 Maybe that's what we should just change the show to just hey, everybody. We're just gonna talk for a while I'll be telling you about my day Let me tell you how I'm feeling, okay? How are you feeling out there? I hope you're feeling great Feeling fine This is this week in science. We are live right now going to record this podcast thing here on this video thing Streaming out to you wherever you are YouTube Facebook, Twitch, where are you? Hello? Good to see you this is the live show and Tell your friends if they want the edited version they should subscribe to the podcast you should subscribe to the podcast too because you know It's nice to have things in your ears sometimes Are we ready to start this show friends? I'm ready. You're ready. Everybody say a couple words Just a couple words Blair You are off-center tonight Jumping on me what happened to half your head Sadie behave This is how I talked to my child I was gonna do a science show. I'm sorry. Let's do a science show here everyone I think I plugged in the things and have gotten it ready. I'm quiet again I swear I haven't changed anything since last week. So That's weird, but now I've turned it up a little bit turning it up. Am I all right now? Turned it up staring at me Sadie Sadie Spooky Am I louder? Yeah, is it good louder or too louder? Slightly too loud. I'm here. Okay. I don't want to be too louder. I want to be right on actually that is good keep talking Okay, is that good? Are we good right there? Is it good louder? Yes Great. Thank you very much. Okay, Blair. Are you louder? Testing one two three I will even out the voices later for the podcast, but let's try to be even A lot of work. I like girl Sharma before we start I have to I did hear this in the like two seconds of debate like recap that I watched I am speaking That depends so I just said to Sadie It's my turn now. I am speaking And we are speaking about science Ready to start this show? Yeah, let's do it. Okay in three a two This is Is Twists this week in science episode numbers 794 recorded on wednesday october 7th 2020 We are speaking scientifically I'm dr. Kiki and tonight we will fill your head with anxiety alternatives and prizes, but first This cool hammer disclaimer disclaimer this past week We saw a great example of the power that science and public health care can have Over an otherwise hopeless situation an obese 74 year old man with covet 19 on government supplied health care Was taken to a non-profit hospital which entrusted his care to cutting-edge medical science He was treated by doctors on the federal taxpayer payroll And survived his otherwise certain death sentence and then still contagious went outside removed his mask and multiple times waved to people While we appreciate this gesture of showing strength after an injury The thumbs up of the injured player being carted off the football field always puts the crowd at ease with the sense of He's going to be okay, or not. It's really too soon to know But now guilt-free we can go on enjoying this week in science coming up next A good science to you Kiki and Blair And a good science to you too, Justin and Blair and everyone else out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science. Thank you for joining us and spending some time with us We are going to speak about science tonight We have a bunch of fun science to tell you about I have stories about oh those prizes. Yes. Yes. It is Nobel prize time. No bells are in the house So we're gonna talk about those for a moment. I also have Our or back to a covet update. I've got a bunch of updates on things related to covet 19 Yay, I'm sure you're excited about that and also For those of us who suffer from it A tinnitus shock Yeah, yeah, Justin. What do you have? Uh, I brought some covety stuff too. Uh, I also have a squid bot Squid bot Squid bot, uh, dino Go to squid bot. Can I get a some? It's impossible. Uh, find a dinosaur skin sensors sensory organs in the skin and bedded into their skin. Uh, COVID Lung jelly What's that about? Yeah And uh, hey What should you actually be wearing a mask? People apparently are still asking. Yeah, the answer is yes. Yeah, we're gonna talk about that. Yep Also, uh, apparently this I don't know if somebody else brought this but the the the cdc saying Can COVID spread through the air question mark? I brought it. Yep. Okay. Yeah, the answer is also yes But we'll talk about that too. Yeah. Yeah, COVID update comes later Tease tease tease. We're not teasing No, this is some of this is why is this being found out? Uh, six months after it was found out We'll find out we'll find out Blair. What's in the animal corner? Oh my goodness. I have snake skin I have decoy turtle eggs and then uh as a quick story. I have a little uh insight to humans and the seasons And the seasons Yeah For every season Wait, there is a reason Yeah, and the story is there might not be four of them Okay Yeah, yeah That was efficient Yeah, are we done now? No, we're not done. We're just getting started. That was just letting people know what we're gonna be talking about It's time for us to actually talk about the science now As we jump into it. Hey, I want to say happy birthday to Kyra H in the chat room I see that there is a Kyra Kyra. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name youtube chat room Happy birthday. Are there any other birthdays out there? You could say happy birthday on the show. It's fun And I just want to remind everyone that if you have not yet subscribed to this weekend science You can find us all sorts of places where good science and podcasts are found youtube facebook On stitcherspreakerspotifyradio.com tune in google apple We are there look for this week in science You can also find information about the show at twist twis. All right Time for science. Are you ready for some Nobel prizes? We we did not win again again. Yeah, we're not looking over No, they were robbed This week is nobel prize week where the royal swedish academy of sciences decides out of their nominees who they are going to award monetary and esteemed reputational awards to within the scientific literary and international political communities science came first this week on monday the 2020 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine was awarded jointly to harvey j altar michael huffton and charles m rice for the discovery of hepatitis c Vaxi uh, excuse me hepatitis c virus Thanks to their discovery highly sensitive blood tests for the virus are now available and these have essentially eliminated post transfusion hepatitis in many parts of the world greatly improving global health So the the fact that they discovered there was a virus responsible for hepatitis c They were able to identify that virus and now We can Find it in blood samples. It's pretty pretty amazing. It's one of those big things that's helped human health around the world On tuesday the royal swedish academy of sciences decided to award the nobel prize in physics with one half to roger pennrose For the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity And the other half jointly to rinehard genzel and andria gez For the discovery of a super massive compact object at the center of our galaxy And I believe That andria gez is one of only two women To have so far won a nobel prize in physics. I was gonna say yes Um and then today the 2020 nobel prize in chemistry Is awarded to immanuel scharpentier and jennifer a dowdna for the development of a method for genome editing since their discovery uh and uh Of the crisper cast nine genetic scissors in 2012 their use has exploded the genetic scissors have taken the life sciences into a New epoch and in many ways are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind according to the nobel prize committee We have talked so much about crisper cast nine and it is really unusual for major awards in the the nobel prizes to go to People shortly after the discoveries. I mean this is eight years since dowdna and sharp entier um developed the crisper cast nine System into a gene editing technology It's only eight years and you know similar to What was it the uh last year? The uh discovery of gravitational waves It's very very rare that Oh, no, it wasn't discovery of gravitational waves. It was a higgs boson that was awarded But it's really very rare For these awards to be given so shortly after because they're it's usually decades for the impact of a research discovery to be felt So I think it just speaks to how incredible it is Yeah, and the higgs boson was 40 50 70 years on a piece of paper somewhere in the like in the making Yeah, it took them that long to to to find the evidence of it to get the technology to the point Where we could actually be looking at this but with crisper. Yeah, it got rapidly deployed Uh and is being utilized in biotech uh and industry in all sorts of places uh farms across the industries right now I mean it's it's absolutely went into play and was improved upon and there's many many versions of it and it's Useful right now Yeah, there were gene editing top technologies before crisper cast nine We had the zinc finger nucleases. We had you know these other technologies But it's really crisper cast nine that caused gene editing to just have a technological explosion Yeah, it's sort of like the first tabletop personal computer that did more than have you put it together and program it to Blink of light like it actually works does does work for you. I should say yeah, and if you are Okay, so Andrea gues the physics Nobel Well-deserved everybody's excited about it. But if you want some scientific soap opera drama You need to check out the commentary around the web about Doudna and Charpentiers Charpentiers award because people are coming out of the woodwork to try and complain that Many other researchers before them whose research did actually lead to the this development of this technology Should have gotten the award It's I think this is the first time two women have jointly shared a Nobel Prize with no men involved whatsoever And it's it's fascinating to watch the the commentary around it within the scientific community also Um since Doudna and Charpentier There was Eric Holder from the Broad no, no, yeah from the Broad Institute at Harvard Wrote a piece several years back that virtually attempted to Take the Berkeley team out of the history of crisper cast nine and put it into the ball park of Harvard And so that Harvard and Harvard did end up getting the Harvard team of feng shang and the Broad Institute did end up getting the crisper cast nine Patent that the u.s. Patent office awarded. So it's very interesting that the actual novel went to these Berkeley researchers Very interesting. It's drama soap opera Political circus if you're into that kind of stuff, you can find all sorts of stories on the web about it Yeah, and you know, there's always going to be some Uh credible uh to to any of these things you know science is not one two one lab operation This is all co-independent Uh based off of this find here that find there and actually if if uh a dozen different labs look at the same thing Long enough they should come up with the same answer Relatively, you know, at least they they're working with the same reality At the very least so you know, we look back at the discovery of dna to begin with There were dozens of people Uh who could have been credited with that discovery Uh, and then there was like, you know three or four That really should have gotten credited with it and then there was two guys that got credit for it that really just showed up at the last minute and Stole or borrowed or put together ideas from other people however you want to sit And actually did the publication So, yeah, it's uh, it's just picking out one or two individuals as it's always tricky, but uh, you know, that's what they do I have been informed that this is the fourth women the female physics prize mary curie Curie in 1903 geppert meyer in 1963 and barbara strickland in 2018 So I misspoke when I said it was the second it's the fourth Still not many still substantial. Yeah So only the only the second one in this century Yes, and the I think the only one, uh For black holes, maybe Maybe we'll think all right, justin let's move away from these prizes and the scientific All right, so what you got if you've got if you want to do the video on this one if you can find it This is pretty fantastic. It's engineers at university of california san diego have built a squid bot This is a untethered so semi-autonomous self propelling With jet by generating jets of water through the motion of its body robot that can Move around by itself Basically, it's got its own power source on board. It can carry cameras It can go and do some underwater exploration Uh, they detail the work in recent issue of bioinspiration and biomimetics Essentially, this is quotey voice of michael t talli one of the paper senior authors Essentially, we recreated all the features that squids use for high speed swimming Tally is at the uh department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at uc san diego This is the first untethered robot that can generate jet pulses for rapid locomotion like the squid You can achieve these jet pulses by changing its body shape which improves swimming efficiency One of the important things about this uh squid bot is that it is mostly soft materials Uh, and and therefore I can go into like corals and jellies and stuff like this and investigate them without damaging Anything while it is there It has a a high speed A high speed. Are you ready? Half a mile an hour Oh, no, I don't know how to say I didn't know how to translate it to knots. It's half a mile an hour Can you hear me? Yeah Okay, my uh when my browser window is not responding google chrome not responding So I'm not even to show the video. I'm well go look up, uh, sandio Uh, you see sandiego squid bot It's a pretty cool little robot So one mile per hour is point six knots So that means that it is about four point four three knots Yes, for you for you who are more familiar Yeah, the nautical and does it count underwater? Or is that just on the surface do things travel in knots underwater? How fast is traveling knots, right? Do they travel in knots? I don't know. I've never been on it. I would assume unless it's par sex. I don't know Is he gonna be par sex? Um, that's very cool. I immediately thought about how long until I can get a remote controlled, uh squid bot Because you know, they brought drones, right like drones were scientific or um military technology for a long time And they were very very expensive and now you can get a drone like at target Yeah, so that would actually be I think a lot of fun to go, uh take a take a squid drone Into the ocean and go exploring a bay that would be really an amazing fun thing to do I love it and then And then yeah, can you imagine all the uh, all the old bikes and sunk ships and things people will start finding on their own There's I didn't bring it, but there's a uh, uh a warrior a looks like a very wealthy prominent warrior found in Uh, found in England. I think in west six or somewhat. No, it's not west six It's uh, the marlowe area. I don't know what it is exactly But they was found by people who were running metal detectors. This thing was close enough to the surface that like the old Uh, corroding swords and coins or whatever was underground set off their metal detector And so they got this they started to dig it up and realized like whoa There's a lot more here than just like an old coin or something So they called the the archaeologists units and they came over there and invested and they've got this amazing post roman You know like a 14 was a 1600 year old find uh, that just Run in a metal detector. See you start getting people out there with the drones. They're finding sites in south america They're finding like outlines of things. You got satellite imagery that found the potential, uh Scandinavian settlement and newfoundland and then you got uh, yeah, we'll get squids. Oh, there it is Yeah, look at that thing. It's cool That's kind of it for those of you who uh are just listening. We are watching that video that we suggested you go find But if you can get people kind of like a finger trap Yeah In and out and in and out. How do we get all the hosts going like finger traps? And so this this may I mean the design is pretty intricate, but uh, you know the the The parts are like most of the parts that they made for this aside from the elasticy stuff was 3d printed You know the the big trick is to encase things like the batteries and stuff like that. So they're completely waterproof Uh, but this might be something Could that could even be made at home as a diy project Very cool But we're gonna start finding people exploring lakes and rivers and areas and going after their own shipwrecks in the futures This is I think this is looking like Tahoe guys. Just don't look in Lake Tahoe Is that is that true? Do we ever determine whether it was true or not? There's like Still down there with their their ties floating in the cold cold water. Yeah, I don't know Speaking of going underwater and going exploring the uh, do you remember our our interview with chad king from Noah and the uh, Monterey bay national wildlife refuge, they are going to be Diving going back to the whale fall and the whale garden the octopus garden this week the octopus garden and you can actually follow their follow their trip and There is a website a story a story map website with that you can follow along in their exploration They are going to be live streaming through nautilus live uh between october today october 7th to the 16th and They are yeah, so you can go to nautilus live and they have a youtube channel and you can Watch the nautilus dives and actually see what they're seeing as they are going underwater Yeah, that was it. It was a whole step that they took Uh, that was probably one of the more difficult things is to get that live feed and have it all set up so that they could Be sharing it in real time, which I think is amazing Yeah, so maybe this tomorrow and uh through next week they will be Finding more octopus gardens. They're going to one completely unexplored area of the uh, Of that underwater national preserve Which will be cool Yo Blair, yes, what you got? Oh, you know, it's pumpkin spice season. Um, no Stop, what is that? No, we're not, no Hey, listen, I don't agree with it, but it's you can't help but notice It's just oh But anyway a study from stanford university medical center Looked at what the seasons mean actually inside a human body And they have come to the conclusion that there's actually only two seasons as far as our body is concerned not four Of course, we've cut the calendar into four perfectly even segments With our four seasons, but looking at molecular data from more than a hundred participants They fat over I think a four-year study lost track of that particular. Yes four-year study Um, they found that there isn't a predictable pattern of change four times a year But there is a predictable pattern of change inside your body Twice a year They saw more than a thousand molecules ebb and flow on an annual basis With the two pivotal time periods late spring early summer and late fall early winter So it's really it's when this if you think about it, it's when if you're somewhere that has seasons That's when they're there's going to be the dramatic shift That's going to be the ice melt into summer and that's going to be when things start to get very cold fall to early winter so um The big giant caveat on this study the reason I actually brought I think it's very funny Is that all of their participants were in northern and southern california so um Not really representative of what seasons are across the country. So I have questions as far as that's concerned But they don't they think that it's you're moving Oh, yeah, I was going to say I don't even really think that northern and southern california, especially southern california even has seasons No, and san francisco certainly doesn't like even you go kind of An hour away from san francisco. There's definitely seasons, but in the specific little base in there where the san francisco bay is It's it really never changes Uh, yeah here in north northern europe. I believe it's just spring and winter Yeah But so their claim is That even though it's northern southern california Since they saw that it wasn't really Mapped perfectly over weather conditions They think it's more complicated and therefore would track across the country. That's like a big Leap and obviously some study needs to be done here But they specifically looked at things that are related to human health and this could be really helpful I'm turning this quick story into a very long story, but Yeah, basically inflammatory markers Or in hypertension are things that Ebbed and flowed in the season. So this is something that if there really is two seasons to the human body This is something that we could use Track immunity inflammation cardiovascular health metabolism microbiome and more So that the kind of treatment you get and the type of medical care that you get could be season dependent And what's more? studies medical studies Could be season dependent and you'd have to make sure even if they're shorter term medical studies That you would do them across seasons, which I think is a really important point I think Really important, especially like right now we're talking about Developing a new vaccine, you know this vaccine for covet 19 and they are accepting people for study but if their bodies are In clinical trials during the summer to early fall months Yet the vaccine might be given to people after the studies are done in The winter to early spring months late winter to early spring. Like that's a completely opposite physiological paradigm. So that's that could Potentially affect efficacy of vaccines in resulting in an immune response Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I don't fire Well, I mean the microbiome was different seasonally. So there's that right, but that also makes sense because your diet changes right But also immune responses were different and inflammatory responses were different. So It does seem like that could have an impact on health care Yeah, that's really interesting Yeah Oh just these stories more and more. Oh look, we have to think of ourselves as animals living in an ecosystem who evolved Yeah Yeah, we might not migrate but we still have seasonal change That's amazing Yep, really interesting very interesting and yeah, let's do studies like this The fact that they looked in california and they saw people with these responses. Yes, you need to look other places, but Like they said you probably you might not really see much other difference. It's probably just A human thing. Yeah Hmm. Is it is it exactly opposite in the southern hemisphere? That's what they only did in california. We have to find out gotta find out All right. Well speaking about planet earth um Some planets might be better than earth But no planet exists as far as i'm aware Earth might not be the perfect planet that so many people think it is researchers Yeah As an earthling I completely Disagree, but uh go ahead with your your faulty premise I will it's not my premise talk to the scientists about it Researchers publishing in the journal astrobiology say they have identified 24 Super habitable exoplanets. What makes a super habitable? Yes, what's habitable? Super habitable. That's right. And super habitable means better than earth With characteristics that might make them better for the evolution of complex life than our planet Even though we talk about our planet as a goldilocks planet there might be variations on that goldilocks theme that Make somewhere in the middle ground flexible. It doesn't have to be just one particular Earth-like planet. It could be a planet that is slightly bigger slightly older slightly warmer Slightly wetter and these are the four characteristics that they really used they had a number of them But the researchers said that if an exoplanet had one at least one of those four Characteristics then they categorized it as a super habitable exoplanet Now the reason that they're looking at Super habitable exoplanets is that if we just tie ourselves down to looking for planets just like earth We might miss signs of life on other planets around the universe. And so using data from some of these surveys looking at little planets transiting stars in other Galaxies in other systems solar systems. They looked at planets orbiting g-stype type stars that are very much like our sun They also looked at longer lived k type stars. These stars are are brown dwarfs usually and cooler than stars like our sun, but they live instead of just like 10 billion years they can live 70 or 80 billion years these stars are extremely long lived Which would potentially give a lot of time for life to evolve become complex and You know, who knows where it could go from there. So they started looking at those k type stars as well and they found 24 Super super super exoplanets For us to look at later Assuming life needs the same things that we right making those assumptions. Yes That will always be my sticking point Right. I mean the basics. They're just looking for you know, warm wet gravity Orbiting a star You know Yeah, we'll see Okay, speaking about Planets and evolution. Okay, Justin. You had a dinosaur story. Yes. I have a story has nothing to do with planets evolution Oh, wait, maybe it does. Uh, this is paleontologists. Uh They have discovered the pot looks like evidence of sensory capabilities in some fossilized skin of 155 million year old carnivorous dinosaur So the fossil is touchy feely It is it's uh, so this is uh Jura venator I'm really sure we didn't mean to Uh, anyway, this is the name of the dinosaur comes from the Jurassic of Germany and is perfectly preserved from nose to tail Including remains of its scaly skin and other soft tissues No way This is we've had it. We've seen a few of these where you can actually I mean where we could actually see color Uh of the scales that were on the dinosaur because it was still that well preserved This is dr. Phil bell paleo science research center university new england and our del australia is leading research of the study In in the study of dinosaur skin few people paying much attention to dinosaur skin Which I have to say is true But then how often does that come up time today really? Uh, because it assumed that they are just big scaly reptiles. He said But when I looked closely at the scales on the side of the tail I kept finding these little ring like features That didn't make sense. They were certainly Unlike other dinosaur scales Researchers found that the ring like features were similar To something that is seen and expected on the scales of modern crocodiles These nodes called uh helping. I into give Integumentary sense organs Are responsive responsive to touch chemistry and temperature information providing crocodiles with important sensory information from their surroundings so it's a Possible that this dinosaur had sensors in its tail that could tell it Under water When when and where prey was So then the question of course is uh, yes, is this a coa coa Covergent evolution. Is this something that could have been inherited from dinosaurs and passed down to what became crocodile I don't know that these things are even related So in my textbooks Um, I I have to kind of put that asterisk because things have changed since I was in school but um in my textbooks Dinosaurs crocodilians and birds made up arcasaurus. So they were all closely related So that would make sense I wouldn't I mean Why wouldn't an organism have sensory organs on its skin on its covering It's weird. That's why I mean python to talk about reptiles pythons have heat sensing organs in their lip Uh sharks have electrosensory receptors in their mouth Dolphins have have Sonar type Stuff in their head. So I mean it's there Right it may it So whether this was just on the tail makes me wonder why an animal would be using its tail to sense prey that seems backwards Um, yeah You know, so were these more specifically Concentrated in the head region where there are other areas where these were found where the skin was not preserved as well You know, like that's all over the all over the dinosaur It could also be this is sort of a bipedal looking thing So it could be that the lower part of the body was in the water and the upper part was out And that sensor might just be like, you know, go put your your tail in the water and it's like, huh? Yeah, no fish in there today No bot no reason to swim around here. I'll keep going until my tail Dino sense goes says there's something and then start looking for it Yeah, no, that's what I was thinking too is the way this animal is standing It seems like having receptors on the top half of your body wouldn't be as helpful if you're wading through the water like this And on the other hand, this is also maybe in the day when there are ginormous Predators, even though this one's a carnivore There might have been some really big predators those senses might have just been there to look out for other predators That are right looking under the water and knowing when not to be in the water or I mean it looks The bumpiness of it looks a little bit like chicken skin You know when you get rid of the feathers and the way that the skin is kind of bumpy or how when you get goose bumps your hair pilo erects, which means your hair stands up and And that is you know, sometimes you get it when you hear a sound or um, you know, you've you know, somebody screeches something On a chalkboard or You hear music that sounds really nice or you get cold and it's heat Thermoreg, it's part of thermoregulation so In birds it would have potentially been used as part of lofting the feathers for thermoregulatory purposes It could also be if there are small hairs on the surface of the animal that there's some aspect of thermoregulation or sensory hairs that would have been associated with them I don't know Yeah, if you compare to the crocodiles, it's a pretty good. It's a pretty good fit It looks a lot like the little bumps that they've got all over their body on the crocodiles all all over the place Are those sensory in the crocodiles? Yes Yes, they are Yep Okay sensory animals Makes me so happy Uh, but some things make me anxious Oh, what's that? And just everything. Yeah, everything these days, but what's the difference between Being happy feeling love and comfort versus anxiety Oxytocin It might be better known as the love hormone But uc Davis researchers have confirmed that it has a role to play in social anxiety and That role is specifically related to production of oxytocin in an area of the brain called the b n s t The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis Huh Yeah, and in their latest study they showed these researchers from uc Davis showed that the b n s t connects directly to anxiety controlling brain regions And when they chemically blocked the hormone in the b n s t by injecting another chemical in there mice Had no evidence of anxiety. There was no oxytocin produced and anxiety didn't happen But when they added oxytocin injected directly into the b n s t Previously unstressed animals became really stressed out And it didn't have anything to do with the injection into their brains This line of study might lead to anxiety treatments down the road perhaps This is interesting. This is like very polar opposites right being created by the same hormone But i'm also thinking about like, I don't know if it's oxytocin, but kind of the The butterfly feeling you get when you like see somebody you like if you're it's new and whatever it's it is It creates anxiety Yes, it creates a huge amount of anxiety and I wonder I have no idea if that could also be linked I don't know but that is that's really interesting. Yeah, like what are what is this butterfly feeling? Like what are the what are the hormones involved there? Well, the the bottom line for this study is that the oxytocin involvement it oxytocin could be involved when in that but it has to do Specifically in where the oxytocin is released So when it has to do with love and bonding and comfort and my friends my family You know when it's the love hormone, it's being released in the hypothalamus But when it turns to anxiety it gets produced in the bn st Stuff brings me out a little bit That uh all of this human emotion anxiety stress angst all of these things chemicals man chemicals. Yeah There's like this. There's just like one like seedy couple of streets in the brain Where there's either drug dealers got it or doesn't have it and they got little junkies running around this back Out of your brain making you fall in love making you anxious about work. Whatever the thing is It's all little drug dealers in your head. Your brain is like trying to control your every activity through through Through narcotics. It's a while Makes you want food makes you want friends makes you want love. It's like or not one any of those things or not Want any of it? Yeah. Yep. It's all brain chemicals man Drug dealer in your head doing all of this doesn't seem Mad doctors shooting you up all the time Okay, if anybody is an artist out there, I really would like to see this as a comic strip, you know The goings on explaining neuroscience through the drug dealer in your brain. I mean, I think this could be It could be a fantastic comic If you just tuned in you are listening to this week in science If you're interested in an item of our merchandise like a hat or a mug or a face mask You can find them in our zazzle store go to twist.org click on the zazzle link Time to talk about covid. Are you ready for our covid update? I'm strapped in I'm ready to go Do do do do do do this just in this just in hi It's bad it's bad with more than 210,000 deaths from covid 19 in the united states as of this week the white house outbreak is concerning currently 35 people including the president have tested positive for the virus Having visibly ignored recommendations From science for mask wearing and social distancing And there is a wonderful I want to I want to share this very quickly with everyone. There is a fabulous data visualization website public tableau calm will put the link in The website that is tracking covid 19 and the outbreak at uh at the white house if you are interested in Who is testing positive negative? No testing who's isolating who's quarantining who's not doing anything? How many cases there are this website is fantastic for being able to keep track of all the information That is available publicly at this time. It's a um It's some it's a project by someone who's doing this just because they think this information should be compiled in one place Also, the white house is tracking not the white house. The new york times is tracking the white house coronavirus outbreak um keeping track of who is Who is testing? positive so far and I thought we knew I thought we knew how this happened Because I believe the president said it was the fault of the military and the police officers who were infected Who kept coming up to them and hugging them and thanking them with tears in their eyes? And that's how they had gotten it. Obviously. This is what I this is And you can't stop them the secret service can't keep people back because that's not their job But that there was just people were so thankful. What do you do? They kept getting hugs from the military and the police With tears in their eyes and that's how according to the president. I'm just going by what he said That's how they got it well I don't know how they got it because they're not doing any contact tracing at the white house So we actually will never know Uh, but there are some groups who are keeping track of where the white house rose garden outbreak is going If you are interested in that data and what happens there But what about the treatments that the president was given? So we've talked at length on the show previously about antibody treatments Regenerons antibody cocktail that has shown limited success in trials today. We talked um we uh We we talked about the trial that uh, they published the data that has come out that It is slightly positive It's not so far hasn't shown anything bad any bad results, which is that's positive in itself And for some people it seems to reduce the time of their hospital stay. It doesn't so far reduce hospitalization uh In its total numbers. Anyway And dexamethasone, uh, we haven't yeah Which is that? Yeah, we'll get there in a second, but uh, so it's shown a little and while it might have benefited the president We can't actually know if it did because he's also received extra care remdesivir, which is an antiviral that is minimally effective in combination with dexamethasone, which you were saying Justin a steroid That brings down inflammation and the president was not part of a scientific trial So we can't know whether or not the Regeneron antibody cocktail Actually is the thing that's helping the president It's probably a combination of a whole bunch of things altogether That said another pharma company Eli Lilly is also developing an antibody cocktail Which is also seeing limited success in early trials And both of these companies producing the antibody cocktails have applied for emergency use authorization by the FDA Something else important to point out The president of the united states is not out of the hospital as you would be out of a hospital if you left a hospital The white house has a hospital wing actually has an intensive care unit built in If you were to be released from the hospital, you wouldn't then take your doctors with you 30 30 or something They bring your 30 doctors with you to your home where you have an intensive care unit in your garage That's it's different when the president is going home Then when you are going home because it's not the same thing. He didn't leave the hospital Or he was released even he transferred hospitals. It's basically what took place Yes, yeah that and like you mentioned in the disclaimer earlier having having all sorts of help if if Everybody who got sick had as much health care Public health care doesn't have to worry about the bill at all If you although good things that they're traveling though, uh, is somebody with a Indicant agious stage still even if his own fever is down is seen leaving Multiplied like touching the handle the rails of stairs everywhere touching everything Child it's like if you had a which we've some of us If you have a child that just won't stop touching and licking things in the playground This is the president of the united states with covid-19 I was wishing that there was somebody behind him with like sanitary wipes like wiping behind him Yeah, so what are we going to do about all of this covid-19 stuff? Well, like we mentioned vaccines are on their way and but when are those vaccines going to be ready the president the white house wanted them to have Pfizer to have a vaccine ready before the november third election Well, the fda released a vaccine guideline This week that will not allow any vaccine candidates to really be ready for authorization before the election in november The guidelines specify that vaccine trial volunteers need to be followed for at least two months After their their last injection for any potential adverse reactions and also to look for vaccine efficacy Making sure that it worked and so Even though it's not politically expedient the transparency of the guidelines are going to They're going to benefit the public in the log run providing a safer and smoother process toward that austere authorization So good job fda. I think the really important thing here is that you know The whole idea of the efficacy of a vaccine being how effective it is Times how trusted it is right and so I already have I have friends and co-workers and family that have already said to me Oh, well, I'm not going to be first in line for that vaccine And the reason the reason that's there is this exactly this idea to push it faster It's people that trust science that trust modern medicine are already distrustful of this process Because of this agenda to push it by a certain date instead of doing it right the first time and of course I always say oh, well the fda knows what they're doing if it goes through a clinical trial I'll be first in line. It's fine. I'll go ahead of you because I trust the process But it's it's still it it hurts the overall Opening of the country for us To try to push it faster than it should go and not breed trust in the system The politicization of this whole thing is also what's is what's breeding that distrust You know, apparently the president requested hydroxychloroquine When he got when he went to waltz raid and they're like, no, we don't do that We don't do that. That will hurt you. It's bad Really? Yeah. Oh, this is like learning without a book. I guess yeah But that but here's and then the thing is that if the vaccine comes out Uh, maybe some resistance on some to take but the vaccine will be intended for in the united states Well, I'm 325 million people to have it Before you give something that absolutely everyone is going to get You need to know that it's safe because you're going to give it to everyone Uh, that still outweighs the threat of the virus You need it to be safer than the threat of the virus No, no, no, no, you don't I mean if it's if it's uh, a tenth of It's harmful as the virus But you give it to a hundred times more people Then you have done more damage. So you really have to You have to uh, make sure that you're not Causing more of a problem. Yeah, you have to Speaking of guidelines, uh, I'm just wondering if they really should be called guidelines. Maybe they should be called guide areas The cdc has waffled on their guidelines around airborne transmission First they didn't say anything at all because they insisted that it was based on physical contact then they posted something about Airborne transmission only to take it down and Finally finally this week they have updated their guidance stating that Quote the principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes covid-19 Is through exposure to respiratory droplets carrying infectious virus What they've said it They continue what what do you mean? What it can be it can go through the air? Yes Yes, but that's not oh wait. No, we reported on that back in march february. Yeah, we did Yeah, yeah, we've been talking about it for a while, but finally the cdc has updated their guidelines to Reflect the scientific understanding and so they continue on their website by specifying definitions of things droplets aerosols airborne transmission and how these Phrases words are used in different contexts, which understanding the words is very important So people understand each other And how they're used in different contexts like aerosols is used very differently in a hospital Where it's a aerosol produced by by ventilation procedures or versus public health uses generally So finally they state that covid-19 is mostly spread through close contact and what they mean by that is within six feet Or for for an extended period of time probably without wearing masks not touching necessary It doesn't have to be that direct contact But if you you're able to spread those droplets to each other get droplets in each other's airspace But it can be spread in certain situations through specifically airborne Transmission in in enclosed spaces with limited ventilation where an infected person who exhales respiratory droplets and small respiratory aerosols into the air for an extended period of time so This leads directly now that we have this cdc verification guideline on the website To uh your next story. I think justin about what can we do about airborne transmission? Is there something that we can do has science told us? Uh, no There's nothing you're going to be forced to inhale The the virus no matter where you go No, no. Oh, uh, well, I mean we've talked about face masks. It's been a recommendation earlier just Doubly sure doubly checked just because it's easy to test now. Uh, simon frazier university canada researchers They went and looked at public health units That suggested that the the local area make Face masks mandatory where the face masks were made mandatory in areas in canada where the face masks were not made mandatory Uh, they looked at from july to august and they they showed They showed was that new cases Were down 25 to 40 percent Which is 700 to 1,000 fewer cases per week In areas that mandated face masks So, yeah, looks like it works whether whether or not uh Whether or not everyone feels obliged to wear a face mask face mask in this country Yeah, the the the liberty issue on this whole thing is is somewhat I I both get it, but then I'm like wondering where all the nudists Why where's all the people who're just like, ah, it's a free country. I'm not wearing pants anywhere Like why like I'm glad at least we got to them them civilized to the point that they will wear pants in public, but We just we didn't get we got to them a little late on the mask issue Is all other but thankfully we got as much time as we did Also, this is uh, maybe we can get them to put pants on their face We got patients, uh, who were dying with severe covet 19 respiratory failure Uh, when they a lot of them when they're looked at they find a jelly had formed in their lungs Yeah, researchers have now established what the active agent in is in this mystery jelly. So it's no longer a mystery This is out of uh, umia university University sweden They've already they're already therapies that either slow down the body's protection of this jelly or breaks down the jelly Through an enzyme our findings can also explain why cortisone seems to have an effect on COVID-19 says urban helman researcher University, so they were doing lung scans The and they kept seeing these white patches and this jelly Hmm They kind of looks maybe they had the resemblance of somebody who's made me drowned But the jelly Uh, it turns out is a polysaccharide glycosamin glisten Clicking like in group like in group really Yeah, uh, it's normal in the body. Basically. This is something that uh, usually shows up around tissues to help the early stages of healing Uh, but this is it's also produced. It's high I can't say the word I get hyaluronin or none Anyway, that stuff, uh, it's actually made sometimes by the beauty industry synthetically for uh, anti-wrinkle treatments like lip augmentations But uh, so they found that they can bind this is a long molecule Uh, it it binds lots of moisture and forms this jelly-like substance that we were seeing In the lungs of the COVID-19 patients, which is part of why this this this runs right in the uh, alveoli The lungs which results in the need for ventilator care In bad cases people are dying based on this jelly, which is trying to heal a thing with the damage that's going on the lungs so Uh, it turns out currently A drug that is being used to slow down the production and other things is already out there for gallbladder attacks And also, so it's courted. So even cortisone says here reduces the production of hyaluronin Uh, British study preliminary data shows positive effects on treatments of cortisone drug Dexamethasone on severe allele patients. So anyway, we've may have found a mechanism for why that steroid is been especially effective at the survival rates If it's knocking down the production of the molecule that's creating the lung jelly We have now sort of figured out some more the mechanics as opposed to throwing stuff and like hey this work Hey that work So it's interesting because this is usually given to the critically ill if they are going on ventilator um But these early indications that this drug is Maybe uh, that the cortisone might be useful earlier to prevent the production might explain why the the president Got it because this was on the list of drugs that he was given This is part of that cocktail He was giving it way what they went to a lot of doctors There's a lot of people in the public were saying he's like, hey, that's really early That's what they give them when you're on the ventilator But it may be that there's some great use in having it much sooner to prevent the initial creation Of that lung jelly so that you never get to the point of ventilator So there may be more arrows in the quiver for doctors going forward as we figure out the mechanics Not necessarily of the virus and how to stop that spread because people seem to be A little unwilling to take even the smallest steps to take that six week break from reality from our world and then we could just be done Let's treat symptoms is the second wave of defense. I suppose To try to keep people alive until the after effects of the disease Yeah, let's get it going. Let's find those symptoms. Let's figure out. It's one by one Figure out how to treat them and keep people alive long enough that they can Get past the disease. That's that's what we want to get past the initial encounter with it. There's still apparently A lot more After effects to the disease that may last a lifetime We only know from the past year that we've been experienced or half year that we've been experiencing this And already there seem to be lasting side effects that stay with people Yay No This is this week in science If you want to help twist out help us grow get a friend to subscribe to twist today That would be pretty amazing Alrighty Coming on back coming on back for that part of the show that We know and love to call Blair's animal corner with Blair Giant What you got Blair. Oh my gosh, let's talk about sea turtle eggs delicious sea turtle eggs. Whoops I'm sorry. Uh, no Why are you eating sea turtles again? So sea turtles they they have a bad they have a bad bag Currently they have their their plastic pollution causing problems looking like jellyfish They have climate change, which is uh causing their eggs to hatch predominantly female It's causing population collapses They get taken for poaching reasons for Turtle shell and all this kind of stuff, but it turns out also their Their nests where they lay their eggs Are poached To sell the eggs at restaurants and bars is a delicacy So if you've ever seen a nature documentary and you've seen a turtle lay their eggs, I I would not I would not want to eat that, but I guess it's a delicacy. So Um, it's a huge problem people raid those those, uh, nests and it's an entire group of eggs that are lost so a new Release from the University of Kent is looking at, um A new kind of uh technology to help save these eggs called the invest eggator I did bring the story Just for that, but it's also very interesting. But once I read invest eggator I was like we were sold. Yeah So it's it was developed by a conservation organization called Paso Pacifico And they wanted to address this illegal trade of the endangered sea turtle eggs in Central America So the invest eggator Was born via kim williams gillian From Paso Pacifico She's a scientist there and she was inspired by her two favorite tv shows breaking bad and the wire Which do with it deal with illegal drug trafficking quote She says in breaking bad the dea places a gps tracking device on a tank of chemicals to see who receives those chemicals In one episode of the wire two police officers plant an audio device and a tennis ball to Surreptitiously record a suspected drug dealer turtle eggs basically look like ping pong balls and we wanted to know where they were going So we put those two ideas together and you have invest eggator So they have a 3d printed decoy. They put those in 101 turtle nests in four beaches in Costa Rica And they found that about a quarter of those fake eggs were taken illegally from their nests And they were able to track a grand majority of them From five clutches including two green turtle nests and three olive ridley nests And in one case they were able to track it 137 kilometers inland Spending two days in transit from the beach to a supermarket loading bay and then onto a residential property So they found it from The initial take taking all the way to the final recipient Wow Yeah, so they were able to track these illegally removed eggs and uh And the other important part of this research is that they were able to test The eggs and embryos around the decoys and that it did not damage the incubating embryos Where the decoys were so it did not impact the other eggs. That's step one step two is it actually worked And did they arrest these people? So yes, but this is where it gets kind of interesting So they found out overall that the majority of stolen eggs don't leave the local area This is their initial suspicions since it's a delicacy mostly in south central america. So um Most of the trade takes place very close to the nesting beach. So that helps them kind of narrow in their area to look at And that also identifies that they have to focus on public education and local awareness campaigns in those communities And if they know where the consumers are then they can cut off the demand, which is really what this is about So when you think about poaching, yes, you should not be hunting wild animals for sport or for meat or for souvenirs or for a little tasty turtle egg treat, but It's not always the people collecting or hunting those endangered species that are really the problem there Because also a lot of the time these are in areas where there's not a lot of opportunity for high income jobs And so it actually presents a really good if you're looking at socioeconomically It's a really good opportunity for these people, right? So really you have to cut off the demand That's where it comes down to and often the demand for these endangered products come from the very rich So if you can figure all of that out Then you can help figure out where it's going because it doesn't matter if you think about rhino's for example It doesn't matter if it's illegal to poach a rhino in africa If you're able to sell that on another in another country or another continent Then if they get it off if they get it out of that space, it doesn't really matter What matters is where the sale is happening. So, um It can it helps them to kind of focus on the multi pronged conservation approach that you need Which is education building better economic opportunities. So people don't have to go poach sea turtle eggs and enforcement So all of those three areas are really what it's about and you can't do proper education unless you know Where the end of that supply line is What's really cool is that passo pacifico plans next To try to use this 3d printing technology to track shipments of shark fins to make deep voice Interesting and they're the step after that they're now looking into potentially Tracking the theft of parrot eggs because parrot eggs are taken not to eat but to sell in pet stores So That's the other thing to look at there. People are weird, man You know, it's I think a lot of it is about status symbols, right? You want to have something different or expensive or exotic? And so a huge part of that, you know part of my big, um Side of the conservation education that I that I do is when I go talk to teenagers So I make sure that they don't think it's cool because they're the next generation of consumers And yeah, if they decide that, um endangered animal products are gross and disgusting Then suddenly there will be no market So there is a hope there, uh, but yeah, so this is a very cool way of using technology and um our understanding of just the basics of how to to prevent poaching and how to Do best practices and conservation to kind of find that whole story of where those endangered animal products are going I really like to figure it out. I think that's a very I think it's really clever how they're how they're Stinging With this operation. I want to know that the end story did they go to that residential home and knock on the door and say How is that sea turtle egg? So Did they go to the supermarket and say who sold you this who sold you the sea turtle egg? Yeah, so I don't know My guess is I don't know how Involved law enforcement was in the initial study Right Because until it's tested and proven To work, I don't know if they have local authorities on speed dial Or if they care, so if this is being used by the wealthy That it was like who probably you know, this is how it works at least everywhere in the world uh wealthy people have influence in the local community usually even over the law enforcement and so then uh Are you going to get an enforcement of a law or? Not Right like great. You've found out how we knew all along that's not we're just trying to keep it a secret Thanks And the other side to it is what happened to that? Person at the end who bought the sea turtle egg from the supermarket Who cracked it open to make an omelet and found a gps transmitter? Yeah, so one of this god I already closed the story, but one of them went cold really early The the trail kind of stopped and it was because the 3d printed egg was dissected and discovered so Yeah So watch for that Anyway, good is good. What's your next story? My other story? I have to admit. I don't fully understand, but I'm very excited about All right, maybe we can all work it out together. Yeah, so this is about the origin of skin color Which I think is very interesting mainly because You know, I know about melanophores and melanin and how you know the how light or dark skin you are as a human Is related to chromatophores. So there's the cells that determine skin color The presence of or lack of pigment. So we talked about melanin. And so that's all about how light is reflected, right? So I've known about that obviously for a pretty long time But I never really put thought into the fact that humans and in fact all mammals Are some shade of brown or black and that's it But reptiles amphibians fish They can be purple or green It's like, why aren't there purple or green mammal? So it turns out there are three types of chromatophores Milano forest, which are the ones that we we have black or brown colors Xano Xanthophores, which are run yellow and iridophores Which have crystals in them that reflect multiple colors. So that's just everything else And so as I said mammals have milano forest reptiles and fish carry all of them, which is why they have all these crazy colors But so this is specifically looking at in snakes coral snakes Or sorry, corn snakes. Whoo, not coral snakes. Not venomous snakes Corn snakes one of the most popular pet snakes that exist And for that reason snakes that have been kind of bred for color and come in a lot of different interesting colors So looking at why they have different colors and where genetically The origin of skin color came from and this is where stuff gets crazy. Okay, so They're it all kind of came from this idea. This is from the University of Geneva that there are Sorry, I just kicked off my slippers because I'm getting excited. Okay, so There's a lavender variant they call it of corn snakes, which they're kind of duller They're they're lighter They're actually very pretty but they don't look like the traditional corn snake, which is kind of brown orange and red And so they found a mutation of a gene involved In this change in color that is also involved in the forming of lysosomes Which are the quote unquote garbage disposal vesicles of cells where you put all your junk So this single mutation In the lysosome is enough to affect every skin color in this snake So the reflective crystals and pigments all three types of those chromatophores are impacted by lysosome related vesicles Which brings us back to the origin of colors and patterns in all vertebrates It looks like melanophores We already know are known to be stored in organelles known as LROs or lysosome related organelles Okay, so we knew that they had to do with lysosomes And on the other hand the storage location of red and yellow pigments and the crystals In other types of chromatophores is unknown But what they found is that there's a mutation With the lavender corn snake where it turns them into pink and gray That has to do with this thing called the list gene ly st And it regulates lysosome trafficking And the mutations of the list gene is also what causes Chadiac Higashi syndrome, which is characterized by albinism An impaired immune system and accumulation of enlarged lysosomes. So now we have pigment and lysosomes related And so this all comes down to the liver So liver cells in vertebrates are Where a lot of lysosomes are kept And so the lavender corn snakes had larger and more aggregated lysosomes So they found that the morphology and arrangement of colored vesicles in the chromatophores were altered in the liver So What we see here is it looks like the origin of skin color is tied to Immunoresponse and the liver Yeah Yeah, it's really weird cellular metabolism considering that those lysosomes are involved. Yeah. Yeah So this thing that is totally you think about is superficial Is actually tied to deep cellular processes Yeah, and an internal system in your body So in snakes. Yes, um But we all like as I mentioned we we know that melanophores are related to lysosomes. So this It does tie in with that So it would make sense that that would be a continuation Um So This was also the first time that different chromatophores Were shown to not be created from scratch during evolution But they all had a basic mechanism in common from these LROs So they want to look in further study finding the mechanisms responsible for varieties of skin colors and color patterns And if there's something that you can see Looking at lysosomes looking at other genetic keys that play a part in functions like camouflage protection Interest specific communication all these other things that they're doing so Basically, I just first of all fun fact That they're the reason we can't be green or purple I know I'm like focusing on those I think just because I really want to be colored like a chameleon. I think that would be very cool but Can't be greater verbal is because we don't have the right chromatophores But also that this all has this like deep cellular connection is Fascinating to me Yeah, I think it is very I think it's really interesting carolin benoit is asking Isn't that how we make vitamin d in humans? Is there must be something with other animals skin color and metabolism and endocrine processes as well So, yeah this and and vitamin vitamin d We do know is associated with melanin in In human skin. So there is a link there between immune processes skin color and That that metabolism for sure Um There's one exception to the uh to the brown skin mammals Or maybe maybe more than one, but uh blue whales and maybe some dolphins. They're gray Bluish gray. They live in the water. So that's yes. This is also true. I think the orca environmental coloration Yeah I never You're you're just been you've been told oh, no, no, no, no your color blind flare. I understand I get it. It's all shades of gray, too I don't buy it. That's all I'm saying Well, I I would love I would love to know more about this I'd love to find, you know hear more about, you know, how these specific cellular and immune immune cells and endocrine regulation impact The chromatophores the melana fours. How do we? Yeah, well, is there a way to hijack it so that we can have purple sugar? So this is exactly yes. This is the conversation I had with brian for breakfast So because I was talking about the story I was like, so if we could like somehow use crisper and this information and like Hack what color our baby was gonna come out like what crazy thing would you want? He didn't want to play I think I don't know. I I mean, I under if if our kids the only one maybe not But if it's if it's like a thing that other people are doing, can we make can we make fish like like Like I don't know like Zebra fish or like lion fish or angel fish. I want oh, I'm gonna have What kind of fish are you talking about? Why are you talking about fish? Because they have cool colored skin too Yeah But a pattern. Yeah, very cool. Oh, that's very star trek Like I have the the You can you can have that now. It's called a tattoo. Yes But you can choose But you can choose or choose not to Do a tattoo which I think is what we should allow the children to do This Or not get the tattoo the idea that parents would choose tattoos for their children Everything is silly, but I think about yeah, but I think I do think like a little bit of the designer baby thing is like Get it choosing tattoos for the newborn baby It is And it would be and it would be pretty permanent as opposed to a tattoo Which could go cool be removed just if you had like just the purplest eyes you've ever seen Don't tattoo your babies. That's all I'm saying Jackson supply says don't tattoo your babies This is this week in science if you are just tuning in. Hey, guess what? calendars are coming If you Are tired of 2020 as as I am Get ready for 2021 with a twist Blair's animal corner calendar Let me show this beautiful screen Blair is sharing her Wait, why am I doing that? I don't know what I'm doing anymore. No add. I'm hitting all the wrong buttons. There we go Sometimes producing and talking at the same time is very hard the 2021 calendar You can celebrate get ready With twists and a Blair's animal corner calendar The link for pre-orders will be available on the website very soon We'll let you know through social media, but be sure to check the website calendars are coming Get ready Also, thank you. Thank you for listening to twists. Thank you for being a part of making twists happen and allowing us to Keep going through your support because really it is your support that Makes this show run and allows it to keep going week after week after week So that we can keep bringing science and discussion To you and with your help we can continue doing that and bringing a little bit of scientific sanity Hopefully to more people so If you want to keep on helping if you haven't having it haven't Dived in to the support waters yet head over to twist.org Click on the patreon link and choose your level of support Right now ten dollars and up and we will thank you by name at the end of the show It's pretty easy. It's once a month ten dollars and up and you can help bring science to the world Thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you And we're back for some more science. Hey, Justin. Did you have some stories? No, I got nothing for this day and a half. I brought the covid stories And then I then I had to move them to the covid section and so then that they ended up there Okay, I was just double checking. Yeah, just I always have to double check Okay, well, let me get into some brain science I love I love the brains uh so question for The the study that I'm going to talk about right now is What could uh be contributing to cognitive deficits in Children in people with human uh with trisomy 21 with down syndrome children with down syndrome often experience cognitive delays compared to typically developing children, but There's substantial variation and the effects can be mild to moderate And there we know that there are higher risks of certain neuro Neuro related diseases like Alzheimer's disease and a few studies have shown that there are elevated levels of inflammation in people with down syndrome And so researchers at the italian institute of technology in genoa And their colleagues published in neuron this this week about Their work with mice and with postmortem human brains from uh deceased people with down syndrome Now when they were looking at the mice They used a mureen they call it a mureen model a mouse model of down syndrome in which instead of the 21st human chromosome it is the 16th chromosome in mice that gets triplicated There's three of them and the mice in this In this model of down syndrome show some of the traits delayed development Motor and cognitive skills that are different from typically developing mice But they don't have dysfunctional neurogenesis or some of the other issues with brain development that other mouse models of the condition have so They looked at these mouse brains just to take a look they're like okay. This is a model It's not in humans But we're just looking at it and they didn't really find Any differences in the neurons Or in the overall numbers of micro glia But what they found is that there were more micro glia that had been activated And what activation means is that They are They are triggered to To create inflammation in the brain Actually to inflame the brain micro glia are There are some Of these nerves these neuron cells. They're not brain. They're not neuron cells. They're brain cells That are a part of the brain's immune system and they help the brain fight off invaders And neuro inflammation is often triggered by these activated micro glia They have changes in there in the shape of their cells their electrophysiology and also in the protein expression So then they took some of these murine models Of down syndrome and they got rid of The activated micro glia. So they're like okay. We see that you have these activated micro glia in there What happens if we knock them out and we get rid of them? And they found that the mice Performed better on lab measure on lab measures of cognition Then mice that hadn't been treated that hadn't had the knockout They also gave a group of these these model mice with the activated micro glia they gave them acetaminophen an anti-inflammatory that's readily available over the counter and Those mice performed better on the lab tests of cognition But then the acetaminophen wore off and the mice that had done better they went back to having cognitive deficits deficits and so they were like well, this is in mice. What about in humans well, we can't dig into uh, the brains of people with down syndrome, but they did get access to a number of post-mortem brains And they found through gene and protein analysis that they had signs of micro glia activation So the micro glia very likely before these people died Were triggered and causing neuro inflammation within the brain So now the researchers are talking about Testing whether or not the simple treatment of giving acetaminophen could be used on a regular basis to help alleviate some of these inflammatory effects and Help to reduce cognitive deficits in people with down syndrome Which is pretty pretty wild to me that it just something as simple as acetaminophen could potentially um affect the You know the the cognitive Functioning of people in a very positive way. It's a really potentially potentially a very a very Potentially big, but you know again acetaminophen it wears off, but if there is some way to Permanently reduce the inflammation that is caused by these micro glia You know, maybe there's a target there Also really another a really good reminder again of Donating your body to science and what that can do Wow, I mean, yeah, you obviously can't just poke around somebody's brain When they're alive, but you sure can't do that after they die and lots of other people can benefit Yeah, yeah a lot can Yeah, so I mean I I'm just like my mind is blown. I'm because of the I mean just acetaminophen Like go to the go to the pharmacy and you're like Bring home a bottle of acetaminophen take a couple of acetaminophen, you know It's a very readily available compound I mean, how many people are on aspirin for the rest of their life after a certain age It wouldn't be that weird to say okay, just my daily acetaminophen Yeah, I I do know acetaminophen does have uh negative effects on the liver. Uh, there are Uh, you know, there are There are issues with taking it long term that are not that can be very problematic So that needs to be taken into account and cost benefits need to be determined So definitely some research to go forward with Do either of you hear ringing in your ears? Not currently, but yeah sometimes There's all those uh those shows where I insisted on being at the very front where the stage was right in front of the speakers Probably a bad call Yeah, so tinnitus it is something that affects a very large number of people Uh, and usually starts affecting people more as they age. It is one of the first first signs of hearing loss or uh The damage of hair cells in your ears and Uh, wouldn't it be great if you could get rid of it? I mean, but really what is tinnitus? What is what is going on when it happens? Well in your brain sometimes tinnitus is a physical thing sometimes it is your brain Misfiring because it's confused. It's kind of like phantom limb syndrome, but in your ear Where your brain used to be able to hear certain frequencies But now the the hair cells that would pick up those frequencies in your inner ear In your ear are they're no longer there, but the nerves Are still there and want something to be giving them information So they're just making it up and so because they're you're the nerves in your ears are like, let's make it eupity it That you hear you hear this ringing so some some aspects of Therapy to get rid of tinnitus are based on Retraining your brain. So one of the most successful methods of Uh of tinnitus therapy is actually cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a type of talk therapy that people if you're Rating on a scale it does. Uh, this is the only clinically validated tinnitus therapy actually this CBT therapy And it improves tinnitus severity scores by about 10 points on average So there's a researcher a biomedical engineer Hubert limb at university of minnesota twin cities and He was doing some neat deep brain stimulation stuff To help restore hearing in patients trying to put electrodes deep into the brains of their patients and some of them The electrodes didn't quite go in the right place and then when he turned the deep brain stimulator on People the patient would be like, whoa, that's happening because you had to turn it on and the people had to give responses as to what was actually happening how the stimulator was working and He's he's put one electrode in a patient and when he turned it on the patient was like, oh my tinnitus is gone I can't hear my tinnitus. Where'd it go? And so he started digging around and trying to figure out and he's like, well, there's got to be some way to stimulate nerves In the brain in the body to shut off tinnitus and to to turn it off And so he has gone after this multi-pronged approach to get rid of tinnitus using a methodology That he's published in science translational methods where Basically, it's like making your brain multitask and it involves electrically stimulating your tongue What yep, yep. Yep. So he he got 326 patients with tinnitus to do this training series where for about 12 weeks they'd Sit for like an hour a day with a small plastic paddle. That's like an electroshocker The researcher says the electrical stimulation feels like pop rocks candy fizzing in your mouth Can you imagine sitting with pop pop rocks candy fizzing in your mouth for an hour? Yeah, it'd be awesome the never-ending pop rock. That is like the dream That's like the willy wonka invention that they never got right At the same time while this tongue stimulation is happening they also had the subjects wearing headphones and listening to Really a combination of different sounds rapidly changing pure tone series at different frequencies Against a background noise that the that limb says is kind of like electronic music So Putting the two things together. You've got the tones. You've got the background noise You've got the tongue stimulation and really it's about making the brain multitask to retrain it So that it doesn't pay attention to the tinnitus anymore So that by just doing all these things it's like trying to Write a unicycle while patting your head and rubbing your stomach, but You know, maybe that'll make they don't I don't think that'll make your tinnitus go away, but um the researchers said that when that The patient's tinnitus symptoms improved dramatically. They saw an average drop of 14 points on a tinnitus severity scale so A little bit better that sounded impressive Yeah, it's a little bit better than uh, the cognitive behavioral therapy The big thing about this though is that it lasted a long time the team followed up 12 months later 80 percent of the participants still had Much lower tinnitus scores around 12 to 14 and a half points So It potentially works longer It might it may be only slightly better than the cognitive behavioral therapy But it seems to work for a longer period of time So this what it's called bimodal stimulation may be the future of treatment for things like Tinnitus basically it's it's retraining those nerves to forget about the dead hair cells In effect, he's detuned it so that they don't the nerves don't think they have to tell your brain something anymore Although as is pointed out in uh in the chat Thanks to test underscore tickle Uh, sometimes that high-pitched, uh whistle you hear is is a is a dog blowing a human whistle And not actually tinnitus Sometimes that's what that sound is Yeah, um, there's a video going around also. I was I I I've been involved in a making a video for hearing loss and with uh with allison coffin who we interviewed at the live show at the uh Alberta theater Portland Portland. Yes here in portland. She's a hearing researcher Watching a state university vancouver So I've been and I have tinnitus and so I've been interested in this topic And I came across a video so you don't have to go Find this therapy with the tongue paddle electric electroshocker. There is an interesting. Yeah, it's a it's a weird It's a weird There's a you can find the video if you look for it But there's a therapy where if you take the palms of your hands and press them against your ears and then take your Your middle finger and your index finger your pointer finger and you put them against the back of your head kind of where your The the spine starts going up into your brain And so you take your middle finger and you put your You put your pointer finger on top of your middle finger and you're going to try and snap You're going to drum on the back of your back of your head So you push your you push your hands. Oh, wait now. I've got tinnitus. I didn't have the minute to go But you make these you you make it up You do it like 50 snaps, you know one two three four and you do these snaps and it like it If you're pushing your palms against your ears hard enough It makes this boom boom boom kind of snapping sound to get inside of your skull and It actually works to reduce tinnitus symptoms for a short period of time Maybe if you did it longer, I don't know more days. I've only done it every once in a while, but After doing it, it's very interesting. It's like, oh, where'd that go? The tinnitus has gone temporarily. So Yes, and if you started Doing that what I was describing while you were listening then you couldn't hear me talk anymore. So yeah Yeah And hne k yes, so Tinnitus tinnitus. There are a couple of ways to pronounce it. Both of them are correct Oh, I've never heard tinnitus tinnitus. Yes. Is that like if you're ridglish? Maybe I don't know. Yeah, but there are there are using aluminium Either way I have been told either way is fine Ah The rebel alliance what? Have I tried have I tried electro shocking my tongue yet? No, I have not But I think we have one more segment for the show. I'm done with stories, but we do have A question this week This week in science questions for mailbag It's a mailbag Comes from george Hello twisters. Thank you all for many hours of entertaining education. I have a question And I hope that Blair's vast knowledge may save me much rummaging around the interweb I was recently surprised to learn that ants are not related to termites that in fact ants share a common ancestor with bees and wasps which got me wondering I know that boat there are several species of both bees and wasps which are non-social Are there any solitary ant species making their way through this cold hard world without the support of friends and family? Keep on shining the light of science Blair so you have an answer. Yes, I do um, so Just kind of thinking back. It's like gosh. I can't really think of any Solitary ants and so I did some digging of my own So here is the situation. There are not solitary ants. There aren't any And we can't really see any Going back in time either Um, but with bees and wasps It looks like very early bees and wasps were solitary. So actually they started out solitary and turned social kind of has we historically think of them but ants As far back as you can look ants have always been Social animals. They've been truly you social animals, which basically just means that yeah, they're really social They're not just hanging out near each other. They communicate with each other and use each other to survive The closest you get with ants. This is interesting to being solitary Is that there are a couple types of ants that will forage alone They don't want any help when they're going out But when the worker ants are going out to do their job But they still come back to a nest or an anthill Where it's still a very social space and they're still bringing those things back to a colony The other kind of close call you have with ants Is that there are workerless ant species that are parasitic to other ant species So they're basically just freeloaders in other anthills Yeah, but they still are social and that they they it's not they're not usually alone in terms of their species And they depend on the other ant species to survive So ants are social species. It looks like they have pretty much always been social species It was very interesting. It was a very cool rabbit hole to kind of fall down and and learn about Thanks Blair I can't even picture unsocial bees Oh, yeah, yeah They're just off on the road I mean, we don't call them unsocial bees. They like live without the colony. They live without the hive Yeah, yeah, they they live in they live in little holes That's wasps picture wasp doing that but bees bees also. Yeah And they're very important members of the ecosystem Yeah, yeah, that's often when you when you make things called bee hotels Those are often for bees that don't live in hot Sometimes it's for bees that are finding a new hive and need a place to stay in the meantime I love it when you say stuff like that when you make a bee hotel Everyone everyone if you're looking for a fun thing to do Probably more in the spring So if you're in the southern hemisphere you could do this right now or if you're in the northern hemisphere You might want to wait wait a few months But you can make a bee hotel at home and put it on your porch or in your backyard And it's a place for bees to hang out another really cool thing to do for bees. Sorry. I'm getting out on a tangent now How do you make a bee hotel a bee bath? So a bee hotel could be like a bunch of toilet paper tubes against a piece of wood or something like that But they really are like little single occupancy rooms for bees. Um, but also Bee baths are great. So bees all the time In bird baths or bodies of water because I mean we did a story Last year maybe about how bees get stuck in water So if you want to make a bee bath next to your bee hotel You just take like a plate or a bowl and you put a bunch of rocks in it And then you fill it up with water So there's lots of spaces for them to land and then drink and they won't get stuck in the water Help the bees there's a little bee hotel. Love it. Make little solitary bee house naters Help yeah Oh, that's great Great suggestion Blair. Yeah Projects are fun. I mean everyone's looking for stuff to do at home right now, right? Are you tired of making bread make a bee hotel? Yeah Make five give them to four of your friends. Oh Christmas presents. That's right. The holidays are coming It's gift giving season. It's coming up People could get the twist calendar and give those as gifts as well Start thinking about that everyone. Oh my goodness Blair. Thank you for wetting our whistle and answering that question And George, thank you for Asking your question if you have a question for the twist team Send us your question really we will do our best to answer it if I mean maybe a right answer may not be We will do our best You can send questions to kirsten at thisweekinscience.com or leave a message on our Facebook page facebook.thisweekinscience.com We've made it to the end We're at the end Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show Shout outs now to Fada for his help on show notes and with social media Thank you for writing all those messages to people and coming up with fun images for the social image the social media messages Gord thank you so much for managing the chat room for our main chat and identity for thank you for recording the show I'd also like to thank our patreon sponsors and the boroughs welcome fund for their generous support Thank you too Donathan Stiles aka Don Stilo, John Scioli, Guillaume, John Lee, Alli Coffin, Maddie Perangora of Sharma, Josiah Zainer, Mike Schumaker, Sarah Forfar, Donald Mundus, Gerald Slurrells Stephen Albaran, Darryl Myshac, Stu Pollock, Andrew Swanson, Fred S-104, Corinne Benton, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Ben Bignell, Kevin Reardon, Noodles Jack, Brian Carrington, Matt Bass, Joshua Fury, Sean and Nina Lamb, John McKee, Greg Reilly, Mark Hesson, Flo Jean Tellier, Steve Leesman, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrappen, Richard, Brandon Minnish, Melizand Johnny Gridley, Flying Out, Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer, Mark Mazzaro, Sardium, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, Robert, Robert Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul Matt Sutter, Philip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Mountain Sloth, Jim Drepose, Sarah Chavis, Alex Wilson, John Ratnuswamy, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Kostie Rankie, Matthew Litwin, Eric Knapp, EO, Kevin Parichan, Aaron Luthon, Steve DeBell, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul Stanton, Paul Disney, Patrick Pecoraro, Ben Rotheg, Gary Eth, Ed Dyer, Tony Steele, Ulysses Adkins, Brian Condren, Jason Roberts and Dave Freidl. Thank you for all of your support on Patreon. And if you want to be a Patreon supporter too, you can join the club. Go to twist.org and click on the Patreon link and choose your level of support. On next week's show, we will be back Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific Time, broadcasting live from our YouTube and Facebook channels and from twist.org slash live. Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast? Maybe make some bee hotels while you listen, multitask. Just search for This Week in Science wherever podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe as well. Yeah, and for more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to the stories we talked about, we'll be available on the website www.twist.org. You can also sign up for our newsletter. Right, you can also contact us directly, email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistmanana, gmail.com, or me, Blair at BlairBaz at twist.org. 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I've got one disclaimer, and it shouldn't be news, that what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get understand. That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. The laundry list of items I want to address, from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought, and I'll try to answer any question you've got. So how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour? This week in science, this week in science. Science, science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science. I turned it off. I love listening. Boom, boom, boom, boom. What? What? What's the picture in picture this happening? Picture in picture. Look at that screen share. That's fun. Maybe I can switch it. No, it doesn't want me to switch it. Let's see. Hmm, no, it doesn't want me to do that. But that's kind of fun. It's a fun picture in picture, huh? So right here, underneath the subscribe button, there will be a order your calendar link. It will be there, everybody will be able to get your calendar. I am not using OBS. I am using a platform called StreamYard, which I really like. It's very cool. It is pretty cool. Gaurav wants to know how many years of twist calendars we've had with my art. And I do believe the very first one was 2016. Couple of years now. Five calendars. 19, 20. This will be. Six calendars. Yeah. Yeah. You're so creative. That's so many animals and so many different styles. I won't run out of animals. I do fear I'll run out of styles. It's okay. It's okay. I think people would forgive you if you decided to recycle some styles. I do know that the coloring calendar was very popular. People were vocally supportive of the, yeah, they liked that one. Last year's calendar, I thought was really great. That was the hardest that I ever did. It was an amazing, it was beautiful. It was such an undertaking. Like each piece that I hand cut took way longer than even just a start to finish. So you're saying you're going to do it again, right? No. No, if I, I think if I do it, I'll, I'll do some, some cheatery. So like basically. You can do a medley. You can do a medley where you just, yeah. You need to get, that's going to be for the, I guess for the, would it be the 12th, I guess the 12th calendar that you do would be one from each year style. Halfway there. Like in Blair space. She's like, what? How about 10th? Now let's see. 12th, yeah. It's the math of the month. And I forgot about that. That's the number of, that's how I was. Macaroni art is good. I have actually been thinking about doing, um, sculpture and taking pictures of the sculptures and putting those in the calendar. I thought about that. Oh my God. If I were to do that, it would be like these really misshapen lumps of clay. I like, this is a donkey. Oh gosh. I used to do like, I used to do a lot of female clay, which is the stuff that you bake in the oven. But I feel like the problem there is I think it would be like, if you give a mouse a cookie thing where like, I'd be like, all right, but before I take this picture, I have to like make a background. Oh, well now I want to like make kind of some foregrounds. Okay. So now I've just made a full diorama for every month and that's going to take like weeks per piece. Like that's not going to work out. No, you have to. That's an amazing idea. Oh boy. That's an incredible idea. I love that idea. And then with each diorama, you can make stop action movies. Yeah, now we're getting to, oh boy. Hey, hey, uh, don't give cookies to mice. Well, because then they're going to want some milk. They want some milk. Yeah. And then they also start to become less afraid of humans. And, and also they can give you what is it, hantavirus. So that's not good. It's just not a great. Oh, yeah. Oh, I like the word chickenry too. That's a great word. It's a great, great word. So we got the listener sounding off of where they are in the chat room a little bit. We got the listener in Alaska. We got one in Norway. Norway. Nice. Yes. That science is a good community globally. It really is. And yes, science, it's, it's a noun. It's also a verb. Scienceing. Scienceing. I think it's an, it is, it is a noun that has been verbed. I think it's coming from New York City. New York City. This is Seattle. They called this name. Australia in the house. I know that we've got some Portland in the house. Oh, yeah. Yeah, currently in Denmark for a few more weeks and then back in Northern Cali. That's right. Yes, strengths. You did recommend StreamYard. I really like it. It is fantastic. It's a great platform. Oh, Thunderbeavers says, oh, we should make desktop wallpick paper packs with odd sizes for mobile phones. That's really smart. That's a great idea. I don't know how to do that though. You have the digital images? Yeah. Mike, north of Napa. Oh, hey, Mike. Hopefully you're steering clear of some of the fires that's going on right there through Napa. I don't know exactly what's going on in the fire. I'm getting some updates. It's bad, but it hasn't gotten worse, I think, since last week. I think it's just still bad. Yeah. I think it was the New York Times. I just saw the headline, the hottest September ever. Was it not a summer in San Francisco? It could be soon. It was the hottest September on record. Ever. See, wallpaper. Oh, Mike Schumacher says he's taken up constant smoking. Oh, but it doesn't actually smoke. Yes, I got to see the air quality. Not good. Yeah, so hot rod, I could share images. I think I just have to, I'd want to watermark the corner or something. Why? Why? Your wallpapers. Yeah. Yeah, you'd put your signature. Yeah, but we know it's you. And if it's the wallpaper, you'd put a twist logo and your sig on the art. Yeah, but also some of them are square. Yeah, so I'm looking. So I'd have to, I'd want to matte them somehow or something? I don't know. Yeah, Webmaster was 2016. Is that even appropriate anymore? 2016 is like a decade ago already. Screen ratios, company wanted desks to 1600 by 1024 is older. 1920 by 1080 is most common. 2560 by 1600 is largest. Yeah, so you can up res the image, but yeah, you have the older newer screens or 16 by nine, aren't they? And older screens are for three. How big are you? I just want them to come out with itself healing screens for these phones. Because I just, I just got a new phone and broke it. I just got, I just lived with the broken one for a while and I was like, that's it. I'm done getting a new phone just because of the screen. And then I don't even remember dropping it. I don't know what happened. Just looked at it one day and it's all cracked. I have to figure out how hard it is to, I know, but that just makes it crack so the glass doesn't fall out, doesn't it? It doesn't actually protect it. I know I've seen so many of those screens of that little sheet on it and then the thing is still cracked. I'm not really sure what the difference is. I got to figure out how to replace the screen though. That's, oh, that's really, I like that one. Isn't that pretty? So this, I was just looking, it's 3300 by 2550. So it would be fine. And it is already matted, which is nice. Are all of them that size? Because I know you did the calendar. The calendar has been big like that for, was that the more rectangular year? That was the rectangular year. Yeah, every time I go, I say the exact same two sentences to the person at the FedEx office that I go to scan them in at because I want professional grade scans. And they give me a different DPI every time, which I'm always like, how? I'm asking the same question. I don't understand. I don't get it. But let's see, oh yeah, so this would be it. So where's, I need the, where's the 2020 calendar? Oh, speaking of bears, we need to talk about, we talked about Fat Bear Week last week. Did anyone vote? The votes are in. I forgot to vote. The votes are in. Love this from their website. Lordacious Leviathan levels, chunky challenger. The votes are in. You've been crowned the Earl of Vardupois Bear 747. It was Bear 747 who has won. Bear number 747. No longer, let's see. 747's voluminous visage eclipsed 32's chunky chassus. No longer the runner up 747 fulfills the fate of the fat and fabulous as he heads off to hibernation. I mean, 32 did gain, that was quite a bit of weight gain, but yeah, 747, I mean, that was the chunk, the chunk. Who was my favorite again? I think that was one of them. You definitely mentioned that one. I did like 747. Yeah. Oh, they've gotten rid of the bears. Oh, no. No, oh there, I want to go back to meet the bears. Okay, 32 chunk. I just love these bears so much. They're all so good. They're so good. 32 chunk, he did, that was a lot of weight gain for hibernation. 128 grazer, 151 walker, that was a good one too. 402, I liked one of the holly, was it holly that I liked? You, we definitely talked about 747 though. Yeah, I definitely did. I think it was just because the number- Look at 747, we're down, brown booty. Oh, he's so cute. I think holly was my favorite too. Holly was good. I mean, there's holly, there you go. There was another one though. There was one that looked like it couldn't walk if it wanted to. It was. How did that not win? Oh, I liked 856, I voted for 856 at one point. We do what we can for these bears. 812 was pretty good too. Look at those bears. Oh, bears. Okay, let's remove the bears from the stream. We have a winner, 747. Oh, look, it's the red panda, the animal, the current animal of the month. Last month. Oh yeah, last month. October. I am not ready for it to be October. I have not changed my calendar. It's a weekend to October. Okay, this is 4,800 by 4,800. But yeah, I could like crop it. You could crop it or put it on a black, just put it on a bigger black background so it's matted on a bigger canvas. True. Truth. Those bears. Oh, Tess Tickle has bigger bears than that in Alaska. Yeah, the Kodiak bears get gigantic. So, Kiki, you were talking about like- Ackbarak, Ackbarak, hold on, Ackbarak Barian has found us on Twitch. Hello and welcome and I hope that we are useful. We talk about science. We may not be talking about science right now, but we were talking about science. We may talk about science again. Our main show is over for the night. This is our after show, but thank you for joining us. I hope you come back, 8 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday nights. Okay, what? Huh, Blair? Oh, you were talking about the zap on the tongue and- And you kept talking about pop rocks and I was suddenly reminded of the pop rock chocolate that you can get in the Middle East that you can't get here. Yeah, it sounds weird, pop rock chocolate. It sounds really weird, but it's really weirdly good. But yeah, I haven't really been able to find it in the U.S. And so I was like, oh, I wonder if I could buy it on Amazon. Maybe. There is a chocolate bar. I think it's called a firecracker bar by- I think it's a firecracker chocolate bar. Is it chuao? Yeah, and it has chipotle and popping candy. Yes, it has- so it's a little spicy and it has the pop. Nice. Yes. Yeah, this is- So if you like spice, the chuao firecracker chocolate chuao is very delicious and poppy spicy. It's the brand I always had in Israel is called Elite. But it has like- it looks like fireworks on the package. But yeah, I suddenly thought of it. I was like, I wonder if I should buy a box and get it shipped over. Yeah, you could- I'm seeing them on Am- yes. They are on Amazon. Thinking about it. Yeah, just because, you know, it was something that I was going there so often that I was like, oh, I just- I'll pick up a 12 pack and bring it home and I'll eat it over the next year or so and then I'll go back again. And then I haven't been in so long and I was like, oh gosh. What candy do I have on my desk right now? Oven joy. I saw blue. Nope. Oh. Any guesses, Justin? What candy do I have on my desk right now? I didn't see anything. Nerds. I got big chewy nerds. Big chewy nerds. I'll do like some nerds. Big chewy nerds. So this- the last- I'm waking up to the news as I am here this late at night in the States. Uh, yeah. The coronavirus outbreak at the White House is now up to 34. 35. Staffers- now it's 35 even? Oh my goodness. 35. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, there is- so here I'll show this link that I was showing earlier in the show from this public Tableau page that somebody put together. That's tracking it. They've been doing kind of unofficial contact tracing of all the known people that are in the White House and that have been- have been tested positive and so there are 35 positives. Wow. And so from those 35 positives, how many, you know, how many people do they have contact with? How many people has it spread out to? There was a story that New Jersey is having to contact trace the 260 or so people who were at a fundraising event in New- or a campaign event in New Jersey for the president. On their own because the White House and the CDC aren't working together to do contact tracing on how this happened. Yes. Yeah. I think- The chewy nerds do not pop in my mouth. Sorry, Anthony. Can I just say, I think it's- I'll just go on a limb. I feel like it was really irresponsible how the president of the United States contracting COVID was- in recovering, which is still taking place, has been presented. Oh yeah. It's willfully dangerous and ignorant to believe that any 74-year-old in our country or anywhere in the world is going to receive this sort of medical treatment and then to downplay it. I felt it was- The downplaying is what has bothered me the most. I felt like the, you know, when vaccines were first introduced, it wasn't somebody telling someone else to not let illness- don't be afraid of the illness. The CDC doesn't recommend simply not allowing infectious diseases to dominate you. They go further in terms of recommendations that are scientifically derived to avoid getting illness in the first place and recommending treatments that have been tested to address them. Simply saying, don't be afraid and just be- you know, don't let it dominate you is, first of all, not how this was addressed. The president didn't simply contract COVID and then tough it out. Quite the opposite. Immediately ran to the best medical care possible by science and medical technology. Again, in a government healthcare system at a nonprofit government hospital using federal tax dollars, which he did not pay. But then to categorize it as having simply been survived by willpower and lack of fear, I think sends the wrong message. It might just be me, but I feel like that was irresponsible. I don't think it's just you. You could say it might just be me, but I don't think it's just you. Nope, nope. Yep. Kevin Jones. Yeah, there's a certain amount of negligence. Criminal, possibly considering his position and status. In our society. And yes, so the hopped up on steroids aspect, so many doctors have commented on the fact that the steroids, there was a tweet that one doctor wrote. People on steroids can get up and walk themselves to the morgue. That the steroids just make you feel so good. Yeah, of course. You don't really realize how bad you are. So I mean, I think it would be. This is there are so many things. I mean, I really do hope that medicine works and that treatments work. And I as much as people. I don't want anybody to get this. People are going to go. No, don't want anybody to get this. Don't want anybody to die from this. However, I will say if if the if we had images of the president on a respirator. For instance, I think it would have saved lives. And I think that the the way it's been defined and categorized for the people who will pay attention to anything that this individual says. Yeah. Is very dangerous. Well, I mean, there was an estimating threat is is is. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, I saw I saw and somebody from the news interviewed a bunch of people who are outside of the hospital with Trump flags and stuff like that. And like none of them had masks on. A lot of them didn't. And they went up to this one young man who was holding this flag and they said, like, Trump's here for coronavirus. Like, why aren't you wearing a mask? And he said, you know, I'm young and healthy. So I don't have any preexisting conditions. So I'm good. And, you know, the reporter said, like, oh, but aren't you worried about bringing that to someone else? He's like, oh, yeah, that's a concern. But I'm young and healthy. So I'm good. And I think, you know, that's the wrong angle is the problem. And I think this is kind of perpetuating that, right? It's like the, oh, I survived. So it's fine. Well, I have just recently purchased a new vehicle, which is compared to all the vehicles in the past is the safest version of that vehicle or pretty much any vehicle that's ever been built. The newer the car you buy, the safer it is. That's why I've stopped stopping at stop signs because I'll be safe. Yeah, ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. And we don't know like the thing that the conversation needs to focus now. I think for, for this segment, at least on the after effects, surviving the initial encounter, even, okay, is only the first step in having contracted this virus. There is, there's a tremendous amount of evidence of lingering effects here through cognitive or lung ability. We don't know how having contracted it, you know, the president, maybe I'm immune. I don't know. No, you don't know. And neither does anybody else. You don't also know how this will affect your ability to respond to future illnesses. Which, you know, there's, there's a lot more to be concerned with other than the initial encounter with this virus. Very true. Whoa. So I just put up the Nautilus live just to, because COVID is everywhere and I need a distraction. Yeah, okay. Need a distraction. I put up the Nautilus live camera feed and am scrolling down and apparently it looks like they are going to dive at midnight. They're preparing the ROVs for a second dive launching at midnight tonight exploring Pioneer Canyon. Exploring the Monterey Bay and Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries. So that is, that is in preparation right now, which is pretty cool. I don't know when they're going to be going tomorrow, but if you, if you like staying up and watching dives, Nautilus live.org slash live slash quad, Justin, you'll be awake. You can distract yourself with dark visions from the depths. It looks like they've got some images from earlier, from earlier exploration, which is pretty cool. Is that a little Lego model of the thing or is that the actual? No, I was just going to look picture of some coral from the bottom of the marine sanctuary. Yes, this is a Lego. Looks like a Lego rover. How fun. Nautilus live education resources build a bot challenge using Lego. There's a funny fish. He's upside down. Is he upside down? No, is he? I don't look upside down. Maybe he's not upside down. He has a bulby head. Yeah. That's a very bulby. Very tubular looking body from this angle. Tubular, totally tubular bulby body. Octopus garden. Oh, there it is. There's octopus garden. Oh, wow. They're going to go back there again. I love the octopus garden. Look at those octopuses congregating. Oh, have you both seen the octopus documentary on Netflix? No. It's pretty fun. It's not quote unquote scientific. It's called My Octopus Teacher, but it's a filmmaker who spent every day over a year going out into the ocean free diving and found an octopus. And so every day he went to visit the octopus. No, it's Meerkat Manor with octopuses. Yeah, one octopus because it's just one octopus. Is this in Seattle? No, I think he's a South African or something. Yeah, but it's a beautiful film. The first part of the movie, I was like, oh, get into it. There's too much story going on and it's very much about his personal story and things he was dealing with and I'm like, okay, okay, get past that. And then he gets into the ocean and he starts actually talking to the octopus and it's like, it gets really good. So if you can get past like the first 15 or so minutes, it gets really great. Really, really enjoyed it. And it just, it's just a beautiful movie. And at the end, I think the big, the trailer, it has this line, but it's toward the end of the movie. He has the thought that going down there to visit the octopus really made him realize how we all need to, how we all need to learn to be, to treat things like our home and less like we're visitors. You know, like so taking care of, taking care of stuff. And I think it's a really important. Yeah, there was something, he said Blair at the head of the turtle egg story, which is we already know about the things with the turtles and all the plastics in the ocean. And it occurred to me like, it almost sounded like the turtles were putting plastics into the ocean. But can you imagine if we separated out all the bad things that people do to this planet? And then there was an animal doing it other than human. So there's a pernicious form of tropical beaver that is deforestation the rainforest. There are turtles that are somehow dragging plastics out into the ocean. There are, you know, you go on and you created another animal that was responsible for all of these things. What would humans likely do to mitigate that? What do you think the animals really would like to do right about now? We're not very, I don't think we're popular. We might be the dominant species on the planet, but we're not, it's not a popularity contest. Oh, it's not a popularity contest. No, no, not at all, not at all. Yeah, there is a short story in this somewhere. Yeah, it's not a reality show made for TV. Everything is made for TV. Let me show you what should be on the TV. What is this voice you got? I don't know. It's my made for TV voice. I'm trying. I think I think it came. I think the voice came kind of from Sally O'Malley. I'm Sally O'Malley and I'm 50 years old. I'm not 50 years old yet. We're getting close. No. Getting very, yeah, getting close. No, I am. I'm really close. I'm a little closer than I am. Oh, not very much. Oh my goodness. Yes. I care about climate change. I know that they don't approach it well. I heard it wasn't covered well in the debates, but I didn't watch it because. Shocking. I had a show coming up and I knew that it wasn't going to change anything. If they said the words at all, it's more than they did in 2016, so. That's true. I'm fine with it. Yeah, I like the animal farm potential of this story, Carl. I think it does. Like these poor humans being besieged by all these awful animals. Just fantastic. Noodle says humans make Earth less than the discovered super habitable planets. Maybe Earth would be super habitable if it weren't for the humans on it. I still, I still have this idea of doing a version of Atlas shrugged. Where it's all about sustainability and living within our means and. Yeah. And cooperation and collaboration and working together. Yep. But you take the instead of a certain industries being the core of that story, it's certain scientific endeavors that are being corrupted by crony capitalism politics. As sort of what happens in the same story, but instead of a railroad trying to be preserved renewable energy. Being the thing that they're they're trying to keep open and honest. Yeah, Pixar could probably help us with that. I know. Well, we have like we have like orcas doing offshore drilling. We'd have hedgehogs doing fracking in the Midwest. Causing all these noxious gases. All these animals are ruining the planet. Yeah. Well, I mean, what was it? Happy feet? I loved happy feet. The movie Robin Williams was the voice of the Emperor Penguin. No, the. Macaroni. Macaroni. Yes. Yes. And the. Yeah. You're in Blair's animal corner now. I am now. Keep it going. Had such a good message. And then there's also the Dr. Seuss's the Lorax. That one is a good one. I mean, it's not out animal farm for sure, but it's still kind of like that. Keep it going. House Science Island progressing. You know what? I still need to figure out how to get the money to start the Science Island. I still haven't figured out. Step one is by land. But then it turns out there's a step before that, which is have the money to buy those, which is really frustrating. However, I did get to visit a couple of times. Basically a Science Island that's been going on for, I think, 50 years now, 40, 50 years, which is Svenholm or Svenholm's girls. I can't really, it's a community that is very much sustainable and organic. And doing all these things, they have, I keep calling it a wind turbines for electricity. They've got some solar. They're doing all their own gardening. And it's a collective of, I think, around 150 people. And it's really amazing. You can wander around the grounds and pick tomatoes or apples or pears or whatever. They've got cows there that are making the milk. They have a big community cafeteria. And they have a little public facing store and some other little things going on there too. But they also, you know, walking through and seeing how they handle recycling or reusing of things that people have purchased. So they have this sort of, like, just grab and go if you live there. You can go in there and there's, like, here's some wall full of children's toys. So if you have kids who, like, are bored with their toys, they can walk through here and it's Christmas. They can go, ooh, I want that. And they take that one toy home. When they're done with it, they go put it back in the shelf in this area. And somebody else can pick it up later to play with. And then sort of separating out their own, oh, you enjoying the culture? Okay, the problem with the cult that I start is I don't want to lead it. And then I wouldn't trust the cult that's led by somebody else. So it has to be collected. Now, one of the problems with the collective is everybody gets to make decisions that affect you, which I also don't like. So I haven't figured out the social political dynamics of the thing. Because I don't like any political system, really. But yeah, it's compared to the alternative, it seems like a really good idea. And what was the question? Oh, Kevin Jones says, Rethink buying an island will be underwater in 70 years. So I think it's like a conceptual island. It doesn't have to be an island. It could be land on a mountain. It could be a mountaintop. Yeah, it could be a mountaintop island. Say we're planning for the future is the point. So you buy the foothills, you buy a hill in the coastal range in California, you call it an island now. Nobody gets it because it's not really an island. And then one day they're like, oh, genius. Yeah, didn't see that coming. Now it's an island. No man is an island. I just opened my Twitter. That was a poor choice. What about the land that's currently covered with snow and ice? Antarctic. You know what looks good to me, Greenland? Greenland looks nice. Yeah, it's still going to be dark half the year, which is rough. It's still going to be melting. Like those glaciers are on their way out. Yeah, there's a lot of melting that needs to still happen. But then some of the far north, I mean, really Montana might not be, if you like swamps at least, because back when it was really warm before, there was alligators in Montana. So that's where Montana is headed. Swamplands, marshy, swampy waterways full of alligators. I need to not look at Twitter anymore. Yeah, it's the nearest place to go right now. Marshy Swamp. I've been doing my best. I go onto the Twitter and the Facebook and I'm like, and then I run away very quickly. I haven't really trying to stay away my mental health. Maybe, maybe someday, I believe I will put down the social media and I will do something constructive with my time. Kevin Jones says, we can let you run it until we overthrow you for making us eat kale chips. Okay, that's fair. So kale chips with yeast powder. I like the yeast powder, not a big fan of kale chips. Oh, it's salty, it's good. But apparently the tradition that became I think Halloween, the Samhain thing, was a tradition of overthrowing local leaders. Like it was sort of like having a term limits, but it was like yearly, whoever was in charge got kicked out at that point in the year and they put somebody else in. So, and I think they might, I don't know if they edit how violent that was, but it might have just been a party. I think there should be a constant turnover of power. There should be a constant turnover of power, otherwise you get into problems. Yeah, big problems. That's what our government was supposed to help us avoid. How about just a representative government, which we don't currently have? That would be it. Our representative government would have to get rid of the way this is going to be. We have to get rid of the way the Senate is formed. We have to change elections. So it's the will of the people, the majority. There's a lot of work that needs to be done, people. There's a lot of work. That could be better on a science island. Could be better on a science island, yep. And if you're on a science island, you can close the borders really early so that you don't get the COVID. Yeah. You could treat your science island like New Zealand. It would be self-sustaining, so the whole point is that. Contacting and contact tracing. You could survive on the island with the food produced by the island, with the energy produced on this little island. If you just... So it kind of needs to be like, can 150 people live with the energy and the food that they produce on 100 acres of land or whatever. Can it be done? Yes, it can be. Let's show people. Carol Ann says, you've been doing this in second life for years, running the science stuff. Okay, no, okay. Yeast, yeah, the yeast powder, it's not salty, salty, but it has that umami flavor to it. That's what I guess. Yeah, I mean, you can add salt to it, but the... Yeah, it doesn't really need it, though. Nutritional yeast did on popcorn. It's really good on popcorn. I had to eat a lot of it as a child because somebody, and I don't know if it's true or not, still to this day, but it had a high vitamin B content or something, and that was supposedly kept bees away. Oh, no, no, not sorry, not bees, mosquitoes. It made you less likely to be attacked by mosquitoes. I think was... I don't know if it was true or not, or if it was just one of those things like... Maybe. Hey, kids, if you eat nutritional yeast, mosquitoes won't bug you. And then everybody's like, Oh, I hate mosquitoes. Let me eat a lot of this nutrition. It might have just been, because my pops would do that. He would lie to get you to do stuff. It was not above coming up. He's not above coming up with... I have fibs. Yeah, a story that tricks kids into eating healthy. It would absolutely be real house. I was mad at my mom for several years regularly, because she would put carob chips in things, instead of chocolate. And it was just the biggest let down. Every time I'd be like, Chocolate, carob, carob. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Vitamin E will put hair in your chest. Broccoli will put hair in your chest. Like, why would I want that? Carob will make you... So, kid, that's not a great message. If you be messing child, it's not like, oh, I want to have hair on my chest. No, it's not a good, not a thing that I want. I mean, Timid Tenor is asking yeast, like in Marmite. It's like, yeah, I mean, it's yeast, but it's a powder. It's like, it's yeast flakes, powder. Not a fermented thing. It's not fermented exactly. HNK's got it there. It's right down with carob. Yeah, you may have had to have had slightly hippie parents to have encountered nutritional yeast in here earlier years. Yeah, or lived in a hippie commune at college. So can I, I do have to say something about Science Island here real briefly. A lot of the places that I would have envisioned putting Science Island are on fire. So it may be a good thing that we're not there yet, but this might be the absolute opportunity to get ahold of some land cheaper than we could have before. It means that we have to do some a little bit of ecological terraforming starting from scratch and fireproofing. You need a big, you need to build that wall. It's a firewall. It's not to keep people out. You could just go north. You could just come up to the northwest. Yeah. Oh, I hear it's really nice. There's a place, it's called Paradise. I think that sounds really nice. That would be too soon, Justin. Too soon. It's always too soon in California. We never get over. We just go on with more of the same. Cod liver. Oh, that was my grandmother every time. So I'd spend like a week, two weeks with my grandmother in the summers growing up every day. Kirsten, take your cod liver oil. Okay, every day. It's good for you. Yep. Yep. Cod liver, my grandmother. I mean, she was Danish Norwegian. So it is a Danish Norwegian thing, but it was also, I don't know, it's a Scandinavian thing. So there's also two people in Finland really like fermented fish and a can. I don't know what it is for a region that is surrounded by water in Denmark. So they're the Norwegians, right? The Norwegians. Finns, Swedes have, they all have access to a sea or an ocean or both. And yet there's a tremendous amount of canned fish that comes from somewhere else. It comes from the ocean. We get this, we get this fish in the net and we put them in the cans and then it's fish from the ocean and you open it. It's like the ocean in your cabinet, in your mouth. They seem to be importing canned fish from other places. Oh, which by the way, by the way, if you're, if you're Scandinavian and a northern European or even European perhaps and you don't like tuna fish, it's because your tuna sucks. I don't know what's wrong with the tuna here. It's not the tuna we have in California. It is complete. It's like, it's very fishy. Cat food. It's cat food that they're eating here. I noticed that when I was abroad too. I was like, ooh, I've never eaten anything. I'm not even, yeah. What's wrong? Is it the blue versus the yellow fin? I don't know what the difference is. No, no, you're not eating blue fin tuna in a can ever. No, you're not eating blue fin in a can. I don't know what it is they're calling tuna here, but it's cat food. Like, I might even feel bad. Like, if I open a can of this and I was going to give it to my cat even, I'd be like, oh, you know what? Let me go. This might be a bad one. A bite for my cat, a bite for me. This might be a better one. Let me go find you something really because it's not even, I wouldn't even feed to my cat what they call tuna. Yeah. Oh, Swedish fish candies. Maybe I need a bag of those on my. Oh, Ludifisk. Yeah, there you go. Ludifisk. Yes. That's some good stuff. I expected to really like Ludifisk and I didn't because I like gefilte fish, which is something that, you know, people generally think are super gross. It's like pickled fish. It's like, oh, probably similar. No, it's not similar and I did not like it. It does weird things. Oh, yeah. So gefilte fish is Jewish poached mixture of ground deboned fish. It is ground and then reformed into a nugget shape. And then it is put in jelly. I mean, into a jelly. No, it's put in jelly. It's like submerged in jelly. Submerged in jelly. Like pickled in jelly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The Ludifisk is that's my dad. I brought some Ludifisk back from back from Norway and Sweden for my dad for Christmas once. He was so happy. This is this is also to get a can of Ludifisk. This is a can of mackerel and tomato sauce. Yep. That sounds about right. It's all the fishes can. It's hard to get fresh fish even though there's water seas and waters everywhere. It's just easy for packing, storing, saving. I mean, they're not going out in the ocean when it's the middle of winter. Well, they're not even wants to go to the store. No, there was no winter. There has not been a winter here. It's been really interesting. It gets dark. Oh, yeah. It gets very dark. So dark. The kids love mackerel and tomato. Oh, there it is. Caroline, the fish is put in lye water and the fat is dissolved. No fat in the fish. Yum, lye water. Delicious. No, it could be a soap, the stuff off of it. Blair needs to go to sleep. I'm sorry. Hot rod won't eat canned fish. Oh. Noodles is ready to barter. Toilet fish, toilet fish, toilet paper for canned fish. Toilet fish. Noodles has a hundred rolls of toilet paper ready for that canned fish. Justin, ready to barter. But fish jello. I think my cat will appreciate that more than I will. So if anybody though has an idea of how to generate a half million dollars this fall, we'll start Science Island for Christmas. Awesome. So that's all we need. It's not that much. It's actually insanely cheap for, you know, entire islands. For the beginnings, for the whole island. And we won't have to do a slash and burn farming technique because the burning's already been done apparently for us. It's all been done. Eric Knapp thinks I need to go to sleep too. The sleep, it is calling us. Okay, well in that case, say good night, Blair. Justin's got a whole day. Say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you for another great show. Thank you for hanging out, everyone. Blair, go get some sleep, everyone. I'll let you know when the calendars are out. They'll hopefully be, well not out, but pre-orders ready by next week. We'll see you next week. That's pretty much it, right? Everyone here next week, we're all here next week. Yes. I'm just going to hang up and leave you guys waving. No, I wouldn't do that. I'm ending the broadcast. Bye.