Finding Genius Podcast

Diagnosed just a few weeks past her eight birthday, it wasn't until she was an adult that she realized how isolated she had always felt as a result of being a diabetic. She and another type 1 had befriended each other, and after talking about diabetes type 1 diet and exercise types, they realized that combing forces and sharing information might help others. Listen and learn What she hopes to accomplish with her blog, diabetesdailygrind.com, and podcast, Real Life Diabetes Podcast, What a "day in the life" type 1 diabetes insulin regimen looks like from her perspective and what kinds of effects stress has on management, and What other factors, like decision fatigue, are added in to that management and how she advises listeners to reach out for mental health support. After several decades with type 1 diabetes, Amber Clour is more than an expert in self-management. But her knowledge has even more depth because of the research and interviews she's done for her podcast and blog. She says that while a lot of people with type 1 are able to be discrete about management, many don't understand that it is a 24-hour, 7-day a week, 365-days-a-year effort. Furthermore, because the metabolism process of the human body is so different for everyone and varies under conditions like stress, there's no one-size-fits-all care guide. This constant focus on insulin action mechanisms takes concentrated energy. Further, it's important not to over treat with insulin, a potentially deadly outcome. This constant stress can also lead to mental health issues. "You can feel like you are alone on an island," she says, but sharing with other people who know what it is like has made a big difference in her life, and she hopes her blog and podcast do the same for others. In addition, she has concerns that minimal direction is passed on to patients facing type 2 diabetes treatment as well. She hopes to help educate and inform others about available resources and technology, and is starting a new series called Just the Facts, Please, which will focus on straight information sharing from an expert. For more about her work, see diabetesdailygrind.com. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

"This is the worse superbug you can get," said her husband's doctors when diagnosing him with a life-threatening multidrug resistant bacterial infection. But Steffanie Strathdee put her research skills to work and eventually was able to convince doctors to treat him with an experimental phage therapy that ended up saving his life. Listen and learn Why no other solution was working to cure her husband of this superbug, How the history of phage therapy versus antibiotics has played out, and Why the problem of antibiotic resistance may be addressed by utilizing bacteriophages. Steffanie A. Strathdee is the Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences and the Harold Simon Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She helped found and co-directs UCSD's new center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) and also works with the Global Health Institute and the International Core of UCSD's Center for AIDS Research. An infectious disease epidemiologist, she's also the author of The Perfect Predator, which tells the story of her husband's struggle with a superbug and the successful effort to help him recover with phage viruses. Phages are viruses that infect bacteria, and are emerging as a potential winner as scientists struggle with how to prevent superbugs from causing deadly infections. She gives listeners a fascinating history of how politics and war kept phage therapy out of American medicine for decades. First discovered by a French Canadian microbiologist, their adoption by Russians pre-World War II marked them as off-the-table for the American medical field. But they are emerging again as having great potential, and Steffanie Strathdee helps enlighten listeners by describing the process and why they can be effective. First, scientists are able to pick and choose their phages, testing to make sure what bacteria the phages will infect. They can get specific, killing only the bacteria they want to target. Ideally, they'll collect a couple of different phages for the best chances of success, then make isolates of them. The most difficult stage is the purification, she says. Scientists are moving ahead, designing clinical studies. Listen in for more exciting news about this life-saving treatment. For more, see the Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) website. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Imaging a heart is both crucial and challenging, but Caption Health has fine-tuned artificial intelligence healthcare to make ultrasound imaging more precise, more accessible, and more efficient. Listen in as their CTO describes What the biggest challenges are in achieving high-quality, informative ultrasounds, How the Caption AI ultrasound meets those challenges, and What additional advantages artificial intelligence in ultrasound procedures offers, such as speed and novice accessibility. Research scientist Kilian Koepsell cofounded Caption Health and serves as their Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He's spent his career focusing on the potential of deep learning to solve healthcare issues. He tells Richard about exciting new advances from Caption Health for artificial intelligence in ultrasound imaging. While ultrasounds are extremely valuable diagnostic tools, the procedures require highly-skilled personnel to work the ultrasound machine. Imaging something like the heart, which requires a simultaneous apical four-chamber view to gather relevant information, is especially difficult. That's why Caption Health started with cardiac imaging as they developed their FDA-approved AI-guided ultrasound system. They created an AI algorithm that works like an expert, guiding the user to the right spot to get that four-chamber image while automatically recording the image as well. Koepsell says that Caption Health's mission is to "democratize medical imaging and get it out to many more people, especially novices of ultrasounds," even if they are specialists in other healthcare segments. He explains how the ultrasound and its application works, down to the quality meter that guides the user and other prescriptive guidance tools. For more about this technology, see the company's website: captionhealth.com. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

How many podcasters does it take to evaluate the modern science field? Well, this conversation presents an intriguing attempt by two to do just that. Richard and Dr. Kat Arney touch on everything from the tangle of the publication field to the ecology of the cell. Listen and learn How she approaches the history of genetics in her Genetics Unzipped podcast and what are some of her favorite stories from the year, What dangers in today's publication system exist, including "predatory journals" and preprints, and How her new book, Rebel Cell, explores the latest on cancer and how an evolutionary lens might help treatment. Dr. Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, public speaker, and broadcaster. Her PhD in developmental genetics informs her latest podcast, Genetics Unzipped, and she's just published a new book called Rebel Cell: Cancer, Evolution and the Science of Life. She offers listeners a plethora of interesting biomedical science tidbits, from the story behind the myth of the invention of PCR testing to why Rosalyn Franklin was left behind in the accolades for the discovery of DNA's double helix. She also describes the challenges in biomedical science in understanding COVID and our genes, and describes a study involving twins to see if the differing COVID responses stem from genetics or environment. She and Richard also discuss their concerns with how science is tested once if hits the airwaves and internet, from the best and worst of peer review processes to the difficulty of wading through preprints. "Anyone can publish a PDF," she remarks, which ultimately is all a preprint website offers. Ultimately, the physical and natural sciences' publish-or-perish pressure has led to predatory journals, which have caused even more problems. Finally, she describes the impetus behind her latest book on cancer as a culmination of years of interest and research on the genetics and evolution of cancer. Because of advances in genomics and DNA testing, she says that we are closer to understanding cancer and she shares her hope for better treatment. To learn more about her podcast, see geneticsunzipped.com. For information on her new book, see rebelcellbook.com. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Over the past century, one virus has been responsible for the death of over 100 million trees in the world, posing an agricultural problem particularly in regions of Asia, South America, and South Africa; this virus is called Citrus tristeza virus (CTV). Press play to learn about it, and discover the following: What role aphids play in the transmission of CTV from tree to tree How 'movement proteins' interact with host proteins to facilitate the spread of virus within the plant How viruses alter the expression of plant genes, and what effect this can have on the plant How plant viruses travel from cell to cell within the host In the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Florida, Associate Professor Svetlana Y. Folimonova, PhD, has been working with CTV for several years now, which is a virus that primarily affects citrus plants and trees. In some plant varieties, it causes no disease (or mild disease), while in others it causes severe disease, to such a degree that infection by the virus spreads throughout the entire plant and causes death. In addition to the significant agricultural impact of this virus, Dr. Folimonova explains that the virus is fundamentally interesting in that it is among the largest of all RNA viruses, with a non-segmented genome comparable to the size of the virus causing COVID-19. At about 20,000 nucleotides, its genome is about twice as large as the average size of RNA viruses. It also has a unique shape, which can be described as filamentous—very long and narrow, with a "rattlesnake" structure. Dr. Folimonova discusses how the virus enters plant cells, what happens once the virus is inside plant cells, the two main types of disease caused by CTV, how the virus alters many organelles within plant cells, as well as the structure of plasmodesmata—microscopic channels that pass through the walls of adjacent plant cells—to facilitate movement of the virus within the plant. The primary practical goal of Dr. Folimonova's work is to determine how diseases caused by CTV can be controlled. She discusses possible solutions, which leads to a conversation about cross-protection in plants, superinfection exclusion, and more. Learn more by searching for Dr. Folimonova on Google Scholar, and by visiting https://plantpath.ifas.ufl.edu/people/faculty-pages/svetlana-folimonova/. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Honey bees are one of the most fascinating and complex social organisms on our planet. Scientists like Gene Robinson research how their genomics play a central role in this behavior and how their environment in turn affects their genes. Listen and learn How the honey bee colony is surprisingly flexible and adaptive to changes in numbers and situations, How the genomics discipline altered scientists' one-directional arrow from gene to behavior to a two-directional model, and What developmental milestones a honey bee passes to make it through to full-forager status. Gene Robinson is the director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, an institute that practices team science within a multi-disciplinary scheme. He's been studying entomology and different species of bees for over 45 years. In this conversation, he shares some fascinating notes about honey bee behavior with listeners. His group in the institute in particular looks at their social behavior mechanisms and evolution from a genomics perspective. Interestingly, he says that studies indicate layers of individuality and adaptability in bee society—not only are they not all "marching to the same orders," they can change behavior depending on what is happening with the colony. In one study, his lab monitored the entry and exit of the hive and found that a minority of the hive worked as foragers. In addition, a small group within the foragers took on a significant 50% of the work. However, when they removed those power-house foragers, the colony did not collapse. Rather, the other bees "upped their foraging game" and made up for the loss. "So while labor is apportioned, it's not fixed and there's flexibility," adds Robinson. He describes other remarkable modes of flexibility, from pheromone releasing and withholding to determine maturity rates to how a hive survives a queen loss. Along the way he explains how the history of genomics has rearranged how biologists look at bee behavior and development from transcriptomic studies. In fact, dramatic changes are evident in bee brain gene activity depending on their rearing conditions. Based on these studies, their genome is very sensitive to the environment. For more, see the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and Gene Robinson's lab website. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Find what you're capable of doing, and double down on it until you do it well…and also, always try to get along with other people. These were the two primary lessons David Olney learned during his early childhood. These lessons could probably benefit any typical person, but Olney certainly learned them in an atypical way. Born with only five percent vision which was gone by the end of high school, Olney has led a unique and successful life and career. Press play to discover: How the brains of London taxi drivers and blind people compare, and why Why technology to restore vision in people who have been blind for the majority of their lives actually poses a significant, difficult-to-overcome problem Which function on Olney's iPhone has added tremendous utility to his life Olney is Associate Lecturer at Politics and International Relations (POLIR) at the University of Adelaide, whose blindness has led him to insights and understandings not always easily ascertained by sighted people. For instance, he credits his blindness for his ability to process and find patterns in huge amounts of disparate data, which has proved useful in a number of ways, especially in terms of understanding security matters and modern war. As an example, it gave him the ability to develop a theory for making sense of Al-Qaeda—a group of people no one really knew anything about in the wake of 9/11—within just a few days, and applying this to what was in the media. Within a couple of months, he was providing lectures on the subject. Among other topics, Olney discusses the particulars of his experience as a blind person—what he sees, what he feels, how he senses his environment, how he frames his interactions with his students and others in his life, and more. Tune in for all the details, and check out Olney's podcast, Blind Insights. Useful Links to Explore: An Insight to Blindness: https://omny.fm/shows/blind-insights/blind-insights-with-david-episode-9-an-insight-to Bonus Insights - David's Journey into the Void Adelaide's CBD): https://omny.fm/shows/blind-insights/bonus-insights-davids-journey-into-the-void-adelai Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Even in the wind-swept, mountainous regions of Himalaya, ants move forward in their rugged life cycles. Dr. Himender Bharti shares how these ants survive in such areas, including the molecular phylogeny and the chemical ecology of ants that must reproduce in very short warm seasons. Listen and learn Why he describes ants as sitting at the "pinnacle" of insect social evolution, How one of his favorite ant species in genus Myrmica manages to survive under the extreme conditions of the Himalayas, and Where ant evolution sits in the larger picture of natural history. Dr. Himender Bharti holds a position with the Department of Zoology and Environmental Sciences and runs the Ants Systematics and Molecular Biology Lab at Punjabi University. Ants have always been his passion, and though he started his academic research on saw flies, he acquired funding to focus fully on ant research and hasn't looked back. In fact, in the past 20 years he has described about 100 formerly-unknown ant species from India and other Southeast Asian countries. He paints a picture for why ants have always fascinated him, and sees their place in insect life as analogous to where humans sit in relation to other mammals. From their social organization to how they interact with each other, from their developmental patterns to their life history and division of labor, their inspiring factors are numerous. Dr. Bharti was also able to open up the understudied ant life and evolutionary history of species in regions in India and surrounding areas. He shares details about one of his favorite species of genus Myrmica, one endemic to Himalaya and central Asia. Such high altitudes lead to a very different life history than what is more common in tropical regions. Their response to the environmental interruptions of scarcity of resources and higher elevation make for interesting behaviors and gene regulation. He describes some of these behaviors, including workers eating some of the brood stages in order to make it through winter. Listen in for more intriguing and little known ant facts. For more about his work, see his website: antdiversityindia.com. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

That grey fuzz you find on your strawberries after a day or two in the fridge has researchers busy in the lab. White and grey molds often harm crops and Shinyi Marzano is working to inhibit these pathogens that often strike greenhouse crops like lettuce, tomatoes, and strawberries. Listen and learn How her work zeros in on the arms race between plant and fungi, looking for weak spots in fungi progression, Why this has led her to research RNA silencing pathways in fungi and properties of mycoviruses, and How blocking the RNA silencing mechanism of fungi might give the mycoviruses the upper hand, freeing the plant from these pathogens. Shinyi Marzano is a molecular biologist and recently started working with USDA's Agricultural Research Service. She focuses on green house and high tunnel production, both of which are used for crops highly susceptible to these white and grey molds. Plants are especially susceptible during flowering to white mold, when sexually-produced spores germinate after they've attached to flower petals. The fungi's mycelium forms and grows, causing a systemic infection that leads to stem rot. Grey mold is particularly a problem for fruit crops, spreading rapidly and ruining the fruit production. Shinyi and her colleagues are studying both the RNA silencing process the fungi initiates as well as the mycoviruses that infect the fungi. RNA silencing in plants is really a function of the fungi. When they sense the double-stranded RNA that's produced by many mycoviruses, they attempt to silence or inhibit the RNA by releasing proteins that cut up the RNA strands, creating small pieces of what's called virus-derived small RNA. Shinyi is looking at mechanisms to disarm the pathogen host of those essential proteins that are part of the RNA silencing pathway. The fungal pathogen would then be susceptible to those mycoviruses. She explains other interesting avenues, including delivery means of these mycoviruses. For more about her work, she recommends searching Google Scholar. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

Twelve infrared cameras lining the perimeter of the ceiling, treadmills equipped with force plates, and high-speed video cameras: this is what you'd find upon walking into the Biomechanics Lab within the Sweere Clinic at Northwestern Health Sciences University. Today, we hear from the Clinical Coordinator of the lab, Dr. Gregory DeNunzio. Press play to discover: How to analyze muscle activation patterns to develop the perfect plan for individual patients What type of therapeutics are being used for various issues experienced by athletes, people recovering from surgeries or stroke, and even those who have no known problems How breathing patterns and stress affect certain muscles, and therefore physical performance and health Dr. DeNunzio has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, a master's degree in exercise science, and a doctorate in chiropractic, and he's found a way to merge these passions into one, perfect role. As Clinical Coordinator of the Biomechanics Lab in the Sweere Clinic, he measures what can't be seen, helping people not only develop a better understanding of their body and movement, but prevent injuries, and recover or improve from those that have already occurred. He explains the process of 3D motion analysis, which includes looking at the angles of nearly every joint in the body (a process he says can almost be considered a 'digitizing' of the entire human body), the force being generated through different joints in the body, the effect of stress and breathing patterns of the engagement of certain muscles, and how to distinguish between different health and fitness conditions that wouldn't be detected without the technology and design offered in the lab. He also discusses injury prevention strategies, injury recovery, and how to pin down the root of an individual person's issue. "I've been in practice for over 25 years, and what excites me is that I am still learning different ways to help people either get better or prevent injuries," says Dr. DeNunzio. Tune in for all of his insights. To learn more, visit https://www.nwhealth.edu/clinics/sweere-clinic/biomechanics/.