 We are going live we are waiting for the confirmation of the link and the broadcasting This is twist this week in science episode number 628 recorded on Wednesday July 19th 2017 after birth science theater Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science We are going to fill your heads with space music sad birds And so much placenta But first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer Despite anything you may hear to the contrary we humans originated on earth We evolved from the great magnitude of fauna the earth has produced over four billion years We were forged in the fear of predation Where any miscalculation of risk might be our last and in the cunning adaptations of the hunt Learning how to catch prey in more and more inventive ways We are every bit the animal our ancestors were beasts with brains But beasts all the same and while all manner of modernity over the years has sought to claim itself Civilized every modernity of thought has kept the core conclusions of predator and prey that it is better to Run and hide than it is to be eaten that is better to fight and kill than it is to go hungry And that it is better to eat than to be eaten and while we struggle to construct Modernity after modernity based on anything other than these principles One aspect of our modern age does seem to buck the trend of animal instinct Because only recently have we as a species the society and the civilization only now Have we earthlings discovered for no earthly reason at all this weekend science coming up next? I can't get enough. I want to learn everything. I want to fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening What's happening? What's happening this week in science? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? In science In science And good science to you Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back yet again To talk about all the science news that we see fit to talk about because you know what? It's our darn show. Well, you know what it's your darn show, too We thank you so much for being here with us for another week of science news And we are also joined today by Jessica Hebert. She is going to talk to us all about placentas. It's going to be very exciting Hello Yes In addition to our interview with Jessica, we are also going to be talking about new stories about NASA space discoveries Movies in DNA and from DNA and world robot domination Crazy robot arm Oh crazy robot arm dominating the world. There we go. Jessica Looking forward to your interview Justin. What do we have from you? Oh, he went away. Where'd he go? Who even knows who even knows he was here for a moment and now he's gone Blair, what is going to be in the animal corner? Oh, I brought birds and perils as you had mentioned previously and also a Good examination of why exactly I distrust squirrels You have good reason to distrust Talk about some science behind it this evening. I love it. That's great And you know what? I can't introduce Justin stories for him and he has run off for a moment So we're just gonna go on with the show because he brought some ancient human stuff and some other stuff I don't know just anything just any things. That's right, but it's time to go on with the show So for our first segment of the show We are going to read from the mail bag for this week in what has science done for me lately Well This is from patron Eric nap. Hello Kiki Blair and Justin I am alive because of science when I turned 50 I had a colonoscopy a test developed by and recommended by medical science the test found cancer I then had a bunch of scientifically designed scans CT pet and MRI to figure out the size of the tumor and if it had spread For treatment. I had radiation with a very advanced machine Surgery and then chemotherapy all developed by scientists and physicians I am now three years from the end of treatment. I am being monitored using CT scans and advanced blood tests So far, there's no sign of the return of the cancer So what has science done for me is it saved my life? Eric nap Eric in a K in the chat room and he's in there right now. Thank you for watching the show Thank you for being a patron and thank you so much for sharing your story of how science has Very dramatically impacted your life Eric Thank You Eric best of luck to you over the rest of your treatment and we're so happy that science has been here for you Yeah Maybe that cancer that darned cancer won't come back that would be the best thing We will keep monitoring thanks to science Everyone out there. Remember we need you you to write in to let us know What science has done for you lately? How has it helped you in your life? How does it what does it do in your life that you think about every once in a while and you go, huh? That's because of science When you think about that Send me a Facebook message go to the this week in science Facebook page and Send me a note write me a little message and I will put you in the schedule to be read on the show You can also send me an email at Kiki Finch at gmail.com because I still haven't fixed my this week in science email because this is me and Internets boo science fix key easy You know The the good and the bad of the science of the internets Anyway, I want to fill this segment Every week with something from our minion community So I do need you to continue writing in your stories have been touching funny Insightful wonderful in so many regards and I just want to keep this going Let's keep sharing. Let's build our community and let's remind ourselves and everyone who might come and across this show What science does for us on a regular basis? Write us do it do it do it do it now I would like to introduce our guest Jessica Hebert is a Biology PhD student at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon Not in Portland, Maine. It's Portland, Oregon She studies the placenta Jessica enjoys teaching and hopes someday to have a research lab and teach at a primarily undergraduate institution. She also Does science communications? She serves on panels and she manages conferences She does podcasts like this one and she's also the media and outreach Coordinator for PSU's biology investigations and outreach Organization she invited me last year to come speak their Darwin days events. I was pretty cool And she also is very nerdy which we can appreciate she makes music about science doctor who zombies and Certain individuals derriers With her band the pdx broadsides and she also collaborates with people on Facebook's theme music and She is sometimes a pirate And we're gonna talk about all these things today I do hope Jessica. Thank you so much for joining us today. Well good science. Thank you so much for having me It's such a pleasure Yeah, so the last time our paths crossed you had a Bucket and a super soaker. Yeah, that'll happen So the last yeah explain what buckets and super soakers Have to do with placentas. Okay, so if you've never seen a placenta before they're gross they're They're about 20% of The weight of a human baby, so they're between one and two pounds At birth and placenta is Latin for flat cake Because that's what it looks like But the placenta isn't yeah, you already learned things I did and it just gives new meaning to the Placenta eaters. That's a hashtag team placenta promise. We'll get to placenta eating. All right. Yeah So the placenta is a system of blood vessels and it is responsible for transporting blood and nutrients and waste and gases in between mom and the baby and When you've got all these blood vessels Well, you can look at the super soaker as a model for moving fluid There's a condition called preeclampsia which affects up to 10% of all human pregnancies and it's a problem of high blood pressure It's not a change in the amount of flow going through the placenta But the pressure the rate of flow going through the placenta So the super soaker the volume doesn't change the amount of liquid stays the same but the rate at which it flows through is going to change based on how much pressure it is and much like us babies don't like getting hit in the face with high Velocity blood flow So having a super soaker pumped up really full high pressure is a pretty good indication of what preeclampsia Looks like also for a three-minute speed talk Audiences are terrified when you come out with a super soaker. So you have Might get squirted with a placenta things that you never thought you would say One of my talks So that was at OMSI for science talk Northwest the three-minute trainee talks and I was Really honored to win the competition with a super soaker placenta And now I've given that talk a couple of times including it the mission pub last week And I'll give it again in Manchester, England at the end of August So it's become very popular to talk about the placenta of the super soaker No popular and you know, it's it just gets at or underscores the idea of Engaging people and trying to find a way to talk with people about the science that you do and we hear this story of The scientist as the poor communicator Obviously you've found ways to communicate your science very effectively I think I've done okay I brought a couple of props that I use during so I'm also an OMSI science communication fellow Which means we work with the public Kids families and then during OMSI after dark if you've ever been In in Portland the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry does a late night event on Wednesday nights Like the last Wednesday of the month and so drunk people can come play with your placenta and your models So you want to make sure that you have things that don't break. So I had a knit placenta made nice For the drunk people and small children And this is the umbilical cord the fetal side of the placenta the amniotic sac and Then the maternal side of the placenta. So that's one of the models I use and people get really excited. They can touch it And then the other model I use is this which is the spiral arteries on the maternal side of the placenta And it's a 3d printed model of all the blood Of all the arteries that control blood flow on mom's side of the placenta This is an actual cast from a mouse and then I blew it up So that's kind of big for a mouse. Well, it was like it was Minnie Mouse. So it's about the right size But yeah, I think Models things like the super soaker things like knit placenta's if people can touch it and see it 70% of people are kinetic learners. They want to touch things. They want to understand how do things move? How do things work? So it's a really good way to reach people and make them excited about How awesome the placenta is and weird but great So let's talk about all these these aspects of the placenta the awesomeness and the weirdness The placenta mammals have this placenta. Why do we have a placenta and other organisms? Did not evolve such a blood-sharing device It's it's weird. So Eutherian or placenta having mammals People say, oh, they're the only things with placentas. They're not Some snakes and some sharks have placentas they're part of Unvergent evolution rather than divergent, which means they Developed for a shared purpose, but not from the same ancestor. So It's a placenta is an attachment point You can even find a structure called a placenta in many fruits like the tomato because it's where the seeds Just attached to the middle of the fruit Why do we have a placenta? Recent research says it was a retroviral infection of the uterine lining Is what caused the first placentas to form in mammals. Whoa. Yeah We're mutants. It's great. So we it's viral DNA got in there. Yeah Placenta, ta-da That's the idea The placenta is made of this is kind of a misconception a lot of people think the placenta is made by the mom And it's not it's made by the outer layer of the embryo It's called the syncytiotrophoblast and it's that outermost layer the embryo that forms the placenta The placenta is a fetal organ. So when you ask people, oh, who's ever made a placenta and only like Folks who have been pregnant raise their hands I can say no every single one of you made a placenta because you've been born. So I had a placenta once. Yeah Oh, I Tell you the placenta is the best So in that it comes from the fetus, I mean, I know that we've we've had issues with blood type are the Rh factors with between mother and fetus and Rejection of the fetus or the ability of the mother to maintain a fetus within The uterine environment without the mom's immune system going shoot get out. So is what kind of Are things like preeclampsia are these things that arise from a mismatch between The fetus placenta that it's creating and the mom's body that's attaching to it Yes and no Yes, that there there's there can be sort of a mismatch Because the genes that form the placenta are primarily driven by dad's genes What dad is able to give to the fetus because evolutionarily speaking it benefits dad to drive the placenta and and drive Fetal growth because this is the one that he can guarantee is his Genetically speaking. Whoa. So is there some kind of genetic imprinting going on that proof that yeah prioritizes the male DNA in this process It probably the placenta is formed primarily because of genes that come From the sperm. So the placenta is a very metabolically greedy organ So it wants to gain size it wants to grow and it pulls a lot of energy and resources away from mom It's why pregnancy is exhausting. You're growing a human, but you've also got this placenta That's taking up a lot of energy So, yeah Yeah, so the placenta is like the alien It is I'm growing an alien in here when I was pregnant. I was then so is the the developing fetus The fetus is also a parasitic alien But the placenta is a a separate and equally as important alien beast So what exactly are you studying with respect to the placenta? I Study two factors that can affect the way that the placenta develops one is Mom when we talk about again that super soaker model and the change in pressure How does mom control that change in pressure in pressure and there's a few ways that she can do it If she is obese if she lives at high altitude There are some external factors, but we're interested in a genetic predisposition It's an increase in a protein called angiotensinogen And if you've ever known someone to be on an ace inhibitor like Lipitor or not Lipitor listen April Very very common captopril That helps shut down the effect of having too much angiotensinogen These moms that have too much angiotensinogen. It's a little difference in the promoter region It's an a6 promoter variant and we find that promoter variant in 50 percent of people of African descent and 30 percent of people of Asian descent and it drastically increases your risk of preeclampsia So I study the mom side and the other thing I do is fetal sex Boys do worse in preeclampsia boys are more likely to be stillborn They're more likely to have future bad health outcomes like diabetes shortened life expectancy kidney failure cardiovascular problems, so why is it that boys do worse and Why isn't it affecting girls the same way from preeclampsic pregnancy? So maternal angiotensinogen and blood pressure and fetal sex. What effect does that have on preeclampsia and how do we fix it? so does the fetal sex actually Influence whether or not plea a preeclampsia happens like if is it more likely that a male child? Will lead to a preeclampsic situation? No, it doesn't seem to be more likely, but it's a It's an increased risk in in outcome. Okay, so just the outcome itself and Then so, how do you how do you study this you mentioned that you had this mouse model? I am I'm assuming you're not going in and doing Trials on human pregnant women Sometimes so I do get Oregon is one of four at will states where you can do whatever you want with your placenta Most of the other 50 states have some gray areas But not all of them, but nor can you can say I want to donate my placenta or I want to take it home And I want to plant it under a tree or eat it or turn it into a teddy bear real thing but a lot of people choose to Donate them and then we can use them for research and study them that way. Do you want to know about the No, there's an artist I want to say his name is Alex green and I feel like I'm butchering it but He took a placenta and tanned it like you would like a leather hide. Oh, and he made a leather placenta teddy bear It's kind of cool. Oh Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of things you can do with your placenta's if you want to why though I See I some things that I've heard of people doing with their placenta is that I really like You can plant it underneath a tree like a young tree and then the tree grows as your baby does The placenta is really lovely. It's got this great tree architecture So some people I've seen this on Etsy. They roll it in paint and they make prints of the tree and then they sell them Real thing. Yeah, no that one makes sense What else do people do with their placenta's that doesn't involve eating them They make jewelry out of it. There's a lady who makes placenta photo frames in England. Wow Yeah, like lots of if you're a do-it-yourself or the placenta is kind of a dream Oregon I guess but but then you also have to like go into midwifery to even Like how do you do this? I don't know you you make friends and decide to do crazy things I Don't do any of those things with placenta's. I've never eaten a placenta And someday if I am lucky enough to have a placenta then I will inject it with plastic in it on both sides Put it in a giant block of lusite and use it as a coffee table I'm really excited for that day. It's it's the one that you have a plan. I do To me the idea of doing that is really cool But I don't know if I'd want my the own placenta out of my body there Not your Body Determinates it's not yours anyway, right, but I want to do it is the long con So I've got it embedded in lusite and then when my child brings home his or her prom date. I can say Welcome. I'm Spartacus's mom and this is a placenta that they made it was like their first art project Actually, that's cool. Now you have me Did it I was gonna tell normal stories on this so you can science. Hi Here we can get back to the normal stuff. No, it's fine. So you could you collect Placenta's that have been donated by the hospitals OHSU here in Portland And then you also have your mice. I do we also do some trials with out at the primate Center West Campus OHSU here in Portland And we have done some live human trials Including on our micro bubble work, which is a new technology Where they're little tiny bubbles about the size of a red blood cell and they ring like a bell under ultrasound And we can measure the flow of blood through the placenta in real time using Doppler ultrasound And we have done that in live human pregnancy and you can tell the difference in blood flow rate very early on. It's very cool Wow, and so is this is that this? Technology is potentially going to be useful to help doctors to diagnose Dangerous situations to monitor them as they go on or is this something that's kind of like yeah You don't really want to do it that often No, it would be a great potential diagnostic tool We can send a high-frequency ultrasound pulse through and it lices the bubbles open and mom just peas them out It's all phagocytosis from there. It would also Potentially be a very useful therapeutic tool because we can load the bubbles down with genes for direct gene delivery To the placenta in the uterus. So we've done this in mice not in humans. We've done Delivery of a gene called vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF Directly to the uterus what that does is it encourages blood vessel growth So if you don't have enough blood vessels and they're not spiraling enough, they're not spreading the blood flow out You have a problem like having a hose with a very tight nozzle If you have more blood vessels more hoses that spreads the pressure out a little bit So VEGF helps encourage that and we were successful in mice. So maybe someday we'll get to do it in humans Do you have any fun mouse research studies? I mean we're not we're My do mice eat their own placenta after I'm sure they eat they eat their after birth, right? I've never seen a mouse eat their after birth But I know that like dogs and wolves people bring this up like well Why do sheep do it Mike will sheep do it because they're trying to defend themselves against predators Yeah, that's the only reason they eat their babies poop too. So they don't have any any sign of a baby around Right. Yeah, it's all about defense some human people like to eat their placentas and we had a case here in Portland just two weeks ago was July 3rd that they That this happened Woman had a baby term Spine a baby was born with a strep B infection. It's very very common They treated the baby with antibiotics treated mom with antibiotics set baby home. Everything was great Five days later, baby comes back and is presenting with strep B infection again same infection Well, that's weird. Where could this be coming from and they were watching mom while babies in the hospital And she keeps popping these pills She'd been eating placenta pills from the infected strep B placenta and it gotten into her milk supply so Yeah, strep B dies at like 350 degrees Fahrenheit and When you preserve the placenta, yeah, yeah, it's like 150 degrees Fahrenheit to powder Placentin pills. So if your placenta isn't totally clean like if you've got some sort of infection, don't put it in your mouth Oh That's my motto And I would imagine I mean this is probably a fairly unregulated market And so if you're sending your plus if you're not doing it yourself and you're sending your placenta to a company to turn into a pill or Whatever, you're just having to trust that they're doing everything and in a clean way that they're not That they're their their practices are sterile, right the CDC's issued warnings and the FDA It's not FDA regulated to have your placenta turned into a pill or I've heard of placenta lasagna placenta pizza placenta like everything it's some people put it into smoothies I Would be real careful Proceed with caution Kim Kardashian thinks it's cool, but proceed with caution the cannibal expert we had on the show How did he have it? I think in a stir fry. Yeah, I think it was stir-fried or Yeah, there's a professional chef. I guess that prepared it So we've talked a bit about preeclampsia are what what other? placenta related Problems are there that that people are studying that you're looking at even Lots of problems in the placenta mo placenta mo problems One of the really common things you'll hear about is called placenta accretia And that's when the placenta Starts to grow and the placenta only grows at the place where the embryo implants in the uterus. It's pretty specific But it'll find scar tissue or some problem in the uterus and it won't stop growing And it looks just like cancer at that point so it grows and grows it can even grow outside of the uterus into other organs But it's a very interesting way to study Tumors and cancer using a very temporary model and why does the placenta usually Turn off when cancer doesn't placenta's can regulate their own growth Yeah, so it's kind of a neat model for understanding cancer treatment Other problems with the placenta the placenta has its own microbiology and very recently they discovered that The microbiology of the placenta this unique group of microorganisms is more related to The microbiota of the mouth than the gut or anywhere else in the body the mom's mouth determines the microbiota of the placenta Wonder how that ends up happening how like the trans the transport transit system must be very interesting We don't know but we do know that your oral microbiota changes Depending on whether you're obese or not and that's also reflected in the placenta Hmm that's fascinating as well I mean it's fascinating in just to even consider like I had already always considered the placenta as Kind of like the blood-brain barrier for the brain where the placenta would act as a the last filter last resort protection for that, you know The blood supply between the mother and the baby to make sure that nothing Dangerous from the mom got to the baby, but we know that's not it that doesn't completely work But not completely, but you're right There's a membrane between mom and the baby called the quarry on and so mom's blood and baby's blood never directly intermix Unless there is a wound or some sort of break in the quarry on Otherwise it just transports nutrients and wastes Back and forth through that membrane Hmm and then the do the microbes sit then on the mom's side and not pass over to the To the baby side or the microbes throughout there are microbes throughout, but they don't necessarily Pass all the way through yeah That's fascinating so maybe I'm just you know just thinking maybe there's a placental symbiosis going on With the microbes well I would I would actually what my first thought on that would be that there was a particular virus load in the placenta that was doing the filtering That was that was actively killing off bacteria other than what it sort of was going to allow to be there It's all a system of checks and balances. We say in humans. It's pregnancy by committee because you have What the mom's biology is driving what the fetal biology is driving what dad's imprinted genes are driving so there's a lot of Cross talk going back and forth between what's beneficial for mom. What's beneficial for baby instead of just like in Sharks there's a placenta and a fetus, but if things aren't benefiting mama shark Then baby's going to get fewer nutrients or maybe not make it So do we know how every I mean the the physiology how much what are what are some of the big Outstanding questions about the placenta that that you're just fascinated by Wow One why why placenta? Why? How do People have have focused on the placenta for you know From the I would say the the 50s on it's become this question of like oh, you're not just a waste organ you actually do a thing But the immune system of the placenta is pretty interesting because there's a whole set like you brought up our H factor there's a whole set of CD4 recognizing cells that say that turn on and off during pregnancy You can get what's called a th cell switching so th1 to th2 Your cells switch from an immune profile to an allergy profile There's a lot of questions about like well, why is that beneficial and how does that actually work? Yeah, there are a lot of questions about How the placenta works and why it's why it can negatively impact babies and how do we make it better? So that all feeds into my big questions of why is what he how do why placenta how do and Boys why do worse bad bad? I wonder that question My favorite paper in all of placenta dumb the my favorite name of a paper is boys live dangerously in the womb And it just goes to prove that it starts real early It starts very early. I mean there are lots of studies though Suggesting boys do Physiology, I mean a lot of it is just based on exposure to testosterone, but physiology wise there is a Men respond differently to the common cold that actually the common cold is like it's harder on them Than women. They're also that's why they're always complain But there are there are studies that that have that Have shown that there are many things, you know that there are these sex-linked differences And so this is goes to show this is a big one early on and if we can help Help to offset the effects of things like preeclampsia on boys, especially if it's hitting them a hardest and That's the goal of healthy mama's healthy babies. That's what we do. Yeah, and then you also write music and I have a couple of strange hobbies But they all kind of tie into Psycom one way or another and one of them is I have a nerd band here in Portland. It's called the PDX broadsides We just had a massively supportive awesome Kickstarter for our fourth studio album and We funded it 278% so we're going on our West Coast tour Starting next Thursday. Don't tell my boss Hopefully your boss is not watching this But it'll be in in three different small chunks, so I won't be away from the lab too too much Which is always important to your PI Don't so you need to start being there's our first three dates up on on the screen now I see so Seattle is next Thursday and then Vancouver British Columbia will be international International touring band then we'll be in Portland and Salem Lions Oakland San Francisco and Santa Rosa before the end of August so lots of of traveling and touring and we sing about short angers cats and rocket science and Shakespeare and Starbucks and Nathan Fillion's Hind parts It's catchy we sing about feelings and fandoms and things that we love so sometimes they're happy and sometimes they're sad, but I Mean we love what we love and we are very excited to share it. I Think that's wonderful. I think it's it's just great that you're You've got this like we were talking about before the show that you have this Other thing that you do that it's not just all placentas all the time that you have a creative outlet And Many scientists are very well-rounded people who have other interests like music or humor or literature and You're just falling right into that creative scientist category there Jessica Well, I think that there are three people I'm talking to right now who go to prove that having a creative side and Benefiting you a whole lot when you want to talk about science But you also want to connect with a really great public audience who's excited like it's it's good to not be boring Yeah, do you have any out like completely like just science songs that you do or just lots It's just lots of different topics We have a song on our first album called shortingers cat about song from the perspective of shortingers cat It's never any fun to be shortingers cat. He does not know whether he's alive or dead We have a song we wrote for Dane alt He's an artist monkey minion press here in Portland and he had a huge Kickstarter about 30 lesser known scientists It's called Eureka Beautiful book and he had us write the theme song for Eureka So it's all about these 30 lesser known scientists and the bridge is about my favorite lesser known scientist Rosalind Franklin. I love her so much. I named my piano after her. She's my favorite Our new album has a song about rocket science the clean versions on the album the dirty versions on the EP You know occasionally the after hours Songs come out but and and when you're performing live is it the clean version or the dirty version? It depends most of the stops on our tour are all ages so clean But we are happy to do Adult shows and you know drop some special words and themes in there for you if you like PDx broadsides.com. We are a hireable worldwide International music stars. Yes. I mean we're about to go to Vancouver super international But we're happy to bring the science party to you to your ears to your face. We're on iTunes and Spotify And Amazon and all of those places in band camp And of course I've seen you on YouTube. Oh, yes, we are on YouTube. Oh good And I have wanted I have wanted to do something like that with the show like also be a band and but and Blair plays saxophone I do and That's kind of it Yeah, the baritone sax is not a solo instrument But Blair can't like sing and be playing saxophone at the same time I guess so that A stunt science musician ringer just call me I'd be happy to help twist out Our science music dreams in Portland They're singing they all sound like Jessica I'll just sit here and Now that the words a little bit that actually might be pretty hilarious to do a music video for one of your songs where we're Just pretending to be you Prove do it Or I can like use a auto-tune so you'll all sound like T pain and then it'll be even better. Oh My godness and in addition to your music you are also sometimes a pirate. Yeah, I have dangerous hobbies Yes involving cannons. I do. Yeah, so that's also part of the psychom I teach about the science of the golden age of sale and the science of gunpowder and why it goes boom And sometimes it's also just fun to dress up It's a group here in Portland called PDX ER and we are the corsairs of the I5 corridor And we have a full cannon line at fire dancing historical sea shanties Sword fighting we are are entertaining, but also accurate ish Ish well, I mean we're not plundering or or raiding or looting or burning your town It's just a matter of time we're a little bit more disney-fied than you know They're doing where they're I think they're gonna be getting rid of One character and switching them out switching out the male pirate for a female pirate and Yeah, so even the redhead if you've ever been to Disneyland like the redheaded wench who is part of the auction We Are a wench on to piratedom You know what it the redheaded wench can be a real pirate the doctor can be female. Welcome to the revolution and geeking And so so can starbucks starbucks was one of the first right yep Yeah Two daughters, it's it's nice that I that my daughter is static to that there's gonna be a girl doctor She's just over the moon. She's a huge doctor who fan and and yeah, she's really looking forward to that Hey, but couldn't you combine all of these and maybe maybe you need for a stage costume a placenta cannon placenta Pirate hat Tannot oh like a tam the umbilical cord coming I feel like all of these things combine really well into science communication because you know I can be I can sing about it I can talk to you very excitedly about all of these things and I'm very excited that you mentioned like your daughters and the fact that we're talking about representation because when you see yourself represented in Piracy in nerdery in science when you see a scientist who looks like you that is so powerful You say you know what it's not just for old Bearded dudes, you know, it's okay to be excited and and want to Sing and also study cool amazing things for the world of what we know Mike my youngest she's four She can she'll quote from the Ghostbusters movie So the like I don't think though if she'd just seen the regular, you know with the old Ghostbusters She'd be that Drawn to it or be quoting it or want to watch it again and again, you know But but because it's yeah because the all-girl cast she immediately feels that connection to them. So it is so excited. Yeah, absolutely Keep it going It's gonna be it's I'd love to see things just a little bit more equal at some point But it you know, we're working on it. It's all good and you are a wonderful role model What are you doing next Jessica? When is that PhD defense coming? You're allowed to what's going on? You're allowed to ask me that if you're actually offering me a job other So what comes next I will be defending sometime before Christmas so watch your mailboxes for fall 2017 you're all invited to my dissertation defense at Portland State University I Would love to continue to do what I'm doing now. I love making healthy mom is healthy babies But I love to teach so whatever I can do in order to understand how it is that we learn and to continue to teach and Have a small undergraduate research lab. That's my dream But I'll always be a science communicator. You you can't take the sky from me. I'm gonna be doing this until I die I mean, we need many scientists who are also amazing science communicators You will be an amazing mentor To your own students in the science that you do and also in the communication of it And it's I think it's I think it's a a laudable goal. Thank you We'll see how this goes We go great and I can't wait to see that invitation to your defense Me neither be awesome and then hopefully you'll be stay hopefully you'll be staying in the Portland area We don't know where Do you have any any moving abouts for research that you're doing at this point or? I'm sort of in and out. I'm going to England the end of August for a conference But I'm going to visit Cambridge because Cambridge has the Boyd collection. It's the largest collection of Like human placental artifacts in the world Yeah, it's amazing. They have rooms and rooms of slides that they've been collecting for decades Different cross sections of the uterus and the placenta So I want to go understand what's in their collection. It's never been digitized It would be a big dream for me one day to get to go in stay in those do 3d mounting and show the world What's in this collection because it's absolutely incredible? So I'm I'm open Cambridge call me Try doing new things as long as it's got the end goal of making healthier mommas healthier babies And can I make you excited about it? That's I'd love to stay in Portland But you got to go where the science calls you sometimes you got to go where the placentas are. I want to go where the placentas are It just worked too well Oh, that was that was amazing Alright, so where can people find you online if they want to keep track of your placental science and hashtag team placenta Hashtag team placenta on Twitter. That's us. I am on Twitter. I'm at dame underscore DNA You can also find me Writing pdx broadsides calm and I write on WordPress as dame DNA and sometimes about Where I'm going to be and all about my science excitement. Oh, look, there's my face. It's very exciting And there's my my slightly outdated blog. I promise to write something about this encounter today I love I love how you have a oh, right the one where I almost murdered an appliance That's it's a funny story if that we will have the links to be to your Twitter and to your blog and to pdx pdx broadsides in our show notes So on our YouTube page and also at twist org We will have all of these links and so if people want to read about how you almost murdered an appliance It was a lab appliance. It is science. Does it count? And I'll I will be writing more now that We're we're kind of into the summer so it's research and I've got a couple of publications coming out So once those are wrapped up, I'll be able to focus a little bit more on writing about why you should care about how awesome science is Nice. I love it. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. This has been wonderful Thank you so much It's such a pleasure to talk to other people who are as excited about the wild with the wild and wide world of Sciences I am and you know the placenta is weird, but the Sun is wonderful. Love your placenta Love the placenta you make Because you made it you made it Yes, you did All right, everybody. This is this weekend science. Thank you once again to Jessica Hebert Who has joined us to talk about the placenta and again you can find her at DM dame underscore DNA on Twitter and also At her blog and at pdx broadsides But we will have those links for you if you are interested in following her Scientific pursuits and her science community communication pursuits beyond that it is time for us to take a very short break We will come back in a few minutes with more this weekend science because you know what the science news is up next We've got space. We've got ancient peoples. We've got birds and blairs Problems with squirrels and that's coming up in a few minutes Stay tuned So Jessica at this point if you want to hang up you are more than welcome to just hang up on us or If you want to stick around you can stick around We're gonna be talking science for a little while longer I have my little messagey things that I need to do right now Or you can just just you know hang up and watch or go to sleep I Do have some writing and things that I need to do were there questions in the chat box or no Oh Yeah, somebody Ed from Connecticut says Don't take your placenta collection with you. TSA might ask some questions. Oh fair. Yes There was also it was another question that somebody had Or I think we answered a bunch some of the questions. Oh good great. Yeah Um, what was that one question is this question was asking if the the strep B Had actually any effect on the placenta itself. Oh, I don't know the answer to that question. So probably good Yay, uh, I will probably go because I do have this publication do Like at the end of this week Yeah, yeah As much as I'd like to hang out But I will probably have the the show on and be watching from the sidelines. So awesome So the the YouTubes will be up when the show is over basically show notes will be on that at some point Probably tomorrow no later than Friday and then I'll have the podcast out probably tomorrow afternoon Super Friday morning So it'll all the links I will email you with links to things if you want to share I do absolutely and I've I've told some Of people that I know that you might be looking for additional especially female scientist guests So I hope that people drop you line But this was delightful and I'd be happy to come back whenever let me know if you want that song that Collaborated and song Everyone I will not I will intentionally raise my voice for Justin's part We'll sing higher As you do as you do it would be perfect. Yes, I love that idea. Okay We will be in touch. Yes. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure and and thank you Blair and Justin so much Delightful Blair. Let's meet up in San Francisco come to our show. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Do the thing. Where's Justin? I don't know. He's awesome a break. He's on a break. No, I mean, is he in San Francisco or he's in Davis? Oh, okay We'll have one show in northern California like more northern than you I think Santa Rosa, but yeah Yes, we'll see. All right. Thank you again so much. Have a great rest of your show It'll take me a couple minutes to boot everything back up, but this has been delightful. I appreciate it so much Yeah, thanks so much. Okay. Bye friends All right All right, I read now Thank you everyone for watching and listening to twists We really do appreciate your time spent with us every week if you want a little bit more twist in your life Hey, maybe consider checking out our merchandise. Oh, yeah, that's right We've got things that you might like to wear or put on your desk or I don't know pillows to put on your couch You just have to go over to twist.org our website twist.org and click on the zazzle store link in the main header The zazzle store link will take you to our lot zazzle store Where apparently there is a sale going on with the code? Zaza peril 40 you can get 15% off on several items 30% off of a Blair's animal corner toad t-shirt Yeah, yeah, we've got all sorts of things stamps mugs Mouse pads phone covers aprons. There's a there's a polo shirt and they're somewhere there hats all sorts of fun twist logo fide Items that will make your life a little bit better because you'll just have you know That piece of twist that you can take with you or look at all the time If it's a mouse pad at your desk, whatever your morning twist coffee mug, you'll appreciate it. 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We could not do this without you And We're back with more this week in science We are back. Hey, you know, we're gonna start off the science part of the show With a little bit of the occult No, no no ghosts no ghosts the occult of which I speak Isn't the occult as in supernatural stuff at all It's actually an occultation or the passing of a One object behind another so that a shadow plays across the surface of the earth and What happened? This is a really cool story at first. I was when I first saw the story. I was like, oh, that's neat and Then it got more and more interesting the more The more I saw so the new horizons team at NASA has a new target a distant Kuiper belt object way out in the dark cold reaches of the solar system It's called 2014 Mu-69 You know, it's just out there Moving through space and we don't really know anything about it The only time it has been imaged is once by Hubble Space Telescope and even then it wasn't enough resolution to get any idea of Really what it looks like it's shape its size There's a whole lot that we really need to know about this object that the new horizons probe which is Flying out past Pluto out into the reaches of the solar system out or out or out or Where's it going? What is it? What is it going to be looking at? And so to figure out more about this object get an idea of this target new horizons is aimed at they determined the path of the object through the sky and They figured out that it was going to be passing in front of a distant star and What they did is they trained a whole bunch of telescopes down in Argentina. They had five telescopes trained on this star way way out there and They timed they went to look for the exact moment that the light from that star was blocked. It's a brief Blip in time. There's a star that blinks in and out of light and as it blinks out what is happening is this MU 69 is Occulting the star passing in front of the star and the shadow I mean you think of a shadow is like oh look my shadow on the ground and it's this big thing This is a shadow from Millions of miles away. This shadow was the shadow of MU 69 Passing over the surface of the earth the shadow that was cast by it passing in front of this distant star In order to to be able to see the the shadow they asked They asked Argentina to help them out and in the process Argentina shut down a highway For two hours so that they could watch they had street lights turned off so that there would be less city light Pollution of the night sky they had people People basically worked together communities in Argentina worked together to make this Visualization this view Possible for NASA and so it's it's pretty amazing that The goodwill of the Argentinian people are helping with our space exploration and the new right new horizons project I can't imagine What that would be like somebody saying okay? We're gonna close down 19th Avenue in San Francisco for a couple hours. There's this really important thing happening Everyone will understand I Know and then they have in addition to that the other people Like in some areas they parked trucks to act as wind breaks in in areas so that the wind would be less blowing onto Their onto the telescopes and their recording Equipment so a big huge collaboration and cooperation Internationally to be able to allow us to see This object pass in front of a star and now based on this blip of data It's actually gonna be a lot of data because from this blip will be we will be able to get information about the size and the shape This little object that new horizons is headed for This is the part of space science That hurts my brain Just it's beyond what I can understand or even appreciate is that there's this little just wink That means so much and is going to inform so much and that someone can see that and go You know what that is? Yep, it's I Space science fascinating. It is fascinating and I can't wait. I mean it's gonna be a while yet, but Coming in New Year's Day 2019 we can expect new horizons to fly by This MU 69 and to actually start sending back Much more information, but now we will have more information to with which to prepare the new horizons mission for its For its intended target and Then this is more crazy space science Which I love so much so the Another part of NASA is interested in studying The space around our planet right so we have because of our magnetosphere We have a plasma a plasma sphere This plasma is made up of charged ions and electrons that have been charged and they get activated even more by Solar winds and also by movement of the magnetosphere and all sorts of different things and We need to know a little bit more about how this area of space Works how it's influenced by solar weather that this will help us in our in our placement of satellites in our understanding of how Satellites and spacecraft might be affected how our communications could be affected in situations where This area around our planet is is Moving around and being impacted by things what impacts it what happens then and what's going on so the researchers at Goddard's NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who are working on the with Van Allen probes to probe the Van Allen belts around around the planet have been recording these electrons and ions the high frequency Movement the waves that take place in the magnetist magnetosphere so as Solar weather comes through as things happen here on earth waves Are set to action. They're called plasma waves are set to action it within the magnetosphere and they can take these waves and Record them and then boost the signal a little bit so it's in an audible phase So that we can actually hear the sounds of different areas of space so there is a type of wave that takes place in an area Where Let's see where to say it's When lightning hits the ground The electrical discharge can trigger a type of wave called a whistler wave a whistler mode Plasma wave and these waves can escape beyond the atmosphere to the earth's Magnetic field lines between the north and south poles and the lightning creates a range of frequencies and since higher frequencies travel faster the wave howls With a falling pitch and so it's called a whistler wave And then Sounds like there's a space battle going on Frog and a laser had a had a baby Then There are other Waves that are called chorus radio waves that sounds like a frog for sure and these occur in a different in the different area of the plasma plasma fear and They have an upwardly An upwardly moving frequency sound like Pacific chorus frogs So it's interesting they're called chorus Waves right it is interesting that they are called that but so the the story here is that they are using These waves and the sounds and understanding the dynamics of the waves themselves to get a better clearer picture of the structure of the Magnetosphere and how energized particles move within it and through it and by being able to Create these audible files. It gives a little bit better idea of characterization for different segments of the magnetosphere for further investigation Which is super fun the whistlers the chorus waves and then there's also a hiss wave and it's basically it sounds like radio station static and The hiss waves some some scientists think are also caused by lightning strikes But others think it could be caused by chorus waves that have leaked Into a different part of the plasma plasma sphere Nobody likes a leaking chorus wave. Yeah, and the chorus and his waves Actually are shapers of the van Allen radiation belts, which are these high-energy Particle belts that encircle the planet and so these waves act the waves of that of these particles actually interact with the van Allen belts and Change the structure the shape of the van Allen belts so and other parts of the near-earth environment So these waves are very interesting and important and Interesting things to study, right? Yeah, I kind of want to make some of those sounds my new ringtone You should And people will say is that a chorus frog and you say no No, that's our magnetosphere. That's right That works and then my final intro story is actually one that I think is super fascinating researchers at Harvard University have taken crisper and They are using it to turn cells into data storage devices not just data storage devices but records of changing information over time and to Show that their concept works that this archival aspect of DNA data in DNA could work They they are employing crisper and part of how they're doing that is they are Understanding that crisper goes in and hacks apart DNA and the DNA and Then hacking it apart. They usually the natural system There's a viral spacer they get viral DNA that gets put in in the bacterial cell But in the case of this experiment what they're doing is they're not putting a virus in they are going to be putting DNA of their choice into the cell and the DNA that they have chosen to use is Based on the very first Moving picture Right. Yeah, more bridge human. He took the video of a John was on a horse wasn't video. It was still pictures in a row that were sequential This is a bet. He was he was hired to settle bet by Leland Stanford Most artists depicted that when the horses were fully outstretched all the legs were not touching the ground And that that was the only point and by taking these still shots He determined actually it's when all the legs are tucked up underneath is the only point in which the horse does not Come in contact with the ground everywhere else. There's at least one foot in contact and so by taking the idea of the sequential images that Muybridge used in the very first motion picture they took Bits of information from the sequence these images the same exact images turned them into DNA used CRISPR to put Each image so like day one they used CRISPR to put the first image of DNA in The E. Coli day two they insert used CRISPR to insert the second image day three the third image day four the fourth Image day five the fifth image until they had all of the images in DNA in this E. Coli bacteria and then they were able to take the E. Coli and Sequence its DNA and then take that DNA and play it back And it played back the movie with about 85 percent accuracy So it wasn't it wasn't completely accurate, but it was very very accurate in its output They they were able to translate from image to DNA to putting the DNA in a bacteria in a sequential way Take the DNA out sequence it and play back the movie So what we're talking about is a potential for the world's smallest Thumb drive is that right? Kind of I mean, yeah I mean the idea they're thinking that maybe it could be used to record the activities of What's going on inside of cells that maybe you could use a cell a back or a bacterial cell to be a recorder Inside the body to be able to record different states or different different moments in time You know that that this could be yes, it could be a DNA thumb drive if you that they are that not only is DNA a good DNA a good storage medium but it also could work for not for sequential information or Or you could genetically engineer somebody to have a neurons that contain the library of Congress Right and what and what George Church who was involved in this study was saying is that maybe one bacteria itself wouldn't have such a high data storage capacity, but a whole population of Bacteria and suddenly yeah, you could be storing the library of Congress and on an aggro plate with a population of bacteria Oh, that makes school easier Now we're gonna pass around our history lollipops to everybody. Just give it a couple licks and within a week you'll have it Yeah, yep. So anyway, this is a this is a kind of a proof of concept of their idea and They're going to focus on establishing molecular recording devices in not just bacteria, but other cell types on Engineering the system so it can memorize biological information like I said Seth Shipman who is also involved in the research said one day We may be able to follow all the developmental decisions that a differentiating neuron is taking from an early stem cell to a Highly specialized type of cell in the brain leading to a better understanding of how basic biological and developmental processes are choreographed Yeah, it could also lead to methods for generating cells for regenerating for regenerative therapy Disease modeling drug testing all sorts of things. This is it's not just a A Movie in DNA you might think that this was a whim and kind of like a ha ha showing off what we can do but this really is potentially a very big step in the direction of Information storage for the future and and recording For the future. Yeah Pretty it's it's pretty big thing. It's very exciting Hey Justin. Hmm. It's your turn. What you got? I have Aboriginal people Aboriginal people have been living in Australia for at least 47,000 years, which is a really long time Considering that Europeans who are now in Europe have been there for a 5,000 ish years But it turns out they've been there even longer 65,000 years, which is a really longer time 47,000 Researchers made the discovery at an existing site, but deeper down Where they found more than 10,000 artifacts in the lowest layer of the site Cody voice the site contains the oldest ground-edge stone axe technology in the world the oldest known seed grinding tools in Australia and Evidence of finely made stone points, which may have served as spear tips says Associate Professor Chris Clarkson from University of Queensland most striking of all in a region known for its spectacular Rock art are the huge quantities of ground ochre and evidence of ochre. Is it ochre or ochre? When slickest ochre ochre Okay, processing found the site from the older layer continuing through the president They the dig discovered an upper jaw fragment of a Tasmanian tiger That was coated in red pigment giving them some insight into the fact that they Had some sort of custom about doing such things back in the really oldie time days of Australia Dating care carried out by a professor Zenobia Jacob's at the University of Walla gong Revealed that Aboriginal people lived at the site The same time extinct species of giant animals were still roaming around Australia This includes marsupial lions the largest meat eating mammal known to have ever existed a 10-foot tall chicken like bird drum Mourney Which they say look like a giant emu, but was much more Related to foul so more like it gets a giant chicken and Dip rotodon The largest known marsupial ever to have lived 10 feet from nose to tail Standing six and a half feet tall at the shoulder weighing in at around three tons cute and interestingly Queensland there's claims in Queensland to have been depicted in some cave art About 45,000 years ago 46,000 years ago, which which was also serving contention because I think they thought this thing had died out before People got there so as well as many many others, right? So there's they've oh also Homo floreansis the little Indonesian hobbit folk not too far away Would have been around at this time Hmm So there's a whole avenue of potential ality of that contact, but yeah, I read Aboriginal people of Australia Now at it for what is that an additional 18,000 years? Nice nice. Yeah, set the dates back. Yeah, I So it I think what is this we just need to dig more Yeah, I feel like I feel like recently this is like every story you bring on this It's like and humans were found in North America Longer ago and humans were found in South America longer ago Africa longer ago in Neanderthals longer ago Like they're everywhere longer ago. Yeah, the history just goes back much much further And and and again humans Humans we go everywhere. Yeah, we go everywhere Mm-hmm and According to this current say we may be going a little bit sooner than expected Penn State environmental engineer professor bill Burgos and his colleagues studied sediment samples collected from a reservoir in Western Pennsylvania. Hey, that's where we were Quoty voice we inserted a tube in the sediment like you would put a straw on a slurpery or slushy Put your thumb over the top of the straw and you pull it out in this case They used agricultural drain pipe as the straw plastic caps and tape to seal it And they collected sediment samples which are immediately frozen to preserve the contents Brought back to Cape Environmental engineering and laboratory Penn State Once in the lab the researchers pushed out the samples like a push-pop ice pop like a push-up ice pop You know, there's a little push. What are they called pop-ups push pops? Yeah pop-ups push-up And they cut them into slices. They split them up into different sections. They ran different analyses on them Said there was also some research collaboration with the Colorado State University They looked for high radioactivity signatures and measured the poor water Pore water of the radio Ice stopes to determine the age of the sediments They also tested the majority of the major mineralogy Particle size grain size they created a full profile of the sediment Dating it sizing it everything The results determined that the discharge from oil and gas wastewater as the worlds of fracking have in fact Impacted water quality sediment quality on a much larger scale than previously thought now This is according to the US Energy Information Administration Hydraulic fracturing accounted for more than one half of us oil production two-thirds of us gas production and to 2015 and this number is expected to go up in 2015 alone, Pennsylvania's Unconventional fracking gas wells produced nearly 1.7 Billion gallons of wastewater While there are facilities dedicated to treating wastewater before its release That treatment may be leaving plenty of the pollutants well intact Yeah, so large quantities of oil and gas water wastewater with high loads of chloride barium Strontium radium and organic compounds were found in high concentrations in the sediment All those EMS can't be good. Yeah. Yep. There was two important types of organic contaminants were found endocrine disrupting chemicals and Carcinogens were amongst them Those two are not neither of those are good What you want in a reservoir set of it? A previous study conducted by these folks found that radium levels immediately downstream from one plant We're roughly 200 times greater than in sediments located upstream of the facilities current Study demonstrates the elevated levels were found as far away as 12 miles downstream from treatment plants They're next going to be heading off to North of Pittsburgh, I guess There's which hasn't yet been tested. There's a major reservoir that feeds the population of Pittsburgh that has upstream of it some of these wastewater treatment things that area of sediment hasn't been tested So that's where they're going next to see if it's made it all the way down to that reservoir one of the things they say is difficult to is There is nobody plucking Putting constant 24-hour every day every year Monitoring in the streams downstream of these, you know, there's not a whole bunch of probes in there constantly monitoring the water Downstream of this and if you went in once a month, you wouldn't know when they were discharging You wouldn't have that, you know, you you're always going to be there at the wrong time So this this decision this idea this concept of going and checking the sediment Downstream is really kind of brilliant because it allows you to look over five ten fifteen years of activity with one Plunge of your straw right So so a brilliant way to tackle something that up till now has not been a real decent a way to monitor or observe what's going on Well, I'm glad that we have new observation methods. I'm not very excited about the results, but the you know the Upside to this is that knowing how and where the contamination is occurring knowing the extent of the contamination greater, you know mitigation can be Can be applied Appropriately as opposed to we don't really know what's going on We'll slap a band-aid on over here because regulations say we have to now if this can move forward then Regulations can be tightened up things can be processes can be made a bit cleaner I mean, you know, we'll see where it goes. It's only gas. So they're probably not gonna do anything about it It's what no, but it's no the danger you're in. Yeah, and this thing's fine. Yeah, exactly I think that's a point I was trying to make And speaking of danger, yeah, it's time Blair's animal corner Let's talk about birds birds are doomed Right because they can I Have two stories this week indicating that perhaps some of these birds might have a larger impact To worry about then something that they can fly away from so the first it's actually about seaside sparrows and This research is coming out of University of Georgia's Elizabeth Hunter Although she has recently moved to University of Nevada Reno She wanted to look at seaside sparrows nesting behaviors That's because they go and they nest on the seaside hence seaside sparrow Which means they're at a greater risk of flooding from sea level rise So, yeah So a flooding is a risk There's other risks that are keeping them down by there So when we when we burn Fossil fuels like coal oil or natural gas to get around or to make energy release is covered dioxide makes a heat traffic blanket the heat traffic blanket warms the earth the Thermal expansion of ocean waters causes sea level rise and then also as we were talking about last week The glaciers trapped on land when melted pour into the oceans and also contribute to sea level rise So sea level rise is something that we are seeing currently happening and the exact effects of it We're not sure about because there are so many different factors adding to it so as sea level rises and These seaside sparrows have to move up the bank with their nests There's something keeping them from moving out of the flood zone and that is predation So these guys are spending set this time so close to the water So that they are less at risk of being eaten and their babies are less at risk of being eaten So when sea level rise is taken into account you would think they would move further up but that isn't really happening and That's because the risk of predation is actually higher than the risk of Flooding they would rather be flooded out than eat So I'd rather drown than be eaten. This is like this is a rock in a hard place Better to run and hide than be eaten. That's how it starts. Yeah, absolutely. So currently Nests are more likely to be eaten than flooded However predation and flooding are acting synergistically Meaning that estimates of the negative effect of sea level rise on nesting succession of seaside sparrows or other species are likely Underestimated because they're not also considering the negative effect of predation on flooding risk So you have two scenarios here either the seaside sparrow gives up on hiding from predators moves up gets eaten even more or They stand their ground and now the risk of flooding is increasing Either way you said it perfectly Kiki their copatrina rock in a hard place. They are kind of They're they're in trouble no matter what So now the question is can we give them more? Can we give them more seaside habitat further up? Can we do something to buffer their space so that they can move away from the rising tide? without getting eaten and That's why research like this is so important It's so we can identify what the threats are and what the motivations are so right now We know as it stands the main motivation is to keep from getting eaten And if that's the case if we can help seed these plants that they're hiding in higher up the bank Perhaps we can help save this species Yeah, and another study that just came out like today or yesterday suggests that birds in general that a period of quiet Climate like relatively little climate change for a long time allowed birds to diversify into the many species that we now know and as we look forward and And basically are Expecting a very a period of very rapidly changing climate around the globe What is that going to mean for the species that are now here and how many will like this the seaside sparrow? How many will persist and how many will not right and this is also a good reminder to to just That the fact that saving seaside habitat and marshlands That's so important to so many species It's important to mitigate the effects of sea level rise because it actually reduces the amount that that banks are pounded In those marshes and it helps filter water. It's a carbon sink all these things We benefit from salt marshes and from seaside habitats like this estuarine habitats, but on top of all of that It also is a home to animals that have adapted to live in that specific teeny tiny space I think with the increased pressure on birds It's there's always just going to be one solution at least one thing that we can all do I know where you're gonna go. I know where you're going. There's one thing that we could all do I know where you're going at least some of the pressure Off of the birds. Oh the cats. Yep. Keep your cats indoors That's I mean, it's a good point. Keep them keep your cats indoors if you can't have an indoor cat Don't have a cat. Yeah, there we go. You're right And we can leave it there moving on to other threats to birds besides climate change Why didn't the bird cross the road wait what I thought the bird did cross the road in this story it didn't Yes So roads we know roads are a huge barrier to a lot of species But we usually think about the ones that have to walk on land For a long time. It's been conventional wisdom that birds can fly over freeways and highways Make sense. Yeah, whereas snails have a really hard time, right as do salamanders. So This has been thought to be something that actually doesn't contribute too much to habitat fragmentation When you cut up a habitat so that in theory a species has the right amount of surface area But it's separated by highways buildings all these sorts of things that actually cut off access So we for a long time have thought that birds are not as susceptible to habitat fragmentation because they can fly well a recent bit of research from griffith university in brisbane, australia found by studying birds in the wild on varying sides of Sizes of roads and varying sizes of birds That they are indeed affected by roadways Fewer bird species and individuals of each species were found near roads But also they were less likely to cross the roads the wider they got so they tested two-lane four-lane and six-lane highways And they tested mostly based on bird size And so looking at all of these variables and just watching the birds first of all They were very careful to pick spots where there's similar brush and similar habitat on either side of the road Because that's where the birds are more likely to cross And then they found fewer bird species and individuals of each species crossed the six-lane carriageways As they call them then the narrower two and four-lane carriageways But when they looked at the different body sizes and bird types It was the smaller forest dependent species that showed the biggest difference So the reasons for this they believe Are more than just fear of being hit by a car Although I would assume that is some of it because there are these fast moving weird things And also you with the mention that uh the larger the road the larger the effect you've got a big barrier That's with a lot of things that are crossing that are moving very fast So it's going to be like a ha that's just big. I'm not going to go there Right. So the other side of this is fear of predation And it's because the forest is safe the forest is home. The forest is shelter That means that if there are aggressive predators Including other birds in the area Going out into the wide open to cross the freeway Could be a big giveaway and a huge risk Interesting. Yes. So knowing all of that How do we reduce this effect? So first of all this completely changes the way that we manage wild bird populations Because if we know this we have to take that into account when we're assessing habitats But now how do we fix this? So for example, I mentioned the salamanders down in uh in stanford california They found that the endangered tiger salamander was not crossing the freeway and getting hit a lot on the freeway right by the stanford campus and so they Yeah, they made a salamander tunnel and the salamanders use it they go under the freeway And now salamanders are not hit by cars. Their habitat is no longer fragmented So there are ways that they could still make these similar pathways for birds But you'd have to do a little bit differently for birds than for salamanders Most likely it would be an overpass that is full of vegetation Lots of cover for these guys Then they would have to be wide enough that they weren't pushed into all one space So that's something to keep in mind But also identifying what times of day or year that's used as a thoroughfare and reducing or changing traffic patterns at that time of year So there's lots that we can do with this information But ultimately birds do not want to cross big highways even though they can fly So the joke just needs to completely change Yes, why didn't the bird cross the road because it was six lanes wide? No, because it didn't want to get eaten. Yeah Yeah, but this gets at The general problem of habitat fragmentation and species diversity that for years researchers have noticed that the more we fragment habitats that we You know cut up Chopped down part of a forest so that we can make room for agriculture so that we can build a town so that we can put a road in We change the habitats. We fragment them so that what used to be large continuous areas of habitat now are no longer continuous and As this study so nicely Demonstrates that the birds aren't moving and the reason the diversity is going down and the reason the diversity is not being maintained is because of effects like this these edge effects and the Yeah predation deterrent Absolutely. Yeah, interesting study Blair There we go It's very large about squirrels. Yes squirrels squirrels There's one main reason I don't I don't like squirrels. It's that they're not trustworthy. You should never trust A squirrel, but they're so cute. They are indeed cute, but they also have a lasting memory squirrels it turns out Have a long memory for problem solving techniques And they can apply them to new situations from University of Exeter They found that gray squirrels quickly remembered how to solve a problem. They had not seen For 22 months five squirrels are given a task identical To one that they had tried 22 months earlier Which they had to press a lever to get a hazelnut in their first experience They had to practice it took an average of about eight seconds in their first attempt They finally honed it down to about two seconds for them to press the lever and get their nut 22 months later, it took them three seconds Wow Wow. Yes, they're like we got this and what's more They've also found that if they if they used a new experiment A new lever based technique to get the hazelnut They still were able to do it. They were neophobic. They were scared of this new thing They hesitated there for about 20 seconds, but once they started on the task It took them about two seconds So they were able to apply the technique they learned previously To get there So wait, why does this make you not trust squirrels? This sounds like awesome Evidence of squirrel intelligence scroll memory. This is fantastic They use this to outsmart us Justin So that that's one of the things that the researchers Kind of pose here is that this might be a result of being an urbanized animal of living around and near humans We have a lot of ways that we try to keep our food away from squirrels. We have Squirrel excluding bird feeders. We have all these sorts of things trash cans that are not supposed to be openable And squirrels learn how to get in and get this food and then the second they see something similar In they are right away. So this is a way that these guys have figured out to Problem solve in an ever-changing environment like an urban one so Kind of the converse of the birds we were just talking about where they have evolved to a very specific niche these squirrels are Are kind of Good at all of it. They can learn how to solve these problems and apply that problem-solving skill to new problems so I say that I do not trust squirrels Because they are very good at what they do, which means you are likely to have a run-in with one In a public place and I don't like it But bottom line They're very good at learning they have a good memory There's a lot going in that little rodent brain There is a lot going in that rodent brain and as many have shown before um, it is possible to get squirrels to learn very difficult tasks to be able to Get bird seed or get food rewards and there are many videos available um of Of obstacle courses that people have set out to keep to keep squirrels off of their To keep squirrels busy. I don't know if it's keeping the squirrels busy or keeping the people busy but there are many obstacle courses that I have watched over the years as People have set them up in their yard and train the squirrels step by step to be able to Solve the obstacle course in order to get food so I'm not really surprised Oh, yeah Yeah, and to answer the question in the in the chat room from hot rod do squirrels really forget where 80 of their food is hidden No, uh, they actually scatter their food Every year and their memory for their locations of hidden food Is excellent according to professor steven lia of the university of exeter So actually it's not necessarily that they forgot where it is. It's that they're saving it for later Yep, you know exactly where it is exactly where it is. That sounds about right. Yeah, can't be trusted They're up to no good. I'm telling you I think that they're that's great. They're just planning for the future These are the squirrels are just they're they're good at getting food and applying skills in different situations They're planning on breaking into my house and stealing my lunch. That's all I know and and taking down power lines and Well, just don't give them a third arm Let's not let's not give anyone a third arm No, thank you And a new a new movement in robotics is Something called octo spelled a ucto and right now it's at a prototype stage and it's a robotic arm that is strapped onto a carbon fiber vest or skeleton that A worker can protect potentially wear On their clothes outside of their clothing or under their clothing That supports this arm and the arm basically is like an extra limb that Comes would come out of your shoulder That could grab things and be placed in different places to either support your weight to make it easier for hands-free work or to hold things for you if you need an extra hand and There is a wonderful video that's been put out by science triple as and They that shows some of the things that this this arm can do now the arm itself is Jointed so it can articulate in multiple directions The end looks like it has something like a plunger on the end of it, but it's not a plunger. It's actually Uh more like a boxing glove that's filled with Beans and coffee The air sucked out of it It's it's smushy and you can put it up against something and then you suck the air out of it And it'll hold on to whatever you've put it It's like yeah, kind of like a suction cup And so anyway, it's the kind of thing that could be used as an extra arm to hold something heavy up over your head to hold you up and it has its own gyroscope and its own brain of sorts to stay in position In whatever position you want it to be and even though you're moving around So it has its own, uh, its own degrees of freedom for movement and now Again, it's called that's what I mean one more appendage with a mind of its own So so dock awk is real is what you're saying That dock awk is coming. That's exactly what that was right here That's right. We just need a radioactive spider now and what we all Like So yeah extra limbs you guys they are coming soon And in the other on the other side of world robot domination You know, there are the robots in our lives the ai that are going to be thinking for themselves already do think for themselves very often um That are going that work with us and for us and we don't want them to hurt us at any point and so people thinking about robot Philosophy and development are trying to figure out how to basically keep robots from Killing humans and hurting humans when the self-driving cars need to keep Occupant safe and protecting themselves from damage The robots need to care for the elderly and adapt to situations when the owners might be apparel But then they all the robots need to protect themselves as well. So Once a robot can think for itself How are you going to teach that robot that it needs to Not just think for itself But for others for humans as well and so uh years ago people came up with an idea of empowerment Empowering empowering robots To help them protect and serve humans and this uh, this idea of empowerment Comes from this idea of the the concept of Harm being kind of complex and context context specific and how do you explain? harm To a robot do no harm, you know or asimov's rules or you know Obey humans and don't harm a human. But what is that? What does that mean exactly to a robot? so The team developed this empowerment me meaning Being in a state where you have the greatest potential influence on the world that you can perceive According to christopher solge who's a scientist involved in this study So for a simple robot he goes on this might be getting safely back to its power station and not getting stuck Which would limit its options for movement empower itself for a more futuristic human like robot It wouldn't it would only it would not only include movement but could incorporate parameters That are more like human drives human like drives And in 2005 they developed this And now they are expanding it To ask the robot to also seek to maintain a humans empowerment Why on earth would we want to infect a robot with human type thinking This is the whole thing. We've been trying to get away from and calling your civilization a civilization and not being animal-brained about everything Right not being animal-brained, but not being animal-brained could lead to The demise of humans because a robot thinks That humans aren't doing something correctly or the most efficient way to do something doesn't involve humans That's what animals think that thing will either eat me or I hey I have now the opportunity and leverage to eat it and therefore I will that's that's human thinking That's not now the robots will conceptualize the planet Unless we teach them to and then we're going to be in trouble Yeah, so another researcher named Polani says they they wanted to The robot to see the world through the eyes of the human with which it interacts Keeping the human safe consists of the robot acting to increase the human's own empowerment In a dangerous situation the robot would try to keep the human alive and free from injury We don't want to be oppressively protected by robots to minimize any chance of harm We want to live in a world where robots maintain our empowerment And so they say that it's an altruistic concept this empowerment, uh and That it might allow robots to adhere to the spirit of azimov's three laws As we move forward driving ethical behavior in robots World robot domination they're gonna have ethics and be empowered soon everybody and seven arms And no, we're gonna have all the arms Maybe we can use the robot arms to fight the robot. But what if the robot arms were thinking for themselves? Just leave the robots alone. Let the robots be robots. No robot has intentionally harmed a human being That you know of No, like that's oh it's when it happens. It's either human carelessness or um human intention Robots are faultless I think I think it's just a fascinating it's a fascinating thought project We have people like elan musk and uh and hawking steven hawking who Are warning of the advent of intelligent the rise of the intelligent machines and what that's going to mean And so if we can program in some um Yeah, make sure that we're maintaining the human species as we move forward with our development of these robots. Maybe that's you know this kind of This kind of theoretical work Uh-huh. It's going to be important in our future conversations and also in the regulatory structure of um artificial intelligence and robotics as we move forward Yeah Does that do it you guys? I'm all done That does it. Oh my goodness. How do we make it this far? How did we make it this far with us all the way to the end of the show? We've had an interview wonderful guest jessica hebert and we are now Once again at the end of the show And I'd like to thank everyone for watching and for listening and I would like to thank our patreon sponsors Thank you to thunder beaver paul disney jibberton latimore john rattan saw me richard onamus biren lee eo kevin parochan jacklyn Boyster tyron fong and you grow keith corsell jake jones chris clark richard charlie and henry brian hudrick john gridley steven bickle kevin rails back jerald sorrell zlases adkins dav fridel james randall bung calder mark mazaros at dire turner 84 leila marshal clark larry garcia randy mazuka tony steele jerald onyango steve debel kyle washington greg Guthman time jumper 319 xv daryl lambert haroon sarang alex wilson jason schneiderman dav neighbor jason dozier matthew lute when eric nap jason roberts richard porter rodney david wiley robert astin sir frank adellic christopher rappin dana peterson And then I scrolled it funny paul stanton david brendan minnish dale brian to roller lee todd north cut arlyn moss bill crz Ben rothig darwin hannon grudy garcia felix alvarez brian hone orly radio brian kondren mark nathan greco Hexatour mitch neves flying out john crocker christopher drier rtm shuwata davil kinsen steve mishanski rich ramus gary swinsburg phil nadeau Braxton howard salgott sam matt setter emigranier phil schane james dawson curt larson steven insom A honey moss mountain sloth jim drapo jason old james paul west alec dodia luma loma joe wheeler dougal cambell craig porter adam mishkan erin the luthan marjorie david swimaly tyler harrison colombo Ahmed Thank you for all of your support from patreon And if you You out there are interested in helping us produce twists You can find information at patreon.com slash this week in science You can also just simply help us out by telling your friends about twists tell everybody You know shout it to the rooftops or maybe make a flyer and stick it on a telephone pole But tell everyone about twist and on next week's show We will be live or once again broadcasting online at 8 p.m. Pacific time twist.org slash live where you can watch and join our chat room Also at facebook.com slash this week in science and on our youtube channel But don't worry if you can't make it you can always find past episodes at twist.org slash youtube or twist.org Thank you for enjoying the show twist is also available as a podcast Just google this week in science in your itunes directory or if you have a mobile type device You can look up twist the number four droid app in the android marketplace or simply This week in science and anything apple market placey For more information on anything you've heard here today show notes will be available on our website That's at www.twist.org where you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts as well as other listeners Or you can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or blair at blairbaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist T W I S somewhere in the subject line Or your email is very likely to be SPAM filtered into oblivion You can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr. 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How is you going? There is nice time, eh? This last weekend I saw Borat for the first time in a very long time I had forgotten how How very funny that movie is Yeah Fata yes The after birth Depends on what you think Is our show The birth process Would be the after birth I don't know if I like that analogy Okay Oh, it is 80 and humid that sounds like a nice hot night Yeah Oh Face transplant at Cleveland Clinic. Yeah, that's great She's gonna be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life so that her face doesn't fall off Oh Pretty soon with stem cells we could just grow you your your own face back I mean Cleveland Clinic is Good at stem cell stuff They replaced 100 of the woman's facial tissue Ed thanks so much for this link The scalp the forehead upper and lower eyelids eye sockets the nose upper cheeks the upper jaw and half the lower jaw Upper and lower teeth part of the facial nerves facial muscles and skin Yikes Yeah, it was a 21 year old woman Who uh She incurred a gunshot wound to the face what a teenager Oh poor thing. Yeah, and uh They say Recovery is good. She is walking and talking And they expect that she will be able to eat with her mouth soon Oh boy That that sentence that part of the sentence in itself speaks volumes to what she's going through right now or thing Yeah, they used Surgical rehearsal the team Rehearsed they did 3d printed models and virtual reality to plan before the surgery Huh So that would be more accurate and they had a donor for a new nose new lips palette eyelids and jaw Yeah But still I mean how closely matched is that is that donor this woman this 21 year old is going to be on Popping pills anti rejection drugs for the rest of her life But I mean I guess you you would do that if you needed a face That meant you can have a face. This isn't like I'm going to give you my kidney This is this is somebody died right and they were a donor. Yes Yeah, no, you don't just give somebody your face Here's my faith But um, we're like the google algorithm Like identify them as the other person in selfies I don't believe so because the underlying reconstruction. I mean some of it. I guess What this story it looks like Some of it is some of it some of this is the upper jaw and part of the lower jaw And the teeth and the nose, I mean it Yeah, I mean how much of the under the structure of your face is determined very much so by the underlying bone And the muscles and tendons that are under there So you can take and you could probably take any face and fit it on and it would look It would not look the same because of the underlying skeletal structure right But like this says there, uh, they had to replace The upper and lower jaw teeth Yeah, nose so I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what kind of similarity there would be I don't think I I I think that the overall overall Facial structure probably is different enough though, but I don't know Yeah, I mean A face is just a face right Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting story Who was asking Ed from Connecticut is asking if you could grow a new face. What would you change? Wow I don't think I'd want to grow a new face. I like my face. Yeah, I've always been pretty okay with my face Well, yeah When I when I when I have self-esteem issues. It's not usually because of my face I And as I get and as I get older I'm earning my wrinkly stripes No, I've got my though. I've got this one wrinkle in here. It's my That one right there. It's my I've got one like my concentration wrinkles When I'm really Thinking about something that that one's mine's mine's not I don't deem mine being involved in concentration mine is more Did you really just open hand to eat yogurt on the couch? Why would you do that? Why would you even think that would be like and well? Yeah, ah I thought I got my song reference You must remember this A kiss is just a kiss. It's just a face A face is just a face Sometime Yeah, the equation the quatious one. So maybe we can grow other parts. Everyone has something about their body They don't like we should just grow those parts. So we like them I don't think I need more parts. I don't need more parts except maybe a third or fourth robot arm Yuck Do not sign me up identity forces you put something fun in the drop box I have to hear it. I don't want to know what you're not what you're putting a drop box Me being silly that's that can be used later Everything froze. Thank you identity Did it everything's fine on this end? Everything's fine here New parts Yeah, so when my I mean, isn't that what we're working on? Maybe it would be nice to have an actual new hip Instead of a hip implant You know, I'm gonna I think I'm gonna have hip problems when I get older Identity I think you'll stay hip forever. I'm gonna stay hip. That's right I'm hip. I'm hip Gorgeous gorgeous So like that's my papa my my grandfather papa He would say that gorgeous simply gorgeous This big booming he had this big booming voice It was great gorgeous All right blairs dropping out because uh, she says we're robots I'm not a robot We're not robots, but Testing you sound fine and look fine. You're fine to us. We're just robots to you You're both robots to me right now I need your brain for research into humans Okay, well, I think we had a nice run of the show anyhow, I think we had a fantastic guest She was great, I have to I really enjoy having long conversations with the guests, but it keeps us up late And it makes the uh, the show very long which is fine, but we can I think on those nights we can cut short this aspect the hanging out Yeah, I think that those are the nights when I have our audience as from what I can tell is already like I'm asleep. They're texting the word yawn now It's time I will see I will go as well. I You're both back just in time for me to say goodbye That's right. That's what we were just saying. We were getting ready to say good night Just say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair Wait, I don't remember if there's anything that anything important that we need to talk that I don't think there is I think we're just doing a show next week and there's no interview to worry about and I've got things interviews lining up in august Excellent Uh blare you're coming up for solar eclipse still. Yes, I am Okay, we got solar eclipse in august And Oh exciting news. I don't know how it's gonna work out how we'll make it work But I'm trying to organize some podcasting event things with uh tom merit Hmm. Yeah from the daily tech news show formally of twit and cnet and Maybe maybe live events in the future Yes, you know, I love live events On the west coast. Yes Oh, even better. Yes. Yeah um Yeah, I'm kind of worried about November beginning of november. We're gonna have uh Be going to colorado. I haven't heard back about the entomological conference But just reminding that that's gonna be on the calendar beginning of november Probably Unless they call back and say no, but we have to keep it open and then Oh, yeah, and we're gonna have tom merit on as a guest ed from connecticut. He's gonna be on the show probably uh august 9th and calendars, so When should we what's our what did we decide? What's our um, so target deadline for um Pre orders for the calendar. So I have pricing And I have scanned in the first four images. So We can post those online for presale anytime Okay, uh, yeah, all right So I'll think let's set a date to do that because it'll take me a few minutes to actually put together the link in the post And all that kind of stuff. Um, great Yeah, so let's think about Aiming for that because it'd be awesome to send things out in november instead of the last minute like we have been doing so um Maybe start pre-orders in what do you think just in late august september? Yeah, I think I think people buy calendars Yes, and I think you can't you can't be too early about it because We want we want people's We want people to plan on using our calendar So they don't accidentally buy another calendar and then we make a calendar and then it's too late for them Oh, I just got a calendar So I think mid august is fine All right All right mid august we will aim for that. That's that's a good. That's a good deadline. Okay Okay, I think that's all the business that we need to chat about at the current moment Thanks you guys for hanging on for a couple more seconds and I'm glad we're not robots anymore. Yes Thanks everybody for watching Hope you enjoyed it all all right Say good night, Justin Good night, Justin Say good night, kiki Okay Say good night Blair. Good night Blair Good night everyone. Have a good week. We'll see you next week