Learn about how AI could help predict which drugs won’t agree with women, and why Point Nemo is considered planet Earth’s spacecraft graveyard. But first, Ologies podcast host Alie Ward is back to tell us about her favorite ologie.
Learn about how AI could help predict which drugs won’t agree with women, and why Point Nemo is considered planet Earth’s spacecraft graveyard. But first, Ologies podcast host Alie Ward is back to tell us about her favorite ologie.
Resources from Ologies host Alie Ward:
AI could help predict which drugs won't agree with women (since studies haven't) by Cameron Duke
Point Nemo is Planet Earth's Spacecraft Graveyard by Reuben Westmaas
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-bugs-are-basically-robots-w-alie-ward
[MUSIC PLAYING] ASHLEY HAMER: Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIE REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you'll learn about how AI could help predict which drugs won't agree with women? And why Point Nemo is considered planet Earth spacecraft graveyard? But first, Ologies podcast host, Alie Ward, is back to tell us about her favorite ology.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity-ology, curiology. Let's satisfy some curiosity. On her hit comedy science podcast, Ologies, Alie Ward interviews ologists. Basically, people who study a particular subject. That could be anything from chiropterology, the study of bats, to agnotology, the study of ignorance, to quantum ontology, the study of reality.
So we had to ask, what's Alie Ward's favorite ology? Warning, there is one curse word in her answer, but it's bleeped. Here's Alie.
[SWOOSH]
ALIE WARD: I would have to say entomology, because there are so many sub-ologies. I'm a real bug nerd. I love bugs so much.
ASHLEY HAMER: What is it about bugs?
ALIE WARD: They're just like these little robots. I feel like if you love the look of robots, these hard shells, and these really high-achieving specialties of a robot. They're just like tiny living robots. And everything from like how beautiful the Blue and a Mason bee can look to how specialized the dung beetle or a paper wasp might be at what they do. I mean, an orb-weaver can build this whole beautiful architecture out of several different silks in 45 minutes. And then when they're done with it, eat it.
Eat it? This thing that came out of a gland near their butt, gobble it up, recycle it, and make a new one. And I just feel like they're so undersung in terms of how specific their talents are. They're just such an example of evolution. Just selecting and selecting and selecting until you got something that just worked perfectly in its environment. And just everything from the colors to-- I mean, who doesn't like a makeover story.
Are you kidding? These things start as eggs. They turn into worms. And then they become capsules. And then something else sprouts out of it. It's crazy.
Some of them don't even eat as adults. They just pop out of this shell. And then they fucking die. And you're like, there's drama. There's talent. I just love a bug man.
ASHLEY HAMER: So entomology, because there's so many ologies you could do.
ALIE WARD: Yeah, gosh. I love a bug.
NATALIE REAGAN: Now, I got to go even deeper. Do you have a favorite bug?
ALIE WARD: OK, one ology I really want to do is I think, it's called odontoloy. I want to say that's teeth. I also want to do teeth. That's another thing. There's always ologies I want to do.
But dragonflies, I really would love to do dragonflies. Because they have this naiad stage that's aquatic. And they have a jaw that can shoot out. And they're carnivores. And they're really good hunters.
They catch its prey. And then they eat it. And then they crawl out of the water. And then they sprout from these exuvia into these completely different looking creatures. And their life cycle is really interesting to me.
So yeah, probably dragonflies. And I have some dragonfly exuvia fossils that were given to me as a gift. That are probably worth more than my last car. So they were very nice gifts. So I'm like, Oh! My last car wasn't worth very much money. So don't get too excited.
NATALIE REAGAN: I'm surprised it wasn't a beetle.
[LAUGHS]
ALIE WARD: But yeah, a beetle or a bug. I mean, come on. Why don't I drive one of those?
[LAUGHS]
Just listening to the scorpions driving down the road or the beetle.
ASHLEY HAMER: Again, that was Alie Ward. She's an Emmy award winning Netflix and CBS science correspondent, and the host of the hit comedy, science podcast Ologies. You can find a link to that and more in the show notes.
[SWOOSH]
NATALIE REAGAN: Most drugs are tested on men. But women get 80% of drug prescriptions. Do that math. That's a serious problem. And it's no wonder that women have up to 75% greater risk of an adverse drug reaction compared to men. Thankfully, a group of scientists have developed an AI algorithm that may succeed where drug trials have failed.
Before a drug goes to market in the United States, it has to be tested in clinical trials to make sure it's safe, and it works. For decades, women were overlooked or even barred from participating in those trials. It wasn't until 1993 that the National Institutes of Health required that clinical trials include women.
But that rule didn't extend to trials run by drug companies, which make up 90% of all clinical trials. This bias means drug dosage and side effect information is almost entirely based on the way the drug works in a white male patient. And that's bad, because sex makes a huge difference in how the body metabolizes drugs.
For example, women have slower digestive and kidney activity than men. They also tend to weigh less and have larger fat stores. All of that can affect how quickly a drug might take effect, and how long it will linger in the body. This isn't just a hypothetical.
We now know that Ambien hangs around longer in women's bodies, which leads to morning grogginess. Women are more sensitive to some Opioids and anxiety medications. And their digestive systems are less hospitable to some antibiotics. And these are just some of the differences. There are probably a lot more we don't even know about.
Researchers at Columbia University have developed an AI algorithm that they hope will speed up the process of making drugs safer for women. The algorithm does this by analyzing 50 years of adverse drug effects reported in an FDA database, and looking for patterns in this data. It would be a daunting task for human analysts to go through this much data. But luckily algorithms don't get bored. So far, the algorithm has been able to identify more than 20,000 sex specific drug reactions. So yeah, there's a lot of work to do.
Now that these sex specific effects are identified, they can be used to update drug dosage information. AI solutions are great. But the next step is to test drugs fairly. If we did that, this would never be a problem in the first place.
[SWOOSH]
ASHLEY HAMER: There are two things you can do in a remote location. Something peaceful, where you can enjoy the solitude, or something dangerous, where you can avoid hurting anybody. The most remote location on Earth is of the dangerous variety. Welcome to Point Nemo, planet Earth's spacecraft graveyard.
Point Nemo is farther from land than any other point on Earth. You'll find it about halfway between New Zealand and the southern tip of South America. But while Point Nemo is interesting to explorers and adventurers searching for the planet's most remote locations, it's even more interesting to rocket scientists. That's because this distant spot is the perfect place to crash land spacecraft. It won't hit anyone's island resort. And since ocean currents keep nutrients away, there aren't a lot of fishing boats around either.
So what spacecraft have been buried in this underwater graveyard? Probably, the most famous resident is the Space Station Mir, which broke up and crashed into the ocean in 2001, all 143 tons of it. Other spacecraft resting in peace or pieces include 145 of Russia's autonomous resupply ships, 4 Japanese cargo ships, and 5 of the European Space agency's automated transfer vehicles. The International Space Station is also on its way to Point Nemo when it's finally decommissioned, sometime in the next decade. That will be quite a splash, since it weighs 450 tons, more than three times the heft of Mir.
Not every spacecraft in history has ended up at Point Nemo though. Sometimes engineers on the ground lose contact with their orbiting satellites. And that means, they can't control the spacecraft's descent. In 1991, Russia's Salyut 7 satellite came down in South America. And in 1979, the OG Space Station, Skylab hit Australia with a massive crash.
In the future, many more space shuttles will join the underwater graveyard. Let's just hope they don't have too much trouble finding Nemo.
[LAUGHS]
NATALIE REAGAN: That was a-dory-ble.
[LAUGHS]
[SWOOSH]
Well, let's recap the main things we learned today. We learned that Alie Ward may love podcasting. But her first love is bugs. From the ecological niches that they've carved out for themselves to their beautiful, colorful exoskeletons, Alie's early love of these six-legged arthropods seems to have influenced her career as an awesome science communicator.
ASHLEY HAMER: I just particularly love that. I don't think we've ever had to bleep an episode ever. And Alie Ward did it. That word was right in the correct place.
NATALIE REAGAN: Yes, she used it with oomph and gusto and absolutely correctly.
[LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: If there was anyone that I wanted to be the first to do that, it is Alie Ward.
NATALIE REAGAN: Yeah. I mean, she could have said that these bugs were making love. But I think she was correct that it was probably more of an angry act. And that was appropriate. So I get it. I love bugs.
When I was a kid, I used to play this game where-- not really a game. I would leave a rock on a place for two weeks. And then lift it up. And they weren't bugs technically. They were arachnids. If I could get a Black Widow underneath that rock, I mean, it was a good day. So I respect Alie very much for her love of bugs.
ASHLEY HAMER: Definitely. And I mean, it's just so great to hear her gush about things she loves. I mean, that's why her show is so popular. It's infectious. You become obsessed with it just like she is.
NATALIE REAGAN: Yeah, and she's 100% herself. She is just as wonderful and fun and silly as she is on the podcast, as she is in real life.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Well, we also learned that despite women being prescribed 80% of prescription drugs, they're rarely part of drug trials. And as a result, they're more likely to have adverse side effects to these drugs. And even though there are rules in place to include them in big drug trials, it's not nearly enough. So AI is coming to the rescue. Scientists have developed an algorithm that has already identified more than 20,000 sex specific drug reactions.
There are so many reasons that scientists over the years have given for not including women in trials. It's everything from, "What if they're pregnant? We don't want to cause birth defects." To, "Menstruation is too complicated. And we don't know where they are on their cycle. What if that affects things?"
And the thing is, the complicated argument, I would argue is a better reason to test them. But in fact, the evidence suggests that women's and men's hormones cycle about the same amount throughout the month. Men have cycles too.
NATALIE REAGAN: They really do. And that's one of the things that we like to ignore or not acknowledge.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
NATALIE REAGAN: The fact that they use that as an excuse not to test just tells them how shortsighted they are. Because they should know how it's going to affect a woman at a certain point of her cycle. If they think it's such a big deal that they're not going to test it, shouldn't that inform them that they should be testing it. I don't know. It blows my mind.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
NATALIE REAGAN: We also learned that deep in the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and the tip of South America is a giant space graveyard called Point Nemo with some really big, dangerous, heavy spacecraft. And there's going to be more. That's going to be my next vacation spot. Let's all go to Point Nemo.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. I mean, I'll go scuba diving in Mir. And actually, to give you a little teaser, we're talking to NASA about what happens when rockets take off and drop stuff. And whether they ever hit ships. Because that was a listener question. And we got the answer.
[SWOOSH]
NATALIE REAGAN: Today's stories are written by Cameron Duke and [INAUDIBLE] And edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan and Sonja Hodgson. Today's episode was edited by Natalia Reagan. And our producer is Cody Gough.
NATALIE REAGAN: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]