along the way!
NATE: Oh that is so cool, but how do you retroactively ask a child about their mental health?
CALLI: Nate, such a good question. They looked at short essays written by more than 4,000 of these kids when they were 11 years old! The kids wrote about what they thought their life would be at 25. So, to judge their mental health, researchers looked at how optimistic the kids were about that future life! If you’re more optimistic, you’re probably in a better headspace!
NATE: Oh that is so cool, and they had access to these people as adults, as well?
CALLI: They didn’t need direct access. The study included blood pressure and cholesterol scores when these kids were no longer kids, but 45 years-old!
NATE: And….? Was there a link?
CALLI: Yes! It turns out that if you’re in a better mental space as a kid, you’ll have healthier blood pressure and cholesterol. Of course, that also means that those kids who weren't in the best positions, had worse scores. And those results were true even after taking into account things like socioeconomic status and sex. It really looks like your childhood experiences can have a big effect on your adult health.
NATE: Do they have any idea why?
CALLI: We mentioned stress before - they think maybe kids who are more carefree are better equipped to deal with stress, protect the heart, and develop healthier habits.
NATE: I’m just bummed that we know this because of those kids from 1958 who are now in worse health. Is there anything we can do for kids today?
CALLI: I feel ya. But we can work to improve kids’ mental health and target it earlier. It won’t only make them happier kids, it might make them healthier adults too.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, I am still so thrilled about the James Webb telescope, the images are so great. But did you know astronomers are using our other senses, not just sight, to study the cosmos?
CALLI: I would love to taste the Milky Way, or maybe the Sun. Like, is it too honor do you think it’s spicy?
NATE: Not tasting, and sadly, Professor Farnsworth’s Smell-O-Scope I don’t think is related. But, we can use our hearing. Researchers say that converting the piles and piles of data we have into sound could help us more quickly process our findings, and open the scientific process up to those who haven’t always had access.
CALLI: Convert data to sound? Like an audiobook, just listing off the numbers?
NATE: No, we convert data into sounds! It's called “data sonification,” but it's pretty simple. They take some data, like an image of space or a series of numbers, and turn them into sounds!
CALLI: Nate, I can’t carry a tune - you know I have a terrible ear for sound. But how do you even turn a picture into sound?
NATE: Ok what about this, have you ever been at a party, and across the room you hear someone say your name? Or start talking about you? The room is already abuzz, but over all that conversation, you can tune it all out, and hear what those people are saying?
CALLI: I am not about to admit to eavesdropping, but yes, I know what you’re talking about.
NATE: Ok perfect! See, our ears are really powerful, and along with our brains, they help us filter out the unwanted sound, so we can laser in on what we want. In this instance, cutting through conversation to hear the one you want. It's called “the cocktail party effect,” but in Astronomy, you can use the same skill to cut through all the “noise” of space and the data we get back from it!
CALLI: I’ve heard a few sound recordings from space every now and again, but not only are they creepy, they just seem like…white noise?
NATE: To an untrained ear maybe! But our ears are actually sharper than our eyes. We can hear more sounds than we can see colors. AND on top of that, our ears process sound faster than our eyes process images!
That means if we train our ears, they can help us sort through a ton of data! Rather than looking at images, hoping to see the sign of a blackhole, we could translate that data into sound and HEAR patterns faster than see it in light!
CALLI: Oh, so it's like giving our brains a boost in processing power! Our ears can work through more raw data than our eyes can!
NATE: Yes! But not only that, our ears are better at sorting through how things interact. Think of it like this, you have a circle. That’s two dimensions. Then you have a sphere. That’s three dimensions. Now try to think of what that shape looks like in four dimensions….its too complicated to envision!
But our ears? They can relate a ton of what they hear! Ears can understand the volume of a sound and how long it lasts of course. But they can also hear how multiple notes sound together and recognize harmonies. They’re incredible at processing a ton of sounds, and how they relate to each other.
CALLI: But that's like a concert band, not cosmology!
NATE: Researchers are currently running more than 100 experiments to see how we can tap into that human superpower and use data sonification to do….drumroll please….multi-dimensional analysis.
It sounds crazy confusing, but it just means we can use our ears to recognize the data as if it were a bunch of harmonies. Our ears can hear all the different “notes” in it, recognize patterns and classify it all based on how it sounds.
CALLI: I didn't know I was about to be such a fan of hearing after this pod Nate! How do I unleash my own ear super power? Am I going to start processing data in my own life with my ears?
NATE: Well, maybe! It's likely that data sonification makes its way into other fields of science, but for now, astronomy is leading the way. And who can blame them! Any given day they track tens of millions of different events, stars being born, black holes forming, on and on, that they have to process. Why not get our ears involved!
And this can really open doors for the blind and visually impaired to get into science! There haven't been many ways to translate images and plots to these scientists and students, but data sonification might soon be the path forward!
CALLI: Wow, that would be incredible. We need every sense, and every scientist, to tackle today’s problems.
NATE: Yeah, now we just need to get the Smell-O-Scope working.
CALLI: Oh my gosh, that’d be so cool.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: So, we know that the world is starting to feel the effects of climate change everyday, right? But with even more environmental problems looming, one amazing animal is a great example of adaptation to our new climate reality. And it’s not going to be one that you would expect. It’s oysters.
NATE: Oysters? Well, alright. Love ‘em or hate ‘em that would be a very tough loss for the ecosystem but hit me with the info.
CALLI: Well, researchers have discovered a new way to restore oyster reefs and… it’s pretty unexpected.
NATE: An oyster armed uprising?
CALLI: That was terrible.
NATE: Not that. Okay.
CALLI: Yeah, no, not that. But it’s the second most unexpected way. It’s through the use of song.
NATE: A song for oysters? Blue Oyster Cult? No, that can’t be it, okay.
CALLI: What is a blue oyster cult?
NATE: It’s a band, it’s a rock band. Alright, let’s get back on track. So, oysters can hear?
CALLI: Alright, backtracking. Alright, listen: many marine animals use sound in the way humans use sight, like whales use whalesongs to communicate over long distances, same with dolphins. Now, oysters don’t have brains or ears, so they don’t hear things like humans. Instead, they detect water particles moving as they’re stirred up by soundwaves through the use of these tiny sensory hairs called statocysts, which are sensory organs they use for balance and orientation. Oysters use their statocysts to follow the sounds of oyster reefs to find rocks to inhabit.
NATE: Alright so the oysters don’t have ears but they have organs that can detect vibrations, or at least stuff moved by vibrations, just like our ears have mechanisms to help us balance. What I didn’t know is that reefs can make sounds? Explain.
CALLI: Reefs usually make sounds! If you ever find yourself snorkeling along a coral reef, you’ll actually hear a LOT of noise. There’s usually some croaks and groans that you can pick up from the reef. Noise is good, because it signifies a thriving ecosystem, which tells oyster larvae that it’s a healthy habitat. But with the reefs dying, oysters are having trouble finding new homes. That’s where an experiment involving man made Oystersong comes into play.
NATE: So, what does the Oystersong sound like?
CALLI: So about that… it’s not a song in the traditional sense, like you’d from a bird, a whale, or Marvin Gaye or apparently Blue Oyster Cult. It’s the sounds of crackles and pops from fish while they feed, shrimp snapping along, that kinda thing. That’s what it sounds like to us, anyway. To oysters, it sounds like safety, like a home. So the researchers decided to see if they could help oysters find new homes by playing Oystersong they recorded from the healthy, Port Noarlunga Reef in South Australia, over near two large reef restoration sites offshore from Adelaide.
NATE: Did it work?
CALLI: Not only did it work, the results were even bigger than the researchers ever could have dreamed. Around 6,000 more oysters per square foot were drawn to the restoration sites after playing the Oystersong compared to before. And over the next five months, more than four times that number arrived as well. To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, the researchers had a test area as a control where they played ambient sound from oyster-free waters. The control area saw no growth whatsoever.
NATE: Okay, that’s pretty impressive. And I guess it goes without saying that the oyster populations were at risk before researchers started this experiment?
CALLI: Exactly. Not only are they at risk, they might be the MOST vulnerable in the sea right now. A 2011 study found that 85% of all oyster reefs around the world had vanished since the late 90s. This is a huge problem because oysters improve the quality of the water they live in; basically, less oysters equals worse water.
NATE: So could something like this undo the damage we’ve seen to all the oyster reefs around the world?
CALLI: All? No, sadly. But thankfully, a lot of the damage IS reversible and these researchers aren’t the only ones leading the charge. Fishing communities offshore from Brisbane, Australia are planning to restore 100 hectares of oyster reef over the next decade. And countless other communities are starting to adopt similar methods to our fearless researchers’. That said, success isn’t guaranteed. It’s hard to restore ecosystems that haven’t existed for a century, and it can be expensive to get large stocks of larvae. But the researchers believe if we do this carefully, these techniques could help, quote, “re-establish the invisible acoustic highways of the sea – and turn the deathly quiet of many coastal waters back into vibrant, noisy and healthy oyster reefs.”
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: Researchers say that our heart health as adults, could depend on our mental well being as kids! Targeting the mental health of children, and helping them deal with stress and form healthy habits could be a great way to protect future heart health.
NATE: Astronomy has mountains of data, and we already have the tool to process it, our ears! Data sonification, turning data into sounds, is opening the door for more efficient and detailed information processing.
CALLI: Nearly 85% of the oyster reefs on Earth have vanished, but new research out of Australia has found a way to undo a huge chunk of that damage through the use of Oystersong. Not only can oysters hear, they use their sense of hearing to find habitats to live in, and scientists are currently manipulating the senses to ensure that oysters can find forever homes and keep the waters clear and healthy for generations to come!