 getting ready to go live for the weekly broadcast of the podcast this week in science thank you for joining us tonight in case you did not know that this is a live broadcast we're live and this is unedited and Alan who's joining me tonight on the show you know any mistakes we made at all tonight not edited out it's just all there warts and all you ready for this Alan hmm can I change my mind nope I'm ready I'm ready the podcast will be edited and I hope that you all enjoy the show remember to click those likes and subscribes and all of the things that help us make the algorithms like us more and are we ready or is the audio all right everyone we ready to start the show my discord are you ready you're here I see you you be live yes all right I'm super quiet again I didn't do anything differently identity give it a little tiny boost and see if that helps I'll be on it okay anyway we will begin let's get this show going in three two this is twist this week in science episode number nine hundred fifty recorded on Wednesday November 8th 2023 what's the cosmic log on science hey everyone I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we are going to fill your heads with yeast robots and cats but first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer it's through experiences when young that we find ourselves when older our experiences shape who we shape us and who we want to be eventually leading to who we become today is national stem or steam day a day to encourage children toward a love of science technology engineering and math that might one day lead them to a career in one of those spaces but really is one day enough shouldn't we encourage our children to embrace curiosity and making every day shouldn't we and isn't every day an opportunity for people of any age to experience the world anew to embrace a new interest whether for hobby or for economy we make every day a celebration of stem or steam or whatever acronym you prefer here on this week in science coming up next I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough I want to learn happen every day of the week there's only one place to go to find the knowledge it doesn't sound right coming out of me Justin's voice is much better at doing this but he is off doing science right now thank you all for joining us for another episode of this week in science and we have a great show ahead we really do on the show we have all sorts of science news I have news stories about editing some yeast bodiless starfish I mean how do you have a starfish that doesn't have a body lots of robots and lots of cats and we are joined by the wonderful Alan Boyle science writer and host of the fiction science podcast thank you for joining welcome to the show Alan well as they say glad to be here I hope how many times have you heard that one or two yeah a couple yeah you come oh glad to be I hope that you really are glad to be here and I hope that we can enjoy a little bit of science conversation are you ready sure yeah let's do it I don't think I mean you've you've written about science you podcast you have a little experience you're ready yeah yeah yeah you know I think your question was what is the cosmic log and cosmic log has been around for 22 years so it's I've been around the block so about about as long as this week in yeah do it okay everyone as we jump into the show tonight I want to remind you that subscribing to this week in science as a podcast on your favorite podcast platform is a wonderful thing to do if you're not yet subscribed go to wherever you find your podcast if it's Spotify or Apple or whatever subscribe to this week in science that's great you can also find us on YouTube Facebook Twitch we stream weekly 8 p.m. Pacific time ish on Wednesday nights every week that's what we're working on maybe for a little while it might just be me and my special guests but that's gonna be a lot of fun for you because it'll be a surprise every single week it'll be like one of those what are those kinder eggs that people get in Europe anyway that's a surprise inside if all this is too much information you can find us on social media maybe we're out there but twist.org is the website that's where you can find show notes and all sorts of information about the site click those likes and everything because now it's time for science all right what is the science this week I'm gonna start us out with a very I think exciting long-term scientific project researchers involved in a project that is called the synthetic yeast project have been they have a website that they have been working on since I believe they first reported about what they're doing about 15 years ago or so and they are working on making a synthetic yeast we've talked on the show about efforts to make synthetic bacteria and synthetic bacteria are one thing because they're prokaryotes right they don't necessarily have a nucleus yeast however they have a nucleus that separated from the rest of the cell there's a membrane that separates the chromosomes from everything else in the cell and these researchers have been working on basically doing that whole thing where you you have a boat and you remove a plank and put in a new plank and until you've rebuilt the entire boat or you could do it with a car I mean is it the same car in this case it is definitely not the same yeast because the researchers have now have they've now reported and it was a suite of cell of papers that were published in cell genomics this last week about their work on the saccharomyces yeast genome 2.0 they have gotten 14 chromosomes copied which means they have significantly created 14 out of 16 chromosomes in this yeast's genome okay so they're like if you could imagine little little chromosomes little copies of DNA 16 of them 14 of them they've done now not only have they synthetically copied and made synthetic copies of all those bits of DNA of chromosomes they have taken some of those chromosomes and put them into the yeast and used yeast mating techniques to get them get these new chromosomes into the yeast so that the yeast cells survive they have now gotten to the point where they're over 50 percent since synthetic chromosomal material one of the chromosomes is a completely synthetic bit of DNA that's actually transfer RNA it codes for transfer RNA which is really important in getting stuff out of the nucleus into the rest of the cell and in what they've done they have they've gotten to a point where they think they can keep going they definitely are going to be able to create the 16 synthetic chromosomes it's just a matter of figuring out how much DNA can be removed and synthetically replaced in a yeast cell a eukaryotic cell with a nucleus before it breaks how much can be changed how much has to stay the same to allow the yeast to survive and that's where we where we are right now Alan do you think that we're going to make it to a completely synthetic yeast chromosome or not chromosome but used DNA well I think it's possible it's a little scary but they've been working on this for quite a while you know Craig Ventura has talked about you know what the minimal genome is how much can you remove and still have something that that can replicate itself and still have that process we call life and why are they doing this it's it's not just to be a Franken yeast it is this are we creating Frankenstein's monster I think that's the fear I think that's the fear you know because but the the application could be for example if you want to make biofuel you could genetically engineer yeast it's well suited for making biofuel or you know you plug in your the thing that you want whether it's pharmaceuticals or or maybe there's some sort of food application you could do for this but I think it there's a little bit of scariness to this too because you are fiddling with the code of life and and so I I'm not totally sold on the idea interesting yeah I mean I think it's fascinating you're coming at this from as you know from your history as a science writer and so there is always that kind of you know what are you know what is the what is the eventual result what are we really trying to do and I think your point bringing up the fact that they're trying to you know they say you know we can make medicines we can you synthetically get these yeast to be machines right to do what do our bidding but they're biological and so can we keep them I don't know there's the it's like a Jurassic Park sequel almost that you have to build in the safeguards and then you have Malcolm you know the the character coming in saying well I will find a way I wish Justin were here to be able to try and do that quote by his actor who looks like him yeah I mean I find it exciting I think they are also part of what they're doing we'll talk more about this later when we talk about cats but part of what they're doing is removing repetitive genetic sequences so there are lots of copies of genes in DNA right chromosomes in mammals copies of copies of copies copies copies how much can you get rid of and still have things work you know how much do you really need you know like they're doing trying to do with the minimal bacterial cell kind of efforts you know what do we what do they really need and what are they gonna you know what is the what is needed for life but again you have unintended consequences if I if I could kind of play the Jeff Goldboom character for a second here that a lot of this DNA they used to call it junk DNA or now non-coding DNA but it turns out that a lot of that a lot of that information has an effect on processes that that may not be your traditional DNA coding for protein process but so you know you got to be careful when you're doing this that's bottom line I I do hope that these scientists are very careful and continue to be careful and take the responsibility of what they're doing very seriously I know that that's a big conversation these days about the ethics of these kinds of sciences and so that's why I show like this is useful you know you get people keyed into all this and then they can have a rational conversation when it comes to deciding what the policy is going to be right I mean and I mean that's what I hope is that you know oh you this is going on as opposed to sensationalism we can talk about it rationally and if people have questions please ask we will we will try our best to answer these questions but we will of course put these links to this story and to the entire synthetic yeast project they've got a github they've got all sorts of information this information that they're working on is public actually it is not private behind paywalls they've been publishing this stuff which is fairly fascinating okay long-term research I always love because it's like the human genome project what other things are taking decades to complete right but moving on from there other things that we've been studying are viruses yay everybody knows viruses they give them colds and bad things right but not always because sometimes viruses are just microbial material that infects other microbes the bacteria and in a recent study in nature scientists have visualized two viruses linking up together as they entered a bacterial host which has never been seen before so to put this in perspective historically when we talk about the viruses it infect bacteria they're called phages phages are often accompanied by what they call satellite nucleots which is like little bits of protein that just kind of stick around and they're like little moons for the viruses they don't do their own thing they go with the virus the kind of like the virus gang and when the virus infects the bacteria those those little proteins help the virus do what it does potentially that's what we think but there's always this kind of it's like messy asteroids or moons they're set they call they're called satellites but now when the student project and I love this because it's like this kind of this thing that was never expected it was a student project where the students were imaging viruses these phages entering bacteria and the researchers thought that they were gonna see the same thing they always see but there was something messy and they tested again and I quit that's messy what's going on and so they did some scanning to see what was happening in in the data to see exactly what was going on and they actually were able to image and detect what is now considered for the first time a satellite virus it doesn't have any of its own replicative machinery or any of the genes that would allow it to make make use of the host cells tools for replicating and so it's like a it's like a a passenger on this larger virus but in hell in going in it also they determined works with the virus to do the business that the virus needs done so they were looking at these this these particular images which I I think were where fat it's a beautiful image of the tail of the satellite virus and the capsid it's got like a little hexagonal covering for its genetic material and a little tail it's like wrapped around the neck of the bigger virus which is pretty beautiful and in in what they saw what they were looking at is what they call a this phage satellite system they were originally looking at the mulch and mind flare viruses which are phages and in looking at the mulch and mind flare viruses they were later able to specifically identify these little helper satellites and so the mulch mansion has the mulch room that goes with it and the mind flare has the mini flare virus that is a satellite that attaches to it so this flare system which I am guessing it's from Dungeons and Dragons or from stranger things stranger things watching too much stranger things really mess you up yeah I mean years ago it was video games but yeah anyway that's that's where it is I I love this story because it's a determining of something new out of something that was expected so expecting one result finding something new and now there's a new category of these little satellite objects that are even smaller than the phages that infect the microbes that in that inhabit us and all the life around us there's little worlds it's little it's turtles all the way down Alan well again I haven't I haven't seen this story I'll have to catch up with it but the first thing that comes to mind is well what what does this mean for virology and also for fighting viruses like could could this be a target for future vaccines where you don't go after the mama virus you go after the messy little baby virus or baby sub virus yeah or can you use it for something you know viruses have been used for a long time to introduce genetic material into the genome and so maybe this is perhaps there's a less invasive way that you could get transfer of genetic material for genetic you know engineering purposes for gene therapy if you were to use something like this attached to a benign virus something that is totally safe so it you know and so there are potential applications I suppose for this I'll have to read up on this speed it's brand new so you know and and like I said it was something it was a student project that became something much much more and sciences like that researchers never really know what they're going to uncover when they turn over that I don't know bacterial phage rock but yeah in this case I find it interesting because it for virology I'd love to speak to somebody like Vincent Reckon yellow or someone else who works in this area to see really how this could impact the ecology of using like phage treatments and other things that we're looking at for for fighting infections and yeah fun times okay when you think of life and we think of like hey I've got a head and like not I mean not just life life but mammalian life or fish or the forms of life that we're familiar with as not plants and more on the invertebrate vertebrate side of things head body maybe some limbs right you've got the sensory organs in one place you've got locomotion or limbs getting around starfish I can't even speaking of turning over a rock where is the starfish's head apparently it's everywhere apparently starfish have gone through an evolutionary process that is pretty much completely gotten rid of their body so the hypothesis hypothesis historically where that maybe the head was on the top of the starfish and then the little weird little feet come out and move the starfish around on that maybe that's more the body part maybe it was separated that way bilaterally or maybe the head is more out of the end of the arms like octopus brain style stuff and then the body's more in the middle where the stomach is which could you could you could see as possible but published this last week in Nature researchers have determined that they have determined that the starfish the the ankinoderm has through genetics they it's gotten rid of its body doesn't need it all it's all head and that is it it's all about the head the researchers at the University of Berkeley at Stanford University also at Chan Zuckerberg Biolab they used genetic methods and a method developed by Pacific bio pack bio which is nanopore technology to be able to do long sequencing reads of the genetics of these these starfish that they looked at and we're able to see that these sea stars and starfish they all the genes led to there's there's no body plan gene expression was exactly corresponding to the forebrain in humans was located along the midline of the sea stars arms and the human midbrain toward the outer edges of the arms and then there were other sub regions of the head that are expressed in the more trunk area and now they want to look at a whole bunch of other related organisms to get an idea of how many other sea cucumbers sea squirts other echinoderm related org organisms have no bodies at all just like the starfish do you get along without a body well I was just thinking about you know the whole idea of alien life how alien life is good it could very easily be different from how we conceive life being organized on earth and so maybe we've got aliens in the in the ocean in the literal areas you know just off shore because you mentioned octopus intelligence and the fact that they do have neural equipment in their arms that basically are a little bit autonomous but the those those neural networks in the arms can kind of do their own thing independent of of any sort of central nervous system whatever that means for an octopus and so it sounds as if this hints to a similar evolutionary path it'd be interesting to see what they find with with other types of creatures sea cucumbers I know that a couple of years ago I was writing about the big disaster that was hitting sea stars that there was an environmental wasting disease yeah and you kind of wonder what what what it would be like for a sea star to be losing those arms and what how does a sea star think would drop off you just totally brought that to a completely different framing exactly that's it's not just losing a limb it's losing part of your brain losing part of your your head well I'm glad to blow your mind thank you well I'm glad I'm not a sea star because I would apparently have no head anymore let's see robots do you like robots they're okay yeah historically we have we've aired on the side of world robot domination on the show rooting for the robots but it while at the same time kind of hoping that humanity can you know we don't want to get on the robot's bad side yeah well I for one welcome our new robot overlords so there you go yeah well thankfully apparently according to a review a study in frontiers in robotics and AI published this week entitled do robots outperform humans in human-centered domains yes and no so they tried to do an apples to apples comparison of humans versus robots so Alan do you have like any thoughts on like the problems that might come up there well it's it's like apples and oranges no matter how you cut it that you know when you're talking about artificial general intelligence versus some robot or actually an AI agent that can play go or chess I think that some of the studies have indicated that it's a long way from being able to master something like a poker game even or warcraft world of warcraft or starcraft to go into the realm of general intelligence where you have to really come up with a solution to an a novel problem something you haven't faced before so there's a big debate over well can can AI agents actually do that you know for me the robot is just the mechanism it's actually the software based agent behind that that really important part yeah and I think that's what this study really brings to the front is that when they compared the the sensory systems eyes versus cameras legs versus you know robotic limbs the the the speed or the strength or the sensory aspects of that particular system that a robot is designed to be good at using very often outperformed humans but when it came to needing some kind of ability to to adapt to change your plan to be able to move differently you know humans are still on top when it comes to that because at this point even with AI and even with the ability of AI to do all these you know new new fangled things it's still not at the point of the human brain and nervous system and how the embodied human or even other embodied animals are designed to exist in their environments okay so bottom line thankfully do robots outperform humans kind of but not most of the time not really I mean or when it comes down to it humans are still better you can't take the robots off the tether very long and they need lots of power and then their batteries die we still haven't fixed that problem anyway yeah if the robots ever to come to take over the world make sure you can pull the plug or take the batteries out yeah just remember all of those fancy videos of the robots doing dance routines or calisthenics or whatever it is they've been programmed and they have those videos are very specifically made also to highlight how great the robots are not the failures of the robots it's all about PR people yeah and in terms of other robots that you know don't need to outperform humans but just it's the last story for this part of the show Oregon Oregon Ohio State University is involved in talking about a robot called the rhombot that was just published about in the president of the National Academy of Sciences and the rhombot is a soft-bodied robot and the idea behind the rhombot is that by using soft robotics paleontologists people who study old things from dead ground fossils you know soft fossils that might not actually have made fossils right those soft organisms that might like the sea cucumbers that might not have turned into a fossil that could have been looked at by anyone that we can use soft robots to try and mimic the bodies or what those old animals might have been like and give us an idea from what we know of the fossil record of how life might have moved how it might have existed and how it might have actually worked within an ecosystem but using using robotics which I honestly was not looking for the day that I would be saying robots are helping paleontologists I wasn't expecting that one it this it's intriguing because we're talking about simulating how an ancient organism may have moved and and on one level you can say well you can just build software-based totally you know digital simulation of what that organism might have been like and you can tweak it and and see well if this muscle was here maybe it would have moved in a slightly different way and so why do you need to build a soft robot to do that and so it strikes me one of the stories that I had been covering for a long time had to do with this guy Nathan Nathan Mervold who was one of the early executives at Microsoft and he's a big one of the fathers of computing yeah but he's also he's also kind of you know he's a paleontologist I mean he's a man about many things he also writes cookbooks but one of the things that he looked into is how fast could a dinosaur's tail move and his claim was that the tail could go super sonic that he in that the shrimp claws creating plasma bubbles maybe but more like Indiana Jones cracking the whip you know that and use that as a weapon and so there was a big debate over whether that could possibly be you know how fast could it move could it go super sonic and so what he did with his fellow researchers was actually build a dinosaur tail that they could whip around and and do the analysis of and so he claimed that this this supported the idea that a dinosaur's tail could go super sonic and other researchers have said no the material that the tail was made out of would not support moving it at supersonic speeds and so there you know again there's a whole debate over what what a creature that lived 70 million years ago was capable of doing and nobody can really probably definitively answer that question but it makes for a fun debate and it's kind of fun to see that dinosaur tail whipping around yeah and so these robots whether soft or hard right enabling researchers looking into the past to be able to maybe hopefully figure out a little bit more than they could otherwise and you're right robots are fun so now I want to make a whip cracking robot take a robot with a tail yeah maybe that'll be maybe maybe Nathan all let's sure whip the tail I think that would be a fun thing to have in an amusement park oh gosh that would be so much fun oh my goodness I hope that you all are having so much fun right now this is this week in science and I we've been talking a lot for the last half hour or so and I just really want to take a moment to really introduce Alan and let you all know who I have been talking to for the last half of the show Alan Boyle is an award-winning science writer and someone I've had the honor to know for many years I think the first time I met Alan was at a National Association of Science Writers meeting where you were my mentor and we're amazing at introducing me to people and helping me to learn just the very very beginnings of the world of science communication that I've been delving into and over the years you've elucidated topics ranging from the mere space station to making a case for Pluto by the way he wrote a book called the case for Pluto genetic genealogy the future of energy the new space race I mean you've written a lot about space that's for sure and beyond and you're writing for geek wire and universe today as well and you have your own blog the cosmic log that you said has been going for about 22 years you're hosting the fiction science podcast which is amazing and honestly I so much you've been doing so much I want to find out what you've been doing lately what you've been excited most about in science and space and again thank you so much for joining me sure yeah yeah yeah well you mentioned the fiction science podcast and that was actually a pandemic project it turned into that okay there was a colleague of mine at geek wire who was really into science fiction and so I said well you know in a couple years I'm gonna maybe dial things back a little bit and I might have some more time and wouldn't it be fun to do a podcast about the intersection of science and fiction what what's what sort of fiction does science inspire and what sort of science is really contained in these works of fiction whether it's the the latest you know ice and fire from George R R Martin how would dragons work if they really did exist or whether it's the expanse and could you actually do some of the fight scenes that that you see on the expanse and I've done my share of those stories through the years and so I said well why don't we why don't we do this let's let's make a fiction science podcast and so when the time came and I said okay it's time to do this he said I'm too busy I can't do it but he did put me in touch with Clarion West which is a writer's workshop in Seattle and they have a lot of great writers come through there and so the folks at Clarion West put me in touch with the science fiction writer named Dominica Fetaplace and so she is my co-host for the fiction science podcast and we've been doing this since since 2020 and we're not in the 900s yet we're not in the 900s yet like some people I know but we're getting close to the 50 podcast mark so that that's been that's great that's it's been fun congratulations thank you yeah yeah Padawan yeah so the latest one that we did was on space which of course is a favorite topic of mine we've we've I've done a lot of stories about the commercial space race and and the implications and and you know the bigger issues surrounding how are how are humans going to get into space and and build a long-term future there is space settlement actually realistic this is something obviously that Elon Musk has talked about quite a bit you know making humanity into a multi-planet species and building a city on Mars this generation being the Mars generation right yeah yeah and Jeff Bezos talking about having millions of people living and working in space I've heard this for for many years and have reported on what their visions are and so a couple of folks Zach Wienersmith and and his wife Kelly Wienersmith he's a cartoonist if you know Saturday morning breakfast cereal he does that cartoon and Kelly is a is a biologist basically behavioral she's a parasitologist and and also a behavioral ecologist and so but they have done you know a lot of looking into what's the what's the reality behind the vision here they did a book called soonish which looked at any emerging technologies and so they followed up with this book called a city on Mars and what they expected to do was to have kind of a guidebook like oh yeah we're going to have space settlements and this is what they're going to be like but when they started looking into it they discovered oh there are some real problems here and one of the biggest problems is how are people going to reproduce in space nobody knows what zero gravity or reduced gravity is going to mean for for reproduction and development of children and so we can make salad maybe salad yeah so so that was one of the big issues that they pointed out is that a whole lot more research needed to be done into into reproduction and development and also space law that I've been covering space law as it relates to property rights in space for for yeah more than a decade it's they were talking about this there was actually a law in 2015 where the federal government said okay we can't claim territory we can't claim sovereignty over territory on another celestial body but if you're a US person if you're an American commercial venture you can extract whatever you can extract from an asteroid or a moon and that could be problematic when you know you've got China and Russia fighting over yeah all those resources over the good stuff everybody launched to get to the same asteroid and we're trying to you know are we gonna work together or are the is it going to be corporation versus corporation and and what are the legalities to all yeah yeah and if you watch the for all mankind TV show you know that it it's pretty problematic I haven't watched it because I'm like so scared of it being too depressing oh no no it's cool you should like maybe I'll have to find out if I can gift you some access to Apple TV because it it's an alternate universe show and which which I always like you know what if show so it's gonna be 2003 and there are people on Mars so that but it's fun but anyway that was what we discussed with the Zac is what what's the reality and what needs to be done and and so that was a fun podcast that's addressed a subject that I've covered for many many years and and another one is artificial intelligence we talked a little bit about artificial intelligence and you know generative AI is a big issue now and one of the one of the folks in the science fiction community who has done the best job of of telling that story and delving into the implications of generative AI is Ted Chang who lives here in the Seattle area and he's the guy yeah yeah the three-body problem is that the no he he he actually is a short story writer and he's best known for writing the short story on which the movie arrival is based and this whole idea of how do you communicate with say Starfish yeah if you remember that movie the the aliens look a lot like Starfish and maybe they had their brains in their arms for all we know it's or maybe they had yeah they yeah maybe their their brain was all over yeah I remember interviewing the the science advisor for the the who is the linguist for a right yeah movie about and I just love the way that they were able to take the reality of how a linguist works and you know what they would put on a whiteboard and how they'd start to try and piece together the basics of a language and you know this huge this wonderful story came out of you know this very insightful short story by Ted so yeah yeah so yeah yeah we had him I moderated a panel with Ted and actually the the screenwriter for arrival talking about what's going on with the screen actors and the screenwriters strike over generative AI and just in the last few hours there was a report that the actors Guild was reaching a tentative settlement with tentative yes maybe maybe a 1201 a.m. the strike will be over and we can get new seasons of shows that we like that's right yeah new seasons of for all mankind season five so there you go but generative AI was a huge issue in those strikes and the whole idea of well there's a digital twin like actors have their bodies scanned so that they can generate yeah that's right and who has the rights and what happens when the actor dies and the studios were saying well we'll compensate you while you're living for the use of your digital likeness but once you're dead it belongs to us and so that did not sit well with with the actors so but those are the sorts of issues that I love getting into just and like you said with your conversation also the question relating to you know these the techno techno optimist yeah how is how does their viewpoint play into the development of the technology that we're using and how is that going to influence the artificial intelligence that is going to be applied that to our right right mm-hmm yeah so that's a huge I'm we're gonna be watching that and I'm sure that there'll be more about that in cosmic log as the weeks and months and years go on but I did want to mention that Ted is going to be speaking about generative AI again later this week in Seattle at Town Hall Seattle and you've given me a link to that so we can make that available yeah website but that for anyone who is in Seattle you might want to check this out because that might be a really interesting conversation and it benefits clarion west it benefits clarion west which was so helpful to me and actually getting fiction signs off the ground so it's like this is coming full circle so that's very cool and then yeah from AI to let's see what other place yeah yeah yeah I mean space has been kind of my go-to place for a quarter century I remember I was at MSNBC back in something like two thousand 1998 and this guy named Peter Diamandis came into the office and he said oh I've got this idea I want to do a ten million dollar prize for the first private privately funded mission into space and so that's how the X Prize got started and and that's kind of opened the way for all these players in the in the commercial space sphere to to do their thing and and NASA kind of got the idea oh well let's let's leave it more of the responsibility with commercial ventures to get us into space like we maybe we don't need to own our Aries five rocket let's let this crazy company called SpaceX do it and that's how the SpaceX revolution got started is that NASA decided to take a chance on them and here now Elon Musk is the richest guy in the world and if other space companies had gotten their rockets working faster or you know can come up with something cheaper better then maybe they might take over space SpaceX's contracts who knows that's that's an issue I mean that's an issue that that a lot of people have been talking about is SpaceX too dominant in the commercial space area and is this a problem yeah so that's that's something to be covering too but there are a couple of things other than space that that I'm really interested in one is electric transportation and specifically electric aviation there's a lot going on here in the Seattle area there's there's a company called aviation which is testing an all-electric airplane there's another company called magna X which is building an electric propulsion system you see different companies different air carriers saying hey we want to go electric we realize that that the aviation industry is not as sustainable in this era that we're living in where we're concerned about carbon emissions and climate change we realize that we need to do something about it and so maybe this electric aviation revolution is something that they want to be a part of and so that's another thing that I've been covering what are the issues so electric aviation you're going to be dealing with battery issues that's right like so it's not just like biofuels which is like you take a fuel but this is entirely like similar to electric cars entirely right systems that have to be developed and so that is the issue is what's the range and right now the battery technology is not going to support airplanes going you know you can't take an airplane from Portland to London just on electric power maybe maybe Portland to Seattle maybe Portland to Cannon Beach a little more more puddle jumper kind of flights exactly are probably more polluting to begin with right think about yeah yeah so that's that's there's a company called Harbor air that's based in the Vancouver v BC area and they want to go all electric with their fleet because what they do is they fly sea planes to different destinations mostly in British Columbia and and so they're testing retrofitted electric airplanes right now they're they're actually older de Havilland beavers that they've retrofitted with electric propulsion systems so yeah as a bird scientist you know I got my PhD in bird brains and other things that is an issue with birds is is weight and so there's this idea that birds that migrate very often their brains get smaller when they don't need to use them and then they get bigger when they do need to use them because they want to optimize for their and so when I think of electric planes and batteries I think heavy I think that this is going to be right heavy thing why not do fuel cells why not like what is like to me that like this is is the weight of the battery do you know this is the weight of the battery like at the same level as the weight of the fuel that they would normally be carrying and the hardware I mean the hardware for an electric for gas powered propulsion system you know that you to some extent you're trading the weight of all that metal for a lighter motor system but you're right that the weight is a big constraint that's why you know the use of carbon composites is sort of an enabling technology to do this and the idea is that the the companies that are are in this field are actually trying to hit a moving target that that plane that you're seeing right there they were able to do that initial test but in order to do that what they want to do they're really counting on battery technology to advance over the next five years and so like I say you're you're trying to hit a moving target and as we haven't even waiting for battery technology to advance for yeah yeah yeah yeah battery break through I used to joke about what's the battery breakthrough headline for this week so but it's got to be solved I think in order to open the way for electric transportation but and it's a little bit of a chicken and egg problem that you have to build a market for it and I think that the market is starting to coalesce for that so yeah and I would I would think that the the market would generally be there for flight that is you know less you know if you've got a plane you've got a plane I think people are going to trust you know are going to accept that that's going to work but I don't think that market is going to be a problem but yeah and then you mentioned bird brains and I'm fascinated by the study of the brain and especially the nature of consciousness we do have a researcher at the Allen Institute here in Seattle named Christoph Koch who has done quite a bit of work on that and in fact he is focusing on an objective measure of consciousness I think it's called the five factor and and trying to see it's related to the interconnectedness of a network that you would be able to kind of determine what the consciousness of a system might be based on how you measure that interconnectedness and another fun thing is that he he is interested in the application of psychedelic drugs that magic mushrooms and that's something that psilocybin is kind of coming more to the fore as a type of therapy and what does that do to the brain what are the effects it can it help with things like PTSD and we're seeing more in that but we're also seeing the issues I don't know if you remember that case of the the guy who he was a pilot I think on a horizon air flight who tried to turn the engines off no that was Alaska Airlines it was here in Portland where I live there you go yeah yeah he was on his day off decided to hop on a flight to somewhere else and just happened to take magic mushrooms for the first time oops and now I'm suddenly trying to shut down the planes engine so that's an illustration of the problem the potential problem with psychedelic drugs so that could have happened at any time though not it's just now that people are I think you know these stories are highlighted because we are looking at them more as treatments and so yeah and I think they're those they're becoming a little bit more accessible that that I don't know where he got his magic mushrooms but but I think it's possible in some states perhaps including Oregon to be prescribed psychedelic drugs as a therapy so yeah yeah so those are fascinating and actually the nature of consciousness is going to be the subject of our next fiction science podcast in a couple weeks we'll be talking with George Musser he's a science writer who has written a book about the subject called putting ourselves back in the equation so that's a look at and he talks about how a lot of physicists or cosmologists people who have been interested in the nature of the universe are getting interested in the nature of consciousness as well and they're actually pretty well suited to do that kind of work and so I'm looking forward to talking with George about that and and you can stay tuned for that I'm a science podcast in a couple weeks I love that I can't wait to hear that one actually because I've met George and he is just wonderful and his writing is fantastic so yeah I'm sure that's going to just be just a wonderful conversation and also the book itself is probably going to be a wonderful read I will I'm gonna put that on my list actually okay business all the physicists get to do the fun stuff I want to do the fun stuff oh wait wait what I'm talking with you that's the fun stuff well I do not want to keep you overly long and it has been an amazing hour of conversation I have to talk about cats I do definitely need to tell people about cats because I primed everyone at the top of the hour about cats bring on the cats if you are would you like to leave before I bring on the cat no I'll be with you for the cats okay they'll stay for my cat stories I yeah yeah all right so let me tell everyone right now if you are just starting to listen or watch at this moment this is this week in science and I am joined tonight by Alan Boyle we're talking all about science and really interesting stories and his podcast the fiction science podcast and what is going on in his world and if you are interested in supporting twists head over to twist.org and click on that patreon link because we are listener supported you can choose your level of support and honestly your support helps us so much thank you for your support we can't do it without you you can also hit those zazzle links the last zazzle stores full of merchandise and lots of great stuff that will help keep our show going into the future which we're talking about right now but right now no right now on this week in science I am going to tell you about cats and Alan are you ready you're ready for the cats I'm ready okay do you like cats I'm a dog person sorry dog person yeah okay so some of this you're going to be like I knew it and others you might find just interesting so first off there aren't as many cat species as there are other mammalian species and researchers have been trying to figure out what the barriers to speciation have been through the years with various cats and there's one study out this last week in current biology talking about limited historical mixture between european wildcats and domestic cats and in this study they looked at these wildcats and domestic cats that have been cohabitating in europe for 2 000 years and really only recently have had their reproductive isolation eroded and so they think that the reason for this is human influences because it's only really really recently that these wildcats have started to to breed with the house cats so other interesting study that follows right on the heels of this one a genome sequencing project looked into cat evolution this is from texas a and m school of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences and the researchers who are interdisciplinary they published in nature genetics they determined that cats cat species unlike primates and a lot of other mammals that the cat chromosomes don't have as many what are called segmental duplications which are like we were talking about earlier these really similar copies of genes and these little segments that are copied and copied and copied and copied primates we have lots and lots and lots of places where these segmental duplications take place cats do not and specifically within cats they have one area on and the x chromosome that is where a lot of the genetic rearrangements take place and so there's a specific repetitive element that they've isolated called dxz4 that is responsible at least mostly for the isolation of the domestic and jungle cats why they have isolated and don't interbreed with other species as easily and this dxz4 is a repeat it's a gene that changes the three-dimensional structure of the chromosome itself it doesn't it's not just a gene that's like and now you have brown hair and now you have white hair and now no it is it has a role in the three-dimensional structure and thus the way that the chromosome itself has interactions for translation transcription and for copying when it comes time for making copies of genes and interactions so they don't know the exact mechanisms but because of the way that they've been looking at these cats and their genomes they have been able to use a method that allows them to take the first generation of hybrids to be able to figure out exactly how much comes from the parental and the maternal sides of the family and have been able to really start to piece together the genetics of the cats and why cats don't breed with other cats all that often why you have weird meowy rowery bangle cats or you know a normal house cat it comes down to these very interesting genetic quirks and on another genetic quirk note this is work done by a friend of mine Jonathan Eisen and his his team of collaborators one of his I believe postdocs has most recently published this is a second paper in a series of papers investigating microbiome and volatile compounds in anal gland secretions from domestic cats uh okay yes so if you do have one of those bangle cats and it's male and it sprays all over the place or if you have a cat and they spraying or every once in a while you might hear about oh the cats and they're infected anal gland whatever well these anal glands are very important to cats for marking and for identifying themselves and in this particular study that was just published in scientific reports they used metabolomics and metagenomics to make really really pretty pictures of all the microbes that are involved in the makeup of the of the anal glands of cats and they found that they are varied then yes cats smell differently because they have different microbes and different microbes are involved with creating different compounds that make different stinks so those glands that are really important to the way your cat smells not how it smells it uses olfaction but how it the way it produces an odor are very bacterially based and then that goes back again to the genetics of the cat and how there are very specific olfactory genes that have been preserved over periods of time but there are also very very defined for particular species and individuals genetically within cat species this is bacteria to cats to bacteria to cats and it's a never-ending but it anyway these researchers made a pretty picture yikes so cat pee is a pretty you know it's an important research topic and i'm reminded of this whole issue about toxoplasma have you delved into that the zombie parasite and how cats kind of spread toxoplasma and you are tossing me to the very last story of the night so neatly there's one thing i want to say though i want there's one thing i want to say about cat pee is that there have been studies uh there's one study i'm looking at here fatal attraction phenomenon in humans cat odor attractiveness is increased for toxoplasma infected men while decreased for infected women so if you if you have a male partner who suddenly seems to be more attracted to the cat in the house get nervous attracted to them get nervous maybe this has something to do with right who people go i don't know why cats like me watch out for toxoplasma yeah well toxo has been an ongoing topic on this week in science for many many years yes discussed justin has an ongoing feud with cats or against cats because of the fact that they become infected with toxoplasma and can pass that infection on to human hosts number of countries around the world have massive infection rates because cats are more outdoor and there isn't as much infrastructure for keeping keeping keeping things clean and so you have these incredible infection rates united states we have maybe like 10 to 20 percent or up to maybe 15 percent infection rates infectivity rates for people who are cat owners or come across cats but that can be really really high up to 65 percent in some places in the world anyway last story of the night not only can toxoplasma gandhi make you more or less attractive to a cat based on the way you smell it's also going to possibly make you more frail as you age so if you have a cat that's been an outdoor cat and you've possibly kept a dirty litter box or dug in dirt outside in your garden that has been used by an infected cat and you've become infected with toxoplasma gandhi his team at the university of colorado boulder university of maryland and university of e coruña in spain have determined and published in the journal of gerontology medical science that adults over the age of 65 and in this it was 601 spanish and portuguese adults who when they had a measure known as frailty right it's just they get hurt more easily they're not as much energetic it's very not 67 percent of the subjects were seropositive for a latent t gandhi infection so not an active infection but just being infected and having the t gandhi in their bodies so they don't have an association and this is where a lot of this stuff breaks down when we talk about t gandhi is that it's a question of causality and so researchers can't tell whether or not this is causal necessarily but there is a correlation between toxo kitty cats getting old being frail just a correlation i'm glad i'm a dog person i'm a cat person so i'm like maybe i need to go clean the litter box i'm gonna go keep that clean keep that box a little more clean but yes i hope everyone out there loves their cats and sleeps well with those little purrying predators in their beds this evening huh on that note yeah exactly is that this is how i try to send people off to bed with a little bit of nightmare juice just to make you you know sprightly i'm gonna i'm gonna fight the frailty just by just by adding a little bit of fun alan thank you so much for joining me on the show tonight and for staying a little bit later than than the nine o'clock hour where can people find you i'm gonna put this on the website okay sure but let's repeat those websites over again yeah so well uh cosmic log dot com i put all my stories in some form or another on cosmic log dot com and that includes stories related to the fiction science podcast you can go to fiction science club dot com or fiction science dot club but just go to cosmic log and root around there you might find a fiction science podcast or you might find a story about toxin infected cats who knows oh i hope but i do write for i do write for geek wire dot com and for universe today dot com and so you'll probably find my stories and and a lot more other cool stuff from other writers on those websites so and that that does it i'm i'm on twitter and threads and blue sky and mastodon and the fractionalization of media has happened me we i've got a list of 14 places where i have to me we what's that one oh yeah yeah it i don't think you want to go there i'm not i'm not that crazy about me we but somebody said oh you gotta put it on there i don't like facebook so put it on me we and so i'd probably have you know 20 followers there but it includes this guy who asked me to do it so i did so if you got some place you want me to post my stories on social media let me know and i'll add that to the list of 14 oh my gosh yeah these days oh my goodness but yes it's good to have a home so cosmic log is a good start for people the place that's the place find you yeah which is the place all right everyone we have come to the end of the show thank you so much for joining us for another amazing episode of this weekend science i do want to make sure to uh thank everyone who is involved in making this show possible all of you who are in the chat rooms right now thank you so much to those of you who are in the discord the youtube the facebook the twitch for being here and being part of a conversation thank you fata for your time on show notes and social media all that all those social medias gord are in law others thanks for helping keep the chat rooms safe places identity for thank you for recording the show rachel thank you for editing the show and as always i do need to thank our patreon sponsors so it is time to thank them very carefully thank you to arthur kepler kepler craig potts mary girth stricis smith richard badge bob coals kent north coat right clubman george chorus pierre velazard john ratness wami carl kornfeld chris wozniak vegaard chef's dad donathan styles aka don stylo alikoff and reagan shewbrew seraphore fardermundes pig steven albron sterile myshacks jupalic andrew swanson fredes 104 sky loop ronovich kevin girden noodles jack brian karrington david youngblood shon clarence lamb john mckay greg reilly brich has mostly leased me naked zima ken haze howard tan Christopher rappin richard brenden menace johnny gridley romey geeburton latimore flying out christopher dryer rdm greg briggs john outward rudi garcia david wilkins and rodney lewis paul rick ramus philchain curt larison craig landon pseudostradis an old stave neighbor eric napio adamish connick kevin parin chan erin luthan steve de bell bob calder marjorie paul d disney david simile patrick fecararo and tony steel thank you so much for supporting us on patreon we can't do it without you and if you want to be a patreon supporter make sure that you head over to twist.org and click on that patreon link woo next week's show i'll be back it'll be a surprise who i'm with with next week it's like that mystery wrapped chocolate what's inside every week you don't know what you're gonna get i can tell you i maybe natalia reagan i'm not sure but that's who i've been talking with we'll be back i will be back for sure next wednesday eight p.m pacific time broadcasting on youtube facebook and twitch and also you can find information at twist.org if you want to listen to us as a podcast we're on all the podcast places for information you can go to our website twist.org and you can sign up for our newsletter you can email us directly if you want to say hey blare how's your baby email her blare baz at twist org uh twist.org you can email me about show stuff ask me stupid questions at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com you can email justin at twist minion at gmail.com and say hey justin where'd you go and he probably will ignore you but in the meantime you just put twists in the subject line so that you don't get spam filtered into a kitty cat's microbially filled anal sack that was not a good way to end this but we will be back here next week and hope that you will join us once again for more great science news and if you've learned anything from the show please remember it's all in your head and change your litter box this week in science this week in science this week in science it's the end of the world so i'm setting up a shop got my banner unfurled it says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice tell them how to stop the robot with a simple device i'll reverse below the warming with a wave of my hand and all is coming your way so everybody this is the after show which we normally do an after show but i just want to say goodbye and goodnight alan thank you so much for spending some extra time live long and prosper and live long and prosper we have to go back and forth and see if you can let's hear uh not very well not very well yeah can you do the both that was fun thank you for joining me okay yeah great to see you yeah one of these days in seattle or portland we'll have to yes get together there must be real path crossing all right that's a deal it is a deal thank you and have a wonderful night okay take care thanks kiki thank you sure all right everyone i am probably going to be heading for the bed and not hanging out a really long time tonight i can uh take a few minutes less than 80 minute show i know it's amazing we did it alan was great he was he was wonderful he wanted to leave at nine o'clock because he has work to do who doesn't have things to do he probably needs to hang out with his dog or like hang i don't know talk to his family or something i don't know something very important which is that kind of stuff is very important i know paul disney it is so short yes it is a short show and um you know this may be the way it is for a little little few weeks we have these shorter shows and it is nice and it is fun but because it's different um yeah and maybe we have a nice time together and we are thankful that we have a nice time with friends and science and uh i have a little weasiness right now because i have had a cold or something i have not been covid positive but i've been hiding in my house my whole family's had it there's been the sniffling and the coughing and the aching and the tiredness and the not good oh yes and yes also the time change yes no i don't know i always like the fall time change it just like it's like taking me home to where time is supposed to be the spring time is like i feel like it's a theft and it is stolen from me even i don't know there's just there's something about the fall time change that i think it makes me happy it does not make my cats happy they're like why haven't you fed me yet i don't understand what's going on i am hungry now yes oh boy but yes um i was text not texting i was talking with natalia reagan about her joining the show next week i will confirm that as soon as i can um to determine if i can get that wonderful funny lady to join i think i think she is a wonderful uh science communicator uh she's a comedian she does some she's doing some great work right now doing tiktoks and reels and like i don't know if they only for like just one that she shares on all the platforms but her her work is hilarious it's wonderful she's very funny and the two of us will probably sit and talk in funny voices to each other all evening about science which i think could be very enjoyable it could be good and everyone out there i hope that uh you all have an amazing amazing week i mean if there's nothing yeah getting to work at 6 30 would be easy this week you'll get used to it though paul you will thank everyone for joining us i'm just looking at the scrolling through the chat at all the people who were talking tonight thank you all of you who were here and who joined um i'm gonna yes take myself to bed put myself to bed and hope that i am feeling much better tomorrow because i'm supposed to be going to a conference in long beach and i think i have to change my flights i don't know i can pretend to be healthy in my own house but i don't know if i should be around other people what are you supposed to do as long as that covid test is negative radio oh boy oh boy oh boy yeah as long as i have no symptoms then i will be fine and that is part of getting the good night's sleep so all of you i hope that you are staying healthy staying out of trouble well i don't know as long as it's good trouble maybe the trouble is fine um and uh what do we say at the end of the show i feel so weird missing justin i miss blair but we're gonna keep on keeping on and thank you for joining me this week also after um i canceled the episode last week it was just too much too much last week uh between scheduling and family and all the stuff that was going on so i do not having i mean not having my normal team um it kind of threw a wrench in the works oh awesome r and laura you can sub for justin tap in all right well i am going to try not to sneeze on camera and i hope that you all stay healthy stay happy nope okay off camera sneeze that's what we do wait there will probably be another one in a second okay but stay happy stay healthy i stop you i hope you're happy um it's stay like in or out of trouble whether whatever works for you stay safe stay lucky right that's the favorite one we'll see you next time i'll be back here next week and i look forward to getting to talk with all of you again have a good night have a good week