Podcast appearances and mentions of dawn kernagis

Gemma and Ian chat to Dawn Kernagis.  Dawn joined DEEP in 2023 as the Director of Scientific Research.   DEEP is an ocean technology and exploration company with a mission to 'Make Humans Aquatic.' DEEP's undersea habitat and submersible systems, combined with multi-phased diver and human performance training, will create the next evolution of subsea science, research, and exploration capabilities.   Dawn is a NASA-trained NEEMO Aquanaut, Explorer's Club Fellow and Women Divers Hall of Fame Inductee and who is also tasked to establish DEEP's first US presence in North Carolina.   Dawn has also been a diver with numerous underwater exploration, research, and conservation projects since 1993, including the mapping and record-setting exploration of some of the deepest underwater caves in the world.   https://www.deep.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-kernagis-995383152/     The BiG Scuba Podcast is brought to you by Narked at 90.   “Beyond Technical”   Narked at 90    If you are thinking of moving across to tech diving or completely new to diving, Narked at 90 can advise and guide on the best equipment and set up for your personal or commercial requirements  https://www.narkedat90.com/           There is currently a code for you to use for purchases and the code is  BIGSCUBA2024.   If you are interested in the INSTA360 action camera we discussed then please click this link:   https://www.insta360.com/sal/x3?utm_term=INRAI8S   We hope you have enjoyed this episode of The BiG Scuba Podcast.  Please give us ★★★★★, leave a review, and tell your friends.   Contact Gemma and Ian with your messages, ideas and feedback via The BiG Scuba Bat Phone    +44 7810 005924   or use our social media platforms.   To keep up to date with the latest news, follow us:   We are on Instagram                     @thebigscuba   We are on Facebook                      @thebigscuba   We are in LinkedIn                          https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian%F0%9F%A6%88-last-325b101b7/ The BiG Scuba Website                  www.thebigscuba.com Amazon Store :                                https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/thebigscuba   Visit   https://www.patreon.com/thebigscubapodcast and subscribe - Super quick and easy to do and it makes a massive difference. Thank you.  

It's time for another Ask Me Anything episode where STEM-Talk cohost Dawn Kernagis asks Ken questions submitted by listeners. In this episode, Ken and Dawn weigh in on: --  Whether AI is becoming sentient. -- How women in midlife might protect their bodies from the negative effects of a slowing metabolism. -- A Stanford study that compared a low-carbohydrate diet with a Mediterranean diet. -- Whether fasting helps optimize cognitive performance. -- The future of hypersonic technology. -- And a lot more. If you have a question after listening to today's episode or any episode of STEM-Talk, email your question to STEM-Talk Producer Randy Hammer at rhammer@ihmc.org. Show notes [00:02:45] Dawn begins the AMA with a question for Ken that was inspired by the Mark Mattson interview, episode 133. Mark talked about skipping breakfast and in his recent book,  “The Intermittent Fasting Revolution,” Mark points out that bodybuilders often skip breakfast and do their weight training in a fasted state, which has the effect of optimizing both muscle building and cognitive performance. The listener mentions that they feel more cognitively sharp in a fasted state but as soon as they break their fast, they don't feel as sharp. The listener asks Ken if this is normal. [00:04:35] A listener asks Ken about a recent news story in which a Russian robot broke a boy's finger during a chess match. The listener goes on to state that several of their friends have jumped to the conclusion that this is proof robots are becoming sentient beings and asks Ken for his take is on this given Ken's AI background. [00:06:02] A listener asks another AI question, this one regarding the Washington Post's reporting on a Google engineer who was fired over claims he made while at the company that an AI chatbot he had been testing had become sentient. The engineer claimed in an interview with The Guardian that the chatbot, LaMDA, was afraid of being turned off, had read “Les Miserables” and that it had emotions. Google maintains that LaMDA is merely responding to prompts designed for it. The listener asks Ken what would be an appropriate test for gauging AI sentience and what other thoughts Ken has about this story. [00:08:32] A listener mentions that they have been following the ketogenic diet for 18 months and have lost 40 pounds. Recently they checked their liver enzymes GGT, AST, TSH and found they were elevated above “normal” and their Alpha fetoprotein marker was measured at 10.3. The listener asks Ken what he has learned about the ketogenic diet's impact on the liver. [00:09:48] A listener asks about a recent paper regarding a Stanford study that compared low-carbohydrate diets with a Mediterranean diet. The listener mentions that in the Stanford study the diets had three similarities – no non-starchy vegetables, no added sugars and no refined grains. The key difference in the diets was that the low-carb diet avoided legumes, fruits, and whole grains while the Mediterranean diet included them. The study measured glucose control and cardiometabolic risk in people with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. The study found that comparative outcomes did not support a sufficient benefit to justify people avoiding legumes, whole fruits, and whole grains to achieve the metabolic state of ketosis. The listener asks Ken for his thoughts on the study. [00:14:57] A listener mentions in their question that they found the Mike Griffin and Mark Lewis interviews both fascinating and worrying. The listener's key concern is that China and Russia are ahead of the U.S. in terms of hypersonic capabilities. The listener goes on to mention that they recently saw “Top Gun Maverick” and asks if it is reasonable that someday we will see jets with human pilots that are capable of flying 10-to-20 times the speed of sound, as depicted in the film; or will these sorts of aircrafts need to be operated by AI or humanoids.

Today's episode features the author of “Why We Get Sick,” Dr. Ben Bikman, a biomedical scientist at Brigham Young University. Ben is known for his research into the contrasting roles of insulin and ketones as key drivers of metabolic function. In “Why We Get Sick,” Ben takes a deep dive into insulin resistance and metabolic health. The book particularly focuses on the role that insulin resistance plays in many of today's most common diseases: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's. Ben and his colleagues at the Bikman Lab investigate the molecular mechanisms behind the increased risks of disease that accompany obesity and excess visceral fat. Much of the research at the Bikman Lab particularly focuses on the etiology of insulin resistance and how it disrupts mitochondrial function. In today's interview, STEM-Talk cohosts Drs. Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis talk to Ben about: How insulin resistance is tied to multiple chronic diseases. The relevance of ketones in mitochondrial function. How so many of our modern chronic diseases are self-inflicted and driven by insulin resistance. How many of the hallmarks of aging are a consequence of insulin resistance. The theory that the longest-lived people are likely the most insulin sensitive. The benefits that occur with carbohydrate reduction as a result of increasing insulin sensitivity. Ben's thoughts about the degree of intermittent fasting needed to induce autophagy in humans. Show notes: [00:02:32] Dawn begins the interview asking Ben about his early life growing up in a small farm town in southern Alberta, Canada, as one of 13 children. [00:02:48] Dawn asks Ben what he was like as a kid and what made him stand out from his 12 brothers and sisters. [00:06:01] Dawn asks about Ben's mother's influence and how she wanted her sons to be Renaissance men. [00:08:29] Ken asks about Ben's experience as a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Missionary in Samara, Russia. [00:15:18] Dawn mentions that while Ben went into his undergrad majoring in exercise science, he wasn't that interested in science at the time. It wasn't until he began working on his master's degree at BYU with Dr. Will Winder that he developed a true interest in science. [00:19:49] Dawn asks Ben how he ended up at East Carolina University for his Ph.D. in bioenergetics. [00:21:42] Ken mentions that Ben, after completing his Ph.D. moved to Singapore for his postdoc work at the Duke National University of Singapore. Ken asks how that came about. [00:25:49] Dawn mentions that Ben is well-known for his work on insulin resistance, stemming from his time at East Carolina when he realized that insulin resistance is tied to many different chronic diseases. Dawn asks what was Ben's ah-ha moment that led him to focus his research on insulin resistance. [00:27:49] Dawn mentions that much of Ben's work is focused on the role of elevated insulin in regulating obesity and diabetes, as well as the relevance of ketones in mitochondrial function. Dawn asks if it is correct that Ben has been on a sort of mission as a professor to teach a new generation of doctors and nurses how insulin resistance works, and why it is so relevant in terms of chronic disease. [00:29:56] Ken mentions that Ben began to take his message about insulin resistance beyond the classroom, appearing on podcasts and making YouTube videos, and also giving a speech to the student body at BYU, titled “The Plagues of Prosperity” making the case that the human race is currently eating itself into metabolic disarray. [00:32:31] Ben's book “Why We Get Sick” points out that historicall, people got sic because of infectious diseases. In modern times, due to sanitation, vaccines, and antivirals, that is less of an issue. Today more people are afflicted by chronic illnesses, many of which are related to metabolism. Dawn explains that the overarching message of the book is that these diseases a...

Today we return with the second half of our two-part interview with Dr. Greg Potter, a British researcher who specializes in circadian biology, sleep, diet, and metabolism. In this second part of our interview, host Ken Ford and Greg continue their conversation about circadian biology and cover topics ranging from insomnia, sleep apnea, time-restricted eating, exercise, nutrition, and supplementation. In part one of our interview, episode 136, Ken talked to Greg about how he became interested in circadian biology and the importance of synchronizing our lifestyles to be in tune with our circadian rhythms. Greg also explains why he decided to specialize in sleep and what his research has taught him about the role and importance of melatonin, a hormone that helps control the body's sleep cycle. Dawn Kernagis was traveling during our talk with Greg and couldn't join Ken to co-host the interview.  Greg gained attention in the U.S. and Europe for his research into the importance of biological rhythms and sleep and how they affect people's lives. His work has been featured in the BBC World Service, the Washington Post, Reuters and other scientific journals and news outlets. In addition to being a science writer and sleep consultant, Greg also is an entrepreneur who co-founded Resilient Nutrition in 2020, a company that leverages science to produce foods and supplements geared toward helping people feel and perform better. Greg earned undergraduate and master's degrees in exercise science from Loughborough University in England a Ph.D. from the University of Leeds. Show notes: [00:03:12] Ken opens part two of our interview with Greg by asking him about continuous positive airway pressure machines, known as CPAPs, that are used for sleep apnea and related disorders, and how these devices relate to circadian rhythms and quality of sleep. [00:05:47] Ken brings up chronotypes, the concept that some people are better suited to an earlier or later sleep schedule. Ken goes on to say that during our interview with Satchin Panda, he argued that chronotypes are largely a myth. Ken asks Greg how much he thinks chronotypes are the product of environment as opposed to evolutionary biology and genetics. [00:10:27] Ken asks what an example would be of an advanced chronotype. [00:11:54] Ken asks Greg about chrononutrition, which is the relationship between a person's nutrition and their body clock. [00:20:46] Ken mentions that muscle protein synthesis comes up as a problem for people getting older who begin a fasting diet which is generally good for their health but prevents them from maintaining or gaining substantial muscle mass, as their protein demands are higher than they were in youth. Ken asks Greg his thoughts on a pulsatile approach to fasting and protein intake for this cohort. [00:23:39] Ken asks Greg about chronopharmacology, what it is and how it might tie into nutrition. [00:25:21] Ken asks Greg to explain his stance that we should re-engineer our lifestyles to better mimic certain aspects of our distant ancestors to protect ourselves from chronic diseases and revive the kinds of energy we had as children. Greg explains what aspects of our ancient ancestors we ought to emulate. [00:29:07] Ken mentions a paper Greg published on sleep and bodyweight, and asks Greg to expound on the relationship between sleep and weight regulation. [00:33:54] Ken asks if Greg thinks it is true that there is now an “epidemic” of sleep loss. [00:36:57] Greg gives a list of advice for people to optimize their sleep. [00:40:57] Ken mentions that many people enjoy a little wine or other drink before bed because they feel as if it helps them fall asleep. Ken asks Greg to talk about how this can damage a person's sleep. [00:43:52] Ken asks when people should go to bed, and how much sleep is needed for a person on average, and how much variation there is in the quantity of sleep needed between people.

Today we have part one of a two-part interview with Dr. Greg Potter, a British researcher who specializes in circadian biology, sleep, diet, and metabolism. Greg gained attention in the U.S. and Europe for his research into the importance of biological rhythms and sleep and how they affect people's lives. His work has been featured in the BBC World Service, the Washington Post, Reuters and other scientific journals and news outlets. In addition to being a science writer and sleep consultant, Greg also is an entrepreneur who co-founded Resilient Nutrition in 2020, a company that leverages science to produce foods and supplements geared toward helping people feel and perform better. Greg earned undergraduate and master's degrees in exercise science from Loughborough University in England before heading off to the University of Leeds for his Ph.D. Ken Ford's STEM-Talk co-host Dawn Kernagis is traveling and was not able to join him for today's interview with Greg.  In this first part of the interview, Ken talks to Greg about his youth and academic background and how he became interested in circadian biology. Greg also goes into detail about why he decided to specialize in sleep and what his research has taught him about the role and importance of melatonin, a hormone that helps control the body's sleep cycle. Be on the lookout for part two of Ken's interview with Greg, which covers a number of topics ranging from insomnia, sleep apnea, time-restricted eating, exercise, and nutrition. Show notes: [00:05:03] Ken opens the interview asking if it's true that Greg's curiosity and fascination with building things as a child led him to tell his uncle he wanted to be an engineer when he grew up. [00:06:22] Greg talks about how he and his older siblings lived on the campus of the school where their parents taught. [00:07:35] Ken asks Greg why he abandoned the idea of being an engineer and instead applied for an art scholarship to senior school. [00:08:28] Ken asks what kind of art Greg liked to make. [00:09:17} Ken asks how a rugby injury in Greg's childhood sparked his initial interest in science. [00:10:33] Ken asks why Greg took a year off before attending university, and what he did during that time. [00:11:04] Greg talks about his first experience with research, which came during a physiological society studentship in his second year of university, where he worked under Dr. Johnathan Folland. [00:12:59] Ken asks about Greg's experiences as an undergrad when he coached sprinters and worked as a personal trainer and massage therapist. [00:14:18] Ken mentions that Greg must have been a good coach because in addition to training sprinters, he also helped two men break the Atlantic Rowing World Record. [00:16:01] Ken mentions that Greg finished his undergraduate degree in exercise science at Loughborough around the same time as the 2012 London Olympic games. The Great Britain Olympic Team used Loughborough as its base. Greg talks about what a great experience that was for him as a recent graduate who had an interest in elite athletic performance. [00:16:42] Ken asks about Greg's experience in between his undergraduate and graduate studies, where he took an internship in the sports science and sports medicine department of the Rugby Football Union. [00:17:36] Ken mentions that while at Loughborough pursing a master's degree, Greg began to pay more attention to the role of biological rhythms and sleep in people's lives. That prompted him to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Leeds, researching circadian rhythms, sleep, nutrition, and metabolism. Ken asks why Greg developed an interest in these research topics and what led him to the University of Leeds. [00:19:58] Ken mentions that Greg has become best-known for his work on sleep, asking about a paper Greg published in Endocrine Reviews in 2016 on circadian rhythm and sleep disruption. Ken goes on to ask Greg to explain how circadian rhythm...

Our guest today describes the global response to COVID-19 as one of the biggest public-health fiascos in history. As you would expect, he gained quite a bit of notoriety for this contrarian view. Dr. Martin Kulldorff is an epidemiologist and biostatistician who has spent the past 30 years researching infectious diseases as well as the efficacy and safety of vaccines. He is internationally known for his statistical and epidemiological methods for the early detection and monitoring of infectious diseases. A former Harvard Medical School professor who today is the Senior Scientific Officer at the Brownstone Institute, Martin worked with the Centers for Disease Control on its current system for monitoring potential vaccine risks. Today, the U.S. and other countries around the world use Martin's detection methods to monitor COVID-19. Martin made national headlines in October of 2020 when he and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford published the Great Barrington Declaration, a paper that questions school closings, lockdowns, travel restrictions and other governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The three authors recommended “focused protection” instead, a policy of protecting senior citizens and others who are most at risk of dying from COVID while allowing young people and others who face minimal risk of death to resume their normal lives. The three authors were immediately skewered for what critics called a radically dangerous approach for pandemic management. At STEM-Talk, however, we appreciate that a curious, open, and even skeptical mind is at the heart of the scientific method. Because of that, we have invited Martin to sit down with us to discuss the Great Barrington Declaration as well as his views about pandemics and the best ways to safeguard the public. We also review with Martin the age-adjusted mortality rates of states like Florida, New York and California which had quite different responses to COVID-19. Ironically, co-host Dawn Kernagis learned on the morning of our interview with Martin that she had contacted COVID. So, she has to skip today's discussion. (Note to listeners: It was just a mild case and Dawn is already back on her feet.) But in today's fascinating episode, Martin and host Ken Ford discuss: -- The safety of vaccines, including the coronavirus vaccines. -- Martin's thoughts about the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children. -- The Great Barrington Declaration and the concerns it raised about the physical, mental-health and economic impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 responses. -- The effectiveness of natural immunity compared to vaccine-induced immunity. -- Whether hospitals should be hiring caregivers with natural immunity rather than firing them. -- Martin's thoughts about Sweden, which was the only Western nation that did not impose lockdowns or close its schools and daycare centers in response to COVID-19. -- What age-adjusted COVID mortality rates for the U.S. have to say about the different approaches states used in response to the pandemic. Show notes: [00:05:20] Ken opens the interview mentioning that Martin was born in Lund in 1962 in southern Sweden, but grew up in Umea, a university town in northeast Sweden. Ken asks what prompted Martin's family to move to Umea when he was two years old. [00:05:47] Ken mentions as an aside that he once spent an enjoyable week at the University of Umea visiting Lars-Erick Janlert.  Ken served as the external expert for a PhD dissertation. [00:07:00] Ken asks Martin what he was like as a child. [00:07:32] Ken asks what drew Martin to math, and if it came naturally to him. [00:08:15] Martin talks about his decision to attend Umea University and major in mathematical statistics. [00:09:09] Ken asks why Martin moved to the United States and to attend Cornell University as a Fullbright Fellow for his postgraduate studies, and why he decided to earn his Ph.D.

Retrieved from ScubaGuru - Expert Advice & Best Practices for Scuba Diving Professionals Dawn Kernagis – Extreme Environment & Technical Diving Legend In this episode of The League of Extraordinary Divers I chat with legendary extreme environment expert Dawn Kernagis. Bio Dawn Kernagis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill where she studies ways to protect the brain […] The post LXD046 : Dawn Kernagis – Extreme Environment Legend appeared first on ScubaGuru.

Katherine Eban’s recent book, “Bottle of Lies,” reveals that nearly 80 percent of the active ingredients of all brand-name and generic drugs as well as almost all of the antibiotics in the U.S. are made outside of the country, mostly in China and India. Eban is an investigative journalist who has written award-winning stories that range from pharmaceutical counterfeiting to gun trafficking. “Bottle of Lies” is a New York Times bestseller that came out in 2019. On June 17, 2020, Katherine Eban gave a talk for TEDMED, a series of TED talks that focus on health and medicine. Their mission is to connect science and the public by sharing stories that inform, inspire, engage and provoke action. Next up are 12 minutes of excerpts from a one hour interview with Katherine Eban by Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis. Kernagis is a Research Scientist and Ford is Founder and CEO of the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC). The full interview is posted on the YouTube channel of the IHMC. They spoke with Katherine Eban on March 12, 2020, about the dangers associated with relying on generic drugs manufactured overseas.

Katherine Eban’s recent book, “Bottle of Lies,” reveals that nearly 80 percent of the active ingredients of all brand-name and generic drugs as well as almost all of the antibiotics in the U.S. are made outside of the country, mostly in China and India. Eban is an investigative journalist who has written award-winning stories that range from pharmaceutical counterfeiting to gun trafficking. “Bottle of Lies” is a New York Times bestseller that came out in 2019. On June 17, 2020, Katherine Eban gave a talk for TEDMED, a series of TED talks that focus on health and medicine. Their mission is to connect science and the public by sharing stories that inform, inspire, engage and provoke action. Next up are 12 minutes of excerpts from a one hour interview with Katherine Eban by Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis. Kernagis is a Research Scientist and Ford is Founder and CEO of the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC). The full interview is posted on the YouTube channel of the IHMC. They spoke with Katherine Eban on March 12, 2020, about the dangers associated with relying on generic drugs manufactured overseas.

In Episode Three, we first hear from Stephan Whelan, founder of DeeperBlue.com and Tec Clark, the Scuba Guru and freediver about what we can expect as we all start to contemplate getting back in the water. Then we have an interview with Dawn Kernagis, a research scientist in the human performance extreme environments arena who tells us what it is like working with the likes of freedivers, special operations military divers, commercial divers as well as astronauts.Then we hear from underwater photographer and cameraman Luke Inman who gives us his take on shooting underwater.And then finally we hear from John Liang on his Best Dive Ever.Don't forget to give us ★★★★★, leave a review, and tell your friends about us - every share and like really makes a difference.

Welcome to the DeeperBlue Podcast! Scuba Diving, Freediving, Dive Travel, and Ocean Advocacy: the DeeperBlue Podcast is your weekly guide to everything happening around the world… underwater.In Episode One we hear from Stephan Whelan, founder of DeeperBlue.com and he shares a bit about what we will find in the upcoming season.Then we have an interview with Director and Producer Hugh Pearson who talks about his life filming underwater on such shows as "Blue Planet 2" for the BBC and "Our Planet" on Netflix.Then we hear from Dawn Kernagis, underwater pioneer and NEEMO Aquanaut on what to expect when living underwater.And then finally we hear from Erin Durbin Sherer as she describes her Best Dive Ever.Don't forget to give us ★★★★★, leave a review, and tell your friends about us - every share and like really makes a difference.

www.DanimalPlanetRadio.com - Dr. Dawn Kernagis is a Research Scientist in the area of human performance optimization and risk mitigation for operators in extreme environments, such as those working undersea, at altitude, and in space. Her team’s current research efforts are funded through several DoD agencies and the NASA Translational Institute for Space Health.

SEO: Jeff Phillips, Naval Medical Research Unit, University of Alabama, F-22 Raptors, hypoxia, oxygen saturation measurement, arterial gas embolism, aircraft oxygen systems, physiologic episodes, Delores Etter Award, Ken Ford,Dawn Kernagis,Jon Clark,IHMC Today’s interview is with IHMC Research Scientist Dr. Jeff Phillips. Jeff joined IHMC a year ago after spending six years as a research psychologist at the Naval Medical Research Unit in Dayton, Ohio. He worked almost exclusively on hypoxia in tactical aviation and was part of team that was instrumental in getting the F-22 Raptors back into operation after a series of hypoxia-related episodes among jet pilots. In 2012, Jeff won the Dolores Etter Award, which the Department of Navy annually awards to its top performing scientists and engineers. Jeff is a University of Alabama graduate who earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology. At IHMC, he works on research that ranges from physical and cognitive performance in extreme conditions to the role that ketone esters can play in protecting special operators from hypoxia, fatigue and other issues. Because Dawn Kernagis was in London giving a presentation when we conducted our interview with Jeff, IHMC Senior Researcher Jon Clark joined Ken Ford to co-host the episode. In today’s episode, we discuss: [00:15:45] Jeff’s participation on a team that investigated hypoxia-like episodes F-22 pilots in the Air Force were having. [00:17:02] The problems with aircraft oxygen systems (OBOGs) and the related physiologic episodes (PE) that extend beyond the F-22 to virtually all frontline tactical jet aircraft. [00:18:19] The physiological effects of hypoxia on the brain and the associated cognitive and perceptual performance deficits. [00:19:54] The most promising technologies for detecting a hypoxia event. [00:29:10] The challenge of understanding what may be a multifaceted phenomenon like OBOGS-related PE events. [00:32:30] Studies that have shown pure oxygen in the lungs causes the alveolar cells to collapse. [00:37:10] The possibility that increased breathing (hyperventilation) may be occurring in aircrew involved in PE events who develop rapid onset hypoxia-like symptoms. [00:48:36] The role that mindfulness plays in elite performance as well as day-to-day life. Show notes: [00:06:06] Jeff talks about growing up in Sandflat, Alabama. [00:06:57] Jon asks Jeff what he was like as a kid. [00:07:32] Jeff talks about the impact that reading Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” had on him. [00:08:19] Jeff explains how he headed off to the University of Alabama expecting to become a newspaperman, but ended up switching his major to psychology. [00:09:50] Jon asks Jeff about his mentors at Alabama who encouraged him to purse a doctorate in experimental psychology. [00:11:50] Jeff talks about a paper he helped author on handshaking and how it generated so much attention that he was interviewed by the Associated Press and network news shows. [00:14:16] Jon asks Jeff how he ended up at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory in Pensacola, Florida. [00:15:02] Ken asks Jeff to describe the work he did at the Pensacola lab. [00:15:45] Jeff talks about becoming part of a team that investigated hypoxia-like episodes F-22 pilots in the Air Force were having when the Pensacola lab relocated to Dayton, Ohio. [00:17:02] Ken points out that problems with aircraft oxygen systems (OBOGs) and the related physiologic episodes (PE) extended beyond the F-22 and affected virtually all frontline tactical jet aircraft. Ken asks Jeff to talk about the how the different military services approached the problem. [00:18:19] Ken asks Jeff about the physiological effects of hypoxia on the brain and the associated cognitive and perceptual performance deficits. [00:19:16] Jon asks Jeff about his participation in studies that assessed different oxygen saturation measurement techniqu...

Episode 71: Elizabeth Nance talks about using nanotechnology to understand and treat brain diseases SEO: Elizabeth Nance, Nance Lab, University of Washington, nanotechnology, autism, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, nanoparticles, blood-brain barrier,diffusion,dendrimer-NAC conjugates,Einstein’s brain, chemical engineering,Ken Ford,Dawn Kernagis,IHMC Our guest today has been described by Forbes magazine as one of the “most disruptive, game-changing and innovating young personalities in science.” Dr. Elizabeth Nance is known for her passionate search to find ways to more efficiently connect resources and information across multiple scientific and engineering disciplines. Her research focuses on using nanotechnology to understand the movement of molecules in the brain. She is particularly focused on better ways to treat brain diseases like autism, stroke, traumatic brain injury and epilepsy. Elizabeth is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. She also has an adjunct appointment in the school’s radiology department. Elizabeth and her lab, the Nance Lab, recently was awarded a $1.8-million-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop quantitative, high resolution imaging and analysis platforms to understand nanoparticle behavior, with a specific focus on the brain. In today’s episode, we discuss: The pushback Elizabeth received in college when she tried to apply chemical engineering to neurological diseases. [00:11:33] How Elizabeth developed the first nanoparticles that could penetrate deep within the brain. [00:13:52] The many potential applications of nanoparticle technology in the treatment of neurological disorders, diseases and injuries. [00:17:10] The structure, and unique functions of the blood-brain barrier. [00:28:11] The dendrimer-NAC conjugates, and how they increase intracellular glutathione to reduce injury in the inflamed brain. [00:35:01] How “disease directing engineering” has the potential to allow for the leveraging of common hallmarks of neurological disease to better deliver therapies. [00:40:19] How change in brain metabolism affects targeted therapeutic deliveries to a specific region of the brain. [00:52:14] Show notes: [00:03:31] Elizabeth talks about growing up in North Carolina and how her family goes back nine generations to the original homesteaders of Charlotte. [00:04:06] Dawn mentions that Elizabeth liked to spend a lot of time outdoors as a child and asks her if it is true that she was especially good at climbing trees. [00:05:12] Dawn asks Elizabeth about her hectic schedule in high school, which, in addition to her studies, included soccer, track and volleyball. [00:06:03] Ken asks Elizabeth when she became interested in science. [00:08:22] Dawn mentions how in North Carolina a person has to decide early on if they are a Chapel Hill fan or a North Carolina State fan. Dawn asks if this culture contributed to Elizabeth going to NC State. [00:09:28] Dawn asks Elizabeth about her decision to major in chemical engineering. [00:11:33] Dawn asks Elizabeth to discuss the pushback she received in college when she tried to apply chemical engineering to neurological diseases. [00:13:52] Ken mentions that Elizabeth developed the first nanoparticles that could penetrate deep within the brain. This was a major reason why Forbes named her one of its “30 Under 30 Disruptive Influencers in Science” back in 2015. He asks if she could talk about the work she did in developing that platform and how it changed the way we might think about delivering drugs in the brain. [00:17:10]Ken mentions that there are many potential applications of nanoparticle technology in the treatment of neurological disorders, diseases and injuries. He asks Elizabeth to describe the structure of a nanoparticle in general, and how it can accomplish targeted delivery of a therapeutic.

Dr. Kenneth Ford is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), a research institute that is home to world-class scientists and engineers focused on building technology that extends human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tulane University and is the author of hundreds of scientific papers and six books, with interests in an array of areas including artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and human performance under extreme conditions. Ken is also co-host to the popular and respected STEM-Talk podcast which recently won first place in the 12th Annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards in the Science and Medicine category. Many leaders in the areas of health and exercise physiology appear on STEM-talk, with a focus on the scientific elements behind extending human longevity and performance. Ken is here with us today to talk about some current projects at IHMC, artificial intelligence, ketosis, and his favorite cutting-edge training methods. Here’s the outline of this interview with Ken Ford: [00:04:16] Episode 49 of STEM-Talk, first place People's Choice Awards in the Science and Medicine category. [00:06:43] Current projects. [00:07:10] Dr. James Allen, World Modelers. [00:08:54] Economic modeling, weather modeling for crop failure. [00:09:45] Cognitive orthotics. [00:10:36] Dr. Dawn Kernagis, brain glymphatic system. Podcast: Human Performance and Resilience in Extreme Environments. [00:11:52] Artificial gravity. [00:12:34] The double secret selection committee. [00:13:56] Extending human capabilities. [00:16:35] Locomotion for paraplegics. [00:17:31] Humans in extreme environments. [00:19:51] Space flight and aging. [00:20:41] Few rules but strong culture and a flat organisational structure. [00:22:07] Growth mindset. [00:22:41] Choosing people rather than an agenda. [00:28:09] Fostering a network of friends and experts. [00:28:46] Barry Barish, STEM-talk Episode 10. [00:31:37] Understanding the limits of knowledge. [00:32:47] Do the big tech companies have too much power? [00:35:51] EU 2.5$ penalty for Google. [00:36:45] Google D.C. influence operation. [00:38:36] Duckduckgo. [00:39:10] The term artificial intelligence. [00:42:41] The danger of a superhuman AI. [00:44:21] HAL 9000. [00:45:09] Dropped a physics. [00:45:58] Driverless cars. [00:51:52] Ketogenic diet. [00:53:23] The benefits of ketones. [00:53:55] Signalling functions of beta hydroxybutyrate (BHB) and acetoacetate. [00:54:26] Study: Shimazu, Tadahiro, et al. "Suppression of oxidative stress by β-hydroxybutyrate, an endogenous histone deacetylase inhibitor." Science 339.6116 (2013): 211-214. [00:55:11] Study: Newman, John C., et al. "Ketogenic diet reduces midlife mortality and improves memory in aging mice." Cell metabolism 26.3 (2017): 547-557. [00:55:57] Study: Sleiman, Sama F., et al. "Exercise promotes the expression of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) through the action of the ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate." Elife 5 (2016). [00:57:03] Study: Roberts, Megan N., et al. "A ketogenic diet extends longevity and healthspan in adult mice." Cell metabolism 26.3 (2017): 539-546. [00:58:03] Podcast: Why Your Diet Isn’t Working: Undereating and Overtraining, with Megan Roberts. [00:58:24] Podcast: The Keto Masterclass with Robb Wolf. [00:59:38] Virta Health, results with 0.5 - 1 mmol/L of BHB. [01:00:11] Study: Shimazu, Tadahiro, et al. "Suppression of oxidative stress by β-hydroxybutyrate, an endogenous histone deacetylase inhibitor." Science 339.6116 (2013): 211-214. [01:01:01] Study: Cunnane, Stephen C., et al. "Can ketones compensate for deteriorating brain glucose uptake during aging? Implications for the risk and treatment of Alzheimer's disease." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1367.1 (2016): 12-20. [01:02:53] Exogenous ketones. [01:05:26] Exercise. [01:06:33] Hierarchical sets. [01:07:11] Art DeVany. [01:08:17] Episode 30 of STEM-Talk. [01:10:15] Eccentric movements. [01:10:41] Study: Schoenfeld, Brad J., et al. "Hypertrophic effects of concentric vs. eccentric muscle actions: a systematic review and meta-analysis." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 31.9 (2017): 2599-2608. [01:13:37] Blood flow restriction training. [01:14:41] Episode 34 of STEM-Talk. [01:16:31] Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen, Dr. Adam Anz. [01:18:13] Kaatsu and Go B Strong (discount code: IHMC). [01:18:43] Vibration platform training. [01:19:16] Power Plate. [01:21:12] Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). [01:22:56] PowerDot. [01:26:41] Kettlebells. [01:27:04] Pavel Tsatsouline. [01:28:21] Strong First, Coaches Mark Reifkind and Tracy Reifkind. [01:29:15] Why not cardio? [01:30:36] Zoo humans. Book: The Human Zoo: A Zoologist’s Classic Study of the Urban Animal, by Desmond Morris [01:32:12] Study: Fain, Elizabeth, and Cara Weatherford. "Comparative study of millennials' (age 20-34 years) grip and lateral pinch with the norms." Journal of Hand Therapy 29.4 (2016): 483-488. [01:34:56] Don't be normal. [01:38:07] Finding versus inventing a purpose. [01:41:45] Cal Newport. [01:43:19] IHMC.us newsletter.

Today’s episode features the second of Dawn Kernagis’ two-part interview with her STEM-Talk co-host and IHMC Director Ken Ford. This episode marks a milestone for STEM-Talk. It’s our 50th episode and follows Ken’s formal induction into the Florida Inventor’s Hall of Fame. In part one of Dawn’s interview, listeners learned about Ken’s childhood and his years as a rock and roll promoter back in the ‘70s. Ken even shared an interesting story about how he went from being a philosophy major to a computer scientist. He also talked about his work in AI and the creation of IHMC and the pioneering work underway at the institute. If you missed episode 49, be sure to check it out. Part two of Ken’s interview focuses more on his research and personal experience with the ketogenic diet, ketone esters, exercise and ways to extend health span and perhaps longevity. Dawn and Ken also discuss the nature of technical progress As listeners learned in part one, Ken has a varied background. He is a co-founder of IHMC, which has grown into one of the nation’s premier research organizations with world-class scientists and engineers investigating a broad range of topics. He also is the author of hundreds of scientific papers and six books. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tulane University. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, and the National Association of Scholars. In 2012, Tulane University named Ford its Outstanding Alumnus in the School of Science and Engineering. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence named Dr. Ford the recipient of the 2015 Distinguished Service Award. Also in 2015, Dr. Ford was elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In January 1997, Dr. Ford was asked by NASA to develop and direct its new Center of Excellence in Information Technology at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he also served as Associate Center Director. In July 1999, Dr. Ford was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. That same year, Ford returned to private life in Florida and to IHMC. In October 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Ford to serve on the National Science Board (NSB). In 2005, Dr. Ford was appointed and sworn in as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In 2007, he became a member of the NASA Advisory Council and on October 16, 2008, Dr. Ford was named as chairman – a capacity in which he served until October 201l. In August 2010, Dr. Ford was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal – the highest honor the agency confers. In February 2012, Dr. Ford was named to a two-year term on the Defense Science Board and in 2013, he became a member of the Advanced Technology Board which supports the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Links: IHMC website: http://www.ihmc.us Ken Ford web page: http://www.ihmc.us/groups/kford/ Florida Inventors Hall of Fame website: http://www.floridainvents.org Outside magazine story on Ken Ford and ketogenic diet: https://www.outsideonline.com/2113406/high-carb-low-fat-ketone-diet Blood Flow Restriction Device. 15% discount code: IHMC https://www.gobstrong.com/what-is-b-strong/ BhB Ketone Ester https://hvmn.com Powerdot Muscle Stimulator https://www.powerdot.com/products/powerdot-muscle-stimulator Papers: Suppression of Oxidative Stress by b-Hydroxybutyrate, an Endogenous Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Verdin_2013.pdf Ketone Bodies as Signaling Metabolites http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TEM-Ketone-bodies-as-signaling-metabolites-2014.pdf Ketogenic Diet Reduces Midlife Mortality and Improves Memory in Aging Mice http://www.ihmc.

On the eve of Ken Ford’s induction into the Florida Inventor’s Hall of Fame, co-host Dawn Kernagis convinced IHMC’s director and CEO that it was the perfect time to have the chairman of STEM-Talk’s double secret selection committee take a turn as a guest on the podcast. Today’s show features part one of Dawn’s two-part interview with her STEM-Talk co-host Ken Ford. Listeners will learn about Ken’s childhood and background; his early work in computer science and research into AI; as well as the creation of IHMC, which, as our regular listeners know, is a “not-for-profit research lab pioneering groundbreaking technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience.” In this episode, Ken will share some of the pioneering work underway at IHMC. Dawn also asks Ken about highly vocal critics of AI such as Elon Musk. Episode 50, the second part of Dawn’s interview with Ken, will transition to a conversation about Ken and IHMC’s research into human performance. Their conversation will cover exercise, the ketogenic diet and ketone esters with the goal of extending health span and perhaps longevity. In terms of background, Dr. Ken Ford is a co-founder of IHMC, which has grown into one of the nation’s premier research organizations with world-class scientists and engineers investigating a broad range of topics. Ken is the author of hundreds of scientific papers and six books. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tulane University. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, and the National Association of Scholars. In 2012, Tulane University named Ford its Outstanding Alumnus in the School of Science and Engineering. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence named Dr. Ford the recipient of the 2015 Distinguished Service Award. Also in 2015, Dr. Ford was elected as  a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In January 1997, Dr. Ford was asked by NASA to develop and direct its new Center of Excellence in Information Technology at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he also served as Associate Center Director. In July 1999, Dr. Ford was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. That same year, Ford returned to private life in Florida and to IHMC. In October 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Ford to serve on the National Science Board (NSB). In 2005, Dr. Ford was appointed and sworn in as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In 2007, he became a member of the NASA Advisory Council and on October 16, 2008, Dr. Ford was named as chairman – a capacity in which he served until October 201l. In August 2010, Dr. Ford was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal – the highest honor the agency confers. In February 2012, Dr. Ford was named to a two-year term on the Defense Science Board and in 2013, he became a member of the Advanced Technology Board which supports the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Links: IHMC website: http://www.ihmc.us Ken Ford web page: http://www.ihmc.us/groups/kford/ Florida Inventors Hall of Fame website: http://www.floridainvents.org Outside magazine story on Ken Ford and ketogenic diet: https://www.outsideonline.com/2113406/high-carb-low-fat-ketone-diet Cognitive Orthoses PDF Bulletin Atomic Scientists 2014 Show notes: 6:41: Dawn welcomes Ken to the show. 7:04: Dawn asks Ken to talk about his childhood 8:12: Dawn points out that Ken moved around a lot because his father was in the Navy and asks him what that was like. 8:20: Dawn mentions that Ken lived in Guantanamo, also known as GITMO. She asks him what it was like to live there as a young child. 8:56: Dawn talks about how when Ken started high school,

Today’s podcast features Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis interviewing their colleague, Dr. Jerry Pratt, a senior research scientist at IHMC who heads up the institute’s robotics group. In 2015, Jerry led an IHMC team that placed second out of 23 teams from around the world in the first-ever DARPA Robotics Challenge. IHMC also placed first in the competition which featured humanoid robots that primarily walked bipedally and first among all U.S. teams. Jerry is a graduate of MIT, where he earned a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science in 2000. As a graduate student at MIT, Jerry built his first robot which was also one of the first bipedal robots that could compliantly walk over rough terrain. As you will learn in today’s interview, it was called “Spring Turkey” and is on display in MIT’s Boston museum. The second robot he built as a graduate student was called “Spring Flamingo,” and is on display in the lobby of IHMC’s Fred Levin Center in Pensacola. After graduation, Jerry and some MIT colleagues founded a small company called Yobotics, which specialized in powered prosthetics, biomimetic robots, simulation software and robotic consulting. He joined IHMC in 2002 and has become a well-known expert in bipedal walking. His algorithms are used in various robots around the world. Recent work on fast-running robots has resulted in ostrich-inspired running models and robot prototypes that are currently believed to be the fastest running robots in the world. Jerry has six U.S. patents and was inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015. He lives in Pensacola with his wife Megan and their two children. He and he wife founded a science museum called the Pensacola MESS Hall, which stands for math, engineering, science, and stuff. The MESS Hall is a hands-on science museum for all ages that just celebrated it's five-year anniversary. Show notes: 4:37: Ken and Dawn welcome Jerry to the show 4:54: Dawn asks Jerry to talk about the time he once stole a science book from school. 5:45: Dawn asks Jerry to discuss his first invention, the knockout keyless door lock, that he came up with for his tree fort when he was a teen. 6:21: Dawn asks Jerry if he recalls his first computer program he wrote on the Commodore 64. 6:47: Ken comments on how in addition to writing computer programs, Jerry had an interest in electronics, particularly Heathkits. 7:08: Dawn discusses how Jerry played a lot of sports as a kid, going on to run varsity track and cross country at MIT. 7:46: Dawn asks Jerry if it was as an undergrad or a graduate student that he first became interested in robotics. 8:20: Ken discusses the first two robots Jerry put together: Spring Turkey then Spring Flamingo. He then asks Jerry to talk about the machines and how he came up with the names. 9:16: Dawn comments on how a few of Jerry’s colleagues have mentioned that much of our understanding of dynamic walking is still based on some of the original work Jerry did at MIT, and she then asks Jerry to talk about that work. 10:03: Ken asks Jerry to talk about how he and his wife, Megan Benson, met. 10:54: Ken asks Jerry to discuss the experience of co-founding Yobotics, which specialized in powered prosthetics, biomimetic robots, simulation software, and robot consulting, with his colleagues at MIT. 11:36: Dawn discusses the growth of robotics at IHMC since Jerry joined the team. She then asks Jerry to give a summary on the types of robots that he and his colleagues have been working on over the last 14 years at IHMC. 13:55: Dawn asks Jerry to talk about the books he often reads on organizational culture and teambuilding. 15:08: Dawn comments on how she has heard that Jerry is one of the worst motivational speakers ever and asks if it is true. 15:28: Ken comments on all of the work that Jerry and the IHMC team put into the DARPA Robotics Challenge, where they placed second in the world and first among th...

Frequent STEM-Talk listeners will more than likely recognize today’s guest, veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who joins us today to talk about the threat of near-Earth asteroids. Tom occasionally helps co-host STEM-Talk. But for episode 42, regular co-hosts Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis turn the microphone around to interview Tom about his days as an astronaut, planetary defense and asteroids. It’s a topic, as you will hear, that Tom is quite passionate about.  He also has a great deal of expertise in the field. Before he became an astronaut, Tom earned a doctorate in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1988. He’s also a graduate of the United States Airforce Academy. His research interests range from the remote sensing of asteroids to meteorite spectroscopy to applications of space resources. He became an astronaut in 1991 and received the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1994, 1996, and 2001. He also received the NASA Exceptional Service Award in 1997 and again in 2000. In 1995, he received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. Tom logged 52 days in space, including three space walks totaling more than 19 hours. He is the author of several books, including Sky Walking: An Astronauts Memoir, which the Wall Street Journal named as one of the five best books about space. His latest book is Ask the Astronaut: A Galaxy of Astonishing Answers to Your Questions about Space. Below are links to Tom’s books as wells the STEM-Talk interview with Pascal Lee, which Ken refers to while interviewing Tom. Links: Pascal Lee interview: http://www.ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-17/ New Yorker article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/28/vermin-of-the-sky TFPD Report: http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/TFPD-FINAL-Report-to-NAC-10-6-10_v2.pdf Tom Jones books: “Sky Walking” - http://amzn.to/2t8dSQn “Ask the Astronaut” - http://amzn.to/2vhUxZD “Complete Idiots Guide to NASA” - http://amzn.to/2uWZHun “Planetology” - http://amzn.to/2unXgnP Show notes: 3:36: Ken and Dawn welcome Tom to the show. 4:11: Ken comments on the interesting path that Tom has travelled throughout his life and asks Tom to give a synopsis of his path of reinvention. 6:56: Dawn asks Tom to talk about the goals and highlights of the four shuttle missions he went on. 3:39: Dawn welcomes Tom as a guest on STEM-Talk. 9:23: Dawn comments on how Tom no longer flies in space, but he and some of his colleagues are now involved in another space mission that could save the Earth or a large part of it from destruction. Dawn then asks Tom how he became interested in planetary defense from asteroids. 11:30: Ken asks Tom to explain the differences between asteroids, comets, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites. 13:37: Ken asks Tom how he would define a near-earth asteroid. 14:06: Dawn asks Tom how frequently asteroids strike the Earth. 16:27: Dawn asks Tom how likely she is to die in an asteroid catastrophe, statistically speaking. 18:27: Dawn discusses an article on planetary defense titled, Vermin of the Sky, published in The New Yorker in February of 2011. She comments on how Ken is quoted in the article as saying, “The very short perspective we have as humans makes the threat of asteroids seem smaller than it is. People of all sorts find it easier to kick the can down the road and hope for a mystical solution.” 20:04: Ken comments on how in the same article Clark Chapman notes that “Unlike Hurricane Katrina, we can do something about an asteroid, the question is whether we would rather be wrong in overprotecting or wrong in under protecting”. Ken then points out that one can imagine a near societal collapse should it be announced that, with high confidence, an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, and that as a society we have no means to deflect it. Humans, Ken adds, would come to envy the dinosaurs who had no time to ruminate about their fate.

Joining us for this special edition of STEM-Talk is Robb Wolf, who will co-host today’s show with Ken Ford, STEM-Talk’s regular co-host and chairman of the Double-Secret Selection Committee which selects all the STEM-Talk guests. Wolf is the New York Times best-selling author of “The Paleo Solution” and “Wired to Eat.” He’s also a friend of today’s guest, Alan Savory, a world-renowned ecologist who advocates for the restoration of the earth’s grasslands. “I’ve known Allan for years as a passionate advocate for restoring the health of the earth, especially grasslands. So when Ken invited me to join him and co-host the podcast with Allan, I jumped at the chance,” said Wolf, who is filling in for regular STEM-Talk co-host Dawn Kernagis. Grasslands take up a third of the earth’s land surface. And, as you will learn in today’s podcast, they are in serious trouble. Seventy percent of grasslands have been degraded by global trends ranging from deforestation to droughts to agricultural and livestock practices. As more and more of earth’s fertile land rapidly turns into deserts, Savory travels the world promoting holistic management as a way to reverse thousands of years of human-caused desertification. Savory is an ecologist, international consultant and the president of the Savory Institute, which promotes large-scale restoration of the world’s grasslands. Desertification, which Savory says is just a fancy word for land that’s turning to desert, directly affects more than 250 million people worldwide and has placed another billion people at risk, according to the United Nations. Savory was born in Southern Rhodesia, which is now the nation of Zimbabwe, and went to college in South Africa where he majored in zoology and biology. He went to work as a research biologist and game ranger in what was then known as Northern Rhodesia, but is now the nation of Zambia. Later in his career, he became a farmer and game rancher in Zimbabwe. As a game ranger in the 1960s, Allen made a significant breakthrough in understanding what was causing the degradation of the world’s grassland ecosystems and became a consultant who worked with groups on four continents to develop sustainable solutions. Most of his time as a game ranger was spent in the country’s savannas and grasslands among antelopes, elephants and lions. It was then that Allan started to notice that the healthiest grasslands were those in which large herds of wild grazers stayed bunched together and were constantly on the move because of predators that hunted in packs. It was this insight that led Savory to develop what he refers to as a “holistic management framework,” a planning process that mimics nature as a means to heal the environment. Once an opponent of livestock, he grew to believe that increasing the number of livestock on grasslands rather than fencing them off for conservation was the way to stop desertification. But when civil war broke in Rhodesia in the ‘60s, Allan ended up leading an elite military squad to fight communist guerrillas. In the latter days of the civil war, Allan became a member of Parliament and the leader of the opposition to the ruling party. He was exiled in 1979 as a result of his opposition to the ruling party and immigrated to the United States. In 1992, Savory and his wife, Jody Butterfield, formed the non-profit Africa Centre for Holistic Management and donated a ranch that serves as learning site for people all over Africa. He and Butterfield then co-founded the Savory Institute in 2009, whose mission is to promote restoration of the world’s grasslands through holistic management. The couple lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and have co-authored books together, including “Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment,” which came out last year. In 2003, Allen received Australia’s International Banksia Award for the person or organization doing the most for the environment on a g...

Prior to Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel’s research, scientists assumed that the brains of all mammals were built in the same way and that the overall brain mass as compared to body mass was the critical determinant of cognitive ability. It was to resolve these conundrums about brain mass, body mass, and intelligence that Herculano-Houzel turned to chainsaws, butchers’ knives, and kitchen blenders to concoct what she refers to as brain soup. As STEM-Talk co-hosts Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis point out during their interview with Herculano-Houzel, epsisode 39 of the podcast turned out to be not only an enlightening conversation, but also one of the most fun STEM-Talk interviews to date. Herculano-Houzel is a Brazilian neuroscientist who devised a way to count the number of neurons in human and animal brains. She writes about this in her book, The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable. Her method of counting the neurons of human and other animals' brains allowed her to study the relation between the cerebral cortex and the thickness and number of cortical folds in the brain. She is currently an associate professor of psychology and biological sciences in Vanderbilt University’s psychological sciences department and the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. She grew up in Brazil and received her undergraduate degree in biology at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, to get her masters in neuroscience, and completed her Ph.D. in visual neurophysiology at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. After completing her doctorate, Herculano-Houzel returned to Rio and went to work for the Museum of Life where she designed children’s activities. In 2002 she returned to her alma mater and began researching how human brains compared to other animals. In 2004, she devised a way of reducing brains to liquid as a means to count the number of neurons in them. It is technically known as the “isotropic fractionator.” In 2004 she won the Jose Reis Prize of Science, and in 2010 she received the James S. McDonell Foundation’s  Scholar Award in Understanding Human Cognition.  She is also the author of a biweekly newspaper column on the neuroscience of everyday life for Folha de São Paulo, the major newspaper in Brazil. Going into its 11th year, the column has appeared more than 270 times since 2006.  In addition to “The Human Advantage,” Herculano-Houzel is also the author of six books in Portuguese that focus on the neuroscience of everyday life. She also has a popular blog called “The Neuroscientist on Call,” which she describes as not-so-random thoughts about brains, the universe and everything. She lives in Nashville, TN, with her husband, son and two dogs. Links you may be interested in: “The Human Advantage”: http://amzn.to/2rtvNOY The Neuroscientist on Call blog: http://www.suzanaherculanohouzel.com Show notes: 5:32: Suzana talks about growing up in Rio and how she became interested in science. 7:07: Ken asks Suzana about her work at Rio’s Museum of Life. 12:55: Dawn asks Suzana when she firsts became interested in neuroscience. 16:00: Dawn follows up with a question about the composition of cells in the brain. 29:21: Suzana talks about how the brain represents just 2% of the average human mass, yet requires 25%of person’s energy. 33:14: Dawn tells Suzana she’s curious about Suzana’s method of counting neurons and asks her to talk about how she came up with the idea of brain soup. 38:58: Break 39:24: Dawn reads a portion of a book review that described how Suzana turned to chainsaws, butcher knifes and blenders to concoct brain soup and asks her to elaborate. 42:03: Suzana talks about some of the difficulty she had in locating brains for her research. 53:07: Suzana shares some of the lessons she’s learned from analyzing the brains of more than 100 species.

Dr. Natalie Batalha’s STEM-Talk interview was so contagious that Dawn Kernagis said it made her dream of returning to school to get a second graduate degree in astronomy. “Hearing Natalie talk about her research had all of us in the STEM-Talk studio buzzing,” said Dawn, the podcast’s co-host. Natalie is an astrophysicist and the project scientist for NASA’s Kepler Mission, a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. She sat down with Dawn and veteran astronaut and IHMC senior research scientist Tom Jones for episode 33 of STEM-Talk. As one of the original co-investigators of the Kepler Mission, Natalie has been a leader in using the telescope to discover exoplanets, which are planets that orbit stars other than our own sun. Natalie has been involved in the Kepler Mission since the proposal stage and has helped identify more than 150,000 stars that are monitored by the telescope. She holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from The University of California Berkeley, and a doctoral degree in astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz. She taught physics and astronomy for 10 years at San Jose State University before joining the Space Sciences Division of the NASA Ames Research Center, which is located in California’s Silicon Valley. In 2011, Natalie received a NASA Public Service Medal for her vision in communicating Kepler’s science to the public, and also for her outstanding leadership in coordinating the Kepler science team. That same year Natalie also headed up the analysis that led to the discovery of Kepler 10b, the first confirmed rocky planet outside our solar system. She joined the leadership team of a new NASA initiative in 2015, which is dedicated to the search for evidence of life beyond our solar system. Called the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, the program brings together teams from multiple disciplines to understand the diversity of worlds, and which of those exoplanets are most likely to harbor life. As if Dawn and the STEM-Talk gang weren't excited enough after talking to Natalie about the search for life beyond our solar system, NASA announced about a month after our interview with Natalie that its Spitzer Space Telescope had revealed the first known system of seven Earth-sized planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water. According to a NASA press release in February, the discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone. 0:30: Dawn welcomes Ken Ford, IHMC founder and director as well as the chairman of the Double Secret Selection Committee that chooses guests who appear on STEM-Talk. Dawn and Ken then talk about Natalie’s background as an astrophysicist. 4:35: Dawn welcomes her co-host for this episode of STEM-Talk, Tom Jones, and they begin the interview by asking Natalie how she became interested in astronomy. 8:03: Natalie talks about how as an undergrad at Berkeley she met a post-doctoral researcher from Brazil who later became her husband. As a result, she ended up doing her post-doctoral work in Rio de Janeiro. 15:47: Dawn asks Natalie to describe the history of the Kepler mission. 19:00: Tom asks Natalie to describe the difficulty of trying to detect a distant planet. 21:34: Natalie describes how long the Kepler telescope has been in space and provides a summary of its findings. 25:30: Natalie talks about lava worlds, which have oceans larger than the Pacific Ocean, but they’re made of lava, which is why scientists call them lava worlds. 27:30: Dawn asks Natalie about the discovery of Kepler 10b,

Women who are pregnant often talk how careful they are about what they eat and drink. They’re careful, points out Dr. Claire Fraser, because they’re feeding their baby. “Well, we should all think about diet in the same way that pregnant women do,” says Fraser. “Everything we put into our mouths, we’re either feeding or not feeding our gut microbes … And it’s important we keep our gut microbes happy.” Fraser is a pioneer and global leader in genomic medicine, a branch of molecular biology that focuses on the genome. In episode 32 of STEM-Talk, Fraser sits down with host Dawn Kernagis and IHMC founder Ken Ford to explain why we should all pay more attention to our guts, which is the home of more than 100 trillion bacteria. An endowed professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Fraser is a founder and director of Maryland’s Institute for Genome Sciences. From 1998 to 2007, she was the director of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, and led teams that sequenced the genomes of several microbial organisms, including important human and animal pathogens. In 1995, she became the first person to map the complete genetic code of a free-living organism, Haemophilus Influenza, the bacterium that causes lower respiratory tract infections and meningitis in infants and young children. This discovery forever changed microbiology and launched a new field of study, microbial genomics. During this time, she and her team also sequenced the bacteria behind syphilis and Lyme disease, and eventually the first plant genome and the first human-pathogenic parasite. She even helped identify the source of a deadly 2001 anthrax attack in one of the biggest investigations conducted by U.S. law enforcement. Research into the benefits of gut bacteria has exploded around the world in the past decade.  In this STEM-Talk episode, Fraser explains the role these microbes play in improving health, preventing disease, and keeping us mentally sharp. She even shares how her diet has changed since she started studying the gut microbiome. Fraser also talks about working with the FBI during the 2001 antrhax attacks and her early work in microbiology that led to the first mapping of a free-living organism’s complete genetic code. Her recent lecture at IHMC, titled “The Human Gut Microbiome in Health and Disease,” can be viewed at ihmc.us/lectures. If you’re interested in learning more about the gut microbiome, Fraser in her lecture recommended “The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health” by Stanford University scientists Justin and Erica Sonnenburg. 1:36: Dawn reads the five-star iTunes review titled “Intellectually Stimulating.” 2:28: Dawn and Ken provide a summary of Claire’s background and research, pointing out that she has authored more than 320 scientific publications, edited three books, and has served on committees of the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and National Institutes of Health. 4:13: Dawn welcomes Claire to STEM-Talk. 4:27: Claire talks about growing up in a suburb of Boston and taking her first biology course as a freshman in high school, which set her on a path toward a career in science. 5:37: Dawn asks Claire what led her to study microbiology. 6:53: Ken points out that there are more microbes on a person’s hand than there are people in the world. He asks Claire to give listeners a short intro into “Microbiome 101.” 9:34: Claire talks about the role of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), a strain of bacteria that is part of many popular probiotic products and has a reputation as a helpful microbe. 12:00: Ken asks Claire to expand upon the potential of probiotics and their usage in human beings. 14:56: Dawn points out that Claire is internationally known for her role in genome sequencing and asks what led Claire to establish the Institute of Genomics at Maryland.

Dr. Michael Turner makes a “big bang” in the world of theoretical cosmology. Translation: He’s an expert on the universe—what it’s made of, what’s in its future, and how it came to be. Turner is the Rauner Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. From 2003 until 2006, was Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences for the National Science Foundation. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Michael Turner and Vera Rubben, who recently passed away. Turner is most well-known for having coined the phrase “dark energy” in 1998, which he calls “very, very mysterious stuff.” Thought to comprise 70 percent of the universe, dark energy is responsible for both the expansion of the universe and the increasing speed at which that expansion is occurring. Another five percent of the universe is atoms, and the remaining twenty-five percent is “dark matter”—what Turner calls “the cosmic infrastructure of the universe.” The universe, he adds, has largely “been a battle between the two dark titans: dark energy and dark matter.” “He [Turner] is able to explain the deepest issues in cosmology with a rare clarity and elegance,” says IHMC Director Ken Ford. “His research focuses on the earliest moments of creation.” With Chicago cosmologist Rocky Kolb, Turner co-wrote the well-known book “The Early Universe.” More information on Turner can be found here: https://kicp.uchicago.edu/people/profile/michael_turner.html and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Turner_(cosmologist). Turner’s 2011 IHMC lecture, “The Dark Side of the Universe,” can be viewed here: . Turner was also a guest on STEM-Talk for an earlier episode for his interview on the discovery of gravitational waves. Turner is interviewed by regular STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis and guest host Tom Jones, a veteran NASA astronaut and senior research scientist at IHMC. 00:37: Ken calls Dr. Michael Turner “exactly the right guy to talk to about dark energy and dark matter. After all, he coined the phrase dark energy. He is able to explain deepest issues in cosmology with a rare clarity and elegance.” 1:04: Ken pays tribute to Vera Rubin, who passed away on Christmas Day. She confirmed the existence of dark matter and transformed modern physics and astronomy. 2:24: Ken asks for feedback on STEM-Talk and reads 5-star iTunes review from BobRXUF: “With all of the garbage we are bombarded with, listening to STEM-Talk reminds me that there is higher intelligence, the hope for mankind.” 3:35: Dawn and Ken introduce Michael and talk about his background. 4:17: Dawn and Tom welcome Michael to STEM-Talk. 4:39: Tom asks Michael to give listeners the big picture about the structure of our universe and explain how we stumbled upon the phenomenon called dark matter and dark energy? 5:14: Michael explains that a half of one percent of the universe is in the form of stars. The other 99.5 percent is dark. 6:29: Michael talks about how dark matter matter provides the cosmic infrastructure of the universe. 7:45: “Our universe,” says Michael, “has really been a battle between the two dark titans: dark energy and dark matter.” 9:49: Michael explains that’s it’s the stars that give off energy and it’s the atoms we’re made of. “We’re the tip of the iceberg. We’re the special stuff.” 10:52: “Michael talks about producing dark matter particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. 11:25: Tom asks Michael what was the original evidence for dark matter and dark energy and who were the people who made that discovery? 13:20: Michael describes how Vera Rubin, a scientist working at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington,

Dr. Art De Vany is an American economist known for his work on the Hollywood film industry. He is perhaps best known, however, as the grandfather of the paleo diet, a high-protein, high-fiber way of eating similar to the way our hunter-gather ancestors ate during the Stone Age. Born in 1937, he has had a varied career that began right out of high school when he signed a baseball contract with the Hollywood Stars, a minor-league affiliate of the Pittsburg Pirates. Even though he could “run like a deer” and “hit the ball out of sight,” his poor eyesight ended his baseball career and led him the UCLA where earned a doctorate in economics. He spent most of his academic career studying Hollywood and the film industry. His research has ranged from “Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry” to “Quality Revaluations and the Breakdown of Statistical Herding in the Dynamics of Box Office Revenues.” De Vany turns 80 in August and has spent the past 40 years living the paleo way. He outlined his diet and fitness philosophy in “The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us About Weight Loss, Fitness and Aging.” https://www.amazon.com/New-Evolution-Diet-Paleolithic-Ancestors-ebook/dp/B004EBT6SS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487717091&sr=1-1&keywords=New+evolution He is working on a new book that’s tentatively titled “Renewing Cycles: Healing the Wounds of Aging Through Improved Cellular Defense and Systemic Signaling.” De Vany gave a lecture at IHMC in Pensacola last December where he talked about the New Evolution Diet” as well as his upcoming book on aging. In Episode 30 of STEM-Talk, host Dawn Kernagis and IHMC Founder Ken Ford have a wide-ranging conversation with De Vany that covers his statistical study of home-run hitting to the dynamics of box-office revenues to the role that exercise and diet play in aging. 0:15: Dawn welcomes Ken, who talks briefly about Art’s background. 1:32: Dawn announces the winning iTunes review. 2:05: Dawn and Ken give an overview of Art’s career and research. 3:12: – Dawn welcomes Art to the show. 3:50: Art talks about his youth and how he started weightlifting as a teen-ager. 5:23: He signs with the Pittsburg Pirates and talks about playing in segregated baseball parks in the South, which was something he had never experienced before. 7:40: Ken and Art compare the lean physiques of great sluggers active in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s such as Ted Williams, Hank Aaron and Carl Yastrzemski with today’s much larger home run hitters. 10:37: Art recalls how debates with one of his professors at UCLA about central planning versus decentralized control systems led him into economics. 13:10: Dawn asks Art to talk about his research into the economics of Hollywood. 16:17: Art explains the impact of movies like “The Titanic,” which can generate 10 percent of all the box-office revenues during a year that will see 600 to 700 movies that are released. 17:06: Dawn asks Art to share his fondest scientific and professional memories. 18:11: In 1979, Art’s newborn son is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and leads to Art’s interest and research into metabolism. 20:20: Dawn asks Art to describe the most profound power laws he has discovered in his pursuit to counter the aging process. 22:26: Ken shares his thoughts about “The New Evolution Diet,” which he describes as beautifully built on Art’s personal interest in evolution and his professional interest in complex stochastic systems. 25:26: Art explains how the book grew out of his realization that insulin controls the pathways that drive growth and obesity as well as shutting down the protective pathways. 26:45: Art describes genes as Bayesian forecasters arising from non-genetic influences on genetic expression. 28:17: Ken inquires about Art’s time at the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, which Art describes as a dream place for him.

On March 11, 2005, President George W. Bush announced his intention to nominate Griffin to serve as the 11th Administrator of NASA. He was confirmed by the Senate on April 13, 2005 and served until January 20, 2009. Griffin knew NASA well. He had been NASA’s associate administrator for exploration in the early 1990s, as well as its chief engineer. Griffin holds seven academic degrees—a BA in physics from Johns Hopkins University, a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland, and a handful of Master’s degrees. He previously served as deputy for technology at the strategic defense initiative organization (SDIO) in the Pentagon.  Griffin’s career has also included academic and corporate positions. He was an eminent scholar and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and space department head at the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins. Griffin was also president and chief operating officer at In-Q-Tel, a private, nonprofit enterprise funded by the Central Intelligence Agency to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. Griffin held leadership positions in as well as the Orbital Sciences Corp and technical positions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at Computer Sciences Corporation. Time magazine named Griffin one of its 100 most influential people in 2008. In his spare time, Griffin enjoys flying and is a certified flight instructor. He’s also a voracious reader and an avid golfer. On August 14, 2012, the Schafer Corporation announced that Griffin would assume the role of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at the company. Griffin has also been a guest lecturer at IHMC in Pensacola, where in 2009, he delivered a lecture entitled “What the Hubble Space Telescope Teaches Us About Ourselves:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvMdORG8OyU. In this episode, STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis monitors an interview conducted by co-hosts Ken Ford and Tom Jones, both of whom have a long-standing professional relationship with Griffin. 1:09: Ford calls Mike Griffin “a remarkable fellow.” Griffin’s work has spanned academia, government and industry. He holds six graduate degrees and was working on his seventh when President George W. Bush selected him to serve as the eleventh NASA administrator. 2:35: Dawn reads a five-star iTunes review from “Meatballs Mom” entitled “Thumbs up.” “I downloaded this in order to feel intellectually superior to my peers. It’s totally working.” 3:00: Dawn describes Griffin’s career and educational accomplishments. 5:13: Dawn introduces Mike Griffin, along with hosts Ford and Jones. 6:03: Griffin’ interest in science was sparked by the first book, called “A Child’s Book of Stars,” that his mother gave him for Christmas in 1954, when he was five years old. 7:50: “I was already fully committed to a career in math and science and space long before I got to high school,” Griffin recalls, also noting an influential physics teacher in high school who encouraged him on that path. 8:25: “My career has gone back and forth between and among DOD space, civil space, robotic scientific space craft and missions and human space flight.” 8:50: Griffin notes that one of the highlights of his career was being chief engineer for the first space intercept mission accomplished against a booster in powered flight as part of early missile defense program under President Ronald Reagan. 12:08: “Possibly the coolest job that I’ve ever had,” Griffin says, was as President of In-Q-Tel, which he loosely categorizes as the CIA’s venture capital company. “The CIA didn’t have access to the hi-tech of Silicon Valley, so the non-profit was chartered by Congress to allow that access. It was an extraordinarily eye-opening and exciting adventure,” he says, adding that they helped create Google Earth. 14:22: Griffin had an early hunch that he would w...

Dr. Dawn Kernagis is a Research Scientist in the area of human performance optimization and risk mitigation for operators in extreme environments, such as those working in undersea diving, high altitude aviation, and space. Dr. Kernagis came to IHMC from Duke University Medical Center, where her postdoctoral research was funded by the Office of Naval Research and the American Heart Association to identify pathophysiological mechanisms and potential therapeutic targets in multiple forms of acute brain injury. Here’s the outline of this interview with Dr. Dawn Kernagis [00:00:20] STEM-Talk podcast. [00:01:35] Ken Ford. [00:03:44] Keto Summit. [00:04:06] Outside Magazine: Is the High-Fat, Low-Carb Ketogenic Diet Right for You? [00:04:22] NEEMO expedition. [00:08:30] The Twins Study was the first study of its kind to compare molecular profiles of identical twin astronauts with one in space and another on Earth. [00:12:04] Apolipoprotein E (APOE). [00:12:13] STEM-Talk Episode 12: Dale Bredesen Discusses The Metabolic Factors Underlying Alzheimer’s Disease. [00:16:28] Apolipoprotein E4 protective against malaria? [00:19:14] AHS 16 - Steven Gundry - Dietary Management of the Apo E4. [00:20:37] STEM-Talk Episode 14: Dominic D'Agostino. [00:21:28] Lauren Petersen: The Athlete Microbiome Project: The Search for the Golden Microbiome. [00:22:55] A combination of 16S, metagenomic shotgun, and metatranscriptomic sequencing. [00:29:48] Estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and HER2 expression. [00:31:16] Python, scikit-learn, TensorFlow. [00:31:32] The R Project for Statistical Computing. [00:33:15] MATLAB. [00:34:10] STEM-TALK Episode 1: Peter Attia On How To Live Longer And Better. [00:35:23] Swiss cheese model, Gareth Lock. [00:40:48] Duke University. [00:41:04] Richard Moon. [00:42:59] NEEMO blog.

For this special episode of STEM-Talk, IHMC Research Scientist and STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis sits on the other side of the microphone. This summer, Dawn was one of six divers selected for NASA’s NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) 21 mission, and we were able to talk to her live from the Aquarius Reef Base, located 62 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. During the 16-day mission, Dawn and her colleagues performed field research designed to test operations and equipment for future space exploration. In particular, the international crew of aquanauts performed research both inside and outside the habitat. During simulated spacewalks carried out underwater, they evaluated tools and mission operation techniques that could be used in future space missions. Inside the habitat, the crew's objectives include testing a DNA sequencer, a medical telemetry device, and HoloLens operational performance for human spaceflight cargo transfer. In many ways, the NEEMO mission crystalizes Dawn’s career. Her research expertise has been focused on human performance, risk mitigation and resilience in extreme environments—namely undersea and in space. In addition to her accomplishments as a scientist, Dawn is also a long-standing diver, and this year was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame. Conducting the interview is IHMC Senior Research Scientist and former NASA astronaut Tom Jones. Dawn shares aspects of her daily life in the undersea habitat, from eating freeze dried food to watching thousands of fish from the galley window every night before bed. She also delves into the research that she conducted, which included testing a mini DNA sequencer and deep water dives to collect samples of several coral species and weighted walks on the ocean floor to simulate space walks. STEM-Talk’s Billy Howell and Jason Conrad, key players in the production of each episode, also join the impromptu conversation with “fanboy” questions for Dawn. Dawn kept a blog about her experience, which you can read at: http://www.ihmc.us/blog/neemo 2:00: Dawn discussed her experience as manager for the world record-breaking diving exploration project Wakulla Springs. 2:24: On her induction, last April, into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, she said, “It was cool to be sitting with women I have looked up to since I was a little girl.” 3:23: Dawn described certain challenges faced by people working in extreme environments such as Navy divers, deep sea divers and astronauts: decompression sickness, oxygen toxicity and nitrogen narcosis. 5:02: Ken Ford read a 5-star iTunes review (which are piling up): “The best podcast. It is as if the double secret selection committee has hacked my Google search. Keep up the great work, team.” 5:37: Tom Jones explained that the NEEMO mission, now in its 15th year, is an analog to deep space expedition. 6:09: Dawn said her voice sounded high because of the increase in air density in her undersea habitat. 7:14: Dawn explained that for the in-water work, they gear up and jump out of the habitat in hard hat diving supplies. “There is constant communication with the habitat,” she says. 9:30: “It makes such a difference to have a great team.” 9:50: “The nice thing is we have support divers who bring supplies up and down on a daily basis. It is not as isolated as space expeditions.” 10:50: Dawn described some of the physiological effects of being at a pressure of 3 atmospheres and 62 feet deep: “I can’t whistle; I have a high voice; we can feel swells pick up overhead—the pressure changes, so our ears are constantly popping. We’re hungry all the time.” 12:12: They performed simulated space walks to identify different species of coral for the Florida International University marine sciences team. 13:25: They used geology sample tools and water-resistant iPads. 14:20: They tested medical telemetry equipment (like min...

If you want to feel like an astronaut, lie in bed all day. That may seem counter-intuitive, but the body experiences the two scenarios in a similar way. The absence of gravity in space mimics the affects of lying down flat—and not using gravity to our physiological advantage. Gravity expert Joan Vernikos talked about this and other insights on how gravity affects us, in this episode of STEM-Talk, hosted by Dawn Kernagis and Tom Jones. Vernikos spoke to them right before her IHMC lecture in Pensacola, entitled, “Gravity is Our Friend” Vernikos’ first mentor in life was her father, who at 17 years of age, left his native Greece for France, determined to study medicine, which he did. His specialization in infectious diseases took him to Egypt, where Joan and her sister were educated at English boarding schools. Her sister became a physician, while Joan “chickened out,” becoming a pharmacologist instead. After entering academia, she was recruited to NASA, where she became the director of the Life Sciences Division. Since retiring from NASA 16 years ago, Vernikos says that she’s had “a lot more time to think.” She is the author of the provocatively-titled book, “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals,” which was published in 2011. Her forthcoming book, “Designed to Move,” is about how sedentary lifestyles contribute to poor health and early death; and how movement that challenges gravity can dramatically improve life and longevity. A dynamic speaker, Dr. Vernikos has given dozens of lectures, some of which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=YouTube.com%2FDrJoanVernikos. You can also check out her web site at www.joanvernikos.com 00:47: Ken Ford describes Vernikos as a pioneer in how living in a micro-gravity environment adversely affects astronauts, compared to the benefits of gravity for those of us on earth. “Living in space is like accelerated aging,” she says—which might be instructive for thinking about preventing and treating age-related conditions such as sarcopenia and osteoporosis. 2:01: IHMC Director Ken Ford reads a 5-star iTunes review from “Fellow Musician”: “Unlike the majority of podcasts I find, STEM-Talk is a long format show with extremely in-depth discussions. I can’t believe how much serious information was packed into the first few episodes. A plus.” 2:25: Dawn gives a brief bio of Vernikos, as the former director of life sciences at NASA, who pioneered research in how living in a micro gravity environment adversely affects the health of astronauts. She also studied the effects of microgravity on the physiology of astronauts in space and aging on earth. 3:37: Vernikos talks about the influence of her physician-father, her first mentor. “I learned by apprenticeship, which is the best way to learn.” 5:05: “What I learned from father, which is fundamental to my approach, is that you listen, you ask questions, and you diagnose …. He would discuss cases at the dinner table; he would ask us, what would we do in that case. That was a fantastic preparation that served me well.” 6:24: In Egypt, which was then a British protectorate, Vernikos went to an all-girls’ English school, with other girls of 27 different nationalities. She studied pharmacy at the University of Alexandria, and then pharmacology in the U.K. 8:00: Vernikos talks about a Greek woman physician who was also a mentor. This woman developed the first drugs that lower blood pressure. “She was very unusual…headstrong…attractive…She insisted we go to the hairdresser every week.” 10:23: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 10:50: Vernikos describes her jump from academia to NASA. She was teaching pharmacology at Ohio State, and the physiology chair there was hired at NASA to start a ...

‘Would you rather remember: the latest episode of Friends, or how to speak?’ asks Dr. Dale Bredesen, a nationally-recognized expert on neurodegenerative diseases. We don’t have to think about the answer to that question. In fact, we are biologically programmed to preserve speech and forget the television show. But physiological changes occur as we age, which begin to affect our ability to speak, walk, and remember names and faces. The most extreme and recognizable form of this is Alzheimer’s Disease, which Dr. Bredesen states is the third leading cause of death in the United States. He has come up with a novel therapeutic approach that first investigates the underlying metabolic changes leading to the disease. Bredesen’s approach, called MEND (metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration) helped a 65-year-old woman recover her functional memory, after her first physician had written her off as bound to the same demise of her mother, who suffered and died from Alzheimer’s Disease. Bredesen shares these and other insights in this episode of STEM-Talk, where he and host Dawn Kernagis engage in a rich and thought-provoking conversation about the future of treating neurodegenerative and other diseases. Bredesen has been on the faculty at UCSF, UCSD. Currently, he divides his time between UCLA and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, of which he is founder and CEO: http://buckinstitute.org/bredesenLab For a close-up look at Dr. Bredesen’s work, check out his papers in the Journal Aging: http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n9/full/100690.html ; http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v7/n8/full/100801.html. As well as is his paper on ApoE4 in the Journal Neuroscience: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26791201 00:55: Dawn introduces Dr. Bredesen as a nationally-recognized expert on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease. 1:17: Ford explains that Bredesen’s research has found that AD stems from an imbalance in nerve cell signaling. In the normal brain, specific signals foster memory making, while balancing signals support memory breaking. In AD, the balance of these opposing signals is disturbed. Nerve connections are suppressed, and memories are lost. 1:47: Dawn adds that Bredesen’s findings, which support the view that AD is a metabolically driven, neurodegenerative process, are contrary to the popular belief that the disease is derived from an accumulation of plaques in the brain. 2:50: Ford reads Mark Riff’s 5-star iTunes review: “Fantastic line-up. And what a wealth of cutting edge information. Just having access to these incredible minds is unbelievable. Can’t wait to see what’s coming up.” 3:15: Dawn describes Bredesen’s background: college at Caltech, medical school at Duke University, Chief resident in neurology at UCSF, where he was also a post-doc in Nobel Laureate Stanley Prusiner’s laboratory. 4:02: Bredesen describes how he got into research, first as an undergrad at CalTech. He went to medical school to understand how diseases affect the brain, and specifically alter learning and memory. 4:47: “The whole molecular neuroscience revolution of the 1980s and 1990s has really offered us the novel tools to understand these diseases,” adding that until now, treating and reversing neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington’s and Lou Gehrig’s has been the greatest area of biomedical failure. “This is exciting time where we are starting to develop therapies.” 5:52: The development of large data sets and systems biology is having a major impact on illnesses. People would formerly spend their whole career on one mechanism, but now we’re realizing disease is multi-factorial. 7:05: AD is a network imbalance that is very analogous to osteoporosis. Signals contribute to osteoblastic activity, which is laying down the bones. Other signals contribute to osteoclastic activity, or taking up the bones. For most of our lives, these signals are “beautifully balanced,

If we could only sell people on the importance of sleep as successfully as we sell them on the pleasures of sex, we’d have a much healthier—and happier bunch. This is one of sleep expert Kirk Parsley’s messages. Parsley calls sleep “the greatest elixir,” and places its importance above that of both exercise and nutrition. Yet, this simple physiological need is hard to satisfy in a society that glorifies business and overworking—and loves its electronics, which don’t exactly prepare the body for sleep. Parsley discusses these and other issues with STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis. He talks about how his background as a Navy SEAL led him to a career in medicine, focused on sleep. He also explains why sleep is important—and how you can get more of it. Parsley served as the Naval Special Warfare’s expert on sleep medicine, and has been a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine since 2006. He is also the inventor of the Sleep Cocktail, a supplement designed for the sleep optimization of Navy SEALs: http://www.sleepcocktails.com A much sought-after sleep expert, this podcast marks Parsley’s 100th podcast interview. You can find more information on him at his web site: www.docparsley.com. You can find his TED talk at http://tinyurl.com/pw9h7qz 4:10: Dawn welcomes Kirk. 5:00: Kirk joined the Navy SEALs after high school and stayed for nearly seven years. “I quickly realized that was a young, single man’s job, and I was becoming neither.” 6:09: Kirk volunteered at the San Diego Sports Medicine Center to qualify for physical therapy school, but found the field too limited, so he shadowed doctors and decided to pursue medicine. 7:00: He attended the military’s medical school. “They were going to pay me to go to medical school instead of the other way around…” 9:58: The SEALs came to him for medical advice. “The most palatable way for me to talk about it in the military was through sleep. They didn’t really want me talking about testosterone. Adrenal fatigue is sort of a pseudo-scientific term. So inadvertently I became a sleep guy.” 10:40: “I don’t think there’s any area of your life that isn’t significantly impacted by sleep. Good quality sleep is probably the most important elixir there is.” He places it above both nutrition and exercise. 11:35: Sleep is a hard sell, with the advent of factory jobs and the idea that time is money. 13:55: “My message is the more you sleep, the more work you get done.” 14:58: “The big problem with sleep is …. Once you fall asleep until you wake up, you don’t really have any objective experience of that.” 15:50: Polysomnographs reveal that some people wake up 300 times a night, but say they slept fine. 16:13: You don’t need the same amount of sleep every day. Seven and a half hours is the average amount of sleep we aim for to enhance the immune system. 17:05: Kirk compares proper sleep to taking your daily vitamin. “You can’t really tell the true benefits of proper sleep until you’ve done it for a month or so.” 17:40: Wearable tech gadgets such as Fitbit and Jawbone measure how much you move during sleep and equate that with sleep quantity. “The truth is you could stare at your ceiling, never move, and never sleep, and it would say you got this awesome night of sleep.” 19:00: Some devices also measure heart rate variability; others, placed under your pillow or on your nightstand, record your respiratory rate. Some iPhone apps capture snoring. 19:40: Polysomnographs are the gold standard for determining how much somebody sleeps. 20:00: Everyone has a different sleep metric: mood, athletic performance, project completion rate/satisfaction. 21:12: Sleep deprivation leads to anxiety, which is already a big problem for entrepreneurs and other professionals. 21:20: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technol...

In many respects, Barry Barish is the quintessential scientist: soft-spoken and modest, he is also completely dedicated to the pursuit of pure science. Barish is currently the Linde professor of physics at Caltech. He’s a leading expert on gravitational waves, and his leadership and advocacy to the National Science Foundation about the need for LIGO (laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory) played a key role in convincing the NSF to fund it. Barish was the principal investigator of LIGO in 1994, before becoming its director in 1997. The pay-off of Barish’s effort and the NSF decision was huge: Last February, Barish and other scientists announced to the world that they had detected gravitational waves four months before, marking the first ever direct detection since Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916. The proof came via a chirping sound—played below in this interview—which was the sound-wave translation of the merger of two black holes more than a billion light years away. Barish talks to STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis and co-host and IHMC Director Ken Ford about the history of Einstein’s theory and the science that later ensued to set up this significant discovery. He also talks about the scientists who made it happen. Barish gave an IHMC lecture in 2009 entitled “Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: Sounds from the Distant Universe” Here is a link to the LIGO press conference on the gravitational waves detection: https://cds.cern.ch/record/2131411 1:36: Audio of “the chirp” signaling the detection of a gravity wave emanating from two black holes merging one billion light years away. 2:57: Ford reads a five-star iTunes review from CCPABC: “Love the science-based discussions, which also includes the interviewers, who also know and understand science, a rarity amongst podcast hosts. Love the funny comments along the way. For example, “Stay curious my friends.” And “Walk into a Walmart to see epigenetics at work.” Outlines (show notes) are also helpful for those of us who want to listen to specific sections again for better understanding.” 3:37: Dawn recaps Barish’s career, calling him a “leading light in several areas of physics.” 4:04: In October 2002, Barish was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve on the National Science Board of the NSF. Ford was also on the board. “We immediately connected and worked on the NSB for six years,” Ford said. 5:15: Barish discusses his upbringing and initial interest in science. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, to parents who had not gone to college, Barish said, “I was probably a scientist before I knew it.” The first science question he asked his father was why ice cubes float on water. His father’s answer didn’t satisfy him. “His answers never satisfied me, which I think is kind of the scientific mind.” 6:36: Ford, Kernagis and Barish recall one of their first scientific questions on why the sky is blue. 7:20: Barish grew up around Hollywood, California. “The furthest horizon I could see was Caltech, and that is where I thought I would go to college.” He went to Berkeley instead because he could start mid-year there, and he immediately fell in love with it — and a young girl. 8:55: Barish started as an engineering student, but he liked neither his surveying course nor his engineering drafting course. “By default, I ended up in physics. It’s where I belonged because physics has been great for me.” 11:15: In 1905, Einstein discovered: E=mc^2; and the theory of special relativity: “These solved some long-standing problems in physics in no time at all.” 11:42: In 1915, Einstein came up with the theory of general relativity, which was an extension of the theory of special relativity that added accelerations instead of just velocities. 13:30: In Newton’s theory of gravity, there’s instantaneous action at a distance: When the apple falls, you see it immediately. When something happens in space (a star collapse...

Dawn Kernagis PhD: Tech Diver ~ Research Scientist ~ Women Divers Hall of Fame, Class of 2016. Interview with Dr. Kernagis, who is a cave explorer and a scientist in the area of human performance optimization and risk mitigation for operators in extreme environments, such as those working in undersea diving. FREE AUDIO DOWNLOAD (PD187)

Roughly 80 percent of the U.S. population is infected with the herpes virus. While the virus is very easy to get, it remains dormant in many people, who never even know they have it. This is partly because it effectively evades the immune system, taking up refuge in the central nervous system. Dr. Greg Smith is a herpes expert. He is a professor in the microbiology-immunology department at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. After obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, Smith did a post-doc at Princeton University. His research on herpes looks at novel targets for antivirals and engineering recombinant viral particles as effective gene delivery vehicles. In this episode, Smith talks with STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis about his educational and research path to becoming a herpes expert. He also touches on polio as an example of an earlier virus that was largely defeated, and how that was different than herpes. Finally, Smith touches on the development of viral vectors and vaccines to win against the more severe forms of herpes that some people are genetically predisposed to get. For a list of Smith’s publications, check out his bio page at web site of Northwestern University: http://tinyurl.com/jl6jsam :47: Smith’s lab studies the molecular mechanisms that propagate and are responsible for the spreading of Herpes. 2:47: Ken Ford reads 5-star iTunes review of STEM-Talk, from “I prefer DOS IHMC”: ‘Fantastic lineup and well-assembled, informative conversations on fascinating topics. Keep ‘em coming.” 4:18: Smith’s interest in research began in elementary school, when his father bought him an Apple II computer for Christmas—and told him to program his own games. Programming “really helped me think in a logical, progressive way,” Smith said. 5:46: In college, Smith discovered that “molecular biology was a way to get at the programming that underlies life.” 6:12: In graduate school, Smith studied microbes, which he describes as “essentially the best human biologists; if you study them, you are studying yourself.” 7:56: Smith was not interested in viruses initially because they seemed like simple entities. He didn’t want to study just one protein. 8:56: Smith worked with Lynn Enquist at Princeton University, a “bacteriologist-big thinker,” Smith says, who got him thinking: “How do larger, more complex viruses get into our nervous system? That got me started on the path that I’m still on today.” 9:16: Viruses are extremely diverse entities in biology; they are more diverse than the rest of life put together. Any organism is infected by many viruses, which are “small nanomachines that are genetically derived.” 10:43: Smith describes what a virus looks like: a shell made up of a thin layer of protein. 12:00: Smith wanted to study something with a lot of diversity/complexity. With that comes very interesting biology. All viruses have two things in mind: They want to make more copies of themselves, and they want to disseminate those copies all over place. Herpes, because of its larger genetic content and physical size, allows it to do a lot of interesting things to achieve those goals. 13:00: Polio is a small neuro-invasive virus. You ingest it and it replicates in your gut. It can get into your blood, and nerves/spinal chord. This can cause polio myelitis, which was rampant in the 1950s. 14:18: Herpes is evolved to get into nervous system. That is how it survives. It’s extremely good at it. 15:00: Most people know about herpes simplex virus type 1, or HSV-1, which causes cold sores. But it actually goes into the central nerve system (CNS) and sets up shop. It does not express proteins, so essentially lies dormant there. “The immune system doesn’t know it’s there. So now you’ve got it there for the rest of your life.” 17:25: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition,

Michael Turner is best known for having coined the term “dark energy” in 1998. A theoretical cosmologist at the University of Chicago, Turner has dedicated his career to researching the Big Bang, dark energy and dark matter. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on gravitational waves—back in 1978—and nearly four decades later—had a bird’s eye view of their recent detection. Turner was assistant director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the development of LIGO, which stands for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. This large-scale physics experiment and observatory, which was led by researchers at MIT and CalTech, discovered, on September 15th, 2015, the existence of gravitational waves via a chirping noise signaling the merger of two black holes over a billion light-years away. The scientists announced their discovery on February 11th, 2016. In this episode, Turner interprets this momentous finding, and talks about some of the big player scientists who worked on LIGO. And some of the behind the scenes activities involved in a “big science” project such as LIGO. Talking with STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis, Turner also shares his early development as a scientist and an important mentorship that shaped his career. Turner has been a popular presence at IHMC as a guest lecturer. His IHMC talks have over 20,000 YouTube views. https://youtu.be/-rVBLwKuDXA He is also co-author, with Edward Kolb, of The Early Universe: 1:18: IHMC CEO Ken Ford explains what gravitational waves are. 4:29: Five-star reviews of STEM-Talk on iTunes are starting to roll in. Ken Ford reads one from ‘Bobalapoet’: “The individuals interviewed are articulate, knowledgeable and able to clearly convey information about their fields. The interviewers and the institute are to be congratulated for putting this series together for my and others’ enjoyment.” 6:18: Turner talks about his childhood interest in science. “I was always a curious kid,” he said. He tinkered with electronics and became a ham radio operator, talking to people all over the world. “I almost electrocuted myself several times.” 7:21: “I like to say that I went to best schools that money could buy, in the 1960s, which was public schools in California.” Turner describes various high school chemistry experiments and “creating UFOS over LA.” He loved math, physics, and chemistry. 8:58: Turner discovers that physics is his real passion, and “math was but a tool.” 9:05: Turner’s high school physics teacher took Turner and friends to Monday night lectures at CalTech. “It just opened up this world of stuff that was going on at the forefront of science,” adding that’s when he fell in love with what would become his undergraduate alma mater. 11:00: For his Ph.D., Turner went to Stanford on the advice of Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. 11:36: Turner went to the University of Chicago in 1978 as an Enrico Fermi fellow. Initially his plan was to return to California as soon as possible, but “I’ve been happily in Chicago ever since.” 12:09: David Schramm, an astrophysicist and Big Bang theory expert, brought Turner to Chicago and mentored him until Schramm’s tragic death from a plane crash in 1997. The two met at CalTech, in the gym, where Schramm was assistant wrestling coach. 14:45: “Dave curved the path of my career from astrophysics and gravitational waves to early universe cosmology.” 16:41: “[Dave’s] toughness and his enthusiasm for science are things that I take with me to this day.” 17:00: “[Dave] really changed the face of cosmology and astronomy at the University of Chicago.” 17:25: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience.  17:58: Turner discusses his passion for bicycling.

In this episode, we talk with Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, the first and only scientist to land on the moon. Schmitt was part of the Apollo 17 Mission in 1972, the last Apollo mission. The geologist turned NASA Astronaut, turned U.S. senator, talks about first seeing the advertisement, in 1964, for scientists interested in space missions. “When I saw that on the bulletin board, I hesitated about ten seconds,” he said. Called “Dr. Rock” by his colleagues in the Apollo program, Schmitt recounts walking, falling and singing on the moon; and his discovery of orange ash, probably of volcanic in origin at Shorty Crater. Schmitt says returning to the moon is a gateway to Mars, and that private investors may have a stake in funding future space exploration. Schmitt recently lectured at IHMC; view his lecture on youtube.  Check out his book, "Return to the Moon," on Amazon. STEM-Talk’s host Dawn Kernagis and co-host Tom Jones, a veteran NASA astronaut himself, talk to Schmitt. 3:53: Historic audio tape of Schmitt throwing geologist’s hammer on the moon. 5:11: Historic audio tape of Schmitt and Gene Cernan singing on the moon. 6:00: Historic audio tape of Schmitt discovering orange soil on the moon. 7:12:  Jack excitedly reports from the Moon that he could see 'orange soil' on the rim of Shorty Crater in the Taurus-Littrow Valley. When the samples were returned to Earth, they were shown to consist of millions of very small brown-orange glass spheres. These are now thought to represent pyroclastic volcanic activity ("fire fountains") that occurred about 3.5 billion years ago. 9:39: Schmitt’s parents inspired his interest in science from an early age. His father was an economic geologist who studied ore deposits, and his mother had an interest in botany and ornithology. 12:57: Schmitt’s thoughts on his selection as the first and only science to go to the moon. 15:31: Schmitt describes right before take-off, monitoring gauges in cabin; “becoming competitive with flight controllers” in Houston. 19:12: Schmitt says thoughts of mortality did not go through his mind pre-launch. What was he thinking? “You don’t want to recycle. That means another month of training.” 20:41: Schmitt describes first impressions of the moon: “spectacular mountains.” 22:27: Marvels at the mountains on either side: 1,600-2,100 meters above surface, which is higher than the depth of the Grand Canyon. Also notes tracks of boulders rolling down mountain. 24:30: Apollo 17 flight controllers used to call Dr. Schmitt “Dr. Rock.” 25:31: Schmitt spent his free time reading operations manual to be “the best lunar module pilot.” 27:11: Historic audio footage of Schmitt saying “dad-gummit” on the moon. 28:57: Schmitt says the Apollo A7LB spacesuit was a remarkable development. Water-cooled underwear allowed the team to control body temperature long enough for explorations. 30:38: Schmitt discusses samples from Apollo 17 mission: “The samples are the gift that keeps on giving.” 32:56: Apollo 17’s most important result: “an understanding of the early history of the earth.” 33:44: Earth’s early history was “extraordinarily violent.” Complex molecular evolution that led to life was taking place. 34:33: Schmitt believes that the moon was formed (by accretion) near earth’s orbit — not by a Mars-sized object impacting the Earth. 36:09: The orange volcanic ash found on the moon makes it unlikely that the moon was formed by a giant impact. Schmitt calls it the most important finding from Apollo 17. 38:29: Commercial break: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 39:00: Jack answers the question, “why return to the Moon?” To mine it as a reservoir of isotopic helium. And,

Before Rhonda Perciavalle Patrick “stumbled into research”—at the renowned Salk Institute—the Southern California native was a biochemistry major and a passionate surfer. She’s still an avid surfer, but of her college major, Patrick said, “I wasn’t feeling connected to synthesizing peptides in the lab, so I decided that I wanted to try out biology.” After earning her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of California at San Diego, Patrick worked at the Salk Institute’s aging laboratory, where she became fascinated with watching how much the lifespan of nematode worms could fluctuate depending on the experiments done on them. Hooked on aging research, she pursued that thread all the way to the laboratory of renowned scientist Dr. Bruce Ames, who developed the Triage Theory of Aging, which focuses on the long-term damage of micro-nutrient deficiencies. Patrick is currently working with Ames as a post-doc at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Hospital. Together, they are looking at strategies to reverse the aging process. She also received her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the University of Tennessee, where she worked at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Patrick lectured at IHMC in Ocala in December. https://youtu.be/wQZz5PklDB0. She also has her own podcast show, called “Found My Fitness,” at:  http://www.foundmyfitness.com STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis and co-host Ken Ford talked with Patrick about her research and development as a young scientist who is now at the forefront of the longevity field. :35: Dawn introduces Rhonda Patrick as “an American biochemist, cell biologist, science communicator and podcaster.” Patrick is currently studying the effects of micro-nutrient inadequacies on metabolism, inflammation, DNA damage and aging. 4:23: Patrick discusses her appreciation for her graduate school mentor. “I got a lot of micro-management,” she said, adding that she acquired the tools she would need to answer interesting biological questions regarding cancer metabolism, apoptosis, and nutrition. 6:00: Nutrigenomics, Patrick said, is a “complex interaction between the nutrients, micro-nutrients, macro-nutrients (fat) and certain genes that we have.” 6:43: As humans, Patrick said, “We all have the same genes, but alternative forms of these genes for unknown reasons. A single nucleotide change in the DNA sequence of a gene can alter the gene function.” 7:13: Certain polymorphisms, or genetic variants, probably emerged because of environmentally-induced genetic stressors, Patrick said. For example, soil high in selenium may have caused people to develop a polymorphism that inhibits the absorption of selenium because they get so much of it naturally. 8:11: Even if the polymorphism changes the gene in a negative way, you can often find a benefit, Patrick said. “That’s probably why it’s survived.” 8:42: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience. 9:25: Hundreds of genes interact with micro-nutrients and macro-nutrients that we take in. For example, half the population has a polymorphism that changes the way your body metabolizes folate and folic acid, the oxidized form of folate. 11:05: Folate helps us make methyl groups, which are used for various biological functions. The MTHFR gene helps with that process, so people with a genetic polymorphism need to take a methyl folate 5 supplement. 12:00: The TRPM6 gene is a transporter of magnesium, an essential micronutrient required in over 300 enzymes in body. Some of its functions include making/using ATP; repairing DNA damage; establishing new neuronal connections in the brain. 12:27: People with a genetic polymorphism cannot transport magnesium in/out of cells,

Guy Consolmagno is not your typical scientist. The director of Vatican Observatory is also a Jesuit Brother, astronomer extraordinaire, MIT graduate, former Peace Corp volunteer and self-described science fiction geek. The second-generation Italian-American, born in Detroit, now divides his time between the Vatican Observatory in Italy and the Mount Graham International Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. In 2014, Brother Guy received the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society for his unique position as a scientist and man of faith, and he believes firmly that the scientific and spiritual inquiry are more complementary than conflictual. Consolmagno is the author of several books about astronomy, and science and faith, including most recently, “Would You Baptize an Extra-terrestrial?” He also authored “God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion,” and gave a lecture at IHMC on that topic. That lecture can be found on YouTube at https://youtu.be/MJGsdY2bcsk In another IHMC lecture, Brother Guy discusses “Discarded Worlds: Astronomical Ideas that Were Almost Correct”: https://youtu.be/Gr0R5oiIoak Brother Guy writes for a blog called the Catholic Astronomer, which can be found at www.vofoundation.org/blog STEM-Talk co-host Tom Jones, a former NASA astronaut who shares Brother Guy’s love of astronomy—as well as the same MIT thesis advisor, John Lewis—interviews Brother Guy about his life-long journey to understand the universe and the role of faith in that pursuit. Introducing this podcast episode is host Dawn Kernagis and IHMC CEO Ken Ford. 1:15: The Vatican Observatory is in a town outside of Rome called Castel Gandolfo, which is also the Pope’s summer residence. Ford and his wife Nancy first met Brother Guy there a few years ago. 3:52: A day in the life of Brother Guy in Rome: after his 6 a.m. wake-up call, he works until the Italian coffee break at 10 a.m., then goes back to work until the big meal of the day at 1:30 p.m., which is followed by an afternoon siesta. In late afternoon, he spends an hour of prayer walking in the gardens, followed by Mass. Then he works again until 9 or 10 p.m., responding to emails from America. 4:44: “It’s a full day, but it’s almost like getting two days of work in,” Brother Guys says of his daily routine. “It’s exhilarating because it reminds me of all the different worlds I get to live in.” 5:07: A “Sputnik kid,” Brother Guy was in kindergarten when the Soviets launched the first satellite into the earth’s orbit. He was a high school senior when NASA astronauts landed on the moon. “How could you not be crazy about astronomy and science?” 6:18: Brother Guy followed his best friend to MIT for college. “I discovered MIT had weekend movies, and pinball machines, and the world’s largest collection of science fiction, and I knew I had to go there.” 6:55: At MIT, he studied geology, quickly discovering meteorites. “From then on meteorites were where my heart was. I never looked back.” 7:36: Astronomy reminded Brother Guy about “bigger things than what’s for lunch”; and also our human intellectual capacity to puzzle about these things. 7:52: Since the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church has backed the study of astronomy at universities, Brother Guys says. “In those days, understanding how universe works was a way of understanding how the creator works.” 9:01: In 1891, Pope Leo XIII established the Vatican Observatory to show that the church supported science. This came during a politically-charged atmosphere of anti-clericalism in France and Italy, based in part on the church’s opposition to the fashionable science of eugenics. 9:45: “You can’t do science without faith,” Brother Guy says. This means that you must have a positive world view to sustain scientific inquiry—in other words, “not think people are inherently evil.” 10:34: Not every religion can support science.

This week we have guest Dawn Kernagis, a Research Scientist in the area of human performance optimization and risk mitigation for operators in extreme environments. We talk about diving, decompression and its effects, genetics, ketogenic diets, and more. Guest: Dawn Kernagis Dawn's IHMC page: http://www.ihmc.us/groups/dkernagis/ A little more background on Dawn: http://www.ihmc.us/news/20150526  

Dr. Peter Attia, the guest for this episode of STEM-Talk, is a modern-day “Renaissance man,” says IHMC CEO Ken Ford. That term gets tossed around a lot, but in Attia’s case, it’s true. He is a top-notch physician, a former McKinsey consultant, and an ultra endurance athlete—who once swam twenty-something miles to Catalina Island, off the coast of California. During the podcast show, Attia talks about his academic journey, from studying math and engineering, to then pursuing clinical medicine and developing research interests in longevity. The birth of Attia’s daughter marked his interest in quantity of life—as well as quality of life. Attia discusses his eight “drivers of longevity,” all of which depart from the concept of preventing the onset of chronic disease. These include optimal nutrition, exercise, sleep habits, hormone optimization, stress management, sense of purpose/social connections, medications, and avoidance of harmful behaviors. Check out Peter Attia’s blog “The Eating Academy,” at http://eatingacademy.com. You can also check out his TED talk “Is the obesity crisis hiding a bigger problem? https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_attia_what_if_we_re_wrong_about_diabetes?language=en STEM-Talk’s host Dawn Kernagis and Ken Ford chats with Peter Attia. 3:25: In college, Attia volunteered at a children’s hospital, which inspired his interest in medicine. 4:08: Ford notes that math and engineering provide a useful background for medicine. Attia later notes that his early academic background in both these subjects “still colors how I look at the world.” 4:32: Attia’s advice to college students who are aspiring physicians: “I think you should study anything that you are not going to learn in medical school.” 5:25: Two things drive significant change in a person’s life: “abject misery and profound inspiration.” The former drove Attia out of clinical medicine. 6:27: The birth of Attia’s daughter spurred his interest in longevity. 7:05: Commercial break: 8:32: Centenarians get diseases 20-30 years later than most people. 9:20: Longevity is first and foremost about delaying the onset of chronic disease. 10:13: Animal literature shows that caloric restriction increases longevity; so do drugs that prevent mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin). 11:52: Eight things improve longevity and quality of life: food, exercise, sleep patterns, management of chronic stress, hormone optimization, medications, sense of purpose/social support network, avoidance of harmful behaviors. 12:28: Accidental death is the fourth or fifth leading cause of death in the U.S.; 80 percent of these are auto accidents, accidental poisoning and falls. 13:09:  Ford and Attia agree that trade-offs sometimes exist between interventions likely to increase lifespan and those aimed at aimed at increasing healthspan. 15:50: People who consume fewer calories are likely to have a lower risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer; they may also have more deficient immune systems and greater susceptibility to catastrophes like falls. 16:10: Caloric restriction creates an environment of cell signaling, cell growth, and nutrient sensing that slows down aging. 16:36: One of the greatest challenges in studying longevity is the inability to accurately measure biologic signals such as mTOR activity. 17:08: Attia characterizes protein optimization: “We want to see IGF-1 levels lower; AMP kinase more active; Ras less active.” 18:36: “Three things I walk through life wanting to keep at a minimum,” Attia says: How to minimize mean level glucose, variability of glucose, and insulin AUC (area under the curve). 19:24: Attia eats 125-150 grams of specific carbs per day, at times when he can maximally dispose of it. He also wears a continue glucose monitor that measures glucose every five minutes. 20:47:  Ford and Attia discuss the benefits of a ketogenic diets and the implications for IGF-1, mTOR, insulin,