Monday, 7 February, 2022
Gold for Australia at Winter Olympics; Why an Aussie ship was flooded in the Antarctic; peanut allergy breakthrough; and the dogs on platypus patrol.
LINKS
The Nuyina’s Krill Fishing Expedition: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-06/how-scientists-flooded-an-antarctic-icebreaker-to-collect-krill/100793114
Squiz Kids for Schools: https://www.squizkids.com.au/squiz-kids-for-schools/
Squiz Kids Apple Subscriber Content: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/squiz-kids/id1494238283
How To Become A Squiz Kids Correspondent
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FH2HA28InnLU6UxE91wrLBAbCMT40Mua/view
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
THE LOWDOWN
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It was a golden night for Australia at the Winter Olympics last night as Melbourne’s Jakara Anthony won our first ever gold medal in the women’s moguls.
Moguls is that incredibly difficult Olympic event where competitors ski really fast down a bumpy slope and do cool aerial tricks on the way down.
Showing incredible poise, strength and skill, the 23-year old uni student was the top qualifier in each of her preliminary finals, before blowing the competition out of the water with a near perfect run to clinch Australia’s first Winter Olympics gold medal since the Vancouver games in 2010.
And it was an Olympic bronze medal for Melbourne’s Tess Coady in the slopestyle snowboarding event yesterday. At 21, Tess is the youngest Australian woman to ever win a medal at the Winter Olympics.
Together, Tess and Jakara broke a new record for Australia: it’s the first time we’ve won two winter Olympic medals in one day.
Don’t forget, the Squiz Kids Shortcut to the Winter Olympics is out now – – available to all classrooms that have signed up to our Squiz Kids For Schools program, and also to parents who’ve signed up to our Subscriber Specials on Apple podcasts. There are links to both in today’s episode notes.
SPIN THE GLOBE
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Each day we give the world globe a spin and find a news story from wherever it stops … and today we’ve landed in Antarctica, where the Aussie ship sent there for scientific research has been deliberately filled with water in a daring attempt to catch krill.
Hang on … what? A ship has been filled with water in the middle of the Southern Ocean? Via holes drilled into its sides? What sort of madness is this?
When the ocean is frozen over with ice, it’s really hard to get nets in the water to collect krill – the tiny prawn-like creatures that just about every animal in the Antarctic feeds on. So instead of dropping nets, the crew of the Nuyina flooded a part of the hull that was sitting below sea level, and sucked in krill that way.
Why is it important to study krill? They’re also a really important natural way for our planet to store carbon… the krill eat algae, which contain carbon, and then their poo sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where the carbon is stored for decades. So it’s a way of studying climate change.
How many krill did they collect with this novel ‘open the floodgates’ procedure? About 8,000. Which is a good haul by anyone’s measure. There’s a wonderful photo essay about the trip in your episode notes.
SQUIZ KIDS SALUTES
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Peanut butter sandwiches and nutty muesli bars could soon be back in a lunchbox near you after researchers in Melbourne announced at the weekend a breakthrough in the treatment of peanut allergy.
For reasons researchers don’t yet understand, Australia has more kids with peanut allergies than any other country in the world, with approximately 3 in every 100 Aussie kids susceptible to a dangerous allergic reaction if they come into contact with peanuts.
Maybe that’s you. Maybe that’s your brother, sister or classmate.
But now there’s relief in sight.
Thanks to the hard work of scientists in Melbourne, and thanks to 200 kids who took part in tests and medical trials, a treatment has been developed that could spell the end of peanut allergies.
By exposing allergy sufferers to tiny amounts of peanut protein and gradually increasing that amount over time, the kids in the trial became less susceptible to an allergic reaction.
All of which means for kids with peanut allergies that having to be super careful in the playground, at cafes and restaurants or on playdates with friends could hopefully one day be a thing of the past.
ANIMAL KINGDOM
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If you were a platypus, it’s safe to say the last thing you’d want is a big ol’ dog sniffing around your creek.
But a bunch of pups in Victoria have been trained to use their excellent sense of smell to track down platypuses in their burrow so that researchers can find and count them.
Last year, the Victorian government listed the platypus as a vulnerable species – which is only one step away from being an endangered species. Which is alarming ..because have you seen how cute they are?
The dogs roam the creeks and streams of Victoria’s national park locating platypus burrows so that conservationists can count them – and that way, better keep track of their numbers.
Platypus Patrol … it’s like Paw Patrol but with a conservation twist.
THE S’QUIZ
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This is the part of the podcast where you get to test how well you’ve been listening …
- What sort of tiny, prawn-like creature have scientists aboard the Aussie ice-breaker Nuyina managed to capture by flooding their ship?
- What sort of allergy could be a thing of the past thanks to clever scientists in Melbourne?
- Dogs in Victoria have been trained to sniff out what sort of native animal in its burrow?
SHOUT OUTS
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It’s February 7… and it’s back to school today for kids in Queensland … after a two-week, COVID-inspired delay to the opening of school gates .. good luck to all kids heading back to class today.
It’s also a special day for these Squiz Kids celebrating a birthday today …
James from Killarney Vale, Dianna from Greenwich, Mia from Forest Lake, Ocean from Ashmont, Bella from Castle Hill, Ella from Mansfield and Pierre – who’s listening to Squiz Kids all the way over there in France.
And belated birthday shout outs go to… Angelina from Brighton, Zara from Tamworth and Ethan, Katie, Dwhen and Jasmine from Forest Lake.
Classroom shout outs today go to… the year 2 students in class A1 at Craigburn Primary with Ms. Bower and Ms. Manna, to Mrs V’s 5/6 class at Windsor Public School and lastly to Mrs Arnold and grade 6A at St Monica’s Catholic Primary School in Essendon.
The S’Quiz Answers:
- Krill
- Peanut allergy
- Platypus