The Science Pawdcast

Episode 28 Season 7: Bone, Printed While You Wait and The Giving Mood

• Jason and Kris Zackowski • Season 7 • Episode 28

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Imagine fixing a fracture with a steady hand and a smart pen. We open the lab door on a handheld “bone printer” that lays down bio‑ink directly at the injury site, promising faster healing, fewer imaging steps, and the chance to customize strength and shape in minutes. If you’ve ever waited days for scans and fabrication, the appeal is obvious: hydroxyapatite to encourage bone growth, PCL as a biocompatible scaffold that melts at low heat, cools fast, and slowly yields to living tissue. Early tests on rabbit femurs outperformed bone cement and showed no infections over 12 weeks, and the potential to embed antibiotics or growth factors hints at on‑the‑spot, personalized implants that could transform orthopedics, trauma care, and remote medicine.

Then we pivot from bones to benevolence with one big question: do pets change how people give? Using a decade of 787,877,198 donation transactions, we map the patterns. Non‑pet owners tend to donate larger totals, yet pet owners give more frequently, keeping support flowing between big gifts. Cat owners spread donations across more causes and contribute more overall than dog owners, while dog people still outpace non‑owners in cadence. A machine‑learning model puts pet ownership as the fourth strongest predictor of giving—behind income, education, and gender—suggesting pets reflect social ties and daily acts of care that nudge generosity. We also unpack identity signals and what they mean for smarter, kinder fundraising that respects budgets and habits.

It’s a journey from bio‑materials to behavioral data, but the throughline is practical empathy: tools that speed healing, and insights that make community support steadier and more inclusive. If you enjoy science that touches daily life—medicine you can hold, and generosity you can measure—this one’s for you.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello, science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zakoski.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm Chris Zikoski.

SPEAKER_00:

We're the pet parents of Bunsen, Beaker, Bernoulli, and Ginger.

SPEAKER_01:

The science animals on social media. If you love science, and you love pets, you've come to the right spot.

SPEAKER_00:

So put on your safety glasses.

SPEAKER_01:

And hold on to your tail.

SPEAKER_00:

This is the Science Podcast. Hi, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 28 of season seven. Chris, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm okay. How are you?

SPEAKER_00:

We're heading into some pretty uncertain time, you and I in our day job as teachers.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I thought we could just talk about that real fast. It really looks like on Monday, our entire province, Alberta, all the teachers will be on strike. So I just thought I should mention that. Like it's a big thing for us right now.

SPEAKER_01:

It's unprecedented. But we did receive an email that there are some talks happening, which I'm excited about. But the email also said that strike action does commence on Monday. But again, my crystal ball is broken. I don't know how to fix it because I cannot predict the future.

SPEAKER_00:

No, not at all. We can just hope for the best, and I really hope it's over soon. But that's just what happens in life sometimes. Sometimes you've got to fight for your rights, and that's what's happening right now. Yep. If you're an Alberta teacher listening, we're standing with you in solidarity. All right, let's get on with the show, Chris.

SPEAKER_01:

Let's get on with the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. In Science News, we've got a hopeful article that is talking about a kind of a breakthrough, but a future breakthrough about 3D printing bones, which is crazy, actually. And in pet science, we're going to be talking about how pet ownership may or may not influence your don't your where pet ownership may or may not influence your philanthropy. So what you choose to give away. Which is interesting when you break it down. All right, let's get to the show.

SPEAKER_01:

There's no time like Science Time.

SPEAKER_00:

This week in Science News, we're gonna talk about 3D printing bone graphs, which is wild. Do you know why I picked this article, Chris?

SPEAKER_01:

Because you've never broken a bone in your body.

SPEAKER_00:

That too, but because of the word 3D printing.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yes. You are an avid 3D printer, and when you get talking about it, you talk about your 3D printing bed, you call it a sling bed.

SPEAKER_00:

No, that's a bed slinger? No, that's what they used to be.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, what is it now?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a core XY. It's okay. Everybody's eyes glaze over when I get excited and start talking about 3D printers, except for the robotics teacher at my school. When I talk to her, we get going, and I love it's so fun, but everybody just wants us to shut up, I think, because they don't care.

SPEAKER_01:

But you are so excited when new models come out. You you go over the specs with me, and you're like, but this one and this one's print bed is smaller, but it prints faster, and then you can print in color all the things you're just so excited, and I listen, but it's very similar to when Adam was talking about CPUs and GPUs, and he was drawing pictures of schematics of the computer, and I was just like, Oh, yes. And I was trying to keep up, but because I am passionate about whatever you're passionate about, like listening to your passion, that's what I love. And Adam loves computers, so he's talking about them, and I'm trying to share in that joy because I think that's important. I may never know what a CPU GPU is ever again, but you know what? I shared in that moment, and I value I value people talking about what brings them joy.

SPEAKER_00:

There you go. 3D printing has taken a huge leap forward in the last year or two with these box printers. They look like a box, and this may relate to what we're gonna be talking about in the science article. But the reason why there's been this huge leap forward is the print time has been drastically reduced because these new printers just fly. Every time I watch this, I've got one of the newer ones, it feels like it's just gonna fly apart and explode because the thing is moving so quickly. But it really cuts down the time. When if I want to print something, it prints it in a hurry. I have a full, I have a full size Walter Wedd, I have a full size Walter Whitehead. Remember when I printed that of like when he's got the hat on from Breaking Bad?

SPEAKER_01:

How do you do that?

SPEAKER_00:

That's on my front lab bench and the kids love it. That printed overnight. That would have taken like days and days on the old printers.

SPEAKER_01:

But the other thing with the old printer, when you're talking about speed and it's going days and days, and then it gets three-quarters of the way done, and then it screws up.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I hate that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So this is much better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, way more reliable than new 3D printers. So there have been advancements in 3D printing of plastics, which I do, and perhaps 3D printing bones. Chris, what's going on with this?

SPEAKER_01:

Jason, it's so cool. It's a handheld device and it actually applies synthetic bone graphs directly at the site of the injury or defect. So it's not like what you might be thinking of, where you get a STL file of a bone and then you're going to put that in the body. But what this core innovation does is it eliminates the need for prior imaging or actually fabricating of the graphs themselves. So what they did is they modified a hot glue gun actually to 3D print bio ink onto rabbit bone fractures. And there's some pretty cool things about the bio ink that I'm sure that we'll get into a little bit later in the study.

SPEAKER_00:

So traditionally, bone graphs are there's a couple different ways they can do it. There's an autograph that's where they take a bone from the patient's own body, and that's because it's got your own cells in it. It doesn't obviously use this new system. An allograft uses a bone from a cadaver, somebody who has died. There's lots of them, which is great. It's not as good as the autograft. And then, yes, as you said, Chris, they could image it and make a synthetic graft. That's a lab-made material. So this is quite a bit different. The bio ink composition is what makes this cool. It's made of the it's made of two key the bio ink comp the bio ink composition is what makes this really interesting and cool. Two key compounds are used in these 3D printing implants. One of them is hydroxyapatite, which promotes bone formation and tissue regeneration. And another one with the acronym PCL, which is polycaprolactone, and that is a biocompatible FDA-approof plastic. So it is a plastic, and this acts as a scaffold for bone growth. It degrades over time in the body over several months, and this allows the natural bone tissues to replace it over time. So this bio ink sort of Chris, though, works like the plastic spools that I have that kind of goes beepop boop and makes a thing, but it would be replaced by bone over time.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm. Jason, you're absolutely right. Now, the idea of this is to design something that is easy to set up and easy to equip and use in a clinical setting. And it saves time. So there's no multi-day wait for the scans and taking time to fabricate or 3D print. It actually saves costs because there's fewer imaging and lab steps, and it reduces actually the complexity of procedures.

SPEAKER_00:

They can actually change the consistency of the bio ink to optimize for strength, stiffness, and other properties, depending on where the bone needs to be put in. Like maybe a leg bone needs to be a heck of a lot stronger than an arm bone. The other cool thing is they can also incorporate antibiotics into the bio ink, and this helps prevent postoperative infections. And this just reminds me of Medigel from Mass Effect. It just reminds me of some slappy goo you just slap on an injury and it starts healing you right away.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. I like to think of it as super polysporin.

SPEAKER_00:

I guess. If the polysporin melted, because it does, it needs to get hot because it's remember, it's in a modified glue gun. So somebody instead of, I'm sure people have used a glue gun before and probably burnt themselves terribly on a glue gun, they get hot, really hot. But this ink melts at 60 degrees Celsius into a liquid, and then it cools in the body to body temperature within 40 seconds. So you're allowed what this allows is a lot of adjustments in direction, angle, and depth as you go. And as you mentioned, Chris, the application is crazy fast, just a few minutes to get it done.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but there is a there is some skeptics saying even 40 seconds is too long with that kind of heat for cells and tissues. So this is still in a prototype stage where they've had success testing on the femur fractures in rabbits. And they compared that with the regular bone cement controls in the study. And the rabbits treated with the bio ink showed better bone healing and re and regeneration. And actually, no infections were observed during the 12 weeks following the surgery.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the things they're hoping to add to this is to increase its effectiveness. You could add growth factors like hormones to it, other antibiotics, and therapeutic drugs. But as you said, Chris, it's very much in proof of concept. And it's not like you can go to Michael's or your local craft store and pick up a bioink gun when Timmy falls off the tire swing with a broken leg and fix him that way. The promise of it is very cool. That's very super, very sci-fi, very futuristic. And perhaps in the next decade we might see parts of that implemented in hospitals around the world.

SPEAKER_01:

I was just gonna say, instead of a 3D printer, it's a bone printer pen.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh.

SPEAKER_01:

That's science news for this week.

SPEAKER_00:

This week in Pet Science, we're gonna talk about pet ownership and giving. Chris, you're generally a more giving person than me. I don't think so. Oh, I think so. I think so. I grew up, I grew up, and every dollar I made to buy something, I had to work very hard for as a kid, like mowing lawns all summer, and I would get two cents. So when I actually saved up enough money, I was not in a very giving mood to people that needed it. Um because I had broken my back mowing all summer. Some of that has actually formed my opinion as an adult, and I need to do better at that. Get in a better giving mood now that we're much better off than we were when we were young.

SPEAKER_01:

When we were starving students, yeah, we were pinching pennies until they screamed. That's definitely for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the best we could do was do the odd fundraiser for the school for Adam and Duncan's things, buy some girl girl guide cookies and 50 minutes.

SPEAKER_01:

Jason, I bought all the girl guide cookies this year, I'm sure. And then I took them to my school. Yes, I had six boxes. That's sure we did. And I got boxes for Adam. He wanted boxes because he loves the girl guide cookies, and then I bought uh another round of girl guide cookies, and I took them to the school, and they're like, Where are all these girl guide cookies coming from? It's quite funny.

SPEAKER_00:

I brought some to my school too, and people teachers love that. Yeah, so we uh we definitely helped fund the girl guides this year with that. And then, of course, we did a really fun fundraiser that made us feel so good, which we donated like over a hundred Bunsen stuffies to the Central Alberto Child Advocacy Center for the kids there. That that was that mean that was really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

That was very good.

SPEAKER_00:

We were so glad to do that. So the study comes in and asks the question Does pet ownership influence giving? So, what we know in previous studies is that social ties strongly influence how much you want to give and your giving behavior. There is almost no research on whether pet ownership can be an indicator of giving. And this study took a massive data set of donor transactions, and the number is astounding. 787 million. Did I get that number correct? Like 787 million donation transact transactions?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but it's close, it's higher than that. 787 million eight hundred seventy-seven thousand one hundred and ninety-eight.

SPEAKER_00:

I can't say numbers that big.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, really? I've been firing them off all day.

SPEAKER_00:

And then it's lot. That's what I say. So let's just round, let's just round it to two sig figs. 7.8 times 10 to the 8. So there we go.

SPEAKER_01:

The donations were specifically given to charities and nonprofits across 10 years.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So the key findings of the study are very interesting. The donation amounts, what they found is non-pet owners donate the largest total amounts. Pet owners actually donate smaller amounts comparatively to the non-pet owners, which is interesting. They also looked at donation frequency. Pet owners donate most frequently, even if the amounts are smaller. And the donation they looked at diversity, where cat owners donated to the widest variety of charities, and cat owners also donate more overall than dog owners.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01:

So dog owners give less than cat owners, but they still give more frequently than non-pet owners.

SPEAKER_00:

Huh. That's I do see that because dogs are expensive. Maybe you don't have the same kind of money as you would if you didn't have a dog. Um, and a lot of people keep like a slush fund or an emergency fund for dogs if something goes wrong. Um, because vet bills can wipe you out if your dog gets sick. I don't know. That's just my hypothesis. I don't know if that's true or not. Cats generally are not as expensive as dogs to own. I think Ginger's entire sack of cat food lasted months, whereas we have to go get dog food every week for the dogs.

SPEAKER_01:

My colleague has a dash hound. Oh, and she I know she was on the one bag of dog food she's ever. And I'm like, we're just back to the store getting more food.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, the predictive model they use was called cat boost. So I'd love to know more information about this, but be but the actual the cat boost regression model, I couldn't find a lot of information about. But it ranked pet ownership amongst all of these donations as the fourth most important factor influencing giving behavior. And what do you think the top three predictors are? I know you know, Chris, you've got the study, but I'm wondering what people at home think they are. The first one is if you have lots of money, income. Yeah, so the more money you have, generally the more money you will give. Education also played a factor. So the higher the educated, the higher the education you have, the more you gave, and gender. And in the study it was female giving more than male.

SPEAKER_01:

So pet ownership thus functions as a significant but secondary predictor of philanthropy. Income, education, and gender are the top three.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, if you want to get into politics, which I don't really want to, but it was part of the study, pet owners were more likely to identify as independents, and non-pet owners were more likely to be non-partisans. And I actually had to look that up because we don't really have those terms in Canada. Nonpartisans in my research referred to people who don't identify or affiliate with any political party. I know in the states there's two big ones, like the Democrats and the Republicans. In Canada, depending on the year, we've got a schwack of different ones. But we do have Democrats and Republicans, they're just called something different. And then we've got three or four more parties you could vote for. So we've got lots. I'm not sure. I don't know what you'd be in Canada as a nonpartisan. Independents are folks that don't belong to a party but generally lead their vote one way or the other. And again, sorry to folks who know about that because I didn't know. I actually had to do some research. So pet owners were more likely to identify as independents, and non-pet owners were more likely to be nonpartisans.

SPEAKER_01:

But there's broader implications of this study. Pet ownership may actually act as a complex personality indicator. So it's like a construction stud sensor, except it's like beep, this is a complex personality indicator. The study contributed to literature on social ties, so relationships that would be driving the generosity and the strength of those ties, so the depth and durability of those social relationships. And lastly, the social information and philanthropy, how your personal identity informs your giving.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's me. My personal identity when I was younger was not a very giving person just because I didn't have a lot to give. And that my my perspective on that has changed. But maybe so has my income because when we were young, as you said, we were penny pinchers.

SPEAKER_01:

We didn't have a lot of money. I do remember we did participate in the kids' fundraisers, like for Jump Road for Heart. Um worked really hard to support organizations like that. Cardiovascular health was really important to us at that time, still is, but we the what I loved is the kids getting involved. Adam reaching out and talking about the importance and then doing the exercises, the jumping rope.

SPEAKER_00:

You did bring out that folder when we met with my family, and they're all like, oh god, here comes the money folder for something.

SPEAKER_01:

For something. I always did though, Jay.

SPEAKER_00:

But hydro ice cream or those like coupon books. That was one thing one year. It was like the stupid coupon book in the office they were all having the costume contest for.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I was like, oh man, we like tried to flog those to my family because we had kids way before them. So we just expected them to buy some coupon books.

SPEAKER_01:

But there's only so many times you can tap into them. And then like we had royals, and it's I can't do every fundraiser. I can do the flower fundraiser, I can do the chocolate fundraiser, I can't do them all because eventually the people are gonna be like, Can you find a larger group of people to ask to give?

SPEAKER_00:

I tried to tap my colleagues too, and they're and they were just so much younger and they didn't have kids. So, what was the one that you sent me to school to try to get? It was like 60 pounds of meat or bacon or something. Like you could get like copious amounts of meat, and they're like, we don't need we're single teachers, we don't need that kind of meat. Who's gonna eat all that? That'd be like for a massive family, like a family of six to last you a couple months, not a single teacher. So I did not sell any of the meat packs to my colleagues.

SPEAKER_01:

You didn't, but you tried, but they did enjoy the girl guy cookies.

SPEAKER_00:

This is true. That's because they're relatively cheap and delicious. All right, that's pet science for this week. That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. And a shout out to all the top dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, the Pop Pack. You can sign up in our show notes. All right, Chris, let's hear those names that are part of the top dogs.

SPEAKER_01:

Amelia Fettig, Re Oda, Carol Hanel, Jennifer Challenge, Linnea Janet, Karen Cronister, Vicky Oteiro, Christy Walker, Sarah Bram, Wendy, Diane, Mason and Lou, Helen Chin, Elizabeth Bourgeois, Marianne McNally, Katherine Jordan, Shelly Smith, Laura Stephenson, Tracy Leinbaugh, Ann Uchida, Heather Burbach, Kelly, Tracy Halbert, Ben Rather, Debbie Anderson, Sandy Brimer, Mary Rader, Bianca Hyde, Andrew Lynn, Brenda Clark, Brianne Haw, Peggy McKeel, Holly Birch, Kathy Zirker, Susan Wagner, and Liz Button.

SPEAKER_00:

For science, empathy, and cuteness.