How going to space ages astronaut bones, and more…

On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald:

Jet-lagged seabirds fly off course

Shearwaters migrate long distances over the open ocean from east to west, using the sun to find their way. Scientists studying the seabirds’ movements accidentally discovered that their navigational skills can be thrown off by something akin to jet lag. Patrick Lewin, a biologist at the University of Oxford, found that as the shearwaters travel long distances, the position of the sun no longer aligns with their internal body clocks, sending them off course. The birds seem to have evolved ways to quickly recover, so they might offer some inspiration for how we can better get over jet lag. The research was published in the journal Science.

A Manx shearwater flying around its breeding colony in Wales. These birds can fly up to 1,000 km to their feeding grounds near the midpoint of the Atlantic Ocean, and on the way home, they can experience a sort of jet lag. (Joe Wynn)

Ice Age Alaskan basecamp reveals what life was like 13,800 years ago

Archaeologists excavating a 13,800-year-old site in Alaska have uncovered a treasure trove of artifacts and domestic features that shed new light on the life and culture of the people who settled into the region. Hunter gatherers lived at this site, known as Shég’ Xdaltth’i’, near the end of the last Ice Age when the Bering Land Bridge provided a passageway between mainland Russia and Alaska. Kelly Graf, an archaeologist at the University of Kansas, who led the study, said this may represent the oldest habitation site in North America. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

The view from the Shég’ Xdaltth’i’ site shows the Alaska Range in the distance. (Kelly Graf)

Battery researcher wins Canada’s top science prize

Linda Nazar, a distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of Waterloo, has won the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal — one of Canada’s most prestigious scientific awards for her work on developing next-generation batteries. Nazar’s research into powerful and sustainable energy storage systems has helped advance the design of batteries for electric cars and energy storage for electrical grids.

Linda Nazar, a distinguished professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Waterloo, has been awarded the 2026 NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal. (Sylvie Li)

Long space missions may raise astronauts’ risk of hip fractures

Astronauts on long space missions lose about one to two per cent of their bone mass for every month they spend in microgravity. In a recent study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Jean Sibonga, a biomedical scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and her colleagues found that astronauts who spent more than 90 days in space faced a greater risk of hip fracture after they were back on Earth. On average, astronaut hip fractures occurred at a younger age and at a rate that would typically be observed in non-astronauts 8-16 years older. 

WATCH | Joshua Kutryk talks to Quirks & Quarks from the ISS:

Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk answers questions from International Space Station

Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk answers questions from International Space Station

Bad dads and supermales. The life-altering effects of estrogen on fish

There’s no doubt that pharmaceutical advances have been life-changing for humans. But these medications often pass through our bodies and end up in our waterways, where they can be life-altering for fish. In a whole-lake experiment lasting several years, Karen Kidd, an aquatic ecotoxicologist at McMaster University, studied the effects of trace levels of synthetic estrogen, like those found in hormone therapy and birth control, on bighead minnows. Surprisingly, she found that exposure to estrogen made male fish more aggressive, which caused them to neglect their parental duties, and had disastrous effects on the population. These results were published in the journal Current Biology.

In a different experiment, researchers at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game harnessed hormones to remove invasive brook trout from rivers. They used estrogen to create “supermales” — male fish with two Y chromosomes instead of the typical X and Y. When a supermale breeds with a female, all the offspring are male. Eventually, with only old bachelors left in the waterway, the invasive species dies out, without directly harming other fish or the rest of the ecosystem. The work was led by Kevin Meyer, a fisheries research biologist, and published in the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

Karen Kidd and her colleagues sampling water from a boat at the Experimental Lakes Area, near Kenora, Ont. During their whole lake experiment, they found that adding trace levels of estrogen to the water turned male bighead minnow into negligent fathers, which led to a population crash. (Submitted by Karen Kidd)