Transcipt: TWIS.org Mar 18, 2008 Part 3

Justin: Our next presentation, we will give you an hour and a half of squirrels chatting. [laughs]

Kirsten: [laughs] Yes, and with that, we are going to take a short station break. We will be back in just a few moments. Stay tuned before This Week in Science.

Justin: Am going to raise my cortisol?

Kirsten: Yes. Go get it, Justin.

[music playing]

Justin: [singing]

Kirsten: [laughs]

Justin: Hey we are back.

Kirsten: We are back, that’s Chris Taylor with “Robots are Great”, that’s off of the – 2007?

Justin: 2007.

Kirsten: Yes. The two thousand –

Justin: Six.

Kirsten: Oh, my goodness. 2006 music compilation.

Justin: Time is flying.

Kirsten: Wow. Yes. The 2008 compilation is coming along really flying the super colored fast wonderfulness.

Justin: Wow. Goodness Its good.

Kirsten: It could.

Justin: It sound even good.

Kirsten: My caveman’s speech attacked..

I was sent a video that I’ve put up – I linked to it on my blog, kirstensanford.com. It’s from a University that – they’ve been funded by DARPA to try an create an autonomous robot that’s able to – just you know, go walk over any kind of terrain all by itself with no help from a remote control or anything like this. And the video is amazing, it’s a four legged –

Justin: Dog. It’s a robot dog.

Kirsten: Yes. I think they call it “Big Dog” and it jumps like mountain goat, it can– in the video you see it sliding on the ice and then righting itself. You know, I would fall down and slide over the ice with less grace than that robot did.

Justin: And I think – isn’t robot – robot dog is the one that they were – they’re designing to like shuttle out medical supplies and stuff to troops in danger or something like that.

Kirsten: Yes. It is just an amazing – I mean I want to call it an “Animal”.

Justin: Wow.

Kirsten: Like the movement – the movement of this –

Justin: Morphosify it.

Kirsten: Yes. Just like that. Yes. I mean, I look at it and it – some – I was reading through people’s comments, and there’s one point where one of the researchers or people who work on the robot, they give it a big kick with their leg to try and push it over, and it kind a slides to the side and then it rights itself up and somebody kind of commented on that and saying “Man it move so much like a real animal”.

I almost felt bad for it. When it got pushed over and it’s true. It’s amazing just the movement that is so lifelike? Automatically this makes you start thinking a little bit differently about it. So, just opened up a whole world of a – just – I don’t know just thinking about robots. What do we think about robots?

Justin: Well, I’m a little concerned about our latest edition.

Kirsten: What’s our latest edition?

Justin: That Canadian robots in space?

Kirsten: Oh.

Justin: Yes.

Kirsten: What’s the robot in space doing? Does it have a cape?

Justin: It’s Dexter –

Kirsten: Oh, right.

Justin: That we’ve been assembling –

Kirsten: Yes. The space station right?

Justin: Yes. Out there at the space station. It’s a – apparently it’s a pretty big robot, about 12 foot tall –

Kirsten: And its got big arms –

Justin: Eleven foot long arms. They just added the visuals there. The eyes, the video cameras what have you. But this harkens back is one of my biggest complaints about robots, is that, I’m still in the belief that robots aren’t making our lives any better, they’re just taking our jobs.

Kirsten: [laughs] So far.

Justin: Because the point of these robots is going to be, to eliminate space walks by astronauts. It’s going to do all the external repairs and all the outside work, so there’s one more job, right? That you can’t have anymore if you’re human, because now robot’s are doing it.

Kirsten: I’m sure, there’s going to be a – you know, plenty of opportunities for astronauts to get out to the space station, go for a walk if they really feel like it?

Justin: Not – this is going to be it. This going to be it. Robot took that job, to know or part being an astronaut –

Kirsten: Ohh.

Justin: Can you imagine the moonwalk, being done by a robot?

Kirsten: Well it already is on Mars.
.
Justin: One small step for robots. One large step for robot-kind. Ha ha ha.

Kirsten: Yes. I mean that’s the way it is on Mars. It’s already robots on Mars.

Justin: Not that I would want to go to Mars, or let alone orbit.

Kirsten: For the millennium. Yes.

Justin: Let alone orbit.

Kirsten: Yes.

Justin: No thanks. Like my happy little planet down here, like being safe and warm and close to the surface.

Kirsten: I know. You’re one of those people who likes being on the ground, right?

Justin: You know – I mean I would enjoy – I would look out that little porthole window. And I’d see the earth really far away and I’m having anxiety attacks about not being able to get back. That’s what would happen. It would just be like, way to far from home. Like they don’t even think they get cable out there.

Kirsten: Yes.

Justin: I don’t even have a T.V right now so I don’t –

Kirsten: I’m sure they get cable. Geez.

Justin: I don’t have – I mean, I wouldn’t be missing anything but –

Kirsten: From –

Justin: Yes. You stay –

Kirsten: Yes, you have something else to say about, Jus?

Justin: He’s got this sense of touch – capable sensing force. So, you can be able – he’s going to be the one who now and – like you know, the solar panels aren’t arraying properly or there needs to be a bolt to turn, or some new conduit to run. He’s going to be the one in charge of doing all that. Yes.

Kirsten: Computer, locate any Didi like life forms. Hmm. And moving on from Dexter’s Laboratory –

Justin: Ha –

Kirsten: Hello?

Moving on from robots to birds, there’s a couple of cool birds stories this week.

Researchers have reported on a new species of bird, in the Wilson, Journal of Ornithology. Species that’s found on the Togian islands of Indonesia. “Zosterops somadikartai” or Togian White- eye.

Justin: Wow.

Kirsten: Yes. The eye isn’t ringed with the a band of white feathers, but it has a white around its eye. It was spotted first, by Mochamad Indrawan a field biologist at the Depok Campus of the University of Indonesia and Sunarto. And his working on a doctorate at Virginia Tech.

The first sightings were very fleeting but the researchers returned and made many more observations. They found that the birds are green, they obtained a specimen; they sent it on to museum to make comparisons with other animals and they finally described it for the rest of the research community. It has a so called “lilting song”, and it has a higher pitch, and less varied pitch song than that of its relatives.

Also, a bird known as the “Whiskered Auklet”, Aethia pygmaea, breeds on a volcanic Aleutian in coral islands in north pacific.

Researchers, watched the birds, bumped their heads during the study – yes. The whiskered auklets, have whiskers of sorts – feathers that kind of look like less whiskers that extend from their face and head region.

Researchers at Memorial University in St. John’s Newfound in Canada wondered whether or not the whiskers acted similarly to whiskers on cats or rodents in which the whiskers actually give them extra sense of touch and let them know whether or not your cat’s whiskers are usually about as wide as their body.

Justin: Right.

Kirsten: So, the whiskers helped to determine whether or not they’re going to fit into a space. And to test the idea, they caught a bunch of birds – 99 birds – 99 whiskered auklets on the wall …

Justin: You have to use the full name though. If you’re going to do that because that’s the –

Kirsten: Right. It is just sounds so fun. They cut them and they put them in a maze, and then they watched them with the camera and check to see whether or not, they ducked. Did the auklet duck?

Justin: Wait –

Kirsten: They checked to see whether it ducked, and on some of the auklets, they taped their feathers to their heads and lo and behold – the birds that did not have their whiskery feathers extending from their heads, bumped their heads more often.

Justin: Oh. Very interesting.

Kirsten: Yes. So, I don’t know if they tested headaches afterwards but [laughs]

Justin: No, that’s a – wow.

Kirsten: It’s really interesting study. It’s the first study, to show that these birds had a – and advantage in their sensory senses, to be able to figure out using the feathers as something other than just feathers for warmth or –

Justin: Flight or, water –

Kirsten: For flight or, whatever. Actually for tactile use.

Justin: Very cool.

Kirsten: Yes. So, whiskered auklets, they’re whiskered.

Justin: Yes. It’s awesome.

Kirsten: Yes.

Justin: What else we got here? What’s going on?

Kirsten: I like birds.

Justin: You’re such a bird lady.

Kirsten: I like chickens.

Justin: Could you name one of those after you. See, we got petition that some of these researchers are going to go find stuff. You know, it could be the “Kiki auklets” or something.

Kirsten: [laughs] Oh, sweet.

Justin: When fungi, get funky it’s hard to tell who’s what and which is the other, because in the classic gender of its sense, fungi do not have sexes.

Kirsten: No?

Justin: No. They have what are referred to as –

Kirsten: No, sexy time?

Justin: What is referred to as mating types. The study – another one of course from the Journal of PLoS One. It’s great its online journal is –

Kirsten: And it’s free. Public Library of Science. There’s several – there’s PLoS One, there’s PLoS cognitive science, there’s PLoS genomics, there’s like computational, biology. There’s – Yes, there’s all sorts of PLoSes and they all free. Yes.

Justin: And, they have revealed that there are a great similarities between parts of the DNA that determine the sex of plants and animals, and parts of DNA that determine mating types in certain fungi. Making fungi an interesting – a new model of organisms in the study of evolutionary development of the sex chromosomes.

In the plant and animal kingdoms there are individuals of different sexes, that is, bearers of either many tiny sex cells which will be the – that would be the guys, They’ll be better.

Kirsten: That would be the guys.