In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we explore the unexpected ways algae (and the things that kill them) influence cloud formation. We also chat about the massive galaxy walls in our universe, including the South Pole Wall and the Sloan Great Wall, both of which are around 1.5 billion light-years long.

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A transcript and references for this episode can be found at acs.org/tinymatters.

On January 27, 1958, newspaper editor Olga Huckins sat down to write an angry letter to a friend. Olga and her husband owned a private two-acre bird sanctuary, and the previous summer the government had sprayed the pesticide DDT all over that two acres to control the mosquitos. She saw wildlife, particularly birds, getting sick and dying. The friend Olga sent the letter to was none other than Rachel Carson, who would go on to write the book Silent Spring, exposing the dangers of synthetic pesticides, including DDT, and helping push forward the modern environmental movement and the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Today on the show we’re going to talk about the history of pesticides and their deployment, and how researchers are working to develop more effective, safer pesticides. We will also take a fascinating dive into the coevolution of plants and pests, specifically insects, and what we’re learning about the effectiveness of pesticides based on hundreds of millions of years of plant and insect evolution.

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Link to the Tiny Show & Tell story is here. You can find BirdCast here. All Tiny Matters transcripts and references are available here.

In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we talk about the ampullae of Lorenzini that allow sharks to detect the electrochemical signals coming from prey. We also cover the fascinating science behind cyanide-filled clovers. Did you know cyanide is actually a very popular poison in the plant kingdom?

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A transcript and references for this episode can be found at acs.org/tinymatters.

E-cigarettes, commonly referred to as “vapes,” were invented in the early 2000s with the explicit goal of helping people quit smoking by transitioning them to something safer. But there are many people, particularly in the United States, who start vaping without ever having smoked a cigarette, leading to fears that vaping will be an on-ramp to smoking — a “gateway drug.” In fact, in the U.S. alone, nearly half a million middle school students vape. And in 2019, the CDC started receiving reports of severe and acute lung injury in people who vaped. By February of 2020, almost 3,000 people had been hospitalized and 68 people had died.

We know that smoking is deadly (in fact, it’s estimated to take about 10 years off your life), but of course vaping isn’t risk free. In this episode of Tiny Matters, we’ll dive into the science behind both to answer, “What’s more dangerous, smoking or vaping?” “And does vaping actually help people quit smoking cigarettes?” We’ll also get to the bottom of why so many people got sick or died from vaping back in 2019 and 2020, yet we haven’t seen injuries like that since.

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Link to the Tiny Show & Tell story is here. All Tiny Matters transcripts and references are available here.

In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we break down the complicated science of tides and why some places have massive tidal swings while others do not. We also cover the role of ancient viral DNA in our genomes, and how it seems to be making us less responsive to cancer treatments like chemotherapy.

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Here's the tides video George mentioned. The rest of the references and transcript for this episode can be found at acs.org/tinymatters.

Around 8 million years ago, an underwater volcano just to the east of Madagascar formed the island of Mauritius. Pigeons on nearby islands set flight and settled on that island. There they continued to evolve, and the dodo bird eventually emerged as its own species: Raphus cucullatus. And tiny Mauritius, with an area of just 720 square miles, was the only place in the entire world where the dodo lived. And it lived a good life, among bats and tortoises and other birds, safe from the predators its ancestors left back on land millions of years before. But in 1598, when sailors from the Netherlands arrived, the dodo’s luck ran out.

On today's Tiny Matters we dive into the history of the bird that everyone loves to make fun of: the dodo. And we’re going to explore some of the work investigating why this bird went extinct and what it was like when it was alive. Then we’ll shift gears and talk about what some people worry will cause a massive extinction in the future — one that might include us: supervolcanoes. These are volcanoes capable of eruptions thousands of times larger than the volcanic eruptions we are most familiar with today. The recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland or the deadly Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 pale in comparison. These are volcanoes bigger than anything we've experienced as human beings in our recorded history. So are we ready if one comes our way?

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Links to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Check out the Headline Science video series here.

All Tiny Matters transcripts and references are available here.

In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we cover work scientists have done to understand what’s going on in dog brains and how attached to us they really are. We also discuss a polymer called hemoglycin that hitches a ride on literal tons of space dust and may have played a big role in how life on Earth got started.

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*A disclaimer that there will be discussions of self harm in this episode* In 2003, Chris Nowinski found himself in a WWE wrestling ring, concussed and not remembering where he was or how he was supposed to finish the match. This would be a pivotal moment not just in his life but for an entire field of research on a neurodegenerative disease long known to exist but poorly defined and even censored: chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE.

There’s evidence that people knew about CTE — which went by names like “punch drunk” — starting in the 1920s, but it wasn’t until the 2000s, when American football players began being diagnosed with CTE post-mortem, that the disease started gaining public traction. Many of those football players, including Andre Waters, had died by suicide. Chris, now a behavioral neuroscientist and the co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, pushed to get the brains of Waters and other athletes tested, and began spreading awareness and putting pressure on organizations like the NFL to acknowledge the devastation this disease can bring to athletes and their families.

Today on the show we will cover what’s known about CTE and how to prevent it, and how researchers are trying to find ways of diagnosing it in people who are still alive and working to find treatments.

Here are some good CTE resources:
https://concussionfoundation.org/CTE-resources/support
https://www.bu.edu/cte/resources/resources-for-families/

Send us your science stories/factoids/news for a chance to be featured on an upcoming Tiny Show and Tell Us episode and to be entered to win a Tiny Matters coffee mug! And, while you're at it, subscribe to our newsletter at bit.ly/tinymattersnewsletter.

Links to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. All Tiny Matters transcripts and references are available here.