 This is Twizz, this week in Science episode number 568, recorded on Wednesday, May 25th, 2016. A force of nature! Hey everyone, I am Dr. Kiki, and tonight we are going to fill your heads with noisy dolphin snot, cow dung, and clouds. But first... Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Regardless of what is about to happen, do not panic, though you may want to take this opportunity to grab a towel. A towel, as I am sure you know, is the most massively useful thing a minion of science can have, especially practical and dangerous times when one really, really, really wants to panic. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you slurry across the Arctic melt, counting polar bears. You can lie on it while etching meticulous layers of sediment away from a found fossil. You can sleep under it beneath the radiation and stars, which shine so steadily on Mars. Convert it to a sail, and free yourself from a castaway's fate of island dwarfism. Wet it and use it for hand-to-hand combat, or simply to ward off cats. Wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes, or to protect yourself from traumatic insemination. You can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, as long as that emergency is not a hungry polar bear that has been lurking about and now thinks you are waving it over, ready to be eaten. And of course, you can use it to dry yourself off with, if you have recently showered in the knowledge that is, This Week in Science, coming up next. Turn everything, I wanna 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 wanna 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. Science to you, Kirsten and Blair. And good science to you, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Oh, it is towel day. Happy towel day to everyone. And also welcome to this week's episode of This Week in Science. We have a great show ahead tonight, full of science as usual. I hope you are ready. Batten down the hatches, pick up your towel, use it as a seat belt. Because on this week's show, we've got stories about the formation of clouds, a connection between cows and dung beetles, and red geysers. Red geysers, yeah. What do you have for us, Justin? What did I bring today? I have got maladapted marshmallows. I have millions of venomous creatures and a Nubian Egyptian, Nubian Egyptian, Egyptian Nubian culture mashup. Awesome. And Blair, what do you have? Oh, I brought some invertebrate sex. I brought dolphin snot. And I brought a man eating crocodile. You're welcome. Also, happy turtle day to everyone. That was a couple of days ago. So, strap on your carapace and your plastron for this episode. Are we going to do some downhill turtle slaloming? Got it. Maybe not. That would be fun. Maybe not. But, okay, let's dig into the science. I have got a crazy story that seriously is going to make your head explode. You're going to want to do some downhill turtle slaloming after hearing this story. Hungarian researchers at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Institute for Nuclear Research in Debrecen, Hungary have published on the archive pre-print server and also in physical review letters this past January. But about this finding that they've worked in their lab to discover possibly a fifth fundamental force of nature. What? Right now. What? How is this possible? We've already got four, but now five? This is going to make it. Maybe. So, we have gravity, the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force. These are the four fundamental forces that kind of hold everything together and make everything work in the standard model. However, we've also got some stuff that doesn't quite make sense. Dark matter, for instance, makes up a massive proportion of our universe, and we really don't know what it is. And so, people are searching for a particle. Also. This Krasnore-Harke lab in Hungary, for instance. What also? Oh, also, Hutzpah. We don't know where that comes from right now. Oh, Hutzpah. We also don't know where it comes from. No, we don't. It's kind of like, you know, the Gestalt. Where does it come from? So, anyway, these researchers published their findings, and they said that maybe there's this new light kind of boson-like particle that's not very much heavier than the electron that we just haven't noticed, because, you know, it's not that big. It doesn't have a huge force. So, a bunch of researchers have been kind of following up on that, especially after their physical reviews letter paper came out in January. And so, on April 25th, there were other theoretical physicists who published their own analysis. And they're the ones that conclude that it's probably not just a boson, but maybe this fifth fundamental force, that maybe it could be something. And the lead researcher on this additional group study was published on Archive, and the lead researcher, Jonathan Fang, is from the University of California in Irvine. So, anyway, they were talking about this research. The Hungarian researchers were basically looking for something called dark photons. And so, they're like photons, but they don't carry light. They don't have that electromagnetic force that photons do. And they could potentially hold mass that would explain something about dark matter. So, that's what they were searching for. They ended up firing a bunch of protons at these lithium-7 targets, little tiny lithium targets. And that created these beryllium nuclei that decayed. And the decaying beryllium nuclei spat out all sorts of subatomic particles, electrons, positrons, whatever. And they were looking at what got spat out. And then they looked at the angle of the trajectory between the electron and the positron as they're spit spat out. I guess it would be spat out. And they said that about 140 degrees, this angle of electron versus positron, 140 degrees, there's a crazy emission spike. It just jumps all of a sudden. And they see this bump. And they calculated that it's probably a new particle. And they say its mass is about 17 mega-electron volts. And that it's a particle that comes from the beryllium-8 nuclei that is being spat out. And then it decays into this electron-positron pair at this 140 degree angle. They say they've done the experiment several times, tried to get rid of every possible source of error. And the Hungarian researchers, this lab, say they are really, really confident in their results. They say they've got basically a 1 in 200 billion chance that this is something weird going on. 200 billion? Yeah, 1 in 200 billion. They say it's like this anomaly without it being something weird. They're pretty certain that this is something actual happening. So the UC Irvine researchers and others, okay, it's not a dark photon. This isn't a dark photon. There's something going on there. They analyzed the anomaly and they looked for other results that kind of jived with past experimental results. And so they think they're calling it a protophobic ex boson. Protophobic ex boson. And they think that it would carry short-range forces. So like atomic, subatomic forces that would basically, the forces wouldn't probably get out of the diameter of an atom. It's just like from much, much smaller than the total size of an electron cloud of an atom, but basically on like nuclear level sizes. And so it's a very short acting force and that they think this is what it is. And so this is what they're suggesting, that this short acting little tiny force, this boson, is probably causing this new fundamental force. Now there's a bunch of researchers who are like, what really? I don't know, because you know scientists always do that. It's like they think they've got something and then other scientists go, wait, a fifth fundamental force, that's a little bit, that's a stretch. So now there, luckily are a bunch of experiments coming online that are actually going to allow us to test it and that there's a dark light experiment that's looking for dark photons with masses of 10 to 100 mega electron volts and they are going to target specifically this 17 mega electron volt target. Now that they know it's there. So maybe within a year, we could be seeing something from the dark light experiment. Additionally, there's the Large Hadron Collider B experiment at CERN that is looking at quark anti-quark decays and they also can look for this particular signal. So in the next year, we're going to have data on whether or not, number one, the 17 mega electron volt signal is a signal of any value, which it probably is, but we don't know what it is yet. And then second, whether or not it has that potential to be a fundamental force that we've never found before, holding things together. Talk about rewriting your textbooks, right? I know, all of a sudden you're like, okay, we got to put something else in there. Fifth fundamental force, this photo photo, yeah. Photophobic, it's afraid of light? Yeah, it's not photophobic, it's protophobic. So it's protons, so it's more likely to, instead of being attracted to electrons and protons, it's more likely to be attracted to electrons and neutrons. Okay. Yeah, so just a different attraction level there, which is very interesting. And then another interesting study, going from the little tiny to the big giant things, researchers have been trying to figure out why there are galaxies in our universe that don't seem to form stars. You know, like normally you've got these, you know, areas of matte dust and gas and lots of mass, and they start cooling down and things collapse on each other and they connect to each other and they condense and they end up forming stars. That's what happens when you have dust and gas kind of living together and working together in energetic parts of space. But there are certain areas that are kind of like star deserts. They have all sorts of mass, but they don't have a lot of stuff. And the researchers actually have this analogy that's kind of fun. They're like, it's like a desert that has lots of clouds over it. And you'd think it would be raining all the time and causing all sorts of plants to be growing. But no, it's not happening. So it has all the stuff that's there, but the end result is no stars. So why do you have these quiescent galaxies? Researchers looking at a survey of galaxies called the SDSS for Manga Survey, which is led by the University of Tokyo and involves the University of Oxford, have dubbed this phenomenon a red geyser phenomenon. Red because usually stars that are forming are in the blue spectrum of light, so they're not forming these blue stars. And so you've got a red component of light, more infrared, the heat is what you see more so. And they're geysers because they're periodic in nature and what's going on is that these galaxies have black holes at their center that erupt in a periodic fashion, kind of like the geysers in Yellowstone. And they erupt and then they stop. And so when they erupt, these supermassive black holes drive massive interstellar winds through the galaxy that's around them and the winds heat up the ambient gas and don't let it cool down and condense and form stars. Yeah, so because they're active supermassive black holes blasting the galaxies around them with the heat from their winds, there's no cooling, no condensation of the star stuff, and so no stars. And they think they haven't done a massive... This is a pretty big survey, but they've only seen a few of them within this survey, but they think this is a very, very common phenomenon and can explain this phenomenon across the universe. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty neat. It's very neat. So this SDSS-4 Sloan Digital Sky Survey for mapping nearby galaxies at Apache Point Observatory, SDSS-4 MENGA program. MENGA. I love that the Japanese got to use MENGA in one of their acronyms. That's fantastic. This is This Week in Science. Hey, Justin, what you got? I got back in the 70s. There were many assessments being made of preschool age children in order to better understand the decision-making process of the strange small hominids, commonly known as toddlers. One such test, widely known as the marshmallow test, assessed impulse control. So the tiny humans were offered a single marshmallow, and they were given a choice. Eat this marshmallow now. Wait, wait, no, don't eat it now. There's more to it. I haven't finished it. Okay, give them all another marshmallow. Okay, but only after I've explained all the options. They would be offered either one marshmallow they could eat right now, or the option to wait 10 minutes and have two marshmallows to eat. Pretty simple test. Children who displayed an apparent lack of self-control, refusing to wait for the more later, were deemed maladapted. Kind of a harsh thing to call somebody who's only in preschool. I know. You're in preschool, you're maladapted. Pretty heavy label, right? But Justin, this is this week in science. So what's new about this story? Oh, it's a kid you asked. I would have just left it there. So now researchers from the University of Rochester suggest that children raised in poverty may have been mistakenly labeled as maladapted because their seeming lack of self-control may actually be beneficial behavior based on that child's environmental context. You were just hungry, guys. Right. So what they're saying, though, is that what looks like impulsiveness may actually be adaptive strategy. Kids who are brought up in homes with limited resources have learned it's advantageous to seize the moment, says Melissa Sturge-Apple, associate professor of psychology at University of Rochester in clinical research at Mount Hope Family Center. For the new study, Sturge-Apple and colleagues measured vagal tone of preschoolers before they participated in the rewards-based experiments. So the vagus nerve? Vagus nerve, yeah. Vagus nerve. Streams information from heart, lung, stomach, and other organs to the brain. It's associated with moderation of moods, including fear and anxiety. So the high vagal tone is a psychological indicator of what we would call grace under fire. The body's ability to slow down the heart rate. Blood pressure, respiration, which can allow a thoughtful response. Previous research-reward-based studies showed that children from high-resourced households have a high tone. It's predicted their ability to delay gratification. The higher the tone, the longer these children can delay, and their ability to keep calm, wait, and get more marshmallows by the end of this. So they might even skip the two marshmallows and go, I could wait another 20 minutes if it's four. I'm good. Can we do it again? So the Rochester study, published in Psychological Science, children from low-resourced households that have the high-vagal tone did not demonstrate the same behavior as middle-class or wealthier children. In fact, it was just the opposite. For children living in poverty, the higher the tone, the quicker they decided to take that single treat. So from a normative model of psychology, this result makes no sense, but when we consider what would have been the most optimal behavior in a high-risk environment, this makes complete sense. It's survival of the quickest, or as Apple explains, context means everything. When all is well and prosperous, when all is well and prosperous, kids who are highly attuned, what's going around them can wait. But when things are scarce and unpredictable, basically, hesitation could leave you hungry, because if you don't grab it, somebody else will on the dinner table, and perhaps then you will have none. Yeah, we did a story a few months ago where, gosh, I don't remember what kind of animal it was. I want to say it was a type of bird that was prone to obesity if they were hungry as babies. Right. Yeah, so you can see how your impulse control is gone if you're not sure if there will be stuff later. Yeah, well, it's not that your impulse control is even necessarily gone, because it's not showing, what the study is revealing is that it's not an impulsive act. Yeah, it's not impulsivity. The correct strategy from everything that they've seen in their environment, it's the right move for them. And it's the move that, because of the high tone, it's the move that they did deliberate, that they did have a chance to sort of calmly think through and go, I better grab it now. But does that mean they don't trust the person that tells them that more marshmallows will come later? It could be trust, it could be partly, but again, this is, if it's based on an experience of your history, it kind of doesn't matter how much you trust the person necessarily. But that, you know... It's just general stress level. And that resources, when you have the opportunity to eat dinner, you eat, because if you don't, and your siblings have gotten there first, that was all that was there for dinner perhaps, as a for instance. I'm thinking of this dinner table where, one, they can keep bringing out more dishes if people are hungry, and one, that's the food on the table that if you can get to and eat, you're gonna be well fed. But if your brother or your cousin eats all of the potatoes, you will have none. So I think this is an interesting thing where, you know, the two of you are like blurs wondering if it's impulsivity and you're saying it's not impulsivity. I wonder if this is the kind of study that should make us really question what impulsivity really is. Why animals or people have impulse control issues. So maybe it is a higher general stress level or vagal tone. So if you do not have what they're calling grace under fire, you're not gonna be thinking about things so much. You're not gonna be considering all the ramifications. What you're going to be thinking about is like Justin was saying, where are your next meals coming from? What you need to do now to survive and you're not thinking everything through because you don't have that time to be able to. So maybe impulsivity is actually a good strategy in certain situations for survival. But I'm slightly disagreeing again. Because the high vagal tone was there with the wealthy kids who could delay the longest. I got that backwards then. So the low vagal tone because your control is adapted. You're less in control of it in a way. So it's an interesting mix, but I think this is sort of related to other studies that we've seen that have been done about poverty where poverty sort of limits long-term thinking. It's not that it's creating impulsive behavior. It's that it's wired you to think in a get it done now, take care of today. Where's today's meal coming from? Where's this month's rent coming from? You're not thinking about a 401k when you retire if you're trying to get the scratch to pay the current rent that's due. I was thinking about the stereotype of the rich people being better at saving. Which is always true. You have left the core of saving and maybe it's not 100% just based on the fact that they have more money. Maybe it actually has to do with their ability to put things away. No, it's 100% based on the fact that they have more money, but they don't have to... Based on that, but there's something else going on there. I think that there is something to the fact that... Do you understand what I'm saying? It's the same. It's the one marshmallow versus two marshmallows. Can I put this away and wait for it to accrue some interest or can I spend this right now while I have it? Yeah. What should I do? Mm-hmm. What should any of us do? Well, it looks like we should fix our vagal tone. Yeah, where's that? Which I guess it's what the whole meditation and stress reduction thing is about these days, right? Yeah, what if just adrenaline ruined your body? But all the high vagal tones made the right decisions, though. Some of it has to do with... I have to think it has to do with if it's related to stress. It has to do with how your body deals with certain chemical reactions that take place in your body when you're exposed to stress. Right. And I think about how some people get an adrenaline rush and then five minutes later they're fine and some people get an adrenaline rush and they're shaking for an hour. You know, I wonder... It sounds related to me. It really does. But again, that's another study, I suppose. I find adrenaline rushes very calming. I hear it a lot. Sure do. Especially when jumping out of moving vehicles. Oh, why would you do such a thing? Is that a transition? Do you have a jumping out of vehicle story? You must. No, I don't, but you know what time it is? It's time for Blair's Animal Corner. What do you want to hear about Animal? She's your girl. Except for Giant and the last girl. And then I'm going to go. What you got, Blair? I have a really exciting invertebrate sex story, actually. So this one is about burying beetles, which I want to tell you a little bit about burying beetles before I get into the story because not everyone might be familiar. I actually wasn't very familiar with burying beetles either. So I went to the St. Louis Zoo's website, quick plug for them, because they have some great animal fact pages. And it turns out that they actually have American burying beetles at the St. Louis Zoo. So by looking this up, I found out that they're called burying beetles because they bury their food, carrion, already dead animals. They bury it and then they use the carcass as feed for their babies. Can you say bury again? What? I say bury? Oh, did I say bury? You said bury. I say bury. I don't know where I'm from. Just checking. Yeah, I don't even know what kind of accent that is. But that's how I say that word. Burying beetles. What am I supposed to say? Burying beetles? Oh my gosh. They bury the carrion and it's usually stuff like mice, voles, opossums, birds, snakes, fish, pretty much anything they can find. And then they lay their eggs near the carcass that they buried underground. And then within four days, the eggs hatch and then the parents move the larva to the carcass. The larva then asked to be fed, I love this, by stroking the parents mandibles. Adorable. That's so cute. That's one way to do it. Both parents feed their offspring by eating some of the dead, rotting flesh, then recurgitate it into the larva's mouths. That goes for about six to twelve days until the larva begin their next stage of development, pupation. And then after about 48 to 60 days, the adults emerge and then the circle of life begins again. But all this starts with copulation. And these guys have males and females going through very intense co-evolution. And the study from the University of Exeter that I want to talk about this week is actually all about that co-evolution. I've talked a lot on the show about species. And that's where, for example, a predator prey or a parasite and host will evolve alongside each other in this arms race over the generations. And so through that process, the prey gets better at evading the predator. The predator gets new moves to kind of catch the prey. This is a case of co-evolution between male and female. And that's because the males want to copulate with the females more than the females need. These females don't need multiple pairings to get enough sperm. They can get all the sperm they need from one encounter. So they don't want more mating because it will actually weaken them. They won't be able to have as many babies, feed the babies as well, any of these other things. And so the males and females are actually in their own co-evolutionary arms race. And the way that the scientists at University of Exeter figured this out was by actually imposing their own selective pressure on these males and females by pairing off these individuals based on family lines that either really like to copulate or didn't like to copulate as much. So the ones that sought sex often got put together, the males got put together in with different females and then they saw what happened. And in just ten generations, this is like an evolutionary blink of the eye, in ten generations, the males evolved longer copulatory organs and the females evolved larger claws on their genitalia. Wow. Genital claws? That's correct. That's one way to stop them from coming, right? That's right. Oh my goodness. So this is fascinating for a few reasons. The main one is that in only ten generations, huge morphological differences arose strictly based on males really wanting to have multiple copulation events and females not wanting any of it. Right. Ten generations. That's fast. But it is, I mean this is something that's like, it's a phenotypic change. This is something that the genes are already there and so this is an adaptation that is being directly selected for because they're putting specific individuals together for mating purposes. So it's not like this is something that's just arriving de novo. It's not like a brand new trait. It's just an accentuation of the traits that were already there because they were placed under specific selection pressures. But it did happen fast. It happened very fast, but you're exactly right. It was a direct relationship. So the females that had bigger claws on their genitalia, the males went off after less. They didn't make as much trouble with them. The females were able to have more healthy babies. The males that had longer, thinner copulatory organs were able to copulate more and therefore have more babies. There's a direct relationship there. There's not multiple steps. So it was pretty easy to get from one to the other. I do love to know in that just probably a couple of years they were able to figure this out and see evolution in real time. That's a very fascinating story. Just a quick note. I'll explain in the after-show, but we may need to make an edit through this segment. I think I heard it. The next one that I have is a quick invertebrate sex story based on something we've talked about before. And that is male spiders giving nuptial gifts to females. Presents! Presents. Food wrapped in silk for the female. The University of Denmark was looking to see why the males of nursery web spiders would do this. Basically, there's a few different options as to why they might be doing it. It might be to woo the female. It might be to show a degree of parental investment or fitness. Or it might be a shield against cannibalism. So their quick and easy experiment was 280 pairs of spiders. They ran them through a variety of tests. They... Males were caused to appear before a female. Some of them were able to make gifts and some of them were caused by a female with no gift. They took their presents away basically, didn't they? I see them slapping the package out of their hands. But it sounds like really they just weren't material for them to make it. I worked really hard on that. From males that showed up without a gift, they were eaten 15% of the time by the females. Males that showed up with a gift and 3.6% of the time. Oh, much better odds. And it didn't matter how hungry the female was. So if it had to do with how hungry the female was, it would be more related to courtship or fitness or any of these other things. But this is actually... It has nothing to do with that. It's all about distraction. And actually the only male that was eaten that showed up with a gift, was that they had already copulated. So they were not only not eaten as often, they were allowed to copulate, they were given more access, and they were granted longer access for copulation. So still, I would say it's still not clear based on this study exactly what use the gift is. But overall, it reduced cannibalism. It reduced their... Well, that's just it. That's the use right there. It increased their ability to mate. It was longer, and they were allowed access. So it was a win-win-win. So it sounds like, really, it's to keep her from eating them. It sounds like that's the main reason. But I'd say there still need to be more studies. No, no. Before we go, before we leave the restaurant, let's have dessert. No, no, no, no. Let's go ahead. It's on me. We're having dessert. We're having dessert, too. Yeah. Bring us a pie. Like a whole pie. Just bring the... as much as you want. Yeah. So, spider... sex is complicated, guys. The last story I have in the animal corner tonight is about dolphins and their ability to make quite a variety of interesting sounds. So I'm sure we're all familiar with the sounds that dolphins make. There are clicks, there are screeches, there's kind of a low thumping sound. These can be made separately or at the same time. And scientists have been trying to figure out how they do this for a long time because they don't have vocal chords like we do. And then also, you know, even if they did, I mean, how do they project it and how do they project these sounds through the water? Right. Exactly. So Aaron Thode, a research scientist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, he wanted to make a model that could replicate these sounds. And he was able to do it by looking through a model that was made for the human voice where they found it was a lumped element model for vocal chords. And they had them as discrete masses connected by strings. So those would store and release energy and then he had dampers which dissipates the energy. So it worked pretty much exactly like vocal chords and could replicate a lot of the sounds that vocal chords can make. So he worked with his father, Lester Thode, who's a physicist from Los Alamos in his laboratory to make a model for dolphin nasal passages which is where the current wisdom is as to where it's coming from. It's the nasal passage just below the blow hole. So what they did is they tried to recreate this cavity in between the blow hole and the nose that has these bursae which are kind of like giant globs that they think they bump against each other to make the initial loud thump and then there's this extended ring and the ring is thought to be when those bursae are pulled apart and then the lingering vibrations make the ring. But the thing that couldn't figure out was the loudest, highest frequency part of the call which came from the bursae sticking slightly together before separating. Kind of like silly putty. And so the only way they could figure out to have this kind of sticky situation where you pull it apart it resists and then it snaps was with mucus. So they've got like an ongoing sinus infection that's helpful. Right. So this mucus could create whistle clicks and click trains as well as this ring. All of that could come. It kind of all came together when they used this mucusy material. So the thing that they want to the thodes want to mention is that just because one model works doesn't mean that's the right model necessarily. There could be another model that also works to make dolphin sound. So that's a good kind of disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. But it still sounds pretty good because we know that dorsal bursae exists. We know that its location is around there. It's in the nasal passage so it could have mucus in it. Sure. Why not? Sounds good to me. But there you go. That's very cool. I also love the father and son scientist team. That's pretty cool. But I also then also kind of in the back of my mind is a suspicion. Like when you go to the junior high school science fair and there's one that's like got like a little bit too much sophistication to it. You're like, if you really do that, your dad's a scientist. Okay. Maybe you got a little help on the project. Yeah, I mean maybe but remember the main researcher works at the Scripps Institute and the dad is a physicist. But this is a great pairing for this. You have the biologist and the physicist. Working together. Exactly. Because maybe the biologist wouldn't necessarily get all the physics right. Like all of the different forces that would be involved from the different membranes and the different sacks of air and in this case the mucus. They both sound pretty brilliant. But I do like the idea of all these charming communications sort of and I guess I can somehow visualize it in this abstract, fake, nasal cavity of a dolphin that I have constructed in my head right now of sort of like running sound and vibration through these nasal cavities and it's like why isn't the flipper talking that much I don't have a cold. I don't have enough of a cold. Funny sounds that you can make with your mucusy. If you have just the right amount of snot in your nose you start to whistle through your nose you can kind of pull a deep breath in. You have kind of a low vibration that can come out. And listening to Justin's voice today and my own there's also mucus on the membranes themselves that air passes through that can change the tonality how wide the passages are how much mucus is on the membranes themselves and mucus has all sorts of functions in the animal kingdom that don't always have to be about trapping particles there's all sorts of functions we've interviewed people talking about mucus before so many functions from mucus in the animal kingdom Between last week's show and this week's show I have let loose of about a dolphin's worth of phlegm and it's gen mucus That's the new metric That's the new metric Dolphins worth of mucus and mucus Hey we're doing pretty good for first half of the show it being towel day and all we've got dolphins we had mice I wonder if there's going to be some water that might complete the cycle Anyways Only if you have a story about fish Yeah, we're done with the first half of the show We don't need to unless there's a story but for those of you who are looking forward to the second half of the show we have cockroaches coming up and finches, birds, crocodiles all sorts of fun things so I hope you do stick with us for just a few more moments because we are going to take a very short break This is this week in Science Hey everybody if you listen to or watch twists on a regular basis we thank you for doing that thank you so much for joining us week after week after week we hope that you keep coming back and we also hope that you might enjoy wearing our logo on some of your stuff your coffee mug in the morning a t-shirt, a tote bag that you take to the store why don't you check out our Zazzle store and the main header bar you can find all sorts of products that have the twist logo emblazoned all over it so you can proclaim your enjoyment and love of twists without really proclaiming it you don't have to go into the local square and shout that you love twists you can just wear a t-shirt and have a tote bag when you purchase these items it does help us out financially to keep the show going so check it out twist.org zazzle.com we've got a little link in our main header bar additionally we are supported by listeners just like you and your donations support everything that we do from our hosting, our bandwidth contractors we need to hire fun things we try to do for the show all sorts of things and stuff, equipment when we need new equipment that is the big help we appreciate any amount that you're able to give whether it's $2 $20 whatever it is, every single dollar helps keep the show running and we really appreciate your help we currently accept donations a couple of ways one is through PayPal and we have buttons all over our website twist.org you can go to twist.org click on the PayPal buttons and that will allow you to easily donate through the PayPal interface additionally we have started a Patreon account we've had that going for a while now and people seem to enjoy it patreon.com slash this week in science that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash this week in science to be able to donate on a week to week basis to keep the show going at whatever level of support you're comfortable doing whether it's a $1 donation per show or more if you donate at what is it Blair the $15 donation level you can get Blair's hand drawn art delivered to you it's amazing the $15 right anyway alright so patreon.com or you can go to twist.org and look for the PayPal buttons whichever your preference we really appreciate your support if you're able to give it if you're not able to give it we can always use your help to get more people listening to over 9400 subscribers on YouTube right now that's little less than 600 subscribers we'll get us to 10,000 subscribers on YouTube which will open up a whole level of using the LA YouTube studio to do to do videos if we want to there's all sorts of stuff that happens when you hit 10,000 and it would be amazing to be able to hit 10,000 subscribers on YouTube so can you subscribe to us on YouTube that would help a lot also can you get your friends to subscribe to us on YouTube it would really help us a lot let's hit 10,000 subscribers that's what we really want to do right now help us get there help us make that happen subscribe on YouTube until 5 friends I bet that'll make it happen in less than a week let's do it come on anyway no matter how you help us out we thank you for your support we really couldn't do it without you and we are back with more of this weekend science oh yeah we are Justin do you have a story? I do it involves scorpions snakes, snails, spiders frogs, lizards, jellyfish non-jellied fish ah we have fish even an octopus there's even an octopus involved so many creatures on this planet produce venom and there are millions of distinct venoms out there possibly hundreds of millions even these venoms have been honed to strike specific targets in the bodies of their victims and for a venomous regular victim this is of course a terrible thing but for scientists the potent molecules and venoms hold the potential to be adapted into powerful targeted medicines but venoms are difficult to isolate and analyze however venoms are difficult to isolate and analyze using traditional methods so only a handful of them are actually today being used as drugs now a team led by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute has invented a method for rapidly identifying venoms that strike specific targets in the body and optimizing these venoms for therapeutic use delivering drugs to specific targets researchers demonstrated this new method by using it to identify venoms that block a certain protein on T-cells this protein is of course implicated in multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis inflammatory disorders it's sort of synonymous with HIV the researchers then used their methods to find and optimize the long-acting variant of a venom that blocks the protein and showed that the new molecule powerfully reduces inflammation in mice so to use venoms as therapies it seems sort of like oh gosh we're using a poison as a cure these are things that evolved over millions of years to cause some sort of harm to an organism but low dose of the right place can have very beneficial effects there's a reference a pain killing drug I've never heard of Zickerton Zico Natide it's derived from one of the venoms used by cone snails to mobilize fishy prey but if you can mobilize a specific region that's causing pain I guess or pain receptors boom, there you go you've got a fantastic pain killing drug venoms are also attractive from drug development perspective I was just thinking about the cone snail venom and the compounds in that I mean researchers have been looking at that for years for harnessing to creating a medication to stop pain and there's one out there that they've developed from it they say that venoms are also very attractive just for drug delivery in general because they hit their targets on cells with very high potency and more importantly high selectivity right so these venoms work on specific body parts and regions like something's going to slow a heart or mobilize a physical ability to move or numb the object doesn't perhaps feel that it's being eaten but there aren't that many therapies out there actually because the traditional method is to collect lots and lots and lots of venom and sort of trial and error figure out how it works, where it's working in a very sort of mundane way. The new method is geared for speed and involves information with little direct involvement from the venomous creatures. So to start Senior Scientist at the Lerner Laboratory Hongkai Zhang consulted animal toxin databases and assembled a list of 589 venoms whose protein sequences have features of interest they then synthesized the venoms genes and inserted them into special viruses to deliver genes into cells. The initial proof of principle was to find venoms that block a potassium ion channel protein known as KV1.3 ion channels allow charged molecules to flow in and out of cells involved in a variety of biological functions therefore and they are a common target of venoms. The K13 is a special interest to the pharmaceutical industry because it appears to facilitate proliferation and migration of T cells that drive inflammatory disorders. So to screen their library of venoms for those that block the KV13, the researchers they used cell based selection system of a type developed by Zhang and created a culture of special KV13 containing test cells which had a strong interaction between venom and the ion channel. So they really they started not with the whole trial and error and not with just sort of knowing how specific venoms had certain body parts but with the data set of and working based on that to create their own sort of synthetic delivery of this venom and it's been thus far successful. So this may be as we've seen you know different takes on creating vaccines which accelerate the ability for us to make vaccines as we've seen things like CRISPR has done to accelerate gene manipulation. This technique may be accelerating its own research into creating a specific drug but maybe the accelerating tool that scientists can now use to use venom or the makeup of a venom to target drugs more effectively. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean if we and anything that we can that we can do that we can use to make that drug development pipeline move a little bit faster and more smoothly get rid of the bad ones faster tone in on the ones that are really going to work. I mean that's going to make it all so much more efficient and then hopefully get treatments to people faster cheaper, better, right? Right and a side piece of this I'd never heard of a highly venomous octopus before. Oh yeah, there are definitely venomous octopuses. Apparently one of the most venomous creatures on the planet. There's something called a blue ring octopus. It's about the size of a golf ball but its venom can kill a human. Not only that it carries enough venom to kill about 30 adult humans and there is no antidote and there is no antidote and it kills them within minutes like they don't even like oh what was that I stepped on I don't know let's keep swimming and gone, right? And it's found in the Pacific Ocean which is the ocean What did Blair say? What? Don't go in the ocean. Don't go in the ocean. What I was thinking was that the more drugs and medicines that we can we can create from natural starting points then that also causes less problems when that gets flushed into waterways potentially. I think about a lot of the more synthetic things that we end up throwing into into our waterways and other places that start interacting with things in a way we can expect and things that have a more natural starting point like venoms potentially not 100% of the time but potentially could cause less problems like that as well. Potentially but they're honing in on very focused aspects of them and it has to do with quantity What's the concentration that's entering the water? If you're using a highly potent venom you probably only need a very small amount. Strengths in the chat room is pointing out that they have the blue-ringed octopus in Australia Ben Rother in the chat points out that everything in Australia tries to kill you. That's true. Moving on from octopuses to clouds. Clouds are awesome. We love clouds. We love looking at clouds in the sky. Well clouds are also very very involved in the greenhouse effect so water vapor when it gets into the sky condenses, forms clouds clouds can throw a layer that blocks the sun's rays from hitting the planet thus actually cooling the planet even though the greenhouse effect overall leads to a buildup of heat underneath that blanket layer. We've got the blanket that covers the planet and insulates it, but we've also got a reflective layer of clouds that can reflect light away and keep the heating from happening too quickly. We thought or researchers have actually been debating this but there's this idea that sulfuric acid is highly highly important for the formation of clouds. What started putting lots of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere? We did. Our industry. Oh, us. That would be us. There's been this idea that pre-industrial skies had fewer clouds and so maybe there was a different kind of warming going on. And so now we've been formed and the idea was that after the industrial revolution we've been forming more and more clouds and so we're potentially changing the way the rate at which warming is going to take place because of the clouds that industry have put into the air. Well, two big studies came out this week in nature. One of them is kind of a theoretical study that's looking at stuff in the lab simulating atmospheric conditions and this is the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets project in a controlled chamber at CERN. It's the cloud project and they are basically shooting cosmic rays at different gases in a controlled chamber to see what happens. They put a bunch of stuff that they thought was like oh, this is stuff that comes from trees. It's like natural vapors from trees and let's see what happens with that. Oh, they had cloud formation and they also did it with sulfuric acid. Oh, same kind of cloud formation. So really stuff getting put into the atmosphere there are certain little nuggets, little particles that end up there that create the little little bits of stuff that lead to the formation of clouds. There's like, there have to be little particles that seed the cloud formation and yes, sulfuric acid works but also these vapors released from clouds and in the second study which took place at a high altitude research station called the Jungfraujoch High Altitude Research Station. It's 3,500 meters in the Swiss Alps and they actually saw that this process occurs in nature. They observed formation of organic particles without any sulfuric acid being involved. They measured the changing concentrations of sulfuric acid and organic molecules in the air and they found really that more aerosols formed with more organic molecules around. So we don't necessarily need industry to form clouds and so now this is kind of, these two studies are kind of throwing a little hubbub into the climate change climate models because clouds really have been one of the areas of debate of uncertainty as to how they really affect heating or cooling and what is the source of those things and so there have been certain assumptions made that before we started in our industrial era there were fewer clouds heating was happening in a different way than it is now but now the question is, oh maybe ancient skies were much more similar to the way they are currently so maybe we need to go back and look at our models again and now I just want to make one major point that this does not negate anything about climate change. All it does is bring up this little aspect of the models that will basically determine whether or not whether or not the ultimate high high temperatures that are estimated from the IPCC whether those will be reached and so it's kind of cool if maybe they might not be reached that would be great it would be nice if the cloud formation that we have currently that we have enough organic that we might have enough organic molecules to be able to cool the planet a little bit more than we had thought so who knows? We have the value of trees too right? Yes and then thus the value of trees yes it's another thing that plants do for us that help to mitigate the warming but if we could find an artificial way to manufacture this and seed our atmosphere with it we could maybe stimulate the cloud formation that we would need to help keep cooling. I think we're going to have to do some terraforming and engineering here. I know it's scary but we've already been doing it the other direction for so long so right? Say it again? Back out the sun? I'm not saying I'm not quite saying that but maybe a little bit it might come down to it right? I think the big thing is though if we are going to do anything like seeding the skies for creating clouds this kind of study understanding how and why clouds form in the first place what kind of an effect they have on the greenhouse effect what is their real role in the entire system? That's what we need to work on understanding before we go messing around with it because then it's just like we're just still running this giant global experiment that we've been running I think we should figure things out a bit more before we actually start doing those things but anyway You also have this as a I'm the low impulse control I assume that my my survival strategy is all about taking care of stuff today so we'll see how it plays out the political will of the nation will be faced with this marshmallow test at some point whether we take a marshmallow now or wait for more marshmallows to just show up later It's been taken marshmallows We've already downed a few of them haven't we? Tell me a quick Egyptian marshmallow I'll have to do it fast It's a bio-archeological evidence showing new beings and Egyptians integrated into a single community So this is an Egyptian colonized area in 1500 BC They wanted trade routes for the Nile River It was down in Sudan and it was known as the New Kingdom Empire Typically I guess researchers would assume that the local Sudanese or Nubians had taken on Egyptian culture as it was so dominant at the time However they've found some tombs in the Nile River valley the Nubian desert in the far north of Sudan and that date to about I don't know I guess it's from 1400 BCE This is when the Egyptians were losing power and the Nubians rose in power and defeated the Egyptians in the 25th dynasty What they found was an interesting mix of cultural burial So I guess then Egyptians would be placed in a coffin and laid out straight as they would put them on this wooden board and sort of have them on their side What they found and the burials was interesting mixes of the bunch They would still have the wooden boards that the Nubians would normally be buried on but it would be in the coffin but they would be pretty much outstretched but maybe not always And they also found morphological evidence and skulls and arrests that made it look like interbreeding and marriages going on So the Egyptian methods of conquering back in the 1500 BC range looked like sort of integration Yes, we're the dominant culture we've taken over but we'll share your culture with you even into the death That's interesting That's not the only culture to have done that The Mongols also The Romans The Mongols actually just took over The Romans did this kind of bringing in different people's cultures and allowing them to meld into the whole And actually the Mongolians were pretty good at this So one of the things the Mongolians would do and this is one of the things I love about Genghis or however you want to say Genghis is that he would give this ultimatum of resistance as futile join us without a fight or we're going to raise your city to the ground And if they decided to comply they kept their religion they kept their culture and they were just under a trade mandate for the Mongolian Empire But if they didn't it was like they lived But they were more than Genghis however you say it was more than willing to allow everybody to keep religion and culture intact as long as they went along and joined I'm going to go along to get along There seems to be for cultures to survive that this is a strategy that works and there hasn't been very much evidence of what this integration was they didn't have they don't have a whole lot of archeological data so this is the first piece in these tombs that were discovered they've been working on them since about 2000 and it looks like it was sort of like how the Romans took care of business and sent our people down there to go live amongst you and will imply our trade is the way to go but there was marriages and cultural merging taking place Nice Speaking of merging taking place how about magnetism magnetism we've been talking about magnetism in the animal kingdom for some time this whole idea that many birds are able to sense magnetic fields fruit flies recently Blair reported on fruit flies with the cryptochrome one protein that allows them to this is a light sensing a photosensitive protein that also allows these little flies to sense magnetic fields that we think it might also be in birds and other animals well guess what animal they looked at actually cockroach because why not the cockroach of course because I always think of magnets and cockroaches that's why they're always hanging out under them anyway they went looking and they tested cockroaches for a cryptochrome a related cryptochrome protein called cryptochrome 2 so not cryptochrome 1 because they don't have that protein and they have a related one so they went looking at the genes that the cockroaches had and then they found by turning this gene off or turning it on they were able to affect the magnetic sensitivity of the cockroaches so when the cockroaches were put in a magnetic field it actually changed the behavior of the cockroaches depending on whether or not they had this gene and so they also were able to change the sensing of the magnetic field by painting the cockroaches eyes black so they couldn't see anything so it is also a light sensitive protein now this protein is kind of far down the stream so they don't want to jump at this protein as being the protein that determines the magnetic sensitivity and that is the mechanism but it's definitely part of the chain somewhere and they think that these cryptochrome proteins are probably evolved in all sorts of organisms insects and others so cryptochromes photosynthes sensitive and also magnetosensing cockroaches I never thought about that one anyway tell me about zebra finches Blair oh well zebra finches their sexual selection is directly related to their ability as males to make fancy red beaks and their fancy red beaks come from the keratinnoids that they ingest from their diet of seeds, insects stuff like that but that could come out yellow it turns red through something internal and researchers weren't sure yet about that and so the Cambridge department of zoology found that there were specific genes belonging to a wider family of genes that also play an important role in detoxification that we're getting this done so that is one of the situations where you actually see sexual selection being a direct implication of fitness and we talk about like red cheeks or red beaks or birds and other animals as being these badges of health and sometimes the badge is a result of health but in this case it's not related to a healthy finch a red beaked finch isn't a healthy finch because being healthy allows you to grow a red beak they have a red beak because the genes that code for turning pigments red in their beak are located on the same place that these detoxification genes are that's cool that's neat I love it I know that zebra finches their red beak it definitely is more or less red and that it is something that the girls the ladies look for and they're not the only birds that this happens and we've got gross beaks and also cross bills where their coloration definitely changes because of those carotenoids that they eat absolutely and the same genes that were involved in making the red are also involved in seeing red color oh yeah pretty cool so maybe the healthier females are more able to detect males with red or beaks yeah that sounds like your next experiment Kiki let's look at that in the zebra finch world I'm out of wedges I'm out of retirement I'm out I have one more story before I'm totally out and it's oh you do we got to get through the quickies real quick and my last story has to do with cows, antibiotics and dung beetles well we know that cattle are treated with antibiotics and it's a big question as to how that affects the health of the cattle and also how that affects the evolution of the bacteria that are potentially affecting the health of the cattle and then also potentially affecting the health of humans and then also how well those antibiotics are going to be working down the line how effective they're going to remain big questions about this but some researchers also thought well what is going on Blair you brought up the idea when you take stuff like birth control pills or any medication and it ends up in the water way right so when cattle who are given antibiotics go to the bathroom and drop their dung in a field that dung is going to have some residual antibiotic presence, a certain concentration in it so how is the antibiotic concentration in the dung from the cattle that are traversing the fields and farms affecting the wildlife within those areas so not just cattle themselves but the environment the soil and so they specifically analyzed this downstream effect of a cattle that were treated with a broad spectrum antibiotic, tetracycline and they looked additionally at how much methane was released from the dung of the animals and found that since the antibiotics affect the bacterial population in the dung the dung actually releases more methane than if the cattle were not treated with antibiotics so they believe this is a quote from the co-author Tobin Hammer from University of Colorado Boulder who told new scientists we believe that the tetracycline treatment favors the growth of methanogenic archaea in the cow's intestinal tract by reducing the bacteria in the gut so like methanogenic archaea bacteria these are ones that produce methane so antibiotics we now have to check how they are lining up with the methane that cattle are putting into the environment from their dung and then additionally they were able to see that it did also affect the microbial populations of dung beetles who feed on the dung so they don't know what effect it has on the health of the dung beetles but they did find that the populations of bacteria that live on and in the dung beetles are also affected because the beetles are basically living on and in and feeding on this dung so anyway downstream effects we should be looking at them based on universal scaling laws applied to large data sets pairing in journal proceedings of National Academy of Sciences Indiana University of Bloomington researchers have pronounced that the earth could contain nearly one trillion species of life forms most of those being microbes that haven't been identified but they go further to say that 99.999% of all species remain undiscovered again, that's pretty much all microbes but still prenatal fruit consumption boosts babies cognitive development but how in the world does a prenatal baby eat fruit Ancient DNA suggests Phoenician from Carthage 2500 years ago had an ancestry from a very rare genotype in Europe so people got around and traveled. Astronomers confirm faintest early universe galaxy ever seen but it was 13 billion years ago so that's pretty old news and gut flora may lead to better diagnosis tool for liver disease and open avenues for treatment so this is scurliosis anglitis I'm not even sure how to say those words but if you live is bad you got the toxic liver thing going on actually your gut micro flora they found for people who have PSE there's a sort of trend within their micro flora that they all sort of move towards when they have this disease and so this they think they can create a profile for your micro flora which if it makes this sort of move in this direction may indicate early diagnosis indicate that it's time to check your liver very good and Blair your quick croc story yeah next time you're in Florida stay away from the crocodiles and alligators even more so than normal the latest invasive species into Florida Nile crocodiles now crocodiles are responsible for at least 480 attacks on people a year in Africa and 123 fatalities between 2010 and 2014 these guys get up to 18 feet long and they can get as big as a car so yeah Florida stop releasing pets into the wild yeah releasing pets into the wild is bad but you know what's great our Patreon sponsors yeah Patreon I would like to take this moment to say thank you to all of our Patreon sponsors including here goes the list Jason Dozier Matthew Litwin John Ratnaswamy Jared Lysette Jake Jones Mark Masaros Brian Hedrick Sarah Chavez Laila Bob Calder Charlene Henry Don Comerichka Randy Mazzucca Craig Landon David Wiley Joe Hexator Deborah Smith John Crocker Andrew Dolinger Artyom Shuwata Rodney Lewis Phil Nadeau Philip Shane James Dobson Kurt Larson Michael George John Maloney Jason Olds Cody Iluma Lama Joe Wheeler Dougal Campbell Craig Porter Adam Mishkan Aaron Lutheran Marjorie Paul Stanton David Simmerly Tyler Harrison Ben Rothig Colombo Ahmed and Gary Swinsburg thank you all for your support on Patreon if you're interested in 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Yo. Boom. Boom. Boom. It's feeding back. Fingering. Back, back, back. Is that the mix? I don't know. I don't know. My lighting is terrible tonight. It's like I feel like I'm under investigation. I'm like, what's going on? So Blair, what is it? All, all crocodile, all, all alligators are crocodiles, but not all crocodiles are gators. All, all, all gators, all gators are crocs. Neither. No, neither. They're all crocodilians. Crocodilians, right. All gators are crocs. Crocodiles are different. So in the crocodilian family, there's crocodiles, alligators, caiman, garyls. But they're all crocodilians. They're crocodilians, but they're not crocodiles. Haha. That's confusing. But you could technically say it's kind of like the all. So all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises, right? So tortoises are a subdivision of turtles. Alligators are not a subdivision of crocodiles. They're a subdivision of the crocodilians. Right. So it's this weird thing where the word crocodilia is, sorry, I said family. It's an order. And inside that is... I'm trying to find... Wikipedia, you are failing me right now. All verbons are whiskey, but not all whiskies are bourbon. Totally. Here we go. Okay, so crocodile is put into three or two... Here, let me screen share this. I understand what you're saying, but technically, crocodilian, you could shorten to croc. Croc, but not crocodile. I didn't say crocodile. You did say crocodile. Okay, so what I meant to say is not all gators are crocs, but not all crocs are gators. Right. Yes. Great. Great. Can't we just do the teeth throw on the outside? It's a croc thing. Isn't that how this works? And the way to remember that is that... See, I want to stop screen sharing so I can show you. Stop it. Okay. Stop it. A is for alligator. Top teeth. A is for alligator. Top teeth only. Crocodiles make a zipper. Yeah. That's how you figure it out, right? Leave it there. Leave it there. You see bottom teeth sticking out? It's a croc. Right, but there's also the fact that alligators are only freshwater, and there's only two species of alligators on the whole planet. And that's the American alligator, which is in Florida, and New Orleans, and the Everglades. And then there's the Chinese alligator in China. That's amazing. Crocodiles are salt water, brackish water, occasionally fresh water. They generally are larger, but there's exceptions to that. They have the teeth going both ways. Then you have garyls, which are the weird... They have like a really tight nose. Yeah, the long-skinned, tight nose. Yes, exactly. So they have garyls. And then caimans are... They just look kind of like tiny crocodiles. Yeah, they're cute. And then there's a... This is a scientific term. Crap-ton of crocodiles. Okay. Speaking of scientific... Yeah, I know. That's what I did. You know what you did, because I was like... I think it came out of my mouth. I was so about to comment on it, and I was like... I didn't do it on purpose. A little bit in shock. I was like, oh, she doesn't know what she just said. What did she say? It came out of my mouth. Oh, I talked about how the male... Was it when you said that it keeps them from coming? Yes. Yeah. Okay, I heard that. Because I was... And maybe it's just me, because both of you carried on just with like... I'm a professionalism. And I'm like... No, you can tell. You just can't stop. You're only going to be heard by anybody who's not the two of you locked in on the subject completely differently. That was not intentional at all? Yeah. Oh, hum. And then I was also like vaguely like... Maybe she did just mean that, and it's just like we're having an adult conversation, and I just didn't realize that I'm coming into this with though this was a family show, and we're just going to roll out any... You know, adult-ish comments, just though like, yeah, this is... We were all adults here. Why wouldn't we talk like this? I didn't know what to do. I was actually... I had like a mental shutdown. Take place. I just couldn't talk. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. Sometimes when you're not scripted... It's a live show, people. It's a live show. Just remember it's a live show. Just trying to say, C-O-M-I-N-G. Yeah. Yep. I got it. I get it, but yep, we get it. We get it. Everybody else got something completely different. That's the thing. Oh, my goodness. So I am staying at somebody's house, and they just got back, and so I feel I'm going to go hang out with them and have a glass of wine so that I can be like, thanks for letting me stay at your house. You're really awesome. Thanks for letting me use your Wi-Fi and do this show and ignore you in a closed room for an hour and a half. Right now? What? Are you in the city? I am. Oh, you're so close. I'm so close. I almost feel you. Shh. Hello, California. What do you at least say hello when you're there tomorrow? Oh, yeah, totally. And if you need, if Jason can't meet you down in front, I can walk you to where he is if you need that. OK. Yeah, he gave me, sent me some map to get to the back. I don't know. He's like, this is the back way to get to where I work. I'm like, OK. VIP? VIP. Going to the zoo with the VIP. Getting places. There's so many. Yay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry when I rap. Every once in a while, it's terrible. I do it and I'm sorry. From the big bang to the ladies advances, we got more science news than Chinese zoos got pandas. That's right. Dave, I think you should put that in Urban Dictionary. Which? Blarism. Accidental porn statement. Porn statement. Yeah. We're not so accidental spider porn. Yeah, it's not so. It's never accidental spider porn. When it comes to Blair, it's always on purpose. Yeah. I like how saying VIP Kiki reminded me that Jessica kept putting your name when he's Kiki, he kept putting it in quotes. What? Wait, what? Kiki. She's like, Kiki. Parentheses. Kiersten. I was like, Jesus, I don't know. Wait, who is doing this? So apparently this guy who's the head of the wellness and conservation department at the zoo is an old friend of mine. We were in grad school. Yeah, old friend of mine. We traveled together. We were in grad school, fellow co-lab mates. He sent him a formal media request, and he saw Kiki's name in the body of my proposal below, and he was like, actually, I know who that is. Kiki. Parentheses. Kiersten. Parentheses. Kiersten. He's amazing. That's awesome. Nice. That's awesome. Can't wait to see him. That's going to be great. It's going to be great. Oh, if you guys need a drinking game, may I recommend watching Eurovision 2016. And when they do, like, before every performer goes on, they do, like, this little, this country is amazing. And this performer in countries, they don't tell you what country it is till the end of the little video collage that they do. And so it's really fun to try and figure out what country the different performers come from. And if you get it, you make everybody else drink. Oh, that's awesome. It's a very fun game. That one's got more subtlety than mine. My drinking game is to watch Leaving Las Vegas and drink whenever they drink. I've just ended up in the hospital. And then... It's a night-ender. It's an early evening. And then you're done. Yeah. All right. All right. Okay. I'm going to go. You guys can hang out if you want. Blair, if you could share the, the strengths is put in, I guess, into the chat room. Oh, okay. YouTube video, which is a promo jingle that mentions every deadly Aussie animal. I definitely think we should play this. If you're watching... No. Well, I'm going to go. I'm not going to hit... Do you guys have a stop broadcast button? Yeah. I've got two of them. One is closing the window. Have a stop broadcast button, Justin. Do you have one that says stop broadcast? No. Actually, I guess I don't. We might go away. Yeah. We'll go away. I think it gives us a little bit of time before we go away, though. So we'll try. And if we pop out... Good night, everybody. Good night, Minions. Thanks for hanging out. Passwords to the Zazzle Store. I still need to do that, because you know what? I forgot what it was. That was my... That's why I haven't gotten it to you. Tony Steele sent me the original graphics from the... Oh, nice. Happy Trails, where we're all stagecoach. It's like, Oh, cool. Nice, too. Nice. He said, he said we could do that. Yeah. He did. Oh, that's sweet of him. Okay. Nice of him. Yeah. Wow. That's very, very sweet of him to say that we could do that. Background out, so it would be easier to put on things. It's like all about it. What a good guy. Oh, Tony. I love Tony Steele. You guys, if you want to see... If you haven't seen Tony Steele's art, he does amazing kind of cartoon style art, little monsters and... He did a whole series of... He's got playing cards. He does games for people. I needed a whole series of art for the Jack Feedback. But I had a child come along that absolutely stunted my ability to work on this project. I have a Pandawan sketch that he did hanging in my house. Yeah. Tony Steele. And then I also have a happy birthday, hippo birthday, hippo in my cubicle at work for my birthday this year. He sent me. Yeah. That's a great guy. That tone in. And if you have any of the twists, I think for the last three years of the twist music compilation CD, you did the covers for them. Oh, last thing. You did send... I saw it. I saw it. Did you hear it? I haven't heard it. Give it a listen. I saw it in the shared file. This is also another drinking game. If Kiki says that she's leaving and then I manage to keep her from going or we, because now Blair's helping me out on this, that's when you drink. Okay. Okay. I'm going to go now for real. I know. But you will listen to it. Thanks for watching, you guys. I will listen to it. I will listen to it. Thanks for watching, everybody. Really, really great to see you again. I'm sorry I missed last week, but I'll be back again and I'll be back again next week. See you again. And Blair and I are going to record things at the zoo. It's going to be awesome. So we've got more stuff coming for you. Keep watching. Bye. Bye, you guys. Bye. Good night. Wait, wait. Do I want to exit? I want to exit. It says confirm exit. Yeah. Exit. It says it will stop this broadcast. Okay. Good night, everybody. Bye.