 The button and I started it and now I have to see if I can actually get things to play because Can't work while it's updating although I never told it to update. So I need a second anyway because my technology Get it to work there. My rundown is doing lodie circley thing. You're doing lodie circley. I Got music. We got music. I just have to make sure that I can play the music We got all the music that we need now I have all the songs I'm not Updates right now. I'm kind of busy Yeah Like try tonight Remind me tomorrow They'll be later. Hey everybody we're recording, but we're not recording Justin. Are you ready to go? No, you're still have spinny wheel of death. I don't know what's going on Yeah, I have all of a sudden I've got this all over my interwebs. Okay. Yeah, things are starting to settle down Your internet your internets I might have choppy internets tonight choppy CZ Yes, so I'm going to announce for everyone. I apologize We were going to try and get a and a scientist from fairy that fair me lab on tonight to talk about dark energy But it's not gonna work out for this week, but we will have a scientist on February 6th, so it's on the calendar February 6th We are making that happen and so you can look forward to a dark energy conversation at the beginning of next month We're ready to start this Born ready Born ready. All right. Let's count it down Start in the show in Three two This is Twists this week in science episode number 705 recorded on Wednesday, January 23rd 2019 driving and cloning As you do. Hey, everybody. I'm dr. Kiki tonight on this week in science We are going to fill your head with sexy smarts cures and clones, but first The wonderful thing about wondering about things is the wonderful places that wondering can take you no matter how far back You go in current human history Evidence of wondering about the unknown One of the wonderful places that wonder often leads is Discovery Discovery can be the destination of wonder, but it can also be the journey itself with many Discoveries whooshing by as you go and along that wandering journey of wondering the many discoveries unwound from the unknown will undoubtedly wheel us towards more wondering until one wonderful day when we discover that What we've all been wanting all along is simply another episode of This week in science coming up next One place to go to find the knowledge. I see Science to you Kiki and Blair Good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back again To talk about all the science that we loved from the last week stories We thought were amazing and worth sharing with you our favorite science friends So on this week's show I have stories about clones about gene drive Maybe some cures we'll see about that, but Justin, what do you have? I've got a cure for cancer Maybe you know for mice. Maybe maybe well That's maybe that's always the thing with the cures for cancer on the show. It's always maybe Also, I have of course some ancient human even some Neanderthal news as well as be careful what you say because The flowers may be listening. Oh There are snoops snoops in my yard snoops in my kitchen Blair, what is in the animal corner listening animals? I have two cases of very smart birds and This is that like 24? yeah, yes a bushel of smart birds and I also have a particular case of a lizard miracle Wow, all right, I am ready for some miracles we need some miracle Everyone as we get into the show I would love to remind you that you can subscribe to this week in science as the podcast that it is all Places that podcasts are found look for this week in science or you can go to twist that org To find information about how you can subscribe on good on iTunes Google YouTube and then there are other places like Stitcher's Breaker tune in Spotify Pandora all the fun places Find us because you don't want to miss stuff like this brand-new paper that came out from Mike Brown and Antonin batky in who I'm not pronouncing his name Constantin batky in I'm not pronouncing his name, right? I'm sure to Caltech authors who have been looking for evidence of the existence of planet nine Number nine so Dr. Brown came out on Twitter this week with a nice little thread that he said Three years ago He and his co-author Constantin bat batty batty gin batty gin batty gin maybe Really not helping here at all and I proposed the existence of planet I'm going for your scattershot method exactly Anyway, they proposed the existence of planet nine because they noticed two strange things about the most distant objects in the solar system First Kuiper belt objects with distant very eccentric orbits are predominantly aligned in one direction And that I mean unless there's something acting on them they should be fairly randomly oriented and Secondly the orbits of those Kuiper belt objects are mainly tilted in one direction as well Which is also kind of strange, right? So they proposed an idea of a distant massive planet on an inclined eccentric orbit so not on the exact plane of the solar system as it were but on its own little path and This provides an explanation to this and so that's the where their hypothesis came from They have now published an article that has come out this week You can probably find it on the archive. Org. I think it was supposed to be available as of today but the paper itself is a published in Where was it? Forget there's a paywall for the actual Paper where it is officially published But you should be able to find it the not with a paywall at the archive Anyhow this new paper looks at actual data From these Kuiper belt objects asking the question. Are they aligned and So they have a bunch of the the Orbits of these Kuiper belt objects and they find that there is really Alignment and it doesn't seem to be very random and the average of all the data ends up in one very specific place Moving on from there. He's like, well, let's look at this And maybe it's a random flute and that so they simulated a hundred and one hundred thousand observations of Non-clustered so Kuiper belt objects that are not all clustered together objects Calculated the average of those and from those actual observations of objects and the data from those objects determined that this is this is pretty different from where What from what they found with the clustered objects so these clustered Kuiper belt objects are very likely being influenced They're all kind of clustered together They did another analysis looking at the tilting and they discovered that it the Percentage of error is very slim And so by the orbits and the tilting and running a multivariate a multi factorial Analysis of the variance on these things they calculated that they had a Basically a one in five hundred chance that what they found is a statistical fluke Which is pretty good, right? And so there was other data that potentially Discredits or it doesn't corroborate not necessarily just credit But doesn't corroborate what they have seen in this Kuiper belt object data but they went and looked at that data specifically and determined that They weren't really able to be looking at what they were looking at because so from the paper They say because of the limited survey region and small number of detected distant objects no conclusions on clustering of Longitude of perihelion observed in the complete data set can be drawn from the also data And so they think that's the most complete analysis that can be done on the data this also data set That would not necessarily corroborate what they found and basically that data set can't draw any conclusions because it's not complete enough They need more numbers Clustering objects to be able to make any conclusions. So, okay, the journal article in the astronomical journal That's where it is, but a the basic the basic take-home message from this The cluster that they have found is real the Tilted orbit is the tilt to that cluster is real and it could potentially be a cluster of objects And it's hard to tell the difference between one massive object and a cluster of objects very closely spaced and there is another Paper out this week that was talked about in the media suggesting that hey, maybe it's just a big cluster of objects and not a planet Which doesn't actually look at any observational data at all And so Mike Brown has come back and said well, they didn't they did modeling which is good But we actually looked at observational data. We found data that looks like there is something there But I I mean I kind of get the point of the cluster of objects because at a distance their Gravitational effect would be the same as one solitary object would be so I kind of get that but Yeah, but this is this I mean This is a very intriguing question that we could have this This this other planet is really wildly misaligned orbit probably retrograde orbit I would assume to help explain why we haven't captured it already and some telescope somewhere for a prolonged period, but Yeah, let's get more data. Yeah, so let's chase it chase it. I mean they say You know, they really think well at the their last sentence of their abstract is well Explanations other than planet 9 may someday be found the statistical significance of this clustering is now difficult to discount What it is what is it out there If it passed by close enough to have reached but we weren't prepared to go and we won't see it again Another hundred thousand year Yeah, uh, but going away from these Far off things that maybe you know lead you to think how about thinking about some things here on this planet I would like to Start a story with a segment of the show called this week in. Oh my god Oh What are we doing? No, the science is sound, but there are definite conversations that are going to come from this story Uh, Chinese researchers who successfully cloned to macaque monkey Babies last year not that we're not talking about he's yang qui's human Right crisper gene edited trial what I'm talking about they they Cloned to baby monkeys that was the first time a primate has been cloned. Well, they decided they were going to take These things and let's you know put these worlds together and so they've now published two papers In which the first is the production of a cloned no the production of a crisper edited embryo and so they edited a They edited an embryo A macaque monkey embryo using crisper cast 9 to take care of a gene that's called the b mal gene b m al one this gene is Very important in our circadian cycles So taking out this gene basically gets just destroys circadian regulation So you have a monkey that can't sleep I mean if you're talking cellular circadian rhythms, you're talking about the Health and function and behavior of a cell how it grows healing memory storage The whole so they created gene edited they created gene edited donor monkeys Without the b mal one gene they exhibited Circadian disorder phenotypes they had reduced sleep time elevated nighttime locomotive activities dampened Circadian cycling of blood hormones increased anxiety and depression as well as schizophrenia like behaviors And it's expected that these kinds of monkeys it would be they would be very useful as being an edited organism to study Circadian based and potentially neurodegenerative diseases. We could use monkeys like this Or if you wanted an army of Schizophrenic monkeys to unleash upon the world. Well, that was their next step I mean, they're they're not unleashing an army upon the world. But the next step is that they they Published a second article taking donor cells fiberblasts, which are effectively skin cells or connective tissue cells from these gene edited monkeys inserted them using or they they used stem cell techniques and somatic Nuclear transfer which is the technique used to create dolly the sheep the first clone and these edited cells the donor cells were inserted into The eggs that had the nucleus removed the so offspring were effectively clones of the donor and they looked for the best representative of this b mal one editing phenotype and genotype that they Were hoping to get and they say that this line of research will help to reduce the amount of macaque monkeys currently used in biomedical research around the world Without the end it which is great. Yes without the interference of genetic background A much smaller number of cloned monkeys carrying disease phenotypes may be sufficient for pre clinical tests of the efficacy of therapeutics That said they are planning to improve the technique and Increase their the number of cloned macaque monkeys that they produce in the future What is the benefit of using cloned macaque monkeys instead of breeding the monkeys that were crisper? So so my my first guess would be uh, just what uh, I was uh reacting to there Kiki said was that um The number of and this is air quotes for those of you who are only listening throw away monkeys Right You know the the carnage that comes In animal research, which which nobody working in history is Is benefited by um Is because of You're looking for a very specific subject to do your experiment with And if you don't have it it has suddenly no value upon the earth and cannot be released into the wild So that's more than more narrowly you could make those selections the less of a breeding program you would Need and so the less to put it in no other terms carnage that would ensue So just a little bit of devil's advocate here what I know about primate research Which again is not a huge amount, but it's some Is that usually there are primate centers that are used for research And that there are different subsets of monkeys. They're used for different research projects So the likelihood that you would need a hundred percent of monkeys at a research facility to have the same genetic expression For all of the research being done in that space is low No, no, no it's saying for instead of instead of going through a breeding program that could reach into the thousands To achieve a sub a subset of subjects that you could then send to that primate research center You could literally make The five or six that they need in a lab as opposed to doing it and I mean think of the jackson lab uh, uh, uh, that's what I was gonna say That's what I was gonna say. So instead of mice, which we know if things work in mice There's a rare How how long is it going to take to get from mice to people? There is a long pathway for drug transfer for treatments to actually Get down the pipeline because there are huge differences between mice and primates even and people and so if we can do some of this research on primates and have them have Primates that have been genetically modified as mice have been genetically modified rats And I'd like modified by the jackson lab in other places It could as as has been said reduce the number of Animals that are needed because you're not fighting against random variation of genotype Yeah, and and also I overshot your question a little bit Blair The in my comment about the jackson research lab was my amazement that they could CRISPR edit the mother and the father and still have offspring that had the other genes in them Which I kind of blew in my mind that it wasn't a hundred percent Heritable because of course epigenetics. It could be the grandparents the great grandparents seeping in And so so even in the CRISPR model Of of producing what it is that you want There's a high enough rate of of error or it not being Showing up what you want in that that next generation that the cloning would be a A better more efficient Possibly okay and according to this Possible a way to go one other question before we move on How do you know that the CRISPR process Is not affecting other things in the monkey? because sometimes there's multiple factors in a locus on a gene and so I feel like there there's definitely and maybe that's what's next But there's definitely some testing to be done to make sure when you When you kind of engineer a particular test group that you're not accidentally creating confounding variables Yeah, so with this kind of uh situation where they're Creating the gene edited animals first and then the clones from the gene edited animals they're looking at the the genome the genotype of the uh of The ones that have been edited to look for the ones that have the highest accuracy So their genotype they will go through and genotype all of those organisms all of those animals And so for example Out of 325 somatic nuclear transfer embryos. They had a whole bunch. There were 65 surrogate monkeys I would say for the for the knockouts. Let's see if I can find the numbers There and also this is numbers there, but this is also, uh, this is also sort of a temporary question Um, there is there's next generation Next next next generation. I don't know how many generations in we are, uh, crisper technology that is Going to have a massively Greater efficacy no off targets or very few And also be able to be applied to a much broader spectrum Of the of the genome than it is currently so so that those those questions about How effective or the off targeting of crisper are just sort of limited to this time now in which we speak about it And we'll we'll sort of just go away naturally as the as the technology progresses Well, well, I mean I I understand that that chris the the technology itself will get better and more precise But I more mean that there's um gene linked traits that we don't know about In every genome right and so you could remove something that you know You want to remove and inadvertently affect the animal in another way. Yes, but then you might discover that I mean that also right, you know Just just the fact that you didn't get the question you asked answered but something else was answered Yeah, still getting the job done and and that's something that has happened for a long time in gene knockout animals Oh, yeah, you know it but this this this knocking genes out or knocking putting genes in knock ins and knockouts This has been happening for a long time without crisper, you know researchers have been doing this for a couple of Through evolution All of the things that we're trying to but at the same But in a research sense when you're trying to like you said you you know You knock something out and something else happens Potentially your question that you were and say asking isn't answered But you learned something new and so that is part of this That absolutely is part of this Yeah, there's a lot going on here. I you know, there are people I'm sure there are many people in the audience who Don't want to see animal research like this take place But animal research at this point Is still a necessity and if we can reduce the number of animals that we are using That is a good use of science And and also I can tell you that I've never met a researcher who works with animals who said I wish this was less efficient I do I do what I do hope though. Yeah, everyone wants it to be more efficient But what I do hope is that as we're pushing this you know bleeding edge of technology and scientific and advanced advancement I really hope that all the countries that are and institutions that are invested in it are Are playing by the rules that we have set for animal research because we know human research animal research There are standards and yeah, well, we know that's not true We know that's not true in the way and hope different countries treat humans. We know this is not going to be true So that's it's a great hope Poof there it went. Okay All right, well Moving on if anyone wants to talk about it talk to us about it on twitter or send us an email. Let us know but This is this week in science. Justin. Tell me a story I'm gonna tell you a story and it's not the one that's in the queue because I got sent a story Moments before going on air that blew my mind like no story has done in a very long time Okay, so it's sort of a pop quiz kind of thing Uh, I want you to design something to catch or amplify sound And I'm not talking about the electronic software or anything with that an analog like a physical thing That can catch or amplify sound. What would that device look like? Like it like a cone like a Yeah, like a cone Kind of a thing And that and the design the design that took you no time to come up with is so fundamental to acoustic collection Uh, that it might not be so surprising that something evolved this shape over billions of years Uh, would have the ability to hear like different shapes of ears Right And if I was talking about different shapes of ears focused on picking up different Frequencies of some sort or different wavelengths of sound or different types of sound This would seem like I was telling you an obvious tale But if instead I told you I was talking about the shapes of flowers and their ability Pick up acoustics from the environment That's when you go So a long time ago that I did a story about bats using blades of grass that were tubed as um projection To be able to echolocate. Yeah So, so this is uh, this is where uh, uh, we we have Tel Aviv University Researcher Lilac Hadney Whose name I might totally just be mispronouncing Hadney's team looked at evening primrose And found that within minutes of sensing vibrations from pollinator wings The plants temporarily increased the concentration of sugar in their flowers nectar in the effect, uh, the flowers themselves Basically worked like uh, like he said like the the ear horn, right? Right So they were able to pick up very specific frequencies of in this case bees wings while turning out and and sort of filtering out sounds like wind wrestling other plants who were probably also trying to attune themselves to the passing bee To test the primroses in the lab hadney's team exposed plants to five sound treatments silence recorded sounds of honey bees from four inches away computer generated sounds and low intermediate and high frequencies Uh plants given the silent treatment placed under vibration blocking glass jars had no significant increase in nectar sugar concentration Same went for plants exposed to high frequency It and uh intermediate frequency But for plants that were exposed to the playback of the bee wing sound and also the similarly in the uh similar kilohertz point 0.20 0.5 to 0.5 to 1 kilohertz the finalist revealed an unmistakable response within three minutes of exposure to these recordings of the bees So we're not talking about molecular exchange in the air or other ways that we know that plants have been able to communicate in the past but hey a recording of the these frequencies sugar concentration in the plants increased from between 12 and 17 as much as 20 percent That's a lot within three minutes too. That's that's so fast Yeah, so so I mean because this is one of those things. Okay, like okay wow now if we had this knowledge you look back at it and production of nectar is such an expense for for a plant right for is that the the biological expense of producing that the efficiency of being able to produce it when you really could benefit from it Makes more sense to benefit to to create it in a burst That that will benefit you directly without having a sustained burst the whole time all the time every time Huge evolutionary advantage in being able to do that And then so so I mean and we think about we it seems really weird that Leave that flowers would have ears, but we know that leaves You know sense light They also sense odors as well And and we've talked about how the the roots of plants emit a clicking sound when there's there's danger And really it animals are just organisms that respond to their environment right in an active way And we can just think of plants as animals that don't move And how much more important that they have animals that can't run away How much more important that they have that all of the ability to sense what's going on around them And the fact that they can't you think you need senses when you can just leave Yeah, for real. I'm getting out of here. Well, no, what if you have to figure out how to make do with what's around you What comes to you what's going to attack you where you are? Yeah, and I'm I'm having this this funny debate in the chat room with Dave shorty about what the difference between responding to a frequency of sound and listening to something is because It's kind it's pretty It is there a difference between responding to a sound trigger and having an ear I would say behavior. I mean it comes it depends on what level you're looking at Are you talking about a neural lot a neurological response? Are you talking about a behavioral response because when I think response I think A physical action even if it is Blinking because you heard something that's still a behavioral response even though it's not a big one And we might have a big clump of nerves that Takes those things that we hear those frequencies and turns them into things that become more of this kind of big deal But it starts in the same place which is receiving these frequencies Yeah, it starts with a reception and response and a positive response to or positive reaction and response Benefits and this is evolution. You know flowers have been doing this for billion years or more I think more and I looking looking at this this little conversation that's taking place in our chat room I think you know what we're getting at here is Whether or not there's comprehension, right? And it doesn't necessarily matter I mean what level does comprehension occur? Are we talking about consciousness and understanding of that's a b I need to you know knowing it and saying I need to increase my sugar output But you know, we have lots of um, you know unconscious Reactions to things that we don't realize, you know, our pupils dilate But you know, we flush our skin flushes with Uh with blood to release heat. Uh, there are all sorts of things our hearts start pitter pattering faster when we get excited Um, and these are things that are from from sights and smells and sounds that are similarly tuned to And so comprehension is its own is yeah is a different thing and There are and I think it's a spectrum. I would say it is all a continuum So so what's also interesting like in the in the cognitive sense, uh, I would say that this isn't a a well-planned response from the plants Right in that in that, uh, or I mean, it's uh, what it what is more of a reflex, right? To do it, but it's it's it works, right? So one of the things that the story points out is that Uh, even though they're they're doing this 20 percent increase It's uh to really bring them bring in the crowd of bees Uh bees themselves Actually are susceptible to noticing a three percent increase sometimes even less So the plants are are like overdoing it a little bit They're like, I want to be your favorite flower come back to me Yeah So right so maybe that's even Okay, then I got to take back what I said about this not being necessarily the most efficient Maybe they're also competing against other flowers. That's exactly what they're doing Studying other flowers you find that some only come up with an eight percent increase And so the 20 percent's gonna and then there's also they also like now like, okay Now we gotta look at what flowers are attracting what uh pollinators and is there a variation in their ability To pick up the acoustics of the different wings And the different frequencies put out by the flying insect Is in comparison to the shape of the flower And so this is whole now Oh my gosh Anyway, there is a world to explore there. Oh evolution. You're so grand It's this kind of a story that just makes me uh just full of awe at At the universe and our planet and the life that is on it. It's amazing Is it time for us to jump to player's animal corner? Yeah, let's do it Oh, don't open itunes Oh, it's gonna work. Okay, great Did you know that crows are smart? Of course I know I've been listening to you on this I'm telling me how smart crows are And didn't we have kaley on here a while back? We sure did. We're a bit expert. Yes I just have when I went on vacation didn't a crow sit in for me And I actually knew my part of the show That's right I just have the latest line latest headline in the series of crows are smart stories This is of course the new caledonian crow the superstar of crow intelligence This is a study from the university of ockland the university of cambridge bertha von sutner university and the max plank institute for the science of human history Interesting addition there at the end. They found that new caledonian crows can infer the weight of an object By watching how it behaves in the wind So we know By looking at things how heavy or light they are by the way they responded breezy conditions The study they offer up or the the example they offer up here Is that if you have a napkin and a fork on the table at an outdoor cafe The napkin will fly away the fork will not you might even take that fork and put it on top of the napkin to weigh it down But we have not studied any other creature being able to figure this out just by looking yet This might just be a case of not looking I haven't heard a lot of a lot of studies looking at this specifically but regardless This is a study where they actually they didn't use Lab birds they went out into the wild and grabbed 12 birds from the wild brought them back into the lab And they were taught to use a weight Uh of an object to receive a food reward So half of them were taught that they needed the lighter object to get their food reward And half of them were taught they needed the heavier one to get their food reward Then they took those same objects that they learned about they strung them a few inches off the ground One by one pointed a fan at them. They got to see how they blew around And so even though they might look the same By watching which ones moved and which ones didn't the ones that blew around easily and theory were were lighter The heavy ones remained stationary Then they brought the birds into the test area and the birds got to pick whichever one they wanted Without having touched them first. So they picked something and it was over. They didn't get to pick them each up and decide And they were 73 percent accurate So definitely more than just random in choosing the objects that would get them the reward So if they were taught that they needed the light object They went for the one that was moved around by the wind if they were taught they needed the heavy objects They picked the one that didn't move from the wind So this is A very interesting bit of kind of inference that they are able to figure out Just by watching natural conditions. Also, they they tried to do something that they might actually see in the wild Wind is a very natural thing. They grab these wild birds. So they're not used to solving puzzles Right. These aren't their lab crows that are like, hey, have you done the latest new york times crossword? Yeah Oh, I think they call this a rock back in there. No, I saw rubik's cube in seven seconds Oh, yeah So yeah, so the the these wild new caledonian crows could figure out by watching how things moved in the wind What was heavier? I wonder if a wild bird would have an easier time than a lab reared bird They don't know from wind That is a good question Yeah Is a wild crow like come up or any wild bird come up against all the time but the effects of wind Actually, he's watching wasn't a crow. There's some small bird And on a windy day not too long ago is the branch was Oscillating up and down and the bird was like I was like actually both Oddly curious as to why it didn't just like take off. Was he like adjusting so that his head didn't move at all Yeah, so the bird was both showing me like this amazing physical trait of being able to balance on this wildly moving Thin limb because there's big limbs that could have moved over to not really moving at all But it stayed on this one really big moving But and then also like, uh, yeah, like why why why not change like why not move and it seemed to like be fine Like I can handle this I can totally adjust my weight It was like it was like a bird teeter totter that didn't Require a partner. Yeah, see if birds could go We Maybe do caledonian crows can we'll find out Yeah, and then the other question is we know now these new caledonian crows have amazing mental capacities What other corvid cousins can do this? How far does this ability go because the puzzling ability that their ability to solve the puzzles Doesn't appear to be That doesn't go that far in the corvid world We don't yeah the other species really able to pick up these puzzles the way that they do but something like Telling how much an object weighs. I think that's going to be a very basic Understanding yeah, I think If we could find a way to test it in a way an animal would want to solve it For some reason I have this this um This impulse to think that that a lot of animals could do this because the wind is a is such a universal and weights of things are really important for um, if you're digging something If you're going to put something in a hole you want to weigh it down Um, if you're trying to pick the nut that has more meat in it, you're going to pick the one that's heavier I feel like this is there's some universals here that that we might see in other Taxonomy potentially but we'd have to figure out A way to test them crows are extremely easy to test in these sorts of things because we know how to teach them things And we know how to incentivize them Yeah, but wait wait don't tell me That was a transition to your next story. Oh wait, wait, don't tell me. Oh Instead of wait, wait, I can't see from here, but I'm just assuming that's right. Thanks. Justin for these but Birds are really smart. Is that right? Okay. Yeah, so The fact that birds are so smart, uh, might actually be Evolutionarily Advantages to them. There's actually a Darwin theory That mate choice could contribute to higher intelligence to some species And a new piece of research from the chinese academy of sciences in beijing and laden university in the netherlands looked at I love how they say this in the article 34 small australian parrots known as budgerigars Aka parakeets aka budgies budgies budgies To test the notion that a suitor smarts could outweigh style Or songs so they wanted to see where intelligence factored in mate choice for budgies They took a female bird they exposed This bird to two similar looking males. She could only interact with one at a time. So she had to pick a or b Bachelor number one bachelor number two And so prior study designs Like this showed that females would pick the male with the nicer appearances or better songs One of the others always appearance or songs that won out in those cases They could tell obviously which one she preferred by how much time she spent with each of them And then Ha they took the lesser male the loser They took him and they gave him a special training session And they taught him how to open a container filled with seeds that was difficult to open Oh Yes, so then the female and the winning male The the mat macho guy received no such training And then they were given open boxes of seeds to just eat from freely. They lived the life But then the female was put back in the cage with a sealed box of seed And she watched the trained male Open his box of seed and then she watched the untrained male who she preferred before unable to get to the seed Eight out of nine females Changed their mind Spent their time with the male who could open that box So the researchers posit that this supports their hypothesis That started with Darwin that sexual selection could affect the evolution of cognitive traits or intelligence across animal species Showing intelligence could help somebody Get a mate and better spread the dna now here is the big question mark here So because can I say one thing before yeah, go ahead There seems to be a little bias in this study that is being done by educated people who may not themselves have always felt like the most Attractive They want to be told that they have the evolutionarily advantageous trait in this case See it's actually tells you as much as I would like to believe you could get by unwits alone There's another element to this which is Only one of these birds had seeds that she could eat Yes, like aside from how they got them. Yes. It meant nothing You know, so this is exactly what nobody else is George Strider and Nancy Burley of University of California Irvine Gave an accompanying perspective article to this one And they say that the researchers quote offer convincing evidence that female budgerigars modified their mate preference in favor of trained males After observing them perform complex foraging tasks. However It's not entirely clear that they appreciated the box opening as a sign of intelligence Quote the fact that females lacked the opportunity to perform the task themselves Suggest that they may have had a little basis for understanding the exercise as a problem in need of a clever Solution they might have instead Attributed male success in opening the containers to superior physical strength or or or or again Can I just throw in just where the seeds were? where If you had if you trained one to open a box No seeds and you trained another one to like lift a tiny bird dumbbell No seeds and the other the third bird just laid back And like mysteriously from a little funnel above seeds dropped down and covered that bird and seeds I keep her where she's going Right So the the idea here at least is that this is an interesting initial finding and that there's the workings here of a good mechanism to test Sexual selection of intelligence. There needs to be some adjustments most likely especially based on the university California Irvine group here It seems like they need to make sure that the female understands that there's an intelligence factor in solving the puzzle Before her making that decision can mean that I guarantee you I could I could put a picture of a cat in that cage But but drop a pile of seeds in front of it. I know where she's going She's going to the pile of seeds in front of the cat has nothing This is like this is like the worst designed experiment in my opinion Well, there are we're not looking at the entire All the controls here and so They were very likely. I mean this is an article in science It's in science science magazine with people who like the Yeah, they like the idea But at the same time they're gonna there's a bunch of smart people who are going to be asking questions Like you're asking and so I'm assuming that some of these things you're bringing up are were addressed in the paper Um from the abstract it says they had control experiments in which females observed males with free access to food And there were others in which females observed female demonstrators Solving the problems Were they still attracted No No, the preference shift didn't happen. They already chose their chose their favorite Okay Yeah, so so the idea is that obviously there's lots of layers. We're not seeing here. This is not just a simple science experiment this is a full research experiment, um, but What the what the UC Irvine people are saying is that there's there's interesting implications here And I think it merits future research And it's pointing a certain direction But we need to rule out the idea that physical strength or just availability of food has something to do with it Which you can do just good and and I mean I like this, but it's also it it does also say that, uh, you know Anything that's an advantage to survival Whether it's being the biggest or the smallest the strongest or the fastest or the whateverest Uh, all of these things do, you know, they're all strategies for survival and if And if you're gonna, you know lay your egg with uh with with one bird this season You want the one that's got the best Strategy for surviving or the right. I mean and it makes sense if you think about There's the whole like maslow's hierarchy of needs thing for humans. It's Similar for animals. They're gonna care a lot more about who can get them food than who has the right song In theory, which is what this is actually testing, right? Is if intelligence helps get you food that should Trump the ability to sing a beautiful song or look beautiful and that's I think really You know, we're using all these fun words to describe it, but that's really what this study is about And that's what may I say that knowing a little bit more about the depth of the study? I'm, um, uh A lot more in favor Of Excellent They have controls. They've got control. They've got it under control Of course Is it time to go to a break? I think it's time for a break I believe it is time for a break as well everyone Thank you for listening to this first half of this week in science. We will return in a few moments with four this week in science After the short break stay tuned Thank you everyone for Listening to twists for watching twists for being a part of our community and enjoying science with us. 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So I thank you for your support We really could not do the show without you Well, I'm pleased it shows the way to go New conclusion the methods of hypothesis and patience are the only things I need Put on a pair of goggles and go looking for the things I couldn't see The answers lie somewhere within this scatter plot time Our first song should work correct with proof of rest The methods of hypothesis and patience are the only things I need And we're back with more this weekend science Yeah, we are back and I have a wonderful This week in what has science done for me It's a bit long, but it is wonderful. It's a story. So I hope that you are ready kick back and relax and listen up Hi, dr. Kiki. This is probably too long for you to read on the show This gets transferred into me typing a lot This is my what has science done for me lately story. Hi. My name is ash and I'm a high school science teacher in Sydney, australia I know go ash. You're Melting the brains forming the brains of the next generation. We're making this longer. Okay Yes, I have been wanting to contribute to what has science done for me lately for a long time However, not being able to quantify what lately actually means nothing is really stood out As I try and communicate science to whoever will listen even beyond my time at school Blair's 700th episode note inspired me to write in as it made me think about the way I teach When I get a new grade of seven years of year seven students first year of high school in australia I always ask the class to draw a scientist for homework at the end of their first lesson Rest assured 90 of the time their image is einstein Esquire sometimes there's the odd girl or professor's frink from the Simstons After they're finished similar to dr. Kiki did for Blair. I ask students if they've ever asked why about anything Solved a problem for themselves worked out how to fix something Even tried different strategies to pass a really hard level on a video game If so, they have engaged with at least a part of the scientific method and they themselves are scientists As they progress through high school They are going to learn the skills to be even better more informed scientists of which they are extremely Enthusiastic about and eager to learn more They repeat the activity drawing themselves as scientists and everyone is keen as beans to get learning My new phrase Unfortunately, there is some correlation between puberty and a demise in this enthusiasm Which I think kicks in when teenagers realize they know everything Fortunately for most their enthusiasm in is rekindled in about grade 10 when they start thinking about their future But what has science done for me lately? In 2017 myself and three other teachers were selected for the australian science teachers association to go on bush blitz Of program funded by the australian government and various private organizations to send about 20 specialist Taxonomists into the field of remote areas of australia for two weeks with the goal of discovering new species and recording range extensions for known species As a biologist, this was really amazing It was an amazing experience because the only field work I did in my undergraduate degree was collecting rocks for one of my lecture research There were a few new plants and some animal species Found as well as a parent new spider genus But I haven't seen a paper published on it yet So that may have fallen through To sit around a table with all these specialists in their field Enthusiastically talking about the discoveries of the day over dinner was incredible And I wanted to spend as much time with all the scientists Absorbing all the knowledge that I could This experience inspired me to be a more involved citizen scientist Using various app-based technology to help with the recording of species in my local area Furthermore, it increased the cash of skills I have to teach my students and has helped me engage with that engage them with their local environment Giving me the necessary skills to head outside and confidently teach how to record abiotic and biotic data catching and identifying spiders insects and recording sightings of larger animals with the aim of creating long-term surveys Monitoring the health of our local ecosystem as we have an airport an airport opening up six kilometers from us in 2026 The experience also inspired me to return to university And i'm currently doing my master's in zoology entomology part-time while working I'm loving all the skills i'm learning and have come up with some research that I may look to undertake in regard to ecological education in the future Communicating science is my life and I am a better educator because of twists My students love hearing all the things that I have learned From your show and often diverging into a rabbit hole of tangents that have nothing to do with the curriculum Some stories have even helped me to improve my results because you direct me to extremely current research in my assignments That my lecturers want that my lecturers want to then discuss with me Maybe when uni is all done I'd be able to collaborate with blaire as a colleague if i'm lucky enough to score a job as an educator at taronga zoo in sydney in summary Science it has made me who I am Science hockey and music are all I really talk about and whenever conversation hits a lull I start a sentence with So have you heard about And we'll start talking about something that I have read or learned from this show It keeps dinner gatherings with my relatively conservative family interesting I know this isn't what you usually read out in the segment But I just wanted to contribute to the show good science to you all ash If you want to see my students loving science check out at ash six four. That's a s h s i x and the number four or Hashtag science with mulhaney Mulhaney, sorry hashtag science with mulhaney. I'm looking over on instagram. So he's got an instagram and a twitter and He's got an instagram that you can check out the work. He's doing out there everyone I love this ash. Thank you and blaire. You have a colleague a future colleague. Yes Ash it was I know That's fantastic. It was long. Yes, but I think well worth it and I am so excited to hear What science has done for you you're educating people in science You are furthering your education in science. You are reaching out into the community and you are affecting the future and ash That is just Music to my ears even though I don't have hockey in there anywhere. Thank you um Ash you'll have to keep us posted after you finish your master's degree Can't wait to hear all about that tweet at us right in again in a year. I don't know Yeah, let us know. I yes. I agree. Absolutely So anyone else out there interested in writing in with your story What has science done for you lately? It can be a longer lately. It can be a quick short lately It could be a haiku could be a sonnet. It could be a song What do you have to tell us about science in your life? Email me kirsten k i r s t e n at this week in science dot com or send us a facebook message on our facebook page It's this week in science on facebook Justin tell me your stories. All right, so uh, one of the rules of fight club Not talking about fight club one of the rules of this week in science Is not reporting on cancer cures and it's not because we don't want people to know about cancer cures but Because just about every story about cancer cures is heavily caveated right with statements like I try to give you a rundown a synopsis of a very typical uh cancer cure story This may potentially someday lead to a pathway that opens a door for them What might lead to a new possibility in the search for Indy keeps going like that But the following cancer cure story that i'm about to bring you Is slightly less caveated than most Lightly less. Thank you for that So yeah, go ahead and count the caveats as you like A new drug shows potential to help cancers sell growth by starting the surgical clock Uh findings from scientists at usc michelson's center for convergent bioscience and the nagoya university's institute for transformative biomolecules looked at turning the body's circadian rhythms Against cancer their study conducted on human kidney cancer cells and on acute myeloid leukemia and mice And I was published today January 23rd journal science advances So disrupting circadian rhythm Is known to have harm health in humans apparently and rhesus monkeys as well Same is true for the Circadian clocks of cells themselves. So if you disturb the circadian clock of cancer cells, they theorize You could potentially Hurt them or maybe even kill them Copy that copy that scientists found that a molecule G zero or g o 289 Targets an enzyme that controls the cells circadian rhythm this drug protein Shrops the function Of four other proteins that are important for cell growth and survival Quoty voice of steve k whose director of convergent biosciences at usc michelson's center In some cancers the disease takes over the security and circadian clock mechanism And uses it for the evil purpose of helping itself grow With geo 289 We can interfere with those processes and stop the cancer from growing so Uh g zero or geo 289 can mess with the cancer cells hijacked circadian clock slowing its cycles And we can do so apparently with little impact to the healthy cells So they they yeah Uh And it's you wouldn't get that schizophrenia or depression or anxiety like the the macaques did from earlier Right, right. So it's initial actual interactions with human bone cancer cells Uh geo 289 appeared to slow tumors circadian clocks as it targeted a different enzyme Ck2 To see if it consistently hindered other cancers in the same way scientists then tested it on human kidney cancer cells and on mice with the acute myeloid leukemia And they found that geo 289 specifically affected cancer cell metabolism And other circadian related based functions that normally would Enable the cancer to grow and spread by the hijacking behavior so That's insane that you can target The circadian rhythm of the cancer cells specifically Yeah, and so and so it's it's uh, it's I I think what they're doing is actually targeting the cells The cell the normal cellular circadian rhythm, which is triggered molecularly Uh chemically molecular however you want to put it Uh and in the fact that the cancer cell relies on the cells native circadian rhythm and is then changing it and that Is is what's is what's affected, right? It's very cool Yeah, and then this is the ending a more a little bit more coy voice Uh k is optimistic about the findings this could become an effective new weapon that kills cancer he says so it's it's Unfortunately A thing with all of the cancer research they seem to get like it's almost like they get a thesaurus of caveats a caveat So uh, so it's it with which to pepper anything that they're talking about Uh, so it's not to You know create too much hope I suppose But it is a fascinating new way of targeting Uh that uh here to do for I have not heard of well and it seems like even if it doesn't kill the cancer It might slow the progression down Which would also be good There's also super aggressive Cancers out there that if you're just if you you're given a little bit of time you could treat it potentially Potentially, yeah find a path towards Yeah possible cure from a different avenue if it were to arrive by slowing down the progression of the disease Yeah, yeah Yeah, and if you just get it to the cell to think it's time to sleep and not time to grow and divide You've effectively stopped it so I mean this is this is of course what we talk about This is what cancer is is accelerated growth So so a a normal cells growth pattern is much slower than cancer So if you slow it by 50 percent, it's probably still growing at a rate that would be Somewhat analogous to its normal healthy behavior But is a massive reduction in the amount of growth that is taking place within the cancer. So yeah Fascinating technique fascinating way of finding that technique And applying it and like we really would like them to be successful as with I would I wish that for every great Be successful. There's not a cancer cure that I'm like, I hope they don't win but you know Just already got some preliminary good data out of it There you go Fantastic data Fantastic um speaking of other health news There is some research. Oh, yeah. Have you had your gums checked recently? I'm going to the dentist next week Good Yeah, well, you might have them check for period I can't even say the word I can't speak today. My brain just turned off everyone Powering down computer kiki. Can't we all have kiki's powered down brain? I would take it Totally Or just in full blast Gotta be awesome in there. Well, you might want to you might have to you know, put up with some other things But you wouldn't have to put up with periodontal disease. There we go. Uh-huh. Well, it appears some researchers from the University of California, san francisco and a company called cork texime Have been looking into a bacteria called p gingivalis which causes periodontitis periodontal disease that it's an infection bacterial infection in your gums That destroys them and can make your teeth fall out Right. Yeah, like the receding gums and the yeah Yes, well, additionally, they have found that there is a link between p gingivalis presence in the gums and the bloodstream and Your brain and there is a link between p gingivalis and Alzheimer's disease Uh, everybody go to the dentist Everybody go to the dentist There's like a whole nother reason so many people avoid the dentist Yeah, so ah, do you want to lose your memories? Go to the dentist Yeah, so these researchers have been searching for These infections things this this idea that you know, the immune system is involved in Alzheimer's disease And so there may be infections that spur Some but not all of the cases and if there are infections How can we stop those and we can stop a certain percentage of cases of Alzheimer's disease? and so they have been looking for signs of a link there and discovered this particular link they They found DNA from the bacteria in the brains and cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer's patients They also found bacterial enzymes called Ginger pains I like that name ginger pains. They destroy brain cells not your friend Cause lots of pain Anyway, they watched these infections in mice and they saw neurodegeneration in the hippocampus and build up of amyloid beta plaque production and inflammation So they put together and they this is the end of the story that they created a molecule This is what this Cortexime company is good at and they created a molecule to block ginger pain enzymes It reduced the amount of bacteria in the infected mice stopped amyloid beta plaque formation and reduced inflammation and And and and this compound which is called core three eight eight Has passed human safety studies and is on its way to clinical trials It's fantastic. However uh, the first question I would have is The directionality of this so are I mean There there if if you attack it from this is a mouth bacteria Yeah, and is because it's it affects your teeth It's it's a mouth bacteria and it begins and starts there and this is the origin of it And then it goes out and causes problems elsewhere then fantastic but if it's a spinal fluid initiated enzyme that then or bacterium that then finds its way over to the mouth and infects the mouth No It's like they believe it starts in the gums it that it the gums are the pathway to the nervous system But it couldn't I mean they couldn't do the gums just be an accessible place for bacteria that could be like It could be in the gut or it's gonna be somewhere else in in smaller form Really accentuates there, but not necessarily the source of it. I mean the idea would be you can wipe it out from the mouth But then this this bacterium is is still causing The release of the enzyme or what have you that's causing the effects that get into the spinal from some other I mean, that's just Yeah, I suppose it's possible. But what we know about period Dontitis at this point is that um proper dental hygiene does make it go away in terms of what's in the mouth so So if we know about that if we know that you know occasional deep cleanings and Flossing and twice daily brushing and all that kind of stuff prevents this disease in your gums Then I think it makes sense that that's where it starts Okay, um, but I but I could see where you're saying that you could just be keeping it at bay If it's coming from somewhere else and you're just keeping it out of your mouth through that process And the other thing is too is like that you always have to be careful when you start talking about dental hygiene in the terms of eliminating Because I guarantee there are people with bacteria in their mouth That either cause plaque or cavities or have some other down You know, maybe or nothing That it's not to do with eliminating No, but that are out competing that bacterium So if you don't have it if you don't have this this uh, P gingivital or whatever it is If you don't have it in your mouth now and you cleanse your mouth completely you may have created a perfect landscape Yeah, all right. Yeah, no, it's absolutely right. Yeah, I had a conversation like this with my dentist a long time ago Where they like there you have a lot of plaque buildup and uh, it's a bacteria that causes this And I was like, okay, but I don't have any cavities and they go Oh, well, that's a different bacteria that causes cavities I'm like, so why would I ever give up the plaque ones where you can go in and scrape it off once in a while? Well, otherwise the other one if I cleanse it that one might move in you got to drill everything out like that's ridiculous Like I'm keeping I want you to do whatever you do Do not eliminate my plaque causing bacteria because yeah That's it's a it's a population It's a population It's an ecosystem and the issue is that if one of these gingivalis If the gingivalis species is allowed to overrun for whatever reason poor dental hygiene, whatever it happens to be It can lead to or too much. Yeah, it can lead to Uh, the the the periodontal disease Which can lead to an entryway into the bloodstream and then even if you fix it at some point You still potentially have those proteins and enzymes in the body for a while that can cause trouble Sorry Let's let's study people with Alzheimer's and and compare their dental hygiene To that of the general public and if it comes back that people who get Alzheimer's No, I thought you met people after they have Alzheimer's disease. Yeah. Yeah people who get Alzheimer's disease compare their dental hygiene We're going backwards. Sure. Certainly not forgetting the rest but we're going back compare their access to to dentists and dental insurance and dental hygiene or whatever you however you want to quantify this to a A subset of the population that has never gotten it or doesn't get it It's that would be very interesting. Wouldn't it? It might be it might be but you know, I think it's great that they've got a molecule We've got a molecule now where maybe it'll work and we'll be able to block that protein and Solve a lot of that problem. So you'll be able to have your poor dental hygiene and not worry about it as well Yeah, that's great. Um, the other there's there is another Alzheimer's study out this week from uh, the university Buffalo University of New York, Buffalo looking at Alzheimer's disease and influences in what Way that we could possibly reverse memory loss They have a paper that they just published identifying epigenetic factors that contribute to the memory loss They found ways to temporarily reverse them in a mouse model And it's a very exciting study other than the fact that they've cured Alzheimer's in mice and not in people So they gave uh mice a familial Alzheimer's disease, which means that it's genetically carried and passed on from generation to generation And they looked at epigenetic changes occurring in the mice They discovered that there's a loss of glutamate receptors They're critical to learning in short term memory and found that many subunits of glutamate receptors in the frontal cortex get Downrated regulated and disrupt excitatory signals, which impairs working memory So if you have bad working memory, you're just not able to keep things in your mind to be able to remember things Anyway, I wrote a click and I may have you sleep on just for a second and just maybe jumping ahead of the story and I apologize um That's fascinating to me because I've always considered Uh things like Alzheimer's to be the destruction of the stored memory It's all it's it's not necessarily about communication Yeah, you're talking about access. So there's a difference. There's a there's a difference Which never occurred to me. There's a huge difference between an access to a memory In the actual storage of it somewhere the imprint of that memory somewhere in the brain Yep Exactly. I'm so glad I was able to help blow your mind there this evening. That's awesome um, anyway, they found that uh, that The loss of the glutamate receptors is part of what is called repressive histone Modification which gets elevated in this in Alzheimer's disease And this is something they saw in mouse models and in human Post-mortem tissue they looked at this abnormal Modification the diminishing glutamate receptors and they ended up looking at and they found a bunch of drug targets that Have to do with enzymes and so they gave the animals an enzyme inhibitor and saw the rescue of cognitive function Which they confirmed through evaluations of memories Recognition spatial and working and they say that they were quite surprised to see such a dramatic Improvement and they saw the recovery of glutamate receptor expression and function in the frontal cortex They looked at it, uh only for a week So they saw improvements for one week and they're going to see if they can create compounds that Penetrate the brain better and are longer lasting into the future And so that's where they're going they've created an enzyme that can restore memories for Alzheimer's disease in mice Right and every time I hear a thing that cures something into disease I wonder if it could just make my un-diseased brain stronger and if I could do this if I could take this Could I remember stuff that I haven't thought about for a long time? Just because I shut down the access to the memory or something that you lost after a night of heavy drinking perhaps There we go. Yeah I'll never get that back again We probably don't want to get that back Tell me another story Justin Oh, no. All right. Do I have more? Oh shoot. I hope I have more. Okay, uh Oh, yeah, this is a separate skeleton suggested to be from disparate early hominin species are as it turns out sourced from the same species A team of anthropologists have surmised The research appears in a special issue of the journal paleo anthropology Which I wish somebody would send me and it's part of a series of articles that offers a comprehensive accounting Of australopithecus sediba hominin species discovered in South Africa back in 2008 so They had a couple of specimens here very complete specimens Uh, and they were over a past decade researchers have been piecing together these skeletons and basically the culmination of this work a series of of 135 fossils and I think nine different papers are in this paleo anthropology coverage and it covers In some detail very specific limbs and other aspects of the vertebrae and the skull and There's a fantastic video of this if you can click on this story and do a screen share they actually have a animated skeletal walking A bipedal walking. So this is one of the other things that they've told uh also come up with is that This was a bipedal walker, you know, uh, this is and again, this is a two million year old Fossil collection Uh from the uh, which water sand in South Africa That they say this the sediba was both adapted to terrestrial bipedalism And also spent significant time climbing trees Either to go and find tasty things to eat in the trees or to find ways to just to avoid being tasty treats for predators around Cody voice of anthropologist of new york university anthropologist scott williams this larger picture sheds light on the life ways of uh Playing sediba and also on major transition in hominin evolution That have largely ape-like species include the broadly in the genus australopithecus to the earliest members of our own genus homo It's also also, uh, interesting is they say this is clearly a distinct Uh disparate species from uh, our own but has also connected to another species that they are another hominin that they had been looking at as potentially a separate species Uh, but it's not a direct ancestor even though it shows A lot of morphology similar to what ended up in a so perhaps common ancestor And they had uh, I guess I guess the what they thought had been to disparate the species Turned out to be a juvenile and adult and so They sort of were able to track morphology Over time and realize that this is what this other one morks into and the morphology alone Wasn't enough another sort of ancient human story There's a neanderthal story out just kind of uh Kind of interesting because it's it's in one way it's very contradictory Uh, they're they're both It's a a new discovery that sort of is finding that neanderthals in in southern iberia Were replaced by modern humans Much longer ago Than previously predicted because there's a site very close to there that had been the longest holdout of neanderthals So they're they're putting this at the site was approximately 44 000 years ago the current humans replaced the neanderthals in the site But the other site that's really not too far away Neanderthals uh persisted to 32 000 years ago as the dominant hominin And all those these are sort of contradictory in the whole like when did the current humans replace the archaic humans? in the in the region The the sort of sub story here is that It looks like it's possible that we Cohabitated the same lands for 10 000 years or more That this was and it's not so much a humans in neanderthal out scenario but uh Neanderthals to the north neanderthals to the east or west and current humans to the east or south or what have you for 10 000 years Of potential cohabitation and intermingling um So a lot less of a direct Direct replacement Even in even in some of this the co-mingling cohabitation scenarios. They're they always try to accelerate the event with Lack of the hybridized next generation of human and neanderthal being reproductively less efficient right The the idea that we had many thousands of years to sort of overlap a bit is is really fascinating and sort of does Challenge a little bit that that replacement scenario I don't know. I think yeah, I mean that scenario is basically that just is going away Yeah, let's take this old idea this story that was told to excite us about Neanderthals They were here before and humans won and we kicked them out, you know the story of humans we we won we survived their sediba um, you know neanderthals denisa vins floresiensis floresiensis, you know all of them all of the ones that we're learning about are telling us this very Different story this nuanced story and this kind of Information, I think it's I think it's it makes sense Especially considering how much neanderthal DNA is mixed in with humans What do they call it now a braided stream? A braided stream Exactly and and also funny interesting to note that uh in thousands and thousands of years of neanderthal and current human and a hybridization element in between Not once is there any evidence of a wall being built between the two But I it has an interesting question though culturally what What was shared, you know Was there was there a common way of communicating if if humans and neanderthals were you know in the same Areas for that long they overlapped There were they speaking the same languages were they learning each other's languages were they trading goods were they I don't know were they sharing were they learning or were they just try completely tribal and shunning each other each other Did we have a story last year about um neanderthal art? Yeah The french and spain ancient cave art that we attributed to the earliest man Um, uh current human artwork actually turned out all to be neanderthal So so it's very likely That the if you were to put it into some sort of weird modern terms Very likely that the neanderthals were the etsy crowd and the current humans of the day were likely the Uh Real estate agents I feel like How are we going to be the best represent? Sure. Yeah Let me let me let me show you this cave over here. It's a very nice cave It doesn't have much of a draft, but you know, it'll pull the smoke out. It'll be all right. You can like your muskox adjacent and one was very one was very real estate aggressive Uh, and the other one was very much sort of into a slower paced life where art was the You know sort of the main state is sort of what the picture that we're getting Uh from the ancient past Well thinking of things from the ancient past I've got some quick science news stories here at the very end of the show quick and dead Researchers have been drilling into antarctic lakes lake mercer In the antarctic they drilled and have come to lake mercer and gotten a sample They found little tiny dead things. They found dead tardigrades dead crustaceans things that looked like dead squished spiders Yes, they have found the vestiges of many organisms and this is first reported last week in nature online And the salsa team is the team who is responsible for this salsa known as subglacial antarctic lakes scientific access Have been digging into lake mercer to see Whether or not anything was there because they've dug into lakes before not finding anything This one however they found a bunch of dead things which indicates that possibly what happened Through the past is that different glacial periods. This lake has been open to the air and actually Had a thriving ecosystem it later froze over things died in there Maybe it opened up again allowing things back in and then froze back up again Maybe it's got a freeze-thaw cycle that goes on and uh goes on and on over eons and that explains the Lack of life that they've discovered but the preponderance of little frozen dead things There you go. Those tardigrades might even wake up if you throw them out So it's interesting and that also makes me wonder what they're looking for. I mean, there was a receding Did I do this story last week? I might not have done the story but there was a receding Glacier that they found two new species of fungi under You know that had been surviving buried under glacier and was reproductively active at Zero degrees Celsius Amazing Yeah, which also Industrial application except for most of our Industrial processes are heat oriented, but but like this is this is one of these things where you know It's a way Quick i'm not actually going to do this story I just have one I have one quick one more quick story and then it's your turn And then it's your turn so I can I can prep some things for the end of the show. Um Gene drive we've talked about gene drive before on the show and uh, it's been very successful in mosquitoes and taking Putting a gene into the mosquitoes are taking a gene out of the mosquitoes But basically driving the gene out to leave mosquitoes in a lab or productively sterile It's been effective Just a hundred percent of the population of the lab mosquitoes was wiped out. However Researchers have been working on this in mice and haven't had or other animals and haven't had quite the same success but now you see san diego who we've reported reported on before working in the gene drive area has had some success in mice and Working with a gene for coat color, which wouldn't what wouldn't matter whether or not it got out of the lab necessarily they Swapped in different chunks of DNA that caused a DNA cutting enzyme to be active in different cells and so when it was active In male germ cells the ones that create sperm it also created large deletions Rather than converting to normal copies of the genes and they had also the enzyme active in female germ cells before the DNA was repaired with a copy gene drive payload However, they're working it up the efficiency as opposed to the mosquito hundred percent Their frequency was about 72 percent and while They uh, this is still not where they want it to be this frequency of inheritance For this particular gene for coat color was much higher than normal Mendelian Inheritance and so of course in their paper they entitled it Super Mendelian So that's gonna be my superhero nickname super Mendelian I'm super mendel. That's right. Will you carry around pee pods? Possibly very yeah, yeah, yeah very large ones Yeah, so uh eventually This is the research that's going on in this system the resort the authors state the goal of using the system to Put together interesting combinations of mutations seems to be within reach. Excuse me But there have been some suggestions of using it in populations of wild mice to eliminate their ability to carry some diseases Or as part of an eradication effort the rodents have been an invasive species on remote islands for instance And that's not going to be ready for game time anytime soon but This is a uh a good step along the way If we if we think of gene drive as good So good gene drive Okay, Justin, tell me your story not to be left out for saying Mendelian Uh results of Mendelian randomization study indicate that the accelerometer based physical activity appears to protect protect against the risk of depression Basically, uh on average a cordy voice on average doing more physical activity appears to protect against developing depression Any activity appears to be better than none Our rough calculation suggests that replacing sitting with 15 minutes of heart pumping activity like running Or with an hour of moderately vigorous activity is enough to produce the average increase An accelerometer data that was linked to lower depression risk Uh The one thing I'm not even really going to go into this story one thing I'm going to point out is they did not They did not in their study incorporate anybody who was Uh rowing a boat under a slave-like condition or anybody doing forced labor Or anybody who's been doing physical labor as their career job Which they foolishly fell into right out of high school as opposed to getting a higher education had been stuck with being physically active for the last 40 years So i'm just gonna say Yeah, for those of you who maybe have not exercised much in your lives Maybe that could divert some depression from an otherwise unphysical life but for for somebody who might be perhaps Physically involved in their day-to-day every day I don't think that an additional physical activity is going to help Those things are all subjective for those people. Maybe taking time off of physical activity to reduce Depression you really have to be careful when you're making these overarching claims about things that take place in Comparison that you're talking about The the one thing just makes me think of though is that the the whole kind of Um fad with getting your steps in wearing a fitbit or an apple watch or whatever it is There might actually be Something to that because the people who are saying I got to get my steps And are the ones who aren't moving around very much the rest of the day So they have to make sure to budget the movement and that might actually help Very interesting however Rest if your thing keeps telling you go walk now. You haven't walked enough. You need to walk some more But I just did walk now walk some more. Ah, okay, but I'll do what you say There is a there is a uh an idea that these fitbits and other health devices don't actually Help in terms of mood management Well, because you might actually get anxiety about not closing your rings or whatever. Absolutely. Um speaking of physical activity I have one last story for the end of the show that is very interesting But very short and it is um that an animal has been shown to be doing something Heather 214 unknown. Is that a real work? No, it's not So, uh There's a few uh individual animals that we have seen walking on water spiders Uh water striders that awesome Jesus lizard. What is it? Yeah, the basilisk or the jesus christ lizard And so we know uh how they do it, but now a gecko has been seen Running on water which is really weird because we know how those other animals are doing it The spiders and bugs are doing it by surface tension on waters because they're very light And then the the basilisks are doing it by size and strength to push themselves above the water As they move and this gecko is in between in size So we have no idea until now how they're getting this done Like the grippy paws, but that's the So Related so not only did we not know that the geckos could do this at all But then once we found out that they could do it Uh, we're not sure how so this is a study from Rockefeller university and it turns out they use surface tension But they put them in soapy water and uh, they killed surface tension Um, and then they couldn't move so surface tension was definitely part of it But it wasn't all of it So they also are physically creating air bubbles generating force just like the basilisk does But there's something else. It's actually also Hydrophobic skin, which is kind of related to this weird sticky thing that they're doing too But the hydrophobic skin Repels the water and enhances their ability to stay above the surface So it's actually three methods in one two. We've known about and one brand new one So the idea is you could potentially make a medium-sized robot that could move on water In order to do search and rescue and floods and things like that Because swimming is actually way more energetically difficult and slower than moving on top of the water As we all know. Um, so there is some practical Uh potential uses for this but also it's just really cool That's I love that it's not just the normal things that we have seen previously, but it's this hydrophobic ability and air bubbles and That's awesome Yeah, yeah, it's all the things. Oh geckos. You're just so cool. So cool Oh, and I forgot to mention that story comes from a Kirsten Sand for oh dr. Kiki you sent it to me. That's why I said I thought you would like it I thought you would enjoy it. I loved it. In fact, I've taken that to work with me for sure. Awesome. Yeah Yes, your animal friends will appreciate understanding their other animal friends All right, everybody we have done it. We've made it to another end It's another end. We're here at the end. Isn't it beautiful my friends? Yeah We are here and I want to take this moment to say Thank you to all of you who listened for the whole show or if you're just here because you listened to part of it Thank you for being here right now. Thank you to identity for for helping to record the show every week Thank you to fada for helping with show notes and show descriptions and social media amazing And uh, thank you for helping in our youtube chat room Gordon mccloud. Thank you for helping to moderate in our you in our our main chat room For our youtube donors. Thank you for donating today during the show. I appreciate your donations And I would like to thank my patreon sponsors Thank you to paul disney I scrolled down Richard onamus ed dire stu paulic philip shane ken haze harrison prather charlene henry joshua furie steve debel alex wilson tony steele craig landon Mark the sorrows jack mathy litwin jason roberts bill k bob calder time jumper three one nine Eric nap richard brian kondren Dave neighbor aiden jeff dave friedel darryl my shack Andrew swanson paul ronovich karin benton sue doster dav wilkinson ben bignell richard porter noodles kevin reardon christoph zoek nurek ashish pants ulysses adkins sarah chavis yartiam rick maymett ramus paul john wakie jason Olds brang kerrington christopher drier lisa susie jim drapeau craig riley shon lamben rothig steve lessam and kurt larthin Larson rudy garcia marjorie gary s robert craig briggs brennan minnish gripper christopher wrappin flying out erin luthan matt sutter marqueson flow kevin parochand biren lee and e oh Thank you for all of your support on patreon and if any of you are interested in learning more about Patreon you can find information at twist.org click on the patreon link if that's what you're looking for remember you can also tell other people about twist And on next week's show we will be back To talk about science live online 8 p.m. Pacific time on wednesday night at twist.org slash live You can watch and join the show the chat room live We can talk with you we can see what you're doing If you're here, but if you're not and you can't make it don't worry We love the fact that you are subscribed to the show and can listen and find past episodes at youtube.com Slash this week in science or twist.org Thank you for enjoying the show twist is also available as a podcast Just google this week in science in your iTunes directory Or if you have the mobile type devices that are out now Uh, you can look at uh twist the number for droid app in the android marketplace Or simply this week in science and anything apple market placey Are you looking for more information on something you heard here today show notes are available on our website That's right. You know what it is. It's www.twist.org You can also make comments while you're there and you can start conversations with the hosts or other listeners Uh, or you can just contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekandscience.com Justin at twist minion at gmail.com Or blair at blairbaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist which is spelled t-w-a-s Somewhere in your subject line. Otherwise your email will be spam filtered into oblivion You can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science At dr kiki at jackson fly and at blairs menagerie We love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address This suggestion for an interview of haiku that comes to you in the night Please let us know We will be back Right here next week, and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news Oh, but remember, uh, you've learned anything from this show. Uh It's all in your head This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science, it's the end of the world. So i'm setting up shop got my banner on furl It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the robot with a simple device I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand 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 the air Because it's this week in science This week in science This week in science science science This week in science This week in science science science I've got one disclaimer, and it shouldn't be news That what i say may not represent your views, but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan If you listen to the science, you may just get understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from Japanese And this week in science is coming away So everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods to roll in and die We may rid the world of toxoplasma Because it's this week in science This week in science science science This week in science This week in science science science I've got a long 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 So how can i ever see the changes i seek when i can only set up shop one hour a week This week in science is coming away You better just listen to what we say and if you learn anything from the words that we said Then please just remember it's all in your head Because it's this week in science This week in science science science This week in science This week in science science science This week in science This week in science This week in science this week in science This week in science Remember, that's all I was waiting for. You said remember at the beginning of the sentence, which was confusing. But I will hate it, it's not the right word. That's not my cue, I have a cue and I wait for it, I wait for the word. Sometimes my brain is slow like today when robot Kiki has powered down. Yeah, I don't keep up as quickly. That's right. Tired Kiki. Where's Justin? He needs to come back for our big, exciting news. Does he know about the big, exciting news? Well, I texted or I asked him about it last week. And he might know, but he might not remember. Remember. Right. That old thing. Everyone, thank you. And there's Carolyn, who is tweeted at us, tweeted at me and said, this is my favorite quote. Oh, my goodness. Your show is like vaccination for the brain and trendy ignorance. Yes, it is. Oh, my God. It's real information. I might finally get a tattoo and it might be that might be that. Right. That's it. And that's why we need more people watching the show. We're not watching, listening to the show. Consuming the show. Yeah, isn't that quote so pithy identity for it is. Yes. Vaccination for the brain. It's trendy ignorance. Yes. Everyone, what did I not? There's a Justin. He's back. Did he put on his head front yet? Headphones on. Yeah, and it is freezing cold. Yeah, I was freezing last week in the week before that. It's a little warmer now. We've got a little bit of a warmer spell. It's like in the forties right now. Yeah, it's probably it's probably not even down to the forties here. It's spoiled California. Cold in the valley. It does, but not it doesn't get Portland cold ever. Yeah, I think it's cold, but not as cold as it is in New York right now. My goodness, tell tell sign of this was that I was visiting Portland once years ago. And of course, in California, I've never gone and put the like anti freeze windshield wiper stuff in it like why bother you just put some water in there if you want to clean your windshield. Why not? And and I'm driving along and my windshield is like got gunk on it and stuff. So I hit the the little sprayer that sprays the windshield immediately turns to ice, immediately turns to an ice sheet and I have to slow down the car and pull over and have all the windows down and try not to crash into something because I just created an ice sheet. While trying to get some bird poop off my windshield or whatever it was. So, yeah, there's a difference being a Central Californian and never dealing with like frosty like conditions where you're so cold. Yeah. Well, it's not Finland. Hey, Janice, you that's cold. Money. Now we're not even cold. It's like summer for Janice. Oh, yeah, honey. Oh, my goodness. New York is fifty one degrees now. Wasn't New York City like minus four just two days ago? Oh, my God. Ben Rotheg is at ten degrees with a wind chill of two. Oh, my God. My 21 has. You can walk into my shivering and warm up. This is what's crazy. You guys are making me cold. Just thinking about it. Oh, my God, I was outside in minus twelve degrees Celsius and it was so warm. That's not warm. No, that's not what it feels like. That's not what warm feels like. Oh, it doesn't. Oh, the cold. Yeah, it was for the other day in New York City. I thought so, noodles. That's great. And now fifty one. That's that's that's a rebound. That's a little what what is the weather? What's happening? Oh, that's right, everyone. What's very exciting, our friends. Let's see, comedy album, a comic comedy album in the in the number one is number one in the charts right now is Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young, all's well, a night attack album. It is, I think, number one on Amazon. Yeah, and night attack is number two. They've got number one and number two. They're amazing. They totally gamed that and did that's Bravo. Top 100 comedy albums, brilliant. Oh, yeah, what's the big exciting news? All right, everybody in the Portland, greater Portland area or who people who want to come to visit Portland, you're going to put your April 3rd on your calendars. We're doing a live show in Portland, Oregon. They don't have a location yet. Don't have a location yet, but we will see. There were a couple of a couple of possible locations that we're looking at. But we will see it is in conjunction with the local science on tap event, which is yeah, wonderful. Yeah, it means drinking and science. Yes, but we will be doing it. Yes, it is the night before a science communication conference that I help organize. Yeah, I'm doing a workshop at. Yeah, so I'll be good and fresh after doing a tap room event. On the night, that's right. We're all going to be like, oh, and the conference. Yeah, like, oh, you want me to talk for 90 minutes? OK. We're going to be good. We're going to be so pro. Oh, yeah, it's great. So pro. I know, Ben, I am live in Portland every week. It is true, but. Blair and Justin will be coming to Portland. We're going to be on stage together in a theater doing twists. And yeah, so we're going to figure out if we want to have any guests on the show to talk about their science. Or we have to start figuring things out. We only have two months. Let me just let me just start. Let me just start by calling shotgun on the downstairs couch. That's fine. I took the loft last time. I can I can take the loft again. OK, Blair's got the loft. Justin has the downstairs. The loft is the loft better. No, you don't want it. I don't know. Did I pick the wrong thing? You don't want it. You definitely don't want it. I thought I was getting out ahead of this apparently. See, Justin, I've been there. So, like, you have. I have. I don't know what the loft is. Oh, is that the studio? You mean the upstairs studio loft or it's a crow's nest? It's a crow's nest. I like it. It's my studio office. Sorry, you called it, Justin. I did. I'm sorry. April 3rd, Wednesday, April 3rd. Noodles, yes, the date. Let me make sure because April 4th and April 5th. Yeah. Are the conference that I'm organizing. Yes. So the third. It's a normal Wednesday, like our Wednesdays. It'll be and we I'm going to try to live. I'm going to try and do a live stream. We will see what we can do. I don't know what tech abilities the theater will have, what tech abilities people will be able to have, but it's going to be a live show. So we will record it and it'll go out as a podcast. And if we record video, we will post video if we're not able to live stream and ask a question. Right. Because I always notice that there's activities taking place, but I don't always follow up with like figuring out if they work. I know we've attempted to do live streams multiple times in the past. How many of those worked? Depends on the venue. Yeah, it is depended. It totally is depended on the venue. Yeah, there are interwebby connections. Right. Yeah. I feel like the New York ones were pretty successful overall. Oh, the New York ones were amazing. We had such good help. Yeah, it was the Academy of Sciences wasn't going out live. Or was it the first we were able to get the first Academy of Sciences show out live, I thought. Or didn't that was through. Yeah, that was through like Facebook video or something. Yeah, Periscope, one or the other. I don't remember. And then I think we tried to do that last time. But I think our location inside that earth core, the the Wi-Fi was was not great. The Wi-Fi was terrible and they wouldn't help. Yeah. They're like, we don't care about you wanting to stream. What is that? What is that? They're like, we have 5,000 people at this event that we're trying to entertain. Yeah, fair point. Fahda is going to be here. So he says he'll help with tech. Yay, awesome. Noodles, I know. I'd love to come back to New York. She'll come back. Yeah, I want to go back to New York. I friggin love New York. New York's amazing. I'm listening to you. I friggin love New York. Yeah, friggin love New York. God, I don't know. Yeah. Wait, what is she? Is she from Jersey or something? I flew into Jersey last time in November. I took the train from New Jersey to Brooklyn, you know, had some whitefish. Great. Say, hey, I'm walking here, you know? I'm walking. I'm walking. I'm walking. New Yorker stuff. What? That's not in New York that's existed for, I don't know. Ever. I know. But I'm walking here in New York. Is that what you're talking about? I'm walking here in New York. Now people are like, oh, I'm sorry. Were you walking here? No, no, go ahead. This is like New York now. Like New York was so polite. Oh, I don't know. I feel like I get like shoulder checked every time I go. That's that's well, actually, that's because you don't get out of the way of anybody when you walk. I've seen how you walk. Yeah, why should I get out of someone else's way? Why should I count out of other people's trajectory? That's not right. Oh, yeah. I'm standing up for myself. Shoulder checking you. In fact, in a lot of instances, they were trying to get out of your way and you're like, oh, oh, no, you don't. That's not true. No, it's not. That's not true. Everyone's always like, are you from California? Because like someone will bump into me. They'll shoulder check me and I'll go, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They're like. Like they're from California. I said, I'm sorry. I was like, you from California? I'm like, how do you know? You're apologizing. Who does that? Nobody does that. Stop. Knock it off. Make your mark. Good night, Fada. Yeah, let's go back to New York. That'd be fun. New York would be totally fun. But first, we've got a show in Portland. Yeah, which I swear, next time I'm going to go to the Oregon Zoo. I'm not going to have time, huh? I know I'm not going to have time this time. Such a bummer. I if I didn't have 500 teenagers coming to the zoo that Saturday, I would stay for the whole weekend. I would make it a thing. But I have to be back like midday Friday to finish the setup for this giant event on Saturday. Yeah. That's a lot of teenagers and it sounds like a big event. So. Yeah. And I'm like the point person. So. So it's on you. Yeah. One is one of my top three or four cities I've ever been to see and I still feel like I haven't been there. I know you've come through. I spent like two months. One day. One day. Two months. One day. One time. I spent like two months, two solid months in Portland. Seven days. And I did not want to leave. I really did not want to leave. And maybe I don't maybe it wasn't the city, but I, but it was a nice backdrop at least at the very least. I'll give it that. Nice. And it's very easy to escape city dumb in Portland, which is the, you know, it's a sort of central valley thing. It's not too difficult to escape to mountains or oceans. You can sort of get away from cityness pretty quickly, but Portland felt like you could almost just walk to hot springs or ocean or wooded things. You know, like you really, it was almost like the city itself was a premise of being a city, but we would promise not to deliver city dumb all the time, if that makes any sense to anybody at all. Okay. A little. Good night. Is it dessert? Wait, hold on. Is there anything else that I wanted to talk about for the show week over and over in the chat room? Justin, what's the thing behind you that's pink? Yes. Noodle wants to know that. Yes. It's a secret. What is it? What? This is a secret. The blue and pink pattern thing. Okay. So this is, uh, well, I don't know if I can show this is just a blanket. Uh huh. Uh, so this is actually in this, well, I can move the camera. Watch this. It's a whole bunch of paintings. And so to keep one, uh, painting from sticking face to face to another painting, uh, you put blankets between them. And that's just a funky blanket that's, uh, being utilized to keep, uh, paintings from I have the, the, the window, uh, that's normally behind me that shows my place on the moon, uh, is, is, uh, in repair mode and someday we'll, I'm going to attempt again. Are you having grommet issues there? Huh? Grommet issues? Grommet. It's, well, I, it's, it's because I haven't grommeted because I haven't drilled the thing in and I've been trying to do all sorts of stick them things and then gave up and then haven't, but yeah, uh, the funky, funky coloring in the corner of the camera is just a blanket. Just a blanket. There you go. And it'll history solved. Yeah. Diggy, did you have something else? I've been trying to think. I know there was something else when I forgot what it was. Um, you're almost done with your calendars. Um, yeah, I have, I have fewer than 20 left, which is great. Oh, uh, yeah, I need to make t-shirts. I need to make new t-shirts. Um, I'm out of sard size, some sizes, I need to make new ones. Should I talk to your dad about that again? Uh? We still have those old files? Oh, yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. That should be, all right, I gotta figure out if I want to, I want to put it on, I think different t-shirt material. I gotta find different t-shirts. Oh yeah. Like a nicer, like a softer one, like an American apparel style one. Yeah. Like a thin soft cotton. Yeah. Um, they're just a couple more bucks a shirt usually, but he has access to all of those. Heather's shirts? Is that a thing? Heather is gray. Is that a color or is it a style of, almost looks slightly distressed? That's weathered. I don't know. No, I mean that's a good description of it, but I feel like there is a, well. Heather is a kind of gray, Heather gray. See, this is why I have, I have serious problems like ordering shirts and doing things like this because there's all these details that you don't know until you dig into it. And then you're like, but I just want the shirt that's the nice shirt. And then they're like, well, you have to know whether it's a four ounce shirt or an eight ounce shirt. What thickness do you want the t-shirt to be? And do you want it to be this boxy style or do you want it to be cut this way? Or do you want that? Or do you want, you need to know what Heather is. My friend is named Heather. That doesn't count. Um, yeah, so it's like if you want a women's cut, which is like curved, or if you want a box cut, which is probably what you want to do. That's what I've done all along is just a normal t-shirt. And then what I think you're describing is a lighter weight premium cotton t-shirt. Lighter. Yes. Is I think what it is, but he'll, he'll steer you in the right direction. It's literally his job to know. Good. But if you say, yeah, like I want like the nicer, like American apparel style t-shirts. I'll know exactly. He has a bunch of different, um, uh, manufacturers that he sources from. So just, I think we should clarify too in full disclosure, um, Blair also works for American apparel, which is like, yeah, no, I, I actually, she was, she was modeling for them. Oh my God. No, I was not wearing a turtleneck leotard and nothing else on a white background. Could you wear a turtleneck leotard? Is that a thing? Has it ever been a thing? That's an American apparel thing. They love their models in like something with no pants. Like that's the thing. Leotard is like the under pant bottom. Um, leotard has, has no legs. Yeah. Leotards, what people do gymnastics in, except for its leotard with turtleneck. Yeah. Leotard. What is, what is it when it's like, is it, I mean, not, I'm not talking yoga pants, but what's like dance pants then? Isn't that leotard also? No. Leggings. I like calling them dance pants. Excuse me. I need to go put on my dance pants now. By the way, if anybody ever asks, I'm always wearing my dance pants. You're always wearing them right now. We would never know. Here you go. There's an American apparel turtleneck bodysuit. That's just what I was talking about. I love those. Like that's American apparel loves to like, it's right. It's after shows. I can, I can throw a little shade. I think that their, their ads are particularly specific. Let's say they are, if they're modeling a cardigan, then their model might only be wearing a cardigan. Which is what makes their shirts nicer. That's what you're saying. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that they are a stereotype for a very soft kind of like luxurious t-shirt. That's like that. What one of the things they're known for is a very soft thing when it comes to shirts. It's more like a cotton percentage versus cotton poly versus like cotton. How come, how come thread count is such a big deal in sheets? But nobody talks about anywhere else. It's a lie. It's all a lie. It's a lie. Thread count doesn't really matter. Yeah. I've had 200 thread count sheets that feel like sandpaper and 200 thread count sheets that feel like satin and 200 thread count sheets that are just right, right in the middle. That's not really great that you're only comparing 200 thread count sheets. No, that's what I'm saying. What happened to the thousands? Maybe it's just like amazing how many threads are touching your body at one time. They're touching in liquid cotton. Okay. Okay. Well, I think there's some 200 thread count sheets waiting for you. So say good night, girl. Oh, Kiki, did you remember what you wanted to talk about before we go? No. No, I'm looking all over the place. Robo Kiki says good night. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Why is this so? I don't know what's going on here. Good night, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Come back again next week. I'll be here. Well, not here. I'll be on Twitch on Friday at 1 p.m. Pacific time. Join me then. And oh, I have my interview. This is. Santa hat. We're up here at our table. Oh, chairs. Interview nook. Interview nook between two scientists. Or, or that's what Dave Freidel came up with. Or what was it? Water bottle. This week in science conversations. I don't know if you like that. Okay. So that would be twisk. There were some good ones people came up with. Yeah. Different different names for conversations, but twist. So Blair, if we have time, come sit in my orange chairs with me. Yeah, we can just chat. That's right. Chat about animals for a little bit, or not animals. Whatever. We can just sit and talk in my chairs and talk about science and all sorts of things. Amazing. Yes, yes, yes. I love it. And then Justin, if you want, you can come and sit in a chair. And we can talk. About animals or not about animals. Exactly. All the topics you can talk about. Animal or not animals. Not animals. These are the choices. That's right. It's my studio. That is my, that is my corner for conversation. My interview nook. Kiki's animal or not animal corner. Yeah, there you go. Animal corner. Unless I put people and animals in it. People are animals. Plants are too. That's what I learned today. Plants are animals too. Thanks for watching everyone. Hope you can find something to eat out there.