Learn about why “beauty sleep” has real benefits for your skin; how plants learn the chemical language of pests to use for self-defense; and a new algorithm that’s fighting deepfakes by looking at heart rates.
Learn about why “beauty sleep” has real benefits for your skin; how plants learn the chemical language of pests to use for self-defense; and a new algorithm that’s fighting deepfakes by looking at heart rates.
How Beauty Sleep Boosts Beauty by Mae Rice
Plants Talk to Worms for Self-Defense by Grant Currin
Fighting Deepfakes with Heart Rate by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-beauty-sleep-boosts-beauty-plants-talk-to-worms-for-self-defense-and-fighting-deepfakes-with-heart-rate
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 why “beauty sleep” has real benefits for your skin; how plants learn the chemical language of pests to use for self-defense; and a new algorithm that’s fighting deepfakes by looking at heart rates.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Scientists just discovered why “beauty sleep” is a thing. New research suggests that while you sleep, your body refreshes its supply of collagen.
This contradicts the scientific consensus around collagen. For a long time, scientists believed that our supplies of the protein were fixed: we developed all the collagen we’d ever have by age 17, and then it slowly deteriorated as we aged.
This made sense, on the surface — our skin does get less supple as we get older. However, collagen isn’t just the key to youthful skin. It actually makes up about a third of the average human’s bodyweight, and it plays a million different roles in our bodies. It cushions our joints and gives structure to our bones, including our teeth. It’s also woven into our tendons, which can bounce back after hard workouts. That swift recovery doesn’t fit with the whole theory of collagen being a fixed resource.
To get the bottom of this conundrum, researchers studied mice, since their collagen works in a similar way to ours. They used mass spectrometers and electron microscopes to check in on the animals’ collagen supplies six times a day, and found something interesting: there are not one, but two types of collagen.
The original consensus was right, in a way — some of our collagen can’t regenerate. This collagen forms thicker “fibrils,” or rope-like strands, in our bodies, and slowly breaks down over the course of our lives. However, it’s interwoven with thinner, temporary fibrils, which researchers call our “sacrificial pool” of collagen. These break down during the day, and regenerate at night. You know...when we sleep? In other words: Beauty sleep is no joke. Get enough sleep, and you’ll help keep your body strong and youthful — from your skin to your tendons to your teeth.
Plants talk to worms as a form of self-defense. I know that was an extraordinary sentence, so lemme unpack it a bit. Plants have been evolving new ways to ward off harmful pests and pathogens for a very, very long time. And now, it turns out that some have learned to speak the chemical language of one such pest, which they’re using to send a pretty straight-forward message: go away!
Nematodes are tiny, worm-like insects that live pretty much everywhere. A handful of soil contains thousands of these microscopic creatures, and they’re constantly trying to infect the roots of plants. In fact, they cause more than a hundred billion dollars in agricultural damage every year. But according to new research, plants have evolved a powerful tool for keeping nematodes away.
The parasites communicate with each other by releasing and sensing a group of chemicals called ascarosides [pronunciation unknown]. Biologists have known for a few years that plants eavesdrop on nematodes and bolster their anti-parasite defenses when they detect ascarosides in the soil. Now there’s experimental evidence that the plants have also figured out how to talk back.
The researchers took a few plant species and treated the soil with an ascaroside that nematodes commonly secrete. Later, they went back to see what the plant had done with the chemical. What they found was stunning. The plants had taken the original nematode compound from the soil and used their own chemical factories to convert it into three other compounds. Most of it had been turned into a particular ascaroside that repels nematodes.
How? Well, the researchers think the nematode-repelling compound is a signal nematodes usually use to call dibs on a tasty root and prevent overcrowding. When the plant releases this compound into the soil, hungry nematodes interpret it as a message from other nematodes telling them to keep on moving.
Frank Schroeder is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell. He led the research and explained the findings this way. Quote, “the plant learns a foreign language, then broadcasts something in that language to spread propaganda that ‘this is a bad place,’” end quote.
Even cooler, the discovery might help scientists develop new insights to help farmers protect their crops against the tiny parasites. Plants! They’re so much smarter than you think.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Purple Mattress. Here’s a question – how did you sleep last night?
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ASHLEY: The ONLY way to get this free pillow, is to text CURIOUS to 84-888.
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It’s now possible to create phony videos that look extremely realistic. Experts call these deepfakes, and they threaten to make it even harder to tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t online. Luckily, a pair of Italian researchers have found a clever way to spot the difference: look for the heartbeat.
The researchers were trying to solve a straightforward problem: how can you tell the difference between a real video of someone talking and a photorealistic computer animation of someone talking? It sounds like a simple task, but it isn’t — because deepfakes are good, and they’re only getting better. The best are indistinguishable from real footage, and fraudsters are already using the technology to cause all kinds of mischief.
Deepfakes are designed to trick human eyes, so the researchers decided to capitalize on an aspect of the videos that humans can’t see. When your heart beats, it pushes blood through your blood vessels in waves. As the blood moves through your body, it reveals your pulse via small variations of the color of your skin. We’re talking super subtle changes that are almost always invisible to the human eye. But they aren’t invisible to computers.
The researchers’ algorithm can tell whether a video shows a real person by looking for evidence of their heartbeat. It identifies areas on the face that should be changing color and analyzes the numerical color values of individual pixels to determine the heart rate. Then it runs that data through statistical analysis to determine whether the video is real.
The researchers tested their creation by showing the algorithm 104 video clips they found on YouTube. 52 were real clips, mostly excerpts from interviews, and 52 were clips from computer games with realistic graphics and presentations of advanced digital renderings. They did choose clips that played to the algorithm’s strengths, but the results were impressive nonetheless. The algorithm correctly ID’d the clip more than 96 percent of the time. So watch out, deepfakes! Engineers are fighting fire with fire.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Mae Rice and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!