 Are you ready for this? Are you ready? No? Exactly. Are you ready for this? Are you ready for the science everybody? I was watching 90s music videos last night. Very reminiscent. 90s. I mean, come on. We could like throw a 90s science rave. Yeah, sure. I just, I don't like to consider that a throwback era yet. Even though it was 30 years ago. Yeah. We're not going to talk about that. And people were wearing like bell bottoms, which is a throwback to a different throwback. It was a throwback to a previous 30 years. Okay. We are going to talk about science now. You've got to have some good science. Yeah, we've got science. We want to talk about it. We want to have fun together. Talking about science as we do and being thankful that we get to share this twist giving night with our friends. Our science friends. And yes, Gordon McLeod, 30 years ago, also known as five minutes ago. Yes, that's how it was. Are we ready for a show? I think we're ready. I'm ready. We're ready. So let us begin this live twist broadcast of the twist podcast where everything is live and nothing is edited until later when it becomes edited for the podcast. So the podcast is a little shorter and flows a little better. This is the version that's got all the cursing in it. No cursing. We're family friendly, no matter what, except for those few occasions where slippages appear. I think maybe one was my fault in the history of this show. I think we've got one or two. I think we've got one or two over. We've got more than that. Really not more than that. No. No. And it's usually just in the after show. I also think it's often the guest who doesn't know that we don't swear. That's usually it or the guest can't control themselves. They get really excited about the science of spuse for scientific profanities. All right, everybody. We are ready. I hope you're ready because it's time to begin the show. You're ready for this? Stop. Over again. It's like Crown Dogs Day. Sorry. You're not even close to the melody of the thing that comes after that. It's not even close. What is it, Justin? It's like some sort of jazz band interpretation. I mean, you're not wrong. You have to be marching. That's so good. You're all ready for this? That's so close. See, the player is doing something completely different. I don't know if you've got the wrong music. This is the science podcast, everyone. It really is. I'm starting in. Three, two, this is twist. This Week in Science Episode Number 852 recorded on Wednesday November 24th, 2021. It's Twist Giving 2021. Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Kiki. Welcome to the show. We will fill your head with babies, bees, and birds. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Thanksgiving. That one day out of the air where Americans pause to give thanks for all the good things in their lives. Thanks for health and family. And thanks for that giant turkey on the table, which likely had a diet of 95% corn of any sort. Foods like corn, potatoes, and tomatoes originated in the Americas. But they weren't just discovered. They were created, cultivated over thousands of years by observant Native American farmers in multi-generational breeding efforts in well-engineered irrigated farms. Which turned what was basically a grass into corn, the most consumed grain in the world. And the potato, domesticated and cultivated back some 10,000 years ago in the Andes, is the world's fourth most produced food. While we give thanks to this or that, we should remember Native Americans didn't just feed a party of starving pilgrims a few hundred years ago. They are feeding the entire world now, today. They are feeding the entire world now, today. Through the food technology that was developed before modern Europeans even stepped foot into Europe. And while Native peoples have suffered cultural annihilation, destruction of sacred lands, religious conversions, theft, kidnapping, rape, child abuse, institutional murder, enslavement, germ warfare, and genocide on two continents, the rest of the world has become better nourished and should give thanks. But as Americans especially, it should be a day where we simply acknowledge the people whose food you are eating, whose land you occupy, and whose children you and your children have replaced. In the spirit of experiment, innovation, and discovery that the ancient Americans used to create the food of the future we all enjoy today, we bring you This Week in Science coming up next. I've got the kind of mine that can't get enough on every day of the week There's only one place to go To find the knowledge I seek I wanna know I didn't even hear you there What? I said some good science kickin' black! What's going on? Well there we go We're getting started with our twist giving show Welcome everyone for another episode of This Week in Science We're here to give thanks to talk about science to enjoy some time discussing science together and yeah, we would like to say thank you and acknowledge the lands on which we are broadcasting from across the United States here on the west coast of the United States I'm in Portland, Oregon Blair is in San Francisco area of California Well I guess, Justin you're over in Denmark right now so that doesn't really work in the same way You're absolved I'm on a Loni-Ramatesh land Because the Danes never took land from anybody that has been proven historically that never took place Yeah Yeah, we are in the here the traditional village sites of the Multnomah Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tualatin Kalapuya and many other First Nations Indigenous tribes Bands of the Chinook tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River and I think that is an important thing to note Yeah, if you don't know what native lands you are currently living on in the United States this is native-land.ca You can look at kind of the different areas in the I think it's all of North America you can figure out based on your zip code what areas historically that you are currently living on There's lots of good resources there That is interesting, a good resource You should start making your mortgage payment to that tribe instead of to the bank instead of to the bank That would make make people a bit happier but we're going to move on We have a good show full of science for you today I have stories I brought some, I really really did I have stories about space efforts carbon storage mind reading and divorce in birds not in people, in birds Justin, what do you bring? I've got many jokes missing link found they found the missing link something to do with the noxications of the COP26 summit and just good news Facial recognition edition Just good news And then some story about a deep sea mammoth just camera camera deep sea diving mammoths they must have had a very long trunk Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, well I have spit swapping ants and meat eating bees and then I also just for fun at the top in the quick stories I have a quick story about touching your face don't do it, latest place not to and also stereotypes in stem stereotypes in stem The human animal we will investigate Indeed Alright everyone, as we dive into the show I do want to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed you can find us all places that podcasts are found, look for this week in science we're also on Facebook on Twitch we are on YouTube we are on Instagram and Twitter some places you find us as twist science but you can always find us at our website www.twist.org It's time for the science, who wants to talk about space? Let's do it, yeah Okay, last week Blair and I had this wonderful conversation Blair wanted to discuss the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope and why we're calling different things by people names, why don't we stop doing that but anyway I've got another James Webb story this week if you hadn't heard already the James Webb Space Telescope had an incident this last week A good incident? No, it has pushed their launch date back from December 18th to the 22nd Oh okay, that's only four days, alright It's only four days because they need to investigate what has happened A clamp band slipped, popped off and this clamp band is basically a clamp that secures the telescope to the launch vehicle adapter, basically attaches it to the launch vehicle so that it can get into space and get to where it needs to go but the declamping of the clamp caused a vibration throughout the telescope and they don't know how severe the vibration was and whether it damaged any aspects of this incredibly sensitive multi-billion dollar piece of space equipment so they're taking some time to investigate what has happened they say it's going fairly quickly they're ahead of schedule so far but yeah this is just one more incident in a long line of incidents when it comes to this space telescope and please, can we just launch it and get it to space and well it has 300 places points at which things can go wrong as it unfolds 300 different possible places, things can just go nope once it gets all the way out to the L2 location where it will be sitting in space to view the universe in infrared okay so that's what one of these 300 things goes wrong it just won't work right it's not like something else worse will happen like it'll if it fails earlier in the process it'll plummet back to Earth or something no it's like yeah once it first it has to launch then it gets out of away from Earth and then it'll get out to L2 and once it's located there a lot of other things happen but yeah there are a lot of places where things can go wrong and I just keep going back to my understanding of NASA engineers as always planning for the worst with lots of backups lots of contingency plans and I'm just really hoping that all of those NASA engineers who have worked on very like amazing spacecraft that have made their way to Mars and other places and worked very very well please I don't want to there are a lot of people worried about this one yeah and I'm with Blair about the naming of things like James Webb's not even an astronomer no he's not even politicians we talked about it yep he's a politician okay I thought he was an unelected bureaucrat but okay no he's in the 7th but yeah maybe name it after a scientist next time don't name it after a scientist name it prosperity or curiosity or rainbows and unicorns I don't care I would love a spacecraft called rainbows and unicorns that would be great I'd really really like that okay Lucy in the sky with diamond there's lots of good ones in other pretty positive outlook news we have a little craft that could it really makes me think of that little the story of the little engine that could the dart mission it has made its way launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from southern California last night this dart mission has started its voyage to an asteroid where it will be attempting to collide with a small moonlit that's called didimus didimus the the asteroid is dimorph or dimorphus is the moonlit didimus is the asteroid and this is a mission to see if we can really act out the movie Armageddon in real life then they invite Bruce Willis to the launch of the dart mission but as far as I know he was not in attendance but the move the idea is we need to protect our planet from potential bombardment by asteroids that could be planet killers how are we going to do that and one idea is that we could impact them can we change their trajectories not blow them up because usually they're going to be very large it's going to take a lot to get to them to the point where we can blast them into little pieces of rubble small enough that they would burn up in our atmosphere but if we could move their trajectory could we get away from being impacted so this is a test they actually have been working at getting funding from congress to make this possible over many years and have now gotten upwards of 150 150 million dollars to work on this project and we'll see where it goes in the future will we breaking them up is not a completely bad idea it's not like you just end up with more things that are going to landing in more places it doesn't quite work math is a little different on that especially it depends on the angle the thing is coming in if you break it up so that the angles are all different a little bit from those the smaller particles have a better chance of breaking up no matter better chance it's unlikely but the percentage is not zero that's the problem the percentage is not zero but this dart we can look forward to reporting on this next September or October when it does reach didimus and hopefully strikes dimorphis and the interaction is really interesting this is a 700 kilogram spacecraft and on the feed last night someone said it's about the mass of a small cow trying to impact a body that measures about 170 meters across at 6.6 kilometers per second can it alter the trajectory of the moonlit can it alter the trajectory of space garbage is what I want to know oh goodness there's a whole other story about that somebody is positing that if we get enough space garbage out there we might be able to get rings wouldn't that be awesome then we'd really be the have to wait a while for the rings to go on I'm not excited about that that one house with trash out in front of it at the end of the block where's that planet yep you know what this is this association is really going to come after us all these days I think Gord you're a writer aren't you somebody needs to write this scenario where a private startup space agency company develops this technology and then yeah we're going to be able to move this asteroid that's coming in but it's not going to be like a mist we can just kind of direct it a little bit towards where it's going to land and then they get funding from all the countries that don't want to get hit by it there's a great story in there like a true doctor evil scenario where it's coming down you want to be on the list you want to be in the probable zone or do you not want to be in the probable zone that's how the funding next round of our startup is going to be determined Justin you get to tell a story next oh it's my turn to get into the good news this is the just good news story of the week facial recognition edition lie detection just got a whole lot better this is researchers from Tel Aviv University created a new and improved lie detector that works by tracking contractions within facial muscles so far they've been able to catch lies 73% of the time which it's not perfect yet but it is then by that number it is the best lie detecting system ever created the older system that we used you've seen it in the movies they got the thing they're checking pulse rates while answering questions was so scientifically and operationally flawed that it put innocent people behind bars for years and is now completely inadmissible in court as evidence it just doesn't work too many human factors but the researchers identified two different groups of liars lying tells that people seem to have there was one group they could detect their lies because it would activate cheek muscles would sort of react differently ahead of telling a lie and there was another group that had activation not at all in the cheeks but they'd get it in the eyebrows so it's also interesting how you've got these somewhere but there's like a whole much more research needs to be done but somewhere way deep within the brain is activating either cheek muscle or eyebrow muscle for different liars and so there's a whole thing there but they had these super sensitive stickers with electrodes in them that were tracking facial movements little micro contractions and recorded the correlation between the lies told and specific regions being activated now these are pretty straight forward lies they would get an audio that said you know up or down say and so they said the opposite of what they heard and that's how they could tell it was a lie because the researchers could see what was lies and what wasn't wasn't just people sort of telling stories about the fish they caught or whatever so again this isn't a real world test but it is the first round of it they'd say though that in the very near future this technology could be digitized to allow a simple AI to use video images of a speaker to determine if they're telling the truth or not not just in a clinical context then right but then you're talking about video of anyone speaking at any time when you have enough definition so not only then can you like maybe watch a speech in real time video and have like a sort of truth meter that shows up next to the speaker but you could go back through archival footage potentially you could go back and watch this show right now and see if I'm lying yeah I mean you could that's the insane thing about this is that it could be retro doesn't matter where or when it's just look at the face you could then use it on like court footage from cases that have come through like years like you could go through an archive of any video and see if people are lying which is just insane so this has great potential for detecting deception in real life context criminal investigations banks could use it when you're applying it for a loan to see if you're being straightforward about all the details you've offered them your software and your phone could use it as a password security system so you might look like you but is that really you and it could see if you're lying or not political speeches job interviews spousal interrogations okay you can go do like that's a step two record it I have concerns though Justin I feel like this could be similarly fallible to the lie detector in that we need studies to see what happens to your eyebrows in your cheeks when you're uncomfortable when you are nervous when you are hot when you are cold with like when you're excited when when you're going loyalty to a regime it's all of it passionate like this is the problem with lie detectors right like some people are really good liar so you can't tell it all some people are just nervous and so the they have all of the signs of lies happening through the lie detector we don't have the research yet of exactly what happens to your face at every other moment of your life when you're not lying and I think that's going to be one of the big points though is that people who are professional liars people who are or who are sociopaths who lie with no problems whatsoever you know it's not going to show those are people are going to skate by again lie detector tests are 80 to 90 percent accurate ish and this is in the 70 so a percent wait a second lie detectors are not that accurate they have been proven like depends on the intonation of the question asked it depends on the all of those factors that you've laid out do affect a pulse rate type thing so here's the thing here's the thing this is if you've trained for a lie detector and any of the previous ones this one you're not trained for you don't even know making these these spatial changes at this point but people might it's like three out of four dentists you know it's not like you know it's not like 99.9 percent accuracy like we want our covid rapid tests to be right yeah we need it to be we need it to be more accurate before we can of course count on it without further data of course I'm not it's not here yet this is the pre but it's also scary I don't want it to be here that's the thing you don't want a lie detector it's you don't want you don't want to be able to read people's minds for the same reason you don't want to be able to notice oh their eyebrows moved when they said it was nice to see me oh my god that person hates me like you don't want that information this is a professor levy levy who was involved with the study says since this was an initial study the lie itself was very simple there were participants by the way who on the other side were watching people tell the lie and trying to determine if they were they couldn't they couldn't tell on this test because it was such an easy no stakes lie you know it's they're just saying the word whatever didn't they couldn't pick up any any differentiating levy goes on usually when we lie in real life we tell a longer tale which includes both deceptive and truthful components in our study we had the advantage of knowing what the participants heard through the tests and therefore also knowing when they were lying best using advanced machine learning techniques we trained our program to identify lies based on signals coming from these electrodes so it's not perfect but better than any existing technology and the other thing that they found interesting is that people lie through different facial muscles some with their cheeks others with their eyebrows and as they expand this they may find more tells that are in their well but it would be it would be fascinating to find out that even the psychopath who's trained to the voice the vocal intonation or the or you're saying the professional liar who's trained their vocal intonations and their word choices to seem always to be the most sincere at any given moment but have all of the tells the for the AI would if that was still there that'd be fascinating and then the only people who could lie with with ease would probably be liars I'm they're like here's the door I'm walking through it there's no door there mimes oh really good at facial gesturing or something be able to make it through this thing finally mine school is paying off finally moving on from school Blair what do you have oh yeah well with all that talk of faces I have a research paper out of University of Nottingham saying that drivers touch their face a lot they touch their face about 26 times an hour on average and that is a concern because they are potentially spreading germs and infection especially if handwashing is inadequate they looked at 31 hours of archived footage obtained from two on-road driving studies documenting 36 experienced drivers and with little or no conscious self-awareness they were observed touching on or around their face again about 26 times an hour but each touch lasted about four seconds it was a long touch the face itself was touched the most about 80% then hair about 10% neck about 8% shoulders about 2% in it 42.5% on occasion they made contact with mucous membranes inner linings of the lips nostrils eyes approximately every five minutes fingertips and thumbs people are sitting in their cars listen don't tell me you haven't picked your nose in your car okay everyone's done it but this is the point um so yeah cars are our homes on the road and they're dirty is that what the point is dirty that is the point so um a lot of the time they were using fingertips or thumbs which are also the areas most frequently missed in hand washing hopefully post COVID people have learned how to wash their hands now but I feel like everyone's forgotten already this was controlled across genders and ages so everybody's touching their face the same amount so this is especially an issue with car share vehicles vehicles in a pool at a workplace that's that means you could be entering a car that somebody else so this is the other thing I'm taking from this spray down the car when you get it um if you have a car that somebody else drives and so this is the thing that's speaking of like dystopian future we were just talking about with Justin they had suggestions that was a good news story that was just no that was dystopian future for sure um but they were talking about what we can do with this information so the first is that if you have a car in a pool be aware that that shared car is probably gross and also try not to make it more gross they also wanted to say that potentially touchless surfaces in a car would be good I think that's silly but the thing that's really crazy is they also suggested the potential for driver monitoring systems which could detect fatigue and distraction already by eye blink rate head nodding but now could also be developed and deployed to detect predict and stop inadvertent face touching so imagine driving a car and the car going stop touching your face like I think I would get an accident um but yeah so they had all these ideas for how to keep people from touching their faces and cars just wash your hands and spray on the car when you get in that's that's what I say so there's a good question for everybody to answer in their head at home and I'm gonna ask out loud to the two of you okay are you washing your hands the same way you did at the beginning of the pandemic yes oh like the the 22nd rule 22nd rule I was like like I am prepping for surgery no I'm not I'm not doing it as thoroughly as I was at the beginning of the pandemic now I'm just back to just you know although I am like I never really used to do this the in between the fingers I do that now in between the fingers you gotta get yeah I do all of it but I doubt I'm doing 20 seconds every time I sing sing the sing what the alphabet song twice through and you'll be good that's right no we can't no we cannot we can't even show people how to do it with that who picked that song that we can't even but we can tell people what areas of the earth should be conserved so that we don't dump 139 billion or 139 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere oh yeah you know what we need to do we need to conserve the really really really crucial carbon sinks permafrost the researchers who have just published a paper in nature sustainability they say permafrost it's melting but nobody's really going to build on it because it's melting and there's sinkholes and all that kind of stuff so it's not really a problem it's not great agricultural land at this point either where they are worried about our old forests mangrove forests areas where you have vegetal growth that's been happening on the order of centuries that their report they call it irrecoverable carbon where if it were to be released into the atmosphere through burning because of for agriculture, for land clearing for housing, for human development the carbon would go into the atmosphere and be there for centuries and it would take a lot longer it would take centuries to grow those sinks back again and it would put us way over the one and a half degrees celsius limit that we have been trying to look for for not having our climate change as much as it's looking like it's going to so pretty much the places that we want to be protecting are carbon rich areas in very specific areas the pacific northwest the amazon, the congo basin and borneo are very specific areas that they name because of the trees and the density of growth that has been in those areas so the basic recommendation is, look these are places that we should protect because they are great stores of carbon if we destroy them that carbon is going to end up in the atmosphere that's bad so why don't we put efforts toward protecting them it's pretty we should save rainforests and hope growth this is a very good idea speaking of a throwback to the 90s save the rainforest save the rainforest in the process as it's a save them not to put carbon into the atmosphere carbon dioxide into the atmosphere it's also going to feedback and protect ecosystems and save animals save these very old diverse places where lots of animals and organisms live plants can I just throw out a thing since it is the day that we're doing the show and all that one of the best strategies I've heard for actually being able to achieve that is wherever possible turning that land over to the indigenous people that once maintained that land because as we've seen whenever a government entity protects a land and an administration changes that can just unprotect the land just like that if you actually turn it over at least in the United States and South America turned it back over the land back over to the people who managed it for tens of thousands of years it'll be fine they'll preserve it they'll watch out for it it'll be taken care of right sustainable land use and management that could work everyone Justin you have another story? yeah no any good baby jokes? no not ones that I can tell peekaboo okay I'm gonna be really quick why are babies born? they run out of womb very good know what temperature babies are when they're born? what? womb temp how many babies can a person have at once? as many as they have womb for and what do you call a newborn baby on the day that it's born? whatever you want I don't have a name okay it happens every day all over the world folks of every kind people are having babies and no matter how prepared you might think you are for having a baby that you forgot to have ready before you bring the cherished little human home even if you had it at home you've got diapers and wipes check you have a place for the baby to sleep soft blanket to swaddle them in a wardrobe full of clothes for the baby to grow out of in just a few weeks toys and bedtime books to keep the mind stimulated as time goes by maybe you even submitted their application to a preschool despite it being many many years away or pre-arranged marriage for a neighbor's kid that's three months old already however you prepare yes a proud parent you've done all the preparing you're getting ready but you still missed something do you know any good baby jokes and these are not jokes about babies like I was telling but jokes that make babies laugh yeah that's what I did peek-a-boo this is University of Bristol researchers conducted a study with around 700 children from ages birth to 4 years old from different parts of the world they published this in behavior research methods it identifies the earliest age humor emerges and how it typically may build in the first years of life so they had this survey that they sent to these 700-ish parents UK, US, Australia and Canada and it was just a quick 5-minute survey that they would go back to check your child's development team found the earliest earliest reported age that some children appreciated humor was one month old 50% of the children were appreciating humor by two months 50% were producing their own jokes by the time they were 11 months old and the team also showed that once children produced humor they did it often it worked on their act it worked on their stand up like before they could actually even stand up half of children having joked usually within the 3 hours that the surveys were being administered after the children surveyed the team identified 21 different types of humor that was going on and a lot of it was age related so children under one year of age appreciated physical visual auditory forms of humor that's the peekaboo, the keys funny faces things like blowing on their face eating their toes funny voices, noises and they also really like misusing objects so like here's the banana phone banana phone I still laugh at banana phone flip phone is a good one oh that's a good one too oh that's great and then once they got into the 1 year old range they started getting into humor that involved getting a reaction from somebody so that was showing people their butts trying to scare people making potty jokes acting like something else so they would act like they were an animal or something like this 2 year olds became a little bit more advanced they started to reflect on some language humor getting into puns and nonsense words and then stuff like old mcdonald had a farm and on his farm he had some cows with a meow meow here and a meow meow wait wait no that's wrong let's get this moo down here stuff like this and they started getting more aggressive with the humor too they were starting to show the mean streak like trying to trip people slapping things out of your hands trying to see the physical comedy on 3 year olds like to try to say naughty words and try to play tricks on people and do the fun so as I developed the course but one of the things that this study shows also is that's not a thing that I really have seen in a whole lot of literature how to stimulate your child by reading to them how to get them interested in early math the art the reading how to work on your intellectual development how to how to get your kids type 5 go before an audience how to deal with a heckler by age 2 you know all like prop comedy for toddlers it's not just for carrot tops yeah so somebody needs to write this book I'm again putting it on you Gord you gotta write the book children comedy handbook how to I think it's on you Justin how to amaze your friends by age 3 by age 3 I love that I think it's interesting also thinking about the different kinds of humor that kids start developing by certain times and how that lines up with brain development and what what allows it so by one month the eyes are developed enough that they're starting to be able to focus on things so that they can if you get your face close enough they can see your face they can hear your voice you know they're starting to be able to discern more colors you know so it's how does the visual system the auditory system the cognitive awareness how does all that play into what they find funny and when and also when they start making their own jokes yeah I was amazed because I do recall my youngest daughter at 6 months was playing peekaboo in reverse I don't even think she was 6 months she was like she was like make it up and make us disappear and the laugh and then come back and be like and then make us disappear again she was like you don't need to do object impermanence I can make you go away you can make you go and that's funny that's scary a little bit she's like you don't even understand I have the power to make you go away she liked it too aww she loved the humor speaking of other baby science babies can change people's behavior apparently that baby smell you know when you smell the top of a newborn baby's head it contains a molecule that affects the way that people interact with other people so researchers publishing in science advances they looked at a molecule called hexadecanal and it is emitted from babies heads and we can't really smell it per se but it's in the mix of the baby smell you can though I use baby head smell as amazing but hexadecanal on itself it doesn't smell like anything but it's mixed in with the baby thing so we're identifying it somehow we're identifying something the baby's emitting a smell independently to make you sniff it probably not to make you sniff it no the baby is emitting a molecule that makes mothers more aggressive and reduces the aggressiveness of fathers what and looking at the brain it impacts these social interactions circuits in the male and female brains differently so it's like a dial down control for men and a dial up control for women like hey mom or lady sniff my head and then protect me and for a guy it's like hey don't eat me be a polar bear please that is the most relaxed scenario I've ever been in is holding a little bambinini and it's just like always boom and yeah it's a weird compulsion to smell a baby's head you can't control it no you want to smell the baby's head I had never been around babies growing up several of my friends had babies in the last couple of years and every time a baby is handed to me it's like it's a reflex you go you can't help I will smell your head everything in my body is making that happen I can't stop it that's so fascinating anyway we have identified it's not a pheromone per se but we've identified a molecule that is emitted by the heads of babies that changes adult behavior and it's sex dependent as well so it's really really fascinating so now babies it's a manipulator is this the thing that we vaporize into like problem prisons of the world or crowd control it becomes a crowd control although I guess if it's having the more aggressive fact then we gotta be careful when we use it oh gosh where and when will we use the hex how will we put a hex on people wow don't eat the baby don't eat the baby Blair do you want to talk about some stem gender problems yeah yeah to no one's surprise University of Houston has found out that there is a preconception about boys and girls and stem perception that boys are more interested than girls in computer science and engineering starts as young as six years old it's likely one of the reasons that girls are underrepresented in stem career fields they looked at 2,500 students in first through 12th grade from diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds they were combined with laboratory experiments to provide important insights on how those stereotypes impact motivation 63% of students believe girls were less interested in engineering than boys 9% believe girls are more interested than boys computer science 61% thought girls had less interest while 14 thought girls had more interest women make up nearly half the workforce but in actuality they make up 25% of computer scientists and 15% of engineers and so the other thing they did the laboratory experiment was they gave children a choice between computer science activities girls about 35% chose computer science activities that they believed boys were more interested in but 65% of girls chose an activity which they believe boys and girls were equally interested in so this isn't just that it's coming from above that no this is for boys and this is for girls it's because they have that preconceived notion from a young age that girls steer clear so of course this is why specific maker groups and stem groups aimed at girls are so important because you have to break that misconception you can try to take care of it before they reach 6 years old but that is difficult because that means the second they're going into school pretty much they're starting to get this narrative so yeah educators, parents, policy makers they can help close those gender gaps by introducing girls to high quality computer science engineering activities ASAP in elementary school before the stereotypes take root so they still will be exposed to those stereotypes but you can maybe uproot them and disrupt them before they take too much of a hold to impact their future choices there are all sorts of of games for young kids to teach early coding skills to teach engineering skills you can start as early as big lego bricks that will help get duplos can get into building and then you get the duplos and then you get into the goldie blocks and the goldie block systems are specifically targeted at girls and engineering and computer science and they have engineering challenges and there are all sorts of programs that are out there but yeah I think this is a really interesting study because it really highlights how early it starts that's what the study is about this isn't new information generally except for the fact that it starts so young and I think there's also an overlap that is possible because having had the children of both inclination of gender at the early age they are attracted to different things one of my favorite things that came along in time for my girls was the lego friends which I don't know if you've seen but they're very girl oriented subject matters to an extent shops and kitchens and things but it's still things they build exactly so they've got to engineer it together I think this is one of those things where we may also still be failing to realize that it is both you can do the engineering and still have that really girly interest if that's the thing that you're attracted to you can put them both together I think gendering toys is a mistake I think it's totally a mistake you can say that girls generally prefer a particular type of toy but I think that packaging legos in pink or blue packaging is a mistake this is a problem I had from a very young age I kept getting the pink lego sets that were ice cream shops and horses but we know that pink used to be a boy color and it's in color, cultural ideas about color have changed over time and they will shift again with time and so the gendering of it is not in terms of color is not necessarily the problem but what Justin is getting at is that if you have from a young age if you give a child the option of a truck or a bulldozer or a doll and they make the choice what they want and they make the choices if they're given the choices you can accept their choices but still give them opportunity in the engineering or the building or the making so it's still gendered to their it's what they want it's not that it's gendered per se but if they like dolls they like dolls if they like pets they like pets if they like rocket ships that's what they like but you have to give them the opportunities to do all the things no matter what I'm going to say that there's still some subconscious gendering happening there in that the blue Legos are the spaceships and the city Legos and the submarine Legos and the pink boxes are the shop and the horses and so there is still a push towards a particular career for boys and a particular career for girls and habitually those sets the blue sets have boy mini figures in them and the pink sets have girl mini figures in them they're getting better at them Legos is trying really hard as an example they have like the NASA women and women of science Legos sets and that's great and I think they've in general they've kind of moved away from that but there's still lots of toys that are pushed that way and in order to be a girls engineering set they have to be pink and they have to make an ice cream shop and I think that it's happening less but I still think it is happening and even then if you're looking at certain types of toys to play with you are not you're subconsciously there can be signals about career choices I tried giving my child plain wooden blocks just wood I think of tree child he went for other things oh of course he loved garbage trucks and bulldozers I didn't do that he did that that's still your totally right letting children choose is totally the right choice I'm just saying I think that there are moments where it would be good to take a skeptical eye to the packaging and the marketing of toys to make sure that there isn't subconscious or subliminal signaling that there are a lot of toys for and I don't think that's such a big deal if in doing so you hook them into engineering something of actually building it doing the problem solving to me that's like the more important thing yeah is almost a different level of problem that needs to be solved I get directly related to this though directly related to career expectations for genders I don't know I mean I do agree to an extent because I had a lot of oh what were they the cowboy playmobil set that I loved that was like my favorite thing as a kid and you're right I did expect when I grew up I was going to be a cowboy so and I found that you know being out there on a horse following cows around all day is maybe not the best fit uh for me you know I really wish that we could read their minds though that would be awesome just like we can now read the minds of worms yes do we know what they're saying about us no we don't know what they're saying about us unfortunately but the sea worms it has 302 neurons very very tiny brain which makes it easy to monitor all the neurons and go what are these neurons doing versus a human brain or even a mouse brain it's a lot of a lot more neurons there so you can't get the resolution that you want a team from the salk institute published in plus computational biology about their work giving sense buttered popcorn almond banana cheese and salt basically wafting the chemical odors over the worms and then looking to see what happened to the neurons but instead of just looking at the sensory neurons that were involved of the sense of the odor sending it they also looked at which neurons were activated downstream so they used what they called graph theory which involves looking at the collective interactions between different pairs of cells and they were able to monitor what was happening and then use machine learning to find out what different groups of neurons were doing when different sense came by and so for example they exposed C. elegans to sodium chloride and there was a burst of activity in one area and then a burst of activity in another and this sensing of salt was really important because salt usually indicates bacteria which the worms like to eat so this is a very important scent to the worms and so they're able to figure out that oh this is what this scent is doing and these neurons are involved versus this so now they can basically waft a scent over the worms and go look at the neurons we can read the minds of the worms to know what they're doing or want to do at any point in time and of course the eventual goal is to move this from worms to humans but that's going to take a very long time just a little bit just as long as it takes to get the jay's wood space telescope up just a few months just a couple just a couple years maybe just a couple more years after that too no big deal but it's exciting we can read worms minds this is this week in science don't you wish you could read our minds right now do you know what I'm thinking I'm thinking I'm very thankful that you're here with us tonight thank you for being here if you do like the show tell a friend today alright let's do a COVID update okay COVID update the wave the surge is coming the surge is coming this we've got increases in the number of cases of COVID-19 ahead of the holidays the Midwest is experiencing a high surge right now the UK, Europe are experiencing massive surges the northeast of the United States we have the country's daily average of new cases jumping 29% over the last two weeks daily case average is nearing 94,000 and there are certain areas that are experiencing very rapid increases in cases and most of this is a result of people not being boosted yet CDC has authorized boosters for all adults who are at least six months past their first their first series of vaccinations for COVID-19 so boosters are available now you can get your immunity level your antibody level back up to a point where you will be very well protected this is coming also in hand in hand with a lot of areas removing restrictions for masking and social distancing and other things here we are coming to the holidays so please, please, please take good care test before travel, before arriving to visit family if you can booster I know it's late for Thanksgiving at this point in time but get boostered wear a mask if you're going to be around a lot of people that you don't know that you haven't planned ahead for but if you are vaccinated and boosted and everyone else is then the CDC and others are saying have a great Thanksgiving so this is the thing I think that I was just talking to Brian about this before the show started so yes, cases are surging really bad mainly it's unvaccinated people the breakthrough infections of the vaccinated still very low percentage still very low and also overwhelmingly not ending up in the hospital is the thing that I think it's important to recognize if you have a breakthrough case you can potentially get an unvaccinated person sick so that's not good it's much less likely than if you weren't vaccinated at all but it's still possible of course but the thing that I think is so important to keep in mind is that it's bad but it's not like last winter it's not like panic and run around with your hair on fire time because if you're vaccinated you have an extremely less likely chance of ending up in the hospital which I think is really important to say that is a massive importance I think you're absolutely right there yeah, vaccinated people by far in areas where there is high vaccination percentages of vaccinated people ending up in the hospital because it's a law of numbers and statistics so if a certain percentage of breakthrough cases are happening all over there's going to be a larger number of people in areas where there are more vaccinated because it's just a higher number of the total population yeah, there's some state back east coast where it's like oh, 40% of the people who've got COVID in those cases were vaccinated people and it's like, oh gosh, then it's not working but that state area has got like 94% vaccination which means that 6% of the population that's not vaccinated accounts for 60% of the cases but if you just be like that's how numbers work and so as we start to look at the percentage of people who are vaccinated who get this it's because most everybody is vaccinated in most places and so it's that tiny percentage of people who are doing the bulk of the work getting and also are the vast majority of the deaths in some places there the entirety of the deaths are coming from the unvaccinated community as you're saying because everyone's ending up still on the ventilators for them if you're unvaccinated nothing has changed from the beginning of this pandemic to now except that you're more likely to get it because you're free to go out and get it you're free to go get it and it's more aggressive now I also wonder if there's a funny bias of the numbers where if you're a responsible person and you got vaccinated are you also more likely to get tested are you also more likely to show up with a positive case even if you're asymptomatic and add to the number possibly yeah that's very that's an interesting point but remember as you come into this Thanksgiving holiday and the Christmas holidays there's layered levels of protection even if you don't want to if you're boosted everyone else is boosted you're all in a nice family setting affordable HEPA air filter that you can put in the room where everyone's going to be sitting and eating together that's going to do a massive job of cleaning the air and keeping everybody safe so air filtration air flow masks distancing you know there's all different parts including vaccination different layers of defense and risk reduction and that's what we need to think about and point out the thing what transmits no it's not the air it's other humans other people yes so the more time you can spend away from other humans for the next say two or three years the better and as we were talking about percentages right now there's report kids cases of COVID-19 are spiking they're now making up 25% of all cases there are 22 kids make up 22% of the total population of the United States kids vaccines are available now we can get our kids vaccinated and that will help us move forward and reduce the rates of kids getting COVID because we still really don't know the long-term effects of COVID-19 and that is a big issue and some there have been hundreds of I think 25,000 kids have been in the hospital for COVID-19 and over 600 kids have died and yeah I just can't wait for the history books where they try to explain why we let everyone die for a disease that was treatable and preventable specifically with the kids because when this first popped up kids predominantly were not affected we shut the schools to protect the adults around the children then the variant came along that infected children we opened up the schools because the adults were protected yes and then we're just like the children are getting sick I don't it's the logic to look upon the decisions that were made oh boy I can't wait for the history books oh my god there will be so many writings yeah it's like the ship is sinking but we think the life rafts are too dangerous for kids so we're gonna leave them on the boat yeah also we got on the life raft so it's fine don't worry about it yeah we're fine be sure to no you'll be fine that kids can't drown it's just a thing science told us or something yeah bye check with the priorities though the history is gonna look bad when you look back at some of this stuff you're right but in a looking forward hopefully kind of way we can be excited possibly about a new peptide vaccine a vaccine called covac one is a peptide based vaccine candidate that means that it's made up of little chunks of protein that are derived from antigens within the SARS-CoV-2 virus and these little chunks of protein these little antigen copies are delivered in such a way as to induce T-cell responses and hopefully long term immunity and the interest here for the covac one virus is for people who are who have immunodeficiencies who are undergoing cancer treatment individuals for whom antibody responses are a problem and by vaccinating with the intent of driving up the T-cell response it then can potentially not it won't reduce the sickness because the antibody response is what like really responds in the first place to the virus but it will reduce the very severe disease hospitalization and death that would occur otherwise with COVID-19 for this population of people who have immune deficiencies and it seems to work against all the variants of SARS-CoV-2 that they tested it against and additionally it's T-cells so it could be long-term immunity and not just six months the scary thing about COVID isn't getting a virus it's about dying from it so if you really, if you just get that part eliminated I think we'll be okay yeah yeah could be something just something to look forward to we always want to have something positive in here in this COVID update think positively everyone the endemic is coming the endemic is coming haha okay this is This Week in Science thank you so much for joining us for this episode we hope that you are enjoying the show so far if you are please head over to twist.org and click on the frog to purchase your 2022 twist calendar Blair has done a lot of amazing work on these Blair's Animal Corner 2022 twist calendars and did you say Blair they are single line drawings they certainly are yes wow yeah so she put down the pen and she drew and animals emerged and they could be on your wall on your desk somewhere in your life get one for yourself very very Hirschfeld get one for a friend they make great gifts so I'm going to be sending them out very soon I recently discovered the calendar system in Europe is the same that we use in the United States so these calendars actually could be utilized internationally international calendars because they follow years as well in other places got years all over the place but we thank you for your support we do hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving it's time now for Blair's Animal Corner with Blair with Blair stop Blair I have vulture bees what vulture bees did you know that some bees eat meat I no wait hornets wasps, wasps no bees no wasps they go to the flowers they're gonna be like reverse pandas in right they got the wrong the very interesting point just wait till you hear this story so this is a tropical bee colloquially known as vulture bees they've evolved an extra tooth for biting flesh and they have a specialized gut to eat meat this is a species of stingless stingless bees say that five times that stingless bee and has evolved the ability to eat meat most likely due to an intense competition for nectar so there just weren't enough flowers to go around they had to start eating meat you said the bees have a tooth what are you talking about bees don't have tooth it's like a mandible it just helps them break stuff off but they have this ability to eat meat which their gut bacteria is not able to do that so it's very interesting that you brought that up Justin because it's just like the pandas but before I talk about the gut microbiome I have to tell you about one other thing that they have on their body because it made me giggle so stingless bees normally have baskets on their hind legs for collecting pollen of course however they observed when they put out chicken meat bait traps for these bees they got a good look at these bees up close and they observed carry-on feeding bees using the same structures but to collect the food they had what Quinnet McFrederick you see Riverside entomologists called little chicken baskets what? on their legs anyway moving aside from the pure joy that that sentence gave me um they wanted to compare nectar feeding bees to these vulture bees that feed exclusively on meat and also a particular type of stingless bee that eats meat and nectar so then they were able to compare the microbiome of these three different types of diets across bees they found the most extreme changes among the exclusive meat feeders and the microbiome in the meat eaters the exclusive meat eaters more closely resembled that of vultures you know the birds vultures yeah so the honey bees bubble bees and stingless bees traditionally all have guts that are colonized in the same five core microbes humans our guts can change a little bit with every meal but most bee species have retained the same bacteria over 80 million years of evolution so of course the scientists wanted to see if their microbiome was the same they went to Costa Rica they had their baits of chicken and um they smeared petroleum jelly to deter ants which is an interesting note um and so they were able to sequence the microbiome of all of these guys and they found that the vulture bee microbiome was enriched in acid loving bacteria which is something that all of their relatives don't have and are similar to what you find in actual vultures hyenas and other carrion feeders so the expectation there is that because it's acid loving bacteria they can build up more stomach acid it helps protect them from pathogens that show up on raw meat if we ate chicken raw chicken we would get very sick for many reasons and it's mostly due to the bacteria present that our stomach cannot break down one of the bacteria present in the vulture bees is lactobacillus which is a lot of our fermented food like my sourdough and my counter right now um they were also found to have carna bacterium which is associated with flesh digestion I will also mention I was like oh stingless bees that's cool nope they can't sting but they're not defenseless they actually can be quite unpleasant stingless bees some of them have nothing but many of them bite and uh many of them blister causing secretions in their jaws which causes the skin to erupt in painful sores so they're not without an arsenal they're still bees and also interestingly their honey is still consumable by humans and still sweet and delicious oh they still make honey yes because they're not obligate they're not obligate carnivores and they do pollinate is that like is that part of it um I know they only eat meat then how what so they store the meat in separate chambers it's not meat honey it's not meat honey the meat is separate in the hive from the honey and then um they yeah so they store the honey completely separately so they still are digesting the meat and barfing up honey but so it is meat honey still okay I always forget honey is it's bee barf bee barf it's bee vomit yeah yeah it's not just the pollen no they're eating the pollen and then they've barfed it back up so this is technically bee honey meat barf it's bee meat barf great question also would I be okay to eat this considering I avoid meat non non vegetarian honey yeah this is really non vegetarian honey like there are people who are mad at it but it's anyway uh there's a little information for you on vulture bees and the fact that their gut bacteria is completely different from the rest of bees and like vultures and hyenas so there you go it's fascinating I mean nature nature just has it all if there's something that you have not yet imagined it's out there and we just we just have to find it and then there's also the fun historical question like what came first the change in diet or like somehow became this how did they seed that microbiome yes great question I bet it's in that honey now anyway okay so that's them moving from that gross meat eating bee story to ants that walk up to each other and say hey hey uh let me spit in your mouth real quick oh Blair what have you done aunt colonies use fluids past mouth to mouth to create a colony wide metabolism very smart yes so these ants they these social insect colonies function in a similar way to a single organism made up of many individuals and for that reason scientists studies ants a lot to gain insight into how complex biological systems like the human body function individual ants in that colony have two stomachs one for digesting food and another before that which is their social stomach they store fluids there and they share those fluids with other ants in their colony they allow them to share food and other important proteins that they themselves produce this is a study from the laboratory of social fluids at the department of biology University of Freiburg Switzerland oh yes I work at the laboratory of social fluids they explored whether the proteins they exchange are linked to an individual's role in the colony or the colony's life cycle and they analyzed all of the ant produce proteins found in social stomachs of those ants and compared how those proteins vary depending on their job if they were a forager or a nurse caring for the colony's young the members oh they also compared it across ages how old the colony was or how new it was they found that members of more mature ant colonies had more nutrient storage proteins necessary for growth and metamorphosis of young but newly founded ant colonies had a much lower amount of storage proteins nurse ants they also found nurse ants that cared for young in their colony had more anti aging proteins in their stomachs which means that colony members were pooling those life extending proteins to the nurses they were saying here anti aging proteins you're welcome and so they were they were spitting these proteins that they create to the nurse ants to pool life extending proteins in them to ensure that their survival was insured to look after the next generation so they wanted to make sure at all costs that the nurses survived to take care of the babies sounds familiar yeah so they isn't that what we did with the vaccines gave it to all the I was going to say before that we did the opposite but yeah you're right what's the vaccines happened for sure they also show that the big thing the big kind of breaking news here is that colony members can do metabolic labor for the benefit of others so their metabolism is creating these proteins and they are able to give them to other members of the colony the idea is you could use this to look at how metabolic work is shared between cells in a similar way ants pass things around in a way that they can easily access what they need to share and having a better understanding of how that works in a colony in a social colony could show how metabolic labor learns inside of somebody like a human to distribute metabolic tasks between tissues or cells in the body so first of all just very interesting ants can have a joint metabolism and metabolize proteins and give them to each other which I love but also this idea that colonies are a sample organism for actual organisms is like is pretty wild and I love it yeah that's very cool yeah but of course but of course you know doing callbacks to your previous stories humans are doing this all the time apparently by touching things we well that's seeding the microbiome right but that's not helping with metabolism there's like kissing and stuff like this that takes place or families who are constantly touching the same stuff or sitting on couches or we use public transit so we're sort of not intentionally maybe doing this activity you have to be maybe much more intentional as an ant I don't think it's intentional enough when you're touching a pole in a subway station you might be seeding your microbiome but that's not what this is this is a metabolic process creating proteins that is then being donated to another organism or another cell so this is like a whole extra step that's like if I I mean it's more it's more akin to like breastfeeding that's what I was thinking it's making something yeah you're creating a product that you're sharing with another organism or another cell or another tissue right so imagine that happening at a colony level that's wild yeah yeah it's like they're their own little farms for proteins individually I mean this kind of harkens back to the the idea of ants as a colony and the colony as a single organism and not the ants not necessarily as individuals but as more complex aspects I guess communication organelles within the larger organism yeah and if you look at it that way it makes sense because then it's like it's just keeping the organism healthy right but then when you take it back to the colony level it's wild because I'm going to give up my life extending proteins to another individual that's wild mm-hmm you don't need all of them Blair no I need them all give them all to me why why why don't we need to extend these lives of ours I want to be ahead in a jar end of story what if there was a better alternative just saying yeah I take a better alternative just going straight to that one that's the preferred outcome listen how many years to take us to launch this telescope it's not even launched yet what really is going to happen in my lifetime I'll be lucky if I get ahead in a jar that's all I'm saying maybe you'll become I don't know a slave to a super intelligent AI I don't know it's possible it could be so lucky well at least we now know what that jar is going to be filled with spit? yes oh yeah that's awesome we've got fermented meat, vomit, honey and we've got aunt spit happy Thanksgiving hope you're listening to this while you're cooking on Thanksgiving Day enjoy Blair's really helping our appetites you're so welcome I'm just you know I'm preventing you from overeating that's all I'm doing this is This Week in Science thank you once again for joining us for this episode we hope that you are enjoying this show Justin what you got the missing link has been found the missing link well one of the many many many missing links that have been being revealed over the years this is a pretty big one though this is an international team of scientists from 17 institutions they have announced the discovery of a 2 million year old fossil vertebrae from an Australopithecus sediba lumbar vertebrae from the lower back portions of other vertebrae from that same individual found in Malapa South Africa together with some previously discovered vertebrae samples are now giving scientists the most complete picture to date of early hominid lower back construction the fossils were discovered in 2015 during excavations of a mining track way that was running next to a site of Malapa in the cradle of humankind world heritage site so they might need to expand borders the world heritage site past where the mine is although maybe not because the miners there obviously are on the lookout because that's where this was discovered Malapa is also the site where in 2008 professor Lee Burger from the University of Witwatersand discovered that the first remains of what became then the new species of ancient human Australopithecus sediba are relatively speaking new player in human ancestry although and also technically it wasn't discovered by Lee but his nine-year-old at the time son Matthew actually made the find and his father's like yeah yeah it's good yeah he probably found a bovine bone but I'm going to encourage the kid I'll go look at this thing he's just oh what whole new hominin discovery well done kid way to be observant so the fossils have been dated to approximately two million years before present and they're kind of stuck in a cement like rock it looked like it was going to be really hard to get it out of the breccia this thick rock so instead they did a CT scan at the University Witwatersand so they could see the thing complete detail without having to chip away at it they put that into a modeling system combined it with some of the other lumbar vertebrae they found at other sites that were sort of disparate what they ended up with was the best picture of a spine of an Australopithecus sediba that was seen and this is according to Professor Scott Williams University lead author of the paper the lumbar region is critical understanding the nature of bipedalism in our earliest ancestors and to understanding how well adapted they were to walking on two legs associated series of lumbar vertebrae are extraordinarily rare on the human fossil record or the hominin fossil record with really only three comparable lower spines being known for the whole of early African record with the complete spine they were able to model this and it looks like it's got a nice curve to the spine observed only in other the 1.6 million year old Turkana boy homo erectus which is much later and some modern humans have this kind of curvature as well the spine is now showing the signs of a bipedal walker which is fantastic that's amazing that's 2 million year old bipedal Australopithecus right in which we questioned whether or not this Australopithecus was bipedal we have thought that maybe it walks like an ape yeah because the other known features that we had a much better look at in Sudeba has been the upper body which is a very powerful upper body torso and is well suited for climbing in trees so the mixed adaptations across the skeleton of Sudeba now show is some sort of transitional or multifunctional nature of this being to be able to walk very much like a human and climb like a damn dirty ape so we have the closest thing that actually lived on the planet to the planet of the apes I guess and you said missing link is a touchy term but it is a bit because even though we've known about Australopithecus I cannot say these old names even though we've known about this hominid for a long time suddenly we're putting pieces together and going oh the walking and the climbing we had it all this was the beginning now you just have to find the missing link in between this and the one before and then the missing link in between that and the on the braided stream yes and the braided as the braided stream goes this then has enough similarity to and again a lot of detail needs to get filled in but has enough detail of the spine now to say this could be a modern human Neanderthal ancestor ancestor as opposed to a far flowing branch of that braided stream that this brings it very much closer to the modern human than anything we've seen before in lower spine so really this again we all got to give it up to 9 year old Matthew way to pay attention to what your pops is doing and go out there and make groundbreaking discovery and the second and last story that I got here is leading up to the COP26 summit the UN said existing policies would see Earth's average surface temperature raise a catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius too much above the pre-industrial level so any of the national leaders to scramble to appear to be doing something about it make the pledges make some actions try to get much closer to that Paris agreement of trying not to pass the 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming according to a new study it was actually written by several contributors to the UN report on climate change it is suggesting that UN reports on climate change maybe painting too rosy of a picture but this is from the one of the first author Ida Sognaes a senior scientist at Cicero Climate Research Center in Oslo the false precision to climate outcomes given during COP26 may lead countries to believe they are making good progress when the opposite may be true so an issue is the method that is being used to connect the dots to set the climate policies in the first place to the end of century temperatures so that you have the right choices on how to even approach this so interesting most projections are based on a model that will start with the desired outcome so they are starting with a cap on global warming of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius so they say that is the acceptable increase and then they work backwards from there to see what policy leavers need to be pulled or toggled in order to get there so in a way it is almost admitting a little bit of defeat and saying we are going to have to give up some ground going forward but here is the leavers that need to get pulled to get us there so this is called back casting approach experts suggest variables such as coal use renewable energy deforestation, reforestation all sorts of things agriculture and like to hit the end of century target so they can go around to their countries try to get them to sign up to meet those goals and to then pull those leavers so that they can achieve that and the new study research looked at the same data and the same policy pledges but instead of back casting it with the UN if we could we, will we, would we should we data scenarios the group forecasted where all of the newly agreed upon policy proposals of today that have been agreed upon now after this COP26 where that would actually lead us that seven seven different climate modeling groups using this technique to assess how all the voluntary pledges if kept 100% would play out by the year 2100 their estimates published in nature climate change had a pretty big range they went from 2.2 degrees Celsius to 2.9 degrees Celsius which is sort of already in line with some of the goals and worst case scenarios that the UN figures were putting out so that's a very mixed bag of information at 2.2 degrees Celsius you missed the target of 1.5 but hey you tried you got somewhat close and climate change is still really a severe issue by the end of the century and really bad things happened because of it but it's better you tried you got some ground accomplished you held off some of the ill effects the end of this though is a hellscape of endless droughts intense storms depleted water reservoirs rising floodwaters, crop failures collapsed food webs threats to most coastal cities which we'll need to take on a more subacquatic theme that's the one but I think the study is interesting because it doesn't pit what we normally used to seeing which is worst case scenarios and you know the if we do nothing drill baby drill smoke them if you got them held in a bucket but at least we're going to enjoy the ride for the next 100 years versus the other scenarios the particularly aggressive scenario where action is taken and checks every box of what we're capable of doing to prevent the negative outcome and here's what is possible and it just looks like it just looks at what we've already agreed to and that range of outcomes from where if we do what we say we're going to do this is the range of outcomes and it's still not it's still not great no it's not great where we are not meeting the needs and it was a lot of hand waving and the meeting was a big disappointment to a lot of scientists and environmentalists out there because the economists and the politicians are not willing to take the big leaps that need to be taken so hold them accountable everyone hold them accountable demand it I want to have many more good thanksgivings good twist giving episodes I do let's have many good happy ones not sad awful climate change forget all that for a moment just put it out of your mind just put it out of your mind put it out of your mind just ignore all the danger and I'm going to finish with a fun little quick story they discovered a three foot long mammoth tusk off the coast of California at a depth of about 10,000 feet who dropped it yeah well occasionally stuff just I guess wanders into the ocean but having done so it was very well preserved this is 10,000 feet you have a lot of high pressure you have a very cold temperature they think this is the best preserved tusk that they have in their collection now interesting they think it is a young female columbian mammoth which was a sort of hybrid of two other types of mammoth and possibly one that lived during the lower paleolithic era which spanned anywhere from 200,000 years ago back to 2.7 million years ago so this could be a very ancient or it could be a very very very very very ancient tusk and they expect that they're going to be able to get really good DNA from it really they don't think that the salt water would have encroached and done damage because that I would think would have really affected it they think it is going to be and I should say you don't know until you try well and I overspoken this a little bit or under reported a little they've extracted a bunch of DNA so they do have DNA they got it thinking that they would be able to and then they did now that's the part that we still have to see is how much coverage this actually is and how but they think they've got a really good quality sample that they can now use to bring back the Colombian mammoth of California so I think the big question here though is like how who why did they find a mammoth tusk they're like somebody's diving there's just submarine like how yeah good question so this is from our friends at the Monterey yeah yeah this is our group that's been going out there looking at the squid all the fun stuff been exploring the sea floor out there off the coast of Monterey the containers from the container ships yeah and this thing kind of looked like a log but was sort of missing any nodular sort of branching misformations a little too smooth and so initially they tried to pick it up and part of it broke off and they went back and got the rest of it yeah now they have it in the collection and have been doing DNA testing on it but that's such an amazing thing like I would never have thought to go look 10,000 feet into the water because because if this thing is hundreds of thousands of years old millions of years old it also means that we might be able to find other stuff there might be all kinds of dinosaurs there might be a tremendous collection of things that wanted into the ocean or yeah well there's going to be right there's going to be stuff that is close to shore because usually level rise changes right but then there's going to be stuff potentially further out that is carried out from washed out from massive rivers or from giant floods or from and then once it gets in there ocean currents how could they have been carried and yeah really interesting but it's just a happenstance they're just down there looking for other things on the bottom of the seafloor and they found a mammoth tusk and hopefully water wasn't yeah JJ water was lower back then hopefully it wasn't 10,000 feet though no that's quite a lot but the geological time scales California is a very plate tectonically active environment so it's not a surgery area though it's a sheer thing over there but yeah that's all there's like who knows I don't know enough about the geology off the coast to moderate it I tell you but there's a lot going on especially yeah Monterey Bay and outwards there's some there's a lot going on geologically and yeah current wise I put it there where come on it was supposed to be an April Fool's joke but it took you I know what it was you found it and were like oh they could probably get this and then bring back the mammoth and you're like no go into the ocean I thought I'd hidden it forever just tossed it alright this is This Week in Science I have a couple of stories before we end the show you know what seabirds they're not turkeys true they're not turkeys seabirds really really like to pair or life or at least for as long as the breeding season is very monogamous it allows a certain amount of consistency and accentuates reproductive possibilities of reproductive success especially if one partner is staying on the nest and the other is going out foraging for food and bringing it back and if you find a good partner it's like I'm gonna keep this partner for a season because that's a very loose definition of monogamy yeah we're monogamous right so bird monogamy is this very interesting thing where it's like they could be monogamous for one season and we are one to two clutches of chicks together or they can be monogamous for much longer periods of time albatrosses are famous for being monogamous for life many seabirds who do spend lots of time out over open ocean are monogamous for multiple breeding seasons so divorce doesn't happen very often once they meet their mate that's it they're like this is it we're gonna be together and if they are going to break up that breakup doesn't usually happen unless they've really not succeeded at reproducing they tried they weren't able to reproduce and maybe the females like okay I'm out can't do this or if they had the chicks hatched but they didn't they didn't live very long they didn't survive same kind of thing it's like okay I'm done I'm gonna go find another mate it's your fault but it doesn't happen very often and some researchers just published a paper on a number of species that they they looked at and this study looked at why kind of these these seabird couples split up and in the study they found that out of the multiple species that they looked at it was only one species that had a high divorce rate and it was the kidawakes kidawakes have a high divorce rate of about 20% and so in the wake populations they about 20% of the couples do split up but it's very likely if a couple loses an egg or a young chick the other birds they couldn't even assess and this was some petrels and and other birds that they looked at they couldn't even assess their divorce rate because they didn't there were no divorces it just didn't happen it had such a low level so for these for these birds that they looked at 4 out of the 5 species they had 1.9%, 3.3%, 2.5% and 0% and this is for Brunyx Guillemot Glaucus gull Antarctic Petrel and South Polar Skua and the kidawake was at about 19.1 so near 20% if the kidawakes were able to raise their young past 15 days of age they had a success they're more likely to stay together so the point here is that they're emphasizing that there are some really interesting temporal variations that need to be taken into account in understanding partner fidelity in seabirds and that goes into the next study there's another study about albatrosses that was also just published in the proceedings of the Royal Society B and in the study of these albatrosses they knowing that albatrosses rarely divorce in the wild these birds stick together for life they want to determine if it was just the offspring death rate or the reproduction failure rate that would lead to their divorces or if it was a bigger environmental issue whether environmental stress actually leads to marital stress and so in looking at the albatrosses they did find that reproductive stress does break up marriages in these birds but they also found that when water temperatures increase and they looked at a period of time from 2004 to 2019 in the Falkland Islands looking at nearly 2900 breeding attempts in 424 females they looked at a bunch of bird breakups in these females and they determined that in some years the divorce rate was lower than 1% they were like divorces were happening all the time but when the average water temperatures went up reaching a maximum of about 7.7 they had this divorce rate of 7.7% in 2017 when the water temperatures were the highest and so water temperatures lead to a change in phytoplankton availability so fewer nutrients in general and this can affect not just how much the birds themselves can eat and forage but can lead to changes in how healthy they look and so maybe your mate has gotten enough food for the children for you everything but they come back and they look awful and so the female on the nest is like what you look like you're sick I can't hang out with you you're done and they might be making choices based on these environmental factors that aren't necessarily indicative of the ability to raise the young and that's a great point because if anybody has been complaining about the high gas prices the supply chain disruption over the last couple years you can't get the present one it's hard to get a good enough size turkey that's what global warming is doing it's hard to get the right form on the planet yes so it's not just it's not just us being upset about these things it's albatrosses are having marital strife as a result of these climate issues as well and that's one of the big points of the study is that as climate change continues these environmental disruptions are going to occur and they might lead to populations that are potentially already on the brink with a low birth rate falling apart and the populations really declining because the breeding pairs will make poor breeding decisions because of the environmental stresses they're going to break up not breed not find a mate, another mate potentially and that's going to add to the downward spiral of some of these populations that are potentially on the edge to begin with I'm feeling the same thing happens with people yeah they're not that different from a seabird when it comes to the resources and the happiness of a relationship I liked how you brought that up Justin because that's really not that different we all just worry about how we're going to put food on the table are we going to keep the lights on what's going on around here I do wish I was as fabulous as an albatross though those that I make up is just it's perfect it's a beautiful curve of the beak if you are not watching and you are listening to this I demand you stop what you're doing if you're driving you pull over and you google you google albatross and you look at google images right now and you tell me that they are not the most fabulous bird you've ever seen they are so beautiful they're smooth feathers they're so smooth yes their eye lines gorgeous birds gorgeous birds where relationships are very important to them and relationships are very important to us here and I want everyone to live their best lives done so this Thanksgiving this twist giving our gift to you is to remind you not to do thanks taking but to really do Thanksgiving you want to remind you Thanksgiving is the reason for this holiday season here in the United States and researchers at Ohio State University have published a study in brain behavior and immunity in which they looked at 1,054 participants in the national survey of midlife development in the United States they were healthy adults between 34 and 84 years of age and they had to complete a questionnaire measuring social integration so were they married living with somebody how often do they talk with people how often are they social and going to different events and activities and they also completed answered questions responding to how much they thought they could rely on their family and their spouse if they needed help and the key to this is that they also asked how much they said they were available to support friends and family and spouses two years later they had them come back and take blood tests and test for an inflammatory marker interleukin 6 IL-6 and they found that those individuals for all other factors age and other inflammation issues, education health behaviors, medications etc the individuals that offered social support to others had the lower levels of inflammation so the take home message from this is that it's not just having social circles and social connections that you think you can rely on but it's also the giving and the back and forth support where you can support others can support you and it's not just feeling like people are leaning on you all the time but that there is a lot of support in all directions they said this relationship was specifically found more to exist more in women than in men and that it may be more important from a social stress perspective for women to feel as though they could give support as well as take support I can see just knowing you have a support system reducing your stress having an emotional safety net makes everything feel less terrible it does, yeah they're saying that safety net has always been important this is a little bit more nuanced to our understanding of that safety net and willingness to give and receive social support it is a safety net and it's part of being a safety net and for this Thanksgiving this twist giving celebration we hope that we are offering you good science and entertainment week after week so that you keep coming back we hope that we support you in your curious pursuits you all certainly support us yes you definitely support us out there for sure yeah but that's all I have that's all she wrote for this twist giving episode anyone have anything else no do that thing that Blair suggested look up your somebody suggested look up your local tribe find out who they are send them some thanks thanks to one and all now you have the time and the space to take a moment of grace this twist giving thank you for listening we hope that you enjoyed the show shout outs to fada for helping with social media and show notes gored for manning the chat room keeping things above board ID for for recording the show Rachel for assisting and editing and I would love to thank our amazing Patreon sponsors who do continue to support this show thank you for your giving thank you too Kent Northcote Rick Loveman, Pierre Velazar, Baralfi Figueroa John Ratnaswamy, Coral Kornfeld Karen Tauzy, Woody MS, Andrea Bissette Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn-Vigard Chefstead, Hal Snyder, Donathan Styles aka Don Stilo, John Lee, Ali Coffin Maddie Perrin, Gaurav Sharma, Don Mendes Steven Albron, Daryl Maishak Kevin Reardon, Noodles Jack Brian Carrington, Matt Face John McKeigh, Greg Riley Mark Hessinflow, Jean Tellier Steve Leesman, A.K.A. Zima Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrapp Dana Pearson, Brent Richard Brendan Minnish, Johnny Gridley Kevin Railsback, Rami Day Flying Out, Christopher Dreyer Artyom, Greg Briggs, John Atwood Hare, Arizona Support Aaron Lieberman, Rudy Garcia Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis Dr. Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp E.O. Kevin Parachan, Eric Luthan Steve DeBell, Bob Calder, Marjorie Paul Disney, David Simmerly Patrick Pecker, Robert Tony Steele Ulysses Adkins, and Jason Roberts Thank you for all of your support on Patreon And if you are interested in supporting us on Patreon you can head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link On next week's show We will be back Broadcasting Wednesday 8pm Pacific Time or 5am Thursday morning Central European Time Live from our YouTube and Facebook channels and from twist.org Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast? Perhaps while you drive Just be sure to pull over when I tell you to google image something Don't do it while you're driving But you can listen to us as a podcast so that you can do all that You can do that wherever podcasts are found Just search for this Week in Science If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe as well For more information on anything you've heard here today show notes, links to the stories we talked about will be available on our website www.twisttwis.org and you can also sign up for a newsletter if that's your inclination Yes, you can also contact us directly email curson at curson at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or me Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org or me Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist T-W-I-S in the subject line Your email will be spam filtered into a honeycomb full of meat honey Oh, gosh You can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at Dr. Kiki at Jacksonfly and at Blair's Menagerie We love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview with Haiku that comes to you in the night Please let us know We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from the show remember It's all in your head Happy Twist Giving It doesn't want to go This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science It's the end of the world So I'm setting up shop Got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in I'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand This week science is coming your way So everybody listen I use the scientific method for all that it's worth And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air Cause it's This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news But I say it may not represent your views But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just get understand But we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from Look what's here Look what's here Look what's here It's the after show I was like why can't she hear me I was muted Yeah I know you were muted How do they look? Up close Do they look good? They do The emu is one of my favorites I like that one a lot People will have to get the calendars of your single line drawing art Look at that mossy frog Mossy frog That mossy frog Calendars are here again The art For those people who are Patreon supporters at higher levels The original art for these is done It's a very shiny The shininess doesn't come out as much in the art and the calendars I would like It's still very silvery But the original is more shiny The original is multi layered I look forward to shipping those out The originals will be fun Tony Frogmouth So cute Tony Frogmouth is one of my favorites also All these great holidays Special science days in the calendar Look at this snapping turtle Justin's back The Tony Frogmouth is my favorite bird It's up there So good, large mouth compared to the size of its head We got it at the sacrament of zoo Used to go see it there Oh, I like this one I'm going to get a calendar for a gift Calendar for you That's a happy sound Oh, those are amazing Yeah They're looking good I love this guy Amazing, how did you do that? It's three dimensional It looks like one of those That's the painting I'm the most proud of Wow, yeah, that is incredible Oh, well done, Blair Original art, well done Blair It's gorgeous I put the extinct animal on September Like I always do for Species Requiem Day on September 1st I love this one because there's a little bug over there You have the velvet ant, but then it's like I'm going to go eat that thing over there Yeah Hey Fred, just over here Over here, oh yeah And then the leafy sea dragon Wow Yeah, calendars Everyone, they're here And they will be sent out It's very exciting Although I'm really weirded out by the fact that it's so close to 2022 What happened? Yeah, the last two years didn't barely exist I'm still writing 2020 on checks Wait, can I see the cover again at the calendar? Oh, that's very cool too Yeah Nice Yeah, I need a copy, you're going to have to send it to the international mail That's going to take a while, but I will do that It'll take a while, what do you mean take a while It's... The leaves blue Hold on Wait a minute Grouchy Gamer, are you trying to make a colorblindness joke? I'm messing Okay, I got to go I know Rick Loveman who writes checks, I know I'm kidding It was a multi-layered joke that didn't fall well I got to roll I got to roll out You have to roll out But I will see the both of you next week Yes, I actually I will not be at the show at the show on Oh, guess what? December I'm not going to be here next week Oh, you're not? You're not going to be here next week Okay, well I will be here I will not be here on the 15th Okay, so we're going to I'm not going to see you two next week I'll see one of you the week after that No, you'll see both of us the week after that Oh, wait a minute Maybe not Are you also not going to be here on the 15th? Hold on, I need to see a calendar Hey, you know what we should do We should have a meeting where we figure things out Oh wait, December 1st That's a special day Okay, got that Okay, got it Oh, is something planned for that day? Oh, maybe Justin has something planned Oh, it's potentially That's the day we think it might happen It's scheduled Okay, that's what I wasn't sure about Okay, got it Okay, and then there's the 8th And then there's the 15th And then there's the 22nd Which we have off I'll be here The 22nd is no show I think that's the one Yes, the 22nd Oh, awesome We give ourselves one Off, I know But why that one? That's a weird day to have It was the one closest Based on like, day before the day before The day before, this doesn't make any sense Just picking one, was it like The 22nd or the 29th I think we agreed for the next year Not for this time Last year for this year Yeah, for this year, when I made the calendar Every year, when we make the calendars We pick the day But anyway I will not be here on the 15th No Blair, okay, no Justin Next Wednesday No Blair on the 15th And Justin, you're like I'll just do the show by myself if I have to But I think you guys will show up I'm pretty sure you will There's nothing wrong with having a week off For our listeners as well Yeah, they don't want it Let's do a poll JG says a Justin only show If we do a poll And most of our audience Wants us to take the week off We need to stop doing the show That's really There's nothing wrong with taking a week off All podcasts Take weeks off All of them All of them do All of the other ones do Yeah, the reputable ones Sponsors Oh, yeah, again The reputable ones do We don't have that option Blair Until we become reputable I'm taking that option Everyone says no time off No time off, thank you very much No time off I'm taking that option for my mental health Goodbye You're gonna just keep taking those days But I'll still try to be here It'll be the first time already You're not gonna be You're not gonna be on the show all month Next month Justin What are you talking about? I'm here all the time He's gonna be taking some time off Taking off I'll be finding some Interesting guest Hosts For the 22nd No, not for the 22nd Justin, you have a reason To take that week off You should take it No, there's nothing going on the 22nd There's nothing going on in your life That might require you to take some time No On the 22nd of December In January Oh, you're saying January Oh, I thought you were saying December 1st There's something else happening You got the wrong day Blair Something else happening on December 1st Yeah, yeah, you won't see me Anymore after next year I'll be gone forever Okay, that's what I thought was Then I was confused, yes You're gonna be taking some time in January Maybe, maybe not You're insane I don't know How things work You're roommate on the phone See how she feels about it Let's see how she feels about these things I don't even have myself a new co-host Send an episode back from the future Exactly We'll do a replay Of the twist DTNS crossover episode Because that one was awesome But was it really You know Awesome I remember being completely jet lagged For that one I thought it was a great episode We're so laggy I'm not fishing The UFO is not taking me Home To the home planet But I am having visitors From the home planet Okay Alright We know how to use Calendars We know how to use messaging Systems like the texts And like the emails Yes We can do these things I gotta go Hold on I had to sneeze I was just trying to advertise the fact that This January Will mark Ten years Ten years of Blair For me being on the show Wow A decade of Blair Yeah, we're gonna have to have a Ten-year Blair anniversary I need somebody to go through And get like Video clips of Blair And do a montage I would love to just see A montage of The Blair's Animal Corner introductions How they changed It's not so much the change It would just be a constant String Invertebrate sex And abject horror You mean like teasers Teasers Yeah, yeah, yeah The whole thing is too long But if you do just a montage Of just like a four hour Teaser of Blair Animal Corner It would be amazing It could be really good Yeah A grouchy gamer Remember voting sort of To keep Blair apart Oh yeah, you took a week off For mental health or whatever The heck you said it was worth And then we had a vote We should bring you back But I think that was Just earlier this year Wasn't I just like a month ago? Yeah When is the ten-year anniversary Of the 24 hour stream That was like it was a 21 hour stream Yeah, it was December 2012 So next year Oh, so next year is the ten-year Anniversary of that Oh wow Ten years after the end of the world I would suggest that we do it again Except I'm much more Tired now As a person I think I'd have a much better run If I was doing it from here Starting at 5 in the morning It would be a lot easier To do a 21 hour show Than it was for starting it at 8 o'clock at night That was the hard starting point To begin with For a marathon show We didn't start at 8 o'clock at night We didn't No, you didn't We started when it was night time for me And I was in Israel So I was 10 hours ahead No, it was like in the morning Because Because it ended at like 7 or 8 in the morning It ended Or like 9 or something like that So we started At like noon Or 10 or noon The day on one day On one day and yeah Oh yeah So when did I start drinking? Right away No, I don't remember Anthony, you made an ad for it What time did we start? I don't remember Are we doing a 24 hour new year show this year? No Oh, that's a great idea No Oh, I did do a dirty cell phone test But not on Yeah, my cell phone was dirty I grew bacteria I gotta go You have to go Good night, Justin Good night, Blair Good morning, Justin Blair wants to go to bed also Everybody's gotta go Because it's twist giving And people have to go do things So say the thing, Justin Say good night, Blair Good night, Blair Good night, Justin Good morning, Justin Good night Good night Good night, Kiki Good night, everyone Thank you for joining us again We hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week Great Thanksgiving If you're celebrating it in the United States Happy twist giving And many, many more We'll see you next week Take care, be safe, everyone Stay curious