[S5E11] In Plain Fright PATCHED
It's 1990, Shawn and Gus are in line for a scary ride. Shawn wants to know why Gus is so scared if he's been on the ride a dozen times. Gus tells him that the ride doesn't seem structurally sound and it might break and throw them through the roof. Shawn points out that the ride is only 12 inches off the ground. Gus asks why Sahwn doesn't want to go on the ride, and he explains that mechanical monsters can come alive in the unusual circumstances. Gus points out that the chances of that happening are highly unlikely. Shawn and Gus start arguing about who needs to go first. After a moment of bickering, their eyes are drawn to all the creepy statues that around them and they both scream grabbing onto one another. A second later they pull apart with Gus telling the people around them "That didn't happen."
[S5E11] In Plain Fright
Back in the haunted house, the police are there checking out the body. But Shawn sees something fishy about the crime scene. Shawn saw the man get killed on the complete opposite side of the ride, and he wasn't wearing a mask like this dead body is. Mr. Holloway, the park's Vice President, steps forward and claims that he thinks the murderer was Johnny Rickets - or rather, the ghost of Johnny Ricketts. Holloway explains that Johnny Ricketts was a kid that fell off the Ferris wheel at Scare Fest 15 years ago and died. That was the last year they did Scare Fest - until this year, when they decided to open it back up. Holloway goes on to explain that he has been seeing Johnny Ricketts everywhere, and that he thinks Ricketts is trying to tell him something beyond the grave.
Suddenly, Shawn and Gus are locked in the library and it is lit on fire, but they are rescued by Father Peter Westley (Ray Wise). Bob, who is revealed to be Paula's biological father, explains that after World War I, his great-grandfather established the town with two other soldiers, intending to create a secluded utopia. After the sawmill fire in 1958, the town began to look at all outsiders as a threat. When Doc Gooden and Sheriff Jackson enter and hold him at gunpoint, Shawn deduces that they are the leaders of the other two founding families. Due to Gooden's infertility and Jackson's terminal cancer, Randy was the only known direct descendant and therefore the sole future leader. To stop Randy from leaving town with a paranoid Paula, the sheriff and doctor drowned her. After Lassiter and O'Hara arrive and arrest Gooden and Jackson, the group celebrates at the diner, only to be repulsed by a number of oddities referencing Twin Peaks.
Our Halloween Special of Western Science Speaks includes Western University researchers Dr. Liana Zanette, Dr. Yolanda Hedberg, and Dr. Lyle Muller. Our guests join the show to talk about how fear evolved, varies across species, and how it stays with us. We also reveal the chemistry of candy and everything you need to know before biting into your Halloween haul. Don't be scared, tune in to hear fright night explained!
When Western Earth Sciences professor Patricia Corcoran takes time off from discovering new plastic forms on the shorelines of our beaches and lakes, she chooses to educate and explain why the plastic epidemic is worse than our eyes tell us. On this episode of Western Science Speaks, we discuss how toxic plastic-nature hybrids are formed, the invisible killers on our beaches, and how we can be better plastic citizens. Hope isn't lost in winning the fight against debris and plastic and listening to Patricia is the perfect place to start.
Rob Cumming 5:28: A little bit, yeah, in a way, in this case, you have a 50% chance of getting it, because it works in an autosomal dominant manner. So just, you know, you're here, you may have a parent who has one bad version of the gene. And it's a type of gene that you don't show the disease until your maybe in your 50s, you've already had kids by then, right. So there's, there's a number of diseases that are like that, where you may not necessarily know that you have it. And by the time you have it, you've already had kids, then you possibly pass it on to those children. So another example is Huntington's disease. And in that case, that usually affects people in their late 30s, early 40s. And again, they may have had children at that point. So now that we know that some of these diseases can occur in a heritable manner, if you have a history in your family, then you really need to get tested. And so what they're doing now, certainly in these rare, Alzheimer cases are getting tested. And then it's the one of the types of things where you know, you've got the mutation, you know, you're going to get it. And that's frightening, it's even more so frightening for people with Huntington's disease. So there's actually kind of ethics rules related to this. So let's say you're, you're 40, and you discover that you have Huntington's disease. And you have a kid who's maybe 15. And you, you think, oh, my God, I want to know, is my kid going to get it. I need to go to the doctor, he asked the doctor, can you test my kid to see if he or she's going to have Huntington's disease? And they say, No, we can't. Because the child has to be 18 years of age to be an adult. And then that child can make a decision whether he or she wants to be tested. So it's an interesting kind of dilemma. Because as a parent, you want to do everything you can for your kid. The problem is, if you have inherited form of a disease like Huntington's disease, or Alzheimer's disease, and you want to see if your kid is going to get it. Well, the problem is there's no treatment for so there's nothing you can do. So the kid can say hey, I have the gene, I'm going to get it. Well, how's it going to influence your life?
Leticia: So I it's easier to answer that question just not thinking about a specific bird but thinking about more systems rather than an individual bird species. So I have worked with birds in the Caribbean region, mostly across the islands off the West Indies, in the US, in the Amazon, and now in Canada. I'm mostly interested in birds in the tropics that live year round they are so they are born there, they reproduce their they died there. And also birds that breed in Canada or in the US. And then whenever temperatures go down, it gets cold, and we start complaining about how miserable we are, they just fly to the south and then spend the winter months in tropical regions. So they are migratory birds.
I'm Henry Standage, and you're listening to the Western Science Speaks podcast. Look, I don't need to convince you how important electricity is to our day to day lives. To live without electricity is to live in a world without an economy, entertainment, or just plain old comfort in your at home life. That's why it might come as a surprise that the technology we use to detect and fix power outages has barely progressed since electricity first came into our homes. Dr. Hannan Lutfiyya, from the Department of Computer Science, researches how power outages are repaired, and where she believes the technology needs to go. She joins this episode of Western Science Speaks, here's the interview. Henry: How is our power distributed? Lutfiyya: Power is distributed, it starts with the power plants. So a power plant actually generates the electricity, whether it's from coal, hydro, nuclear, or whatever, then what it does is it has to transmit that power to the consumers. So it does that through transmission lines. And those are the things she's you often see these long transmission lines, you know, the electric poles. But the thing is, so when it does that transmission, what it does, it has to increase the voltage a lot, so that it can be transmitted over a long distance. Then when it gets closer to the consumers, what happens is you actually have to decrease that voltage, because the high transmission voltages are dangerous. So what they do is they go to a distribution grid, where it starts to decrease the voltage before making the final delivery to the consumers. Henry: Right. So it comes out extremely high voltage when it leaves the plant. Lutfiyya: That's right. And then when it gets to closer to the consumers, they have to start decreasing that voltage before they can actually power your home. Henry: What happens when we have an outage? Lutfiyya: What happens when we have an outage, well, you every you no longer uncle have electricity, right? And usually, what happens is that it's very difficult to detect. So what they [providers] have to do right now, is they send crews to the area that's been affected by the outage, trying to find out what's the cause? You know, is it something that one of the substations that's reducing the voltage, did a tree fall in a branch or whatever? So they actually have to send crews out to sort of manually search for the outage. Henry: There's no automatic sensor or anything? Lutfiyya: No, nothing. It's very manual right now. Henry: And so I imagine that when there's severe wreckage in some sort of community, such as a hurricane, or tornado, locating the pivotal spot must be extremely gruelling. Lutfiyya: It is, there could be actually multiple causes, right? If you have two trees falling on the line, right? But yeah, it can be very difficult to find out. Henry: Is that a universal method? Or do different cultures have more modern advanced technologies for this? Lutfiyya: No, everyone is pretty much doing it the same way. Henry: What are you proposing as a solution? Lutfiyya: The solution we're looking at is we're saying, "can we pinpoint what's causing the outage?" And it turns out that there are techniques on the transmission network that people do use for that. The reason it doesn't carry over to the part of the grid distribution network, which is closer to our homes, is because they're much more complicated. Because every time if you are the neighbourhood, you may have a line. And then you have to have a bunch more lines, they have to branch out like a tree, or radio network, just so that they can actually deliver it to different homes. So the approach we're taking is that whenever there is an outage, it will emit some sort of signal. And our centres are going to detect that signal. And then based on that, they will be able to figure out based on that signal also get the reflection. Because when a pop happens, it will send out signals throughout the distribution network and they start to bounce. So the sensors, they'll get the initial fault and they'll get off the bounces or the reflections. And so you can use those signals - you can use the time between them - to sort of help you figure out what were the actual location is. Henry: Is that what you call the x-fault? Lutfiyya: Yes, you're trying to pinpoint. So that's what's actually causing that outage. What makes that actually very hard, is that the way this works, is if you have a fault somewhere, it's going to take out everything, right? It's going to cause an outage everywhere, within a certain area, the reason is they are trying to protect the equipment. So I can have two faults in one area, and they cost the same outage, right? And that's making it very challenging. Henry: I think this will surprise a lot of people because we're talking about a billion-dollar industry, where when there's a fault, more money can be made in other industries because in a certain community, everyone's relying on this power. Yet, what we have now is an extremely dated method very much 20th-century. Lutfiyya: That's absolutely true. And it's not even 20th century, I mean, the electric grids are really based on a concept from almost the first days of the grid. Now we're talking more than 100 years, sure the equipment gets upgraded and they will, you know, buy new stuff and it's more modern and faster and all that stuff. But, the basic structure is the same. What's changed, I think now, looking at the possibilities of using cheap sensors, analytics. And they're looking at trying to take advantage of it and in this environment. But you're right, it's an old infrastructure, and yeah, we still have it and we're still using old technologies. When a power outage strikes, it takes down the entire community and won't be fixed until the exact sweet-spot is manually found by workers. Power outages are inevitable. But prioritizing the technology behind repairing them faster, so that hundreds of families aren't left in the dark is more crucial than ensuring top-speed WiFi. The world has primarily shifted to automatic detection methods for industries as lucrative as electricity. And considering the impact outages have on a wide range of people and businesses. A modern shift and how we fix them is imperative. I'm Henry Standage asking you do a warm up and chill out. Thanks for listening. 041b061a72