Learn about why there’s no such thing as a sugar rush; why it took more than 40 years to see NASA’s high-resolution images of the Moon; and, how dogs use referential signals to communicate with humans. 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: Sorry, Parents: There's No Such Thing as a Sugar Rush — https://curiosity.im/2LAgH4a NASA Had High-Res Images of the Moon in the '60s, So Why Couldn't We See Them? — https://curiosity.im/2LAgqya Dogs Use 19 Signals to Communicate With You — https://curiosity.im/32QZ7yw 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 why there’s no such thing as a sugar rush; why it took more than 40 years to see NASA’s high-resolution images of the Moon; and, how dogs use referential signals to communicate with humans.
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:
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/signals-dogs-use-to-talk-to-you-nasas-lost-moon-photos-and-the-sugar-rush-is-a-myth
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 why there’s no such thing as a sugar rush; why it took more than 40 years to see NASA’s high-resolution images of the Moon; and, how dogs use referential signals to communicate with humans.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Sorry, Parents: There's No Such Thing as a Sugar Rush — https://curiosity.im/2LAgH4a (Cody)
The science is clear – there is no such thing as a sugar rush. Sorry parents, but you’ll need to find another reason for your kids’ hyperactivity. And busting this myth is more important than it seems. With the average American consuming way more than the recommended amount of sugar, our belief that sugar gives us energy could well be a contributing factor to a serious health risk.
And the science behind this doesn’t come from one small, flimsy study. This is a thorough analysis of 31 studies — and the conclusion was clear. While the occasional previous research suggested that a candy bar might boost energy levels, when the data was combined, researchers found no relationship between sugar and mood.
In fact, the authors write that sugary snacks actually make you less alert, not more.
So with all that evidence, why so many people equate sweet treats with a boost in energy? Dr. Jody Dushay is an endocrinologist at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, and she suggests that maybe kids are just happy to be getting candy, which they show by being hyper.
Another study gave kids artificial sweetener under the guise of sugar and asked their parents to rate the kids’ levels of hyperactivity, and the results suggested that part of what’s going on is that we simply tend to see what we're looking for. False beliefs affect our behavior, and the idea that sugar can improve mood and energy has been widely influential in popular culture.
In 2008, the average American got 14.6 percent of their daily calories from added sugars. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that added sugars should make up no more than 10 percent of your calories — and in other countries, it's even less. Most of us are clearly way over that limit, and the idea that a Coke can help us get through the afternoon is partly to blame.
So it’s time to let science win out over habit. Data over donuts, we say!
NASA Had High-Res Images of the Moon in the '60s, So Why Couldn't We See Them? — https://curiosity.im/2LAgqya (Ashley)
NASA had high-resolution images of the moon back in the 1960s. And you’re about to learn why we couldn’t see them. Believe it or not, we did actually have the technology to take hi-res pics back then; in fact, the orbiters that photographed the moon in the 60s sent back images that were stunningly high-resolution, even by today's standards. The only problem? We couldn't access them until recently.
I’m specifically talking about photographs were taken in 1966 and 1967 by five spacecraft that were tasked with mapping the moon, in preparation for putting a man on the moon. And what they accomplished boggles the mind. The orbiters mapped 99 percent of the moon's surface with a minimum resolution of 60 meters. That means they photographed nearly all 38 million square kilometers in such high quality, you’d be able to make out the wingspan of a Boeing 747 if there was one on the surface. And some of the orbiters did even better, reaching a jaw-dropping resolution of 1 meter. Since digital photography hadn't been invented yet, each orbiter had to develop the film, scan the photograph like a fax machine, and then beam the analog data back to Earth.
That data was recorded onto magnetic tapes, and the images were printed on huge pieces of paper. And I mean HUGE: they were so enormous that NASA had to rent out old churches to have the room to hang them up for analysis.
Once the images were printed, the tapes were placed in storage in Maryland and — are you ready for this? — we… forgot about them. No, really. This is nothing new for NASA; the original Apollo 11 footage was accidentally taped over. Fortunately, in the 1980s, two people collected the analog tapes to see if they could digitize the data. Those people were Nancy Evans, co-founder of the NASA Planetary Data System, and Mark Nelson from Caltech. UNfortunately, the project lost funding and the tapes were left in a barn in California.
Finally, in 2007, Evans made a last-ditch effort to find someone who would carry on their project, and she found another pair of people: space entrepreneur Dennis Wingo and NASA engineer Keith Cowing. They rebuilt the tape drives, digitized the data, and manually reassembled every image in Photoshop. When they successfully reproduced the famous Earthrise image, they got NASA's attention — and their funding.
After bringing thousands of high-resolution images back from the dead, the Lunar Orbiter Recovery Project completed its mission at the end of 2017. Today, the images are freely available to the public on the NASA website and in the National Archives.
Dogs Use 19 Signals to Communicate With You — https://curiosity.im/32QZ7yw (from Tuesday 10/8) (Cody)
If you think your dog is trying to tell you something, then you might be right, because a new study has identified 19 distinct referential signals that dogs use to address humans. So, can you learn dog? Kind of. It’s not universal, so you’ll have to spend time with an individual dog to learn its specific dialect.
But first: what exactly is referential signaling? It’s what scientists call using intentional gestures to communicate a request. This is different from normal movement because the gestures don't serve a practical purpose — they're just symbolic — and they're repeated until the request is granted.
Hannah K. Worsley and Sean J. O'Hara of the University of Salford in the UK discovered this by combing through hundreds of videos of 37 dogs interacting with their owners. They found that the dogs addressed their owners with 19 distinct referential signals, which included rolling over, jumping up and down, and the seated front-paw hover. Sometimes, a dog used a single gesture on its own, and other times, they combined a few gestures to get their request across. Their most common requests were for food and water, toys, scratches, and opening a door.
Referential signaling has been associated with great apes, babies and more recently ravens. But domesticated dogs are the first animals that scientists have found that use referential signaling to address another species.
And a dog's style of communication is shaped by a variety of factors. One is training: for example, a dog that's trained not to bite, is less likely to use gentle play-biting as a referential signal. Another factor is how many humans live with the dog. The more people living in a dog's household, the more expansive its vocabulary of gestures usually is.
So yes, your pet really is communicating with you, but you probably already knew that, right?
ASHLEY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that there’s no such thing as a sugar rush. That’s just a big ol’ myth!
CODY: And that NASA basically forgot about hi-res images of the Moon for a few decades, until a handful of go-getters finally got their hands on them.
ASHLEY: And that dogs are the only animals we know of that use referential signals to communicate with other species. One more reason why they’re man’s best friend!
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!