 Hi everyone, I apologize for the lateness that was for once all my fault completely my fault I Took apart my office and was like it'd be fine And somehow I think I thought the magic elves were gonna come put it back together again before the show and they hadn't So I had to do all had to put it all back together again, and it's now back together and we're now doing this show live For everyone for you who are watching Which is which also by the ways why I never show up on time? Because somebody else is invariably going to be late eventually and so eventually eventually And then I'm just wasting my time No No, ah, yes, but we are going to do our live broadcast of our podcast Right now, which means that you are going to see the live unedited unpost-processed Un-unned version of this week in science That's right. It's coming up, right you guys ready? Are we ready to start it now? Okay, let's start it now in three to This is Twists this week in science episode number 783 recorded on Wednesday July 22nd 2020 Why the earth isn't flat? Hey, everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science We will fill your heads with nanostars invasive hedgehogs and Brains but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer I'm about to give you some advice the following advice is just a bunch of words being said by someone who very rarely gives good advice Let alone takes any And yet somehow I reigns a desire to above all else Not look like an idiot at least not in public and especially not on the video recorded format like this where people can watch you be an idiot over and over again by Replaying idiotic things that you said believe me. I have done it. I know there are clips available of me saying the darndest things And so I have compiled a list Simple list three things you can you can do to avoid looking like an idiot in public number one Know what you're talking about know at least the basic facts and more is better It may require reading or even listening to others But the more you know about a thing that you are talking about the less of an idiot you will see number two if you say some stuff that might not Pretty sure Definitely isn't true Don't ask to be fact-checked on the spot unless you genuinely honestly want to know the truth see When faced with facts that you yourself asked for which refute the thing that you previously said Remember that most people watching are not in your payroll They're not your family and if you stick to the now proven very wrong thing that you said They will openly and mercilessly mock you for being an idiot and for do not base the credibility of your intellect On a test designed to look for cognitive impairment smart people never brag about how smart they are especially after taking a Cognitive impairment test That's what idiots do And lastly remember while not being an idiot isn't everything It is something you are able to achieve simply by listening to this week in science coming up next Science do you keep in Blair? Good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back again Yes, we are to talk about Science science science That's right. We're here to talk about science. I hope that's why you are listening to this Podcast right now is that you're interested in science or you hope to be we hope to fill your minds with wonder at what the heck We're doing here. No Wonder about the world around you. That's right. I have stories tonight about batting a thousand Yes, yes batting a thousand and a baby picture a little tiny baby picture and Brains because brains are my thing. I like them Justin. What did you bring? I? Got silver-coated golden nanostars Breaking a record in seventh place oldest evidence of Native Americans just got a whole lot older or a little bit older depending on who you ask and Why plants are a good thing to have Because of oxygen Another good reason Okay, all right, more good reasons to more good Things yes Blair, how's that animal corner looking tonight? What do you have for us? Well? I have pigs brains Toxic aggression and invasive hedgehogs I Those invasive hedgehogs. I think that is I mean I kind of want to name a band invasive hedgehogs The invasive hedgehogs. Good. It'll be a I don't know metal band. I'm not sure Sounds yeah, and they would wear quills everywhere All right, are we ready to jump into the show tonight? Let's do it. Let's do it Okay, I just want to remind everyone as we dive on in that if you are not yet subscribed to this week in science You can find us in all of the podcast players Stitcher-spreaker tune in Apple Google Radio comm look for this week in science and you will be able to find us We are also on YouTube and Facebook and our website is twist TWIS dot org Okay, let's dive in to the science quick science stories Let's start off batting a thousand and set the trend for the show Well batting a thousand. I'm not talking about bats. I'm talking about bats Not baseball but bats the yeah, the flying mammals that are actually related to whales. That's yeah Yes, and it's so surprising about the whales penguins People like to say that they're related to mice and that's their closest relative, but no. Oh, no, no, no researchers from the bat 1k the bat 1,000 project have sequenced the genomes of six bat species and They compared these sequences with many many many other animals the results suggest that bats as a group might share a common ancestor Somewhere back a ways with horses whales penguins the aforementioned animals and dogs And that they have always had an amazing immune system that their immune system isn't just good now But it's always been good digging into their genome. They find all sorts of let's leftover bits of viruses from long ago infections that indicate that They were at one point in time affected Infected by viruses that are thought only to attack birds So bats get attacked by all kinds of things and are fighting them off And so they've always always had this really strong immune system Additionally, they have discovered that within the genome. There are lots and lots of replications of antiviral genes so While they have turned off about 10 genes that are shared with other mammals for the fight against Viruses, which you would think oh those genes are turned off. They shouldn't have a strong immune system There are a number of other genes that are very important to fighting viruses that are replicated and that have unique mutations So looking into those a little bit more in the future might lead us to some interesting insights into exactly how the bat immune system works now and has worked throughout history The researchers hope that they'll be able to sequence 27 more bat species genomes next year They're currently applying for funding Six this year 27 next year. I mean, they're just going for it It's baddie, I mean, it's I guess that's kind of a weird I don't know if I would even call it a bright side, but it's I guess it's something that's happening as a result of the the kind of the arrival of COVID is Bats and pangolins are getting some research focus that they didn't have before Yeah, I hope that the pangolins get a lot more research. I mean bats especially because there are so many species that Transferred they harbor diseases their vectors known vectors. I mean, this is a really important area of research Yeah, I think I glanced at this Earlier and What I think I found intriguing is they they said there was a higher Was a higher diversity or higher number of archaic viruses that they found in their DNA Which means it sounds like bats bits and pieces. Yeah So aside from being you know sort of vectors now they the sounds like they've always been Like a place viruses like to hang out in bats Which might might also Like have led to some of this immunity, you know, so maybe yeah, it's definitely that's what you want to study The thing that gets the most viruses and doesn't die from them. Perfect. Yes exactly Now tell me about some of these nanostars Okay, so This is from These are inverse molecular sentinels is the actual official Science you name for them. These biomedical engineers Duke University engineered a method for detecting the presence of micro RNAs Very specific ones. They have to sort of know what they're looking for in advance so they can just take a sample tissue and Pull from there without the sense here sort of without the need for labeling or target amplification You don't really need to do the amplification But there is some labeling involved on this and this After all the technique that they use to identify early biomarkers of cancer and other diseases without the need For time-consuming expensive processes special laboratory equipment annoying lab mates. I signed the card Karen No, I don't have time to eat the cake I'm busy with my experiment. No, I and no I can't and I would appreciate it if you would stop breathing up on the samples No, I know it wasn't a threat. I don't have time to go down to HR with you right now Karen Okay, I'll go eat the cake. Oh, is that okay? You're welcome. Yeah, okay. Oh wait, what was I talking about? Yes science Micro micro RNAs are these short RNA molecules that bind to messenger RNA and stop them from delivering a Sessions of DNA into the machinery that does the replica replication. So in doing this Micro RNAs regulate modulate even silence certain sections of DNA or gene expression Which then alters the behavior of certain biological functions because now things that could have been printed aren't being printed because the micro RNA said nope You're not going to work today So there's more than 2,000 of these micro RNAs that have already been discovered in humans that are specifically affecting development differentiation growth and metabolism They're super important More than we know about them more useful. They will be for all sorts of health and biotech related applications but the general focus of this is Quan Quan vote in professor of biomedical engineering at Duke Who says the general research focus in my lab has been on the early detection of diseases in people before they even know that they are sick To do that We'll need to be able to go upstream at the genetic level genomic level and look at the biomarkers for these diseases such as Micro RNA so professor vote in this designed a faster better way to identify Micro RNA the inverse molecular sentinels which was on the plane gold Gold nanostars This is the this is the thing he's created these gold nanostars have multiple spikes that can act as lightning rods For enhancing electromagnetic waves, which is a unique feature of the particles shape Says vote in our tiny nano sensors called inverse molecular sentinels take advantage of this ability to create clear signals of Presence of multiple micro RNAs the strategy of these things is to get a little molecular label near the pointy parts and when the specific stretch of our RNA Attaches to this label they shine a laser and it kind of arcs and it Basically removes a spacer in it and it creates a little bit. Anyway, it then reflects a signal They can actually read the signal under light X laser excitation the label emits a light called a Raman signal, which is generally very weak with the shape of the nanostars Coupling effect of separate reactions caused by the gold nanostars and their silver coating Amplifies signals several million folds making them easier to detect and what these finding is basically they can put these in with the samples and it's going to Basically come back with a spike on the computer and these they're saying is he's saying is like a fingerprint of the specific differentiated micro RNAs by able to by being able to spot which micro RNAs are present They can then predict what disease will follow from the presence and the number that they are seeing Really amazing incredible Incredible feet to be able to do this without it's a very different RNA is like like I was sort of joking But if you breathe on your your kit that you're trying to set up you just ruined it. It's like they're so sensitive to test and difficult to carry out that Yeah, having having a sort of lab proof method Absolutely will accelerate that field Yeah, anything that makes the methodology more robust Then it can be replicated more places. It can It can work in a larger number of lab environments. You know, once you get that once you get that methodology, it's like, okay It'll work. It's gonna it's going to be effective Yeah So far the say it's working. They want to Diversify so the the trick here is you also need the science behind it to tell you what you're looking for because you still are looking for Specific markers. It's not just going to grab everything that's there and then you can say Oh, here's all of the things there and that that would be like the next level better test something that you grab any of the micro RNAs You can just identify a population This is looking for specific ones So you have to have all that research and science that went behind to say these micro RNAs are Associated with this disease because they are preventing this expression or that type of expression from taking place It is I mean that specificity is really important, too I mean, yeah, it'd be great to test for a whole population of micro RNAs But if you know a specific target, you know one specific micro RNA that you know is involved in a particular disease or a particular Metabolic pathway, you know, then you can just be like, okay, is it in there? Yeah, some things there then you have that signal and you can yeah, you know what to do next and I'm actually wondering, too If you you're the quantity of your feedback is stable So whenever you're amplifying anything especially really really really small What you get is a large population, but you can't always tell what the original population sort of looks like Because you've magnified it to you know huge huge proportions So you don't know always if this was you know what it was generally with this I would imagine because if you're putting in a set number of these stars and you're getting a set amount of these reactions back You might actually be able to quantify The levels of the micro RNA too, which would also be important Super important But you know, sometimes some things are Less important than others know less dependent than others where What's your story? Well researchers wanted to know why dogs are so gosh darn special And we know that dogs look at humans in a problem-solving context to establish Attention and initiate communication interactions and that's from an early age puppies do it, right? But they wanted to know if this was dogs specifically or would other companion animals do the same and of course We know cats don't that's probably because they're not social. We know that wolves don't it's probably because they're not domesticated So what about? They're domesticated they can be raised as Family pets and they're also very smart. So they really has a pig Yeah, and I knew someone growing up who had a pig and knew how to roll over and spin in a circle and shake And yeah, so they're actually really smart and really trainable and could their pig do any tricks Very good Anyway, the the question was would Pigs look to humans the same way that dogs do raised in the same situation And so first they just checked what they did in the neutral situation Which is just you know, they were they were in a room and there was food in a dish basically and Both the pigs and the dogs interacted with the humans equally They sought out attention from humans because they were raised around humans But where it changed was the problem-solving So when they made it harder for those pigs to get their food From the dish and the dogs the dogs gave up pretty much right away and went to the human to ask for help But the pigs stayed at it. They remained independent and they continued to Figure out how to get the food on their own now It was a trick the the case was locked so they couldn't get the stuff But it was just it was trying it was supposed to make it simulate being hard And then the human could open it for them, but yeah, the pigs appear to be more independent You know what I immediately think though They assume that they're smarter than the humans I could ask yeah, what would they know? I was assuming the dogs know that we are trained to help them Yes And that really is the difference they've been training us since day one. Maybe pigs aren't training us as well Yeah, I think our relationship with pigs is Quite different even though pigs can be trained and they're domesticated Yeah, the relationship is not the same And that's what this boils down to the relationship is not the same. That's exactly what they were trying to test. Yeah Yeah And it has who knows maybe someday it will be I mean it could be they do they do make pretty good pets. They're very clean They're smart. They're trainable There's a there's a therapy pig at sfo that that you can pet and stuff that they walk walk around with Really? Yes. Never seen the sfo therapy pig. Yes I have not seen her in person, but I've read articles about her and every time I take a flight. I'm like, is she here? Is she here? I want to hang out with the sfo therapy pig I think it might be you might have to have something traumatic to get to to meet the pig No, it's just it's just to calm people down because people get stressed out before flight So this is a normal thing dogs go to airports all the time as like therapy dogs to help them To help people just de-stress before they get on the plane But there's a pig at sfo fun fact. So that that dog who's sniffing my luggage with the uh, with the officer No, that's a dog with a different job. So there's different jobs that dogs can have in an airport. It turns out Don't pinion all of them Oh, I wonder what dogs and pigs dream of when they're little puppies and pig piglets. What are they going to be when they grow up? Well fed does a small does a small puppy dream of being a luggage bomb detecting dog I think they dream of treats and sniffing other dogs, but that's what I think they dream about So I you know I there's something to this kiki because if you Dogs that have been bred And used as work dogs for many years Well, well early early on start to exhibit some of the behaviors of what they've sort of been bred to train for There's a there's a really if you look at a little Baby border collie. They they will start trying to herd things Right away right away. Yeah, my car. He definitely has always she like she doesn't nip But she like pushes her nose into the back of our heels Like she's hurting us. Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep going. Where you going? I gotta hurt you. Yeah Oh, well after you've heard this story, you might just need that therapy pig Oh, no, yeah a new analysis of climate sensitivity The measure of just how much the climate is going to heat up with a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere Updated the previous estimate that was calculated back in 1979 weaving together three separate lines of evidence an international team of climate scientists produced a 66 climate and I'm sorry a 66 confidence interval and confidence intervals are the range of numbers with within which you are Fairly certain something will happen. 66 percent is 66 percent of the time the numbers will fall within this range Um, and that range was between 2.6 to 3.9 degrees Celsius in warming They also and the reason they did a 66 confidence interval is because that is the range that has been reported by the IPCC Historically and so they wanted to match that They also reported a 90 confidence interval which extends The range of numbers to get 90 of the values into that interval and the range is 2.3 to 4.7 degrees Celsius So what does this mean? basically means that No matter how hard we work to reduce that carbon dioxide output. We are not going to be able to keep warming below two degrees Celsius With that ship has sailed we are well into the two to 2.5 at the minimum end uh of warming uh for For the amount of warming globally and this is not local warming, but global average increase in temperature and of course being degrees Celsius if you were to Yeah transfer that to Fahrenheit that's about seven degrees Fahrenheit increase globally At minimum that's a lot That's like a lot. That's a lot a lot. Yeah, let's keep it in Celsius. It sounds better. Keep it in Celsius people Uh, okay Uh, yeah, I don't even want to bring up the fact that we're still accelerating down this thing I mean, uh, COVID's been helping but uh Uh, so when we're talking about seven degrees, it's probably gonna be 20 before we get Fingers crossed that it is not and we can hope that in the next few years we can turn some things around I am optimistic We saw a lot of global adoption of behaviors by individuals that managed to shift the curve of the pandemic and that was not necessarily with Uh, it was with government recommendations not necessarily with great government oversight, uh all the time But individuals working together are able to enact change It's I mean, it's about I take optimism. Yeah, it's about urgency It's about agency and it's about community And those are the things that have really been successful with COVID right is there's this thing that's Happening it urgently needs our attention that is not necessarily been part of the climate narrative So that's the thing we can work on people think it's a far off not today problem and it certainly is I like not today satan, but yeah The community climate today Take care of your neighbors. Take care of the first responders Take care of each other and the agency there were things there are very simple things that you can do to make an actionable big difference and so I think Even though it's not perfect Like you said, we are seeing Entire shifts in the way we live our lives Um it in a lot of cases. So I think yeah, I think we hit there's something to be learned here about how to move forward with climate I think so. I definitely think so Yeah, uh, yeah, Gallagher and the chat room. This is from the uh your previous story So it's crazy crazy when domestic pigs get into the wild. I think two weeks and they go back feral Um, and then you have 30 to 50 feral hogs. Well, you know, it's funny the same thing happens with dogs Your family pet dog that's totally dependent on you What once they get out and get a taste of the freedom of being in a feral dog pack They're not coming back They they they adapt pretty quickly to be in wild But they have to have a feral dog pack. They can't just be wandering the streets. Yeah I don't know. I don't I don't know if two weeks is right there, but I'll yeah I'll take your premise. I take your point But I think I think it's gonna take it would take a lot more than that if they've been raised with humans Yeah, uh Continuing on the run you can believe that but don't leave the door open when you go out camping Or the tent flap out make sure you can't keep your dog at least because keep your Sadie closed the wilds strong Everyone read that book in elementary school Okay Keep it to the run down of the quick stories. No, I've got one still. You just give me my story. I got one left Yeah Congratulations to tropical storm Gonzalo It is now the earliest arriving number seven named tropical storm on record in the atlantic basin beating out tropical storm gert of 2005 by two days If you don't remember tropical storm gert, that's okay It never became a full-fledged hurricane. Just a big storm at sea However, not for nothing and worth noting that 2005 was the year hurricane Katrina struck the states Not that there's any correlation But regardless hurricane season is here. And so if you live in a hurricane frequented Location, maybe it's a good time to get your emergency get out of town kit put together Gonzalo is expected to go full-fledged hurricane over the next few days, which is just doing the mats here Hey, I think that will make it the earliest forming number seven named tropical storm to go hurricane in recorded history as well, so Nicely done Gonzalo. You really did it. Yeah Now please on the the heating very very easily Now please leave quietly via sea stage, right? Also, I'm pointing this out nas Satellite provided the look at the early record breaker Proving that despite pressure from some politicians who want nasa only to look out into space NASA does a pretty darn good job of monitoring conditions down here on earth as well Yeah, it is an essential one of nasa's essential services to The people here bow show man, the storms keep getting earlier bigger Good job Gonzalo. Hey Blair. What's your next story? Oh, you know, I say potato you say potato I say mouse brain. You say human brain. What's the difference? What? Uh, this. Yeah, so this is every this is uh From piece of research out of television Quite a few differences. I don't know how to start. Well, I'm here to tell you There's not a lot So, uh, this is a first of its kind study looking at brain connectivity in 130 mammalian species This is a huge potato No, so all the praise were removed from dead animals except for the 32 living humans Were who were also scanned in an MRI All the animals that had their brains removed were already dead. They were not euthanized for the study But uh, we were able to see the the researchers were able to see this like huge vast look at brain structure for 130 different species from tiny bats That's again weighing 10 grams to dolphins in the hundreds of kilograms So what they found was that the efficiency of information transfer through the neural network Does not depend on size or structure And That they exhibit equal connectivity and information travels with the same efficiency within each brain They also all had the same Balance to preserve that connectivity and information transfer via a special compensation mechanism So in connectivity between hemispheres is high It's within each hemisphere the connectivity is low and vice versa So they have this compensation that they do to make sure that they're attaining retaining this efficiency So of course many scientists have assumed that connectivity and the human brain is higher than other animals But as listeners to this show are probably not so surprised to hear Nah No, not a brain the brain Yeah, I I love one by one these ideas about how the human brain it's this amazing thing That's better than all the other brains. We've got to be special I mean, we are special but you know, but it's like, you know, every every every parent's child is special as well It's I think it's also it's like the what makes us special is not Our structure. I think that that's where this differs is yeah, it's it's we weren't Handed a different set of equipment No, we are mammal. We are primates. We are vertebrates. We have the same equipment as everybody else It has grown or adapted or evolved to be Used in different ways potentially, but we started with the same building blocks And I think that's the it's the the build the Legos are the same the the the properties of The building blocks are the same whether whatever brain mammalian brain you're looking at But when it comes to like you say the structure, yes human brain, we maybe have we have more specialized Areas of the brain for things like language different aspects of cognition. We have maybe different different connectivity In the sense of what exactly is connected to what but in terms of information flow All the stuff that allows that to happen is the same I'm still I'm kind of confused by is this just saying like like the speed at which a neuron Travels is like the same Uh, like uh, or is it saying there's the same number of connections? Like the white matters no more thick or dense or So they are looking at they are looking at white matter in the brain So that they could reconstruct the neural network They they reconstructed the neurons and the axons the nerve fibers through which information is transferred and the synapses where they meet then they compared them and uh, they were able to Use a model to adjust it for size basically And then they could create and apply a uniform gauge of brain Connectivity the number of synapses a message must cross to get from one to another in the brain So it's not just how fast it's firing. It's how it moves across neurons. Yeah And so our brain seems to be you're saying based on this the the same sort of prototype model that all of these animals brains are based on so Yeah, they're all the same. Yeah, okay. Yeah, basically they're all the same. They're all the same So this was not faster. There's was not slower. All right kiki. Why is our brain special then? I don't why if it's all the same Uh machinery how come we can do all these crazy human weird neurotic things and most animals don't seem interested in doing so Well animals do neurotic things also and it's a it's how often are we looking at the odd behaviors of animals? You know, we pay attention to very stereotypical Uh behaviors and you know once you start looking at a species Very intently and spend your life studying a species you learn the idiosyncrasies and the nuances to their behavior You know and Animals, you know birds for example, they have language bird song is Very complex. We use birds brains as a model For trying to understand our own language processing capabilities and production capabilities. So You know the complexity We just we are it's it's how you where you put the the magnifying glass, right? What are we looking at? What questions are we asking? How are we able to figure them out the the wondrous world of behavior? and ability It's out there for all animals Right Justin wants to know why we're allowed to make podcasts. I think is really what he's getting to That isn't here. I think that's I think that's a great question. I think it is, you know, that is, you know the What makes us human what allows us to be? Uh talking right now and uh building skyscrapers and making podcasts and what is it about our Our brains and our cognitive ability and it's a combination of things, right? It's a combination of Our ability to process information which lots of other animals have similar abilities, but then also combined with our capacity for teaching each other and collaboration and and And the our our physiological are you know what we look like our arms our hands our ability to manipulate the world around us I don't know Our hairless face that can our self domestication is like a whole thing. Yeah, absolutely. So Yeah, it's a it's a perfect storm of a bunch of things, but the point is Our equipment is this is not really that different from any other mammal The neuron is a neuron. So a neuron is a neuron is a neuron, but am I right then? Do we have like A magnitude more blood flow providing energy to this brain? Do we have why bother having a bigger brain if you have just the same connections? And we have a frontal lobe Yeah, yeah, we have some areas of the brain that are bigger. We have, you know, our brain itself is very big Uh, and and there are yeah, we need more blood flow to the brain So if I may it was something that happened along the way that uh, that was part of the stepwise progression of changes that allowed us to get to where we are and of course I absolutely believe that was when we We ran for a million years I'm thinking about a metaphor for this. I'm trying to think of so for example You could have ethernet that's very fast and you could have two different machines running off the same very fast ethernet And have the same memory on both of those computers, right? And that's what we're talking about here your speed and your connectivity your your memory Let's say like the ability for the computer to do things at the same time is kind of the same But your software might be different And so that's that's kind of what I'm seeing is you might have really good ethernet But be working off of an old computer And you could have really good ethernet and a brand new computer that has a whole new programming on it So I think that's that's kind of what I'm thinking about is the capacities there But for some reason our brain does things that other brains don't as far as so so what this then brings up is something Computer Yeah, but no, no, we have the same computer though, right? So pretty much like so here's that this is the sort of We just have like more updates Yeah, but yes, we have But we have so here's we have to say basic structure. We have that same basic connectivity But there are upgrades. There are parts like I have like our brains have a have a better potentially a better video processing a video processor or Well, hey, we're we're starting it. Look, here's the thing When now we're starting to like we thought that right we thought that we had more connectivity We thought that it was a big part of it now It's not so we're moving to maybe individual components might be responsible What I'm saying though is if that architecture is is if the big piece of that architecture is in place the evil genius mad garage or subterranean cave lab that if I Ever get funded for I will run Where you're trying to create a sentient mouse One of the things you won't have to do Is engineer mouth to have this sort of connectivity in the brain Maybe the other things to work on but now there's like sounds like a big part of the architecture for a Fully sentient, you know able to write mouse. We're able to type on a little tiny mouse Like some of those hurdles aren't there then Yeah, I mean, but we what we would have to do so there's uh, there are thoughts that like the the crown of thorns neuron might be responsible for some of the The the higher processing that we're able to do cognitively The crown of thorns neuron is like a single neuron that Was found by researchers who were mapping the brain and connectivity And they found this one neuron that kind of goes all the way around and it's like a crown of thorns It connects to a whole bunch of stuff And brings a bunch of different parts together So it's not just okay the amount of connectivity is the same But it's like how it's connected and like those trade-offs that blair was talking earlier But this is what i'm saying. We don't have to reinvent the brain We just need to reinvent this one neuron and see what happens Yeah, we have to reinvent these little ways that it's put together engineer this there's one neuron to take No, that's kind of crazy though. That means that like again, I'm just doing the evil scientist thing but it does mean That that separation between man and beast is not as Is as big of a difference Very cool story It is a very cool story And finally for the quick stories. We were supposed to be quick Have you saw that these been the quick stories? I got on my okay. I'll talk more. I'll talk slower later Quick stories at the top. No Kiki you're showing the run sheet still also. Oh, hey everybody. Look at the run sheet. Don't you like it? It's pretty you can see what we're doing. Uh, so yes We took a baby picture We did scientists took a baby picture. Well, it's actually A distant image of a for the first time ever Two planets orbiting a star Very much like our son the 17 million year old star only 17 million years old It's a baby star. I'm a mini star. What's the first time ever? Is it that it's two planets or the first time we took a picture of this star? That we that there's two planets just to orbiting this star that we imaged we took a picture Uh, this star is called tyc 8 9 9 8 7 6 0 1 and it has two gas giants that are about six and 14 times the mass of jupiter And they exist about 300. They're very big super jupiters. They exist about 300 light years away. So Yeah, pretty far but considering, you know 17 million years and 300 Light years to get here really not not that big a deal. Um, they'll be watching. I love lucy in about 200 years They were observed using the spear instrument on the very large telescope from the southern hemisphere the spear instrument has a a special A special light blocker that it blocks out the light from a star so that you can see everything else around it And so it was imaged using this this special coronal filter the two planets Orbit really far away from their host star 320 and 160 astronomical units out that's like 32 and 16 times the distance of Saturn from the sun so it's like multiples of so they're big boys. They need space They're huge and they're way out there But it's a very very young system And this is the first time that we have taken a picture of of a baby of of a baby sun with These little with with their stars in tow We have only previously been able to infer the existence of Of planets around stars through how they affect the wobble of the star through Gravitational influences or when planets occlude the light when they transit between A transit in front of a star between us and a star Be some next level next level. I'm gonna go on Yes, it's very cool very very cool, but it's also It's an interstellar baby picture We can show it to that star later and be like look at when you were 17 million years old You were so cute except by then we'll all be dead. Oh player. Why do you kind of ruin it? Bringing us down man. Actually if we send it a picture now Won't it be like 600 million years old when it gets it? 679 17 million and 600 You If you just tune oh You are in the midst of this week in science If you're interested in supporting the show you can head over to twist.org and click on the zazzle link The zazzle link will take you The zazzle link will take you to our store where you can find mug a shirt A mouse pad or maybe even a face mask So click on over there browse our store support twist All right, it is time for our weekly covet update That was like It's like the least energetic covet update I know because I'm like, oh no That's why you have to end with it. I wish I had a trumpet and I mean Sad trumpet Well, yes numbers do keep rising globally total numbers of cases are increasing At an accelerating rate. This indicates a lack of an overall of overall control of the situation There are some countries that have gotten things under control new zealand. I'm looking at you uh, but many others are still in the midst of the COVID pandemic and not doing not faring well The united states is number four in per capita daily incidents behind brazil Bahrain and oman Goldman Sachs estimates that a national us mask mandate would increase mask use in public by 15 percent, which Could reduce the need for more restrictive social distancing measures like closing businesses Uh and save the economy one trillion dollars This is what's so frustrating is the whole reason we're back, right? Is the economy the economy the economy if the decisions we were making were really about the economy Then someone would go everybody put on Your mask right Yes, that's what we want to do But everybody is not that there are a lot of people who are and we thank those of you who are being responsible And wearing a mask in public. Thank you very much for doing so Uh, but there is the question about vaccines What's going on in the vaccine front? Will we one day be able to walk? mask free through a shopping mall I don't know but that day will come if Maybe if we can get a vaccine put together and in the last week there have been a few papers suggesting that progress is being made the The money and the effort going into Vaccine production at this point in time is actually paying off multiple vaccines Have stimulated immune responses And are headed now toward phase three clinical trials. There's currently 10 000 people taking the the oxford vaccine which has been produced with an adenovirus They mutated adenovirus vector and Moderna is looking to begin a trial of 30 000 people for its phase three trial There's also a Pfizer vaccine and a couple of others One in china that is another adenovector that is headed toward phase three all doing very well having When I say stimulating an immune response what they've done is they've gotten the antibodies to perk up In the test subjects all those of those test numbers because they've been early phase trials clinical trials have not been huge so What we know so far is in the people tested there has been safe relatively safe Efficacy so an immune response that's showing up antibodies that are growing in Appearing in the bloodstream similar to the the levels found after infection also T cell responses have been measured and detected in some of the vaccines as well, which is important for long-term viral immunity now There was a question from our listener last week paul riley I punted to this week and since there's been so much vaccine news this week. I wanted to answer the question From paul if a vaccine is just dead virus then why is it so hard to create a covet 19 vaccine? Well vaccines are not just dead virus. Those are the very Simple versions we started with dead virus for for diseases like smallpox But in I've done it again stop screen sharing. Thanks blare. No I didn't want to interrupt your flow my flow. Here I go yo But through the uh, but with The the covet 19 vaccine you don't necessarily want to just use dead virus dead virus can have other negative reactions that you don't necessarily want and sometimes the dead virus isn't necessarily completely dead And can get into cells anyway and and cause actual caused actual infections polio was was one vaccine in which that happened for a very long time so So What they do is they take little bits of the vaccine of the of the virus and in the in the case of The SARS-CoV-2 virus. They are looking at things like the spike protein And taking those little pieces that the body Recognizes and attaching them to another vector. So in the case when I said the adeno virus Vector what that is is a In in the case of the oxford vaccine. I believe the adena virus is a It infects other primates not it's a cold virus That infects other primates not humans And so we shouldn't have an immune response to it because our it it should Just infect the cells and give that little bit of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that we are introducing to ourselves ourselves To the body to react to And so the idea is that you try to get that little bit of the virus that you want protection for Into the body so the body recognizes it and creates antibodies against it and continues to fight it off Something that I found really interesting a comment that a doctor made In talking about the difficulty of creating vaccines for respiratory viruses specifically Is that if you think about your lungs And your respiratory tract you think of it as inside your body But in reality it is an extension of the outside of your body It is epithelia Epithelia epithelial cells Are your skin and if you've ever thought about you know, how hard it is to get things into your skin You have to use a sharp needle. You have to use a knife. You have to do Pokey things to get into the skin, right? You can't just I mean Yes, we can we have ways now to rub stuff on the skin and have your body absorb it But it is not necessarily an easy process to get things through the the epidermis Because the epidermis is meant to protect And that and it does that in the respiratory system. And so in order to get A via get protection antibody protection within the body For a virus that affects you through the respiratory system You have to get you you really have to do a workaround to be able to get the Get the body to recognize it in the right way So it's actually not as easy as some other viruses to create a vaccine for something like SARS-CoV-2 because it's respiratory And so we've we've what they're testing so far is the antibody levels based on these vaccines, right? They're testing safety. So whether or not like do do people Have bad responses. Do they uh, do they go, you know, Is is there anything beyond a sore sore arm or a headache or a small fever? Right. No, I more mean like when they're when they're deciding if something has efficacy if it's if it's an effective vaccine They're looking for antibody levels, but yeah We don't know They this has to be a long-term study because we don't know if they maintain antibodies Or if they go away and then you can get infected by the coronavirus again right and so data Oh, I was going to say data so far suggests that uh antibodies There's a new paper out that suggests antibodies At least stay in our system for six months. So after infection, they're suggesting you are at least going to be protected for six months So the hope is we've been dealing with this for six months Does that mean that it's an ongoing thing and so far for six months or people have dropped off? I mean that so so that means worst case You you could have to get a booster every six months till this thing's gone. Yeah So so a couple a couple notes case one one is uh, absolutely fascinating way you described the lungs is epithelial I've never thought of lungs this way. Um, it's connected to the outside world It's out there. Yeah, the thing is like right if you take your lungs and actually spread out the material It's the what is it the size of a tennis court? So you're talking about protecting skin your skin in a way Uh, but it's the size of a tennis court and you're just not aware of it. It's like massive Uh structure. Wow. Yeah Um, the other Go ahead. Go ahead. The other thing what? Oh, the other thing I was hearing too the the other thing I was going to say was uh I've also heard reports that the as they've been doing this increased testing and being able to test people who don't have Uh the symptoms of the virus that they're finding they're getting hits that are 10 times or much higher even Uh than the reported cases Yeah, and so this is this is another interesting, uh another interesting question how much further spread within communities Is is the virus getting than we actually know about is it 10 times more? Um, but still even with if it's 10 times more that's still Not a lot yet And that's another aspect of the difficulty of testing a vaccine Is that you need to get volunteers? The best situation is to get volunteers from an area that's having an active outbreak for the test vaccines because then the likelihood of that person Interacting with somebody who has the virus and being exposed to that virus And then actually testing whether or not this test vaccine does anything Um is is higher. So if you it where you Where you uh look for volunteers to test your vaccine is also very important But then are you getting a diverse enough sample to be able to Really represent the full demographics of humanity to know Is it effective for everyone in the same way? Yes, are you only testing male mice? Right. Yes. No, that's not gonna work But there so there are a lot of difficulties to creating a vaccine That you don't necessarily think about at first is not just I'll take a dead virus and Put it out there And other times you might create Your vaccine with your little bit the antigen that little tiny bit of the virus that you're going to show to the immune system And maybe it doesn't create a big immune response And so then vaccines are mixed with things that are called adjuvants And the adjuvants are in there because they shake up your immune system and force your immune system into waking up And because they make your immune system wake up. It's more like your immune systems more likely To go. Oh, oh, what's this little bit of virus? Ah, sure. Fine. I'll I'll have a response to that now and so So the antigen is like this reminds me a little bit of uh, there was this one village in Mexico I think it was might have been so might have it was uh, South America at least Uh, but I think Mexico during the swine flu outbreak That this one town had like the mortality rate was way lower Uh, everybody was sort of surviving and they ended up coming coming to the conclusion that Because the well water in this town that everyone was drinking had an especially high arsenic content That their immune systems were sort of primed all the time Yeah, uh, to be that they were under attack and were these people were generating more white blood cell response Right and they probably died at a younger age because of all the arsenic and they have all sorts of other health problems So don't go drinking arsenic. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Yeah, please. Nobody take any medical advice from from that scenario Um, but no, but the idea is is this is that would that sort of be how the antigen is work? It's sort of priming the system to be on high alert and then it's the so the adjuvant Primes yeah, the adju the adjuvant primes the immune system to be on alert and then the antigen Which is the little bit of virus is in there and the immune system goes. Oh, hey, you're not supposed to be here Yeah, so So sometimes you have to figure out what you can mix The little bit of virus which with to make the immune system respond in the way that you want And you also have to if you're using something like an adenovirus vector You have to make sure that it is something adenoviruses or viruses that cause colds. They infect us Very often and so if you have a vaccine that is made with an adenovirus That is similar to something you've been infected with before Your body may have an immune response Just to that that adenovirus but not to The virus that you're trying to create immunity for so there are Different balances and complications to how we how we create these things the mRNA virus Vaccines that are being created by Moderna. They're brand new. And so those are Those are going to be really interesting because They like a virus use the machinery within yourselves to create antibodies Yeah And so very cool. Yeah all sorts of technologies and new ways of doing it But if everything is being tested, which is the most important part and we do not want them to skip skimp on the testing That's for sure and anyone out there who is volunteering for any of these vaccine trials. Thank you for doing that Thank you so much for for helping all of us Yes, and and if you happen to be a person of a color uh, any form of minority Go out find where if there this is going on your community and volunteer for this because The more represented you are in the study the more effective the treatment will be for the greater population Yes studies are usually done on white men Well Sometimes my men but there is a male bias in in a lot of medical tests. Yes, absolutely Yeah, the demographic of who's getting Who's participating in the studies is going to determine the efficacy Of the the resulting drug On the greater population. So if one of these studies is going on in your area and you can contribute Your diversity to it. Please get involved um And if anybody has any questions for this week in science questions You can ask about covet you can ask about all sorts of other things But you can email me kirsten at this week in science.com Or leave us a leave us a message on our facebook page. Sorry. I was distracted. My cat just fell out of the sky All right, um, but moving on with the vaccine information The national once we get a vaccine that will be the interesting part and our government has Is working very hard to try and get everybody access to vaccines once a vaccine is available On new news the u.s. Has agreed to pay $1.95 billion to Pfizer ink and bio n-tech se To secure 100 million doses of their experimental covid-19 vaccine for americans For free of charge now America has a lot more than 100 million people. So hopefully there will be more vaccines available You know, who's gonna get those vaccines? Who do you think the national academies of uh, science is engineering medicine and the national academy of medicine have formed a committee that will develop an overarching Framework to assist policymakers in the u.s And global health communities in planning for equitable allocation of vaccines against covid-19 So there's a committee. Okay. Well, that's health care. We're gonna get it first. So That's a whole thing. But uh, I I just I was listening to the news the other day about these different vaccines that are in the works and um that I guess russia tried to Hack in and get some of our vaccine ingredients and all this kind of and there's this massive Competition for somebody to find as well To to yeah to make the vaccine Because other countries will have to pay that country for the vaccine Yeah, and I don't want to sound like a hippie here. But like That seems this seems counterproductive It's it seems like I I appreciate the the competition because hopefully like that'll get people going faster But at a certain point the fact that whoever figures this out or pushes it to market quickest Will become the rich country out of this? Concerns me. It's not going to be a rich country. They're going it is going to be a rich company But Yeah Right, so that's part of where I started to get concerned But but yes that the fact that any individual or any nation Could kind of push this forward and end up a benefit Exactly. Yeah, that concerns me I I don't know. I don't have any solutions But I just I just wanted to throw it out there that I have I have concerns That's where it becomes something of a sticky wicket. I believe yes Oh, it should be it should be public whatever. That's all I'm saying is what when we find one that works The recipe should be free Yeah There's a another study that came out this week looking at hydroxychloroquine It doesn't work. Mm-hmm. It doesn't work another another study. That's not true. Hang on. It works fantastically Not for SARS-CoV-2 Oh, no, no not for that. No, that's totally wrong. Yeah, it's horrible for covid Horrible for covid. Yes, uh for in use against SARS-CoV-2 infection in non-human primates Uh in I have a chat. Hello, Kai. I love you. Have a good night Okay, chan. Disperse I love you too They they used hydroxychloroquine to try and help monkeys that were already infected to see if it would reduce time Of infection or ameliorate the symptoms. It didn't help. They also tried to use hydroxychloroquine in these These monkeys to see if it would help keep them from getting sick and it did not help So it's just another study adding to the pile of evidence that hydroxychloroquine is not really a Useful drug in the sense for covid-19. So please Take that into account Let the people who have prescriptions for it use it and stuff. Yes Don't stockpile let people let the people who need it use it Yes, uh and and just as I can't help it but say it again three weeks If we just shut down the planet for three weeks And and again, I'm gonna push it. I think every year we should take three weeks where everybody stays home and doesn't go out and doesn't interact I love everywhere On the planet. I like shut down for three weeks We could knock out all these communicable diseases. Well, I mean not all of them. We still have what would we call it? Would we call it disease transmission? Uh For the viruses Yeah It's not a festivus for the viruses. It's dexta viruses for the viruses formerly january January is now called dexta viruses We do it for dexta viruses this year Hey, this is this weekend science. Thank you for listening to twist You're the reason that we are able to do what we do every week bringing you up to date and down to earth news And views on science and with your help we can do even more We can continue to bring people our sane perspective I think we're sane kind of our perspective to a world full of misinformation head over to twist.org right now right now And click on the patreon link and choose your level of support be a part of bringing sanity and science To more people right now Do it Come on Now wait. No, we're waiting for you. We're waiting for you. We're not going on till you click the buttons. No, I'm gonna go on Let's go on All right and Justin, do you have any stories? Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, uh I do here, uh, as soon as it loads, which is okay. Here we go. So this is oh, this is a good story This is a stone tools have moved back the arrival of humans in the americas by thousands and thousands of years again Find things of stone tools move back first immigration of humans to america by 15 000 years currently we're hovering at around the 15 000 year mark, uh for the sort of accepted Generally accepted time This is uh, this is revealed in the new international study from the university of copenhagen Where researchers have analyzed ancient material from a mexican mountain cave And they're calling it proof that the first humans arrived in america at the very least 30 000 years ago Probably more like the 30 000 33 000 or something like this. No, no, no. It was 15 000 It was 15 000. Well, or was it so here's the quoting. Okay quoting the, uh, press release Uh Approximately 15 000 before science was hitherto able to render it probable first, uh Couple problems with this first, uh, there's no need to bring back the word hitherto Uh, there might even be some danger and it's gone for reasons There's no we kicked it out. It's maybe even a little bit dangerous Uh to have hitherto uh has not been talked about because of the hitherto getting that word removed from use Infectious way that hitherto worms its way into hitherto conversations. Am I saying hitherto? See this is why we got rid of it. It's just starts to creep in Uh, it doesn't to every conversation it used to it was the right. It was the right. I want to know about the creeping into the caves Okay, so creeping in the caves. Okay. So that's the first one second problem is french canadian archaeologist Jacques sing mars who we've talked about on this show before Uh, uh, and he had a yukon discovery Uh 30 something years ago when the bluefish caves Where he found animal bones worked over by tools that dated 24 000 years old Uh, which by itself renders this date completely probable so this was this was a Jacques sing mars He had his discovery. He went around and tried to tell people about it. He was literally laughed at For suggesting a timeline older than 13 000 year old clovis sites Uh, Jacques sing mars was right then and is still right It seems despite the so many claiming to have found the first evidence of old living clovis over and over again throughout south america Okay, still with the new study published in the journal nature is awesome The team of archaeologists and dna experts from the university of Copenhagen as well as universities in mexico, uk, us and brazil and others All collaborated on this the article. This is a quotey voice of esca willer slav The article in nature is a scientific hand grenade The fact that it moves back the time of early immigration to america significantly is guaranteed to ignite a heated debate uh maybe esca Willer slav and his two colleagues associate professor michael winter peterson assistant professor martin Sakura Made up a Danish contribution to the international team of researchers the three scientists have conducted the dna analysis of ancient Remains from animal and plant material found during excavations of the chiquilla chiqui cave in northern mexico they found 1900 ish stone tools That is that is an amazing collection of tools from any site and it kind of and they They do them as far back as 30 000 years Uh And they also say that these they had already developed techniques for producing these tools that were sort of unique to the americas Sort of interesting too is that they were they described this cave is also sort of having an impression that has uh three meters, I guess of compacted earth, uh and in a sort of Six layers of detritus and dust and all a 10 sorry a 10 foot column Uh of ancient remains which is so compressed and stable that using various advanced Measuring methods it has been possible to date the layers one by one from top to bottom So also wow aside from all of the tools a a perfect, uh column if you will Of data, uh has been stored within this this cave Each layer has contained deposits of stone tools such as knives scrapers arrowheads Which the researchers have also been able to date the cave finds are extremely interesting These archaeological finds are so far the oldest in america and the excavated stone tools Are of a type unique to america it says professor universidad autonoma de Zacatis in mexico superman f andrellan, uh, he's saying until now science has assumed well That the earliest immigration in america took place approximately 15 000 years ago There's also sites all the there's one in pennsylvania, which has been dated at 19 000 But again, it's out of the range can't be true. You're gonna have to look at this one Uh at the time there were no other okay, so at the time then they've been assuming this because of the last glacial maximum That sort of covered north america and they have always assumed that until that broke up Uh, nobody could get through so So at the time 30 000 or so at the time there's this narrow opening though that happens about 15 000 years ago Which makes it possible to walk from Siberia onto the american continent and then later down through so so the That's been why it's been part of why the theory has been there because you can look at the glacial Uh thinning and it kind of matches up with some of the more predominantly accepted sites the clovis sites and some of the others now in south america This is my uh side note to the story the crossing area that they describe Would have actually formed a chain of islands Much much earlier, which we've uh brought to talk about that in a story on the show And these islands would have been able to be navigated by a boat Which would have also predated the glacial maximum around 19 to 26 000 years ago and allowed For pleasant enough boat travel down the coast So if you were boat faring You know 20 30 000 years 33 000 years ago You wouldn't have that massive Glacial cap, but you would have this sort of chain of islands showing up between Siberia And alaska that you could sort of hopscotch through which if you have little islands Popping up in the in the sea you might have something to hunt Something to Hunt on these Little islands all the way across and then you would have had a coast without A glacial maximum So 30 000 years ago when the first stone tools were left in the Chiqui cave The ice cap had not yet covered all of north america Which means it would have been possible even to walk down From from the north american portion of the continent says asca with a slav That would have it. Yeah It would have been a long walk The one thing that i'm thinking about in this whole story though is a DNA they found DNA In the cave, um, i'm going to guess. Yes. Some of it was dead animals, but uh part of it is probably also fecal remains I'm going to guess that Part of that DNA is like what animal like if there's black bear DNA It's what was the black bear eating probably plants and berries and you know, what are what how are you finding it there? So that's a good guess that they found a black bear a wide range of rodents several types of bats As well as sparrow and falcon Uh And it's gonna all be in the layers there It's on layers and they also are you know, it also gives them because of the different plant compositions Changing over time from these different steps. They also give them uh sort of climate change information as well as the Sort of biome of where these caves are located over time It actually is a huge treasure trove of information that will be sorted through and written about and studied for decades to come Yeah, environment ecology climate like all those tight things tied together not just hey people tools 30 000 years ago And so many tools though so many. I mean that's That is amazing That is just absolutely Uh dream come true to to have all of that to study so interesting though. There's so many tools, but no No human remains That they're not actually, you know, there's no other I mean the tools have Withstood the test of time, but you'd think it's Somewhere nearby maybe not there, but there they've got to be Burial sites or people remains Somewhere near nearby Yeah, so that that is very interesting, right? You don't you know Hey, I mean, I don't know what your house looks like. I don't have anybody buried Where I'm living Yeah, that's true There was like there was this practice in and some of the early Middle Eastern I think it was where ancestors would be buried underneath the the home or hut Uh, you would sort of carve out an area under and they would actually be buried Underground in the house, which is probably where probably where the idea for burial came from It's like wow, they're gonna be in the house. Let's make sure they're under that's make sure they're covered with a lot of dirt Uh, but yeah for the most part, that's a very odd Thing to happen and conversely you're looking we when we look at the homo niladi Uh, the massive sort of cave of remain right cave of bones. It's cave of bones. Not a cave of tools So where's all their tools or where were they, you know, where's all their food stuff? It's not there Why they just apparently put the dead in one cave and maybe live in another? Yeah, and if people at this point in time were, you know, uh smallish bands of people they're they're stopped there for A small period of time seasonally, maybe even maybe they came and came and went numerous times Maybe they had a few different areas they frequented Um, you know, we don't know what these people were doing And so maybe they did use the cave to live in For a short period of time and then moved on to other places Where they died and buried their people I have to have to uh, sub tangent to the the my previous rant, uh about uh, that's all I'm taking a a Vibrous vacation snored prefect in the uh, youtube chat room nailed it Corona ball Corona ball Where we all put on a mask and dance in our living rooms for three weeks. Perfect. I'm doing that anyway. Yeah seems about right All right. I've got some science news for you. Oh wait, Justin. You have more news. Tell me about the plants Oh, I did bring one more story. That's unfortunate. I forgot all about it. Ah uh, okay, so this is Water plants are a new sense for streams and rivers Very easily blocking the flow and taking up volume Uh, when they take a volume they can lead to more frequent flooding And so we always remove all of this plant material From streams and riverways to make sure that uh, the water flow is is more manageable Well now researched by royal netherlands institute for sea research scientist loretta corna Chia published in proceedings the royal society b Cooperation with utrecht university shows that vegetation and streams can actually buffer Uh water levels and by adjusting vegetation cover They actually are more efficient at managing the flow Says loretta corna chia they provide a natural buffer against hydrological changes The information for water management are huge The current strategy of plant removal does not only threaten a naturally balanced water level It also threatens extremes biodiversity The inland waters are Fresh water hot spots for biodiversity vegetation is the guardian of this Yeah, so it's providing habitats and food for invertebrates fish helps stabilize riverbanks So there's less erosion Moves excess nutrients from the water so the water is more Clean I guess At high flows they find the vegetation is pushed to the side and can even be dislodged to the sides Which then forms an open lane sort of a fast lane Down the middle for high flow traffic of water During periods of low flows aquatic plants actually gradually clog up the stream Uh slow down the runoff and thereby prevent the water from draining too quickly And this is uh the so-called self-organization process counter acts the variation in water flow that streams experience through the seasons Uh last kodi thing from loretta corna chia Saying it very Japanese corn. It's I'm saying it very Japanese, but it's not a Japanese last name. Uh Loretta corna chia, maybe I don't know More nature-based approach to the control of water levels Harnesses natural processes rather than the human control to maintain Biodiversity hot spots insight in self-organizing plants and understanding their role in ecosystem resilience Is it essential to a future governed by global change? Which of course the future? Uh might have some more rain We might be blessed with a little more rain Not just a little bit more rain, but rain in Atmospheric rivers Rain that comes once every long period of time causing these floods and uh in which we would really That having natural controls to flooding and water distribution would be great Yeah, especially when the water's up to the cow's knees and the chickens are sleeping and willow trees Especially All right, I have some science I know i'm going to talk about brains right now I don't want brains Because I do love the brains So we've talked before about the benefits of young blood to old brains Yes, we've also talked previously about the benefit of of exercise to brains In general exercise is good for your brain and we know that there are factors in the blood that come from Exercise that lead that can potentially change the brain So uh researchers publishing in science this week They took Old mice and split them up into two two groups now old mice are 18 months old That's not old in human years, but in mouse's years It's that's old and then they took Half of those mice and they said you get a running wheel and you get a running wheel and you get a running wheel And they got to run an exercise and the other half of the mice they said you get a couch and you get a couch You got it you got it you saw where I was going so they had sedentary old mice and active old mice and They found that when they took the plasma the blood plasma from the mice who were old and who had exercised and put it into the sedentary mice It led to improvements in cognitive tasks related to memory and it led to improvements in the uh in the In the liver and also in other aspects of metabolism. They were able to identify a compound called glyc I had it I said it number of times before I actually did the show to see if I could say it and now I stumbled Okay, I'll try again. They called it glycosyl phosphatidyl inositol specific phospholipase d1 It's a factor A liver I've gotten about halfway through and changed the ending I know I know You can also call it glp Um, but this is a an enzyme that splits Uh, gloss glock glycosyl phosphatidyl Anyway, it's this it's a thing. It's a factor that it's an enzyme that splits other factors in and it's in the plasma It doesn't cross the blood brain barrier itself But they tracked it took this one little Enzyme and they determined that that enzyme on its own could lead to changes in the brain of Older mice so the uh, the study looking at this Glycosyl phosphatidyl inositol specific phospholipase d1 otherwise known as gpl d1 Um, that they're now going to start looking at this as a way in which Blood factors can actually transfer the benefits of exercise To the aged One of the ideas being that some people are old and frail and unable to exercise And so they cannot get the benefits of exercise to the brain And so their decline mentally goes is much more rapid than people who are able to exercise So give them young blood But you don't have to you don't have to now now we are looking for factors like this glp d1 that can Uh potentially be given. Uh, it it improves liver function and leads to a bunch of downstream effects that Could hopefully Help improve brain function Ah, this seems like unnecessary extra work. Just give them the young blood. Just give them Why don't we just do that? All right coach, I got a question. I got a question How come how come every team in our league is sponsored by plasma ink? Yeah, funny thing son, so it's also part of why we all give blood donations before every game I thought we were doing that for the good of community. Well, we are And it's also why we haven't won a game in a while. Well, nobody's really they have to call all the games because we're everybody's listless Yeah, I think I think we could just like yeah, uh, young people blood Seem like when we first were encountering this I was like, oh, there's gonna be this just draconian Black market blood Blood from the young kids. Yes blood from give me that youth blood It's gonna be like Yeah, like uh poor children in communities around the world who uh families are subsisting on the young giving blood that goes off to uh billionaires and other third world country But uh, yeah, it would be nice if we could synthesize a way around the whole leaching the young part of Yep, so looking for those slightly less vampiric societies slightly slightly less. Yeah Yeah, but it it also identifies this liver to brain axis and uh suggests also that there are aspects of liver health that Uh are important as we age for maintaining The proper factors getting into the blood to maintain the health of the brain So this is a new area of research very exciting. Yes, maybe we will not have to have to suck the youth dry but for people who move on onto another story that I thought was promising and exciting people who have Have limb amputations And need prostheses they either Complain of having phantom limb syndrome where you know, they feel things that aren't there because their limb is not there anymore Um, or they feel nothing at all because the limb is not there and if they're using a prosthetic There's no sensation in that prosthetic So they go and they reach for things they try and do things with the prosthesis prosthesis and Uh, and they're unable to feel so they there's no feedback as to The pressure that they're putting on a cup or uh when they're touching something. Everything has to be visually confirmed This is something I've I haven't lost any limbs But I do have lack of feeling in parts of my hand and I have dropped Oh, I have dropped and shattered at least five mugs Because I don't know how much pressure I'm putting on the cup And it drops right out of my hand Yeah and so this uh, this new study out of uh, let's see where is this from the university of Pennsylvania medical center center. Oh, sorry university of pittsburgh schools of health sciences They are uh, they've published in elife their new study in which they're repurposing spinal These new spinal cord implants the the spinal cord implants are used to to treat chronic pain and they Just sit their uh electrodes that are run into the spinal cord and usually for chronic pain They short circuit the chronic the pain pathways so that people don't feel the chronic pain as much or Don't feel it anymore but Knowing this and knowing that sensory information is sent through the nerve trunks in the spinal cord the researchers implanted electrodes into the the volunteers backs in their spinal cord and then checked to see If they could trigger a feeling in the limb that was no longer there And that's what they were that's what they were able to do And so the the hope is that eventually they will be able to tie this with a With a prosthetic limb In the future so that if somebody touches the prosthetic limb if they reach out to grab something with the prosthetic limb that they will be able to Have sensation on From the prosthetic Device that they actually feel So, yeah, it's all electrical signals It's all electrical signals and they did this and our the Target is there's that narrow strip on the side of the brain. There's something there for hand There's something there for arm. There's a body location little map that the sensory information is going to uh, and and What what happens to folks is when they lose a limb there's this little part of the brain that's no longer getting signals It can actually get taken over Uh by neighboring uh signal uh areas of the brain or it can just keep screaming out like hey Something's wrong. Something's wrong. And that's where you get these phantom pains. It's this part of the brain That's not getting its signals anymore. And if you could uh find the pathway to give it signals Yeah, why not? You should be able to integrate this into You know these robotic Feely touchy soft fingery things that are always we're always seeing come across like new more fleshy like robot hand You know with sense a touch sense That those electrical signals if they're diverted to this little patch of brain should effectively give that sensation that signaling pathway back to the brain And you can feel again Yeah, so they are hoping uh that They'll be able to design spinal simp stimulators that can be fully implanted as opposed to Connecting to a device that's outside of the body, which is what they did for this particular trial um and then demonstrate that the feedback between a prosthetic and The body can actually improve control of a prosthetic hand right now. They're just showing it's like proof of concept We can make this we can show that there is this matching of sensation simulated Yeah simulated sensation, but um, yeah, and the researchers say mostly we wanted to demonstrate the possibility that something like this could work And I think it's uh, it's a really promising direction and I think very exciting for people Who need prosthetic glimpse or who want an extra limb if you want to figure that out Wait, but the brain wouldn't have oh you could teach your brain. Yes. Really? For sure. Yes I'd take a third arm. Why why the heck not? Why not the question is do you put it right out the middle? Or under one of the other arms? That's really the question in in the middle of your back No, because then you couldn't lay down or sit. That's that's silly kiki. Don't be silly You would have to go middle of the chest Or I think no no no I sleep on my stomach. It couldn't go there. Yeah, it would have to be under one of your arms And your armpit Instead of armpit. Yeah, stuff like you'd be like a dragonfly with Oh, you're going you're doubling it. I'm doubling I'm going under. I'm gonna stay. I'm gonna keep I'm absolutely You want you like that bilateral symmetry? I do. I like the symmetry. Yeah under each armpit because Then Justin. Oh, I figured it out right out of the top of your head Just an arm right out of the top right out of the top That'd be good. I think we have Made it to one of our favorite times in the show. This is this week in science. Do you want to help twist grow? Get a friend to subscribe today All right, it is time for As you're pulling that up uh in the uh in the youtube chat room uh eric combs happy birthday happy birthday I do yes, uh, I do get I get a list of all the birthdays of everybody who logs into the chat room on youtube. It just uh auto-populates Eric combs happy birthday Yeah, it's the new data capture thing. I added to that. You didn't know about oh, well, of course you didn't It's okay. It's fine. Happy birthday. Eric. I'm sure he's happy that I said happy birthday might be weird that I know It's his birthday, but it's a happy birthday Fantastic, it's time for Blair's animal corner With Blair Oh You all know that co-worker you know the one the one who's really outspoken kind of A little bit aggressive really likes to get their way and often asserts themselves as the leader Well that particular type of person also exists in fish society And a new study is Karen. Yeah Well, Karen, I don't know if Karen's dominant Karen's just annoying I feel like this is like a I don't know like a greg or something like Greg's telling us what to do again But uh So this happens in fish too And a new study on fish behavior shows that dominant individuals can influence a group through force That can be physical force or in Jeff's case um verbal force or In other cases passes and passive individuals are actually better at bringing a group to consensus So the difference between these two scenarios is actually quite interesting This comes from max plank institute of animal behavior the university of constants and the university of texas at austin Those three I couldn't say the word austin. That's funny Um, but it kind of shines light on the potential of domineering individuals to actually obstruct or hamper effective communication in organization So depending on the situation you might not want somebody that's take charge And so in order to figure this out they studied cichlid fish They looked at them because cichlids have strict social hierarchies And there's usually a dominant male that controls resources territory and space or many dominant males depending on the size of the group The dominant males are usually more colorful. They're usually more aggressive And they are central in social networks and as I mentioned they control resources So they are considered to be very influential Drab subordinate males They are passive non-territorial and have little or no control over resources But they wanted to see if they wielded any influence in that society So they examined how information flows between dominant or subordinate males In the groups in two different contexts. One was routine social behavior So just like eating swimming eating swimming. What else do you pursue? And then more complex social learning tasks In the complex learning tasks dominant or subordinate fish were trained to a certain colored light on one side of the tank To mean that food would arrive at that location. So a nice red light or something says food's going to be dropped right here So then those informed individuals were then brought back to a new group Of individuals that had not been informed of that information And then researchers looked at which group more quickly learned to associate colored light with food So who was able to communicate to the group at large? Come over here for food So what they found is in the routine social interactions eating and swimming The dominant males had the greatest influence on the other fish by chasing and pushing the group around But in the complex tasks where they were asked to communicate this Kind of idea that this light meant food to the group It was actually this the subordinate males who had the greatest influence on their social group So Yeah, so what does this mean so you can kind of extrapolate this and think about how There's um, there's an opportunity between Kind of how that relationship Affects the other fish and who is a reliable messenger? So what they're kind of the the extrapolation here is that animal or human societies have individuals that are in positions of power or prowess and often Those things are associated with aggression intimidation and coercion So not not that dissimilar so far right, but community communication requires A diversity of voices if there's one person yelling it can often turn people off And so these results from a natural system with fish Show that alternative pathways to positions of power are actually useful in creating a stronger advisory governmental and educational structure. So this is all right point dexter. What's that light mean? We'll actually serve it it means Probably gonna be food dropped over there. It's a very short period of time. All right. Let's get a move on. Let's go over there They finally make yourself useful Yeah, so I think that's kind of the idea right is that you need different types of influencers yeah, and and so May it you know It's fish. I'm not gonna tell you exactly what this means for humans But what I see here is Does our society I'm just posing the question does our society Prioritize certain types of voices being put into decision-making roles Absolutely Yeah, and and is that right or should we have more of a diversity of people? Giving those sorts of recommendations to the general use the thing Uh, would you say there's a correlation with people who are really good at handling large amounts of information, but lack social skills Versus people who are very good with their social skills, but maybe don't pay attention to any of the details There you go Fish yeah, the sweet spot is where you have somebody who does well in both domains But yeah, yeah Well, and I mean I just think about you know the coronavirus briefings here in the united states where we had one person talking Who is definitely dominant, but maybe didn't have as much information And then you had another person talking who had a lot of information But had to stand back and roll his eyes And so who actually would have been the better person to listen to In this situation and who maybe was listened to more by the general public and trusted more according to polls Yep It's interesting. It is very interesting This is making me think yeah, this is making me think of another study that came out of the santa Correlations are real by the way this week that uh, they're looking at at monkeys I think it was might have been the cac monkeys, but groups of monkeys and the the take-home message from the study is that groups of monkeys Are better informed than the individuals within that group And that they are like that the groups are like Little computers that them the monk that they oh, I did see that one. Yes. Yeah where they look and they looked at these monkeys as they were forming and Forming groups and leaving the groups while they were foraging in these fruit trees and so the groups were kind of the signal of Whether a tree was good to be foraging in and how good it was But there were decisions made by the individuals to leave a group and make another group or to join a different group and so there was this constant flux and it but the the big message from it is that individuals don't necessarily Understand or have all that they have the components of making making decisions, but it's really the group knowledge That emergent property of the group that is actually more intelligent And this is kind of like the wisdom of the crowds But the other side of it is the other side of it is that commons a chance of commons, but then there's also they looked at the fruit trees themselves and Determined that the these monkey computers Were very inefficient and they could have been using the fruit trees much more efficiently if they had Done it differently. So there was wisdom in the group, but not like not total Dominance over that knowledge like it what didn't make them super efficient and perfect. They were there were still inefficiencies Right, so I think this is where like so. Yes. So a group has a greater According to But when you When you then have to act on that sometimes In action is the result or disorganized action So often you need a leading voice which in this case with the cyclids You had one fish that knew something that no one else knew and they had to take the initiative to kind of Show everybody so a leader still had to emerge and so that's why you know having Diversity of understanding and background knowledge is so important But also there are times when people need to stand up stand up and speak and It turns out it doesn't always have to be the same kind of person Right, but the important thing though is a new scenario somebody Somebody pulls the the x caliber out of the stone And somebody standing right next to a mordom is like, oh, thank you. I am now the king of england. Thank you Thank you very much But then it makes me think of the rat study from last week Where it was like well the rats and people don't always do what is quote-unquote right You know who is gonna step up if nobody's stepping up exactly So there's actually one of my favorite, uh, ted talks are ever seen not to go totally crazy on the tangent is that um actually the The initial Leader is not the most important person in making a movement. It's the first follower Because you can go and do something crazy and start talking on your own and you're just one crazy person But to follow that crazy person is actually putting yourself out there in a big way And then for every additional person that's following It becomes less risky, but the risk is actually highest for the first follower Yeah, so it it's Interesting that everybody has an important role to play you don't have to be the change maker, but Starting a support system is often more important. I think it's very interesting Can't have a pyramid scheme without What no pyramid schemes. No, no pyramid schemes. No, no, that's what all like that's what all power is Yeah Um, skin conspiracies, uh, let's talk about invasive species So invasive species, uh, in particular this this one is looking at hedgehogs and ferrets Which are animals that I talk about through my day job all the time because they're illegal to have as pets here in california and in organ And in a lot of the united states because they're not from the united states And they have a huge potential of becoming invasive in any place they go that is not Where they're from hedgehogs because they are so good at protecting themselves And ferrets because they are amazing little hunters so all of that together means They have a potential to wreak havoc on an ecosystem that is not theirs And because people have them as pets is often why they're released into the wild They Whenever an animal is a pet the likelihood they could escape or be released as high people don't understand this animal isn't from here And they just let it go in their backyard and it can cause a huge problem on the ecosystem and so how do we either eradicate these invasive species or Reduce their negative impact on an ecosystem and so this is looking at ferrets and hedgehogs in new zealand a place where they are invasive as well What isn't invasive in new zealand sometimes it feels like there's more invasive animals than local animals, but um ultimately because they're an island they're especially susceptible to these problems and They were trying to figure out how these animals hunt And specifically how they find and target prey To see if they could use that information to reduce their impact on the ecosystem And this is also based on the idea that both of these animals are nocturnal both of them are extremely reliant on their sense of smell and Previous research has already shown that chemical cannibal flage could be effective In deterring other invasive species from harming vulnerable bird populations and chemical camouflage is when you basically just spray a whole bunch of bird nest odor All over a space before anybody lays any eggs So then they keep going Is that fresh eggs? And they walk over and they're go, oh, there's nothing here and they do that for like a month Before the eggs even show up so then by the time the eggs show up They're kind of jaded and they're over it. They're done looking for that stuff Like uh, that's a false signal So the chemical camouflage has been used in the past and so they the researchers wanted to see If and how chemical camouflage could be used to to protect birds from ferrets and hedgehogs So they um they they found How these animals were using their sense of smell was really the crux So they are using their sense of smell To locate prey for ferrets. They're eating things like rabbits and large game for hedgehogs Mostly they're eating insects, but they're both opportunistic So if they find a free meal in the form of an egg or a baby chick They're gonna take it right wouldn't anyone right? Um, I would so if you found a free meal No strings attached you would see me Yeah, um, so how did they do this? They captured local ferrets and hedgehogs And they ran them through a series of controlled treatments and outdoor enclosures They resembled natural habitats and they wanted to see how they categorize smells So whether they group smells into types of birds Or how they habituate to smells how do they process this input? And so uh from that they found that their hunting strategies and their priorities were specific and Very easily manipulated um So It looks like ferrets generalized all avian smells smells. Uh, yeah avian smells I said that right. Yes, I really want those eggs. So basically just like any bird smells Great Hedgehogs were much more specific um, so They were really looking at uh Maybe ground nesting bird eggs that are around a specific type of year. So it's um It was kind of more specific It makes sense. I mean hedgehogs are they're not climbing trees No, and they are seasonal. So hedgehogs. They have I know this for african hedgehogs I'm not a hundred percent sure about the european ones which I think are the ones in new zealand But african hedgehogs estimate so they go through summer hibernation So they are extremely seasonal So it would make sense that they'd only be smelling for animals that lay eggs when they are awake So that would make sense. Um So based on all of this they think that they will be able to protect bird colonies by distributing specific smells around an area saturating it Then and therefore uh doing this chemical camouflage For hedgehogs and ferrets. They become accustomed to the smell. They ignore it. They seek out other prey So no birds for you. Yeah, there's all the birds It's general enough that it might be really hard to synthesize or capture a ground quail smell That is you know a protected species, but it seems like they can be much more general They could put out chicken smell And it would be enough At least for the ferrets Yeah, definitely Hedgehogs might be a little bit more difficult perhaps I don't know It's so funny. I when I think of hedgehogs I mean, I guess, you know being invasive being a pet species that totally makes sense But at the same time I really do not think of hedgehogs as this incredibly efficient hunter and survivalist in the wild I think of hedgehogs as these little cute little things ferrets on the other hand. Yeah, they're gonna get in there. They're wily They're Predators, you know, they can hug full grown rabbits. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it's so ferrets. I'm like, yes I'm down with but the hedgehogs. I'm having I'm there I'm having some Mental gymnastics to make so they're yeah, they're not they're not hunting. They'll eat an egg Is really what it's about. Um, I came across an egg. I'm gonna. Yeah, but I mean here in california That's not even the main concern. The main concern is that we have indigenous Small mammals That live in underground and hedgehogs live underground, but they're terrible diggers. So they actually steal other animals Yep So they go underground stick out all of their quills and like get out. This is my house now And that pushes those animals up Where they're hot and snakes and other animals waiting exactly, you know, you know, who loves you know who loves hedgehogs Who? Hawks Yeah, yeah, it's because they pick them up and drop them really well in this hedgehogs Well, thanks hedgehogs. Come on Yeah Oh my goodness Well, I think that we have come To the end of another show But I did need to answer the question from the the title of our show which for this episode was Why the earth isn't flat and apparently According to a study this week from the university of pennsylvania Um, it it's because it's made of cubes It is Publishing and proceedings of the national academy of science as a team of researchers from the university of pennsylvania budapest university of technology and economics and the university of de brecken They um Looked at a whole bunch of little tiny rocks. They broke rocks. They measured rocks and they used math mathematical models geology and physics to determine That uh plateaus conjecture that uh the matter that the idea of matter Everything is composed of Indivisible the smallest indivisible object is something of a cube Well, he might have been on to something apparently measuring all the rocks on the planet Based on the way that geological forces in three dimensions Grind up rocks and break them the random fragmentation that happens again and again and again Leads to shapes that are generally cubic And so the average Shape of indivisible rock on our planet is it's cubes You go look at nature. They've been they've been eroded and made soft at the edges way too much Minecraft Like imagine a spherical cow, are we just trying to make it easier? Well, it would make some things a little bit easier of what they say is they they think they have found What appears to be a fundamental rule of nature, but it could help identify patterns That lead to rockfall hazards likelihood and location of fluid flows oil or water in rocks And it could it could help with a lot of identification of geological Features and things that happen geologically So anyway, uh the researcher gerald mack dr. Gerald mack says when you pick up a rock in nature It's not a perfect cube But each one is a kind of statistical shadow of a cube. It's the spherical cow. That's what that means Oh my god See rock art where people make shapes with different rocks like you can make any shape out of a bunch of I made a cube rocks I'm just gonna hey from now on I am team cube earth. I'm just saying Okay On a corner then kiki. I do stand. I do still find it very fascinating I do still find it very fascinating how quickly this flat earth thing has gone around the globe Oh around. Yes very quickly thanks to the Connectivity of the internet Spins us round and round and round Also, remember the moon is round But earth is not Yeah Well, I think it's gonna be round, but we're supposed to be flat and you can foul off all the sides No, all the other planets All the other planets We're just We're not Okay, anyway, um People can choose to be dumb. It's a cool thing That a freedom to ignore all information. That's logical people have been doing that for a long Time willful. I don't know what the I don't know what the benefit is Uh, I don't get the the wind from from being dumb Intentionally uninformed. I don't understand what you you achieve by that Things make sense to you in your view of the universe if it all makes sense to you, there's comfort in that science has a lot of uncertainties and uncertainty leads to fear and so And it also leads to a displacement of understanding your place in the universe If things are certain if things are definable And you know understandable within your your boundaries It allows you to know your place as A human In this, you know as at the center of the universe, right? Um, yeah, so I should stop the calling. I should stop calling people It's it's identity building and philosophically fulfilling to find that certainty It was also the the the less you understand your place in the universe and your impact upon it the less responsibility that you have So from now on I should stop you're right I should stop calling people ignorant or stupid for having these beliefs and should just call them cowards instead Okay, that's fine. I'm I'm comfortable with that. I can do that There is a wonderful article that I uh, I shared today on twitter from I don't remember what media outlet it's from but It went through the top 10 things that you can that you can do to To talk to people who believe in conspiracy theories The the experts they spoke with for the article are people who do research in the area of conspiracy theory and psychology But also from the sub reddit Conspiracy theories, there's a sub reddit on conspiracy theories And they have rules on how to interact around the conspiracies and the moderators of that group Had recommendations on how to help talk to people and talk people through things and potentially change their minds So there's a there's a great article out there. Yeah, there's the first first thing is um is Finding finding something you share in common finding a way to relate as a person We talked last week to Dr. Hair about othering and dehumanizing and when you attack people if you think of them as Dumb or stupid or whatever you're dehumanizing them. And so if you can find compassion find some shared Shared value that gives a place to start talking to somebody as another human being Where they feel valued and willing to engage Hey, you have two eyes two ears and a mouth. We have that in common This idea you have about this other thing can ask you a question real quick. Are you often completely right about things? or You seem to have trouble getting things right because I'm guessing it's a ladder I'm not gonna end don't send me to a negotiation. It will be it will be turn into Uh a cold war at the very best outcome I I do know this I I believe this I believe that will be the outcome I absolutely 100 percent respect the perspective of your stupid idea Um, it's wrong Just wrong. I can't help you You're too there's like a empty space that somebody pasted some nonsense into And you don't have a cut. This is just this is not helping. This is not helping to talk to people Also, let me just mention that we haven't closed the show yet. We haven't closed the show yet And I'd like to finish the show. Yeah, I've tried Thank you. Thank you, ma'am Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show Shout outs to the friends of the show who help keep things running fada. Thank you for your help on social media and in the show notes Gord, thank you for manning the chat room identity for thank you for recording the show and I want to thank our patreon sponsors and our uh and the boroughs welcome fund for Yes for their generous support And my computer is taking time to load up again Thank you, sir. I gotta go. Yeah, I didn't need more practice at diplomacy. I'm just bad at it Although I will tell you on the other hand People don't like spend a lot of time talking to me about nonsense because of this It's kind of kind of on upside It's how you stop certain conversations from ever taking place Yes Okay, here we go. Thank you too Eric combs flying out geom John lee benrothig ali coffin matty pair and gore gore of charma Taylor p.s. Josiah zaner sarah for far donald mundus rodney lewis steven alberon john ratna swami Dave fridel darryl my shacks do polyc andrew swanson karin benton sky luke paul ronovich ben bignell kevin reardon noodles jack sarah chavis paul jason olds brine carrington matt bass joshua fury Sean and nina su duster john mckay gregg riley marqueson flow gene telly air steve leesman ken haze howard tan christopher rap and richard brendon minnish melizond john gridley richard porter christopher drier mark masarros artyom Gregg briggs john atwood robert rudie garcia dave wilkinson matt sutter philip shane kurt larson craig landon mountainsloth jim drapo alex wilson dave neighbor costy ranky matty litwin eric nap e o kevin parochan erin luthan steve debel bob calder marjorie paul disney patrick peccararo gary s ed dire tony steeley lissie's adkins bryan codren and jason roberts Thank you for all of your support on Patreon and if you are interested in supporting us you can find information at patreon.com slash this weekend science Or click the patreon link at our website On next week's show We will be back on wednesday at 8 p.m. Broadcasting live from our youtube and facebook channels and from twist.org slash Is it supposed to be yelp? It's all in caps Yes Want to listen to us as a podcast just search for this week's in science or wherever your podcasts are found If you enjoyed the show get your friends to subscribe to Or more information on anything you've heard here today show notes and links to stories will be available on our website www.twist.org And you can also sign up to hear our newsletter There's one coming soon. Yeah You can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com justin at twist minion at gmail.com or blare at blarebaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist twis in that subject line or hitherto forever Your email Will be Oh No, can't bring the word back. It's so awful. You can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr Kiki at jackson fly and at There's hither to We love your feedback. If there's a topic you'd like to discover address Actually for an interview a haiku that comes to you in the night. Please let us know Um, it's blairs menagerie We'll be back here next week And we hope you'll do this again for more hitherto unheard great Oh and if hitherto you've learned anything from the show remember It's hitherto 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 a shop got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device I'll reverse below the warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a couple of grum in 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 looking science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That's what I say may not represent your views But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just get understand That we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from jeopardizing we say And if you use our methods that are weak in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in 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 a week This week in science is coming your way to what we say and if you can science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science So I picked my camera up During the song because there was this little teeny tiny spider That was hanging down and I can see it in the lights and it was this cute figure and I was like I'll try and Put the camera near the spider and see the kids show everybody the spider and Um And then I picked the camera up and put it in here and then the spider was gone And I couldn't figure out where the spiders it's now on the camera Huh the spider little spider is now on the side of the camera cute little teeny tiny white little spider Mm-hmm cute little dude Anyway, uh ed dire you brought up the patreon hang out Next week Yes, so I uh put a post on our patreon Account our patreon page. Hey little spider. You're gonna climb in front of the camera do it go go Oh Nope, you're not going for it. Um, there is a link To the hangout. There's information in the hangout About the hangout on the post in our patreon account, so if you are a patreon supporter, I I Think I made just anyone who is a patreon Supporter should have should be able to access that patreon post and get the link and be able to come hang out Um gives a few details And it is Thursday Tomorrow, is it not Blair? Mm-hmm. We are hanging out tomorrow at 6 30 p.m pacific time On science island You sent me an invite to that right I believe I did Okay I'll find it And if I didn't I can send you one Again First time I believe you I believe I did Yeah, so um anyone who is a patreon supporter can come hang out Tomorrow evening on science island. Oh, yeah, I haven't great Um and what you will need to hang out It will not be I don't know how to record it identity I mean you could probably record your end of everything um Yeah, that's something that I I would need to figure out I need to figure out how to talk with the people um To see if it can be recorded in some way From the server So it is an interesting audio pretty much audio only environment It's a browser page with a flat 2d image That's the background and then there are little icons that little little bubbles that are you the user the visitor um, and you can put your picture you can put a picture in the icon and Write your name. Um, you can also That you can Personalize it with like a color you like a particular color as well Yes, and the link goes to the high fidelity site and you can go check it out It's if you I mean if you are uh have gotten that link from patreon Please don't share it widely widely because um, I mean Supposed to be for patrons. It's supposed to be for patrons. Exactly. But this is science island It's the twist science island and you can go hang out there with each other whenever you want Actually, but tomorrow night is when we're scared when we've scheduled the twist Hangout so Blair and Justin and I will be there also um, and you know It's an open hangout site. Uh, it's audio only like I said it works best on google chrome Um, and safari if you're using an ios based device You should definitely yeah, how about not recorded identity for that'd be great Um, we'll probably hang out. I imagine an hour and a half or so It's a nice length of time Tomorrow night, Justin, you've been invited. It's our patron hang out Yeah, I know I forgot the time though 6 30 Thank you 6 30 um I've tried to view comment neo wise. I haven't seen it But I haven't really gotten very far out of town yet fada. So um, I went camping We were supposed to be able to see it but Could not yeah I mean you can see it with re with pretty good binoculars or telescope, but um, yeah having having a A long exposure on your camera is really what's gonna do it for you But anyway, for tomorrow night the platform You need headphones because the cool thing about this high fidelity platform our space our science island space is that it's directional audio Which makes the audio seem like it's three dimensional So you can run around and talk to people You can group up and talk to people in groups and not hear people Who are across the island from you? Although we did something once and it messed up for Justin. So hopefully it doesn't mess up again for whatever reason I had really really good hearing in this app in that no matter where I went on the island. I could hear everything Yeah, I hope it doesn't happen like that again, but yes, it's in beta Um, but yeah, you can you can try it out right now. I mean if you're by yourself You're not going to hear much it won't do much, but if other people pop over there um You'll be able you'll be able to check it out. Um, but yeah, like ed said you can get a sound test Test your test your audio and make sure it works before popping in But the link is the link is there in our patreon. So if you're Shoebrew you were saying That you are supporting us on patreon. So you should be able to access that post and be able to get the link Yes Out there who is hitherto Well, what why hitherto why why tonight? Yeah, why kind of bone to pick with hitherto I you know, it's a word. I have hitherto not uh not heard you It's because nobody uses it. Thankfully. It's an awful word. It's awful hitherto unheard of It's a horrible word and there's a reason people stopped using it and the fact that it was in this article and used Well, it was used correctly grammatically, but it made a I think uh incorrect statement that there was hitherto uh Was it uh Not rendered probable or whatever. It's just not such um It's so it's been so interesting though actually in the course of the doing this show There've been so many south american discoveries that were older than clovis and each one Was going to create this controversy of doubt because clovis is the earliest And each time like, you know, they would invite people to find other scientists to come look at the evidence and check out the site and Look things over. It's like, oh, yeah. Okay. This is older But it was still like, you know, it's the one that's like 13500 or 14 000 or 14 500 years older all in south america further south than the whole like the timeline kept getting Messed up in the whole time that this is going on Bluefish cave is sitting there with stuff dated at 24 000 years old saying hello although although part of that part of that was the idea that Uh, there was a migration banger people whatever it was who were Stuck there and tell the melt and then we're allowed to come come through But there kept being more and more evidence and so This this one is just so amazing This is found in mexico if this was found in like washington Where we've got some old evidence if this was found in the uconn again That would have just reinforced the that old earlier. This is 30 000 Ish years old and is in mexico Really cool really fantastic, but you're right kiki. We need some of that human dna. Oh, also, it's sort of interesting the So i've got the maternal haplogroup Of mothers all the way back to some of the the first group of people that came over And genetically It is thought to have separated from the a hap maternal haplogroup in syberia About 25 000 years ago. So that's when the dna says it happened. So the dna already said there was this split about 25 000 years ago At least from from syberia from my mother's all the way back Which fits that timeline It does. Yeah Yeah, and that and that a a Haplogroup is most common in south america It's not a heavily. It's not a predominant north american native american. It's a very predominant south american Who is the oh, there's a No, is it marisa? No, it's not anyway But But yeah, so there's all this sort of genetic evidence. There's this blue cave blue fish cave It's amazing to find this site though that brings all of it together Because it reinforces a lot of other information we've sort of had out there That that that didn't fit with what was the hard artifact And stone tool is such a confirmed human endeavor arrowheads arrowheads are such a confirmable human endeavor without doubt um The problem with the I guess the problem with the bluefish cave Evidence was that it was a few tools Maybe Mostly it was markings on Uh bones that showed that they had been cleaned and tool strikes On on bone That that were the evidence that made it up, but they didn't have 1900 tools. That's such that's such a preponderance incredible preponderance of evidence for a thing. I mean this is Really intense, uh discovery I think But yeah, now now you're right. We need to find where were these people buried? Let's find some of those bones Yeah, let's find some let's find some of these remain Yes, not just their poop And they really really like Really secretly Well, I mean people don't often bury they're dead where they poop. They feel like I know Yeah, yeah, but but you know, but how far away How far away are we gonna or should we you know, this is Uh, there are other caves and there are other systems around here. Like let's let's dig it all up Let's get some of that deep ground penetrating radar. Let's find stuff in this area, which I'm sure they are I'm gonna try Oh thunder beaver just repatrioned Cool. Hope you can make it tomorrow. Oh thunder beaver. Hey thunder beaver. Uh By the way thunder beaver at some point you need to send us in some music You think we talked about this once Before we met in person once, uh, and I think we talked about this. I need to hear some of your music uh, so uh Through the twist meaning at gmail.com or through the twist What is our how else do people get all those twist something you know, whatever the emails are All right, we'd love to hear email or we'd love to hear some of Or you can message us on facebook if you do the facebook or You've got a band video. Yeah, uh See if we can share the link in the chat if you want to share a band video That'd be awesome I don't know what it whatever happened Um, but I cannot connect to the free note anymore Oh, really? Maybe I got did I get banned? Word Is jackson fly banned? I may have happened Am I not supposed to put the hashtag Am I not supposed to put okay? Yeah, I don't know why I can never it just says connecting forever and never lets me Don't know why Sadie I want to cuddle you you're so cute. Good night fata Oh I can that I can understand that. Yeah Cables drive space. Oh my goodness So many details This is just not believe that I'm not a robot. I don't know what happened Oh, yeah, okay, uh someone else who else gaurav is asking about uh, what in portland and Who else up there asked me about how I'm doing here? What's going on here in portland? Okay, hang on We couldn't connect to the server sacramento hfc Comcast business.net uh asterisk asterisk asterisk banned Banned I'm banned from the server The hell did I do? That's funny somebody was Doing something I got banned from that hotel They don't like the hotels I legit got banned. Yeah, wow Eric in alaska, there's a 7.8 earthquake near sandpoint. Oh Geez I didn't even hear about that Sandpoint alaska But it prompted a tsunami evacuation Uh, who else asked me about I'm looking for I'm looking noodles. I don't have cognac. No, it's just rosé rosé Where's my rose b? Rosé all day. Uh-huh Hey, does anyone have any recommendations for an affordable sitting standing desk? My body can't do this anymore Um go to there's probably a ton right now as businesses are out of uh going out of business and possibly selling stuff Look online I have a fully a fully fu lly a fully desk, but you can look online or go to used Used furniture office furniture stores And they you you should probably be able to find one If you I know that I did there were some Less expensive ones you can probably find a new one online that's less expensive for 200 At the cheapest end, but it's not going to be super stable. So you won't want to stand on it right Anyway What's happening here in portland? It is amazing what's happening here in portland right now. Um Yeah, the my take on the current situation of what's happening is that we've had ongoing protests black lives matter protests and um, there is a it was probably only You know a few hundred people that were continuing the protests up until uh more recently um When it when Trump sent the feds in the feds were not invited By the city. They were not invited by the governor of the state. They were not asked for not there was no request They came in and they are using Tier gas. They are using munitions Non-lethal munitions. They are attacking. They're not non-lethal. They're less They're less lethal and they're being used lethally and they're being used lethally because they're being used directly on people And not on the ground and bouncing up Which is how they're intended to be used and previously it was the police and the city police who were uh doing these things and the tear gas and the rubber bullets were banned and so then the feds came in and started using them. Um, and it has Uh, it has led to Uh an increase in the number of people that have come out for the protests again People are not taking it and what was just kind of this ongoing low-level protest of a couple hundred people nightly has uh now blossomed to A couple thousand easily Two thousand the police of portland really want to redeem them besides is themselves in the eyes of the public come out and protect your people Yes, from these federal thugs as opposed to They're calling them like department of homeland security people whatever you know who they you know who I I guarantee you they're drawing from I guarantee you they're drawing from federal prison guards Who are not trained to interface with the public at all and it's it's It's actually not incarcerated. It's been reported and confirmed that there are prison guards who are who have been Okay, recruited for this because of course those people can't wait to get out of a person who wants to be there But that's the thing not they're not trained in deescalation. They're not been trained in crowd control Uh, and so it's not It's not a good situation because somebody is Going to get I mean people are getting hurt and people are gonna get somebody's gonna get killed and it's because The training isn't there to the local police need to go out there and start protecting their citizens and making arrests They do of these federal these these federal thugs They just need to that's if they if they did that can you imagine the kumbaya afterwards? Like our local police just protected us from an invading army Yeah, that'd be fantastic. What I the the word that I keep getting bugged by is um, is they keep Calling the people who have come in the federal police And they're not there's no such thing. There's no such thing as fbi But yeah, there's no federal police and they're talking about the city police and the federal police are working to Control the protest and blah blah blah and i'm like these aren't police. Don't you dare? Compare the two because they're not the same our police may have been militarized, but this is these are this is Military action in our own city that's coming from the federal government and it's not it's not okay It's not okay, but there is something almost funny about it almost Which is when they're making these arrests of leaders Uh, they're pulling because somebody's wearing black so they pull them into this unmarked van and they take them away They take pictures of them like they're booking them in and then just let them go because they have absolutely zero legal standing to Actually hold these people for anything Yeah Yeah, I mean we'll see they're they're they're probably trying to trump up charges Ha ha ha it's the videos are inspiring They they're interesting The stuff that's out there if you haven't been watching you can uh, there's a twitch channel twitch.com tv slash woke It's a channel called woke and uh every night they've got Streams of the protests from people streaming Live and you can you can watch wherever you are and see what's happening. Um it's pretty it's It's amazing. There's a lot of i'm loving the the wall of moms So we've got the mom block And then and then the dad pod came in So we've got the mom block and the dad pod um Which is you know, it's it's great, but there's there's this fascinating thing where there's there are the protesters that have been there all along and then There are the protesters that have come in to support Now that the feds are in um and they are kind of two different camps of protesters but Yeah, the mom's got tear gassed exactly and dad's got leaf blowers They do they're using leaf blowers to blow the tear gas back at the back at the feds um It it's fascinating because it stays fairly uh civil Until like up until about 11 or 12 11 or 12 every night And then uh, there gets to be a lot of activity around the federal courthouse downtown How how far okay, so that's a waste and so yeah, and it's it's a little waste for me. So I am over I'm about 10 minutes from downtown by car so It's I'm outside of the range, but it's really focused on like a four block area Around the courthouse and the police And the police building downtown And that's a really really mostly where everything's happening. So it's Pretty isolated which is night, which is you know great for the rest of the city But at the same time it's also gets you but yeah, it's close for comfort for sure one of the one of the impressive videos I saw was uh, it's become a sort of an icon of this is this Pretty big dude who's just sort of standing there at first. I think he's wearing an old navy sweater Turns out to actually be a navy sweater. He's a navy vet And he's standing there as these federal, you know, all with their buddies dressed up in military gear Run up and start swinging batons at him He gets hit like five times with batons and just stands there motionless. They broke his hand His hand. Yeah, he wasn't he wasn't impervious But he did not give an inch as they were just swinging two-handed with batons at this guy Then they like pepper sprayed him directly in the face He takes a couple steps back and double flips birds at him. He's a 53 year old navy vet Who uh came down because he was extremely upset that federal people were harassing his neighbors basically uh and in his comment, you know, he's he became like a overnight sort of Icon of what's going on His quote is amazing. Uh, it isn't about me getting beat up It's about focusing back on the original intention of all these protests, which is black lives matter Completely selfless on top of it. Um You know that this is this is ugly this is if this was like you know, the This is amazing to me that the thing that the Far right conspiracies are always talking about the federal government the liberals are in charge They're gonna come get you they're gonna send the feds they could just take over the streets and Only comes true when republicans are in power. How is that possible? That that's their biggest fear and it's their go-to as well Ridiculous the philosophy is bankrupt It's absolutely like much like the president has been many many times utterly bankrupt Yeah, anyway Yeah, it's a the situation Hopefully, I mean it the the the problem I mean what people are concerned about is the statements that have been made about not just Putting the feds here in portland to quell the uprising But to plant them in cities around the united states and so the concern is that This is just a testing ground or a proving ground for for putting federal military power in place against Against the citizens really around the country and so You know, what's happening right now in protest is incredibly important because The only reason I mean through our democracy through our constitution the people give the government power and That and that needs to stay that way Yeah Yeah, anyway, it's it's kind of a serious time right now. We've got covid. We've got protests. We've got a lot lot happening I hope everyone's doing okay. I hope you're keeping your head on your shoulders and you're finding reasons to smile You're finding little things. I mean yesterday. I was looking at the news yesterday And it was like one thing after another of like like just crazy news and I just like This is tuesday Okay, and it's like it's a normal tuesday for the craziness, you know I mean, we're all I think we're all feeling it right now There's a lot it's a lot This is why like, you know governments have been toppled in the past That's why we created a system where we could kick people out after a few years stuff went bad like it is going Uh, there's there's a need for change stop right now It'll happen. Yeah, she brews saying uh, all of them need to be wearing badges so they can be identified and held accountable They're wearing shadow badges, which means you can't read them for more than a couple feet away Yeah hiding your badge number does not Yeah Just kind of sounds like you know you're doing something wrong That's right. There's so much. I mean aurora, colorado. I mean All the people all the places across the country and I tell you what I tell you what the one thing that the Just want to sing kumbaya I Don't I I really don't I I like I joke I don't either we need change divided country and you know what based on what the other side is saying Yeah, we're gonna stay that way Do not agree I do not agree with you and I don't see a middle ground that is acceptable And I think that's what's happening We need to form another country That's so then there's like the you know, there's the the state of jefferson is trying to form its own state, right? Yeah, but that's and then and then we have um Washington, or again in california. There are and I think I don't know ecotopia ecotopia people are also calling Northern california not southern california would be included in what something they're calling And also, I think british columbia would be included in something that's called, uh, cascadia So it's kind of like a pacific pacific northwest twist on on a new state or a new country. Yeah, that's ecotopia grounded green new deal all the way, you know Yeah, I seriously I just can we Can't we all just get along can't we be nice to each other can't we can't we stop dehumanizing and And talk to each other I think the big like seriously they It's being able to talk to each other and we just can't anymore. It's always an attack There's something Hmm Hmm. Oh What I was like in a positive things everybody Completely off the subject Not even a tangent, but just change of subject How many times did my computer freeze tonight? None? None You fixed it I fixed it. I didn't hire a computer person. I fixed it. How? It only took six months how do you do Well, because it's the most ridiculous like I wouldn't have thought of it. I tried all these different things I'm like, okay. I've tested the memory. I tested this I did that I've done that I fixed a thing identity I did But what it is is this weird, uh What is it a power so power management on this windows machine power management It's a weird thing. I have two drive a couple of drives And one of them goes to sleep when it's not being used And then at a certain point the main drive says we've got to check on this other drive But the other drive is asleep and so they don't talk to each other anymore. And so I went in And I changed the go to sleep Number from 20 go to sleep after 20 minutes to basically don't fall asleep Mm-hmm And there's no glitch and it's done and I thought it was a usb issue. I was like I thought it was an hdmi issue. I thought it was I was going down all these roads and It was power all along I had to have power Down down down anyway this thing I thought was gonna be Really expensive to fix It just took me doing the right google search to find somebody saying the words that made sense in my brain at the right moment So, um, I spent after I had been working from home out of nowhere my um My magic mouse my apple mouse stopped working Did you put new batteries in it? So they were chargeable. I charged it up I I disconnected. I reconnected. I like did all the things I went to forum after forum after forum and I couldn't figure it out And it was just like it was just getting stuck It was just like kind of not moving as I moved the mouse and all of a sudden would jump And it was it was terrible and I finally found a forum that said like So it's a gyroscopic like Issue where you just have I defined several other Uh forums because I didn't believe it It said hold it about two feet above a flat surface like a flat hard surface Like wood and drop it on its face And I was like this is insane And I like read all of the comments. They were like I tried everything I took it to the apple store. I bought a new one. I did And I dropped it and it worked And then I like I went to a completely different site and like people had tried to do all like Like remove the driver reinstall the driver and like oh the softwares. No, it's not a softwares Okay, I dropped it and it works And eventually I was like oh god. Oh god. Oh god. It works It's like whacking the side of the vending machine or like Yeah, percussive maintenance exactly. Yeah percussive maintenance. Oh my god It was the apple mouse apple mouse. That is funny mouse cpr Oh my god, that's what happened and it worked The physical the physicality of it sometimes, you know with all this The electrons zipping from place to place Quantum quantum tunneling their way through your Through the boards You know sometimes it just takes whacking it a little bit. I mean, yeah It's still a physical thing that you're messing with You know sometimes so you whack them too hard the wires come loose and that's a worse problem. You can also break it Yeah, it was it was really terrifying. Brian woke up and I told him what I did and he was like no, you did what? I did a lot of research about it It worked All right, say good night Blair Tomorrow 6 30 We're just gabin, right? We're just talking Yeah, it's a hangout on science island. I mean, it's I mean we've been shut down. How do I How does how does Send emails to work anymore. I can't Send emails Blair found the email. Yeah, I found the email. Just search Like the link go to science island All right, I'll go here. I will see you there tomorrow at six 30 ish 6 30 Science island. Yes. I sent you an email. It says welcome to science island Justin you can look for that Okay, I'll find it Okay, maybe I'll click it right now I'm on my island Okay, Justin went away We'll see you next week everybody or we'll talk to you tomorrow on science island If you're a patreon supporter, have a wonderful week everyone Take care. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for joining us this week