 This is twists This week in science number five seventy four recorded on Wednesday, July 6th 2016 Juno, don't you? I'm dr. Kiki and today we are going to fill your head with feminine wiles beetle bits and Juno but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer the world is a wonderful place to live if by world You mean earth because most of the worlds that we know of are hostile to the very notion of life existing But of course you knew which world I was talking about Just as you know that if someone is on the pill that someone certainly isn't a guy even though guys can take pills They don't take the pill they may take that pill which does something very different from the pill And it's even possible that after a bit of light pillow talk will be revealed that both pills were at play and That the end of the world is a wonderful place But the world this world earth I'm talking about here is much more than wonderful It's wonder filled and there is no better place to get your fill of the wondrous than right here on This week in science Coming up next Everything I want to fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge. I see. I want to know What's happening What's happening What's happening this week in science What's happening What's happening What's happening this week in science I am still Kiki and Blair And good science to you Justin and Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back yet again After the American Independence Day, I'd like to have a finger count off. Does everyone have their fingers? Have we made it out of American Independence Day relatively unscathed? Good job. Good job co-hosts Yes, I hope the best for those of you out there. I hope that you are returning to The rest of I don't know whatever this American Independence is and moving forward with as many fingers and toes and noses Extremities as you possibly can. I hope that you are But today that's not what we're talking about although there there were some Not fireworks, but there was some pretty cool stuff to be fanfarious about over the last few days Also on the 4th of July that we're gonna talk about I'm gonna talk about today. I've got some stories about faulty MRIs Mismatched genes for healthy aging and oh a new lab pet And some space news. What do you have Justin? I've got fungal farmers I've got the American ostrich And how an insect with a penis several times its body length manages That I guess it's an interesting question there Blair, what are you gonna be talking about in the Animal Club? I have those lovely feminine wiles I have some invertebrate deception and Octopus eyes You don't have octopus eyes Who says? Okay maybe you do Okay everybody let's dive into the science Okay the first thing that I want to talk about is really the most important thing that we should be talking about this week Do you know what it is? Do you know? Don't you? Do you know? I don't know Do you know? I don't know Juno everyone, if you've been living in a cave maybe you haven't heard about Juno But Juno is a really cool thing that we managed to do as little apes here on this planet Earth We five years ago basically threw a tank into space And got it going a little bit over a hundred thousand miles an hour You're just cruising speed Cruisin' along And it sailed for about 1.7 billion miles over five years to the planet Jupiter Where on Monday night as many Americans were getting ready for their hamburgers and their hot dogs And their flags and independence fireworks There were many others at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere who had their eyes pinned on the skies Because this little tank that could had no second chances It needed to slip into orbit around Jupiter And if it didn't it could be crushed by the gravitational field It could be ripped to shreds by debris in the debris field around this gigantic planet That's the biggest thing in our solar system second to our sun Did it make it Kiki? Did it make it? Please tell me the little problem made it It did it did it It burned it burned its engine turned itself around burned its engine for two thousand one hundred two seconds Which according to ours Technica is perfect to within one second of what it needed to do So the feat of engineering here is that this is it was a robotic probe It was programmed to do all these things autonomously upon arriving at Jupiter Because there is a 48 minute communication delay You cannot remote control real time probes that far away It's just it's something like eight minutes to Mars this is much much further Much further so as a 48 minute communications delay They only found out that it had worked when they got a ten second long beep back from space Ten seconds saying that it worked and it was like thirteen minutes after the entire procedure had completed So this little probe could have been smashed to smithereens Flying off into outer space somewhere never to be seen again Or heading into the interior of Jupiter or elsewhere And they wouldn't have known until after it had happened And there would have been nothing they could have done to fix it But hey NASA engineers are pretty awesome it worked We now have this amazing little probe around Juno And yes we've sent probes to Jupiter before This is not the first mission that Galileo probe has been there Has taken beautiful pictures gotten great imaging of the storms on the gas giant There I believe in total we've sent like the Voyager missions past it And in total there have been something like seven missions that have flown past Jupiter But none have gotten this close because Jupiter is so big and it is such a dangerous environment This is a one-off shot and they are going to try and get Juno to Its scientific instrument should be spinning up as we speak over the last couple of days It should have been getting the science and the imaging going as it orbits It makes its first orbit around over the next month or so It's not actually going to send any data back because of the radiation coming from Jupiter It's not going to send any information back until the end of August So it's going to do its first orbit for like 53 days and then send information back Seems a little risky and what if something happens? Just keep sending all the time be sending be in contact, constant contact I don't think they can be in constant contact because of the radiation And because of the size of the planet and where the orbiter, how Juno orbiter is In relation to the planet Jupiter and where it is in line of sight to planet Earth Since it's going all the way around Jupiter, it's not going to be in line of sight at all time So it's going to try to orbit 37 times over the next 20 months But because of the insane radiation coming from Jupiter It's going to start breaking down the electronics and the propulsion system And slowly just destroying this little craft And so they don't even know if they're going to get 37 orbits out of it But maybe around 8 or 10 orbits, a few of its instruments might already be dead But before it dies completely, that's when the engineers are going to just push it They're going to give it an instruction that lets it fall out of its orbit And plunge to be crushed by the massive gravitational forces of Jupiter It's going to be amazing people And what are we going to learn from this? What are we going to learn? We are going to learn amazing things about the core of this metal enriched hydrogen planet This is a star that wasn't This is large gas giants like Jupiter are what we find, or what Kepler is finding All over the universe, wherever we look for different solar systems We don't see little rocky bodies like Earth all the time But we do see big gas giants And so if we can start looking at Jupiter as a little mini solar system Why did Jupiter not turn into a star when the sun did? What was missing? Why did it take up metals into itself? What happened? And how did the chemistry work there? Does it actually have a solid metal core? Or is it just gas that turned liquid and became metallic hydrogen all the way down? So this is there, these questions that we really can't answer yet And so they have magnetometers and spectrometers on Juno That are going to allow us to figure out what's happening with the magnetic field of Jupiter To be able to figure out like we do with our own planet and also with the sun What's happening much deeper within it And we're going to go very very close to the surface of Jupiter Just above the clouds, it's amazing how close we're going to get And the neatest thing that I love about the end of this is that it's dying Dash into the heart of Jupiter They're doing that because they don't want to accidentally have it crash into one of the moons That could harbor life and contaminate a pristine environment Because they didn't build it pristine So it's not completely earth bacteria free And if there is a life, they don't want to mess up a laboratory that we haven't gotten to visit yet on purpose Which is good sound thinking And easily counters my, you know, what if they end the space program tomorrow What if this is the last chance to get life off of the planet What if those bacteria could have survived the landing and propagated And started life on that planet and, but, you know, maybe they're probably being more Save it for your novel Justin Yeah, and Dave Freidahl in the chat room is wondering how far into the dive Juno can transmit And that's the sad thing is that we'd love to get information back the whole time But I think from what I have read from various sources, NASA's going to just cut the transmission And just let it free dive So we actually won't get to get the information of that fall into Jupiter But you never know what's going to happen over the next 20 months People change their minds all the time It wouldn't make sense at all to cut the transmission I mean, I wouldn't, at least I don't can't fathom what the reason for it is If they have to I guess Then sure, but it seems like if you could just leave it on, you'd leave it on Even if it didn't make it that far down And you were still getting transmissions would be worth it And maybe they're figuring that by the time they're setting it to do that It'll be so deteriorated, the components that it can't be transmitting anymore But then maybe, maybe crash it sooner Just to, you know, be able to And they might, yeah And they might, I mean, who knows We will see how long it'll last And how long Juno will last against this intense radiative environment That it's in the middle of How amazing is NASA's engineering, really I mean, we've seen the rovers on Mars Right, they're overbuilding They are overbuilding and engineering stuff And I think They put the computers on Juno, they're encased in titanium Yeah I mean, they're like, they're like, let's just put it in a block of metal Yeah And I think, you know, I think that NASA truly at this point Does operate on the, on the sort of principle Of the worst possible thing that could happen Being the thing that always happens And that's, and it's sort of like, this is the impetus of overbuilding these things It's not just because they're showing off It's because a lot of bad stuff and unknowns could take place And so they try to protect against everything And in doing so, and in sort of coming up with every scenario that could cause a problem They build something that is outlasting and outperforming Its initial intention So yeah, this will be a great test Yeah, so we are excited Keep your sciency ears and eyes tuned for news from Juno There will probably be little bits leaking out over the next month or two But end of August is when we're really going to see a deluge of information Headed our way from NASA once they get the transmission And they start analyzing it and start being able to give us stuff Hopefully we'll get some pictures before then Because that would be really rewarding But we'll see, we'll see And then from way out in space Figuring out what Jupiter and our, how's Jupiter got its start Our solar system, the history of it all Let's go back to, come back to Earth Scientists are working on trying to figure out Life on Earth, right? And one of the biggest questions on Earth is How do organisms exist and survive in extreme environments? Same here for Earth during its early years When it was a very acidic environment When it was a very harsh environment with no oxygen How did that work? How did life get its start? How could it possibly have gotten its start on a moon of another planet? This is what we want to know So the Oak Ridge National Laboratory here in the United States From the Department of Energy has isolated a bacterium Not just a bacterium, but an archaebacterium So these are the extremophiles of the world And maybe are, they're within bacterium family But they're a different wing of that family They've isolated a species Cultured these microbes in the laboratory Which is a very exciting endeavor So nanopucilis acidilobi, tiny microbes 100 to 300 billionths of a meter in size And they interact with a host which is called acidilobus And acidilobus is another archaebacteria And so they interact in a cell to cell state So in Yellowstone's hot springs, which are super hot, super acidic These bacterium hang out together And you have the acidilobus and the nanopucilis acidilobi Comes up and snuggles in, gets really close And they share stuff they need back and forth Symbiotic relationship And so it's been difficult to get these archaebacteria Cultured in the lab We can't culture every bacterial species that we'd like in the lab Because sometimes they have needs that we don't know what they are And so what they did at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Is they did a point by point genetic sequencing Of these two species To figure out what genes were present that they knew of That they could kind of go, okay, we know this gene and this is its function And try to figure out the metabolic needs of the bacteria And then they basically created, after they'd sequenced the bacterium They created a made-to-order culture environment They gave it the temperature it needed, they gave it the nutrients it needed All the different things that it would like to grow in They figured out based on the genes So they started from the genetic sequencing and then moved to the culturing And that is a wonderful step that this lab has made In getting to the point of being able to do this Because this can give us a whole lot of information about how these creatures exist How they thrive and maybe how we can, what genes we can start learning To use ourselves for different functions Or even what genes we can start looking for in species for various functions I couldn't help but thinking of that being applied to myself though As I look at all things in the world and see how they would apply to myself But I was like, okay, so what if they did that for me? They'd be like, okay, you like to eat potatoes, pasta, buffalo, and matzabal soup It's like when I was like, okay, I got my genes have a lot of different things going But I don't know if this really goes well together I've never really tried it, but we'll see Yeah, so the researchers say we discovered and cultured a novel organism From a group of organisms that people have been trying to get for over a decade And in part that was due to prior genomic data we acquired from these organisms in Yellowstone Adding that the microbial system abounds in unique, remarkable, physiological, and genomic features So, hot spring bacteria, hot thermal vents, hot springs, what genes are there, what are necessary What can we learn? We're going to figure it out Cultured them in the lab, boom This is this week in Science, hey Justin, what you got? Good question, my next story is, oh, as we have been learning about in this show of late Fungi in the soil set the stage for the foliage that we find in our environment They control which bacteria can survive in the soil and also are linked to the plant's ability to absorb nutrients from that soil So much so that there's invasive plant species that we see on the surface Are accompanied by an invasion of a different type of soil fungi than what would have been there before As well as bacteria that are going to be different because the fungi that sort of works like an antibacterial agent Towards some bacteria sort of filters what bacteria can be in there And so you're not just transforming the landscape you see It's also the landscape underneath that you can't see that's also being transformed The current story is going to take us a little further This is a research by an international team of environmental scientists They have found that plants that associate with one type of symbiotic fungi grow bigger in response to high levels of carbon dioxide But plants that associate with another major type of symbiotic fungi do not The study which appears online in the journal Science calls into question the sort of theory of the greening effect That will come from global warming with all the CO2 It's like oh it's all in the air and there's going to be all this out The plants are going to love it, the farms are going to love it, everything's going to love it I guess it's also called the CO2 fertilization effect Which will persist as these carbons keep going out into the atmosphere Pumping extra carbon, this is a quotey voice Pumping extra carbon dioxide into a greenhouse is a common tactic to stimulate plant growth But nature is much more complex than a greenhouse Says Richard Phillips who probably doesn't talk like that But his professor, associate professor at the IU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology Is the co-author of the study So there is great debate about whether pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through fossil fuel combustion Stimulates plant growth in nature where soil nutrient levels are typically much lower than in a greenhouse So fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plants are called mycorazole fungi Over 90% of all plant life on the planet and that by that planet of course I mean Earth Have this symbiotic relationship with a fungi And they do different things, they provide plants with soil nutrients in exchange for plant carbohydrates So it's a nice little relationship they got though And it's a fact that the northern hemisphere is greening, it's greening up NASA satellites have shown northern hemisphere is more greenery year after year It's also kind of correlated with the fact that many of our wildlife, our wildlands Are having a lot more pesticides added to fight off invasive species So this is also And I think recently there was a link actually made between human activity and the greening of the northern hemisphere So that's actually something this last week there was a paper that came out Yeah, I think it was one I had in a queue but didn't make it to the show So while researchers have long known about this symbiotic mycorazole fungi play The role in helping ecosystems store carbon has really been investigated on a broad scale until now Second year PhD student Caesar Terror of Imperial College London who is the first author in the paper In a quotey voice Our analysis is the first to demonstrate that only plants that associate with a certain type of fungal partner One that helps them acquire nitrogen from soil are likely to grow bigger as carbon dioxide levels rise So they did an exam at 83 experimental studies of plant responses to CO2 levels Equivalent to those expected in the year 2050 They found a market difference in the ability of certain plants to take advantage of increased CO2 levels Plants that grew in nitrogen rich soils were able to grow bigger, sustain high levels of growth throughout the experiment Following expectations in nitrogen poor soils which again this is the nitrogen rich is sort of like what you would expect in a greenhouse Nitrogen poor is Fertilized is basically putting the nitrogen in there Or in just really naturally fertile soil I suppose but nitrogen poor soils which is most terra firming landscape Only plants that associate with a certain type of symbiotic fungi were able to keep growing larger I think about this kind of like a limiting reagent and a chemical reaction Even though you add more carbon dioxide if you only have a certain amount of nitrogen that you also need to grow big and strong That's going to prevent a certain amount of growth So you're only going to get as much on the right side of your chemical reaction equation as the lowest amount of your reagents at the beginning on the left side of the equation Yeah and the reagents that you specifically need in this case is a specific species of fungus that exists in nitrogen poor soils to help grab nitrogen out of that poor soil Yeah and they're also, it's the ecto-microzole fungi It's a type that helps plants actually access soil nutrients by decomposing organic matter such as other dead plants and microbes even Decomposing microbes to feed it to the plants Plants that associate with the major type of the mycoreal fungi, the non-ecto, which is our muscular mycoreal fungi Were unable to maintain high levels of growth under this elevated system too So nearly, let me, I'm trying to figure out where it is Ecto-microzole fungi associated with, is associated with woody plants So this is more trees and shrubbery and it's more what we sort of see in high latitude forests Which is kind of nice to know because they're going to be losing a lot of snow It's going to be more probably a longer growing season so we may get some really big trees out of this But not necessarily going to boost your typical farm production That's interesting, I think it's fascinating that you need a decomposing fungus A fungus that basically is like, okay there's nothing here, I'm just going to be stuck to you But I'm going to eat anything that gets close to me I'm going to decompose it and we're going to suck up all the nutrients And that's how I'm going to get some nitrogen And you get some nitrogen And you get some nitrogen So here also, in temperate forests about half the tree species associate with each type So they're kind of split, but that's sort of interesting because then you might be able to make predictions On how this sort of temperate forest might change in levels of this tree versus that tree Or this, you know, this association It won't be the trees of course, but now we know it's going to be the fungus that they're associated with That's really making the difference And it goes on to say 30% of human CO2 emissions are currently absorbed by land-based ecosystems So silver lining, a thriving forest will help keep down the growth of this And then trees are pretty good absorbers So there is a little bit of a silver lining in that the trees will be helping us slow the effects of global warming Pros and cons, pros and cons All I know is I don't want to run into one of these ectomycorrhizal fungi in a dark alley So you look like good tree food Yep, nope Nope, not my favorite Just let us talk for a little bit Okay, we've been talking for a little bit, but do you know what time it is? I do, I do It's that time again Time for... There's Animal Corner What you got, Blair? I have a couple of misleading animals in the corner tonight Animal deception Liars of animals So the first are paper wasps Paper wasps, the females will fight to become the queen or to defend territory if they are the queen And they can size each other up by their facial patterns And the facial patterns actually let each other know who is the stronger, who is the more aggressive Who is the more likely to come out the winner in a fight And this is a situation that you see in other animals too Like deer or moose with very large racks with very large antlers Or for example, there are different birds that have bright colorations that indicate that they are more fit And these colorations or these different patterns will tell each other whether it's worth it to start a fight with another individual So if you're lower social ranking, you're not going to start a fight with an individual that has indications on them That show that you're going to get your patoot kicked So instead they pay attention to these signals and that keeps them from investing in a fight that they can't win Similarly, having signals that make it clear that you are a very good fighter or are very strong Will keep the lower down individuals from even trying to fight you and then you save energy that way So everybody wins So if this is the case, wouldn't it be beneficial for some wasps to have colorations that would indicate they were good fighters when they were not? Yes, it's sort of like how I avoid trouble by wearing bright colors and antlers whenever I'm in the rough part Yes, very well done Justin Yeah, so you would expect this to happen So why doesn't it? Because it doesn't Why? Why? Well, in a recent study that came out on July 4th in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences University of Michigan Biologists took these paper wasps and they altered their facial patterns So the wasps with more irregular black spots on their faces would win more fights and are avoided by rivals Compared with wasps with fewer irregular black spots So what they did is they took pairs of female paper wasps and they took pairs that were similarly sized They stuck them together for two hours and they videotaped the resulting fights And one wasp in each pair remained unaltered One of the wasps, known as the Bluffer, they painted them so that their facial patterns signaled inaccurately high fighting ability What happened is pretty interesting In the videotape, counted and scored the number of mounts, bites, grapples and stings to indicate aggression And after all of these bouts, the wasps were then bled for analysis of hormone levels Juvenile hormone or JH is an invertebrate hormone that indicates dominance, aggression and increased fertility So they're linked, we don't know if it's caused, but there's definitely a link High levels of JH, higher dominance, higher aggression, higher increased fertility They found that the wasps that were bluffing overall received way more aggression than their control wasps So they were attacked more They also found that the ones that were attacked, the Bluffers, their JH levels were reduced immediately after the contest And the wasps that fought the Bluffers had raised JH levels So let's synthesize all that So first of all, bluffing will get you attacked more But secondarily, it lowers the hormone in that animal getting attacked, linked to dominance, aggression and fertility And it raises the hormone, linked to dominance, aggression and fertility in the animal, attacking more So this is a pretty interesting study because you can see how an ornament or a marking can actually have an effect on physical health Because of the way that they're being attacked But also has an effect on the hormone levels in the attacker and the attack E in that exchange I'm sure it's something similar to, I'm going to bring it back to human behavior because this is something that we always like to do People are the center of the universe So in humans, there are all sorts of situations that can elevate testosterone, which is the aggressive hormone in people And also corticosterone, which is the stress hormone in people And so if you are the person who is being attacked, that's going to decrease your psychological sense of well-being It's going to decrease your potential sense of strength and self-esteem So that's going to decrease your testosterone levels potentially Over time, those kinds of things can build up and lead to psychological changes Whereas somebody who is an aggressor, over and over again, they're going to go away Feeling strong and successful, their testosterone will increase Their corticosterone levels will probably decrease compared to the person who has been attacked Unfortunately, you heard it here first folks, the health benefits of being a bully Well, yes, but there's also this idea of if you're losing fights, then you're not going to be reproducing Right, exactly, but you're not going to be getting out there and doing it You will be reproducing, absolutely So even better reason to avoid taking on Justin with his many big antlers His bright colored clothing and walking down the street because chances are you're going to lose and then decrease So what this means is, it's not that bullies win, it's that portraying yourself accurately benefits everyone Because by showing that you're a good fighter, if you're a good fighter, you will not end up in unnecessary fights that will drain energy But if you are not a great fighter, then by displaying that you're not a great fighter, you will only take up contests with those that are appropriate to take up contests with Contests of words instead of fighting or clamping or sticking So that's why this bluffing has never shown up as far as we can tell in this sort of situation because it benefits the less skilled individuals to accurately portray themselves So in the words, the eloquent and highly intelligent words of Kenny Rogers, you've got to know when to hold them and you've got to know when to fold them You've got to know when to walk away, you've got to know when to run Absolutely, aka be a paper wasp So the other story I have about deceptive sexual signals that I think is absolutely fascinating from our good friends, the bonobos So the bonobos and the chimps both closely related to humans, but something that's very different between chimps and bonobos or what? It's constant sex taking place Yes, and very much less aggression Exactly, why is that? Well, coincidentally, bonobos are also a female dominant society Why is that? Are they linked? Well, probably Probably, a recent study published in BMC evolutionary biology from Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany has looked at the sexual signals of female bonobos Now, female primates will often show exaggerated sexual swellings when they are receptive to male attention When they're ovulating Exactly, and so what you'll see is if you ever go to a zoo and you go to see mandrels or baboons, those are the two that are usually the easiest to see it in If you ever see a female that around her genitalia, you see swelling, change in size, shape, tergidity That's like What's that mean? It means how stretched out and how stiff Swollen and stiff Yeah, swollen, the areas, and then also color All of those things are exaggerated during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle So, that is the easiest way for males to know when key mating time is, when to guard females, when to fight over females So, all of that is beneficial to the males and the females in some cases because that means that they are most likely to conceive What's interesting about bonobos is that they have extremely deceptive swelling They are unreliable in terms of their cycle And they can sometimes be swollen for up to 31 days, which is way longer than necessary Sometimes they are swollen when they are not ovulating at all Sometimes they don't swell when they are ovulating And so this could actually reduce the aggressive mate competition behavior that happen in males And it is likely to be some of the reason that it is more female dominant That's because there is less male-male competition over females Because the females actually are the ones who have to voluntarily give signals that they are receptive So, you're saying that if females have control over their own bodies and have a more dominant role to play in society We will have a more peaceful society and probably more sex to go right along with it You know, I'm not going to say that because this study is about bonobos If we were in bonobos society, this is what I'm saying Yes, yes, sounds great to me Yes, so the males have to rely on things like vocal or behavioral cues to detect when a female is likely to conceive And is receptive to that behavior And that results in spending more time with females by grooming them Rather than competing with other males for mating opportunities Yeah, so that might be something to do with why these societies are so much more peaceful That's because they're tricksy Yeah, the females, females want to say yes when they want to say yes And they want to say no when they want to say no And how do they get the upper hand? They trick everybody into having no clue when they're ovulating Yeah, so this is a study of actually wild bonobos, which is great It was a study of wild bonobos, they looked at a total of 34 ovarian cycles And only half of them had accurate signaling So there was really, it was all over the map And that's pretty great that the females, they figured out a way to keep the men from fighting with each other And get the upper hand But the question there is, so you say, you know, there's that anthropomorphic kind of figuring out a way But the question is, you know, what led to that difference? And it's obviously, I mean, bonobos are a smaller population than chimpanzees Chimpanzees are much more dominant and widespread But it's so far, it's a successful strategy For their species, and they are more closely related to humans And more intelligent So there's this question of, okay, what led to that difference? And I would say that humans, we have signals, but we've evolved or adapted different ways also With faking stuff, with lipstick and other things to make the signals dishonest most of the time So it's a very interesting point that this arose naturally And it's resulted in a peaceful community versus chimpanzees, which are not So that's a very interesting point Right, and so there had to have been some sort of fitness advantage to messing up this cycle So it didn't align properly So was that the overall genetic health, we could say, of the group was increased Because less bonobos were killing each other? Was that the benefit? Was the benefit that females weren't being injured in any sort of exchange? There's a million things you could look at here There's pretty much no way to know exactly what the trigger was But there had to have been some sort of genetic fitness advantage to either reducing the aggression between males Or giving females the choice Any of these things, something like that helped them in the short run That kind of caused this chain reaction of now females are in charge They're throwing males off their scent They are initiating these things Pretty interesting Very interesting There's a lot more to be interested about everybody We have more science to come We're going to take a quick break right now And we will be back in just a few moments with more This Week in Science We have ostriches, fmri's, and long beetle penises coming up So you don't want to miss that Stay tuned Hey everybody I know a lot of you have already subscribed to our YouTube channel But I'm going to keep asking because I know there are a bunch of you out there who have not yet And it would be so great to have you a part of our YouTube family as well Because it's another place that you can watch us Or put us on in the background and listen to us It'll update you every time we post a new episode It's pretty awesome So if you subscribe to us on YouTube Also it will help us reach 10,000 subscribers You want to know how many subscribers we have of right now this very, very minute? 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I mean, we need help in all sorts of ways Like I said, our and Laura's helping us out In the migration of our servers It's a tech help We also have a guy Brandon now Who's helping us stream live to Facebook Hey everyone on Facebook If you're watching right now Nice to see you I hope you're enjoying the show And so it's stuff like that That little things that we can't do ourselves That are slowly being made possible Because of people like you So if you can even just tweet about twists It all helps Tell somebody around the water cooler How much you love us Pass the word on Get people listening Show the family That's what we're trying to do We thank you for your support We really could not do this without you We disagree but I still give a damn The ramification of treatments from holy men Leaves me slightly queasy deep down in the afternoon Hence that's the lies that they lead me to Justin And we're back with more this weekend science Oh yeah, Justin 50 million year old feathery fossil found Is a new species that is a formerly unknown relative Of the modern day ostrich And what's really amazing about it Was found in North America And it's in fantastic shape This is like one of the best fossils they've found In terms of completeness And there's soft tissues And there's feathers According to this new paper Coauthored by Sterling Nesbit Of Virginia Tech's College of Science The fossils actually were found More than a decade ago Real research started About seven years ago It's completely intact Bones, feathers, soft tissues And it was found in a former lake bed in Wyoming And quotey voice for Nesbit This is among one of the earliest Well represented bird species After the age of large dinosaurs The new species is named Calc Avus grande Calci meaning harder stone Avus from the Latin for bird And Grandi in honor of a paleontologist Who did a lot of work in that lake area Finding mostly fish fossils The bird is believed to be roughly the size of a chicken And were mostly ground dwelling Only flying in short bursts Likely to escape predators Two fossils dating from the Iosin Epoch Were found by fossil diggers In river formation in Wyoming Which is a hotbed for scores of complete fish skeletons Which is the thing they find the most of Birds, plants, crocodilians Turtles, bats and mammals From this ecosystem 15 million years ago These are spectacular preserved fossils One is nearly complete skeleton Covered with feathery remains The other are nearly as complete And show some of that soft tissue systems So it's pretty rare It's pretty rare to find Not just this complete But fossilized birds are tough The bones are hollow, they're fragile It's not quite as thick and strong and durable As a mammal bone And they usually get crushed During the process of fossilization So they think this was likely A quick event where it got covered up by mud And then slowly fossilized Had rocks fall out of it Or just dirt Most likely we wouldn't have this beautiful fossil To study So yeah They're calling the bird a close relative Of living ostriches, kiwis and tina mus Tina mus! That are in southern continents They're just squealed Right now! They think these birds When extinct after the tropical forests Disappeared in North America North America used to be tropical forests And this relationship is somewhat contentious It's been extremely contentious That there's this relationship But now they have this very detailed Anatomical data from this fossil That they can compare and contrast And see if this connection truly truly Is there That's awesome Are they connected? This is a remnant of a creature That lived in a tropical environment Which is now a sort of high desert Wyoming environment So when you talk about global warming In context, when climate changes It's more than just it's hotter Or it's colder somewhere It's that the entire ecosystem All around the world Can be quite different than it is now The environments on the earth are not static They're not set It's not like you're here in the north You will have trees and snow And you're closer to the equator You will have a tropical environment It can change It can move It can be quite different It's a good reminder too Especially considering that There are ratites There are ostrich-like birds On most of the continents So there's it's They've But it wasn't really thought of As a North Americans Type bird And now it's like Oh, they were possibly here too Yeah, let's just go ahead and guess That there was a flightless bird Like an ostrich pretty much everywhere But now the question is Because they're not looking at genetic data At this point in time So the question is They're looking at simply morphological It looks like these other ratites Right, it looks like It has the same morphological features And we've Right, and we've been taken in by Actually related Right, we've been taken in by that Especially back when all we had Was morphology We've made a lot of connections Human brains are very good at making Connections between things That aren't always there Right So in this particular fossil That they've found It is complete enough Soft tissue That was preserved Those finer details If they line up If they sort of match up If you can see that Beyond just a skull's morphology Or just beyond a leg bone morphology If you can contrast it Across the entire specimen Much better shot at the morphology Coming through with good data With a good answer And remind me how long ago They think this fossil was from? It's about 50 million years ish It could be more recent It could be somewhere in a 38 million And as far back as 54 But they've tagged it as 50 million years currently That's cool That's very, very cool So questions arise for the ostrich But some bigger questions Have arisen about brains And the tools that we use To look at them Specifically functional magnetic resonance imaging And this is a big, big report That came out this week Because we've reported on this previously And previous studies that have called To question functional magnetic resonance imaging data Or FMRI data So it's the use of blood oxygenation And how it changes from moment to moment To show that this functional aspect Of magnetic resonance imaging Catches on to It just tips into where there's a dip In blood oxygenation Because their polarized oxygen Is polarized molecules The neurons consume the oxygen When they're active And so there's this dip in the oxygenation That can be picked up And then blood flow comes right back again Oxygen comes back And so there's this timing Of blood flow that can be And oxygenation that can be Detected by these magnetic resonance machines And the assumption is this is showing Activity in the brain Which part of the brain is being active While the subject is being studied Exactly And the software that's used Breaks the brain down Into what are called voxels Which are like pixels in three dimensions So it's like a little cube Your brain is just little tiny cubes Of activity or no activity And so the software determines Yeah, and so the software determines How active each voxel is And then what happens is There's a clustering inference So is the voxel inference And then there's clustering inference And so the number one is okay We're inferring activation of a voxel Based on blood oxygenation levels Is that happening or not? That's the first question Second question is how closely Does it match patterns of oxygenation In other voxels at the same moments in time So what other voxels are active concurrently? And so there are all sorts of tasks That we use fMRI for And go oh our brains are active for this Oh our brains are active for that Well there's a study That was just published this last week Reviewing a whole bunch of studies And it's pretty damning for fMRI It's called cluster failure fMRI inferences for spatial extent Have inflated false positive rates It's published in the proceedings Of national academies of sciences And they've had earlier work That had very similar results But they only tested one statistical Software package and we reported on this Like a couple years back when this When they reported these results And then there was another guy This guy Craig Bennett He got an Ig Nobel Prize for his study In which he put a dead salmon in an fMRI And found out that when the dead salmon Was shown pictures that the software Detected a statistical cluster of voxel activation Yeah so dead salmon But this is just like Okay so the fMRI software might have Some kind of problem Did the fMRI community do anything about it? No No we need to pull this man's Ig Nobel We do I didn't make it up This really happened Now his conclusion In trusting the software Might have been a little extreme But really if you get the result You get the result And you say here's my result That's right There's my result Well so the problem with this is That a lot of people who use this software They're not writing the software They're not creating the software themselves These are software packages created by companies And it's kind of like a It's just a package that people buy And they don't necessarily understand how it works Or what's happening to give them the data that they get So yes that's the data that they get Or the statistical results that they get But because the software is doing the statistical analysis Behind the scenes They don't exactly know why it's getting the result That it is The researchers have just had to trust the software And that it works So this current study Let me tell you They looked at three different software packages And they found that So normally when you're looking at false positives In biology, psychology studies You're looking for a 5% false positive rate It's a p-value of .05 They found a false positive rate as high as 70% That's pretty bad 70%, 70% And there was one statistical package That did have a bug that was recently fixed last year And that improved the results by about 10% But still we're looking at false positive rates Between 60 and 90% Depending on number of subjects Threshold of statistical significance What parameters they're working with All sorts of things like this There's a great write up If you want to read more about this By Steven Novella over at Science Based Medicine There's also a really great write up Over at Ars Technica Talking about what happened in the study You can also find the study at PNAS We'll link to all these things on the website So if you want to read through all of it You'll be able to But the key here is that We have a problem There's something like 40,000 fMRI studies That we have been basing conclusions on That could be false Or mostly are false 70% of them are false Actually 100% of them are false And it's 70% of the data that they used was bad Here's what I think has happened And I don't know any of those The data it collected is probably good The statistics are probably bad Because the study found That in looking at what the statistical packages Were doing They found the voxel inference was accurate So actually determining which voxels were active Was accurate But it's the cluster inference that's wrong And that's the part of the functional fMRI That is interesting It's this brain area and that brain area And all this stuff together that's active So real quick question related to that Is if they tried to repeat any of these studies Because they were still using the bad statistical package They might get a completely different result They would get a different result So this is something that could have Potentially been identified by trying to repeat Some of these studies And they were not Yes So once again No replication Money is not going in research to repeating studies And here's the other This is my impression of this Without having read the thing that you're saying We've leaked through there But my first initial reaction to it is I bet you almost money That further back you go And looking at older studies The more accurate they are The less false positives they are Because they're not using computer programs It's not just that Even the earlier computer programs Because I have a feeling that this is an attempt By people selling software To show that they have better resolution Look how much more result You're getting by using this Instead of having a few grainy clusters Or a few clusters showing up Ours is so good that you see all of these Possible clusters that could be Possibly interacting at once So it may be a push by the software To claim more functionality By sort of giving a less strict regimen For what is or what is not a cluster They should have thrown more dead salmon In the fMRI machine Exactly You need the dead salmon test Oh gosh, that's going to be the thing now You've got to dead salmon test it I know you've been bent in a way of doing it But did you dead salmon test it Because until you've done that I ain't using it I bet you that's what happened It was an attempt to create higher resolution And in creating higher resolution They also added a lot of inaccuracy And that's probably what took place And I'd be interested then In just comparing software from 5 years ago From 10 years ago to what's being used today To see if that has been greater resolution More clusters being discovered And higher and higher inaccuracy going along with it So I wouldn't say that we have to throw out All fMRI studies I would say though That you could probably trace backwards In a downward graphy thing The reliability Downward graphy Upward graphy thing backwards I don't know Now I've got my I'm looking at my graph from the wrong side And I can't tell if it's going up or down But that's my point And so now we just need to hope that there are Researchers out there who stored their data Who can actually reanalyze it Maybe these software companies will sit down And do some real quality control And figure out where their statistics are going wrong So that people can do reanalysis And have new results There was a quote related to this That many researchers did not save their data In a way that would allow for reanalysis So it's like they did it And they measured these people's brains And then, okay, now that's gone The data's not stored anywhere That they can actually Or in a way that they can access it For accurate reanalysis And so there's a mess out there When it comes to fMRI studies So just kind of hold out for a while There are many books out there Based on fMRI and things that brains do And just kind of hold out judgment for a little while Don't go jumping on the fMRI bandwagon Any time soon This is going to take a long time to fix Yeah, so stay tuned for the next Where we'll spend 21 hours redacting Every single fMRI study we've done on the show Yeah, right Which have been a few, exactly No, we've reported them as well But I would like to say that we have reported On other previous studies That have found errors in fMRI So that's true I am always critical Always be critical Don't just jump in Although it's so exciting Tell us, Justin Yeah, first of all, I am also excited I'm excited too because maybe there's a bunch of those studies That were done that just seemed awful Like there's probably some out there that, you know You're like, oh, it's so horrible to learn this about ourselves And now we can, now we have an alibi Now we have, ah, the machine Human brains, human brains better than that It's the machine Anyway, not speaking of humans But many male insects, especially beetles In this story they're going to cover Possess a penis that is sometimes several times longer Than their entire body length Let me repeat because I didn't say this incorrectly But you may have thought that I did There are many species of animals Yeah, lots of invertebrates Lots of invertebrates have These species that are several times longer Than their entire body length Oh yeah, oh yeah And it's a bit of an evolutionary arms race Where the females make their duct longer And longer and longer And the males have to evolve longer sexual organs To get to the end of that duct Who talked about this like two weeks ago Yeah, and then there's also the extra long Male copulatory organs that are used as sperm scrapers Which the longer the better for that as well Yeah, so only the long survive Or only the long reproduce then I mean this is a Well, the longer the better Okay, okay If you're a beetle That's been clarified, thank you Blair If you're a beetle So I guess what they were wondering Is like in this study Is they just sort of looked at So like, how do you manage? Because this seems It's a good question It seems to be, like this would be Unwieldy and difficult And there's a long, say, row to hoe To get to the point where You're delivering any goods To where they will do any good How do you steer that thing? How do you steer? It's a good question Something like this So what they just Science has the answer Science has been to find the answer In the hyper elongated situation there In order to propel all the way down the duct The male species, muscles surrounding The propeller Provide the force to carry out A good precise delivery And it's because it gets It's relatively stiff And progressively gets softer The closer you get to the tip That seems counterproductive Yeah, right? Well, but then you must think, right? This is then This is sort of a human trait though Is it not? This is a human trait It's one that is often removed But so, yeah, this might be Beetles obviously could not exist In a situation where beetles There was beetle circumcision It would be the end of beetles I need a very tiny scalpel for this Tiny, tiny Be very careful, doctor Doctor Matsumura explains The long doctrine of female slows down The penetration, so the time-pressured Males have co-evolved to counteract This obstacle After running computer simulations We think that this composition is the fastest At penetrating the female duct So it appears softer tips are better And how this research could be applied To medical uses, according to Doctor Matsumura We haven't tried applying it To any other fields yet However, I think that knowing How to precisely control a narrow tube In a duct could help develop Harmless catheters Or injections in the medical world So, the... That seems like a stretch Not necessarily I mean, when you're talking about trying to... But not a hyper elongated stretch Not necessarily But that's an interesting idea To be able to take from the natural world To inspire material science And if we can have better ways To inject materials Into small spaces Long, thin small spaces Then this could be something very beneficial And if we understand the physics Of how it works Why does a particular structure work Better than another structure Than that could... That could solve some engineering problems Yeah, I think it seems silly But I understand it is It's an area that we haven't Really been looking closely in For how to put tubes in ducts That's true And then it is right there It's nature's best invention of that And as you said Blair It's a big counterintuitive, right? Yeah So maybe in some sort of Micro-engineering labs They've been trying to develop Harder and harder tips To make it down longer tubes And they've just been going at it all wrong It's sort of... It almost sounds kind of like The... What do you call it? Crumple zones in the car They design metal that is thicker At one end and thinner at the other So that it absorbs it Well, anyway That was my Beatles story Nice We do love the Beatles Such great hits Anyway Moving forward How about a story of mismatch Things that don't quite go together One of these things Yeah Not like the other So sometimes that's really good Teaching you racism since 1960 Oh no Oh no No This is going to teach you It's mismatch is a good thing And we're... We are always... Well, in one place where mismatch We know is good Is in human immune systems And we have this whole system That we think we don't know Is based on pheromones Or the sense of each other But the idea is that If you mate with somebody Dissimilar enough to you You're going to have healthy offspring Because you won't be in breathing You won't be decreasing The strength of the genes By making them the same Basically you're adding in diversity That could make them stronger And so this works also When it comes to nuclear And mitochondrial DNA So when the sperm And the egg join up in fertilization There's mitochondria that's involved Last week I talked about how the male mitochondria Goes into a self-destruct mode And destroys itself So that it won't stick around Because there's only one mitochondria That needs to be in the self For whatever reason they don't know why yet So, why do the mitochondria... The mitochondria are the energy-producing Organs, organelles of the cells We know that they work with the nuclear DNA The DNA in the nucleus To produce proteins and enzymes And various things that are responsible For certain aspects of metabolism So some researchers were like Hey, let's take some mice And let's have them get mismatched And mismatched mitochondrial and nuclear DNA And see what's going to happen there Because we couldn't figure out a reason Why they should be matched or mismatched Or whatever So anyway, the Spanish National Center For Cardiac Research in Madrid And their colleagues published in Nature Their study in which they genetically Cross-bred strains of mice With particular mitochondrial Or nuclear DNA profiles For 20 generations, they bred these offspring The female offspring with the males And they diluted the nuclear DNA Until it was practically non-existent So the mice then had mitochondrial DNA From one strain And then nuclear DNA from the other So it was a very specific mix A mismatch of the DNA From the two sources And then they found, they looked at the Health and lifespan of the resulting Offspring after 20 generations What they found is that The mismatch, the foreign DNA That was not similar Led to mice that had Longer median lifespan So overall, the curve was moved To later in life So the median age of death was later They showed better preservation Of their ovaries in advanced age Fewer tumors at death And maintained more steady cholesterol levels With age They had better health spans If not the similar life spans But better health spans The counterintuitive part of this study Was that they had increased levels Of reactive oxygen species So we're always talking about Meeting our antioxidants to stay young We want to get rid of the reactive Oxygen species because It's that reactive oxygen That is going to damage ourselves And kill us sooner Well, that didn't happen in these Animals and they think it's kind of a case Of where a little bit of bad Actually turns into something good And that because they started off With an increased level Of reactive oxygen species That they had a constant level Of mild stress over their entire lives And they're constantly dealing With these reactive oxygen species Their whole lives And so they found that As the animals aged The reactive oxygen production Remained pretty steady Throughout the life of the mismatched animals But then in animals Where it was their DNA From the nuclear and mitochondria were the same It ramped up really sharply At the end of their life And so it was like an indication Of worse aging So it's a situation where A little bit of stress is not a bad thing Yeah, so a little bit of stress Could not be a bad thing And so then the interesting point To bring to this is that now we're at a point Where we're starting to use egg donors And we're starting to take the nucleus Or the mitochondria out of an egg And put it into another egg To help somebody with genetic disease Conceive children And so this is something that we need to start Looking at more closely To actually take into account If you're going to take an egg And put similar mitochondria Or similar nucleus in How are you going to set it up To be the best outcome for everybody So right now what the authors are suggesting Is just use a mitochondrial donor That is closer to the recipient Because we don't know enough about this yet And so at this point in time We know there's some kind of issue That potentially could help people's health The offspring's health outcome in the end But we don't know There could be a real downside to it So don't jump if you're doing These implanting experiments Don't just jump into this bandwagon But it's a very interesting area of study That could help human reproductive sciences A lot Or yeah, or jump in And then, you know Yeah, yeah From foreign country Where there's no controls on this kind of stuff That sounds awesome That's one way to do it All right, Blair, tell me a story Oh, well if I could genetically engineer my baby I might give them octopus eyes Have you guys ever seen cephalopod eyes And how they look super weird? Maybe? Yes Our pupils are not shaped like ours So our pupils around They get larger or smaller Depending on the amount of light And that's to affect the amount of light That goes into our eyeball That's because if any of you have ever Gone out into the bright sunlight After getting your pupils dilated When they're too large Sometimes you'll see this weird effect Where you'll get kind of rainbowy halos Around different things Out in the world Because your pupils are too large It's collecting too much light Well, the reason I bring that up Is that a new piece of research Coming from UC Berkeley And Harvard University in a joint effort With a father-son duo Has looked at how cephalopods see color This has all happened because The son of the father-son duo Alexander Stubbs has been fascinated forever Trying to figure out how cephalopods see color Because they should be completely colorblind They are brilliantly colored themselves They do all sorts of colorful displays To each other But they actually only have one type Of light receptor in their eyes So they should only be able to see In black and white If they can only see in black and white Why would they do these coloration signals To each other? How would they know what color to turn To blend into their environments? How is this possible? They must be able to see color Well, there's been this kind of confusion About this in the scientific community For a long time And the son Alexander Stubbs Teamed up with his father Who actually is a physicist At Harvard To try to figure out, run some models To see what was happening with them And the idea was That had something to do with their eye So the pupil in their eyes Are either U-shaped Or W-shaped Or kind of dumbbell shaped And the idea is that They can adjust their focus To different things in their field of vision Just like you can focus on different things With your digital camera And by changing their focus to different objects They actually get chromatic aberration Which is that kind of halo That I was talking about before In the edges of that pupil That come across in their eyes In their brains And that signals to them What color they see So this is just a theory The dad from Harvard The astrophysicist Christopher Stubbs Developed a computer simulation To model how that might work It looks promising So there's definitely more research to be done To see if this is actually how it's working All they know is based on the shape of the pupil And this computer simulation It could work What's really interesting I think Is that in order for them To detect color with chromatic aberration Is computationally so intensive So much more so than our cones That we use That it requires so much brain power That this might actually be one of the reasons Why cephalopods are so smart Oh that's an interesting idea Yeah That it's an adaptation because of their visual system So if you want to read the super complicated Technical explanation of how this all works I won't get into it now Because we're about to wrap up the show momentarily But go to our website And look at the show notes Read the link provided in the show notes And yeah it's actually really fascinating How this all potentially could work Octopus eyes Super fascinating but they have cones They don't have them They have rods They have cones They don't just have light detectors They have pigmented light detectors So they should be able to see some color Well they only have one type of light receptor So as far as we can tell They should only be able to see in black and white Interesting Mars' moons There might have been more of them once And the moons that we see now Could have been just remains From an impact From a large moon Transient Just getting pulled into Mars' gravitational field Once a long time ago And impacting with the planet Causing a massive eruption That led to the formation of the potato shaped Phobos And pebble shaped Deimos So researchers think that there might have been a bigger moon That actually just lost Instead of falling away from the planet Fell into the planet Gravity took over Yeah It's another scenario They now need to do a sample return mission And the JAXA Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency Is planning a sample return mission to Phobos and Deimos And that's maybe I don't know when that's going to be Hopefully soon, but NASA has a sample return Mission planned in the 2020s hopefully So with these in the future Hopefully there will be sample returns From the moons and from Mars So that we can actually do A chemical composition analysis And determine the validity of this idea And then my last story Bringing it right back to the big giants At the outer end of the solar system Saturn's moon Titan We've talked about it's life giving Or possibilities of life Life fostering possibilities before We've talked about it having lakes of hydrocarbons Researchers have found An abundance of hydrogen cyanide In Titan's atmosphere And you might think to yourself It is cyanide It's bad for people Yeah, well it's a hydrogen bonding molecule And it could form polymers With other molecules And these polymers include polyimine And using quantum mechanical calculations These researchers Publishing in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Have determined that polyimine Has the right properties At very cold temperatures Like those that would occur on Titan That could potentially facilitate Prebiotic chemistry And they say especially in Tidal pools near the large seas And so this is speculative of course But quote from the authors Because they are impossible to form naturally In a warmer world containing water and oxygen Only future exploratory missions to Titan Can test the hypothesis that natural chemical systems Evolve chemical complexity In almost any circumstance So now that we have Juno out there Come on America Let's work on this Let's get some more missions To moons, planets in our solar system We don't have anything on the books right now It's time to do it Let's do it I'm calling it action Justin, do you have any more stories? I'm good You're good, got it Alright, so We did all the science Science We could do a whole cover To the Betty Davis size You can act aposize One of these mitochondrias Not like the other And on that note I'd like to thank our Patreon sponsors For supporting us on Patreon Thank you to Paul Disney Kevin Parachan, Keith Corsale, Steve DeBell Melissa Mosley, Jesse Moreno, Jason Schneiderman Rudy Garcia, Gerald Sorrells Greg Goothman, Alex Wilson, David Naver Jason Dozier, Matthew Litwin, Eric Knapp Jason Roberts, Chris Clark, Richard Onemus John Runtzwame, Byron Lee, EO Jared Lysette, Ulysses Adkins, Dave Friedel Jake Jones, Mark Mazzaro, trainer 84 Advartus from KISS, Brian Hendrick Cassie Lester, Patrick Cohen, Sarah Chavez Laila, Bob Codler, Marshall Clark Charlene Henry, Don Comerichka, Leira Garcia Randy Mazzuca, Ed Dyer, Tony Steele Brian Condren, Craig Landon, Darryl Lambert Diverd Wiley, Robert Aston, Nathan Greco Hexator, Debra Smith Mitch Neves, Flying Out, John Crocker Richard Porter, Christopher Dreyer, Marked Sylvan Westby, Artyom Pixelfly Kevin B. 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And if you have learned anything from the show remember It's all in your head I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand This week science is coming your way So everybody listen to what I say I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all over It's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That what I say may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just then understand But we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy And this week in science is coming your way So everybody listen Do everything we say and if you use our methods then roll it and die We may rid the world of toxoplasma got the eye Because it's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science Science Science The laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got But how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop One hour's coming your way So listen to what we say And this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science It's not going to last terribly long because I'm very tired and it's hot in here It's very cold here. I know. You're in San Francisco where summer doesn't exist. Correct. Well, it does exist. It's just in October. It's in October. It's not in the right time of year. It's in the right time of year for me to vacation there. Very true. Yes. Yeah. USS River, I've been putting alcohol and hydrogen peroxide on them, don't worry. So I was house sitting, two cats and a dog, and I asked the owners, I said, does the dog care about fireworks? And they go, no, the dog doesn't care about fireworks at all. I mean, while I did not ask about how the cats feel about fireworks, I had both cats on my lap. A giant flurry of fireworks happened very close by, and I ended up with many holes in my leg. No. Yeah. No. Yeah. And I forgot about it, and then I got in the shower the next day, and I looked down, and I was like, what happened to my leg, what disease do I have? I'm keeping an eye on my family for Zika and West Nile. Yeah. We were at a pond over the weekend, there were mosquitoes. You'll be fine. We came home, and all of us have bites, like, I tried, I used the stuff, I sprayed it on, but we still have bites. Uh-uh. I'm not a good mommy. Eh, it's better for you. My child's going to get an emerging infectious disease. No, it's not. You're fine. It's good for him. It's good for him, right? Toughens him up. Right. Low-level stress. Good. That's what we learned today. I get the feeling from many postings of Dave's that he was not very happy with his neighbor's fireworks displays. Yeah, it's a bit north for Zika. Zika should not be up here yet, and especially at a random pond. Yeah. Yeah. In Oregon. In northern Oregon, on somebody's private property, not even a public property kind of place. Yeah. Oh, no. Oh, dear. Not fun, then. I don't know. I think Iraq must be a wonderful place. I don't know what Dave Freidel and the chairman was talking about. During the war. No, even right now, like, for the last decade, all I've been hearing- It's just been constant bombs, right? Yeah. All I've heard for the last decade is different armed group of people, whether it's us or other versions of them, or coalition-y people. They're all fighting over, like, towns like Fallujah. Fallujah must be the most beautiful, wonderful, awesome place to live. I mean, that must be the most amazing city on the planet that so many people are fighting over. I'm kind of on Zika watch for this Olympics, because this is going to be- You know already, right? This is going to be the sub-story between every swimming event, or what are we doing? It's like- It's going to be swimming in pure chlorine, just pure chlorine. We caught while you were preparing for the race. We noticed that you swatted. Do you think you have Zika? Are you feeling fatigued? Do you have joint pain? Are you afraid of this? Are you expecting this now? I know you won the gold, and it's great. Are you worried about Zika? This is going to be this constant mosquito buzzing around your head while you try to sleep drone that's going to go on throughout the entire Olympics. They're just going to put one giant mosquito net over the entire Olympic village. It'll be great. It's just going to be so annoying. It's going to be what's going to be fascinating, I think, is that there's- I mean, I don't know how many people are actually going to still go with all of the news of, yeah, fecal, bacterial contamination in the water, and Zika, and various others, and just the city not being ready for the Olympics yet. I mean, it's the usual story of a city not ready for the Olympics when they should be. It seems like they never are, right? No, anywhere in America is never ready for the Olympics. Yeah. No, never ready. And Northern America is never ready for the Olympics. But the thing here that I'm interested in is as epidemiology, as a source, so you have people in different areas of the world. Of course, Zika is already in various places around the world. It's not just in South America, Central America, moving its way into North America. That's not it. It's in Africa. It's other places. But all of a sudden, you have a moment in time where air traffic is increased, where a visitation is increased, where human traffic through an area is increased. And so the possibility of moving disease beyond the borders is increased. And yet the World Health Organization says, go ahead. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Just maybe if you're pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant within the next six months, maybe don't go. So I'm just, I'm waiting to hear the stories after, not just at the Olympics, but after when all of a sudden different countries around the world start reporting increases in various diseases and they tie it back to the Olympics. I'm just kind of waiting for this. I hate to say it, but it's just, I mean, normal traffic, it's like that's just the flow of things. But when you increase traffic to an area that we know has something like Zika, is this really a good idea to move forward with? So we've, okay. So we've already started this droning, you're knowing, buzzing effect now. Because this is, we are, but it hasn't even started and we're already Totally. Yeah. It is. It's important to talk about. And I think it's This is the Zika Olympics. It'll be forgotten that it took place in Brazil. I hope, I hope nothing goes wrong. Now they won't know what country it was, but it was the Zika Olympics, right? It was the one where all those people got Zika, yeah, the Zika Olympics. Yeah, I'm reporting from the Zika Village. I mean, Olympic Village. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, honestly, I hope nothing comes of it and it doesn't increase incidences anywhere, but the It kind of has to, right? It kind of has to. It kind of will. Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to have people who haven't listened to the stories or the travel proclamations saying if you're pregnant, don't go and there's going to be an increase in people coming back and having sex and having babies too soon and being Zika infected and having, you know, brain deformities. Well, isn't the Olympics usually a giant sex fest anyway? Yes. They've had very young athletic people hyped up, testosterone eyes, yeah. They basically just, instead of having like confetti, they just throw condoms into the air at the welcoming ceremony for the Olympics. They better. This time around, they had better. Yeah. No, I'm very interested to see what happens and I just have to, I mean, there's a big politics. It's a huge politics thing, you know, because Rio wants the business. They want the money. They want it to be a boost to their economy. And so, you know, the World Health Organization says, yeah, yeah, go, go ahead. It's fine. The CDC says, yeah, yeah, it's fine. Go ahead. But meanwhile, these reports are coming in that are not very good. And it's just kind of like, oh, what if, what if the Olympics were supposed to be in an Ebola infected country? What would they say then? Well, you know, possibly, look, look, I know that it all, it all seems like really frightening. But if you're talking about, yeah, if they put, what is it, Liberia? Is that, is that Ebola country? Yeah. Okay. So if the Olympics wasn't, it was in Liberia, you would potentially be lifting a lot of people out of a poverty level, at least temporarily so that lives would be saved. Possibly. Yes, more attention would be paid. The statistics, the statistics of these things, and yeah, the media attention and the desire and willingness to act, I bet you there's a lot more being done to combat Zika right now. Oh, they totally would have existed if not world-focused attention was being placed on this event. So, yeah, the bigger picture-y look at it all, I think is going to be beneficial. I hope so. I mean, there's that for Zika, and yes, there are, like, as someone else in the chat room said, there's, like, a number of vaccines that are on the table in terms of research, and then the one thing that's weird, though, is, like, the, the, the bacterially contaminated water, and it's like, oh, we're not going to talk about problems in, in water, in, in, in the systems in place to clean the water and how this country can, how we can help install technology to clean the water and better help the people of this, the city and the country. No, no, we're talking about these amazing suits the rowers are going to have that are going to fight bacteria. Yeah. I mean, seriously, don't get in the water. Yes, you can wear your silver-lined suits or whatever your antibacterial suits are, but the issue at hand here is that people have unclean water around the world, and that's what we should be talking about. How can we get clean water to everybody? I'm really, really pissed off today. Well, okay, I, I, I, I agree with you on one level, Kiki, but then it, this is the, this is the world stage, and, and I'm going to make up a statistic that I'm totally, probably wrong about, but if a country like Brazil spends more money on cosmetic surgery than it does on waste management, it's not really the world's job to come in and, and also then take care of the thing that they're neglecting it, like. But isn't this part of the point of the Olympics is to like spread some of the opportunities around the world and to, yeah, to kind of shine a light on other countries and, I, yeah, I'm with Kiki on this one. It's supposed to shine a light, it's like, it's supposed to bring people together and it's supposed to shine a light on the hardships that some people have and try and get people to be better, better world citizens. And not to mention the reason people or different countries, different cities want the Olympics where they are is to bring wealth, to bring attention, to bring all these things to their space. So if they have this budget for the Olympics and they're busy making these fancy tents instead of fixing the water filtration system, that'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, uplifting news, not related to Zika or the Olympics. But we have a cool scientist in space now. Hopefully she's going to make it to the International Space Station by Friday. If anyone, I don't know if you watched it. We watched my family watched a few minutes of the Soyuz launch that took three astronauts from the Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and they're on their way. They're in orbit right now. One astronaut is, or Tyco-naught is from Japan. One is from Russia and from the United States is Kate Rubens, who is a biologist turned astronaut. She used to study infectious disease in biosafety level four facilities and on the ground in the Congo. And she is going to do science on the International Space Station. That is her, that's her job. She's going there to do science and she's going to do the first genetic sequencing in space. What? Yeah. So they're using a pocket size, what's called a mini ion sequencer. And it's a technology that hasn't been used in microgravity before. So they don't know whether the liquid is going to behave the same way and whether the DNA sequence is going to go through the nanopores in the same way. They don't even know if it's going to work. So I've got to try it first to see if it's going to and then work on work on any troubleshooting they might be doing. Another thing that she's going to be involved in is like some some experiments on interocular pressure. And so she's one of the astronauts. They're going to be testing themselves and ultrasounding their own eyeballs. So she describes it to wired and she says, yeah, you close your eye and you put either gel or what works great on orbit is water actually because the water just sits there. And you can ultrasound over the top of your eyelid. It's amazing. You watch with the other eye and you can see your retina and your cornea and your optic nerve. And it's really cool. That is awesome. Yeah. So it's very, very exciting. She's a she's a well-healed scientist. She's worked. She's done some amazing work, worked, done some great stuff. And hopefully she's going to be able to do some really cool science on the space shuttle. That is awesome. Lady scientist in space, gonna be on the space shuttle. On Friday. Oh, yeah. Super good. Yeah. So not just scientists in space, female scientists in space. Boom. Score one for female role model of the world. OK, I think now you're just you're just Benoba pamorphizing us. Maybe, maybe not. I think it's good. Oh, USS Rover says, quit watching Olympics when we allowed the US professional basketball players as a team. That was pretty funny. More Kenny Rogers songs. Oh, yeah, I got to look at this link. That's scary eyeball pressure. Panda squirrel. Yes. So anyway, very exciting identity for scientists in space. So after having a super awesome three day weekend. Are you all glad to be done three day weekend weekend weekend? Yeah, what's a three day weekend? Are you on? I don't get those. No, in fact, because of this three-day weekend in the Carbiz, I spent my two days off that I normally have following the three-day weekend working, cleaning up business from that weekend. In a sense, not having any days off over what it would be. I hope it was lucrative for you. A 12-day stretch. And I'm moving at the same time. So, yeah, holidays are for suckers. Holidays are for suckers. Okay, you positive people. I got my little rantiness out, although I have more rantiness, but I'm going to keep it to myself. I'm going to keep it to myself because I'm going to be a positive person and I'm not going to let people know all the negativity I hold inside. Oh, my goodness, I thankfully will fully admit to having an interoptimist. And it's a detriment. It's a big detriment. It's a huge detriment to have an interoptimist because then you're like, yeah, it's terrible. It's like, oh gosh, I really like that, but I can't afford it. And then your interoptimist pipes in, yeah, you're going to make more money next month. It'll be great. I don't care about it. You know what? Interoptimist is right. I should just buy it. What am I doing? Why am I even hesitating? Oh, outer critic of the world, outer pessimist, give in to your interoptimist. Yeah, she went into a lot of trouble, actually, having an interoptimist. It's good to be balanced. Dale Poco in the chat says, I'm sure this is a joke, but I'll respond anyway. I don't even think the gender of an astronaut is a newsworthy item anymore. It's done. Well, there have been, I just looked it up, 536 people in space. How many of them have been female? 45. I bet we can count it on two hands. I'm guessing 45. 40. 40. More than two hands. Well, five of them I just couldn't tell. So 40 females and 500 males, basically. Yeah, so I'd say it is definitely newsworthy. It's less than 10%. Throughout all of human history, though, which is actually, it's not really going back that far. No. No. It's a little bit, but not that far. Yeah. So anyway, I just thought I'd say that real quick. Yes. Yes, Dave. So, Dale, you might have a very good point there. If we looked at it on a time frame, how that percentage has increased year by year. And I'm sure it's been more recently increasing. So we've got the bulk of history that it's been men who have been the astronauts. But yeah, it's increasing, which is good. But it's still, I think it's still a newsworthy thing. Actually, not just a woman, but a female scientist. Yeah, and a female biologist, too. Yes. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Sausage space. Very nice, Dave. Hashtag sausage space. Yeah. I mean, there is a whole, where effects, effects is joking a bit. There is a space and time in the future where hopefully sex won't even matter, where it'll be not an issue. And we won't be saying male or female. It'll be gender-neutral, and it'll just be people who are very well-suited to the job. Well, I don't know if I like that world. I have a friend who believes that actually trying to take gender out of equations is counterproductive, because we are a biological organism that requires two distinct sexes, and we are very different. And embracing those differences probably would be more beneficial than ignoring them. I agree with that. And there's also the argument of wanting to leave space for people who are uncomfortable defining with either sex. And so if you say, this is a man going to space, or this is a woman going to space, and you're celebrating a particular thing, then you're drawing attention to something that puts them in a place of not fitting in, or it's like, okay, so what am I supposed to say when the PR person comes? Right. And asks me that, okay, what's the gender identity, okay, or maybe that'll be the next cool thing. Maybe it'll be the transgender person in space, or whatever, and maybe that'll be something that's right. And it's going to be more complicated than transgendered. It's just a whole vocabulary that you have to learn that goes with it. But you're right there, too, I mean then that's going to be, it's like, oh, at least you had 10%. You're right. As opposed to zero. There's groups at zero right now. So I mean, I don't think it should be necessarily removed from the equation for that reason. And for like the reason that Blair says. Well it's in theory that you're not going to have to say she's in space and she's a woman. How awesome. A woman in space. Yeah, but you know how many African American women have been in space. Right, right. And you can always do that. Absolutely. But it's definitely, that's the thing when, you know, I was having this very lively debate about how people think that misogyny's dead, right, and all this kind of stuff. And I know that weird, like, super misogynist thing is going to pick this up and take these words. So I'll just feed it right to them right now. But the idea of pretending that it's not there is convenient. But it's, I think it's more important to recognize that it's not that women are the same as men, it's that women are capable and that women are useful and that women have something to contribute. And they doesn't have to be the exact same thing that they have to contribute, but that they are also worthy of consideration and space. Okay. So, so women are... All people are. Yes. All people are. But then that's the same argument. That's, you know, that's the... Right. So, so there's, okay, so if we're going to get into this a little bit. It limits history. It's back to this thing and it comes back to, there's a history behind everything. And so, yeah. It's back to this thing of every person is different. Every person has different capabilities. Every person has different strengths. And so sometimes those are correlated with categories. Sometimes they are not. Okay. Okay. So I think, I think the point in the chat room that started all of this is your point that it, misogyny might not be gone, but the idea that women are capable of being competent is pretty much gone. Yes. That's pretty gone. Yeah. It's not that anybody's questioning whether women are capable of being competent anymore. Now what you can look at, as you would look at when you're talking about sort of the diversity of racial or of any sort of ethnic, I guess, in an open society like America is, well, if you see deficits in one group or another, how do you address this? Where can you find the root causes of this? And they're not going to necessarily be at the applicants to become astronaut level, which might not look like a very diverse group at all. It's probably further back in the chain of education and economics and everything they'll probably improve and opportunities and that sort of thing. So it does touch on a bigger issue. But I don't, but I kind of agree the chat room, there shouldn't be too much excitement that, wow, we found it, look, everybody, a competent female. Yeah. It's not really what, but she's not the point. I know it's not the point. And that's not what we should be. The point is this is this is kind of we should be celebrating eating its own tail in that there's not so many female astronauts in space. So girls don't want to be astronauts. Well, that's part of it. Yeah. But I mean, that's what I meant to say. I mean, well, that's the conclusion of where I'm getting at, which is that it's not that, hey, look, we found a competent woman who can astronaut. It's that we're celebrating the fact that we have come to the point where we are overcoming those fake boundaries, which were very real as they were applied to people, but were based on fake premise. So we're celebrating the fact that there's another female astronaut in space. And we're also celebrating that it's a female scientist. And it's a even bigger celebration. It's a female astronaut scientist in space. And we can applaud that loudly without feeling as though we are just happy that we found a competent woman. Right. And I think also it's it's important to remember that as a society, as a whole, we have recognized that women are competent and women can do things. And women should be managing companies. And that's not weird. And they will, you know, women politicians aren't controlled by their menstrual cycle and all this weird stuff, right? So as a society, we're starting to catch on to that. And we know that that's not right. OK. Which is why certain individuals maybe still are swayed by some of those ideas won't say them out loud because they know that they're not right. OK. But here's here's here's to add a little bit of go. Yeah, there is. But there's still a lot of stuff inside. And they say that when you say that we as a country, I'm just going to sit a little bit in the West. Take a break. When when we say that we as a country have come to this point, you know, I would say it's you're now talking about the majority of the country has come to this frame of mind and that much of the country has already had this frame of mind for a very, very, very long time, perhaps since its inception, you know. We have I think a majority of this country who now believes that somebody's ethnicity does not preclude them from being president. We have hopefully a majority of this country who believes somebody's gender does not preclude them from the highest office of the country. And when you have these things, it's again, it's not like we have to do that just to prove a point to ourselves. It's that that's sort of where we've gotten as a country where the majority of people don't have that point of view that automatically precludes based on preconceived notions. At least 50% based on. Current polls and banks. And long way to go before that's reflected in who has Senate seats or Congressional seats or is an astronaut or any, you know, long way to go before the ideological shift that has obviously taken place within this nation is reflected. So we can celebrate those moments when the ideology of the country is reflected in those who are holding positions. And each one is a victory. And if we get to the point where it's all female, you know, it's 100% female, Congresspeople, senators, president, and astronauts. Yeah, that'll definitely happen. And they decide that at some point that, you know, man's place is really at home and only women should work. I'll sign off on that, too. I'm fine. I can run a vacuum cleaner. Well, you know, we can take a lesson from the bonobos, you guys. That's what I'm saying, because it's going to end in more sex, which is really what our goal was to begin with. And if there's another way to do that that's more effective, I think all men will listen up to it. Plus, it would improve the economy. Can you imagine if all men dropped out of the workforce tomorrow? Men, listen up. We know you've talked about this. You've talked about it. We know we'd rather be playing golf or Xbox, hanging out with our friends. Who doesn't want to be a stay-at-home dad? And I'm telling you, it's a lot less stressful of a life. We'd be happier. Women, they want to run the country. I think we should give them the shot. It's the grand experiment, this democracy thing. But I think we should just let the women run the country. And if all of us dropped out of the workforce, there would be competition for job, competition for employees from the companies. Wages would go up with this sort of competition to get competent employees. And then one-income families could be the standard again in this country, just because everybody would be offering benefits, higher wages come work for us. No, don't go to them. Come work for us. We'll offer you more money, more money to work for us. Oh, and daycare. And daycare. Who needs daycare? Stay-home dads. And then imagine the Olympics after that, because what are the dads going to do? No, I'm just thinking daycare for when the mother is still feeding her children. Oh, yeah, yeah, there'll be a little bit of that. The infant daycare would be necessary. Back to work. Women's place is in the workforce. I'm excited to let her stay at home. And then dads, what are dads going to do? Dads will still be in the sports, at least for a while. And we're going to have the kids out there exercising. They're going to be in soccer, then baseball, and basketball at the same time. We're going to win every Olympic event, because the kids will all be athlete freaks in all this every activity. And then it'll also be fit, because dad's like, all right, let's go out there and run some laps. Let's go to soccer practice, baseball practice, then basketball practice, and then go home and kids will be out. I think it'll be fantastic. This sounds great. Sign me up. Yeah, let's do this. We'll make this the Science Island. We'll get Science Island. All political positions have to be held by women. All the entire workforce has to be women. Men actually aren't allowed to work in Destin's society. They're not allowed to lift a finger for anything outside of the house. Shut up and make me a sandwich. There you go, yeah, I can make a sandwich. This is my, I'm actually good with that. I like hanging out in the kitchen. This is, this could totally work. Oh, I love it. Oh man, I am so on board with this. No, and seriously, the unemployment gets up to like five, six, eight percent. People are freaking out. Have all the men drop out of the workforce. Now there's, now they're going to have to employ every single eligible woman, which means that we'd have a hundred percent employment. It'd be fantastic. All right. Claire, did you want me to chop up the pickles and put them in the sandwich, or do you want them on the side? What do you think? Oh my God, what did I sign up for? Wait, was that two sugars? A little less mouth, a little more hand-witch. Was that two sugars and one cream or one cream and two sugars? This is why Dave Friedel I can't believe we have to go over this again. I was wondering when I talk. I think this is going to be a fantastic future. Oh you guys, crack me up. I am sensing a twist short in the making. Right? But we'll dress just like it's the 50s. Oh yeah, oh yeah, 40s. Can we do 40s? I like the 40s a little better. Sure, 40s, 40s. I like the 40s a little better. Yeah, that'd be great. I was thinking more like Mad Men's style and just all of the roles are reversed. I think that would be brilliant. And I could be that, I could be that like spunky upstart secretary who has an eye on being an ad woman, but nobody's taking me seriously. But I've got really good ideas and they keep using my really good ideas but I never get credit for them. Be totally right. Identify, you couldn't play the old time you 50s radio announcer because in this world people only want to listen to what women have to say. Unless it's about a good cleaning product. Yes, that's right. Which is why I only use Solarium. It uses the power of the sun to get tough stains out. That's how I keep my kids clothes looking clean. And also Wildwood oil. It trains and treats children's hair. Oh my gosh. We're onto something here. I think so. I think so. You guys. Okay, the egg timer just went off in the kitchen. I gotta take out the, I gotta take out a roast, I'll be right back. I'm gonna go. Oh no, he's gone. Well, I'm gonna hang up. So he's gonna come back today because I've been waiting and I'm gonna go. I'm ready to go get the throat, losing voice. We'll see you next week. Yeah. Awesome. Looking forward to more 40s, 50s, reversed, role reversals. Sounds good to me. Role reversals of the 1950s. All right, you guys, have a good night. Uh-huh. This has been This Week in Science. Thank you for sharing this ridiculousness with us. And I hope that everybody has an amazing week ahead. I hope that you check out the Science Island Twist Minion Hangout. People have fun with those on Thursday nights. And I think that's about it. We're gonna say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Blair. Good night, Kiki. Good night. Thanks everyone for watching. We'll see you next week.