Quirks and Quarks Podcast

Energy with a grain of salt

Researchers have developed a new sodium metal powered fuel cell with up to triple the output for its weight of a lithium-ion battery. The team from  MIT, including Yet-Ming Chiang, think these fuel cells could have enormous potential for electric vehicles — including flight. They say sodium can be electrically produced from salt on a large scale to facilitate this technology. The research was published in the journal Joule.

Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response

A new study has found that plants can respond to the distinctive vibrations of pollinating insects by activating sugar-producing genes to produce rich nectar. In contrast they respond to the sound of nectar-stealing non-pollinators by cutting back on sugar. Francesca Barbero, from the University of Turin in Italy, presented this work at a recent joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and 25th International Congress on Acoustics.

Penguin poop helps create the cooling clouds over Antarctica 

Penguin guano is rich in ammonia, and when it accumulates in penguin rookeries in Antarctica, that ammonia is released into the atmosphere, encouraging cloud production. Those clouds reflect sunlight into space, but can also trap sunlight reflected from the ice, so have complex climate interactions. This connection was discovered by University of Helsinki researcher Matthew Boyer, and was published in the journal Nature.

Giant sloth family tree suggests trees are just a recent part of it

Sloths used to be giants the size of bears and even elephants before disappearing around 12,000 years ago. An international group of paleontologists including University of Toronto’s Gerry De Iuliis have assembled a comprehensive family tree of the sloth to understand how a group that used to dominate the landscape was winnowed away to only a handful of relatively small, tree dwelling species. The research was published in the journal Science.

Eradicating diseases — Can we wipe out ancient and modern plagues forever?

In 1980 the World Health Organization declared Smallpox officially eradicated, meaning that for the first time, a plague that killed hundreds of millions of people had been eliminated by human ingenuity. It opened the question of whether we could do this for other lethal threats? We look at efforts to eradicate Polio, an ancient plague, and HIV, a more modern epidemic, to understand how researchers are trying to eradicate these diseases , how close they’ve come, and what’s preventing their final victory.

Quirks spoke to Stan Houston, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine and public health at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He’s worked on treating HIV and tuberculosis in places such as Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Ecuador and Alberta.

Catherine Hankins was the chief scientific adviser for the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS in Geneva, Switzerland. And in 2013, she was named to the Order of Canada and in 2023 was inducted in the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. She is currently an adjunct professor at the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University and a senior fellow at the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development.

Mutant super-powers give Korean sea women diving abilities

The Haenyeo, or sea women, of the Korean island of Jeju have been celebrated historically for their remarkable diving abilities. For hour after hour they dive in frigid waters harvesting sea-life, through pregnancy and into old age. A new study has shown they are able to do this because of specific genetic adaptations that appeared in their ancestors more than a thousand years ago. These genes make them more tolerant to the cold, and decrease diastolic blood pressure. The women also spend a lifetime training, beginning to dive at age 15 and continuing on until their 80s or even 90s. Melissa Ilardo of Utah University and her team published their findings in the journal Cell Reports.

This dessert is automatic and autonomous 

Care for a slice of robo-cake? Scientists in Europe have baked up a cake with pneumatically powered animated gummy bears, and candles lit by chocolate batteries. They think their edible robotics could develop in the future to food that could bring itself to the hungry and medicine could deliver itself to the sick. Mario Caironi of the Italian Institute of Technology and his colleagues presented their creation at Expo 2025 Osaka.

Shrinking Nemo — heat is causing clownfish to downsize

Scientists have found that clownfish, made famous by the Disney movie Finding Nemo, have an ability never seen before in fish in the coral reefs. When the water they live in gets warmer, they are able to shrink their bodies — becoming a few per cent of their body length shorter — to cope with the stress of the heat. Melissa Versteeg of Newcastle University says the size of the clown anemonefish is important for their survival and their ranking within their hierarchical society. The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

When the music moves you — the brain science of groove

You know that groove feeling you get when you listen to certain music that compels you to shake your bootie? Scientists in France investigated how our brains experience groovy music to better understand how we anticipate rhythms in time. They discovered that we perceive time in the motor region that controls movement. Benjamin Morillion from Aix Marseille Université said they also found a specific rhythm in the brain that helps us process information in time, that could predict if a person thought the music was groovy. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

Scientists hope a new storm lab will help us understand destructive weather

Extreme weather is far less predictable than it used to be, and now a new research centre at Western University wants to transform our understanding of Canada’s unique weather systems. The Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory will collect nation-wide data on extreme weather, including hailstorms, tornadoes, and flash flooding, and look for patterns to help predict where they’ll be hitting and how to prevent the most damage. 

Producer Amanda Buckiewicz spoke with:

Greg Kopp, ImpactWX Chair in Severe Storms Engineering and CSSL founding director at Western University

Harold Brooks, senior research scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory

John Allen, associate professor of meteorology at Central Michigan University

Paul Kovacs, executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University.

Tanya Brown-Giammanco, director of Disaster and Failure Studies at NIST

Chimpanzees lay down mad beats to communicate

Apart from their rich vocal palette, chimpanzees drum on trees to communicate over long distances. A new interdisciplinary study, led in part by PhD student Vesta Eleuteri and primatologist Cat Hobaiter from the University of St. Andrews, has explored the details of the rhythms they used, and found that different populations drum with rhythms which are similar to the beats in human music. The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

An exciting new fossil of an early ancestor of modern birds gives insight into evolution

Archaeopteryx, a 150 million year-old bird-like dinosaur, is known from about a dozen fossils found in Germany. A new one that has been studied at Chicago’s Field Museum may be the best preserved yet, and is giving researchers like paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor new insights into how the ancient animal moved around the Jurassic landscape. The research was published in the journal Nature.

A house with good bones — in more ways than one

Inspired by the structure of bone, researchers have created limestone-like biomineralized construction materials using a fungal-scaffold that they seeded with bacteria. Montana State University’s Chelsea Heveran said they demonstrated they could mold it into specific shapes that had internal properties similar to bone, and that it remained alive for a month. It’s early days yet, but she envisions a day when they can grow living structural material on site that may even be able heal themselves. The study is in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science. 

A different kind of emotional band-aid

Scientists have created a clever combination of physical sensors and computer technology to produce a flexible band-aid like device that can accurately read emotions when it is stuck to the face. It’s not quite mind reading, but could give physicians better insight into the emotional state of their patients. Huanyu Cheng of Penn State led the work, which was published in the journal Nano Letters.

A scientist explores what it takes to live a longer, better life

Do you want to live forever? As he noticed himself showing signs of age, immunologist John Tregoning decided to find out what he could do to make that possible. So he explored the investigations that scientists are doing into why we age and die — and tried a few experiments on himself. Bob speaks with him about his new book Live Forever? A Curious Scientists’ Guide to Wellness, Ageing and Death. 

Tregoning dutifully documents everything he discovers as he undergoes testing for his heart, gets his genes sequenced, has a bronchoscopy, and follows an extreme diet, among other experiments. But he comes to the conclusion that “when it comes to improving life outcomes, exercise considerably trumps nearly everything I am planning to do whilst writing this book.”

Chimpanzees use medicinal plants for first aid and hygiene

Researchers have observed wild chimpanzees seeking out particular plants, including ones known to have medicinal value, and using them to treat wounds on themselves and others. They also used plants to clean themselves after sex and defecation. Elodie Freymann from Oxford University lived with the chimpanzees in Uganda over eight months and published this research in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Why this evolutionary dead end makes understanding extinction even more difficult

540 million years ago, there was an explosion of animal diversity called the Cambrian explosion, when nature experimented with, and winnowed many animal forms into just a few. A new discovery of one of the unlucky ones that didn’t make it has deepened the mystery of why some went extinct, because despite its strangeness, it shows adaptations common to many of the survivors. Joseph Moysiuk, curator of paleontology and geology at the Manitoba Museum helped identify the fossil, and published on it in Royal Society Open Science 

A quantum computer demonstrates its worth by solving an impossible puzzle

Imagine taking a sudoku puzzle, handing bits of it to several people, putting them in separate rooms, and asking them to solve the puzzle. A quantum computer using the weird phenomenon of “entanglement” was able to do something analogous to this, which serves as evidence that it really is exploiting quantum strangeness, and could be used for more practical purposes. David Stephen, a physicist at the quantum computing company Quantinuum, and colleagues from the University of Boulder published on this finding in Physical Review Letters.

Roadkill shows that most mammals have fluorescent fur

A researcher who used a range of mammal and marsupial animals killed by vehicles, has demonstrated that the fur of many of these animals exhibit biofluorescence – the ability to absorb light and re-emit it in different wavelengths. They were able to identify some of the fluorescent chemicals, but don’t know why these animals would glow like this. Zoologist Linda Reinhold observed bright colours such as yellow, blue, green and pink on Australian animals like the bandicoot, wallaby, tree-kangaroo, possums and quolls. Their research was published in the journal PLOS One.

Science suggests humans are not built for the information age

We are living in the age of information. In fact, we’re drowning in it. Modern technology has put vast amounts of information at our fingertips, and it turns out that science is showing that humans just aren’t that good at processing all that data, making us vulnerable to bias, misinformation and manipulation.

Producer Amanda Buckiewicz spoke to:

Friedrich Götz, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Vasileia Karasavva, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Timothy Caulfield, professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta, and was the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy from 2002 - 2023.

Eugina Leung, an assistant professor of marketing at the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.

Jonathan Kimmelman, a medical ethicist based at McGill University.

The beginnings of our end — where the anus came from 

Our distant evolutionary ancestors had no anuses. Their waste was excreted from the same orifice they used to ingest food, much like jellyfish do today. Now a new study on bioRxiv that has yet to be peer-reviewed, scientists think they’ve found the evolutionary link in a worm with only a single digestive hole. Andreas Hejnol, from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, said he found genes we now associate with the anus being expressed in the worms in the opening where its sperm comes out, suggesting that in our evolutionary history a similar orifice was co-opted as a butt hole. 

Deepfake videos are becoming so real, spotting them is becoming increasingly dicey

Detecting deepfake videos generated by artificial intelligence is a problem that’s getting progressively worse as the technology continues to improve. One way we used to be able to tell the difference between a fake and real video is that subtle signals revealing a person’s heart rate don’t exist in artificially generated videos. But that is no longer the case, according to a new study in the journal Frontiers in Imaging. Peter Eisert, from Humboldt University and the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute HHI in Germany, said detecting manipulated content visually is only going to become a lot more difficult going forward. 

Crows can use tools, do math — and now apparently understand geometry

Crows are known to be among the most intelligent of animals, and a new study has explored their geometrical sophistication. Researchers including Andreas Nieder from the University of Tübingen found that crows can recognize and distinguish different kinds of quadrilateral shapes, an ability we had thought was unique to humans. The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

There’s gold in them thar magnetically charged neutron stars!

Astronomers have discovered a new source of the universe’s heavy elements — things like gold, platinum and uranium. A study led by astrophysicist Anirudh Patel found that magnetars — exotic neutron stars with ultra-powerful magnetic fields — may produce these elements in a process analogous to the way solar flares are produced by our Sun. The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, found that a single flare from a magnetar could produce the mass equivalent of 27 moons’ worth of these heavy elements in one burst.

It may not be big, but it’s small — and stroppy

You might not expect an insect so tiny you need a magnifying glass to see it properly to be an aggressive defender of its territory, but that’s because you haven’t met the warty birch caterpillar. Its territory is just the tip of a birch leaf, but it defends it by threatening intruders with vigorous, if not precisely powerful, vibrations. Jayne Yack at Carleton University has been studying this caterpillar since 2008. This research was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Criminals beware — the microbiome leaves fingerprints

Scientists have developed a new tool that can track location based on traces of the bacteria characteristic to different places. Eran Elhaik, from Lund University in Sweden, trained the AI tool using nearly 4,500 microbiome samples collected around the world from subway systems, soil and the oceans. He said they could identify the city source in 92 per cent of their urban samples, and in Hong Kong, where a lot of their data came from, they could identify the specific subway station samples were taken from with 82 per cent accuracy. The study was published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.