 This is TWIS, this week in Science episode number 584, recorded on Wednesday, September 14th, 2016. Are we drunk yet? Hey everyone, I am Dr. Kiki and welcome to another this week in Science tonight on the show. We're going to fill your head with consequences, viruses, and the moon, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The wisdom that comes from a life well lived is worth its weight in years. And living life well, as subjective a subject as this may be, must in this humble opinion, be a life lived in inquiry, in examined existence. Not just in the know-thyself sort of way, but in the world around you scenario. Because if you don't understand anything beyond your own shadow, if you know nothing of the world beyond your cave walls, what can you claim to have lived? Throw yourself out of yourself. Get up and get out there where the people are, the makers and the doers. They're busy making and doing things, where the investigations are, where the experiments are, where the learning is happening now. Turn on, tune in, open the door and have a look around. See what's out there. Or at the very least, just listen for the sound of this week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I wanna learn everything. I wanna fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in Science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in Science. Good Science, Stinky Gimbler. And good science to you, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again to talk all about the world of science. And it's a big, wild world out there. In fact, it's a big universe of science. Who knew? Who knew? I have some cool stories this week about a potential power crash, some consequences, and a virus inside us. I've got the infrared emperors new clothes, ancient blue jeans, how to paint a moon and tiny pterosaurs. And Blair, what's in the animal corner? Well, I have giraffes. I have invertebrate sex. And I have hibernation. Hopefully you're not hibernating. Oh no, because we need you. We need you on this show. No time to sleep. All right, you guys, let's dig into the science news. Big stories this week. The Gaia Observing Mission, looking at the European Space Agency has this program going on. It's a star mapping mission called Gaia. It's a 750 million pound project, which means it's probably around a... Heavy, very heavy. Around a billion dollars, US dollars. Very heavy. And this star mapping mission is basically looking at the sky and trying to catalog as many stars as it can see. It just released a new catalog and it now contains sky positions for 1.1 billion stars. It's a lot of stars. And this is the Milky Way Galaxy in greater detail than we've ever seen it before. And 400 million of these 1.1 billion stars have never been seen before, which is pretty cool. Yeah. And so this look, this cataloging goes to show that our galaxy is even bigger than we thought it was. And if our galaxy is even bigger than we thought it was, then probably there's a whole bunch of stuff out there that we haven't seen before. Very likely. For a lot of the stars, according to this article, the positional accuracy of this star mapping mission is 300 micro arc seconds, which is kind of analogous to the width of a human hair if you were looking at it from 30 kilometers away. And so... That would be very hard to see. Very hard to see, but this telescope is able to do that. So it's going to be running until 2019. A second data release is planned for 2017, and the second release will be hopefully more accurate up to 10 micro arc seconds, which means that would be like a human hair at a distance of 1,000 kilometers. Yeah, so they're trying to get distance and distance from us of these stars, also the motion of the stars so that we can get an idea of gravitational influence of what's going on in the Milky Way's gravity field. So according to one of the researchers, knowing stellar distances is extremely important for many fields of astrophysics. And so this is very exciting. Also future facilities, like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the ESA's Euclid satellite are going to be able to use this Gaia catalog of stars to be able to focus their observations of the future. Very exciting. So anyway, the Milky Way, a little bit denser with stars than we thought it was. Another 400 million stars to your immediate neighborhood. That's a pretty big development there. Absolutely, right? And if we're adding stars, what else is there that we're not seeing, right? Moving on from distant stars to our local star, our star has outbursts every once in a while. We call them solar storms. And occasionally they are aimed in our direction. And depending on how vibrant, how eruptive these solar storms are, they can have different effects on our planet. And one of the great things about the solar wind and the energetic particles that come away from the sun is that we have beautiful auroras at our poles. And these auroras, the aurora borealis and the aurora australis, they're gorgeous things to look at, but they are indications of the energy that our planet is being bombarded by. It's a visual cue to how energetic the material coming from the sun to our planet actually is. And sometimes those, the aurora in the Northern Hemisphere will reach pretty far south. It'll reach into Oregon or even, the mid-latitudes of the United States. So people are wondering, all right, we've got these electrical grids on our planet and like in our country. And they're all kind of old and hatched together. And of course, localities have been working on updating them and making them better. And we've reported in the past on increases in solar storms and the possibility that big solar storms could disrupt electrical grids. Well, this is a new story related to this in that researchers have been going around sticking little sensors in the ground. And you're like, what sensors in the ground? We're talking about the aurora. What is going on? Well, they've been using these ground sensors to be able to measure the conductivity of the Earth's crust. And so they're getting a picture, the United States Geological Survey is getting a picture of how electricity flows through the Earth's crust because normally, rock is not very conductive. And when solar storms come into the planet through our atmosphere, they're very often going to go through the metal grid of the power infrastructure to complete their circuit. Because you gotta have, you have an electrical circuit, flow of electrons, and they're going to, if they can't flow through the ground, they're going to find something else to flow through. And that's where the problem with our metal power grid infrastructure comes in. The second thing to this is that this survey that they've done has discovered that there's an area of the United States, the Midwest specifically, which has a very interesting makeup. So the upper Midwest has two types of rock that actually are really good when they're together carrying an electrical current. So they have sedimentary rock, which is a little bit more conductive, underlaid by insulating igneous rock. And so we've got these two layers of rock that because of the way that they sit together, it creates a dielectric, which is a local electric current that can be kept up during solar storms, geoelectric storms. Yeah, so the idea that comes out of this is that because of its special crustal makeup, the upper Midwest might be prone to a serious power grid disruption should a big solar storm come through because of the way the ground is all set up to carry currents. So then is this also, though? I mean, there's a power disruption possible, but is this something we could harness? Right, that's another thing. Right, you turn it into a big ground-based battery collector. So you get the solar storm, and then you've got, I don't know, flywheels batteries on the ready, something that can sort of capture this energy as it transfers through the crust. Interesting. Yeah, it's a pretty fascinating finding. And of course, they haven't surveyed all of the United States yet, so they've looked at an area of the Pacific Northwest into kind of the Rocky Mountain area of the United States, so it entails kind of like a bit of Northern California about the upper quarter or third of California into Oregon and Washington and across to about the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, et cetera. And then this swath from the upper Midwest down through the Great Lakes and through the Midwest down to Florida and the Southern Coast around Florida and Georgia. So there's a lot of the United States that has yet to be surveyed, but it's very possible that the conductivity of underlying rocks might affect the power grid in the case of big storms. And so we either, like you said, Justin have to take advantage of it or figure out how to deal with it when it happens. Yeah, and then my final story, we've talked a bit about synthetic DNA on the show and we reported on a lab that has created two additional bases for DNA. So normally DNA are considered nucleotides. They created what are called nucleosides. They're basically nucleotides, but they don't have a phosphate group attached and they called them D5-S-I-C-S-N-D-N-A-M. Anyway, these are artificial nucleosides that can combine with other nucleosides and nucleotides to create DNA, an expanded DNA library. And this is a really exciting idea. It's like, oh, can we create new protein structures? Can we create chemicals, molecules with additional functions that we haven't seen in nature before? Can we learn about the functionality of how these nucleotides, nucleosides work together to create the proteins that make us up? Anyway, they went looking at these nucleosides in living cells and they found that using these nucleosides is a bit of a problem when it comes to life and specifically life on the surface of Earth. Having these nucleosides incorporated into the DNA of E. coli and other cells makes the cells more susceptible to damage from sunlight and even fluorescent light. So, phototoxicity is higher when these nucleosides are involved. And I love the title of their paper, which is in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Unintended Consequences of Expanding the Genetic Alphabet. Yeah, so I think the lesson here might be nature found a way and that's not it. Yeah, and yeah, nature found a way. There's a reason nature set up the way it is. It's because it's tried everything and some stuff didn't work. And what you're left with is it works. So that might be kind of what we find as we might be stumbling into and sort of adding what were evolutionary dead ends and discovering why. They were evolutionary dead ends, too, in fact. Yeah, one of the interesting aspects of their study is they wanted to see how the phototoxicity actually affected living cells and so they used living cancer cells, epidermoid carcinoma cells. This is from, that's a type of human skin cancer. And they treated the cells with the D5-S-I-C-S and they exposed them to a low dose of near-visible light. And they just didn't grow very well. It decreased cell proliferation. So it indicated that they had been, these cells were photosensitized and had damage. And they think the damage occurs as a result of the production of reactive oxygen species inside the cells and that these nucleotides, when affected by light, lead to reactive oxygen. Reactive oxygen causes cell damage, as we know, anyone who tries to eat well to reduce radical oxygen in their body. And the interesting thing, what they're talking about, though, that maybe, even though this is something that doesn't necessarily work for living cells, maybe it can be used to treat cancer. Like maybe there's some way that we can actually treat cancer cells with these nucleotides and then just shine light on them. And kill cancer. So maybe there's some upshot from this, aside from, oh, this is something we didn't really expect to happen. Yeah, well, just pretty cool. So anyway, expanding the genetic alphabet, it's not as easy as we hoped. It's gonna, back to the drawing board, take more work. All right, this is the Speaking Science. Justin, what do you have? Let's see, where to start this? Okay, so a 6,200-year-old indigo blue fabric was found in Huacapuru, making one of the oldest known cotton textiles in the world. And the oldest known textile decorated with indigo blue. The exotic nature of the color, indigo, so intrigued Europeans at one point that it is falsely believed to be a color of the rainbow. It's in there, they say, you know, that it's blue than indigo, there's no indigo. I don't care how hard you look, there's no indigo. Some of the world's most significant technological advancements were developed first in the new world, says Dr. Splitsauer. Many people have remained mostly unaware of the important technological contributions made by Native Americans, perhaps because so many of these technologies were replaced by European systems during the conquest, however, the fine fibers and sophisticated dying, spinning, and weaving practices developed by ancient South Americans were quickly co-opted by Europeans. So this is discovered in a desert area in the North Coast of Peru. The experts believe it was likely a temple where a variety of textiles and other offerings were placed, possibly, part of a ritual, don't really know. Development of indigo dye was critical for future trends in fashion fabrics, textiles, arts, Splitsauer says, the cotton used here in the Huca Prieta fabrics is gasy-upsum barbed densa, whatever that is. It's the same species grown today and is called Egyptian cotton. So this is actually an American development. But this is sort of, and it's not only the cotton connection we made in this excavation, they also found other cottons that were being utilized. And Splitsauer says here, we may well not have had blue jeans if it weren't for the ancient South Americans, both the cotton that we use and the dying came from. Very interesting ancient textile story there. And now- And Levi's, I'm sure Levi's is thanking them profusely. Levi's, the gas. Probably not, probably not. I love my blue jeans. I can't imagine without them. I'm wearing mine now. So this is one of those new segment sticks where we partially are doing a fake sponsor for a product. So here goes, tired of weighing the same clothes made from fabrics that keep your infrared radiation from radiating, making you hot and irritable. Think of the hours each week spent sweating needlessly. The money you could have saved on air conditioning, the social irritation that could have been avoided, the relationships at home and work improved, then multiply all that time, money and energy wasted by the billions of irritable humans on this planet. And, well, you see, don't you? Yes, it's time for a change of clothes, but not just any clothes. Nano porous polyethylene cling wrap clothes, the clothes with nano size holes. The material lets heat escape instead of dropping it like traditional fabrics. But according to Stanford University Materials Scientist Yi Kui, giving cool clothes a new meeting, a more literal meaning anyway, but the question remains, who would wear cling wrap as clothing? Every person who wears clothes could be a potential user of this product, says MIT physicist Svetlana Borinskiya. Current clothing devices include wearable fans, wicking fabrics, they both rely on evaporation to cool human skin, but our skin also sheds heat in another way, infrared radiation. Clothing holds this heat close to the body, Kui says, and if infrared radiation could instead pass through the fabric, he reasoned, people would feel a lot cooler. But the fabric would have to be transparent only to infrared wavelengths, otherwise we'd be walking around and see through clothes. So that would be cool, but not necessarily cool. Not necessarily what people really want, unless of course, I mean, I don't think nudists would really go for the transparent clothing, but it's just all the restriction with none of the fun, right? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's sort of like, is there a point that you can see other people's nudity or is it that you just want to be free to the open air? In any case. Deep thoughts by Justin, yes. Yes, so the fabric would have to be transparent only to infrared wavelengths. The visible light, it would need to be opaque. Otherwise, the nudist call on the earth. Kui found just one material that satisfied both requirements, commercially available plastic used in lithium-ion batteries. The material called nanoporous polyethylene, or nano PE, is a clean wrap-like plastic that lets infrared radiation through. But unlike clean wrap, this material is not clear. It is blocks visible light. Tiny pores speckled through the fabric act as obstacles to visible light. Borinski the MIT physicist says, when blue light, for example, hits the pores, it scatters, so do other colors. The light bounces around in different directions and scrambles together. To the human eye, the resulting color is white. The pores scatter visible light because they're both in the same size range. The diameters of the pores span 50 to 1,000 nanometers and the wavelength of visible light range from 400 to 700 nanometers. Infrared light emitted by the body has much larger wavelengths, 7,000 to 14,000 nanometers. So the plastic's tiny pores can't block it. Infrared light, the pores are barely bumps in the road, not barriers at all. The pores are kind of like small rocks at a beach, Borinski says. They'll interfere with the motion of small waves, but big waves will wash right over. It seems a lot like, is this something along the lines of the invisibility cloak technique where it's the scattering of light, but it's scattering, instead of scattering light around something so that you just don't see it, it's scattering light so that you see a white color, so it looks opaque. So it's like the opposite. It's like a see me cloak. They tested this, see all of me. See all of me cloak. Yeah. So they tested the Nanope. They laid it on a hot plate. They warmed it up to skin temperature, and this is, they did it in Celsius for some reason. 33.5 degrees Celsius, they put this hot plate. Then they put the Nanope on it, and it raised the skin temperature by just 0.8 Celsius, up to 34.3. Then they did the same experiment with cotton, and it rose to 37. That's a whole lot more Celsiuses. Yeah. Kind of made it hot in there, right? They also tried some techniques to make it more wearable, because currently it is basically a clean wrap type material, but they're gonna next focus on a way to weave the fabric to make it feel more like a traditional textile. My take on this though is he says within five years, somebody will be wearing this. Within 10 years, I hope most people will be wearing it, but before you go and invest in Nanope, let me tell you the smart money on this is invest and invest heavily in any company that's making or working on infrared goggles. Because I think, and if I'm not mistaken, I might be like, I think that's gonna be still visible light. You'll still be naked in the infrared. So this has that sort of an emperor's new clothes feel to it somehow. Right, so depending on the kinds of glasses or eyewear people are donning, they may see people in different ways. Now, yeah. It seems- If you want to, you might not want to. It might actually be rather disturbing to see everybody walking down the street naked. It would be funny if there was something going on in current glasses, like I think all the time about my polarized sunglasses, that you try to see a screen and it doesn't work. It'd be pretty ridiculous if those had just been in glasses for a while. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, everyone's coming away. It seems though that I mean, this is nice. It'll be holding body heat in. So maybe people in Antarctica could, this'll be great for like Antarctic or expedition wear if you're going to the top of a high mountain to hike glaciers where it's cold or maybe- Maybe it's long John wear for astronauts. Space is cold. Maybe it'll- No, space is hot. Space is boiling hot. Space is thousands of degrees hot. Oh right, it's hot, but there's no, there's not- But there's no- There's no molecules- No molecules to move the heat, transfer heat away. But you're cold. Yeah. Yeah. But it's thousands of degrees hot. It's so complicated. I don't understand space. Outside of the space, it's super hot, but there's nothing touching it, the transfer of the heat around, so it just doesn't- So it's cold, so you freeze. But it's hot. But it's hot. It's 2,000 degrees and you freeze to death. Either way, this nano PE could be great naked wear for the space station. But yeah, so it's, I mean, it's got some really interesting potential. Yeah. But they have to make it a clothing I mean, it's one of those innovations like, yeah, we've developed this idea for plastic clothes, but if they don't feel comfortable, if they don't get the ergonomics of somebody wanting to wear them down, then they'll be no good. But we wear plastic all the time. We do, please. We do. Yep, polyesters. Polyesters. Micro-polyester or something. It's another one. That's right. Plastic for the people. Put it on, people. Put it on. This is This Week in Science. You know what time it is here at TWIS. It's time for this week's Player as Animal Corner. That's what time it is. It's been a bit no-pant at all. Wanna hear about it, animal? She's your girl. Except for giant pandas as well. What you got, Blair? Oh, well, we're gonna start with something that's all the rage on the internet this week. I wanna talk about giraffes. I like giraffes. I like giraffes. Yes. The internet is a buzz. We have different internet feeds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you just say? My internet, at least, is a buzz with the giraffe news, and I wanna talk about it. So, historically, scientists have recognized a sing-song player. Scientists have recognized a single species of giraffe made up of several subspecies, depending on who you ask. It's six, seven, eight, or nine subspecies of giraffe. But so all of them had the same genus and species. But now, a recent study on giraffe genetics says there are actually at least four distinct species. So previously, all of the giraffes were under giraffe Camelopardalis. And now, there are these four species, the southern giraffe, giraffe giraffa. See if you can remember that one. Giraffa giraffe. Yeah, the Masai giraffe, giraffe tipil skirchi, the reticulated giraffe, giraffe reticulata, and the northern giraffe, which is still giraffe Camelopardalis. So now, identifying four distinct species changes things in a few ways. But first, I wanna talk about how this happened. So giraffes, they all live in Africa. They all look pretty similar. They all have a pretty similar diet. They all have a pretty similar life history. The only thing that you can really tell about them that's different is that their patterns are slightly different. If you're not someone who studies giraffes or works with giraffes, it's pretty hard to tell the difference in these subspecies or what we're considered subspecies based on their pattern. The other differences are their range, their home range. And most of these subspecies do not interbreed with each other, despite human pressures on their habitat. But that coupled with the fact that they are very understudied in terms of large mammals. There are a group of large mammals that people don't do a lot of scientific studies on. Elephants, rhinoceroses, gorillas, lions, those are all African mammals that get way more research done on them than giraffes. Why do you think that is? I mean, every zoo has giraffes. Yeah, my personal opinion is that they're not that, what I would call, these are giant air quotes, sexy, right? They're not a carnivore. They're not considered to be super smart. They're not, they don't have complicated social structures. They are in many ways just a stretched, hoved mammal. And there are a lot of hoved mammals on this planet. And unless hoved mammals are your thing, I think that the average person maybe they don't care as much about hoved mammals. Giraffes are basically stretched cows. So they, I think that they are underutilized in terms of their research potential. Now, based on all of this, despite the lack of research, they've actually been dropping pretty significantly in their numbers. They're over the past three decades. So 30 years ago, it was estimated that there were about 150,000 giraffes in the world. And now there's less than 100,000. That's a pretty big dip. And it's because of many things, but it's mostly because of the number one cause of animal numbers to drop, which is habitat loss. Exactly. So that's the main concern for giraffes. The big caveat here is that if you're looking at listing animals as endangered and using governmental or conservation funding and or political power to protect a species, it has to be a species, not a subspecies. There's not a lot out there to protect subspecies. And specifically the IUCN, which lists animals as endangered or threatened, they only list species. So if you're looking at giraffes, the number of giraffes in the world are not low enough to list them as endangered. If you separate out these individual new species, there are some that are actually potentially critically endangered. And that's where this becomes really important. Yeah, so are people going to start debating the potential bias in separating these species? I mean, it's genetic tests. You show that they're separate species or they don't breed together. Okay, they're separate species, but you're still all very closely related. Sure. For comparison, the genetic differences between these four giraffe species are at least as great as those between polar bears and grizzly bears. So genetically, they are vastly different. And it's because they have not been interbreeding for a really long time. So first question I would have is, why? Why aren't these subspecies interbreeding at all? Because they don't have the right spots. Right. I don't like that guy, it looks less like a net and it looks more like splotches. Yeah, you're all splotchy. And there's different colorations to these markings as well. Some are lighter versus darker. But are the sizes of the draps? I mean, I think these vary a bit too. They're pretty comparable, the size. The size and body shape of these animals. There's nothing physically stopping them from reproducing with each other. It's all clearly just that they, I would assume, can recognize each other as separate species. But yeah, there've been lots of debates about this. The main thing I would just offer up to consider, which I'm not saying a specific opinion or what's right or what's wrong, is that the reason this study is so important is that we can't list subspecies and protect subspecies the same way that we can protect species. But I would argue that individual subspecies have just as big of an impact on a system and an environment as a potential species. Yeah, and you have argued that before. We've had that conversation many times. Yeah, yeah. And so the need to make this distinction is kind of like, it's just the way we have it. We should be saving systems. We shouldn't be worried about these species so much. But if we are gonna be worried about the species, then what we need to do is have some documentaries where there are lions chasing giraffes or hyenas taking down giraffes so that we see the threat to the giraffes because in documentaries and at zoos, they're just sitting there chewing their cud, chewing on those tree leaves. Yes. Well, as much as it's predation at the cost of habitat loss, it's also a big part of it is you have to remember that these animals are herd animals and they have one male and many females. And that means they need huge expanses of land because they're also browsers. So they need this huge amount of land to just be able to munch on leaves all day. Yeah, and then on top of that, they need to have space for full-sized herds of many females and one male. You need a bunch of those. You can't have just one or two herds because then you lack genetic diversity and we know what happens then. So within what was a subspecies is now a species. You need enough space to have all these different herds because at a certain point, that one head male is fathering every single baby for at least a couple years in that herd. So if you're gonna have any genetic diversity at all, you need space for bachelor herds. You need space for several full-sized adult herds. And Ed from Connecticut asks, Blair-Baz, do these different draft species, mate and zoos? And it's sort of interesting because I believe with all the drafts that are at the sacrament of the zoo, the baby came from two that were the same type even though there's multiple types kept together. Yeah, I haven't really heard much about them. They happen occasionally, but to my understanding, it doesn't happen very often. But that also is because at least in America in zoos, there would be an effort to keep those, especially because some, what were subspecies and now species of giraffe are so few. So for example, northern giraffe, the last one that I said, Cameloprodalis, is less than 4,750 in the wild. And the reticulated giraffe, reticulata, less than 8,700 individuals. So that's a very low number. So if you're looking at zoos like seed vaults, like we've talked about before, then you don't want to mess that up, even if they were only subspecies at the time. You still don't want to kind of confuse those lines, even in zoos, because if you're gonna release those animals later, you need to have a pure line, especially if they're adapted to different habitats even slightly. That is right. What's up next in the animal corner? Oh yes, I just have a little dash of invertebrate sex. So looking at our good friend, the round worm, or as many researchers call it, the worm, C. elegans, they are a great animal to study for a lot of different things, particularly when it comes to chemical exchange. They're the transparent round worm. They live in kind of a fluid mass. So it's very easy to kind of see what the, their response to different chemical changes would be. This specific study coming out of University of Chicago was looking at chemical cues from males to females when it comes to reproduction. The long and short of this study was that chemical cues from males can make women or females go into puberty sooner, maintain reproductive age longer, but as a trade, greatly reduces longevity. So you can reproduce longer, but you're not gonna live as long. So all your energy is going into reproduction. So they use C. elegans. They identified two distinct signals produced by males that affect female reproduction and the females then directly altered their physiology. And they don't see this as an intentional side effect. It's more like a cost benefit. So they see it as kind of something that is a drawback. They called it collateral damage to increasing reproductive age on both ends of the spectrum for the females. So from this, they were able to kind of parse out where this was coming from. And future studies in this vein, they believe could help improve fertility science for humans because actually all these chemical cues are pretty much the same in most animal species. So they think that this could help with fertility research. They think also they could identify the part of this chemical signal that is related to reducing life expectancy. And they could use that also to prevent that from influencing humans as well. So based on this pretty small study, there's some pretty lofty goals coming out of this. Yeah, I mean, we use C. elegans as a model for so many aspects of medicine and understanding our own genetics and physiology. I mean, it is a simple organism, but there are so many aspects of this simple organism that are highly, highly conserved even in humans. And so it's an interesting question, as we mess with our reproductive systems, as we take fertility hormones at older ages to have children, what effect is that going to have downstream to female human longevity? We don't know the answer to that question. So I find it fascinating. And maybe even, what about people, women who take the pill and kind of delay their reproduction? How does that affect it? So there's some interesting questions about that are tied up in reproduction among Jevonny. Who knows if they are tied up in the same way in humans as they are in these worms? Yeah, absolutely. And that's such a good point with the birth control pill because in this study, these are tiny animals. The male didn't even have to be there to present these causes or these changes in the female. They just needed a teeny, tiny amount of the male pheromones and that affected aging in those females. And what's really, the reason they kind of thought this could jump to humans is because the results they got here echoed previous findings in mice, which means if it can jump from the roundworm to the mouse, it's a much shorter jump from the mouse to a human. Yeah. Yeah, if you're looking at the amount of genes you have in common, right? It's pretty similar. So also the, just the reproductive system of a roundworm versus a mouse versus a mouse and versus a human. It's a much shorter leap to take. Absolutely. All right, everybody. I think it's time for us to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a few more minutes with viruses, moons, and tannin' pterosaurs. And then we're gonna talk about getting drunk. Let's up next, music and science. I'm missing that. It's gonna get power. We're gonna have kicks, so everything's gonna be awesome, man. Hey everybody, thanks for watching or listening to this week in science. Your patronage really, really is what keeps us going. It's the reason we go on. Well, I mean, we love the science and we love talking about it, but it's all about you. You are the people who keep this little tiny show afloat. You are the people who keep us doing this week after week after week. I wanna tell everybody, I went to the Maker Faire this last weekend and had a little booth. There are videos available at our YouTube channel this week in science on YouTube of interviews that I did with a couple of scientists and makers at the Portland Mini Maker Faire. So you can go check those out if you are interested in seeing a little bit other content, things that we're doing in the world. Who's making in Portland? I talked to a few of those people. And there's also an iTunes podcast feed that Paul Colligan put together for the audio files of these interviews along with his interviews. And that is at iTunes. It is the Portland Maker Faire podcast. So you can look for that feed on iTunes and hopefully enjoy it. Twist also has merchandise that you might enjoy. We have a t-shirts and you can head over to twist.org to get some of those t-shirts because we have a link on our website that goes to our Zazzle store. And that Zazzle link has all of the t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, cups, mugs, phone covers, all the things that you would love to have with the Twist logo emblazoned on it or some of Blair's original artwork. Twist is also supported by listeners like you. You are our producers. Your donations pay for our hosting bandwidth, contractors we need to hire, fun things we try to do for the show from time to time. And we really appreciate any amount that you're able to give, whether it's a dollar or $100, every penny counts, it really helps keep things flowing and moving here at Twist. So whether you're an old listener or a new listener or you're watching on YouTube, please consider supporting us and you can do that a couple of ways through Patreon is one, we can go to patreon.com slash this week in science. There is a link in the main header bar at twist.org to be able to go there. The other way is through PayPal donations. Again, there's a link at twist.org for PayPal. Makes it quick, easy, you can make it recurring or one time, you can figure out how you would like to be a part of supporting and producing twists on a week by week basis. If you can't afford a donation, there are many other ways that you can help us out. We can always use your help on, there are always things I'm looking for getting done for the show, totally, totally. But biggest thing is get your help telling people about twists. Go to a Maker Faire, tell makers, scientists you meet on the street because everybody should meet scientists on the street. Tell them about twists. Tell people who are just cool cafe cats about twists, because maybe they're earbuds. Whether or not they're connected by wires to their phone should be filled with the tunes, the dulcet tones of this week in science's voices. However, you are able to help. We really, really thank you for your help. Thank you for your support. We could not do this without you. I'm alive. You're chakra and chia both growing well strong. Your cold disappeared after just nine short days. All thanks to the words on the whole earth displays. Now due to the juices and pills and the creams, the body's lost toxins, whatever that means. You've stopped eating all of that sinister food. Your dinner tastes awful, so it's got to be good. Still hope you're able to skip the guardian. I can't believe you believe in that shell. We disagree, but I still give a damn. And we are back with more this week in science. I've got a story about a virus inside us. Are you ready for this? I'm scared. Don't be scared. It's a virus that's fantastic. It's an old virus that somehow a long time ago became integrated into our DNA, and it is the virus that gives us a protein that enables us mammals to form a placenta. Sincitin is the name of the protein that is formed from this little virus's DNA that is integrated in our own. And so it's fantastic that we have it. We wouldn't really be mammals without it, right? Yeah, so this group from the University of Georgia Gopin Hagen published a study in Nature this... Gopin Hagen. Gopin Hagen, Gopin Hagen. They published a study in Nature this last week, and they're like, well, does this Sincitin influence anything else? Is it only involved in the placental formation? Because in viruses, what it does is it causes membrane fusion so that you get the host cells to fuse with another cell and then empty a virus, a viral load of DNA into the cytoplasm of another cell that it merges with. And so the Sincitin in mammals in forming the placenta has a role in cellular fusion that allows the formation of the outer layer of the placenta. We acquired it about 30 million years ago. It's fantastic. So there are a couple of forms of Sincitin and these researchers, another group from the Centre of France's, France's National Centre for Scientific Research at the Université Paris Sud. They deleted a version of Sincitin called Sincitin B from mice. They said, okay, let's just take that out of the mouse and so they're creating what's called a knockout mouse. They found that, okay, female placentas weren't forming very well in the females, but male mice weighed less than animals that had all their Sincitin. And so they're like, oh, we didn't really, maybe Sincitin has something to do with males. We didn't think so before because they'd only ever really seen it in the placenta. And so this Sincitin, they also, other previous researchers found that it is as active in immature muscle cells and mature muscle cells form through fusion of these immature muscle cells. So they found that the muscle mass was the reason for the weight difference in the males. And so this discovery finds that not only is Sincitin essential for fusion of cells for the outer layer of the placenta in females, it is a major player in the larger muscle mass production that males tend to form compared to females. So this is 30 million year old co-evolution with this virus. Yes, this virus, this viral protein that ended up in our DNA helps us a lot. It makes males more muscular, females, let's us have babies, that's fantastic. Thank you, ancient virus protein remnant in our DNA. Yes. Another piece of proof that we're just a bundle of bacteria and viruses with some protein. I know, the virus is inside us. Well, and I think it also illustrates that one of those things that we tend to think of only happening on the level of bacteria, which is that sort of information exchange of DNA taking place. Like it only happens at that sort of really primitive level. But obviously this incorporation, at least by viruses into our DNA has allowed, has allowed the human evolution to take advantage of things that could be useful. Yeah, so these incitin proteins are probably in all sorts of other, they probably function in all sorts of other areas. We just haven't figured out what they are yet. And then there are other retroviruses and there are remnants that are in our genome that we have no idea about. I mean, there's so much inside of us. It comes from other places that we have no idea. It's good. And with this discovery, look for a really, really strong, fast Russian Olympic running team. That's right. 20 years from now. Exactly. Hey, Justin, you have a story? I do. That's a few of them actually. What do you want to hear about first? How about, how about, we talk about the New Horizons spacecraft. The large red dot. No, no, we're not talking about. Did you put it already in one? This is a large reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Sharan. It looks like it has been spray painted on. And it was puzzling scientists who had no explanation for it. They could have assumed aliens did it and given any number of reasons for its meaning. Like, call it a warning of eminent destruction of Earth if research funding isn't significantly increased. But they didn't. Instead, they looked into how it got there. And they think they have solved the mystery. Sharan's polar coloring comes from Pluto. As methane gas that escapes from Pluto's atmosphere and becomes trapped by the moon's gravity and freezes to the cold icy surface at Sharan's Pole, this is followed by a chemical processing by ultraviolet light from the sun that turns form the methane into heavier hydrocarbons and eventually into reddish organic material called tholins. Who would have thought that Pluto is a graffiti artist? Spray painting its companion with a reddish stain that covers an area the size of New Mexico. Asked Will Grundy, New Horizons co-investigator from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, a zoning lead author of the paper. Every time we explore, we find surprises. Nature is amazingly inventive in using the basic laws of physics and chemistry to create spectacular landscapes. So that's pretty cool, right? This is the team combined analysis, detailed Sharan images obtained by New Horizons with computer models of how ice evolves on Sharan's poles. Mission scientists had previously speculated that methane from Pluto's atmosphere was trapped in Sharan's North Pole and slowly converted into the reddish material. But until this study, they had no models to support that theory. But this model says, yeah, you're right. That's how it happened. Awesome. And I also love some of the names of these areas. The top, the North Polar region is named Mordor macula. Mordor. And it's red, the reddish Mordor. What a bunch of nerds. Totally. Oh my goodness. Moving on from Sharan and Pluto to closer to home, how about Zamun? We like the moon. Ah, Zamun. We like the moon. Because it's close to us. We like the moon. The moon. Don't understand that, you see. Fantastic song. But I love the moon. Ah, the moon. As the spoons are for eating soup and maybe other vegetables. So anyway, la luna, the moon, there are... Now there have been hypotheses for a while that the strain of the tides caused by the pull of the moon could actually increase the magnitude of earthquake tremors. There are many, there have been hypotheses related to this for a long time. And there are questions also related to, as sea levels rise, are the tides changing and putting different pressures on the plates in a way that will change earthquakes. So... Yeah, because it's a very, it's right. I mean, you look at how big the ocean is and the mass of the water in there. And if... Like mass of water. Yeah, it's a lot of mass built up in there. And if the moon is affecting tides globally, it's sort of shifting that mass about on our surface. And you could infer that there should be some sort of influence on something. Maybe not to the degree of plate tectonics, but maybe. Right, not to the degree of plate tectonics. And it's probably one of many influences into the magnitude of earthquakes. But there's a study published in Nature Geoscience this week from a seismologist at the University of Tokyo named Satoshi Ide. And he and his colleagues investigated earthquake records in Japan, California, and the entire globe. And they looked at what happened to relative tidal stresses for 15 days leading up to the occurrence of every quake that they looked at. And they found they assigned a number to the tidal stresses and 15 was the highest amount of stress. And they found that some of the large quakes occurred pretty much at the time of the highest amount of strain due to the tides. And so this was during new and full moons. And this is the reason that the maximum tides occur at new and full moons is because it's not just the moon that's pulling on the mass of water, it's aligning up of the sun and the moon and the earth so that it's the sun's gravitational pull, the moon's gravitational pull all affecting the earth. And so they looked at like 10,000 earthquakes and they found if it was during one of these new or new or full moon periods that the earthquakes were more likely to grow from a 5.5 to over a magnitude eight. Whoa. Yeah, so. Magnitudes, we're talking. Magnitudes, we're talking, which is an exponential scale, not just a logarithmic one. And so. Yeah, and this is just, this is side note, right? But it's like a 5.5 is half the size of a 5.6, which is half the size of a half of a 5.7, which is half the size of a 5.8. Like this is, when you start talking about the difference between 6.5, 7, let alone an 8, you're talking about completely different events in terms of the energy that's being released by these tectonic movements. Yeah, so there are seismologists around who think the results are fairly plausible compared to other hypotheses about how the moon could affect earthquake strength. But like I said before, this is one of several factors that can influence what happens during a tremor and actually gets the ground moving. And so the tides are definitely not going to be the last word on things, but maybe it's another piece of information if areas that are earthquake prone, they can take advantage of this information to plan ahead during certain periods of time, kind of prepare during certain periods versus others. And so now they're going to be, they're doing additional surveys to look at other plates, other earthquakes where the crust of the earth plunges under the continental crust. So see if there's a pattern there also. Looking at lots of earthquakes, checking it out, but there seems to be a link between the pull of the moon and earthquake strength. Mm-hmm. Did you have a mooning story or I guess Sharon was your mooning story? That Sharon was the mooning story. Almost, yeah. All I've got left here is a bit of the late Cretaceous, which- Well, let's hear it. You and I may not remember too well because it happened really a long time ago, but when you think of a pterosaur, what do you think of? Pterodactyls. Right. Pterodactyls. It's a pterodactyl. Caw, caw. They have found- Like in Jurassic Park, what was it, three? That's the wing, and they had the wings. The wingspans of 30 feet, you know, we're talking like school bus, right? Just huge. Yeah, huge. So this is our picture of it. And until recently, there've been a couple that were in about eight to 10 foot range where the smallest they've found. But this, this fragmentary fossil they just discovered, roughly 77 million years old, found in British Columbia. This is a Canadian pterosaur, okay? Had a wingspan of just, what would that be? One and a half meters at three, four, like four feet? Five feet? Yeah, four and a half, five feet. It's pretty close, they say, to that of a bald eagle. That's adorable. I wanna put bracelets and jesses on that and wear it on my arm. Right? Can you imagine this at the zoo? Like this would be a zooable dinosaur, right? Yeah. Little pterosaur sitting on your sleeve, and this is bladed, bladed, and you can touch it, but just with a closed hand, or I don't want any fingers out there. There we go. I love this. A zooable dinosaur. That is a new- A zooable dinosaur. It's a new category of dinosaur. I'm excited. So cute. Look at it next to the cat. I want that on my wall. Cat wants to eat the pterosaur for dinner. This is an actual figure from the study discussion to show that the size, we've got an image of a profile of a black cat looking at the profile of this tiny pterosaur, and it's pretty cute. Pretty cute. Kitty cats and pterosaurs. Fortovan. Kitty. I love it. Kitty cats and pterosaurs. Yeah. Tiny, that's cool. That's great. That's totally- So let's change the pterosaur. Yeah, maybe let's not bring back mammoths. Let's bring back tiny pterosaurs. Oh, we'll bring them back too. If I ever become by accident somehow a billionaire, if I were a billionaire, I would attempt Jurassic Park. I definitely would. I'm not surprised at all. I would make that happen. No question. I might stay away from velociraptors. I think lessons can be learned from sci-fi. But now we know the T-Rex is a scavenger, so they're not gonna hunt. So they're- Unless there's nothing to scavenge. See, it's one of those things. Like, I think they would adapt to a different scenario if need be. But yeah, I think a T-Rex probably would be fine. And a proper enclosure. Haleo dude wants us to bring a catsocotalyst instead. There we go, catsocotalyst. You know, like a pterosaur that's the size of a bus. Right. So that one might be a bit harder to just build the enclosure. But you know what? If I'm a billionaire, what's- You've got an island. Just put it on an island. It's a bigger bird cage. But now, like, this would be a very manageable zoo dinosaur. And I would also definitely bring back all of the megafauna, you know, the giant sloth, the mastodon. The giant grump sloth? Yeah, that'd be great. Wouldn't it? Giant lemur would be very cool. Giant lemur would be great. Okay, giant lemur. Oh, the eight foot tall penguins? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Those we definitely need to get in there. I love the bird. Hey, Blair, you were segueing with giant lemurs, but you've got a story about dwarf lemurs here. I do! So let's talk about that. And it's so fun. So hibernation, it's not sleep, despite what you might think and what cartoons might tell you. Hibernation is a lowering of your metabolism and a lowering of your body temperature. Depending on how you define it, bears don't hibernate. They go through winter sleep because they don't lower their body temperature very much at all. Most true hibernators lower their body temperature as much as 10 degrees Celsius. That is a pretty intense drop in body temperature. Dwarf lemurs, I'm gonna attempt to say the genus and species, shirogaleus medius. That's the CH in the front. They're in Madagascar, of course, because that's where lemurs live. And they are the first ever to be found to sleep while in hibernation. They found this out by, yeah. They sleep while they're hibernating. Yes. So they're reducing their metabolism and hibernating and then they're like, I think I'm gonna take a nap. Now I'm gonna wake up. I'm still hibernating. And they found this by monitoring their blood pressure by monitoring their body temperature, their breathing rate, their metabolic rate. But then they also monitored brain waves and eye movement so that they could test for rapid eye movement, for REM. And they noted that the most typically occurred when the ambient temperature was above 30 degrees Celsius. 30 degrees Celsius is pretty warm. And we usually think about animals hibernating in the cold, but these guys hibernate in the cold. These guys hibernate in the warmth, which is, this is actually the species that I talked about just a few weeks ago that could wake up from hibernation when they smelled burning over this. And so these guys are the very same. Smells like burning. Yeah. Am I having a stroke or is the forest on fire? Yeah, and so these are the very same guys that they're also unusual because they hibernate due to drought, not due to cold temperatures. That's interesting. So all of this makes them unusual, but it also is very unusual, but interesting because they sleep while hibernating. So this is something that we might have to look closer for another species, or it's possible the dwarf lemur is just unusual in this ability, but still a pretty cool find. So, wait, some more. And it could tell us more. Hibernate aren't sleeping? Right. Hibernation is not sleep. You lose all muscle control. Yeah. You're completely immobilized. It's almost like people who go through sleep paralysis. It's more like that. So can you still have dreams? Well, are you happy? No. No, because you're not having rapid eye movement. Wow. So your body temperature lowers several degrees Celsius. Your metabolism slows down so that you have maybe a quarter of the heart rate that you had. So you can't, there's not enough blood circulating through your body to be able to have your brain doing much. So the bear, when they, I, Bears don't hibernate if they sleep, and that's why they wake up and they can be cranky bears if they wake up early. Bears go through winter sleep. I was having a good dream and you woke me up. Bears just sleep for a long time because there's not a lot of food, but their metabolism and body temperature don't drop enough for it to be considered hibernation. So next time somebody says a bear is hibernating, or that the hibernating bear, I go, no, stop, bear is not hibernating. I mean, if you want to sound kind of like a snooty jerk, yeah, I give you that power. Okay. Thank you. Because that's what I was coming for. Yeah, actually, technically. It's like saying, it's not hibernating, it's called a clet. Just a very long nap, that's really what's going on. Hibernation cares low heart rate, no REM sleep, where the bears can dream, man. Don't you understand anything about the world? Think about the world. How drunk are you guys? Do you know? Getting there, working on it. I'm a zero. I'm a zero too. But you know what? According to- I would make it a zero. According to a recent paper in BMC Public Health, a bunch of researchers went to bars and clubs in Cardiff, Wales, and which is a fairly bar and club heavy area that they went to. And they spent their evenings between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. They went to a bunch of neighborhoods and every seventh person they ran into or saw, they asked them if they would take a survey. And then they asked people these questions. How drunk are you right now? On a scale of one, totally sober, to 10, completely drunk. Two, how extreme has your drinking been tonight? On a scale of one, not at all to 10, completely extreme. Three, if you drank as much as you have tonight every week, how likely is it that you will damage your health in the next 15 years? So one, definitely will not. To 10, definitely will scale. Four, and finally, if you drank as much as you have tonight every week, how likely is it that you will get cirrhosis of the liver in the next three years? Way to kill a buzz. On a one, definitely will not to 10, definitely will scale. And basically the turnout of this study is that drunk people have absolutely no idea how drunk they are. Shock, shock and awe. But the interesting thing that came out of this is that drunk people judge their drunkenness and the health consequences of their drunkenness, of their drinking, based on the social environments that they're in. And so they ended up doing a statistical analysis and they found that, I quote, it appears that drinkers are more self-aware of their own level of intoxication when in the presence of those who are sober, and they will judge their drunkenness based on the least drunk person in a group. So Justin, are you like an ape? Cause you're with so many sober people right now. Wait, oh, oh, it's interesting. So they would say, I thought they would go the other way. I figured you would say, well, nobody else seems to be swaying about her staggering. So I must be in good company. So I must be as drunk as they are. Well, I didn't think about that. Have you ever run into someone from work that you weren't expecting to see when you've been out and had a couple? And then- Like Karen? Like Karen. Karen. Karen, why are you always showing up at my favorite bar, Karen? And then you realize you're like, am I slurring my words a little bit? Am I, did I use that word wrong? I feel like don't you get super self-conscious when you're in into someone that you weren't expecting to see who is sober if you've had even one drink? Well, yeah, I think I would if it were like two o'clock in the afternoon. I think that I would be like, oh, I should try to really maintain. But I think if I'm like out at a bar, I don't think I would be like, oh, hey, what's going on? Yo, we're at a bar, what are you doing? Oh, yeah, this guy from work, he worked with this guy. He's totally a work, work, work guy. Yeah, come on, we got you a drink, come on. Like, I don't think, I think if you've been drinking and you're in a social drinking atmosphere, I don't think you should care that much about the etiquette at work place. You don't think yet, but people based on their finding, basically people judge how drunk they are based on the people that they're hanging out with, their peer group. And as Annalie knew it, that's in this Art's Technica article, if everyone around a drunk person were blackout drunk, an extremely inebriated person would consider himself relatively sober. And a tipsy person with sober people would be very conscious of being drunk. Right, they're not mixed. Like Claire was just commenting on. I wonder if it's cultural, if there's a cultural bias here. So this was done in Great Britain where maybe people are very focused on being polite and maybe in certain areas where there's a certain social side to being the drunkest person at the bar. She can state. Right, and so from this study, because this is a group working on trying to figure out how to improve public health, they think that maybe it would behoove bars to kind of just have token sober people. Instead of having the sober driver, you just have the sober person at the bar. That's the bartender, isn't it? That's the one that I can get. But wouldn't that hurt sales at the bar? That was my first thought as well. So it's not necessarily in the bar's best interest. Well, a lot of this self-reporting too, it's got to be sort of self-reporting. It's the environment there. And I know people who, if they've gone out for an evening and had three drinks, that was the extreme end of the drinkest that they've been. And I have other concerts that I hang out with that once you've gotten through your first six pack, now you're starting to drink. It depends on the environment of people you're hanging out with, how you would judge what is a lot or not a lot of drinking. That's exactly what this is saying. It's the people you're with. The people you're with, how you judge it. And I would like to thank the people I'm with for another great show. Thanks, you guys. This is a good show. I'm so happy to be back. Yeah, Blair, glad you're back safely from your zoo adventures in Southern California. Looks like I saw your social media feeds. They looked fantastic. And I'd also like to say thank you to all of our Patreon sponsors. Thank you to Chris Clark, Paul Disney, Dave Freidel, John Ratnaswamy, Richard Onimus, Byron Lee, EO, Jared Lysette, Ulysses Adkins, Kevin Parachan, Andy, Keith Corsale, Jake Jones, Eric Schwalb, Bob Calder, Mark Masaros, Ed Dyer, Trader 84, Brian Hedrick, Cassie Lester, Layla Marshall-Clark, Charlene Henry, Don Camarage, Galeria Garcia, Randy Mazzucca, Tony Steele, Steve DeBell, Haroon Sarang, Melissa Mosley, Alex Wilson, Jason Schneiderman, Rudy Garcia, Greg Guthman, Dave Neighbor, Jason Dozier, Matthew Litwin, Eric Knapp, Jason Roberts, Craig Landon, Daryl Lambert, Rodney, David Wiley, Robert Aston Cosmic, Gypsy, Brian Hone, Orly Radio, Brian Condren, Pixelfly Marked, Nathan Greco, Hexator, Debra Smith, Mitch Neves, Flying Out, John Crocker, Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer, Ben Rothick, Sillin Westby, Ardiyam Shuwata, Dave Wilkinson, Steve Mishinsky, Rick Ray, Muscarrey, Swinsburg, Phil Nadeau, Braxton Howard, Saugud Sam, Matt Sutter, Emma Grenier, Phillip Shane, James Dobbson, Kurt Larson, Stefan Insan, Michael George, Russell Jensen, Mountain Sloth, Jim Drapeau, Tara Payne, John Maloney, Jason Olds, James Paul West, Alec Dodia, Lou Malama, Joe Wheeler, Dougal Campbell, Craig Porter, Adam Mishkawn, Aaron Luthon, Marjorie Paul Stanton, David Simerly, Tyler Harrison, and Colombo Ahmed. Thank you for all of your support on Patreon. If you're interested in supporting us, you can find more information at patreon.com slash this week in science. And remember, you can help us out just by telling your friends about twists. So maybe tell three people about twists this week. That could help us out a lot. And on next week's show, once again, we're gonna be broadcasting live online at 8 p.m. Pacific Time on twist.org slash live. You can watch and join our chat room there. There's so much fun going on in the chat room all the time. Don't worry, if you don't make it, you can find our past episodes at twist.org slash YouTube or just twist.org. Thank you for enjoying the show. Twist is, of course, also available as a podcast. Just Google this week in science in your iTunes directory or if you have one of those mobile-type devices. You can look for twist, the number four, Droid app in the Android Marketplace or for this week in science in anything Apple Marketplace-y. And for more information on anything that you've heard here today, you'll be able to find some show notes on our website. Yeah, that's www.twist.org. There, you can also make other comments and start conversations with the hosts or other listeners. Or you can just contact us directly. Email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekin science.com Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or Blair at BlairBaz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S Somewhere in the subject line or your email will be spam-filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at Twiscience, at Dr. Kiki, at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Magery. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview at Haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week. And we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you have learned anything from the show, remember... It's all in your head. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science, it's the end of the world. So I'm setting up shop, got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in, I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device. I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand. And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. This Week in Science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth. It's this Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. Science. Science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That's what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just let understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy. This Week in Science is coming your way. So everybody listen to everything we say. And if you use our methods, better roll it or die. We may rid the world of toxoplasma. Got the eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye. Because it's this Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. I've got a laundry list of items I want to address. From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness, I'm trying to promote more rational thought. And I'll try to answer any question you've got. So how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour a week? This Week in Science is coming your way. You better just listen to what we say. And if you learn anything from the words that we've said, then please just remember it's all in Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. Science. Science. 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! And once again, we have come to the end of another This Week in Science episode. We hope you have enjoyed your tour of Science for the week, and that you will go into the following week more sciency in your outlook. Welcome to the post-show. I have a code in my node. I did the node, I did the code, I did the sniffles. Uh! Uh! Well, now, I made it through the episode. Yes! I still have to finish a presentation I'm giving tomorrow. No! Uh! Yay, back to school! I thought I was doing really well. Oh, no. Tomorrow's gonna be fun. I have to come across as... Happy? Perky? Good presenter? Try not to have bloodshot eyes and a sniffly nose and... We'll figure it all out when I get there. Figure it out. Always figure things out. I can do that. I can figure it out. How was your zoo trip? It was great. So, um, it was the annual meeting of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Yeah. Which, this was my first time going, so that was really great. And it was in San Diego, so I got to check out the San Diego Zoo, and I went to SeaWorld too, so I'll be sure to mention that, well, Justin's not here. And, um, I also went to the Birch Aquarium, which was awesome. Sweet. Yeah, and, uh, let me think. What were my big takeaways? So, um, I learned about this amazing study. Do I have it out somewhere? Oh, I think maybe I do. Let's say yes. Okay, it's about. So, the, I think it was the Dallas Zoo. Hold on. I was looking at all the poster presentations, because that's obviously what I should do at the AZA conference. Um, so, uh, yes, the Dallas Zoo conducted studies, and I didn't read the entire study. I read the poster, but I do have a link to the actual study, so I'll, like, look further into it. But basically, what they did is they exposed visitors to what they called, um, positive animal interaction, which was basically hugging goats. That was their scientific way of saying hugging goats. So, they had random randomized individual hug goats, and then throughout the day paid attention to if they donated to conservation, if they said they were willing to make changes about saving the environment in their personal life. They found that overall, it made them more receptive. Huh. So, basically, right, yeah, you're priming them with oxytocin is what you're doing, which we've done a lot of, we've talked about a lot of different research based on oxytocin priming. So, they did what they called this, you know, exposure to the goats, so basically hugging goats, and then whether they were willing to pledge to support some cause or make some behavior change, and then giving money. And it was statistically significant. They gave more money, they pledged to change things more often. I thought it was fascinating, and it's, it's such a good reminder when I know anecdotally and deep down inside that zoos do positive work for the environment, for conservation, for science, and for endangered species. But it's always nice to see the data, I guess, because I am a scientist at heart, right? So, when they do studies on people's understanding of environments and ecosystem services and all these kinds of things based on having visited a zoo or an aquarium, and that positive result is a great thing to see. Also, at this conference, I was getting trained to help lead my own regional climate change training in the spring, which I'm really excited for. And it's through this thing that I've talked about a million times on the show, NOKI, the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation. So, that's the, the big thing that I went through that lasted like three or four months, and I flew back to Boston a bunch of times. I'm sure you remember that. So, back when I did that, I became this, you know, certified through this process. And since then, in very intense evaluation, now by testing visitors at zoos and aquariums, they can identify the zoos and aquariums that have had management staff go through the NOKI training. Oh, that's interesting. Well, yeah, huge. It just changes the way that the zoo itself communicates. Right. And it changes the way they train their part-time staff, too. It changes everything about how they talk about conservation issues, and particularly climate change. So, the fact that you can pull visitors and know whether two people at an entire institution have gone through this specialized training, that's awesome. That's real change because you hope that you're, you're imparting this information to somebody who trains people, who teaches people, and it's kind of this upside-down pyramid, right? Kind of this fan-out of information. You hope that that's going to happen, but you don't know if trickle-down ever actually works, right, until you test it, depending on the subject. So, in this case, it totally worked. So, knowing that and then in this case, just the interaction, the physical interaction of being able to be up close with animals and then that primes you chemically to be more relaxed because you're like touching the goats and you're having nice, happy goat time and you're like, these are awesome goats and then the oxytocin is there and you've also got the opioid system relaxing you. And it's kind of an empathy primer too, right? So, it gives you the ability to be able to picture why these things are important, despite our very busy, kind of removed lives that we sometimes have. That's why these places still exist and that was really meaningful. And then the last thing, I was talking to you a little bit about right before the show, which there were a bunch of stories this week in the news about it, but I couldn't get into it on the show. It would be like a half-an-hour conversation, so I just didn't even want to get into it. But the threatened species commissioner in Australia, he spoke at this conference at one of the general sessions about the fact that I think it's like 30% of their land mammals are endangered and it's all happened since, you know, European humans came to Australia and it's because of feral cats. Cats! Oh, yeah. This is a global problem once again, people. Yeah, and it's because of the world. There has never been a felid on the continent of Australia until we brought feral cats. And they go out into the bush of Australia where there are no humans. And for example, one 6-kilogram cat that they caught had a 5.3-kilogram walleroo in its belly. What? Yeah, that cat had made your goals. So they're very effective at what they do, cats, and so if they're put into an environment where animals aren't afraid of cats because they've never seen a cat, that's a problem. This is the thing that's really cool though, is that this threatened species commissioner helped raise funding and supported the development of this new technology. He calls it, what did he call it? The cat paintball box? So it's this box that has a sensor on it. I don't know exactly. Cats with paintballs? Kind of, hold on. So it's like a, I don't know what kind of sensors they use. I'm assuming it's a camera that can analyze shapes of things. But if you're a bilby and you hop by, it does nothing. If you're a numbat and you wander by, it does nothing. If you're a kangaroo and you wander by, it does nothing. If you're a dog and you wander by, it does nothing. If you're a human and you wander by, it does nothing. But if you're a cat and you wander by, it shoots this little pellet at you that's like a paint gun pellet. And it doesn't hurt them right away, but it has, I think it has an, it's an anti-venom that I think has a neurotoxin in it. And, but it was developed from this anti-venom. And so when the cats groom themselves later, it just slows down their heartbeat and they die. And, and they want to develop it so that there's an additional element that is a microchip scanner. So that if you have a domestic cat in the area, cause right now it's only in the wilderness, but they want to be able to put them just outside cities and you're supposed to keep your cats inside in Australia because this is a problem. And so then if the cat wanders by and they read the microchip, it doesn't shoot the deadly paintball but it does send information back and that house gets a, a citation. Oh, that's great. So I'm very terrified about an autonomous robot shooting neurotoxins. It's not an autonomous robot. It is. It's an automated system. It's an automated system firing neurotoxin at things that go by. I don't like that idea at all. I do like the idea of, I mean, you know, cats are an invasive species. They're much like the cane toad is to Australia. Yeah, cane toads are a big deal. Yeah. And because, because of this sort of protected status of domesticated animal, because we like them and we don't like cane toads, they're viewed completely differently. But if it's an invasive species that's doing more damage than humans, then, then we, if it does the same damage as humans, I guess we shouldn't complain too much, but we do a lot of damage. So we should get rid of even things that do less damage than us. But, yeah, there was, there've been islands, I think, around there. I don't know if New Zealand was the one that lost a lot of its flight was birds, because cats might have been rats that came aboard ship for the, that offloaded. New Zealand also has a massive feral cat problem with their endangered species. Yeah. So these are, these are places where cats weren't. So everything that evolved there evolved without them. So yes, Fata, homo sapiens aren't invasive species, but we have an affinity towards them, because we are them. We are people. So we are conquerors of the earth. We admit it. We won, but, but I don't think we, I don't think it's, it's sufficient to give cats that same protected status in places where they're devastating to the environment. And, you know, if you, you've got your cat lovers who will put in feral cat shelters here and around Davis. And then you have your, your, your aviary fans who lobby against them because they want more birds in the backyards and want less cats out there. So this is, you know, there's, there's other ideas. It's, it's, well, okay. So in Tasmania, which is an island, they have officially collectively decided, okay, no more cats. We'll see if it lasts. Cats have caused such a huge problem on Tasmania. Like, the cats have caused a huge problem there. Yeah. Yeah. So they've decided no more cats. People who have cats, as long as they're neutered or spayed are allowed to keep them until their end times. But otherwise you can't, they're not so, nobody's supposed to be getting more cats in Tasmania. Let's, let's, let's agree to get rid of all the cats. Look, we have documented sufficiently behavior to entertain anybody for several lifetimes on the interwebs now. We no longer need more cats. We've, we've documented them. Their role in society is secure and history, but it's maybe time to move on. Can we find a different pet to replace cats? What would you suggest Blair as a good dogs? No, no, not dogs. Dogs are, dogs are terrible. Dog owners are the worst people too. Cause they take the, this is, you missed this. This is my rant last week about how they take their dogs to the park and let them run up, run kids and stuff as though they, You can't have a pet if you can't take care, if you can't be responsible, then you can have nothing. And they aren't, people who have dogs aren't. But here's the thing. The one thing you could have, I think, is a goat. You can have a goat. We should all have goats instead of cats and dogs. So another, another interesting study this week that we didn't really, that we didn't talk about. There's a new species of tool using crow that's been discovered. What? It's the Hawaiian crow. That's so cool, the Hawaiian crow, that's it. But it's extinct in the wild. Doo-doo, dun-dun-dun, predators. Which would be like cats and rats and things. And also, you know, human use of land and stuff. But. Oh, strengths, llamas. Yeah, we could all have llamas. That'd be cool. Hawaiian crows using tools. They're only in like zoos now though. Well, they've only shown it in captivity. It's hard to, yeah. Well, I don't know if it's hard to, on account of having seen it in the wild across the species, uh, elsewhere. I think, I mean, at this point. Species are subspecies. That's the question. This is a species. It's a species. It's a species. Yeah. But this is, and so this is, this is also, it's, I mean, I think, especially just listening to, to this show, we can assume that all crows anywhere. Crows, ravens that, what do they call it? Candidate, candidates. Corbiday. Corbids. Corbids. That the corbids everywhere are. What's it mean? Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Corb, never mind. That these are really smart birds and that they're going to have this sort of behavior wherever they go. Yeah. And it could be, I mean, maybe not all of them have the behavior, but whether or not it's shown in captivity shows that there is some proclivity for the learning of the behavior at a certain point. So it's whether or not it appeared de novo in the crow's mind. Right. I need a tool and I will use it. Oh, pigs. I would love to have like a little potbellied pig. That would be a good tool. Oh my God. Strengths, sugar gliders are one of the worst pets you can ever have. Don't you dare say that again. What's a sugar glider? They're super cute. Oh, they're super cute. Pigs, aren't they intelligent? They're smart. What's a sugar glider? They are a type of possum. Oh, possum. They have big eyes and they're cute. They're not what you're picturing, Justin. Those are sugar gliders. No, I'm talking about potbellied pigs is what I said. Look at this. They got that. No, but strength is sugar gliders. And it is the worst idea I've ever had. So sugar glider or have ever heard. So the sugar gliders have pointed sharp outward sticking incisors. It's basically like they have a dagger on the top and bottom of their mouth. And they use it to dig a hole in through tree bark to get the sap, which is why they're called sugar gliders. But that also means they bite so hard. They will bite through a raptor glove. Wow. Wow. That's a that's a big good bite. How do I know that? Because you've been bitten. Yeah, it's terrible and people have them as pets. And I see them like perched on people's shoulders like licking their ear. And it just I can't handle. Look at the little incisors on that middle. Yeah, there you go. The sharp little teeth. Look at this. And I don't want to see the sugar glider. Also like a terrible and are very loud at night. Twit refugee. How dare you? Is this animals just don't like you play grass? That's not true. How many animals have you been bitten by? I don't know. But I've worked with over 200 species. That's not counting individuals. So I would say I've probably only been bit species wise by like 5% of the animal species I've worked with. Which would be then 10. Yeah, probably. Probably. I got bit when I went to the visit you at the zoo. Oh, by the Auschwitz. Biting you got gummed. Well, if they really wanted it, they could have. I didn't really realize at the time that the ostriches don't have teeth. So I was. Birds don't have teeth, Justin. Come on. No, I know, but he was snapping. And then when he got a hold of my finger, I like screamed. Ah, and then realized, oh, that really didn't hurt at all. But he was very snappy. She, she, she, she, she. Don't be so she, she, huh? The trick is to bite them first. Yeah. That's how they know. Yeah. I would say if you don't want to have a dog, get a goat. That would be my. Or don't have an animal. Yes. I would. Yeah. That's my first choice is just don't get anything. I seem to have riled Dave right out. He wants he wants to pay money to see an ostrich beat me up because of my cat coming. You are not a great pet. Strengths. Strengths. You have the worst pet ideas. Just stop it. Oh my gosh. So. Dara has been assaulted by a giraffe. Yes. Actually. I really was. Actually. That's the other thing that maybe animals don't like me. That giraffe. Did not was really sweet to my kids. I was really sweet to my kids. I was really sweet to my kids. I was really sweet to my kids. I was really sweet to my kids. But kept trying to smack me with its neck. The male. The one that we were feeding bananas to. Just kept kept. Just like five years ago. I don't remember. What were you going to ask me? You're going to ask me. Fishbowl. Fishbowl Blair. Every five years it's a full reset on your memory. I don't remember what witch giraffe you were. I didn't ask you which one. I asked a witch giraffe. But it was trying to get. Kiki. I was going to make a response to what you said in the chat room right before we finished talking about giraffes earlier. What female giraffes do to find out if it's time to meet with a female? Yes. My link. Yes. What I shared in the chat room. What female giraffes do. I don't know if we've talked about it before or not. I don't think we have. It's all hormones. Basically a male wants to find out whether or not a female is in heat. They go through what's called the FLEMEN process. The male licks the female's rear parts. Then the female pees on his mouth. Then he scents the pea. Tastes the pea and scents the pea. We know that taste and smell are intermingled. The FLEMEN response determines whether or not the hormones are present for the female to be in heat and receptive for childbearing. I didn't realize. I found female giraffes pee in the male giraffes mouth. That's true for a lot of hoof mammals, but also a lot of felids, a lot of cats. When I was a zookeeper and I worked with the snow leopards, I had to observe the snow leopards because you never want to put snow leopards together who are not ready to be together because they're extremely solitary. You don't want to let them in together if the female is in heat because she will tear him apart otherwise. I would have to make observations all day on how many times I would see the FLEMEN response from the male, which would mean that the female would mark her territory. He would get a whiff of it and then he would go... The FLEMEN. And then I would make... It's like they're wine tasters. I've seen wine tasters do that. Yeah. Oh, it's the same. So it actually is supposed to improve the vomeronasal organ. The vomeronasal organ. Located above the roof of the mouth via adduct, which exits just behind the front teeth. Yes, and the vent, it's usually used for reproductive purposes, but the vomeronasal organ is known for pheromone detecting in mammals. And there's a question as to whether or not people have one somewhere in here still because we can sense, sense, but can we really sense them the same way that other mammals do? And do we assume that we sense them, or don't sense them in the way that animals do, because maybe we do, but maybe the animals might not know that they're sensing it, but their brain then just kicks into, oh, here's what happens now. Maybe our brain just clicks into, here's what happens now, unbeknownst to us, because the brain is doing things on our behalf or pushing us towards or away from things constantly without our conscious knowledge of it anyhow. Now I'm just giving you turtles eating a flower. Oh my gosh! Baby sea turtle or baby tortoises. There we go, tortoise hatchlings. Look at those little Russian tortoises. Little baby tortoises eating a hibiscus flower. That's pretty cute. Aren't they cute? Oh my goodness. Gaffbecks, brains don't always care what you want. This is true. It's an abusive relationship, but it's an evolutionary hierarchy. You're not supposed to be in charge of your brain. This is a major hack job, this whole human intelligence thing. We hack the brain and can seek out different stimuli as we choose consciously, despite what the brain might be trying to get us to do. To some degree. But on the other hand, the brain still has this hierarchical control over things like hunger, sleep, sex, reward systems. They're an extent, but we hack it all the time. Hack it, hack it, hack it. Alright you guys, it's 10 o'clock. I need to go because I still have to work on my presentation tonight and get some sleep and do the things that I'm supposed to do. Tomorrow's going to be a day of decongestants and coffee. I see it already. It's going to be one heck of a presentation. Here we go. Here we go. Can nobody buy any exotic pets while we're gone? Yeah, no buying ocelots. Or cappabars. Cappabars, yeah, no ROUSs. You guys, thanks again for a great show. Thanks everyone in the chat room for hanging out. Thank you Minions. I hope you all have a wonderful week. And we'll be back again next week just like we usually are. I can't think of anything else in the intervening time. Yeah, hopefully next week. The cold will all be gone. I'll be good. Yeah, I'm sure. I'll rest. And I'll be all rested and happy. And I'll be like, ta-da. But I did get my hair dead. All right. Say goodnight, Kiki. Good night, Kiki. Good night, Blair. Goodnight, Blair. Say goodnight, Robo Justin. Goodnight, Robo Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night. It's cute. It's cute. Perfect. Good night.