 Hello everybody, welcome to this week's podcast broadcast of this week in science. So glad you're here So glad Justin's here. So glad Blair's here. So glad we're all here on this soul Stis. Oh my goodness. I That would happen. Yeah Early morning little late night. Although in most places, this is not the longest. Well, the latest sunset It's just the longest day of the year As we get started just want to remind everyone that they can hit those likes and hearts and notifications and subscribes and Telled friends that things are happening here because it's getting started. It's time to let everyone know and hit the algorithms and make everybody Find this week in science because we are going live not taped And if there are things that happen during the show, they might get edited out by our wonderful editor Rachel Ready to go Let's do it. Okay starting the show for this week And three two this is Twist this week in science episode number 931 recorded on Wednesday, June 21st 2023 Super summer souls to science and Say that three times fast. Hey everyone. I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science We are going to fill your heads with hit songs old art and frog sounds but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer Things are rising up on planet Earth Atmospheric carbon is rising and we wait temperature keeps rising and We complain about the weather the sea levels are rising and we watch and While awareness is also rising Action is not quite rising to the level that should be expected in an emergency Unless the humans have a second habitable planet that they have told no one about This will affect all of them too The worst of global warming is yet to come and the only thing that will stop the temperature rising is you Not just you because everyone else including you needs to rise up and take action Control of the situation. I would do it myself, but I'm busy on that day But you you have been chosen by fate by destiny by mere chance and dumb luck to be alive in the age of energy Consequences and you need to rise to the challenge right after sitting down for another episode of this week in science Coming up next And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We're back again To talk about all the science we want to talk about and it is June 21st the solstice, which is you know, scientifically auspice auspice auspicious Yes, scientifically Stonehenge When all the days start to get shorter. I know it's my least favorite day of the year Anyway, no, I love it. It's big. It is also world giraffe day Which is because of the long necks the longest day. It's that's always the same. It's also what is it? It's a National selfie day, so I'll just take Yeah, you did that yet national selfie day, I think it's also like Nash pod Whatever some related podcasts, I don't know There's all sorts of days here, but you know what? This is a science day and it's the longest day of the year So I hope you're ready for a tight 90 minute show. We're gonna bring it to you Okay So you can go howl at the moon when it finally comes out later Exactly I have stories about horse toes hit songs paint brains and good guess What do you have Justin I have got the thing that kills everyone another cancer cured why snakes and The oldest neander art ever found Can't I'm waiting for the second half of that next to last sentence, but that's okay. We'll figure it out No, that's it. That's it. You mean why snakes? There's no more Thanks, that's the story why snakes? Okay. All right. Can't wait. Why snakes? Okay, and Blair What's in the animal corner? Yes, I have dinos rats and frogs Okay, well on that note we will hop right into The show no well I need to remind you first that if you have not yet subscribed to this week in science You can find us streaming live every Wednesday at 8 p.m. Pacific time ish on Facebook twitch and YouTube but you can find us as twist science on twitch and Twitter kind of and Universadon and Instagram so look for twist science if it's not just twist this week in science is a great thing to follow We're also, you know podcasting everywhere. This gets edited turned into a podcast got the podcast going out all over the place You can subscribe to that. If this is a lot just go to twist org You can find show notes all sorts of things related to subscribing there. Okay, but now it's time to rib it The science okay, let's start with horse toes. How about that? Okay, because I'm already Toe A singular headline of the first story of the day and Justin is already confused Horse toes What used to be So there was a hypothesis going around based on a paper back in about 2018 that There were a number of toes that kind of got mixed into the whole support system of the hoof So the hoof itself is the third finger of What would be a five digit or a four digit at hand? And so the the toe that single hoof is considered to that's one toe That's down on the ground But then in 2018 some researchers were like We don't know where these others toes went and so maybe they just melded into things and look the frog It's not really anything from anywhere else. And so that's where the other toes went They became the frog and it's all part of the support structure Just in how did a frog get involved? That's the part of the soft underbelly of the hoof that you have to clean out and make sure there's nothing in it That part I just didn't know what it was called then it's called the frog because it looks like a frog possibly If you really squint and Kind of squint you can see it's a little crouching frog, but I digress the Horses were related to other species of horse like animals tapirs, hyperions, others and In the evolution researchers have been questioning what happened to all the all the all the toes And so we've got the taper with the head four toes in front three behind Each was individually hoved so like toenails with an underlying foot pad horses are not like that asses zebras Just a single toe. That's it Leftover original third toe Got the hoof around it the soft underbelly of the frog underneath and Bunch of researchers just published in the Royal Society open science their study That has come to the conclusion that well While others may have said that there were more toes involved in the hoof In fact modern horses have lost their toes Great. There's only one what we thought So what you thought it's just a single toe third toe those other toes kind of went away and they're not there anymore they They de-evolved if you want to go that way Researchers say the frog of the horses hoof evolved independently of the side toes as a unique structure providing shock absorption and traction during locomotion and That these one-toed horses have a different shape from the main toe of the foot of three-toed horses And so maybe that has to do with weight distribution and ecological habitat But in case anyone was still really worried or wondering about it horses don't have a lot of toes. They've got One and they stand on it. Well, they have four Yeah Hopefully they have four Yeah, but I just I love the adaptation of various digits based on evolutionary need and ecological need and that we've seen this happen You know the four chickens don't have teeth anymore because they don't really need them but the genes are still there So should the need come back could we find that horses may evolve in one? You know point in the future to have different digits reaching down into their hooves. Who knows but right now one toe each Well, I wonder how long it'll take for dogs do claws to finally go away disappear there They're not doing anything Right. They're just kind of hanging out there. Yeah Maybe they're using them when I'm not looking It's possible, but I don't think so. No. No. Yeah All right, enough about horse toes Justin, let's talk about oh yay a wonderful thing to talk about Climate change clay matia. What could make it worse? Hi matia indeed central heating and air conditioning Very much a very much an American thing So this isn't this isn't as widespread around the world as it is in the United States around nine out of ten American homes Have air conditioning. Wow. Wow Coming from the West West Coast and like the Bay Area and now in Pacific Northwest I would just like amazed at that number. Wow. Does that mean there are houses with ten air conditioners in it that are numbers Okay, I just don't I don't understand how it's possible, but I believe you it's crazy Yeah, it's because most of most of the country is not San Francisco. That's where the other one and ten are As places where historically air conditioning hasn't been needed So developing countries tend not to have it northern Europe has never really needed air conditioning and so doesn't have it and they're typically because there's a Typically a handful of hot days and they just kind of sold her through it Maybe a household fan Can handle it. That's about it. But of course all of this is changing because of global warming and the heat gets too hot to handle around equatorial latitudes and increasingly uncomfortable weather patterns in northern nations the need for protective human cooling is Set to skyrocket So, I don't know if Blair would understand this but air conditioners take a lot of electricity to run No, I have heard She's heard she's in San Francisco. They still don't have air conditioning. It's it's mind-boggling. I'm on the peninsula I still don't have air conditioning So it's enough actually that it can stress up the grid Like they start to tell people don't run it until this hour or before that hour Because you can get rolling blackouts. It just can really one of the things I read is even New York, which Everybody in New York. I don't think has an air conditioner because that's relatively It's usually relatively okay there without one It will it will bump up their grid by like 30% When when there's a hot day and people start running the AC So where does where do we get where do we get the electricity to run all of these air conditioners? Great question mostly from fossil fuels. Yeah Okay, so now is that mean more carbon is released in the atmosphere on these days It also means a tremendous amount of heat is being produced by air conditioning in itself This is a whole thing that's like well What if you're making cold over here because air conditioners? They don't actually put cold air into a room They take heat out of the room their heat pump They have to take it and put it somewhere. Yeah, that heat is conveyed out of the room where the building Into the already hot air of the day outside Which is what was causing the need for the air conditioning and raising the outside temperatures even higher Actually, it could be as much as a degree Celsius reported for big cities on hot days From the air conditioning heat pumps So anyway, all that is somewhat related to this study published in the journal scientific reports by environmental economists at The University of Venice They're warning how the demand for air conditioners and electricity for cooling in Europe and India Between now and 2050 could accelerate the conditions that caused the warming the first place by creating increased emissions to Power the cooling needed to counter the warming caused by the increased emissions Studies suggest air conditioning uptake could double in Europe and grow fourfold in India With the probably a goal of reaching about 40% homes in both regions Personally, I think it'll actually be much higher in Europe even though we were just talking before the show The building I'm in does not have air conditioning. There's no conceivable way Of putting it through a wall or a window here currently if the heat continues to rise People will need it. It will be a safety thing. And so a way will be found So I mean, that's the question is it gonna be people who you know can afford it and can adapt Their environment to them or people who can't afford it and can't live there anymore because they're dying of heat And so then they move Yeah, because it's something it's well, it's gonna be it's gonna be a not move situation for northern Europe Yeah, I'm gonna be Six to six, you know six percent hotter overall trend, but then hottest days will be even hotter than that They'll go up. Maybe double of that. Yeah over the averages India is looking at a 20% average increase with the hot days being much higher and Because of economics largely and also the ginormous population size people aren't gonna be moving so the other problem is a lot of affordable air conditioning Tends not to have the most energy efficient design Basically, okay, they threw some numbers out here is totally meaningless numbers. They're predicting Additional rise in co2 emissions between seven and 17 million tons in Europe and 38 160 million tons in India. I think it's probably gonna be higher than yeah, so I mean so we've got this It is a catch-22 it is these are getting hotter. So people need to find ways to Stop the heat. So they're gonna go to air conditioning air conditions gonna be a problem because of fossil fuels and thus we can find come up with other energy sources and Also air conditioning and the chemicals it uses and the technologies it uses is not sustainable. So It's just the positive Get elsewhere from trying to curb we're going to have to Run through just to run these air conditions and the thing is to it's not gonna take very much heat for all of Europe They're looking at temperatures and I get it. It's temperatures. It's not that much higher But it's very humid in Northern Europe people don't realize it because nobody ever complains. Oh It's cold, but it's a it's a dry cold. It's not a or it's a humid cold Like nobody cares about humidity when it's always cold. Nobody pays any attention to humidity Humid heat means that a lower temperature threshold Yeah, so what you need to do at least for Europe is you just need to hold on long enough for climate change to reverse the Gulf Stream Then all of Europe will be thrown into an Yeah, so that'll fix it. You just need to hold on a little bit longer Yeah, and then it's just gonna be snowing and I see all the time So it's not in this story or the I didn't really bring this study for it, but there's a the The North Sea the north of the Arctic right now is the warmest It's ever been on record and and and by a lot That's what the out they even conveyor belt working properly the heat is just sitting there And it's any it's spiked It's spiked higher a few times Before but this is right now the the longest prolonged highest heat of the Arctic Yeah, there has been yep, and also we're you know, you're talking about writing it out We're probably in for 50 years Release from the oceans at levels that will be increasing So are you just are you just you're just upset you don't have an air conditioner and you're hot Yeah, and I wasn't I just got I was spent the last week in London and it's it's it's worse there It's we've been worse there. They don't know what to do They don't have an air conditioning there all their buildings are you know hundred years old too, so Nobody's nobody's ready. Nobody knows what to do Nobody's ready for it and but they're going to adjust and they're gonna just quick and it's gonna be huge energy Carbon and heat pumps all operating at once. It's gonna be lovely He comes are more energy efficient So if we have if you if we do have the temperatures changing substantially enough in these areas where they have historically not been good for efficiency but heat pumps can be very very efficient heat exchangers and better than a lot of the Modern other air conditioning methods that we have And yeah, we're gonna figure it out and we're gonna come up. I know it our scientists are gonna come up with Fusion it's going to come through or I don't know batteries and really good solar or there's gonna be a combo of things All right, well Yeah, moving away from the doom and gloom and yes, I think more positive let's talk about how dinosaurs died Yeah, yeah, I don't Well, this is about a specific Size of Rhode Island because I think that's how we started the Rhode Island measurements. It was with that This is This is a specific group of dinosaurs. This is what what foiled them in the end So this is our the Long Neck dinosaurs, which there's been plenty There's been huge groups of Long Neck dinosaurs throughout the fossil record But in particular there are these ones that just have like the longest necks They're crazy and they they're partially fused to help support the weight of their head and they're mostly aquatic and Paleontologists have long suspected that that made them vulnerable to predators that it actually wasn't right the best strategy Because it's basically like here come bite my neck very long. It's huge. It's huge target difficult to miss so researchers studied the unusual necks of two different Triassic species of the tannis stropheus genus Which is a type of reptile distantly related to crocodiles birds and dinosaurs They have these unique necks as I mentioned exposed a composed of 13 elongated vertebrae, they're not exposed they have flesh on their neck 13 elongated vertebrae and strut like ribs and they had these stiffen necks and Because of their body shape the expectation is that they they were sitting weight predators Which totally makes sense so they're like whole bodies down below and then they just have their little head poking up after their long neck Then they can catch the prey So there's a long time ago in in 1830 There was an artist rendition of these guys by Henri de la Béch where The long neck was getting bitten by a predator But there's been no Fossil evidence for that that anybody's found But now there is so there's terrible examination himself He just put himself in the mind of a predator and it was like If I had big sharp teeth, I'd want to bite that neck so they looked at fossilized bones They found the necks of two existing specimens representing two different closely related species They were both severed necks. So good start If they're severed the good guess there There it is just that long tantalizing neck, right? And they had some bite marks on them. So already sounding pretty good and It had been well known that these two species had well preserved heads and necks That abruptly ended. There's no body So it was long speculated that they were bitten off, but no one had studied it in detail This is this is the part of the story. They think it's really funny after an afternoon Examining the two specimens in Zurich one afternoon. Yes, okay, y'all couldn't get around to it before now It took an afternoon. Oh, whatever anyway, they concluded that the necks had been bitten off So the portion of the neck preserved were undisturbed It really looked like the the head and neck were allowed to decay and fossilized without being predated upon So it sounds like the body was eaten and then the head and neck were left behind because there's not much to eat there So that makes it look like it was discarded and the main kill was the body Also tooth traces at the sever point so Seems seems seems accurate So this is The idea of this is so at first you think like okay, this is just an evolutionary dead-end right like They got too big too long Just a huge target for predators But here's the thing this genus Was around for about a hundred and seventy five million years. Oh so Long time Next long time. Yes long next long time And so this is a reminder that evolution is a game of trade-offs So this long neck provided them a benefit, but it also provided a very clear susceptibility And so yes, it seems like maybe having this long neck was not a great idea, but hey 175 million years we don't have that I Successful I would say at a certain point it wasn't anymore, but for a while those long necks really really lasted and they lived They lived for a really long time. They were all over Europe Middle East China North America South America, so I Mean they've got to have behavioral adaptations or had to have had behavioral adaptations Related to their long necks like so when they were probably attacked was when they were out in the open and not able to hide or themselves, right like Amongst like a bunch of Kelpie type plans Yeah, they're in the water And so did they have behaviors that like had them pulling their heads back and Contracting their necks or bending their necks in interesting ways to make them appear shorter or to protect them We still have species on this planet giraffes lots of You know birds with long necks snakes are just one big long neck So that the body could rest at the bottom and they could go up and down for breaths without having to yeah to move I've seen snakes do this. I've seen snakes do this where In an aquarium the snake will be basically resting on the bottom, but just its head And that's like kind of picturing that that whatever was predating on them spend a hundred and seventy five million years trying to get big enough Or sneaky enough there's always somebody bigger Who are sneakier? No, absolutely. So there's your long necks for the longest day of the year. There's your long necks I might be wrong about it just because the chat went off on it. I might be wrong about the The asteroid the KT event being Being precisely Rhode Island size The asteroid it was believed to be about nine miles across I have no idea how big Rhode Island is Also, it's not a given that the dinosaurs if the asteroid hadn't hit You know mammals were still plentiful we were pretty diverse around the planet They were tiny and Subterranean People think there was actually more diversity things would have been different for sure and all we needed was an ice age Keep all the lizard folk down towards the equator We were to have a run of the whole north and south parts of the planet and Maybe we could have a time to evolve. Yeah, and then we could be fighting the dinosaurs over the Amazon and Yeah They'd be protecting the Amazon the only thing that might be different is the Dinosaurs probably bipedal one with some, you know manipulatable claws could have been the first really Sentient advanced technology now you're in doctor who territory. It's yeah. Yep now It's just wish you wash your time is whining. What do you wobbly kind of stuff the biggest brain dinosaurs also were bipedal You know, there might be something bigger the brain bigger the brain the bigger the body usually so This would have been like velociraptor or something. This would have been About human size Comparatively then we're talking about comparative stuff not yeah relative not absolute All right. Well moving on from dinosaurs into Embryos This last week there was the announcement from of a bio archive a couple of papers that were published On stuff that we've talked about over the last few years, which is stem cell stem cells being used to create embryos we've brought up all sorts of instances of induced pluripotent stem cells being created creating embryo like Masses of cells that are then being being used to create model systems to study human development on and these balls of cells growing to something like Oh It looks like we have technical difficulties Q the epa nema whatever is it song? So Do you know what this is what's interesting is I think the story she's about to tell Don't don't fluke her story. Just no, it's not next story. It's not But this has also been done inside of it recently Hi, welcome back I don't know what's going on. Yeah, it's warning me that my internet is low and I have no idea why because i'm not doing anything So I hope I don't know what's happening um Any who yes, so I was Saying that these balls of cells that were being developed Of the induced pluripotent stem cell kind have been shown to develop into little balls that Developed seven days 14 days comparatively to human embryos But uh this recent announcement was that human embryonic stem cells had been used to create little Blast assists little balls of embryo like cells that went to what they say is comparatively about 14 days of human embryonic development now bunch people are talking about the Issues related to the morals and ethics and how we use human embryonic stem cells and what we use them for and whether or not we allow the length of time that scientists can look at these balls of cells To be more than 14 days Let them go to 21 days so that scientists can understand a little bit more about that early early stage of developmental biology but related to that and uh an interesting aspect It just published in plus biology an international team of researchers have been looking at These little balls of cells up to about five days old They've been looking at five day old Up to five day old embryos to look at the gene signatures from every single cell in That five day old embryo to determine what's going on the path that it's on where it's going and previous research Has shown that about a quarter of the cells don't fit the profile of any known developmental cell type going into the embryo going into the placenta going into like some other support cell or A quarter of the cells in the blastocyst at five days the the little embryonic ball of cells Doesn't really look like anything else. And so they looked a little bit deeper into it And they found that these cells Have lots and lots of young transposable elements jumping genes Jumping genes are the kinds of genes that copy themselves and paste themselves elsewhere in the chromatin They're like i'm copy myself. I'll paste myself. I'll copy myself. I'll paste myself somewhere else They're kind of like it's like the horizontal gene transfer stuff It's just genes like I want to put my face up all over this dna But it's not good for dna and cannot can often lead to mutations And so we know when jumping genes have been involved. It can lead to cancer. It can lead to Neurodevelopmental defects all sorts of things and they found in the embryonic cells that were actually embryonic that they had A component that hadn't been seen before it was a gene called the human endogenous virus x So it's a virus like gene not a virus virus like gene That suppresses jumping genes And so what's happening is that these this quarter of the cells that didn't turn into really anything They're like on their own they ended up going on a Program of cell death They didn't turn into placenta. They didn't turn into embryo They they ended up being selected against And like being killed so it's as if there's natural selection happening at the cellular level in the embryo For those cells that are best fit to survive In the ones that are able to suppress the jumping genes are able to move on and become something Within the embryo or the placenta and those that can't suppress the jumping genes that don't have that virus like gene Virus h they go on to die And that's good for the embryo. It's good for the organism because if they don't go on to die then the embryo will fail so fascinating like Cellular level pruning that takes place to improve the health of the embryo at five days That's pretty well right Super cool, and they've uh, they have seen that a lot of these jumping genes and other issues They, uh, they might explain why a lot of new type mutations are related to infertility and other issues that occur in In reproduction Cool stuff Little baby cells What do you want to talk about Justin? Well, gosh, uh, this is uh this week in cured diseases Cancer cured at least a cute lymphoblastic leukemia Three young patients With relapsed T cell leukemia. This is meaning that they have undergone chemotherapy to combat the leukemia And relapsed with the disease Or we didn't manage to eliminate it We're have been treated with base edited T cells as a bench to bedside Bench to bedside collaboration between university college London and great ormond street hospital for children Also known as gosh so Base edited is not quite like a crisper. It's a it's a chemically induced Uh A system so that it's not cutting which means that you doesn't get you don't get the potential for Additional accidental reads to go in so it's supposedly much cleaner the paper published in new england journal of medicine shows how donor CAR T cells were engineered using editing technology to change single nucleotides So they could fight the leukemia Uh This is Really crucial because the current CAR T therapies that are out there. They need your the patients T cells they take those out. They re-engineer them. They put them in This is donor. This is universal donor That they've got here So what that means is that instead of it, you know, it eventually could be streamlined as a clinical therapy that didn't require you to have your own specialty lab working on re-engineering so Drops it down from a two million dollar treatment to Just go see the doctor and they'll take care of it Huge That's amazing. Yeah huge. So now three patients all children The Let's see. Let's see. There's 13 year old elissa. This is the only one Uh mentioned last year was the first person in the world to be treated on the trial for the t-cell acute lymphoplastic leukemia Cancer of white blood cells is usually treated with chemotherapy But if it comes back as it did in her case, it can be very hard Too clear. So within four weeks of receiving the treatment Elissa's leukemia was undetectable She went on to have a successful bone marrow transplant is still well and at home almost a year later I don't actually quite understand. I guess the In the other CAR T therapy, I don't think they were doing a follow-up Uh bone marrow transplant, but these would have been Also in those were that study that those initial treatments were being done on much older adults Right. So I think the difference there is kids versus probably not going to get to the point where It's a disease that needs to be managed if you're already over 50 But if you're 13, they want to do the complete reset second teenager Cleared their leukemia within a similar time period and is now recovering at home after the transplant a third child Responded to the CAR T cell therapy But was unable to complete the treatment due to a fungal infection that took their life just as they were Lighting the path for others to follow It's promising but it's still such a it's still one of those things where it's like such a small Group of patients right because it's people who are this is their last chance. And so they're part of this research Yeah, so three for three the The treatment was uh successful One of the patients unfortunately didn't make it because again, this is You're already treating uh patients who this is the last arrow that wasn't even there yesterday So they're they're taking great risk, but they're also At that point when it's time to do so, okay so The way they did this is pretty wild the they basically have The ability to do a donor bank that is non matching. You don't have to worry about rejection It doesn't have to be based on your own Cells and engineered specifically for you. They remove a flag or a tag called cd7 that identifies the the T cells as T cells important step because leukemia is a mutant T cell disease and The new universal T cells are being designed to destroy these mutants By identifying and attacking them by that cd7 So they remove that thing that they're attacking and also they would uh because they'd be attacking themselves Yeah, yeah, that would be autumn. You don't want that also all T cells so then And then there's a couple other uh, there's another step that they do to make it stealth So the drugs or treatment that the patient's on Doesn't recognize these T cells. So also doesn't try to combat them like the regular therapy regimen would be But yeah, they're uh, they're looking to recruit 10 more patients Who have again who have exhausted all conventional treatments options in the uk so that recruitment is underway by the nhs there If successful team hopes they can be offered to more children And earlier in the treatment journey When they are less sick so that they are better able a better position to then Do the ensuing treatments as well Right because if they're less if they're less sick then they're less likely to succumb to a fungal infection Or you know any of those other co-morbidities that happen and to be healthier for bones and splint and everything else, right? Yeah But uh, yeah, this is uh all led by a professor we've seen Casem at university college london great ormond street institute for child health Who says it's nice to be able to see the fruits of a long period of work coming together From multiple teams and being brought into play for new treatments It's still early and we need to we need more follow-up and to treat more patients to know how it might impact treatments long term Yeah Well, uh, yeah, I wish this this whole I mean carti has proven successful so many times already and hopefully it'll continue to be in this case as well and it looks promising but Yeah, three patients is very small. So Step by step by step by step Well, and the limiting factor between that and stem cells has been Yeah You we we don't have universal donors. So that's a very complicated specific high cost thing Yeah stem cells, uh recently there's a a biotech company. It's uh That's got a universal stem cell a universal Carti therapy now. Yeah now we're starting to talk about treatments designed That can take on the masses of diseases. So things are going to be accelerating things are going to be speeding up quite a bit forward Universal hopefully it actually works that way Let's hope Uh, speaking of things that we want to be good. Uh, we've been talking about the fecal transplants for years poo pills we take that help treat chronic IBS Crohn's disease doctors have been using them for a while very well new study in acs central science has published on a new development A new strategy that researchers have come up with That they are calling their colonizing probiotics and their colonizing probiotics involve some micro gel spheres that have been Have had had a particular nanoparticles put into them. So they have sodium alginate tungsten and calcium nanoparticles along with beneficial probe probiotics pro bacteria that are specific to a particular uh A particular disease and the researchers have not given this to people yet But in giving it to mice what they have shown is that when they give the these micro gels to mice who have a basic Copy of Crohn's disease the or uh irritable bowel disease They were able to put these micro gels these micro beads in the micro beads were first uh Approached by a particular type of uh, uh, microbe that likes to connect with calcium and so the calcium was extractive extracted and then as that happened, uh, another Another aspect with the molybdenum, molybdenum, the molybdenum actually gets exchanged in an enzyme in another Bacteria that's very deadly and difficult to manage in the gut. So that bacterium in the gut can't Do its work anymore and then the probiotics Start coming in and they take over and the new happy bacteria take over and are able to colonize and get rid of the dangerous enterobacteria Species that are there So instead of poo pills people might be a little bit more likely to take these specially crafted cocktails of Ions and you know sodium calcium Little micro gel beads. You're you're saying gel beads which makes me think about um What were those in the 90s the uh, the bath the bath beads bath beads No, not bath beads. No, not bath beads, but also not bad for you beads colors I've just hurt shaped micro bead Great, but it would do it just go away. It would dissolve away and then all that would be left is good happy bacteria And it would make your gut happy. So the idea is if you if they can go in specifically and use particular molecules to isolate and Reduce the activity of certain dangerous species as they add probiotics good species then that can possibly lead to a beneficial result in the gut that can be maintained so It seems also like this is I wish this wasn't part of the conversation, but it sounds more Digestible. Haha. Can't general public. Yeah, exactly Then a poo pill, right? So like if you if you if you're having them take a gel cap or um Or a medicine that seems appears to be much more Prescription drug Esk, right, right? It might be more marketable more easy to put to push on to Individuals who need it Yeah, as as opposed to again. I'm frustrated that this is part of it, but it is part of it But are they still they still got to go through some trials and stuff before that's available, right? Absolutely. This is just on mice. They showed really really great success rates in mice. And so the next step will be Moving it up clinical trials until it can be made available for people. But then so additionally Yeah Dr. Justin's not a real doctor poo pills Technically a supplement and not due to fda oversight is on the market where we're selling it We're selling them left and right folks But I think that's the other problem, right is that um when you talk about poo pills You're still talking about a donor, which is way harder to regulate than lab made formulas Yeah, here's this here's the ingredient list Here's your medication as opposed to we vetted this donor Hopefully it's the same as it was when we vetted it Here you go Well, they have to they take the donor they have to clean it. They have everything has to be of course, of course, but What do you mean clean it? You can't clean it? That's the whole point It's like so they isolate, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also Not Yes, you can't we once you get it into a formula Then you can patent it then you can invest and and sell and it's all part of the game But you know what if in the end it gets people the uh, the hell That's where it's gonna get them. All right I think you know, it's work sometimes you got to work within the system And this works within the system way better than poo pills does so I I'm actually uh Optimistic about it. I know I want to be optimistic about this as well And finally for the life savings into dr. Justine's not a real doctor poo pills. I Not a poo pill but a cute little Tasmanian devil Tasmanian devils have been succumbing over the recent years past couple of decades that we know of Most highly to facial tumors that are caused by a virus and there's been question about how the Tasmanian devils are going to survive and how we can create conservation programs to and protect them from the facial tumors and there's all sorts of work has been going on but uh paper recently published by Rodrigo Hamid and his his team members on The evolution of these facial tumors with the Tasmanian devil populations in a specific location in New Zealand They were able to show that It is evolving to live with the devils So the virus that's causing the cancer is the cancer is becoming less Deadly so they still get a better pair of sights Very good. Don't kill your host So it's still not great it weakens the host for sure There's still a tumor being formed and there's a question, you know, of course of the Tasmanian devils immune system and how the immune system of the Tasmanian devils has been evolving to deal with this virus in addition to how the virus has been evolving, but it has been a As a synchrony of these, you know meshing gears, right? Where the immune system and the virus have been co evolving for a very long time many generations now and it is turning out that Fewer Tasmanian devils are dying from the tumors and that This may be an instance of a successful co evolution of a virus Yeah, cool good job facial tumor disease Yay Poor little Tasmanian devils they're not so cute when they get those facial tumors Hopefully it's happened with enough In a short enough amount of time that there's not a giant genetic bottleneck now for the Tasmanian devils Right Hopefully there's still enough that they functionally will be fine that the devils will make it out. Okay They will i'm voting for the tazis because they're super cute when they just they need to make it Don't pet one though. Don't pet a Tasmanian devil. Don't do it I mean, why would you pet a cute thing with a name like that? It's cute, but don't pet it. All right This is this weekend science. Thank you so much for joining us for this first part of our show tonight We are so glad to have you here. We hope that next time you bring a friend That's right. Tell a friend about twist today if you enjoy the show Don't be shy share it with others Also, if you enjoy this show coming every week week after week Make sure that you help us out on patreon head over to twist.org click on the patreon link and Choose your level of support over on patreon 10 dollars a month and more and we will thank you by name at the end of the Show 15 dollars a month and more and you'll get Stickers you get a sticker every three months a different one. Most of them are Blair's art. It's just pretty cool Yeah, you didn't know that did you know I want some stickers Blair art stickers are out there All right. Okay. Let's come on back for more this weekend science specifically at that time in the show for Blair's animal corner with Blair What you got Blair I have Leigh ribbit Leigh ribbit ribbit ribbit. Did you know that frogs have accents? Nope. Yeah, so they do I mean accents is a very generous way of saying it but they have differences in ways that they call and It was Previously assumed that it was regional just like an accent, right? But there is some new data on this issue. So this is a piece of research coming university of new south wales in australia where there's lots of frogs And they use data collected by citizen scientists through the frog id project to analyze the calls of around 700 frogs thousands of calls But around 700 individuals. How do you know? By the call the calls are so specific that you can identify an individual by their call and so the variation was Often thought to have to do with habitat structure or geographic location And it does not appear to be that way. There's something else going on But instead according to this research they found that frog calls are influenced by the interplay between Environmental factors which is different from just saying their habitat Noise from other animals anthropogenic noise like wind and water There's lots of other factors that go into it because ultimately at the end of the day Frogs depend almost entirely on acoustic communication with each other. So They have to be heard That is their number one goal doesn't matter if they're seen only matters if they're heard And so, uh, they need to make sure that their call can cut through all the other sounds in their environment And so, uh, this is uh called the acoustic adaptation hypothesis Which means that their vocalizations adapt to conditions to optimize transition throughout space And so the surrounding environment does play a role But these other factors also do who's also calling how many crickets are calling at the time? Are they near a Manmade fountain that's causing some sort of distracting sound And so all of that does play into it. They were looking at banjo frogs, which are a widely distributed type of frog throughout australia There's four species that they looked at when they're found in a wide range of habitats They were able to map these calls against Canopy cover and other factors that they knew about their environment So basically they were like is this just related to your environment or is this related to these other factors factors as well And so they were able to kind of rule out that canopy cover alone was what was changing their calls And so what this tells us is that When you are kind of mapping out an environment for a frog It's way more than what's actually happening in their environment in terms of Whether they have trees trees or not or how big the trees are It's about all these other things going on that also means that if something changes suddenly Then frogs have to find a way to keep up if you suddenly have a new sound Escape I guess in a frog environment You the frogs have to figure out how to compete with that And so their next area of research is to look at different species to see if this is consistent across frog species Or if there's only certain species of frogs that do this But I think it's very cool kind of just at the baseline to recognize that They're not just adapting to their physical environment. They're adapting to their Audio environment, they're adapting to their biotic environment. They're adapting to all these different bits because Sound is so important to them I find that so interesting because it's yeah, it's it takes into account it's like being at a concert and Shifting your voice a little bit lower so that or a little bit higher pitched so that your friends can hear you when you shouted them over the sound of the crowd or you know being in a different environment and Whispering or changing changing the way that you talk or maybe you head over to I don't know far go north north dakota and decide you're gonna start talking like you belong in north dakota because they have Large open planes. I don't know. Yeah, sure sure Is that why everyone in new york is yelling all the time all the traffic noise there you go Could be but yeah, I think it's interesting that it you know It's not that the the call is not just the individual species It is a function of the aspects of the ecology The habitat all the things that go into making the individuals in that species more able to survive Yeah, and I would also be on just kind of looking at different species I would be very interested to find out if I was a fraud researcher How plastic this was right so like right if if I take a frog from one soundscape And plop him into a new soundscape Can he adapt can you change the way that he calls? Or is this something that's built in once you reach an adult frog age? You're like, this is it. This is my call This is my calling card Set in stone can't change it. I'm very curious my my guess is that they would be able to Because the the thing that this reminds me is penguins Penguins well Where the frogs are very different and the way that they use their calls is very different. So this is like But penguins Finding each other through calls through a sea of other penguins You know the the need to be able to to isolate your voice from the rest of them Seems like it'd be important, right? Right. But my point is Frogs don't normally traverse extremely far From one place to another. They're usually Pretty local local. They grow up in a specific Pond as a tadpole They they are able to leave the pond, but then They're not going too far. So if you are learning your frog calls as as a frog lit And that is the environment that you are born in If I pluck you and drive you a hundred miles and plop you in a different soundscape I'm not sure That's something that evolutionarily they have been handed the tools to change, but that's what I would want to know Yeah, I think that would be really interesting. Could it I mean does the accent affect how it's able to survive in a different Soundscape or the way that it's able to even behave in a different soundscape. Does it change its accent to fit in? Yeah, is it like your friend from college that studied abroad and came back with a British accent and you're like Stop it What are you doing? It's made Atlantic darling Next I have a story about rats Oh rats rats all rats and rat pheromones. So rats, they're super smart They're pretty social. They really seem to cue into one another I love stories about rats and their interactions with one another Well, this one from University of Tokyo is looking at their ability to calm each other down with pheromones So previously it's been known that calm rats can reduce fear in nearby rats But the mechanism was unknown without touching they could be in completely separate cages But a calm rat could calm a stressed rat Without touching them So in this study University of Tokyo found the pheromone responsible big surprise. It's a pheromone And they wanted to see how it worked and see if they could use it For their own reasons Which we'll get to you later. Uh, so essentially they can calm each other down without direct interaction due to these pheromones which Travel in the air the release from a relaxed rat. They're received by the scared rat. It calms them down. It alters their state So they wanted to find the pheromone and isolate it and see if they could use it for things and They couldn't just grab a rat because that would stress them out Then they wouldn't be releasing the calm pheromone and see it's really tough. So instead They put they put a calm rat to sleep Just just just a nap not like put put it to sleep. Yes, just take a nap. Yeah, take a nap And they used water to absorb the pheromones from the back of their neck What they were able to find the pheromone which is two methyl butyric acid or two mb Which is also found in the aromas of cheese and wine So who just say that I If we and rats have anything in common the cheese and the wine may calm us which I certainly Can relate to Uh, well, so they they they found this 2 mb And they wanted to make sure it was what was doing it. So then to kind of reverse engineer they had Two identical chambers They laced one with 2 mb Rats showed a preference for that They also just did some basic monitoring and found that being exposed to 2 mb did calm them down So this didn't have to be another rat. It could just be the the molecule. Yeah, it's just the molecule. So it showed That it worked, but this also showed because they had the kind of Preference for the area that was laced with 2 mb. That means the rats felt comfortable sniffing it So then they wanted to use it in urban environments with wild rats and they tested it at two different locations And they found that when rats were treated with 2 mb They reduced their fear of novel things or neophobia So it's they were just kind of chill. They're like, oh, hey, what's that? And Here's the part Where I think this study takes an interesting turn They think this is a great use Of this 2 mb because if you can reduce neophobia, they'll be easier to trap Yep, you can get them to come and eat something. It might be poisoned or get them in a trap and right Trap them up there And so of course they're saying Oh, this would be great for humane pest control You can lure urban rats into non-lethal traps and also keep them calm Well, will you transport them out of the urban environment? Come on. We know what you're doing Well, yeah, I know exactly. I can see through it. This is going to be sold to restaurant tours Who have competition uh down the street From the other best way to get rid of the competition is you put a bunch of this mb2 All around the front of the restaurant and then people go to Go out dining and they see all these rats hanging out in front of a restaurant and they go Oh, we're gonna keep walking and they come to your place instead Or would you do you spray it on your head and then you can have a rat chef on your head Under your hat totally okay, so Yep Here are the two very obvious uses of this pheromone that I thought of immediately while I was reading the story And I thought that's what they were going to be talking about number one most importantly in my opinion Calm laboratory rats, right doing experiments where you don't have stressed out rats. What? Very helpful, but that would but that would then Removing cortisol as a is that a special condition compared to all the other research we've done? Is it a better condition? So so it depends If it's something where a stress hormone could interfere Then absolutely it could be helpful If you're trying to test the result the kind of emotional well-being Based on another variable. You don't want to confound it, right? But it's just like that whole thing that we talked about where like mice are cold In the lab and so that's been messing up experiments If rats are stressed, this is the other thing is uh Pretty recently we talked about in a story about giving enrichment to laboratory mice and rats and how that can help Have a positive impact on their well-being and help keep them calm And they perform better in behavioral tests and there's less confounding variables there So if you want to reduce stress hormones, this is here for you But then of course the other thing I thought of was um humans If we could figure out how this is related to us if there's somebody with an anxiety disorder Or ptsd or any number of stress related behavior Issues This could help with that right so obviously rats very far away, but So is your experiment then Have a have people with one of these anxiety disorders Perform a stressful task See how they perform have another group with the same disorder Or maybe the same individuals perform a different stressful task after smelling cheese And maybe a small glass of wine That's right. Maybe I mean, I feel like that could be That could be done. I feel like it's going to be wafted into the air at like uh casinos Oh, I was thinking spa But perhaps casino, although I think in a casino you want people stressed out right because you want them acting on impulse To spend more money if you're nice and calm if you're just like, oh, I lost 50 bucks. No big deal. I'm gonna go like I don't know. I feel like they bring around the free drinks for you wafted you wafted in places where people could get stressed out so like closed uh Subway tunnels where you have to walk between trains and there's lots of people Dennis's office, right? This is fascinating. Yes. So anyway, but yeah, okay, right They're gonna use it to trap rats. So whatever. Um, but I do think it's it's an interesting Results that could lead to other things besides just trapping rats Yeah As a pheromone as a smell compound that's a that's fascinating. I find that yeah I'm I'm oh to calm Oh Just everywhere I go just wafting calm energy on people. I would be very interested in that actually I guess it depends on the cheese smell that the walk. Yeah, it depends But to you know cheeses that can be a little tough to we can go we can go the opposite direction From calm Blair. Let's talk about snakes and oh sure I mean, I still am calm because I love snakes But you go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and continue the animal corner here just a little bit longer uh Why snakes? chromosome level uh chromosome level assembly of 14 snakes And a study led by Chinese the chinese academy of sciences has created a pretty high resolution genomic reference for the study of snake evolution They used they used the long forms. They used pac bio and oxford nanopore Technology to get really really long Long reads to do the whole genome of 14 snakes that were from 12 different snake families Team also then went back over Using bgi and aluminum platform sequencers to obtain higher resolutions of shorter reads And they also did the assemble to chromosome using high c So what all that means is this is they really spent time To get the the detailed version of these snakes genomes The analyzer data collected along with previously sequenced genomes of snakes lizards turtle a crocodile a bird a mouse Trying to get a picture of snake evolution from the various traits that have been lost Uh with the genes that are lost and additions of of genes Maybe trait differences there Based on the estimated divergence times They think snakes originated early cretaceous around 118 million years ago And then underwent a rapid diversification Around 65 million years ago, which hey, that's also when we were talking before that's when the kt Boundary interesting. Yeah, that's when everything almost went extinct Yeah, fascinating Uh, so they they that kind of really makes sense because after that period of time So many niches open up, right? You've got so many missing uh critters critters on the planet There's everything is now sort of open to go and exploit and find new niches So there was a lot of a lot of evolution taking place there The signature traits of a snake Long legless body were consistent with snake specific gene deletions observed in the newly sequenced snake genomes The elongated elongated body also forces snakes to have weird internal organs Yeah, they're they basically only have one lung Yeah, so that the other one is either gone Or it's like a residual. Yeah, or it works, but it's like a little jelly bean And it has to be next to that the tube that will be filled with food at some point after they eat And they did find the gene Uh, that is usually sort of in charge of the symmetry of lung development That was missing There you go changes in the visual system They showed snakes have lost several photoreceptor related coding genes The expression of 15 photoreceptor cell related genes was significantly upregulated So the author suggests that what this indicates is that the snakes underwent an early prolonged low light period likely as a burrowing creature Where it lost a lot of its ability to see And then came back to the surface and had to adapt With the genes it already had by up regulating them to regain its its its vision I wonder if that's when they lost their eyelids also. Yeah, they wouldn't need them necessarily. They're not. Yeah, they're in the dark So, yeah, so then Three lineages of snakes pit vipers pythons and boas all possess Something specialized they're probably already knows what it is Well, there's a couple things. Do you mean their heat sensing organs on their face? Yes, they have temperature sensitive infrared sensing organs Yeah, now analysis revealed a convergent repurposing of what were non-coding genes A round active genes that have a cellular response to heat So it was it looks like it was a co-option And it's and I don't have it here, but it's two of them were like Kind of did it the same way and the third one did it slightly differently So it looks like a convergent evolution like this this took place separately. This isn't a a shared ancestor of the three that developed this but two they they kind of got it in two different tracks And then observations Of genes regulating hearing Suggests that gene loss is connected to the snack snakes lack of hearing range and some sound perception Which at the same time the evolution of additional gene regulators That could relate to inner ear specialization and low frequency hearing Which again would sort of is something you would commonly see in burrowing animals Yeah That's cool So they were burrowing They were at one point underground they diversified And then they came back up on the ground and so the genetic This is like genetic Sleuthing to follow this whole track of snake evolution. Well, a lot of them are still underground Not all of them came back up True and a lot of them will be above ground but will breed underground or they don't hibernate what do they do They go to those big mating Ball pits that what is it rat like rattlesnakes go back to the same location every it right? I don't know what it's called, but they do have those those Reproductive areas. Yes. Well, and some of them do hibernate Um, and then they'll also go through various types of of kind of like reduced metabolic activity too So they won't fully hibernate, but they might not eat for three months. Yeah Just chill out Chill out man. We're snakes. I think it's cool to be able to I just love the fact that we can take All this information now and potentially be able to figure out how things evolved so neat I mean snakes pretty successful evolutionary strategy Long neck long days long net it but very bendy not super fused, right? So they can still curl up and protect themselves plus very Sharp fangs Bitey bite Yeah, we have another story. Awesome Last one research by the led by University Ted de Tours in France has dated sediments in a cave with optically stimulated luminescence dating They determined that the cave was sealed off by infilling sediment around 57 000 years ago Why that's important is because that's well before current modern humans were in the area and in this cave Are maisterian tools a technology associated with neanderthals? Oh, so we have neanderthal tools in a cave that's been sealed at around 57 000 years ago On the walls of the cave. There are engravings That through a simple proper process of illumination could only have been made by neanderthals While the cave was sealed off around 57 000 years ago The engravings more likely around 75 000 years old Which would make them the oldest cave art In europe by about 10 000 years over the nearest contender in spain Cave art that's a little bit more advanced, but also thought to be made by neanderthals These are Non-figurative symbols. These are carvings of sort of patterns Uh, they are a similar age to cave engravings made by current modern humans in other parts of the world and This was the yeah, we talked I guess it was last week about the homo naledi find the Was it rising star cave? And I described it as cross hatching. There was seen some cross hatching that looked like it was intentional. Yeah They are ridiculously Underselling everything and trying not to make big announcements The homo naledi stuff Is is design patterns. It is not just simple cross hatching. There's cross hatching going on But there's symbols in that one. So Yeah And there was a tool found in the hands of it like There's like so much from the naledi. Anyway Uh They don't know what this is exactly in terms of what the meaning is but The evidence is starting to grow now. We've got shared use of fire and cave art manufacturing of materials and tools now in neanderthals naledi current modern humans Uh, and it keeps going back well so Exactly And there's there's likely to to for a lot of this is probably a language aspect that's that's going to be Going along with all of this So it could be convergent some aspect of shared advancements Could be Coversive they both came up with oh, let's do cave art and engraving. They both came up with how to control fires separately But as we keep adding more The likelihood is increasing that there is a highly intelligent predecessor to current modern humans and neanderthals maybe even homo naledi that likely already Was doing this and we just haven't found it because it's extremely old. We're talking now. It's 800,000 years or more right and any kind of Forces that would disrupt the caves or any surfaces like, you know 800,000 years is a long time for A space not to be disturbed for soil not to be disturbed enough that You could actually be able to make out any kind of markings And they'd have to be caves and that's the crazy thing with the naledi find too is because it's a such a sealed underground Undisturbed area. They have they're having a hard time dating it Like a lot of other places you get infill you get Slag tights coming down you can do your rain trace uranium Of leaching through the walls on the cave art or something like this to sort of Get a half-life of how long it's been there. Well, he doesn't have a lot of that stuff So it could be much much older, but all these things are started pointing to this, uh this Earlier hominid that was probably using fire making engravings Probably making was probably one of our tool users. We know there were tool users before that's fine. That's a million year old Yeah, practice You know the homo erectus it was is a likely candidate right there for A much more intelligent than we're currently giving them credit for Right kind of traverse the world before current modern humans and for a very long time For a really long time They may have been more advanced than we're Currently Are giving them credit for so never mind trying to like get the neanderthals You know respect for intelligence And they're there there's enough evidence that now we got to go back further because It's not likely that they came up with everything So separately, you know Four to eight hundred thousand years of separation from current modern humans and came up with all the same ideas It just doesn't quite track Right or yeah, yeah that there was some common Common source and is it is it through learning? Is it just Like where does that come from though? Like when you're talking about it? Like how does how does that even happen in different species? Little, you know, of course we can talk about individual populations with skills that are learned across time but then is that indicating this Learning that happens between individuals within populations as speciation is taking place Right that ends up making its way to these new populations in different places hundreds of thousands of years apart Like and you got to figure that there was language communication But it wouldn't be like we're kind of thinking of it today. Like we don't have a 20 000 year old language Yeah, that we know how it Right, we don't have any idea how just that long ago But for millions of years There were tools that were made in the same fashion So That language whatever they were using to communicate that might change every hundred years So that, you know, it could just continually be evolving with the new groups so that it's not a set language over time And it wouldn't matter because you're mostly just needing to communicate to the those around you anyhow But it looks like it must have been there for all of these fire-making toolmaking Symbol-making thing the symbol might yeah the symbol making is the really fascinating one because that really indicates direct thought and that indicates a higher level of awareness of the environment and their place in it and it's yeah It makes it mean a lot more so cool Cool old wall scratchings, uh someday we'll be wondering where did the human scratchings go? Oh AI took them away Speaking of AI What a wonderful transition Researchers have just published their study accurately predicting hit songs using neurophysiology and machine learning in the frontiers of in artificial intelligence journal uh, so In the in this study what they uh, what they did is they did Did using off-the-shelf brainwave monitoring? technology they were able to sense kind of the the feelings and like brainwaves the emotional responses the activation of the brain in response to listening to a bunch of songs and so they had a number of volunteers for their study that they had self-report how they were feeling and Then they played them 24 songs for the study and they recorded how the How the how the brain actually responded and they put all that data from the neurophysiology from the self reports of mood and emotion from these 33 participant participants volunteers Into a statistical model and first it was just a linear statistical analysis and from The logistic regression this linear logistic regression they were able to determine The potential for a song to be a hit song About 67 percent of the time 69 percent of the time But then when they said let's add machine learning to the mix The machine learning model increased that to 97 percent accuracy they were able to Put the brain activation together with a song being a hit 97 percent of the time And so the researchers now are saying that uh what this means that they could be able to do it This is a model for market research And that sometime in the future Everybody will just listen to the best songs Because we will have all the brain recordings and all the brain recordings are going to tell everybody Why the hits are going to be and then we're only going to listen to the hit songs because that's all that will be made No, that's not exactly what they said, but it's kind of I don't like that Hit songs are not necessarily good songs. First of all So I believe that they could predict what a hit song was because there's certain formulas that make things catchy and playable and replayable But that's not the same as good music Sometimes those overlap not always Yeah And there's music that is really good, but it's not a hit but not hits Yeah, really great music is very often not hit music hit making music my favorite artist You do not hear on the radio And there's a reason for that people don't generally want to listen to tom waits while they're driving to work in the morning I do diamonds on my windshield these tears from heaven I do but most people don't and if if ai means there's no more tom waits music I'm gonna be very that that'll make me mad at ai Forever forever forever forever so and all these other things Don't take my weird music away, please What I find interesting what they what they say the conclusion that the researcher says our key contribution is the methodology It's likely this approach can be used to predict hits for many other kinds of entertainment too including movies and tv shows But what they also say here is that based on their responses with the number of hits that were identified This means that streaming services can readily identify new songs that are likely to be hit hits for people's playlists More efficiently making the streaming services jobs easier and delighting listeners So effectively making Streaming service services better money makers and more boring to listen to for the user I don't think it'll delight listeners. Um, I think I think that what's gonna happen. I just I just saw the future I just got a glimpse into the future ai is going to finally do what they were working on in the 50s Which is come up with a five second jingle that cannot be removed from your brain And Discover it It'll play it a couple of times and then nobody will be able to get it out of their head And it will be the end of humanity Right there five second jingle, but the ultimate can't be released from a human brain Synchronized perfectly to all of us. Are you writing episodes for black mirror now? Is this That seems like something that should be a black mirror episode Oh The researcher also says if in the future wearable neuroscience technologies like the one that we used for the study become commonplace The right entertainment could be sent to audiences based on their neuro physiology Instead of being offered hundreds hundreds of choices They might just be given two or three making it easier and faster for them to choose music that they will enjoy I don't want that either I don't know how many times have you come across? Really neat stuff because you've been searching for something that you didn't know you needed Listen to music that I never would have picked out for myself that someone else hands me Is a joy it is Yes So I don't I don't know I don't know if we are on the outside of the Data set here, but to me it seems like making my life easier is not something in this case that would make me happier um And yeah, I agree I think radio hits have a place For sure like I'm I will sing along to a radio hit with everyone else in the car Yeah, that's not necessarily what I'm gonna curate for myself Well, I think I think what's clear is whoever said that or wrote that or whatever this researchers or whatever Doesn't understand how music works But everything else is probably true I think they need to hand this research over walk over to the music majors at the university And talk to them because they will have some things to say about this I think so Yeah, yeah, I mean really what what this comes down to is Neuroscience being used for what's called neuro forecasting which is being used Is a is a technique that's been kind of in its infancy being used off and on for the last decade or two Trying to determine what should the end of a movie be how do what makes people happy what makes them sad What you know, what is going to be a hit song? How should we create this this media to get the This content this form of media to get the best response which will lead to lifelong fans, which will you know So it's marketing. It's basically marketing. And so it's like this is all part of a money making scheme not a Really making people happy with music and art art artistry and creativity and enjoyment of that scheme. So It's a very different. Yeah, it's very different Place to be yeah, but humans get so bored with formulas so quickly Do you know, I so I don't think that they do I think I think there's I think there's certain humans and you're one of them, which is why I like you Certain humans who don't Necessarily want the formula over and over and over and over and over again But I'm telling you if you've ever paid attention to movies tv and music There's a lot of formula that's getting regurgitated and Digested by a large percentage of humanity over and over and over again So I find this really interesting which is the kind of Lumpification of populations. It's like this is a hit. This is great. We're gonna put everyone together into this one bucket We're gonna do everyone responds this way. This makes people happy. This is it But not everybody is the same. There are individuals within Populations, right? And so my last study that was published in the journal journal of neurophysiology It kind of relates to this in that the researchers were looking at pain and how brains respond to pain and they They shot people's hands with painful lasers and then Looked at their brains to see how their brains responded and they looked at a specific kind of brain response called gamma waves and the gamma frequency of Of waves has kind of Not been well discerned in pain research historically and according to the researchers In fact has kind of like Differences between individuals in these gamma gamma waves have been thrown out as noise And instead of actually investigating them as individual differences And these researchers are saying that these gamma oscillations these in the oscillations in the gamma waves that take place Could be used as like individual fingerprints that in their study what they saw is that individuals Within the group some individuals didn't respond with any gamma waves Oscillations whatsoever in response to the painful stimulus But some people In the first part of the study They had the same brain oscillations as in the second part of the study with the second cut with the second painful stimulus And so what this means is that the gamma oscillations of those individuals people who have them who don't This can be a fingerprint For pain that should be looked into that some people have a consistent response to pain that has been thrown out with the trash historically Because it's noisy. It's too difficult to look at. I don't want to look at that data. That's not the difference looking at Do they think this is related to how they experience pain? Like how it so that's what they uh, they were asking and it's not necessarily related to how to whether or not They experienced the pain, but it could be related to the how but they didn't Get people to say how painful the stimulus was and like really dig into the details on that but the people who Didn't have gamma oscillations. They did feel the painful stimulus. They did say that hurts so interesting it's because I also wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that like Redheads require more painkillers Right, right. Yeah Wait, is that a real thing? Yes. Yes. I didn't know Yeah Yeah, so there's it's very It's interesting that you know this like historically a lot of stuff that causes Noise in the data has been thrown out. We're not looking at that data. You know, it has been women in research historically But now it's we're looking at all sorts of different signals And this interestingly is individual response to painful stimuli that the brain and touch related Response is can be measurable and the same within individuals across painful experiences. So Yeah, I can relate to that a little bit. I I have a high pain threshold. I think it doesn't bother me at all But I can't hold a cup of coffee even with with just one of those little cardboard sleeves on it Because it's too hot for my hand It's I it's I have the most Tips of my fingers just the heat for my coffee Uh, like a take to go coffee cup Way too hot. I can't even hold it Right, I can usually hold a coffee cup. But if I like just barely stub my toe. Oh my gosh I'm yelling. I'm screaming. I'm hopping. I am in so much pain My toes very painful my hands. I whatever is great Maybe just different parts of that. I don't I don't know but that's the question It does this impact how a person experiences pain and then specifically does this impact how pain can be treated in individuals Because if you could come with a pain fingerprint and from that create a pain management strategy That is tailored to an individual that would be excellent Right, and so that is that's kind of where they're looking in that What they're measuring currently and the way that they are assessing pain currently does not Fully encompass the way that our brain That the individual's brain and not just the population's brain deals with interprets perceives pain and acts on it and so, uh, this is Something that could potentially be, you know, a sub you know a subset a sub sample could lead to individual treatments and yeah Yes, I love that you just show up for anything at the doctor's office and they open up your chart and they go Oh, I see from your pain fingerprint that we are going to administer this drug to you in this amount in this way Right. Yeah. Oh Love it. Yeah, but first we had to figure out Okay, now we know maybe people do have pain fingerprints. So this is a new direction to look How do we how do we identify completely those fingerprints? How do we associate those with the complexity of perception of pain and then how can we lead to treatment and there are all sorts of You know, yeah all sorts of things that tie into it But the fact that yes, we never thought about that before even though. Yes, Justin You and I can talk about the fact that we don't perceive perceive pain the same Why would our brains look the same? Ah, we're all individuals out here everyone Making our way Doing our things Have we done it? Do we make it to the end of the show? We've done it Is that all the science that was fit to talk about tonight for sure. Yeah, we'll be back again next week. Whoo. Whoo. Yeah Everyone thank you so much for joining us for another episode of this weekend science I want to say thank you so much to people chatting in the chat room to my co-hosts to Several individuals who help out to make this show very possible fada Thank you so much for your help on social media and your help with the show notes And gourd and arnlor for making sure those chat rooms are happy shining places for people Identity four. Thank you for recording the show and rachel. Thank you for your editing assistance And of course to our patreon sponsors. I have to say as always Thank you so much for your support on patreon Thank you, too. 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i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what i say may not represent your view you might understand it's the after show will you yes you will it's the after show everyone thank you for being here for a great episode we did it we made it through lair you're not frozen okay justin just went away you're not frozen it's all good okay good i'm just slowly decaying keeping blair up late at night late late late late keep me awake at any time is difficult now oh i bet your body's like okay it's a final stretch let's get this let's just get this done also no sleep for you yeah no sleep for you no oh you want to you want to get some sleep no never mind no sleeping not on the menu who needs sleep you don't need it nobody needs to sleep it's that you want to be comfortable laying down no no no no no comfort what is that you want to go more than 30 minutes without having to pee no you can't do it for you can't do it sorry all the good times are being had how's it going over there he got some good hair going on justin this is a humidity this is the thing what i'm talking about this humidity thing is nonsense yeah just so you know you had a cat you need to get rid of this humidity immediately they need to put start forget the forget the giant windmills or power turbine wind turbines that they're putting out in there in the sea there the north sea what they need is dehumidifiers huge dehumidifiers of course that water gonna go no maybe we could take the water we'll put it in the underground actually they'll use it for farming you know it's insane denmark farms rely on rain but oh uh it because it rains so much i thought you were gonna say mist nets which is also fun no it just it just nor it just rains here a lot in the central valley in california they can totally use do do collection and mist nets but no in the central valley they they you know when it rains they're like oh that's a little less water i you know i could pull but i gotta take it anyway because then my allotment shrinks so there's a whole political thing water west western united states water use is a whole barrel of snakes well and don't even get started on the whole food waste piece where we make way more food than we actually used yeah okay just just want to put it out there people we're doing it wrong right now the world i don't know at least i don't know a lot of people in the us are focused on the rescue operations for a doomed submarine uh mission to the titanic it's not doomed it could still be saved there's plenty of time they got there's only a couple hours left i think i thought you were out there's a couple of days no no as of this morning they had less than 24 hours of oxygen sunday monday tuesday oh yeah you're right so well and of course i saw people posting about like kind of bothered about the millions of dollars going to find these billionaires when there was a cap size boat with refugees that just they were allowed to drown yep nobody did anything about it and that was that it actually is a conversation taking place within pakistan because that's that was a boat of pakistani refugees and so we have the pakistani well to do and the unable to do who are fleeing the country and dying but for very different reasons um but you know the whole thing is this the the ocean adventures whatever the the little submarine that unfortunately didn't probably is i mean i i don't know i very very very few hopes that they're gonna find it but they heard ocean noise this morning and started doing rov operations in that direction so yeah we can wake up tomorrow to find that they were found but we could and that would be the amazing rescue story but um but at the same time what we've done in this whole situation is we have uh we have celebrated the uh the innovation and the you know the the ceo of the company who was in charge of the company who was saying get rid of regulations because they stifle in innovation um you know and and money being spent for this kind of adventure tourism and we have so much going on on the planet where if we spent five minutes focused on getting a lot of stuff done that was important related to health and climate and food we would do a lot and if like all those people who are just getting interested in the money involved in venture capital and silicon valley and all that other stuff if they took five minutes and just did the good thing instead of the thing that can make them money that we could there are problems that could be solved and instead we're there's so much just yes let's have innovation let's have creativity let's have adventure but let's do things better people well and i think i think that's exactly it doesn't have to be instead of even it can be and just and but do it better yeah it's yeah don't cut corners and as in the youtube chat room on your next sub use a wired gamepad so i'm sure you heard that they're using what is basically a logitech like aftermarket playstation controller to control the submarine so but this so this is a conversation um that has taken this is something game controllers are being used across the military and across these innovative craft across the board so game controllers are easy to implement they've already got like basically hardware and that people have already been trained on because they're playing games right so they're easy to use and they're very accurate controllers because like when you're playing uh pov first person shooters or something like you got to be fast you got to be accurate and so if you're using a controller you know you want it to be exactly where you want it to go you can't have a lot of of error in the in it so my question is just really not is it issue it's the corners that were cut in the in the structural aspects of the craft and the communications aspects of the craft as a whole and in the worst case scenario aspects that they didn't ever plan out what are you going to do if something goes wrong oh well the craft will just go up so yeah what if you're under something it's adept below where uh where is it sperm whales or something here you go right it's like it's like an insane yeah deep 3,500 meters is the bottom this is a very specialty craft the submarine that can handle insane pressures like this so maybe how many how many other craft are there and are they outfitted with anything that can i mean like how do you even go after a thing that is the specialty thing that can go down that deal so that's part of the deal they're going after it mostly with rov so not with remote vessels yeah right yeah robots racing basically that are gonna have a camera on it to say oh we found it found it now what i can't grab it i don't know i mean i don't i don't ever wish any single person poorly and i do hope that there is a good outcome i just find it very impossible to believe that there will be a good outcome at this point in time and it's a situation that could have potentially been avoided by more planning and more uh you know prepare for the worst kind of redundancy so like redundancy yeah getting yeah yeah i think that's that's the main complaint i've heard about the controller is that it's not that they used a controller it's that they didn't have hardwired redundancies in the controls so we don't know that it's a control but we don't know what the problem is we don't know we don't know what happened and they i i'm confident they will find it eventually it was tiny maybe not i think it's gonna i think it i think it the only thing it makes sense is that it has uh imploded and the reason for that is because if you lose communication and that's what happened you can still raise the vessel you still go home at the end of the day even though you didn't talk or ping them throughout the day you still get home yeah but then they would they would hopefully find a signal of something in the radar or you know on the on the surface of the ocean they haven't found that yet so yeah like if the sub has a problem where it stops functioning or steering or whatever your communications still work you can ping you can text up and say what happened the fact that the communications gone and the sub didn't return means it's been gone for three or four days yeah yeah man i was reading a reddit thread where people were talking about all the various things that could possibly have gone wrong or have you know everybody's speculating wildly but the the idea that you know if the carbon fiber gave it all or if the viewing port which was potentially not rated for those depths um didn't yet cracked and gave the second that there's any kind of place for pressure difference to regulate itself to equal itself out basically you would have implosion on the scale of those people didn't even know they died or so they like it would happen so fast that the air inside the submersible would catch on fire before the craft like all the water rushed in and everything got smushed so you know and so fast like so fast that they wouldn't even know it happened so that in its own sense that would be better than them being stuck underwater with no diminishing oxygen and you know possibility you know i i yeah i don't know it's crazy my yeah there's so much it's so many things like the story around this is fascinating i think there's hubris involved um well i also i want us to remember that this is you know they wanted to send some millionaires and some billionaires to go look at the titanic right think about all of the commercial space operations that are currently ramping up i know and think about all the things that could go wrong there i know i keep waiting for something i'm just like there all right there's yes yeah uh hey guys there's a reason that we've done this kind of pretty well regulated in the past i mean i think i think exploration is good and there should be innovation in exploration but there should always be as much safety as possible right when you when when capitalism enters the game once again hey oh it kind of changes the it changes the formula a little bit right when you're doing when you're doing research for the sake of research it is a very different process to safety right things and try to take these risks then when it's for because this rich man said he wanted to go so there's a there's a way to regulate it through capitalism and the way to do that is all of the recovery efforts need to be charged to the insurance company that that backed it what insurance you think there's insurance that covered that yeah and from whatever insurance for the company the company must have some form of livelihood however the united states and canadian governments are currently paying for search and rescue operations wait for a check but my point is if you charge the insurance companies this is the way capitalism is supposed to work supposed then the insurance company goes oh okay you have a sub company and you want insurance here's the list of regulations you need to follow for you right get insurance for you to operate as a company that's how we tend to do it and it gets tricky when you have a billionaires in charge of things because they go i i don't need insurance because i'm super rich so i just i would just pay for it at the end and so that can do it without regulation and they were in you know it's international waters where the titanic is so it's you know a question of who's responsible and who's supposed to be taking care of this and you know i think it's great that the united states and canada are stepping up and and getting into the search and rescue because really they're in international waters without a a plan for something like this so you know who's really supposed to be helping them right now it's and to be honest those nobody asked you those ships are sailing anyway yeah yeah like i don't know they had to send the coast guard and that cost the money to send the coast guard coast guard's out to sea every day they're already they're already cruising around you know they're earning it their keep instead of doing a training mission so that's it yeah it's fascinating i do wonder there's by the way the coast they don't do 3,500 meters under the ocean there's not a yeah and there's a difference between maybe the the submarine tours or the submersible tours that go down a couple of hundred feet or meters versus this going down thousands and the pressure that's involved in that um blair went on one blair was on one of these things yeah in hawaii yeah did not go far we could we could see the top still yeah you just don't have to get wet you don't have to snorkel that's a good depth right there yeah that can still and there were sunken ships that they they sunk strategically so you could cruise around and check out on purpose yeah well they were they were decommissioned boats that were that have to get kind of dealt with so they kind of they kind of picked a strategic location and let it sink and so it's all this like coral habitat now it's pretty fun but just do that why are you getting in a little pod going in there I don't know this is definitely going to impact the DIY submarine world and the industry of this adventure submersible and the underwater exploration world so I think that in itself is going it's going to be interesting to see how the reverberations of this kind of ping back into uh how underwater exploration is carried out in the future even though this was you know wealthy tourism and not a scientific adventure uh you know it's still you know where one line starts and the other begins is sometimes very hard to delineate I wonder well it won't impact ROVs at all so hey that's good I was wondering like DIY submarining yep can't have a really great track record I kind of picture like DIY airplanes or something you know like like yeah like some can go up a bit and then you know man that's great but I feel like there would be more problems than successes like the guy that built his own rocket to prove the earth is flat that didn't work very well for him oh no that didn't work out that was a sad story too that was sad for different reasons oh you know human human progress is laid upon the pyre of dead bodies I mean it's evolution is built upon billions upon billions of dead individuals right yeah how it works it's yeah and those that do not try are not the ones who are you know pushing the envelopes the envelope of our abilities and there are some among us who are more likely to be thrill seekers risk takers likely to take adventures like this and others who really really are not and so let's let you know let none of us cast the first stone but we can hope that future things are done better and we can hope that hope that they make it back even though I think they're out of air but I don't know I don't have a timer counting it down but I went to look at the live updates from CNN actually just to see where it's at it sounds like a few hours ago they heard some clanging underground or under the water but like water yeah and Debbie Mitchell says there was no insurance but I bet there were waivers were there waivers I bet there were waivers were there waivers oh okay so Thursday Thursday morning US time limit is when the air runs out so they have a few more hours here there hasn't been air since sunday morning there hasn't been there hasn't been volume within the confines of the outer shell since sunday morning so on wednesday the u.s coast guard widened the search area and rerouted let's see that's not good already rerouted some of its equipment to try to pinpoint banging sounds heard during an aerial search in the remote north atlantic area it didn't yield any results but the sonar devices from the aircraft are being analyzed by the us navy meanwhile a fleet of ships and specialized equipment has been deployed including a us navy deep ocean salvage system and canadian coast guard ship john cabot which has side scanning sonar capabilities chat room who is my source go to source for everything says yes there's a waiver that supposedly mentions death three times yeah make it clear right but i mean this is you can get you can sign a waiver and sign a waiver be like yeah yeah okay but i trust you you say this is going to be fine and you're coming with me you own the company and you're coming with me you say it's going to be fine it's going to be fine it's going to be great but that doesn't mean you really understand all the aspects of things that can go wrong with the engineering and what's going to happen there do you really understand really but maybe they did but it doesn't take away the liability of a company to do due diligence in the first place to make sure that oh everything should be safe so an industry leader who takes it all away said that ocean gate expeditions strayed from industry norms by declining a voluntary rigorous safety review of the titan there are 10 submarines in the world that can go 12 000 feet in deeper 10 all of them are certified except for this one yeah port filings revealed uh ocean gate years ago was confronted with safety concerns about the vessel vessel records also show the company faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years not great so i wonder if i got into the water clean like yeah it's a great question they almost canceled because the weather was so bad things are getting knocked around i don't know how much it takes to ding a submarine that's supposed to go down to the 3,500 feet but i would say any is too much yeah i mean there's so many that warned him about problems yep oh the ceo's on board currently of ocean yeah yeah yeah what well she keeps saying currently i think i've uh well in my mind i've already come to the well he's still there well i've i decided i i have decided that probably it was going but i technically don't think he's inside i think that it imploded on the way down i think it probably hit about about three thousand two yet 3000 feet yeah probably about that oh yeah and just went yeah i think that's what happened and they just haven't found the the leftover shell yet but whatever to be mitchell it was a beautiful clear day lost contact after an hour yeah i think something no insurance that's hilarious well but then like yeah i it was a beautiful clear day before i even sure real seekers like that right i can we stop messing with the titanic now as far as i'm concerned in terms of vessels related to the titanic so not great yeah well there's a reason there's a reason diving whales don't go down that far bro unless unless they're they're dead and then the all the bone worms eat them so ooh but then they're good that's good food that's like good for the environment and is part of the whole cycle of life and birth decay yes nutrients and the whales are becoming the i'm very excited actually if i may slightly change topics to uh watch almost entirely nature documentaries um while i am uh in a zombie state who with a newborn baby i'm just gonna put like blue blue planet and like planet earth and all these things in the background just be like you know you're gonna watch so many shows that you never thought you would watch you're gonna just suddenly just need a distraction for hours you're gonna sit and listen to talk radio and podcasts and but i'll just i'll be so happy for david attenborough to just tell me about bower birds just over and over just buddy just tell me about them that's i i think it's gonna be great i'm very excited for the bone worm segment of blue planet i gotta find for that great daddy daddy i hear you like this buddy i gotta go daddy say good morning justin good morning justin say good night blare good night kiki good night everyone thank you for joining us for another episode of twists and a fun after show conversation yeah right ignore am radio blare just listen to the good stuff tune in yeah of course oh please radio what's that radio get yourself a good playlist put together by an algorithm um but anyway we'll see everybody next week thanks so much for being here and stay stay stay healthy stay curious and stay lucky and stay out of the ocean yeah i know business being in there leave it alone normal normal depths i wish you all well at normal depths everyone good night