Lab Grown Meat

I don't know if you've seen the news on this or not, but scientists in the Netherlands have been successful at growing meat in the lab. They basically work in a field called tissue engineering. That field of study works to produce tissue for human transplants. Growing meat to eat is a slight deviation of that application of course. After Haley and I had a bit of a heated discussion about it, we decided to do a quick introduction to it in this week's podcast:

The story of real life zombies.

This summer, we got the chance to visit East Africa. While we were there, I found an amazing plant called zombie cucumber. It smelt really bad, and had big spiky fruits on it. I decided to look it up and found out that it is one of the ingredients used by witch doctors to make people into zombies. Think that's crazy! I did. The story was in the inspiration for this weeks video though.  It's fitting for the times in any case.

Oregon gets Wave Energy

I'm not exactly sure where the decision to put the first commercial scale wave energy project off the coast of Oregon came from, but I think it's a great step in the right direction. This buoy isn't the first of it's kind, though. It's just the first to get implemented. Since I once lived in Oregon, the idea for this was near and dear to my heart. Here is my video review of the project.

Plant Nerdery

I create podcasts on a lot of different science topics. This week I was given the opportunity to create a video about anything I wanted to (within reason). I've always wanted to do a piece about monocots and dicots, but couldn't ever figure out how to make it cool. Truth is, it is a bit of a nerdy topic. Kids learn it in school though, and it's impossible to find any good videos on the topic. 

Thus, I present ... our nerdy plant video of the day. I tried to show that plants really are cool.  I'm not talking this time about how they'll kill you or how you can get high. I do like those topics though. This time, it's all about the basics- monocots vs dicots. You learned it in school, but why did you learn it? It's important, that's why. If you're into plants, I think you'll like this short. 

To learn more about this topic visit our monocots vs dicots page.

Ticks with a twist of lyme disease

Over the summer I found out that our new house, being so close to the woods, is crawling with ticks. At one point we found between 5 and 10 a night in our bed. It's a terrible feeling to have a tick bite you while you're dreaming. Needless to say, one of those ticks was carrying a pathogen. While I can't be sure it was lyme disease, since I didn't get it tested, I do know that it was something in the same category because I had all the signs. I got treated with antibiotics and I'm fine.  However, it made me start thinking about the disease.

A few weeks after I got treated for lyme disease, we went to Africa. Turns out, one of the preventions for malaria is the antibiotic, doxycycline, which is exactly what I had been on for lyme treatment. I basically continued treatment for another couple weeks there. In the meantime, we bumped into a researcher, Brian Allan, who studies ticks and lyme disease. Because of those two chance occurrences, we decided to make this short update:



If you're still interested in reading up on the ecology of this disease, we did a short writeup here: http://www.untamedscience.com/biodiversity/article/lime-disease

Tracking Baboons in Style!

If you've been following our work at Untamed Science, you might know we just went to Africa. You might also know that we were tracking baboons with a group of researchers. Yet, we weren't able to share a whole lot about what we were doing, because we knew we were going to release this video. So, after a month of work, here it its.



Read more about this research at our full link here: http://www.untamedscience.com/baboons

After it's all said and done, I think the project turned out very well. I'm happy to say I completely enjoyed every one of the researchers on the trip and I wish every expedition could be as fun as this one.

Teaching Whitewater Kayaking

Over the last couple decades I've dabbled in and learned a lot of sports. I've been a dive master, hang glider, wakeboarder, snow boarder, cyclist, swimmer, runner, rock climber, roller bladder and skydiver.   With every sport, I've figured out more about how my body learns. I've been able to compare the different sports a bit and learn what I like. In doing so, I've come to realize that I am actually surprised that so many people have picked up whitewater kayaking.

Whitewater kayaking is a sport that has a huge learning curve. With pretty much any other activity I've done you can ease into the sport gradually. In doing so you pick up skills that will help keep you safe and having fun. Only a few of these sports, are more dangerous when you start. As you get better, they become safer. The first one that comes to mind is skydiving. The hardest part is landing, and making sure you know how to jump out of the plane. The rest is just fancy stuff. The second is whitewater kayaking. The reason's all come down to the fact that you have to get one difficult skill before you're at all safe - your roll. As long as you can confidently flip back over, you'll be fine - but it's a difficult task to accomplish in the midst of swirling whitewater.

This weekend I decided it would be fun to give Jonas and Louise a crash course in whitewater kayaking, a sport I've now dove into 100 percent. Our destination was the relatively easy Nantahala River in North Carolina. Here is a short one minute video, showing some of Jonas' crashes, and eventual swims.