 This is TWIS, this week in Science, episode number 571, recorded on Wednesday, June 15th, 2016. Our robot friends! Hey everyone, I am Dr. Kiki, here again with another episode of This Week in Science, and tonight we are going to fill your head with rocks, waves, and robot overlords. It's true. But first... Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. No matter how long this old world keeps spinning round, there are some things that will never change. Like how untrue that statement is, for eventually nothing stays the same. And while change comes even to those who wait, waiting around is not the sciencey way. So each day, scientists set out to change what we know about everything. And once a week, we get together with a fresh list of what new things scientists have discovered that will forever change how we see the world around us, here on This Week in Science. Coming up next... What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? Good science to you, Kiki. And Erin, we have a guest. We do. A good science to you, Justin, and Erin, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back yet again to talk about, you know, science. It's kind of what we do. But we are going to start the show off a little bit differently. We're not going to jump right into the news tonight. We're going to jump into an interview. We're going to jump into a very fun interview. But tonight, let me tease a little bit. I've got new stories about gravitational waves. They've been cited again. Handy molecules in space, of course. And we have an interview with Erin Kennedy, otherwise known as Robot Girl. Justin, Justin, what do you have for us tonight? Oh, what have I got? I've got a massive, huge, gigantic story about something very small that is significantly impacting our understanding of the Hobbit, Homo Florianza. So huge update coming for Homo Florianzas. Awesome. Also a meteorite that has never before been found on Earth. And why you should be buying lead-free milk for the kids. Or LED, sorry, LED. The lead-free milk. I hope we're getting lead-free milk. Yeah. LED-free milk in the future. All right. So tonight on the show, we're going to start off with an interview with our lovely guest, Erin Kennedy. She is a roboticist and she is well-known for projects such as Robo Bird. She also recently has been working on a Kickstarter to create a cleaning robot. And not a robot that's going to clean your house. We already have a room back. But one that will help us clean up the environment. And I'd love, hopefully, we're going to find out all about her many robot projects. Erin, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. So you seem to keep yourself very busy with projects. Do you always have little robots in the works constantly? Usually, but nowadays this robot has been keeping me occupied all the time. So I've just been working on that one robot. So tell us a little bit about this one robot. The environment cleaning, the garbage picking up robot that you've been kick-starting. Right. So the robot itself is going to be a robot platform where you can use it to do multi-purpose things. Basically add on different modules to have it do different functionalities. The first one that we're exploring is for shoreline cleanup. And there's a whole larger purpose to this project. It's called robot missions. And the grantor idea is to enable makers and humanitarians to collaborate with each other on using robots to tackle large challenges. And so mission number one shoreline cleanup with the robot is the first prototype of this. That's cool. So what are your various goals? What are you trying to do with the different prototypes trying to figure out what you can do, how far you can take it, how capable the robot is? Do you have various goals in mind that you want to reach for different prototypes? Yeah, we definitely do. So one of the goals that we're working towards is to develop the robot far enough so that it can collect five kilograms of debris along Toronto Island by the end of the summer. That's a lot. Yeah, it is a lot. And so what we're doing to work towards that goal is going on multiple field tests. So we make changes to the robot and then we evaluate how well it does during a field test and then we go on and figure out what else to change, what else could be improved. And hopefully it will bring us to reaching that goal. And so I'm imagining when people go out and do shoreline cleanup, you walk around with your garbage bag and you stoop down and you pick up the trash and you put it in the bag or you have a little pointy stick that you spear the trash with to be able to put it in the bag. What are the design points that you've been considering when you're trying to build a robot that could do something that people normally do? So a few of the design points have been trying to make the robot more efficient at this task. So for example for the very small pieces of debris, the plastics that have been fragmented that wash up the shore, these end up getting mistaken as food by animals and it ends up bio-accumulating in them. So as humans it would be pretty tricky to pick up all these tiny pieces but what if we had a robot to be able to sweep it up? So that's one consideration. Another consideration is being able to use the robot to reach difficult to access locations. Imagine like a shoreline that's further away than we could use a robot to get there. She broke up. Hopefully she'll come back. She's frozen for a moment. We'll ask her again when she comes back to complete these thoughts. So one of the highest and best uses I can already think of if I had a personal one of these beach-helming robots is that you could outfit it with a little metal detector and go about trying to scoop up... To scoop the treasures out of the sand, yeah. Because you see those folks every once in a while with the little metal detector going back and forth and I don't know how lucrative this is. I don't know if they're actually finding a decent amount of coin out there or Rolex watches somebody tick off before they went swimming. Probably nothing. But yeah, maybe this is another way to fund the project. Put the little metal detector on there and teach it to scoop up coins as it goes about. That's the whole idea I think behind the robot missions is that you have a platform that is the starting platform and then robot makers can start adding to it and designing and becoming a part of it. So Robot Missions has its own Twitter page and a lot of information you can sign up to be a part of the robot missions to be part of the mailing list and to hear more about them. Dave Freidel says, oh my goodness, I want one for my living room dishes. Yeah, Dave Freidel could have his dishes on the floor of his living room picked up by this. How they get there, I don't quite know. Everyone. You're muted right now if you want to unmute yourself and then... There you are. I don't know what happened. Okay, we just started filling space and talking a little bit. Yeah, go ahead. So you were talking about the second aspect of these missions and developing them so that they could go out to distant shorelines that maybe are difficult to reach and we're extrapolating on that. And so the third design consideration will be to eventually have these robots that would be like a swarm of robots serving as semi-autonomous agents along the shorelines that can just come out at night and sweep up the debris and essentially tackle this problem on a day-to-day basis rather than say a shoreline cleanup that happens maybe once a month. Right, when you're dealing with people, it's like, okay everybody, let's all get together and clean up the trash. This Saturday is trash cleanup day, but when you've got the robots, you can just have them out as much as people are out there throwing things into the environment. Yeah. So what brought you to this idea of robot missions, of creating a platform that could be developed upon by other roboticists for similar environmental missions? So it came in sort of a long way. I started out with that robot that I showed you at Robo Games a few years ago where it was an unfolding cubesat robot that I wanted to send to a different planet. And in making that, I had to test it out in the field and I realized that it's pretty tricky to make a robot withstand all these different conditions, the types of terrain. And so I happened to join this social innovation program, fellowship rather, and started to learn more about how we can apply technology to social impact. And that got me thinking about how we could enable people to use robotics to solve problems. And it just so happened that I was on Toronto Island and noticed this huge trail of debris along the entire beach. And it really makes you think about how a global problem can affect you at a local scale. And so it just clicked really like I wanted to make a robot to help solve this problem. And I noticed that it can't be just makers slash roboticists. We also have to engage with environmentalists as well. Are environmentalists that you're engaging with so far are they receptive to the idea of robots helping them? It's been a mixed experience so far. Some people get caught up on how the robot itself is made out of plastic, which could be inherently bad. And then there's also the aspect of the robot will never be good enough to pick up all of the debris. So we're always learning more, which is the good part. And I'm always excited to speak with more environmentalists to hear their point of view. Yeah, I mean I understand the idea of we've already got these plastics going into the environment. These microplastics are of big concern especially. And do we want to create things that are created from plastic? And then from your perspective as a roboticist and someone who can fabricate things very easily from plastic. You've got these 3D fabricators that can just extrude plastic into whatever design you come up with. What if we make the robots out of plastic that we picked up from the beaches? Would that make you happy? Yes, exactly. So we have been sort of looking at filament recyclers and that could be possible. But first we have to make the robot to be able to collect the plastic and then we can recycle it into another robot. Yeah, recycle the robots being recycled, be getting more robots, be getting more robots. So for this project what kind of timeline are you imagining for it? I mean do you have hopes that these are prototypes and with prototypes you never really know what kind of success you're going to have. But do you have an idea for your timeline with this beach cleanup project? So what the timeline looks like for the next 6 months or so is that by the end of the summer we'll have the proof of concept just about finished. That way we're like using it in the mission pilot to collect the 5 kilograms. And then after that we're going to try to have the robot be replicated in 5 fab labs around the world. So yeah, that will be really exciting. Once that's able to be replicated as well as if the effort is able to be replicated, then it will bring us to an exciting part where there's now ambassadors of robot missions around the world and it would be great to see how it could go from there. So I'm going to say you missed my great idea. But here I've got the way that you can commercially market this in a way that will help just to help generate funds for the greater project and you'll be field testing at the same time some aspects of this robot. So all you need is a metal detector built into the base of this guy and sell it to beach comers, sell it to those people who like to go out and try to collect coins from the beach and it'll just have the metal detector and it'll just sort of be like a coin sniffing robot dog. As it goes back and forth across the beach it finds something, it stops, it puts up a little, it goes back on its hind wheels and then the person can fall around behind it and dig a little and see if there's anything there and set it on its way again. This would be like gang busters for all of these treasure hunting enthusiasts. Also as a meat you could take this out to the desert and it could be a meteorite hunter. Instead of going out there in 110 degree weather you can stay in your air conditioned vehicle and wait for the little sign from your robot that it's found something. Yeah, so that actually touches on a fun part about the project is how there will be module connectors on the robot. Other people in the community will be able to design different things for it to extend the functionality. And so eventually there could be a meteorite detector and picker-upper and whatever for the robot. For identifying trash or these little pieces of plastic or whatever they are, what do you tell the robot? What does the robot know? So right now since it's the first step the robot doesn't know that much. It knows how to respond to commands from a remote. But if we were to envision how that problem could be tackled, we would use computer vision to be able to detect different shapes or different colors that it sees. And then from there hopefully train the robot so that way it can start to automatically detect what is different for you and what is not. Imagine somewhat like a piece of driftwood for a piece of debris. I think people do the same thing too, little mistakes. But I imagine that there's a lot of work going into stuff like strawberry-picking robots. So the vision systems on a lot of these, on farming robots and others that are already being programmed to pick up very specific objects that you could probably base it on something like that and move forward. Or even probably Google's vast repertoire of visual understanding at this point from all of the wonderful cat pictures on the web. So for everyone out there, can you give us a little bit of your own personal history and how you got into robotics? Because I don't know if everyone has seen other interviews with you in the past. So can you kind of tell everybody what got you into working on robots? Because it's kind of a neat story. So what got me into working on robots was I was entered for playing sports for summer and needed something to keep me entertained. So I got a Lego Mindstorms kit and started building robots. Since then I was hooked and from there I built more robots. The first real big hit of a robot that I made was called Robo Bird, which was an educational robot. It looked like an angry bird, but if an angry bird was like a square or cube. And so with Robo Bird it taught kids how to, it taught people how to make a robot through the mechanical side, the electronic side, and also the programming side. What was fun about it was that the people who were building Robo Bird, they just thought that they were making a robot friend. They didn't care so much that they were learning robotics because they had the end goal in mind. They wanted their robot bird friend. They just had that end goal. They got a kit and all they wanted was the robot in the end. So they didn't necessarily see the possibilities of what else they could do with it? They did. So that was another fun part where once they finished making the robot then they hacked it, modified it, added on new things to it. So one example was someone added voice recognition to their Robo Bird. Another one made it dance to Daff Punk. Another one played the game Hunt the Wilderness. It was a really cool variety of hacks and mods. Were you ready? Were you expecting that to happen when you put it out in the wild? Did you have any idea where people would go with it? Or did you just kind of go, okay, here it is. Have fun. Enjoy the way I've enjoyed robots. Well, since I've been sort of a part of the Arduino and Maker community, I figured that the people would definitely hack it and modify it. But I didn't know to what degree they would. So I was really looking forward to seeing what other people's Robo Birds would look like. So yeah, I was expecting it for sure. Then tell us a little bit also about the Fab Academy and the robot hangouts that you do as well. You're doing some cool stuff out there getting people interested. Yeah, so with the robot hangouts, it's called a robot party and it's a Google Plus online hangout just like this. And we invite robot makers to share what they've been making on. And one of the really great aspects of the robot party is that it brings everyone together. And especially in areas where there may not be a community of robot makers where they are. So these people join the hangout and they're actually able to interact with other robot makers. And they say, no one in my town builds robots, so it's so great to be here. Lately we've been doing themed robot parties and it's been pretty decent. So for the themed parties are people bringing in specific types of robots, like a particular like we're going to have robots with voice action relation or we're going to have robots with whatever or is it like Tiki bar style. So what it ends up being is some people bring in robots like specifically for the theme. Other people think about how they could change their robot to fit the theme. And then others have ideas for robots for the theme. So it's really interesting because my goal for the themes was to sort of give an overall vision to what some of the robots people have been making. And it's the start of it so it's going to be interesting to see how it evolves. Right, whenever you start it's like putting your robo bird out into the wild. It's like you start the hangouts and you say, okay this is the idea but then you don't have control over it once it really gets going. Because it is very much community driven. So then from there there's also the fab academy that you're a part of. Kevin is asking who's moving boxes. So there is sounds in the background of where Erin is at. Her entire apartment is filled with robots. And they're all working right now. The robots are all hard at work. So if you hear some noise that seems to be coming from the background it's the factory of robots that Erin has built to build other robots. Yeah, you can hear them back there. Always hard at work. Yeah sorry about the background noise. So sorry Keegan, I didn't mean to interrupt. Oh no, I think it was a wonderful explanation of the background noises. It's good. I mean we should address the elephant in the room, right? Fab Academy, I've asked. What is the Fab Academy? So Fab Academy is a program that is delivered to all the global fab labs via a video feed. And it's based off of the class how to make almost anything at MIT. So people in these fab labs are able to take Fab Academy and learn all about digital fabrication through this program. And it's structured in a really good way so that you can build on what you've learned from each week. And it's fast paced. So you don't lose focus because by the time you get finished with one week it's time to move on to the next challenge. So through Fab Academy you learn about electronic CAD design and how to fabricate your own single-sided circuit boards. You also learn about 3D printing, of course. Laser cutting, CNC milling, molding and casting, and composites, which is interesting. And of course at the end you have to make a final project. So for my Fab Academy final project I made the unfolding CubeSat robot. Right, and that's an amazing idea if you could expand on that, yeah. So yeah, for sure. CubeSats are these standard size satellites that college students and university students can now make to run experiments in space. They're usually sent up in various payloads and then deployed into space. There's different sizes, so you could have a 1U CubeSat, which is 10x10x10 cm, or you could have a 3U CubeSat, which is 30x10x10 cm. So the unfolding CubeSat started out ambitiously as a 1U CubeSat. So basically, oh, I have a TKR. Oh, great. So this is what the robot sort of looked like back then. And it uses an interesting technique for the hinges where I used a multi-material 3D print with the flexible stuff captured inside. That way sand or regolith wouldn't get stuck inside of the hinges. So it folds up like this. And then whenever you're ready to deploy the robot, it goes like that. Wheels would touch down on these sides, and then the robot would be able to navigate around. So it seems like there's a little bit of origami going on there in the folding in the design. Yeah, definitely. That was one of the fun parts, yeah. And that's all important because, of course, despite the vastness of space, there's very limited space on anything that's putting things into space. So this is what you need. You need lots of origami and lots of creative design and getting a lot of stuff to fit in a very small package when it goes up. Exactly. And the thing about the unfolding part is that these green pieces could be used as solar panels to be able to power the robot. Nice. So if you expand it on the prototype design, you've got solar panels that unfold, unfurl for power. You've got the wheels that touch down to be able to allow the little tiny cube set to move around. And ideally, I imagine that you could deploy as many as you could fit into a payload. Not necessarily just one cube set. And then really, not even a cube set at this point, but a cube probe. Because with the wheels that we're talking about, we're not talking about orbiting now. We're talking about this is a cube rover. Nice. So you've done the Fab Academy and worked your way up. You've also been in school for what you're doing and you're pursuing degrees in this area of robotics. So you're not? No. You're like, no, I'm not. That's awesome. Okay. I got that wrong. Tell me what's up then. So I did maybe a few semesters of university, but then stopped. And now I've been kept busy with the robots ever since. So it's on my radar. It's still on my radar, but I'm working on this right now. Yeah, it's like Tesla. Eventually, I'll get around to getting my electricians license. Since I'm done reinventing electricity, I'm going to get that license so I can wire somebody's home. There's a backup here. As an example then of how achievable this all is, this is something. You started with Lego Mindstorms and now you are designing these very creative. I mean, there's definitely a large amount of personal creativity in there. But people who have ideas and just the willpower to start learning how to do all this, do you go out and just tell people, hey, you can do this? Anybody can do this? That's pretty much how the conversation goes for any time people are amazed at robots. The important thing to think about is that it's all just about learning. So as soon as you know how well and in what ways you can learn, then you're pretty much unstoppable for what you can do with it. Do you feel unstoppable? Well, I mean... She does when she's got the right robot built. I know, right? It's getting there. The robot has a long way to go. I still have more to learn. I still have more to teach people. So yeah, it's a long way. I know you have the robot there with you. Can you pick it up so that we can see what you've been... I've showed pictures of it already, but if you can... They're going to hold it up and then I'm going to describe it for just the listening audience. Oh my goodness. It looks like a... Well, nobody knows what a Tonka truck is anymore, but it's got like big off-roading tires, a long yellow, graspy thing with a clamp at the end. Those are cool-looking wheels. I mean, even the rims on those all-terrain tire... It's sort of like tire tracks. What do you call it? Is there a name for what those wheels are? Just wheels. It's wheels with little... Feet at the end of the wheels. Yeah, so... With the wheels... It's a little heavy to hold it up. Okay, here we go. With the wheels, it has this flexible filament piece on the end. So when the Rova is pressing down on these parts, then it enables the little triangles to sort of try to dig into the terrain. And that's on top of this wheel, which is just rigid plastic. So these wheels do decently on concrete and also wet sand. Wet sand has been a major challenge for us because the sand typically gets stuck within these grooves. So we're always trying to improve it to make it better. Yeah, especially if you're going to be in a coastal or a beach-type ecosystem, you're going to be dealing probably with sand. You're going to have sand, you'll have rocks, you'll have all sorts of things that I'll have to crawl over. And then at the front, you've got what looks like a bulldozer, a grasper, and pusher. Yep, so the front has a claw on it. This is version two of the claw. So the way it works is whenever you see it close to it, and then the servo motor closes down on the debris. It's easier when the robot does it. Right, you're forcing the servo. And then it's able to hold on to it and then picks it up with this arm to lift it in. And so like you said, right now it's remote controlled, so you would be the one guiding it to pick things up and do the work. Cool. Yes. It's a cool robot. That's fantastic. I know. How much of that did you fabricate yourself? Have you printed most of the components aside from the batteries? Yes, it's all three printed. That's super impressive. I think I love that just the comp from nothing. You have nothing and then you have up with the design and okay, I'm going to print the design and put it all together and then test it, fix things, go back, print new pieces, try it out again. The iterative process is great. And I don't own currently or in the past or probably even into the future for a while, a 3D printer. So what's the cost on many things? Like how much of these raw materials? Forget the cost of the 3D printer itself. I'm sure that's a lot or not a lot depending on the quality you get. But in terms of materials, how much material cost went into that robot that's in front of us? This robot that's in front of us was less than, that's a feature. Don't worry. That's a good answer, not regardless. Well, it just became a little bit more expensive. It's less than $500. The batteries, though, it makes it a bit more expensive, but essentially everything else is less than $500. That's less than $500 as a prototype, custom built, designed piece by piece, part by part, the way you'd want it to be, which any inventor throughout time would love to be working with something that can produce that component exactly the way they need it for that one off unique project. Never before in history, of course, has this been at least possible without huge amounts of income behind it. Still, even though $500 is cheap for that, that's still a good chunk of change. How's the Kickstarter going? How is the funding coming along for the project? Luckily, the Kickstarter was successful. We just finished about a week or so ago. It was great. We got a lot of backers involved and really got a lot of help from a lot of people. I'm thankful to all of the backers. Very nice. The next thing on the horizon, and I know you're still working on it, what's the specific next thing that you're trying to get your robot to do or to behave better at? There's a few specific things. We have a group of collaborators now helping develop more functionality to the robot. One person is working on adding environmental sensors on board the robot, which will be great to be able to monitor all of these data points. Another collaborator is working on an improved arm mount and claw design. With the improved arm mount, the idea is that it will be a better way to interchange the different modules so that way it won't break like it just did or it will break in a more predictable way. Another collaborator is working on obstacle avoidance using common off-the-shelf sensors. Another one is working on the control dashboard for the robot so where we can see the vision from the robot if there's an Android phone mounted onto it and then also then control it. What I'm personally excited to work on is the sweeper because it will be raised and lowered with a neat mechanism and I'm really excited to print it and try it out. Is this a mechanism of your own design or is this something that you've found out in the wild and that you're trying to bring it for use in this robot? It's a combination of a mechanism that's been out there before. It's really simple. It's just a four bar linkage but two of them and then two of those so that way it can raise and lower the thing and there's a liner piece so that way it doesn't get skewed. Yeah. That's cool. That's awesome. This project is then advancing in multiple directions at the same time. Very cool. It's truly exciting. We're really excited. I'm so excited that since I invited you to come on the show you were first trying to get your Kickstarter going and get people to fund the Kickstarter and it's so neat to be able to come here after the deadline for that and to find out that it was funded and you are on your way and you're adding more to it and it's just going to be so great. This is the stuff people coming up with ideas trying to help the world around us trying to use robots to help us live better lives. Yeah, exactly. This whole project actually aligns with one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals number 15, which is Life on Land. The idea is to help improve Life on Land by 2020. We hope that if we keep going in this direction robots will be able to help us get there. 2020 is not far away. That's four years. Yeah. It's three and a half years now. Yeah. What are you doing talking to us? Well, I know it's very late where you are. We don't want to keep you too much later. So thank you so much for joining us tonight. I really, really appreciate getting to see your robot, getting to hear about it, getting to find out what you're working on and just wish you the best in moving this project forward and your next projects. Yeah, and I want one. Thank you so much. Now I totally want one to do some desert meteorite combing. I'll need the sweeper, but it'll have to have a powerful magnet there for this on the sweeper arm. We'll figure it out later, but I need one of these. I know you've got a bunch of Twitter accounts and social media stuff, so if you could tell our listeners where they can find you online and where they can find out more about robot missions. Yeah, of course. Everyone can find out more about robot missions on Twitter, which is at RobotMissions, plural is an S, and also on Facebook, RobotMissions again, and online at RobotMissions.org. Very cool. Yeah, I've got it up. So you can start at RobotMissions on Twitter. That's fantastic. Learn more. Do robots. Everybody can build robots. Yes. Well, thank you once again, Erin. It's been really great to talk to you again. I hope you have a wonderful night. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Robots. Yes. Say goodnight to Bowie. There we go. We didn't ask about it, but that robot's name is Bowie. I think we talked about it in a pre-show, but today my three-year-old was going over, looking at this giant poster we've got of the solar system and all the planets on it, and I was pointing out which one was Earth, that's the one we live on, and she was going through and asking me the names of all the planets and who lives there. Because we live on Earth, who lives on the other ones. We got to Mars and she goes, who lives here? Oh, wait. We put robots on Mars, so there's robots on Mars, so now she's going around like robots are from Mars. That's where robots come from. If robots are from Mars, then what are from Venus? I don't know. It's still women. We have reached the end of the first half of our show. We can also try and make the second half go quickly. I don't know how it goes, but right now we're going to take a very quick break. I'm going to say a few words, but for now it's time for you to go refill your glass of water, whatever beverage of choice you have, and we'll be back in just a moment with more This Week in Science. All right, everybody. Like we've asked in previous shows, if you can, please subscribe to us on YouTube. We'd love you to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Go directly to our YouTube channel where you can click Subscribe and be a part of our YouTube Subscribers where you find out when we publish new episodes every week and you'll be able to watch the YouTube stuff and it'll help us get toward that 10,000 subscriber goal that we're going for. Help us get there. Help us get to 10,000 subscribers. Twist.org slash YouTube. Subscribe to us on YouTube. 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Whatever your preference, head over to twist.org listen to the most recent episode, make a comment and then make a donation. We really, really appreciate your support. We thank you for your support. We could not do this without you. And we are back with more this week in Science. Kiki! Yeah! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What are we talking about? What's the second half? There's so many stories. There are so many stories. All right, my first story is one people may have heard about already this week but it's too big to pass up. It's risky. It involves stem cells and it involves the nervous system. A Canadian study shows that there are multiple sclerosis patients with a specific form of multiple sclerosis which is called primary progressive. It's an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis that leads to just downward or more and more debilitating effects. So people very often with multiple sclerosis, about 90-95% of the cases are relapsing, remitting. It's very progressive. It's a very small percentage of patients so there are not many treatments available for these people because they're in the minority. So some researchers tried something that they had not tried before. They put these patients through chemotherapy and this, of course, the study, they did not have a control group. There was no placebo, there was no sham. All of the patients got the same treatment if it did some going through chemotherapy or going through a sham. It didn't seem right. So there's no control group in this study. So 24 multiple sclerosis patients were given chemotherapy to basically kill their immune system. They had a full blood transfusion but with new immune system stem cells. So completely fresh. They had an immune system reset is the idea behind this study. So this sounds like a lot like in a different way. Of course, Dr. Justin is not a doctor. Poop pills. But you're doing it with a new immune system through the blood. Exactly, through the blood. And they found 70% of the patients, these are, of course, it's only 24 patients so not a huge sample size, but 70% of the patients for three years after this transplant had completely halted or reversed the disease. Wow. Excuse me. Eight patients saw that improvement go on and last for seven and a half years and it's at this point that they've published the papers so they don't know how long the benefits, these improvements are going to last for these eight individuals. Well, here's the other thing though. So those are still ongoing results. So can you do it a second time? Can you do it again? And that's the question. Well, they had, they did have one fatality out of the 24. So that is only 24 individuals. That's one in 24 chance of death from complications. But they had to go through terrible side effects related to the chemotherapy. There were infections, you know, you get rid of your immune system, you get infections, you have to go through getting vaccinations all over again. You can, if you, you know, you might get something like childhood chicken pox as an adult. Yeah. So there are some pretty, pretty terrible side effects, but yes, complete rollback. And but these are people who were looking at pretty certain death from complications related to MS. They were in wheelchairs, unable to work, probably, sometimes even bedridden. So they, these people, especially the eight individuals, went from being in a wheelchair to walking again, to being active, to playing sports. So the benefits are amazing, but there's a definite cost versus the benefits. It is, but you know, it's, it's one of those scenarios where the cost is, is, is, it's no choice. It's, it's a sort of a no choice thing. I mean, it really is, I can continue to deteriorate and get this, this is going to progress in this direction. Or I can, I can attempt to, to fight. So this, this sounds to me like this is, this is a exceedingly successful trial. And, and they, they, and now they're moving forward to larger trials. So in, in addition to trying to replicate these results, which, you know, they, they knocked down the immune system of these MS patients, and then also basically destroyed it with chemotherapy drugs, and then had the, the stem cell transplant, they're also going to see how to make it maybe safer. Is there any way that they can improve this process for people to make it less of a risk and a better option for people. Yeah. Yeah. So big news in stem cells and multiple sclerosis for people with the more devastating version of the disease. And then in galactic news or actually even universal news. This is big, you know, we love gravitational waves. They were detected. They were the rumors forever. And then finally the news that they had been detected that a merger between two black holes had been detected. Well, you know what, they found another one. Yes. Yeah. So they, they have discovered that this discovery is published in physical review letters and they've, they've they're using their detectors and they've done it again. More black holes merging they use the same the same ideas of how they using LIGO initially to witness this merger. They were able to determine a second merger of two black holes into a massive spinning black hole. Yep. Yep. Gravity waves. Gravity waves. They've detected them again. So it wasn't a one off. It wasn't just a hey, what oops. No, they've actually detected them. And this is this is also why Aaron was talking about robot girl was talking about this in the pre-show. The ish at the end of The Voice of Reason. I had for a decade or so been, been affirmatively saying we will never find gravitational waves. They don't even exist. It's the what Einstein got this one thing wrong. It's just some but of course that's why it's ish at The Voice of Reason. The Voice of Reason was completely wrong on gravitational waves. Yeah. That's okay. I knew they would be detected eventually. I just was not expecting them this soon. I was expecting them in another year or two. And here we are not just once but twice. And their confidence level is over 99.999 percent. That's almost cocky at that point when you're that confident. It's like you could tone it down a little bit. You don't need to be that sure of yourself. Yeah. Oh, and this was a weaker signal than the first one. So this is they're getting their method. They are honing their methodology and we are going to discover much more about our universe. Yes. So that we can figure out more about the origin of black holes, binary black holes. Are we going to find out more about these spinning large black holes? We're going to find out more about potentially the origins of the universe itself. Yes. What do you have? Okay. So this is we got to go back in time. We're going back to September 2003 in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. A discovery so small was made that it sent the scientific world into a full-on tizzy. Which is pretty much where we live here on this week in science. Constant tizzy all the time. It's always we're always in a tizzy about something. This discovery the skeleton of a primitive human who adult an adult human who died 70,000 years ago and who had grown to the incredible height of about three feet tall and despite having a brain smaller than that of a chimp they use stone tools. Science called them homofloriensis. Everyone else refers to them as hobbits. And the debate went went on about trying to determine what exactly we were dealing with. Was it a new species? Was it a diseased human? Was this island dwarfism? Or was this a new species of diseased island dwarves? Nobody really knew at first. So over time agreement the researchers started to parse out well it couldn't really be this. The diseased thing doesn't fit because there's other morphology in the rest or the brain cavity is this so it can't be that. And it's sort of settled and landed on island dwarfism of some form of earlier human ancestor. So not like modern human dwarfism but some ancestor of a man that got to this island and then so Java man most likely candidate. This is an Asian originated homo erectus that settled on the island of Java west of Flores about 1.5 million years ago. The other possibility is that homofloreansis stems from a even more ancient precursor homo habilis or even a human forerunner of habilis that we really only know of from fossil records in Africa. In either instance it would be a unique case of homonins conforming to the island rule whereby mammals cut off from mainland stuck on islands limited food no predators they become small if they were big that's dwarfism but there's also island gigantism which is if there's a small mammal and the same conditions they tend to get larger. So there's this sort of ratio of things that take place. Now report in nature this week fossil remains of homonins that are similar in size but at least 10 times older have been excavated at Mademenge an open grassland site in Indonesia it's some miles from the cave right? The fragment of maybe 30-40 miles short drive from the cave unless it's on a different long walk maybe a little bit of swimming right so a fragment of a hominin lower jaw several isolated teeth were found in a layer of sandstone which has been deposited by a lakeside stream around 700 thousand years ago Dr. Adam Brum from the Giffords Research Center of Human Evolution says the new finding is the most stunning breakthrough yet to help with our understanding of the origin of homofloreansis. He says this is quoting voice we have unearthed fossils from at least three individuals including two children along with stone tools that are almost identical to those made by the much younger homofloreansis he goes on he's an archaeologist by the way who first commenced field work at Mada Mengi in 2004 along with colleagues from geology museum and geological survey institute in Indonesia there is a striking similarity in the size and form between the Mada Mengi hominins and the homofloreansis which is surprising given that the former at least several hundred millennia older so this new find what's really fascinating is we have another hobbit much much older and they the timelines of island dwarfism how long does this thing take place what was it like but this is a much more ancient form of the same hominin which is the same size and is apparently using the same tools something about having a chimpanzee's brain it's amazing we had the same tools for a long time too so they haven't confirmed that they're exactly related but this pretty much says hey these individuals were around for a long time that these were the people who lived in this area yes so it's not they weren't like a this wasn't a I mean if so it kind of it okay it pushes back island dwarfism 700,000 years already island dwarfs already hobbit type people hominins there right so we don't have the full skeleton this is what's going to be really really important they need to get a full skeleton a skull that sort of thing to see how similar the morphology is overall and it also might if there is if this is sort of between java man and homo floreansis we should see some morphology differences in the structure of the skeleton that are more java man more homo erectus pronounced than homo floreansis so if we're hoping this is somewhere in the middle and that's the correct we're not hoping but if if we're anticipating this then that's what we should see if we see something different that means maybe it's not java man right now this is of course this is very much the main theories that this is going to be java man's descendants who got marooned on the island and experienced island dwarfism so there's also and there's some things to include that so while I was saying before this is sort of it would be unique we haven't seen hominins experience island dwarfism before right it's not it's not common for us at least but in the same area where they're finding this the matamanga site where they're finding the ancient hobbit they also found fossils of extinct pygmy elephants this is you know elephants that shrunk because they were stuck in an island and giant rats which is that smaller so the elephants got smaller the people got smaller the rats got larger great yeah rats got much much bigger so that that does sort of lend to the idea that this is the island the island rule could have easily affected maybe we just don't have enough hominins that have been stuck on islands we're too clever about finding our way back off again that we haven't really seen this or it's just the way we interact with resources could be different all sorts of things yeah maybe it's more I mean maybe it's more likely for humans once you get on an island to create a boat and get off at the island and these islands are not terribly far from the mainland or just or just you know one of the things that that affects is predation whether or not you know you no longer have predators around you maybe maybe we're the opposite of island which is that we're so good at dealing with predators this is how big we get right like this is our this is the this is the large size of us already or the dwarf size of us already whichever whichever you think would would better apply but and so we're not really affected by suddenly being thrown into an environment where we where we don't have predators because we're kind of used to that to some extent but anyway yeah this continue working on the site this is the new one though the ancient hobbit not just the the 70,000 year ago one though that's the modern day hobbit as far as science is concerned now we're looking at the 700,000 year old one they're looking for more evidence and of course we'll report it when we get it here but it's going to be a fascinating find it's I feel like it's it's either going to nail nail down things or just give us more questions right now it's just more questions right if it answers the question or just poses further questions it's awesome either way yeah I love the tracing it back and trying we know that there were these individuals now who were the ancestors and the ancestors were yet more dwarves so who were the ancestors of the dwarves where did they come from kicking the can to that answer backwards in history 700, 600,000 years so this is this week in science I guess moving forward how about again once again looking out into space looking at dust clouds gas clouds trying to find out exactly how life got might have gotten started and whether or not it should be the same all over the universe so you know you and I I'm right-handed you might you might be right-handed or left-handed are you right-handed Justin yes yes you're right-handed some people are left-handed but the majority of people are right-handed but life itself works this way the molecules that make up life are handed and have a certain handedness and that has to do with the molecules rotation and the amino acids that form life have a a particular handedness and then the DNA itself has the handedness is based on that so it's everything is I know this and I always forget it when I want to write it I want to say exactly what it is let's see so let me make sure I've got which way the molecules are handed and of course I read it and I was like yeah of course it is and then I forgot it okay it's not working for me today my brain's not working today I can't find things that I want to find so anyway the question is where did the original handedness come from and so researchers are trying so I believe that I want to say that DNA I want to say that the amino acids that make up DNA are right-handed but I'm probably wrong with that and this is a mental thing I got a 50-50 shot here oh my goodness so researchers are looking into space to find the molecules that could potentially make up things like amino acids and other molecules and so we look into space to try and find the handedness to find out what things are out there and so this chirality is what it's called is a determinant that we need to take into account and so researchers were looking into Sagittarius looking into a giant dust cloud near Sagittarius A which is the giant black hole near the center of our galaxy well there's a big dust cloud nearby and it's called Sagittarius B2 and so this interstellar dust and gas cloud has all sorts of stuff in it lots of methanol has other things and they have found a compound that is called propylene oxide CH3, CH0, CH2 propylene oxide very simple molecule but they're able to look at this and start looking at the chirality of the molecule the handedness of the molecule to find out whether or not there is in the basic stuff that makes up life the molecules that make up the molecules that make up life if they start out with a certain handedness or not or whether it is a 50-50 chance and so they found this molecule it's a great simple molecule for them to be able to look at they can't yet distinguish between the left and the right handed versions of the molecule because really they're looking way out in space and they're just happy they found this molecule at this point in time and that's what they're looking for next they're going to be looking at the molecular signals of these this molecule to determine whether or not there's a greater proportion of right handed or left handed propylene oxide molecules in this cloud because there's a big question as to whether or not when we go to another solar system in another galaxy if the life there will be based on the same handedness that we are and so if you eat something this is the question if you eat something that is made up of molecules proteins say that have a different handedness than you will you be able to digest them and will they be useful to you because if they're the wrong handedness your body won't be able to take them into won't be able to incorporate them into its own into its own self so if the entire universe is the same handedness as life on earth it'll help cut down the places that we want to go or don't want to go in the future yeah we don't want to end up on a planet where everything is made out of sugar but it's wrong handed so we can't use it we can't use it at all it's all sugar but it's not going to help us at all yeah so they've got some amazing radio telescopes to be able to hone in on this signal of propylene oxide and hopefully they'll figure out more more later that will tell us more about the stuff that came before the earth and came before us and what might be out there we don't have to look further than our own planet no what else is out there discovered in a Swedish quarry type of meteorite never before found on earth scientists report in the journal nature communications I love this quote this is the studies co-author he's a professor of geochemistry and planetary sciences at University of California Davis in our entire civilization we have collected over 50,000 meteorites and no one has seen anything like this one before discovering a new type of meteorite is and I remember he's geochemistry and planetary science University of California Davis discovering a new type of meteorite is very very exciting yes very exciting it is the new meteorite called OST 65 and now it's OST I don't my Scandinavian language skills are pretty weak but OST is also how you say cheese it is it is Scandinavian it's a cheese so this is cheese 65 meteorite it appears to be from a missing partner be the missing partner from a massive asteroid collision that took place 470 million years ago the collision sent debris falling to earth over about a million years and may have influenced a great diversification of life in the period one of the objects involved in this collision is well known so it's the source of L-chondrites this is the most common type of meteorite this is the one if you send away a couple of duckets to a meteorite hobbyist place they will send you back one of these L-chondrites this is the most common meteorite that we find on the planet and it's the idea is this came from a collision like one thing hit something else and near enough to earth that all these blew up in space and then rained down upon the earth over a million years time so OST OST 65 was discovered in Sweden's Thorsberg Aquarium source of many many meteorites itself measuring just under four inches wide and I love this it looks like a grey cow patty plopped onto a pristine layer of fossil rich pink limestone but that sort of greyish cow patty plop might be why it got called cheese I'm not really sure the OST rock is called a fossil meteorite because the original rock the original meteorite is almost completely altered except for a few hardy minerals spinels and chromite chromium oxygen isotopes in the surviving minerals allowed the researchers to conclude that OST 65 is chemically distinct from all known meteorite types by measuring how long OST 65 was exposed to cosmic rays the team established that it traveled in space for about a million years before it fell to earth 470 million years ago its timeline matches up with all the L meteorites found in the quarry leading the study authors to suggest the rock is a fragment of the other object from the Ordovichian collision the original object may have been destroyed during the collision but it's also possible that the remains are either still out in space or somewhere on earth that we just haven't found that's cool yeah it's neat to think that you know when you hear about okay we've got these meteorite fragments on earth and the chondrites and whatever are the different types of minerals that are in them usually iron meteorites or other but there's this idea that oh they're all just these couple of kinds and that's it and then if that were the case then why do we have such richness of material here on earth why do we know that there are other rocky planets that have different compositions from us I mean there's gotta be other stuff floating around in space yeah one of the stories I don't think I've got it fully dialed in but there's oh where did it go there's also something of an interesting conversation going on which is that we for a long time like where does gold come from well it's only created in the supernova and then the supernova must have somehow taken place before the earth was formed there's another idea though that thea I think it's called thea this massive object that slammed into the earth which may have created the moon may have contained all of those elements that we think would have sort of been there at the creation of the earth or come to us via a supernova event that then coalesced into stuff so we may not know where all the stuff on earth minerals even come from exactly yet because the entire formation of the earth is still getting getting fresh looks super fresh unlike your milk if it's been exposed to LED tell me about this LED milk that you teased earlier in the show so this Cornell University Research Department of Food Science found that exposure to light emitting diode sources for even a few hours degrades the perceived quality of milk more so than microbial content that naturally accumulates over longer periods of time their study determined that milk remained at high quality for two weeks normally then and then consumers overwhelmingly preferred and that consumers overwhelmingly preferred milk that older milk over fresh milk fresh fresh milk that was stored in a container a typical container that had been exposed to LED light for as little as four hours so two week old milk as good if not actually better than in this case better than four hour fresh milk being exposed to LED lights this is no good for energy efficiency because this is what all the stores are moving over to these low energy input LED lights that shine bright a long time don't need to be replaced don't take as much energy and they look great cost them less money but then they're going to be affecting the milk unless they change packaging well it's okay so nutrients and milk are it's affected by light because when light hits it's riboflavin as I guess the key riboflavin as a photosensitive component in milk which when activated or struck by light releases a cascade of electrons then degrade proteins they can oxidize fats and it changes the taste and flavor of the milk and that's that normally happens with milk that's why a lot of milk is in those non see through containers even the plastic light allowing ones or a thicker thicker plastic you won't see sold in like clear glass for instance but if that particular blue spectrum of the LED light gets through somehow interesting wow it breaks down riboflavin and then you think your fresh milk is doesn't taste as good as old milk cardboard not so yummy not so yummy no things that you would like to look at how about some pretty pictures of Venus there is a wonderful story unfolding out of Japan actually a Japanese probe at katsuki the dawn spacecraft headed to Venus to get into orbit in 2015 and it had a thruster misfire and it didn't kind of go into orbit around Venus it just orbited around the sun for five years and it missed it missed Venus it just orbited around the sun until lately recently engineers got it into Venus orbit they used its attitude control thrusters these are super low thrust super low thrust but they were able to actually use these this is what phil plate says are used to change the spacecraft's angle to the planet to be able to get different pictures but they used it to move it into orbit go engineers that's all I can say so now at katsuki is sending images back to earth that are absolutely astounding so when we look at Venus normally we see it kind of in a as a hazy cloud right you don't really think of it as having lots of details it's just kind of a hazy cloud so there's an image here in ultraviolet light in which it looks just like kind of that hazy cloud you can see some banding in the clouds and we get very much detail however researchers have well they have an infrared imager on katsuki and we're able to get some amazing images that the Japanese space agency released to show the cloud motion so what happens is the heating from the sun heats Venus to incredible temperatures so that Venus in the time period I've got an image I've got on the screen right now that shows the surface of Venus just rotating around at a rapid pace it's a series of images that have been put together to make an animation and you watch the clouds moving around from the right hand side of the image over to the left hand side of the image and about halfway across they just burst into just a white over exposed looking because the sun is heating up the atmosphere of the planet so much that's what's going on the sun is heating up the atmosphere so much yes it just couldn't tell the camera just couldn't tell what was going on there because it was just too much info but if it's actually sort of vaporizing the clouds as they hit the horizon that is awesome about this is that Venus it looks as though Venus is rotating but this is over a time period in which Venus hardly moved at all and so what we are seeing is the fast rotation of the atmosphere caused by the heating on the day side and the cooling of the atmosphere on the night side so on our own planet we have the convection currents that come from the day and the night sides of the planet but we also have the moon that's involved and the ocean currents that pull the atmosphere along as well but on Venus it's just the atmosphere so the atmosphere itself is getting heated to massive temperatures when it's in sunlight and that is forcing it to rush around and so the atmosphere is rushing and rushing around the planet at an incredible pace it's just it's amazing to me how how apparent it is it's beautiful so JAXA now taking amazing pictures of Venus that we in a way that we have not seen it before and it's pretty exciting so hopefully from JAXA we will learn a lot more about Venus and its atmosphere that's very cool tell me about carbon dioxide and rocks short story here international team of scientists have found a way to sort of create a carbon sink for carbon emissions they basically can turn the carbon emissions from the atmosphere into rock and therefore sort of store it for however long period of time they like the only downside is for this to work you need a volcano oh yay well I mean you need to live near one or have your power plant near one would be ideal but perhaps perhaps perhaps not perhaps not perhaps we can create a giant fan that would do this but so the idea is you would take an atmosphere and you inject it into volcanic bedrock the CO2 in that atmosphere reacts with the surrounding rock and can form its own benign minerals that get stuck there so this was a process that was thought to take many many many many years and there was no way you could do it but they basically they injected on a smaller scale a bunch of carbon rich environmental air down into some bedrock of a volcano and up in Iceland and they say 95 to 98% of it over a course of just a couple years was contained and that's faster much faster than they expected it to be oh much faster so this is gas was injected into a deep well study site in Iceland as a volcanic island Iceland is made up of 90% basalt rock and that's important because one it's porous so you can get a lot of stuff into it and it's also a rock rich in elements such as calcium magnesium and iron which are required for carbon mineralization this CO2 is dissolved in water and carry down the well on contact with the target storage rocks which is 400 to 800 meters under the ground the solution quickly reacts with the surrounding basaltic rock forming carbonate minerals and they don't leak out they get stuck there that's where it stays once they become carbonate minerals then they're carbonate minerals yeah so it was a fantastic proof of concept that took place here I just wonder how much we can utilize this on a larger scale seems like we'd be shipping carbons around by ship to Iceland and it just seems like it would be a net loss at some point but for you know for carbon storage this could be this sort of idea at least that could possibly be then recreated around a power plant even if it didn't have a volcano nearby in order to sort of get closer to the and I'm quoting quoting with my fingers in the air a clean carbon power plants that use burn lots of carbon in a very dirty way but keep moving on it researchers this is a very promising result for sure not going to be the fix yet but it's definitely a promising if we get enough little fixes if we get enough of the little fixes you know that's the big fix there's lots of little fixes that can work just as well let's see another space story we have discovered an exoplanet around its host star and it's 1200 light years away and it's not through just just wobble that we've seen it this is we've actually imaged this there's a there are two planets in the star system they're CV SO 30 and astronomers use the transit method four years ago to detect the first planet which is very close to its host star the second planet they detected through direct imaging with data from ESO's very large telescope in Chile and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Keilar Alto Observatory in Spain it's really really far from its star so the researchers are like hey it's out there we think it might be orbiting this star but we're not really sure it could just be a rogue star on its own or it takes 27,000 years to orbit its star so it is located 660 astronomical units from its star our furthest planet not counting Pluto of course is 30 astronomical units that's Neptune yeah so there are lots of ideas researchers have as to why this particular planet is sitting so far away from its host star but it's amazing that they've been able to visualize something 1200 light years away with direct imaging as opposed to the transit method of waiting for a star's light to dim before they can actually detect it so exciting you got any more I think I'm tapped out for the evening alright well I've got brainy birds and penis bones bring them both okay so researchers publishing the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have published a paper called birds have primate like numbers of neurons in the brain so I've said it for years right being called a bird brain is not a bad thing it's actually a compliment and the researchers are saying this as well they measured the number of neurons in the brains of many over two dozen species of birds from the zebra finch which I know and love so well to the emu and they found that these little tiny birds every one of the species have more neurons packed into the brain space that they have than mammals or primates of the same mass so say taking a zebra finch a small bird compare it to a small mammal or small primate of comparatively similar mass and they found that the birds of the same mass had more neurons packed into their brains smarter than a spider mickey what's that small the question is birds are birds brains wired differently well no they're organized very similarly to primate brains to mammalian brains they have similar connectivity between different areas of the brains and so they came across a new hypothesis which is that birds complex behaviors are the results of just having more neurons than we had thought and so basically they're efficient at packing the neurons in researchers say we found that birds especially songbirds and parrots have surprisingly large numbers of neurons in their pallium and that's the part of the brain that corresponds to the cerebral cortex supports higher cognitive functions such as planning for the future or finding patterns and they think this explains why they exhibit levels of cognition at least as complex as primates yeah and then one of the implications from this is that there is more than one way to build a powerful brain right you don't necessarily need to build a larger brain such as the human brain or even say the elephant brain you don't necessarily need to build that bigger it's just how many neurons you have in there so there's more than one way to skin a cat proverbially when it comes to building brains which is very exciting there's also literally more than one way to skin a cat yeah but I'm not gonna go into that what I am gonna go into it's penis bones I'm gonna go straight into penis bones yeah for my last story tonight I just wanted to remind you about last week we talked about bioluminescence in fishes and how it evolved separate 27 times well it turns out a similar kind of study looking for a bone called the baculum in mammals this is the penis bone many mammals have it they looked at 950 species across all mammals and they found it popped up separately at least 9 times throughout the history of mammals so there is no specific common origin I mean aside from mammal that brought about the penis bone in some species it's just something that worked and was a good solution for this convergent evolution example yet again we love convergent evolution yeah so what has penis bone what animals have penis bones dogs have penis bones what other animals have penis bones I'm trying to pull up a list right now let's get a list of the animals I know it says here primates human spider monkeys or woolly monkeys no some primates not all primates some primates some rodents some rodents oh some insectivores shrews, hedgehogs bears there's cats yeah dogs, yep I think whales I think whales have so it is sort of a broad list across otters, weasels, skunks that it's bats so this is sort of like this would be an interesting thing to see charted out what mammals have and don't have and even though they may have come up evolved several times it says also that they were lost in a number of lineages yes so they showed up and then disappeared yeah so not always not always evolutionarily advantageous losing that evolutionary advantage sometimes faux show have we done it? I think we've made it to the end of yet another episode of This Week in Science that's a good episode, it was a lot of fun yeah it was a great episode we had a fantastic guest many of you may or may not have noticed we were without one of our co-hosts this evening Blair will be back though next week she will be, she's out of friends PHD the celebration tonight so that's exciting it's on the short list and the long list which is the same list of reasons you're allowed to miss twists yeah celebrating someone's PHD for sure yeah um oh and I just I know I just have to bring this up something I didn't know there is a female equivalent of the baculum called the baobelum say what yes the female I guess clitoris bone the osclitoris oh well that makes sense and I would think would be present in any of the female sex that had the baculum I would think that those two correlated I have no idea this is something to look into this is definitely something to look into because I was not aware of the baobelum so maybe we'll look into it give a little historical perspective on the baobelum but that's for another week thank you everyone for listening to another episode of this week in science we are going to move forward I'm going to take this moment to say thank you to our patrons thank you to Paul Disney Kevin Parachan, Keith Corsale, Steve Debell Melissa Mosley, Jesse Moreno, Patrick O'Keefe Jason Schneiderman, Rudy Garcia, Gerald Sorrells, Greg Guthman, Alex Wilson Dave Neighbor, Jason Dozier, Matthew Litwin Eric Knapp, Jason Roberts, Chris Clark Richard Onimus, John Ratnaswamy Byron Lee, EO, Jared Lysette Ulysses Adkins, Brian Condren, Jake Jones Mark Mazzaro, Trainer A4 Advitus Rimpus, Brian Hedrick Cassie Lester, Patrick Cohn, Sarah Chavis Leila, Bob Calder, Shane and Tara Ginsberg Marshall Clark, Charlene Henry Don Camerichka, Larry Garcia, Randy Mazzuca and Dyer Tony Steele, Dave Freidel Craig Landon, Daryl Lambert, David Wiley Robert Aston, Nathan Greco, Hexator Deborah Smith, Mitch Nieves Flying Out, John Crocker, Richard Porter Christopher Dreyer, Mark Sylvan Westby Artyom, Pixel Fly, Shuwata Stephen B, Dave Wilkinson, Steve Michinsky, Rodney Lewis, Braxton Howard Phil Nadeau, Rick Ramis, Salgud Sam Matt Sutter, Emma Grenier, Phillip Shane James Dobson, Kurt Larson, Stefan Insom, Michael George, Russell Jensen Mountain Sloth, Jim Drapeau Terrapane John Maloney, Jason Olds, James, Noah Wiles Paul West, Alec Doty, Aluma Lama, Joe Wheeler, Diggle Campbell, Craig Porter Adam Mishkaan, Aaron Luthan, Marjorie Paul Stanton, David Simaly, Tyler Harris Sambo Ahmed, and Gary Swinsburg Thank you for all of your support on Patreon If you're interested in supporting us, you can find information at patreon patron.com slash this week in Science Remember that you can help us out simply by telling your friends about TWIS And on next week's show, once again we're going to be broadcasting live online at 8pm Pacific Time on TWIS.org You can watch and join our chat room It's going to be awesome. We're going to have another guest She is a woman who has moved from the naturopathic medicine to science based medicine and she has a petition for the government going to not support naturopathic medicine So we're going to talk to her a bit about her experience and what is or is not scientific about naturopathic medicine next week If you have questions, let me know And if you don't make it next week don't worry because we can find our past episodes at TWIS.org and also at TWIS.org slash YouTube That easy Thank you for enjoying the show TWIS is also available, of course, as a podcast Just google this week in Science in your iTunes directory or if you have one of those mobile devices that isn't Apple, it's probably an Android and therefore you can look TWIS for Droid that's TWIS the number 4 Droid app in your Android marketplace or simply this week in Science, anywhere in the Apple sphere That's right and for more information on anything you've heard here today show notes are going to be available on our website that's TWIS.org Conversations with the hosts and other listeners Yes, this is also possible you can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinScience.com Justin at TWISMinion at gmail.com or Blair at BlairBazz at TWIS.org Just be sure to put TWIS to WIS somewhere in your subject line or your email will be spam filtered into oblivion You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at TWISScience at Dr. Kiki at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Menagerie. 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If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an ear view a haiku that comes to you in the night please let us know We'll be back here next week and we hope that you will join us once again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from today's show Remember It's all in your head This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science It's the end of the world So I'm setting up the shop Got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in I'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you This Week in Science is coming your way So everybody listen to what I say I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all It's This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That what I say may not represent your views But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just better understand That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy This Week in Science is coming your way So everybody listen to everything we say Use our methods Better roll than a die We may rid the world of toxoplasma Got the eye Cause it's This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science With our laundry list of items to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got But how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up chop One How Week in Science is coming your way So listen to what we say and if you learn anything This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science How come I can't hear you Kiki? Because I was muted I didn't even muted myself, muted myself. I was gonna say, I'm tired. I was tired today, I'm so tired. It was a mess. Today was a mess, I was a mess, you guys. Sorry. I almost didn't make it. I really literally- With the sunglasses. Oh my, it was like, I got a migraine about an hour. I mean, it's not a migraine. I don't know what those are. I don't mean to claim that sort of pain. I have no idea. Cause my headaches and never that. But it was like, somewhat blinding. Like, yeah, the light in this room was like hurting my eyes, like it was bad. But I took a lot of pills and they really worked. I feel better now. Yes, somebody is talking about, where is it, Whiskey Renegade? Watched your Netflix show, Kiki, you killed it. Yes, you were so awesome. Thanks. I got, I had all sorts of excitement last week because of that. And then like, I've just been like, I think around Saturday, I crashed totally. It was just like, the whole, the high from the week went, and I've just been kind of like dragging along ever since. I'm like, okay, I can do this. Yeah, and then you were on Twitter tech news as well. My goodness, you are making rounds. Yeah, I was on tech news today on Monday, which is good. Yeah, try to make the rounds, right? Yeah. Try and do some things. Make the rounds. Get people to remember this week in science. Yes, Ben Ruffig. She's now a TV star. Not really. Well, again, a TV star. Once again. No, just me. Yeah. No. Oh, I've been on the TV a few times. Do that. Every once in a while, I do that. Every once in a while, people go, hey, you should be on TV. I go, okay. I should do that more often. I don't do that as much as like, as I think not in this role per se, but it's one thing I do miss about living in Los Angeles is that you could weasel your way into a movie here and there. Again, a movie. I'd like to be in a movie. I'd love to be a little tiny bit part in a movie. That'd be fun. That's voice overs. That's fun. Ed from Connecticut. Minion Hangout Tomorrow, which is 12 midnight Eastern damn time and 9 p.m. Pacific time. Okay, I'm a little bit in. Awesome. So 9, 9 p.m. should work. It's off before whatever reason, it's been a running theme that just about every Thursday, I end up late at work, but I joined pretty late last time when Ed was in. Me and Ed hung out for a good long time, but I think we had some good combos. Yes, stay fried. You should also be on TV more. All of us should. All of us should. All should. Everybody should be on TV. In fact, 24-hour surveillance that streams live to the web for everybody. Live. Always. Hey, Justin. Yes. I know this is like very far in the future for you, for playing November 4th. How do you feel about going to Baltimore? Well, I've got nothing planned that day, I think. Right. Yeah. Give me an idea. I tiner what's it, and I'll throw it into the... The work mix. Yeah, I'll get it planned, but yeah, of course I'm down. This is so exciting. We'll see about that. And we're gonna be at an aquarium? Yeah, so Baltimore people, that would be Patrick. I know Patrick's not in the chat room right now, but people near Baltimore, Maryland, we are potentially going to be involved in the Maryland STEM Festival. I just have to say yes, I guess, and give them an answer. So what they want us to do is to be part of their opening ceremony on November 4th for the STEM Festival and record or tape the show at, I love that, I would say tape, tape the show, at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Wait, what is it? Friday, awesome, it's a Friday. Wait. 4th. Okay. Remember, remember, the 4th of November. Yeah. Yes, the Baltimore Aquarium is awesome and I can't wait to tell people that we're gonna be going there. It's gonna be so great. Yeah, I'm down, that's gonna be totally fun. Yeah, so, oh, I forgot, Periscope Archive of Food Science. What, Periscope Archive Kiki Food Science? What? I don't know if I have a Periscope Archive? And yeah, anyway, what else happened tonight? Oh, I have to check my Facebook, our Facebook account. Brandon, who is, he was in the chat room a while ago. He watches twists every once in a while, listens to it. He offered to help us simulcast to Facebook while doing the live show tonight. So, I wanna check and see if that happened. It did, right at the outset of the show, I got all sorts of alerts telling me that. I had my Facebook turned off, so I'm gonna. Livestream was happening, we got some likes there going on. Nice, I wonder, gotta go check that out. Look at it and see if anybody, I'm gonna go look. I guess we're still doing it live if he's still doing it. Thank you, Kenji Kato posted. Amino acids and proteins are left-handed. Sugars, DNA, and RNA are right-handed. Thank you, Kenji. Yes. Dave fried out, I did not light my house on fire. I did cook on Periscope, I do that occasionally. It's when I'm cooking dinner and I'm a little bit bored and wanna talk to somebody, but it's hard to hold the phone to my head to talk with someone on the phone. So I do a Periscope and talk to a lot of people, I do that every once in a while. Aha, and then, oh yeah, and my Periscope, all of a sudden my phone just gave up the ghost and was like, just stopped working. I don't know, it might've been my internets. I don't know, anyway, what were you gonna say? Oh, I went to the Facebook to look into this further and it turns out that curbing enthusiasm is gonna return for a ninth season, which is great news for all of humanity. Curb Your Enthusiasm is a fantastic show. It's a fantastic, fantastic show. You guys, the fire department was not at my house. Shush, Dave fried out in Colorado. What are you, oh my goodness thing. Oh, just another, wow, high school friend is doing cool things. Nice, we like interesting people from the past. All right, I'm tired tonight. It is 10 o'clock and I would like to go get some sleep. Like I actually go to sleep. Yeah, that's a novel concept. Okay, so I have an idea, one last thing before we go and Minions, you can chime in on this if you think this is a good idea. I'm proposing that we meet up again next week and do another episode of this week. You are crazy, what? Yeah, I know, I know we just did one, but like a lot's gonna happen in this coming week. There's gonna be a lot of new science stories that things that we've never, we would never have imagined. Well, we could imagine, but we probably would imagine different things that don't actually exist. These are actual things that are gonna happen, discoveries that are gonna be announced, new things we're gonna learn in one week and we can talk about it again next week. We can't. Radical, no idea. Radical, you are a radical. What is, Identity 4 thinks you're totally radical too. Oh, yeah, and I think that the poll that we took about whether or not people preferred or didn't prefer twists with or without Blair. Resoundingly, we haven't had a single vote that said that they wanted less Blair. So. Yeah, there have been no less Blair votes. We're gonna go ahead and sign your contract and bring it back for one more week. Yeah, at least one more. We do a week to week contract with Blair. Oh, yeah. Yeah. As I am also on the same plan. Actually, mine's bi-weekly or mid-weekly. Yeah. I could not only not be brought back next week, I could also be fired on a Monday or a Sunday. Not really. I'm not kicking. Good night, Justin. Good night, everybody. Yeah, see you next week. Thank you so much.