 Re, re, re, re, reconnect, re, re, re, re, reconnect. Sometimes you need to reconnect. But it's this week in science right now. I hope you're reconnecting with us and the science that we love to bring. Hello Blair. Hi. Hello audience out there. This is the live broadcast of the Twist podcast and we are here to talk about some pretty awesome science news from the past week. And as you should know, if you have joined us for the live show previously, who knows what's gonna happen while we're here? Who knows? Anyway, some of it will be edited possibly or maybe Blair and I, the two of us together can hit that tight 90. I think so. Life goals. Can we stretch it to 90 is really my question. No, let's hear this program. I feel like last time Justin was gone, we did like a cool 78. Oh no. We will have so much to talk about. We're not, we're gonna try. We do hope that we entertain you with the science news and the conversation. It's live, it's live, it's live. And yes, Daniel, yownt, let the science commence. So let's start this show in a three, the two. This is twist. This week in science episode number 851 recorded on Wednesday, November 17th, 2021. What would you call it? Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we are going to fill your head with controversy, disruption and cats. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Mayorsy notes and aunts and notes and little eyes be flying. Keep your eyes peeled, dear friends. The facts are being checked on the daily but you need to be your own fact checker just because you want to believe doesn't mean you should believe. Not even when you're listening to this week in science coming up next. And you know what? I didn't even get my music queued up. I was busily writing a disclaimer because we don't have a Justin tonight. But here we go. Three, two, one, go. Coming up next. No, what is going on? Now it wouldn't even work. Geez, okay, hold on. Take three. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn everything up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening. Good science to you, Kiki. And a good science to you too, Blair. Tonight, we don't have a Justin. But we're here because the science never quits. We're here to talk about it. And it was a good week, was it not? It was. Lots of good science news this week. Lots of great science news. And everyone, happy day of science. I do hope everyone is looking forward to a great show. Thank you all for joining us. The show ahead tonight. What do we have? I have stories. I mentioned a disruption. It's a bacterial disruption. I've also got cocoons filled with fish and grandmother brains. It's gonna be so much fun. What do you bring, Blair? What's in the animal corner? Delicious grandmother brains. I have a telescope controversy. And then in the animal corner, I made a little beefier today because Justin's not here. So I have orangutans, cats and corals. And corals. Cats and corals, not cats in corals. No, it's three separate stories. They are not related. Do not picture an orangutan holding a cat in a coral reef. That is not what this is about. That is not what this is about. But we're gonna find out about all of it in just a moment. So let's jump into the show. But right before we do, I need to let you know that if you are not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can find us all places podcasts are found. Look for This Week in Science twists. You can also find us on Facebook, on YouTube. We're on Twitch as Twist Science. We're also Twist Science on Instagram and Twitter. We're all over the place. But if you get confused, you can find our website at twist.org. All right. Let's start with some natural cures. For? So the word natural has really kind of gotten this kind of woo meaning to it because of some areas of medicine, kind of medicine. But it's a natural food or what? Food, unnatural food? I don't know. I'm gonna eat it. That's natural enough for me. But anyway. Are you gonna cure my lack of essential oils? Is that what you're gonna cure today? Exactly. But that's not what this is about. This natural cure is natural because a woman apparently might have cured herself of HIV. She was just like, nah, I don't wanna have this anymore. Nope, I'm done. She really wanted it, you know? Yeah. Well, that's the headline that has been shared around. There are people who after being infected with HIV, they are known as elite suppressors. And these elite suppressors within the HIV positive community, their immune systems are extremely active and are able to fight back the virus and keep the virus at very, very, very low levels to almost undetectable. Now, some children they've found. So in Africa, many children who are born with HIV go on antiretroviral drugs and spend most of their lives on antiretroviral drugs. And then eventually their bodies, they've seen that the bodies of these kids, the immune systems start suppressing the virus on their own without the antiretroviral medications, but it takes a very long time to get there. Additionally, in this situation, they wanted to know, they had come across this woman since 2017 in Argentina. They've been collecting blood samples, scanning DNA, trying to look through billions of cells for any evidence of HIV being integrated into the DNA of immune cells where it could be hiding because as we know, HIV can hide. It gets into cells and it might not be completely gone. It might be dormant. And then at some point, it can come back out again. But in this case, they were looking in, she was pregnant. And so they wanted to look at her placenta to know since it is rich with immune cells, the placenta is a barrier for the fetus between the maternal environment and the fetus. And it could be a great place for a dormant HIV virus to hide. So they're like, okay, let's get that. Let's take a look at it. But they reported in there, the annals of internal medicine on Monday that they could find no virus. They looked at billions of cells, lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of DNA and they found nothing. And while they couldn't scan every single cell in her body to actually be able to say there's no HIV hiding anywhere, there's, they couldn't find anything. So there's a possibility that it's hiding in there somewhere. But this woman who they're calling the Esperanza patient may have an exceptional immune system that might have excised HIV from her body itself. Wow. And so before this, the expectation was the best your body could do, combination of your body and drugs is just suppress the HIV, not have it turn into AIDS, have it just kind of be lingering. Just there, lingering. But this is implying there is a good probability because you can't prove, like you said, you can't prove every single cell is without HIV. But based on the sample that they took and the fact that placentas are likely to have it, there's a high probability that there's no more HIV in her body. That's wild. I love that. Yeah, and it's different from other situations where people got blood transfusions or bone marrow transplants that gave them different immune cells which allowed their body to fight off the virus. So this is an interesting situation because if we can figure out what is going on in the immune systems of these elite suppressors and people who are exceptional elite suppressors whose bodies can get rid of the virus completely of which a few apparently can, if we can figure out what's going on, what the factors are that are involved, this could help to really treat and cure HIV, which would be amazing. Well, this woman hopefully will prepare herself to spend more time in a lab so they can take more samples and figure out more stuff. There's a great article in STAT News actually and we'll link to it on the website, but it's wonderful. Her name is Esperanza and one of the researchers says, it's a beautiful coincidence that Esperanza is where she lives. Esperanza translates literally to hope. Oh, great. And she thinks of herself as special and so she's like, if I can't not do anything, if I am actually special, I have to help. So it's a wonderful partnership between people. Yeah. Need more of those partnerships. Yeah. Nice. Very nice. It's like a positive nice story to start, like really good news, right? Yes. Let's start with some really, actually good news. You wanna tell me though, let's go to the controversy. Yeah, I was gonna bring it down. Let's do it. So we were just talking about the web telescope last week and we have a lot. I remember we had somebody on the show and we did a live show in Baltimore in 2016, talking about the telescope and how it was about to be launched. It's been a long journey, but I just came across this editorial in Science Magazine from Daniel Clary. And I just wanted to bring it up because I think it's an interesting topic that I don't know if we talk about a whole lot on the show. So the naming of things, especially in science, what role that can play. And my question is, is it a good idea? So originally the James Webb telescope was called the Next Generation Space Telescope. And in 2002, the NASA administrator, Sean O'Keeffe, wanted to kind of humanize it, bring more press to the idea of it, give it a snappy name and named it after James Webb, who was the second administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968. But what is coming to light and scientists are not a group of scientists, a particular group of scientists are not thrilled about. In fact, more than 1200 signatures have been collected to maybe discuss and remove his name from the telescope. Is that he is one of the rarest cases where a scientific instrument was not named after a scientist, named after a politician. And unfortunately, his career as a politician has some issues. He was a US Secretary of State from 1949 to 1952, and he was a Senator prior to that. And he had a part to play in something called the Lavender Scare, which is something that I did not read about in the history books. I was not that aware of, but so this is around the same time as the Red Scare, which is when Communists were getting pushed out of the, or people suspected of communism, or getting pushed out of the government, and in some cases being put on trial and it was really ugly and scary. But around the same time, there was something called the Lavender Scare going on, which was a systematic effort, which was mostly encouraged by prominent members of Congress to remove people from civil service because they were suspected of being gay, lesbian, or queer. And so their sexuality was seen as a potential compromise against their character. So basically that they would be easier to be manipulated, swayed, or blackmailed by Communists. Whoa. And so James Webb had a sizable part to play in that time and those policies. And in fact, immediately after he took over at NASA, somebody was removed for suspicion of being. So all of that to say. That sounds, that's not a coincidence, I think. No, no it's not. So yeah, so there was a petition collected 1,200 signatures. Many of them were scientists that actually will be using the telescope in the day to day. NASA began an investigation in June, but as of right now, the case is closed and they have not resolved to change the name. However, there is precedent for certain scientific instruments in NASA to be renamed after they have already been launched and are in commission. So that happened in 2018, NASA renamed SWIFT, the Gamma Ray Telescope, 14 years after its launch, after Neil Garels, who is the principal investigator who had died. So this doesn't mean it's put to bed and it's done, but I will go ahead and say how important is it for us to name these multi-million or in some cases, billion dollar instruments after people and particularly white men, come on. How many times do we have to learn this lesson? Especially today, the Webb Telescope is not launched yet and we are here renaming high schools because people are going, oh yeah, maybe that's not great. And it does also, I mean, the honorific of having something named after you, it seems like a great honor while you're still alive to appreciate it. Historically, after you're gone, it can maintain your memory, but then our cultural values shift and change and we have to, what do we preserve? Do we preserve the cultural values and memories of past decades or do we preserve and recognize other values? Yeah, but I mean, and you don't even have that problem if you don't name things after people. I just, I think it's never been done. This is my thing is like, we've done a good job naming things curiosity and intrepid and like, just go with that. Just go with like good inspiring words. Just stop naming things after historical figures. The infrared, the, you know, L2 infrared telescope. Yeah, yellow. Yeah, it's just, especially, think about like what kids in science class are going to have to memorize and write down on a test one day. Does it help their understanding of science to know that this thing is called the web telescope or does it help them to associate it with a particular era of scientific technology? I just, it might be time to just reassess this desire to put our names on things. And again, I will say at the risk of alienating certain people, it does seem like white men really like to put their names on things. Oh, I think a lot of people would like to put their names on things and have, you know, their memory live on throughout history to be appreciated by so many people. People learn about the James Webb Space Telescope and oh, they say who's James Webb and then that starts a whole conversation. Potentially it can be used in an educating manner about how things were and how they've changed and that's one argument that has been used. Yeah, I think, yeah, these are great questions and I think I would love to hear from our audience as to their opinions on these sorts of issues. What do you think? Should we change the name of the Webb Telescope? Should we not? Let us know. Let us know. Yep, Farah's saying he doesn't mind so long as we try and choose much older science figures that don't have controversy. Oh, there's controversy attached to just about everybody. There's always controversy. People are human, humans are fallible. I mean, there's always something somewhere. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I don't know. All right, moving on from names, let us talk about disruption from controversy to disruption. In Silicon Valley, they love to disrupt things. Oh, they certainly do. They want to disrupt education. They want to disrupt the internet. They want to disrupt communication. They want to disrupt everything. How about we disrupt bacteria? That's what we want to do. Bad bacteria, yes, I'm with you. Yes, bad bacteria. So things we know about bacteria, we can kill them with antibiotics. Bacteria can gain resistance to those antibiotics through mutations and through sharing of their genetic elements. But additionally, the way that these things work, it depends. And so there are some drugs that just outright stop the way that the bacteria can work and the bacteria don't function and so they die off. Another kind is their bacteriostatic. And the bacteria static ones make sure that the bacteria can't multiply. But regardless, when we try to kill bacteria, the bacteria go, ah, I'm under attack. And they don't like it very much. And so they shut down. If they shut down, it's like a dormant state. And we can't get to them in this dormant state. Over time, a lot of them will die, but there's always gonna be some left that stay there. And when you remove the antibiotic or you take the stressor away, they're like, ah, okay, things are cool. I'm gonna get back into it. Let's multiply. Let's mess things up again. So the bacteria have the pot, if there are bacteria there, they will come back. So how do we disrupt the bacteria that are in that dormant state that have shut down because of stress? Well, some researchers just published in Nature, their study looking at what happens to these bacteria in this dormant state. And they realized that there are certain stressors that when they come on like pH or temperature, things that these bacteria have kind of evolved for, that they're like, oh, this is a normal stressor. They have systems that are incorporated into their biology. They have systems that allow them to adapt and survive through that. So they're like, oh, yeah, this is a different temperature. Okay, I can handle this. But when they're in that dormant state, it's like they've shut everything down all at once and those normal responses don't kick in. So there's something else going on. And so they realized there are these two different management states that the bacteria go into when they're subjected to different kinds of stress. All right, so the bacteria in this dormant state, they gave it, they were looking at E. coli in this particular study published in Nature that they gave a dose of a chemical called SHX and it induces starvation immediately. So it's like the bacteria are like happy, happy bacteria. SHX comes in and the bacteria are like, I'm so hungry, I'm starving, I need to go dormant. And they applied the SHX for different lengths of time. What they discovered is that when they removed the SHX, the bacteria recovered at different rates of time. So what they're saying here is that there is a time response that the bacteria are taking the amount of time that the stress has been applied to them into account in how they recover from the stressor. And because there is this kind of a response, they were able to model how bacteria come back from these responses and they think that they're going to be able to use this information to understand how bacteria will respond to things like antibiotic treatments and help us disrupt the response to be able to kill more of them more efficiently when we want to because they're bad and we don't want them. So understanding how they survive will help us destroy them. Mwah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Very cool, I like it. Yeah, it's an interesting combination of the simple like actual biology, physiology experiment give bad thing to bacteria, see how bacteria respond and then they took that and then applied math and modeling to it and computer modeling to be able to actually make predictions of other types of situations which could actually help in the long run. Yeah. And then let's, you wanna talk about lungfish? Ooh, lungfish. Yeah, I wanna dive into, dive into lungfish for a moment. So Blair. The fish that breathe air. Right, you know lungfish. Yeah, so they live in water that's like, it doesn't have really very much oxygen. So evolutionarily, they had to figure out how to supplement their oxygen. So they suck down air, they were some of the first, they were the first vertebrates, I think, to breathe oxygen from the air. And they're very interesting creatures and people are really interested in their genome and how they survive. And one of the things that they've adapted to do is transition from wet environments into dry environments. And as they do that during the wet season, they're like, yeah, I'm in the mud and I'm in the water and they're using the water and they're happy little mud living, water living fish. But then it starts to dry out and those pools that they're living in are like they start getting smaller and smaller and smaller and they respond by digging into the mud and creating a cocoon around themselves. They basically live in the mud under the ground as it dries out and this cocoon is a dry cocoon but it's created from mucus that their skin produces and apparently a whole bunch of bacteria and it's like a cloak that their body produces. Their skin radiates outward, grabs bacteria and pulls the bacteria on and like goes, yes, cover me with bacteria. And they have these immune cells, these granulocytes that travel through the blood to get to the skin and make their way toward the cocoon on the outside of the body to help produce the mucus and grab the bacteria and make everything this environment. It's like an extension of their skin. And this study is very, it's just fascinating because no one's ever really looked into this before and they've determined by getting rid of the bacteria in these dry cocoons. The researchers were able to find out that then the skin of the lungfish got lesions, they got infections, they had all sorts of problems when the bacteria went away and these bacteria then are their microbiome. They externally create a microbiome with this mucus and this whole system that helps protect them in their little mud cocoon. Love it. Which is pretty cool. Their microbiome is mostly outside of them. That's so cool. Yeah, yeah, they don't necessarily carry that microbiome on themselves either. They attract particular bacteria to them and grab onto those bacteria and say, you're gonna like it here. Can they make those bacteria happy? Yeah, I am the mud. I have become the mud. The mud is me, I am it. Yes. It's like, yeah, so where does the lungfish end and the mud begin? These are philosophical questions. I think it's time for us to keep moving on. This is This Week in Science. If you are enjoying the show, please head over to twist.org and take a look at purchasing one of our calendars. You can get a calendar for 2022 over at twist.org. They make great gifts. Well, are you ready for a COVID update? Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Is it a happy one? Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. It's a combination of a bunch of things. Yeah, I would say it is more happy than sad. Oh, good. Yeah. So some good news here. Researchers have analyzed the US CDC vaccine rollout. They used a model comparing how the CDC split everybody up into different groups and distributed the vaccine over the timing and the months. They compared it over 17.5 million alternative approaches. Guess what? The CDC maybe could have improved the results by about 4%. Okay. That's not very much. Yeah, they did really great. The researchers who have published this work, they say that it is the CDC allocation strategy performed exceptionally well in all four measures that they were looking at in their model. They measured total deaths, cases, infections, and years of life lost. There were certain things that the model wasn't able to take into account or took into account inaccurately. One of those things being various levels, varying levels of vaccine hesitancy. It also didn't take reinfections into account, which have been an issue. So that is something that they would like to look at in the future. They can extend it as well to be able to include waning immunity and booster shots and how that affects the spread of the disease. They have made their computer code available to the public. So if you are a code monkey and you wanna dig into what these modelers have done, it's available to healthcare policy makers and everyone around the world, which is pretty neat. So good job, CDC. Science says, check. So a couple of things about this. So I mean, the first thing is like, this is great. This means next pandemic. And yes, I am saying next pandemic. This means we can have some trust in the CDC's recommendations for how to respond. This is really, really good information to have because I know I was sitting backseat driving throughout this entire thing. And I was like, what about this person? What about that? What about this? What about that? Why not a regional method? Like all this kind of stuff. And I was sure that they were bungling it, but this is really, this is good information to have because of the future. And this is helping inspire, at least from me, some more trust in this organization and the recommendations that they make. What I will say though is, we gotta figure out the messaging here because they could have done 4% better does not equate to someone who doesn't understand probability and science really well to listen to the CDC. So how can we turn this into like, hey, they got a better rating than your favorite restaurant's food safety score, right? Like, they did really well. They got a 96 basically. They got a 96% on the test. That's like an A, A plus. Yeah, so how do we package this to explain that the CDC did it, right? And people should listen. I think, yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, how do we communicate that they balanced the goals of vaccination that to save lives, to reduce hospitalization, to decrease case loads, and also to decrease the years of life lost? How do we get that across? Yes, exactly, yeah. They really complicated things. They didn't have much room for improvement. They did a great job. I mean, they'll just give them the smiley face rating system. Yes, yeah. Check plus? Yeah, if you give them five stars. A gold star even. In some, a little bit of negative news, talked briefly about the HIV case at the very beginning of the show about the woman and how they wanted to look at her placenta because there's a large amount of immune activity. There are a lot of immune cells in the placenta during pregnancy. New study out in a cell that suggests that SARS-CoV-2 can propagate all through the placenta. It just gets in there. So if the mother becomes infected by SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV-2 is going to, by using the ACE2 receptor, is going to make its way to all sorts of cell types throughout the placenta. And so that's not good news for the baby, for the mother, for everyone. And it begins to explain what happens when things go wrong during pregnancy. But we kind of expected this, right? Because speaking of the CDC, pregnant women were pushed kind of to the front of the line when the vaccines first rolled out. So I feel like there was an inkling that this was the case. Yeah, before the data came out that it's very, very safe, much safer to get vaccinated for COVID-19 than to get COVID-19 while you're pregnant. There was a big question about that for a while, but they did know that COVID-19 was bad for pregnancy, that it ended in miscarriage and all sorts of issues very regularly. So they did want to protect pregnancies very early on, but it was just a matter of balancing the unknown about, because there hadn't been any clinical trials with the vaccine and pregnancy. Right, prior to that. But since then, we've also found that the vaccine, the immunity transfers to the baby too. Yes. And during breastfeeding. Yeah. That's great. All those antibodies. Your baby is benefited. Yeah. So don't spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Get vaccinated and share your antibodies with your child. Yeah, strong. Yes, yes. Let's see. Okay, so that's bad news, good news, but it's helpful news because it can help us move forward, right? Moving forward, we wanna know what kind of animals might be reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2? We recently heard about white-tailed deer. People have talked about dogs and cats, pets. We've talked about tigers in zoos, gorillas at zoos. We've talked about all sorts of animals that may be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and could potentially become reservoirs where further mutations can take place just like the unvaccinated reservoirs of people that we talked about regularly. That can happen in animals as well. So we want to know where the virus can go. This can also help us understand where the virus might have come from in the first place. So these researchers at Cary Institute of Ecosystems Study, Ecosystems Studies in New York, they created a machine learning model that uses animals traits to predict the structure of the ACE-2 receptors. So they used the ACE-2 receptor structure of animals that we know. So, okay, we've got these 300 or so animals and ACE-2 receptors in our database. Let's use that. Okay, what are the traits of the animals that have these particular ACE-2 receptors? That's great. Now let's create a model. And so with their model, they've just published the results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They were able to predict 5,400 species that may be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. Among them, white-tailed deer, which is what we just have discovered recently. So some predictions have been very accurate. Others are still questionable. Like the scimitar horned oryx is a zoo animal, has lots of contact with people in zoos, but nobody's reported infections there yet. And there are other animals like that. So the question is, how can we take this information about potentially susceptible animals and use it usefully, effectively, to be able to monitor different populations for potential outbreaks and infections? We don't wanna have the ferret issue that we had in Denmark and here in the United States where all of the, or the mink, it was the mink issue where all the minks had to be killed, culled because they were SARS-CoV-2 positive or could potentially be. And so that was to cull domesticated animals is going to be incredibly costly and potentially a waste if they're not really a problem. So there needs to be a collaboration between the biologists, the modelers and the people who are actually in the field working and looking for the virus. Yeah, I think a really good example of this is opossums. Follow me here. It's a little bit of a reach, but... I like opossums. They, because they're urbanized animals, they're around garbage all the time. People associate them with raccoons and all this kind of stuff. There's this expectation that they can carry rabies. And so there's whenever a person's bit by an opossum or there's an opossum problem or anything, sorts of things, there's a push to cull them to check them for rabies, which is the only way to do that is to euthanize them and check their brain. But research has found it is extremely rare for opossums to carry rabies. It's almost impossible because they have a lower body temperature compared to other warm-blooded animals because they're marsupial. Interesting. So the reason I bring that up is that like, that's exactly what this is about, right? Is identifying which species it's likely to hang out in so that we know who to check on. Luckily, you can check animals for COVID without poking into their brain. But well, it's sort of, right? I'd like to see them try to swab an oryx. That would be dangerous. Oh, they've got horns. They certainly do. Yes, yes, yes. But yes, anyway, yes, that's exactly what we're trying to do is figure out who could be a carrier so that you can manage the situation better. And that also means if you know who can be a carrier, you know how to adjust your management of that species in captivity. Better PPE around humans, all that good stuff, quarantine, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. I think there are a lot of interesting things. I love, again, this is one of these integrative studies that it's using computer modeling, but it's using biological information. We're using physiological information about the ACE2 inhibitor. If it can be, it just needs to be applied in the right way. I also, I will also mention just while we're at it that there are lots of animals out there that carry what's called zoonotic diseases. Bats, we talk about it all the time. Bats do it. Most reptiles shed salvanilla. It just lives in their stomach like in Hawaiians in ours. Armadillos carry rabies, not rabies, leprosy. Animals carry diseases. So I also, I'm just mentioning that some monkeys and macaques can carry hep C. Like it's just part of being an, the animal kingdom means there's like a disease ecosystem and there are diseases that can jump from animals to humans. So managing zoonotics is part of managing animal populations. So I also just say that because I know like, ah, COVID, you don't want to think like, oh, this species can carry COVID, they got to go. Right, exactly. Stay away. No, we actually manage species that carry deadly, deadly diseases to humans and we do it safely. Most of the time. Most of the time. You have to be careful. You have to know what you're doing. I mean, sometimes we're playing catch-up, but you know. Yeah, the more you know, the safer you can be about it. But it's, yeah, I just want to throw out there. It's part of the game. It's not like, let's get rid of everything that could carry COVID, it's unrealistic. That, yeah, exact. It's unrealistic and we also need to consider ecosystems. So we need to understand the importance of various species and species diversity and you know, all the different aspects of a sustainable planet and ecosystems existing together. Together. Hey, remember how we were talking about fluoxetine and the antidepressant and how it could possibly maybe be useful in reducing deaths from COVID-19? Yeah, yeah. There were some really interesting results from a study that was published recently, but some big questions as to how was this study really done and is it, you know, as good as we would need it to be to really start using this thing? Well, a new study just came out from UCSF and the researchers at UCSF did a review. They just published this in JAMA Network Open. They looked at, they analyzed data from the CERNR Real World COVID-19 Electronic Health Record Database, 83,584 patients who tested positive from COVID-19 from January to September, 2020 at 87 US medical centers. They, because this was anonymized data, they were also able to determine which of these patients were on SSRIs, were taking SSRIs and again, so that's one of the medications they're taking. So obviously you're in the hospitals, your medications are still being given to you. They matched those patients against controls who were not taking SSRIs and they determined that SSRIs reduced death among patients by 8%. So 8% fewer deaths in the SSRI group than the control group in the general population. Those taking fluoxetine or fluvoxamine, which are, I think it's Prozac or PAX, I don't remember the name brands of these drugs. Oh, Prozac and Luvox are the name brands, fluoxetine and fluvoxamine. 13.3% of the fluox of this group died versus, yeah, it was 10%, sorry, 10% of the fluvoxamine fluoxetine versus 13.3% of the control patients. So it's still very close, but it's a slight improvement in the number of deaths from anti-dispressants. This is strictly correlative? Absolutely, yes. Because it was not a double blind randomized study. Yeah, they just went into the data and they said, what happened in these groups? Yeah. So there could be a specific mechanism at play here. We don't know. There could be. They also determined specifically for fluoxetine that there was a 28% reduction in death, which is, you know, it's percentage, so that's not an absolute number, but any improvement in the number of deaths can be useful. And if it is a tool that researchers or not researchers, if it's a tool that doctors can use to treat, then that's great. It's not quite as good as the new treatment pills coming out of Merck and Pfizer, but it's something that's an improvement potentially. So this is interesting. Just another bit of evidence to put in the bucket of evidence that's accumulating. The big question still is, why would these work? Why would SSRIs affect the immune system? What are they affecting? How is it, how are they working? Nobody knows the mechanism. So that's an interesting question. If we knew that, we could maybe soup up those pills that you mentioned even more. Yes. Super power, antidepressant, you know. Extra strength COVID medicine. And then hopefully, aside from the side effects, you feel much happier when you get out of the hospital too. All right. Well, I don't think I have any other COVID-19 news, something like 10% of, aside from the good news about 10% of kids have gotten their first COVID-19 vaccine vaccination, which is very exciting. Kids are lining up across the country, got my son vaccinated this weekend. Yay. Looking forward to a very happy holiday season. Yeah. For sure. This is This Week in Science. We hope that you're enjoying the show. If you are, please consider heading over to twist.org and either clicking on our Patreon link and becoming an ongoing supporter of twists. You can choose your levels of support. You can choose anywhere from a dollar to $1,000, whatever you choose, $10 and more per month. We will thank you by name at the end of the show every single week. And we also have another option. You can buy our calendars. The 2022 Blair's Animal Corner calendar is available for sale now. Some great original art by Blair. It's there at twist.org. Click on the frog. It's not a toad. It's a frog. That's all I have to say about that. Buy one for you, buy one for your mom, buy one for your dad, buy one for your brother, buy one for your sister, buy one for your friend, buy one for your niece, buy one for your nephew. Buy one for everyone. Buy one for everyone. We thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you. Okay, it is time now for the wonderful part of the show that we talk about all the animal things. It's Blair's Animal Corner with Blair. A creature, great as all. By a pet, male a pet, no pet at all. You want to hear about an animal, she's your pearl. Except for a giant, animal that's pearl. Take that off your tail. What you got, Blair? Oh, good. You said it so I can continue. So my first story involves animal art. So no, not the stuff in my calendar. I'm talking about when you hand a crayon and a piece of paper to an animal in a zoo. There are a lot of animals that will paint or draw. Mostly animals with thumbs, but there is like elephants will do it, other animals will do stuff with their paws. And so this is something that, it's a type of enrichment. I know I've talked about enrichment on the show before, but it's basically something to stimulate the mind or body of an animal in a zoo so that they use some sort of natural behaviors. And so especially for great apes and other animals with thumbs, giving them art tools allows them to use fine motor skills in a way that they would to forage, to make tools, to break things apart, to do any, you know, groom each other. So it actually is helping them to kind of key into natural behaviors, believe it or not. But anyway, there was a scientist from University Institute of France, Cedric Soeur, primatologist there who is watching his young daughter drawing, scribbling with intention, as if it had some sort of meaning and it got him to thinking. And so he then learned about five female bornean orangutans at Tama Zoological Park in Japan. And regularly they are provided with whiteboards and crayons. And from 2006 to 2016, workers collected 1,433 drawings made by the orangutans. Most of them were drawn by one orangutan named Molly, about 1,299 of them. She did most of them. And she was 54 years old already when she started to draw in the zoo and actually passed away during the study. She died in 2011. So there was five years of data collection after that and she still created the majority of the drawings. That being said, the other orangutans did too, but it seemed like Molly took extra time to draw than some of the others. And so this researcher wanted to find out if there was a difference between how they did it, like if they had art styles, if they had moods with their art, if it changed from time to time, if it was deliberate, if it was random, were they, for whatever you want to call it, creating art or are they just scribbling? And so the orangutans decided- I don't know, I called my toddler, I called my toddlers scribbles art. Yeah. So let's discuss. Yeah, so what is art? This brought up a really interesting question. Towards the very end of the article, they mentioned cave drawings and how they first happened. So I want you to have that kind of in the back of your head while I talk you through this study and the drawing that these orangutans are doing because it's very easy, even I who am constantly saying we're just animals, right? It still feels like a far jump from this to the kind of art we create, to film, to music, to abstract art, to poinalism, to like all this great, right? It seems like such a far jump, but if you think about some of the first art that we have isolated and identified, these cave paintings, and then you think about things even a little more, I guess, crude than that, like hashtags and scratchings, some of them about 70,000 year old. Those could be precursors to cave drawings. So if you kind of open your mind to that, where did it start? It can very well have started here. I mean, you definitely see animals scratching at or pawing in the dirt, making scratch marks in the dirt. Are they doing what we would do if we were a bored kid on the playground, scratching out patterns? I just saw my cat today. Well, I didn't see it happen, but my cat vomited on the floor after she ate. And then I guess she went to scratch and cover it up, but apparently because I had folded my laundry on the floor near where she vomited, she grabbed a piece of laundry and covered the vomit with the laundry. Oh, don't want to see it. She was hiding it from me. So I'm definitely going to apply intent there. Yes, do what she did and she needed to hide it. So intent is the question though, right? That really is what this is about. Now that seems like a stretch. However, I don't know, my cat's very, very smart Blair. The interesting thing here with the orangutans is that Molly was the most prolific of all of the orangutans with her drawings. And she also took more time with it. Others would finish their drawings very quickly, drop them to the floor. She could be working on a drawing for over an hour. After they finished their drawings, the orangutans would drop them to the floor. Some of them tore them up. They were free to begin new ones. Most of them did one or two and they're like, I'm good and they went and did something else. But Molly would make a lot of these things. They analyzed 790 of the drawings specifically, examined the amount of canvas color, the shapes, the colors used, how lightly or heavy their touch, their lines were on the drawing, how hard you're pressing with the cram. And they were able to find individual differences in their color preferences, how strongly they pressed, and how much of the board they covered. They could identify who did drawings based on these things. So first you find styles that they're saying that that reflects differences in personality, motivation and cognitive abilities. That seems like a pretty big jump, but I do think there is an individuality to how they used these things. I think that is easy to say. Those specific items. What the individuality is caused by is still in question. Yeah, I think we need more study on that. But the other thing that they talk about is that Molly, since she was drawing so many, they could compare her drawings over time. They found that as she aged, she drew with fewer colors. She covered less of the sheet and she drew farther from center. Interestingly, she became blind in her left eye as she aged. So that could be just a direct result of that. She still created more complex drawings than the other individuals, making a greater variety of strokes, variety of colors. And she favored different colors in different seasons. She favored purple in the spring, green in the summer and winter. And at one time, when another orangutan was giving birth, she did a painting that was mostly red, which is very interesting. What they say is that she couldn't, she didn't have direct eye contact, but could definitely smell the blood of the person. So could be coincidence, for sure. Could also not. I think noticing purple in the spring and green in the summer could be a coincidence, could be related to the foliage around where she is. She's drawing what she saw. Absolutely, could be. Or was inspired by it. Yeah, absolutely. So this is not like a super concrete study, I think there's a lot of research to be done, but I think to recognize that there is individual differences that can be disqualified from being random chance, I think is really what's important here. That they were different enough that the research found that these were different enough to say it's not just that they're picking random crayons and doing random shapes, they have styles to them, is really what's wild here. I'm not surprised to find out that one orangutan favored a particular enrichment item over another. Anyone who's worked with animals knows like, of course, there's animals that prefer a specific toy or a specific food or a specific area of their enclosure or a particular radio station. Like there's any number of things that animals are individuals, they have preferences. But I think having style differences in their art is really cool. It's very cool, yeah. I think there's a rich field of study here to be had and I do think- Now open up. Go ahead. Yeah, I think anthropologists should get in on this with pathologists because I really do think this could help us understand how art came to be in humanity, which is such a huge like whoa question. Right, I mean, so often it's like, oh, that primate is using that stick to poke for ants in a tree or in the dirt. They're looking for termites or whatever it is, but what if they're using that twig to just make designs in the dirt? Absolutely. How often do orangutans stick their hand in the mud and then put their hand on a rock? I don't know anything about that, but what do primatologists know about that? Yeah, and who else is doing that? Who doesn't have film? Who else is? Definitely, I think this could be a really cool kind of window into how art happened. I think it's awesome. That's great, thank you. Yeah, so moving on to cats, speaking of your cat, do you think your cats care about where you are and what you're doing when you're not feeding them? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Oh, why do you say that? I think it's their motivation. Sometimes my cats come to me and they definitely wanna play. Sometimes my cats, I hear them meow from other parts of the house and it's like an attention getting meow. That's interesting. Yeah, so it's like they're calling to make sure I'm somewhere. It's like, I don't know. I do think that they pay attention to where I am and when I'm there and what I'm doing. Okay, so let me press further. When they are lounging in the sun, face not even pointed towards you, do you think they care where you are and what you're doing in the house? I don't know. I mean, I don't want to put my ideas of caring onto my cats, but yeah. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Well, okay, I'll remove that subjective word then. So do you think they pay attention? I think they do pay attention. I mean, I am the source of their food. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, so I, this is such a- The source of pets and cuddles. This is a really funny story and I, the experimental technique is hilarious. So this is several institutions in Japan work together with team of researchers to try to find out if cats keep track of where their people are in their homes even when they can't see them and it's not mealtime. And up to this point, anecdotal evidence and other kind of claims suggest that cats are generally ambivalent to the activities that go on around them with their humans when it's not feeding time. There's a lot of cats out there. People say, my cat doesn't care about me at all. My cat wants to run away when I bring out the vacuum cleaner. There you go. So paying some attention. Get that loud, sucky thing away. Yes. Are you in the kitchen? Am I hungry? What you doing? Hi. So what they did to see if that's true is they carried out a series of experiments involved placing cats in enclosures with speakers and piping in sounds and observing their reactions. So already this is a very interesting method. You can't know what the cat's thinking. So you can really just record its responses to stimuli and try to guess what they're thinking. This is 50 domestic cats and their owners. They were separated into three random groups. Each of the three groups was then further divided into house cats, cats and cafe cats. Each of the cats were placed inside room-sized enclosures fitted with speakers. Another speaker was placed outside and the groups of cats were then exposed to different sounds from the speakers. Some were the owner's voices calling them by name. Others were stranger's voices calling their name and some was just random noise. So the researchers played sound and pairs first sent to the speaker inside the enclosure and then sent to the speaker outside of the enclosure. As the sounds were played, they had volunteer observers rate the degree of surprise from each cat. So that way nobody knows who's calling the name, who's observing it so they can't sway the data. And so when they looked at the data, they found that cats appeared to express surprise when hearing the voice of their owner first inside and then suddenly outside, kind of to suggest that they teleported instantly. Yeah. And so- How did they get there? What? The fact that they appeared surprised suggested that they were keeping track of their humans. So they heard their voice inside like, okay, great, he's inside. She's in the backyard now. How is that possible? And so that means that they are constantly, they think, building a mental map of their surroundings in their home, including of course the humans that they live with. Part of me, my response to this is that I'm not surprised. These are animals that are predators that, in any situation, they need to know about the other things going on in their environment. Is there something dangerous? When am I gonna get food? I mean, this is survival 101, right? You need to know to survive the world that you live in, what the environment that you're in, how dangerous it is, how safe it is. And so you need to keep track of variables. Something like the stove in the kitchen doesn't move, but the human moves around the house. Yep. Well, and the other thing about cats is we know that they have evolved specifically to manipulate us, so they have- No, you love us. Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But yes, as Michelle Kelly says in the chat room in YouTube, I've read the cat's meows are for humans to the most part, that's true. They evolve that to get our attention. And so that- They do meow to each other though, but there are specific people-based meows as well. Right, and so they have adapted, they have evolved to be with us. They are domestic species, and so of course they're gonna be paying attention to where we are and what we're doing to a certain extent, but it does go against this kind of common narrative of cats don't care about you at all. Yeah, I think that is cats getting a bad rap. Yeah, yeah, I think- They do care about you for their own reasons, that- Just sometimes they make you pay for that care with your own blood. That's all I'm saying is- Okay, dog lady. No, no. But it's true, if you pet a dog the wrong way and they just leave, if you pet a cat the wrong way, you'll pay with your blood. They're much more sharp. They're personalities, they are dogs or boobas and cats or kikis. Sure, yeah, you said it. Do you wanna hear about corals or do you wanna- Yes. Close, okay, great. Bring me corals, yes. So corals, I give a lot of bad news about corals especially the Great Barrier Reef but I have some good news this week, some new research that could help corals on our planet. So of course, corals are in trouble for a lot of reasons. The sunscreen that we wear, the rising sea levels, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification, pollution, all these things are kind of piling up on coral and it's causing problems because they can't handle it all at once. And so we can try to stop all those things. We have to try to stop all those things or at least slow them. But as we are trying to do that, we have the potential to lose a lot of corals. So this is one of those things where, I'm often pushing like, okay, we can't try to put a band-aid on it. We have to stop the problem at its source. Well, this is one of those things where you have to do both. And so this is a really cool research project led by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, ANES. And it is aligned with the Great Barrier Reef's mass coral spawning event which comes up in November. They want to use artificial intelligence and genetic analysis to locate reefs that have a high likelihood of having heat tolerant corals and using those corals when they are ripe with eggs and sperm to kind of seed or hybridize with the corals that are most likely to be impacted by climate change. So you can take the hardiest corals, you can kind of inject some of that into the gene pool of the areas most at risk. So I love this because this is, you know, we've talked a lot about coral opportunities that are very localized and kind of one-offs. Like you can build resilient coral and then transplant it. Okay, but that like takes a lot of work and it just takes care of that one little coral that you transplanted. You can grow corals and then transplant them so they get a head start. There was a really cool study a few weeks ago about using Lego as modular scaffolding for building coral. I loved it. That's great. But all of that really just helps you build individual corals and transplant them later. This will allow broadcast spawning for 800 kilometers of a radius. This is like, this is a huge radius for their broadcast spawning of this more hearty genome so that you can have, you can make sure basically that the, a portion of the entire next generation of these corals are better set up for the challenges ahead. That's really amazing and very important as so much of places like the Great Barrier Reef and others are being affected by ocean acidification and ocean warming and coral bleaching and yeah, all this stuff. Yeah, so- How could we boost it? Doctor- Making better coral. Line Bay from Ames, the principal research scientist and part of the Australian government's reef restoration and adaptation program, Rep. Says, quote, to protect coral reefs, we need, the world needs to reduce emissions, maintain good management of marine ecosystems and invest in cutting edge marine science to help coral reefs adapt, recover and survive to warming oceans. So I really appreciate that because they didn't forget to mention the emissions, which is the cause, but then on the kind of marine science side of things you can give the coral a helping hand. We need to, we need to, we need to, we're taking away on one side, so we need to help it on the other. I mean, we need to fix the emissions problem, but let's do what we can in the meantime. We can do both. There's seven billion of us on this planet. I think we can do a few things at a time. Yeah, there's a lot of us to do different things. Yes, some people can do the emission stuff and these scientists can work on boosting the spawners. Yeah. Increase the spot. That's wonderful. Yeah, I like that. That's a really, it's a different technique. It's a different strategy, but used in conjunction with some of these other strategies for bolstering coral populations. The more we do, the better it can be. Mm-hmm, yep. Them a nice head start. Yeah, that's great. I like that. I wonder if that's the kind of thing that volunteers could get involved in. Yeah, definitely. I mean, if, I think they would, they would have either extremely experienced volunteers or specific marine biologists pulling the coral, but you could definitely have almost anybody with scuba certification dropping them in the location for broadcast spawning, that would be pretty easy to do. So I think you're totally right. I have, my uncle actually does, he's a scuba diver and so he volunteers, I think through Mbari in Monterey, he helps with quadrant surveys down there. Right, I talked with your uncle, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, with sampling, yeah. Yeah, so he is one of those volunteers that helps with marine science researchers, which is so cool. That's neat, yeah. Yeah. There's many opportunities to get involved in science out there. So many different ways to do the science thing. But this is this week in science, so we're gonna talk about the science thing and I have three more stories. So let's talk about brain. You put up brain stories, I'm shocked. I know, shocking. I try and, I try and stack the end of the show with my, my brain-y interests. Yeah, so we all like to exercise, right? Right, exercise? Sometimes. Part of a good keeping yourself healthy kind of plan for how you live your life. If you can exercise, it can be beneficial. Researchers just published in the journal Gut Microbes that they were able to reduce levels of inflammation and pain for people with knee arthritis, arthritis in their knees, when they had them exercise, which sounds counterintuitive. So I guess this one particular study isn't a brain study. The next two studies are brain studies. But anyway, that's an aside. So counterintuitive exercising your knees when you have knee arthritis can help reduce pain. How does this work? Well, they have determined with this study by analyzing anti-inflammatory compounds in the blood, the gut microbiome, and also there's cytokines and endocannabinoids, they looked at all sorts of things that were going on and found that when the people in the study exercised, it increased the levels of endocannabinoids in their bodies. Those endocannabinoids were associated with reduction in pain, but also with potentially modulating the diversity of bacteria in the gut microbiome, increasing the diversity of the microbes and the microbes themselves release anti-inflammatory substances and perpetuate anti-inflammatory processes that reduce pain. So exercises, exercising promotes better bacteria in your gut, which then pay it back by making you have less pain. That's a leap. Right, I can't, I thought you were just gonna say like, oh yeah, just like stretches it out and maintains mobility. Like that would be my like, that would be my complete 100% guess of why exercise would help with arthritis pain is that you're like, loosen it up, you're working through the stiffness, nope. No, it's bacteria and it's this whole thing that goes to your gut and then it'll help your knees. So this is just a study looking at people who have achy knees, but it does, so it doesn't necessarily apply to things like rheumatoid arthritis in multiple joint systems or with different aches and pains, but it's interesting to find that there was this relationship between our natural cannabinoid system, which is like a pain reduction system that our bodies produce. And gut microbes and it all fits together. If you exercise, maybe you make a nice bacteria environment, the bacteria are like, yay, and then I don't know, wild. This can reduce your chronic inflammation, perhaps through bacteria, through exercise. It all fits together. Oh my God, I definitely need to get a good night's sleep and then exercise tomorrow. Eat a healthy diet is all about making the microbes happy. Yeah. If Justin were here, that's what he'd be going on about, making the microbes happy. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about grandmothers. Okay, you know the grandmother hypothesis, the idea that grandmothers that we live longer so that grandmothers can be around to help raise children and help with the whole social group of many different animals. Yeah, it's why females live past menopause. Otherwise there'd be no evolutionary reason for them to keep living. Why are you staring around? Yeah. So this very kind of, it's a pilot study. It's just digging into this area and is one of the first of its kind to look at the brains of grandmothers. Specifically, they recruited 50 grandmothers and they had them look at pictures of their grandchildren, other people's grandchildren, of their own children and other people that they didn't know. And they stuck them in an fMRI machine to look at how their brains were activated. Turns out the brains of grandmothers are very empathetic to their grandchildren. Just their grandchildren? Yeah, just their grandchildren. So that's like, if you're watching your parents interact with your kids and you're like, they weren't that nice to me, it's biology, that's why. So the question is, okay, what's actually happening as you get older to lead to this change? Is it that, okay, I mean, we don't know for sure this empathy for, or this lighting up for the empathy for these grandchildren, like what is driving that? How much of having experiences with that grandchild, working with that grandchild, what they've done. So this is very early days digging into this. But it's very interesting to note that there was a difference also of between their grandchildren and their own children. So with their grandchildren, they were in their brain areas involved with emotional empathy. So lots of emotions and movement. And so like, oh, I need to love and care for my grandchild. And it's kind of leading to the interest in how the grandchild is feeling. Whereas the brain areas that are activated for their own children are involved with cognitive empathy. So they're more interested in different aspects of what their children are thinking about. Like the more analytical aspects of their children's lives as opposed to the emotional aspects. Do you know if they showed pictures of their children that were current like as adults or if they showed pictures of their children as children? I was trying to get access to the study to be able to determine that because I thought that was a very interesting, that would have been an important point. Yeah, I feel like you want to do both. Access to the study that deeply, yeah. Right, you want to have the current grandchild, your child as a their child, as a child and then their child today and see how they're different. Because it's also possible that they would like romanticize how they felt about their own child when they were little and it would be more similar to the grandchild. But if you showed them a current one, it would be more analytical. But yeah, interesting. I think that would be very interesting to see. But it was different. So grandchildren, grandmother brains lit up in a very special way. And so there is something special about grandmother brains that helps grandmothers be grandmothers. And that's why they made their own child eat broccoli every night, but when the grandchild comes over, it's candy and cake. Oh, you want some candy? Okay. Exactly. Do you want to go out to a movie? Do you want a comic book? Do you want? Yeah. It's biology. There's nothing to be done about it. Yep, grandmother brains. I love it. I love it. I hope to have a grandmother brain one day. So my last story here that I want to end on is just an interesting note that the world is filled with psychopaths. That sounds correct. Yeah. Yes, yes. Researchers did a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies investigating psychopathy in various populations. They looked at 15 studies as of June, 2021 and they had 16 samples of adults totaling 11,497 people. They determined that the general adult population at most has about 4.5% psychopaths. In the United States, that calculates out to approximately 14,805,000 people who have psychopathy. Using the gold standard for determining psychopathy and psychopathic traits, they determined that there is at least 1.2% of the population in the United States. The general adult population that are made up of psychopaths. And that would be 3,948,000 psychopaths. Still, a lot of psychopaths are in the world. And yes, if you go to very specific populations in the study, they suggest that there are higher percentages of psychopaths in particular populations like prison populations have upwards of 30,35% psychopaths. And apparently universities have 8 to 14% psychopaths. Nobody knows why, but they did not in this particular study look at majors that people are choosing. And they suggest that future studies should look at specific majors. Things that get people going into business or economics specifically. Don't you think college though, also is a place where psychopathic tendencies are going to be brought to the surface statistically? There's less sleep, there's tense social situations, there's constant stress. Yeah, but I also do wonder about the biasing sample, the sample biases of the studies that they used in their review and whether or not if they're just gathering university students are these university students who have specifically volunteered for studies because this is something they can get for extra credit or they can do, there's certain things you can do which may predispose certain personality types to have volunteered for these trials. Anyway, questions, questions, questions, the bottom line is there are a lot of psychopaths in the world and so when you go on social media, remember that. Well, I was thinking because not everybody has your best interests at heart. That's the thought, that's the take home message. Yeah, but I feel like the other take home message here is we knew it, but there's a mental health crisis. Yes. Like what can we do for these people? How can we help them? How can we keep them from hurting themselves or others? What, this means this is a problem. Like the fact that mental health care is not free and available is a problem because if you're a person who doesn't have medical coverage that covers mental health care and you're one of this 14 or three million, you're out of luck. And so are the people around you and that's not good. Right, and that's not going to be helping anyone, right? Yeah, yeah. Which most colleges have free counseling. So if that is where there's a lot of these people, hey, if you're watching and you think you might be a psychopath, or even just, hey, anyone watching that has access to free mental health care, do it. It's great. Yeah, and if anyone is interested in the construct of psychopathy, it's generally, according to this article, type of personality disorder characterized among other things by the presence of behaviors that conflict with the social, moral, or legal norms of society, giving rise in many cases to clearly criminal behaviors. It's a lot more widespread than I expected. I thought it would be a little more clinical than that. That's interesting. Yeah, there are lots of aspects to diagnosis and yeah, but the presence of personality traits related to lack of emotion, lack of nervousness, absence of remorse or shame, inability to love, show effective reactions, presence of an outward appearance of normality, lack of delusions, and other signs of irrational thought, superficial charm, good intelligence, there are many aspects that could determine a diagnosis, but of course a diagnosis needs to be made with proper, within proper medical systems. Which not everyone has access to, again. Which not everyone has access to, to your point. Do you know? Yes. Oh, I see a Justin Jackson in the chat saying, if he must have been in responding to the cats. Yes, no, I do believe it was when, when you said if Justin was here, he'd be saying, you've got to keep that gut microbiome happy. He said, if I'm right here, I'm yelling it out of my screen. I'm listening, saying all the things that I would be saying. Oh, have we made it to the end of the show, Blair? We did. We did it. We've made it to the end of another episode of This Week in Science. Thank you, Blair. Thank you, Kiki. We missed you, Justin. Everyone out there, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We hope that you enjoyed the show. Now time for some shout outs. I would love to shout out to Fada for your help on social media and show notes. Gord Manning, the chat room, and to others who helped the chat room stay sane and clean and happy and a nice place to be and to chat about the science of the show. Identity Ford, thank you for recording the show and Rachel, thank you for editing the show and for your assistance. And I would like to thank our Patreon sponsors for their support. Thank you to Kent Northcote, Rick Loveman, Pierre Velazir, Ralphie Figueroa, John Ratnaswamy, Karl Kornfeld, Kara Dawsey, Woody M.S., Andre Bissette, Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn, Beggar Shefstad, Hal Snyder, Donathan Styles, aka Don Stilo, John Lee, Allie Coffin, Maddie Perrin, Gaurav Sharma, Don Mundus, Stephen Albaron, Darryl Meyshek, Stu Pollack, Andrew Swanson, Frenas104Sky, Luke Paul, Ronabitch, Kevin Breedon, Noodles Jack, Brian Carrington, Matt Bass, Seananina Lam, John McKee, Greg Riley, Mark Hessenflos, Jean Tellier, Steve Leesman, aka Azima, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrapp and Dana Pearson, Richard Brendan, Minnish, Johnny Gridley, Kevin Railsback, Rummy Day, Flying Out, Christopher Dyer, Artie, I'm Greg Briggs, John Atwood-Hayer, as I want to support Aaron Lieberman for governor. I hope you already did. Maybe, I don't know. I don't think it's time anymore. Rida Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul Mallory, Sutter, Phillip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Mountain Sloth, Jim Drapeau, Sarah Chavez, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp, E.O., Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luthon, Steve Balbob, Calder, Marjorie, Paul Disney, David Simmerly, Patrick Pecoraro, Tony Steele, Ulysses Adkins, and Jason Roberts. Thank you for all of your support of TWIS. And if you, you out there would like to support TWIS on Patreon, please head over to twis.org and click on the Patreon link on next week's show. We'll be back on Wednesday at 8 p.m. Pacific Time, broadcasting live from our YouTube and Facebook channels and from twis.org slash live. Want to listen to us as a podcast? Just search for this week in science wherever podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe too. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes and links to stories would be available on our website. That's at twis.org and while you're there, we can, you can sign up for a newsletter. We are cooking one up as we speak. We are. And for more information, that's right. Sign for a newsletter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can contact us directly. That's right, email Kirsten, kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twisminion at gmail.com, Blair at BlairBazz at gmail.com, at twis.com, at twis.com. What are these emails? We have three different URLs. I'm at BlairBazz at twis.org. Thank you. I need to get everyone on the same darn email. I don't know. We've never done that. Why would we do that now? Just put twis in the subject line so your email doesn't get spam filtered into Blair. You want to come up with something? You're so good at it. Into a placenta. No, I don't. You don't want Jerry and Mel into a placenta. No, no. You can also hit us up on Twitter. We are at twiscience, T-W-I science, at Dr. Hickey, at Jackson Fly, and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. 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This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. Science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That what I say may not represent your views. But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to it. You just might understand. Woo. You just might understand. It's this Week in Science is after show. I made it. I faded us out poorly. But I did it. Woo. I can't. Let me move over here. Woo. Ooh, I get to sit. It's the after show. It's the after show. You can sit down. So my keyboard. It's a great keyboard. I really like it. Clickety clackety. And I like the key stroke action. But it's long keyboard because it's got the number pad. And so I can never center it exactly where I want it on my desk because there's like this other bit to it. And so the number pad is where I want to put my mouse. But I can do that because then I have to move the keyboard over so that I can get the microphone where I want it to be. And so I keep moving like all over. Yeah. Never in the right spot. Nothing works right now. It's little things, little things. You know, like every once in a while, you're like, why does my sweatshirt feel weird? Yes. No, absolutely. That's right. Yeah. No, I have this 70 inch desk and I am out of room on it somehow. It's like things expand to the space that exists, you know. Oh, we do. We expand to fill our spaces. Very much so. Hello all. We hope you enjoyed the show. Okay, November 2022. So I can expect to be saying support Aaron Lieberman for governor for another year. Right. Is that, that's probably okay. Oh boy. I mean, that was a smart move, patron. Look at you. Using my program for messaging. That's great. Aaron Lieberman for governor. I'm going. I'm going to the site. I'm figuring out what's going on. What is it? Okay. Oh, identity four. You got the dance going in our discord there. You know, if you support us on Patreon, you get to be part of our discord. We've got other chats and things going on. Yeah. The broadcaster issues, right? Hot rod. I have so many issues. Oh, Gaurav is asking you a question. Oh. Oh. Here's the thing. It's like personalities for art. No, I actually don't think this is it. I think so. I think you're raised around one or the other or both. You know how to read that you are comfortable around. And when a cat person is forced into common space with a dog and tries to interact with the dog, it's like, what? Why? This is a lot. And then if a dog person like I was goes to play with a cat, like I did when I was eight. And the cat scratches you. Because you're like, why, why couldn't I like roughly pet you and scratch you on the nose? And like it's just, so I think, I think people are raised around one or the other sometimes. And then that becomes their safe zone. But then if you like expectations, if you learn how to respond to animals, then you can, you can become the other. So I didn't really spend almost any time around cats until I was like eight or nine, I think. And then I got scratched. And then I didn't really spend a lot of time around cats in general. And then I became a, I was doing a lot of pet sitting in my early 20s. And so I ended up living with cats for like 10 days at a time. And I got to know probably 12 different cats over the course of five or six years and figured it out. Figured out how cats work. And they're lovely. I think cats are so cool. Not all cats are the same. No. Cats are so very different and individual. And that's true for dogs too. I mean, I feel like overall dogs are a little bit more fool proof, but there are still dogs that you cannot treat like you treat other dogs. So. I just put Justin up as a little screenshot from our chat. So now we can say that Justin was on the show this week. I'm wondering what it was. Lieberman's website doesn't say when the election is. It's funny. Let's see. Arizona. Goober. Not Tory. All election. 2022. Thank you. I think it is funny to say that. You're right. It's just funny that. I agree. That person making his website really pretty. Yeah. McQueen's this person. Aaron for a Z. Who are you? That's a pretty website. There's a video when you open it up and he's like smiling and talking to people. Look, he's interested. He wants to know what people are doing and help them. Look at that. This website is... Oh, see, Ballotpedia is helping me now. And Lieberman declared Canada's second 2022. Okay. He's a member of the House of Representatives. There you go. That's his deal. His website says he wants to be the clean energy governor. Cool. Which I think is great. I mean, Arizona, clean energy, and you should really be working on your water issues. There's lots of room for solar panels there. Yeah. Yeah. I know so many people, so many people are moving to the Phoenix area, to Arizona, and it's a great climate, right? Great climate. After having read some novels, some books, understanding... I mean, Cadillac Desert is quite the book, but understanding water... Not that I understand them. They're very complicated, but water rights issues and knowing that there are major droughts coming and water shortages possibly on the way. I just... I can't help but wonder when people are making their decisions to move to a place, whether they ever think about where their water is going to come from in 10 or 15 years. And how is the economy going to be affected? How is stuff going to be affected down the road? Well, I mean, they're still building cliffside properties in LA. Or not LA, but Southern California. A lot of people aren't thinking about 10 years from now, unfortunately. And this is part of the problem. Yeah. Oh, I like this comment. You must want to goobern. You must. I think Paul's right. That is a... Talk about English being weird. Goobernatorial. Shut up. Stop. Enough. Yeah. Right. I'm going to be the governor. Let's vote for me in a gooberner's race. Yeah. Okay. Anemology, everyone. No, I meant that. Not goober. No. Fingers. Goober. Goobern. He must want to goobern. He's a good one. That's funny. Paul, I will be stealing that. At some point. Thank you. What was that? Michelle Kelly lived in Arizona for two years. Had to go back to Pennsylvania. Gaurav Sharma went to ASU. That's a good school. ASU's got a lot going for it. I mean, it's beautiful. Arizona is a wonderful, wonderful state. It's got mountains and trees and snow and it's got deserty areas and it's got all the things, which is super awesome. It's not... Just worry about people going to the dry places. I do worry. Okay. Yes. Paul Disney. Goober. It's like the, that peanut butter and jelly jar. The goober. Goober spread. Is that what Ronald Reagan called jelly beans? Goobers? Or am I making that up? I don't know. I haven't heard that. I think I'm making it up. I know he likes jelly beans, right? Mm-hmm. Isn't that a thing? Who liked jelly beans? Ronald Reagan? Yes, he liked jelly beans. Okay. Yes. And yeah. Why do I know that? Why do we call Goobers boogers? Why do we teach our children that and not that he ruined the American economy? He was a huge part of America's decline. That is his legacy. He's the reason I can't... No one in my generation could buy a house. Thanks, Reagan. Oh my God. Okay. No. I don't want the Goober... I want etymology. Etymology. Try to do too many things at the same time. Okay. The origin. Greek. Goobermen. To steer. Latin. Goobermare. Steer. Govern. Latin. The Goobernator. I mean, that was California's governor. When Schwarzenegger was governor, right? Yes. People had to... Goobernator. Yeah. But it's the Goobernator. I never heard of that. The Goobernator. Goobernator. Latin. Goobernator. And the English added the EL, so Goobernatorial. Yeah. So I guess at some point we were like, yeah, Goobernator. Let's call it a governor. Okay. And we never put the twix between. Okay. Okay. I guess, and it's funny since we've grown up with Goobernatorial, it's easier to say Goobernatorial and you hear governatorial and that doesn't sound right. It sounds fine. That's fine. But... So. Governor's election. That was that one. Yeah. How about THRU? How about that? English instead of THR. OUGH. Yes. How about thorough? Can we talk about thorough? Because it's got to go. You're talking about thorough or thorough? Thorough. It's just too much. What are we kidding ourselves? Just stop. Just stop with the words. We were talking about that. Spellings for things. The other day I spelled catalog the British way. And somebody made fun of me for it. And I was like, it's not my fault. It's English. It's an English spelling. Why do we do it two ways? This is... C-A-T-A-L-O-U-G. No. C-A-T-A-L-O-U-G. C-A-T-A-L-O-U-G. C-A-T-A-L-O-U-G. C-A-T-A-L-O-G. G-U-E. Catalog. Yeah. I did the U-E. Because just with the G on there, it looks unfinished. It looks wrong. And of course, Spellcheck didn't correct me when I spelled it with the U-E. I never... I don't think I've ever actually put that together that we do use the two spellings. I never really thought about it. I think I probably would always spell it the British Yeah, as opposed to American English. There's also great American English is easier. Yeah, that one I go back and forth between Yeah, I don't have a preference and I don't remember which is which but one is technically British and one is England and American and then there's also a color With C. O. L. O. You are that's what I yes. Yeah, it's just I Let's palette palette yes, it's just like I There's too many there's too many like homonyms. There's too much. It's the other day I wrote like in an email. I wrote bear with me and somebody also was like, yeah I'll bear with you and I was like, is it not bear like the animal and I looked it up and it is It is bear like the animal if you're using bear like nakedness. That's wrong Yeah, that is that would be a completely different statement. Oh Cancellation that's the other one L or two L is it one L or two L's they're both fine. It's fine I Mean technically it's a consonant. So you should double the consonant for adding the extra the a and then the extra bit at the end Technically the thing is like not required. I Last summer as you can imagine summer 2020 when I was working camp I was writing that word there as in Kerry. Yes. Yes, that one. I know Um, like the animal but yeah last summer I was writing the word cancellation a bunch and then at one point the CFO wrote cancellation with one L and I was like And then like I saw somebody else told the two and I was like, hold on a second The only thing I know is that we don't use typewriters really anymore. So just one space after the period Yes, that is a pet peeve of mine for sure. I'm not trying to be mean But when somebody says you something like that, I'm like, all right. Well, I know I'm deleting. I'm like, all right I know you're a baby boomer or older Yeah, I Don't like I can't I'm one of the people who I look at if people spell loose for lose Oh, yes, that makes me upset. Yeah, cuz I think you should know the difference between lose and loose I mean, maybe your finger gets stuck on that. Oh too many times, but you know, I Think we need to know the difference Yeah, but what about choose or did you lose? Which ones choose and chose What do you mean choose and chose it's why is it chose and Lose I'm just saying pronunciation makes no sense. Oh, it's the pronunciations, right the oh, right? It should be Lowe's Or did you Lowe's did you Lowe's the race? Yeah, because according to that the e at the end should yeah lose Choose should only have one oh if you're gonna do it like lose mm-hmm, and then the other one should be choose mm-hmm I'm sorry to everyone who has to learn to Read and speak English as a second language, I mean that's just I'm sorry We grow up with it and it's complicated enough, but oh geez Geez Yeah frumpy be cinnamon and synonym are more homonym That's fun It is cinnamon and synonym Cinnamon and synonym cinnamon and synonym. Oh my that's fun. I like it. I like it. I like it. I Started making some Yeah, wrong keyboard. I started making some t-shirt designs That I want to mess with so yeah Feedback Window window. Oh wait, uh, no cancel cancel There we go. Now I can share it Uh, yeah, the newsletter you got my you got my Message in a bottle. I saw that it exists Have I opened it? No. No. Yes. I wrote something Yeah, so this is like a mock up for a t-shirt That I think might be fun. Very cute. I like it Yeah It's all in your head and I don't know how to preview On the canva, but if we go over here you can see Kind of there What it would look like That's fun. Yeah, I don't know if I should Change because I've been thinking we should happen. It's all in your head t-shirt for a while, but Yeah, oh, yeah, I tried to make a hat and it never happened Right because the hat was difficult Yeah It's all in it. What is happening with the color? What did I do? Yeah I don't know Yeah, uh, should I use white? Or I can change it Would that be too much? Hmm Yeah, I think the black's better. Yeah I mean if it were just a single color print that would probably be the easiest way to do it because it would just be open space on the print Oh, yeah And I could just be a single color as opposed to adding a different color Lightning the body of the text would make it pop more. Yeah. That was that I was wondering about frumpy bee Yeah, there it should be the brain picture is too realistic says hot rod That we should oh need a cartoony brain. Okay, so let's pick a cartoon. I'll kind of I'll find a cartoon brain I could use that kind of a brain More cartoony I could find a different cartoon brain. Yeah, like one that's like, um black and white, right? It's like a More silhouety type Mm-hmm Dark drop shadow light text cartoon brain Okay, I'll do that. What was the other one that I have I have another one um That's my other design this one's like a Just lots of different lots of different things Sneakerhead kind of thing Um, and then and then that one I don't know. I'm just making things up playing Science is science Science is science everyone it's science science is science That is that is a true fact Science is science Yeah God makes yeah, they get fun t-shirts. I don't know anyone has ideas for teacher t-shirt designs t-shirts T-charts that twist should have let me know be fun So you should come up with some more fun designs Dexter's laboratory Very Yeah, yeah, I mean I could add them all and see what sells. You're right. See what works Yeah Blair, do you need to get to bed between 10 and 11 p.m. Like science says I do I do that was on wait wait. Don't tell me I heard this morning That means that we talked about it before they talked about it. It's true. I feel like a lot of time they talk about it first um Because like a lot of good science drops on thursday and friday. I feel like yeah Um, not a lot of science drops on mondays No, yeah science and nature are both thursday Thursday friday drops. Um, yeah Yeah, there are some that are wednesday drops, but Yeah, really we're looking at kind of like the big drops for thursday friday And then we have a few more days of stuff that comes out on different journals Yeah, yeah, but so for that reason a lot of the time they talk about stuff before we do because If it drops on thursday or friday, then they talk about it on saturday, but um That early week stuff we get to it first Yes, we do You can get in there. Um, can I youtube poll pictures? I could do that. I could probably make a youtube poll tomorrow probably Oh, paul samson. Thanks. I'm glad you like that kerning absence I'm not a hugely uh, I'm not a big designer, but I am learning how to borrow other people's designs Mmm Like oh look what this was No, all art is borrowing. Yeah, that's true I'm not not taking someone else's designs. I'm using You're you're taking inspiration inspiration and elements and remixing Yes, oh michelle kelly 106 a.m That's early That is early Okay, gora. Have you like the community page? Just a lot of communities for me to manage so I haven't really spent a lot of time on the youtube community page But I definitely can leave a poll there with the images Yeah, and I think it is underused by many channels because so many channels have either patreon or discord or facebook or you know, whatever other communities that they're trying to foster and so it's just Really hard to keep up with all the places and all the things unless you have people Who are community managers and you know there to take care of all that stuff? All right, the bedtime peoples. Thank you everyone for joining us Another episode of the science. Justin. We're sorry that you were not here with us Apparently, Justin is doing some moving of things and it was a lot Good luck to Justin. Yeah. Good luck, Justin With all the moving we missed you. We can't wait to get you back on the show um Is there anything else going on? No Next week is our twist giving to a skipping show so There won't be much science I feel like always the twist giving show is like, uh-oh Well, sometimes it's that one. Sometimes it's the week after um Speaking of like dropping stories on thursdays and fridays, but Yeah, I always feel like this time of year is where there's like weird lulls in stories There are yeah, there are some conferences in november and so There can be some big bursts of different material for like a week here or a week there, but it's usually very specialized and then Yeah, then there are some walls and yeah Yeah, and then everybody's like what publishing? No It's the holidays. We're not putting the good stuff over the holidays except there's always inevitably One really great story like in the week in december when we're not doing a show Just say then I just No, no, I don't save it because there's going to be more science the week following. So I just go And I have to let it go Just share it on facebook Yeah, exactly The stories that I would have shared this week if if only if The science of cooking. Yes, we could talk about the science of cooking next week we can also Talk about uh indigenous representation in science next week. Who knows who knows what will come To our rundown But I know that we will be very thankful once again to be able to do the show All right, say good night Blair. Good night Blair. Say good night kiki Good night Good night, everyone. We do hope that you stay well stay safe and Maintain your mental health take care of yourself It's a very important thing to do this time of year All the best to you all. Thank you for joining us again. See you next week. Bye