 I always dance my way in on that. I love those little boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. It's so simple, yet so catchy. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the weekly podcast broadcast of This Week in Science. We are back again, yes, for this science. And we're gonna broadcast the podcast live right now. Although maybe not on Facebook because it looks like that's broken again. You're seeing it too. That's really funny. I don't know. I thought that I reset our whole thing to Facebook, but I don't know what to do. I don't know how that, there we go. We've got a thing. I'm gonna hit a button and say start now, maybe. Schedule start time. I don't know how to fix it. Make it go now. Maybe, nope, can't schedule for later. It's too late now. Don't change the thumbnail. Can't fix it. Save changes. Nope, it didn't like it. Okay, forget it. Sorry, Facebook. Well, I just posted to Facebook and told them to go to YouTube. So I'm sure the Zuck's not very happy about that, but you know what? I'm sorry. I don't know why. I reset our whole, I specifically went to Facebook or went through the whole thing where you log in and you connect the services and you make it all talk nice to each other and it looked like it should have worked. And I'm sorry, Facebook, or those of you who cannot watch the show tonight on Facebook, I hope that you are able to watch the show later. They can't hear you, Ki-Ee, because they can't watch it. I know. This is me talking to the trees. Maybe they can hear me. Maybe they can't. I don't know. But anyway. You speak for the trees. For the trees have no tongues. Anyway. But they have little eyes that watch us all the time. It's time for the science show. Let's talk about science. Not the ears or the eyes of the trees or the Facebooks that may or may not be allowing us to stream. We are podcasting and sometimes stuff like this happens and then it gets cut out. So that's not gonna make it into the final podcast. Ta-da! That's my disclaimer there. Yeah, no. The rest of it though, the live video that gets recorded to the streaming places. This is what you get. All the fun stuff. Hello. You ready for a show? Let's do it. Let's do it. How about all you? Are you all ready for a show? Are you ready? I think they're ready, Kiki. I think give the people what they want, which is a show. Oh, the science show. What do you like to hear from science? Okay. Starting in three, two, this is Twist. This week in science episode number 936 recorded on Wednesday, June 26, 1923. Man, the second you said that, I was like, really? Really? Let's just forget about the last 23 years. Going back. Who cares? Oh my gosh. You want to take two of that? Because the tab next to this one in our rundown is July 19th. This is July. Don't try to explain it. It's just sometimes we do these things. It's fine. Okay. So, Rachel, I'm going to say the date right now. So cut out all this stuff, please. Recorded on Wednesday, July 26, 2023. Nothing compares to science. Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Kiki. And tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with a mysterious boundary, the Loch Ness monster-ish, and why you should consider robbing an art museum. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. In science, X is an axis. X is a variable. X is a chromosome. X is an energetic frequency of range of light. X is a molecular halogen. X multiplies. X is a unit. X is not owned, yet is of our own making. And how we use it is yet to be defined on this episode of This Week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn, is it happen every day of the week? There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know. Good science to you, Dr. Kiki. Good science to you, too, Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again in the wonderful 21st century to talk about all the amazing science that we were able to uncover this last week that we thought was interesting and we wanted to bring to discuss and share with you. So I hope you're all ready for a great show. Has it been a good week, Blair? Oh, yeah. Lots of science to talk about. Had to really figure out what I wanted to bring. Very excited. I know. It's all the things that you cut out, right? People want to know. What did you not want to talk about, Blair? No, it's what we want to talk about. That's the important one. OK, on this week's show, I have stories about troubles with a muck, restoring fertility, fighting malaria, and why some people have more trouble with stairs than others. What do you have in the animal corner? Oh, my goodness. I have the invisible line you talked about. I have the Loch Ness monster, but not really. I wish I did. And then in the actual animal corner proper, I have neon tetrafish that are very polite and suspicious drongos. I don't even know what a drongo is. But now I'm, should I be suspicious of the drongos? No, the drongos are suspicious. They're concerned. I can't wait for you to find out what a drongo is. This is great. I want to learn about drongos. OK, but we have to have lots of other stories before we get there, which we're all ready to discuss right now. OK, if you're not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can find us live streaming every Wednesday evening, 8 PM-ish Pacific Time on Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube. We are live right now on the air as I am speaking. And if you want to catch us later as a podcast or other recordings, look for us places podcasts are found. And on those aforementioned platforms, This Week in Science, look for TWIS. We are TWIS Science on some socials and on Twitch. And our website is twist.org, where you can find links to things, show notes, all sorts of fun things. Anyway, it's now time for the science. What do you got, Kiki? Well, first off, I guess I'm going to ruin a muck. Well, I personally, yeah, I'm not personally ruining a muck, not running a muck. Humanity is running a muck. That's kind of what we do, apparently. This week was news from a group who have warned of a possible slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning current. And now there have been movies in which this has happened, where suddenly the current that takes all the warmer water from further south brings it up north. It cools, and then it overturns. And there's this upwelling and downwelling and the movement of the water, which impacts the wonderful, temperate climate of Europe so that Europe can have great agriculture. And I mean, I'm right now. It's getting a little bit hotter than maybe people would prefer it to be getting these days because of climate change. But one of the things that may possibly happen is that because we're heating the atmosphere so much and heating the oceans and increasing carbon dioxide, which is having a feedback effect to change pH and also impacting the heat trapping capacity of the atmosphere and the oceans, that the surface of the oceans are getting warmer and warmer and warmer. And as they warm up, it's going to decrease the ability of that Atlantic ocean meridional overturning circulation, otherwise known as a muck. It's going to decrease its ability to be a muck. There's no overturning if there's no temperature gradient. Temperature pressure gradients make the difference. So we've heard about this before. There have been movies that have suggested that there could be a stoppage of this current. And then an ice age comes and impacts North America and Europe and, oh my god, glaciation, which the last time, 12,000 years ago, that Europe had a glaciation, it was because a muck stopped. So it could cool things down in Europe a little bit. But we don't want it to cool down so much that agriculture is no longer possible and the ice sheets start moving their way down from the Great North onto the continent. So a lot of people are kind of questioning what's happening with this data. It was published in Nature this last week, Nature Communications. Researchers basically saying that the assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, have been too, they're not going far enough actually. And that observations are already suggesting that we're seeing evidence of a stoppage of a muck right now and that we're coming up on that threshold, the point at which it slows down really, really fast. And instead of, as the IPCC climate suggestions, climate estimates suggest, which it's a muck will not stop until after the end of the 21st century. These researchers think now based on their statistical calculations of variants that a muck could collapse between sometime around 2025 to 2095. With, with, that's soon. Yes, the ultimate is, hey, we're already seeing cooling that is not lining up with the IPCC simulations. So they're already having observations that don't match the IPCC's most extreme simulations or estimates. And so that's why they're suggesting that this is going to be a much more rapid collapse than what is currently made. Which could mean a lot, but at the same time, it could be not a complete collapse all at once. Maybe it goes kind of step-by-step, so like it's a partial slowing and maybe it's, you know, maybe it doesn't go all at once. Other researchers think that the way that they have looked at the data is not appropriate and that the IPCC is still the proper estimate. So there are a lot of questions as to what's happening here, but there are researchers who write at realclimate.org who have published papers on this current previously and have written up some great points about this that you might wanna take a look at and we'll link to it on our website. And they link to a number of papers related to all this stuff. But the take home message is that a lot of researchers are looking at this and taking it very seriously. And that the IPCC's estimate of like, ah, you know, there's maybe a 10% chance of it happening within this century. Why aren't we looking at the likelihood or the statistical significance? It's something more like what we expect from the rest of the client, which is our certainty levels are at like 99.95 or 99.99% statistical significance. We're not doing that. So it's kind of like, you know, you're gonna go into a room and there is a one in 10 chance that you're gonna open the door and there's gonna be gases that'll kill you. Right, once you open the door. Why do you wear a seatbelt? Yeah. What's the likelihood that you're gonna be in a fatal car crash? It's less than one in 10 actually. But it's still scary enough that we wear a seatbelt. And you should, I'm not saying you shouldn't. But that's exactly the point, right? Like we do so many things to avoid something that is less likely than one in 10. We do. One in 10 is actually not good. I will also say, I feel like this is when I wanna shout out to my environmental science teacher in high school who was talking to us about the Gulf Stream and how it would be reversed and Europe would be thrown into an ice age. And this was 20 something years ago. And I've been thinking about it ever since. It's actually a lot more intense if the entire AMUK system is gonna get messed up, not just the Gulf Stream, but. Right, this is talking about not just the Gulf Stream and they're talking about the AMUK system. And there are already temperature changes that we are measuring at the sea surface that are indicative of the predictions that are more dire than what IPCC is suggesting. Now, there are some resources, if you go look at the news and the ways being covered, it's like, okay, there's a really small chance it could be as early as 2025. Probably not gonna happen. But within this century is sooner than we were anticipating. We might not really be able to, I guess really picture and conceptualize what the change of AMUK would mean for life in Europe and life in the Northern North America areas and how that could potentially change the Gulf Stream and all sorts of stuff. But we are already seeing heat changes that are definitely the result of climate change. Again, another group came out this week reporting on their assessment of extreme heat in Europe, North America, and China and that it's the temperatures that we've been seeing are much, much more likely because of climate change. And if it weren't because of climate change that the temperatures are, that we would be seeing the highs of our heat waves would not be as high. So we can worry about heat. We can worry about AMUK, but why not both? And how about look at the planet as a system and let's try and figure out how we can do best. We're all of it, right? I mean, this is why climate scientists have pushed the climate change rebrand from global warming so hard because it is so much more than warming. Yes, warming is part of it. And yes, it's like 114 degrees in Arizona or something today. It has been for like 25 days or so. It's like a 20 day stretch of over 110, which is amazing. I think it was 130 something in Death Valley today. Anyway, that's part of it and that's bad, but freezing over is also bad and also part of it. It's a system. You mess up the system, things don't circulate right. And as much as we might as humans like to run AMUK on the planet's surface, we don't want to ruin AMUK. So let's try now too. Let's decrease our carbon dioxide output, everyone. And that doesn't necessarily mean just pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We need to start figuring out how we use our energy, how we create products, how we are consumers and how our industries are regulated. We gotta work it all together. Voting for politicians who support climate action and reduction of fossil fuels on a larger scale. You cannot do it by yourself. You have to get the support of your local government. That is the only way. Sorry, you gotta vote. Don't ruin AMUK. Vote. But speaking of oceans, you had another cool story related to a serious boundary in the ocean. A serious boundary potentially caused by climate change 35 million years ago. Climate change 35 million years ago. I mean, that was like normal climate change. That was like the climate change as the result of weird tectonic activity, which I'm gonna get to in a minute. So there's this thing called the Wallace Line. It's in the Malay Archipelago, which is a chain of more than 25,000 islands between Southeast Asia and Australia, which includes the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, and many, many others. And this guy, Wallace, noticed that the species that he encountered was, they were kind of the same, the same, the same. And then they were drastically different at a certain point. So there was this strange boundary that he got named after him called the Wallace Line. Since then, it's kind of been redrawn to reflect current findings, because a scientist on a boat, it is a contemporary of Charles Darwin, didn't have perfect data, but since then, they found that, aside from a slight redrawing of the line, the line stands. So on the Asian side of the line, the creatures exclusively urinate from Asia. Once you cross this line, bam, there's a mixture of Asian and Australian animals. There are no crossovers of Australian animals above it, but Asian animals can move below it. So there's something weird where Asian animals can move one direction, but Australian species cannot move the other. So there's some weird, sort of weird selective pressure happening that will not allow any animals from Australia to cross this line. Recent study looked at the kind of more contemporary expectation that it had to do with climactic differences on either side of this line. And so the reason that the climate is so different on the two different sides of this line, they think actually has to do with tectonic activity from around 35 million years ago. That's when Australia broke away from Antarctica and crashed into Asia, which made this archipelago. They used a computer model to simulate how animals were impacted by the different climactic effects and they factored in dispersal, ecological preferences, evolutionary relatedness, all this stuff of about 20,000 species. And they found that Asian species just were much better suited for living in the archipelago at the time. So basically the Asian species had evolved already to be more flexible. And the Australian species were less flexible. And so that kind of tracks with what we know about Australian species. It's island biogeography, there's a bunch of weirdos. And the reason Australian species are so weird is that they were separated. They became specialized for a very specific habitat and they never went anywhere else. And that was it. They had no other selective pressures. And so this kind of follows that line. So the climate in Southeast Asia and the newly formed archipelago was much warmer, wetter than Australia, which was cold and dry. And as a result, the Asian animals who were well adapted to live on the islands were able to use them as stepping stones to move all the way towards Australia. But then these Australian species, they were less successful at going tropical because they were used to this dry, cold habitat. And so this explains this kind of weird phenomenon, but ultimately also it gives us tools to look at how to forecast modern day climate change and how that will impact species. So it's kind of more, it's more data to put into species flexibility studies, essentially, to see who's gonna be able to adjust and adapt to changing climates and who will not. And so my guess is that Australia's not looking so good. That the animals there, they're great for what they haven't been adapted for, but if it changes, it's not gonna do so well. That said, Australia itself does have a very varied layout of habitats and ecosystems. You've got the outback, you've got more tropical regions. You've got, there is a lot of variants, but maybe there's a lot less generalization within the species. Right, well, and if you look at a lot of the animals that have survived on Australia, they are, they always like to use words like primitive, but that's not right. They are of a more ancestral morphology, I would say, than animals that you see in the rest of the world. Although I will also say that we had a study a couple of months ago that said that marsupials might actually not be the default that was the precursor to placental mammals. So who knows, maybe I'm totally wrong about that, it turns out, but that's what the text told us, right? Yeah, so if that is the case, then Australian animals kind of have these older traits, evolutionarily speaking, because they didn't have the same selective pressures from being on the mainland, in which case they are generally less flexible, which would follow the results of this study, right? So it would make sense, but I am just throwing out there that it was called into question recently, whether all the marsupials in Australia are in fact, a more ancestral lineage or not, I don't know. But regardless, that kind of explains this Wallace line and gives us some interesting things to look at for the pressures of climate change. Yeah, I wonder though, you know, with the suggestion that potentially there will be different glaciations, there will be because of climate change, it's not just like you said, global warming, right? There's going to be localized changes, there are going to be changes in water level, right? So the ocean level, sea level is going to rise in some places, not in others because of the way that gravitational shifts are going to influence the compression of the Earth's crust and other facets of how it moves. And, you know, it's going to just be very interesting to see which places maintain kind of a status quo, which become different than they ever were. Like here in the Pacific Northwest, we're starting to see more weather that's hotter, that's more like Southern climates as we go further on. But then will we see stuff like a muck shutting down that will lead to an ancient kind of need for a phenotype or, you know, something that you would consider, quote unquote, more primitive, but could be very well adapted to a particular type of place and time, right? Yeah, and what animals are going to be able to move and island hop and figure out how to kind of get into a spot that they're comfortable with and what animals will not. Right. Yeah. I don't know, I do feel kind of sad about some of the wonderful Australian species not being able to make their way out, but others, I'm absolutely fine with them staying wherever Australia ends up. I'm having some thoughts. Yeah, the venomous ones and, yeah, the dangerous ones. Yeah. Be specialized. They're part of their ecosystem, but you're right. I don't need them in my backyard. Oh, you can't make it. Oh, that's too bad. OK. Oh, shucks. Sorry. Do I feel bad? No, no, not really. It'd be interesting to see what would happen should Australia become colder and be affected more greatly by those kinds of climates. Not speaking of ancient reproductive capacity and fitness and ability to evolve, but speaking on a level of reproduction and fertility in humans. But of course, in this study, it's a study on mice because we can't really study the things that we're studying unless we study them in other species first. And so it's nice. Got it. And mice. Yes. This work is very interesting because there are a large number of people who undergo ovary degradation, whether it's from chemotherapy or from other disorders or, you know, genetic issues. But over time, there's about 5% of people with ovaries who have issues with being able to be reproductive, that their ovaries decline in fitness. And this is not just a problem for reproduction because when the ovaries start to decline in their function, they also stop producing lots of essential hormones that are important for bone strength and for, like, physical function and brain function. And so the ovaries are very, very impactful to the physiology overall for people with ovaries. And when they start to not work as well, things aren't great. It's hard to do with it. So what would it be like if we could repair people's ovaries after they've been destroyed by chemotherapy or damaged by chemotherapy? Wouldn't that be amazing? So researchers, yeah, researchers are working on this. And one thing that they have recently done, just published in Lancet, e-biomedicine, is their study on using induced pluripotent stem cells that they have taken in this case from mouse ovaries, the stem cells that are called granulosa cells. These, they can turn into the ovary cells, the cells of the ovary. They've taken the granulosa cells, turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells, and then taken those. And induced pluripotent stem cells, they could become any type of stem cell, but they're making them turn into ovary cells because it's kind of, there's this weird programming that's kind of embedded in there somewhere where it's like, oh, you're from an ovary? You still want to become an ovary. We could turn you into skin, but we're just going to have you become an ovary. That's great. So they did that. They injected these ovarian cells into mice and in the work that they did and they published. They were able to take these non-reproductive cells, the stem cells, the granulosa cells, and turn them into functional eggs. They were able to create, have the mice with non-functioning ovaries go on to reproduce. The stem cells were implanted. They worked as they should. They turned into ovarian cells. The ovarian cells were then able to support egg cells and the egg cells were then able to go on and produce offspring. That's amazing. Yes. Yes. And it was able, they had multiple generations of animals. They went several generations down the line to see if there were genetic abnormalities or any issues from the stem cell implantation and there were not any that they could see. So this is a proof of principle for moving forward into possible human trials in the future. Yeah. So making a stem cell into an egg, I recognize this is like a very specific pathway, but that is a big deal. Yeah, but this isn't just making a stem cell into the egg. This is restructuring, rebuilding an ovary that has been dying back that was basically deteriorated or almost dead because of genetic issues or because of something like chemotherapy. And it's like, we will rebuild it. It's like, I don't know, the bionic woman, but stem cells. It's a stem cell, stem cell ovary. Yeah. And so these ovaries were able to then go into inducing OO sites, which are the egg cells and the OO sites were then able to become little mice. Love it. Yeah. Wow. That's, we've come very far. I know, right? This is a big deal. I don't really have anything intelligent to say about it. This is just a big deal. It's a pretty big accomplishment that researchers have been working on for a long time. Yeah. Yep. Wow. Yeah. So the possibilities of, you know, there are a lot of people who don't know that, you know, they can save their eggs or there's not, you know, you're going to go undergo chemotherapy or whatever. A lot of people don't hear about those things and then they have no choices. And now they don't have the insurance that does it at the time. Yeah. And this is, this is the kind of thing that will allow people to, you know, reproduce and to be, you know, to have the things that they want, that they need internally. And if it, like I said, also, it's not just about reproduction. It's about having functioning ovaries that produced estrogen or estradiol and other steroid hormones and are important for physiological function. And so that in itself is also an incredible deal. Like instead of, you know, maybe you have a hysterectomy and have also maybe your ovaries are suggested to be removed for whatever reason, but maybe you're able to rebuild them. And so then you don't have all of the deficits that come with having had, you know, all of that removed from your physiology. Or you go into super early menopause. Menopause. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. It's very exciting. So, you know, we'll see. Where's this going to go down the line? It looks promising and it's great. We were able to solve a problem in mice yet again. Do you want to talk about your monster? I thought you'd never ask. I'm looking forward to this. The Loch Ness Monster. Is it real? No. No. But where the cryptozoology hits actual zoology is where many researchers over many generations have tried to figure out what people are seeing. What are they photographing? What are they seeing? Where does this lore come from? Is there an animal in the Loch that could inspire these stories? One of the predominant theories is that it is a giant eel. That would be a really, really big eel. That's the thing. How big? Great question. So, this research was looking at eel catch in Loch Ness to try to figure out if any eels ever could have possibly been big enough to be mistaken for the Loch Ness Monster. And so they used previous estimates of the monster's size and then they used this eel catch data to try to figure out if this is at all possible. No. There's no eels big enough in Loch Ness. They calculated the chances of encountering a one meter eel, which is approximately one in 50,000, which could explain some sightings of smaller things that people see in the Loch, or the smaller version of the Loch Ness Monster. But the big guy, that big Nessie situation, probability is basically zero. There is no way eels could account for these larger sightings. So purely statistical considerations do not support the existence of exceptionally large eels in Loch Ness, and therefore Nessie is not an eel. All right. What could she be? I don't know. So not European eels, not eels from that Sargasso Sea area that got stuck in Loch Ness at some point. There's no way that could have happened. No. It's just really based on this modeling and this catch data. Nope. Can't be it. So it's got to be something else. What if it was like an eel ball? Like what if it was mating season and it was like a bunch of eels? Right. But maybe it's not eels at all, but big fish that have the similar behavior like that. What if it's a log? Which, you know, at a certain time of night and a certain kind of water, the water reflecting in a particular way, it just, you know, definitely seems like it has a long neck and head extending above the surface. I walk on the Bay Trail every night. And in the kind of fall, winter, when it's kind of twilight-y and I'm walking and I see reflections on the water, I have seen what looks, I swear, like an alligator. I know it's not because I'm in the San Francisco Bay. There's no alligators there. There shouldn't be anyway. Yeah. It's a log. Sometimes I'll see what I swear is an otter, which is possible. Usually a log. Sometimes I'll see what I am sure is a sea lion. Oh my gosh. There's a sea lion here. It's possible. I can't put. Almost always a log. So my money, my money for Nessie is that she's a log. But we know for sure, based on eel catch data, the science tells us not an eel. So there you go. Not an eel. Okay. So we've checked that possibility off. Nessie's not an eel. Could be an actual monster, I suppose, but whatever. Or a log. Or a log. My money's on log. It's log. It's log. Oh, anyone who gets that old reference. I don't tell you the next, the next phrase, but I am aware of it. I don't remember. It's better than bad. It's good. Right? Yes. It's good. It's better than bad. It's good. Anyway, moving on down the line of stories away from the fun idea of thinking of crypto zoological possibilities in Loch Ness. Not eels. Let's move on to things that are not so crypto, but actually zoological. And that actually are posing problems around the world like malaria. The Plasmodium parasite, which causes malaria carries the malaria and causes all sorts of problems. Plasmodium is paramecium. It comes and it's ejected into your bloodstream. Usually when you're bitten by a mosquito, 80s, egypties is one of the nasty ones that we don't like for that one. Malaria. There have been cases in Florida recently. Climate change is making malaria more prevalent in areas of the southern United States and we're likely to see it spread within the northern hemisphere even further as we can say, thank you, climate change. And we could stop it by stopping climate change. But anyway, let's go back to malaria and the fact that people have been trying for years and years and years to figure out how to treat it well. And also how to possibly prevent it because it is such a global problem. There have been efforts at vaccines and we currently now have a vaccine that is better than nothing. It's not the best vaccine. It's not 100% effective. It's actually not, you know, for the comparison of other vaccines that we get here in the United States, it's probably not even as effective as the flu vaccine in terms of how well it works. However, it's more than was had before. And so it's being, it's actually working and doing good throughout the world. But researchers are still working to discover more possible vaccines. And in this work, collaborators from Victoria University of Wellington's Farrier Research Institute in the Malagan Institute of Medical Research, in New Zealand, and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Australia have been looking at mRNA based vaccines. And one thing to know about malaria is that it gets injected into your bloodstream. And then those little paramecium, these, the Plasmodium parasite likes to go to your liver and hang out in the liver. And the eggs, the cysts, they grow and develop within the liver before then emerging again and causing the larger illness. And so the researchers in trying to develop this particular vaccine with mRNA, initially it failed because they were just targeting a protein that was within the malaria virus. And so the researchers in trying to develop this particular vaccine within the malaria or Plasmodium genome, they got one protein. They're going to work on, use that one. And it didn't do much. And so in their next efforts, they kept looking and they found what's called an adjuvant. And adjuvants are additions to vaccines that make them work better, be more effective. And in this case, it was an adjuvant that helped the mRNA vaccine go specifically to the liver and pretty much only be active in the liver. And in doing that, the mRNA vaccine creates immune cells, CD8 T cells and others that are then like memory cells that have a memory against this protein for malaria within the liver, which is where this parasite goes to build its resources and get better at doing what it does, but in fact hurting you. And so instead of focusing on having floating memory cells that are in the blood that don't do as much good, which is how other vaccines have been working so far, it is specifically focused within the liver. It's highly focused. And they were able to basically harness this mRNA platform to halt malaria in the animals they were studying. And this is in nature immunology that they have published their paper. They showed in mice this addition of the adjuvant, the agonist, it recruits T cells from type one natural killer T cells under these mRNA vaccination conditions and produces specific cells against a protein in the liver and keeps the mice from getting infected with malaria. So could you call this a weird silver lining from COVID? Because of mRNA vaccines use and testing, or do you think this was well on the tracks already and it's not really related? I'm going to say it's probably, this is probably something that was being looked at, but I'm going to guess that it wasn't well on the tracks. The researchers in this particular instance, they turned to mRNA in about 2018. So it was prior to the COVID pandemic, but it's probably because of what has been learned with respect to COVID and also other diseases that mRNA vaccines are being used for such as cancer and I think there are quite a few. I mean, HIV AIDS, I think there's some mRNA work being done. There's a lot that's being applied right now. And so I feel like the money that was probably put into supporting the research efforts for mRNA vaccines during the effort to get vaccines out for COVID-19, that has benefited all of this incredibly. Great. Yeah, because I know, I mean, the only reason we got an mRNA vaccine for COVID was because there were so many different paths of research for it happening already, but it really did allow just an amazing data set of just real-life application of mRNA vaccines in a way that I think probably sped this stuff along a lot faster than it would have gone otherwise. So it's neat to see it kind of... And I hesitate to call it a silver lining because COVID was terrible and so many people died and we're still stuck in a dystopian future because of it, but... But how many groups would have had maybe the mRNA technology set up in their labs? How many people would be aware of it as a platform for advancement? Like maybe it would have taken another 5, 10 years. Maybe this is something that would have gone more slowly. So I think, yes, silver lining, but also it was on it. It would be nice to see some lives saved after all this because of what we learned from all that. Yeah. Two of the really interesting aspects of this study also is that other vaccines don't work as well sometimes when people have been previously exposed to malaria. So a lot of the vaccines out there, they don't work as well because people have had malaria before and so it makes it hard for the vaccine to actually have an impact. And in this particular case, with their animal models, even rodents that had been pre-exposed to malaria had a really big response to this mRNA vaccine. And so that is a huge, huge thing. So I don't know, still need to get to human trials yet again. This is in mice. We've done wonderful stuff in mice. So this can be many years to come, but it's, you know, I don't know, we're looking at 10 years, 5, 10 years before malaria becomes really endemic within North America and people really start to care about it. It's just a bummer that people don't care about it now and a lot of people are getting it currently. It's just not. Yeah, that's my tongue and teeth right there. No, absolutely. It's so frustrating. And it's also scary that we, yeah, we probably will get it here because of climate change and all that good stuff. And if we just gave a toot now, then we'd benefit later. Hello. Hello. Yes. Yes. We help each other. We help our neighbors. Right. Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Help our neighbors. Yes. Anyway, about your own personal benefit, there will be some later. I don't like talking about personal benefit and all that kind of stuff. Unless it's talking about how people are going to personally benefit from watching or listening to twists. So thank you very much for being a part of the show this week. This is this week in science and we are so glad to be here talking about really interesting science news stories with you and hearing what you have to say. I love seeing your comments in the chat room, although currently apparently it's all about soccer, but we are continuing on with this show. And if you would like to support the show, you can head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link. Patreon is how we are listeners supported. And we really can't do it without you. So your help, no matter whether it's $5, $10, $15 a month, any amount helps. And you can choose your level of support over at the Patreon interface. And we just really appreciate you being a part of helping us do this for you. We really can't do it without you. All right. We're going to come back now for more of what we love to do, which at this time is to talk about things going on in Blair's Animal Corner with Blair. What you got, Blair? I have two stories that I was very excited to bring and very excited to read all about. And now you're not? My drug keeper. I had some issues with the mechanics. So we're going to talk about it because they're both, they sound very intriguing. But that's kind of the theme this week is like, is that actually what that means? So here we go. So first study. Neon tetrafish line up to escape a small opening. Okay. So schools of Neon tetrafish, para, in Nessie, they will queue up to evacuate through narrow spaces when they are in a hurry and they will do so without clogging or colliding. So researchers observe Neon tetras evacuate in groups of 30 through a narrow opening in a tank. The opening range from 1.5 to 4 centimeters. And they were doing it because the researchers were kind of pretending to try to scoop them up with a net. So basically scaring them through the hole. So the Neon tetras themselves measure about 0.5 centimeters wide and 3 centimeters long. So definitely can't all go through it once. They found that the fish evacuated at faster rates through larger openings than smaller openings. So they're slower as a group to go through the smaller openings, but that fish evacuating through all sizes tended to do so at a constant rate. The exception was that the last few fish in each group would all kind of go slowly, which I guess that's just natural selection. They're going to get eaten, is my guess. So they all gathered around openings of all sizes prior to passing through them, but they didn't bump into each other at all. There was no physical contact. So I guess this is where they're calling it kind of queuing up is that because they didn't bump into each other or clog up or try to squeeze through next to each other, they were polite. They were waiting their turn. And so their findings indicate that they may wait or queue before evacuating through narrow openings in order to maintain a preferred social distance and avoid clogging. In previous studies, they've seen similar behavior from ants, but for example, humans and sheep do not do this behavior. They will all try to squish through it once if you've ever been in an elevator or a crowded subway stop. Or yeah, in Japan. Yeah, getting on the subway in Japan, terrifying, except actually they have markers for lines so that they don't do that. But yeah, it depends on the situation. But anyway, so the authors suggest that they think that this would reflect the behaviors of schools of wild neon tetras when they pass between rocks and rivers to escape predators, stuff like that. And so I get it. It makes sense to me. I think a lot more study is needed. I definitely think they need to look at this in the wild. You can't just assume that this is going to happen the exact same way, especially when you're using a net, which is basically like a wall. It's not just a threat. It's you must move this way. If the net makes any physical contact with fish, you're not testing what you think you're testing anyway. So there's that. But I also think that queuing up that forming a line is not the same thing as just not mobbing. Yeah. And it sounds like there's an allocation of something that's way more complicated to what's going on other than just fish school. Fish are very good at not running into each other. It's like their whole thing. Right. They're very aware of their neighbors and how their neighbors are moving. And that's actually part of their survival within schools of fish, that movement. Yeah. Whereas herds of fish, for example, will constantly make contact with each other. Yeah. So it's, yes. Anyway, I think it's cool. I think I really appreciate that the Neon Tetris didn't all try to squeeze through at the same time. But I definitely think that more research is needed. And of course, the icing on the cake with this is that what's the proposed use of these findings? You got it. To inform the development of swarm robots. Those are words I don't like hearing together. Wait. What? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. So not to help make exits from human event spaces. No. No. No. No, no, that's the second thing that they say, as well as traffic management methods for autonomous cars. That's actually the second thing. The third thing they say is human crowd. But why swarm robots first? Come on. Thank you. Why? Why are swarm robots first? No, thank you. Anyway, autonomous cars also. You got to, you guys haven't figured out how to teach the cars how to line up. Because that, if you really haven't figured that out yet, I'm scared because there are self-driving cars currently on the road. Oh yeah. A lot of them. Yes. This part out yet, I'm concerned. I think it's interesting also, you know, that it's definite that it's swarm behavior. And it's assuming that each individual, like you mentioned earlier, like, like that each individual is exactly the same. And so is, you know, making specific judgments based on, you know, proximity or, you know, other stimuli. But watching, there's a video that shows how the fish move through. And it doesn't look like they're lined up as they're moving through. And it looks like some fish are like, I don't care. What? No. Okay. And they end up getting kind of pushed through. And it wasn't something I had to do in the first place. And there's some fish that go through kind of lined up. Together. Others that mush together. And it seemed like it was a lot more. Very behavior than you're trying to make it sound. I agree. And when I first saw that video that came with the study, I thought that was like the before video. I thought that was going to be, here's what happens with a big hole. And then we make it small. Now let's watch them line up. No, that was just the whole video. We need more videos. I want to see more. I need more. I just think they need to do more. They should do more. They should do more. They should do more. They should do more. I need more. I just think they need to do more. They just need to tag a bunch of fish and record their movements in the wild and see how they respond to predators. I think that's, that's all you need to do is how did these fish escape through these holes in the rock? Was it orderly? Or were they getting out of there as fast as they could? Because also a net is not an eel. Bring it back to eels again, right? Like a net is not the same thing as something that's going to eat you. So it's, it's a totally different barrier. It's not a threat. So it anyway. Kevin Reardon said, we will need swarm robots to replace bees. Well, and possibly neon tetras. I don't know. I guess. I don't know. Do the, do the robot bees need to swarm? That sounds unnecessary. They're fun, right? The bee swarms are only to follow the queen, right? And to form a new colony. We just need them to colony. That's, yeah. It seems scary and unnecessary. Anyway, swarm robots. Yes. Let's talk about drongos. Okay. And now let's, I need explanation. It's a bird, Gigi. It's a bird. Oh, why don't I know? Yeah. Drongos range from Africa to Central Asia, Australia and the Western Pacific islands. There are lots of kinds of drongos. They inhabit forests, open country gardens. They, um, they're, a lot of them are really stunning. So there's, um, the greater racket tailed drongo, which like has these two like, uh, all tail feathers that are almost like pinpricks. They're super thin. They end in a big old feather at the end. Um, there are sitting here with my, my mouth hanging open right now because they're so cool. They're very cool looking. They have little tufts on the front of their head. They're stunning. They're absolutely stunning. That's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the fact that, uh, specifically fork tailed drongos in Africa are often, uh, the target of brood parasitism by African cuckoos. Our buddies, the cuckoos. So they'll go, they'll lay an egg in a drongo nest so that they don't have to rear the chick themselves. And then if the, uh, imposter egg goes undetected, then the cuckoo will hatch. It'll be much larger than the baby drongos. It will eat all the baby drongos. And then the mom and dad drongos will care for the cuckoo. So that's the classic cuckoo story. We've talked about it a million times. But what this particular piece of research, uh, that came out this week is all about is the idea that drongos have signatures. So basically, um, drongo eggs vary. They have a lot of different colors and patterns. And so, um, those are usually forged by the cuckoo. They can kind of copy them, but the drongos have their, their kind of flavor of egg is very personal and specific. And so the researchers suggest that the drongos have their own kind of signature. So just like I signed my name different from anyone else, drongos have their own color and pattern on their eggs that are specific to them. They are unique to them. And they are repeatable by the same individual. And so potentially they can use that to identify eggs that are not theirs. And that picture that you just showed is what a young cuckoo looks like. So those, I think they are so cute. They're really cute. Too bad they kill baby birds. But it's how they survive. Yes. Of course. You know. So cute. Right. Survival. Survival of the fittest. Here we go. Oh, you little cutie. So, uh, so yeah. So that's, that's kind of the suggestion of this study is that drongos have their signature, their eggs are very specific. They can tell a cuckoo egg apart. Now this is where the story starts to lose me because if that were true, how do cuckoos still exist and do they still lay eggs in drongo nests? If they're getting caught, how does this behavior continue? So let me get into it. They're not getting caught enough is the thing, right? Great question. So, um, University of Cambridge and University of Cape Town worked in collaboration with a community in Zambia. They explored the effectiveness of signatures as we call them as a defense against this mimicry. And, um, they found that despite near perfect mimicry of drongo eggs, African cuckoo eggs have a high probability of being rejected. How do they measure the probability of being rejected? Did they go in the wild and see which eggs were rejected? No. Uh, they carried out field work in Zambia, uh, across four years they measured the differences in color and pattern of the forktail drongo eggs and the cuckoo eggs. They found that the color and pattern of the cuckoo eggs were almost identical to the drongo eggs. Sounds like cuckoos are nailing it. The broad types of drongo egg signatures were forged by cuckoos. So cuckoos could kind of tailor the egg that they popped based on what the other ones looked like in the nest. So the second step of their study, they simulated cuckoo visits by parasitizing drongo nests with foreign eggs from other drongo nests. Ooh. That was their proxy for African cuckoo eggs. This is where the study loses me because you are completely changing the variable. Yeah, it's not a cuckoo egg anymore. It's a drongo egg. Which the whole point of the study is saying that each drongo has a specific signature. So then they checked the nest daily to see whether the drongo parents accepted the foreign egg or if they realized it was imposter and rejected it by removing it from their nest. They could then test what differences in color and pattern between the foreign egg and the drongo eggs best predicted whether or not the drongo parents were tricked. So basically what they're doing is they're using these foreign drongo eggs. If they're rejected, they're figuring out why and then they're applying that to cuckoo eggs. So it sounds almost like they over, they made things too difficult for themselves, but ultimately in order to try to control what was happening, they tried to identify what about the eggs made them successful or not. They then created a mathematical model to predict how often on average cuckoos would have their eggs rejected. And they predicted rate of rejection was 93.7%. Which is super high. There's no way cuckoos can survive that. That species cannot cope. Because then you've got 96%-ish, 96.3% of those survivors then having to be young baby birds surviving in a nest and then surviving to adulthood to then pass on their own egg to a nest. Yes. And then they have to beat those 6.3% odds that their eggs continue. It's impossible. It is impossible that this brood parasitism could continue with that low of a success rate. So their additional simulation show it's likely because these drongos have these signatures on their eggs. And so even though cuckoos have evolved forgeries, they don't have enough of a match of their own eggs. But again, we don't know that because they didn't test cuckoo eggs. Right, they tested drongo eggs. Right. And so this is where I think it's really funny. The results of the study suggest that a female cuckoo may only fledged two chicks in her lifetime only just replacing herself and her mate. Researchers say that this would not amount to a sustainable population, which presents a puzzle because African cuckoos remain a common bird in many parts of Africa. So their suggestion to explain this is that the fork-tailed drongos where the research took place could be particularly good at spotting forgeries. So they think that this population is just really good at it. And that perhaps this part of Zambia is a hot spot for parasitism where drongos have to particularly find two defenses. And so cuckoos stand a little chance. Or your research method was flawed. Which is, I'm questioning that you're coming up with this criticism and the published study got published without it being a criticism to begin with. Maybe I'm not, I don't have the whole story here. But based on the information I've been given, it seems like you could also just observe wild drongo nests and see which ones cuckoos laid eggs in. And check the success, right? See what kind of eggshells are in the nest or outside the nest. You don't even have to disturb the nest. You look at the ground and see what is on the ground around the nest. Yeah. So I mean, from previous research, not specifically with the drongo, but with cuckoos, generally there's been some fascinating work related to this like predator prey co-evolution that's gone on where you have specific cuckoo species or cuckoo populations that because they live in a particular area where another particular population or multiple populations of parasitized birds also exist, that the cuckoos start to create the molecular, like they have the molecular signatures to be able to create the shells that look like the birds that they are going to parasitize. So there's this, the fingerprinting itself is an evolutionary war that they are going toward this point of being able to really replicate the eggs of the parasitized species. And it seems to me that if you're taking a completely different individual drongo's egg where it has a different fingerprint, you're going to have rejection of that more often than something that has been specialized to look as close to the fingerprint of your egg as possible. Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that kind of the step one of this study, totally valid. Drongo egg to drongo egg, unique. Yes, great. This idea of signatures, I'm totally on board. Individual drongo's have their own little like flare that comes out on their eggs. That's their brand. That's what my eggs look like. And I think that is awesome and that may have developed to try to deal with the cuckoo problem. Most likely. Yeah, and it's part of this arms race that you're talking about. But the idea that 93% of them could be kicked out. And that cuckoos would still survive in that area. Something's missing here. But yes, it is very cool that drongo's have signatures on their eggs. And cuckoos have figured out a way to outsmart it, which is my take away from this study. And that researchers have not yet discovered a smart enough way to address it. Yeah, yeah. Research wise. Stop screen sharing. Yeah, I love I love stuff related to cuckoos and the whole nest parasitism. It's so once you start digging into it, it's such an intricate complex interaction between different species, you know in an ecosystem trying to figure out how it's going to work. And like you were saying you have these drongo's with very specific egg fingerprints. And then you have the cuckoos who are going around and probably looking at a number of individuals and going, okay who's timed with me? And whose nest can I put an egg into? And if I'm going to put it in your nest, okay, do they have the ability to create a number of different fingerprint eggs? Are they like a 3D printer? All right, let me just scan this. Yeah. Then I'm going to make my egg look like these other eggs. Yeah. How does that work? Or do they know what their signature looks like and are they picking the nest that looks like what their eggs look like? Are they aware of that? Yes. And how are they aware of that? Because they're dropping and leaving. Right. Those parents are not hanging out because they don't want the other birds to know that they were there. Yeah. There's lots of cool stuff to look at. Also, just Google drongos later if you're listening to this and you haven't done it yet. Just check out what drongos are like. They're super cool. And a lot of them do like weird mimicking calls and they're very neat birds. Anyway. Claire, you have opened up a bird rabbit hole for me. I'm so excited. A bird nest, if you will. It's a bird. Bird nest. Oh, yeah. Spiky. Hopefully not too spiky. All right. I've got some fun research. Yeah, it's mostly I've got three really interesting fun stories to talk about that I want to end the show with. Let's talk about why some people have more trouble with stairs than others. Some people trip and fall down stairs more than other people who are able-bodied and able to take stairs. And I'm not talking about people who are have differently-abled people who are able-bodied able to take stairs. Some people just have stair trouble and it's like what's going on there. So of course researchers were like, hey, let's study this and publish it in plus one. And so this is how we now have a study entitled behavior during stair descent for young adults. Differences in men versus women. Oh, of course. So their research looking at young adult pedestrians 2400 of them 1470 men 930 women they videotaped them on a college campus during descent on two different staircases a short staircase of two steps and a long staircase of 17 steps. And then the researchers coded, they had codes for like what happened, like risky behavior kind of things. What were people doing while they were going down the stairs? Were they on their phones? Using electronic device not using the handrail being in an in-person conversation having your hands in your pockets. Oh, no. Don't do that. Wearing sandals or high heels was another one. Skipping steps is another one. Skipping steps going down is baldy. Skipping steps going up, that's fine. Yeah, so the results of this study found that women were more likely to have be engaging in so-called risky behavior on staircases than men. But did they fall more? Yeah. Women were injured more often. The high heels and the petticoats and the bustles, obviously, they get in the way the hoop skirts, you know. Overall the number of injuries and falls out of those 2400 stair descents they had the number of co-occurring risky behaviors is higher in women, so 1.9 to 2.3 5 pedestrians lost balance but didn't fall 4 of the pedestrians lost balance on the top step. All 5 had their gaze diverted from the step at the time their balance was lost. And these observed behaviors might be related to the higher rate of injuries on stairs in young adults. Young adults. 2400 descents. 5 injuries? Yeah, not even injuries. Just losing balance. 5 out of 2400. Yes. That doesn't math. That's not statistically significant. Well, we're statistically Okay, that just doesn't seem you need more data. That's not what? So they found that women were significantly less likely to use the handrail. No participants used the handrail on the two-step staircase though. Women were more likely to be holding something in their hands or to be engaged in conversation to where sandals are high heels and so also had the higher number of those behaviors co-occurring than men did. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I don't know about that. I need more data. I think that we need a lot more. I find it interesting that researchers add the young women we observed demonstrated more risky behaviors than the young men. Future studies should also examine physiological differences that may lead to greater injury risk such as differences in strength or reaction time. Okay. We know that's bunk though. How many studies have to happen that prove that that's not real? Great. I mean this goes to sports. It goes to so many things. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, I'm going to say that they probably saw a number of these things happening, these risky behaviors, but the number of actual injuries they observed were very, very low and so find it questionable that they would even be able to have a statistical significance in that sample set. And in my own anecdotal observation of risky behavior upstairs in my household versus balance lost, I would say that the men are more prone to these troubles than women. Go back one. I'm curious about the handrail thing too because I think handrail use. During handrail use observation as a percent of all the total was only 35%, 35.2% of the total observation is percent of the number of men is 37% of the men and 30% of women, 30.7% of women. But there was again a much smaller number of women than there were. Right. That's the other problem. It's not. Yeah. It's not controlled exactly. Yeah. And also you got to do the analysis but yeah. You got to put men in sandals and you got to put men in heels. I'm sorry. That is the only way you can actually identify any of these things as real variables. As a real risk. Is it? Is it? I mean just walking in heels. I don't know. Yeah. Yes. I want to see how they got these p-values. I'm very skeptical of these p-values. I don't like it. I don't. Yeah. I brought it because I thought it was ridiculous. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Any, anybody, anybody, if you want to be safe on stairs please use a handrail. Yeah. Don't look at your phone. Don't look at your phone. Pay attention to where the stairs are when you're starting down the steps that you have a good sense. Make sure that the stairs, these are campus stairs, so they're going to be regular. Sometimes in old houses, stairs are weird so you don't know what's going to be happening there. And if they're slippery, you don't know. So pay attention. Stairs are stairs. Don't be like a young person like me and just go head first down the stairs. I think the thing that's like careful on stairs or not is if you had a lot of accidents before, I'm very careful on stairs. I'm very careful on inclines. I'm very careful in a lot of situations because I went through a very clumsy period and I fell down a lot. It was, I think it was when I grew about a foot and a half in less than a year. It took a while for me to figure my body. How it all moves, right? Your body is figuring it out. So I am very careful now in all those areas and I cannot think of the last time I actually fell downstairs or fell down going upstairs and it's because I'm always holding the handrail and I am paying attention and I'm looking at my feet. Pay attention everybody. Honestly, this is the thing. Pay attention everybody. Be careful on stairs. Stairs are dangerous. I guess it's when you're younger, you're more free and I don't know not paying as much attention. And maybe it's lack of experience. Maybe it's an undeveloped prefrontal cortex. I don't know. But just be careful on stairs. All right, please. Especially if you're wearing sandals or high heels. Oh, this is my other, my other fun one that I love. So, if you were to go to a sermon, a religious sermon. Chicky premise, but continue. Yes, for whomever is out there. And your preacher we're not a human but we're a robot. How would you feel? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have trouble answering that question because of the premise itself, but I think, wow, that's really interesting. I need to know about that robot. Who is this robot? Why is this robot preaching to you? What's he programmed with? Great. Why does this robot think that it has the information that I need to live my life better and according to whichever religion this is? So, these researchers publishing in the Journal they put forward an experiment in an automated Buddhist temple. So, right, preacher, Buddhist temple, this is also something. Those words are not quite right, but that's fine. Yeah, so that was a recently automated Buddhist temple and then they did a second study in a Daoist temple and they found people perceive robot preachers to be less credible than humans. Uh-huh. Again, your point being how are they programmed? What is going on here? The researchers say this lack of credibility explains reductions and religious commitment after people listen to robot versus human preachers deliver sermons. They did a third study that again replicated the findings in an online experiment and suggests that religious elites require a mind. People need to perceive that that spiritual leader, religious leader, the elite who is preaching has a mind that is experienced that is knowledgeable that there is agency that that brings the credibility and this is partly why robot preachers are less inspirational to humans than humans. Why do we why? Why robot preachers? Because robots are everywhere and they're infiltrating everything everywhere so why not robot preachers? I guess checking it out, right? Where would preach, where would robots work? Could robots work in a church? Could they not work in a church? Okay, all right but what I would also be interested to see is if you gave somebody a passage, like a sermon, let's say written down on a piece of paper and you said this is written by a preacher and you said this is written by AI or whatever or you didn't label it either way would people be able to tell? Probably not. Right, that's a very important question, right? But would they care? Yes. Yes. Because that's what religion is for. It's squishy. It's squishy but there's also dogma so it's person-based though is the idea, right? Yeah, you're putting faith in it's person-based right but then those people are supposedly tapped into something that is higher than ourselves, right? That there is a connection that they are helping you guiding you but yeah, AI guiding you a robot that has been programmed is using AI to do the sermon Yeah What if it is? It's bringing all of the data, the information from the religious texts from centuries of religious learning and scholarship and bringing it to you in those sermons. It could be better than a human. And that's what I was wondering is if you told somebody this robot is basically an audio book of your favorite preacher that is no longer with us who's passed on and he's going to read you So-and-so's 1972 or whatever right? Would people like that whether that's true or not right? Because then you're giving the credibility of this is actually this other person's words, you're just hearing it from a robot right now Right, you're getting to hear it kind of like it's live right now with this robot It could be like robot Disneyland Yes, like great moments with Mr. Lincoln, yes It would be like religion land That exists right? I'm pretty sure that exists Probably, I don't know I think it does Yeah This is a study, I don't know if we need it I think we do this right And that, yeah, again this is kind of, this is a okay someone did a study and they published it and people aren't into robots as preachers yet and this was kind of interesting though We're not there yet Would you believe in a robot doctor? That would be interesting because do you need the person do you need the human to feel like you're getting the back and forth and the subjective response and all these sorts of things or like, because religion in and of itself is, as you said you're supposing a connection to a higher power than you might not have but with a doctor with you AI as of now no, maybe sometime in the future who knows I'd have to believe in a higher power to understand how any of that works but anyway the doctor is supposed to be your best access to all medical knowledge and if you had a robot doctor you would have much more in their brain than a human does Would you believe the robot doctor or would you want to have a human doctor that's the kind of thing that I think actually would be really interesting to see because even I myself don't know how I would feel about it in the moment there's part of me that says I want the person but then when it comes to something like surgery maybe a robot surgeon would be better or you know or you're suggesting this medication what's the statistics on the side effects and the benefits and all this kind of like a human can't give me that so something also interesting on the doctor front there was a a study came out this last week in which they were trying to figure out how networks of doctors can help each other and there's the concept of like the regression toward the mean where you would think that if you have really good doctors and really bad doctors that eventually all the doctors putting their input in the good doctors will become a little bit less good and the bad doctors will become a little bit better but they all regressed to the mean but they discovered that that's not true that what happens is that the best doctors stay the best doctors and the worst doctors get better so that actually information sharing and the networking of doctors is better for everyone on a whole as opposed to doctors working independently which is very cool yeah right yeah I thought it was really I was like oh interesting I hope my doctors are talking to other doctors I hope so wow well yeah I don't know robot preacher no thanks robot doctor maybe so we're thinking about robot preachers robot doctors but have you ever thought about robbing art museum no you've never have you? I don't know I've watched those movies and TV shows like national treasures I guess I've thought about it I guess I've kind of thought about it when it comes to the British Museum because everything in there is stolen anyway I wouldn't be cool to actually take this stuff out of there yeah I'd repatriate it that would be excellent but no I've never really thought about it I guess well some scientists at Duke University decided to think about it and they had this paper they just published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that explains their work in which they had two groups of people and the participants were assigned randomly to one of two different backstories and there was an urgent group so the urgent group was told you're a master thief you're doing the heist right now steal as much as you can and then they were put into a video game which was kind of like a walkthrough of an art museum and they had to go through and try out and steal as much art from this virtual art museum as possible for the other group they called the curious group they told them you're a thief and you're scouting the museum to plan for a future heist so now you have two groups of people going through the same game but with very different goals and different ways of experiencing it the next day they had people come back and gave them a pop quiz about the art and the prices of the art and details about the art that they had seen in the museum the participants had to flag the paintings as familiar and how much they cost and everything the curious participants recognized more paintings and remembered how much each painting was worth so being curious boosted the memory for more information overall the urgent group did not have that they didn't see that kind of increased memory but the urgent group did have an advantage they were better at figuring out where in the museum were the more expensive paintings so they had figured out how to get more value out of the museum than the curious interesting group so the researchers are looking at this now in terms of these different strategies and how they are adaptive and potentially used in different situations and so the researcher says in this press release from Duke University if you're on a hike and there's a bear you don't want to be thinking about long term planning you're going to focus on getting out of there right now other things that require really short term focus might and be involved in messaging for public health issues like trying to figure out how to prompt people to go get a COVID vaccine how do you take advantage of urgency as opposed to curiosity or if you want it to be a more long term activation how do you not get them stressed out how do you make them feel calm and be able to actually pay attention so you want to have people seek information remember it for the future and pay more attention for things that maybe are like a bigger lifestyle change with larger consequences huh yeah interesting so they think you know urgency is more involved with the amygdala being activated fear and anxiety and emotion and that has definitely impact on certain memories for like urgent mode stuff like you have more focused efficient memories but the curious exploration might might stimulate more dopamine release and a different regions of the brain like the hippocampus for memory storage so I mean you asked me if I ever thought about robbing an art museum and I haven't well this is it's funny that I what actually completely slipped my mind is that I'm currently in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that is all heist based and so it was supposed to be I think it was supposed to be a one shot it was supposed to be like a four hour thing right we've now met three times for multiple hours each time and we have we just finished the the initial planning stage the actual like recon mission and so how many details do you remember related to the heist every room talked to every person figured out what was going on in every part of this area and so now we're going to go back and the actual heist itself is probably only going to take one session but I think you're so right about how when you're in that curious stage there's so much more room to gather information and you're kind of assembling thought processes there were a couple moments where we thought maybe we were in trouble and we were going to have to smash and grab and go and suddenly it's all about where are my exits what are the risks how can I get out of here as fast as possible I don't care about that hallway I haven't looked down who cares what's down there what are the things I do know what is the most I can get out of here with safely yeah absolutely it's so funny I think that's hilarious but yeah I think the other thing is that you know this is kind of like a memory castle kind of thing so if you do want to use this kind of strategy for your own memory techniques and remembering things in the future like give yourself that kind of maybe heist kind of strategy and you know think about it from that perspective like what do you want to know and what do you need to remember if you're going to be successful on that test later on at the end of the week how can you wander through a historical situation to remember all these details or how can you wander through an art museum or a science museum or whatever to get as much and retain as much information as possible yeah that's so fun I love that I kind of speak to this other piece about the kind of just how your brain works in moments of planning and when you know you're not in trouble and no alarms are going off and versus fight or flight time what is essential yeah so that's a good reminder too where if you're having trouble learning something or remembering something or being engaged in something there are some alarms going off in your brain do you have some fight or flight that's kind of queuing you in to prevent you from having those curious moments do you need to take care of any of Maslow's hierarchy of needs are you hungry are you thirsty are you threatened like is there something else going on that could be preventing you from learning in that moment and that is the take home message at the end of this week in science this week take care of your basic needs so that you can learn so you can be curious because yeah you don't need to be curious you want to be curious I mean I think you need to be curious but I mean come on we're going to talk about that we've come to the end yes we've made it we've made it all the way through another episode of this week in science with all of you thank you so much for joining us thanks to everyone in the chat room I did see you talking about soccer in there let's go Portland Timbers that's great but come on it's science you did make it you did make it through the show and chat about science with us and I appreciate that for all our chat rooms not Facebook tonight unfortunately but Twitch 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Well just search for this week in Science wherever podcasts are found and if you enjoy the show please get your friends to listen to For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to the stories that we discussed will be available on our website that's at www.twist.org and you can also sign up for a newsletter that may come to your inbox someday Someday Yes Contact us directly Email me Kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org Put twists in the subject line so your email doesn't get spam filtered into a robot preacher in a church that no one's going to anymore because who wants to go listen to a robot preacher anyway Speaking of robot preachers you can also try to hit us up on what used to be called Twitter I don't know and you can try at twistscience at Dr. Keevee at Jackson Apply App I haven't even opened that app in several weeks but you know you can give it a go Find us We do love your feedback though for email at least we love your feedback For the topic you would like to cover address or suggestion for an interview please let us know And we will be back here again next week and we hope that you will join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything at all from the show today remember It's all in your head This week in science This week in science It's the end of the world Setting up shop Got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in I'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robot With a simple device I'll reverse below the warming With a wave of my hand And all this is coming your way So everybody listen Do what I say I use the scientific method This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got one disclaimer And it shouldn't be news That what I say May not represent your views But I've done the calculations And I've got a plan If you listen to the science You may just better Especially not in the after show Which is where we are now That was fun Aren't there some ridiculous stories this week? I had to talk about that I was so happy about all my stories And then I was kind of doing my Second pass on them and going What? But I think that's one of the fun parts of it Is not just going hey It's just this cool thing It's also digging in and going hey But now this is how I'm critical Of what they've done and that's You know I think that's important That is part of the science conversation That needs to be talked about Absolutely for sure Maybe if they had published On a Preprint journal You could have commented earlier Yeah why didn't they ask me It was my whole thing Why didn't they go to you first player I don't know What the heck What the heck What the heck Identity 4 has An image that I love Let me see if I'll share It looks like something From Futurama Certainly It certainly does Futurama I don't know that whole thing seems very Strange that they went straight to Preacher And also, Buddhism Taoism I don't even part of it Because I think they were Japanese researchers And so they're That's more in their Actually I think that's a great Let me go I can see what I can find because that is Interesting because it's like Of all of them Were they thinking that of all of them That those would be more accepting Or maybe most Wondering because it's a lot more of just like Here's Here's the structure, but I think There's also generally less like Evangelism happening In Taoism and Buddhism So I don't know exactly It might Be more acceptable I don't know Very interesting Man, I want the advanced online Thingy don't make me Have to get access People Anyway, robot preachers Bad for religious commitment Where else I mean does this mean Like What about robot politicians Or like Well, you can't pay off a robot So Might be better That of all things You can't shame a robot But also it seems like you can't shame A lot of politicians These days either so Nothing lost there They also Get robot preachers get fewer donations Not just undermining credibility They also reduce donations My question is what if you like blinded it What if they can't tell What if you made it so they couldn't tell If it was a robot or a real preacher Then would it matter I bet it wouldn't So there's In Portland I know in like nickel arcades In other places There are the The future telling Kind of head Zoltar Yes You put in your money and then Zoltar It's like Dig The lights flash And you're like Is this just a different level Of that where maybe it's less Credible but more of a I don't know people Pay for it because it's like a It's just like a A gimmick or something like I'm gonna go see the Buddhist Sermon preacher I'll get a heart sutra For A dollar I don't know Jumping straight to preachers seems very Wild To me Because it is I mean the whole thing Is subjective so if you Take out subjectivity And you put something that's supposed to be objective Then you're changing the nature Of the whole deal Yes Seems strange Yeah if the whole point Is a higher power then how does a robot How does that make any sense It doesn't I'm looking at more information on this study now And it's very So the second Study in the Taoist temple In Singapore They heard a sermon by a human priest And the other half heard the same sermon From a humanoid robot called Pepper And then they The researchers asked The participants on a scale from one To five to rate the credibility Of each and so this Is the interesting number Robot preacher on average Received a credibility Rating of 3.12 Compared with 3.51 For the human So the human Was more credible but not by much What That doesn't sound good at all Yeah but still The third experiment Did kind of similar to your question Of is it you know AI written Or human Sermon and Because the AI Can't think or feel like a human They didn't like the AI as much So there's a lot of things They're looking into here but Interesting Okay Sure Out there Out of five Not out of Out of one to five Three out of ten would be pretty sad Would be For both of them Fascinating Fascinated By I just I Is there going to be like the I'm going to the church In the My communion or to my My confession Booth You know you put in twenty dollars You go into a booth and Zoltar's in there And you tell them Your sins and then It's fine I mean is it going to turn into that Eventually You have to believe the robot has a direct line To God Yeah Which I think is going to be a hard Cell Cause that's the point That's the point of the confessional Is that they're You're talking to somebody who's really keyed in And they're saying I have word with the man upstairs I'm going to absolve you I'm going to put in a good word for you bud Just go do your rosaries or whatever they are Your Hail Marys And I'll tell him I'll tell him you're all good now So if a robot doesn't have The ability To tell But in the future If a human doesn't have The ability to tell the difference Between an AI and a human Say it's a text chat Or say it is a deep Fake kind of situation Generative AI Producing A preacher, a priest A you know Insert official figure here Does it then matter Right Yeah I'm not the person to ask I'm not either but I find it Absolutely fascinating How far does it go How when At some point Maybe there will be people in space Maybe it will be like the expanse Where we've got outposts Some people all over the place But you don't necessarily have that person AI generated stuff so that you can Maintain whatever faith it is Or whatever develops as faith Out in space with With the future There's so many possibilities And maybe there is a time to come Where it all is AI as God Or all knowing Higher power I could see you having like an AI hologram That With scripture Or like farm scripture To give advice based on very specific Queries or all these sorts of things Things very close to the sermon that the study was about Right But I think it's like It's the interactive, it's the confessional It's the like blessings It's the stuff that's supposed to be very interactive That I It's hard for me to see a point at which Someone could maintain their faith and go But this robot is fine This robot is fine Yeah, this will do In a pinch, it's great Yeah, I don't know Now I'm going to have to go look up That Prairie Home Companion bit Eric Knapp is bringing up 20 years so ago Prairie Home Companion had a bit called LOL Lutherans Online So I'm going to have to find that Sure Yeah And honestly, no I'm saying Happy confessing to Falcor Like Falcor in the Neverending Story Totally Falcor, I'll cry On you and you give me a big Falcor smile Hug and then I'm happy Falcor is That's my kind of animatronic robot I'm a huge fan He was so cute And cuddly looking And also wise Hearing Maybe the robot has Google Fiber up into heaven Starlink, thanks Paul Maybe it does Oh my gosh Eric You've got the best little tidbits Tonight, there's once a very old joke About using politicians in lab studies Because the animal rights people wouldn't object Bada Bop Alright, well I hope the Portland Timbers won tonight That would be fantastic Yeah, there's sports happening Apparently There's sports happening And it's summer and so I hope people Are enjoying their time Well, I mean it's not summer everywhere I am very hemisphere centric And I apologize I do try Although I do know That we have our wonderful listeners Down in Australia and New Zealand Pamela told us last week Even though it's winter there It was hot, so it's basically Summer there anyway Always Man Well everybody I think we've done it Have we done it Blair? Say goodnight Good night Kiki Say goodnight Blair Good night Blair Good night listeners Good night everyone We will be back in another week And I do hope in the meantime You stay thoughtful You stay safe You stay healthy You stay curious And Justin's favorite Stay lucky We'll see you then