Learn about how archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to map an entire Roman city underground without digging; the gross but cutting-edge science of creating human hair in a lab; and why you see way less color than you probably think.
Learn about how archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to map an entire Roman city underground without digging; the gross but cutting-edge science of creating human hair in a lab; and why you see way less color than you probably think.
Archaeologists mapped an entire Roman city underground WITHOUT DIGGING (Falerii Novi) by Grant Currin
We can create human hair in the lab by Grant Currin
You see way less color than you think by Grant Currin
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/human-hair-was-created-in-a-lab-you-see-less-color-than-you-think-and-mapping-an-underground-city-without-digging
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 archaeologists mapped an entire Roman city underground without digging; the kind of disgusting but definitely cutting-edge science of creating human hair in the lab; and why you see way less color than you probably think.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
A team of archaeologists working just north of Rome has just published a ground-breaking study… without breaking any ground. They dug up some history without digging! They unearthed a mystery without — you get my point. They created a high-resolution survey of the city Falerii Novi [pronunciation at 3 seconds] using a technology called ground-penetrating radar. It’s the first time archaeologists have used the technology to capture an entire ancient town.
This is a big deal, because while Archaeologists do know a ton about the Roman empire, a lot of what they’ve learned is from a handful of well-preserved cities like Pompeii. But those famous settlements don’t tell the whole story. By the first century AD, there were about two thousand cities in the Roman world. Typically, archaeologists only get to excavate one of those when developers want to build something on top of them, and even when that happens, only a tiny sliver of the site gets examined.
That’s why, over the past few decades, archaeologists have looked for new ways to spy underground without digging. Older tools like fluxgate gradiometers can create an image of underground objects based on the way they affect the surrounding magnetic field, for instance. But those techniques can only go so deep and only reveal so much detail.
That’s why ground-penetrating radar holds so much potential. The technology uses radio waves to create a detailed, three-dimensional image of whatever lies underground. The archaeologists behind this study mounted an array of fifteen antennas on a cart; then, they towed it behind an ATV to survey all 75 acres of Falerii Novi. It was a smallish city about half the size of Pompeii located about 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, north of Rome. And it existed about 2,000 years ago.
The data revealed the entire city, including a bath complex, a market, a temple, and a public monument that’s unlike anything archaeologists had seen before. The new technique even let them have a look at the huge network of pipes that received water from an aqueduct and distributed it across the city. Try doing that with a shovel! And the best part is that these findings aren’t what most archaeologists would have expected. The city’s layout isn’t as standardized as other well-known Roman cities, and its public buildings are surprisingly elaborate for a city of its size.
The researchers are excited about the prospect of using this technology to survey other sites in the ancient world. This study of Falerii Novi shows that the tech stands to revolutionize the study of ancient cities — from the roofs to the plumbing and everything in between.
Here’s a breakthrough that’s as exciting as it is creepy: researchers have found a way to grow hairy human skin. (Yeah. I’ll give you a second.) It isn’t a cure for baldness, but this breakthrough could kick hair-loss research into high gear.
Why is it so hard to grow hairy skin in a lab? That’s the million-dollar question, according to Karl Koehler [KOH-lurr], a co-author of the new study. While it’s unclear why past efforts failed, he thinks his team’s efforts succeeded because they basically recreated the skin’s entire developmental process.
His team started with human pluripotent stem cells, which have the ability to transform into any kind of cell in the body. They put a few in a petri dish and periodically exposed them to drugs and proteins. For about two weeks, those treatments guided the cells’ development by mimicking the chemical signals that would normally guide the development of an embryo in the womb. This causes the two layers of skin cells — the dermis and the epidermis — to develop alongside one another, just like they do in the human body.
Once the cells had developed into the types of tissues the researchers want, they stopped the treatments and put the tissues into an incubator, where the nascent layers of skin might spend up to five months growing comfortably. It’s during that time that the cells produce a lot of the signals necessary for developing hair follicles.
But there’s one weird, super-creepy caveat: the skin grows inside out. The bulbous roots of hair follicles grow outward and the actual hairs grow inward, toward the middle of the mass of cells. It’s basically the world’s worst ingrown hair. But as disturbing as that sounds, it’s okay! This tissue isn’t meant to be used as-is. When they implanted it in mouse skin, for instance, it sort of “blossomed.” The hair turned right side out and it grew normally.
The researchers say it’s possible this method could be used to cure baldness, though that would come with the rejection risks of any transplant. But more immediately, it provides a virtually unlimited source of human hair follicles for scientists to learn more about human hair growth — without taking hair from an actual human.
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by KiwiCo.
ASHLEY: KiwiCo creates super cool hands-on projects designed to expose kids to concepts in STEAM — that's science, technology, engineering, art and design, and math. All from the comfort of home! Each box is delivered monthly and comes with all the supplies needed for that month's project, plus detailed kid-friendly instructions and an enriching magazine filled with content to learn more about the crate’s theme.
CODY: Projects provide hours and hours of entertainment during the long summer days
[ad lib 1-2 sentences “Please talk about your experience with the crates and why you love KiwiCo - specifically referring to the summer months!”]
ASHLEY: With KiwiCo’s hands-on art and science projects, kids can engineer a walking robot, blast off a bottle rocket, explore colorful, kid-friendly chemistry, and a whole lot more — all from the comfort of home.
CODY: They have everything you need to make STEAM seriously fun — delivered to your doorstep.
ASHLEY: Get your first month FREE on select crates at kiwico-dot-com-slash-CURIOSITY. That’s K-I-W-I-C-O dot com slash CURIOSITY
How well do people see color? The answer might surprise you, according to a pair of recent studies. It turns out that the full-color world we think we see is almost completely a figment of our imaginations.
In the first study, researchers brought volunteers into the lab and showed them a series of photos, each for about a quarter of a second. Their job was to look at each image and answer a basic question about it, like whether there was a human face at its center. The first ten images they saw were normal pictures, but the eleventh was different. The very middle of the image — where the volunteers were told to look — was normal, but the colors in the rest of the photo had been edited. Some photos were mostly black and white while others had been changed completely. Think blue trees.
After seeing the doctored photo, the volunteers were asked if they had noticed anything unusual Seventy percent of them didn’t notice that anything had been changed.
Researchers found something similar in a different study. This time, they used a high-tech virtual reality display to immerse volunteers in amazing places, like a street dancing performance or a symphony rehearsal. But this wasn’t your grandma’s VR: the headsets included eye-trackers and specialized software that instantly changed the imagery so there was only color in the exact spot where the volunteer was looking. The rest of the footage was black and white.
The researchers tried a lot of variations with this setup, and their findings were astonishing. Two thirds of the volunteers didn’t notice that anything was amiss even when only five percent of what they could see was in color.
In terms of what this pair of experiments tells us about human vision: The researchers say that the rich, technicolor world so many of us live in is probably thanks to our brains — not our eyes. Our brains are able to stitch together visual information from what we’re directly looking at and extrapolate from there to create the illusion of a full-color world. Trippy, right?
ASHLEY: Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today. Starting with the fact that
And scarlet and black and ochre and peach
And ruby and olive and violet and fawn
And lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve
And cream and crimson and silver and rose
And azure and lemon and russet and grey
And purple and white and pink and orange and blue
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by 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!