 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the late starting this week in science. We are live broadcasting our podcast and waiting for Justin to restart his computer in the hopes that whatever crackle their cause is just wiped away magically by the computer restart. He needs to toss those Rice Krispies out of his microphone. Yes, no Rice Krispies in the microphone. I hope everyone is ready for another episode of science discussed by people who love science. Hello. Yes, we're here. Thank you for being here as well. Make sure that you give us a big thumbs up if you're on the YouTubes or wherever it is. And am I slightly just waiting to see if Justin comes back before I actually start? I might be, but it is time for us to start the show because it's we're 15 minutes past time. Oh my. And yes, Gaurav, we saw the pillars of creation image from Hallow Halloweb is what they're calling themselves right now, which is pretty funny on Twitter. It's gorgeous. Oh, Kiki. Can you turn yourself up more? They're saying that I am way louder than you way louder. So that would that would mesh with my observation that Justin was louder than you. That I turned myself up all the time. All right. Somebody sneaking in there, the cat or something and turning down your game all the time. Don't touch my game is right. Oh, I can't be turned down. My microphone does not have volume. I can turn it is how's that? How's that, everybody? Speak Blair testing one, two, three. One, two, three. Is that better? No, there's a snap. Good. Is it good? Both louder? It says both louder. Great. Okay. We're all good. Oops. What a bit. Okay. Anyway, we're going to do this show. I haven't seen Justin come in yet. So we can at least get it started. Blair, do you want to try to do the disclaimer? Yeah, you got it. And yeah, are in law. It's probably Kai's fault for sure. All right. So let us start this show without any further ado because you're all here and we're here and let's make it go in. Three, two, this is twist this week in science episode number 897 recorded on Wednesday, October 19th, 2022. Are you a mosquito magnet? Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and maybe sometimes I'm a mosquito magnet, but tonight I'm going to fill your head with whispers, spiders and stars. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Technical issues are part of life. And so I will be reading Justin's disclaimer tonight. Here we go. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The following program is alive because knowledge is a living creature. It must eat a steady diet of data. The more reliable the data, the more it will sustain the creature. So the meals must be prepared in the proper method. The scientific method because knowledge is a living creature. It has memory through senses of observations and measurements, sensors and formulas of recognition all need to be carefully recorded and conserved because knowledge is a living creature. It must reproduce to multiply and expand its chances for survival through learning by reading, watching, listening and doing on teaching process and the teaching process ensures that knowledge will pass on to the next generation and the next and the next knowledge is a living creature and we are all its caretakers. So take care of your knowledge and occasionally give it a little scratch between the ears with this week in science coming up next. Got the kind of mind that can't get enough every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the good science to you, Dr. Kiki and a good science to you to Blair. We are here for another episode of this week in science and that we will hopefully see Justin arrive shortly. He is doing some work on getting his computer back up and running and joining us on this stream. But we are back here and welcome everyone to another episode of this week in science. We're back again. We're going to talk about the science. We have so many stories. I have stories about mosquito magnets, whispering brains and hidden star maps. What do you have for us? Just I mean, nope, nope. Justin's still not here. Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I have two atara's. I have animal vaccinations and social spiders, social spiders, the ones that scare us the most. Yes. And I can tell you what Justin has if he will arrive because he put it. He wrote it down. Okay. What's he got? Justin says, quote, I've got a spicy recipe for disaster, multicellular bacteria and an age of the Neander humans. Neander humans. Yes. So if he arrives, we will hear those things. We will just have to wait and see. But as we jump into the show tonight, I would like to remind all of you who are here that if you have not yet subscribed to twist, you can find us as a podcast on the places that podcasts are found. You can find us also streaming live weekly on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Pacific time on Facebook, Twitch and YouTube. And we are easily findable. If you look for this week in science, we are also twist and twist science on Twitter, Instagram and Twitch. But if all of this is just a lot to remember, just remember twist.org. That is our website. It's time for the science. Blair, are you a mosquito magnet? No, actually. I usually the people I'm with usually get bit a lot compared to how many bites I get. I'm very lucky. Fantastic. So we're going to do a quick cut in here and see how Justin's doing. He's here and I'm going to add him to the stream. Let's see how it goes. Hi. Hi. Are you here? Is it working? We still got some rice Krispies in the gears. Unfortunately, but yeah, is it too crackly? Let's ask the audience. Why don't you talk some more just and tell us what stories you have for the night? What did I bring? I have a spicy disaster story. I have something to do with. We got maybe 50% of that. And age of the answer. I've got great Neanderthals stories. I've got spicy danger and I've got multicellular bacteria that had not been described before. Oh, and those are so interesting. Such interesting stories. But it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to bring him. It's too wonky. Yeah. Everybody says Justin's wonky. Joined from your phone? I don't know. Everything looks so good from this angle. Like you guys don't seem to be delayed or anything. But my output is is weird. So. I'll see you guys next time. Oh, no. So sad. I hope you are able to go back to sleep. No, no. I hope you're able to source some new cables or something. I don't know what's wrong with it. I have to figure out what's happening. And we'll get it fixed for next week. Okay. Well, actually, before you go, hold on. Eric Knapp said drop the video and see if that helps. So can you just turn off your video and talk? Are you saying it's my face? My face is the problem. Yeah. So there it is without a camera and with just audio. No, it's still crackly. It's still crackly. And we tried it with different mics and everything. So I am at a complete loss for why that might be. Yeah, shoot. Don't know how to fix it. Yeah. Why don't we try it with just video? Yeah, I know. Is there a call-in option for StreamYard? I don't think there is, right? No. Yeah, but if you could figure it out from his phone and possibly, but still. All right. Well, Justin, if there's any other hardware in the house that you could try to join with, go ahead and give it a try. But otherwise, I guess we'll see you next week. This is so sad because he's right there. I know. I'm so sad. Yeah, Dave Gillespie does sound like a sync error or something. I don't know what's going. Yeah. A little bit of what's happening. Bye, Justin. Bye, Justin. Well, this might be a quick show. Okay. Well, I did not bring extra news like I usually do when there's only two of us, but you know what? That's fine. Get you back to bed. Yeah, get us all to the places we need to be. Well, this is a bummer. We're all a little sad, but we can keep going. And I was interesting. David Nevin said he looked and sounded fine. That's so weird. I have no idea what it is. But anyway, good night, Aaron Moore. As we are moving into the show, I was asking Blair if you're a mosquito magnet. We've heard previously on other episodes and conversations that Justin is definitely a mosquito magnet. Yes, yes. No, I am not. Usually the person I am with gets lots and lots and lots of bites and I get maybe one or two. If any, maybe none. Maybe none. You're a lucky, lucky person. I get a few and then my immune system goes, let's make that itch and swell and be awful. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Right. Well, research out of the Rockefeller University published this last week in Cell. Researchers Leslie Voshall, head of Rockefeller's laboratory of neurogenetics and behavior. And Maria Elena de Obaldia, who was a former postdoc in her lab, they wanted to investigate individual odor. And there is all sorts of evidence that not just carbon dioxide, but scent related to a person's microbiota might influence how attractive a person is to a mosquito. So they had a very fascinating study in which they, they had people wear nylon stockings on their arms for six weeks. And then they took those nylon stockings and mixed and matched them with a bunch of mosquitoes to see what the mosquitoes were attracted to the most. And they found that there was one particular subject and they had everything blinded as a double blinded randomized controlled study so that they had absolutely no idea which person wore which nylon stockings on their arms, any of that kind of thing. But they said subject 33 was the most attractive to the mosquitoes. The 80s. Egypt were the mosquitoes they were looking at in this particular study four times more attractive to mosquitoes than the next most attractive subject in the study. And 100 times more attractive than the least attractive subject in the study. 100 times 100 fold difference in how attractive they were. So they were trying to figure out. Okay, what was it that caused these differences and they determined that there are about 50 molecular compounds in the moisture barrier of the skin, the sebum. And so they were able to determine that these particular compounds that were really attractive in these individuals were carboxylic acids that that are produced by bacteria in the skin so that these are compounds that bacteria are chomping on and then modifying and then the scent of the skin is really part of it. So the whole surface of your skin because it is full of bacteria and is very individual to you as as a person impacts the way that the mosquitoes are attracted to you or not and they tried to go in and change the odor receptors in the mosquitoes to see if they could make the mosquitoes less attracted to any individuals and it turns out that the mosquitoes the female mosquitoes have like backup after backup after backup for their scent system so that when they shut off one kind of receptor it didn't matter they were still attracted to people and so and then they shut off a different receptor it didn't matter they just kept being attracted. They could not make it so that the mosquitoes were not attracted to people so according to this particular study we don't have a way to stop mosquitoes from being attracted to people yet. We don't have that but but is there a way to make yourself less intriguing as an individual be less of a number thirty three if you will. Right. So how can we how can we make individuals less of a number thirty three and so that's the question we don't have an answer to it yet but the idea is perhaps we can have have moisturizers or other other compounds that contain the bacterial effervescence the molecules of less attractive individuals that could possibly mask the attractiveness of certain individuals so it really comes down to the microbiome is what this is saying yes okay but we know that elements of the microbiome can be influenced by genetics we also know that elements of the microbiome can be influenced by people around you and your environment yes so I would be very interested to know if they can drill down further what part of your microbiome like when you move in with new roommates does it come more or less tasty to mosquitoes so this is a really interesting question because they they set this study up in multiple parts over multiple years and so subject thirty three who is this super attractor of mosquitoes you know over six years things might have changed in this person's life but their attractiveness to mosquitoes never did that is wild because I am concerned because one of those people that I mentioned that is very attractive to mosquitoes is my husband and when we went to the bayou he got covered in bites I think I had two and I'm just very worried now selfishly because my microbiome has surely changed to be more like his but it's like not not in such a way okay well attractiveness to mosquitoes has been impacted yes I'm in the clear these carbox all carboxylic acids that are being being used and created their yeah they seem to be individual based so mosquito attractors you're special so cool for those of you who aren't and shucks and sorry for those of you who are number thirty threes out there no you number thirty threes exactly it's like the mosquito red shirts all right so let's move on forward to your two attars yes so I might actually take a little more time with this one since since we're down a host because this is a pretty interesting story so two attars they're in New Zealand and they're a really weird reptile they're the soul surviving species in rincocephalia so if you look at reptiles you look at lizards we look at snakes we look at crocodilians we look at turtles and tortoises we don't know really if they're even part of reptiles or not that's kind of a big question mark still and then you look at two attars and two attars are the only species in their order that that currently is alive they are different from lizards even though they look like a lizard he's showing a picture right now if you're listening to the show look up with what a two attar looks like it looks pretty much exactly like a lizard but there's some very key things that that differentiate two attars from other lizards just this is kind of a tangent but I think that it's relevant to kind of understanding why two attars are evolutionarily really important and ecologically really important they're not just a lizard they're nocturnal so they're a completely different niche than most lizards who are diurnal they lay their eggs underground they have completely different teeth they have two rows of teeth on their upper jaw and one on the lower so it's like the one tooth sits in between the two above it they they also pervert prefer colder temperatures than most reptiles which also means they inhabit a different kind of niche than other reptiles might like other lizards and the way that we know they're not just weird lizards oh they also don't have external ear holes they have their their skin goes straight over their ears but the reason that we know that they're evolutionarily not just lizards that have gone weird is that they are diapsids so they actually have two temporal finestra holes in their skull whereas all other reptiles only have one or all other lizards and snakes use me saropsid synapsids have one hole in there in their skull which like that's a hole I could do a lecture on on temporal finestra but essentially this is this is like the smoking gun in the evolutionary record that shows that this is a completely different lineage of reptiles so that that is a oh that is a to a Tara yeah so so you have you have a second hole so it's really hard to see but it's up it's number 10 on this diagram so there's a second hole in the skull that lizards don't have they only have one anyway back to the story to a Tara's are very very very endangered in fact they're not found on mainland New Zealand at all anymore they are only on the remote islands and there's a few reasons for that but the main one is invasive species that eat to a Taurus. New Zealand I think we've talked about the threatened species commissioner on this show before New Zealand is working very hard towards a predator free 2050 they are really really trying to remove invasive predators because they have so many endemic species species that are only found in New Zealand that that these nonnative predators like rats and cats are just destroying the population okay so all that to say as you remove the predators now there is space to bring the native species back and so this is was a study looking at reintroductions of two a Taurus from offshore islands so we have these functional populations on the offshore islands and they want to bring some of them back to the mainland as predators are eradicated okay great so now we can get to the actual story. This is a study from take back at background yeah yeah yeah so this is a study by Teheranga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and they wanted to look at the impact habitat differences will have when reintroducing these these New Zealand species of special cultural significance to them the Maori so they wanted to see basically if you take an island see there's two pieces to this if you take a population that is hung out on an island for a long time and you plop it on the mainland can they survive just understanding that they have been on the island for a long time or have they grown to accustomed to being on a remote island to thrive on the mainland secondarily have things changed on the mainland since essentially white people came to New Zealand and completely changed things naturally speaking and in other ways so has it changed enough that that will impact the ability for the two a Tara to survive so what they did is they actually looked at the diet of the two a Taurus on these remote islands and they were looking at they're essentially looking at their poop to look at what was in their poop to see what they've been eating and they found that 40% of the dietary carbon into a Tara poop had marine origins this explained a large occurrence of headless seabird carcasses Oh my gosh all over the island so two Taurus they're not that big but they are they're hearty they got those those fancy teeth I mentioned before and so it looks like seabirds are a really important piece of their diet at least on these islands the seabirds are a crucial source of polyunsaturated fatty acids puf a's and they can get that from eating seabird eggs eating fledglings or even eating those adults or I guess adult heads if you so choose but there's no seabird colonies like that on the mainland we don't know if they've never been seabird populations or if there's just not now we don't know if two a Taurus always eight seabirds or if they only eat seabirds on these remote islands so when they're reintroduced what would what will they eat and what will be the physiological implications if they have a reduced source of puf a's for example in the eco sanctuaries they're currently released in on the mainland they're eating a lot of skinks geckos and ground nesting native birds all really good sources of other nutrients but not good sources of puf a's so knowing all of that this more than anything just shows that the biological communities on offshore islands can be really different from those on the mainland and that of course species are part of a complicated interwoven web of predator and prey yeah but that essentially there's a need for a holistic view of restoration and our measured approach to reintroductions because even if okay now we got the space what are they yeah yeah and the idea of being making sure that they're predator free it's like okay what predators because obviously the two a Taurus or predators to the seabirds and there is an ecosystem and but it's the invasive predators what are the can we get and but have the invasive predators been around long enough that now they are just part of the ecosystem yeah and I think that that's to piggyback on that if the two a Taurus been gone for the mainland from the mainland for long enough and then you plop them back over there and let's say they used to eat seabirds or not but these individuals do and then they pivot their attention to something else similar or different I don't know is that going to somehow completely change the relationship to predator prey in that ecosystem if they start measuredly targeting a specific species that's not used to pressure from the two a Tara because they've been absent yeah how is that going to affect other species around there right so it's it's complicated it's an open system especially I mean you've got birds who can fly in and out you have two a Taurus who could probably swim a little bit and yet the the openness of the system is something that we have to take into consideration yeah and it's research is so so essential to understand it absolutely and when you're you're kind of letting nature retake a space and you're trying to go backwards in time it's not a snap of the fingers okay we'll just we'll bring everything back and everything will be fine it's there's there's been decades or sometimes sometimes centuries or even longer of adjustments to the system yeah from the impacts that we made and so it's not so easy as to just go okay we'll just release them to a Taurus and everything will be great just release it it's all good we'll put it back to what it used to be right you need to puff us Pufas Pufas Pufas yeah Pufas as long as it's not like our U.S.'s yeah Pufas from seabird hits yes Pufas from seabirds good luck to the two atara on their return sometimes we have to look for things more deeply it's not ecosystem necessarily but historical sometimes we have to look beneath what is right in front of our faces and in a new paper this week in the journal for the history of astronomy researchers have detailed medieval parchment from which they have discovered ancient star maps details of coordinates from the very first earliest centuries of of time from a and one of the first astronomers Hipparchus and Hipparchus apparently was detailing the skies probably inspired by the Babylonians originally and he wrote down his stuff and apparently got scraped off and written over by other people who needed the parchment at some time later in time and so these researchers were looking at these old parchment that had been been preserved at a library and they one of the graduate students who was kind of looking at these parchment's over the summer was like hey there's some weird stuff in here and so they got they got these parchment's to a research center in France the CNRS the net French National Scientific Research Center and they were able to they were able to look under the under the biblical writings on the parchment's and were able to find Hipparchus is original coordinates and have they have been able to translate and determine these underlayers of the parchment's enable and have been able to show based on modern understanding of how our solar system in the universe moves and the time difference between now and 120 29 BC that he was very accurate that he had been using technology of the time to be able to really pinpoint the origin the locations of stars in the sky based on a multiple coordinate system and was really this was like the beginning of astronomy even though other people later kind of got the credit for it and so Hipparchus and his and his discoveries were swept under the rug well or scraped off of the page over time and so this is the first known map of the night skies that was created and catalogued by Hipparchus the ancient Greek astronomer. That's really cool and also sad I know but what's cool is that people who are so focused on continuing to dig and look and goes that doesn't that doesn't follow that doesn't that doesn't fit right here what am I looking at and then to dig more deeply and to be able to really you know find these these ancient writings and if you can consider you know now with our modern technology of and our understanding of astronomy you know we've got telescopes we've got computers we've got all sorts of things that help us do what we're doing I mean they were using very primitive lens systems to be able to view these stars in the sky to be able to identify their locations to especially to give them coordinates in the sky that were so accurate so that the the amount of work that must have gone into Hipparchus's efforts was probably very very intensive but yeah yeah very yeah he was he was an early discoverer and was the father of the field even though other people decided that yeah we're gonna thanks we're not ready for us yeah come back in a couple hundred years or something yeah but this but what I knew not not new word but the multi spectral analysis is the technology they were able to use to under using different lights to be able to see what was there in the parchment of the pages and the what they what they call this kind of a multi-layered document is a pellet set like a national treasure you just need some lemon juice and some Benjamin Franklin x-ray specs right oh yes exactly that's what it's always the lemon juice yeah invisible right in reality an acidic liquid going on to an old parchment is probably a very bad idea don't do it yeah the conservators would not be okay with that yeah you can borrow it but yeah no so I see Justin had some great stories but I didn't prepare them so I can't talk about them so let's talk about some ostrich like dinosaurs oh heck yeah that we're discovered in Mississippi right that's awesome when we think of ostriches or we think of like big bird like dinosaurs we think of Australia right we think of big terror sores and terror birds and other things and apparently however there's a group of ostrich like dinosaurs they're not birds yet they were ostrich like and so their name are the ornitho Mima sores so like a bird like dinosaurs ornitho Mima sores and so they were able to look at these fossils from the Appalachia region which is actually really rare because the ecosystems like the lands and everything it's but they haven't seen a lot of the fossils from this Appalachia reason but at one point in time back when these dinosaurs were roaming North America North America was not North America it was split in two and so you had an an area Laramedia to the West and Appalachia to the East and this was during the late Cretaceous period before all of the you know before the big meteor came and destroyed everybody but so this area the Utah not spelled Utah UT it's E UTAW formation of Mississippi they were able to find these new fossils of these giant dinosaurs the foot bones are about 85 million years old and these bird like dinosaurs probably were about 800 kilograms so one of the largest of their of this particular example and the authors say the coexistence of medium and large-bodied ornitho Mima sore taxa during the late Cretaceous sentonian of North America not only provide key information on the diversity and distribution of North American ornitho Mima sores from the Appalachian land mass but it also suggests broader evidence of multiple cohabitating species of ornitho Mima sore and dinosaurs in those ecosystems in that period so ornitho Mima sores look at him what am I even looking at I I want to try to paint a picture but it's really difficult it's like you took you took a dinosaur a kind of medium sized dinosaur looking thing with like the long neck and the kind of small pointy head and you made it really fuzzy and then you had it naked on the feet and then you also had itty bitty wings just from the elbow to the tip of the fingers yeah what a weird looking thing these are just hanging out in the eye of the holder hey weird can be beautiful I'm not saying it's not beautiful it is weird though it is but it's just a you know fantastic discovery and I love the idea that there were these giant ostrich like dinosaurs that used to run around ancient North America that got going for it let's do this weird and there were many of them that it makes it it makes sense that they would be everywhere that these weird ostrich eat that like things would be it's a really successful body plan right they run fast they have big strong legs they have a long neck that can maybe you know it's giraffe ish or whatever you can reach high places they can maneuver their head various places I mean the big long neck does give quite a target for a larger predator but when you're 800 kilograms you're still doing pretty well size wise yep I would think I would think yeah this is this week in science thank you so much for joining us for another episode of science news discussion we're so glad that you're here joining us if you love the show please share it with a friend today all right let's come back to more this week in science and you know how I said that we were going to not do the covid segment of the show anymore and I didn't believe you I didn't you know and I don't want people to take me seriously as they as I joke covid's over because it's not and that is something that we need to consider you know we are definitely moving forward with the understanding that covid is definitely a part of our lives for some time to come I just got vaccinated yesterday so I've been dealing with that but that's okay that means it's working your your body is attacking it maybe maybe this is this is our world health segment it is world health you know maybe you can spin it towards the positive that's what I definitely like to do so we'll start with the bad news first research out of UC Davis this last week determined that yes as we've heard previously covid 19 does infect neurons and induces inflammation in the brains in their studies they weren't looking at rats they weren't looking at mice they weren't looking at preserved brain tissue or collected tissue from dead people they were looking at rhesus macaques which are a model species for humans because they are very similar physiologically and evolutionarily what they determined publishing in cell reports this last week is that their work shows that aged monkeys with type 2 diabetes experience the worst virus induced neurological damage in which in which the virus induces the immune system to attack synapses in the brain and so what you find is micro glia in the brain which normally support the cells are suddenly attacking the neurons and this understanding can lead to a long a better understanding of framework to understand these long-term neurological systems which are becoming more and more commonly acknowledged among the medical community and with people who have a recovering from covid 19 and a different study by the carolinska institute have also looked at infected this is a model system of brain organoids with infection with SARS-CoV-2 and they also saw that the brains immune cells excessively eliminate synapses and they acquire an a gene expression pattern that has been observed in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease and and that is also similar to what the UC Davis researchers report so the the effects of what the virus is doing in the brain are leading to similar impacts to some neurodegenerative diseases that might might occur for more genetic reasons but this is virus induced so it's I found it interesting that there were two studies out this last week that kind of were converging on this very similar similar evidence the good thing is that as we understand more perhaps we can block these effects from happening perhaps we will understand how we can create treatments for people who have had covid 19 because as we talked about previously in the show this is not necessarily a oh only people who get severe covid 19 experience these effects this is also being reported in mild infectious cases. Yeah and that's a really common complaint I think for people who have covid anecdotally is that they they complain of covid brain fog for a while after infection even for mild cases and this could have something to do with that. Yeah it definitely could have something to do with it and then moving away from the effects of long covid and what happens to your brains I mean the reason I talk about this kind of stuff is like yeah it's like hey get vaccinated maybe we can help each other out you know we're vaccinated and you know limit the spread of this virus let's you know more people are vaccinated more protection there is you know good for our communities but okay there is a big hubbub this week about research happening at Boston University in a biosafety lab level level three biosafety biosecurity lab at BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory there is a question as to whether or not research they did in which they took the Omicron spike protein and put it together with the Delta version of the virus basically got rid of the Delta spike protein and gave it the Omicron spike protein to see what would happen how that would affect yeah see how that would see what would happen that was what I was about to ask why would you find out that why they're doing it is to determine whether the mutations that affect infect that affect infectivity and lethality are solely in the spike protein or whether they are in mutations in other areas of the virus so it's to be able to understand where we can target our treatments as we're seeing more and more antivirals become less effective as we're worried about future vaccine you know how how are we going to keep protecting against these things the researchers I think they did a bad job of communicating their preprint work which hasn't yet been peer reviewed but they focused on the fact that 80% of the mice died in their study that's a lot right however this virus combination has already occurred naturally we've already found naturally occurring version of the Omicron spike with the Delta virus and it kind of went away so it's probably out there a little bit but it has not become one of the more successful viruses so number one there is a big concern about how the study was done well the study was done in a biosecurity level 3 facility so it was done under safe security practices the way that they communicated the amount of mice that died in their study is a big deal but at the same time the original Delta virus killed 100% of mice in studies so this particular combination reduced the lethality of the virus and as I said it what we the natural experiment doesn't seem to have gone very well in humans so the big question is did they have the authorization to do this from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the NIAID has funded this laboratory and they said they never heard anything about this study that this study was going to happen and they said that they would expect a study like this which is potentially called the gain of function experiment in which you're giving a virus a function that it didn't necessarily have before I think there is a question as to whether or not this is a gain of function experiment as opposed to just a I think there's a debate there to be had but they're looking into it and people are now really questioning the entire regulatory structure of you know when is government money like how is it involved and what is it what is required before a university which does have a group on campus that says yes a review committee who says yes you can do this study and so their review committee said yes go ahead and do the study but they never asked the government if they could do it even though there was potentially government government money involved now so very interesting situation I have a question that maybe you can answer for me here I can't answer it I don't know this isn't a hypothetical illness this is something that is currently happening and as you mentioned this is a combination that currently exists why is research money going to testing mice when people are being infected every day and you could be collecting data on actual real life sick people like why when I got covid did no one send me something that said would you like to be a part of the study can you send us a swab do you know what I mean it's there yep there's hundreds of thousands of people right here like that you could test and you could test you could test how sick they got you could figure out which variant they're carrying you could you could figure out how long their fever lasted like that you could you could gather so much data even if only 1% of people who are infected actually give you data right but you can't you can't manipulate the situation by forcing a particular virus it's all going to be observational it's all going to be right you know but you could you could figure out which variant they have yeah and yeah and especially if this combination exists even if it exists in a very small amount but if it exists naturally then you will catch some data for that specific combination yes yeah but with the numbers of mice that they can test on which is that's lots of mice even though mice are not people there's lots of us too yeah yeah but with what they with what they have concluded from the study is that the mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant are responsible for the strains ability to evade immunity people have built up the vaccination infections are both but are not responsible for the apparent decrease in the severity of the Omicron viruses so the severity of the disease is due to mutations elsewhere in the Omicron virus but spike protein is related to infectiousness so it's it's it's going to be in it it's important information to have but yeah big there are lots of questions about it just government money it's I'm just I'm just curious I don't I it just there's a sample size right here anyway yeah yeah like Rick Rick Levin is saying people don't have a control people have people don't have control so well people don't have control but we do have a control and it's people who are negative for COVID right yeah that's true so yes that's anyway I don't yeah but anyway that's the fun news on the COVID front COVID front these days I do enjoy the scientific brouhaha you know especially when it gets people talking about the way that science is done the way that regulations manage the transparency of research like this which is one of the hypotheses of how we originally got the virus in the first place right escape from a lab in Wuhan where researchers were putting together I was thinking that seems like that PR yeah yeah so you know there are definite their conversations definitely to be had moving forward yeah let's do that thing people accused us of doing exactly oh my goodness that's it for our COVID corner for the day this is weekend science unfortunately we're missing Justin today but Blair and here and I are here to talk about the science with you if you are enjoying the show I do I would ask I implore you please head over to twist.org click on the Patreon link and become a Patreon supporter Patreon is how we keep this the show going and and support our efforts here and you are a big part of making this all happen so we thank you for your support we really cannot do it without you let's come back now to more this weekend science with Blair's animal corner with Blair what you got Blair thank you so much I can't start without it so I have there's a story really want to talk about but before that I have a quick one related to vaccinating wild animals when you yes when they're when there are zoonotic diseases potential zoonotics things that can jump from animals to humans and it is something that is running through a wild population it's a good idea to try to control that that can include things like rabies influenza and tuberculosis a lot of the time people control those diseases and wild animals by baited oral vaccines so basically they put out bait food a nice good treat for that individual species and they stuff it with pills or inject it with a serum or dust it with something to vaccinate those animals but the problem is when you're doing that how many animals are you double dosing are some animals not getting it at all are enough of them getting it to create herd immunity these are all great questions I do not know the answers yeah and and it's pretty difficult to test but a team of scientists from the International Institute for zoonosis control and Hokkaido University has developed a model to estimate the effectiveness of bait vaccination in wild animals this all happened when in 2018 there was an outbreak of outbreak of classical swine fever in Japan is the first one after 26 years it was found in a pig farm and wild boars as well in the same area and it was spreading among the wild boars so they started a bait vaccination campaign in 2019 and in order to test the effectiveness of that campaign they constructed a mathematical model that describes relationships between three variables changes over time in the proportion of immune immunized animals so you have to actually be able to check to see if they're immunized the number of vaccine applications and the effects of the vaccine so because this was a smaller population this is totally me guessing but so put it was partially in a farm so you're able to check it versus captive animals but then also in the wild you could test the the poop to see if there's trace of the vaccine in there or trace of the disease can also check for deaths and all sorts of other things so basically all of that together means that you can test the effectiveness of this one bait vaccination campaign so once you know the proportion of immunized animals in a population you can with that combine it with the data about the number of vaccine applications and from there you can estimate the effects of the vac vaccines measured as a proportion of animals who acquired immunity and that's all fancy words to say in this one very restrictive population in this one very restricted test they could then create a model and that's all what this is about so now they made a model they were able to test with real data collected during the bait vaccination campaign and they show that the vaccines measurably increase the proportion of immunized animals in wild boars great so it looked like it was working this was able to show that the bait vaccination caused a quantitative increase in the proportion of immunized animals it worked basically but this allowed to have a model that now does not require the data on the number of the individuals in a population their movements within a study area or the history of bait vaccine intake you are you can now use this model to gauge the effect of oral vaccines for a number of diseases to study different applications of the vaccines to design improved vaccination strategies all of this by testing against this model that was made with wild pigs so it is it is one instance of one kind of animal so I'm a little hesitant to say that this could be applied to the entire animal kingdom but I think it's very cool and I think it's a good use of of the resources that exist and when opportunity strikes kind of the the question I was just asking related to COVID there was there was an outbreak let's use this current outbreak to gather data to be able to prepare for future outbreaks so I think that's a neat application of that use yeah and you can't I mean you have to start somewhere right so you start with this model and then you say is it going to work elsewhere can we apply it to other things do does data match from other situations right and is it worth it is this is this bait campaign going to work can you have a guess and will it work on will it work on humans will it work yeah that's the question bait bait traps for people yeah I think I think I think using I think using wild pigs would be fine for human behavior but yeah the rest of the animal came not so sure bacon bacon yeah yeah so anyway just a neat tool for bait vaccinations and wild animals but really really really what what what we're all here for the you've been dying to talk about yes we are all here to talk about social spiders and I just recently saw somebody else making a joke like on TV or something about like I really don't like spiders but you know at least they haven't figured out how to work together if they do that I'm done sorry you're welcome ASMR friends anyway so social spiders we know they exist we saw their giant field in I think it was in Australia we've talked about how they take care of babies on previous episodes I'm sure you could search social spider on twist out org and find some good stuff but new research has identified how social spiders may have evolved different ways of hunting showing that it is not kind of a one off random thing that happened it's something that has popped up multiple times in spiders a few species have evolved to be social and live in groups known as colonies we we do know that to start with they live in these large family groups they share communal nest they share childcare duties they even share hunting and foraging but this new study shows this study from University of Portsmouth that environmental conditions may have shaped how species develop different strategies of cooperating and hunting so it's a lot more complicated than just there's a bunch of us here we can all work together they looked at different responses to prey stuck in webs among three social species of velvet spiders they found substantial differences between them they lived at the African social velvet spider the Indian cooperative spider and the African social spider these are all the same genus so they are closely related individuals or species but they they each attacks prey differently some of them only sent out the number of spiders necessary to take down the prey small number for small prey large number for large prey some of them were extra shy with very few spiders attacking prey regardless of the size they were slow to attack and they rejected a high proportion of prey they're like too much some of them so that was the African social velvet spider the Indian cooperative spider attacked prey regardless irregardless of size like just it doesn't matter I'll take everything but larger numbers of spiders attacked when the prey was actually small which is interesting the African social spider preferred medium-sized prey more spiders engaged in small prey less in large prey so they actually went down if it was a bigger spider or a bigger payload I guess so there's a couple theories to this one being so remember these are all the same genus so there's a good chance that they actually have an evolutionary ancestor that was social right so the theory actually is that when spiders become social because they're all hanging out together and helping with child rearing they actually become really inbred so evolution can kind of run away with itself really quickly so that means that you can see a lot of change in a short amount of time in the genome and in the behavior of a population but this also just shows that there's more than one way of being a social spider it's not just the simple we work together there's there's a lot of dynamics involved there and in fact the African social velvet spider and the African social spider live in the world but they have different hunting strategies whoa so one is cautious and choosy the other one is opportunistic so they have actually developed different niches to co-habitate in the same space and eat almost identical food but do it differently so not just two spiders of related of the same genus but different species hanging out together two colonies of spiders hanging out together that are very related and they are able to both eat because they have different strategies so this indicates that where two different social species share the same habitats they have their own niches they have they have inst in competition instead of one out competing the other they have diverged and specialized away from each other so this means their social behavior is much more complex than we thought it means that social spiders are just more complicated than previously thought about the different types of social dynamics that exist and that there's something more going on than just we all got to eat and we all live in the same place there's a decision making process happening which you know whether it's subconscious or intentional in some way who knows but really there it's more complicated than just a bunch of spiders living in the same place I don't need to know more but what a great strategy to have to be able to pick a different method of sharing the same biome sharing the same space you know almost you can picture an entire biome made up of spiders with different strategies where it's all spiders everywhere some are on the ground some are up in the trees some are catching flying insects some are going underground but you know there could just be spiders everywhere we don't need all of the breadth of fauna that are out there spiders can feel a little rich. No that's okay I don't need that many spiders listen I love spiders everyone knows I love spiders I love talking spiders on this show I don't need that many spiders thank you a spider tried to say hello to me in my car in my commute home today right in my face while I was driving it was great exciting sure that was not now early for your cue anyway that's what I got for the animal corner this just shows so much we that there's so much we don't know right we don't understand about spiders the fact that there are spiders that are social is just amazing there's just yeah learn we didn't know that a few years ago I feel like that's pretty much information and now we're figuring out it's way more complicated than that oh yeah I'm still interested in that that strategy of the more of the group attacking the smaller prey I'm wondering if it's just smaller prey is more likely to get away I was thinking that or more dangerous more dangerous yeah depending where they live and it's fascinating we need to know more I don't want to especially if that smaller prey is an ant you contain it and it gets back to where advance are then you're intro then you stop in the predator and you might end up being a prey that's true it's tricky and dangerous tricky tricky to be a spider hey Justin do you want to talk about Neanderthals I do but I really want to I going to talk about the earlier stories first yeah so speaking of danger segue one of the most dangerous places in any home is the kitchen in some homes it's the trampoline set up in the playroom with low ceilings but for most homes it's the kitchen there's sharp objects boiling water and oils occasional fires and a smorgasbord of uninvited microbial visitors poor food prep practice and contamination by microbial hitchhikers is a major source of foodborne illness salmonella campylobacter account for nearly 2 million infections a year in the US according to the CDC big portion of those illnesses are derived from raw meat handling inadequate cooking times or temps issues with hand washing sanitation of kitchen services services and utensils so researchers the Rutgers school of environmental and biological sciences and researchers at North Carolina State University together set out to test kitchen surfaces for potential cross-contaminating practices that could lead to pathogen ingestion and the way they went about it's pretty interesting they had 371 subjects cooking an identical turkey burger recipe and they had several kitchens that they used of various sizes some were small apartment style kitchens were larger teaching kitchens presumably at one of the universities and they also used a food bank for larger scale food prep stations participants prepared the meal with a mixing of raw ground turkey patties a seasoning recipe along with the prepackaged salad to simulate the movement of a pathogen across the surfaces of the kitchen researchers inoculated the meat ahead of time with a bacteriophage that they could use utilize as a safe trick tracking device basically they could trace it after the experiment none of the participants knew that they were taking part in a food safety study so they prepared the meals researchers observed the objects and surfaces used or touched that once the meals are done researchers swabbed everything the participants made contact with to test for the presence of the tracer they found a major contamination culprit in their test kitchens can you imagine what it was where would you think the spatula that's a good one hands oh that's another good one according to Donald Shafner professor of the department of food sciences at Rutgers in addition to more obvious surfaces like cutting boards garbage cans, lids and refrigerators here's something else that you need to pay attention to when you're trying to clean and sanitize your kitchen trying to be clean and sanitary in your kitchen researchers found that the most frequently contaminated objects were drum roll the towel that's a good one too but that wasn't it keep the drum roll going any last second guesses have no idea one was the most contaminated spice containers I touch that every day every day and when's the last time you're like I need to put my spice container through a vigorous sanitary wash never getting in there with those most contaminated objects were the spice containers with about 48% of the samples showing evidence of contamination this prevalence of contamination was significantly different from many other surfaces sampled cutting boards and trash can lids were the second, third most contaminated faucet handles were the least contaminated objects because we wiped them down a lot probably thinking about it we were surprised because we had not seen evidence of spice container contamination before most research on the cross-contamination of kitchen surfaces did a handle here from me poultry has focused on kitchen cutting boards or faucet handles utensils and his neglected surfaces like the spice container and the trash bin lids so everybody at the end of this show go clean your spice containers yep oh boy that's what we did and last I guess story that I might blurb some of the nanodolls other main story I was interested in today how did life begin on earth we propose perhaps it started deep in the ocean around the thermal vent maybe had the right precursors of life getting encapsulated in tiny pockets of clay and muck allowing for the experiment of life to get started emerging initially as a virus or as a single celled creature eventually a multicellular creature with cells that performed more and more diverse functions the beginning of complex multicellularity for life like us but how did that leap take place maybe just maybe it looked something like what was isolated from water dripping down a limestone cave on a wall on the island of the south of Japan this cave wall they didn't go there looking for this this is sort of an accidental discovery these are researchers in Japan who are looking for enzymes produced by novel bacteria that might assist them in breaking down plastics so that's what they were doing their mass collection for nothing to do with the story but that's how this is sort of good observation and follow-up is amazing because this is a now newly described bacterium that starts out as a single cell but instead of remaining a single cell like most microbes it then develops an organized body what hundreds of cells I don't know if you scroll further down into that those are nice pictures there's some I think videos involved as well so develops an organized body comprised of many hundreds of cells when the time is right the cellular configuration then spits out a stream of single rod cells from its own multicellular configuration in the center of the thing so when they grow that novel bacteria in the lab dish had this iridescent sheen to it that I hadn't really noticed in anything before shimmery color look to it it began to divide into long filaments these strands formed long chains that then folded around and wrapped around itself to form a superstructure colonies stopped growing after just two days as soon as they were put into the dish they crossed that surface they started growing two days later they stopped then for two to three days no real activity took place around day five right around day five the flat sheet began to thicken in the middle and it got bulky and it got a little cloudy and these rod shaped cells began appearing in the center if they immerse them in water these rod shaped cells shot out of the microbial mass they were ejected where they went on to start the process all over again so this is a it sounds like a mycelium and a fungus in a mushroom it's really it's so interesting you know this isn't like butting on the edge of an individual microbe this is one microbe that split split split split split split split but maintained contact and created this chain that it then wrapped around and then created this other novel version of itself in this rod form that it then spit out so many things are to see so this isn't the first multi-cellular bacteria that's been other bacteria have known have been known to have structures chains or films some more complicated structures in one under stress so that they can change locations but unlike other known forms of multi-cellular bacteria this one that they have called HS3 didn't just have different kinds of cells each type had a distinct structure and formed different points in its life cycle as if responding to environmental cues like this immersion of water tells it to eject or the contact with a surface then in this case the lab dish told it to start the process of reproducing in nature it would have been contact with the wall okay let's form this structure and then when water reached that wall in the cave and this is the cave researchers note does occasionally does occasionally flood so this is a very reliable repeatable environment for the evolutionary strategy that is developed within this organism finds the flat surface creates the structure then the water comes eject more single cells which then find a wall somewhere started over again very simple very straightforward but one of the interesting these I think it shows that the paths to multi-cellularity may have been many yeah we talk a lot about how life really started just one time as far as we can tell it's the same components it's the same we all seem to be related to everything all the way back to bacteria genetically things are all linked the interesting thing though is that leap into multi-cellularity didn't necessarily happen to happen the same we're probably all of us complex life forms mammals create animals walking around we're all related probably to the very same first multi-cellularity event in our history but there may be other paths to becoming multi-cellular we see a lot of diversity so we've talked about how it's weird that life hasn't shown up more than one time but that's because the niches have all been taken up here's a cave wall in this remote island in Japan where multi-cellularity or multi-cellular bacteria was allowed to exist and perhaps a niche that didn't have anything preventing it from doing so and it did so in a way that we haven't seen before so there may be other paths to more complicated life final stories I'll just blurb them because I know I've shown up late to the show new techniques have shown that Neanderthals in France and Spain definitely overlapped for a period of about 1600 years that's a significant period it's been very difficult to determine one of the problems is carbon-14 which is usually reliable for carbon dating has a problem right at the time point when humans and Neanderthals are interacting there was a short reversal of Earth's magnitude which weakened Earth's geomagnetic shield enough to allow for an extra pelting of cosmic space to generate a spike in carbon-14 in the atmosphere which then throws off dating techniques right around 41 to 43 thousand years ago it has this weird effect of making things seem more racist than they actually were or maybe a little older it's all catiwankas in that record scientists have largely been able to sort that out recent, somewhat recent they've always had different ways of doing dating techniques but they also have some specific calibration curves that they now use to determine modern current humans and Neanderthals coexisted in France and Spain for about 1600 years interacting but it would be extremely hard to imagine that they weren't we have other evidence that says they likely were one of the things they were looking at was the tools that were Neanderthal and then evolved Neanderthal tools towards what current modern humans were doing and then the Neanderthals sort of disappeared but it's sort of disappearing after 1600 years of interaction likely it was more of an integration effect and and not to leave the subject of Neanderthals you remember the Dnesiva cave that's where we found out about Dnesivans well there's also a lot of Neanderthals there and those Neanderthals were about 120,000 years ago and another set of caves within 100 kilometers of that one there's been 13 individuals Neanderthals that date to about 56,000 years ago and it turned out they did genomic testing on them they're all pretty related but they're not related to the nearby Dnesiva cave they're much closer related well that's interesting to the European Neanderthals and one of the various of this has always been why did the Neanderthals start heading away from Europe because they know there was this migration event well if current modern humans weren't there yet 56,000 years then it wasn't that they were pushed out by humans if they're already in Siberia 56,000 years ago and they're the ones who are related to those that were seen migrating from Europe in that direction or thought to be and it says that it was just the wandering Neanderthal lifestyle that took them there and they likely weren't running from current modern humans who as it turns out we coexisted with just fine 1600 years anyway this is a the most Neanderthals that have ever been found in one location and there's some really kind of it shows that they were a pretty tight-knit family oh one of the interesting things that they did come with too is while they are closely related the related members were the females meaning that when it comes to mingling with other Neanderthal group it was the females that would go on and blind the other family I don't know who would go on and join the other family is exactly right might have been a little bit more unpleasant but I take your point just your Neander prejudice instead of the males going off and wandering and finding other tribes it was the females I'm just thinking back to reading clay to the cave bear that's all I'm doing the only way to view Neanderthals it's not Neanderthals, it's all ancient people I'm thinking about how the animal kingdom is about this sort of thing too that's all your characterizing it is a very sweet like she packed up her spindle she said I'm going to go see the world and that is I am almost willing to guarantee you not how it went I don't know I think that's very likely how it went okay just women move between communities and the men were of their own volition, sure they did well so we don't know we don't know just based on the animal kingdom I have some ideas I don't know why you would assume this that there was anything untoward about the Neanderthals we know that cave art we know they cared for their old most mating is untoward that's why most mating on earth is untoward okay we may have had fixes with dating just for the record the two of us I love the statement though mating is untoward watch a couple nature documentaries and tell me if you think those female Neanderthals went off on their own on purpose but it's interesting to know that they weren't sticking around and they weren't causing population genetic bottlenecks and that there was mixing between different groups and that's important but hang on a second in the animal kingdom when a male goes off and finds another group to join like a young male baboon or a I don't know what else does that seal on something and stuff you don't know that poor male baboon had no choice but to go and join that other group sometimes they actually didn't have a choice they usually don't they get kicked out they're getting kicked yeah they get kicked out it's like leave or die because they'll be killed by the older males that's always true of everything but very civilized society hopefully yes but that's what I'm saying is that you were painting this very rosy picture can she romanticize for a moment I'm just throwing out there that if we're being realistic about the motivation behind these things untoward I have a feeling that there was very romantic courtship involved in the Neanderthals and until proven otherwise I will stand by this all right I have one sorry to end this show for all of us you know as you're sitting here listening to us talk about stuff maybe occasionally a thought wanders into your head and your brain wanders off daydreaming for a minute when you come back and go oh what did I miss what did I miss of the twist conversation yeah that was me during the show all the time you're not supposed to say that was that out loud shut up what yes well researchers publishing in cell reports this last week we're looking at the brain and its activity during various times of the day looking at this hypothesis that there is memory formation that occurs during times aside from when you're sleeping we know that when we're sleeping processes that are important for memory consolidation but why is it that we get caught in these little like daydreams mind wandering so often and the researchers from the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Oslo have said that we daydream for very brief moments thousands of times a day and so what is actually going on there we looked at the thalamic cortical circuits that are involved connected to the thalamus and the hippocampus and when they're active and when they're quiet and they determined that the hippocampus gets really really active for a while when there's stuff going on and then it gets quiet and what happens is the rest of the brain actually ends up sometimes to listen to what the hippocampus is saying and so you have this cortical network in which these mice who are awake and not sleeping they didn't look in humans, they looked in mice but they were able to determine that basically the brain goes through like these little tiny periods of quiet but it's quiet as if it's trying to listen to the whispers of the hippocampus the hippocampus is whispering to the brain and telling it things that it needs to know so not only is my brain actually talking to itself but it's also eavesdropping yes, yes the brain is eavesdropping on itself the brain is talking to itself and this quiet wakefulness when we're daydreaming and we let our minds wander what happens is that this is potentially, they say, how the hippocampus is encoding memories during the day when you're awake but yeah, you're not sleeping, you're awake it's how the hippocampus works constantly and doesn't get all filled up and then dump everything out when you're sleeping and that these it has different electrical impulses and they say it's a bit like how different barcodes identify a product in a store and it happens thousands of times and so even when we think our brain is just not doing anything useful the daydreaming isn't very useful it's really storing memory and perhaps this is something that we, you know those shower moments those thoughts that you have while you're having a long walk and suddenly pieces of information come together in your brain, that aha moment that occurs when we're old, when we're kids pay attention, don't daydream but daydreaming is actually a part of how our brains work and how information is connected, consolidated, how it's put together and so those waking moments of quiet in your brain are actually really good for you that's awesome, I am constantly having shower moments and things like that it's some of my best thinking so that makes sense it is, right? I'm a daydream believer and a homecoming queen that's a monkey's it's a monkey's reference they were my, they were daydream believer monkeys, no I'm kidding homecoming queen doctoral research fellow Christopher Nurelland Baerge says we found that during quiet wakefulness the hippocampus only sends weak messages about past memories to the rest of the brain so weak that these messages are lost in the clutter of information that the rest of the brain experiences and so this led to the question how can the brain hear this whispering from the hippocampus and so it is this brain quieting your brain quiets down it becomes silent so that it can hear the whispers I love that I just think that's what it is something, I got it the hippocampus is saying something it's going to be something important listen, listen to the whispers or some hippocampuses the hippocampus might shout get over the noise one hypothesis yeah, but one hypothesis that they say here and of course they need evidence to back this one up but it is in modern times we feel like our kids constantly need to be entertained or you know stimulated there's YouTubes and iPads and all sorts of things and that the researchers say maybe potentially it's good for your kids to be bored because with boredom comes more of the quiet wakefulness comes more of the daydreaming comes more of this putting together of things so maybe it's better for your brain and it's functioning and creativity to be bored to daydream to not be constantly entertained showers just in general but also for this and just on the hygiene yeah but also a dog forcing yourself to take a minimum 20 minute walk two times a day and you take the same route or you have a set of routes so you're kind of on autopilot it's so good it's so hard to read my phone when I do that though so I hear this and then I think yeah that really makes a lot of sense sounds like good solid old people wisdom but then I'm like what was the generation where they were unentertained all the time unengaged with something all the time had a lot of downtime and the world was much better for it no no but think about it Justin if you're sitting churning butter for like two hours what are you doing you're daydreaming oh yes that too I wasn't churning butter right now anything other than this butter churning man but that's the point right is that you weren't doing that and you had a podcast you're in and you're watching something on the T and you were you know it was that's kind of the idea is you had repetitious acts that allowed your brain to wander when do our brains wander anymore it's a question for us to ponder as we finish the show this is like churning butter for me I'm sorry oh as we end the show oh man Justin's like six seconds behind I think alright everyone thank you so much for joining us I think we've done all of our stories for the night we've made it through we got a Justin back that was great and so I would love to give yay shoutouts to Fada thank you so much for your help with social media and show notes over on YouTube Gord and Arnold are left earlier but other people who helped keeping the chat room happy nice places to be thank you for that identity for thank you for recording the show and Rachel thank you for your assistance in editing the show I would also love to thank specifically our Patreon sponsors thank you too Teresa Smith James Schaefer Richard Badge Kent Northcote Rick Loveman Pierre Villasar Baralphi Figueroa John Ratnaswamy Carl Kornfeld Karen Tazi Woody M.S. 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Yes I was on on Monday October 17th and I talked about animal conservation and social media and so we had a very interesting conversation about the ethics of social media and that sort of thing but from a conservation lens so last week we talked about animal trafficking on social media and there was an additional study that I brought in about how it's not just mammals and birds other animals are also interesting and people will be interested in them online so that was fun look for Daily Tech news show all the places you find podcasts and videos and stuff and you can hear us chat about that. And on our show next week we will be ooh just in time for Twiso Ween we'll be speaking with Dr. Vivek Kumar about bioengineering and tissue regeneration. Don't miss it. Nice. Yes we will be back then for that show 8pm pacific time broadcasting live from our YouTube and Facebook channels and from twist.org slash live. 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Kiki at Jackson fly and at Blair's Menagerie we love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview with Haikun that comes tonight please let us know we'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news and if you've learned anything from the show remember it's all in your head 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 unfurled 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 below the warming with a wave of my hand and all is coming your way so everybody listen this week in science this week in science this week in science science this week in science this week in science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what I say and that is the end of the show thank you for joining us it is the after show woosh woosh woosh Alex Soss thank you for joining us daydream while you clean your spice rack before the spiders take over that's absolutely absolutely true I think we're all gonna go take care of that market Justin is auditioning to be the micro machines me where did he go he turned off his he's here but he's not here now yes thank you all for joining us for another show apologies for the weird crackliness and the connectivity issues someone earlier in the chat said noam saying said that they had seen some other crackly live streams so maybe somehow it's related to restream youtube so that is something for us to look into and actually just a quick google search I did discover people talking about that kind of stuff so I'll look into it to see if there's any kind of fix and I know somebody earlier in our discord chat said maybe if we like closed our stream and then reopened it again I don't know I don't know what to do we're gonna try all the things and hope that it'll be better next week I hear stomping upstairs for me I hope it's good stomping not funny stomping not child stomping because he should be in bed hmm shudan is very different things that's right I don't know where Justin went at this moment I'm tired like I said we tried turning it off and turning it back on again exactly we did that I hope we don't have all the mics crackling fada make me very sad computer gremlins yes I'll blame it on computer gremlins but as I said earlier I had my COVID vaccine yesterday and my flu vaccine and I have been suffering some immune side effects which are totally normal just they're making me very tired and I didn't sleep well last night so I am tired but I keep saying it as if that's going to change something I am tired um next week is our twisawine episode woo woo I don't know if I'm ready for a twisawine costume I haven't even thought about that yet but I guess it's the thing I have a Halloween costume I'm working on I don't know if it'll be ready will it be ready exactly hi Paul nice to meet you I don't have a Halloween to go to here I don't really either though it's a Monday and I don't have children so I have texted my friends with children to see if they want a tag along for some trick or treating but this is part of the problem I didn't start assembling an outfit because I have nothing to wear it to but I usually this time there's shops that open up that are specifically geared towards providing the last minute costumes or fully constructed costumes that one could purchase there are, yes one can purchase no wait I'm sorry I'm looking at something that's supposed to fix audio say it again what did you say was your mind whispering while I was talking it was exactly what was happening I was just saying you could just go buy a costume oh no I've never done that and I never will I could tell you're talking to the person with a pile of hats in the corner exactly wigs, hats, all the things we've got piles Blair and I have things that can be done so Justin I have something for you to try for your audio click on settings in stream yard and make sure the echo cancellation is not selected oh wait Kai go to bed yeah go to bed why aren't you sleeping unscientifically determined I love you this wasn't an internet problem so my upload and download speeds I was having a hard time accessing but did you deselect echo cancellation just now just did the crackling is gone was it still crackling when I came back man that sucked that was it so I looked it up the echo cancellation can cause it so you just deselected it I think the crackling is gone alright let me redo my stressin there's crackling again I thought I got it it was gone for a minute internet was so bad when I was trying to join somehow it's connected to other usage in the building but I don't really understand but while off I tested again and it was jumped up to super fast speeds so I'm like aha now it should be good to go but if it's still crackling the next thing to check is swapping out the computer or browsers I don't know browsers never worked leaving chrome to do anything never worked streamer doesn't like to work in anything but chrome really yeah it's true nothing does new episode of lower decks well at midnight fata again I know it's in two hours it's funny yeah we'll figure out if we can uh get into it a bit early next time Justin maybe we can hopefully the internet will be better and we haven't had this as an ongoing problem no we haven't there was a google chrome update that took place over the night so I'm wondering if sometimes there's a little bit of ketchup that needs to be poured on things before they work again alright hey uh say good night Blair good night Blair say good morning Justin good morning Justin good night good night Kiki good night everyone thank you for joining us for our interesting adventure through science and troublesome technology this evening we really appreciate you being here and hope you enjoyed the show and we'll be back again next week and we hope that you'll be here for our interview and all of that good stuff stay safe stay curious that's yeah that's what I tell you right stay healthy stay curious we're gonna go now thank you good night