 going live! Woo! Almost missed my live deadline. Sorry for the late start, everyone. We've got one of Justin's ears, we've got a Blair, and we've got me, Dr. Kiki, here to talk about science tonight. Are you ready to rumble? We've got the science. Let's get ready. I'm ready. Are you ready? I hear tippity tappeting, Justin's still adding things, saying things, getting ready to do the things. Good evening, everyone. We are starting the show and for those of you who have just joined us for the first time, this is the live broadcast of the This Week in Science podcast. It will, there will be mistakes, there will be technical flubs, there will be things probably that will get edited out for the final podcast, but this is where you watch the whole show and watch us do it in person, beginning in a one, two, this is twist. This week in science, episode number 820, recorded on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Is it time yet? Hey there, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your heads with fish, psilocybin and screams. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, all of the content from all of the platforms in which content is contained on whatever new device that streams it into our consciousness cannot compete to the simple beauty of having your favorite brevards outside under the bright blue sky of a sunny Southern California springtime day, or in a crowded cafe bookstore in cloudy, sweaty, weather Portland, or a bustling New York deli where everyone is bagels to briskets wanting what she's having, or even mingling with the masses in the fragrant fish markets of foggy San Francisco as the world begins to emerge, albeit too soon, from a half-masked attempt to divert a pandemic. In those simple things that we've been missing, once taken for granted, we will relish with tremendous glee once everything begins to get back to actual normal. Going out in public to places not inside our own homes will be amazing. But before we go full on post-pandemic COVID complacency, let us keep in mind that while we're almost there, we ain't there yet. So sit back, stay home, tune in to the electronic void just a little bit longer with This Week in Science coming up next. It's to you everybody. And a good science to you too, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us once again, or maybe for the first time. We are so glad that you are here, and we hope that you enjoy this adventure in science. All right, back again. We have a whole week's worth of science to talk about. I have stories about super sneaky light sneaking its way through things. I have a Fermilab follow-up from that story from last week, an official COVID update, and a change to some science textbooks. What do you have, Justin? Ah, that's a good question. I think I've got, oh, space dummies. Magic mushroom that makes you happy? Yeah. Oh, and he froze. Happy? I thought that was you just pausing for dramatic effects. But here we are. We heard mushrooms that make you happy, and then you froze. So this is weird. So I think it must be, I must have some hiccup in my connection because did you see Kiki hiccup at her intro? Do what? Yeah, everything's been normal on this end. So yeah, it's not a hiccup. I don't understand your question. No, she didn't. Never mind. So there's something wrong with my internet. Okay, I'm just making sure because I had the same thing happen in reverse, but I wasn't sure if it was this end or that end. Anyway, 3, 2, 1, if we do editing things. I've got space dummies, a magic mushroom that makes you happy, imprinting autism, and why 2020 doesn't count. It doesn't. It doesn't. Nobody thinks it counts. It doesn't. Okay, I want to hear the science behind that, though. Blair, what is in the animal corner? So believe it or not, in the animal corner, I have screaming, I have speed bumps, I have yawning, and I have blood. So it's all over the place. It's like, speed bump, don't get in an accident because you're yawning. Uh-oh, blood. Okay, I am very thrilled for the story that my mind is spitting up for all your animal stories. Yes, they are in fact animal stories. All right, everyone, as we jump into the show, I want to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can do that. You can find us all places that podcasts are found. Look for This Week in Science. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, and on Twitch. On Twitch, we are Twist Science. Oh, yeah, we're over on Instagram, too, as Twist Science. But our website is twist.org, and that's where you can find out links and show notes related to every episode that we produce. All right. This weekend, I have an announcement. Well, if you've been listening, you know this announcement, but just so you know, this weekend is it. April 17th, 4 p.m. Pacific time, DTNS Twist crossover. That's right. Teaming up with the DTNS team on Saturday afternoon here in the Pacific region, but it could be evening for you or morning wherever you are. And we're going to have some Science Tech fun. It's going to be like dipping chocolate and peanut butter. It's going to be great. We've been taking suggestions from Twitter and in emails. It's very exciting. Very exciting. Don't miss it. We will be broadcasting to all of our usual platforms. You'll be able to watch the show on our YouTube channel, on Facebook, and on Twitch. Okay. Here comes the science. I'm going to, they're going to like super physics science you just out of the gate for the show. Okay. You ready? You ready for some super physics science? Last week, I opened the show talking about the Muon G-2 or G2 experiment that took place at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab. And they've been working on determining this magnetic moment calculation for Muons. And last week, there was an experimental result that really deviated from what would be predicted by the standard model. And so researchers are like, ooh, does this mean new physics? Well, I didn't realize it, but on the very same day. Or no, actually, I think it was like the next morning. It was like after just right, right when this stuff was going on. There was a whole new publication in nature by another group of physicists, theorists, not experimentalists. And they did a really big supercomputer computation to figure out the same value that the Muon G2 experiment had just found through experimentation. So these theorists, they're like, no, our supercomputers are way better. And so this value is great. And their value is really, really close. The value they figured out is kind of like it agrees more with the standard model. And so that makes it so everybody's like, oh, what is going on? Which is right? Which is wrong? And now it's the battle of the theorists and the experimentalists. And everybody's going to be waiting for more data to be crunched for the experiment. And everybody's going to be waiting for more supercomputer theoretical experiments to be run to see which way the dice are loaded. Because there's no answer yet. This is science. It's very exciting that both of these results came out opposite from each other, basically on the same day. And it's experimentalists versus theorists. So this to me is like the epitome of physics research. But wait, wait a second. So wait, maybe I'm missing something. One of them was an actual experiment. Yes. One of them was a simulation on a computer. Yeah. I mean, I grant that they both are. I grant that they both are. But one was just the computer. It was one was just the computer. And that one, and that one is then the one between those two that I would trust the least. That's what you would think. So researchers working on these supercomputer what are considered what they're called lattice calculations that are based on this idea of quantum chromodynamics and the theory of quarks and the strong nuclear force and basically taking information and brute force calculating using supercomputers where they have a lattice. And as the article that I will that I will link to in our show notes will say it's it consists the model they use consists of space and time as a lattice of discrete points occupied by quarks and particles called gluons which convey the strong force. And so this this technique can calculate the masses of of protons and neutrons. But they haven't tried it before with muons. And so this is there's too many uncertainties, but this group did it and they're very certain they are very certain about their result. Yeah. But the thing is that any model is only as good as you have built it to see things and know things. You have some point you're putting in values. Some point you're not computers aren't just going out and observing the world and then coming back to us is like well here's what I've learned. Let me report back boss. So I went out there and I did some of those experiments out there and did some observation. Now they're only working with the data that they've gotten which is why yep you'll only you know you'll only get some if you let's make it up something right. We're trying to identify a raccoon with a supercomputer. But all the information that we've put in is dogs and cats. We have absolutely covered dogs and cats. And what is the thing to say? Some sort of combination of dog and cat is what a raccoon is. It's maybe a hybrid. Maybe you know we give it some accessory information about hybridization and it might even predict that it cannot reproduce because it's a hybrid. And especially one that's of an odd species which is very rare. So but like it's not doesn't mean any. I trust the experiment still. So I think I see both things here but ultimately theoretical physics is still theoretical until it's observable right. And then once it's observable it needs to be replicable. Yes. So these are kind of so first of all they observe something. They think they observe something. It wasn't replicable in a computer model. So that's kind of a problem. So now what is it replicable in in in anything moving forward right. But then on top of that yes computer models are just models. So it's I see it fighting from both sides. Yep. So basically more work needs to be done. That is where we are. They need to replicate the experiment or at the very least really dig into the data that they have to see if their result is robust and stands up. But yes there need to be more experiments more simulations more brute force calculations more fist fights between theorists and experimentalists. No I'm kidding about that last part. That's not true but yes more data. That's the only way that a true consensus will eventually be reached. But for anyone to say this one experiment is the real answer this one calculation is the real one at this point is very premature. Yeah I mean I would have a very different opinion if there was another experiment that was run that came out with a different answer. Then I'd be like ooh now we have a battle of experimentation and your parameters and how was it conducted and how was this recorded and how did you crunch numbers to figure out what was in that data and how did you do that and all that becomes on board. But one that just didn't have a experimental basis on it I would have a hard time believing that one. Well but it's tough because experiments have potential for human error. So I feel like this is this is where I see in order to know what's really going on both should agree. The thing that takes human error out of the equation and the thing that isn't happening in the real world there should be consensus for me to really think something is happening. Yep and that the theorists and the experimentalists really know what's going on that they've that they've got a theory really. Yes. All right let's move on. Yes. From physics to space Justin. Oh is it the space story time. Okay so this is Blue Origin. Almost launched people into space today. Almost. Almost. So close. They didn't make it. Unfortunately. Wait what happened to the people. The astronauts. Something bad. No no they're fine. They're fine. Everybody's fine. Good all right. Astronauts tested seat belts. They checked out the radio links. They went over the in-flight safety video. They placed their phones in rocket mode and they thumbed through the in-flight menu to see what food was going to be being served on the trip before then exiting the craft right before it launched. Why would they do that? They were that close. The new Shepard rocket launched. Went on a 10 and a half minute trip and landed again. This is quoting voice from Ariane Cornell. While there are no astronauts on board today that was a critical step toward our march toward first human flight. Yeah you got to test the seat belts. I was gonna say the flight commentator might have missed the fact that human flight has a thing that we've achieved many times. Yes but not on the new Shepard mission. Many times. Human flight. Yeah. The first time you've been successful at it at some point but it's not first. Anyway. That's what they were getting at. Their own first human flight. As you didn't say that she said our march toward first human flight. Come on. Tell us David. Company is very is very close to putting passengers in the air. Blue origins goals to take pain care customers on short orbital excursions letting them experience the bliss of being three times their body weight for two and a half minutes on launch then wait less for three minutes then falling back to earth and landing very gently in the world's largest collection of cardboard boxes. This was the 15th flight of a new Shepard rocket. This is named after the American first American in space Alan Shepard capsule reaching altitude is 66 miles which is just above the official border to space which if you think about a place at 66 miles from where you're sitting right now you're looking at an hour's drive doesn't really seem that far. That seems pretty easy but when you're going up straight up yeah for an hour takes a lot of and they don't go straight up they kind of go a little bit in the arc yeah uh yeah congratulations on I mean the flight was successful right we've got aside from the the the employees not astronauts but but test astronauts pretend astronauts testing everything out ahead of time and then getting out and then it it did its thing right everything's good well yeah it went up it went up the uh reusable booster rocket landed upright so that means they get to use it again it landed upright seven minutes after lift off capsule touched down under parachute about three minutes after the rocket booster had landed uh there was someone on board though it was a space suited mannequin named skywalker it was one dummy on board uh wait they one of the point things I point out is that it has the windows make up one third of the capsule yeah it's only like a six person cedar thing I've been inside the capsule before and it's beautiful yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's a it's beautiful but there's a lot of space the windows make up most of it so anyone uh lucky enough to be able to take one of these flights once they once they really start taking space tourists up they're gonna have a great view and a really great ride because what's the point of going to space if you can't look out a window and go hey look I'm in space so something just occurred to me that I I don't know why I hadn't really thought about it but were you joking or do they really have a menu no they don't okay because it's short but like in the future right I assume there will be longer excursions and I just kind of had this thought about being a space flight attendant eventually what a wild job that's going to be in the future eventually I mean you're all astronaut slash flight attendant oh you know you people do double duty oh interesting you have an astronaut serving drinks I don't know I you know I don't think that's gonna because it feels like it will be too much to put somebody through to have them launch to that many times oh maybe yep you know what I mean because 10 minute flight but that's that's uh that's like three g's yeah that's just part of your rotation at the delta flight attendant yeah all right anyway but while you're coming down just while yeah while you're coming down you might be prone to screaming a bit oh that's true yes yeah so but why you might be screaming that's the question are you screaming because I know it's a transition and I know I'm screwing it up but I do really like the fact that you are more you have more pointing out the fact that there can't really be an in-flight menu versus the the capsule landing in a giant stack of cardboard boxes because because that's the one because it's the Amazon company oh that's what happens to all the cardboard anyway okay so screaming you might be screaming on your way down from excitement elation terror I don't know any number of things right so screaming for humans can mean a lot of things sometimes I scream when I see someone I haven't seen in a long time and I'm really excited to see them even though that might make me a little basic but anyway University of Zurich wanted to look at human screams and what those signals mean they found that uh human screams signal more than just fear so saying and are more acoustically diverse than other animals um so they looked at um scream like calls in a lot of animals but they always seem to have a negative context a social conflict the presence of predators environmental threats but humans also scream when they're sad when they're experiencing despair and when they're experiencing elation when they're crazy happy right um and so they see this as unique amongst humans they looked at 12 participants they were asked to vocalize positive and negative screams um and they kind of described a situation before they did it and then a different group of individuals rated the emotional nature of the scream so they classified the scream into different categories and then underwent uh functional magnetic resonance imaging fmri while listening to those screams they revealed six psychoacoustically distinct types of screams pain anger fear pleasure sadness and joy so only really joy one or two of those pain are part of what we were talking about in the animal kingdom maybe pain and fear so these are these are new to the animal kingdom as far as we can tell we don't know you know all the time we're finding out animals are making sounds we didn't hear the things mean what we didn't think they meant so this is definitely uh we'll put a pin in this for later but it sounds like this is pretty unique and listeners responded more quickly and accurately and with higher neural sensitivity to non alarm and positive scream calls than to the alarming screams so they had more frontal lobe reaction and quicker reactions to these things that seem unique to humans um and so they're also more diverse in their signaling and communicative in humans than we had assumed so this seems to be a diversified communication technique in humans and represents a major evolutionary step again i would not be surprised if we find out other animals are doing this but just right now it looks like this is what's happening and that might be because we have developed language but in terms of guttural sounds our vocal cords are not that good and that's kind of what i was thinking about i read this article is that's because we can only make one sound and it's a scream you know maybe we can whistle if we teach ourselves we can laugh but what else what other sounds can the human vocal cords make besides speech and screaming grunts sure um but i i'm thinking about uh the potential multiple meanings of screams and how we perceive them and wondering how you know we listen to something say a call versus a song in a bird and so from our listener standpoint it's like this bird has one call and we say that's their alarm call and then we say they have this song for these other what if that call actually has differences that we haven't noticed yet that the birds pay attention to um similar to how this is turning out yeah yeah very first thing i thought of is dogs barking yeah like dogs bark at all of those things and they might have different barks for them yes yeah so i think that's exactly what i was trying to say too about how we just make kind of one sound is that you know dogs bark they howl they whine they whimper they make all sorts of different sounds that feel very distinct so maybe it is just that our vocal range is a lot more narrow yeah yeah anyway do you either do you scream at all those things like i don't scream at any of them i don't think i scream at all i don't have that i mean i i yelp occasionally i think um i think i have screamed on occasion sometimes like blare in happiness when i see people and very excited maybe at a concert expressing excitement that's a good one is it a scream or is it a whoo like a woot that can't be a scream that's not the same i think it's a probably i've done the woots and i've also done the screams get it all out there i think i've done fake screams like emulating people screaming like ah look who's here but i that's totally made up that's that's not an actual that's the thing is that a made up scream minus high pitch scream is it is it made up and happy or is it authentic and fearful yeah it's still being used as communication by you regardless yeah it's the point so it's it doesn't really matter if you consider it fake if it's a sound that you're making to communicate a thing it is still categorized as a sound that you are making to communicate which in this case would be a scream but in this case it's almost like using any other word or that has an intonation i don't know i i'm reserving my yeah yeah it's definitely like i said it's i think i my hypothesis from this is that it's because our vocal chords are pretty narrow in their capabilities but yeah anyway yeah i'm just thinking of screams looking looking at old concert footage of the Beatles those were yeah but okay but and and you're in by the way the place is like running down the aisles at those concerts it was running it was urine was tmi what tmi but let me ask you something have you seen that anywhere else since other um i don't know there are other people emulating the other people and joining into a group yes it was and screaming so let's okay stop band red chili peppers don't have people screaming and getting into this sort of like a frenzied state thing where they're all screaming and peeing nobody does that Beatles had it the Elvis had it and then i was it nobody screams and peas at the concert i think you have not been to young young people concerts in a long time just in old man yeah i was gonna say i feel like hang on sorry it's every four minutes it's every four minutes i freeze yeah so we have to time my next segment to be interesting interesting well as we're moving on we're just being like the fish just like fish because fish are moving out of the equator this is not good news researchers uh have just published their study in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences entitled global warming is causing a more pronounced dip in marine species richness around the equator five years ago they wrote a study published a study in which they predicted that based on past animal movements from a parent from fossil records from previous periods of warming on our planet that were then followed by mass extinctions um that our extreme period of warming and ocean temperature rise would have this kind of effect and now they have experimental evidence looking at distribution data on 48,661 species from the poles to the equator and showing that yes indeed they are responding to equatorial warming by moving to waters that are more habitable to the temperatures that they uh that they prefer so there's a dip around the equator and species are moving and this potentially we don't know what it's gonna do but really when you start species movement food sources move and ecosystems are put out of whack and if the warming happens too fast then fish find themselves in places where marine life find themselves in places where they are unable to um to exist and so not good news i don't think we can put up any fences and stop stop the fishes from making their their swims out of the equator but yeah i think it i'm not surprised to hear this because we know terrestrial animals are moving towards the poles but they're moving slow because you know like there's there's things in their way on land and they're they're uh i think they're the borders of their biomes and their kind of ecology is very specific to to topography and all these sorts of things but in the ocean it's so much easier to move to move and and the edges to these different biomes are a little fuzzier and i think that yeah so this is a nice foreshadow or terrible foreshadow of what we're gonna see on land yeah and yeah foreshadowing but you know for for people out there who are concerned about sustainable fisheries and what's and how fisheries will be maintained this is going to be a huge part of that is knowing where the fish are going and how they're integrating and interacting with other marine life and how they're able to survive all right justin time for some sell the cyber oh that's a great idea uh this is it was almost this could be the short story shortest story of the week uh psilocybin active compound magic mushrooms may be at least as effective as a leading antidepressant medication in a therapeutic setting uh finding is uh let's see finding is a study carried out by researchers in the center for psychodontic research at imperial college london it is the most rigorous trial to date and according to dr uh carhart harris i strongly encourage both researchers and the public to delve deeply into our results including those available as they published appendix to the main report this is a six weeks course six week course of a leading antidepressant compared to just two sessions of psilocybin therapy take away the uh psychoactive part the psychedelic part um and you've got a you've got a powerful antidepressant right there yeah so you know uh one of those there those are both drugs that we're looking at uh right so it's not that one's drug and one isn't although one is a fun guy that produces a compound that can be used as a drug yes yeah but uh yeah uh that's just right that's not really news if you have ever heard of psilocybin or ever read about it this has sort of been known for a long time but the news is that it is at least as effective as one of the leading antidepressants on the market so this is um this is really a big news uh in from that perspective it it's another tool in the tool belt potentially and we've been talking about this kind of stuff on the show for a long time the potential for uh for some of these substances uh to help people um and so it's just it's great that the research was pushing forward and actually has been allowed to get to this point which is fantastic they have some some pr work to do it's it's definitely a way to explain that you're just you're making a drug out of a natural element instead of a lab rated element and uh otherwise we're not trying to give you psychedelic mushrooms it's not the same right yeah but uh from there I guess the question is can they get into psilocybin and remove the psychedelic part of it to be able to make it tolerable for a wider range of people who are be interested but just to know that it works two doses in a therapist setting in a controlled setting that's amazing that's that's really promising yeah and as Shubhru brings up in the chat room this is where micro dosing could be helpful if they can find a way to provide it at a low enough threshold that you kind of build it up in your system and there's efficacy but you don't have the hallucinogenic kind of side effect I guess you could call it that's what they would call it if it was a lab created drug right they would call it a side effect weird dreams okay but yeah just to be clear the antidepressant side effects are sexual dysfunction anxiety uh dry mouth and I guess that's a drowsiness yeah yeah I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just saying there's some pr work because people are gonna be there's gonna be an aversion originally to taking mushrooms as a totally there yeah that's all yep I think that's where I think that's where it loses and we should just give up on it because I don't think it's going to win that fight I don't think so so you can because because you can't patent it because it's natural but the if they're able to isolate isolate a compound or make a synthetic psilocybin it was I you know something that has been isolated and or there's a methodology to isolate it and or they can create it synthetically in the lab suddenly you can patent it and it is pharmaceutical yeah but if you can grow it in your closet I'm just saying like you as soon as you go up to the against the money of the pharmaceutical companies then it's not that you have to build up your pr on your side it's that you're gonna get crushed by a machinery that's designed to push you out if somebody pans it if not then maybe just yeah maybe how about pushing some light pushing the light fantastic researchers this uh past week at Utrecht University and Tu Vien Vienna have created very special light waves that can pass through objects or opaque conglomerations of objects yeah so it's really a fascinating concept there's a particular class of light that these researchers worked with it's called scattering invariant light and this means that it scatters in a very predict predictable way and because of that predictability they're able to warp the light or create a light wave that can pass through diffusing and bouncing off of little tiny particles on its way through and emerge on the other side of an object almost exactly the same as it started passing through just maybe a little bit dimmer because some of the light will be lost in those reflection reflections and diffractions it's an amazing new new possibility for being able to see into things so right now we use x-rays to be able to see into the human body we're able to use various kinds of light infrared light to try and get deeper past the skin to get into the body but perhaps with this kind of scattering invariant light researchers could program light to go certain depths into tissues interact with certain biological entities and then continue along its way and interact with other entities further on maybe there are imaging processes that can take place for cellular imaging that have not been enabled so far because of the destructive aspect of the reflection of light as opposed to the light just passing through maybe there's also security or technologies that could be involved in scanning and observation so you want to show what's happening on one side of a wall versus the other side of a wall you want to light to pass through a wall maybe this is something that oh god we're beyond the point of night vision goggles now we're going to have see through see through wall goggles yes but not x-rays yes but they're not actually but the but the x-ray goggles that you bought in the back of the comic merck steve also didn't involve x-rays that's true yeah so they tested their their arrangement using zinc oxide because zinc oxide is fairly opaque that has many layers of randomly scattered molecules that were perfect for trying to shine their light through they were able to get it to shine through their disordered medium and display a picture so they in there one of their trials they used a picture of a galaxy or a constellation and tried to shine a picture a picture of a constellation through this zinc oxide obstacle and were able to display it on a field on the far end i feel like they picked that because it's just a bunch of dots and they were like see it looks great but if they picked something that was a little more continuous they would have had trouble possibly yeah i mean if they tried to show a movie or something you know it maybe would not have had the resolution to be able you know the fidelity to to show up but the fact that it is showing up at all is amazing it's uh it's a first step in being able to understand the interaction of light waves and the wave forms themselves with nano scale um atomic scale with with the atomic scale that is contained inside objects obstacles and it's very and i'm i'm excited by this see through walls the invincible light ray it's exciting blare you had one more story yeah just a real quick one about speed bumps and how it's saving monkeys what yeah it's from wildlife conservation society and this is specifically looking at the zanzibar archipelago at the red colobus pilio colobus kirki almost kiki not quite and they looked at the installation of four speed bumps along a stretch of road that these colobus were were crossing all the time and they found based on historic data that one monkey was killed on average every two to three weeks by traffic that's a lot but after speed bumps were installed it was reduced to one every six weeks so just slowing down traffic reduced mortality of monkeys on the road and i know here in the united states or we are we think about roadkill and we think about raccoons and stuff like that skunks but if you live in zanzibar roadkill could be monkeys endangered monkeys so this is just a really good kind of pinpoint study looking at this one area in zanzibar where speed bumps have been extremely helpful and so as tourism grows and habitat shrinks which will continue to happen in wild areas using science to figure out the easiest and simplest solutions to problems can save species and so if installing speed bumps save species in areas that have a high kind of concentration of endangered species you can just install a bunch of speed bumps and that will reduce fatalities on the road that is a huge plus it's amazing that it's just slow down everybody you're driving too fast yeah slow down you move too fast we got to make the monkeys last oh yeah you're right you did it better um i couldn't help myself i'm sorry but not sorry yeah anyway speed bumps slow down slow down for monkeys slow for monkeys such a simple solution yeah yeah sometimes it's just scientific investigation to collect some data and yeah you're right you are right hey everyone thank you for joining us for another episode of this weekend science we would love it if you're loving the show to help us grow please tell a friend about twist today time for the covid update i knew it was coming this week i knew it you know it it would happen eventually yeah so let's talk a little bit about covid and what it's doing right now just for a moment so we are fresh out of the winter we are getting vaccines we had a big third wave and everybody's like whoa the third wave's settling down we've been so good let's make it four yeah let's go for four cases are on the rise globally everyone uh and it looks as though we are well on our way to a fourth wave that is globally and some locales may be doing very well but there are no fences no walls that hold this virus in so it is global if it's growing somewhere it'll eventually come and get wherever it's not but um questions now what is going on this virus has killed almost three million people worldwide now um uh what do we know and what do we not know so right now there are over 17 million vaccine doses being administered every day according to reports from 172 countries around the world there are 191 actually reporting data for covid cases the rate of increase in vaccination worldwide is 18 per cent per week so it's rising it's rising tide vaccinations are coming in the united states 29 percent of adults are fully vaccinated 62 oh 47 are at least partially vaccinated 47 percent are at least partially vaccinated 62 percent of people 65 and older fully covered this is really great news it's especially exciting as all us adults are going to be able to get in line to get vaccinated as of april 19th that's next week that is next week in the united states doesn't mean that you will be able to get a vaccine that very day but at least you'll be able to sign up or at least start waiting your really waiting your turn to get vaccinated we have three vaccines in the united states different countries have different vaccines the fizer the maderna have been doing fantastically worldwide uh astrazeneca had a little hiccup with some blood clots and another adeno virus vaccine johnson and johnson vaccine has also been put on hold here in the united states after six people all women were diagnosed with blood clots and they're not just any ordinary blood clots these are uh a specific uh blood clot that is in the veins that draw the portal veins that draw blood from the brain and in these people they all or majority of them had low platelet counts this is very indicative of a rare condition and possibly a an immune reaction in which antibodies are created in response to the vaccine that attack the platelets themselves and lead to this this clotting so there's some really big questions going on to really check this out there was a a a press briefing today doctors were talking about some of the information they had antibody tests after of five out of six of these blood clot patients did show platelet factor antibodies which means that they became that their bodies became reactive to their platelets and would have caused those clots whether or not that was specifically caused by the vaccine has yet to be shown but this is the possible uh the possible path to this severe outcome that is also being seen with the astrazeneca vaccine and the common the commonality between the both of these are the fact that there are adenoviruses and so now there's uh or they use an adenovirus vector to get the RNA for the spike protein into your body and so now there's a big push to try and find out is this something that happens in other adenovirus vaccines there is an adenovirus based evil of our vaccine there are questions as to whether or not this is a common reaction to adenovirus infections just normally so there are a bunch of questions the pause on the johnson and johnson vaccine does not mean it's a bad vaccine it is an abundance of caution which is warranted to save lives even though this is at this point a one in a million chance of having this outcome you're more likely to have a blood clot from birth control pills if you're a woman then you are to have a blood clot based on the johnson and johnson vaccine at this point but now doctors know what symptoms to look out for so more data can be collected we can really get to the bottom of what's happening and maybe similar to the Pfizer vaccine in which we now have the 15 minute waiting period to find out whether or not there is an adverse allergic reaction because some of the ingredients in the vaccine we now have protocol in place to help people stay safer and perhaps there are protocols in place that can be used with the johnson and johnson vaccine as well maybe it means that the johnson and johnson vaccine is best for older individuals because all of the all of these cases were between the ages of 18 and 45 and only in women yeah yeah so so it would mean that you would only you johnson johnson you would stop giving it to women of reproductive ages yeah of reproductive age basically i i will also say though it's six women and so in terms of a sample size so small i am not convinced that that actually means anything because it's only six people i feel like you need a bigger number of you know i don't want more people to get blood clots but i don't but i feel like you need a bigger number to know if there really is a causative link to certain factors right and i i will say as someone who got the johnson and johnson vaccine i am not concerned it has been six weeks since i got it i am fine uh you're more likely to be struck by lightning multiple times and for this to affect you no i don't think that is that right you have better than a one in a million chance of getting struck by lightning multiple times yeah really that is my understanding i will like that before the after show but that is my belief i have to look that one up that is correct you're more likely to get a car accident on your way that is getting your vaccine than you are yeah risk analysis is very important here and i i will say the other thing that's important here is for for people who might be concerned about this and that it might raise hesitancy because i know that is an issue yes this is proof that the system works yeah thank you for mentioning that that is exactly yeah that this is an abundance of caution to keep people safe right so we were we were we it's so rare did not come up in trials so it was deployed when you deploy beyond a trial you get a way bigger sample size talk about sample size right it's 0.8 million people yeah so now you get more information and from that now they can pause not because they think people are going to die on mass from taking the jaws and jaws vaccine but because they want to examine this particular side effect figure out what causes it so that then they can stop those individuals from taking the vaccine and suggest a different type to those people this is not saying jaws and jaws is going to get pulled because it's still extremely effective and still extremely valuable but they might just offer it to specific groups and not to specific groups just like if you're allergic to a know what or they know what to look for and they know how to treat it yeah so that it's something that can be taken care of yeah okay uh three things though right one as is being pointed out also in the chat room from our eyes in norway that's how many people died it's not how many people had blood clots no there was one person who died six had six had blood clots one died only one died yes but six but five others had blood clots all of them had blood clots one person died from the blood clots one death so that's not the worst uh then it's a survival thing but if you have both options you instead of pausing it at this point i would pause it for that age group and that would be it that would be the thing so you can but that's what that but that's what blare was saying is no i'm too small of a group we don't know but that that's why they're looking at it at this point they have 6.8 yeah the 6.8 million doses deployed well and the reason i'm saying this though is not just specifically to the united states where we have three vaccines they're getting rolled out pretty much everywhere right now um for this is poor denmark is one example but there's other places like this had the astrazeneca one that they paused but they had johnson and johnson which they then also paused like those are the two options right now so there's places that don't have a third option so this pause is keeping us from getting keep them above that 18 20 30 40 percent in the next six you know yep it's going to to slow it's gonna it's gonna get people it's good people are going to die so if we have it identified as a group that is maybe susceptible to this keep letting the people who are not in that group receive this vaccine now yeah while you figure out and you're right they might be able to do a screening test ahead of time to see if oh you carry this gene variant or this blood variant or this whatever the thing that says are you or you have a low blood platelet count that is not it's a pretty existing condition to having gotten the thing and wasn't causal but reactive on the thing that was already there yes yep still every all the men and who were getting johnson and johnson she's still be getting it despite the pause there maybe maybe we need more data all right so that has been can i also just really quick tell you how likely you are to be struck by lightning because it's per yes okay so depending how you count it it's between one and five hundred thousand and one in a million in a year but it is it is one in ten thousand in a lifetime really that's high much higher than i had thought wow one in ten thousand one in fifteen thousand it's around that in your lifetime okay because there's there's some island somewhere where people golf it's like the national it's like the national sport and for them they get electrocuted three four times around yeah men are much more likely than women to be going off the number all things take that anyway anyway point anyhow you are more likely to be struck by lightning multiple times in your lifetime then to get a blood clot from the johnson johnson vaccine that's the point moving on yep it appears to be a very rare immune reaction and so this is something that thankfully they're looking into and i'm glad that they are and not just pushing forward in addition fizer has completed a clinical trial of kids age 12 to 18 it was 100 effective at reducing severe disease and so they have applied for an emergency use authorization with the fda and by may depending on the outcome of that review process kids as young as the age of 12 may be able to be vaccinated with fizer and that would be great because some of the newer variants are running amok in young adults so yes yes they are one of the questions though that has come up as to is and you've brought it up on a previous episode's Blair is why are young adults getting getting infected more often all of a sudden and there are many aspects to it there is the higher transmission of the b117 variant which is becoming more dominant and because that variant is like 40 to 70 percent more infectious than the other variants that we've dealt with before people are getting more virus when they get infected that can lead to a higher viral load and because of the higher viral load that can lead to more severe disease we have seen that more severe disease is linked to higher viral loads so that whole process could be part of older individuals are now vaccinated the vaccine so far work very well against the b117 variant and so we're not hearing about older individuals getting ill as often anymore but now we have younger individuals who are also tired of being at home and local restrictions say are lifted and bars are open and you can go out to drink you can go out and meet with your friends because the government says it's okay now and so people go out and they do things but that doesn't mean that they're safe and so then they get sick they get a higher viral load and they may get more sick than they once did as a result of that so a lot of different factors weighing in here yeah as someone who's worked with teens for a long time i can tell you they're real bad at social distancing um they they don't want to wear a mask if they if they don't want to wear a mask they're gonna take it right off but also they're they are so sick of being inside and we're sending them back to school and all of those things together it could it could be more than just the variant it could be the fact the kids are back together again the perfect storm of social factors yes a lot of what happens with this virus is completely social factors the the waves that come and go it is more how people are acting that that brings those waves forward and back as opposed to people getting vaccinated like that's that these waves are really really here because of things that we choose to do and on that note my last story for the covid update tonight it has to do with wearing your mask there is a new study out in the public library of science plus one journal mask adherence and rate of covid-19 across the united states they found looking at covid-19 case rates across the country for all 50 states and the district of columbia between april to september and also may to may to october and individuals reported adherence to wearing masks so a lot of um skeptics online you might hear them say masks don't work places that don't that places that have regulations don't necessarily have lower covid numbers it's because regulations don't necessarily equate to people wearing masks because people choose to do this behavior aspect they choose to adhere to those regulations or those social standards or not and so the bottom line is in all of these places the more people adhered to wearing masks the lower the covid-19 rates in those areas so as we are continuing in this pandemic people are getting vaccinated it's springtime in the northern hemisphere stay outside when you socialize wear a mask if you can um if you're vaccinated that's fantastic but continue to keep others safe and wear a mask until we are very certain that you do not have the possibility of transmitting covid-19 safe to hang out with other vaccinated people though so outdoor party anyone oh somebody get vaccinated someone got one shot so i just got my second i have a couple suggestions don't have a big plan the next day yes so so we do not plan ahead and i actually had and get it oh and get it in your right arm so that you can't use your arm you're not going to use your arm anyway but but there's so but with the leaves that i got them a donut there was so much soreness in my arms that i'm like why is my chest hurting am i having a heart attack no it's just the it's just the muscle the spread so it'd be like nice if it'd been on the other side but i had the opposite initial reaction i think because uh drowsiness is is one of the common things that's reported i didn't sleep the first night at all i just couldn't sleep after i'd gotten a thing yeah and it was the weirdest thing it was i think like uh i might have a low nausea that kind of felt like motion sickness that uh when i closed my eyes it made me feel like uh the feeling of driving in a car oh interesting yeah so i couldn't sleep every time i started to close my eyes it was like whoa gotta drive no i'm in bed okay oh no yeah go hold down yeah be aware that you know these your immune system's gonna work they are no joke kevin unique in the chat room brought up blood clots are are one of the side effects of covid 19 you are more likely to get a covid blood clot and die related to that pulmonary embolism anyone uh from being infected with covid 19 then you are to be affected by a blood clot from the johnson and johnson vaccine so still the reasoning of getting the vaccine is up there um and side effects just expect it your immune system is going to be working but it's not going to be as bad as the real thing and hopefully it will protect everyone who's vaccinated against long covid which is also a problem and we're seeing it more and more in kids there was an article today um discussing how kids may not show symptoms at all but then suddenly be subject to long term effects because of damage to their lungs that went completely unnoticed or neurological damage so there's lots of um let's keep let's keep everybody safe everyone vaccination wearing masks this is how we become free again vaccines for freedom that's what i get it freedom i want my freedom i'm gonna get a vaccine and wear a mask so that we can be free from this pandemic there we go do i have something to say right now we're done with the covid update thank you so much thank you so much for joining us tonight on this week in science so glad that you are here with us once again thank you for listening to twist and if you are able please head over to twist.org and click on our patreon buttons that's right please support us on patreon allow us to continue bringing science and sanity and conversation and fun hopefully a bit of fun to your ears or to your eyes on a weekly basis it's your support that allows us to keep doing what we do click on that patreon button ten dollars and up and we will thank you by name at the end of the show i want to hear that list of names grow grow grow we really can't do this show show show without you thank you for your support and we come back now to a land for the blood and well no screams thank goodness we already took care of those it's time for Blair's animal corner Blair she's a hot creature great at small five pegs lila pet no pet at all if you want to hear about the animal she's your except for giant yeah darn it ha ha ha i was trying not to oh they're contagious let's see how many times i can get our listeners to yawn during this study by saying the word yawn this is University of Pisa looking at lions and hyenas and contagious yawning they were looking at these animals living in the wild in Africa and as we know and we have discussed on this show prior research has shown many animals yawn and as with humans it results in increased blood flow to the head it oxygenates and cools the brain and so in short it's believed that yawns make us more alert so it's trying to get us to wake up yawn contagion which we've spent a lot of time talking about on this show it has to do with seeing someone else yawn or hearing the word yawn or talking about yawning oh my god i feel the urge to yawn when they do it themselves without yawning in this new effort though they wanted to figure out if yawning had some other purpose so when we've talked about it before we talked about it in terms of a social signal and having a direct relationship to the actual relationship between individuals so you're much more likely to yawn in response to someone else yawning who you have some sort of attachment to than to a stranger and so there's some sort of social aspect to the contagion of yawning so when they were looking at lions first they started looking at hyenas but then it turns out hyenas and lions kind of hang out near each other in south africa this is in the greater maka maka la li private game reserve in south africa and the lions they found had a lot of yawn contagion going on but they also noticed that there was something else happening with yawn contagion when they copied the yawn behavior that someone else did they then copied other behaviors that happened afterwards so over a four month period researchers recorded many many many hours of 19 lions in their natural environment and they said they paid specific attention to yawning in the videos and they what they found was that lions mimicked behaviors that followed a yawn as well as a yawn so if one lion yawned and then another yawned in response if the first lion stood up and walked a little bit the second lion who had just yawned in response would also get up and walk a similar distance so there is a mimicking behavior happening back and forth so this is again totally just observational there's no for sure links as to if this happens in other groups of lions why they're doing it but the the suggestion from researchers is that it might be a way of boosting group of vigilance they're saying like be alert wake up look around a little bit so it's part of boosting collective awareness it could help them spot food if they're not lions it could help them notice threats so there is something there they think to it's kind of a signal that it's more than just i on you yawn it's like i on you yawn and then you pay attention to what i do afterwards right so it's i'm rousing myself which is a social signal that i'm about to do i'm rousing you should rouse also yeah yeah so i like to get up the time to go because it does connect to the conversation that we had before about social connections it would make sense this would be the next step right the reason that you only have yawn contagion amongst people that have social connection is because you would only care what someone you're socially connected to would be doing right generally and if it's a lion in your own pride that lion might be taking a look at what those hyenas are doing that you know yeah yeah and checking it out conversely if it's a lion from a different pride they're not going to share food with you anyway right so maybe it doesn't matter that they're getting up to go look for some food so interesting interesting look at yawning in line as a social signal okay now from yawning to blood i'm having an amazing story about bird blood i'm alert you're alert you've oxygenated your brain you're ready to go ready so this is from researchers at lund university in sweden and they made kind of a wild discover i don't know maybe ki you'll let me know if this is like not that new or um earth chattering but i thought this is an awesome study so okay this is looking at bird blood in winter versus autumn and something very specifically that allows a bird's blood to be a little radiator in their body oh yes so until now the common perception was that birds keep warm in winter by shivering and then that that's when you see them like fluff up their feathers big and fluffy and they shiver their large pectoral muscles and that kind of energizes things gets energy moving in their body heats them up just like we shiver when we're cold right yeah but but but but but but it could be all about the blood the blood may indeed be a central heating system inside birds that's fascinating yes they examined great tits cold tits and blue tits they looked at them in autumn and in winter they took blood samples they isolated red blood cells and they used a cell respirometer which measures oxygen how much oxygen mitochondria consumes and they found first of all first of all their blood cells have mitochondria the powerhouse of this cell mammal blood cells do not have mitochondria oh yes yeah so first yeah so first of all they have a little engine inside all of their little red blood cells and then secondly um the they were able to look at how much oxygen was consumed by those mitochondria in the different seasons and how that energy was spent obviously the assumption would be that the energy in the mitochondria is spent to shiver to make heat but instead it looks like the oxygen consumption spiked in the winter and was spent on producing energy directly to create heat right no need to shiver just have a heater you have a cell that creates energy and can release heat as a byproduct yeah yeah also blood samples in the winter had more mitochondria so it just it looks like they have a higher metabolism in winter also so that this is wild to me this is a crazy wild insane study to me that awesome mitochondria in red blood cells in birds also just creating their own heat i love it so question is this something that reptiles possibly do great question or at the very least dinosaurs yeah did dinosaurs have yes yeah great question how far back does it go i don't know i don't know what you think i'm here with answers i just gotta look at some dinosaur blood oh darn it um yeah so uh their next step is to investigate whether cold weather is the whole explanation or if there's some other signaling going on in winter is it hormonal is it circadian rhythm connected what is causing them to change the amount of mitochondria and the way that they are producing energy in the winter so they're they also want to look at what food they eat if that is something to do with it very interesting stuff yeah i mean i would wonder every every animals naturally change their food sources depending on the season and what foods are available but is there an influence of those food sources on their ability to produce heat so that's an interesting question um many birds so this is also fascinating because a lot of birds will especially in really cold climates they will store food to survive on for the winter when food isn't available and so that they have to rely on this food that they have you know put in their little storage lockers for a season yeah so it's dried food it's seeds it's insects that have desiccated um yeah yeah very very interesting um yeah but a lot of birds will fatten up they fatten a lot of birds you'll see them making lots of trip to the to those bird feeders in the fall because they know winter is coming yeah they need to feed that mighty mitochondria in their blood they do fascinating fascinating thanks blare i i want i could use a heater in my blood i too could use this nice i know these are other interesting this this bringing this up is also very interesting because of other aspects of bird physiology such like heat pumps being able to keep heat in the extremities and how how blood is pumped to through their legs and their feet lots of interesting stuff they're physiologically but we're done with the animal corners so let's move on to a little more this week in science you're watching this week in science and oh hey if you haven't been to our website yet go to twist.org click on the zazzle link and you can find our merchandise maybe buy a hat or something spring's coming you got to keep the sun out of your eyes get a twist hat might be nice hey justin yes uh yeah what do you want uh let me see which uh how did we do it in the rundown science what do we do in the rundown which one do we do first we did oh yeah okay halfway to zero this is this is why this is why 2020 doesn't count okay let us know so according to this uh this year 17 states plus uh uh two one-day states washington dc and port urico have adopted laws and executive orders and governments have done things to achieve 100 carbon free electricity and the next couple of decades 2050 ish 46 us utilities have pledged to go carbon free no later than 2050 uh put the all put all this together and you've got about half of the us population economy is basically planning to go carbon free here's what's sort of uh uh it here's the problem i have with this though this is a study that uh was done from 2005 to 2020 uh but this is burke lab scientist ryan wazer business as usual projects projections saw annual carbon dioxide emissions rising from 2400 to 3000 million metric tons from 2005 to 2020 but actual 2020 emissions fell to only 1450 million metric tons and the us cut power sector emissions by 52 below projected levels we are now halfway to zero now i like that we're people are making laws and trying to do things but to use 2020 as the year you compare anything to seems seems uh like a bad idea yeah we definitely had it was definitely like a not quite a normal year not quite yeah it's it's not just that there's not data good data it's just an out it's outlier data it's an accounting error it is that one time when uh you didn't have somebody didn't calibrate the machine ahead of doing the experiment you can't use it you can't use 2020 data you just are not allowed if they had just given us 2019 and made statements based off of night 2019 it would have been fine it might not have been as interesting why not have had as big it was like turns out everything is as it was projected in 2005 and we've done nothing that might have been the story it might not have been the only thing is i don't know because you use 2020 and the one thing i know about 2020 is that it didn't count yeah nobody went anywhere but it's if it's it's promising i know that we're going to be increasing our renewables so i i saw a study that said we're going to be speeding up rolling out more renewables which is exciting um it's not i mean there are other things that we haven't done right 2020 yeah not a good comparative year but maybe we're getting better if well the the other thing i think about too is that um a lot of workplaces are going to move towards a hybrid model now with time uh with teleworking options and i think that yeah using it for this is kind of garbage but using it as as proof that adjusting certain expectations from a work environment could have a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions i think that is an important conversation right so so that is something to look at here is if you offer people one or two days a week telecommute that's going to have a pretty huge impact on some of our emissions so i i i think it's interesting i also think it's interesting that it's still dipped so far despite the fact that people were using in some cases a lot more electricity than in the past 24 11 so that's also a funny thing is uh if you compare it to 2005 we're probably using less electricity because all of our plants have become more efficient all of our i mean yeah it feels like there's a lot more technology in the house but your old refrigerator your old light bulbs and that old little television vcr combo machine that you had those three used more electricity than is being used on your block now like the amount of efficiency that is taking place uh is is is really where a lot of that is and a lot of that was mandated yeah a lot of that so that means it's working so they're you know the final year that they looked at was 2020 but they did look at it compared to the projected you know 25 over the last 15 years right and so the trend is decreasing compared to the projected energy use this is the positive take no it didn't decrease as much but it was still on the way to 50 less right the Berkeley labs is did a great study and it's showing that we are actually going for to a more carbon-free environment but you can't make your statement about 2020 is my is my problem you could have studied 2020 but you gotta stop and say yeah but if i say that nobody's gonna understand what i'm talking about nobody's gonna understand what i'm talking about because 2020 didn't exist yeah what what you have to do is talk about something else so there's also yeah it's giant increases and and uh solar electricity uh lower costs of of wind power all of these things are playing in factors and and we're actually moving pretty relatively close to the goal of being of reducing that carbon emissions down to zero in the next new couple hundred years but but we are getting there we're gonna we'll get there and less than that couple we can do it we can do it everyone come on work together just like we're working together never mind i'll be quiet but oh yeah here's a fun just a fun economic thing that throw into it there was uh this is this is how much the american consumer has saved uh let's see this is total savings over 15 years i guess the example total electric bills for consumers were 18% lower in 2020 than what had been predicted in 20 uh 2005 2005 yeah if we had kept going at that rate of increase that we had been trending uh we say we had uh 18% lower bills which amounted to 86 billion dollars a year in savings sounds like not chump change we're gonna take those savings and roll them right back into pg&e and california's fire costs but no oh oh that's harsh for pg&e let's move away from energy what's what else you got okay uh this is about a story about imprinting you know what i'm talking about in printing that's when a baby duck is born and the first thing that it sees moving it thinks is its mother yes mama quack mama quack uh uh uh uh migrating fish do this the i guess it's the smells that are in the waters where they are new nates is what they are looking for when they're heading back to their breeding grounds as adults that's how they find their rivers so it says exposure to environmental input during a critical period early in life is important to forming sensory maps neural circuits in the brain and mammals early exposure to environmental inputs is known to affect perception and social behavior later in life visual imprinting has been studied uh quite a bit but the what about smell how does smell work what about olfactory imprinting so to find out more scientists from japan worked on understanding the mechanism of olfactory imprinting during a critical period in mice the study is published in elife this is quoting dr nishizumi university of fukui we discovered three molecules involved in this process semiforon 7a a signaling molecule produced in olfactory sensory neurons plexon c1 a receptor for the sema 7a expressed in the dendrites of mitral tuft cells and oxytocin a brain peptide known as love hormone during the critical period which is when a newborn mouse pup is a week after being born is there critical period the signaling molecule sema 7a initiates the imprinting response to the odor by interacting with the receptor plexon c1 what it means is this receptor what's interesting is this receptor is only there in localized in those dendrites in the first week after birth so there's this very narrow time window when it's going to be sort of activated or interacted with so that's the window hormone oxytocin released in the nursed infants imposes a positive quality of the odor memory so of course once you think you've got this connection what do you do if you're a scientist you kind of mess with it so they had baby mouse every time to an innately a verse odor uh something that this uh something that would not like right this imprinted odor now induced a positive response against what should be the innate natural response of towards the odor so now you have this hardwired innate circuit and this imprinted memory circuit fighting with each other about whether this is good smell or bad smell interestingly too here uh male mice normally show strong curiosity towards unfamiliar mouse scents of both genders this is something from previous study they found it blocking uh sema 7a signaling during that critical first week resulted in the mice not responding in their usual manner they splay displayed avoidance response to the stranger mice as uh as opposed to curiosity so yeah and then interestingly you know like oh gosh what could we do if we could find this sort of this region this time this reaction something like this in humans what could we imprint young people to like i guess but it's also interesting is this possible in human does this exist in humans in the same way as there's this period of time in the same way can we make them like healthy can we imprint them with these broccoli smell if we want kids to eat their broccoli or how does any of that work secondly though this is yeah i was gonna say imprinting is not something that we've really looked into in humans or that we've seen in humans we can do all sorts of experiments on ducks geese mice these animals but i'm gonna have to look up whether it's something that happens in humans there are obviously preferences that are developed from a very very very young age but whether or not they have to do with an imprinting process is not something i have ever heard of so here's an interesting second thing that they they're asking about uh or talking about the study also suggests that improper sensory inputs may cause neurodevelop developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorders and attachment disorders oxytocin is widely used for treating ast symptoms in adults however dr nishizumi says our study indicates that oxytocin treatment in early neonates is more effective than after the critical period in improving the impairment of social behavior thus oxytocin treatment of infants will be helpful in preventing ast and ad which may open new therapeutic procedure or neurodevelopmental uh for neurodevelopmental disorders the problem there is how do you treat a developmental issue at the time of development when you don't know that there's going to develop a problem like like the like the signs of autism these things they show up much later don't they yeah they show up much later yeah so yeah so but i guess he's trying to say that but if it is something that's genetic if it's known if you have a genetic predisposition in the family for autism don't give your babies oxytocin but i mean do hug your babies oh yeah right that'll give them oxytocin i mean the brain produces oxytocin so you're not gonna stop it no okay but yeah so interesting it seems like a reach i don't know enough about this but it seems like this last date we're connecting this to autism disorder or a spectrum disorder kind of stuff seems like a reach to me but you'd have to look at uh to the people who have autism you'd have to go smell the house they grew up in the room they grew up in see if but what about siblings that not all of them have autism yeah they grew up in the same environment it's definitely it's this thing that has a genetic trait to it so it doesn't necessarily mean it would run in a family if we are if i'm taking something if i'm if i'm if he's connecting this with something that looks similar to that uh association of people avoidance or the the spectrum disorders are maybe it's an inefficiency of one of these mech three mechanisms that he's discovered that's not allowing the oxytocin to do this and printing at this point and he's he's thinking hey maybe that's where all of this generates from so at that point if you can give exogenous oxytocin add oxytocin somehow then that might boost normal or normal development right or the one of those other molecules that's uh doing the you know that's part of that chain it might not even be the oxytocin itself the oxytocin might be available but there's no way to connect it to the these dendrites aren't getting the the whatever the c1 what's it whatever it was so it might be but i guess yeah so anyway this sounds more like i'm gonna test in babies that's why i guess that's why we do research on mice yep this sounds like something that you would use for like okay we've tested this fetus and it has a high likelihood of having these genetic markers that lead to autism here are things that we can do to promote um kind of traditional neuronal development as this baby develops right i feel like that's more what this is going towards is that yeah i mean it's just looking into how the sensory system is involved in creating patterns of behavior and neuronal development for that will affect an organ an animal for the rest of their lives that happen very early in development and so if you can influence those i mean maybe it's olfaction maybe it's vision maybe it's sound maybe it's touch you know maybe but perhaps you know the addition of oxytocin could therapeutically be used to enhance neuronal development and sensory responses for individuals from a young age and it is something still very this is just a very this this is just hypothetical at this point oh it is but the thing that has uh has got me kind of stuck on it is that it's a little bit arrogant of humans to think that uh such a few weeks or whatever it is in our early early early development can't possibly affect the outcomes of the rest of our lives but they do but most other animals as soon as they get to the planet they are getting ready for one type of survival or another and it's going to absolutely get them primed for what the world is going to be uh as we see in these mice whether or not uh you smell other mice can make you like not be interested in other mice later kind of a thing um um so it's it's humans are going to be that way too it's something that we're not immune to being animals at this point have no we are not we haven't vaccinated that out of ourselves for sure um continuing along this kind of uh interesting connections in the brain vein i have a story about your face man your face your face your face yep your face it's just like your brain no it's not just like your brain but researchers at stanford university and k u luvin in belgium have identified what is it 76 genes that are linked in brains formation and facial formation they took a look at a uh 472 regions in the genome that affect brain shape and compared them to genes involved in facial shape found 76 that were previously shown to influence facial structure out of those 472 and we're able to start saying that the the face and the brain are intertwined and we've seen this in rare disease conditions uh holo prosencephaly holo prosencephaly the brain doesn't divide properly into two hemispheres and there are also facial malformations that go along with the disease but these researchers wanted to know in the healthy condition how are the face and the brain linked and what genes could be responsible for those structural changes and developments and they started looking at the genes realizing according to the one of the researchers joanna wasoka who was involved in the study that there's a lot of crosstalk occurring between the face and the brain during development and it's got to be more complex than they realize surprisingly some of these genes are only known to be expressed in the face and don't have any known role or expression in the brain this implies that in addition to the brain influencing the facial state shape the face influences the brain structure but this is not facial phrenology facial structure you can't look at somebody's face and tell whether or not their brain works well you can't you can't tell how you look like a smart fella that brain works underneath the hood there that is not what's going on cognitive aspects of brain functioning are not involved in this these are just larger scale structural elements worlds and wrinkles bulges um they found that genetic singles signals influencing brain shape are enriched in genomic regions regulating gene expression during embryo embryo genosis embryo genesis in facial progenitor cells and also none of the shared genes are known to be associated with any cognitive behavioral neuropsychiatric conditions like Alzheimer's disease so this has been a link that is they've known for a long time but this is the first time that anybody's taken a look to see what genes might really be responsible uh and explain the relationship between the face and the brain but yes your face is it influenced your brain shape and your brain shape influenced your face shape you've got a face brain man face brain you've got a face for science that's right that's very good um and then finally uh a discovery that is really changing science textbooks because there's some there's something that we thought and it's now different apparently because of new research and we need to change textbooks okay in the human brain with our eyes looking out of our face our eyes are bilaterally connected to the two hemispheres of the brain that means each of your eyes has a nerve that goes to the hemisphere that's on the same side of the brain as that eye and it has a nerve that crosses over to the other side of the brain so it's got two nerves that are connecting one to each hemisphere and each eye does that so you got one's going straight back and then ones that cross over we've known that humans have done this for a long time it has been a thought that that this bilateral structure of the eyes leading to the brain is something that occurred with land mammals and that it doesn't happen in fish and we look at species like zebrafish which are in the lab and we're looking at all the time they are only unilaterally set up they only cross over the right eye is connected to the left hemisphere left eye connected to the right hemisphere no same hemisphere connectivity they only have that crossover and so we've been looking at many fishes over the years and fossil fish we built fossil fishes don't really show up but they've been looking at this for years and we're like no okay so fish they've got it set up this way land animals we've have these bilateral connections so this was part of 3d vision that was necessary when we came on land this is part of how land mammals land animals see in 3d yep this is where the butt comes in this is where researchers from france who were interested in checking out uh who were interested in looking into this question they had to get connected with researchers in the united states where we have and also in australia where we have old fishes where we have fishes that are fairly conserved that have evolved relatively slowly so they still have traits that they would have had hundreds of thousands of years ago millions of years ago even and so they wanted to look at gars gars are fish with alligator like needle like snouts they've got little teeth they're very interesting very old fishes and the garr they proceeded with their team of researchers to look at the garr brain and compare it to the brains of zebra fishes and many other species and they found that lo and behold they had bilateral symmetry in the connections in the brain uh the images of using brain imaging different colors on either side either hemisphere of the optic lobe and the brain they were able to visually see using different colors that um that there were connections going from one side to the other and also staying on the same side so this is the first evidence that very old fish did have this bilateral symmetry and this is something that we really have gotten wrong and that uh this bilateral symmetry is not necessarily the thing that made land mammal vision so amazing in 3d that it was something that was much it was necessary much earlier the textbooks will be changed as a result of this and the researchers are really proud of the fact that their research like they're like i'm teaching from a textbook that teaches this wrong incorrectly my work is going to fix this textbook that's very cool yeah yeah so it's just very neat uh comparisons when you're able to take a look at things um you know it's just so neat that we're we we have these ideas about things that we've had for a long time because we've looked at stuff a particular way and someone takes a new look and you go oh nope we got that wrong time to rewrite the textbooks well it's i mean there's so many different ways that things could have gotten to where they are now there's convergent evolution there's a common ancestor and then actually things lost uh certain traits there's there's the fact that traits exist where we don't see them originally they're kind of masked there's all sorts of things we're taking our best guess here because for example eyeballs and the neurons attached to them are soft and squishy and not well preserved in the fossil record so right yeah there's so there's so much guesswork involved trying to guess what how things are connected and and when they broke off and it's it's amazing what what work gets done on that and and how much certainty we have it's awesome and i love it but there also is a lot of kind of question marks that we just kind of had to fill in the dots fill in the blanks and you know when you're when you're working with when you're working with the mad libs it doesn't tell you if you need a noun a verb or an adjective you could be pretty far off from what was intended yeah absolutely yeah um the research the researchers do go on to say that uh this is probably something that the these what they call ipsilateral connections that were lost the same side of the brain connections that were lost um they that that they were ancestral and that they were lost in these modern tiliost fishes um and that's wild like why why would you they lose it yeah why did they not lead it at i want to see you work i mean is it hello evolution i want to see worse thank you i mean is it is it the the position of the eyes on the heads of these animals is it the body shape is it some aspect of how these fish have structurally changed what happened why i don't know you don't know textbooks changed times in fish land if anybody has any questions about the show or if you have any questions that you would like us to answer about covid or i don't know your brother-in-law i don't know some i ask us questions you can send me an email kirsten at thisweekinscience.com and you can send justin or blare emails you can also send us a message on our facebook channel who daily tech news show and this week in science crossover show coming up this saturday april yeah it's soon april 17th 4 p.m pacific time so make sure your calendars are marked if you want to watch it live it will be streaming on all of our channels it's going to be there and it's going to be on the dtns twitch channel as well it's going to be all of the internets all of the internets wherever you like to watch dtns or twist it will be there should be there unless something goes very awry which i hope it will not it's going to be like watching both shows at the same time yeah yeah but better have we made it to the end of this show so we can start getting ready for that show we have yeah we've done it we've done it yay thank you for listening everyone i hope you did enjoy the show thank you co-hosts for a great show shout outs to fada for help with social media and show notes gourd for manning the chat room identity for for recording the show rachel thank you so much for your assistance and i would like to thank our patreon sponsors for their amazing support of this week in science thank you too carl 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this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science has magic lights she doesn't have a microphone anymore because it fell over but now she has fancy lights and that makes everything okay. I caught it! God for you. Why did your COVID shot hurt but not your flu shot? They didn't hit a nerve when they injected you for the flu? So they're tiny needles. So they're tiny needles. Some of them, depending on which vaccine you got is more volume. Yes, that's true. But also, I have an unscientific theory about this. Vaccination centers, let me just say it, unscientific theory. Yes. So vaccination sites, some of them have a lot of staff who giving inoculations is not the normal part of their every day. They can do it. They are qualified to do it. They are perfectly capable of doing it, but they don't work in a lab in a medical building normally. So that's in some cases. I got my vaccine from a fireman. So perfectly qualified to do it, not his normal beat. So there's that. There's also the fact that they're doing it kind of all day, every day ad nauseam. I just feel like there's a lot more room for them to do it in the not the best way possible. Because if you're really careful, you know exactly where to place the shot, you do it a lot, then you can do it really well. It's kind of like how some people, you get blood taken and you bruise everywhere and sometimes you don't. It's all about the technique. So that's my whole unscientific theory about it is that it's a technique problem because of the mass, the vaccination clinics working on mass. Yeah, the place I went actually asked the person giving the shot, how many shots do you think you've given during a pandemic? She's like, well, I've only actually had been assigned to this vaccination center for nine days, but it's over a thousand at this point. Because they were just doing so many. I never felt it. Like the bandaid went on before and I was still waiting for the shot. So yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely a bit of time. And the needle is a tiny one too. I mean, there's going to be shots that have, I don't know, different needles or bigger needles or maybe it's been a while since I given the vaccine. No, they're pretty tiny needles for the flu vaccine for the COVID vaccine. These are all pretty tiny needles. Sometimes they hit, you hit a capillary, sometimes you hit a nerve, sometimes you, you know, yeah. Oh, my whole technique. But it's like, but it's like, what did it hurt the jab itself? Or is it afterwards when it starts reaction? That's the act. Yeah, that's the immune reaction. So I just got schooled on his way out the door. Thank you, Brian. So he was very sweet about it. I don't want to make it sound like he's like, you're so, no, no. Okay. So he actually, he was trying to be helpful. So he said, firefighters, EMTs, give intramuscular shots all the time. So actually, I'm medic, EMTs, don't give shots. Okay, go to work. No. All right. See, I'm using the wrong terminology here even. But okay, so medics and firefighters give intramuscular shots all the time. So I am incorrect. They, which I appreciate that chime in, because I don't want firefighters watching this and be like, what? I give these all the time. The pediatric nurse who gave me my shot last or pediatric doc, I don't know if she's, I don't think the doctors are doing a volunteer. So I think it's on this. But I was probably around at her thousandth shot, having been at the center for nine days. You know, I mean, unless you're the first person, this one person's ever tried on, but usually if you go to one of these centers where they're mass inoculating people, you're going to be fine. Yeah, I think so what the other thing that he just said is intramuscular shots, his understanding is that just intramuscular shots in general are going to be more likely to hurt because you're pushing fluid into a muscle. Yeah, and that's it. Yep. So I would guess it does have to do with, I know Moderna's volume was what like twice that of Pfizer or something. So the volume might have something to do with it, the exact location, the needle size. I think that's small. Like I never felt it that first day. It didn't hurt until many hours later. And it wasn't immune response then. Yeah, it wasn't bruising on site. There was no problem there. So I think when people are talking about the pain from the shot, that whole region, that's what I was saying, get it in your right arms. You don't feel like you're having a heart attack because it's that hope my whole chest muscles and I think there's also I'm like sometimes thinking about like, okay, the muscle that you're going, they're going into this deltoid muscle and like they're like putting it in there. And yeah, I guess there's a bit of muscle over the bone, but I don't know, some people have bigger muscles than others. I don't know. I'd kind of, it might have been better if it was in like my tricep. Why not put it in my tricep? Why in my deltoid where you can hit me in the bone? I heard of somebody. I have a friend who works my glutes. That's my thunder beaver and one guy. She worked in the VA and in a lab in the VA and one of the doctors, I want to say he was a surgeon. He got it in his right arm the first time and it was problematic because the soreness, you know, affected his ability to do surgery. So the second time when he went to the vaccination site, he goes, do it in the rear. So they gave him his second jab in the butt. They did. Yeah, they did. Intermuscular is intermuscular. So awesome. Yeah. It's very funny. Anyway, yeah. I know somebody who ordered themselves a standing desk. Who was it me? You did? No, the doctor who got the Oh, I gotta go. I have to take off in a couple hours. Wait, oh, yes. Wait, what? I'm going to be flying. Oh, you're leaving tonight. Tomorrow morning. I'm leaving tomorrow morning, but it's not a whole lot of hours before I have to start driving to the San Francisco city. Got it. Got it. Well, safe flight. Stay safe. Stay to be healthy. I will always be healthy. Keep us posted for Saturday. I'll be there. No, it's still on in the same time zone as you people meant to. What was that? Is that a ghost? Did you see a ghost in your house? No, it was a ghost. I think we caught it on film. There was a goat. You have a goat? It's a tiny goat. There's the tiny ghost. Oh, it's a ghost dog. No, I think Sadie was chasing it. That's no, look, Sadie sees it too. She's like, I saw it. She was watching her father leave is actually what she was doing. She's chasing it, or it's chasing her. I can't tell, but you definitely have a ghost in your house. Speaking of goats, real quick before you go, I have new co-workers. And I can show you a picture of my new co-workers. Do you have goats? Yeah, this is the view out of my office window. That's a lot of goats. That's a lot of goats. What are they doing? Are they in charge of the grass? Yeah, they're lawn mowers. I love it. I'll put it on Instagram or something later. You guys can see a better picture, but yeah, they're lawn mowers for hire. Out my office window, there's just a little herd of goats hanging out. I love it. Goats. Yeah, I was in the office today and my manager was there with me, and we went to the car. I was like, I want to pet a goat. She was like, don't. It's an electric fence. I was like, oh. Thank you for telling me. Wow, that could have been traumatic. Definitely seems like day one. Here we are. And here we are. I made something. I'm trying to download something to upload something. Let's see if I can, because Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday. There it is. Let's see if I can get it in here. Zeke wants to know if, how long I've been with the show. I started in January 2012. I do believe. So I'm about to have my 10th anniversary next year. 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, because it was the year after I had Kai, and this was his 10th birthday. Yeah. Wow. He was a little bjern. He was in his little, I forget what it's called. It's like the little circle with the. His fascinator, his fascinator jail. Yeah, yeah, with the wheels that he could kind of, he could go around the house like this. That's how I first met Kai. Oh, he was busy. He was very, he's still busy. Just, did I started at the twit cottage shoe brew? I did. A mashup of video clips. I made a, I made a lower third. See the lower third I made. Nice. For Saturday. So, but I think you need to clarify. You didn't start at the twit cottage. Yeah, what are you talking about? You existed prior to the twit cottage. Oh, I started, I started a twist in, yeah, in Davis at KWS 90.3 FM, the college radio station in Davis with Ted Dunning. And then it was there for a very long time until I met Leo Laporte. And then I was dead. Yeah. And I was moving to San Francisco anyway, but actually I think I was in, yeah, yeah, things were changing. And then, and then we were in, and then I worked with Leo for a while at the cottage with twit. And then at the brick house is the time when we started doing twists at, twists on twit. That's where Justin and Blair came and broke the internet. Which we must always be reminded. Yes, always. You must always be reminded. But yeah, I remember going live. I do remember when we were just doing it as a radio show. It had a very different vibe. Well, it was only an hour. And so I've been actually going back and listening a little bit to some of a little bit of the old does because I've been trying to find episodes and link them back within our show notes, within our website. Yeah. And so I'll be like, I'll go back to this episode from 2010. And so I'll listen to a little bit of it, so I can give a little blurb. And I'm like, Oh, that's what we sounded like. And what we talked about then. Okay. But yeah, we definitely had tighter conversations because we had only an hour. But we got through a lot of stories still for just an hour. I think part of it too is that the longer you do this show, the more complicated stories become. So I bet at the very beginning you could just kind of report a story. It's like, here's the finding. There it is. Right. I mean, there's probably there was conversation back and forth. But now it's kind of like, okay, well, like three years ago, they said this and five years ago, they said this. So what does this mean for the greater story that we're portraying here? Yeah. So it's I mean, and not to say there hasn't been science prior, but I think just in terms of us having intimate knowledge over the decades, it changes the conversation and the type of conversations that we have. Yep. I think so. I think you're right. I think so. Yeah, Michael Gibson, TWIS is about five years older than TWIT. Is that something that's still on the air? TWIT? Yeah. Yeah. TWIT's online. Leo's still going. He's doing his thing. Yeah. Still podcasting, doing his Leo business. We never really expanded as much as I wanted this show to. Oh, Nadelva. I hope you have a good day. Yeah. I mean, at the start of the pandemic, when everyone was like, we're stuck at home, we're going to be more productive. I'm going to do a bunch of stuff. I said I would do that. I never did that. It's like, oh, actually, no, you're living through a crisis. So expecting yourself to do extra is ridiculous. I did like what, three players, animal, quarter, shorts? Yeah. Then you're like, okay, that's enough. It's like, oh, right, life is the thing. And I'm still working. Also like trying to get very changing jobs, moving. It's like, oh, right. There's a lot of obstacles to the show. And I'm saying at some point, we need to just get them out of the way. And focus, people. Focus. Well, Patreon sponsors. Assemble. Assemble. Shoebrew. No, who but who? Noodles. You're saying you missed some of the personalities at Twit. Yes. Well, this Saturday, Tom Merritt and Sarah Lane, both past Twit employees also, DTNS hosts, Roger Chang. I think Roger was just revision three, though. And then an old, old, old school tech reporting back in the days. Let's see, who else would be? I think Jason Howell is still doing stuff. And then Becky Worley, you'll see her on television. I think she's on ABC reporting technology. You will miss it. No, you might miss it live, Noodles, but it will be recorded. So you can watch it if you want. Wait, are you saying that the show we're doing can also be seen other than at the time that we do it? Yes. So why don't we do it like earlier in the day when we can like have a cup of coffee that's not going to ruin our night's sleep? We can be like awake for it. I have a day job. See, there's one more obstacle. This has been a great time. Get yourself to Denmark, Justin. And then you can have that cup of coffee in the morning. That's the I'm going for that. And I need to get a haircut. And that's the only place I have a haircut. I got many hair. I get I get haircuts. All right, everybody, we do have this. This animal corner thing will never catch on Zeke. Tisk, tisk, tisk, tisk. We love it. Yeah, Roger was on tech TV. Thank you with Kevin and Sarah. And yes, that's right. Kevin Rose lives up here in Portland now. I don't I don't see him. He's not somebody I hang out with. He's a he's a Kevin Rose. I know who he is though. He lives in the hills. Hi, somewhere doing doing things with tea. I don't know. Say good night. Yes. Good night. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. And yeah, Thunderbeaver, you can tie this 10% of your paychecks and then Blair won't have to have a day job. That'd be great. We'll do this every day. This would be our day job. All right. Thank you so much, everybody. We do hope we see you on Saturday at the DTNS twist crossover episode 4 p.m. Pacific time. But if we do not, it'll be recorded and you can watch it and we will be back here next Wednesday. But you have to show up because we have a site. I have a side bet. I don't know if we have a side bet that more our people will show up than their people. So you need to show up. Otherwise I lose a humiliating excruciating side bet. Yeah, we need you. We need you, people. We need you. I know it's Saturday, but we need you. Good night, everyone. Thanks, everyone. Have a good night. Bye.