Curiosity Daily

Meat Disgust, Cosmic Rays for Medicine, Immortal Battery

Episode Summary

Learn about how meat-eaters really feel; using cosmic rays in medical diagnoses; and the Oxford Electric Bell mystery.  People who eat meat think it's gross, which suggests new ideas for cutting consumption by Kelsey Donk Even Some Meat-Eaters Are Disgusted By Meat — And Encouraging Those Feelings Could Help Reduce Consumption. (2021, June 3). Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/06/03/even-some-meat-eaters-are-disgusted-by-meat-and-encouraging-those-feelings-could-help-reduce-consumption/  Becker, E., & Lawrence, N. S. (2021). Meat disgust is negatively associated with meat intake – Evidence from a cross-sectional and longitudinal study. Appetite, 164, 105299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105299  Doctors can use cosmic rays in medical diagnosis by Grant Currin Gough, E. (2021, June 8). The Universe is Constantly Bathing you in Radiation. Incredibly, This Could be Used for Medical Diagnosis - Universe Today. Universe Today. https://www.universetoday.com/151419/the-universe-is-constantly-bathing-you-in-radiation-incredibly-this-could-be-used-for-medical-diagnosis/#more-151419  Morris, C., Perry, J., & Merrill, F. E. (2021). Cosmic ray radiography of a human phantom. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2106/2106.01542.pdf  The Mysterious Battery That Has Lasted More Than 175 Years by Mae Rice originally aired May 28, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/personality-predicting-eye-movements-a-mysterious  Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.

Episode Notes

Learn about how meat-eaters really feel; using cosmic rays in medical diagnoses; and the Oxford Electric Bell mystery.

People who eat meat think it's gross, which suggests new ideas for cutting consumption by Kelsey Donk

Doctors can use cosmic rays in medical diagnosis by Grant Currin

The Mysterious Battery That Has Lasted More Than 175 Years by Mae Rice originally aired May 28, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/personality-predicting-eye-movements-a-mysterious

Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.

 

Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/meat-disgust-cosmic-rays-for-medicine-immortal-battery

Episode Transcription

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 people really feel about eating meat; how doctors can use cosmic rays in medical diagnoses; and a mysterious battery that’s been running for more than 175 years.

CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.

People who eat meat think it's gross, which suggests new ideas for cutting consumption (Cody)

There’s nothing quite as unappetizing as a pile of raw, slimy chicken breast. Just ask a meat-eater. 

That’s right — even people who regularly indulge in meat find it kind of gross. And that’s given scientists a new idea for cutting meat consumption. 

Because let’s face it — meat is pretty bad for the planet, and for our health. Livestock farming is a big producer of greenhouse gases and a big contributor to deforestation. And eating a lot of  meat — red meat especially — is linked to heart disease and certain cancers. And that’s not to mention the ethical concerns, like how animals are treated in factory farms.

So if we do want to cut down on meat consumption, a new study from the University of Exeter suggests it’s probably smart to play to people’s feelings of disgust. 

The study took 711 people who followed different diets. Most were omnivores; some were vegetarians or vegans, and others were flexitarians or pescatarians — that is, vegetarians who eat some meat or fish.

The researchers measured the participants' attitudes toward meat and their level of meat consumption. The researchers also followed up with participants six months later. 

As you might expect, vegetarians felt the most disgust about meat. But it turned out that meat eaters also felt some meat disgust. And the higher the meat disgust, the lower their actual meat intake was. In the follow-up study, they confirmed that disgust influenced people’s actual eating habits — the higher their disgust on the first survey, the less they reported eating meat on the second.

This is the first study that was able to quantify how meat disgust can sway meat consumption. Past studies have suggested that people who eat meat repress their feelings of disgust around eating sentient creatures. No one wants to eat Bambi, but meat tastes good, so omnivores push those feelings aside to get through their meals. 

But now, this study suggests that if we want to encourage people to go vegetarian, we could take advantage of those feelings of disgust and bring them out in people. It might encourage them to eat less meat over time. 

That said, the study couldn’t say whether disgust pushes people away from meat, or if people who eat less meat also express more meat disgust. Future research will have to tackle that question. But if you’re trying to cut down on your meat consumption, try leaning into your feelings of disgust. They might be there right below the surface.

Doctors can use cosmic rays in medical diagnosis (Ashley)

A lot of medicine boils down to a simple question: What’s going on inside of a body? Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently announced a new technique that uses naturally occurring cosmic rays to check out internal organs. In a not-yet-peer-reviewed study, they say the futuristic method could be used to monitor lung inflammation in people with COVID-19, among plenty of other things.

Doctors and technicians have spent decades peeking inside patients using sound waves, electromagnetic radiation, and even radioactive material. Some of the techniques are fancy, but even a regular ole’ x-ray is a marvelous marriage of physics and medicine. The methods of imaging currently in widespread use all have something in common: they create — or at least channel — the particles or waves used to make the image.

This new study is so cool because the researchers used particles that were already out there in the atmosphere. The particles they used are called muons, and they’re created when cosmic rays from space collide with Earth’s atmosphere. Muons are strange little particles. They’re similar to electrons but a lot bigger and way less stable. Once a muon is created, it only exists for a couple of milliseconds before decaying.  But here’s the thing: muons move fast. So fast that a lot of them manage to travel all the way to Earth’s surface during that extremely short lifespan.

The researchers used a pair of muon detectors to measure muons just before they traveled through a 3D model of a human (weirdly called a human phantom) and then again right afterward. Since muons are created high above our heads, setting up a test like this was pretty simple. They put one detector above the human phantom and another one underneath it. 

They used a few different techniques to track how the human phantom affected the muons that passed through it. One of those techniques, called multiple scattering radiography, can determine how thick an object is by seeing how the angles of muons change while they’re passing through it. That can give physicians information about changes in the body over time — things like lung density, which is an important metric in COVID-19 patients.

This was a very early study, but the results were promising. The researchers say that higher quality instruments and a few tweaks to the setup might make it possible for doctors to continuously monitor changes inside their patients — all using nothing more than the muons that are flowing through all of us all the time. 

[A] The Mysterious Battery That Has Lasted More Than 175 Years (Ashley / Cody intro)

CODY: Researchers are always trying to make batteries last longer. But would you believe one of the longest-running batteries ever was created all the way back when Charles Dickens was still publishing new works? To dig into its history, we dusted off this classic Curiosity Daily story from 2018. Have a listen.

[ASHLEY: 1:44 clip]

RECAP

Let’s recap the main things we learned today

  1. ASHLEY: Even meat eaters feel some disgust toward meat, and the more disgust they feel, the less meat they eat. That might be a way to persuade meat-eaters to eat less meat, since meat consumption is a big contributor to greenhouse gases and deforestation — not to mention health problems. 
    1. CODY: I remember growing up I’d hear about people turning vegan almost instantly after reading a book called “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, published first in a newspaper and then released as a book in 1906. Though fun fact, the primary purpose of the book was to expose the horrible working conditions of immigrants and advance socialism in the US. He actually said, quote, “I aimed at the public’s heart and accidentally hit the stomach”
  2. CODY: Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory figured out a way to use cosmic rays from space to see what’s going on inside the bodies of medical patients. Muons, created when cosmic rays collide with our atmosphere, are passing through us all the time. By using detectors to measure how muons change when they’re passing through us, this new technique can monitor changes in a human body over time, including things important in COVID-19 like lung density.
  3. CODY: There’s a bell at Oxford University that’s been ringing since 1840 — more than 180 years. The “Oxford Electric Bell” or “Clarendon Dry Pile” has rung more than 10 billion times, and nobody really knows how. It runs on a “dry pile,” which uses alternating discs of materials like silver and zinc to generate electricity. Back then, people experimented with organic materials like radishes and beets, so it’s really anybody’s guess what’s in there. Probably meat. THEN WHAT, VEGETARIANS? THEN WHAT??

[ad lib optional] 

ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Kelsey Donk, Grant Currin, and Mae Rice. 

CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.

ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.

CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.

ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!