Episode description

The storm flooded mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, which supply the tech industry with some of the purest quartz in the world. Also, researchers developed a 3D-printable material, inspired by worms, that can act as a Band-Aid for damaged heart and cartilage tissue.

After making landfall on September 26, Hurricane Helene devastated regions in the southeastern US. Over 200 people are confirmed dead so far. About a million people are still without power, and many lack clean water.

As climate change intensifies, hurricanes like Helene are expected to occur more often and be more intense. What’s become very clear in the last few years is that due to the interconnectedness of the modern world, extreme weather in one place can have global implications.

For example, Spruce Pine, North Carolina, home to around 2,200 people, flooded during Hurricane Helene. The town is also home to several mines that produce some of the world’s purest quartz, an ingredient necessary to make solar panels, smartphones, semiconductors, and more.

Ira talks with Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, about this and other science news of the week, including a completed map of a fruit fly’s brain, how scientists in the United Kingdom are screening newborns for rare diseases, and how octopuses and fish are hunting as a team.

The heart is an impressive organ that has to beat constantly for years. But what happens when heart tissue is damaged? Or when cartilage in joints like our knees wears out? These constantly moving tissues don’t regenerate easily, and there aren’t a lot of great treatment options.

To address these kinds of problems, a team at University of Colorado Boulder invented a new strong, stretchy, and sticky hydrogel material that could act as a Band-Aid to heart or tissue lesions. They were inspired by masses of worms that tangle and untangle themselves, behaving almost as both a solid and liquid. The team was able to replicate that in a molecular structure with the help of a new 3D-printing technique. And it could have applications far beyond medicine, including for manufacturing and improving the 3D-printing process itself. Their research was published in the journal Science, and their lab has filed for a provisional patent for the material.

Dr. Jason Burdick, professor of chemical and biological engineering at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute, joins Ira Flatow to talk about the new material and how it could improve future tissue and cartilage treatment.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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