Cow Slime, City Rainfall, Golden Lettuce
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 935 Ratings
🗓️ 30 October 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, you’ll learn about the synthetic slime that might help people heal from back surgery, how cities tend to get more rain than the rural areas around them, and a new genetically engineered golden lettuce packed with vitamins.
Cow Slime
- “Cow slime can help disc herniation patients after surgery.” EurekAlert! 2024.
- “Preserving the Immune-Privileged Niche of the Nucleus Pulposus: Safeguarding Intervertebral Discs from Degeneration after Discectomy with Synthetic Mucin Hydrogel Injection.” by Huan Wang, et al. 2024.
City Rainfall
- “Unprecedented global study shows that most cities receive more rainfall than surrounding rural areas.” EurekAlert! 2024.
- “The escalating impact of global warming on atmospheric rivers.” by Saima May Sidik. 2024.
Golden Lettuce
- “‘Golden Lettuce’ genetically engineered to pack 30 times more vitamins.” by Michael Irving. 2024.
- “CRISPR tomatoes genetically engineered to be richer in vitamin D.” by Michael Irving. 2022.
- “Scientists fine-tune iodine and potassium levels in designer veggies.” by Michael Franco. 2024.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Did you wake up this morning hoping you would get a little bit smarter somehow? |
| 0:07.0 | Well good news this is Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I'm Nate. |
| 0:11.0 | You know I did wake up thinking that this morning and I am super |
| 0:14.1 | sided that I am a part of this I'm Callie. Today you learn about the synthetic |
| 0:18.2 | slime that might help people heal from back surgery how cities tend to get more rain than the rural areas around them, and a new genetically |
| 0:26.7 | engineered golden lettuce packed with vitamins. |
| 0:30.0 | I have so many questions. |
| 0:32.0 | Let's find out. |
| 0:32.9 | If you've ever gone to a farm or a petting zoo |
| 0:34.9 | and gotten up close and personal with a cow, |
| 0:36.9 | you know that when those guys chew their cud, |
| 0:38.9 | they produce a lot of slime. |
| 0:42.4 | You mean like slobber? |
| 0:44.0 | Yeah, yeah. So researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden |
| 0:48.0 | have been inspired by that cow slime |
| 0:50.0 | and have developed a treatment to help folks recover from disc herniation surgery. |
| 0:54.0 | And cow slobber is going to help people recover from back surgery? |
| 0:59.0 | Okay, well, not exactly, but sort of. |
| 1:01.0 | So to really get into this, let's talk about disc herniation. |
| 1:05.0 | The herniated disc and that seems like a pretty common issue in spinal health. |
| 1:10.0 | Right. Our discs are basically those cushions between the bones and our spine, our spinal vertebrae. They can get pinched, squished or basically displaced which can cause all kinds of pain. |
| 1:19.4 | Think about them as the rubber cushion between two pieces of metal. |
... |
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