 This is Twis. This Week in Science, episode number 590, recorded on Wednesday, October 26, 2017. There was no patient zero. Hey, everybody. I'm Dr. Kiki. And tonight on This Week in Science, we are going to fill your heads with lots of noise, parasites, and aliens. But first... Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The best evidence yet for aliens is that there are other planets, possibly inhabitable in a way we think that life may inhabit them and that the number of these planets is not few and that the conditions for habitability are not unique. Because in the universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies with 76 billion stars, there are so many possibilities that life on more than one planet is highly probable. And while our cosmic cousins are not likely or are likely out there somewhere, it does not mean that we should claim that they have secretly fiddled with the formation of our civilization, just because some people can't comprehend how we got from knuckle-dragging apes to This Week in Science. Coming up next... ...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 to kick in there. And good science to you, Justin Blair and everyone out there. If you're watching or listening to the show right now, it is twist-a-ween. At least where we are. We might be a few days early, but is the season right? And twist the season. Or spooky. That too. Twist the season of Halloween. Twist-a-ween, exactly. I brought all sorts of science news. I hope you all brought it too. I've got promising prosthetics, patient zero truth, and aliens. What do you have for us, Justin? I've got creepy crawlies, parasitic plants, headless dinosaurs, and why bug eating isn't gross. Not gross. Not gross. I've never seen haunted house I've ever been to. Maybe it doesn't consider any animal. Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I brought two different animals driven to the edge of madness and devils. Devils outsmarting death. Wow. Wow, the intro to this show is so creepy. I hope people can make it through the intro and keep listening because I think it's going to be a great show. Let's jump right in. We've got to start with aliens. Because is it aliens? It has to be aliens. It's usually aliens. Consensus. Well, it's not necessarily the consensus. So there is an article that has been published in the archive .org entitled Discovery of Peculiar. Let's see if I can read this. Discovery of Peculiar Periodic Spectral Modulations in a Small Fraction of Solar-Type Stars by an E.F. Bora, an E.Tradier from Laval University in Canada. They use data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to analyze the spectra of 2.5 million stars. And of those stars, they found that 234 of those stars have a periodicity, a signal in their light frequency. And it just so happens that that spectral frequency matches up very nicely with these F2 to K1 type stars which are very similar to the sun. Dun, dun, dun. So of course they think that they've got an E.T. signal. I mean, it's aliens. You've got stars. It is an extraterrestrial signal. It's an extra, but it's not they're saying extraterrestrial. They're saying evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. And the reason that they say this is that one of the authors of this particular article, Bora, published in 2012, an article predicting a particular signal for extraterrestrial intelligence that would be caused possibly by other intelligences in space looking to meet other intelligences in space. You know, it's a lot like Tinder. Put out a laser signal, swipe right, swipe left. You've got a signal. Anyway, the light fluctuation fits into this kind of predicted range for a pulsation of a laser. Pulses of light separated by constant time intervals and basically the question is, you know, they set out to find. They predicted this and said if aliens are shining lasers into space to find other aliens then we're going to have to look for this kind of a signal. Let's go into the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, look at stars and see if we can find it. And they found it. So it was kind of like they found what they were looking for in the data. But that is to say also, you know, they looked at 2.5 million stars. So maybe this is a real signal. However, it's very interesting that SETI and the breakthrough effort that's going to be listening, the breakthrough listen at UC Berkeley, they're going to be listening in space for evidence of aliens. They said, well, this spectral signal might be worth something. And let me quote from the response that was written on October 11 from Breakthrough Listen. They say there are the 1 in 10,000 objects with unusual spectra seen by Bora and Trottier are certainly worthy of additional study. However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is too early to unequivocally attribute these purported signals to the activities of extraterrestrial civilizations internationally agreed upon protocols for searches for evidence of advanced life beyond Earth. SETI require candidates to be confirmed by independent groups using their own telescopes and for all natural explanations to be exhausted before invoking extraterrestrial agents as an explanation. Careful work must be undertaken to determine false positive rates to rule out natural and instrumental explanations and most importantly to confirm detections using two or more independent telescopes. So basically they say on a scale of like one to ten, this results is right now basically a zero or a one on the significant scale of one. One is very significant. Zero is much, much less significant. That's pretty wide scale there still. Yeah, so the people who are busily looking for aliens have looked at this study and said, that's nice. That's a nice little study you put out there. Okay, we might look at those stars. We'll add a few of them to our survey but basically need more telescopes. Sorry, you can't just say but it's aliens. You can't just say. However this is this show that we do is one part is sort of just the weekly science new stuff, right? There's another thing that we do I feel like is going to be archived well for history, which is if you can go back 100 years and 150, 200 years and listen to people talking about cutting edge science, you'd also learn a lot about what their view of the world, what they think is possible what the perception is of the future of science. It would be as though we were listening in on science from a couple hundred years ago and people were like Mom McGillicuddy has come up with a new solve. Here's more than just rickets. Someday there'll be a solve you can put on your chest for everything. Okay, that's where they thought it was going more solves. We have that, it's called Vapor Rub, right? Yeah, it's pretty great stuff. So there's an element of whenever we do hear one of these stories that we're going to be archived by future people who are having trade deals going through with the alien extraterrestrials who are like back then they just thought it was tomfoolery that they're going to talk like olden time people through that's going to come closer. Mom McGillicuddy wouldn't be able to get her intergalactic solves if it wasn't for alien connection, but those yahoo's in the olden times didn't believe it was really that possible. So this this first contact if it ever is possible or not it wouldn't be necessarily contact but reception of a signal from an intelligent alien species is going to be just like this. Extremely dubious right? It's not something that we're going to just, well some people go aha it's aliens they have a whole lot of stuff but the scientific community is constantly going to be like you really got to prove that one. You really need some seriously strong proof signal. We want video. Everything needs extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and you can't just run out and say I looked at some stars and some of them spin differently than others and so aliens. You can't just say that. You have to really rigorously prove or disprove all the other alternatives before everyone will start to get on board with you and that's the thing is that they went through archive and they are very sure of what they've come up with. They've said, we looked at this this this and so we can count them out but other people have gone in and said you know I don't think so and Seth Shostak in an email to another science writer over at astronomy.com went so far as to say a lot of people didn't even think this paper should get published at all. So that's why they went to the archive. I mean it's just it's not good it's not complete science and so now people are coming out. It's gotten media because this is a media attentioning story. It's like oh aliens are out there right. Everybody wants that but no science. Science first. However they could be right. They could be. And moving on. Moving on. That's how it's going to be. It's not going to be a giant saucer-shaped ship hovering over Washington. That we go. Now we have the first evidence. Romulans. It's going to be something really subtle. It's going to be something with a lot of dubious signal and noise. Like dolphins. Exactly. No I'm kidding. I thought that was a transition. I didn't. I brought a story about dubious. The dubious nature of communication and media. Do you guys know patient zero? Not personally but have you heard the story? I have. Patient zero is supposedly somebody who was what's the word when you have a lot of partners. Permiscuous. Permiscuous to a magnitude of I'm going to set the record for being the most person on the planet. And supposedly this person was basically the first person with HIV or the one that was the epicenter of the outbreak epidemic in the Americas. Yes. But that whole story is wrong. The whole story is wrong. This guy, he was never even called patient zero by any of the researchers who were working on his case. It's a very interesting story. NPR has run the story and there are others. You can find the whole story in nature where it has been published by a number of authors working on it. 1970s and patient zero HIV one genomes illuminate early HIV AIDS history in America in this nature article the researchers have gone back and looked at the early genomes the HIV one genomes. The strains from whence North American HIV epidemic came and they determined that no there was never there was never a patient zero there were a number of people in the United States at about the same time who were infected had multiple partners and the spread of the disease occurred as a result of the this whole thing is an urban legend? Yes, so let me tell you where it comes from. There was a book written by a journalist Randy Schilts who used a study that took place in LA it was called the LA cluster study where researchers were trying to get people in the homosexual community around that time to talk about their partners name their partners and basically form and create the network of where the disease had started and to try and figure out how the disease was spreading and why it was spreading. He wrote a book called and the band played on and it's a best selling book where it was on the AIDS crisis and he got fascinated by this patient called patient zero and Schilts tracked him down and basically made him out to be something of a villain in the book this guy who was going around infecting other rats. Supposedly the patient zero knew that they were infected and was willfully ignoring their own vectorness. Yeah, so it's always made that patient zero sound like the most horrible person on the planet ever. Yeah, and so what has come out is actually the CDC was investigating in Los Angeles interviewing these men for the names of their contacts to be able to find the historical links between them. One of the men was called case 057. He was an airline employee. He was a steward on airlines and so he was flying across the country and he was having in every city he went to having sexual contacts and some of his partners developed symptoms of AIDS after he did which would be expected. The CDC used a coding system because of their sequence case 057 because he was all over the place and he kept ending up because he was very promiscuous. He kept ending up in different like he couldn't be categorized as an LA identity. He couldn't be categorized as a New York identity. He became known as outside of California within the CDC database and his nickname was abbreviated as the letter O. Patient O. Patient O. Yes, and it got misread by the media as patient 0 and the media ran with it and then and the band played on story pushed it even further. So this is he at this case 057 patient 0 he actually helped very much. He remembered a lot of the names of his partners. His name was actually very memorable. So a lot of his partners remembered his name whereas a lot of people who were having sexual contacts at that time didn't remember many of their partners according to this article in fizzorg over 65% of men in the cluster reported more than 1000 partners in their lifetime. 75% had more than 50 partners in the last year but they couldn't remember most of the names of their partners. Case 057 managed to provide 72 names of the almost 750 partners he'd had in the previous three years. So a researcher. It's a really good memory. I don't. If I was trying to do this with the customers who I've helped in the last year I don't think I could come up with that many names. Yeah and so patient 0 in effect became this known for infectious became for the beginning of infection and the first case primary case and index case just didn't work with the media and so the CDC accidentally coined it and it turned into a story and it actually turns out that this guy was actually very helpful in trying to help the researchers he was not going around trying to infect people it just was a period of time in which people were unaware that they were passing diseases on moving along in time and and it was not a lot of it wasn't with intent so he was maligned after his death in Schultz book and hopefully now that his story has come out you will gain a little bit of his gain a little bit of honor back but there was never any patient 0 although we never knew his name right his name wasn't in the book it is in the book oh it is in the book his name was gay tan do gas a French Canadian man and he was that seems in poor taste to use his name yeah yeah so now you know it was a time and it was a place and time has moved forward and so has our understanding and I think this is a lesson that we can all learn from you know something like patient 0 it strikes fear and it strikes you know we talk about patient 0 for Ebola last year in the United States you know we can talk about patient 0 for Zika in the United States we can talk about patient 0 for a measles outbreak this is a term that is now very very in use and it strikes fear into the hearts of people and it's very unfortunate that it never really even existed to begin with yeah all because an 0 and a 0 look very similar right they do don't they notice that it's a problem I will often put the diagonal line through my zeros right always put a diagonal line it's not an 0 it's a 0 diagonal line 0 not not and a UGHT this is this week in science hey Justin what you got in a cavern in a canyon in Sequoia National Park was found to millipede with 400 legs 200 poison glands of producing hairs and four count them for penises what found in previously unexplored dark marble caves in Sequoia National Park the bizarre millipede was sent to Diplopodologists which Diplopodologists apparently are scientists even millipedes yes Bill Sherpaul Merrick who immediately recognized its significance as a revolutionary cousin to one of the leggiest animals on the planet which is apparently found at about 150 miles from that site the new species possesses only 414 legs in total only that many compared to its relative who is the leggest at 750 yet it has a similar complement of anatomical features if not legs including 200 poison glands a multitude of silk secreting hairs and four penises the new millipede Lachemy Tobini after cave biologist Ben Tobin to the National Park Service by its discover Jean Kajerak so this is in addition to the new millipedes legginess there's also bizarre looking mouth parts that they say is of a mysterious function of four legs that have been modified into penises a body covered in long silk secreting hairs and paired nozzles on each of its 100 segments that squirt a defense chemical of an yet unknown nature this is I mean this is truly this is truly a uniquely evolved creature at this point in conclusion by exploring our world documenting the biodiversity of this planet we can prevent anonymous extinction so like something like this could have easily disappeared they've only found it in one cave in Sequoia National Park that's amazing do we know how big it is it's apparently pretty tiny it's they describe it as thread like so it's very very so I don't have the measurements here for it though interesting what's so fascinating is finding a creature like this you know this is the the new generation of exploring where you can find a cave and find only one instance of an animal that only lives in this cave and it doesn't live anywhere else and we know that because of what we're doing we'll probably kill it eventually we found it so it's like a race against time absolutely it's Sequoia National Park wasn't a national park this thing had been long gone yeah and so it goes to say I mean Blair in the animal corner has talked so much about the opening of new aquatic conservation ranges of new national parks we've talked about all sorts of the idea of not just conserving species but conserving ecosystems and it's this kind of a little animal that's a little frightening but still the poison that comes out of that poison gland could turn out to be an ingredient in future medicine there's the silk could be something that we use in manufacturing new technologies the other like 200 nozzles that are making out goo that they don't know what it does yeah see someday we may learn that why it is a creature needs four pieces I mean yeah four people can only imagine with goo all of it what are you doing in there and it looks like they're about 30mm in length and about a millimeter wide oh wow there you go still very tiny yeah 30mm not very big but still much that's pretty long 200 poison glands still not something I want to come across millipedes not my favorite insects gotta say I'm too worried about the poison in the millipede I don't know why I'm thinking that's not going to affect me I prefer millipedes to centipedes truth truth moving on parasitic weeds maybe maybe able to steal genes wait parasitic weeds like a parasite like a plant weed like a plant a weed that's parasitic well we have parasitic it's like an invasive species oh okay but this one they're discovering there's a group of them really are able to steal genes from plants they are attacking and then use those genes against the host plant since this before this is sort of a I don't know if it's a direct follow up but we covered something like this about four or five years ago where there's been evidence of horizontal gene transfer in plants specifically in weeds and so this is something that we're used to bacteria doing this like I have this gene oh I could use the gene for that hand it off right kind of strange that it would happen in a more complicated system like a plant but there are plants that can do this they can take genes from a plant that's nearby and incorporate it in some way however this is the first time they've actually seen this gene transfer do more than maybe create a resistance to a bacteria or give it some little bit of a benefit they're actually weaponizing in a sense these genes so it says research has detected 52 incidences of horizontal gene transfer from a host plant that later became functional into members of the parasitic plant family and in this they're studying the broom rapes and this is researcher Claudia or Claude Deepam Phyllis professor of biology at Penn State although considered rare in plants this is what they're seeing these parasitic plants that we study from the family include some of the world's most devastating agricultural weeds horizontal gene transfer discovery is really part of our effort to try to better understand how parasitic plants work how we can better control them our hope is we can use this information to find the best strategies to generate or breed resistant host plants and so what they found researchers find and they put this in this is published in the Proceedings National Academy of Sciences suggested this transfer could boost the parasitic plants ability to invade the host it can overcome defenses the host creates to try to ward off these attacks and the horizontal gene transfer may also reduce the risk of infection for the parasitic plants so the researchers are suggesting that the close feeding connections of the parasitic plant with their hosts may increase the chances of chances of intact genes traveling from the host to the parasites genome and this is not just that they're planted nearby they're the roots of the parasitic plant contact and even enter the other plant and they begin extracting waters new sugars mineral nutrients and even nucleic acids including the DNA and RNA so it's not just that they're in the neighborhood that's what I was wondering was how are they doing physically invading the plant they're not just neighbors they're like can I come over and get some butter no I'm just going to let myself into your house and your refrigerator I'm just going to take it and then your butter is going to define me yeah no you know what I like the way you have your kitchen set up I'm going to do the same thing over at my place in fact I think you should knock down a few walls so this is this makes sense why there's invasiveness to this strategy this parasitic plants taking out crops across the world in different areas if they're learning from the crops that they're attacking and overcoming their defenses of course they're going to be successful let's say one of the most damaging sources of agricultural loss it says here is witchweed in sub-Saharan Africa Stria Kevin unique in the chat room is calling them alien weeds it's aliens instead of a piece of species yeah alien weeds that kind of works the same way we just have to hope that when the aliens really invade they don't want our DNA but maybe this is the invasion maybe this is it Kiki maybe they sent their plants up ahead first like we invasion of the body snatchers well it's just it's like a terraforming it's like we'll put these plants out there well those are plants right invasion of the body snatchers what's the body snatchers they grew people on plants yeah it was cloning they went from plant cloning directly into human gloaning and then there's what scott sigler's book infected his trilogy the infected trilogy those were spores from outer space spores from outer space spores from outer space not that not that no anything but that it isn't so oh are you good on that story Justin did we cover it I think it's a fascinating story wow they're just it's like needles needles to the plants I still I still want to know how it does it how it incorporates I mean I get doing is there but I want there to be a bacterial symbiosis thing that that's where that that's the level that the transfer is taking place and that that's then you know in viewing that to the plant somehow but I guess they might not need that that's a question you know are the plants defending against it or some if they're if they're not putting up immune defenses why not you know what is how why are the the plants that are being invaded and stolen from why are they allowing it to happen is there like you said is there something that they feel like it's symbiotic are you blaming the plant victim right now Kiki no but but it could it could be yeah that that it's it's sort of telling the other plant that nope this is normal this is just part of you right here we need to learn mechanism signaling mechanism what's happening we got to know why how how's it how's it how's it happening but you know first story was four years ago this was now maybe four years from now maybe soon you know what's even sooner than four years from now right now and it's Blair's safari animal corner for giant what you got Blair I have a couple animals driven to madness the first one notice what you got something behind you there no there's nothing behind me on the on the on the wall behind you no no it's everything's fine it's okay so okay so I want to talk about ants so ants they succumb to peer pressure um so let me ask you if you if your friends jumped off a bridge would you jump off a bridge too nope well if they made it I might what if they ate poison would you eat poison too is that poison alcohol yeah no it's just great poison and no probably okay so you're different than a carpenter ant carpenter ant so carpenter ants um the were discovered in a recent study from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina to show that social information delivered by other ants overrides individual assessment of food so the way that works carpenter ants they rely on sophisticated communication channels and on individual decision making and they do that to make sure that their foraging is effective and that they find good food sources the way they do it pretty interesting they actually swap food via mouth to mouth exchange and that's called trophallaxis so it's it's uh imagine telling your friend oh you got to try this cake and then spinning it into their mouth so that's how ants communicate so mothers and babies maybe sometimes engage in trophallaxis sure and actually that's an interesting point that might actually help animals figure out what is good to eat yeah very interesting so the ants use trophallaxis to do this mouth to mouth exchange and that allows group members to pick up odors and tastes which they then go to link with specific foods so this research study looked at um a laboratory experiment and a field experiment they did both to see if a toxic substance which they knew was strong and harmful to the carpenter ants if they could make that food acceptable to the carpenter ants if they associated with an odor um that is also found in food that they exchange via trophallaxis so they exposed ants to toxic food which was sugar water mixed with boric acid hey that sounds not good at all yeah and they um they mixed that with the odor they had previously learned about through this mouth to mouth exchange and they showed that ants can detect whether something is toxic and that they will reject it as a possible source of food unless the odor they experienced was also experienced in trophallaxis previously so even though they can recognize this toxic food so this happens to such an extent that ants go on to then collect toxic food after they have been exposed to this toxic food that was also associated with this smell so they essentially would commit suicide via toxic food based on something that they experienced from a member of their colony so I gotta I gotta taste it to believe it I really believe it if you wanted to kill a bunch of ants then you wouldn't want a fast acting poison you would want something that they could you know somebody was going to try it have somebody else try it and then oh they go and collect it now now they're bringing it back to the nest what would make more sense would to have two stages of ant poison the first stage not poisonous second stage smells tastes the same poisonous I know that people do use boric acid as an ant poison people will shake it on the ground around the outside of their homes and put it in dishes within their homes on windowsills etc and so this kind of thing you put out a little glass a little lid full of sugar water or little sugar cubes and just let the ants come let them get used to it and then switcho chango suddenly I ant problem so the moral of the story is that the desire to avoid toxic food is overridden by social information so yeah so this can be extrapolated to many things we can think about this think about how many people have acted well of course but I'm going to go there anthropomorphization is generally something that is super fun to talk about but not scientific so I will mention real quick one of our favorite topics the mob mentality the perfect example of this the mob mentality you know better you know better but because you're surrounded by all these people acting a certain way you act that way as well so just a reminder to think for yourself and we also talked about the alcohol study a couple of weeks ago where people drink more because they think their friends are drinking more yes yeah kind of that you're keeping up with the joneses like absolutely oh my friends are eating french fries I'll eat french fries oh my friends are eating salad I'll eat salad yeah and then a second story related to accidental suicidal tendencies and animals is from the University of Bristol and this is regarding mongooses so mongooses as part of the weasel family excellent sense of smell they are themselves a predator but they are also prey and so they use their sense of smell to avoid predators specifically by being able to smell predator poop this study looks at mongooses in South Africa and they were specifically looking at bear with me sound so they were looking at sound pollution from urban environments and they exposed these mongooses in the wild to these sounds they had road noise playback and these sounds negatively affected the mongooses ability to detect predator smells even after they smelled the predator poop the additional noise led to less information gathering and less villagers they overall acted way more vulnerable so professor andy radford from the school of biological sciences said quote we've known for a long time that noise from urbanization traffic and airports can detrimentally affect humans by causing stress sleep deprivation cardiac problems and slower learning again with anthropomorphization what's becoming increasingly more clear is that a lot of other species mammals birds fish insects and amphibians are also impacted in all sorts of way anthropogenic or man made noise so this is especially interesting because it is affecting the way their brain processes stimuli from a completely different sense that is crazy that their brain can't process smells the same because of sound pollution well I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you this have you ever been in a noisy environment or been trying to work on something you know focus on something that's important to you when somebody comes in and starts making a loud noise or the stereo's playing really loudly and like jarring music that doesn't make any sense to you yeah I guess I've just never tried to identify smells while that's happening but that sounds like a great personal experiment is to tell somebody to start cooking something in the other room during a loud party and see if you can recognize what's happening is that popcorn is that cookies what is that but for manga I'm gonna say you know for mongoose is the mongoose smell is very important because they you know not only do they use it to find prey but they also use it to like you said check out other threats in their environment I could find this it depends on the smell to be really messed up for them is one thing but which senses in other animals are important that get messed up what is it yeah personally I would have that be really interesting but it would have to be for me it would have to be something that had voices it would have to have talking like I can put up with a tremendous amount of noise music other sort of things and concentrate on what I'm doing but I've got these I've got like jungle ape hearing that's constantly on the lookout for vocalization and I can I can't turn it off I can hear somebody having a conversation outside and down the street as they're walking along and I can I'm listening to them while I'm doing whatever I have pretty pretty good at this I can hear two conversations at once coming from different areas even but and it that can that can get in the way then because I can't not hear it at the same time I can't turn turn out or tune out people talking if it's music it's easy but if there's vocalization and yeah so it makes it makes sense the vocalization or whatever if you're listening to a lecture or watching a video and somebody next to you starts talking you're probably going to be distracted by the person talking and you're going to have a hard time focusing you're going to either want to focus on one or the other and that's just a single modality though that's just hearing but this is like all of a sudden you know you're trying to smell your cup of coffee and somebody starts talking to you next next to you and you're like I what am I smelling or am I listening what am I doing and that's the confusion yeah and so previous studies have looked at movement patterns and foraging and those have definitely been affected by noise pollution you can wonder whether that's related to them trying to avoid certain noises or whether they can't hear other things I think that's usually been the conclusion that's been drawn which is why this is kind of exciting because this is looking at processing of other sensory information disrupted by noise pollution which in some ways Kiki you're dead on it's the brain is the brain and if the brain is having trouble processing information based on confusing constant unwanted stimuli right it makes perfect sense that it would it would make it difficult to process anything it's just something that we haven't really looked at and for so many animals those complex sensory cues are exactly how they survive it's how they find each other to mate it's how they stay alive it's how they find food so if you take away one or multiple or you just numb all these different sensory inputs it's going to affect fitness of animals in the wild yep so something to think about if we look at electric cars that'll reduce we see this we see this in aquatic animals too or at least aquatic mammals whales and the like sharks too yep who communicate quite a bit normally shut down their own communications when there's like large boat sounds or whatever going through when there's acoustic pollution in the ocean it really does affect everything I do we'll see where this research goes and what we find out more and more I mean how are we affecting animals in the wild how are we affecting their behavior and their survival and then additionally we're creating our artificial habitats cities where more and more people are going to be our living and they are a jungle and they are a very loud raucous place and so how are we affecting our own survival absolutely and this also affects the distance from protected areas that we think about having people because we think about just creating physical distance but not a lot is factored in at this point with light pollution and noise pollution about distance for protected areas so that definitely needs to go into the equation as well absolutely alright everybody this is this week in science it's time for us to go to a little break it's time for us to complete the equation right we have another half of the show coming with many more stories I've got promising prostheses and then there's some I don't know what other people Justin what do you have I don't know there's also some devils what is on Blair's backdrop is it a giant ant crawling down to eater it's either a giant ant crawling down to getter or it's a spider the largest spider I've ever seen the fiery Blair we're gonna go on a break and find out what happens to Blair while we're gone we'll be back in a moment this is this week in science hey everybody you know what I want to let you know about I would like to let you know that we are pre-selling calendars for 2017 Blair's gonna don't get attacked by the spider while I talk about this Blair we're gonna be pre-selling our calendars for 2017 you can pre-order them now Blair's almost done with all the art for the calendars we're gonna be putting 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Mimis from the late Cretaceous suggests they were gregarious social animals explains Gregory Funston Ph.D. student at Bineer school the University of Alberta our discovery demonstrates that dinosaurs are more similar to modern animals than people appreciate although the players are different this evidence shows that dinosaurs were social beings with gregarious behavior who lived and died together in groups so this is a that's fascinating yeah this is a coming from a site in Mongolia first encounter by paleontologists about 10 years ago site contained thousands of shards of destroyed bone laying the telltale evidence of a previous discovery by fossil poachers after conducting additional fieldwork scientists discovered a bone bed with an assemblage of A.V. Mimis dinosaurs who are extremely rare prior to this discovery Funston explains that it is common knowledge that modern birds form flocks and these flocking dinosaurs are exhibiting that same sort of behavior with an assemblage like this you can really understand why the dinosaurs died you can't really understand why the dinosaurs died together unless you see the field site we can tell that they were living together around the time of death but the mystery still remains as to why the paleontologists do know that the discovery highlights a potential trend of increasing gregariousness in social behavior in dinosaurs well it's not increasing now they're all dead but these groups of dinosaurs became social towards the end of the Cretaceous what remains to be solved is whether this trend is based on dinosaur behavior if it's because of how the fossils were preserved so dinosaur behavior towards the end of the Cretaceous is it a trend in the way the dinosaurs were dying or is it happenstance of how old the fossil finds are and that's affecting the nature of what it is we can find so this could be something based on what he's saying this could be something that is not just a late Cretaceous thing that's taking place dinosaurs are becoming social this could be how dinosaurs are all the way back right yeah it's rare to find this in the Jurassic and Triassic but it is very prominent in the Cretaceous period this is the first time they found a bone bed of bird-like dinosaurs with this so it's bird behaviors had to come from somewhere right or I mean yeah so this is the what we're seeing in the behavior of birds or even of herd animals according to this both these groups coming from somewhat different sources but the ancestral herd-like behavior or social behavior appears to have existed just fine in the dinosaur age they weren't a bunch of solitary creatures going around being mean to each other or they were and then they were all dying out and there was no food and so they started flocking together which is that's also possible Funson says that perhaps more important than the scientific findings is shedding light on the increasing incidence of fossil poaching and how this is affecting our ability to delve back into the past and find these sorts of information for this reason he co-authors published their findings in the open access scientific reports part of Nature group of scientific journals inspired by their mentor who's been working in Mongolia since the 80s and they bring up and this is the mentor curious students have taken up not only scientific cause but also the higher social justice to protect our shared heritage so they're sort of being little socially active politically active I suppose and saying this needs to be brought attention to and so in this they also bring light to actor Nicholas Cage what? well yeah who apparently in late 2015 he he won a Tarbosaurus skull he actually outbid another star Leonardo DiCaprio they were both bidding on this Tarbosaurus skull he won and it belonged in a museum right? well yeah he found out that it had been poached that it was illegally acquired and Nicholas Cage returned it yeah he did return to Mongolia yeah let it go so we should all if we win a fossil anything at any point we should ask ourselves www and do what would Nicholas do or name it after Nicholas Cage if it's a new discovery yeah so you can ask that about skulls but don't ask it about like sound investments or anything like that right? there's that I think this is a it's a wonderful finding yeah there's so much we still don't know when did these behaviors first pop up like you brought up the story last week of the cracking of the stones by the Capuchin monkeys when did humans first start doing these behaviors that we're so well known for birds are so well known for flocking fish are well known for schooling when did these behaviors really get started and why I still I still like the idea very much that humans waited around who's Capuchin monkeys to crack a stone and then come up after it's like oh we got some more ah okay now let's wait for some more see if they do it again it's very possible so it was for 250 years 250 million years I have a couple of cool stories related to the brain and the visual areas of the brain and plasticity so the visual area of the brain has traditionally been understood as only whoa what was that did a stick just fly out of the air I think Blair's got attacked by a I think I think Blair just got attacked sorry yep there's a spider the spider jumped I killed it you killed the spider okay well good for you Safari Blair I mean don't kill spiders everyone don't kill spiders spiders are good spiders are nice well when they're like two three feet across maybe consider not hanging out next to them anyhow the visual cortex the visual system of humans is known to not be incredibly plastic we get our vision and then at a certain point in our in our life it gets it becomes hardened and the visual pathways are nailed in and we see what we see and if damage is done there's no fixing it right that's part that there's if damage is done there's there's not a lot that's going to happen to fix it now two studies out this week kind of really make us wonder whether this system is actually more plastic than previously thought so one study reported today in nature demonstrated that they not you but researchers can take embryonic neuronal cells and transplant them so these neurons from the embryonic cortex transplanted into a damaged visual cortex of adult mice they followed the trajectory of these embryonic cells and found that they actually integrated with these supposedly not plastic visual pathways integrated and almost started fixing some of the damage so they found that the cells actually started responding these transplanted neurons reacted to visual stimuli that the animals were exposed to and nine weeks after transplantation these cells were consistently responding more strongly to certain orientations of lines than to others so this is just like developed neurons do in this part this area of the visual cortex and it suggests that over time over these just nine weeks the neurons functions were finally tuned which is which is pretty amazing and so this question is now I mean the reason they did this is like okay can we take embryonic stem cells can we take neurons and put them into the brain to fix damage in certain areas of the brain like the visual cortex could we potentially fix damage to the visual system that has rendered people blind for extended periods of their lives and one of the problems with this is we don't really know what's going to happen to the neurons once they get transplanted and so this is one of the first studies that has really looked at this in the visual system yes it's still in mice but it's a very interesting result the ultimate goal is to transplant neurons in people and this group that did this research out of Ludwig Max Millions University and the Institute of Stem Cell Research at the Hemholtz Center in Munich Germany their end goal is to actually to take neurons and to reprogram them so to take stem cells and reprogram them basically fix errors in the cells and then transplant them into adults so in effect be able to take cells from a person who's lost their vision fix any errors or make any upgrades and then transplant them into the visual system wow yeah so that's their goal and now the second study that was published yesterday in PLOS biology is also really interesting and this one is more interesting though because it is in people not in mice but it goes along with this idea of the plasticity of the visual system it's an Italian study where they actually put chips into the retina of people with retinal pigmentose pigmentosis which is a disease that destroys the retina and people go blind over a period of time now they took patients who were blind and had been blind for a number of years for a significant amount of time and they put these retinal prostheses into their eyes so these chips were taking information of light from the cones and rods in the retina and transferring information about light to the optic nerve and the cortex of the brain and so the question is okay is the brain even going it hasn't gotten signals for a long time the retina has been dead so do these nerves even work anymore is the visual system in these people going to respond and what they found is that it did and that people over time and the people who trained more and trained harder on learning particular patterns of light were able to discriminate certain light signals better than others and so the brain picked it up these retinal prostheses are working yes this is fantastic news oh it's so exciting I mean this is like step by step we are going to return sight to people who have lost it and it's just I get goosebumps goosebumps I mean these are these are very beginning studies this is not you know not all the way along the pathway for sure and the people who are are seeing they're not you know seeing in the sense of all of the information that you could get from a working eye of course because you're dealing with just a chip that's implanted but being able to get any idea of light information could help somebody navigate could help somebody be able to get more getting more information than they have is better than none yeah of course nice yeah yeah so I'm excited about these two studies and the fact that they just came out like a day apart I'm just like oh how exciting very exciting alright now Justin I'm talking about sticking chips and nerves into people's brains and eyeballs what's up with bug burgers yeah the idea of eating bugs has been creating a buzz lately haha I got it so both yeah both in the foodie international development circles more sustainable alternatives to and fish because we're overfishing things and cattle are taking they make a big footprint and I don't know maybe maybe we'll find out that this ends up being worse we don't know whether or not what the carbon footprint of insects would be in mass production but but we are looking for other ways to create sources for people to eat and protein is one of those important things this is a report pairing in the ACS Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry examines how the nutrients provided by grasshoppers, crickets and other insects really measures up to get old hamburger and while eating bugs might sound appealing you were doing a bit of squirming there Kiki yeah I mean I had my share of mealworm flower cookies in my day I can you know so you're not completely yeah and it's long been included in a lot of diets in many regions of the world these regions now are home to more than 2 billion people according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization so there's a good part of the planet that's already used to eating bugs that might not have too much of an issue with this Port also notes that about 1900 insects species are documented as a food source globally source of protein that's well established so no problem there but if the world is going to switch from cows to bugs in any great number the creeders will also need to be giving us more than just protein iron particularly important nutrient that is often missing in meat diets causing iron deficiency anemia which can lead to lower cognition poor immunity poor pregnancy outcomes and other problems in light of these concerns yes me lot of data and colleagues wanted to find out whether commonly insects could contribute to a well-rounded meal the researchers analyzed grasshoppers crickets mealworms and buffalo worms for their mineral content estimated how much of each nutrient would likely get absorbed if eaten using a lab model of human digestion and the research says bug burgers could indeed fill that dietary need it's gonna work and as you got there was that is that crickets and grasshoppers you got way out in front in the amount of iron the jumbo mealworms the jumbo mealworms the ones that you see most often and the ones that the the flowers made out of that Kiki you were talking about are the ones with the lowest protein amount there oh that's iron iron but this is the additional nutrients the mealworms are very high in protein but it's interesting to see that the crickets are way ahead of the pack and way ahead of beef way now that's the thing right crickets they say have higher levels of iron than other insects and minerals including calcium copper and zinc from grasshoppers crickets and mealworms are more available for absorption than the same minerals from beef results therefore support the idea that you can bugs could potentially help meet the nutritional needs of the world's growing population and actually may be a better source of food than beef I mean I don't like I don't like beef either but here's what I'm picturing I mean my crickets lentil burger come on you guys the uh cowboy or the grasshopper boys of the future out there on the range what does that look like um the grasshopper boy out on the range would be probably in a lab coat in a building in a very large building that or we could genetically start breeding larger and larger because you know cattle I don't think we're these giant boviney things that we're used to seeing nowadays they were they were bred into this oh yeah take the cattle everyone yeah they're all smaller how big do you think you could breed a grasshopper to be probably a couple of feet wouldn't that be really cool like now we've got like these oh my goodness I mean maybe they come hopping home I mean maybe like fish or like plants they're really only limited by how much nutrient intake they can have and how long they have to live the late 2000 cricket herds across the American plane like I'm all for it chocolate cricket shake hmm I feel like I've been warned about these giant crickets before you think so I put a link in the chat room I believe there was an educational film about it I don't know and there was a version of it where there was a man and two robots who watched the film and spoke about it while it was happening oh is this the mystery science 2003 giant grasshoppers that's right it's called the beginning of the end I think it's going to be a fantastic future and you know what really when we're talking about eating the poison with mob mentality how much worse could it be than your average fast food hamburger really it's probably an improvement in fact with the current manufacturing process there's a decent amount of your protein iron uptake that's probably coming from bugs anyway what is it like very true the amount of spiders in chocolate bars or something what's not to talk about that wait now we can talk about it positively it's good for ya that raisin that wasn't a raisin how about the shoe rubber and sandwich chains bread I was just talking to someone about that today okay let's keep moving let's not talk about things I got more neuron stuff more prosthetics Kiki you're going to talk to us about brains prosthetics because that's what's really cool right now so very interesting study out of University of Washington is they've embedded sensors in the surface of people's brains and those sensors allowed them to basically feel information so there's this problem with people who are paralyzed or have amputations if you have a prosthetic or if you're using a brain computer interface to move a robotic arm you don't have any haptic feedback of a closed loop of control to actually know how hard you're touching something and you can think of how important the sense of touch actually is how you have to consider maybe playing the piano or playing any kind of instrument like a guitar if you could not feel how hard you're touching the strings of a guitar or the keys of a piano there would be no nuance to it you'd probably just be like smashing away at things and not really knowing the difference or it would be like when I had nerve damage in my hand and I just dropped items all the time because I couldn't tell how tight I was holding on to things or if you had say an aluminum can would you crush it or would you drop it because you couldn't tell the difference and so this group they have taken these brain surface electrodes to actually record brain signals and also stimulate back to the brain for sensory feedback and so they had these people a glove that had electrodes in it and this is while they were in the hospital for open brain surgery to begin with they had their their glove on and they were asked to hold their hand at certain positions of fingers being either close together or a certain distance apart without actually looking at their hand but just by the sense of feeling how far apart their fingers were and they would be stimulated by the stimulatory electrodes when they kind of got close to where their hand should be and so they learned to use this sensory input that's actually like wireless electrical information that's come from the sensors and actuators in the glove they were wearing that was actually getting electrically that was actually electrically stimulating their brain to be able to help them figure this out and people got very good at it so this is one of the first times that we have a system where we have electrodes implanted into the surface of the brain actually creating this closed loop bi-directional brain computer interface that can could potentially allow a brain to control prosthetics or other external external devices and then additionally a different group they used a separate kind of concept in which again there were as a different kind of electrode array being used to stimulate the brain but on amputees they put actual electrodes within the nerves of the of the arm that had been amputated above the point of amputation so that any kind of prosthetic device that could be applied could potentially stimulate these electrodes and relay a signal to the brain of the person who's amputated so in this study what they were showing this is from the University of Chicago in Case Western Reserve University what they were essentially showing is how to stimulate the nerves how many times did they have to stimulate the nerves in a row how quickly did they have to follow those stimuli how rapidly did the stimuli have to come to give the amputees any sense of of pressure changing is something touching you hard is something touching you very softly these people actually learned and responded to these signals very very well and it was a case study that of three amputees in which they were actually able to figure out a lot about the process of how the nerves actually work to send information to the brain and it could potentially be used with prosthetic devices and people who have limbs that have been amputated in the near future yeah so this is that's yeah so check this out this is a story I was I had in the queue but I didn't I wasn't going to do but I'm going to do it now anyway did you know that apes are 50-50 right versus left-handed I think I heard that somewhere yeah I think we talked about it on the show a long time ago yeah they're not predominantly left-handed or right-handed and this is just all your handy talk got me thinking about this story again 90% of humans though are right-handed and this is this in this study they found a 1.8 million year old homo habilis which is the earliest evidence for right-handedness and so this is you know again we don't have the numbers we don't have the numbers we don't have a lot of these intact teeth that we can look at in a fossil homo habilis they could be 50-50 they could be not so much but so far it's 100% right-handed so and they can tell this by looking at the teeth at the teeth because homo habilis yeah used their mouth as like another hand and would you know do things predominantly so these teeth would be worn down more if they're right-handed yeah there's more levulestriations cut marks on the lip-sided into your teeth in the intact upper jaw fossil so yeah so the earliest evidence thus far and the human lineage is right-handed very cool it says handedness and language are controlled by different genetic systems but there's a weak relationship between the two because both functions originate on the left side of the brain interesting one one specimen does not make it an incontrovertible case there's more research is done more discoveries are made we predict that right-handedness and cortical reorganization language capacity will shown to be important components in the origin of our genus and therefore the origin of the predominance of right-handedness and humanness yeah I mean again it's if apes are 50-50 when did we become more dominantly right-handed than left how long ago did it happen did it have to do with what aspect of the development of our brains say language did that lead to it it's a question it's a question that we will ponder until we find more information until we find more fossils now we need some more fossils and I can picture to the connection between language and handedness having to do with talking with your hands because I've never pictured like homo habilis sort of gesturing while grunting it's like a little showing your hand gesture of a water buffalo running across they could have done quite a bit of sign language as well as just vocalization and that combination if you started with a handedness or started with the side of the brain that was picking up language could go a long way yeah all right let's get to the quick stories at the very end of the show I reported a little while ago on the FDA banning some homeopathic teething remedies well it turns out the homeopaths are fighting back and according to our technica have the NCH National Center for homeopathy has left a statement on its website blaming the media's exaggerated fear mongering dramatic headlines for getting the teething treatments from the market they are calling homeopaths to act misconceptions and said despite these facts that groups interested in seeing homeopathy destroyed continue to hammer away at the system making exaggerated claims that create misunderstandings about and limit consumer access and yeah so basically they are trying to promote their own media on the other side to try and get the teething products back on the shelves even though CVS has pulled all of its products from the shelves and Highlands has discontinued its products so what you're trying to say is it's all rigged it's a joke it's garbage so when I talk about teething products the only homeopathic teething product I've seen that was at the the newborn store in town and was trending a few years back was amber necklaces amber necklaces that's different what this is is a homeopathic which means that it should be a very dilute concentration of some compound teething gel to calm pain and irritability and the idea of homeopathy is things should be gain potency as they're diluted but very often are left in higher higher dilutions than they should be there's no controls on they make sense this isn't these are not these are natural products and so they're not controlled by the FDA really so nobody's checking to see how much of these substances are actually in the products and the FDA has said it found inconsistent amounts of Belladonna in the teething products Belladonna which causes poisoning symptoms like seizures vomiting difficulty breathing lethargy excessive sleepiness muscle weakness skin flushing constipation difficulty urinating blood vision and confusion led to more than 400 illnesses and 10 deaths that the FDA is investigating this is kind of sounding like those ants this is sounding like homicidal paths so anyway psychopaths don't give poison to babies just stop it homeopathy treatments are not evaluated or approved by the FDA that is that it is true this is a statement from Ars Technica but this is true you're not evaluated nobody checks to make sure how much of compounds of anything are in these products and so even if they don't contain Belladonna they could contain something else even though these things are supposed to be dilute they could contain things that are dangerous and it's the question of what you want to trust your children so anyway this is the story reported on a week or so ago couple weeks ago and now there's pushback and then my second story is remember the Mars lander from the European space agency that we're trying to figure out what happened to it last week it did crash and it's a NASA's Mars reconnaissance orbiter thinks that it found it it's a little black dot on the surface of Mars and then a little white spot that might be its parachute it crashed but it's okay because it's not the most important part of the mission the most important part of the mission was the the gas monitoring orbiter that is working just fine is in orbit and we'll be looking at trace gases indicative of life activities coming from the surface of the planet so that's something that is neat but unfortunately it is now starting to cause questions among those who were trying to put trying to push toward another more daring lander craft coming from the European space agency so there are questions as to the future of landers on Mars coming from the ESA at this point in time and last story Blair you got devils yes so devils actually the cutest of devils the most vicious marsupial the Tasmanian devil they we've talked a lot about facial tumor disease and the latest update is actually quite inspiring so recently I did a quick update indicating that Tasmanian devils there's actually a small contingent of them that appears to have evolved resistance to this facial tumor disease now a study from University of Tasmania imagine that monitored wild animals and actually found they looked at 52 devils 34 of them contracted the disease and 6 of those devils developed serum antibodies against the cancer cells ooh yes awesome yes so they healed thyselves from the facial tumor disease which is huge not only for the devils because these animals might actually come out of this 80% die off from facial tumor disease since the 90s they might actually come back from that but if we can find an animal that can cure itself that can develop antibodies to cancer that is definitely something we can use absolutely yeah unfortunately had to take a majority of the population to fall prey to it before it right but I mean that's how evolution works right talk about a population bottleneck though yes absolutely but this is a good direction there is hope for the devils there is hope for devils which they currently have about 20,000 individuals so that's not terrible it's not like with elephant seals where it was less than 200 cheetahs where there's less than 50 where it's not like the Mexican grey wolf where it was 7 are humans where it was 1500 they think yeah absolutely so 20,000 individuals is something potentially we can work with fingers crossed with the devils fingers crossed for some cancer enlightenment from all of this and in the meantime this is going to bring an end to our twist a ween show I hope you've been entertained by the devils the bugs the things in your brains all the fun science that we brought for the show tonight and until next time I want to give shout outs thank you to our Patreon sponsors thank you to Chris Clark, Paul Disney Robert Astin, Darwin Hannon Cosmic Gypsy, Brian Hone Orly Radio Brian Condren, Pixel Fly Nathan Greco, Hexator, Debra Smith Mitch Neves, Flying Out John Crocker, Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer Ben Rothig, Sylvan Westby, Artyom Shuwata Dave Wilkinson, Steve Michinsky Rick Ramis, Garen Swinsburg, Phil Nidow Braxton Howard, Salgud Sam, Matt Sutter Emma Grenier, Phillip Shane James Dobson, Kurt Larson, Stefan Insom Michael George, Russell Jensen, Mountain Sloth Marco Terra Paine, John Maloney, Jason Olds 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anything from today's show remember it's all in your head this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science it's the end of the world so I'm setting up a 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 global warming with a wave of my hands and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand this week science is coming your way so everybody listen I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all of it's this week in science this week in science this week in science science this week in science this week in science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what I say may not represent your views but I've got calculations and I've got a plan if you listen to the science you may just better 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 do everything we say and if you use our methods better roll and I die it's this week in science this week in science this week in science science this week in science this week in science science the 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 you guys but how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop once this week in science this week in science science this week in science science this week in science be careful don't make any sudden movements this week in science this week in science this week in science be very careful I believe I believe there's a cobra on your pit hat dear I don't know if you shouldn't make any sudden sounds but just you seem to be moving your head about quite a lot now quickly do you have some sort do you have a recorder can you play it a tune yes yes oh oh yeah get it to bite something else oh no you had it there for the moment that snake on your hat just whack it with a stick just just do that just whack it with a stick Blair got angry pica pica I think it's gone I really need to take off these squirtle glasses they're squeezing my head and my eyes are hurting because I've been in sunglasses indoors for hours let's say after show I can be I can be less squirtle because I think it's safe I think it's safe now I can work with this wig it's good I like it it cut for me right is that like a leelu wig what is that I know it's kind of the right color right it's um oh what's her name Marcy Marcy Marcy she's a pokemon she's one of ash ketchums traveling partners mm-hmm yeah so I have red suspenders and I guess a yellow tank top when I get to wear jeans any halloween costume where I get to wear jeans perfect I know right multi pass leelu Dallas multi pass oh zombie so I'm now very excited to go to Baltimore cause it turns out I'm from there from Baltimore what I had no idea what do you mean is that where your family this is an unsolicited came across on that maybe I haven't found the actual boat that they got here but I've got folks that were I've got somebody who was who was John Baltimore Harryman back in 1671 to 1711 just because his name doesn't mean he was from Baltimore no no he was in Baltimore as were like a whole bunch of the other family the Simkins the Nortons the Masons the webs they like there's this like yeah I did the ancestry.com free thing like free trial dealing and it's crazy I'm now I've got a couple people who fought in the revolutionary war already I've got one family line that went back all the way to like the 1500s it's traced back to France late mid 1500s like this is this thing is crazy it is so wow and and what's also very interesting is not only the size of the families people had a lot of kids it was not uncommon to have like seven or eight children but but also the fact that very common and safe because people died there's a lot of yeah there's a bit of that going on there but it's also the names you notice that names you know you might say like well I had a grandpa son so I think I'll use that name to name my child put that in the name maybe it's a middle name or something like that when you do that what's crazy is that it makes your entire family line look very uncreative because chances are that name wasn't just their name it was a name before and a name before and there's tons of you know first sons with the father's exact names and stuff like that team trends that go about my Italian side is actually quite boring if you go back it goes you know there's a it's an Angelo there's a Frank then there's an Angelo then there's a Frank like they kept the same names like over and over again of where you are from in the western world there's I think about a 40% chance that your name would be Mary if you were if you were born before the year 1900 a lot of Mary's in the world my goodness but yeah now I'm going to get to go there's apparently still there's a I look there's apparently a Harryman restaurant in Baltimore that you know maybe the maybe some of my ancestors never left and the Harrymonds are still still cooking it's going to be interesting I've got this list of names I'm going to look for if we do any like look at any historic sites ready now I've got this list of like that it's my great great great great great something other fun yeah I have a whole bunch on one side in Baltimore and then another line is like pre-revolution I have a lot of colonials I did not know that I had this many colonials a ton of like my like I'm very colonial past like these there's not a whole lot of people coming off boats part of this New Jersey is also a big colonial hotspot and then for whatever reason a lot of my family moved to Missouri and like hid there for for about a hundred years and then and then we came to California like during the Civil War sort of gold rush times there's a lot of gold rush to the California's a lot of gold rush to the California's I think that's why I came out strengths wants to know if you have any conflicts in your conflicts any convicts convicts not that I can tell so if I now there can be there could be plenty in extended family because while while each of my relatives has a list of brothers and sisters I'm not like tracing those families down through every I've got some a what is it a Lieutenant something or another in the Revolutionary War a bunch of people who are you know in the Sons of the Revolution or the Revolutionary what is it Sons of the American Revolution there's like pensions that get paid down to their their wives as widows and their children and in some cases it even looks like grandchildren are getting some sort of government benefit for their fathers and grandfathers having fought in the Revolutionary War interesting I I've got I've got people on both sides of the Civil War but most of them most of them took off kind of bail a lot of them kind of took off while that fighting was going on to go live in California kind of get away from there what's really interesting is there was one ancestor that was private and you can mark private which you can kind of so that you know people can't see who that is in your family history and normally they do that for people who are still living just so like somebody else can't go and look up their family history can't connect them to it because they're alive and you know they're going to I don't know give out somebody who's living's personal information but to find one that was back you know oh great great great great where's where's this guy this guy is in uh oh wait no I don't have his total info here but this would have been somebody oh gosh it would have been born probably in the early 17 early and mid 1700s commit with this name kind of sketchy because you get certain documents but you have to put them in the right time and place and make sure that there's not somebody else in that area with the same name and so there's little documents that you can actually bring up pictures of and this was uh under wills and notary stuff and so I was like oh well a will would be perfect because you're bequeathing stuff to people so you could really identify if this who this person's children were based on or spouse was based on a will and that could confirm their place in the family line and only it wasn't a will it was a record of sale of a young negro girl so ah yeah there's and it kind of pissed me off that people were making that relative private so that people couldn't see that like the family had to hide it or whatever like you're then you're then hiding not just your family history you're trying to hide history history in that point you're trying to hide actual history history um so yeah there's that there's interestingly like back east and this is in the back in the baltimore region there is a fair amount of photographs of headstones so you have this person you have certainly might have a birth record you might have a voting record you might have a census record or something like this and then you know they have about dates when they were born and then you'll get a tombstone that'll be that person with the right years and the exact dates of their death and their birth and you know the survived by spouse or married to or whatever and another bit of information maybe even on the tombstone it's a fun puzzle I suggest everybody comment at least the it's not the DNA thing which I might end up doing the family tree is a really fun puzzle if your peeps have been in a country just a few generations which is what I was looking trying to look back into is just a couple generations ended up going crazy all the way sort of disappeared and then you're like well how did they get there where did they come from and maybe that's like my Italians I don't have like an international Italians and when they arrive in the United States it's as far as back as they go and that's that's like the mid or late 1800s pretty much all the Italians and I've got here just about late 1800s and then and then it was just it's just a few great great grandparents that their family history unlocked all their back and so I had a fair amount of collection of documents photographs names that sort of thing I mean I was I had photographs that have thankfully names of who's on them on the back which helped me place names of great grandparents siblings so I had a nice little collection and and then somewhere in everybody's family is this person who's hoarded the family information they have that Bible with the list of names right they have they have a family tree that was held maybe you know a couple generations ago that they they still have possession of and so even if you don't have anybody in your immediate family even your grandparents weren't that person you may have a great grandparent who are a great what would it be like a third or fourth cousin out there somewhere who does have a collection from a sibling of your great great great grandparent that was one of these collections right and so and so part of what you can do in this is compare other people's family trees and what's really fascinating about that is of course they might not be interested at all in your great great-grandmother right and identifying who who she was in her life and they might have the date of her birth but not the date of her death and they might have her name spelled wrong but but they've got all of the siblings they've got the name of those parents the parents of the previous generation and they've got towns that they lived and other bits of information that correlate but also fill in blanks where you've got blanks so it's sort of this group effort of people connecting the information that they have of their family and finding other families that can fill in the information so as a for instance and going back four or five generations there's people I've never heard of but there's but I can get right up to it and there's a bunch of other people who can get right up to it right right close to the generation after say and because all of our information is overlapping of at least the name of a parent all somebody else needs to know where that person was from and then suddenly we're making these connections back a whole other generation and that person might have had a better documented existence with census data with military records with this sort of thing and so they're already fleshed out and easier to connect back to another generation having a tremendous amount of fun losing a lot of sleep with this thing because it's there's a fair amount of I was looking I'll tell you I'll tell you a funny example too because the computer I think is scanned scanned in census documents for the every ten years going back you know over a hundred years they've scanned it in and you can tell that the computers have some a little bit of deficiency in reading old hand written cursive script trying to find there was there was this column column Jackson C-O-L-O and I kept trying to look for this column Jackson it was supposedly my great great grand something right and I kept looking kept looking and then because it was it was another family trees so I soon I finally found the document that said that there was a column Jackson and it turns out it's Calvin his name is Calvin it's not calling which I was like I even researched I'm like what is column and like it's a last name it's particular to the south a lot of people have this last name column I'm like oh well maybe this is a real thing but then when I saw the actual document you can actually pull up and see the census document from whatever 1840 or whatever it was it's obviously Calvin it's clearly clearly Calvin and so then now that you have a right name to punch in there Calvin instead of column might have other ties he might have done business he might have a grave site he might have a birth record he might have his children have a birth record and then there might be a spouse there right and so then suddenly you're building a branch of your tree that kind of was stuck because there's no such thing as column very fascinating very fun digging into that stuff is always fun family trees following the family let's see is there anything that we think about for next week you guys have your travel stuff figured out I mean we can touch based on stuff like this Wednesday for sure well you saw our group text so no I still haven't figured that out okay but I know that I'm getting on public transportation on that day to get to Oakland airport that I know awesome get to the airport just get to the airport yes and if Justin wants to do that with me he will tell me yes I think I will okay awesome so we just have to pick a rendezvous time and place you guys figure out your rendezvous we shall hopefully I'll see you guys in Baltimore do you land around the same time as us yeah I think I land an hour later if you guys can hang out for an hour we could all take a cab together because we're all going to the same place oh yeah absolutely we'll grab a beer or something in the airport I'll give you my flight information so you'll know whether or not my flight is delayed or anything like that Claire don't move Claire do not move on your right shoulder don't look you need a mongoose totally need a mongoose I think he's back Ricky Tickey Tavi where are you when I need you I don't have any mongoose I don't have any geese in here Ricky Tickey Tavi where are you let's see we'll figure out stories yes we don't really need that I think did you guys see my email I found one yes I saw that you found one that's awesome it's a great story it's pertinent to the aquarium yes which will be great we have an aquarium interview I've been informed that we're going to have somebody from NASA for an interview with I haven't talked with Phil to see if that's going to be confirmed if it's not I will find we'll either bring more stories like one more story each or something or we will just interview people from the audience at random or I'll find somebody for an interview and then we have our musical guest Shota Kay Shota Kay is going to be so much fun we're going to do a demonstration he's into science and music fun stuff yeah vocal percussion wait beatboxing yeah Shota Kay is a beatboxer our musical science and music is going to be beatboxing oh nice yeah it's going to be really good just no freestyle rap contest please no I was all prepared for then you can do it by yourself rap the disclaimer perhaps oh no maybe he could probably give you some beats I'll say Shota Kay give us some beats from the big bang to the there we go yeah good is this a clap for rap one hand good rapping I say top notch thank you thank you very much I'm popping like my anime character thank you that's right yeah it's going to be fantastic so we've got a place to say thank you to Patrick for helping us out with that that's going to be amazing yeah I think we're going to have some fun our show is going to be done by like 4pm and then we've got like the afternoon well and I don't know if you're both aware but we're going to the zoo the next day oh we are that's very far away though the Maryland zoo isn't it very far away I don't know I didn't look into it yet I was kidding I'm going to look into it I'd go to the zoo that would be super fun well because they have the polar bear stuff for stem fest going on the next day the next day so if it's near something else that we also want to do we could do that so that reminds me actually I'm going to see if I can reach out to people at that zoo oh in Baltimore maybe it's not that far away that's awesome oh it's near Johns Hopkins maybe we can do the zoo and a little trip to Johns Hopkins hmm I know somebody who works in the nano science department there the media great but that is let's see that is I see where that is it's ish what 20-30 minutes probably from inner harbor I don't know what these words mean I don't want to walk there okay maybe you don't want to walk there maybe I want to walk there no you don't want to walk there okay okay yeah I did some walking in Baltimore once upon a time and then I found out that I shouldn't have people are like where were you walking I apparently walked through a very dangerous neighborhood on my way to get crab I just wanted crab for dinner man hmm let's see yeah so we'll figure out what we're going to do but I think we're going to have a a little meet up maybe on Friday evening yeah that's going to be great a little science meet up Friday evening and anyone out there in Baltimore doesn't know about the meet up message me on facebook and I'll see if I can get you information oh gosh Blair I just ran across your pictures for tonight I love it oh my god better at the pictures thing um somebody just sent me this story that's awesome and I don't understand it necessarily because I haven't had a chance to read it all the way through yet but um published in plus one some researchers created a dough out of 237 cubic centimeters of water 355 cubic centimeters of flour 133 cubic centimeters of lemon juice 59 cubic centimeters of table salt 15 cubic centimeters cubic centimeters of vegetable oil and two cubic centimeters of food coloring and you could probably put sugar in it and make it a crust anyway uh according to this article they formed it into round blobby shapes and then hooked them to a jumper cable and measuring devices with a red LED positioned close to the blob of dough they exposed the dough to electric shocks paired with flashes of the light and this is similar to how they uh train nerves like in a plizia for conditioned responses in some trials the shock and the LED flash were simultaneous and in others the flash was delayed by up to 500 milliseconds then after training and following a one or five minute delay they exposed the dough to a flash of the LED and then observed the dough's spectral power density so basically the conditioned dough when it wasn't electrically shocked again and was only presented with the LED light it produced uh the same amount of electrical activity as it would if it were just shocked untrained dough did not show the same response what? according to this article in plus one they trained a blob of dough blob of dough i don't like it oh i know conditioning in a blob of dough and seriously i gave the recipe it's blob of dough electrodes and a red LED light yeah is this for real it's okay yeah i'm coming i'm screen sharing right now i'm going to take you to plus one let's see if we can find the actual okay so that's just the plus one link so here's the study a new study that's the one i should have clicked on a new study experimental evidence of classical conditioning and microscopic engrams in an electro conductive material and what makes it electro conductive is the fact that it has lemon juice in it and salt lemon juice and salt anyway yeah they they conditioned the dough and the dough either responded or it did not respond and let's see let's see if we have some other then they mushed then then another part of the experiment they mushed the dough all up so they had control they had conditioned they mushed up and just light and shock and basically yeah if it was conditioned it all responded the same very so what they say this isn't that they're this isn't learning complex learning per se but if you have a material that structural integrity can be changed by some sort of input then hypothetically learning is a much more basic concept that can be shared much more widely across across organisms yeah and what they say let's go back to that article they say in the article yeah that learning in summary the data indicate that a conditioned response can be encoded into a simple material that the conditioned response is associated with structural modifications within the substrate so maybe learning is way more fundamental than anyone ever thought but seriously a ball of dough responding to light did you just say learning is fundamental more fundamental learning is fun it's fundamental but anyway yeah this does make my brain hurt I don't really I like it yes the data you did and I don't understand how on earth did the light affect the dough that's what I'm wondering I understand it's an LED they put off minimal heat so that's a red LED too so it was like a red so aliens is what you're saying yeah yeah totally toots aliens spores from splice got it spores from splice yep spores from splice getting a homeopathic vibe here right salty has it's either homeopathy or it's that being mean to water thing being mean to water don't tell me you haven't heard about these experiments I have not alright yeah um mean to water you what you what yeah yeah yeah yeah hold on power of thoughts emotos is it emotos haha good luck on that email farah have a good night um yeah let me see massaru emotos I think it's massaru water crystals that's what it is water crystals okay let's see if I can make sure I find a good just use his website so let's see if he has pictures basically he played different music or was mean to water and then uh froze it into crystals and took pictures of the crystals that were formed and this guy um massaru emoto and he showed that um if you played nicer music the crystals were prettier so heavy metal song get out of town with this the folk song was kind of weird amazing grace was beautiful and look at edelweiss then I mean you get like farewell song from Chopin and what is that heartbreak hotel from Elvis what then John Lennon's imagine wow so was this replicated ever oh yeah people all over the world have been um yeah and so another one where they showed the water photos he showed the water photos and made it into crystals like he showed the water a photo of an elephant and the water loved it um and then there were oh my god where's that they did to the water so chi of love sent remotely by 500 people um they prayed to the water and this affected the crystals yeah and then they had different words that they gave to the water so eternal or evil love and gratitude hemp hemp got a nice beautiful one didn't it yeah because I didn't get it so not only not what's really fascinating about this actually did the researcher get some hemp as well but what's what I find very fascinating about this is that the crystals actually seem to understand English exactly and have an opinion uh based on that that they then communicate and articulate through different forms I would guess that the people saying it know the context of it and therefore carry spiritual value with the words that they speak to the water yes and so it's resonating or some kind of um vibration so for the word evil to look like the evil crystal wouldn't you have to have somebody with evil vibrations in the room at the time I mean you couldn't just like like when I say evil you know I'm still like having my positive vibrations in the room I'm not bringing evil into the room so why would that be different but when I'm thinking of hemp you know it's really this beautiful intense crystals that automatically like yeah and he made a documentary and he made a rice experiment and like all sorts of things robots online yeah can we do it now I'm done I'm done waiting let's let's science island can we go now really need to go now can I go can I run away and make this look this is what my people have been doing apparently for hundreds and hundreds of years I had some I was just looking at uh and Martha uh and and my bushy hair okay she fled for no her mother did her married her mother married fled France went from England to the Americas to get away from the religious per keeps the persecution of both of those uh countries then then they had they get the stuff gets a little too uh uh pilgrim your tentacle in the east they had to the Missouri's they go for they had to the open open lands right give us a big science island in the middle of nowhere where nobody can see us and we'll just have a proper educated civilization and then of course the civil war and there's people and say okay the California has got a California keep running keep trying to get away from humans because they are absolutely insane yes I want science island I want it now so there was an experiment there was a revolutionary right a son of the American Revolution could serve have another shot at this because apparently the first run run failed look what's happened so um he didn't experiment uh with the he carried out that other people have been carrying out online and became viral video um where he put water over cooked rice in three beakers and labeled one thank you one you're an idiot and then another one was unlabeled and ignored and so for one day every day for one every day for one month a photo spoke to what spoke whatever was on the bottle to the rice inside and then after 30 days his results were that the um thank you bottle was giving a strong pleasant aroma and fermenting well and a the you're an idiot rice turned mostly black and uh like the and the control rice also began to rot and turn disgusting and so uh yeah sure the ignored rice fared the worst because negligence and indifference are the absolute worst things we can do to water rice and ourselves not that that was your control and it just ruined your experiment also um if he never opened the control rice that allowed the bacteria to grow very fast open it up perhaps some bacteria escaped because you spoke into the rice and displaced some of the air and then also maybe if you yelled you're an idiot maybe some of your spit went into that container Karen Karen Karen yeah why don't you just label some rice Karen while you're at it Karen yeah bye it just hurts it so hurts oh science island oh thanks for that link fada oh good they can get a lot of the science out of the ESA lander that's great yay the landing even though it landed badly that's good I feel like I might need to go soon yeah I should go too I was just uh waiting hopefully have we gone have we gone through I should go to bed I need to sleep I must sleep twist chat room why are you being weird um okay next Wednesday we're not going to do a full show here spider but we will join up and make sure we've got all our details covered right go over a few things eight o'clock and eight o'clock yeah and if people want to join us in the chat room you can chat with us and we'll hang out and we'll talk fall to more trip but uh and talk plans for any additional plans that occur to us during the next week um I know guests two four oh eight eight right what is sleep sleep is something I do at night because I have a child that wakes up in the morning facts contrary to proper belief science and is actually a peninsula do you know that I used to think Rhode Island was an island right is the way they would show the little line out because it's so small that you can't really see it on a lot of maps that have a and in fact that they cause itself an island those two pieces um so we're not doing like intro outro next week on Wednesday or anything like that we're just gonna chat on air for a bit or okay yeah just say hi to people and remind everybody that because if people show up and they forget that it's not the normal time we'll be there and we'll say hey this is the normal show but this is what we're doing right now and be sure to not forget Friday right yes that sound good absolutely and a hair blare yeah this is the wig you were talking about with choppy this is all short and choppy I love it it's just my hair now I don't know what you're talking about yeah alright everybody I can't think of anything else important that we're supposed to talk about right now and consider what our show is coming up next week and so I'm sure we'll consider something between now and then my gosh you got a haircut Ed is there a minion hangout tomorrow Ed's still here can you go to bed I probably will be Ed from Connecticut is not in the chat room yeah tomorrow scienceisland.org head over see if there's a science minion twist minion hangout tomorrow evening and otherwise everyone stay awake well or sleep well or do whatever you do well and I hope that we will see you again next week and especially we'll see you next week in Baltimore have a great week everyone oh wait where's my squirtle glasses again