Brain Dump

'News to Us' starts off about fruit and takes a left turn into child birth.  After that we tackle two huge stories of 2016 that remind Andrew and Elyse that scientists are humans and sometimes that means Kardashian style drama will be attached to new findings.   In May 2016, Nature published the findings on Neanderthal constructions in France.  This could prove a much more complex culture than most credit Neanderthals with having.   We then go into the mystery of King Tut's tomb. Last year when Nicholas Reeves dropped the mic by saying there are hidden chambers in the tomb everyone took notice, Now, after the second scan there are more questions than answers  We topped everything off by giving some hopes and dreams to 2017  Thank you all for listening and supporting this little corner of the internet. Feel free to email at podcastbraindump@gmail.com with any questions and don't forget to rate, review and subscribe, it really helps us out a ton.  All of the articles

This week's 'news to us' ranges from The Princess Bride to cat spies.  Afterwards we take a look back at 2016, because "everyone's doing it mom!" and focus solely on SPACE.   Next week will be a grab bag of scientific accomplishments in 2016 but inspired by the amazing life of Vera Rubin, we walk through our top 3 space stories.  First being LIGO detecting gravitational waves back in February.  Then we travel 4 lightyears away to hang out with Proxima b and learn what Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg are doing to one day get people there (Andrew's dream of space cowboy is ever closer).  Lastly, we end with Earth's "constant companion" reported by JPL back in April.  All of the research and quotes cited for this episode will be on podcastbraindump.com and don't forget to tell a friend!  Brain Dump wishes you a wonderful Holiday Season!

We start the episode with 'news to us'.  Elyse learned about early human ancestors and Andrew is skeptical.  It's touch and go there for a minute, but once we cross that bridge we are knee deep in insect news!  Some baby fungus gnats get their prey in a remarkable and gross way.  A new spider species (we think) is discovered in Ecuador and worms that shoot slime out of their faces remind Elyse how amazing nature is and forces Andrew to come up with a better name than face canon.  As always, if there are questions, comments, or you just want to say hi email us at podcastbraindump@gmail.com The sources we pulled this week's news from are below.  Enjoy! http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162687 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/silkhenge-spiders-ecuador-mystery/ https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/velvet-worms-squirt-slime  

And so it begins... Our inaugural Brain Dump episode is all about dinosaurs.  Namely, the news surrounding the incredible dinosaur tail encased in amber, published in Current Biology this week.  We talk about what this means for furthering our understanding of dinosaurs and I crush Andrew's dreams of a dino pet.  Giraffe extinction makes an unusual appearance and I call Lida Xing my new hero...because he is.  The links for everything discussed are below.  As always, what is said on the podcast is based on my understanding of the research at the time.  If anything changes or I am incorrect, please let me know over twitter or at podcastbraindump@gmail.com .  The 'Let's Learn More' pick of the week is the book "The Wasp That Brainwashed the Caterpillar" by Matt Simon.  Enjoy! Dinosaur tail in amber: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31193-9 Cretaceous trackways: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018216307726