Podcasts about journal nature

"Scientists Warn ‘Doing Your Own Research' Is ‘Dangerous' and Turns People Into ‘Conspiracy Theorists'", according to a new report published by Journal Nature. The climate science community is sounding the alarm about the grave dangers of climate engineering operations "if" they were to be implemented while still denying the fact that such operations have already been fully deployed for over 75 years. The weather-makers are increasingly desperate to engineer winter weather whenever and wherever they can, patented processes of chemical ice nucleation cloud seeding are core to the equation. What is the true extent of damage already done to the planet? Is an abrupt climate collapse scenario already unfolding? The latest installment of Global Alert News is below.

City of God by Saint Augustine of Hippo (Books Three and Four) w/Tom Libby--- Welcome to the City of God Working Smarter: A Leadership Philosophy Injustice vs. Community: A Debate In The Great Books The Tipping Point: When Brute Force No Longer Suffices Parenting with Caution: Lessons Learned Over Time Agreeing to Disagree: Has Social Media Killed Civil Discourse? Good Leadership: Staying True to Yourself and Treating Others Well Clickbait and Personal Responsibility in Decision-Making Intelligence and the Generations: Is There A Cyclical Pattern? Millennials: Facing A New Challenge at Forty Continuous Growth: A Lifelong Commitment to Learning and Leadership Staying on the Path --- We Are Not in ‘Moral Decline' - The Journal Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06137-x -   Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker - https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570 Rollo Tomassi, "The Death of Debate" Rational Male Substack - https://rationalmale.substack.com/p/the-death-of-debate Episode Trailer - Introduction to City of God by Augustine of Hippo - https://share.transistor.fm/s/cf899a9d Episode #8-City of God – Book One - https://share.transistor.fm/s/4f21ff05 --- Pick up your copy of 12 Rules for Leaders: The Foundation of Intentional Leadership NOW on AMAZON! Check out the 2022 Leadership Lessons From the Great Books podcast reading list! --- Check out HSCT Publishing at: https://www.hsctpublishing.com/. Check out LeadingKeys at: https://www.leadingkeys.com/ Check out Leadership ToolBox at: https://leadershiptoolbox.us/ Contact HSCT for more information at 1-833-216-8296 to schedule a full DEMO of LeadingKeys with one of our team members. --- Leadership ToolBox website: https://leadershiptoolbox.us/. Leadership ToolBox LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ldrshptlbx/. Leadership ToolBox YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJvVbIU_bSEflwYpd9lWXuA/. Leadership ToolBox Twitter: https://twitter.com/ldrshptlbx. Leadership ToolBox IG: https://www.instagram.com/leadershiptoolboxus/. Leadership ToolBox FB: https://www.facebook.com/LdrshpTlbx.

Dr Ken Keathley, professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, joins Jen Grady and Carson Cobb to discuss Creation. Read all of North Wake's “What We Believe” statements on our web site.  North Wake's statement: “We believe that God created all things and that by his sovereign power he continues to sustain his creation. (Gen. 1:1; Col. 1:17)”. Ken Keathley's personal one-sentence statement on creation: “God, without opposition or equal, called the world into existence out of nothing. For his own good purpose of glorifying his son.” Resources Referenced in the show: Podcast: Christ in Culture Podcast from SEBTS. Ken Keathley and Benjamin Quinn, hosts. Scientist: Francis Collins, a Christian Evangelical, who leads the Human Genome Project.  Learn more at Brittanica, NIH, and the Journal Nature. Book: 40 Questions about Creation and Evolution.   

Nicole Chu from the University of Ottawa speaks with Professor Cooper. Professor Cooper was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015 and is currently a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. He is the Founding Director of the Centre for Materials Discovery and the Academic Director of the new Materials Innovation Factory. He is also the principal investigator of the Cooper Group at the University of Liverpool, and his pioneering research work in Materials Chemistry focuses on polymer synthesis, nanoparticles and crystal engineering. In 2011, he was named one of the Top 100 materials scientists of the last decade in the Thomson Reuters list. In 2021, he was awarded the Super AI Leadership award, which was previously won by IBM Research, for his robotics work on the mobile chemist that was published in the Journal Nature. In this episode, he joins us to discuss more about the topic of AI in materials chemistry. Learn more: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/cooper-group/

Dr. Brian Thomas has worked as a researcher for decades and his dissertation was on dinosaur soft tissue. Dr. Brian Thomas was formerly convinced by the evolutionary theory, until learning about the evidence for the alternative. In this interview, he will be reviewing and peer-reviewing a paper from the Journal Nature that is attempting to reconcile the evolutionary eons timeline with the reality of soft tissue still preserved in dinosaurs. Dr. Thomas likewise invites all to consider the evidence with an open mind as he did when he reviews Nature's paper on DINOSAURS!

The editorial in the latest edition of the journal Nature has a stark message for Australian lawmakers. And new study describes a huge reservoir of ground water that sits beneath the ice sheet of Antarctica.

On today's ID the Future, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith explores a recent article in the journal Nature, “The Alarming Rise of Complex Genetic Testing in Human Embryo Selection.” As alarming as that title sounds, Smith says the reality is even worse than the Nature article suggests. Using the breakthrough technology known as CRISPR, scientists are not only altering the genes of a given creature, including humans, but are even altering the creature's germline. This threatens to permanently alter a species, Smith explains, including the human species. There's the question of whether we have the right play god in this way, of course. There's also the practical issue of scientists not really knowing what they are doing yet. A gene identified Read More › Source

This ID the Future continues the debate between design theorist Casey Luskin, an editor of The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and science historian Adam Shapiro, co-author of Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction. Justin Brierley, of the popular British debate program Unbelievable?, hosts. In this second half of the conversation, Shapiro argues that intelligent design's popularity seems to have waned. Casey Luskin counters, arguing that the number and frequency of New York Times articles on ID is a superficial metric and that the ID research program is exploding, with the number of peer-reviewed ID papers growing every year, and the number of interested graduate students, ID hubs, and conferences expanding around the world, including ID conferences attended by high-level scientists, including Read More › Source

Here is the link to the study in the Journal Nature 

In dieser Folge erzählt Lorenz die Geschichte, warum Jonathan Scheiman beim Boston-Marathon 2015 Kot der Läufer:innen einsammelt - wohlgemerkt vor und nach statt während des Rennens. Dabei lernen wir die Unterschiede zwischen 16S- und Shotgun-Sequenzierung kennen, den Cousin von Butyrat, und warum Probiotika von führenden Wissenschaftler:innen zurecht nicht empfohlen werden. Künstliche Intelligenz funktioniert für die Vorhersage von Sportverletzungen ohne den Einbezug der Darmbakterien nicht sonderlich gut, aber woran kann man die Profile von unseriösen Wissenschaftler:innen eigentlich erkennen? Das erfahrt ihr in der Folge genauso, wie die Körperzellen, die Jasmin & Lorenz am liebsten wären. Wir wünschen ein großartiges Hörvergnügen! >> Bugtales auf Steady unterstützen! Material Eine gute Quelle für diese Folge war Spektrum GESUNDHEIT 5.21 (u.a. mit einem Interview mit Alessio Rossi): https://www.spektrum.de/pdf/spektrum-gesundheit-5-2021/1862401 Ein Ausblick im Journal Nature zum Thema Darmbakterien & Athletik: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00821-6 Ein Ausblick im Journal Nature zum Thema Vorhersagen von Verletzungen: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00818-1 Eine Notiz im Laborjournal zu den Fußball-Genen: https://www.laborjournal.de/editorials/2140.php

Today's ID the Future spotlights The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and specifically, an essay in the new anthology by biologist Jonathan Wells, “Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis?” As Wells and host Casey Luskin note, the essay title alludes to philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn's influential 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argued there that if one studies the history of scientific revolutions, one finds that when the scientific evidence has begun to turn against a dominant scientific paradigm—when its days are numbered— its adherents do not simply concede defeat. Instead they use all their institutional power to suppress dissent and punish proponents of any competing paradigm. This is the period of crisis, which can last Read More › Source

Markus ist Forschungsleiter am ETH Future Cities Laboratory in Zürich und Assistenzprofessor an der Nanyang Technological University in Singapur. Seine Forschung befasst sich mit einer der drängendsten gesellschaftlichen Fragen: Wie lassen sich nachhaltige Städte gestalten? Zu diesem Zweck entwickelt er ein wissenschaftlich fundiertes Verständnis von Städten und nutzt diese Erkenntnisse für die Gestaltung nachhaltiger städtischer Infrastrukturen. Komplexitätswissenschaft und Big-Data-Analytik bilden die Säulen seines transdisziplinären Ansatzes. Markus hat mit seinem Team ein grundlegendes Gesetz für das Reisen von Menschen in Städten entdeckt und dieses kürzlich im prestigeträchtigsten Journal "Nature" veröffentlicht. Das neue Gesetz sagt die Anzahl der Besucher an einem beliebigen Ort voraus, je nachdem, wie oft sie diesen besuchen und wie weit sie reisen. Es kann zu vielen neuen Anwendungen in der Stadtplanung, der Verkehrsprognose und der Krankheitsbekämpfung führen. Hier besprechen wir folgende Themen: 0:49 - Woher kommt deine Faszination für Städte, Markus? 11:30 - Hintergründe zum "Alles oder Nichts"-Artikel in Nature. 23:50 - Die verblüffenden Ergebnisse des Nature-Artikels. 31:12 - Woher kommen die Daten und welche Methoden wurden verwendet? 45:39 - Was genau bedeutet das gefundene Gesetz? 1:02:30 - Die nächsten Schritte. --- Weiterführende Informationen: Zum Artikel: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/markus-schl%C3%A4pfer-1305315_universal-law-to-predict-human-mobility-activity-6804765083042910208-quHJ Nanyang Technological University: https://www.ntu.edu.sg/ Future Cities Laboratory: https://fcl.ethz.ch/ Website von Markus: https://www.urbancomplexity.ch/ LinkedIn Markus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markus-schl%C3%A4pfer-1305315/ LinkedIn Bernard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardsonnenschein/ --- Diese Episode wird unterstützt von der Industrie- und Handelskammer Nord Westfalen. Die Technologie-Region Nord Westfalen vereint das nördliche Ruhrgebiet und das Münsterland. Eine einzigartige Kombination aus Hidden Champions, innovativen Hochschulen und Startup-Kultur. Hier entstehen die Produkte und Geschäftsmodelle der Zukunft. Nicht nur bei Batterie- und Wasserstoffforschung, sondern auch in Sachen Cyber Security und Künstliche Intelligenz. Zum Thema Künstliche Intelligenz: https://www.ihk-nordwestfalen.de/innovation/kuenstliche-intelligenz-eoai-4676802 Der KI XChange: https://www.ihk-nordwestfalen.de/system/vst/3498908?id=359217&terminId=614560 --- Mehr Datenbusiness: https://datenbusiness.de/ Ich freue mich über Feedback: bernard.sonnenschein@datenbusiness.de

In the new EU-UK deal, the UK is to be an associate member of the latest EU research funding round, known as Horizon Europe. costing around £2bn to take part, what can UK scientists now do and what has changed? UKRI CEO Otteline Leyser and the Wellcome Trust EU specialist Beth Thompson discuss ways in which UK researchers are breathing a sigh of relief. Of all the things the UK can now diverge from the EU, DEFRA is currently holding an open consultation on whether to tweak the current GMO regulations so as not to include CRISPR style Genetic Editing. The EU is coincidentally looking at the same issue. John Innes Centre's Janneke Balk works on making strains of wheat that have a higher level of iron for nutrituiional fortification. Interim head of the Roslin Institute in Scotland Bruce Whitelaw thinks developing disease resistance in farm animals is potentially profitable area. Both agree the GMO regulations should be more tightly specified to bring clarity and opportunity for innovation. In Iceland, Kari Stefansson's company Decode Genetics analyse the genetic codes of most of the population of Iceland. This has allowed them to look at the parents, siblings, and offspring of identical twins, and identify how early genetic differences between them develop. And it's very early indeed. Given that identical twins studies are so often used to address issues surrounding the so-called Nature-vs Nurture debate, the findings, published in the Journal Nature, are striking. Presenter by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Alex Mansfield Made in association with the Open University.

Dr Alex Lathbridge with your peek at the week in science. This week in the House of Commons Matt Hancock announced a new variant in the Covid virus, discovered to be spreading through the south east of the UK. As Professor Jonathan Ball of the University of Nottingham describes, there have been many slight mutations and changes to the DNA in the virus since it first emerged, and most are of no added danger. But it is important that new ones - and new combinations of them - are tracked through collaborations and networks such as COG-UK, who provide an almost real-time track of the spread of new mutations. The new one this week is of some interest as it involves a slight change to the protein of the binding area on the virus, but much lab work remains to be done, Is an angry face always an angry face? A paper in the Journal Nature this week uses Machine Learning to scan millions of videos of faces on YouTube to shed light on an old problem - the universality of facial expressions in people. The authors - working with Google - suggest that broadly speaking, in a number of contexts such as weddings and sporting events, people in much of the world tend to pull the same faces. But as Lisa Feldman Barrett - who wrote an accompanying commentary in the same journal - suggests, the way Machine Learning approaches in this area require very human perceptions to train the algorithm in the first place, means care must be taken before inferring too much. This year BBC Inside Science has been showcasing some of the mystery objects the Science Museum has uncovered in the course of moving its collections to a new home in Wroughton, Wiltshire. Jessica Bradford talks to Alex about our next one. If you have any ideas what it might be for, you can let them know by dropping a note or memory to mysteryobject@sciencemuseum.ac.uk Presented by Alex Lathbridge Produced by Alex Mansfield Made in Association with The Open University

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Donald Trump is a menace to public health and also to school district budgets. Federal funding could be at stake for districts that don’t hold in-person classes in the fall, pandemic be damned. Meanwhile, a Supreme Court ruling revokes birth control coverage for thousands of women. Employers can now claim a religious exemption under the Affordable Care Act. And lastly, Washington, DC, is set to restore voting rights for incarcerated citizens. In forty- eight states, people who are or have been in prison for a felony still can’t vote. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump threatened yesterday to cut off federal funding for school districts that don’t fully reopen with in-person classes in the fall. Luckily, in the US, most school districts don’t rely completely on federal funding, instead raising money through local property taxes. But Trump’s threats do unfortunately put emergency pandemic funds at risk everywhere. Many if school districts started rolling out their reopening plans this week, and many are on course to defy Trump’s wishes. The country’s largest school district, New York City Public Schools, plans as of yesterday to send students back for in-person classes only two or three days each week, in order to maintain social distancing. At more crowded schools, the New York Times reports, students might receive only one day per week of in-person instruction. And there is still no plan to provide families with childcare on days when the kids are doing their lessons online. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the plan will influence how the rest of the city reopens. As in many states, the governor also has authority over when and how schools reopen. Andrew Cuomo has yet to comment on de Blasio’s plan. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom wants to leave many details of reopening up to local districts. But in a leaked recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times, LA County’s top public health official told district superintendents that they needed to be ready to hold all classes online come fall. Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the superintendants it would be irresponsible not to have a backup plan that included all distance learning, all the time. If that’s irresponsible, what can one say about Trump’s threats? That they’re outrageously reckless? Borderline homicidal? Mike Pence announced yesterday that the Centers for Disease Control would be release new guidance for schools next week. He made it clear the new guidelines will favor in-person classes, just like Trump wants. Sure seems like health experts have different ideas. But when is the last time this government listened to them? The public health director in Tusla, Oklahoma, said a surge in coronavirus cases followed Trump’s rally there two and a half weeks ago. Separately, Johns Hopkins University reported that US coronavirus cases passed the three million mark. That’s one case for every a hundred people in the country. The virus is out of control, and it seems like the White House is determined to make sure every American gets exposed. It’s just nuts. Supreme Court Upholds Patriarchy More than a hundred thousand women, and millions more in the future, stand to lose their health insurance coverage for birth control, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling yesterday. With a seven-to-two vote, the Court upheld a Trump administration regulation that grants employers a religious exemption to providing birth control coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Justice Elena Kagan voted with the patriarchy, I mean the majority. Which is technically a patriarchy. But still. The case stemmed from a challenge by the states to the Trump rule creating a religious exemption for birth control. Pennsylvania and New Jersey argued that the state treasuries would be left to pick up the tab for health care that should fall to employers. A federal appeals judge granted an injunction last year that preserved health care for many women – but the Supreme Court’s word is now final. I guess we’ll just need to find a better Supreme Court. DC Enfranchises 4,000 Voters City leaders in the District of Columbia are preparing to end voter disenfranchisement for felons, at least locally. If Mayor Muriel Bowser signs an emergency bill put forward by Councilmember Charles Allen, more than four thousand people will regain their right to vote. The emergency measure is expected to pass. And Councilmember Allen told The Appeal, a news website covering justice issues, that the Council could make the measure permanent as part of its budgeting process later this month. The emergency bill will let convicts and incarcerated felons vote in the November election, by request. Beginning next January, DC will be obliged to provide voter information and ballot access to people in prison. The bill also includes some limited police reform, including bans on chokeholds, tear gas, and rubber bullets. DC will join Maine and Vermont in allowing all incarcerated people to vote. According to The Appeal, DC has a higher incarceration rate than any state – and over ninety percent of its incarcerated population are Black. It’s nice to see a win for voting rights, for a change. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Newly released transcripts based on body camera footage show that George Floyd told Minneapolis cops more than twenty times that he couldn’t breathe, before he finally died under Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee. The transcripts were contained in court filings. According to the New York Times, which reviewed the texts, Chauvin told Floyd to stop talking after Floyd said officers were going to kill him. He added, QUOTE it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk ENDQUOTE. Chauvin faces second-degree murder charges and up to forty years in prison. A new study by a former Google worker revealed thousands of previously unreported contracts between Silicon Valley companies and the US military. The researcher, Jack Poulson, protested Google’s work with Chinese censors and the US security state, before quitting the company in 2018. Per NBC News, he analyzed thirty million government contracts and subcontracts from the Defense Department and federal law enforcement going back five years. He found that Amazon had more than three-hundred fifty subcontracts since 2016, and Google had two-hundred fifty. Microsoft had more than five thousand, most of which, I’m guessing, involve asking the feds if rebooting their computers solves the problem. Torrential rains and severe flooding in Japan have killed at least fifty-eight people, according to the Washington Post. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on lawmakers to declare an extreme disaster. Landslides are also reportedly wreaking havoc in affected areas, mostly southern and central Japan. Those parts of the country still face another foot of rainfall in the forecast this week. A new DNA study claims to have proven once and for all that people from the Polynesian islands share an ancestral connection to Native Americans from Mexico down to Chile. The study appeared in the Journal Nature. The findings confirm that Polynesian sailors traversed more than forty-two hundred miles of open ocean to travel to South America some eight hundred years ago. That’s several hundred years before that enormous poseur, Colombus. And not only did the Polynesians bring sweet potatoes to the New World, they managed to avoid waging a murderous religious crusade across two continents. Give them a statue, for chrissake. July 9, 2020 - AM Quickie HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Nature is arguably the world’s most prestigious scientific journal. Editor in chief Magdalena Skipper spoke with Scientific American ’s acting editor in chief Curtis Brainard about her journal as it celebrates its 150th anniversary.

New CFC emissions Researchers say that they have pinpointed the major sources of a mysterious recent rise in a dangerous, ozone-destroying chemical. CFC-11 was primarily used for home insulation but global production was due to be phased out in 2010. But scientists have seen a big slowdown in the rate of depletion over the past six years. This new study published in the Journal Nature says this is mostly being caused by new gas production in eastern provinces of China. Dr Matt Rigby of the University of Bristol and the BBC’s Matt McGrath, who has also been following the trail, tell Gareth about the mystery. Yeast to make cannabinoids In California, where cannabis has become a major cash crop since legalisation there, researchers are trying to evaluate the environmental impacts of large scale agricultural planting. But, as Geoff Marsh reports, other researchers are finding other ways to produce various cannabinoids for potential future sale. Can humble yeast be modified to produce the active substances that some believe to have therapeutic benefits? Hearing aids for cocktail parties One of the most impressive properties of the human auditory system is the way most of us can overhear or eavesdrop on specific voices in an otherwise crowded room. Most hearing aids can’t help with that: they can sometimes filter out noises that are not human voices, but cannot do the very human trick of sorting one voice from a sea of others. Nima Mesgarani from Columbia University reports in the journal Science Advances a proof of principle for a device that might be able to do just that. Firstly, a new algorithm can separate out one voice from another. Then brain waves from the wearer could be used to recognise which of those voices they are trying to hear. Then it’s a simple case of turning that voice up, and lowering the volume of the others, all in nearly real-time. Automatic face recognition So called Neural Network computing techniques are revolutionising our lives. They are able to perform a host of tasks that not so long ago would be the preserve of human brains, and to process huge sets of data and “learn” very quickly. One of the things they are proving exceptional at is face recognition; being able to identify faces in a crowd, or on a street, from a set of images provided by a user. But with great computing power comes great computing responsibility. What are the implications for policing and personal privacy? Gareth discusses these issues with Stephanie Hare. Producer: Alex Mansfield

The Hubble Constant The Hubble constant is the current expansion rate of the universe but it seems to have changed over time. Hiranya Peiris, Professor of Astrophysics from University College London and Adam Riess, Professor of Physics and Astronomy from Johns Hopkins University, are both using different methods to obtain a value for the Hubble constant. But there is a discrepancy in their values. It used to be that the error bars on the two values overlapped, and so cosmologists thought they would converge as the experiments got more precise. But instead, as the error bars have shrunk, the discrepancy is getting more serious, and something must be wrong. They chat to Adam about potential reasons for this difference in calculations and what it could mean for our cosmological model of the universe. Is new physics required to evolve the description of the age of the universe as we know it to be more accurate? A synthetic E. Coli genome Jason Chin and Colleagues at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge have published this week in the Journal Nature their latest work to completely synthesise a new genome of an E. coli bacteria. Not only was the genome designed and manufactured by human means, it was also recoded in a way not used by nature, involving some 18000 edits. In natural DNA, several different codes can do the same job. As Roland Pease reports, the new genome instead uses fewer of these duplicates, demonstrating all sorts of possibilities for future designs of synthetic cells. Von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a celebrated Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer. He influenced Darwin and was the first person to describe human-induced climate change, based on his observations from his travels. Yet he has slipped into relative obscurity, at least in the English-speaking world. Andrea Wulf is an acclaimed author who has previously written about Alexander von Humboldt and is now back with another book about the explorer: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt. It’s a graphic novel (illustrated by Lillian Melcher) that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Humboldt’s birth and depicts his adventures on his 5 year expedition through South America. Adam Rutherford chats to Andrea about her book, why she chose to make it a graphic novel and how Humboldt’s views on the environment can be interpreted today. Producer: Alex Mansfield

Today I want to turn our discussion to Kidney Cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute there are three main types of kidney cancer. Renal cell cancer is the most common type in adults and Wilm's tumors are the most common in children. These types form in the tissues of the kidney. Transitional cell cancer, the same type of cancer that can form in the bladder, forms in the renal pelvis and ureter, the funnel shaped drainage system from the kidney. According to the American Cancer Society, in the United States in 2017, about 64,000 new cases of kidney cancer and renal pelvis cancer are expected and will lead to more than 14,000 deaths. Statistically, about 1 out of every 63 people will get a kidney cancer within his or her lifetime For today's discussion, I want to focus specifically on Renal Cell Carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer in adults. Renal Cell Carcinoma is responsible for over 90% of all cases of kidney cancer. Renal Cell Carcinoma accounts for about 4% of all the adult malignancies and is in the top ten malignancies for both men and women. A man is 1.5 times more likely to get kidney cancer than is a woman. Risk factors for Renal Cell Carcinoma include the following: smoking, obesity and high blood pressure.  Extensive use of NSAIDS has also been implicated. It goes without saying, of course, but I am going to say it anyway. Stop smoking, watch your weight, and control your blood pressure. A family history of renal cell cancer also predisposes you to a risk of kidney cancer. Genetic variants have been identified as the cause of inherited cancer risk in some Renal Cell Carcinoma–prone families; these pathogenic variants are estimated to account for about 5% of Renal Cell Carcinoma cases. Furthermore, having certain conditions or syndromes can also lead to Renal Cell Carcinoma such as von Hippel-Lindau disease, Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome, hereditary leiomyomatosis, and tuberous sclerosis. Patients with kidney cancer may present with the so-called “classic triad” of symptoms: blood in the urine, pain in the flank or abdomen, and a palpable mass. But this presentation is only common when the tumor is very large. Renal Cell Carcinoma has also received the moniker, “the internist's tumor” because an interesting facet of kidney cancer is that it may manifest first in something called a “paraneoplastic syndrome” that seems unrelated to the kidney:  hypercalcemia (pseudohyperparathyroidism), erythrocytosis, hypertension, and gynecomastia are all related to hormone like substances made some renal cell carcinomas. More commonly in the day of advanced imaging such as CT or MRI kidney tumors are discovered incidentally (i.e. an incidentaloma) when a person has the imaging done for other reasons and a small, asymptomatic tumor is seen in the kidney. Tumors found incidentally may be very small, even as small as 1 cm, the size of a pea. A CT scan also called computerized axial tomography or CAT scan is an x-ray that makes a series of detailed pictures of areas inside the body by computing x-ray pictures taken from many different angles. A dye may be injected into a vein or swallowed to help the organs or tissues show up more clearly. An MRI or magnetic resonance imaging   is a procedure that uses a magnet and a computer to make a series of detailed pictures. Both the CT and the MRI create a very detailed image of the kidneys and can determine if a tumor is cystic (typically benign) or solid (can be benign or cancerous). A CT scan or MRI cannot tell you if a tumor is cancerous; a cancer can only be diagnosed by biopsy of the tumor or after the tumor is removed. A Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) originates from the lining of the proximal convoluted tubule, a part of a series of small tubes in the kidney that filter the blood and then concentrate and transport urine to the renal pelvis and ureter. But doctors didn't always know that this tumor found in the kidney actually started in the kidney.  In fact, the origin of kidney cancer, where it came from in the body, was not known for many years, and was one of the longest controversies in surgical pathology. The debate started with Dr. Paul Grawitz, a German pathologist, when in 1883, he published his observations on small, yellow renal tumors that had previously been described as lipomas or fatty tumors. Dr. Grawitz compared these small tumors to the normal adrenal gland and hyperplasia of the adrenal gland, and concluded that they represented small ectopic adrenal rests (struma suprarenalis aberrata).  Dr. Grawitz consolidated his theory with further illustrations of intrarenal ectopic adrenal tissue. Dr.  Grawitz's theory stimulated considerable interest and was widely, but not universally, accepted. Other doctors supported the adrenal rest theory by coining the term hypernephroid tumor, which was later amended to “hypernephroma”, to describe these tumors. Vigorous criticism of Grawitz was provided by Oskar Stoerk in 1908, who considered the adrenal origin of renal tumors to be unproved. He compared the relative frequency of renal tumors with the scarcity of malignant epithelial tumors of the adrenal gland and commented on the lack of histological similarity between a hypernephroma and adrenal gland cancer. It wasn't until 1959 that convincing evidence to settle the debate was offered in the Journal Nature(1960, 186: 402-403)  by Dr. Oberling C who studied the ultrastructure of clear cells from eight renal carcinomas and found that the tumor cell cytoplasm contained numerous mitochondria and deposits of glycogen and fat, with occasional cells containing microvilli along free borders and concluded that these features were more consistent with the epithelial cells of the renal convoluted tubule. Although renal cell carcinoma is now recognized as starting in the kidney, renal cell carcinoma is still sometimes referred to incorrectly as a hypernephroma or a Grawitz tumor. Doctors continue to learn more and more about different types of kidney cancer.  In The 2004 World Health Organization (WHO) classification of genitourinary tumors recognized over 40 subtypes of renal neoplasms, and several more have been added since that time. Let's transition to how we treat Kidney Cancer. I want to begin by quoting another author. “The treatment for Renal Cell Carcinoma, both, primary and secondary growths, continues to be surgical…a review of the literature indicates that the hope of cure in this tumor lies in the hand of the surgeon.“  Thus begins an article in the Journal of Urology when, in 1964, Dr Charles Robson reviewed 88 cases of kidney cancer that he treated surgically during a 15 year span between 1949 and 1964. Robson's article is published, along with other groundbreaking articles in Urology, in an anniversary edition of the Journal of Urology, this year celebrating its centennial. You can find the article at www.JU100.org. What was true in 1964 is still true today.  The best hope of cure of Renal Cell Carcinoma is to catch it early and remove it, almost regardless of subtype or predisposing condition. The recommended treatment for renal cell cancer is surgical removal of all or part of the kidney. Different procedures, radical nephrectomy vs. partial nephrectomy, open vs. laparoscopic or robotic, removal of adrenal glands and lymph nodes, may all be appropriate depending on circumstances, tumor size, location and a patient's other medical problems. A "radical" nephrectomy  removes the entire affected kidney including Gerota's fascia (the fat around the kidney), and may also include the adrenal gland which is on the same side as the affected kidney, and the regional retroperitoneal lymph nodes. This technique is most often used when there is a large tumor present in only one kidney. It is important to note that the other kidney must be fully functional and the patient must be healthy enough to undergo a major surgery and associated risks and complications both during and after the surgery. Smaller renal tumors (usually < 4 cm) are treated by “partial” nephrectomy when possible. The partial nephrectomy involves the removal of the affected tissue only, sparing the rest of the kidney, Gerota's fascia and the regional lymph nodes. This allows for more renal preservation as compared to the radical nephrectomy, and this can have positive long-term health benefits. Nephron-sparing partial nephrectomy is especially important when the patient has other medical concerns such as diabetes or hypertension. Larger and more complex tumors can also be treated with partial nephrectomy by experienced surgeons. Cryotherapy or other ablative techniques can also be done on smaller lesions with good long-term success if chosen for the right patient. Surgery is increasingly being performed via laparoscopic and robotic techniques. Laparoscopic or robotic surgery does not have the large incisions seen in a classically performed radical or partial nephrectomy, but still successfully removes either all or part of the kidney. Visualization and dissection is performed using small incisions (one of my partners calls them “poke holes”) through which we pass high definition cameras and dissecting instruments. Robotic surgery has an advantage over laparoscopic surgery because of the increased dexterity afforded by the robotic instruments. I discussed robotic surgery with one of my partners in episode   of this podcast. Laparoscopic and robotic surgery is associated with shorter stays in the hospital and quicker recovery time. Most cases that I perform are done robotically, with a preference for a partial nephrectomy if possible. Last week I was involved with 5 different operations for renal masses. One of the operations was a radical nephrectomy, 4 others were done as robotic partial nephrectomy. The nephrectomy done last week was for a very large renal mass and required an incision, the first incision I have made for my practice in several months. In 1964 Dr. Robson used the thoraco-abdominal or trans-peritoneal abdominal approach to remove a kidney, and his name became almost synonymous with a thoraco-abdominal incision, an incision that opens the chest cavity as well as the abdominal cavity. Urologists rarely use the thoraco-abdominal approach today, but use an abdominal incision only when a large incision is needed. He described the operation succinctly but effectively and I will read from his article. “After reflection of the colic flexure, dissection should begin on the medial border of the tumor. The renal vein is identified and the renal artery is dissected free from its posterior aspect. The artery should be ligated before the vein wherever this is possible, thus disturbing the hemodynamics as little as possible. The value of a preoperative aortogram, besides its diagnostic features, might be emphasized here, because it will definitely identify the position of the renal artery and, also, if there is an accessory artery present or if there is an abnormal division of the renal artery, the surgeon is forewarned. The perinephric fat and overlying peritoneum are removed with the primary growth and, where possible, the para-aortic and para-caval lymph nodes from the bifurcation of the aorta to the crus of the diaphragm. If the tumor is very large, it may be necessary to remove it before the gland dissection is carried out.” The principles that Robson defines in his brief description of the operation, specifically understanding the vascular anatomy prior to the operation and early identification and ligation of the renal artery still hold today, and are the foundation for today's careful anatomical dissection and improved outcomes, regardless of whether the procedure is done robotically or with a large incision. As I read through his description I realized that with the exception of the extended lymph node dissection, last week I used a trans-peritoneal subcostal incision and performed the surgery just as he described. Dr. Robson argued in his article that the prognosis for renal cell carcinoma is dependent upon 5 factors and/or a combination of these: 1) involvement of adjacent structures by direct extension, 2) presence or absence of distant metastases, 3) involvement of the regional lymph nodes, 4) gross invasion of the renal vein or its main tributaries and 5) histological grade of the tumor. Robson created a staging system with 4 different stages based on whether the tumor was in the kidney or invaded the perirenal fat, had lymphatic or vascular involvement, or had metastasized. We now use a more detailed TNM Staging System, but there are still 4 stages of cancer. A tumor confined to the kidney and less than 7 cm across is Stage 1, if it is greater than 7 cm it is stage 2. Stage 3 is a tumor of any size that is invading the fat around the kidney or resides in a nearby lymph node. Stage 4 is any invasion into the adrenal gland, distant lymph nodes or other metastasized to other organs. Taken as a whole, if cancer is only in the kidneys, it can be cured roughly 80-90% of the time with surgery. More specific subsets show a five-year survival rate of around 90–95% for tumors less than 4 cm. For larger tumors confined to the kidney without venous invasion, survival is still relatively good at 80–85%. For tumors that extend through the renal capsule and out of the local fascial investments, the survivability reduces to near 60%. Survivability decreases significantly in cases where the cancer is stage 4 or metastasized. But even in cases of metastatic disease, long term prognosis continues to improve with changing chemotherapy regimens. Factors such as general health and fitness or the severity of their symptoms at presentation impact the survival rates. The earliest reference suggestive of tumor arising in the kidney was made by Daniel Sennert in his text Practicae Medicinae, first published in 1613. Sennert wrote, “Moreover the hard swelling of bad kidneys which has the capacity to throw a person into cachexia and dropsy, is for the greater part incurable”.  That is not true today.  Today with advanced techniques and diagnostic tools we are able to find kidney cancers early and remove them or control them effectively if they have spread. And, as I said, we are still learning.  Dr. Robson's article in 1964 advanced our knowledge and surgical expectations for patients with kidney cancer. Laparoscopy, robotic surgery, advanced CT, MRI and Ultrasound imaging have also moved us forward. Newer chemotherapy and immunotherapy regimens will continue to improve the survivability of the disease but, for now, I will leave you quoting Dr. Robson again, “…the hope of cure in this tumor lies in the hands of the surgeon.”   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Grawitz http://uscapknowledgehub.org/site~/98th/pdf/companion09h02.pdf https://www.cancer.gov https://www.iarc.fr/en/publications/pdfs-online/pat-gen/bb7/BB7.pdf  

Melting Mountain Glaciers For many years it has been believed that Canada's western mountain glaciers, also known as the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, melted some 12.5 thousand years ago. A new study published in the Journal Nature by researcher Brian Menounos and his team is shedding new light on just when our mountains became ice-free. Deciphering the story of ice melt across western Canada's mountain has far-reaching implications. By understanding how ice melted thousands of years ago, we can also build better models to predict how current alpine ice sheets, like the one in Greenland, may melt in the future. It also helps to understand the challenges of previous theories of an "ice-free corridor" in terms of human migration to the North American Continent. And finally, it also is an important part of the story of ocean level fluctuations as a result of the increased meltwater. When we talk about landscapes we need to understand two concepts, inheritance and consistency. When we look at changing climates over the millennia, we also need to look at the associate landforms that each climate typically creates. In the mountain west, for instance, the mountain landscape was first carved by the power of water. Water dissects the land in a very specific way. It takes advantage of the contours as well as weaknesses in the rocks to guide its flow. Water passes over rocks of varying hardness including soft shales and harder limestones. Softer rocks will be worn down more quickly while harder rocks remain more resistant to the power of water. Cracks or fissures will be widened and over time, the landscape begins to be divided by mountain summits and intervening v-shaped valleys carved by water. When glaciers later inherited this water forged landscape, they inherited the same valleys previously carved by water and began to renovate them. Narrow V-shaped valleys were renovated into broad u-shaped valleys typical of valley glaciers. High on the mountains, glaciers also formed on cliff ledges and any area where snow could accumulate. As these glaciers moved, they enlarged the ledges upon which they sat and in many cases created round bowl-shaped depressions called cirques. I often refer to cirques as glacial nurseries as the ice usually formed there and then would overflow down the valley as it exceeded the ability of these bowls to contain the ever-increasing volumes of ice. Rock and debris fell onto the ice and some hitched a ride, just like a modern-day conveyor belt. It would later be deposited along the ice margins in linear ridges called moraines. Most of the rock becomes incorporated into the glacier and gets scraped and scoured along the base of the glacier. It's this action that allows glaciers to modify the landscape. Today, water has re-inherited this ice-modified mountainscape and is once again altering the cirques and u-shaped valleys. Consistency refers to the simple fact that processes acting on the landscape within a particular climate are the same processes that acted on the landscape at other periods of similar temperature and moisture. The way water changes the mountains today is the same way it would have done thousands or even millions of years ago. Each climate creates its own types of landforms but is always working with vistas carved by successive climatic periods. As a naturalist, this is what I love to look for in the surrounding peaks. Where can I find the impacts of previous climates and how are the current changes in climate affecting how water will shape the mountains long into the future. Brian Menounos' study helps climatologists to not only more accurately understand how our mountain glaciers melted, but also how similar landscapes today may react in the future. Just like looking at a star in the sky represents light that may have traveled for thousands or millions of years before it reached your eye, our mountains may represent a time capsule of how other mountain glaciers may melt in the future. One of the challenges facing this study was the fact that most previous studies found that the glaciers in western Canada only melted around 12.5 thousand years ago. This date was the result of Carbon dating. Carbon dating has been a tried and true way of dating materials for decades, but once you get into high mountain landscapes, it runs into problems; there's not a lot of carbon at high elevations. The carbon used for dating comes from ancient plants and once you hit the upper alpine environment, you find yourself in a land of rock and ice with little to no plant life. This may have added significant error to the dating. If you take a walk to the far end of Lake Louise in summer, you'll enter a land where winter is still king, and where glaciers have only recently revealed the landscape that was previously hidden by ice. You'll also notice that there is little regrowth on much of the lower valley as you hike up to the Plain of Six Glaciers Teahouse. Once glaciers disappear from a mountain valley, it may take a millennia or more before it becomes fully reclaimed by plant communities. This means that the carbon that was being measured in previous studies may have represented plants that colonized the valley long after the glaciers had disappeared. Newer dating methods that don't rely on carbon offered some additional ways to get a better date. Beryllium is a mineral most of us have never heard of. It's a highly toxic and carcinogenic mineral, but it's also one of the lightest metals in the world and has a correspondingly high melting point. These characteristics make beryllium very important in today's cell phones, aeroplanes and even missiles. One isotope, beryllium 10, like carbon 14 is radioactive. The radioactivity is created by cosmic rays colliding with atoms on Earth. In the case of beryllium 10, it's caused when cosmic rays hit oxygen atoms in the bedrock. A layer of ice acts to stop these rays and so measuring how much beryllium 10, which is found in the quartz rocks so common in the mountains, can help to tell us when the rocks were exposed by melting glacial ice. Menounos and his team measured 76 samples from 26 locations to see if dates could be more accurately determined using this new dating method. They visited glacial moraines across British Columbia in order to test the theory that many areas may have been ice-free much earlier than previously believed. The great ice age, the Pleistocene, ended some 14,700 years ago when climates suddenly warmed. At the peak of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, the amount of ice was similar to what can be found in present-day Greenland. The results showed that the moraine samples fell into two age ranges, 12,800 to 15,000 years for the older locations and 9,800 to 13,000 for the younger sites. If we work with the average ages of 13,900 and 11,400 years respectively, the study showed that large areas of the mountain glaciers had already melted prior to earlier estimates of 12,500 years ago. It also shows that ocean waters off the coast of British Columbia would have risen by approximately 4C between 15,500 and 14,000 years ago. This would have melted most of the low-elevation glaciers, leaving only the highest mountain regions ice-free. Also during this period, meltwater would have contributed to sea level increases of 2.5 to 3 metres. In other terms, the mountain glaciers lost half of their mass in less than 400 years. This also changed the ice sheet into a series of interconnected alpine glaciers, and icefields, gradually leaving us with the landscape we recognize today, just on a much much more extensive scale. This study shows that vast amounts of ice had been lost from the mountain landscape at least 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. It also shows that ice sheets as large Greenland's can also melt at a very fast rate. Essentially, once the melt starts, it can take place very quickly. While it may seem that this actually adds to the possibilities of human migrations towards a possible "ice-free corridor", the study shows evidence that low elevation travel routes would have remained ice-choked until long after the migrations would have needed to occur. Way back in episode 6 I talked about some of the new evidence that was rendering the ice-free corridor to the dustbin of history. You can check it out at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep006. The most recent archaeological evidence shows that people had already arrived in North and South America as far back as 14,500 years ago. Assuming that early migrants made it across the ice-free corridor even 13,000 years ago, there is little chance they would have spread to Monte Verde in southern Chile by 14,500 years ago, yet there are archaeological sites that date to that period. Essentially, it's out with the ice-free corridor and in with the kelp highway. What the heck is the kelp highway you ask? Well, it refers to a coastal migration rather than an inland one. It wasn't long ago that this was considered fringe science. All the archaeological eggs were in the ice-free corridor camp and there was little research into an alternative option. Over time though, ancient sites began to appear across the coastal areas of North and South America that kept pushing the tenure of first nations further and further back. Currently, the oldest sites are 14,500 years old in places like the Page-Ladson site in Florida. As far south as this site seems today, this underwater site revealed evidence of mastodon bones that showed signs of human butchering. Even much further south, on the southern end of Chile, lies the Monte Verde site. In 1975 the remains of a Gomphothere, an animal considered to be ancestral to modern-day elephants was found and this spurred further investigations. These revealed amazing artefacts well preserved in a peat bog that included butchered Gomphothere bones, stone hearths, the remains of other local animals, wooden house posts and even bits of animal skin clothing. To most archaeologists used to having to deal with hearths and stone tools, this site was incredibly rich, largely due to the preserving qualities of peat. Again, the dates stretch back to some 14,500 years. Prior to sites like this, the Clovis culture was considered to the be the oldest North American indigenous culture, but these and many more sites are now pre-dating the Clovis culture which was believed to have arrived via the ice-free corridor between 12,900 and 13,200 years ago. So how exactly did these pre-Clovis cultures find themselves in the New World - well that's the kelp highway? Essentially it refers to a coastal migration of peoples confident in traveling by boat along coastal areas taking advantage of plentiful supplies of kelp and seafood that was available. The ice-free corridor Clovis migration has been suffering a death by a thousand cuts over the past few years. Doubtless, Clovis people did take advantage of a corridor across the Bering Strait but it is now clear that they were the followers and not the leaders. They would still have arrived several millennia after the coastal regions had already been settled. In Episode 37, I talk about a new site off the coast of British Columbia that begins to add fuel to the kelp highway migration theory. One of the Achilles heels of this potential migratory route in the past has been the lack of evidence of a coastal migration. A newly announced site on Triquet Island has revealed artefacts at least 14,000 years old. This makes it the oldest archaeological site in Canada and helps to finally build a trail of breadcrumbs to support a coastal migration. We still need to push the chronology back further if we are to bring well-established populations of humans to the southern tip of South America by 14,500 years ago, but perhaps this is a good start. One of the great aspects of science is that until you actually look for something, it may be hiding in plain sight. Some science is the result of just plain luck…looking for one thing, and discovering another. Sometimes, we're just looking in the wrong place. With renewed interest in a coastal migration, there will be more and more resources focused on examining sites that might have been visited by our very oldest ancestors. While part of me laments the loss of a good story on an ice-free corridor migration right past my doorstep, another part of me loves the fact that an entirely new archaeological story is now unfolding. Just to throw another wrinkle into the equation. We're still assuming a migration across the Bering Strait that hugged the Pacific coast of North America. What if these paleo sailors were more adept than we give them credit for? We know that Aboriginal Australians were there by 50,000 years ago. They would have had a more challenging, open-water voyage in order to discover this new continent. Maybe we're just beginning to scratch the surface in a new whodunnit of New World migration. A really unique site in California shows the potential for some kind of early human as far back as 130,000 years ago. The site was found in 1992 beside a highway site near San Diego California. While archaeologists are quibbling about a few hundred years here and there when dating sites, this site has come in more than 100,000 years before anyone thought humans could be in the new world. The site features a partial skeleton of a mastodon that appears to have been butchered by paleo-humans. The outrageous preliminary dating of the site kept it on the fringes until new dating techniques to confirm early dating. This resulted in the new research being published in the Journal Nature just in April of 2017. Every new discovery leads to new rabbit holes of investigation, confirmation, peer review, and then new questions. This site is so wacky early that if it's confirmed by subsequent research, then all human migration theories on the planet will be up for grabs. It's so old that we would be talking about hominids as opposed to humans. I can't wait to see how this story ends. Perhaps we are just at the beginning of a new mystery? Stay tuned. Next up - The greatest land geographer to ever live David Thompson's early years The history of the exploration of Canada is filled with the names of great men. Names like Simon Fraser, Alexander Mackenzie, Samuel Hearne, Anthony Henday, and David Thompson. All of these men were great explorers but in the final tally of simple achievement, none could hold a candle to David Thompson, or as the first nations knew him, the man who looks at stars. Thompson was born on April 30, 1770, in Westminster, England. His family was poor and after his brother was born two years later, his father died leaving the family even the more destitute. The day before his 7th birthday he was enrolled in the Grey Coat School in Westminster. At the time, it was a school devoted to educating poor boys. Its goal was "to educate poor children in the principles of piety and virtue, and thereby lay a foundation for a sober and Christian life". By all accounts, Thompson was an able student and this brought him to the attention of the School Board. In the minutes of their December 30, 1783, meeting it states: "The Master also reports that application was made by the Secretary belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, to know, if this Charity could furnish them with 4 boys against the month of May next, for their settlements in America. The Master, by order of the Treas (sic) wrote a letter informing the Governor and Directors that there were but two boys that had been taught navigation in the school, which two boys they desire may be qualified for them, vis: Samuel John McPherson and David Thompson." What an adventure for a boy of only 15…or was it? Apparently, Samuel McPherson didn't think so as he did a runner the following day rather than be packed off to the new world. Thompson, on the other hand, embraced the opportunity and on the minutes of the Grey School dated June 29, 1784, he was apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Company. The minutes state: "On the 20th of May David Thompson, a mathematical Boy belonging to the Hospl (sic) was bound to the Hudson's Bay Company and the Trear then paid Mr Thos. Hutchins, Corresponding Secretary to the said Company, the sum of five pounds for taking the said Boy apprence (sic) for seven years". I can imagine that when the Company ship the Prince Rupert departed London in May of 1784 that many things must have been going through the mind of this bright 15 year old boy. Part of him must have been terrified to leave the only home he had ever known for a vast wilderness. Thompson reflected on his years at the Grey School writing in his journal: "Books in those days were scarce and dear and most of the scholars got the loan of such books as his parents could lend him. Those which pleased us most were the Tales of the Genii, the Persian, and Arabian Tales, with Robinson Crusoe and Gullivers Travels : these gave us many subjects for discussion and how each would behave on various occasions." Doubtless, stories of the hardships awaiting him must have reached his young ears, yet he embraced his fate and soon after, the new world for the rest of his life. As the ship approached the coast of North America he wrote: "We now held our course over the western ocean ; and near the islands of America saw several icebergs, and Hudson's Straits were so full of ice, as to require the time of near a month to pass them ; this being effected the three ships separated, one for Albany and Moose Factories, another for York Factory, and the third for Churchill Factory at which last place we arrived in the beginning of September 1784." Thompson continued: "Hudson's Bay, including Jame's Bay, may be said to be an inland sea, connected to the Atlantic Ocean by Hudson's Straits…On its west side it receives Seal, Churchill, the Kissiskatchewan (now known as the Nelson), Hayes, Severn, Albany, and Moose Rivers; on the east side Ruperts and several other Rivers, the names of which are unknown as they come from barren, desolate, countries." What a first impression it must have been for Thompson? Fort Churchill was isolated at what must have seemed like the end of the world, especially when he learned: "The Factory is supplied once a year with goods and provisions, by a Ship which arrives on the last days of August, or early September, and in about ten days is ready for her homeward voyage; the severity of the climate requiring all possible dispatch." Thompson saw adventure along with hardship. In autumn, just like they do today for the viewing pleasure of thousands of tourists, the polar bears arrive at Churchill. Thompson wrote: "The polar Bear now makes his appearance, and prowls about until the ice at the sea shore is extended to a considerable distance ; when he leaves to prey on the Seal, his favourite food : during his stay he is for plunder and every kind of mischief, but not willing to fight for it." While the cold and the wind bothered all, there was little snow until the latter part of December when: "a north east snow storm of three days continuance drifted the snow to the height of the stockades and over them, and filled the whole yard to the depth of six to ten feet, which could not be cleared, and through which avenues had to be cut and cleared of about four feet in width ; and thus remained till late in April, when a gradual thaw cleared the snow away. From the end of October to the end of April every step we walk is in Snow Shoes. The Natives walk with ease and activity, and also many of us: but some find them a sad incumbrance, their feet become sore and their ankles sprained; with many a tumble in the snow from which it is sometimes difficult to rise." The winds of Hudson Bay are legendary. Any snow that falls quickly forms in huge drifts. After spending three weeks on the Bay this fall, I can see how the stockades would catch the drifting snow and how it would fill the enclosed yard as well. The climate is the great arbiter in the north and he wrote: "The country, soil, and climate in which we live, have always a powerful effect upon the state of society, and the movements and comforts of every individual, he must conform himself to the circumstances under which he is placed, and as such we lived and conducted ourselves in this extreme cold climate. All our movements more, or less, were for self-preservation : All the wood that could be collected for fuel, gave us only one fire in the morning, and another in the evening…" "The interior of the walls of the House were covered with rime to the thickness of four inches, pieces of which often broke off, to prevent which we wetted the whole extent, and made it a coat of ice, after which it remained firm, and added to the warmth of the House, for the cold is so intense, that everything in a manner is shivered by it" When the summer sun arrived, so did the swarms of mosquitoes. Thompson wrote: "Summer such as it is, comes at once, and with it myriads of tormenting Musketoes ; the air is thick with them, there is no cessation day nor night of suffering from them. Smoke is no relief, they can stand more smoke than we can, and smoke cannot be carried about with us. The narrow windows were so crowded with them, they trod each other to death in such numbers, we had to sweep them out twice a day ; a chance cold northeast gale of wind was a grateful relief, and [we] were thankful for the cold weather that put an end to our sufferings. " "different Persons feel them in a different manner ; some are swelled, even bloated, with intolerable itching ; others feel only the smart of the minute wounds ; Oil is the only remedy and that frequently applied ; the Natives rub themselves with Sturgeon Oil, which is found to be far more effective than any other oil. All animals suffer from them, almost to madness, even the well-feathered Birds suffer about the eyes and neck. The cold nights of September are the first and most steady relief." At one point, Thompson began to wonder why he had been brought at all: "It had been the custom for many years, when the governors of the factory required a clerk, to send to the school in which I was educated to procure a Scholar who had a mathematical education to send out as Clerk, and, to save expenses, he was bound apprentice to them for seven years. To learn what ; for all I had seen in their service neither writing nor reading was required, and my only business was to amuse myself, in winter growling at the cold ; and in the open season shooting Gulls, Ducks, Plover and Curlews, and quarelling with Musketoes and Sand flies." After spending a year at Churchill, he was sent to York Factory after the supply ship had arrived at Churchill in 1785. He was sent out, accompanied by two natives, on foot, without provisions, to walk 240 km in the cold of autumn to bring mail that had arrived on the ship to another fort. He was accorded a single blanket to keep him warm at nights. At the same time, two natives would be sent from York Factory to Churchill. This would give each fort current information about the state of the other while also forming as a ready means of communicating between the forts. They were dropped at Cape Churchill and while Thomson was given a blanket, his guides were given a gallon of strong whiskey. Alas, the day was lost as they quickly set down to consume the spirits. Thompson always opposed the use of whiskey in the fur trade and banned it from any post that he was in control of. The next day they walked all day without breakfast or lunch, and in the evening his guides shot a goose and three ducks. He arrived on Sept 13 and spent the winter in the fort and quickly settled into a new routine. The natives that walked with him were given 3 gallons of brandy and 4 pounds of tobacco. The fall and winter are spent collecting all manner of food, fishing, snaring hares, hunting geese in the fall and ptarmigan in the winter, and basically trying to stay warm. The forts had to be completely self-sufficient. March and April seem to be the months when snow blindness is most prevalent. Thompson writes: "As I never had it, I can only describe the sensations of my companions. Accustomed to march in all weathers, I had acquired a power over my eyelids to open, or contract them as circumstances required, and to admit only the requisite quantity of light to guide me, and thus [I] prevented the painful effects of snow blindness. In the case of those affected the blue eye suffers first and most, the gray eye next, and the black eye the least ; but none are exempt from snow blindness ; the sensations of my companions, and others, were all the same ; they all complained of their eyes, being, as it were, full of burning sand ; I have seen hardy men crying like children, after a hard march of four months in winter. Three men and myself made for a trading post in the latter part of March. They all became snow blind, and for the last four days I had to lead them with a string tied to my belt, and [they] were so completely blind that when they wished to drink of the little pools of melted snow, I had to put their hands in the water. They could not sleep at night. On arriving at the trading Post, they were soon relieved by the application of the steam of boiling water as hot as they could bear it, this is the Indian mode of cure, and the only efficient cure yet known, but all complained of weakness of sight for several months after." The Bay men had mastered the north country. As they expanded their influence further west, they encountered the peoples of the Blackfoot Confederacy, in particular, the Peigan. He wasn't the first to visit the Blackfoot, that honour was reserved for Anthony Henday who visited the area in 1754. Henday was trying to sell an impossibility though. He was trying to convince them to go to the Bay to sell their furs. This was pretty much a non-starter for a population of the grasslands. He learned that, rather than travel long distances to the Bay, the Blackfoot would sell their furs to the Cree, who would, in turn, trade them to the Company at York Factory for a profit. An additional wrinkle was that the rival Northwest Company had built forts far more convenient to the Cree and they would get the best furs long before the remaining poorer quality pelts made their way to the Bay. The Northwest Company sent men out, onto the land, to meet, live with, learn the languages of, and in some cases, intermarry with the indigenous people of the hinterlands. The Blackfoot, while they enjoyed the whiteman's trade goods, they really didn't need them, and they definitely didn't want trading posts in their territory. They also were in a position to manage trade across the continental divide to British Columbia. Essentially, any Hudson's Bay Man wanting to visit B.C. would have to go through them. To negotiate with the Blackfoot, the company sent James Gaddy who spent three winters living with the Peigan in the foothills west of Calgary. In 1787, 17-year old David Thompson accompanied him. At this point, nobody had realized that David was no ordinary teenager. He kept a careful journal and decades later would use it to write his memoirs. Thompson described the people that he stayed with and the stories shared with him by them: "The Peeagan in whose tent I passed the winter was an old man of at least 75 to 80 years of age ; his height about six feet, two or three inches, broad shoulders, strong limbed, his hair gray and plentiful, forehead high and nose prominent, his face slightly marked with the small pox, and alltogether his countenance mild, and even, sometimes playfull ; although his step was firm and he rode with ease, he no longer hunted, this he left to his sons ; his name was Saukamappee (Young Man) ; his account of former times went back to about 1730…" Saukamappee was not of the Peigan, today referred to by the name Pikani. He was part of a Cree nation known as the Nahathaway with whom the Pikani were closely allied. Both nations were constantly at war with the Snake or Shoshone Indians to the south. Usually, they were very well matched in terms of weaponry and few people died in their skirmishes…at least in the early days. Saukamappee related how the arms race began to alter the balance of power as horses and guns began to appear. "By this time the affairs of both parties had much changed ; we had more guns and iron headed arrows than before ; but our enemies the Snake Indians and their allies had Misstutim (Big Dogs, that is Horses) on which they rode, swift as the Deer, on which they dashed at the Peeagans, and with their stone Pukamoggan (war clubs) knocked them on the head, and they had thus lost several of their best men. This news we did not well comprehend and it alarmed us, for we had no idea of Horses and could not make out what they were. Only three of us went and I should not have gone, had not my wife's relations frequently intimated, that her father's medicine bag would be honored by the scalp of a Snake Indian." Guns and horse began to change the landscape of the plains. The Pikani won with the help of the Nahathaway guns. Thankfully, the Snake Indians didn't have any horses with them in this battle. A few days later, Saukamappee saw his first horse, a dead one that had been killed in a different skirmish. The Peigan were able to keep the Snakes gun-poor as they were able to control access to the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Company supply of trade goods. This allowed the Peigan to expand greatly across the plains until they encountered an unstoppable foe - Smallpox. "While we have these weapons, the Snake Indians have none, but what few they sometimes take from one of our small camps which they have destroyed, and they have no Traders among them. We thus continued to advance through the fine plains to the Stag River when death ca

This week we talk about another branch of earth science, meteorology. We discuss the upcoming severe weather season and Shannon’s close call with a tornadic storm. Also updates on past stories, feedback, and fun paper friday! Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability The Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability The Brunt Väisälä frequency Story Updates and Feedback Nasa has decided to go with the boulder snatch technique for an asteroid mission launching in 2020 If you like space news and talk, checkout “The Orbital Mechanics” podcast. A very early copy of William Smith’s map has been rediscovered at the geological society. You can view a digitized version of the map online. More on the mysterious radio bursts We got some feedback about levels (thanks Celena B.) and a problem with the show logo (thanks Ross K.). We hope we have corrected both. Please keep the feedback coming in! Severe Weather We encourge you to learn your way around and use the National Weather Service webpage. Also checkout the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Storm Prediction Center. For one of the most severe weather prone areas, Oklahoma, these three organizations are co-located in the National Weather Center Communicating weather information, or an probabilistic information is actually really difficult. Doing a hand analysis of data is still crucial to weather prediction. For example the analyst knows about isobar kinking. Oklahoma Mesonet Checkout the email “The Ticker" from the mesonet Checkout if your local weather service office offers storm spotter training classes and get to know your branch meteorologist John had a relevant blog post that talked about what an expert is and how important it is to know the fundamentals. Have a disaster plan and know what to do during an emergency! This applies to field geology work just as much. Fun Paper Friday This week is April fools, so we have a laugh with the Journal Nature. This week we learn about the coming back of dragons and climate change. Hamilton, A. J., May, R. M., & Waters, E. K. (2015). Zoology: Here be dragons. Nature, 1–2. doi:10.1038/520042a Contact us: Show - www.dontpanicgeocast.com - @dontpanicgeo - show@dontpanicgeocast.com John Leeman - www.johnrleeman.com - @geo_leeman Shannon Dulin - @ShannonDulin

It is likely that scientists will soon engineer strains of "friendly" bacteria which are genetically recoded to be better than the ones we currently use in food production. The sorts of bacteria we use in cheese or yoghurt could soon be made to be resistant to all viruses, for example. But what if the GM bacteria were to escape into the wild? Researchers writing in the Journal Nature propose this week a mechanism by which GMO's could be made to be dependent on substances that do not occur in nature. That way, if they escaped, they would perish and die. George Church, of Harvard Medical School, tells Adam Rutherford about the way bacteria - and possibly eventually plant and animal cells - could be engineered to have such a "failsafe" included, thus allowing us to deploy GM in a range of applications outside of high security laboratories. Adam reports from this week's launch in Paris of the International Year of Light marking 100 years since Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Amongst the cultural and scientific events at UNESCO in Paris, Nobel Prize winner Bill Philips explains how using lasers can achieve the most accurate atomic clocks imaginable and we hear how Google X is embracing new ways to manipulate light to ignite some of the team's futuristic technologies And as the global decline in coral reefs continues as a result of human activity, Adam talks to Hawaii based biologist Mary Hagedorn who is using unusual techniques normally adopted for fertility clinics, to store and regrow coral species that are in danger Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

Transcript -- Ian Flintoff discussing the history of the weekly journal Nature, how it has changed and how it communicates scientific research.

Ian Flintoff discussing the history of the weekly journal Nature, how it has changed and how it communicates scientific research.

Transcript -- Ian Flintoff discussing the history of the weekly journal Nature, how it has changed and how it communicates scientific research.

Ian Flintoff discussing the history of the weekly journal Nature, how it has changed and how it communicates scientific research.