 Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast broadcast of this week in science where we come together every week on Wednesdays at 8 p.m.. Ish Pacific time to discuss all the science news that we decide is important to discuss this week and We chat about it. We have a lot of fun. This is the pre-show getting started letting you know that if you're here You're watching the uncut magic. This is how the Bacon, why is it how the bacon is made? I don't know. It's how the sausage is made. The sausage Regardless still similar similar like it's the process When you find out about Then you don't want to eat That's how they make it. This is more like how the cookies are made like Cookies and you want to this version of it and you Rock cookie dough, it's okay really The flower I know anyway, um we're gonna start the show and The podcast version will be edited. So just keep that in mind as we get going hit those likes hit those Subscribes hit all the buttony buttons that are not really buttons, but just little Icons on your screen. That's what we want you to do right now because we're gonna start the show Starting the show in a three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 914 recorded on Wednesday February 22nd 2023 welcome to the science carnival Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show We will fill your head with work eggs and surgery but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer History has a lot of lessons for us modern humans for one. We are only the current modern humans There were other current modern humans in the past at times several versions of then current modern humans existed Simultaneously in the future there will likely be different current modern humans than the current modern humans of today I do hope they remember us well We are in a sense just a placeholder for humanity a pin in the ever-flowing corkboard of time a Post-it note on the ever-expanding desktop of eternity a truck stop along the always receding highway of Evolution but as the currently most current current modern humans We have the most to benefit by looking into the past because there is more of it Sometimes that just means there's more of human history to pour over in ancient writings artifacts and fossil finds But it also means that there is more modern history to discover recent advancements and discoveries in science from the most productive period in Scientific history the history. We like to think of as this weekend science coming up next And a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this weekend science We are back again to Talk about science because that's what we like to do You're back and I didn't destroy the show Of course, you didn't destroy the show Thank you for covering. Thank you for keeping it going my pleasure Of course, you did an amazing job. Geez. I Didn't explode anything. It was great. No, I I Expected everything to be totally fine and it absolutely was good. Okay, so I'm leaving now and you all get to do the show without No, just just keep going. It's fine. It's fine. No, please keep doing the things All right, I'll keep doing the things like telling you that we have a whole bunch of science lined up for you today I have a story about the innermost core the core in the core the core core core also some Jwist discoveries sharkless vaccines and heart prints Like fingerprints, but not really really not really and brain brain repair, but do you have Justin? I? Got a four-day work week. Is it worth it? Yes another reason Da Vinci was an amazing guy volunteering for cranial surgery in medieval Italy and Why if you're a? Why have your student you should actually be sleeping late? It's actually better better for your education and Your future outcomes and we'll talk more specifically about this, but It's not we're not talking about kindergartners So this is universally because it yeah, you're right most of these studies in the past are like whoa What are the young children think about? Are you saying you're trying to bring child development science into how we run schools? Interesting I can't wait certainly are not including that in our program Which if you would like to subscribe to it is found on pretty much every podcast? Platform that is out there the ones that you know and love and if you look forward this week in science You should be able to find us. We are on Twitter Instagram Twitch and Mastodon as at twist science and we broadcast live on YouTube twitch and Facebook Every Wednesday 8 p.m. Pacific time for all of you who are out there But if this is just a lot of information go to our website twist org And you can find a bunch of things there like show notes and links and all these ways to subscribe So on with the science wait, I brought stories. Oh good gracious I Could go I guess Oh Rachel Rachel Rachel maybe you can edit this and put one piece where the other piece should be and then this is I'm this is gonna be me saying and Blair what's in the animal corner? Oh, I'm so glad you asked I brought David Attenborough and I also brought Old ladies and these are old ladies of the monkey and naked mole rat variety So, all right, we have some interesting company tonight in the animal corner for sure company company But now Let's dive into the science. Yes. Yes. Let's do it. Okay. All right. Everybody likes doing their core Strength workouts, right? And if you're if you're into being strong having a nice strong spine You're like, oh, I'm gonna work out the core muscles and then they people talk about the corset Actually, it is I'm throwing everyone completely off course because this is a story about the earth's core. Oh, oh Well, just like with our core if you get a six pack It's like oh, look at those cute muscles on the the top of the top of the abdomen that have no fat on them That yeah, there are muscles underneath those muscles The girdle there's muscles under muscles. And so researchers have determined by once again listening to bouncing earthquakes through the earth seismic Reverberations they have determined that not only not only is there a crust a mantle an outer core and inner core There is a bit level The innermost inner core. Oh the inner-est core the inner-est the most Interesting And so this is the core this is the core that is Solid super solid iron sulfates it's Rock, it's they don't think if there's any liquidity to it that this is the part that's really crystallized Yeah, instead of four Layers to our earth now researchers have said there are five It gets more complicated and nuanced the longer that we look at it The innermost inner core everyone it's course all the way down you're saying It really is This is published in nature communications this week and researchers are calling it something of a metallic ball solid metallic ball and They have used a number of earthquakes one particularly an earthquake in Alaska that caused seismic waves to Finitrate all the way through the core bounce off the other side of the crust of the earth And then come all the way back through that enabled them to really be able to get this Information the research researchers say this inner core is like a time capsule of earth's evolutionary history It's a fossilized record that serves as a gate gateway into the events of our planet's past Events that happened on earth hundreds of millions to billions of years ago Um, you know that said we're still not going to be going there anytime soon so a lot of this is you know still speculation because we're dealing with The ringing bell of the earth and it's Yeah Reverberations and basically sonar through our planet But Yeah, they analyzed about 200 magnitude 6 and above earthquakes from the last decade to get this information So do we have to worry about the innermost core stopping or changing directions now This is not a question that I am able to answer yeah, it's I mean the thing is I think we have enough to worry about up here Yeah, we may have just discovered it I think it's five It's always been there the core is the core it's still the core. It's it's the coreiest core We'll move on. That's all I really wanted to start with How about let's work less. Can you can you help us with that? Justin? Yes, please just so well So the way you phrase that may or may not be May or may not be completely Anchor, but what if We had A four-day work week. Yes, please really work. Yes. It sounds nice Who wouldn't want to have that three-day weekend every week who would come with it? Might imagine that even without a study employee well-being Would be positively affected. Yes at first. Yes We're about a little bit of a long-term consequence there And and most importantly How would the businesses suffer? Most importantly, yes Think of the businesses suffering 61 organizations in the uk with around 2,900 employees in total committed To working a 40 four-day work week all staff every level With importantly no fallen wages for a six-month period Most of them kept their full-time productivity targets. So not less work Just fewer hours at work So just so this wasn't four tens Yeah, is it still 40 hours a week or is it just no they reduced the number of hours. So I worked I tell you I worked four tens For for a number of years. That was the best Schedule ever but four eights would be better The four eights would also be better. Yeah Yeah Although at that point it doesn't matter because In that 40 work week honestly You have all of the energy to do four tens. It's not a problem. Also. I was younger so that might have been something Anyway, well, yeah, that's the other thing too is is uh four tens are very much like a young person's game that doesn't have children Yeah, if you're gone for 10 hours plus commute you you can't really see young children at all That's your that's your day. It's done. Yeah. Yeah It's I I mean sorry to derail Justin, but um, I have a 980 schedule, which is amazing. So I work nine hour days five days Uh, well, I guess I work nine hour days four days then I get a three day weekend Then I work nine hour days four days and then I work an eight hour day so I get I get a three-day weekend every other week, which is great, but Now I'm looking at having a family soon and I'm going to have to drop it because It does make a sacrifice to your home time. So like I am very intrigued in this because I assumed this story was about four tens No, yeah, they just did uh, they just did reduction in hours down to I guess the 32 Okay, so question though is how did it go? Because before we get too excited about trying it It was great for the employees. Yes 61 organizations 2900 employees tried it out for six months How did it go? Absolutely fabulously 71% of the employees reported low lower levels of burnout 39% stated they were less stressed 60% of employees Found an increased ability to combine paid work with care responsibilities. I think that's what you're talking about there 62% this is the younger folks maybe reported Easier to combine work with their social life For some parents of young children a midweek day off meant saving on childcare expenses Well, those with older children got more me time 65 reduction, this is probably the most interesting one 65 reduction in sick days Hmm. Wow, because you can schedule your doctor's appointments on your day off Or or you know just power through it for that one more day. Yeah, or not have burnout. Yeah 57% less employee turnover, which has a big percentage But it's I don't know how many how what the number of people being turned over so it might have only been a few Uh to begin with from the previous six months not the previous of the previous years same six month period But Yeah, I'm surprised they had any because I don't see how you quit a four-day work week Even for a better job if it means going back to five days Right. Yeah, there's a better opportunity over there more money and everything else, but yeah, they want they want they want more hours for that Some companies stopped work completely for the three-day weekend While others staggered their staff to create a reduced workforce over the period of the week company revenues barely changed They increased by 1.4 percent on average over the six month period, which I guess depending on what the projections are For a company it might be great. It might be terrible. I don't know that one But it must have been okay because 56 out of the 61 companies that participated Say they intend to continue with the four-day work week Research for the uk trials was conducted by a team of social scientists meaning to university of cambridge working with academics from boston college in the u.s and a think tank Called autonomy companies involved ranged from Everything from online retailers and financial service providers to an animation studio local fish and chip shop There was a consultancy company that apparently really really liked this participating housing it skincare hospitality marketing healthcare a broad grouping of companies the only ones that had sort of any complaint I guess was I don't know if it was the animation studio, but what was described as a the people who had more creative jobs Enjoyed taking more downtime at work It was sort of like they you know that helped the the process of creativity Right to get into that flow state or to have that. Yeah, and so for them. They were like kind of like Like probably not like complaining loudly if they got the three-day weekend But we're saying like the condensed amount of work that they needed to put out Was was was not as favorable It didn't like that. They like being able to take a three-hour lunch and think about something Yeah, I mean I think the one aspect of the work culture is just How much work is expected by particular deadlines? And so if you are going to that four-day work week, are people still able to get the same amount of work done? Are they Or like you were mentioning with the creatives, are they more likely to have it feel more stressful because they feel like they Don't have that same time for that creative process that they need. So perhaps this is the kind of thing that could be flexible depending on the career or the person Yeah, absolutely I think part of part of what's going on here too is With that three-day work week It seems like there's is reported less stress less burnout more time for social engagement. Whatever people are coming back Without a monday because regardless of you started you ended the work Nobody comes in on friday or nobody comes in on wednesday or whatever. It basically eliminates the monday Where you're coming back and you're dragging yourself to work To start this whole week thing over again I get the sense that it's They're just jumping in and then the friday or if everybody's checking out by noon Everybody works through their their friday and doesn't have a monday I don't know I push back on that one. I think monday exists no matter what because think about like your first day back from a vacation Is tough always but what I will say is Some of I don't know if this is for everybody but some of my most productive time Is the afternoon before my weekend because I have stuff I want to get done before I leave Right and that doesn't matter what day of the week it is if I'm about to leave on a vacation or If I have an appointment the next day or if I have my three-day weekend I'm trying to get stuff done before I go home. Yeah, so it's This is this is the way Workweek should be moving our technology is improving. We can work faster and more cohesively We should be able to work less instead of do more in the same amount of time The only direction should be going the only word of warning I would uh throw out in relation to this story because I love a four-day workweek. I think it's brilliant. I think it's absolutely should happen This was a participation by companies that agreed not to reduce salaries. Yes. Okay So other companies also have been you're contacting these companies me like, oh, hey, how to go tell us more tell us more Tell us more because they're probably thinking hey if I didn't get the same productivity and pay every employee eight hours a week less Yeah That also see that's that's the other it's sort of like how automation sounds like it's going to make your life easier and then it turns out it just means you can't get a job in your industry Or it means that you have to do more because it makes everything more efficient Yeah, it just depends on on where that efficiency is taking place if it if it's what used to be your job It's terrible But if you're if your goal is to stimulate the economy giving people more free time just gives them more time to spend money on things Thank you. Yes. Thank you If you're if you're a service-facing business and now you have a three-day weekend of people going out to restaurants and bars and getting their They're ahead of going shopping or whatever it is people do on these weekends Yes, then then you have another prime day of business Those humans are doing other you have another prime Opportunity for your earnings that should go up and since we're a service-oriented company or countries anyway Like we've gone away from a lot of manufacturing It requires like people going somewhere and doing stuff within their community And yeah, give them an extra day off so you can boost that local economy. Absolutely If only this would actually happen Yeah Well, who knows Perhaps this kind of data will push things in different directions. There is a lot of flux going on right now in a lot of areas related to employment and it's important that studies like this happen so that there is data behind decisions that are being made I don't I don't want to be nasty, but the last thing you want to say is like The pandemic showed us how effective and beneficial teleworking is There are heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps of data on how effective that is But if you look on the whole Companies are pushing to bring people back to the office right now yep, and so I would love to think this is going to do something. I'm really hoping I'm really like clenching both fists and hoping that This will go somewhere But I can't help but see what happened with teleworking and go I try to be I try to be an optimist I try not to get jaded even though there's a lot to be jaded about but let's talk about Goodness in the world Blair. Oh my goodness. Oh, it's my such goodness. Yes. Yes. Yes Hey, do you watch nature documentaries either? Oh, yes They're good Scientifically speaking. Oh not just based on the producers in the yeah Okay, uh watching make your nature documentaries makes people more interested in plants potentially provoking involvement in botany and ecology so there have been studies on Things like blue planet planet earth all these other Kind of documentaries in the past and how it Changes our behavior what we're googling for what we're donating to and it has an impact so in particular researchers wanted to look at what it does to plant species Because about 40 percent of plant species that we've identified are under threat of extinction But there is a cognitive bias in humans called plant by blindness or plant awareness disparity which It's basically just walking around and seeing something green with leaves and going. Yeah, that's a plant And so while while we're generally concerned with the danger to animal species Threats to plants are harder to recognize and address especially since yeah, that's a plant Plants receive less than four percent of federal funding for endangered species despite being about 57 percent of the endangered species list So knowing that They focused on the 2022 bbc documentary narrated by surd david attenborough, of course green planet To look whether this documentary promoted plant awareness Which could ultimately increase audience engagement with plant conservation programs It was watched by about 5 million people in the uk I'm sure it's also on streaming devices and and has been seen by many more people than that But specifically the study was looking in the uk and this the documentary featured a diversity of plant species Looking at vegetation from tropical rainforest aquatic environments seasonal lands deserts and urban spaces And the program also talked about environmental concerns directly Talking about monoculture deforestation and other threats to plants So then they explored people's online behavior around the time of the broadcast They noticed the species that appeared on the show They looked at the time they appeared on the screen and then they extracted google trends and wikipedia hits For the same species before and after the episodes aired and so 28.1 of search terms Representing plants from the documentary had peak popularity The week after the broadcast of the relevant episode Almost a third of wikipedia pages related to plants mentioned in green planet showed increases Increased visits the week after the broadcast as well. So Google and wikipedia showed that people were looking these things up So it at least Was increasing awareness and interest in these plant species So in this study they indicate that nature documentaries can in fact increase plant awareness among audiences And suggest that viewers found certain plant species particularly captivating. So much like there are certain Uh poster species for endangered species as we talk about sometimes They can actually use this information to leverage specific plant stories and plant species to raise money for plant conservation So, uh, they can use this kind of for a next step as well But in the end those documentaries are doing good. They are adding Awareness to people who might not have it in other ways even for plants not just animals More plant documentaries. Yeah That's pretty interesting. I would also encourage people Especially if you've got a garden outdoors But even even indoors Go find out what your local native plant species are And and plant those Yeah, i'm i'm very excited about getting rid of the invasive english ivy that is around my house and trying to plant native berry plants and native ferns and all sorts of Uh native plants this spring as we start heading in Yeah, and if this is if this is something that's kind of Interesting to you. You don't just have to watch green planet over and over you could actually go to Um to natural history museums and learn about plants there But also if you want to learn about the specific plants that are where you live You can often find guided hikes in parks near you You can find nature programs at museums or gardens or sometimes even at the kind of um At plant stores right sometimes they'll have at a nursery they'll have actually Uh educational programs there So there's lots of opportunities for you to hear compelling stories about plants and learn more about them Not to mention the the app seek. I feel like I just discovered that kind of recently and it's been so fun It's like that's what that's called. That's what that's called So there's there's lots of new opportunities to learn about plants around you I learned uh, I learned from a study that was uh that was put out or not put out by but shared by a local california wildflower uh organization That was pointing out that uh california native wildflowers are more fire resistant And then which at the time I read that was before all of the wildfires and then when the wildfires happen I'm like, oh gosh. I wonder You need to throw you need to throw more of those wild the wildflower seeds around justin I mean you've told us before on the show Pockets full of the california poppy seeds and other native wildflowers. I was I was planting them in empty fields or ever But yeah, don't do that where you are now though. Then it's an invasive species Well, I have to find whatever the the native species is here to make it make it work But the the thing that it told too is it tells me that california is a place that has a lot of fires likely That's why the native wildflowers are more fire resistant than flowers in places that don't burn As often so it also tells you something about the history of california just by studying the native plant That's a good point. Yeah Other places we like to study our in outer space we like to look at outer space and Hubble gave us many views of distant galaxies gave us ideas that there were big galaxies starting some 300 400 500 600 700 million years after the big bang very close to the big bang but now with the j-wist from nasa the telescope has given us a view thanks to a particular study called the cosmic evolution early release science survey where they've looked into A patch of space near the big dipper the big dipper is probably very familiar for many of us you look into the sky and oh look, there's the big dipper or as others like to call it's ursis Majora's or ursis the is the big bear too, right? and So they looked into this area of space where Hubble has looked before and it wasn't very interesting. However with this new Resolution that they have they have looked at some fuzzy spots They went what what are those fuzzy spots? And oh those fuzzy spots appear very red. Oh, what are these red fuzzy spots and in astronomy red light usually means distance and the slowing down of light and Usually it's light that's traveled a very very very long way to get to us and the researchers that have just published their study in nature have determined that they've found a bunch of galaxies that are pretty big like milky way kind of size and they existed about 500 to 700 million years after the big bang and This is one of those discoveries that if you're in the astronomy community Having the data for it people are going to say this is going to rewrite textbooks But yes, they shouldn't have had the time to form. They shouldn't have been so big they shouldn't have all the stars in them that they have and Because we have a device that's in space now that has clearer imaging And can look further back and get through dust and be able to really see that infrared spectrum They're able to determine determine these possibilities that they're They're these big things way back when so is that Is that when they shouldn't be there because it's too soon in the early universe Does that just mean that the early universe was earlier than we think it was? Great that things that number has been pushed back a few times It has been and with Hubble and there are lots of oh There are galaxies that have been found earlier than we expected And so this is not the first time that this kind of discovery has been made It is specifically the first time that the size of the objects has been so large This far back or this early in our universe's history So if we keep our current model of how how things formed in the early universe that means the universe Maybe older than we think That's a really that's an interesting question too and somebody uh hard jar in the youtube chat says it's moving away from us so we also have to consider the expansion of the universe, but i'm sure they've taken that into account as well, but it's it is a very tantalizing question of did things start earlier than we think or Do processes at the early stages of the universe Are they different than the way we think they are currently? And so these are these are questions that we cannot answer but we're seeing fuzzy dots that make a Make our scientists ask questions I like fuzzy dots fuzzy dots. Do they make you ask questions? Ah, what other science do we have here? Oh speaking of fuzzy dots. Yeah fuzzy dots. What do you have? Well, if you think of the world's most famous painter A number of prominent painters might come to mind if you were to instead consider A prolific inventor In history a different set of names might come up If we conjure the important designers anatomists or engineers If history still more names we could try to choose them, but if you were asked to consider A famous painter inventor designer anatomist and engineer all at once The only name that should appear is Leonardo da Vinci Amazing guy Would have been pretty cool to hang out with have a cup of coffee, you know I think so. I think so. I would have just loved to watch him right backwards That would that was with his mirrors. Yeah So uh now engineers at Caltech are suggesting that we add physicist to the list of things that Leonardo da Vinci was pretty awesome at Leonardo published in the journal Leonardo Researchers found that one of da Vinci's notebooks Illustrated an experiment That you know this illustration is in This book that's got all these, you know thousands of pages and they this is what you see when you see pictures of Leonardo da Vinci's Drawings and stuff. It's usually taken from this This book of papers that he this notebook of his that he wrote down The notebook itself covers like 40 years of his work And there was this sort of interesting diagram Where there are a few words a little bit of math attached to it that yeah, they just was interesting But nobody really deciphered it or thought about it too too much Researchers found that it is actually illustrating an experiment meant to demonstrate that gravity is a form of acceleration This is this is about a hundred years before Galileo theorized it 150 before newton developed a mathematical law to explain why apples kept dropping on this head Da Vinci had proved or provided experimental evidence And modeled the gravitational constant with around 97 accuracy He could have done better researchers think That a lack of a good stopwatch Prevented him from more precisely measuring Time it took for objects to fall Da Vinci mathematically described the acceleration As the falling objects distance being proportional to Two to the time power Instead of proportional to time squared Oh, I gotta carry the the square over to that anyway, however So they're kind of like oh, he just kind of got the math a little it wasn't quite there mathematically however They then realized that In in recreating his experiment the Da Vinci's illustration of a falling object Was for up to four intervals of time Which is a period in which the graph of The wrong equation that he used in the right equation actually matched up So he found he found the way to run his experiment so that everything Everything worked the page again found in the codex a rundle the collection of papers written by Da Vinci covering a 40 year span from 40 years span from 14 78 to 15 18 One of the things that had caught the researchers eyes who ended up figuring out what it was Was notated on the page Equit equity owner de morte meaning equivalents of motions The papers titled lean order Da Vinci's visualization of gravity is a form of acceleration There's going to be a link to it on our website So I want to talk about the fact that We're still discovering things that Leonardo knew And So much so yeah That there is a whole journal called leonardo Yeah, that is blowing me away that featured a story about leonardo that was yeah There is enough there is a A rich enough spring of information that we have not yet discovered when it comes to Da Vinci's texts That there's a journal for it like I just Yeah I I wow it's very cool and it's crazy that we didn't know this until now and turns out he's he was he was Living on another level next we're gonna find out. He was he was a prima ballerina in a spare time You know he was also he was all the things he was poly Uh, the poly math what they call it. Yeah, okay. I thought you were saying something else No poly math Like that's not really relevant. I think but I guess that's interesting He's considered the Oh, who knows he was considered the uh, the idealization or the the the Uh, the the eminent prima the the renaissance man I mean, you know, put it at the motor lisa You're invented the tanks and flying machines and Detailed anatomy that hadn't been detailed or drawn or described before he did all these things to the point where If we had just found out that somebody you know the 14 1500s had had discovered laws of gravity 100 years before galleo would be like, oh, who is this? This is amazing. Then you find out it's Leonardo da Vinci and you're like, oh, yeah, that's right. Of course Of course, he understood how gravity works with Leonardo da Vinci. There's nothing he can't do. Yeah, who else? I think the fascinating aspect of this is that it's just a matter of Everybody going back and digging into all the notes and all the things that are there, right and taking the time to really investigate it And yeah, he was ahead of his time But it is that you have the I don't know if you played the the little video I did Okay, I didn't have my screen up But yeah, how how how closely like the physical experiment that he had created And the actual how it tracked that we can recreate today track is just uh Yeah, but again, ah, but it's Leonardo da Vinci Not anyway if it was anybody else We'd be like who is this person? Oh, we got to vault their name up with the others because now we have our first father of gravity and Leonardo It's all good He was a good dude came up with lots of neat ideas We just didn't write them all down at the right time or he didn't um a couple quick stories to wind up this first part of our show Uh squalene, do you know what it is? It's shark oil Yes, Blair it is Never heard yes They're buoyancy I think Yeah, it is shark liver oil specifically it comes from their livers and it is one of the main reasons that we still hunt sharks That we fish for sharks Is that we use squalene as an adjuvant for vaccines And there are synthetic versions, but they don't work As well a lot of the time. Um, and we're trying to make more synthetic versions of squalene and in a public a study published this last week in npj vaccines researchers have synthesized and tested 20 new squalene like Compounds And they tested them in a dish with mouth cells and then human cells and then they also tested them in real mice We haven't put them in people yet But they determined that Depending on the number of carbon atoms apparently squalene itself has 30 carbon atoms There's a particular compound which scientists have access to that's beta Pharnasine and it has only 15 carbon atoms But because of the beta pharnasine they're able to work off of that and build new structures and different structures and they've been testing them and they found some that actually did better Then squalene itself others that did worse They tested against the h5n1 flu in mice And they found after two immunization immunizations the mice were able to make antibodies against five h5n1 Which is bird flu. Yes, not a nice flu that we're all worried about right now and hopefully Sooner rather than later we'll be able to stop hunting sharks for their liver oil And be able to synthesize these compounds in a lab and have more effective vaccines than we currently do That's great Yes We're getting there and then also as a researcher Who's involved in this general area of science told the scientist They said that these kinds of trials also help us understand How adjuvants actually work like the mechanisms of the adjuvants At play that help to accentuate the impact of the viral particles that you're Giving you know these little little tiny antigens that we deliver in our vaccines. Why do I know why do Why do adjuvants work? Why do we need them? Why does our immune system like that double double triple hit at the same time? I would have assumed I would have already been worked out. Yeah That's like that is but we still use eggs to make vaccines too, right big hammers Which it's a big tool. Ah, it works. There we go. But we don't really know all the little details Yeah, there's a lot of that that people assume we know why we do things And and the reason that we do things is because it works Uh speaking of things that works. This may be the uh part of the show that um We should probably edit from the radio version. I don't know but uh, youtube's probably not gonna like it because researchers have been um looking at an object that they found in a place called vindolenda This wooden object Could have been a good luck symbol could have been a charm could have been some religious object Something like that but um Wait, wait, like wait, this is when Anthroposarchaeologists are like, oh, it was uh used for rituals a ritual Right Right, so this spirit had a spiritual connection to the people Yeah, so it's a a wooden a wooden tool a wooden object I won't say a tool We don't know whether it was a tool but these researchers at new castle university and university college Dublin um They found it with a bunch of other tools and craft waste products leather bits and Bits of antler that had been carved and other things it was it it was a piece of something in a ditch All right And now the researchers have determined that it very likely Was not a tool And they have published a discussion paper in the journal antiquity about their Uh determination that it very likely was a Wooden phallus that was Well used And it could have also been used as a pestle like for a more mortar mortar and pestle for food grinding grinding ingredients, maybe it would have imbued the ingredients with magical properties Unlikely that you would need to have crafted it in Such a detailed way Well except that I mean there's lots of cultures that that use the imagery of a phallus to signify things So I could see how it wouldn't be a crazy leap to say well, maybe you made this Uh mortar and pestle situation look a particular way to signify things. I could see that I could buy it. This makes more sense though. It's like the The most obvious answer is usually the correct one Right and the one of the options another option they discussed in their paper is that it could have been attached to a statue That people it it might have been worn down because people touched it as a good luck uh Action as they as they entered a building and maybe it became unstuck from that statue and and it's wood you say It's made of wood But they do they do Have their primary hypothesis that it was a sexual implement Right both ends were well smoothed Yes, I'd want to make sure it was very smooth Not have any accidental splinters right If you would like to see this object of ancient Times it is on display now in the Vindolanda Museum which is in Uh a roman fort area. Yeah, so you can go take a look at it if you are win in Rome, right? win in Rome You know, it's it's one of the things that is curious like I would uh I'm surprised we haven't found more examples of this But maybe we have and they just weren't yeah as detailed Maybe they weren't as detailed and I do Maybe people weren't using mortar and pestle nearly as much as we think we were Oh, you keep finding all these pestles everywhere. Yeah, where are the mortars? Yes, the pestles are everywhere. No mortars But one thing I think is is interesting about this is that they really are looking at multiple Hypotheses ideas for what it could possibly be as opposed to just saying religious artifact It's a good luck charm and just falling back on It could be it very possible it why not both but it's good to see Lots of ideas being put forward about things we really don't know a lot about Except well, I very definite definite shape I hope that this doesn't get censored out of any of our feeds just because I feel like it's important to recognize that these tools likely did exist through time and it's normal and sexual health is part of health and It shouldn't be stigmatized to quite the level that it currently is so totally agree It's if you can recognize this is something that that is ancient as old as us if not older In fact, if you look in the animal kingdom guaranteed older, so it's Yeah, it's of course a lot of our it's not such a forbidden thing A lot of our stigma comes from Puritan root more More recent history then Yeah, then there are ones so Let me go for certain Thank you all for joining us for this weekend science if you are enjoying the show right now Please head over to twist org and click on our patreon link patreon is how we support the show and with your support We can keep doing it week after week bringing you more science more curiosity lots of discussion $10 and more per month and we will thank you by name at the end of the show And we have a sticker pack now that is available. I think it's for the $15 and up a month Level of patrons where every three months you'll get a new sticker from twist There there's art mostly Really? I will try yes We'll do it weekend We thank you for all of your support. We cannot do this without you And now back to more this weekend science It is time for that wonderful part of the show that is I guess this week full of old ladies It is Blair's animal corner with Blair Dance Hall By bed milliped no bed at all If you want to hear about animal She's your girl Except for giant Pandas it's grown Gap Blair Oh my goodness. I want to talk about naked mole rats. I'm so excited Naked mole rats. They're a wonder. We talk about them all the time. They survive cancer. They can't get cancer They don't mind Radiation They don't age the same way that other animals their size age. They don't feel pain There's so much crazy stuff with them add to the list eternal fertility Eternal Yes, you know for their entire lifespan Um It's like 30 years. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah, which for a mouse is like two years Maybe four if you're a healthy mouse um but so for most mammals as any, um Humans with ovaries listening will know you are told You are born with a finite finite number of eggs They are produced in utero via a process called oogenesis because of the limited supply The egg cells deplete over time some are released during ovulation But most of them just get old and die fertility declines with age As any again human with ovaries in their mid 30s has been told many times But naked mole rat queens can breed Their entire lives So something is going on They're eating the royal jelly from the beast That's gotta be it. That's gotta be it. Yeah, so miguel brianio and riquez md phd assistant professor at migie women's research institute and the university of pittsburgh's school of medicine's department of obstetrics gynecology and rique productive scientists says There are three possibilities for how they do this one They're born with a lot of eggs just so many eggs There's plenty for their whole life two Not as many of them die So they they don't go bad over time like ours do or three Miraculously, they somehow continue to create more eggs after they are born kind of like how Men can create sperm their whole life So They looked And do either of you have a guess of what's going on? I have no idea what's going on Well, it's a trick question because it's all three Oh, what? Yes They compared ovaries from naked mole rats and mice across across different stages of development And despite similar sizes as I said mice live about four years naked mole rats live about 30 They did find that naked mole rats have an exceptionally large number of egg cells compared to mice They have about 1.5 million egg cells, which is 95 times more than mice the same age This is an eight days a good head start. Yes. So at eight days old already amazing head start Also the death rates of these cells were lower than in mice throughout their lives But what is most remarkable and potentially most interesting for human medicine? Is that oh genesis happens post natally in naked mole rats? They found egg precursor cells actively dividing in three month old animals and these precursors were found in 10 year old animals as well suggesting Genesis continues throughout their lives This challenges the the leading dogma that this is how all mammals work This was about established about 70 years ago female mammals endowed with a finite finite number of eggs. You get your eggs. That's it use them or lose them And then uh This is a new idea and of course this uh This could have an impact on human medicine Now part of the reason that this might be happening in mole rats and not in other mammals Is that they have this very specific structure where there is a queen Naked mole rat and she is the only one that reproduces right, but She can die or be displaced and when that happens subordinate females compete to take her place and then become reproductively active when they win Any girl can be any female naked mole rat can become a queen at any time And so that means that at any time in their life cycle bam, they have to be reproductively active So to learn more about the process they removed three-year-old females from the colony to prompt reproductive activation compared to subordinate females they found that non breeding subordinates had egg precursor cells in their ovaries But the cells started dividing only after they established themselves as queen Wow So not only this is what I love about this study not only did they figure out potentially what the heck is going on They have a lead on a mechanism They have something very specific to look at to figure out how this is working and of course go ahead what and just that that Biology affected by social position. Yes, exactly construct is such an interesting connection here Yes, and so of course if we can figure out how they do this If you can figure out the mechanism and you can manipulate it in an experiment You might be able to develop new drug targets or techniques that allow human Allow humans to grow new eggs Now I know we have a population problem but We also have a situation where humans are trending to have babies later And as that happens The opportunity to have babies is being lost If you wait too long and so this is Most likely you're going to create a very interesting phenomenon for humans on earth very soon So this is an interesting thing to consider recognizing that I know again, we have a population problem Maybe it doesn't really matter But ultimately just a for quality of life for people that want to have kids in camp. This is huge but also be to recognize that This might actually be a societal problem and more on that to come in my next story This could be a Potential solution to that problem Not to mention not to mention over ovarian health influences cancer heart health and lifespan So if you can understand what's going on in the ovary you can understand. Oh genesis better You might be able to also use these indicators to improve ovarian health And that by improving ovarian health you're improving Female health you're it's holistic in nature And under understanding the whole cycle It could have social repercussions because if we're talking about something like stress from hierarchies from social situations Causing cortisol responses causing changes in progesterone estrogen you know All sorts of hormones that are present in our bodies, you know, all of it ties together and maybe it won't just have health effects for understanding the ovary but also Humans Cross the board. I'll just throw a note too uh having a even slightly higher percentage of the population that has a trust in science Or trust in their medical caregiver Not a bad population growth. That's true Absolutely more of that. Yeah now now speaking of this kind of phenomenon that we're facing where uh humans are are overall trending older There was a study this week on rhesus macaques in kayo santiago, which is known as monkey island on Puerto Rico And they wanted to look at the ratio of older to younger females and how That impacted the monkey culture and society. So just kind of as Primer what I was mentioning before is that global human population of over 60s is expected to double by 2050 so There is a worldwide trend happening About the age skew of humans. Okay. So as that happens, will society change? I mean society changes no matter what right, but will this particular thing impact society? They so they looked at the rhesus macaques to look at uh how female macaques act in social networks based on age and the older macaques Reduce the size of their social networks. They prioritize existing connections as they age This is something that we also see in humans. So this is analogous And so they wanted to look at how this affects the overall cohesion and connection of the groups older monkeys live in The observed macaque populations At the max had 20% old individuals So this was not anywhere near the levels that we will see as humans So they used this as a model And then turned it into a computer model so they could kind of mess with the ratios a little bit more. So They Yeah, we're not affected at the group level with these 20 percent differences But the computer simulations showed higher proportions of old macaques would reduce cohesion and connection For both humans and macaques focusing on close friends and families later in life brings benefits It's it's who you can trust. It's it's who you can go to when you need something It's also takes less probably energy to deal with people. You know the new people, right? And so um, they they kind of wanted to see how these effects Cascaded they looked at six monkey groups collected over eight years representing in total 19 social networks Older female macaques as expected are poor influencers. They have fewer friends They are less able to transmit knowledge and experience outside of their immediate social circle So this impacts the individuals, but it also impacts the dissemination of knowledge And uh, when they tested whether monkey networks with a greater number of older females, which is over 18 in this case Were less cohesive and connected. They didn't find a statistical difference But they found enough data that they were then able to extrapolate, right? And so they created a computer model that simulated the effect of higher proportions of old macaques and found a decline in network of cohesiveness and connectedness connectedness And that had real substantial consequences for network structure So that affects things like information transmission cooperation And also changes the way disease spread It actually limits the spread of disease, which at first you're like, oh, that's a great thing But if it impacts immunity That can also have negative impacts, right? and so looking forward The extrapolation here is that as the human population of over 60s Doubles by 2050 that could have far-reaching effects on the structure of our societies the way we function the way information is disseminated All of these things I think that is a little bit harder for me just because the internet exists But I still think it's an important area of study Because this is a global phenomenon that is coming And there will be consequences We don't know exactly what they will be yet, which is why you start with a monkey model, right? But it would be great if you could take this information And then extrapolate that into modeling that we do have like current social trends based on age and all these sorts of things Of course, it's also kind of different because like we have these huge technological advances between generations and so Whereas generations might all be kind of similar in macaques over a short period of time In just a difference from one generation to another There can be huge differences in the way we trade information And the way we communicate and what we value in social structures. So humans are In that way. I think a lot more complicated um, but sure You know, and I'm usually here the one saying like oh, we're always saying That humans are different from animals, but we're just the same But this is definitely when you're talking about global information sharing information between cultures We have our own kind of tribalism going for sure But there there is a difference in the way that works than when it would work how it would work with a troop of macaques, but I still think it's an important thing to study I think it's a really interesting area of study and I think There's going to be much more of this moving forward because we do kind of have this very interesting phenomenon coming And it is it is definitely coming and if we, you know, bury our heads in the sand Uh, we're we're gonna be caught unprepared and yeah, and Yeah, it I'm not saying more humans are gonna fix the problem But if we had a way to get people who would like to have a family who can't physically have a family to get a family Like with this naked mole rat study That might adjust the skew a little bit and change the way things turn out So I think it was an interesting kind of weird Coincidence that these two studies popped in front of me this week That they kind of they play into each other in a really weird way where we don't know what's going to happen to us, man We have no idea. There's lots of balls in the air There are a lot of things for us to be concerned about and yeah, it's been interesting over the last couple of years Knowing that there is this skew especially among western nations toward aging populations because fewer people are choosing to have children Where a lot of the news however has been talking about these Surveys of future populations and going yeah, our populations are growing, but oh don't worry about it We're going to hit like 10 billion by 2100 and that's and it's going to be fine Or we're going to go up to 10 billion and then we'll start dropping everything's going to be fine. Don't worry about it you know, and I think there's a lot of messaging and hand waving and Yeah, we have to think about where these messages are coming from and yeah, no, absolutely Yeah, but this kind of telling what the future holds no telling Yeah No telling You know what the future does hold though morning. It holds mornings Justin yeah So this is a this is a interesting story In the way that they they did it. So this is finding that early class times are associated with lower grades and poor attendance in university students so Initially, they had kind of looked at Grades for classes early in the morning because that's sort of the thing the early class people might not be awake for Yeah, how are they doing in the that class versus later classes and it turns out the grades in the morning classes Not significantly lower than those held later in the day You get just as good a grade for that early morning class that you wake up with your cup of coffee halfway through You still do fine what they did find was There was an accumulative effect a negative effect on the rest of the classes throughout the day so much so that Students with early morning classes Got lower gpa scores Lower grades overall than students that did not have them and if they had multiple morning classes The more morning classes you took The worse that impact was Oh, no Your whole day's ruined And it makes sense. I mean, you know, even if you are an early if you're an early riser Well, then maybe, you know, you should take less afternoon classes Because maybe you're tired by the end and that's where the impact is It's it doesn't get into that here, but this is published in the journal Nature Human Behavior They found that this was also the University of National University of Singapore And what they did was they were able to estimate class attendance For 23,000 students Without their participation Just by using Wi-Fi connection logs They could see Who was showing up And it showed that attendance was lowest for the 8am classes about 10 percentage points lower than classes was later start times They also looked at logins to The the university's sort of online learning course Program They had 17.4 million time stamped logins of almost 40,000 students And with that data They could kind of tell When people were interacting with it And they found that Students with the early morning classes Stopped interacting at about the same time at night, but started interacting with it again earlier meaning There was Possibly less time that they spent sleeping And then they did a third leg of this They had 181 students participate in a sleep study And they found sure enough they get an hour less sleep At night if they have the 8am class And they correlated all this Number of days a week a student had a morning class It was negatively correlated with their grade point average amazing So Get to sleep. So, uh, the the resources are suggesting a university should consider Avoiding at least having mandatory morning classes You know universities tend to want to have earlier classes and earlier and earlier classes because You are maximizing the use of the classroom and getting the most teaching time and creating the most options for Schedule flexibility so students can take the courses that they want to take but If those morning classes mean Students are going to perform worse Get lower grades Maybe then have oh less job prospects when they graduate because they didn't Kids just get a great. Oh, and then their earnings over their lifetime are impacted And then they have to work more hours and they put off having kids longer and then they have to go into there you go You're just going down this rabbit hole But it doesn't matter if they're able to up tuition because they they're able to up the student body numbers Yeah, you know They say the universities also point out they point out the universities most universities already have the ability to sort of assess How their own attendance is doing by using Just the wi-fi login portion They can see not necessarily track grades to go with it this way But they can see how their own attendance Is affected just by looking at their their own wi-fi connection logs I'm going to say that it's a great measure It's one that they can probably very easily use but you go into class you get there Get your wi-fi turned on and then you fall asleep Isn't that class that's so If you're sleeping through class Yeah, they're good. Oh, yeah, there's the other thing the what was it the the sleep study students the There were a third of the time They woke up Too late to have made it to their morning class on time That's a problem. You have an 8 a.m. Class. You have to get to the class in time. That's like, yeah How early? Wake up to get over there job It did make me wonder like the thing that they didn't look at in this study The thing they didn't look at is how many people are like i'm a morning person So i'm taking all morning classes, but then also Tagged on an afternoon class that they shouldn't have because they're a morning person and they should have gone home early They got into bed early if they're going to get up early, but the problem is Not conducive to early bedtime That's the other problem is i'm a morning person but I fell asleep in 8 a.m. Classes all the time because I was up late because that was the culture of the space I was in the culture of the space you're in is also very much determined by the fact that you're no longer In the structured environment where people would usually Tell you when to go to bed or you need to go to bed because the rest of the household went to bed or whatever it is And and you had a set also you had it, you know before you get to university You usually have a set morning schedule You get to university one day your classes start at noon the next day they start at 8 a.m The next day they start at noon and there's nobody In insistent your peers are staying up later because they hey no i'm free Well partially because because teen brains want to stay up later and sleep late So that means the second you remove the constraints your brain's like i want to be up now So now we just have to convince professor brains Yeah And and university administrator brains to do what's in the best interest of the brains That they have decided to nurture as their career and start everything later Science says Let's do it, but what if they were volunteering Justin? Oh gosh this one. Yeah, so sometime in uh six to eighth century woman Underwent skull surgery to scrape a hole into her her skull and It was done willingly apparently procedure went well so much so She apparently decided to do it again mostly national group of researchers in the uk spain France, italy and us have discovered these skull modifications after detailed observations of a Longobard cemetery tassel torsino in central italy The longobards. I don't know if we've talked about them on this show before This was a a germanic warrior Mercenary at times barbarians they were called sometimes they went and they took over parts of eastern austria and hungary and were charged there and then they invaded italy invaded rom failed Try to get failed and then rom fell and invaded again The people were like actually, uh, you're the only ones who know how to use swords and maintain order Why don't you come move to our village? Why don't you come to so they the elites of this warrior culture started getting Bited to occupy territories in italy to help maintain order So it's just interesting and then they integrated like pretty quickly Into becoming just italians So Why is this woman? Volunteering to have holes in her skull. Yes. Yes. Why I thought you were gonna say and she was dead No, no twice volunteered while she was dead. Yes So this is this is uh, this is the thing It healed the bones showed signs that this you know this scraping away of skull Bone material to make little holes in the top of the skull Healed up So she survived At least by at least for six months because that's how they how long it takes to do the minimum Healing that they saw so it was at least six months could have been a year could have been two years could have been many That they did some sex and age determination here that's how they determined this is a female skull around age 50 So for the analysis fairly long lived Yeah Although there's there's some when we talk mortality in oldie times there's some, uh data miscalculation that's common In that we we tend to count Infant mortalities and youth mortalities that don't happen as often today In the mortality in the average ages of ancient peoples There's nothing that really prevented people of of oldie times from from becoming Old except unless they got an infection that didn't have antibiotics and then died But this is the other thing. There's no antibiotics. This is open skull surgery medieval medieval Italy No antibiotics. No, I don't even know what they could use for You know painkillers and anesthesia Very strong whiskey. Yeah, exactly what I'm getting. It's Italy. So grappa, right? Yeah So scanning electron microscopy they did uh, they did some We got latex casts and then made resin casts and then put that in the CT scan To better look at this second site and they found bone scraping traces On a second location That must have taken place right around the time of death because they didn't heal So second round modified skull modification did not go as well as the first grave site of this woman Is in a central location in the cemetery of elites There are wealthy grave goods gold bronze brooches and combs So this was this was a wealthy woman of Some status within the community So taking that into consideration They don't think this was a form of punishment or an unwanted procedure But rather a voluntary attempt to receive some sort of a therapeutic outcome So the exact reason for the surgery is difficult to discern Plenty of reasons why a woman of medieval means might desire To have a hole in her skull But none of them were forensically obvious. So it's tereponation Is with turtles no treponation treponation treponation. Thank you treponation. I was like, what do turtles have to do with this? Trepanation is the act of scraping holes into a human skull It was practiced at times and immediately days There are actually An amazing number of examples of this. I kind of went looking into it. There's areas in Around this medieval time and much later where you can see communities that have 10 15 20 percent Of the skulls that we find have evidence that holes were made into the skulls. This was apparently a pretty common procedure. There's some Greek and roman texts that document it as a medical procedure What's interesting though is there's no examples of it being used to Relieve pressure from a headwood That's what I would have thought that maybe there was she was having headaches and needed to relieve They decided there was swelling in the brain or So that could be so that could be could be headaches, right because that wouldn't show evil spirits They had to read she was having seizures and they had to release evil spirits. I don't know There's what's sort of I thought was interesting In this in the side look at this is one of the highest levels they've seen of this is areas of hungry Where they have like really high percentage of the skulls that they find have this trepanation and medieval but even more so You know hundreds of years after Uh And they're calling it ceremonial Oh interesting because it seems to have been Maybe a status thing. Maybe a cultural thing. They don't necessarily See how it could have been that high of percentage of the population all getting migraines or having evil spirits or Some of this nature and then so so then I'm getting your ears pierced Yeah, so then I'm really think oh well the longabards they occupied hungry for a while Maybe this is cultural holdover from Some interesting members of the group the researchers have ruled this out in saying that Everything about the folks buried here in this community are fully integrated into the Byzantine culture Italian culture. They don't see cultural holdovers Anywhere else interestingly also though out of the hundred and something Uh Remains that they have on earth There's only I think 19 skulls Yeah, 100. Uh, so this was the the initial excavation of the site was 120 years ago But there's only 19 of the skulls That are currently available out of the hundreds of Burials that took place there. I don't know where those skulls went but Folks took them home People yeah, people probably took them home Over the years. Like what do you do? Well, we already dug them up. We don't need to you know, here take this ornament They look the same to me Go go use this in your hamlet play or something right uh, but it's unfortunate because Examining those skulls We might be able to see if this was a more widespread procedure right in this community There's also this is uh this group that was also previously looked at a different Longo Bard site in more northern Italy That had found a man who had survived amputation of his hand And had a prosthetic blade A blade Yeah I'm not gonna get a hand. Uh, I'm gonna have a knife. I will At least they chose to bury him with his prosthetic blade which had a strap on it that could be Tightened with his feet. This is evil dead then, right? That's right. He traveled in time, right? so There you go, and and he'd survived the amputation and the the boneware around that that uh A prosthetic blade had shown where from uh use Yeah, so this was a community that what you're like, I need to know right. He is it. He's like, oh, yes All right, he must be he's the best prep cook we have Must be like he's a chopping broccoli chopping broccoli even better at fencing But this is I mean it's another example of what seems like really kind of advanced medical Abilities for this this culture of barbarians And then the thing you think of is well, this was also water culture So they spent a lot of time fighting for for territories that they were taking or getting hired to take or or have you So I kind of thought of this as the the intersection between athletes and sports medicine Where athletes get all of these injuries that you know, a lot of them that normal people get to but But because they're really important to get them back out there There's a whole lot of focus from the medical community on repairing the knee or the ankle or treating this or that And so maybe they just became medical experts because people kept getting sliced up And they just had to figure out how to keep them alive long enough and get them put the prosthetic I I'll tell you what I can do Right, but we're still just seeing a small number of these and so it could be that A small number of people do have great immune systems and they fight off bacterial infections And they do great and they survive but a lot of them just died And we're just not seeing them Yes, of course. There's that of course. Yes Well speaking of not wanting to die Um Researchers at mit have been working on how to model people's hearts And so in their most recent work That they have just published in science robotics Which gives you an idea of what kind of a heart i'm talking about here um these researchers took advantage of the uh the pandemic and staying at home to um work on their modeling of Synthetic hearts They used 3d models of patients hearts. So they scanned people's hearts Took 3d models of them and then 3d printed these hearts So that they could then try and model the fluid dynamics and the flow of blood through the hearts and so the There are sleeves around various parts of the heart and the fake aorta these synthetic printed things that are kind of like blood pressure cuffs that could be inflated and deflated to Mimic the pumping of the heart and uh the people that they were specifically looking at it were uh Have been diagnosed with aortic stenosis and normally normally aortic stenosis stenosis is Treated by implanting a synthetic valve widens the aorta's natural valve so that more blood can flow through But this could be a situation where in the future Doctors 3d scan your heart They make a 3d model of your heart and aorta They test it to see exactly how your stenosis your particular stenosis is influencing fluid flow and then design A new valve for you specific to your personal problems That can then be implanted Okay, right Well much better my first valve my my first reaction is Can't you Can't you digitize it? I mean can we get our Digitize it sure, but it doesn't work the exact same way. So this in this particular case. They've got a physical model that is Physiologically accurate functional. They can really test the fluid flow. Um, yes, of course you can make the computer model and But maybe you're going to get things wrong And so until they get to that particular point, maybe these physical models are going to help them Really understand how blood flows through the hearts through the interior chambers how it pools in some places how it doesn't and others You know the the individual differences in how the walls of The ventricles and the now that you've described it I want if I was going to choose between I would definitely want the physical model To to be analyzed and not the not some computer simulation with fake blood. Give me the real thing Yeah, so this is not they're not taking these 3d model printed hearts and putting them into people yet, but uh, perhaps this is something that Will eventually be able to develop a more accurate 3d tissue model of a heart Maybe this will develop beyond just understanding how they can fix little parts of hearts and Become a real help to people who need heart transplants who need valve replacements Replace being able to replace the whole thing exactly and also a whole new heart exact exactly and User specific right so it's not just oh six foot tall white guys hearts. It's going to be A diversity of anatomies 100% and also you can have you can have a model of what your heart looks like when you're healthy You can have a scan done of your heart when you're like 20 years old And then when you go in when you're 50 they compare and contrast and go Oh, this looks different than it used to Exactly So lots of good things coming. Thank you 3d printing I really never kind of put these things together and so it's fascinating to me that You know researchers engineers are starting to do these kinds of things to test valves and valve sizes and types And how could we do it better and what could we do it 3d printing everyone? It's the future And my final study for the evening has to do with our brains our neurons in particular How is it that our neurons Are able to survive For basically our entire lives. We use them all the time And they're not like, you know skin cells where they slough off and die They are well known for being long lived Our neurons The ones on our brains the ones that stretch down our spinal cords They live and they live and they live and they're doing all sorts of stuff And the doing all sorts of stuff means that they're potentially Copying a lot of dna and there's a lot of places for things to go wrong and things to break And so why don't our neurons break more often? Well, publishing this last week in nature researchers have been looking specifically at a particular Transcription factor that has been discovered as bad discovered back in 2008. It's called npas4 Okay, it's special. It's a trans transcription factor. That's really only found in neurons They don't find it anywhere else. And so the question is what is it doing here? And it regulates the activity of genes that inhibit excitatory neurons, so you get excitatory External stimulation your brain goes And you have to have something that goes shh calm down Don't be so excited neurons. And so this npas4 is involved in calming things down a little bit or Regulating the genes that are responsible for that So what is it doing there? They did a bunch of experiments in mice. Thank goodness We love all these experiments in mice because it's really hard to do them in people, but they They decided to Look to see what this transcription factor specifically was doing and they determined that it is part of a complex That's made up of 21 different proteins and they've called this whole complex a bunch of letters and numbers npas4 new a4 Anyway, the complex binds to dna Where it has damage and make sure that those damage sites get fixed And so when they inactivated the complex The mice that did not have this npas new a4 Uh, they died sooner. They didn't live as long Yeah, they're bright their neurons didn't do the work That needed to happen. And so their their neuron neurons just deteriorated and they died sooner And so what they've determined is that in order to have these super active cells in the body that have to live for a long time They're under a lot of stress all the time Breaking they need to be fixed. And so there is this really novel dna repair pathway that's involved in fixing the breaks that happened during the transcription process in our activated neurons So this is what we've got to make sure is present in the jar containing Blair's brain. Yes And I was gonna say before that. Can I just drink this? Like something I could just You can you can however first you need the hole Drill a hole and then inject it in there you drill the hole in your brain. You should volunteer for that one Blair Yes We have a no music turtle. That was a mistake. That has nothing to do But yeah, use the turtle shell to drill out the oh, there's the terrapin Oh This train is stopping at terrapin station for a little treponation. I might be a little trepidatious at this moment in time Have we made it to the end of the show? I think we did I think we did it our brain's intact. Hopefully all of our neuronal repair complexes are activated and will be working overtime while we Sleep during that essential period of time That we need for getting good grades Gotta wear shades Thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of this week in science. We are Gonna be back. 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Well, you sharpen your knife hand just search for this week in science where podcasts are found if you enjoyed the show Get your friends to subscribe as well For information on anything you've heard here today show notes and links to the stories will be available on our website www.twist.org Or you can also sign up for a newsletter You can also contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at this week in science.com Justin at twist minion at gmail.com or me blair at blairbaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist twis in the sort of line or your email Will end up on a pop quiz at an 8 a.m biology class at a nearby college and that means no one will ever see it No However, however answers to the pop quiz Uh can be derived by pinging us on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr Kiki and at jackson fly as well as at blairs Menagerie we love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview A haiku that comes to you tonight. Please let us know We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from the show remember It's all in your head And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand Coming your way So everybody listen i use the scientific mess this week in science this week in science This week in science science science science this week in science this week in science This week in science science science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That's what i say may not represent your views, but i've done the calculations and i've got we have come to the after show The end of show big time. Woo big time. Woo Oh, yeah, paul disney is saying i should share the haiku that he made Oh Dolly dolly too made a picture and uh The haiku Splattered hippo poo messy lizard gizzard goo call zoo cleaning crew And we have a that's very good. I appreciate that I appreciate it Thank you for sharing paul and then there was This image that went along with it Thank you dolly too, we think very good. It was so fun How's it going? Were you going to show us a picture of your blizzard? Yes Well, yes, let's see I have many many blizzard pictures. It's so So snowy up here. Oh my goodness. I could hear it started raining here during the show Still raining. Oh my god Snow lots of snow this is This is outdoors right before the show started My backyard is covered in snow Why is it pink? Because there's a pink the magenta light on outside Okay yes I was gonna say I thought that you were um that it was light out when you took those pictures right before the show and I was like She's north of me How is that possible? That's not possible I'm confused. We do get a yeah Yeah, a little less daylight than you do but yeah, I mean at least the same amount is the thing There was much snow lots of snow many snows in the views Hello, yawn. Well, yes, I'm gonna sneeze. It's about time I sneezed I coughed I yawned I did it all in like a five second span in the beginning of the show All the body was just like no Just get rid of it right now Ha ha it looks like Minnesota. Yeah, this cold front this storm is going right across the United States It's so fascinating Cold and snow all over the place. It's supposed to possibly even snow in LA maybe What? I don't know Yeah It's the the weather warning I get um Through my work said that it was gonna snow as low as 15,000 No 1500 feet Elevation in california, but in the bay area, but that's you know Still 1500 feet higher than I'm at so exactly. Yeah, you're pretty much at sea level there I'm at sea level. I actually I would bet I'm like a couple feet below Because it's I have to go upstairs to go to the bay trail for my house So it definitely feels like there's like it's I might be a couple feet below sea level. I don't know It's possible Yeah, it's possible People like digging holes. Yeah We have Justin back I missed the picture Of the snow. I missed the picture of the snow I can put it up again Oh, yep Looks as though schools are closed tomorrow Tomorrow is officially a snow day here in courtland nice Kyle will be so upset So not he was like today. He got home. Yeah Look at that snow So I have a question because I've never lived anywhere that has snow days A lot of workplaces don't then have snow days, right? So like what are you supposed to do with your children? If your office still Wants you to come in You call in snow day Is that what you do? You have to use sick time so Yeah America, this is the whole Diatribe I could go on If because I'm learning about the system here in Denmark And if you have to stay home because of your kid It doesn't count as your sick day What? Yeah It's crazy, right? That sounds reasonable It's because it's reasonable and and that's that's what they created here is a very reasonable society However tremendous lack of snow. I must say for a winter in Denmark there has not been The snow that you're getting Right now. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Is it snowing in San Jose? Yeah, what? That is that is not a place for anybody who doesn't know San Jose is not a place that is used to seeing snow No, in fact, no, Jose It's not used to seeing that much rain If you saw any pictures or videos of what happened during the storm parade a few weeks ago San Jose's infrastructure is not the best for that For a while there was like There were there were cars underwater in San Jose Really? Yes Wow Yeah So Oh humanity Infrastructure come on. Let's let's get some resilient infrastructure I mean, I don't want to hear about to do that. You would have to collect taxes. Oh Hey, you know what country has great infrastructure? Okay You know Enough already Wowzers Yeah, it's snowing all over the bay area very weird Very we'll see See if any of it sticks. I want to see pictures of sledding In Portland, do we get the people who like go down the streets on their skis? They're like, yeah Ski time Nice Yes I am a tired person. Blair is yawning already. Oh, yeah Well, I guess then it's time for me to start my day Good night, Blair Good night, Blair. Say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin Good Good night, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of this weekend science We hope you have a wonderful week. Have a great night Enjoy snow wherever you are. Even if you don't have snow. Enjoy the idea of snow. Yeah, it's it's cold and fluffy I like my warm and fluffy cat better. But anyway, I'm inside. You're inside. Stay warm. Stay safe. Stay healthy and stay curious We'll see you next week