 gonna let me go. Yay! It says Facebook. Let me go. I hope I'm on Facebook. I hope I'm on YouTube. I hope I am on Twitch. Are we broadcasting to all of the places? Only the viewers can tell. Shubrew says we are live. Thank you very much. It's live. Yes, everyone. This. What is this? This is This Week in Science. It is your weekly science podcast broadcast, where we are going to do the broadcast of our podcast and then maybe I'll edit the podcast depending on how the podcast goes and then you may subscribe and listen to the podcast. I hope that you do. I enjoy having you here live. Live with us right now. All of the content you're about to hear may be edited out of the podcast and be replaced by something completely different. Like me singing show tunes. Maybe people would like that one week. Are we gonna tell you down for that? Yeah. I don't have hopes and dreams. No, I don't have plans. Don't do too much. The YouTube will get shut down. Yeah, we don't need to be shut down. Yeah, we have to make up our own show tunes that are science-based. So basically Randy rainbowing the science world, which would be pretty awesome. Okay. Okay. But anyway, it's now time for the science show that you do know and love to call this week in science. So I guess we'll give it a go. We'll give it a start. We'll give it a little thing. I'm a do's only dazzling basil. Yes. Starting in three, two, this is twist this week in science episode number 832 recorded on Wednesday, July 7th, 2021. Are you okay with the methods? Hey everyone, I am Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your head with beetles, bats and brains. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. When Lewis and Clark headed west, the then president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson had a special request. Keep your eyes out for woolly mammoths because, well, why not? They had been seen before in fossils and the concept of extinction had yet to be invented. The early Americans believed as people had believed for thousands of years that the natural world was unchanging. They killed a rabbit for supper. Another magically appeared in its place. Kill a hundred rabbits. A hundred would poof into existence overnight. In time, the fossil record revealed more and more strange creatures that could not be found. And once dinosaurs were discovered, it was unavoidable. Things in nature can and do change. We didn't mean to make the passenger pigeon and the dodo bird go extinct. We just didn't understand that killing every member of a species prevented more from existing. And like extinction, the concept of evolution had to be invented for humans to understand it, like concepts in physics or anatomy or climate. Before we know about a thing, it can be very hard to see that it is happening all around us. We are foolish and ignorant creatures until we are not. And that is the moment when humanity takes its rightful place in the universe and tunes into This Week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind I can't get enough. I want it every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want it. Good science to you, Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again on our Wednesday night adventure into the land of science, into the land of exploration and curiosity and tools and techniques and methodologies. I brought stories about sea level rise and what else do I have? Oh yes, I also have a story about helping males live longer lives if they're okay with the methods. Bat lives, because bats are cool, and brain waves on VR. Justin, what'd you bring? I've got really old bats. See, I took all of your stories and mashed up the one. Really old bats? Cures for cats? Why you see faces when there are none and a murder of black holes has found me under the outskirts of the galaxy you call home? Wait, wait, wait, a murder of galaxies? Wait, a murder of black holes? Wait, a murder? Is that a murder? Something in your home? They turn into a black hole and kill you tonight at 11. Exactly. It's not officially a murder of black holes. I thought that might be, maybe it's a gaggle? Gaggle of galaxies. I like a murder. How about a suck of black holes? No. A drain of black holes. Anyway, a colander of black holes? Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I have the beetles. And then I also have a quick story about allergies. Very quick, very quick, very quick. All right, everyone quickly as we head into the show, I do want to remind you that if you have not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can. It's very easy. Look for This Week in Science. All places, podcasts are found. And you can find us on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch, where we are at Twist Science. We're also at Twist Science on Instagram and Twitter. And our website is twist.org. All sorts of information. And here comes more of it. All right, let's dig into the science. Okay, you know, I like to start the show off with the good news. Does that sarcasm? Yeah, absolutely completely sarcastic. Get some bad news out of the way. That is the right way to go. Go for it. Tell me the bad news. Okay, let's just do it and get it done with researchers out of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory led by the members of the NASA sea level change science team from the University of Hawaii have completed a study showing that high tides are going to exceed known flooding thresholds around the country more and more often, most likely starting in the 2030s. Oh, that's not for a long time. Wait, 2030s? Yeah, the 2030s. That's literally the next decade. Yep, a decade just over a decade from now. The lunar cycle will switch. The moon has a bit of a wobble. It's an 18 and a half year long wobble. And this 18 and a half year long wobble can be divided up into halves, where half of the wobble kind of pushes down the effect on the tides. And the other half of the wobble does what? Brings out cicadas? No, exacerbates the tides. So makes higher tides higher, lower tides lower. You know, it's it's very big thing. Anyway, moon wobble, you know, the moon affects the tides. So a combination of sea level rise, thanks to ocean water heating and bloating, thanks to increased temperatures around the globe, in addition to ice melt that is adding to water in the oceans. Timing together in the mid 2030s with that switch of the wobble to bring higher tides is going to probably mean much higher tides for more, for longer periods of time. So within, say, a month, where you might get one flood if you're living in a coastal area, and maybe there's weather involved as well. Instead of just having one flood, maybe you experience three or four or five floods within the same time period. It's going to get to the kind of situation where businesses will have a hard time staying open if their parking lots are flooded, if if employees can't come into work. So ships can't dock to deliver goods because the dock has washed away. Yes. And so there's and there's also the effect of more high tides hitting the coastal regions leading to more erosion. Exactly. The mantra of real estate agents today, location, location, location. The mantra of real estate agents in the future, elevation, elevation, elevation. Yeah. So low lying areas near sea level are going to be more and more at risk thanks to this combination of factors that, you know, after about nine and a half years might abate a little bit. But if sea level rise continues, then the next wobble phase will come nine and a half or so years after that. And it'll just push and push and push on this regular wobbly schedule thanks to the moon. What will we do without Florida? Yeah. So this planning perspective, what one of the researchers says, it's important to know when we'll see an increase, understanding that all your events are clustered in a particular month or that you might have more severe flooding in the second half of a year than the first. That's useful information. And NASA has a sea level portal that is available for people to use. Now, the one piece of news that is kind of good news on the end of this little push of bad news at the start of the show is that surprisingly, Texas might be lined up to really make a difference in the carbon capture and sequestration game. A study out of the University of Texas at Austin published in greenhouse gases, science and technology has determined that in the Gulf States, thanks to their unique geology and the technology that is available there, they already have carbon capture technology that's been implemented to assist with the getting of gas. So if you start pushing the carbon in and the gas comes out and it started this whole process. But because of the economics, the declining economics of petroleum extraction, it may be more advantageous for companies to start simply heading into carbon capture and sequestration. And so Texas and Louisiana, which are the number one and number two carbon emitters in the entire country or the United States, if they could start putting away some of that carbon through sequestration, it might make a bit of a difference. So technology, economy, science, it's starting to come together little piece by little piece. And it's good to see some of these things potentially making a turn. We will see where it goes. Speaking of turns, is it a squadron? Is it a colander? Is it a murder? A gaggle? Justin, what are you seeing out there? It's Palomar 5, which is one of the sparsest star clusters. And it is located in our galactic halo. Our galactic halo is kind of like what you imagine a halo to be, this sort of glowing-ness on the outskirts sort of surrounding our galaxy. If you were an astronomer in another galaxy using our best technology to see our galaxy, you might not see it, because it's so far out there onto the fringe. But new research published in Nature Astronomy shows that in Palomar 5, this star cluster, 20% of the mass of that cluster is made from a population of black holes. Now they think the Palomar 5 formed like a normal black hole to star formation, but it's out on the outskirts, and there wasn't a whole lot of star formation taking place, and meanwhile the black holes kept sort of eating up and devouring what was there. So the point now where they say a billion years from now, the cluster will dissolve as a 100% black hole cluster. So we'll have to worry about that before global warming anyway, so we'll be fine. The black holes will eat us first, right? Is that how that timing works? No? Well, here's the fun thing about it. Here's the fun thing, like this, like, okay, so I've been, this is one of my, one of my end-year prediction things, right, that we will see orbiting black holes, like a little solar system of black holes. This is the closest I've gotten on that prediction, is finding this tight cluster of black holes that are living there. But also what happens when it does turn to 100% cluster of black holes? Do we even know it's there? Is it like how hard is it to then to see? Because these are stellar masses. These are, you know, black holes as big as stars. They're not mega super monsters that are going to be distorting incredible. Right, and it's in the Milky Way, so it's not like even all of them together would be more than the mass of the Milky Way, right? Oh, no, not at all. For the super giant black hole that's at the center, right? There could be a black hole right behind you. But it means like, then we could, we could actually have tiny black hole clusters all around our galaxy and not even know it. But it's the, yeah, it's, is the gravitation happening in an area to bend light, but where there is no light? Or where we're not seeing the light? If it's not on the halo, we won't have other stars in our galaxy really as a backdrop. We'd have to go outside of our galaxy and use other galaxies. And that's not going to be as easy if they're not big giant monsters. Time to take a trip, I guess. Could be everywhere. Time for us to get on out of this galaxy. Send our little ships out there, right? Gotta take pictures from elsewhere. Let's get on it. Come on, humanity. Clusters of, I love the idea that there are these just roving murders. I love the, I love trying to figure out what a group of black holes would be called. Astronomers, if you are watching, please let us know if you already have a term. I would love to know the official term for it. It would be like a rogue group. An opacity of black holes. Ooh, I like that. That's a pretty good one. A darkness of black holes. Blair, what did you want to talk about? Oh, you know, we've talked in this show previously about allergies and there's a really common theory that has been around for more than 20 years that if you have to clean of a home, your children will develop allergies. There have been studies that we've talked about where houses with dishwashers have had children with greater kind of instances of allergies. But there is a new paper that came out this week looking specifically at this question and this idea that potentially it's clean as much as you want. So this is published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Researchers wanted to look at kind of everything that has come up at this point, every study that has been published, everything that might indicate that you need some filth in your home essentially to either seed your child's microbiome and or prevent allergies from forming. So what they came up with were four main points. So the first, microorganisms found in a modern home are to a significant degree, not the ones you need for immunity. So sanitizing will not deprive your child of their microbiome. Secondly, vaccines in addition in addition to protecting us from the infection that they target do a lot more to strengthen our inherent immune systems. So we now know we don't need to risk death by being exposed to pathogens. So vaccines do a better job of training your immune system than actually getting sick. So that's number two. Number three, we now have concrete evidence that the microorganisms of the natural green environment, the ones that seed your gut are important for our health and domestic cleaning and hygiene have no bearing on human exposure to the natural environment. And then the fourth point is that there has been recent research that demonstrates that when epidemiologists find an association between cleaning the home and health problems like allergies, this is often not caused by removal of organisms, but exposure of the lungs to cleaning products that cause damage that encourages the development of allergies. Oh, but so don't clean. No, right back where we started. Kids are not when your kids are around. So basically, they are suggesting that clean as much as you want, you're not going to give your children allergies by depriving them of biota, essentially. Well, is that what it's saying? Or is it saying that the house environment, whether filthy or clean, about the same. But it's different than going outside. They are saying the benefit of a healthy home is great. The benefit of a dirty home is nothing. What they're saying. Yeah. So the dirty home isn't going to do much damage. It's not going to do much good either. And it's more it's not going to do much good. The dirty home can actually be worse and get you. And so they were concerned more that like, for example, not cleaning well, you could leave salmonella on your kitchen counter from cleaning chicken, right? Or whatever. Or like not using dishwasher. I mean, really, when I take raw chicken and just use it as a sponge. Like who's doing that? No, I think there's a difference between using a cleaning product and wiping something down, right? And so, yes, that was an extreme example. But still, there are schools of thought that you need your child to be exposed to bacteria virus, just any that over cleaning can hurt your child. That is something that we've talked about on the show. And that people do think it is a common conception. In fact, that's part of what this research was looking at. Was it how pervasive that was? And they consider it a pervading view of public narrative in Western 21st century society. That if you are too hygienic, they are less exposed to germs. And in early life, and become less resistant to allergies. And so this is responding to that. Okay, fair enough. But the whole thing, the whole conversation about allergies, though, I always think that as more of an indoor kid versus an outdoor kid issue. But that's not what this was about. No, I understand that it's not what- And we're still not understanding it. I think what this study is saying is we still don't understand enough about allergies, really. Well, and it also specifically called out stuff from the natural environment, and that that actually is important. So what you're saying is actually backed up by this study. Okay, that's good. Because it's very confusing. I've heard about this argument since I was a unit child, which was before, I think, germ theory. And it was very much focused on the isolation of the indoor environment versus, you know, when I was a kid, you weren't allowed to come home until it got dark. That's when you had to come home. But before that, you weren't allowed in the house. That was not a place you were as a kid. Children are not allowed in the house except to eat dinner, go to sleep, and then off to school the next day. And then the rest of the time, kids are not allowed indoors. But that was always what I thought the argument was, not like whether the level of cleanliness up within them. Oh yeah, the hygiene. We've talked about it a lot, Justin, the hygiene hypothesis. Yeah, totally. And that was the whole dishwasher thing. Yeah, houses with dishwashers had more allergies. But then, you know, this is the theory here is like, actually, are you leaving film of cleaning products in your home that is getting in your children's respiratory tract? Yeah, maybe dishwashers somehow vaporize more cleaning products that get into the air that are then breathed than washing dishes by hand. Yeah, so there are variables that maybe have not been even investigated yet. There's a lot more to be looked at. Absolutely. But bottom line, clean your house. You're not going to hurt your kids. Don't be afraid. Clean your house. It's okay. Just open a window. Oh, all right. Justin, how long would you like to live? Uh, that's a very important question. As long as possible. Obviously, I have the only one I know what's standing do not resuscitate order. I mean, do resuscitate. What if, what if, what if, what if, what if we could increase your lifespan? Uh, uh, uh, oh, okay, okay. I've made a few deals with the devil. With a very one simple procedure. First off, full record, it was a hot day. I wanted a cold beer. I may have sold my soul that day for the cold, for one cold beer. I didn't think forward. There's always a catch. Sorry, never mind. Yes, what do I have to do to live forever, Kiki? What do I have to do? Uh, we just would need to get rid of your testicles. Yeah, okay. Perfect. You're fine. I don't need them anymore. That's what it takes. Maybe different men of different ages might have different responses to this possibility. But new researchers, new research being published in the open access journal E Life finds that looking at measures of the epigenetic clock in sheep that have been castrated versus not castrated, they found that castrating male sheep delays the aging of DNA compared to intact males and that the DNA and the methylation, which is a signature of epigenetic markers, maintains more female characteristics in the castrated males than in the intact males. Women are known to live longer than men, and there may be epigenetics at play in this process. And they discovered that, well, for a long time, farmers and scientists have known that castrated male sheep live longer. But this is the first time anyone checked the DNA. Anyone checked the DNA to see if the markers of aging were actually changing, and lo and behold, they are. So you just need to get rid of your male, major male sex characteristic, and there's the possibility of living longer. Yeah. Well, then again, like, what's the point? Well, live longer, healthier as well. Again. Again. What's the point? That said, there is a significant amount of overlap between the various groups. Individuals of all study groups, female, intact male, and castrated males of these sheep, lived to a variety of different ages, where there were some female sheep who didn't live very long, some that lived a very long time. So these epigenetic sex-related markers are definitely not the only factor involved in aging. It's just a part of it. Yet it does seem to affect the timing. Yeah. In sheep. Not in men. Human. Not just sheep right now. But they're mammals. We use sheep for all sorts of research. And anyway. Yeah. Humans are very hard to track when it comes to longevity things. There's enough people who have decided to go that direction at some point in life that you might be able to get a pool of people who could track in their lifetime. But then like, three out of a hundred will smoke and four out of a hundred will die in a car crash and five out of a hundred have genetic... So many different variables. Exactly. And it's just like, ah! That can be nothing. Couldn't you narrow down what this is doing inside the body and just do that without removing anything? So, yes. Testosterone. You could also find people who have lower natural levels of testosterone as an example perhaps and see if that effect is there. Right. So that would be one aspect. The other aspect is for people who potentially want to live longer. Maybe there is some blocker that could be involved. They found that the way that certain molecule complexes interacted with the methylation when castrated or not castrated changed. And so maybe there is something that could be used as a target for therapy for humanity wanting to live longer. So maybe we can not alter testosterone even but alter the way that methylation is affected in our DNA. So, yeah. So, epigenetics, methylation. Yeah, that's the end result that people are going to probably be hoping for. Also, of course, just like so many studies, this is male skewed. On purpose, I don't know. Well, that would be a hard study to do on women. I'm just gonna say. Yes. You figured out how to make them red live longer first. No fair! Well, because the women already live longer. Mostly. Yeah, but longer. This is more making it so the men would live as long as females, not live longer than females, necessarily. Blair, are you already? How does it take it to raise all ships? Blair's just jealous. She wants to live forever and we know this. All right, Justin. You wanted to talk about something, like bats or something. Oh, there is a bat story out there. Yeah, have you ever wondered where they come from? Caves? How, where, when did a... Something, a common ancestor with whales. I know that. So, it's tricky because actually, you heard that, I've always, I heard at some point it got locked in that their closest living relative was horses, which are in the clad that sort of, at some early point became whales and penguins. I don't know. But apparently that's not necessarily true because we don't know. We really don't know. It's so far back and we just don't know. And it only happened once. There's only one flying mammal and that's the bat. And once it could fly, it went everywhere. There are the dominant species on the planet now in terms of the amount of diversity, the amount of geographic territories that they cover. A lot of people I don't think realize how dominant bats are too because we're not watching them. They're going around at night. We can't really see them. If they were flying around the day, they might be quite a bit more obvious. We don't pay attention to things that happen at night. We're sleeping most of the time or we live in cities where there's all sorts of lights so that we can't, we're not watching them any because they stay away. This is teams from University of Kansas and China doing field work in Jengar Basin, a very remote sedimentary basin northwest China, discovered fossil teeth belonging to two separate species of an ancient bat or two separate specimens of the same ancient bat, I should say. Published in biology letters, their papers describe the oldest known bat fossils from Asia, pushing back evolutionary records for bats on that continent to the dawn of the Eocene and boosting the possibility the bat family tree might have originated in Asia. This is Christopher Beard, Kansas U professor of biology. I can think of two mammal groups that are alive today that are really weird. One of them is bats because they fly and that's just ridiculous. The other is whales because they're completely adapted to life in the ocean. They can swim obviously and they do a little bit of sonar echolocation themselves. We know a lot about transitional fossils for whales. There are fossils from places like Pakistan where quadrupedal mammals that looked vaguely dog-like. We have a whole sequence of fossils linking these things that were clearly terrestrial animals walking around on land through almost every kind of transitional phase you can imagine up into the modern whale. This isn't true for bats. For bats, literally, you've got normal mammal and then bat. No explanation how that happened. And as co-author Matthew Jones, doctoral student at KU, bats showed up in the fossil record out of the blue about 55-ish million years ago and they're already scattered on different parts of the... And already are scattered around the globe 55 million years ago. Not there. They're there and they're everywhere. Which isn't too, too surprising if you can fly. You aren't limited to the same range that you were before. But yeah, before this, the earliest known bats are from a couple of places in Europe, Portugal, Southern France, and Australia. So when they show up early in the fossil record as these new fossils, they're already effectively worldwide. By the time we get their earliest known full skeletons, they look modern. They can fly. Most of them are able to echolocate. We don't really know anything about this transition period from non-bats to bats. We don't even really know what their closest relatives are among mammals. It's a really big evolutionary mystery where bats came from and how they evolved to be so specialized. Don't you think a big part of that is because they're so light and delicate that the fossil record is just grind bat bones to a fine powder? Yeah. So as soon as they're starting to take flight and get kind of like that, I wonder if it's harder to find transitionary fossils because of that. So that's a great point because when you're talking about a lot of dinosaur or whale bone, you're talking about these huge skeletons that are going to have a lot harder time getting worn by nature. In chemistry out of our view. But the other part of the bats are, they're everywhere. Why, you know, they're in a place that could have a bog that they could fall into a bog and be preserved or a mudslide should hit them or there's something somewhere we should have evidence of these ancient transitions. But I guess, I guess that would be the point. It'd be the thing before they were flying and before they were spread out over the entire world would be the trick But perhaps there is that genetic evidence. The more that researchers delve into bats, pangolins, all of these species that we're concerned about as reservoirs for these diseases that we're worried about. We're going to learn a lot more about all of these species and we're going to see a lot of similarities that will place them within the evolutionary tree more clearly. I also think it's really easy to make mistakes. Well, you know, I'm no paleontologist but how do you tell the difference between a digging animal with long fingers for digging and a transitionary pre-bat with long fingers that are transitioning into wing shapes? Right? So I think, I think there also maybe just need the DNA. Exactly. Not needing, not having the DNA being able to DNA test fossils going, okay, this is a bat predecessor. Okay, maybe we arranged the skeleton wrong. And so I think, I think that's the other problem here is that you're going from quadrupedal thing to flying thing in a way that- Yeah, flying squirrels but no, no flying squirrels before the bats. But yeah. Right, yes. And also, like you were saying, those soft tissues disappear. So if there were early protobats that had thin membranes, those would be gone. They wouldn't be preserved in the fossil record. So the teeth that they found though, they're definitely bat-like and primitive version of that, they sort of describe. But that's all they have is these teeth fossils thus far of this ancient thing. So they're going to keep looking now. This is apparently a very remote desolate area but it also means that there's not been people digging out sewage pipes and putting in home foundations and everything else. So in a way, it's also an untouched area of exploration. So if they found one thing, they could find more. Because at this point, they don't know if this fossil belongs to something that could fly or echolocate. They say it's definitely related to the modern bat. It's got already its art that the teeth are already heading there and the signatures there. But this might already be that missing link. They just need to go back and do some more digging. Who knows? Maybe we'll find a specimen down a well. Check all the wells of China. That's the first place to look. Check all the wells. Apparently that's where people like to hide their fossils. Yeah. Well, vampire bats like to hide in trees. So if you're going to be talking about vampire bats anytime soon, go check those trees. Caves and trees. What? Yes. They like those nooks and those crannies. And that's the place where they all socialize and they get to know each other. And Blair, you've talked about before the social nature of these bats and the way that they have little cliques and they get to have little groups of friends and they maintain these friendships. Well, they also have dominance and subordinates within these populations of males and females and males are generally not dominant because they're smaller on average than the female vampire bats. So males, they kind of go out of the equation here. They're subordinate when it comes to the hierarchy. But in other species with hierarchies, with dominance, you have individuals that maintain that dominance that try to show how strong they are. So most of the studies of primates that we've seen have been looking at dominance and seeing that, whoa, well that female, she beat that other female up or that male, you know, these these different animals, they show their dominance to maintain their dominance. Well, researchers at Ohio State University just publishing in Royal Society Open Science recorded 1,023 competitive interactions concerning food over three months in a captive colony of vampire bats This is in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. There were 24 adult females captured from two distant sites as well as nine young bats, four males and five females. They picked the winners and the losers based on displacement of a feeding bat by an intruding bat, feeding bats maintenance of its position and a nearby bat waiting to eat until another bat leaves the feeder. So all these kinds of like dominant and subordinate things that could be determined. So based on looking at this social ranking, they couldn't tell you much of anything at all because it appears that vampire bats don't do anything to maintain their dominance. They're just like, okay. And the dominant females, the ones that they know are dominant very often will let another bat eat first. Will not fight another bat even though the researchers thought they would or should based on interactions they've seen with all sorts of primates. Is it because they're they're latching onto a cow rear and they're not there's plenty. There's plenty of blood to go around. Yeah. And so that's the question. They think that with most of these other animals that have a group it's important. They say the researcher says in a group of animals that's always together it's really important to work out who's dominant because when you come across food you all come across that food together with vampire bats. They have this society inside of a tree and all of the relationships are worked out but we think that vampire bats don't hunt as a stable group. They go out in forage and come back together. And so what that means is that they're not always coming across a food resource together and having to decide who's going to get access to it first. There's no deciding. It's just there. Someone gets it. Someone doesn't. And we know that vampire bats if some of their friend bats don't get food they'll regurgitate food for them. They're like here I'll share my food with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah the fact that they already have that precedence of food sharing means there's like very little reason. Absolutely. And what is the primate solution for everything? Primate solution to yeah violence. Primates. Primate wants to date another primate. They use violence. Primate wants to be in charge. They use violence. Primate wants to take over another primate's territory. They use violence. I want to be like a vampire bat. When you look around the rest of the animal kingdom the rest of the beasts we're the ones using all of the violence. It's our particular our particular clad. Anyway I thought this was very interesting because it is a different way to be. And it's vampire bats that show us the way to being less violent. Who needs to be violent to maintain our dominance? This week in science certainly doesn't. This is This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of the show. If you love the show tell a friend to listen today. I only have one story for our covid update. This week. And it's interesting. There's. No masks involved. No vaccines involved. Just a very interesting story about. A possible second receptor that SARS-CoV-2 might latch on to. We have talked a lot about SARS-CoV-2 and. The ACE-2 receptor. That SARS-CoV-2 and the spike protein. The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 enables it to latch on to the ACE-2 receptor in the epithelia to gain access to the cells to replicate and do its viral viral job. We've also seen that there are a lot of unexplained effects that are not necessarily immune system regulated beyond the epithelia. So we have multiple layers to our tissues. There's the the epiderm. There's an endoderm. Mesoderm. Many different layers. Right. So. What a group of researchers looked at was the endothelium. The endothelium that's past the epithelium. That layer that's just after those surface cells and they discovered that there is a unique K403R spike protein substitution in SARS-CoV-2 that allows SARS-CoV-2 to bind to a surface integrin. This is a common protein on endothelial cells. A specific integrin called alpha V beta 3. And it is widely expressed in endothelial tissues around our bodies. So this is like the this is the virus gets into our bloodstream and then it attacks the epithelia of our bloodstream and then it can get into the endothelia of the bloodstream and start to have a more systemic more dysfunctional response. And what they've found is that it passes from the epithelium to the endothelium. Epithelium using ACE-2 the endothelium using this alpha V beta 3 that then allows it to get into the endothelial cells. So it's able to attack. I'm thoroughly confused. So it enables it to attack two levels of tissue that it wouldn't that most viruses wouldn't normally be able to. Okay. So it's in our blood. I'm just let me I got confused. Work it through. Work it through. I got to confuse. So it can attach to the outside of our skin and do stuff the tissues inside of our blood. So there's also the epithelia on the inside of our vasculature. So our blood vessels all of these tubes and linings it's not just epithelia on our that's our we call our skin epithelia. That's the outer lining but that's not the only place that there's an epithelium. There's also an epithelium in our gut. There's epithelium in our vasculature. There are lots of these are the surface tissues and the endothelium is underneath the surface tissues. And so it's gaining deeper access using a different lock and key. Well say yeah different lock different key. So does this mean in some scenario where you're doing your hand washing or your surface cleaning of the outside layer of your skin there could be virus lurking below? No, no, no, no, no. This has nothing to do with your skin. Okay. This has nothing to do with your skin. This is if you imagine your skin it transitions. You know you got this transmission that this transition at your lip gets nice and pink and then it goes inside your mouth but you still have coverings. It seems soft and fleshy but it's on the inside. You're a tube. Yeah, you're a tube. There's an outside covering in it. It's all epithelia. So there's epithelia inside your lungs. And so when your airways the lining of your airways is epithelia but then the next layer in is the endothelium. And so layer in like deeper under the exterior layer. Yes. So is this something that we're worried about getting kind of showing up due to mutation or something that we think might happen as they have nothing else to grab onto as we all become vaccinated? What is the concern here? So it's not a concern. This is an advancement in our understanding as to why SARS-CoV-2 is has been so unusual compared to other SARS viruses. Why is it why does it cause the problems that it does? Why do we have the inflammatory issues that we do? Why do we have? Why does it last so long? Why does it last so long? How is it getting into tissues that we didn't think it should be able to get into? Why are we finding it places we didn't think it should be if it's only an epithelial virus? If the ACE2 receptor if the ACE2 receptor is only in the epithelia, why is how is it getting in these other things? And so what they've discovered is it has another lock and key. There is there is another lock on endothelial cells and it's able to latch onto that and gain access to other groups of tissues. And so it answers a lot of questions about or it begins to answer a lot of questions about how SARS-CoV-2 has been as bad in its disease form COVID-19 compared to others. Can we use this to kill it more? Yes. And so that is that's the other this could lead to more treatments. Exactly. This could lead to if we know that it's attaching to this particular receptor, this integrin, what medicines do we have? What do we always already have in place? How can we use this to help treat it better? Exactly. Great. Yeah. So this is not bad news. I mean, it's the oh god, it's another receptor. But this is good news in our understanding. It's our understanding is coming richer and that's going to help our approach. Well, and this will also help us know how to look at the next coronavirus. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, not our skin. We're talking about lungs and blood vessels and all sorts of things like that. But it's yeah, interesting. It's good to think of ourselves. Yeah. Like an onion. Thank you very much identity for think of humans like onions. With many, they are so layered inside and out. They both make me cry. They do. Any more COVID news from either of you? I've totally ignored the subject all week. Good. Very good. I hope. Well, let's keep going with more science from this week in science. I would love now to introduce you to a segment of the show that we know and love only as Blair's Animal Corner. Except for giant What you got, Blair? I have the Beatles. I have two different stories about the Beatles. The animal, the beetle, of course, the first is about a very old beetle. And this is the agent beetle discovered in, you guessed it, fossilized poop. For the first time ever, scientists have found a new species in poop. And this is actually in a dinosaur ancestor. And so the record for the most ancient beetle ever found was actually found in amber or fossilized tree resin about a hundred and five million ago. This poop is around 230 million years old. The beetle, Triamixicoprolithica. Because of where it was found. Yeah, exactly. What is the name for dinosaur feces, fossilized dinosaur feces is called coprolites. Yes. So, Triamixicoprolithica. It's the first insect scientifically described from fossilized feces. Coprolites are abundant already in museum and research collections. There's fossilized poop everywhere. But until recently, few scientists have examined these quote little capsules of incredible fossil record for content. Because researchers didn't think small insects could successfully pass through a digestive system and then still be recognizable out the other end, which makes sense because, you know, in stomach acid. But if I may, they assumed that this dinosaur ate this beetle and this is where I am not 100% convinced because beetles love poop. So, do we know for sure, for sure that that beetle passed through and didn't enter of its own free will after it was already out of the dinosaur? I'm just saying this came out of Upsulla University. They examined fossilized droppings from Poland. They were from the Triassic period again, about 230 million years ago. They picked something bigger, about two centimeters long. It had broken ends. So, you know, if you if you notice these things about poop, that means that it came from a larger piece, which then means that likely there are some bigger pieces in it. If it was a big piece of poop, that's a big animal, which means maybe they don't chew well and, you know, their intestines are larger. There's less squishing happening internally. You know, I don't know. That's kind of, they were like big poop. Maybe there's stuff in there. So, then they exposed it to an X-ray beam. They rotated it. They created 3D reconstructions of everything inside. And they found this 1.4 millimeter long beetle, as well as a bunch of pieces, heads, antenna, legs. This is where it starts to sound like they got eaten. Right? So, because of those other pieces and because the poop was kind of unbroken, that is why the assumption is that they passed through the intestine. I am just going to throw out there. There are other ways for beetles to end up inside poop. So, we can't, I just think we can't be sure. So, I think you're, I think you're right there. I mean, maybe if it got in after you would expect some crawling trail, like a tunnel of some sort, but yeah, you never know. Especially considering the fact that it was separated from other, some other big chunks. So, maybe it landed and fell and. Yeah, and I think this is the thing is that the reason amber is so good at preserving insects is the same reason poop is. It is in micro environment. It's not exposed to the elements. It preserves organic material. And when things are kind of flattened in the fossilizing process, there's a little bit of a buffer, a squish factor there, right? So, all of that to say, it retains it from getting too squished in the fossilization fossilization process. That squishing and flattening and compacting of the fossilization process might have rounded out any crawling passageways in from the poop. Just saying anything. But so the the poop based on the size and the contents is presumed to have been from psilosaurus opalensis, which is a beaked dinosaur about 2.3 meters long. So, if you think about that, it's like what is that type of story? That's like eight feet long, right? So, that's a bigger, it's definitely a bigger dinosaur. And so, this is who they think ate the beetles or the beetles weren't to eat their poop either way. But regardless, very cool. It's more than just finding this species and discovering that there is an animal in the feces, there is now an untapped resource. All of these coprolites throughout the world in museum collections could potentially be imaged and inspected. And there might be other animals that are caught in there from much farther back than Amber allows us to see. Yeah, that's really, that's fascinating. So, if we're able to look into these coprolites, maybe we will see more things than we've ever expected. So, someone in the chat room is asking whether or not, whether or not beetles could possibly have been born in, if it was an egg that passed through the digestive tract that could have made its way and been born. That is interesting. I think that it's certainly possible. We've certainly reported on the show on animals that do that. I think that it depends on the beetle, on the type of eggs that they're coming from if stomach acid is beneficial or detrimental to those eggs. But yeah, I think that's certainly possible. But then, how do they survive the trip from inside out? Right. Interesting. Okay. Maybe it depends on the species of beetle as well, like what family it's a part of and how often that kind of a potentially digestive tract life cycle they might have. I don't know how many beetles have that kind of a... Yeah. Anyway, yep. For those of you who are interested, if you look for images of this beetle that was found in the dinosaur dung, it is a very well preserved beetle. It just, it's got all its legs. It looks like a beetle. It's like, you know, a little messy from the the 3D scanning. But it's definitely, it's a beetle. It's got its antennae and everything. It's awesome. Where am I? Oh, I'm in poop again. Just where I like to be. A beetle. Yeah, exactly. So moving from poop to water, I have a story about a beetle that swims in a really unusual way. Not from 230 million years ago, but from today. This is an accidental discovery by researchers from the University of Newcastle and the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research. They were scouting tadpoles in pools of water in Callahan, Australia. At first, they saw a beetle that was swimming across the surface. Nothing too unusual there. Closer looks showed not only was the beetle upside down and submerged, but was using the surface as a means of transport. Beetles can't do the back stroke, right? Because they don't have the range of movement. So these guys were scurrying along the bottom of the surface of water. It's like the opposite of a water strider. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So this is a water scavenger beetle. They were walking on the under surface of water. So water striders, for example, they use surface tension on the top to skate. But this guy walks under on the under surface as if they were walking on top of it. It looks exact. It's like a mirror image. It's like they're in the upside down. So it's like they're trying to traverse under ice, but it's not ice. Yes. It's just the surface of the water. Yes. And so they took some videos. They scoured literature for similar finds, didn't really find anything. Only thing they found was that some snails are able to slide along the under surface of the water, but they apply slime to do so. The literature did not show anything about anybody walking on the under surface of water. And so what they found by taking videos and doing all sorts of research was that they, first of all, they place a bubble, which you can see in the video if you're watching along. They place a bubble on their abdomen. It's like they're hugging it kind of. And that seems to help with buoyancy, they think. And then they also, the other thing they do is it almost looks like they punch through the surface of the water in a weird way. So they exert pressure on the under surface. And with each step, the beetle's foot pushed a small amount of water above surface to give it traction. So yeah, it's almost like they're punching holes in it as they go. And so, of course, they have a lot more work they want to do. The first thing they want to do is, still, they're trying to find another animal that does this. They want to find it to be more than just a fluke of this one type of water beetle. And then after that, they want to know if they can walk on top the same way they walk underneath. So they want to take these little guys, scoop them up and plop them on top of the surface tension and see what they do. They also want to see if this air bubble is being used to help them breathe. Which they don't know yet. Why not? That sounds like it would be. Yeah, natural, right? And then they also ultimately think that all of this research could be used, of course, for... The military. Pretty much, yeah. Robots. Robots, oh, the military robots. Yeah, so just imagine, just next time you're in a pool, just dunk your head under the water and then imagine trying to punch through the surface of the water and scurrying along it like you would scurry on the ground. Yeah, no, it's a fascinating technique. It's really similar. The water strider example, you see them skating along the surface of the water. And water striders, it's like they're these wonderful ice skaters and they just push gently. But these are like underwater mountain climbers and they're using their crampons and they're grabbing onto the holds and pulling themselves along. It's an interesting difference. And I'm sure there is a bit of a difference in the physics. I'd love to have the physicists, engineers get a hold of the physics of it for the difference between the top down in the air versus the bottom up in the water and the differences of the two substances. Yeah, so the water striders using surface tension. The beetle is breaking surface tension, but they're not breaking it too hard because if they did, that bubble that's right up against the surface tension would merge with the air above it. Yep. And then they'd just be underwater. That's something interesting in that footage that you're showing where it almost looks like at the feet, the light that's being shown kind of is highlighting the very ends, the very ends of the feet. And I'm wondering if they're somehow grabbing a bubble of air down with their feet. Like if this is also part of the- They're like feeding it? Yeah, it's almost like there's like- I don't know. It's really hard to tell what's going on there, but there's definitely the light is reacting right at the ends of the little legs that are sort of breaking that surface. Yeah, it's so fun to- I encourage everyone to find this video. Yeah, it's very fascinating. It's so- it looks like jello. It looks like they're inside of jello the way that they're moving it and it looks kind of viscous, almost solid. And that water does look like it might have a little bit of a mossy film to it. Like also, like there might be a little extra help. Like you might go back to the lab. Yeah. You might get back to the lab and they just sink. For sure. Scoop of that, yeah. Scoop of that pond water. There you go. You know what? You can also take back to the lab with you, twist. We're just about everywhere. You can listen to us in the lab. You can listen to us in the car. You can listen to us on a bike. You can listen to us in a jar. And if you really, really, really love the show, help support the ongoing efforts of twist to bring science to you every single week. Head over to twist.org, click on our Patreon link, and choose your level of support. $10 and up every month. And you will be thanked by name at the end of the show because we really can't do this without you. Thank you for your support. All right, Justin. Do you have a story of science to tell? Yeah, I have a story about veterinarians. University of California in a city called Davis. They have found that a cat's DNA alters how it responds to lifesaving medication. So apparently this is like, we've heard a lot about the problems that cats cause society. We know about the many diseases, what specific parasite that causes a lot of diseases in humans or tax humans. Cats apparently are not immune to effects of disease themselves. Turns out one in seven cats has a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or HCM and it's a very life-threatening. They can get blood clots and they can die at a relatively young cat feline age, I suppose. Cause a cat's heart muscle begins to thicken, condition worsens, they form blood clots in their hearts. They may get the, I guess you know how you have a cat stroke from this. Or, yeah. So there's a couple of medications that are out there. One of them is called Plavix. But it works like- Is that a human? That's a human heart drug. Works on cats, apparently. Okay. It works about 20% of the time. Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Data shows that nearly 20% of cats had resistance to that, to the therapy. And this is a therapy that's used all over the world. So they kind of did this study, just see why this drug is working here or that drug isn't working there. And basically they did find a genetic link. They found a genetic link in a test that allowed them to see that part of the drug pathway was being blocked by the cat's own genetic makeup. This is really similar to humans as well. We find that there are many difference between different groups of people, males and females, blacks, whites, Asians. Like there are genetic differences in how we respond to drugs. And it's interesting that cats do as well. Yeah. So what they found is like they've actually got their- So the part of the problem is your local veterinarian does not have genetic testing available for your cat. The lab that they send out to may have some limited basis of this, but there's nobody that's got the quick test for, for instance, this. So what they're saying is they might actually be able to come up with a rapid test that looks for just the specific mutation. Nice. And then you could tell, okay, the vet then can say, all right, we can treat your cat, but we're not going to use this mainstream drug. We're going to use this other one over here that works down a little bit different pathway. A little bit different pathway. Might not be as effective as the other, generally speaking, but in personalized medicine, you don't care about generalized thinking because you want specifically what's going to work based on your genetic makeup. And it's kind of- Justin, yeah, thank you for bringing a story that might lead to my cats being helped one day. Of course. All I've ever wanted to do is help the cats, Kiki. Oh, okay. As long as they're- Sure. As long as they don't have toxoplasma. As long as they don't have toxoplasma. I want to rid the world, not of cats, but of toxoplasma. Of course. That's it. Yeah, keep your cats inside. Okay, so I know that dogs, for example, you can do DNA, like, what breed is my dog? Sort of stuff. I have a feeling that probably exists for cats too. I have not looked into it. But that's a sort of thing where you could start including this in that. So just because- Just like with 23 and me, I used to just be like, you're 8% Jewish and this and that or whatever, you know? And then now they're saying like, oh, you actually- You could be predisposed to this thing. Talk to your doctor about this, right? So this could be a way to leverage a market that already exists to help give better, better and airy care. Yeah, and what's sort of interesting about this too is I don't know that it's got a predictor of whether or not your cat is the one out of seven that gets this disease. But it might be able to tell you 100% what drug you should use if your cat gets it, right? Which is a whole other field of length. Then it doesn't even matter what you're predisposed to or not. You don't have to worry about it. You get something. Oh gosh, I have this awful disease. And now your doctor already knows based on your genomic situation how the best path of treatment. So it's a pretty cool story. So good for cats. I'm glad the cats are getting really good research done in their favor. Gosh knows the mice have quite a big advantage. They absolutely do. I think we have cured not only the diseases known to mice but we've cured mice and diseases they can't even get. There's a face on the moon. There's a face on Mars. There are faces to be found in your ceiling perhaps. Maybe it's in your carpet. Maybe it's in the side of a mountain. Maybe there are faces to be found on pretty much any imaginable inanimate object. And that's before we even start talking about toast. People see faces there too. Until now scientists haven't really understood exactly what the brain is doing when processing visual signals that it interprets as human face. Kind of had the suspicion that the reason humans see faces everywhere is because it's useful for us to recognize another human face in this world that we live in. At some point there weren't that many humans. Being able to recognize there's another human then being able the second part of it though is being able to analyze that other human state. Again we came from these very violent primates mostly very violent primates. So you always had to know what their motive or the mood or the intent of that face was. That especially that like face that other hominid that other human face what are they thinking? Do they mean me ill? Or do they mean me doom? I think those were the choices. Harm or destruction? Whatever it is you really want to analyze it. Well so what's interesting here is that okay so this is like one of the quickest things our brain does it detects a face super super quickly and it doesn't apply too hard and fast of a rule to what is or isn't a face because you're always better off guessing face and then being wrong. But what's interesting about this that is that they found that the part of the brain that's analyzing the mood of a face continues long after you've recognized the thing as an inanimate object. So it's still going hey that's an angry potato. Yeah is that clock coming on to me? I kind of feel like it's I don't know it's it. That's just an imagination right? You're just like getting kind of lost and thought and feeling. No no no it's processing emotion in a tent. Yeah yeah emotion versus reason right? Yeah brain split second says oh face. Yeah attention goes to it third of a second later not a face. Other part of the brain is it happy? Does it like me? Is it angry? What mood is it in? No no it's not we figured out. I thought it was a face I was wrong. Yeah I recognized it's not a face. Yes but what does that face or not face is intention. Keeps going long after you figured out not a face. The mop is my favorite I think. The mop? The mop. The mop. It looks like a Muppet and I love it. Right does your mop look like a Muppet? Does your mop? I have to say I had a lot of fun playing games with my son when he was young related to whether or not the vacuum cleaner or the pool sweep was going to eat him you know. It was fun it was not real we made it a game. Yeah. Just the brave little toaster come to life here. That's right. Yeah I think this is so fascinating that we have these because of the way that processing works in the brain we have these different this different differing abilities where we're like it's a mop. No it's a happy mop. No it's a sad mop. It's a mad mop. Suddenly our mop turns into a Dr. Seuss book. Face or no face? You be the judge. So is the man in the moon happy? Man in the moon looks pretty happy. I think so and Pluto has a heart on it so that's all good. I have some stories. Do you want to hear some stories? Yeah okay let's talk about brains because I like the brains. Do you want brains first or trout? Trout that's dessert. Start with the brains. Okay trout we'll have trout for dessert. So we're going to start by putting rats in VR and no they didn't make little tiny VR headsets and I'm really upset about this because I think rats in VR headsets would be fantastic so that's what I'm waiting for but they created little enclosures where the entire surrounding was virtual. It was a screen with lights that were projected in colorful bands around the arena that the rat was in so the floor like the entire environment the rat was put in was a screen that could change because they couldn't make a VR headset small enough for a rat. So caveat number one they weren't exactly in VR the way that a human would be in VR but that said researchers have put rats in VR and come up with some very interesting results. These results being the discovery of an entirely new brainwave this general wave of activity within a particular region of the hippocampus the area of the brain that's responsible for bringing in signals and turning them into memories. And so the researchers put the rats into these VR enclosures and they were looking for normal brainwaves and we know that when people when rats when all sorts of organisms walk or run our brain has theta waves and the theta waves are kind of like the the flow state they're the waves that get going when you're just letting your brain kind of go with the flow your deepen work you are in the shower you're taking a walk or running and so they found that as the rat was walking around in its enclosure with this virtual reality externa around it the theta waves boosted up compared to if it were walking around normally and they created a control enclosure that was made out of real life colors and things that looked exactly the same as the virtual reality enclosure except it was real where everything was physical so compared to that the theta waves in the rat brain boosted up when it was in VR and so they're like oh that's interesting but then they looked more closely and they found that in the area of the hippocampus where there are the dendrites so the projections from the cell bodies that the waves changed and there was a different wave occurring and it's something that has never been seen before in a human brain in an animal brain they haven't seen they're calling them the eto waves and they haven't seen these eto waves before the mice are getting to telekinesis right no this is what's happening they're involving telekinesis right before our eyes now we're just figuring out how to measure it for the first time they've always had it how do we measure it how do we take it out um but one of the the very exciting aspects to this is that they were able to discover that when they took the they looked for it with the rats in the regular enclosure the eto waves were there they just weren't as big so same as in the in the theta wave situation everything got boosted up so the eto waves are there nobody had ever seen them before okay so it wasn't this was not an this was not a a wave caused by the virtual reality effect on the the the brain it was right so the virtual reality effect is this boosting in a boosting yes so what we can see the signal loud there's yes so there's a difference obviously the brain can tell the difference between virtual reality and reality so as much as we've talked on the show and i've said the words before our brains think of virtual reality the same as reality they don't like the inputs there's things that are different so maybe the air on your face or the movement of your entire body or the fact that you are aware that you've put a headset on you know there are there's a difference your brain is aware of it and there is a boosting when the rats the rats mind you caveat go into vr and then there's this new eto wave so now we know what's the interesting thing here is there is a difference in communication between the cell bodies and the dendrites in so the same neuron the cell bodies were theta waving and the dendrites were eto waving so that means that the same neuron cell body that projects out and connects to other things elsewhere in the brain the same neuron is using different electrical signals different electrical frequencies to communicate at different points in its entire structure which is this is mind blowing this gives us a whole new way to look at how communication happens within the brain so multiple levels of interest is it telekinesis it's not telekinesis it's just the brain doing brain just the brain being brainy call me when it's telekinesis right so you know this is exciting because we can now potentially design virtual reality experiences to enhance when we are we are to enhance certain situations for learning or for therapeutics there are many different waves but potentially we can tune them or we can tune the vr specifically to the waves that our brains will produce knowing that they will be different from reality yep just the brains doing brain things okay so another really quick really really quick happy brainy story it's really small sample set 16 participants very very small 11 males 5 females with Parkinson's disease average age of 69 tested between October 24th and November 17th they all took part in an hour and a quarter long dance class once a week this dance class was correlated with a reduction in the development of the disease symptoms so those individuals that were participating in dance class over three years they found that the activity reduced daily motor issues like those related to balance and speech which often lead to social isolation so potentially dancing but not just dancing in your living room alone dancing with others with music could be beneficial well and and it being a lesson means they were trying they were using their brain more than just doing a dance they already knew also so working out your brain working out your body would make sense to help with Parkinson's yeah yeah so yeah you know it's not a cure but it is potentially something beneficial and if it is something that will keep you socially active as well that in itself is going to have a massive benefit over time and my final study for the night that I needed to talk about just need to talk about researchers decided to test number one whether and not a trout can whether they whether they like methamphetamine okay yeah a paper in the journal of experimental biology researchers looked at brown trout and whether or not they would get not addicted per se because we don't know about whether or not it was addicted but whether they could would be attracted to methamphetamine after prolonged exposures to concentrations seen in nature people using drugs go to the bathroom they dump things down the toilet down the sink all the time and these compounds are not always cleaned up in the water treatment services that we have created and so the researcher Pavel Jorge a behavioral ecologist at Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague says uh that methamphetamine use is on the rise globally and where methamphetamine users are there is also methamphetamine pollution of fresh waters and they actually saw that there were methamphetamine cravings for the fish uh the fish were given the choice of spending time in waters with or without methamphetamine after they had been previously exposed and the exposed fish spent just over half of their time on the side with methamphetamine which was about 10 percent more than the unexposed fish did so it's not a massive increase but it's a bit of an increase yeah call me when they start more often call me when they start doing telekinesis breaking no no breaking into vacant buildings and stealing the copper out of the walls to pay for their habit now until then 10 percent more likely to swim in the water with i don't know yeah time for me to shout again better water filtration systems get the hormones get the pharmaceuticals get the drug but isn't that isn't really that bad that we've got like we've got enough methamphetamine pee in a water at this point like what are people doing yeah so they yeah they had a uh they had 120 wild fish and they put them in tanks that contained one microgram of methamphetamine per liter of water for the next eight weeks and you'd think microgram that still seems like it might be a lot uh and it's an order of magnitude less than levels in wastewater discharges in australia two to five two and a half to five times the highest concentrations detected in rivers directly in the united states and parts of asia so it depends on where you are and what rivers you're testing probably where when and how good the sanitation systems are but they did find that with this amount they they left the fish in these tanks for two or for eight weeks with the methamphetamines and then they took them out and put them in clean water and then they offered them a choice every two days would you like the meth would you like not like the meth okay so how does a fish do drugs through their gills they breathe it they swim in it it gets directly into their blood system yeah yeah there are um other studies that found methamphetamines do alter fish behavior this study did not necessarily because the levels were so low concentrations and other studies have been higher and so the big point here really is that um it's we can see this phenomenon of methamphetamine pseudo addiction something that's like addiction the choice of methamphetamine over not in a wild species and this is potentially a really indicative of what's happening to fish in the wild we don't know you know how this changes their behavior what it affects i mean but potentially it affects which streams they swim into where they reproduce how they uh how they forage where and when they forage and if methamphetamine has effects on fish the same way that it has effects on humans it's going to really affect those behavior patterns and and how they are active in their ecosystems so there are a lot of haha downstream effects there's there's there's no better argument for the legalization of drugs i think then the fact that met what did you methamphetamine uses on the rise this is like the like the nastiest worst compromise like chemical toxic thing that people can do there's better drugs that people could be doing if you just made them legal they had to be cleaner probably better for the environment but if you if they were all legal would there be more in the water would there be less in the water we don't there's no way of knowing would it mean more evenly distributed in the water i mean i think there are very interesting questions about this the bottom line is Blair yeah better water filtration this is the other thing that's that's messing me up is think about all of the medicines that we take and how we're lectured on counter indications yes and how medicines aren't meant to be mixed yes certain groups and if you're mixing it all into the water it's not just do fish respond to meth it's do fish respond to meth mixed with birth antidepressants antidepressants mixed with like your birth control pills just all of the different things that humans are on that could be in low levels in the water is what you know it's it could create a much larger response when mixed together that maybe in little bits aren't so bad yeah oh fishes they didn't mean to be on the drugs they sure didn't they didn't mean to be as they were abducted by scientists like aliens and like given the drugs it's the whole thing so my fault the aliens gave me drugs the aliens did this to me have we done it have we come to the end of another episode it wasn't fishy at all very fishy episode very fishy episode well everyone thank you for joining us for another episode i do want to thank the wonderful people who help with the show thank you so much to fada thank you for all of your help with show notes and with social media thank you identity for for recording the show gourd thank you with the chat rooms and rachel 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Just most of us don't have airbrushing. Death comes for us all in the end. And whether or not you have airbrushing, you can't airbrush away reality. Can't airbrush death? Oh, I didn't see, I think, Arun, Laura, you're asking me about a tweet. I think I saw that long time ago. Can you put it back in the discord or wait? There is no evidence that children have served as vectors for transmission of the virus, have worse long-term outcomes, or that the Delta variant has led to higher rates of hospitalization in children. It's true and not true. It's complex. There is no evidence. Evidence is not true. That seems like an oversimplification for sure. Yeah. Yeah, we know that kids do spread COVID and are vectors for COVID. They are not necessarily super spreaders at the same rate that adults are, but they are definitely, they get infected. There is an effect of long COVID that they can potentially expect to have one in 20 kids. Who get COVID, can expect to get long COVID. And it's a low death rate, which is great for kids overall. That's great. The rate for hospitalization and death for kids is fantastic. But yeah, the whole, yeah. And now we have the dental variant. The Delta variant, and the Lambda variant. The Delta dental variant. Oh, gosh. And it's not about opening schools. It's about opening them safely. And we can open schools if school districts and counties, cities, states figure out how to implement good trace and test programs to maintain masking and to have good ventilation for all the students. It is possible, but, and it has been done. It has been done. Schools have opened safely. It's just a matter of whether or not a particular school district or school is able to do it. So, ah, oversimplifications. Twitter is like the bastion of oversimplification. You want nuance? Don't go to Twitter. I know I'm super late, but I think the cluster of black holes should be a plurality. A plurality, that's a good one. A plurality of singularities. It feels like that's just right. I kind of like that, yeah. Also like a gravitas. A gravitas of black holes. Somebody, I'm scrolling way back. Yeah, apparently NASA, we could go. Put this up for discussion. Lauren Gifford is still in our Facebook. Astronomers found dozens of black holes looming around a cluster of stars and as part of a newly coined quote, black hole week. NASA crowdsourced that question on Twitter. The suggestions rolled in. A crush, a mosh pit, a silence, a scream. It is tough. What is the plural for an enigma? I like, I think, yeah. A plurality of singularities is really awesome. I kind of like that. That's good. I don't know. I think we could just call it Bauhaus. I don't know. It's a hardware store in Denmark. What? Who's going to Denmark for a hardware store? There's a hardware store in Denmark called Bauhaus. Oh. I think it's also a German architectural design type of glass and steel. Eric Knapp, I like that, a question of black holes. A concern? A concern is very good. A black hole. Just a shrug. How about an entero bang of black holes? An entero bang. Do you know an entero bang? Everyone knows, right? I forgot. I'd be afraid to go in. It's a question mark followed by an exclamation point. There we go. Oh, you said all the time. An entero bang. An entero bang. I use that all the time. That's actually my speaking voice is in that form. Yeah. Is it still an entero bang? What? If you have a question mark, exclamation, question mark? I have no idea. I think so. Yeah. Speak fluent entero bang. Dave Shorty says a spiral of black holes. I don't know if they'll necessarily be in a spiral until the end, a darkness of black holes. There's so many good possible names. Sadie's chewing into the microphone. I thought I heard her making noises. She's like, cool. You stop it, Blair. You stop it. No, I gave her a treat. She ate it right by the microphone. Ooh, a hawking of holes. That's in Futurama they call something a hawking hole. It's called a fry hole originally. We need critical thinking. I like that one. A cluster of black holes. I love, I don't think that researchers really at, do you think astronomers at any point really thought about, oh, we need to come up with a name for a collection, a grouping of black holes? Black holes are these things that are off doing their thing, not herding together. Well, I mean, collective animal nouns also are just like some random person was like, what do you call a bunch of giraffes? Oh, I know, a tower. Okay. All right, that works today. How about a parliament of owls, I guess? How about a business of ferrets? Okay. All right, Laura, there is a book of new things. A mischief of mice? Isn't it a, aren't mice a mischief? A mischief of mice? I haven't heard of that. It's a mischief of mice. I'm pretty sure that's right. Oh, what is some of the bringing? According to Pamela Gay astronomers are bad at naming things. Oh no, I forgot to respond to an email from her, crap. But astronomers, actually I think they're usually pretty, they're usually good at naming stuff. They're right, they've got that really big telescope array that they called the really big telescope array. The really big, the very large. The very large. Can you say something in the microphone? Telescope array, they called the very large telescope array. Say, Kiki, you forgot to write back to Pamela. Dum dum. Say something, say something to the listeners. Is that it? How about another crunchy? That's good ASMR, right? People love it. What's going on? I'm eating a treat. Eating a Charlie bear. Huh, you want another Charlie bear? Oh yeah, we should totally, we haven't ever, we haven't had Pamela on the show. How we should have Pamela on the show? We should, totally. I didn't reply earlier. I am bad at email. And life in general. Oh no. Too much. Oh, too many details for that email. Too many details, I'm sorry. Really back. Reel it in, reel it in, Kiki. There you go. Here comes the child. There's a Kai up late. Yeah, is he supposed to be up now? What are you doing? You're not supposed to be up this late. Oh, it was a long anime fight scene that kept him awake. It never happened. Four episodes long, apparently. Oh. So. There's certainly no natural break, it sounds like. You fell for the cliffhangers. Wait, it's only time? It's only 10. You're not supposed to be awake right now on a weeknight. Well, that's true, you're right, Kiki. I am not supposed to be up this late. So I'm gonna have to bow out. Should I hold on to Kai like Blair's holding Sadie? Yeah. He's too big, Kiki. He's way, he's much, he's grown too large. The child of the growing. You go put that child to bed, I'll put this dog to bed. Oh my gosh, what happened to Sadie? What do you mean? She flopped. She's huge. Oh yeah. She's much, much smaller. He's 30 pounds, yeah. Sadie's 30 pounds. Yeah. I thought Sadie was like a little dog forever. No. Oh my gosh. What? I think Kai likes corgis. You're doing a high-pitched whine that only the dogs can hear. So the anime was what anime? One Piece. One Piece. If you know One Piece, he's enjoying it. It's very good. Look at Sadie, she's already asleep. Yeah, she's like enough. Go ahead. I just wanna, I just wanna eat it. You do, I know, I wanna hug Sadie too. We all want to cuddle Sadie. Come on down. Oh, the chat. Sadie is a chonk. It's so true. She is not a chonk. She's actually in quite good shape. You have said this, but she's just a lovely little, she's a corgi chonk. Yeah, I get that. Like even for corgis, being in great shape, they still look like little chonks. I would accept her as a loaf, but I don't know if I would accept her as a chonk. I feel like this is a bridge too far. Chonk implies fat. Okay. She's quite a loaf. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Cause they are loaf shaped. They're loaves with legs. She's not a cube. I also call her a furry worm. I call her that a lot. I tell her to be gone long one. The anime was one piece. Scion sings. If you didn't hear previous things. Kai, I really wanted to make sure that you knew which anime. Yes, it's important details. One of my friends kept on bugging me to watch it and I never ended up watching it and then I ended up watching it like a night ago and I really liked it. He said it was the best anime ever. I think we're gonna have to debate that. I agree, but I do think that it's a very good anime. Yeah, we're gonna have to debate on the best. I just watched Tomorrow World's Oh, the Tomorrow War. That's not an anime. No, it's not an anime. It had a good looking monster. Chris Pradame. It was really, I thought it was awful. I'm gonna love it then. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I saw. It's worth the monster, but that's about it. Go, okay, if you want an awful movie to watch. Okay. Wait, hold on, let me get the name right. This is probably gonna be on my top five list of favorite movies I've ever seen, too. Willie's Wonderland. Willie's Wonderland. I just saw it this weekend. It is a Nicholas Cage movie. From this year. Yes. Oh, is he still making movies? Yes. I have to say, when his car breaks down, a quiet loner, Nick Cage, Oh, he's playing himself. Wait, hold on. I don't want this. Oh, a quiet loner agrees to clean an abandoned family fun center in exchange for repairs. He soon finds himself waging war against possessed animatronic mascots, while trapped inside Willie's Wonderland. It's basically five nights at Freddy's, but with Nicholas Cage. The initial release was in Thailand. When a middle-aged man takes eight units of summer courses while working a full-time job and doing a podcast. Fine. Okay. He soon finds he needs a nap. I think you have a responsibility now to introduce Kai to Nick Cage if he does not know who Nick Cage is. He doesn't know who Nick Cage is, so yes, you're right. Just show him the rock. It's time for education. It's not, I can't, I can't, he's 10. I can't do face-off yet. Yeah, the rock is fine. He doesn't curse at all in the rock. Yeah, the rock is pretty good. He says like fudge and stuff in the rock, although I do think other people do swear. Other people curse. There was cursing written throughout the whole script, but Nicholas Cage had a, I think, a 10-year-old at the time and decided he wanted his kid to see the movie and he didn't want to see his kid to see him curse. So he rewrote all of the dialogue with a TV-friendly type of cursory. He still has cursing, but he made it all like sunny day at the beach. Like instead of... Kai, you've seen Nicholas Cage in a movie, National Treasure. Oh yes, of course. National Treasure. Oh, I remember that. That was a good movie. It was not, but that's okay. No. I enjoyed it. That's one of my favorite films of all time, actually. Connair. Okay, the rock. I got it. Connair. He's done so many. He's done many. Raising Arizona. That was like the first... Raising Arizona is one of my all-time favorite movies that I will, that is Desert Island movie. I love Raising Arizona. Oh my God. Great movie. Okay. All right. We'll leave you to watch those movies and Justin and I are going to go to bed. Okay. I'm going to put this child to bed. Great. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Good night, Kiki and Kai. And Kai. Good night, everyone. Thank you for another wonderful episode. And I'm so glad that you all hung out, watched twists, and we can't wait to see you again next week. Stay well. Stay healthy. Stay happy. Stay active. It's summer, summer, summer time, summer time in the Northern Hemisphere at least. So enjoy that if you've got some good weather. Big triple digits starting Thursday through, I think the rest of summer. So enjoy the nice weather before the triple digits and you need that air conditioner. Anyway, thanks everybody. Really enjoy getting to spend time with you.