 This is TWIS, this week in science episode, episode, it's not an episode. Three, two, this is TWIS, this week in science episode number 588, recorded on Wednesday, October 12th, 2016. Grab it by the science. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on TWIS we are going to fill your heads with a borrowing bacterium, hard-working squirrels, and space. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. False beliefs can come in many forms. Most can be corrected with knowledge. False beliefs that cannot be refuted by facts is a frightful form of madness. And to remain willfully ignorant of the facts is a maddening form of politics. Telling when others hold false beliefs is thought to be an important aspect of human cognitive development. It helps us choose which advice to follow, which to ignore. It's useful in predicting the future behavior of others. And if you're really good at it, you can read minds. Now I know what you're thinking, but I'm ignoring it because it has nothing to do with what I'm about to say. Apes, it turns out, also have this ability. And while we humans can continue to think we are more advanced in many mental respects to our ape cousins, the purely human trait of theory of mind is all in our heads. And before much longer, so will be a bunch of sciencey goodness because it's time, once again, for This Week in Science. Coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I wanna learn everything. I wanna fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening This Week in Science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening This Week in Science. Good science to you, Kirsten and Blair. And good science to you, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back once again with all the science that we can fit in a show and an interview. It's a very exciting day for us. We have tons of sciencey stories. I've got stories about pale blue dots in space. I've got stories about nation space. I've got stories about space for viruses inside of bacteria, inside of insects, lots of space. What do you have, Justin? Space brains, mind reading bonobos and green energy beer. And Blair, what is in the animal corner this week? Oh, in the animal corner, I have a good old fashioned battle of the sexes. We don't get enough of that in this world, seriously. No, okay, that was sarcasm. Okay, let's just start this show. Get it rolling, we're gonna right off the top have an interview because it's time to talk about some fun stuff. Joining us tonight is Connie Strittmatter. She's the coordinator of Children's and Teen Services at the Hartford County Public Library in Maryland. And she and others in the library system in Maryland are going to be involved in the Maryland STEM Festival. And so one thing that we really wanted to find out about was what they're gonna be doing because Maryland STEM Festival, we're going. We're doing that thing. We're going to Baltimore, everybody, right? So we want other people to get excited about this too. Connie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, you're welcome. Fabulous, I know it's a late night for you. Over here on the West Coast, I'm like, oh, it's eight o'clock. My child just went to bed. So thanks for staying up with us a little bit tonight. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do and maybe how with especially being working in the children and teen services portion of the library system, you work to incorporate STEM matter into the library. Sure. So like you mentioned, I'm the coordinator for children's and teen services in my library system. All of Maryland, pretty much all the counties have a similar position to me. And our jobs are to make sure that everybody from children's services and teen services are getting great programming into their libraries. And one of the topics that we definitely cover a lot of our STEM topics. And sometimes we'll even call it stream, which is kind of everything. We always joke that that's basically just school, but it incorporates- But better. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Totally better because it's a really cool awesome acronym, stream, which stands for science, technology, reading, engineering, arts, and math, which is like everything. But the whole point of the library really is to inspire our community to seek more information to be self-guided learners. So we incorporate STEM into our programming and into our collections to make sure that our community has the opportunity to be self-guided explorers of STEM as well. And especially in Maryland, we know that we're in a unique position where we're so close to the federal government, we're so close to so many major metropolitan areas that we wanna make sure that our communities have ample opportunity to experience STEM because there's so many STEM careers in our area available to our young people. Yeah, and the library, I mean, I remember growing up and it was the place my mom took me once a week and I would leave with this giant stack of books that I would end up spending, spend reading over the next week and then go back again and do it all over again. And occasionally there were readings from authors or if you were a younger child, there's somebody reading a book to younger children. But I don't remember ever, I mean, I grew up in a very small rural area, so maybe I didn't get this stuff. I mean, they didn't have it at my library, but has the libraries expanded more in terms of offering what they offer as a place of gathering and learning? Absolutely, I mean, you'll definitely still find the traditional story times, of course, and you'll still find author readings and author visits, but when you walk into a library today, especially in Maryland, you'll find science clubs, you'll find Lego clubs, you'll find, in Hartford County we have something called a Leap Kit, so you'll walk out of the library with a stack of books, but you'll also walk out with a giant tub full of science materials that you can play with at home that include books and DVDs and maybe a Stingray jaw will be in there too, we have that at the library that you can take home. And you'll find musical instruments that you can check out, you'll find American Girl Dolls and superhero action figures and everything. It's a pretty amazing experience. What was it that in your life that made you want to become a librarian and work in library services? It's so funny, I was just telling the story to someone yesterday and I was an English major, but oddly enough, one of my earliest memories of being in a library was going to a class learning about meteorology in the library and I remember thinking, I was probably seven or eight and I remember thinking, why am I here learning about clouds? Like I'm in a library, this is really weird, but it's such a lasting memory that I have that it's just stuck with me and I've always been fascinated by the library as a place of learning in the community. That's really awesome. And what kind of programming, in addition to the normal programming that you do, are you starting to put together or have you started to organize in thinking about the Maryland STEM Festival? We have a lot of great stuff. A lot of it is our typical run-of-the-mill STEM, which is wonderful, you know, run-of-the-mill makes it sound not so much, but it is, it's wonderful programming. So a lot of the library systems are doing their regular coding clubs. We do a lot of coding at the library. We do a lot of robot programs as well. So you'll see a lot of that. A couple of highlights I think that are gonna be great. We have a live broadcast with NASA that's happening November 10th at nine different libraries throughout the state. We're gonna have heave-yo physics experts from NASA broadcasting at those libraries and it's gonna be a really cool experience. And we also have, in two different counties, an NSA cyber professional coming in digitally and mentoring some of our young teen customers. So it's gonna be a really cool time that whole week. Yeah, I find and I was looking through the schedule and I saw a lot of that. And I was thinking how, where I'm located, we're far away from the central government and so something like an NSA representative would probably not be represented at a STEM festival in this area. So that's something that's really unique about what you're doing. Yeah, and that is something, junior high school through high school, that would have been something I would have loved to have had a chance to participate in. Yeah, we're really excited about it. And we know, like I said, we have so many great opportunities in this area. I didn't grow up in Maryland, I actually grew up in Seattle. So I totally know what you guys are saying about it. I'm not used to being near DC. I'm still in awe when I walk around that city. I can't believe, like, oh look, there's a Supreme Court building. But it's really great for the community that we can bring those opportunities to them through the library. Larry, did you have any questions? I just love that this is kind of being championed by the libraries and that libraries, when I think about my experience of libraries growing up, it was kind of a safe space. It was a place that I would go after school to hang out with friends, to explore new topics, to do homework. And so this is definitely something that I think is a great way to kind of engage the community, have a safe place for kids to explore new topics. It's, I think it's a great time of year to do all this. Kids are finally back in the swing of school. Is there one particular thing on the STEMFest schedule that you're looking forward to in particular? I think probably, I guess that NASA broadcast is gonna be really cool. But I know, I think I mentioned a lot of the library systems do robot programming. And we have, in Hartford County, we have a program called the Robot Roundup that we're doing. It's gonna just be like, as many robots that we can possibly fit into the room, basically in letting families come in and experiment and explore with them. And that's gonna be a lot of fun. That's at our Edgewood branch. That's gonna be so fun. Absolutely, yeah. Go robots, go play with robots. Do you have any live animals visiting any library branches as part of the festival? That's a very distinct possibility. I know we do that a lot over the summer. We actually have the zoo come in. And this past summer, we were actually a little bit frightened because the zoo was really late. They got stuck in awful traffic. And when they showed up, they were like, just so you know, we have an alligator with us or whatever it was. I'm not of the, it was a smart one. But it's really hungry. I feel like it's been in the car for how long? You're gonna bring it into the library now? So that was a little terrifying. But we have a lot of fun with the zoo. And we actually have the Franklin Institute come due programming over the summer from Philadelphia as well, which has been really cool. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, this is very awesome. I'm glad that the, I mean, I've seen my local libraries added newer elements that weren't there when I was growing up. But I was raised by a librarian. And one of my very first jobs was shelving the return. So, and it's a great place to bring kids in even if they've been lured in by robots. They may end up going home with a little bit of literature that might inspire them in a different direction. That's absolutely our hope always, for sure. Actually, I do have one more question that I always like to ask librarians whenever I can. Dewey Decimal System, yay or nay. Oh my goodness, that is opening up a huge can of worms. That's such a big question. I love it because it is so organized, but then people have a hard time finding stuff. So I don't know, that really is like a huge question. I think the fact that you don't have to just go to the card catalog thing anymore. You can go to a computer and put in a few words and find the book and it'll tell you where to go. Kids today, they'll never understand the shuffling through the cards. The card catalog and pulling it for it tells you where to go, yeah. For back in the day, I remember, once I got the Dewey Decimal System down, I didn't even, it was so easy to put the books back where they belong. Now, it might have been harder at one point to find them, but I think today it's probably pretty easy to track down what you're looking for. It's a fun challenge though. We do it every once in a while with the reference librarians asking each other a topic and then seeing if we can name the number. So, and some of us are pretty good at it. We, yeah, some of us are pretty good, but, oh my gosh. I don't know. Librarian challenge. Exactly. Name a number, send somebody after the book, see how fast they can find it. I guess I've never had the challenge. I'm already, I've already got the number when I was reshelving. It would be interesting to, if there was, you know, if you're the one that has to determine what number to assign it, that seems like that would be a little bit, that could be a little bit daunting. Yeah, cause we do, we do end up having arguments sometimes we'll pull a book out of a section and say, wait a second, like this should not be in the 598s. That needs to go in the 613s or whatever it is. But, I mean. So then, so then when you, how do you solve the problem? Do you grab a couple of the robots and have like a little robot? Oh, obviously. That's, that's, those are the, those are the new library rules. That's library of the future. We're going to have robot battles to determine. Yeah, robot and alligator maybe. Oh yeah, actually, that's, that's great. I'm just, I'm just imagining two will enter, one will leave and reshell the book. I'll have to, we'll have to add that to the library games next summer. That'll be great. So back to the, the science and libraries at hand. How do you think the best way, what is the best way for people to come in and take advantage of all the opportunities in steam and we go stream and we could maybe make it stream if we put science, history, technology, reading, engineering. Cool. Stream. Stream, stream. I have not heard that yet and I think I'll suggest it. Stream. Stream. Stream. Stream, how do you, how, how do you suggest people take advantage of all the opportunities that the Maryland libraries have to offer and specifically find events that they might enjoy at the Maryland STEM Festival? So the first step for sure is to go to the Maryland STEM Festival website which is Marylandstemfestival.org spelled out all together. If you go there, you'll click on the events tab and you can see everything that's happening all throughout the state. You can filter it by county or you can filter it by topic if that is what you'd prefer. Oh, look, there it is. Oh, there it is. So when you click on events, like you can filter it however you want to to determine where you wanna go. So that's a really great way to take advantage for sure. Those events should link to more information from the library website. So it's not just libraries that are hosting either. There are a lot of times school systems are doing things as well. So it's a great opportunity for a lot of different organizations throughout the state to host these events. So that's definitely one way. Another way is if you live in Maryland, walk into your local library and ask a librarian. That's almost always the answer to so many questions that you might have. Go to a library and ask a librarian. We'll be able to help you. So we can help you find a great program for you. And I would also urge everyone to use this as an opportunity to remember that STEM things happen at libraries all year round. The STEM Festival is a great way for us to promote it, to make sure people are aware of it. But don't just wait for November 4th through the 13th and don't stop after the 13th. Keep coming back and keep taking advantage of all the stuff that we have to offer. That's fantastic. I really do think libraries as open facilitators of knowledge transfer, of information, they really are a place where knowledge is free and anybody can come in, anyone can use computers, anyone can take out a book or go to a robot club. So libraries are a place for everyone to be able to quench their thirst for knowledge. So thank you so much for joining us tonight, Connie. It's been great talking with you. No problem. Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome. And everybody who is in the Maryland DC area, I do hope that you check out the Maryland STEM Festival website, marillonstemfestival.org, see if there are any events to your interest and just go to the library. It's a cool place to hang out. It's quiet. It's very nice. Sometimes. Yeah, maybe not during like robot demonstrations or Lego night. Right, or when the 3D printer is droning along. We have lots of 3D printers. Oh, wow. That's so cool. Can you check those out? We haven't been doing that yet, at least in Hartford County, but you can come in and you can print stuff. And you'll sit there and watch it print. We have all kinds of things that people are printing. It's been pretty cool. That is awesome. That's awesome. That's super cool. It's becoming a library slash maker space. That's amazing. Yeah, absolutely. That's the next level library in. Library ending. Sure. Industrial library and magic? Yes. I like this. I like this. These are good new titles. All right, everyone. This is this week in science. We are going to move on to the science news portion of the show. Connie, once again, thank you so much and have a wonderful night. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Goodnight. All right, everyone. Don't forget you can catch this week in science at the Maryland STEM Festival, November 4th. And we are going to be having so much fun there. I do hope that you will join us at the National Aquarium. It's gonna be a great day. Our tickets are booked. We are headed that way very soon. All right. This is this week in science. Time for some news. This story blew my mind today. It's more a fun story than science, science, science, but it could have some interesting implications down the road. A Russian businessman named Dr. Igor Ashurbele. He is the founder of the Aerospace International Research Center, AIRC, in Vienna, which publishes The Room, which is a space journal, room.eu.com is where you can find that. And he became chairman of UNESCO's Science of Space Committee and he made an announcement that he is starting a space nation, or a nation space, a place, but not really a place in space. And it's pretty awesome sounding. It's gonna be called Asgardia after the Norse. Asgard, the place with the Viking score. Yeah, where Odin ruled from Valhalla, right? The Norse mythology. Asgardia is what it's going to be called. Founded with the core values of knowledge, science, and intelligence. It has a philosophical mission of serving all humanity and digitalizing the noosphere. A legal mission of creating universal law. Like right now we have international law in which nations are bound by international law, but he wants to create something known as universal law that in which we are not members of individual nations, we are all earthlings. And this universal law would benefit all humanity. And the third mission is scientific and technological to quote, have peace, access, and protection for all. And you can go online and become a citizen of Asgardia. If you like. How much does it cost? It doesn't cost anything right now. You can go to asgardia.space and they're gonna keep it open for the first 100,000 people. I thought you were just saying years. 100,000 people and then they're gonna close it for a while. They might open it again later. But they are going to, and I believe it's, you're not a citizen right away. You have kind of applied for citizenship by putting your name in the hat. And so it will be considered. There are 21,000 Asgardians at this time. Yeah, earlier today when I looked, we got to get in there quick. That's right. You know, I didn't actually sign up because I had this moment of like, really, could put my name and email on that thing. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. How many emails am I gonna get about the fact that I've renounced my American citizenship? So Blair, that's exactly what I was thinking though. Cause then I feel like this list could be used. It's like, oh, oh, look here. You signed up to be a citizen of space. Well, I guess that means your rights here. Don't matter anymore, just come with us. Oh, surprise, your vote didn't count. Yeah, so it's a, it's- Social securities for citizens. So I'm gonna announce yours. Yeah. So anyway, I just think this is a fascinating direction. And the idea, you know, he has, especially the legal aspects and in his speech, he's really pushing that someday, as Guardia will be recognized as a member of the United Nations. And then, and then there will be reasons for granting citizenship. One opinion is that, and this is what he said in his speech, is that the first, as guardians will be those who work in the fields of space research and exploration and space technology, as well as investors in these fields, including small investors. And they're going to be doing crowdfunding. And then the first 100,000 people who apply will get special preference. And they would like to launch a satellite, which will, they want to launch it in 2017, or at least get moving on launching it in 2017. And this space satellite would work to protect the earth from space bombardment. I don't know how, one, two, three years? As long as the bombardment is coming right through where that little satellite is. Tartigrades? Is that what he's worried about? Tartigrades. Yeah, so they're very, if you go, I'll put the link in our show notes later, but his speech is very interesting and they have very interesting ideas. And I'd love to know what everyone thinks about Asgardia and whether you would like to be a citizen of this new nation's space. It sounds, I love it being based in science and knowledge and intelligence. I mean, I love that happening in that, right? There we go. Yeah, also in space, some pretty neat things. Remember Proximab? Proxima B, our nearest neighbor in Alpha Centauri, Centauri B, the three-star system with the Proxima Centauri star had a little rocky planet that appears earth-like and appears to be in the habitable zone, although a little bit maybe tidally locked to its star. We haven't gotten a really good look at it, but scientists have simulated the planet itself. They were researchers at the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory in France. They calculated a number of size and surface properties. So they simulated a lot of things. They basically said if this is how big it is and it's this far away from their surface or from the star or if this is how big it is and this is what it's doing, what is the likelihood that it might have water on the surface? And the researchers say the planet could be an ocean planet with an ocean covering its entire surface similar water to some icy moons around Jupiter or Saturn or it could have a very, it could have a small amount of water and be much more similar to what earth has. Another report is that if there is surface water, it would not contribute more than 0.05% to the planet's total mass. This is similar to earth where it's about 0.02%. And so, yeah, there's very possible, very, very possible likelihood that it could have an ocean. There could be a single, there could be a liquid ocean on it. And if there is, the simulations do suggest that it would have a thin, gassy atmosphere and temperatures that would allow water to remain liquid on its surface. Even though it's close to a star. Remember Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf so it's not a super hot star. So, it's very possible that it's not too hot. It could, there could be liquid water that doesn't gas off and that there's a nice ocean on the surface. So, yeah, we have to get some equipment out there which is what people like the star shot team would like to do in aiming their little tiny robots toward that star system. But there's a new plan not to send machinery directly to Alpha Centauri, but a group is working on sending. This is the Boldly Go Institute. They are working on, for about $50 million, maybe if they can get the costs down, $25 million within the next 10 years to put a space telescope up, that would allow us to image the planets around Alpha Centauri A and B, not necessarily Proxima Centauri because Proxima Centauri, again, the light is a little different and so it wouldn't necessarily be able to image it the same way, but they wanna put actual optical imagers, a telescope in space that would give us an image very similar to the pale blue dot image that was sent to us from Voyager of Earth. And this would allow us to actually image the atmosphere and see if there's water in the atmosphere of any planets surrounding Proxima A and B. We don't know, we think there is one rocky planet that has been discovered around those two stars, but there may be more and we don't know, we haven't seen them yet. And so actual optical imaging might give us a view of rocks in space around these stars. And so they're crowdfunding, that's what they wanna do. They're going to be, this is called Project Blue. Again, it's through the Boldly Go Institute and they think it can be done for less than $50 million, hopefully $25 million. Wow, that doesn't seem like a whole lot of money. I know, when we spend. For space, explorating. Yeah, so it is a little bit of a gamble because like I said, there's only one rocky planet that we kind of do know about and so we don't know about any others and what they would be like if they are there. So it could be like, hey, let's spend this $25 million and put this telescope up there and aim it and not see anything new or interesting. I feel like you're gonna see something interesting. You might not see what you're specifically looking for. That's science, isn't it? But yeah, you're tossing the space telescope out there, you're gonna see something new. You're gonna find stuff. And besides, you look at Hubble. Hubble wasn't designed for the Deep Array view where we saw the billions of galaxies out there, or the, you know, it wasn't designed for that. It's something they figured out after it was already up there and tried out and then lo and behold, it worked and gave amazing images. So yeah, let's put it up. Yeah, so they're working on it, this project blue. And so they think they can get a sufficient resolution to image a planet around one of the Alpha Centauri stars and the telescope would be a 50 centimeter or smaller in size telescope. And for comparison, you brought up Hubble. Hubble's telescope mirror is 2.4 meters. So this would be substantially smaller, which would be cool. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see, I love looking to the stars and the excitement and enjoyment of what could possibly be out there. Justin, whatcha got? Captain's log, star date, number something. We encountered a distress thingy emanating from the galaxy cluster, whatcha gonna call it? And found a ship full of, you know, the guys with the white hair and the antennae. The ship was in need of repair so we sent over what's his name from engineering. Apparently things ended badly because their ship quietly exploded. So we are now continuing on our mission to wherever it is we're going. Also there's red flashing lights and annoying alarm that we can't figure out how to turn off. So this is Captain, Captain's time to signing off. While this might sound like an episode of Star Trek written during a writer's strike, it could be the real result of too much time in space. A condition called space brain, which as a citizen of Asgardia now I am particularly concerned with. University of California Irvine scientists have been probing the space brain phenomena. UCI's Charles Limoli and colleagues found that exposure to highly energetic charged particles like the ones you would find in cosmic rays out in space will bombard astronauts during extended space flights and can cause significant long-term brain damage according to tests in research rodents. And these tests resulted in some long-term cognitive impairments and even dementia. So the study appears in Nature's scientific reports. It follows one last year showing somewhat shorter term brain effects from the exposure. They were looking at six weeks after. This time they're looking six months after the exposure has taken place in the research rodents and quoting, this is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two to three year round trip to Mars, said the professor of radiation oncology. The space environment poses unique hazards to astronauts. Exposure to these particles can lead to a range of potential central nervous system complications that can occur during and persist long after the actual space travel part is over with, such as various performance, the decreasements, memory deficits, anxiety, depression, and impaired decision making. Many of these adverse consequences to cognition may continue to progress throughout life. There was also something that they discovered which was the team discovered that the radiation affected fear extinction, which is an active process in which the brain suppresses prior unpleasant stressful associations. So in that thing where the captain has the red lights of the red alert going and hearing the sounds, that thing might be off, but it's as though they can't release that memory and anxiety of it. So it would seem like it was still happening. Sounds rough. Yeah, that's good. Right, rough. And then you put the crew of these people, what did Elon wanna do a hundred or so at a time who aren't getting over anything? Anything anxious or stressful that happens and they're not able to get over it for the entire trip, plus people who are maybe in charge of whatever critical systems, having some cognitive deficits as the trip progresses, and we have a huge problem. While dementia-like deficits in astronauts would take months to manifest, he says, the time required for a mission to Mars is sufficient for such impairments to develop. People working for extended periods on the International Space Station do not face the same level of bombardment as a Mars mission, however, because they are still within the protective hug of the Earth's magnetosphere. So can't we fix this with better ships and suits? So they're looking on creating areas of increased shielding for maybe places where the astronauts are sleeping, that sort of thing. However, according to the researcher here, these highly energetic charged particles will traverse the ship nonetheless and there's really no escaping them. So this is really high intergalactic cosmic ray energy stuff that's gonna- What if I line my helmet with tardigrades? That I just assumed you were gonna do anyway. I'd name every one of them. Yeah, so it's actually causing, you know, I mean, there's, it's sort of like what happens when somebody has radiation-based treatments for cancer and the like. And so it's pretty well with that. You know, that happens in shorter periods of times with the large bombardment, but if you're for longer periods of time with those high energy particles, you get the same result of that sort of dementia. Yeah, I mean, we can say that, you know, oh, it's, you know, this is a study in mice. This is, you know, the behavioral stuff they're looking at it just in mice, but the mammalian neurons are probably all going to respond very similarly. Yeah, this, they looked six months after the exposure and this to the research rodents and it revealed that the brain's neural network was impaired through the reduction of dendrites and spines on the neurons, which therefore disrupted transmission of signal between brain cells. And yeah, so then they had these behavioral tasks for learning in memory and the research rodents did much, much more poorly after. Yeah, so basically you have radiation that gets in there, mucks up what's going on inside the cells, the cells that go, I don't wanna touch other cells anymore. And so the cells don't and then they don't talk to each other anymore. And then your head, because you don't have a bunch of neurons that aren't talking to each other anymore, you don't wanna talk to other people anymore. Kind of what happens? I'll keep that in mind when I move to space. For our space nation, yes. Yeah, I really do hope they figure out the shielding issue because that is like, that's, ah, it's a huge deal, it's a really big deal. The shielding may not materially be possible, okay? There might be some form of trying to recreate a magnetic field kind of thing, but they say right now the most likely thing that they could do short-term is pharmacological, create drugs. Fix it or stop it. They've got compounds they say that they're working on that can scavenge free radicals and protect neurotransmission. So it may be more of a biotech answer to the problem. I feel pretty confident we're gonna solve it. This seems like something that is fixable, and I'm glad we found it. Before we went to anyone. The other way to go is, you know, just get circuit, get circuits, get electronics that can withstand the radiation better than human neurons. And then we upload our consciousness and then we go to space, not physically, but- Toxin, yes. Avatars. Avatars in space, there we go. I like this idea. Who's going to a space? My avatar. How can my robot is lying on the space couch eating space chips and watching space flicks all day? Wait, maybe we shouldn't have used my consciousness for this mission because that seems like what's taking place. Let's see there. Exactly. How come my avatar is spending the whole time petting the space cat? Oh, I love it. Oh my goodness. Like avatar, you are. That's right. You know what time it is if you just tuned in? This is the weekend science and it's time for Blair's Animal Corner. I have a good old fashion, down and dirty, battle of the sexes. Who's the smartest? Who's the strongest? And who is going to get eaten? I was going to say Blair's is the smartest and the strongest. And I'm not going to get eaten. You're not going to get eaten. No, you're too smart for that. So I actually have three stories that have three very different views on this. So the first is actually about arctic squirrels in Alaska. In a study, I will right away tell you the sample sizes from Northern Arizona University. This was published in, oh, it was a team, Northern Arizona University, University of California and University of Alaska all looked at arctic squirrels and their study was published in the Royal Society of Open Science. And they tested, they trapped 18 male squirrels and 30 female squirrels. So not a huge sample size, but still a decent representation. And they put collars on them to find out whether they were above or below ground. And they also had accelerometers on them so they could figure out their movements and when they were active and inactive. And they looked at them at two living sites in 2014 and 2015. And they charted their activities. And what they found was that when they weren't hibernating, so this is late spring and early fall, late spring to early fall, the females were super busy. They were above ground, they were below ground, they were moving around. The males were a little lazy. They spent a lot of time, quote, lulling about and spent most of their days above ground. So the researchers extrapolated that it's most likely the females were moving around more because they were consuming food pretty much constantly during this time. Fattening themselves prior to carrying babies, growing babies inside of them, and then producing milk to care for the babies after birth. But the males, their hypothesis was that they spent time laying out in the sun, keeping warm. Now, my favorite part about this study is that this study was done not to see how males and females act, but why males were getting eaten by and large more than females by predators. And so they think it's because the males were basking in the sun, enjoying their day while the females were flitting around, eating everything they could find. So they were easy prey. And maybe it has to do with the males not, they're basking, so they're not paying attention, right? They're taking little naps and little squirrel naps saying, yeah, whereas the females, because they're paying attention, because they're looking for food, they're alert, and they are in an active state as opposed to relaxed and queasy. Also, the males were somewhat more energetic during one short time span of the year. Can anyone guess what that was? Meeting season. Yeah, mating season. There was one outlier in the study, though. There was one male squirrel. I wish they had named him, but they didn't. And he was busier than all of the other males and females in the study. But the researchers have no potential explanation for this behavior. Wow. I think he just really hated the collar. That's my guess. Yeah, that's me. He's flaring off on me. Yeah, so those are the squirrels. Now, on the flip side. But I do have a question. Yes. I'd love to know, what does it tell me about the kamikaze squirrels? I guess that is during spring. So there are the squirrels just run across the road in front of you. And you go, can you see that slam on your brakes? You try not to hit them, right? Are those? Wait, no, you don't hit no. You do not break for squirrels. But I'm just wondering. You do not break for squirrels. You might hit the brakes for deer, but you don't hit it for a squirrel. That's the first lesson that country road dwellers live in. Because I guess maybe if you're out in the. Just having you seen Kiki's license plate cover, it says I break for squirrels. I break for squirrels. I guess if you're out in a farmland, and there's one car per 100 acres. And there's nobody behind you. You don't have to worry about it. But I learned how to drive in mountain roads. Where if you hit the brakes and you went off a little bit to the side, you go off the mountain. So you didn't break for squirrels. That was the rule. The kamikaze squirrels. I'm not sure this would explain very well. A, because these are Arctic squirrels. They're in a pretty barren area. But B, because I think that's just because squirrels are really frustrating and stupid. Anyway, and then we'll get back to the song and other stories of why Blair doesn't like squirrels. So anyway, moving on, the flip side, you said. So the flip side. So we have the females that are busting their tail and the males that are just wallowing about in the sun. Then there are a group of birds called cookles, which are related to cuckoos, which are from Africa. They're black cookles and there are white, brown cookles. And they have different roles in their broods. So the black cookles, the males care for their broods all by themselves. The white, brown ones actually pair up for monogamous seasonal pairs and care for their babies together. Why? These two actually have habitats that overlap and they're extremely closely related. So why is this happening? The easiest explanation, explanation that is most clear from researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in C. Wiesin. Their explanations are that the black cookle, the species where a female mates was up to five different males during each season. Then after the eggs have been laid, each of her mates take care of the brood alone and then the female defends her large territory and lays eggs for the next male in line. This happens because the males vastly outnumber the females. In this other closely related species, the white, brown cookle, they have almost a 50-50 split of the sexes. So they would be better off to pair up. What's especially interesting about this research is that the black cookle fathers feed their young four to five times more often than the white, brown parents combined. So most likely this is actually because of the food choice. They hypothesize that the white, brown birds are feeding their young more frogs and the black ones are feeding them insects. So they need to do more work. And they even hypothesize that the white, brown cookle parents, one of them would be enough to take care of the brood because if the single father of the black variety is feeding his babies way more times a day, then one parent of the white, brown could absolutely get it done. So why is it happening? It's simple supply and demand. There are two and a half males for every female in the black cookle population. So the females can do pretty much whatever they want and the males have to be stuck there to take care of their babies. When it's half and half the females unlikely to find additional partners. So she's better off keeping her current mate happy and working together with him. So that's kind of the other side of the coin perhaps. And then all the way in the other ballpark, we have the ultimate sacrifice. And this of course I'm referring to post-coital cannibalism in spiders. My favorite. Yeah. So dark fishing spiders, if Kiki can share a picture from, the females are huge compared to the males, not unlike other species that we've talked about in the past. A recent study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Gonzaga University has found that the males will basically surrender themselves to cannibalism and that there is actually a huge benefit to that. It is indeed the ultimate sacrifice. Yes, so the male dark fishing spiders, they actually begin to curl up immediately after mating with a female and then she will eat him. So the sacrifice appears to increase the number, size and survival odds of the future spiderlings. And they did this study where they also took crickets that were the same size as the male spiders, did not have the same beneficial effect. There is something about the spider male that is uniquely beneficial to her laying more eggs, having larger babies and having those babies survive more. That's so weird. So it's not just the nutrition, not just. Not just the nutrition. And the male's anatomy actually functions to force him to sacrifice himself. So the male will make his deposit with his petty palp and then a bulb inside the petty palp quote goes off like an airbag. The bulb remains inflated and the male's body curls. His heart slows and it would stop beating within hours if he were not eaten first. Get that anyway, might as well get eaten. Yeah, and they think that the reason for this actually, it's kind of interesting is again, it's down to the dynamic kind of a supply and demand. So the males want virgin females. That's because the likelihood of fathering babies drops severely as soon as she has mated with a single male. Right, we talked about that last week, right? Right, so it's always more likely that you're gonna father more babies if you get a virgin. So as time goes by, the number of virgins in a mating season, if that's what you wanna call it for spiders, the number of virgins decreases. So that means as the weeks go by, there is less chance of them bagging another virgin. There's no point to them even being alive anymore. But on top of all of that, the self-sacrifice helps their babies survive in huge numbers, way more than any present that they could bring to the female and the species, more than any other care that they could give to these babies. They are instead giving the ultimate sacrifice of their body to be eaten. Yeah, I wonder if there's something, I'm just wondering if there's something that they're missing about what happens as he self-destructs or as. I think it's purely psychological. Yeah, I'm just wondering what happens like when the female eats the male, is there something that the scientists haven't seen yet? Right, I think that this is a rich vein of study because there's obviously some sort of compound or chemical reaction, something going on that makes the male, because the next step in my mind would be to take a male that she hadn't mated with and feed it to her. Does it have to be genetically the same male that just gave you sperm? Does that have to do with it somehow? Is it just any male of that species? Is it a different spider male of a different species? Or could you dress up a cricket to look like a spider? Cause I think it's psychological. I think it's just a mental kick that she's getting on having to take everything that he had. We're gonna call it spidercology instead of psychology. Yes. Oh my goodness. Bicology? Oh my goodness. So, identity four, I think won the internet tonight with Kirsten Sandford's license plate cover says I break for squirrels. Justin's license plate cover covered in dead squirrels. And on that note, we're going to bring the end of the first half to an end. We have finished the first half of this week in science. We're going to take a quick break. Don't leave. Or if you do, just take a quick break because we're going to be back in just a moment with more science news because, you know, there's lots more coming. We've got cool nesting doll bacteria viruses and I don't know, thinking apes like us, but not us. Stay tuned for more this week in science. The line of reason shows the way to go. She's the method to our hypothesis in patience, honey. Hey, everyone. I hope you're looking forward to the Maryland STEM Festival as much as we are. We're very excited to be joining the Maryland STEM Festival on their opening day. We will be at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland on November 4th. So please check out our website, twist.org, for information, links to our Facebook event page. We have a Facebook page also with an event page for it, but really what you're going to have to do if you want to go to the STEM Festival, if you want to come to our live show on November 4th, you're going to have to go to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, buy a ticket there and just go to the aquarium and come see us. There's no extra special ticket price or anything like that. It's just entrance to the aquarium. So support the aquarium, enjoy some science, have some good fun on a Friday, November 4th in Baltimore, Maryland. Twist also has merchandise that you might enjoy. So head on over to twist.org and click on our Zazzle Store link to take you to our Zazzle Store, where we have items like hats and mugs and tote bags and smartphone covers and trucker hats and all sorts of things with the twist logo emblazoned all over it. Also we have art from the 2016 Blair's Animal Corner calendar and also from the Patreon rewards that she gave out during the last year. There are new ones coming. It's going to be very exciting, but go to our Zazzle Store, click on the Zazzle link and go to twist.org, click on the Zazzle link and support Twist by buying and showing off your twist swag. Also we are supported by donations, by listeners just like you. Our listeners support us and help us keep doing what we do. We bring you the science week in, week out with only the every once in a while break in service. It's very rare for us to take a break from the show, but we are really produced by you. You executive produce us and allow us to do what we're doing. We don't have any advertising. It's all you people, you listeners, you keep us going and we thank you for it. But if you'd like to support Twist, you can support us by clicking on the big donate button on the webpage twist.org. Go there, scroll down the sidebar. You can donate, takes you to a page where you can donate through PayPal. Additionally, we have a Patreon account. So if you click on the Patreon link that will take you to our Patreon page where there's a nice big button that says become a patron and then you can become a Twist patron and support us at any level that you choose, whether it's $1, $2, $3.14. We've got some good ones in there. And for the $15 or more per episode level, Blair will hand draw you a picture. It's one of, like one of the pictures that went in the 2016 Blair's Animal Corner, but she's got new art this year. There's some cool stuff that she's been working on. I think I saw a mammoth and a bivalve thing. I don't know. Can we make one of the quick buttons that you can press the 3.14? Can we make that a thing? No, not a quick one. But we do have this become a Patreon button and then you can pick your reward, the reward of your choice that's on Patreon. And if you are unable to support us financially, we absolutely understand us and our executive producers support us in many, many ways. And one of those ways is through sharing us with their friends, talking us up, telling people about us, telling people that they should listen to our interview with the awesome volcanologists who were on a volcano last week who should check out our interview with the Maryland Library and about science and libraries. Check out our show for the awesome science news that we do. Talk us up, tell your friends, put us on social media. That is a huge part of helping to support TWIS. And if you can do that, that would be absolutely amazing. We thank you for your support. We really could not do this without you. We're all laid down in black ink Never even bothering to stop and think The further I knew believe is the dollars and cents all these authors received If miracle wonders were held in their looks Why waste precious time and try selling their books for sits and waste for your publishing Royalty and born has real power And we are back with more this week in science. Oh yeah, we are back. And we've got all sorts of science. Hey, Justin, can you read minds? Is that the story that you're going to tell me? I think that is the, it's time for the mind reading story. So the capacity that we have to tell when other people have a mistaken belief is is one of these key components to humans being so cognitively superior to the animal world, all those other life forms that we share the planet and all of our entire evolutionary history with. And yet there seems to be these dividing lines that are pretty stark between their cognitive ability and ours. And humans develop this ability pretty early on. It says here, usually before the age five, it marks the beginning of a young child's ability to fully comprehend the thoughts and emotions of others. And these skills are, of course, essential for getting along with people, predicting what they might do, it also underlies ability to trick people and to believing something that isn't true. It's our misdirection, our subtle lying and fibbing to get away with things. And when this sort of trait is missing in children, it is considered to be an early sign of autism. So it's one of these markers they're looking for to sort of predict if a child is going to have some cognitive issues later on. So this is what separates us from the animals. But new research on chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans suggests our primate relatives may also be able to tell when something is just in your head. Studies here show that apes are remarkably skilled. Actually, previous studies are showing that apes are remarkably skilled at understanding what others want, whether those might know, based on what they can see and hear, their mental states, this sort of thing. But when it came to understanding what someone else is thinking, even when those thoughts are false, apes have consistently in the tests that they've constructed in the past failed at this study. So they created a new study, a new test to sort of see whether or not these apes could tell if somebody was performing an act based on faulty information. So in the studies what they did is they've actually created, this is fantastic, they created a couple of videos that go along with their actual study. And the first one, they've got somebody who's dressed in a King Kong suit and he's hiding himself in a large haystack. And this video is playing here, here comes King Kong and there's a man who's looking for him. The man is out there and he's searching for him. The King Kong ducks into one of the two haystacks and the man of course knows where he is. And in the video, it's sort of showing the man with the stick whacking the haystack. Now the man comes back out, the ape hides in the other stack. And again, it looks like the man is going to be able to find him and he does. He whacks it with the stick, the King Kong runs away. Third experiment, the man came out without the stick. The ape is hiding in one of the haystacks, the man goes back to get a stick and the King Kong runs away and now the man comes out. And what it's tracking is the eye movements of the apes that are actually watching this video. And they're all looking kind of at the one that he knows the man is going to be fooled into thinking it's in. So they're anticipating his misdirection, the success of the misdirection. And in the second video, they did sort of the same thing, but it was a little simpler. It was the King Kong suit, the guy pretending to be an ape, I guess, hiding a rock under a box. And it's two boxes and you'll hide it in one or the other. And when the human can see which box the King Kong is hidden, the rock, he pulls it towards him and selects the correct box. And you can see the eye movements are following where the correct box is. Anticipating that the man who saw it is going to pick that box. So then towards the end of the video, what they do is the same sort of thing. The ape hides the rock under one of the boxes. The man sees it, but then the man leaves the room and King Kong takes the rock away and runs off with it. And so then when the man comes back in, you can see the eye tracking of the of the apes in the experiment, anticipating that the human will choose the box with where the misdirection took place. Maybe giggling a little bit to themselves while watching the silly human. These movies are so fantastic, too, because they've got the, you know, the King Kong or the ape character is a person wearing an ape mask, acting like an ape. So. And they've got a little mirror so you can actually see the ape in the experiment and then these electronic dots that sort of highlight where the looking is taking place. Okay, so there in this part of the video, the man has left the room. The King Kong takes the rock away, runs off with it, and now reenters the human and this little ape is going to go, I know which one you're going to choose because you got suckered. You got totally fooled. So, this is a very fascinating find and it does, it does give give the theory of mind that we are so attached to as humans is being that thing that can't be done. And then, of course, it's already been encroached on by apes a bit, but this takes it to a really subtle intricate level where they can they can see the misdirection and predict the future behavior. They can sort of track the thoughts of the players in the videos. Yeah, I like I think the methodology they've used is a good one because historically, like we've talked about this many times, you know, we've got dogs and many animals that have kind of now passed these theories of theory of mind tests. And here we are going, but the apes were related to how did they with their social behaviors and everything not have this? And it's just why have they not passed the test these tests yet? And it's just sometimes in science, it's a matter of finding the right test, asking the question in the right way, finding a way to if you can't find an animal, an animal centric platform, a way to put it together, make it coherent for the animal. Then you have to find a new way, like what they've done here, watching where the apes' eyes are going, which they've done, which we've done in children as well. And it's also interesting to me when we bring up the dogs that we sort of gave a little bit of ground with the dog saying, well, the reason dogs are so good is because they're domesticated and they spent so much time with humans and have been dependent on humans that they've learned to read our faces and sort of guess, based on that sort of communication that they've held throughout this whole domestication process. And then they ran the study with wolves and the wolves were better at it. So, you know, it's more likely that this was an intuitive thing already within wolves, which made them easy to domesticate and have that sort of relationship with us in the first place. It's actually gotten a little worse with time. So there are... Well, which breeds were they testing? Of course, but there is, you know, I think more and more we sort of peel away that separation between man and beast and that we can find that the beasts have much better cognitive abilities than we imagined. And we also see examples in society of humans acting pretty bestial. Oh, very bestie. Very bestial. Absolutely. So maybe not that different than the animals. And maybe we are just influenced by those little tiny things inside us that we've been evolving with for millions of years. Yeah. Mwah-ha-ha-ha. So there's bacteria and viruses. So there's a study out this weekend. There are two studies out this week involving a species of bacteria called Wolbachia. And Wolbachia is pretty interesting because in some species it is beneficial and it helps them. It can be symbiotic with some hosts. And in other species, it can actually be pathogenic. And this bacteria can actually break out of cells that it's in and dive into other cells to infect the other cells. And there's some really interesting stuff going on. One study found that it's this is published this week in Plos Genetics. It's out of the Instituto Gulbenquien de Ciência IGC in Portugal. And the researchers were looking at the Wolbachia exposing this Wolbachia that's found in a strain of Wolbachia that's found in fruit flies to viral infection. And so they say that their previous work had shown that Wolbachia can protect fruit flies against viruses and that different strains of the bacteria can actually confer different levels of protection against the viruses. And so they gave different strains. They studied, looked at flies that had these different strains when they were exposed to the viral infection. And they basically found that there were some strains that allowed the fruit flies to evolve and or adapt and have more fitter offspring even in the face of viral infection than other strains. All of the back, all of the fruit flies exposed and the bacteria exposed to the same virus. It's just different strains of bacteria, which symbiotically live inside the fruit flies. So the Wolbachia infect the fruit flies and can actually influence evolution. Yeah. So this is one of the researchers says hosts and symbiotic bacteria are acting as a unit in response to pathogen infection with the evolution of both genomes contributing to host adaptation. We believe similar results will be observed with other bacteria and animals. So we look at these relationships that we have with the bacteria that exist within us. And then it's not just, you know, one, like we talk about one kind of bacteria. It's a kind of bacteria with lots of little variations or their different strains. You know, they're very similar, but maybe a little bit of variation amongst them. And so how does that variation actually influence the symbiotic host relationship and survival? So great. So fantastic. And then the other study that was similarly just fascinating, this is, there's a big write up on it by Ed Young in the Atlantic this week. And their work was published in, let's see, which was in nature communications. And it's looking at the genetics of Wolbachia. And so this one, if you've ever sung that song, you know, there was an old lady who swallowed a fly. Perhaps she'll die. Perhaps she'll die. And then there was an old lady who swallowed a spider. And then it goes on and on and on because of the fly and then the spider and then all the end of the mouse. And then it's a cat and then it's a dog and then it's a cow for some reason. And then it's a horse. So she died, of course. She died, of course. But here we've got no dying happening. But what we really have is a fascinating similar nesting doll setup of things that have ended up inside of other things. And what they're looking at is Wolbachia. So we've got this bacterium that will exist inside the cells of insects. So like a spider, for instance. It'll be in the cells of the spider. Now, that Wolbachia can be infected with a virus. So there's a phage. You know, phage are bacterial viruses. So this phage could be infected the bacteria. And then they find out that there's, actually this is circular because they did a genomic survey of Wolbachia and found out that there is a spider toxin gene, the spider toxin that makes the bite of the black widow really deadly, right? That's in the virus that lives inside of the bacteria that lives inside of the cells of the insects. No. I love the way that Ed put it all together. It's just so perfectly, he tells the story perfectly. So the DNA analysis that they've determined is that at some point it was beneficial that the virus, because the bacteria with the virus was inside of the cells of the insects, it was beneficial for them, because sometimes different strains of virally infected Wolbachia will end up in other cells in the same insect. And so then if one Wolbachia discovers that there's another Wolbachia with an infection, it'll break out of its cell to infect another cell and attack the other strain of Wolbachia. And so to be able to go into a cell, and infect a cell is one thing, but to be able to get out of that cellular environment and be inside of the insect environment and not get destroyed. And then to go back into another cell is like this massive, it's a very complicated undertaking in terms of bacterial survival. And so the researchers think that at some point it was very beneficial to grab onto that DNA and that there was a transfer of this DNA that allows the Wolbachia to break in and out of the cells of insects. Because the toxin gene that is involved is for a toxin, Lachrotoxin, that is in Black Widow Spider Venom. And it breaks down the cells, it basically breaks down the cell membranes of the cells that have been touched by this venom. And so the cells just start leaking outward to become very leaky. And so the spiders might have gotten this, Lachrotoxin from a virus, but it's highly unlikely. The higher likelihood is that the phage at some point picked up the spider DNA and then Wolbachia picked up the phage, the virus. But it's this fascinating like Matryoshka of nature, which... How much of us is even us, man? Right? I can't even deal with it. What do you mean? I'm just the part of me that, I'm the part that has to go to work all the time. Yeah, that's right. I think the rest of me is just getting a free ride, whatever else is going on, just free riding. Yeah, so we know that in our own DNA, we have retroviruses that exist lately in our own DNA that don't really do anything anymore or so we think, but maybe they do. And a lot of viruses actually, and bacteria, there's a lot of horizontal gene transfer among these organisms. They don't, the idea of their own personal genome is very slippery. They're like, just shed a little DNA, grab a little DNA there in this very loose, cellular DNA environment, where you can imagine if you're inside of a cell and there are little bits and pieces of DNA or RNA that are floating around in the cellular soup in the environment that could, if you have the right machinery that you can grab onto and if it works for you, it makes you better and stronger and you go on to infect more. And so this is something that's very beneficial for viruses and for bacteria to do. And so it's just fascinating. We don't know how much or how often that happens, how much or how often it leaks up to higher organisms like us, but it's fascinating to see this kind of, that this is the first example anybody has ever seen of insect DNA inside of a bacterium. Yeah, it's very exciting. Whoa, Bacchia. It's a sort of concept that is dying now, which is that we're sort of different than the bacteria, right? We're unaffected, like we're not affected by immediate evolutionary exchange of DNA because that's not how we operate. We have evolved far above that scale. But now that we know how dependent and active microbiota is, if these things can take place in our guts or some ways, then it is affecting us immediately. It could be creating or preventing diseases for all we know. Right, could be. And in the last, another interesting thing that Ed focuses on is other research that this group is going to be moving in on, which are other genes that are part of this phage, this viral DNA. What it's got are genes that Wolbachia possibly uses to manipulate the sex lives of its hosts as well. So there are some other very fascinating aspects to Wolbachia and its viral load, right? Viral. Viral load indeed. Viral DNA in a bacteria affecting the insects. Oh my goodness, I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. Justin, got another story? Yeah, I do. As soon as I can find it. Green beer, right? It's one of these things that we raise up St. Patty's Day. They'll put a little of the food coloring in there. Everybody's got the green beer, right? Well, it's not just for St. Patty's Day anymore. It's a terrible teaser, but that's the story. Colorado University Boulder engineers have developed a bio-manufacturing process that uses a biological organism, a fungus, cultivated in brewery wastewater to create the materials they need to make energy storage cells. Says here, breweries use about seven barrels of water for every barrel of beer produced, says Tyler Huggins, graduate student at CU's Boulder's Department of Civil and Environmental Architectural Engineering and the lead author of the study. For those unfamiliar with the measurement, it's a measurement barrel. It's not quite the wine barrel, but it's about approximately two kegs to every barrel. And there's about 124 true pints to every keg. So using seven times, you're talking about 14 kegs of water that they're used to produce the two kegs of beer. Process of converting biological materials or biomass, such as timber and the carbon-based battery electrodes is currently used in some energy sectors, but using biomass that is naturally occurring is been pretty limited. It's in short supply. There's too much problems with extraction in the chemical makeup, making it expensive, difficult to optimize. So what the researchers here did is they basically found a fast-growing fungus that they could cultivate in the sugar-rich wastewater of a brewery. And this is a Neurospora crassa that they use. And it turns out the fungus flourished and this flourishing fungus is, it creates the chemical processes that are necessary to create naturally-derived lithium-iron battery electrodes. So this is, we're talking about something that can be utilized in the most cutting-edge form of energy storage today. So yeah, this is fantastic on a couple of fronts because the fungus flourishes, it creates an energy storage device, which is, as we talked about many times on this show, one of the keys to that whole sort of green energy economy is going to be storage. You can capture all the solar you want, but if you don't have a way to store it, it's only gonna be good during the day. So storage device plus, plus it actually is a way of treating this wastewater. Portland is going to be just rolling in it. This is amazing. Colorado, Portland, California's, I think, got more microbreweries than any other state. It's good. So, yeah, this is Portland. Well, Portland, not state, but it's... It's gonna be a Portland versus all of California, you're saying? I mean, I get the new hometown spirit and I really appreciate that. But I just, I put the whole state of California and you said, no, Portland has more breweries. You have the only, and I will say, this is a superpower and advantage nobody else has touched. You have the only brewery pub slash movie theater that I've ever been to. And I think that... There are several. Now, there's, yeah, there were two, I think that was there a long time ago. That's right. But that is one of the... Set up the couch. I can't believe that's not a brewery. And flying out, it's not the lots of fungus in Portland. There are lots of breweries in the area and it would be easy to set up something like this. It's a, that's a great idea. I'm sure there's plenty of fun guys there too. The research was funded by the office of Naval Research. It was, I guess they won a contest. They had a... They went to, how, where was it? That's in here somewhere. They won some sort of contest for the concept and so they got some funding to sort of prove their concept and it looks like it's working. Now, it was the US Department of Energy sponsored startup incubator competition at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. Nice. Where they competed. I like it. This kind of sustainable energy I can get behind. 100%. So yeah, doing my part to create the green economy one pint at a time. One pint at a time. That's right. Ready for some last stories? So, hey, New Dwarf Planet found in our solar system. Very exciting discovery from space scientists at the University of Michigan. And it's actually the credit goes to students. They had a challenge to find some new objects. This is, you know, a challenge. Hey, we're constructing a galaxy map. So why don't you find us some new objects? Students get to work. Well, they created software that can analyze imagery from the ongoing dark energy surveys, dark energy camera. And it looks for moving objects in any given patch of sky. And the idea is that if we can see them moving that means they're close enough for them to be within our solar system because we're moving and they're moving. And so it's a sign that they are in our solar system. And so anyway, they were looking and looking, tracking these images over many, many lights, looking at one image versus another and tracking them from night to night to look for in what they call a connecting the dots kind of way. So it's not a long stream, but a much more connect the dots type movement, reveal took them two years and they discovered a dwarf planet. They're calling it a dwarf planet. It might not remain a dwarf planet, but it's within the Kuiper Belt. It's about 14 billion kilometers away from our Earth takes 1,140 years to make an orbit. And it's snazzy snappy name is 2014 UZ224. It's just 300, that's it. About half the size of Pluto, 330 miles across. And I have to interrupt you really quick. Just for those not familiar with kilometers, 14 billion kilometers is about the same as 14 trillion meters approximately. Nice, nicely done. Thank you. Thanks for that clarification. So they're continuing to look to see if they can find any new objects. This is a great proof that it does work, that they can find something, anything out there. But hopefully they'll find other objects in our solar system. They're gonna keep their eyes out for that hypothesized planet nine as well. Excellent. Yeah. Blair, what do you have? Oh, so I have another use for beer before we finish out the show. Very cool. Beer helps ease pain. You may say, I knew that. Hallelujah. But for snails, a graduate student from the SUNY College for Environmental Science and Forestry wanted to find a humane way to euthanize snails in her laboratory and found that the answer was a few ounces of beer or a 5% ethyl alcohol solution as the first step in a two-step process which sedates and immobilizes the snails before their terminal dunk in a 95% ethyl alcohol solution. Yeah, so the traditional euthanization involves just pretty much dumping them right in there and they show physical signs of stress. They retract their tentacles, expel mucus, defecate, and retract, you get some drunk. Yeah, so they retract so deeply into their shells, not only are you bothering these snails, you know, disposing of them in a terrible way, but it also makes their tissue difficult for researchers to access, which takes away part of the point of this whole process. So after a dip in beer, it was about 4.7% alcohol, they were just kind of chilled out. They were immobilized, they were unresponsive to stimuli, such as a needle, scrape, or a prick, and then they would either be back to normal about an hour or if they were dropped into the terminal solution, they die quickly without reaction. So that's good news for laboratory snails. And I would like to say for gardeners everywhere. If you've ever had a garden and tried to get rid of slugs or snails, one of the things they tell you to do is put out little jars or lids of beer. I don't know whether they accidentally fall in or they're attracted to it, but they become a little sink, a drowning pool for the little slimy sluggos. So it's just, you know, at least there, we now know they are drowning painlessly and happily. So next time you find a beer in a lab, it's not a scientist drinking on the job, it's a scientist being humane with their laboratory snails. And my very last story, real quick, with tropical frogs, climate change could be a greater threat than deforestation. Researchers from UC Berkeley found that declines in frogs thermally suitable habitat from climate change alone could be up to 4.5 times greater than declines attributable to land cover change only, such as cutting forest and raising agriculture. So frogs are amphibians, which means they're indicator species. They're basically the canary in the coal mine for a lot of habitats. So if this is their greatest threat is climate change, I'm just saying, might be some other animals' greatest threats. I'm just saying that you weren't serious. I am. So all the things, you know, that we've been worrying about, the pesticides and stuff that people have been, we've been shouting about on this show for years about the fungicides and things. It's like, oh, they're killing the frogs. We have to stop doing that. That's just fine. Don't worry about that anymore. No, I didn't say that. Climate change. Don't say that right before the end of the show. There's combined stressors, which means even those things will affect them more if they're already being affected by climate change. But I think it's important to state that a 4.5 times greater effect on their suitable habitat than for a station, deforestation, that's huge. The conventional wisdom is still the number one reason any species is endangered or extinct is habitat destruction. That may have to be replaced very soon by climate change. Well, one thing I hope nobody replaces is Twis' place in their podcast feed because, you know, we made it to the end of another show. We have done it once again. Congratulations to you guys. You have listened to the entire show. Thank you. And I hope we didn't leave you on a sad note. Let's leave you on a happy note. We can do it. We can all change the climate back, you guys. We can do it. We can do it. Save the frogs. We can save the frogs. I would like to take this moment, and I know I can, to say thank you to our Patreon sponsors. 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Thank you for all of your support on Patreon. And if you would like to support us on Patreon, you can find information at patreon.com slash this week in science. Also remember, you can help us out, be a producer, simply by telling your friends about twists, share the love. And on next week's show, once again, we'll be broadcasting live online at 8 p.m. Pacific Time, where you can watch and join our chat room. We're gonna have another interview talking more about the Maryland STEM Festival, which will be very exciting. But you know, if you can't make it, that's cool. That's totally cool because you can find our past episodes at twist.org slash YouTube and just twist.org. Thank you for enjoying the podcast and the show. We hope that you'll come back again next week. If you haven't found it yet, then you're not listening to me now, but you can just Google this week in science and guidance directory, if you can read my mind. Or if you have a mobile type device, you can look for twist, the number four droid app in the Android marketplace, or simply this week in science and anything Apple market placey. But Justin, maybe they found twists on our website, where you can listen to the show, watch past recordings, and find more information on anything that you've heard here today. That'll be in the show notes and that website is www.twist.org. And you can also, while you're there, make comments and start conversations with the hosts as well as other listeners. Or you can contact us directly. Email Kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com, or Blair at BlairBaz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S somewhere in the subject line, or your email will be spam filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter, where we are at twist science, at Dr. Kiki at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. Yeah, and if you've learned anything from today's show, remember... It's all in your head. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science, it's the end of the world. So I'm setting up shop, got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in. Gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop their robots with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand. And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. This week's science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the Earth. It's This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you make us better understand. That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world from Japanese. This Week in Science is coming your way. So everybody listen to everything we say. And if you use our methods, better roll and I die. We may rid the world of toxoplasma, got the eye. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. I've got a laundry list of items I want to address. From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought. And I'll try to answer any question you've got. The help can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop. One hour. This Week in Science is coming your way. Listen to what we. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Dance, Utility Done. I love that post show. Dance there, Blair, with your bubbly bubble-ness. Nice. Those are bubbles of joy. Exactly. Yeah, but I did make a mess of it. You made a, it's probably a splatty, splatty bubble sauce everywhere. Splatty, splatty bubble sauce. You got it. That's right. So we got something last week and... Oh. I don't know if I can show you them. Might be dangerous. Did you get a Scottish fold? No. Not a Scottish fold. Welcome to the after show, people. Welcome to the after show. Who put all these bubbles everywhere? Why is my room so slippery? What's going on, Minions, in the Hangout? Justin. You're a bass. Best post-show dance ever. But Justin, look it. Look it. I saw that. I love it. Oh, I can't wait. That is fan-freaking-tastic. I'm so close to being done with the calendar. Wow. Congrats. Here. I haven't even shown the face of this on the internet yet. Are you guys ready? Just for those of you that stuck around, yes. You got a toxomagnet. Kiki got a kitchen. But this is what I was going to show you guys. Hold on. Hold on, I'm going to lose a kitten. Oh, my god. That's a big kitten. That's a cat. What did you hold up? Was it a cuttlefish? I missed it. No, I'll show it again, but let's focus on the animal. No, let's not. Let's change the subject quickly. No, I'm hearing it on the cat. Look at it. I can't fight it, so I'm going to run. Kiki, what's its name? It doesn't have a name yet. You've got to name it. Is it a boy cat or a girl cat? Girl cat, and she's got a sister that we have too. We've got two. You've got two. Are they indoor or outdoor? They're going to be indoor. Indoor. That's good. No toxo. That's not a kitten. That's a cat. OK. It's a straightforward cat. Look at that. Oh, a deguana. I mean, a chameleon. Chameleon, sorry. Yes. Yes. Look at him. He's a little grumpy. Aw. He looks like he's smiling a little bit. He seems happy. No, he's not really. No. It's kind of non-plussed. And then, oh yeah, and then I finished the dragonfly this weekend as well. Yeah. Oh, nice. That's very cool. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. I have, I'm going to make some hippos. And then I just have, I think I only have the cover to do after that. Isn't the cover usually one of the? No. Well, some people do it that way. I don't. See, OK, let me show you what I started. Because the idea is that piece of art won't ever be. But it will if you buy it before the year starts and you hang it with pride. Hold on. Oh, yeah. Dr. Kiki's home is now just in free zone. Yeah. OK. So. Why can't, you know, it's like so psychosomatic. I can now smell like cat poop. I can smell a cat tray. Yeah. This is where the hippos are going to live. Oh. And then this is for the cover. Does everyone remember what the cover looked like last year? Hey, I know my home is. Oh, my own secret art project is in. Yeah, I need to work on it. So they don't have names yet? Do you have ideas? Well, I don't know. Kai wants to name them after Pokemon characters. So I mean, there are some cute Pokemon characters. Like one is called there's one called Squirtle. I think. Yes, Squirtle's good. It's kind of Squirtle's cute name. I feel like you're just asking for Squirtle as a cat to have a leaky anal gland, though. I'm just going to. Yeah, OK, we are not going there. My secret project. Cat with a leaky anal gland? It's a problem. It is a problem. Yeah, that is a secret project. Justin is is is got base paint on, but is hasn't been excellent. Doing the thing. Yeah, it's kind of doing it already a little bit. Yeah, it looks like it's a relief, right? I want to show my other kitty cat. She's got to have the eyes. He has more claws. Next week I'll have eyes. Eyes on the art. You're doing you're doing that, the painting with the starey eyes. Yeah, no. So this entire thing here, see this frame? It's all going to be starey eyes. So the frame and the back. It's all one solid piece. This is all cast plastic. And then this is canvas on the yellow part. And then this is indented into it, right? But once painted, it should hopefully look like it's a relief. I've got the base on there that I can paint over. But I've got the. Maybe I'll paint a bit right now. Edna. Edna's cute. I'm trying to think what you could name them. I know one of them. So there's the one that's they're both five month old sisters. One is the tabby, gray tabby. And then the other is like has more white on her. She's like cute with a little bit of tabby, but mostly like white. She's really sweet. Well, they're so sweet. I'm just like, I like them. If I had three cats, if I had three cats, I'd name them. Toxo, Plasma and Gandhi. I think you should name them. Mary Curie and Ada Lovelace. Right. I love it. Mary and Ada. Yeah. Curie and Lovelace. Yes. Yes. That's cute. Tabby and snow. Snowflake. Sparkle. Yes, I took a long yawn. That means I'm smart. You have a big brain, Blair. They missed you, yawn. But when you said, yawn, it made me yawn. Yawn. The hype is yawn. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn. I'm turning off your audio. Yawn. It really works. I'm going to put that in my pocket for later. That's a good trick to have. I can't hear you now, so that's fine. Sniffles, and it's not allergies. No, just take a million milligrams of vitamin C. I know. I've been drinking, I've been eating chicken soup and taking zinc lozenges. And that's good. I'm working on it. I'm going to make it go away. I will zinc it away. Zinc? I thought zinc didn't work. I thought that was, like, one of those fakes. No, no. One of the forms of zinc is one of the few things that has evidence that it does work. Oh, okay. Was echinacea another? I don't remember. I think you could go to Jamba Juice and drink some grass. Touch that. Okay, zinc for cold is the final word from the Mayo Clinic. Punnies. Are you sure you want to check? Because you think it works. So why would you look for it? Recently, an analysis, this is from the Mayo Clinic. Analysis of several studies show that zinc lozenges or syrup reduced the length of a cold by one day, especially when taken within 24 hours of the first signs and symptoms of a cold. Taking zinc regularly might reduce the number of colds each year, the number of missed school days, the amount of antibiotics required, and otherwise healthy children. If it's rhinovirus, zinc may work by preventing the rhinovirus from multiplying. It could also stop it from lodging in the mucus membranes of the nose and the throat. And at the lozinger, the syrup form might be working because it allows the substance to stay in the throat and come in contact with the rhinovirus. Nobody actually really recommends this. Not a mechanism unknown, but... Inserts here. I have less cold there. Yeah. You don't want to take too much zinc though. That's not really a super problem. Let's see. And echinacea... Hold, let's see what they say there. Because I remember there was something... I do not... Here we go. Mayo Clinic. I trust the Mayo Clinic more than I trust WebMD. And some echinacea supplements might shorten the duration of a cold by half a day and reduce symptom severity. May. May, yeah. It's mixed, mixed evidence on the echinacea. Would it still work if you crushed it into their morning beverage and they didn't know they were taking it? Oh, that's a very good question. Placebo or no? That's what I don't know. Yeah, and experts... Vitamin C won't actually help the average person prevent colds. If you take vitamin C before the onset of cold symptoms, it may shorten the duration. Vitamin C may provide benefit at high risk of colds. This is apparently why they're called the Mayo Clinic. The May. May. May work. May work. May happen. You may experience this. Yes. There was this yummy... Arsenic. Arsenic is apparently good, too. No, I'm not kidding. This was one of the things that... If you have high levels of arsenic in drinking water, which is discovered in wells in Mexico around one of the outbreaks of the... I think it was the swine flu epidemic that started up, is that the mortality rates were apparently lower in areas where they had wells contaminated with high levels of arsenic. And part of the reasoning was the arsenic was priming the immune system to work harder and to be more active. And so when the virus came along, it was already in fighting fitness. It was getting ready to take something on. Maybe that's what zinc is doing. It's your body's trying to fight it off. It's very possible. We don't know. And then homeopathy. Mm-hmm. It's a slippery, slippery slope, I tell you. No, I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I think the slippery slope is homeopathy. I think everything up till then isn't. Great. Listen to the evidence. Dr. Justin's poop heels will be including a micro amount of arsenic. That's not good. Did you see the study? Dementia study lists everyday factors that might influence the risk of dementia. Basically vitamin D deficiency and air pollution. So go outside, but don't go outside. Right. Go outside if you have a fire in the fireplace and lots of candles and a charcoal burning stove. Maybe you should go outside because you don't want indoor air pollution. But then if you like, who was it in on Twitter? It was Kevin Parachan said outdoors, but I'm right next to 580. So if you're right next to a freeway, maybe don't go stand next to the freeway. Go to a park somewhere away from the freeway. Yeah. But outside. Right. Right. Tough. Tough cold. Do we have a place to stay in Baltimore yet? Oh, yeah. Didn't you guys see it? So there's an awesome place that Patrick that I'm hoping. Yeah. Totally rad. Yes. I wouldn't cost me. But not that much. And so I've been, the Maryland STEM festivals said that they would get back to me this week about whether they could do a hotel or not. And if they can't, then we'll probably look into this place that Patrick knows. Can they pay for that place, which might be convenient. Yeah, they'll cover part of it. Yeah. We will see. It didn't. I didn't read far enough then because I thought it sounded like it was a bargain. Yeah. But if nobody has to pay for a place to say it's the best thing, right? A good hotel room, not costing money. It's great for everyone. Yes. Great. And then my other question was, I didn't see it on the, I didn't see our thing on the. Hey, words on the national aquarium. No, I've looked and it's, I don't, I mean, they had a meeting supposed at the end of last week. I don't know. So it's not, I don't, it's not being advertised, which is a bit concerning. Okay. Because I mean, I would expect if the national aquarium is doing this with the Maryland STEM festival, they'd want to put something on their website about it, but they haven't yet. And so my fingers are crossed that they will, because then we'll be able to link to it. But yeah, as of now, as far as I know, it's just us going, Hey, but I have had a conversation with people from the national aquarium. That's good. So, and they were like, yes, this is what we can do. And there were lots of, yeah, it was, it was people saying they could do things. So that's great. So what's the, do we know what the setup is? Like, we did the arts and sciences in Francisco place. Yeah. And we had that little mini auditorium. I don't know what it where they're going to put me. When we spoke, they said they had several potential locations. You know, I'm guessing they're going to put us in a closet in like the darkest corner of the wettest part of the aquarium. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah. Sounds awesome. And, and like roll our microphone cords right through salt water puddles. Yeah. Totally. Totally. No, I think that national aquariums got some, some serious issues. If there's going to be salt water puddles later in, but. Justin, I'll tell you something. It's just part of being an aquarium. It's part of being an aquarium, but no, what would actually be kind of fun. And I don't know how they're set up at all, but like if I'm thinking like Monterey Aquarium, they've got some of those behind the scenes back areas where like you're on the roof. It's the place where like the sea lions can come up and down from, right? That's where the diver's going. Like someplace sort of behind the scenes, you would be kind of fun or even better. This would be ideal. This would be the number one choice. In the tank. In an exhibit that's down for remodeling or reconstruction or they're just cleaning it out and you're going to, let us go in there, set up, and we could be in an aquarium thingy during this. That would be really rad. That'd be so fun. Maybe a little echoey, but it would still be awesome. That'd be so awesome. Well, I have a feeling they're going to put us where there's some amphitheater seating. I bet there's more than one spot in the aquarium where that exists. Yeah, we'll see where they put us. They say they've done stuff like this before. What's the leather going to be like there when we're there? That's a great question. Still like what? Two and a half weeks out. So I have no idea. What's November in Baltimore? It's hurricane season or something. It's probably just like windy, right? Weather, fall to where? Well, right now it's 57 degrees. No, tomorrow it'll be 57 degrees. Okay. And then next week it'll be in the 70s, but rainy. Rain. That'd be nice. Let's see. Let's look at the forecast. I want the extended forecast. Where's my one-way ground? Ben thinks that it's going to be cold. It's going to be cold, Blair. You're just saying that because I'm always cold. Well, 10-day forecast has it low 60s. On the 22nd. I don't know if we can go further out. Calendar forecast. That shows like annual or yearly averages. November 2016. Whoa. Average. 61 degrees. High. 40 degrees low. Not necessarily storming or raining or anything. Okay. Great. I'll just bring some fun scarves. Scarves. And even though I've got a computer device in front of me, how far away are we from the DC thing? Are we going to get to site C? I mean, it's a train ride. Yeah, we could. My friend that lives in Baltimore works in DC, so she commutes every day. Really? It's possible. Wow. It's possible, but I feel like we're going to have enough to do in Baltimore. I know. That's what I would think. Although I would not mind a trip to the national zoo. I would like to see the statue of Liberty. That would be nice. Well, that's a longer trip. And then the thing with all the faces of the president, that one would be. That's an even longer trip. Pretty. Yeah. But maybe I don't. Maybe Baltimore is going to be fine. Yeah. We'll go have lunch with John Waters. Isn't that a thing that you do in Baltimore? You go see John. Can I go see John Waters? I want to see John Waters. Yeah. I love John Waters. His is my favorite Christmas album. I have a John Waters Christmas album that my family listens to. Oh yeah. We'll see the Space Needle. We'll go to the top of the Space Needle in Baltimore. That would be awesome. Boy. That's going to be an expensive trip. 52 degrees. We're hot rod is right now. That's right. Blair is learning how to play the harmonica everyone. I want to see the, I think Baltimore is also, they've got the Liberty Bell there. We should go get some selfies in front of that. It's going to be a good trip. What is in Baltimore? I don't have no idea what's in Baltimore. I told you John Waters. John Waters and his. And the National Aquarium. And the National Aquarium. And crab. And crab. I'm going to eat so many shellfish. Okay. I'm going to eat so many shellfish. You're going to think I'm selfish. Selfish. Selfish? Are you selfish when it comes to shellfish? I am. 37 Wisconsin right now. Is it already that cold? Mark says the inner harbor is gorgeous. I wish we were going to get to go see Raven's football game. Uh, observation four. Although I actually, I guess DC would be kind of a waste of time to go, go through with Blair anyway. Why? Because she'd be like, don't look, don't look. But I want to take a picture. Keep the camera down. Keep walking like you belong here. Yeah. And Ed says the Baltimore Science Center. We should. Oh, that's great. Don't look like it. Justin. I want to look. I believe there's a pizzeria we have to eat at as well. That's always a good suggestion. Um, no, didn't, um, Patrick who helped me make the calendar last year. Yeah. Baltimore. Yeah. Yes. It says there's a Baltimore Science Center. That's what I was just saying. Yes. Whoa. Freeze warning tonight in Wisconsin. Oh, we're going to the East Coast. Yeah. Kind of. So have you guys heard about this self balancing bike that, uh, BMW motorcycle? Sounds like something I need. Self balancing motorcycle. The motorcycle. Not a bike motorcycle. And it's self balancing. And so it's, it's, it's this cool. Tron looking concept vehicle. But the thing about it that just. I mean, they're all their design stuff. They're like, you're not going to need to wear a helmet anymore. You'll just have smart glasses. That'll give you like a heads up display of navigation and speed and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, seriously? Seriously. You have a bike that you think is never going to be hit by another vehicle. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If you're on a motorcycle, you should wear protection. It's, yeah. I was just talking about this today. It's not, it's not, it's because you're going to make a mistake. It's everyone else. Everyone else, right? Yeah, I mean, but a lot of the motorcycle accidents I'm familiar with were, were like. People leaning too far over. Well, yeah. Or in hitting something, it was usually like, it's, it's usually like the last one I heard a guy towards ACL went down pretty bad, hit a tree is I think what really messed him up, but he came around a corner really quick. What else you want to wear a helmet. 50 V. Oh yeah. He still was wearing a helmet and everything. Otherwise, might not survive. But it was, it was an unexpected like a stick in the road or something. That caused the front wheel to lose traction that caused the accident. Stick little, you know, it's like this concept vehicles. It's like, oh, it's kinda, this is our design concept. And they're seriously not taking reality into account. into account and it's a fancy video, you're never gonna have to wear a helmet again. No, you still exist in the real world and you are riding really fast on a vehicle and if you're unprotected and something goes wrong that your vehicle can't control for, you should be controlling for it yourself by wearing protection. Gosh darn it. Yeah, she's like wearing, I'm looking at the video now, she's not even- Her personal responsibility. She's not even wearing leather at all, she's just wearing like yoga pant material all over her body. I'm never gonna fall off, I'm gonna wear my yoga pants. Whatevs. With our bike, the rider will be able to- I like identity for it, but it's fancy, fancy things don't have problems. Focus on the rider experience. Yes, the rider experience because nobody's ever done that before. Yeah, I have never focused on the experience of driving a car while I've been driving it. What have I been doing with my life? And then Hot Rod said, if it self balances, how do you lean into a corner? That's a great question. It doesn't go above like 10 miles an hour. It just goes super slow, like those hoverboards. There's like a whole bunch of things to do. Jonestown is apparently in Baltimore. Yeah. And they have a little Italy. And there's a national aquarium. And a top of the world observation level. Okay. To something. Great. How about the inner harbor? Breweries. There are breweries in Baltimore, faux show. Great. I'll be there. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. American Visionary Art Museum with unusual rotating exhibits by self-taught artists. Two sculpture plazas in garden. Sure, we'll find all sorts of things. And everything seems pretty close together too for all those, the inner harbor. Looks like it's got a whole bunch packed in pretty close. Where is the, I gotta find, oh, and the national aquarium is there. Yes. In the inner harbor. So this is where we're going. I hear they have a special event on November 4th. Kind of hanging out. Do they now? We might want to check it out. Yeah, did you guys know that Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg are having a potluck dinner party on BH1? Well, that's not news. They have them all the time. Oh, they're televising this. It's televised. Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. It's called Martha and Snoop's potluck dinner party on BH1. Oh my gosh. I don't even know what is happening with her yet anymore. I am so... No, no, they've been buds for, I think they were cellies. Where were they cellmates, right? No, but they've been like buds for a really long time. That's because Martha Stewart likes to smoke the chronic, right? Oh, well, I don't know. I actually, I don't know if she, but I don't know that she smokes it. She probably bakes delicious brownies. Yes, and she goes in her garden. She has this amazing garden that has attracted worldwide attention. Yeah, she would never smoke it. She'd have to bake it into things. Yeah, yeah. Like this is a seasonal pumpkin spice macaron with a special herb flavor. Women have a seasoned pumpkin. Seasonal kind herbs. Jonestown, there's a Washington Hill. There's a downtown. Brian Cox says the aliens are dead. There's a hippo theater. I'm sorry, what? Hippodrome theater. Oh, that's not actually hippos, though. That's great. Hippos. No, Brian Cox, British science dude. Uh-huh, says. We haven't met aliens because they're dead. And humans are next. Okay. His claim is that everybody kills themselves off. This is fantastic. Oh, it's like a clue. So hold up. On every planet. Now, hold up. There's a great amount of truth and wisdom to what he just said. You know, you look at the 100,000 years or so of just the human evolution. And we're in year 2000 of recording that history. And since we started recording history, we've been advancing incredibly in our technology really just in the last 50, 60 years or so. 100 years has been awesome. 150 years, well, you can give it, right? Incredible amounts of technology advancement. How many of you out there listening can actually picture a civilization Earth in the year 100,000? Not likely. Yeah, right? Like it's kind of like overpopulation war, technology to increase the killing power, destroy the planet, becomes inhospitable, like it's, ah, we're heading, it's just, really. But life could start again. 2050, yeah. The year, the year 2150. Yeah, I could see it coming to that, getting there. But then, yeah, there could be crap people. 90,000. Or lizard people. Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be people, but it is sort of daunting. There is a sort of period where, you know, technology advances to a certain point where it sort of reminds me of like clams that populate a lake bed or something. And then they get to this overpopulation point where they've used all the nutrients and they're competing against each other and then there's a mass starvation event and they almost all die off. And then slowly over time they start building up again. I think it's a matter of looking at life, what his conjecture is, and I'm gonna say it's conjecture, is that it's a matter of looking at life forms on the planet. Most life forms work fairly sustainably because they're controlled by other life forms. But when no other controlling factors are at play, they tend to use up resources. And so you end up with totally hypoxic areas of the ocean because bacteria are using up all the oxygen in that area and things die. Humans have come in, there's nothing controlling us. We control resource use and we are overusing, we're using all of our resources and we're gonna use them all up and then something's gonna happen. Either we figure out how to be sustainable and our population can live sustainably somehow on the planet into the future, then we continue to survive. But if we can't figure out how to be sustainable, the next step is to get off the rock before the bad stuff happens. And so the question for extraterrestrial populations is if we look at ecology the same way as use of resources, most, you probably guess that most advanced civilizations, advanced civilizations, at least to our stage, would probably do something similar. Use up, if you're the highest life form on the planet, you're in control of the resources. No restrictions or regulation on it. And unless you've figured it out early enough, then you're gonna use up all your resources. And this is something humans have noticed in the past and have brought to the front, but it's a very unpopular idea and it's one that I've never been able to get behind personally in my own personal life or even ideologically, but might be the only thing that because the sustainability factor is impossible with the near exponential overtime human growth rate in population. So with sustainability would have to be an element of population control and how you implement something like that is dreadful to the point that nobody on an individual level would accept it for themselves. And therefore as a greater population we may never be able to do this in any sort of way. But that's the part that I think then becomes, the path through our own destruction is that we refuse to limit that. The one thing. Yeah. The thing that is most essential to being a life form which is procreating, that's the rub. Absolutely. Shakespeare would say, if you were. Yeah. So I think it's an interesting thing that, he, Stephen Hawking, these big voices that people listen to, the big thinkers of our time. It's interesting that they bring this kind of stuff up and he might, Brian Cox might totally believe this idea but the interesting point to talk about is that he has a big bully pulpit and if he can get people thinking about the reasons why aliens might be all dead and why we might end up there too. His space fanatic audience, if they start listening and thinking then maybe more people will start thinking about no growth ecological or slow growth ecological economics as opposed to the capitalistic style that we have or population control or maybe more ideas will become possible. But here's the problem with that. It's too late. No, no, no, no, it's not too late. Here's the problem with that scenario, Kiki. Which is my biggest objection to this whole thing which is that, great, the people who get this will stop procreating. Everybody who doesn't get it. You're talking about the plot of idiocracy. Yeah, it is the plot of idiocracy. I mean, this has always been the problem with this issue, it's like, great. So all those scientific-minded, liberal thinking, long-term planning for planet earth people will stop procreating and will become more and more of a minority over time and so then the problem accelerates itself. There's no solution to this that I can see, you know? And that's part of why it takes, it's taking place, I think, why it's unavoidable, why this isn't part of the story. You haven't seen idiocracy? No. You need to see that. I'm trying to find the main explanation of how it happened. So it's not a book, so I have an opportunity. Because I've forgotten how to read a while ago. It is a book, okay. Here we go. Watch this two-minute clip, Justin. I just put it in the chair. Oh. Never dead, oh my gosh, you're funny. Gord, you can't find idiocracy, it's totally available. It's got a deep-wasted narrators that already believe everything that's being said. Idiocracy is so fantastic. I really love that, I really love that movie. I do, I do. Dumb and down. I like Future Towns, why are they bashing on Future Towns? So these are actresses. Oh no. Maybe we should start a YouTube trend of watching people watch the trailer for idiocracy. This is, yeah, but that's exactly the point. Right, it's exactly. It's like, what's happening to this world? All right, what do we think, is it bedtime? It's bedtime, this is really funny. So Gord, Gord Elon Musk just tweeted, what the electoral map would look like if only Trump's Twitter supporters voted. That's Russia, yeah, yeah, that's great. That's a riot, people are funny. Sometimes they make me laugh. Most of the time they make me not want to go on Facebook ever again. Well I just went on for a second and guess what I saw? That certain people are saying that we should repeal the 19th amendment because women aren't supporting Trump. So we should take away their ability to vote. It's a joke, right? No, it's like a joke. This is satire, people are like, ha ha, we'll just go along with this funny machine because I can't, seriously? Let me find it now. I'm going to open up a can of whoop. Hashtag repeal the 19th, it's happening. Hashtag repeal the 19th after poll show he'd win if only men voted. This is running in LA Times, USA Today, Huffington Post. Yeah, okay, it's just people jumping on the bandwagon. Yeah. Being silly, but ha ha. So, why a guy has a solution in the chat room? The way we ensure that there's an intelligent portion of the population that maintains its percentage and perhaps grows, simply take the warning signs off of things. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm still wrong with it. Warning. Warning. What warning? Hey. Oh my goodness. One of those jokes but not really a joke, joke exactly, rorks. I can't play that way too much. Yes, take the warning signs off. There we go. Women are not fit for politics. Hashtag repeal the 19th. There we go. And this is actually a Russian belief, believe it or not. This is, Russian women tend not to believe that women should be. Oh yeah. Because it was some weird thing where there was, and I can't remember the story, but it was, a guy who was president had his son was kidnapped by the enemy and he wouldn't negotiate and so they killed him. And they were like, no woman would ever do that. That's strength of leadership. Something of this nature. Something that happened in the country for reals and then became an example of why only men should live. Something stupid. But this is further evidence that we need science out. I am now an Asgardian citizen. Women are also tweeting, hashtag repeal the 19th. I would be willing to give up my right to vote to make Trump president, hashtag repeal the 19th. Yeah, well, you gave up your vote a long time ago. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I think this is the problem. This is why we need a science island. A earth-based headquarters for Asgardians who will maintain dual citizenship here on the planet and in space and can find a way to remove ourselves from the surroundings, the immediate surroundings of those people in society who want to regress back into some ape-hierarchal, silver-backed or orange-backed guerrilla structure. All right, so we need to... But see, there are other species, like all of the lemur species, which are primates. Female-dominated. Yeah. Just saying. I'm just saying, show me an equal society. Okay, there were those one birds. That we talked about. No, no, no. I'm saying, I mean, humans can do that and have done that, community-wise at least, if not on a large national, even in some nations, I think there's decent equity. I'm thinking maybe Iceland is the one, the rare bird. It's good too. But in the country, like, and within this country, like the city of Davis has got plenty of female leadership and has for many, many years, city council, mayors, that sort of thing. It's California's estate that had two female senators representing it for many, many years. There's exceptions to this, but there's places where there is completely regressive thought and, you know, what do you do? You create yourself, you build a wall, is what you do. And Science Island will have really big walls. They'll have big walls, but we'll also have a very large ivory tower that we can see over the wall. Oh, ivory tower, of course. We're definitely not. We're building an ivory, it will not be made out of ivory. Relax, Blair. It will simply be painted the color of ivory. That's not even my concern. And then we can look down. And it will have a broadcast. Next thing you're gonna say that you wanna make Science Island great again. You know, I wouldn't shoot for a mediocre Science Island. I would be, you know, I mean, why would you try to make it mediocre? That doesn't even, I don't even know why we would try to make it mediocre. I think we should make it great. But I don't, I don't. Knowledge, science, intelligence. Yeah, based on that kind of stuff. The good stuff, the good stuff. Now, I think we'll have to pay for the paint flying out. I don't know that we can make somebody else pay for the ivory. That would be against the objectivist. I'm Rand liberal in me. We'd have to find a way to pay for it ourselves. Oh, so we'll make the ivory tower and we'll make the elephants pay for it, right? No, we'll make poachers pay for it. That's right, we'll create a pirate ship off the coast of Kenya that'll intercept the ivory heading to China. And, oh, but then we can't make any money off of it. So how do we, oh, we'll just, we'll sail the ship that they were sailing, we'll pirate it and use the metal to construct this, so it gets complicated. I don't know how we'll do it. Step three is make profit. Step one is collect underwear. Right, step two. Question mark? Yeah, question mark. All right, so things I need to do this week are get a calendar pre-order or just order button on the website. That's something I need to do this week. I need to confirm where we are going to stay in Baltimore. Is there anything else I need to do this week other than put the podcast up? For Twiss? I think anybody in the chat room know what I'm supposed to do? What do I need to do this week? I have other work to do, but. Yeah, I think just the, I'm so close Kiki. I just have, I have the cover and I have some hippos. Yay! And then I'm done. And then I'll be done. Yay. So hopefully the calendar will be ordered shortly. You saw my email about the different sizes, right? Yeah, I need to look at that and confirm what we want to do. But since it'll be easier to not have to worry about the design-y stuff, right? To make it the same size as the pictures or the shape relative. Yeah, so these ones are all horizontal this year. So I was going to do a, not a square calendar, a rectangular calendar instead, and then just put like an inch of black on each side and put like, there's animal corner and like, I don't know. I don't know. But make it a lot less complicated. So then we just have to open up that document again and check our calendar dates, our holidays and stuff and make sure we don't want to add anything new. Yeah, we got to check on that calendar button, thanks, Ed. What is that link? What is that link that Ben is sharing in the chat room? I'm not going to click on it, what is it? I'm going to click on it, but it is extremely long. What is it? Oh wait. At the end of it, it says dash no. That means- That's the second one, what was the one before that? I think it's all connected to the one before it. It was also three one, I think, which is why it doesn't work. Dash no, that means don't do it. Dash no. Don't do it too long. We can put in the work, we can do it. All right, I'm going to go to bed so I can get over my cold. Oh, also, drink. Before we go, is any minions out there who play either words with friends or chess with friends? Hit me up. Awesome. Got too many slow people out there. Take turns to say that. Oh my God. That's not even a word. I don't play those games. But Justin does, so hit him up, you guys. All right, I'm tired now. Need to get over my cold. Oh, there was one issue I had with our website. Oh, dead. No, no, no, no, no, no. But I forgot to do it last week and I just wanted to point out because it's either our website or our YouTube site, which is it? One of them has got the show, says the show is on Thursdays. Oh, okay. I'll check it. Let me go. Or if you can check it and tell me what to fix. This is the twist. This week in science.org. Okay, that one's right. That one says 8 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesdays. So then it must be the YouTubes. Let me go slash back. Oh, stop. What did it do? Let's see, where is this week in science? I gotta... Where is it? Hang on. Hi, Yance. You know that in our video, I think it still says Thursdays. In the video, yeah, which is our intro. Excuse me about. Because fixing that is gonna be hard unless we do another one. Just like cut to like voiceover. Yeah, just say. Wednesdays. Exactly, which would be totally awesome. Okay, so no, it's in the about too. In the about, it says we broadcast live each Thursday evening from 7 30 ish to 9 p.m. ish Pacific standard time. So it's in the about also. On YouTube? On the YouTube channel about. Yes, description. So it's in both places. Boop, day, boop, day, boop, view channel. Boop, day, boop, day, boop, view channel about. So if anybody's finding us there, it's hard to find us later. Unless you mentioned, unless they stay this late and they have to show. And discover that it's Wednesdays that we're doing the show now. 8, 2, 10 p.m. ish Wednesday evenings. Wednesday evenings. I fixed it on YouTube. Awesome. And it should be possible to get that little bit of audio edit into that YouTube video that we've got up there for the about. That's gotta be doing. Wednesdays. Yeah, Wednesdays. Actually Wednesdays. Actually really Wednesdays. Because now that we've got, what was it, a million subscribers to the channel? We should probably tell them when we're live for reals. I know, come on Wednesdays for the live. Live each Wednesday. Okay, it's done. Did it. Okay, we've got a nice playoff. We've got the uploads with the playoff button now. That's perfect. Oh, I love that. And a twist shorts with the playoff. What's up with Wolf Canyon at the SFZ? I didn't see this yet. What's this? This is new video. This is new content. I've shared it. Age ago. I have yet to see it. What's new? They what's up with the Wolf Canyon. Oh, you didn't see that? I didn't see that. That's been months. I guess, I guess it has. Okay, you guys. I think it's time to go. Go watch a Wolf Canyon video. We'll be back next week. And if we think of anything interesting and funny, it'll be the social medias or you can game with friends with Justin. Thanks so much for watching. We'll be back again next week. Praise. Say goodbye, Blair. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Say goodbye, Justin. Goodbye, Justin. Goodbye, Kiki. Goodbye, Kiki.