Today, you’ll learn about how the human sense of smell may be much better than we ever thought, how the bones inside your body are having interesting conversations with your organs, and a new innovation in desalination technology that uses significantly less energy than its predecessors.
Today, you’ll learn about how the human sense of smell may be much better than we ever thought, how the bones inside your body are having interesting conversations with your organs, and a new innovation in desalination technology that uses significantly less energy than its predecessors.
What’s that smell?
Your body talks without talking.
Water with salt on the side, please.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/whiff-of-victory-bones-be-chattin-desalination-innovation
TITLE:
WHIFF OF VICTORY, BONES BE CHATTIN’, DESALINATION INNOVATION
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! 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.
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 the human sense of smell may be much better than we ever thought, how the bones inside your body are having interesting conversations with your organs, and a new innovation in desalination technology that uses significantly less energy than its predecessors.
CALLI: Without further adieu, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Calli, what are you doing? Why are you pinching your nose?
CALLI: I just learned that, contrary to popular belief, humans have a great sense of smell, so now, I’m noticing all sorts of odors I didn’t notice before, and it’s a little overwhelming.
NATE: Can you at least unpinch for the recording?
CALLI: Okay. Whoa! The smells are hitting me. The styrofoam of the soundproofing. The coffee. The (sniff sniff) is that bolognese?
NATE: I’m coming in from a power lunch! Leave me alone.
CALLI: Hey, good for you.
NATE: So, wait, humans have a good sense of smell? I thought that was an area where we were lacking.
CALLI: Yeah me too. Well, in the late eighteen hundreds, an anatomist named Paul Broca ...
NATE: Oh, I’ve heard of him. He was a giant in the field of brain anatomy. Also, had killer sideburns. You gotta look up a picture.
CALLI: I will. I love a good sideburn. Anyway, Old Sideburns himself noticed that the olfactory bulb, which is the region of the brain that processes smell, was relatively smaller than most animals. He figured, maybe smell’s not so important to humans. But that’s not totally right. We have just as many neurons packed in there as some animals with bigger ones. Since this was the first finding on the matter, it likely influenced the human understanding of our place in the smell pantheon, causing us to underestimate our olfactory abilities.
NATE: So, human smell is ... good?
CALLI: Very good! Our sense of smell is often better than other mammals, like rodents, and monkeys. Though sometimes they smell better than us. It really depends. But we’re certainly not bad. There was a study in 2006 where humans were asked to follow the trail of an odor...
NATE: Was it a pie on a window sill? And did the humans float to it?
CALLI: No, Nate. They were blindfolded, crawling on hands and knees following the scent of chocolate essential oil.
NATE: I dunno how convincing this is. With a guarantee of chocolate at the end, I could do anything.
CALLI: Many people successfully followed the scent, but not only that, they got better with practice! So, as to why we didn’t think our smell was good, maybe it’s just that we don’t use our sense of smell as much as, say, dogs. They actively use smells socially ...
NATE: ... which would make us think that their smell is probably better than ours.
CALLI: Exactly. We’re not going around smelling butts. But, I dunno, maybe we’d be good at it. That’s a point well-made by a scientist named Paul Breslin, out of the Monell Chemical Senses Center. He says that, for all we know dogs might be impressed by our ability to cook! Like, how on earth do those humans know that the spice they put in will taste good just from smelling it?
NATE: It’s true, dogs will eat anything. We’re not over here eating socks, or felt coasters. Maybe we smell better than dogs.
CALLI: We certainly bathe more often. Plus, it’s not fair to compare ourselves to dogs because they have a whole extra organ!
NATE: They do?
CALLI: Yes, they have something called a vomeronasal organ.
NATE: Vomeronasal organ??
CALLI: It’s an organ that allows dogs to smell things that are trapped in liquids. We can’t do that. Honestly, it’s not even clear that what they’re doing with that organ is smell. There’s a different brain region associated. Might be a sixth sense.
NATE: Dogs smell dead people ... under water.
CALLI: Nice reference, but also, they for sure do.
NATE: Ew.
CALLI: Now, while we can’t smell things through water, we can smell things in the air, and we do that really well. We can smell particles as small as two atoms.
NATE: That’s insane!
CALLI: Yeah! And, we have a great ability to distinguish between smells.
NATE: Right, so the first thing is, we can tell that there’s something there to be smelled at all, but also we’re good at saying one smell is different from another.
CALLI: Yeah. Apparently, we can discriminate between over one trillion different smells.
NATE: I don’t even think I can understand that number.
CALLI: You are correct. You cannot. But that makes sense. We can tell between many millions of colors, and nearly half a million audio tones. Plus, we do use smell plenty often. I think some people just weren’t factoring it in. For example, we avoid rotten foods because of smell, which has saved countless lives in human history.
NATE: Plus, saved me a case of the bubble guts at least a few times.
CALLI: We smell each other when we kiss, which some folks think isn’t just a passionate, in-the-moment thing, but an adaptation, to help us smell if this mating partner is sick.
NATE: Or if they just kicked back a bowl of garlic pasta.
CALLI: In your mind, is that bad or good?
NATE: Oh, it’s great. Definitely want a mate with impeccable taste in food. Was just thinking about how garlic-lover is a must.
CALLI: Wait, was your “power lunch” a date? Did you smooch?! Could you smell if she was sick?
NATE: Calli! You’re sick. And I don’t need a good sense of smell to figure out that one.
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Calli, do you group-text with friends?
CALLI: Of course. At any given time, I have a few going, all with different friend groups. My inner circle, my larger group of friends from childhood, my science friends.
NATE: Well, your habit of constantly communicating is yet another thing that you have in common with ... your bones!
CALLI: Wait, what else do I have in common with my bones?
NATE: Height.
CALLI: Fair point.
NATE: So, researchers are learning that our bones aren’t static structures, quietly holding us up at the end of a long day. They’re actually pretty chatty. Bones communicate with the rest of the body, help regulate the processes, and may offer new solutions to treating hard to solve ailments.
CALLI: And here I thought they just help keep me from squirming along the ground like a slug.
NATE: Well, standing upright is still a choice, but the bones help for sure. Let’s start with some bone basics. Bones provide physical support. They create billions of blood cells a day...
CALLI: In the bone marrow!
NATE: Yep, exactly. There are a few types of bone cells. Osteoblasts, osteoclasts, and osteocytes. Blasts build new bone, clasts break down the old stuff to keep a healthy balance. And then, there are the osteocytes. About ninety percent of your bone cells are osteocytes. Recent research has given us a view into how all of these cells do way more than we used to think. Osteocytes, for example, are big communicators.
CALLI: What do they say?
NATE: Mostly, “hey, I made this growth hormone that helps regulate phosphorous in urine. Want some?”
CALLI: Do the other bone cells send messages too?
NATE: Osteoblasts create a hormone osteocalcin. We’ve known it harvests calcium and other minerals the bones need, but it turns out that's not all! Researchers have realized osteocalcin is also tied to testosterone production, insulin production, and muscle function.
CALLI: Oh wow, that's a laundry list of roles, previously unknown!
NATE: These things all come in handy, when, uh… the crap ... hits the fan.
CALLI: Are you talking fight or flight?
NATE: Yes. There’s a decent amount of speculation out there, but one theory is that it increases brain function during a scary event, and helps us better remember the details, so we can remember not to walk that path again.
CALLI: So when someone calls you a bonehead, they’re complimenting your memory.
NATE: Yes! But they may also be talking about how your bones are telling your brain you’re full. They create a hormone called lipocalin 2, which fights infections but also heads to the hypothalamus to curb our appetite. After a meal, our bones pump out enough to triple the level in our blood.
CALLI: Oh wow. Why?
#NATE: Well, building and trimming bone takes a lot of energy. But if your brain and bones stay in touch about food supply, they can regulate when to take in more calories, and when to dial it back.
CALLI: Okay, so then the bones have to be talking to the stomach as well, right?
NATE: Yes! Specifically to our microbe-filled gut biome. So much chatter between the bones and the belly. When we lack a healthy gut, the numbers of bone-destroying osteoclasts plummet, leaving too much potentially unhealthy bone mass. But the bones play a role in processing the food we eat. That osteocalcin heads to the pancreas to ask it to make more insulin. It talks to our fat cells, which then release another hormone that increases our insulin sensitivity.
CALLI: This feels huge! Knowing our bones play a role in our blood-sugar could open the door for new treatments for diabetes and obesity.
NATE: Absolutely! And it works in both directions! Our gut could help us fight bone loss, bone cells could help us better control nutrient regulation ... There is still so much to learn, but this is even giving us hope for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimers that are often accompanied by osteoporosis. If the symptoms are connected, the solutions might be as well.
CALLI: Seems like we should continue eavesdropping on our bones’ conversations.
NATE: We can’t feel too guilty. It’s for science.
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: We’re heading back to one of your favorite parts of the world today, Calli. The world’s oceans!
CALLI: My favorite. What’s the news?
NATE: There is some amazingly cool technology that’s being developed to desalinate and repurpose the water for safe drinking.
CALLI: I thought desalination could be a pretty harmful process?
NATE: Historically, energy-wise, it has been! Although taking water from the oceans and filtering out the salt to make clean drinking water has long been propped up as an important endeavor in keeping water available - it’s also been pretty damaging to sustainability efforts due to the immense amount of energy needed to make it work.
CALLI: I’ve always been quite salty about it.
NATE: Yikes, Calli. Well, anyway, a company named Oneka has recently developed a buoy device that can use the power of the sun, and energy created from waves, to process ocean water into drinking water.
CALLI: Buoy? You mean like those red floating safety cones?
NATE: Exactly! But the Oneka device floats at a depth of roughly thirty-five feet. And the solar panel-covered top of the device is actually small enough that you typically can’t even see it from the shoreline.
CALLI: Functional and discreet. The perfect combo.
NATE: And much cheaper! Oneka estimates that its buoys can save up to seventy percent in costs compared to a more traditional diesel-powered desalination plant.
CALLI: Those are the ones that do more harm than good in terms of sustainability.
NATE: The desalination industry is estimated to contribute up to two billion tons of CO2 emissions per year by 2050. That’s more than twice the emissions of the airline industry!
CALLI: Do the buoys give off any emissions?
NATE: Emission-free!
CALLI: Buoy-yah!
NATE: Bad, Calli! Anyway, the system they operate on is pretty simple. The top-lining panels draw in solar energy to keep the buoy functioning. And tidal power draws the water in for reverse osmosis processing, meaning as the water is pushed through, particles are caught in a kind of filter.
CALLI: Tidal power sounds so cool. But these devices must need some pretty big waves to get water in right?
NATE: They only need waves that are three-feet high. And the perfect range is only three to ten feet.
CALLI: That seems very doable. But once the new water is made - how does it get back to shore?
NATE: Each buoy has a small pump that can send water back to shore through an underwater pipe. The devices are not only able to create about two and a half thousand gallons of fresh water each day; when the economics are worked out the total cost is only about 75 cents per hundred gallons!
CALLI: Hey, nice! But would that even make a difference in places facing severe water shortages?
NATE: Easy fix for that too - their modular design makes a larger network of buoys not only possible, but simple and efficient.
CALLI: So far, these seem kinda ideal. What’s the down side? What about all the leftover salt?
NATE: The buoys account for that as well with a special inlet and outlet system. The leftover salt brine is periodically discharged into the ocean at amounts that can easily disperse and re-integrate back into the natural salt water.
CALLI: But how long do they last out in the ocean? Would we have to constantly switch them out?
NATE: With regular quarterly checkups - the systems can last for fifteen years!
CALLI: Wow. That’s like fifteen times the length of a year.
NATE: ...Okay...
CALLI: I’m pretty excited about this. I worry about water supply, as Earth warms. So, this is kinda thrilling new tech.
NATE: The US Department of Energy agrees with you. They’re also pursuing their own version of the buoy with a five-stage, three and a half million dollar contest designed to speed up innovation in the field.
CALLI: I’m surprised there isn’t already one in existence.
NATE: The National Renewable Energy Lab does have their own model but it suffers from a lack of solar power.
CALLI: First Drake, now clean water creating buoys. Canada always gets cooler stuff before us. So how long until I start seeing buoys everywhere on my beach trips?
NATE: The first commercially operating use of the buoys was completed last year in southern Florida! Right now they’re most useful for waterfront areas like resorts, islands, and coastal communities. But of course, they’re hoping to expand.
CALLI: I’m hoping they do too. There’s a lot of salty water in the ocean, waiting to be desalinated.
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: The human sense of smell has long been underestimated. It turns out, it’s fairly strong. More recent studies show that we can scent-track, sniff out air particles as small as two atoms, and differentiate between over a trillion defined odors.
NATE: New research shows that our bones are not static structures, rather, they actively communicate with, and change, some of our most important organ systems. These new findings could help us use our bones to solve medical problems throughout our bodies.
CALLI: New innovations in desalination technology have created a floating buoy system that can completely change saltwater to fresh water through, reverse osmosis. With the device running on only solar and wave power, it could revolutionize the desalination industry and be a huge step forward in solving water shortages around the world.
NATE: Curiosity Daily is produced by Wheelhouse DNA for Discovery.
CALLI: It’s available anywhere you listen to podcasts. We’d love if you could take a second to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts.