 Not on brand at all. Are we on brand? What's a brand anyway? What's a brand, but it's not a brand? I don't know, somebody recently posted that on Twitter and said mosquitoes. It true to their brand. I don't know. Anyway, welcome everyone to the weekly live broadcast of the Twist podcast taping. We are so glad that you are here to join us in the lovely pre-wintery month known as November. Really? Yes, really, November. It's now no RIMO month. It's a lot. There's a lot going on. It's getting toward the end of the year. I'm so glad that you're here with us. And you know that we are going to do this show that we do and some of it might get edited out. But everything here is here to stay. It's here to stay online in the video. Identity Force says it's normal. Yes, it's working. Okay, are we good? I believe everything is under control. Are you good Blair? Yeah, let's have a show. Okay, let's have this show. A starting N, a three, a two. This is Twist. This week in Science episode number 849 recorded on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021. Are you jelly of the science? Hey there, I'm Dr. Kiki. Welcome to another episode of Twist. No, what am I doing? Today we will fill your head with hips, home records and promiscuity. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Jet lag. It's that thing that can happen when you travel a great distance typically by air and land somewhere hours later in a location that has a significantly different time zone. With your circadian rhythm upended, it's understandable to be sleepy. It's expected even. But if you are the leader of a nation, attending a talk about the dangers and urgency of action in the face of a global climate crisis, there is no excuse for taking a nap. Now, despite the low expectations of the UN climate meeting, it has so far underperformed tremendously. Key driver underlying the underperformance is that it is a performance because it relies almost entirely on economies and businesses to reform without legal mandates. In the United States recently, oil executives were invited to testify about climate before the government. They all confirmed or admitted that global warming occurs and that fossil fuels play a role. And they all said they support the Paris climate agreement. That's great. It was also revealed that while each of the oil companies were saying this, they were also lobbying the government hundreds of times for tax exemptions and increased drilling lands, yet failed to use their influence or lobbying for any additional environmental protections or to support any provision of the Paris agreement. Not great. It was also revealed that they collectively spend millions and millions and millions of dollars to support autonomous industry organizations that pump out climate change denial misinformation. Really, really not great. Really bad actually. Kind of like they're supporting the opposite of what they are publicly saying they support. And while I am no expert on dictionaries or lying for that matter, I'm pretty sure that funding companies that spread climate misinformation while you pretend it has nothing to do with you is the definition of greenwashing. When asked about solutions, many pointed to the fact that fossil fuel usage in the United States is much cleaner than in many other countries. Ironically, this is because the government of the United States passed laws that forced them to make changes which they lobbied against at the time. If governments are going to take seriously the threats of climate change, they have to do more than ask those profiting from emitting carbon to do something about it. They need to take actionable steps. And what that means is not just setting goals, it means laws that make it illegal to do business as usual. Well, View and Summit was full of statements about accelerating action towards goals which are themselves things that are forward thinking that you're planning on doing later also. The image of a 78-year-old president of the United States nodding off during the event pretty much sums up the real sense of urgency amongst world leaders. They're sleep at the wheel as urgent reports keep coming in from folks like This Week in Science coming up next. I've got the kind of mime I can't get enough I wanna learn everything new discoveries that happen every day of the week there's only one place to go to find the good science to you Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin, Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back to not be sad about the science but rather to be upset about the failings of humanity. No, we're gonna talk about science. That's what we're gonna do. That disclaimer got to me a bit, Justin. I have to say. Oh, I'm so sorry. Then you will not appreciate at all the rest of my contributions to this show. All right, well, as we jump in everyone, welcome to another episode of This Week in Science, right? We've got a great show ahead. As we jump into the very, very, very tip, tip, tip top, I just wanna take a moment to appreciate that it's Jellyfish Day. What? I totally didn't do anything jellyfish-oriented all day. Ah, I missed it again. You have a twist calendar? Did you have a spine? Yeah. Did you have a spine? Do you have separate openings for eating and for waste? Oh, gosh, yes. Do you have a full brain? He's not a jellyfish. Oh, so yeah, you didn't do any jellyfish thing. No, he didn't do any jellyfish things at all. I ate some fish today. I feel like that was a jellyfish thing. Well, I feel like the jellyfish have followed all of the politicians and financial experts to Scotland for the COP26 meeting as a jellyfish swarm this week, very timely in its actions, has scuttled a nuclear reactor in Scotland. They use water cooling for their nuclear power plant, and occasionally when there are massive jellyfish blooms, these or algae blooms, these blooms can get into the intake and clog it all up, and then the nuclear reactor starts to overheat and so they have to turn it off so that you don't have a big problem. Anyway, jellyfish, what's up? In climate change, you know, you have winners and losers, mostly losers, but jellies are one of the winners. They love warm water. They do real well with rising temperatures, so they just wanted to go over there and shout out, don't undo anything. Keep doing what you're doing. It's great. What you're doing is great. Oh, I see. Hey, go to the jellyfish. Keep it warm in. Yeah. That's why they were trying to shut down the nuclear power plant. They were like, that energy's a little too clean. I'll turn it into a clean. There's not enough carbon coming out of there. I'll turn it away. Give me some of that coal, that clean coal. It shouldn't be greenwashing. This was jellywashing. On the show this week, I have stories about hot planets, exoplanets, and black holes, some promiscuous proteins, and saints for sadness. What do you have, Justin? I have got just good news about skiing. Oh, great. Yep. Looking forward. And three more stories that Kirsten is not going to appreciate. Oh, no. All right, I'm getting ready for it. Blair, what is in the animal corner? I have some nice, light-hearted animal fluff tonight, so you don't have to feel too upset about it even. I have Alan. I have, yeah, I have dead fruit flies, and I have murderous chicks. Oh, it sounds super fluffy and light-hearted. It's okay. Just chill, animal corner tonight. Yeah, Alan, murder, and death. Great, okay. Animal corner should have been, you just, you can't get rid of Halloween in the animal corner. No, no, it's actually, it usually comes a week late because the animals, they don't have calendars, so they see the kids in the costume, and they're like, oh, right, it's Halloween, and then it takes a couple extra days. They figure it out. I feel like I always come up with my costume a good week after. I'm like, oh, I know what I should do. Or do you come up with a 51 weeks early? No, because it's gone by then. Another week passed that, and it's already in store. But we gotta do a tight 90 today, guys. So come on, what's our first science story? All right, as we jump into the show, I would like to remind everyone that if you are not yet subscribed, you can find us on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitch for the video streaming. On Twitch, we are at Twist Science. We are also on Instagram, Twitter, and I guess other places, yeah, got the social media's going on. And then you can find us all places podcasts are found, look for this week in science. Our website is twist.org. All right, the science. What if the temperature of the earth were increased 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit? That's like 11 or so degrees Celsius. No, thanks. Yeah, and my guess would be that there would be an end to ice and snow. Yes, things would definitely melt. Researchers decided that they wanted to model what might happen to the earth's atmosphere, use some of these atmospheric modeling programs that have been developed to study our atmosphere, to see what could have been happening in the atmosphere during the hot house periods of the earth. When the earth was actually experiencing temperatures this high, the earth has been up to 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in the past. And it may get back there again someday, hopefully not while we are still on the planet. But it could also predict changes to the atmosphere and how things move around. And they're also thinking it could understanding the atmospheric dynamics could also tell us more about distant exoplanet atmospheres on hot earths and what's going on there. So they did some modeling and what they determined is that there would be a boundary layer between the lower atmosphere and the upper atmosphere and the lower atmosphere would pretty much do a lot of raining and cooling, but not like it would just be a lot of like steaminess, a lot of water kind of evaporating into the atmosphere and a lot going on. The upper atmosphere would have evaporative cooling as well. And then rain would fall in the upper atmosphere but evaporate before it reaches the boundary layer that separates the upper and lower. But over time, all that evaporative cooling would cool the boundary layer and what would happen would be massive day loses on the scale of dumping like a tropical cyclone's worth of water in a matter of hours as opposed to days to weeks. So we take all of the water and put it into the atmosphere and when it comes down. It comes down fast. It comes down. It sounds like if humans could survive in this, which obviously they can't, but if they could and you went for a walk in that, you could drown on land. Yes. I mean, there would be mudslides, the likes of which there would be almost deserts to instant rivers. Like the, if you could imagine feet of water, the San Francisco Bay Area just had an atmospheric river come through and I saw on Mount Tamil Pius, there was some 15 to 16 inches of water that came down which is ridiculous. The rest of the Bay Area saw four to eight inches of different places, which is a lot. But can you imagine multiples of that coming down? I mean, just flooding and- So the silver lining though. The likes of which you can't even see Bob. The silver lining in that though is, at that point or perhaps the point before we got there, there'd be enough water in the atmosphere that you'd probably see a pretty drastic cooling of the earth. And this is one of those things. When you're worried about like, oh, what about the planet? The planet's going to be fine. It'll be fine. I mean, you're talking about cooling- It's going to go back to an ice age again at some point. Oh, eventually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not in our lifetimes. Not in our species life time. There'll be an asteroid impact between- I thought you meant cooling while this rain is going on because this model knows the surface of the earth and the surface of the oceans, the sea surface temperature in their model was 130 degrees Fahrenheit. That is, that's- That's insane. Yeah, that's really hot- But I would assume- Surface ocean water. But I wonder if they had to limit anything or had to take any kind of anything because it seems like that much atmospheric vapor would be reflecting sunlight. It would be preventing all of that heat from getting- Yes, so there is the reflux. That is contributing to the dynamics that boundary layer between the lower and the upper atmosphere and the formation of different clouds and how those clouds interact. So absolutely. Yes, there would be a lot of- A giant greenhouse effect because there would be a lot of water vapor in the air. Yeah, anyway, this research is published in Nature this week. And as I said, it takes note also of the possibility of being able to look at exoplanets and in other exoplanet news, some researchers working with- Which place is this? Researchers who were astronomers who are with NSF's Noir Lab. They partnered with California State University Fresno geologists to take a look at white dwarfs. They're studying the atmospheres of what are called polluted white dwarfs. Polluted white dwarfs are the dense collapsed cores of once normal stars like the sun that contain material from planets that got caught up in the destruction of the star and contaminated the star's atmosphere. And it's potentially what will happen to our sun someday and that our sun, because it has rocky planets, will one day have a polluted atmosphere that can be looked at. It's kind of funny to think of your sun having a polluted atmosphere, but it's a technical term, right? The researchers looked at 23 polluted white dwarfs about 650 light years from the sun and we're measuring different elements that were present. And what they determined is that these dwarfs have a wider range of elemental and molecular compositions than any of the inner planets in our solar system. So all of the white dwarfs they looked at had completely different distributions of molecules, which suggests that the rocky planets that surrounded them were very different from our earth. That maybe their rocky material was more porous in some cases, maybe it absorbed water better, maybe it had a higher melting point, maybe it had a lower melting point, maybe it was denser rocks. So because of the molecular compositions that they detected in these atmospheres, they're able to kind of take it back and say, think about all the different possibilities for rocky planets. They're not all gonna be like our earth. But what couldn't it be just like our earth also? Cause like the thing that I think that we're saying- It could be like our earth, but what they were saying is they're not. No, no, no, I know. But I think the thing that's missing from that is what gets, what is going on at the core of all these rocky planets? Like that's the thing we don't know. Like there could be so much different chemistry than we see in the rocks in the soil and as far down as we dug into a planet which really isn't that far down. You know, maybe the molten core is hiding all sorts of different molecular chemistry and elements than we expected to. Yeah, so perhaps- We're gonna have to blow up a planet to find out. That's so weird. Yeah, to see the full distribution of what's possible. Yeah, based on what we've seen so far though, the researchers say that our planets in our solar system have specific distributions of olivine and orthopyroxine and these other planets, they actually had to make up new names for the combinations of chemicals because we don't have them in our solar system and chemists and geologists hadn't really thought about them before. So they've come up with new classification nomenclature and that includes compounds like quartz pyroxanites and that has more than 10% each of orthopyroxine, clinopyroxine and quartz. There's also quartz orthopyroxanites. There's periclase dunnites, periclase warelites. I mean, the list goes on. They had to make up new names. How often does that happen in geology? Not very. Not very. Yeah, it kind of ruins my whole theory of the, you know, the sci-fi movies and they're out there mining asteroids and they're like, oh wait, you can only go over here to get this one now. And I'm like, that's nonsense. It's the same everywhere. Maybe that's very not true. Yeah. All right, Justin, you wanna bring some good news? Just good news. Hey, for those of you who are not fans of skiing, good news is it could be going away. This is an which would allow you to take taking the heights and the sights of a winter mountain range without all that pesky ice and snow. Stafford Shire University graduate, Rachel Carver and a professor of Fiona Tweed investigated the impacts of melting snow and ice on the future of tourism in a new paper published in Geography. Paper looked at how resorts are introducing a range of measures to prolong the ski season, including glacier blankets and artificial snow. So this is Rachel, she's explaining, I visited the Stubai Glacier in Austria on holiday and was intrigued by the fact that they were trying to conserve the ski industry. They left me asking lots of questions so I decided to go back and learn more. She found the site uses protective blankets to reduce ice melting and wind erosion so they actually put blankets down over the slopes to protect them. Oh, just tuck those ski slopes in, make them noise and coffee at night. You go to sleep now. And it's also transitioning from winter to summer type tourism. They're adding playgrounds, viewing platforms, trying to put in hiking trails, maybe even some mountain biking trails, kind of a thing. Surveying tourists saying, despite the environmental changes, if it was to be without ice and snow, 70% said they would still go to the site, they would still visit, citing the mountain scenery and hiking opportunities as reasons why they would continue to visit. What did the wildlife say? No, it didn't question the wildlife. You still visit the wildlife stuff? Didn't question the wildlife. But apparently resorts around the world are using similar strategies. Many now rely on snow machines to produce sufficient pack. Of course, the use of most snow and ice generation is ultimately contributing to the unsustainability because they're consuming energy, usually localized energy, that's usually fossil fuels that contributes to climate change. So this is, and this story was interesting to me too, because that's going to be a growing contradiction of the cause and effect and back to a solution temporarily that we're going to see everywhere, not just ski slopes, but as cities start to go underwater, they'll fire up diesel-powered pumping stations to pump the water. It's like the heat goes up outside, the air conditioners come on, the diesel-powered pumps are happening. I talked last week with Rebecca Helm and we were talking about the diesel-powered plastic picker-uppers for the ocean cleanup project very briefly, and yeah, there's a lot of that. And then they didn't talk to the wildlife and they also didn't talk to the people who depend on the meltwater from the glacier and the snow patch for their water. She's just found a thing for a thesis and is focused on that one thing. Just a little back up, back up. She's doing fine. It's just a dangerous narrative. Is mountain biking on that list? Yes, it was. She did suggest that mountain biking could be a thing, but Rachel says, at the rate we're losing glaciers, doing nothing is not an option for these industries. There will be a lot of people adversely affected by the economic impact of not having this tourism. It's interesting to see different solutions to the issue. Most places understand that these practices that they're using now aren't long-term solutions, but it is buying them time. As they move towards a transition to becoming, hopefully it's summertime tourist destination. Oh, but one of the other- It's summer all the time tourist destination. Oh man. One of the other things that they might do is plant grass. Apparently there are resorts in the Czech Republic where there's not enough snow, where they've planted grass and people go skiing down grassy hills. This seems dangerous. The other skiing is already dangerous. It's probably safer. No, because the snow is softer. At least you can see where the rocks are. Okay. Yeah, the snow isn't the problem. It's the rocks hiding under their skis. Humanity, we will adapt. Yeah, we will recreate. Of course, we're going to get the water for the all that grass. Your snow in different places. Oh. The downsides of things changing. As things are transitioning, though, Blair, how's the day to night transition going? Yeah, well, we're about to go through daylight savings time. That's because the, yeah, we're going back from daylight. We're going back to normal. I don't remember. But anyway, who knows what normal is at this point. But ultimately, Not me. Ultimately, we are messing with our clocks to adjust how many hours a day we have our lights on. And so because we are a diurnal species, but wild animals, they don't have clocks. They rely on their circadian rhythms, their internal clock, which is often dictated by light and dark in the natural world. And a study from Tel Aviv University and the Open University of Israel looked at male crickets in artificial light at night. Alan. I think I talked about this acronym on the show before, and it's one of my favorites because you can give that thing that is ruining wildlife a name. And Alan for ruining everything. So Alan messes with all sorts of activity cycles and all sorts of animals. Great example, dung beetles navigate using the Milky Way, lose their way when there's light pollution, see turtle hatchlings will go to the brightest surface in sight. And that's supposed to be the sea, but sometimes they end up in a shopping mall or on a street. So it's a problem for a lot of animals. And this one is specifically looking at crickets. So nocturnal crickets, they chirp to call females to come and mate with them. And there is a disruption from Alan that can interfere with reproductive processes and endanger entire species. So one of the reasons I picked this study is that there's a lot of SAS coming out of the research team and I wanna read some of the quotes to you. So Professor Karen Levy of the School of Zoology in the Steinhart Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University says, quote, the distinction between day and night, light and darkness is a major foundation of life on earth, but humans as creatures of the day who fear the dark disrupt this natural order. They produce artificial light that drives away the darkness and allows them to continue their activities at night. So more than 80% of the world population live under light pollution and the overall extent of Alan rises by 5% annually. It negatively impacts the environment, natural behaviors. This has all been developed over millions of years of evolution. This can affect sleep from animals, it can lead to high mortality, it can change activity cycles. And so this one in particular is looking at the field cricket, which is these guys are nocturnal chirpers and they chirp from sunset throughout the night and they end in the morning. They exposed field crickets to different levels of lifelong Alan and observed its impact on two fundamental behaviors, which was chirping and locomotion. And so they found that crickets exposed to 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of darkness, normal half and half cycle had cyclic activity rhythms of 24 hours. Crickets experienced a partial lighting in the dark periods, lost natural rhythms and their synchronization with their environment. 80% followed an individual inner cycle that they developed based on the weirdness and 5% lost all rhythm. Then when they took some crickets and exposed them to constant light, which is more what a lot of animals are experiencing, they developed their own cycle 71% of the time or lost all rhythm 29% of the time. That's a lot to have no rhythm at all. So Karen levies out again. She says, quote, they behave like teenagers on vacation alive or active or asleep according to their own inner clock or lacking any rhythm whatsoever. In fact, light pollution introduced or induced by humankind impacts the field cricket and evokes loss of synchronization within the individual on a population level and between the population and the environment. So the idea here is, yes, light pollution is bad. The more we look at it, the worse it is. So what you can do, we're not asking you to sit in the dark. What we do ask is to help protect the environment and the surroundings and the animals within it to turn off lights in your backyards, on your patio, on your terrace, in parking lots when you're not using them. Do not leave those on all night. Hell, that's really what needs to happen. You can draw your curtains, you can have your lights on inside. You have to remove the outdoor lighting whenever possible. I feel like this is something that is, it's doable for rural living for more less city urban living where you have more natural environments surrounding your property wherever you are. Urban living, though, you're in a concrete jungle and humans have turned the space into our own. Yeah, so there is less diversity and the animals and insects that have taken up habitation in the human environments are coming to adapt to that, I would think. No, that's absolutely true. And I will also throw out there that especially for city living, for urban living, please don't turn out the lights. Women walking alone at night would prefer that you keep the lights on. So there is that also. Hey, hey, Blair, Blair, I just had an observation because it seems to have come up before. Stop walking alone at night, it's that terrifying. I should be allowed to. Or move cities. Come to a city like Davis where that doesn't happen. A city, he says city. A village, a village with that where we, oh, gosh, we didn't even lock front doors. Yeah, well, the point is turn off your porch light. You probably don't even need to. Yeah, you can turn off the porch or have a motion sensor light so that it turns on when something comes close. But the other point that was brought up in the chat also is what about the extreme poles like the most northern or southern pole regions where they are very, but there was sunlight for six months. They don't have crickets. They don't have crickets. They have no crickets. If they do or don't, those animals are used to that. We're dealing with, like Karen said, millions of years of evolution to be adapted to certain cycles. And on the show, we've discussed how some animals have circadian rhythms based on light. Some have them based on temperature or precipitation. Yeah, absolutely. So there's all sorts of different things that can sway patterns, but there's a lot of animals that depend on light for those patterns. I will tell you, back in the days before the low-energy light bulbs, this little village of Davis was a lot darker. People didn't want to leave a 500 watt light bulb on the back porch. And I do recall, like growing up, you would always hear the crickets at night. You'd just hear it be like the symphony of crickets. I used to be used to falling asleep that way. And you don't hear it today. It's like they're gone. Ah, it could be insecticides too. Could be a lot of reasons. But I was staying out the middle of last year out in the farm, farmlands, and oh, the symphony of crickets was there. And it was so beautiful to know that they are still out there somewhere. It's just not in town anymore. Yeah, they're not in town anymore. They've moved on. And let's move on to promiscuity of proteins. Yes, promiscuous proteins. Researchers at EMBL Hamburg and CSSB have been looking at proteins in the gut that are transporter proteins. And what their job is, is to help move little bits of digested material, proteins, peptides of proteins, which are little segments of proteins. They're designed to move these peptides, parts of proteins across the gut barrier out of the lumen of the gut into the circulation and to places where it can be taken to places where it can be used to build new things for your body, to be the materials, the building blocks that we need. And there are about 800 different transport systems dedicated to specific nutrients in our gut. There's a lot, very specific, except there are a couple, a few, that are promiscuous. That means they don't care what kind of protein peptide they're picking up. They're like, ooh, you look like a blonde. You look like a redhead. I mean, whatever. You look like you just fell off a truck. Come on. And so these particular transporters, PEP T1 and PEP T2, they sit in the cell membrane of the intestine wall and they just grab whatever they can grab. They're like, oh, I like you. You're fantastic. Let's hang out. And anyway, they're grabbing whatever they can grab, moving it across the cell wall. And researchers at these organizations decided that they needed to find out what the molecular structure of this transport protein, PEP T1 and PEP T2 are, what it looks like, how they can build something that will work with the transporter to allow for better drug design. Because when you eat a pill, you take a pill, a lot of the drugs that we design have poor uptake. That means that they have to put a huge dosage into the pill that you take because only a small amount of it gets across the transporters and across that barrier of the gut. So better drug design can lead to more efficient drugs that enable the drugs that we need to get into our bodies to make us healthier. So knowing what the transporters looks like, we can create drugs that can get picked up more easily by these promiscuous transporters. So a couple of things. One, I guess the transporter's just moving it across the barrier. It's not taking it to a final destination. It's not taking it to a final, yeah, the transporter is just the movement across the membrane. So something else somewhere else goes, oh, this is what we can use over here. And we're gonna break you down over here to, okay. So this sounds like just like a, it's interesting that some would be very specific and others would be total generalists. Yeah, which it is intriguing. It is intriguing. I mean, it allows the cell to structure itself in a way that allows the cell to work efficiently, right? You put all your sugar transporters in one area or you have particular vitamin transporters or, you know, whatever it happens to. And in a way, you have sort of a limiting effect of how much of those proteins are being brought through at any given time, I guess. Exactly, so those rate limiters. Then it's their ability then to connect with these proteins, which becomes the interesting thing because the other, the transport ones, they've got the key and lock sort of like, have to like have the right VIN number or whatever, like however you want to phrase it. On the protein that they're grabbing, they have to have the compatible mechanism for grabbing it to bring it, but the universals don't. So yeah, creating a drug that can fit that universal lock picking, whatever, however, analogy of how two proteins can engage. That's, yeah, fascinating. It's a smart tactic, right? I'm impressed. Good job, researchers. And it makes me think then if it's flexible enough to grab anything that this also, it makes me imagine that it would be, for some reason, the less, because it's less specific, that it would be an older transport mechanism. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know, yeah, that's an interesting point. I have no idea. They did say, so they looked at it using cryo electron microscopy and they were able to not just determine the structure of the transporter, but also capture it in different states as it moved peptides along the transport cycle. So they saw it change its conformation as it moved. Because what happens is when these transporters grab a peptide, that forces the molecule to change its shape. That usually opens some other kind of channel and that allows more movement and then that changes another conformation and then you finally get the molecule, the peptide in question all the way across the transport chain and the transporter has gone through this really wonky Rubik's, the long snake Rubik's cube kind of manipulation to get that peptide across, but they were able to visualize the entire process in molecular detail like a film, which is very, I mean, the fact that we're doing this now is so amazing. This is the next movie I wanna see. Yes, I'll watch that movie. All right, Justin, you have more good news for us or you're gonna bash on Australia now, maybe? Oh, is it the Australia story? Yeah, okay, let me find the Australia story. So this is at the United Nations Climate Summit in Glasgow, which we've been talking about a little bit tonight and it's been going on, it's still going on. There's more than 90 nations have signed a global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% and actually, this is of all of the sort of goal setting that they've done, this one is ambitious. They're saying by 2030, which I'm not a mathematician, but we're almost at 2022, so that's about an eight year timeframe. Yeah, which eight years, I mean, isn't it methane has its half-life is like eight years? It's very half-life. It's much faster than the carbon. But yeah, most of the goal setting has been 2050, which you look at the average age of the people who are signing on this, none of them are gonna be here in 2050, very few, very few are gonna be here in 2050. Yeah, that's the problem with these. They keep picking timelines where they're like, won't be my problem. Exactly, so Australia has refused to sign. What's wrong with Australia, you ask? Well, okay, so methane is emitted in coal and gas production, but it also is emitted in livestock and other agricultural activities. And almost half of Australia's annual methane emissions come from their agriculture sector. So this is me defending Australia's decision, or no, not me, this is the energy and emissions reduction minister, Agnes Taylor. Who is saying that while Australia has pledged net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, they didn't wanna say how they would do it or set specific targets for doing so. And this is me saying, I agree that they have a point, reducing by a blanket percentage ignores unique economies and individual nations and what their dependence is on specific emitting greenhouse gases. So just targeting methane is gonna affect some nations, more than other nations. If he's just said coal carbon, that would maybe be a different set of nations that would be affected. Oh, we just only wanna, we're gonna first focus on the emissions from computer servers. Right, like these are all different things. So yeah, the national party leader, Barnaby Joyce. Gosh, they have fun names here. Who's probably, I know nothing about the national party. I don't know if I agree with him on anything else. But he came out and said that signing the pledge would be a disaster, saying the only way you can get 30% by 2030 reduction methane levels in 2020 levels would be to grab a rifle and go out and start shooting your cattle. Wow, that's extreme. That's an image, yeah. But it's- How about methane capture? How about from industry? How about- But this is, yeah, and if it depends on where your methane's coming from, right? If it's coming from industry and not agriculture, maybe that's a solution. So here's what I kind of agree with with that statement on that level. Like, yeah, that sounds, that's a, well, I don't agree with it, like that you shouldn't try to do it. Maybe that is the solution. We could have a, you know, like, go out there and get on some horses and go around and shoot a bunch of cattle. You know, I'm sure there's people you could recruit who would enjoy that. China, Russia, India, and Iran also declined to sign the pledge. Again, 30% before 2030. Fun fact, India who didn't sign is the world's fourth largest exporter of beef. India? That I wouldn't have guessed. For a number of reasons that probably need to be removed from my brand immediately. Yeah, they're just behind the USA, which is the third biggest exporter. Brazil is number one, with about a quarter of all beef exports globally, which if you're wondering is exactly why they're cutting down the rainforest, burning them down is to make more room for cows so they can send more beef. So then that's a problem in two different ways, right? Now you've got more cows and less trees. Okay, that's exports. US is the largest producer of beef. We make more beef. We just, I guess, don't export as much as Brazil because we have more people eating it at home. But none of this is the point of the story. It's that the Paris Agreement's targets remain just that, targets. Australia and India, to their credit, did not sign, but perhaps are being on in us honest enough to say we actually can't reach those goals. Yeah. So who did sign? The US and Brazil, right? The biggest exporter in the world and the biggest producer in the world, both signed it, while actually increasing beef production every year. Well, so far. Part of the problem is I cringe every time when they say net zero. Exactly, that's a big part of the problem is it's, oh, but we'll fix it later. Or oh, but we'll take away what we give. And it's, no, you need to be reducing emissions. Reduce your emissions. I don't want to hear net zero anymore. I don't want to hear people talking about net emissions because that doesn't matter. What matters is what you're throwing in. Yeah. Not what you plan on taking out later. And I think one of the big things here is from COP26 this year, they just had the financial portion or they started the financial portion and everybody's very excited about the carbon markets. And from this, what it makes me conclude is that we can increase what we're throwing in because we're going to turn this into an investment opportunity. It's going to be investing in trees somewhere else or investing in other aspects of what these carbon markets are. Yeah, so it is a shell game and it's greenwashing because it's not solving the initial problem. Yeah, so a couple of things that I thought was like, if you're India and Australia being some of the biggest exports of beef, if the global nations are saying, we want you to cut by 30%, that's who you're selling to. But on the other hand, if they stay out of it, do the nations who are still importing beef from them, do they count that as carbon usage? They certainly don't currently. So it's a ridiculous thing. Like the UK has no problem. Yeah, we don't mind doing that at all. 75% of their beef comes from Australia. Almost all of their pork, I think, comes from Denmark. America can say, ah, yeah, we're going to reduce our beef usage and then open up cattle farms in Mexico or import more from Brazil. So the whole thing's kind of ridiculous. But here's the final thought that I got on all this here. The fact that US and Brazil are signing it while actually still making no sign that they're going to decrease beef production or methane. This is what I was going to do a punchline earlier. I should probably skip it. But it's like, again, I'm no expert on dictionaries or textbook definitions. But it seems like BS. Oh, I'm sorry, it took too long. You're timing and delivery on this one. Well, it was because I got caught but I made good points in interjecting. Right before I got to the final line and I thought, ah, I can recover. Why write a thing and then never go back to it? But it was too late. Yeah. You want to know who couldn't recover? Smilodon. Smilodon. Smilodon couldn't recover from its hip dysplasia. Like a German shepherd? Like a German shepherd. Yes. Researchers just publishing in scientific reports this week and doing research on species samples from the right femur of a Smilodon fatalis saber-toothed cat from the Pleistocene age Rancho Lebrea asphalt seeps in California. They did cat scans of the cat's femur. To determine the degenerative state of the femur. And they know from lots of other samples from different cats that have been held in other collections is that there is a certain amount of degeneration on the femur. And they wanted to determine what the cause was whether this was a chronic problem over the life of the animal whether it was caused from infection or whether it was a late life like arthritic problem caused by the attacking large mammoths. And as they liked to do was it were these things from injuries? Anyway, they took these cat scans of the cat's femurs and were able to kind of determine that the way that the femurs looked indicated a congenital problem, hip dysplasia. And so they think that Smilodon fatalis had a genetic disorder and was prone to hip dysplasia. And from this, and this is where it makes the jump that I think is questionable at best because this is like evolutionary psychology of an animal long dead. But they are suggesting from this that the Smilodon social groups were very social and that they supported their ailing individuals because individuals with a problem like hip dysplasia would not be able to survive as long as the damage to this particular bone on this one fossil that they looked at. Not a lot of fossils that they looked at just one fossil they looked at that individuals would not have lived long enough because they wouldn't have been able to hunt with their bad hips. But they could have scavenged, right? They could have scavenged, right? Yeah, they could have scavenged for sure. Yeah, you know, I get why modern day humans are always amazed to find out that other life forms don't send their old people away to die. But I feel like, I really feel like in a lot of other human cultures in the past, different variations of the modern human or in the animal kingdom itself, just disposing of the elderly isn't as common as we would like to imagine it to be. Well, except in cats, there's not a lot of social cats. Right, I mean, but big cats. So we don't have the evidence of hip dysplasia that we have in cats. We have, say, the Maine Coon large cats that are prone to hip dysplasia. But we don't have a lot of evidence from the big wild cats. But in big wild cats, like lions, they have prides that they live in together. They are social. Tigers are a bit different though. They don't have the same kind of social structures. Yeah, so it's, you know, this is making a jump. But, you know, it's kind of neat to think that Smilodon could have been really social, had a big happy family, taken care of them and didn't send grandma out to pasture. That seems like a huge jump. It's a big jump based on one femur. Come on. How do they know this thing didn't die immediately when the hip dysplasia set in? Yeah. You know, the other thing that occurs to me. Molecular bone evidence, yes. The other thing that really quickly, I know we're on a tight 90 tonight, but the other thing that kind of occurs to me is. I know we are, but. If you're like the old bison of the pack, it's not that the group puts you out to pasture and just bales on you and lets you get eaten by a wolf. It's that the wolf. The Smilodons who are working together, they're gonna kill that bison. No, no, no, no, I don't think so. Oh yeah, the Smilodons will do it or the wolves will do it. There's some predator that's gonna like target the old because they're easier to catch. So something comes along, sees a disabled Smilodon decides, oh, I'm making me a lot of that. That looks like a disabled animal. I should have a good run at, you know, it's not walking around and moving or anything. It should have no problem eating it. And then they get close enough to, you know, attack. It finds out it's a Smilodon. And then the Smilodon eats once again and then becomes a stationary hunter. Oh, Smiley. That's why it was smiling. It really was. This is This Week in Science. I hope you're smiling because we're bringing you the science once again. All the science news just for you and your friends that you tell about twist because you really should be telling your friends about us. I mean, seriously, everybody needs to know about this stuff. You can have some great conversations because of the stuff that we're talking about. We're having great conversations. You can have great conversations. Tell your friends about twists. Thank you for listening. All right, let's come back for a quick COVID update. This is a happy one. Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. I'm the happy one. I know, yes, full CDC authorization, emergency youth's authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 for five to 11 years of age in the United States. The panel of reviewers at the CDC, at the ASIP and CDC who reviewed all the evidence, many of them admitted to being parents themselves and how optimistic the data made them feel and how confident the data made them feel about vaccinating their children. So vaccines for kids under fives, you still have to wait, but it will be coming. That data is definitely on the way. And in case you didn't hear us talk about it last week, this dosage is still a two shot dose of the vaccine, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for five to 11 year olds. It is a third of the dose, smaller dose, but because of the way that they have to do the mixing, it's actually like a bigger, but more less concentrated dose than the dose that adults get. It's a third of the total mRNA spike protein that adults get. Is this one also called? Co-co-mer- Co-mer-n-r-t-t? Co-mer-n-r-t-t? Co-mer-n-r-t-t? Co-mer-n-r-t-t? Co-mer-n-r-t-t? Co-mer-n-r-t-t? Co-mer-n-r-t-t? Co-mer-n-r-t-t? And everyone's just still calling it the Pfizer vaccine and they're like, all right, I give up. Yeah, this is not because it's a different dosage, so they're not calling it that at this point. Cool. Yeah. But yeah, there's a lot of details. We've got a link to a post on a newsletter from one of our medical friends, Jeremy Faust, who used to do the brief 19 postings. And now he has a newsletter called Inside Medicine that you can subscribe to. Got some great posts for people interested in medicine. And then, okay, we've talked before. I've reported on an antidepressant called fluvoxamine and a couple of studies that have come out over the last year, suggesting that fluvoxamine could be beneficial as a treatment for COVID-19, that once people have COVID-19, if fluvoxamine is administered taken, a pill taken in a particular dosage daily, that it could help minimize the progression of the disease, keeping people out of the hospital, that kind of stuff. The data was very minimal until a new study was just published in the Lancet Global Health on October 27th last week, a randomized placebo-controlled trial in which 1497 people who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 were split up into a couple of groups, half got fluvoxamine and half got placebo. The article's authors conclude that the drug reduced the need for hospitalization based on their measures, their outcomes that they set. And so, they are posting a lot and they have also signed up for a patent on the use of fluvoxamine for this particular purpose in treatment COVID-19. And they are telling doctors, they think that fluvoxamine should be part of drugs that are administered for treatment. That said, there are several researchers who are calling foul, saying they're not convinced by the results that some of the data that was shared was a little bit cherry-picked and that the data does not necessarily confirm that fluvoxamine is beneficial in the way that the authors have concluded. So, fluvoxamine, it could be a new thing. This is a randomized-controlled trial. It's not a double-blinded trial, however, and it was a concern of some reviewers that because of the side effects of fluvoxamine, which can be pretty intense, people may have realized that they were not in the placebo group and doctors would have realized as well. But anyway, it's questionable, but it may be something that doctors use for their patients and if, and it could be the right thing for some people. We don't know yet, but this is the scientific process and it's unfortunate that it rolls out so quickly in the public eye. But yeah, I just think it's important that our audience know that there is, that there is, even though the paper is out, there is still scientific discussion of how the data was analyzed and the results and how we should read the results for our use. Yeah, there's a, there's a, there are connections between biotech pharmaceutical companies and the medical health industry. Yeah, many, many, many, many. That often get called out when they're transparent. Most of these connections are not transparent. It's one of those things that we saw during the opioid crisis where pharmaceutical companies were making diagnostic, writing diagnostic advice that then were being used by by pharmacists or not by pharmacists, but by doctors. They had financial incentives to doctors and people who were using those medications and saying great things about products that turned out not to be true at all. Who then lobbied against government and saying, oh, hey, we need these things. Why aren't you letting us have them? And then, you know, there's a, you need more than one study is what I'm saying. You need like three or four of these. Right, there need to be many studies and hopefully now that they have this larger sample, maybe it will be picked up in a larger, for a larger investigation, double-blind, controlled, however they can do that. You know, maybe somebody else will have a population that they can apply this to and see if it works. Yeah, it's always a problem, I think, when you have the people developing a drug come out with the data themselves. It feels like this should be a different way. So this group, they're not developed. The drug is a long-time drug. It's a drug that is out of, it's in a generic patent, but, and it was part of a larger survey called the Together Trial. It's an international trial to try and find potential treatments for COVID-19 out of drugs and other compounds that are currently in use and that were high possibility and probability. So like Ivermectin was one of these things that people have been looking at, Fluvoxamine is another, but this group, this group, they have applied for the patent for the use of Fluvoxamine for COVID-19 treatment. So it's a very specific use patent. Oh, interesting. So here's the thing somebody else already developed that we're applying for a patent for the application of a thing that somebody else already did the research and development on. Because it's a new use. Hang on, all we need, all we need is a study that says, yes, you can use it for this. And we didn't have to do any research and development aspect. We can just profit off of selling the drug immediately. Nice thing, yeah. Sounds like, and I think that's the problem. It's like, the problem is the lack of ability a lot of people have to trust this system is that it lacks transparency and has obvious financial motives, right? Like that combination sucks for people going, I trust that that information is good. It makes it very hard for people to trust what information is good. And let me ask you this, let me ask you this. If they get approved and a million people take this drug and it just doesn't kill them or whatever. And then in five years from now, we find out, actually it shouldn't have had any effect in other studies, you've shown that there's no effect. No effect, yeah. Is there any negative recourse? No, zero, zilch. So of course, if you're a hedge fund operator or whatever the heck that put the money to buy this patent, and then did the study? I don't believe it. Ah, it caught on me skeptic. Yeah, and they don't, and the other aspect of this is that nobody knows how Fluvoxamine would have any effect on COVID-19. Lack of mechanism information. What, nobody knows that at all. It's like, why would it have any effect? Is it anti-inflammatory somehow? Is it, you know, maybe that's what it is, but nobody knows why it would be working. It's just that the researcher who is, what the head researcher on the study, she was taking Fluvoxamine while she had COVID-19 and she had a nice go of it, I guess, and went, that's great, let's study it. Well, what if all these people had undiagnosed depression and this actually helped them in another way and they felt they felt better? Hey, hey, hey, hey, you know what would be really depressing, getting COVID. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, vaccines are out everybody. I hope that people are, if you are able, getting a booster, if you are qualified and able to keep your antibodies up and keep yourself healthy for the holidays. And if you are able to vaccinate your children, that you can get your children vaccinated so that our schools and our social places can be healthy this season when we want to meet and greet one another. I like the vaccine so much, I got it three times. Good job. I haven't been able to yet, but I'm looking forward to it. This is This Week in Science. If you love this show, head over to twist.org and buy a calendar. You want to plan 2022 with twists? You know you do. Head over to twist.org, click on the giant toad in the sidebar and buy yourself a calendar. Buy a friend a calendar, make it a holiday gift because twist keeps you going through the year with science, curiosity, and fun science-y holidays and all of Blair's amazing Animal Corner art of which there is brand new work for the calendar this year. Can't wait to show everybody. So twist.org, get yourself a calendar. And if you like me, if you like me, you're in one room. You look at the calendar and you go, okay, it looks like it's Wednesday. Then you go into another room and you're like, ah, what day is it again? Having a second calendar in that other room allows you to check a second because you don't have to walk all the way back to where that first calendar is. You go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Wednesday. The calendar says the same thing here. And now coming back, it is time on This Week in Science for that fluffy bunny time of the show. I guess full of death and murder this week. Yes, that's correct. It's Blair's Animal Corner. Blair! A creature, great and small. Biped, milliped, no bread at all. You wanna hear about this animal, she's your girl. Except for a giant animal that's grown. What you got, Blair? I have a spooky story about dead female flies, luring male flies to come and mate with them. Wait, what? But it is not the female fly, it is the fungus that has taken over their brain. Wow! Wait, what? This is crazy. So, there's a housefly. They are covered in tiny white spores. Turns out, they were invaded by a fungus. It took over their brain and manipulated them into flying to find the highest perch that it could. And from there, they send their spores into the air and infect as many healthy flies as they can. Just for fun or, I don't know, bonus points, I don't know. They're trying to mate with, they convince males, these dead female flies covered in spores, convince males to come and mate with them. And in the process, get infected. So, they're covered in dots, they're swollen with rot. And the males are like, yeah, yeah, I hit that. So, this study looked at why. Why is this happening? What is the mechanism that this fungus is using to make this happen? It appears that the fungus creates something akin to a love potion, releasing chemicals that lure the flies to increase their chances of infection. Yeah, so this started with some anecdotal evidence, just of observations, seeing some flies, male flies, trying to mate with the corpses of females that had died of the fungus Entomothora musce. The fungus. And so, it would make sense that this would help it spread, but why are the males doing this? So this is a study out of University of Copenhagen and they tested whether the attraction is sexual and the fungus is luring healthy males to dead females. So they infected female flies with the fungus, sorry ladies, just after they died, they placed them in a petri dish and each time then added a healthy male and recorded whether they approached the dead female, how long it spent there and whether they tried to mate. He then also did control experiments that included uninfected females that were still dead that were frozen to death because you gotta eliminate the variables, right? So males were five times as likely to try to mate with a dead female when she had died from the fungus. Sometimes the vigorous mating attempt, let loose a cloud of spores that they could see, but even simple contact was enough to infect the male. Then in another experiment, healthy males were able to choose between two dead females in the same dish, one infected and one not. Males tried to mate more often overall when there was an infected female nearby than when there was two dead, uninfected females, but they didn't distinguish, which means they weren't being lured specifically to the infected female. Something about the presence of her. It was just been put in the mood. It's like an aphrodisiac, yes. So they think the fungus releases some sort of sensory mating cue. So then they wanted to see if it was the spores specifically, this is very methodical, placed four male flies in a small chamber containing two opaque Petri dishes inside each Petri dish. They had a fly-sized entrance and in it was a piece of flypaper, one dusted with fungal spores and the other not. In 43 trials, all of the flies landed on the paper with fungal spores. But- Oh, in industry use then perhaps. Oh, perhaps. I don't know if you want those fungal spores everywhere though. Yeah, of course, why not? They're not making me do anything terrible, like have sex with a dead person. Oh, geez. Yeah, well. Well, I'm just saying, like it's having the effect on flies, not on humans. Not on humans. I hope. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. I hope. The kind of the hypothesis moving forward is that there is a strong odor of the fungus, this grassy sweet smell that is part of the appeal. So how did they test that? It's very methodical. Placed an electrode on the tip of the flies antennae, showed whiffs of the fungus, stimulated an electrical current in the brain. So it was the fungus, it was the smell of the fungus. This is exactly what was happening. And so they also looked, they worked with the chemical ecologists. Fancy fungal perfume. Yeah, and they found flies infected with the fungus had many more chemicals than did healthy flies. And the presence and abundance of those varied with how long the fly had been infected. So I don't really have a big conclusion to this one. This is just crazy. This is just another crazy thing that fungus has done, figure out how to propagate and holy, wow. I just feel really bad for the fly and that photo Kiki just had up. That male fly that's attempting to mate with a dead female covered in spores. Cause you know, all of his friends have seen that picture now. Right. And they're like, I mean that fly's mother has seen that picture. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's not a good look. So wrong. No, no, no. Well, there you go. There's that. That's gonna be a movie. Yeah, you know it. Yeah, yeah. And the next version of the fly is going to be so different. Yeah. Than my uncle Jeff Colbloon's version. Speaking of horror films, imagine a baby born with an urge to kill. No, I don't want to. I'm not talking about some horror flick. I'm actually talking about cuckoos. Talked about cuckoos on the show. A bunch flew over the cuckoo's nest? Yes, the brood parasites when the mothers wait around, they wait until they see that a mother bird of another species has laid its eggs. When they fly off to find food, the cuckoo mom swoops down, lays her egg in the nest as it's your problem now. When the natural mother returns, she can then nurture the egg as if it were her own. And when the cuckoo's born, I don't know, maybe she suspects, maybe not. But ultimately that baby got some free childcare. So this study is looking at why brood parasites, these hatchlings, so when they're born, it's not enough that they got this free incubation. They want all of the resources. And so depending on the brood parasite, many species have different ways of these chicks trying to kill off the other chicks in the nest so they get more of that mother's resources. Some of them, like the cuckoo pushes the eggs out of the nest, they actually hatch early. This is part of their strategy. They hatch before the other eggs and then they push the other ones out of the nest. So they get full attention. Others will peck other chicks to death. Other will push rival chicks out of the way for food so that they starve. But ultimately the point of this study, which I'd never really thought about, is newly hatched chicks should not have the strength to do any of those things. Some, the cuckoo pushing the egg out of the nest, that is equivalent to a newborn baby pushing a bowling ball off of a table. So, yeah, how did they get so strong? Yeah, you gotta be yoked. Forgive the pun. Do you guys know? So anyway. Yeah, we're waiting for that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so it turns out they're working out in the egg. Yes. Researchers collected 437 eggs. They're doing like a Rocky montage? Yes. Yes. Researchers collected 437 eggs from 14 bird species, some parasitic, some not, from multiple countries on different continents. The eggs were then placed in a brooder and studied using an egg buddy, which is a device that shines a harmless laser into the egg and can measure movement of the embryo. And they're doing squats. They're doing squats over there. They found that the parasitic embryos moved around in the egg more than the non-parasitic birds and they found that that made them stronger than they would be otherwise upon hatching, which made them strong enough to push eggs out of a nest, peck other chicks, push other chicks out of the way. You name it. So, this is just, it's one of those things where you didn't read the book for the book report, and then you do so much work to get your work done on that book report. You should have just read the book. I feel like that's what this is, right? Like the mother is showing up. She's casing the joint. She's like, okay, wait for that other mom to, okay, great, it's time to go, strike. But also then the chick has to be doing squats on the egg. They come out, they have to do all this work to eliminate the competition. It's just so much work. So also, also there's another fun aspect to this, which is the, I think it's the mother, will sing near that nest enough to imprint on the baby cuckoo so that it's not just getting the, so it learns its native tongue because it's hearing it from a nearby bird that's probably singing more often than whatever bird that's sitting in the nest just chilling. Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Isn't it just easier cuckoo mom to just raise your baby? I don't know, just a thought. Yeah. Yeah, it just seems like so many hoops to jump through to not do a simple thing, like build a nest and sit on an egg. And mean to other birds too. Like it's like, I'm taking what you have, I like your house, you need different babies, take care of my babies, and yeah. So if any, my babies are gonna be very, very, very strong. If any fetuses are listening to the show tonight, and especially if it's a multiple pregnancy, like if you got a twin or a triplet in there, start working out. You got to take care of number one, you know? Just saying. Who's supposed to do squats now? The fetuses, do you think anyone takes headphones of our show and puts them to their stuff, to their stuff to have their fetus listen to it? I hope so, I want little babies to be listening to my babies. They do, they do. By the time they're getting into the seven month range, they're working out pretty consistently. Human bambininis, no, not mentally, like physically. They're like punching, they're like, the last Rocky movie was like 40% montage of workout video. That's basically what a seven to eight month year old bambinini is doing. When one of my best friends was pregnant, I guess almost two years ago now, one day towards the very end of her pregnancy, I saw a fist just comes, like you was punching. I just saw a full imprint of a fist coming out of her tummy. It was, it was wild. And then the alien came out. Yeah, exactly, like, oh my God, that's crazy. Talk about a nest parasite, oh my goodness. It's, there's something like, there's a, you do a movement check when you're pregnant, not that I've ever had an alien inside of me. But you can just, you know, you feel for that motion, those kicks, those punches, those twirls, those like, you know, poking the belly button from the other side or grabbing a hold of your bladder, all the crazy things that take place in there. Yeah, playing jump rope with it, right? That's the thing. Yeah, and you're, and if you sit for an hour, there's like X amount of movements you should be able to, but it's really insane. Like, there's a reason men don't have babies. There's like a hormone download or upload or however hormones work. There's, it must be a huge thing that happens within a woman who is pregnant that keeps them from just freaking the hell out. Because it's not a thing. About the alien parasite that has taken over their body. Yes. Yeah, it's like, if somebody outside of you is poking you, that's annoying enough. Somebody's poking you from the inside. Oh gosh. Yeah. This is This Week in Science. We hope that you are enjoying the show. Please take a minute to head over to twist.org and get yourself a calendar for 2022. You'll be thanking yourself next year. All right, Justin, do you have some stories? But of course, but of course. This is researchers from University of College London Geography and the University of Nottingham and the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology. Combined large data sets with environmental flow to look at basically changes that would come in river flow between one to three degrees Celsius rise in the Earth's temperature. Now that one to three is kind of an important number because that's the Paris climate. The agreement, they're saying 1.5 Celsius and no further they have mandated for the Earth's climate, despite not having actually mandated any Earthling to make that happen. But they've have told the climate, here you stop and no further. So this is, they looked basically at rivers, the research published in Earth's Future shows increased risk of ecological change with warming and particularly in seasonal flows. I'm gonna skip to the, basically the rivers that are projected to be the most at risk are the Amazon and Piranha in South America, the Limpopo and Orange Rivers and Southern Africa and Australia's Darling River. So all Southern Hemisphere. Does that kind of like raise any alarm with either of you that it seems like the largest impacts are going to be in the Southern Hemisphere? Yeah, the countries that contribute least, is that right? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And so the countries who are contributing more are going to experience less problems and therefore react faster or slower. That was always gonna be the case though because the most technologically linked communities are burning the most fossil fuels and they have the most insulation against the effects of climate change as humans. So there's that, but there's also just the way water distributes on our planet. And it turns out like if you adjust, we've already seen in the past, the water rise is not going to be equal everywhere. Water will rise much higher on the Southern Hemisphere. That's just how oceans work. It's just more ocean down there. They're gonna get more rise, they're gonna get larger swells, than they will in the North. Part of that also has to do with this weird effect of, once we melt the ice caps on the North Pole, there's actually a little slight expansion of the planet, the land. And so the effects of that water rise are going to be less the closer yard of the North Pole. Anyway, this was basically the final thought here was Professor Thompson who was part of the study noted, people will need to consider how you do trade-offs between the environment, agriculture and other human demands for water. As the climate warms, you need more water for irrigation, but you may have less water in the river. How do you prioritize competing demands for a finite resource that will require a lot of political will underpinned by sound science? And again, and again, we have this, the Paris Agreement, not a whole lot of that, you know, urgency thing going on. Yeah, and knowing that right now we have salmon that don't have enough water in the Klamath River Basin because they shut down the water. We had fights in Oregon over the salmon versus agriculture water resourcing. We have a 20% reduction in water that's going to be going to Phoenix, Arizona next year. They've already said they're gonna be reducing the water. So it's not just, you know, in these South American far off distant places from our Northern hemisphere life, it's happening everywhere, but yeah. But yes, the countries that are causing the problems are not the ones that are gonna be feeling the massive brunt of it. I mean, that's true at the country level, it's true at the continent level, it's also true at the community level. A lot of the time the communities within countries who feel the strongest impacts of climate change are the ones contributing the least. So it's a common thread. Very common, yes, hit against it. You got more good news for us, Justin? Okay, yeah, this is actually, this does touch on something you talked about, about the finance sector taking on climate change. This is the UK Finance Minister, Rishi Sunak, said Wednesday he plans to make Britain, the world's first net zero financial services center. They spelled center wrong, but that's a question. Oh, yes, yes, ye olde center, I get it. So I'm quoting it. Quoting Sunak, this means we are going to move towards making it mandatory for firms to publish a clear deliverable plan. We're going to move towards making it mandatory for firms to publish a clear deliverable future plan. As the UK aims for net zero economy by 2050. If moving towards having companies come up with a plan that sounds like and someday making an effort, then if that's what it sounds like to make an effort, then one day I will move closer to making an effort in the general direction of finding a way to eat my hat. I might have messed that one up too. So the government actually wants this to be enforced by 2023 and wants to set up an independent time task force. This would be one removed from government, I would assume to define what is required. Let the financial people tell you what we should do financially. We know what to do, yes. This is what I was gonna say. If that independent task force is made up of so much as one financial sector banking insider, I say you burn them all as witches. Because an independent task force for a government mandate, I think only means nobody from the government will be involved, but I have a feeling, like I would love for it to be different. I would love that independent task force made up of only government people who are hired scientists who study climate change or something of this nature. I doubt that's what's gonna happen. Okay, so. Scientists in government, Justin, what are you talking about? Study was done by a group of environmental groups, including Greenpeace, found the UK's financial sectors, carbon emissions exceeded the net annual output of most countries in 2019. So the investment by the UK's financial sector exceeded the net output of most countries when in terms of how much carbon emissions was involved in their investment and their holdings. So it goes on to say that that report goes on to say, firms will not be legally obligated or obliged to commit to net zero, which again is a vacuous term. Zero. And they could have different targets while investments in carbon intensive activities could still be allowed. Sunak insisted on the need to mobilize the private sector to tackle climate change. Again, you're mobilizing the sector that has the profit margin motive, not the sector that you have part of, which is the maintaining human health and, you know. Anyway. We should have the paint companies get together to maybe discuss removing lead from their products if they feel like it. If they feel like it. Yeah, maybe. So there are some people who signed on. The lead, you know, it's just some money. There are some people, well, we just just get rid of lead and gasoline. Like the last country finally stopped using lead in their gasoline this year. Among the signatories to this financial alliance, nonsense, net zero, HBSC, Bank of America and Santander, which most people, have you guys ever heard of the Santander Bank? No. Okay. This Santander Bank is famous or infamous in the auto industry for offering the most outrageously high interest rates to people with low credit scores. So at least that bank has a lot of experience burying people. Were you writing a stand-up bit tonight, Justin? Yeah. He's trying out for John Oliver. Yeah. Did I really? No, it's just, you know, no fault of my own. But the jokes are writing themselves if you read anything coming out of the current Paris Agreement, UN agreement to do, make an agreement for a Paris Agreement later. The jokes are writing themselves. I'm not a comedian. This thing is just ridiculous on its face. Yep. Let's end this show with some brain-y science. I'm sorry, we were cheeky, but I think we're out of time. We got to the 90 minute threshold. You might have to bring this thing. Just kidding. I have two stories. I have two stories. And you want to hear these because, you know, people have been very down about climate change, about the pandemic, about many things. Down. And we've, I talked a couple of weeks ago about a woman who had a brain implant to treat her untreatable chronic depression. But there's a new method that may work just as well, may work for and not require people to have a device implanted in their heads. Coming out of Stanford University School of Medicine is ST. Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy. ST. You can also call it Stanford Neuromodulation Therapy. It is individualized, so the researchers use MRI to determine proper locations to focus transcranial magnetic stimulation. And they have a focused high-intensity beam of magnetic field that, or magnetic field that is focused into a very specific location in the brain. And it's a slightly different location for different people. But it has to be a particular area of the brain that is involved in regulating executive function, problem-solving, inhibiting unwanted responses. So inhibiting your depression or the way that you respond to things. They stimulated at 1,800 pulses per session. So normally transcranial magnetic stimulation for neurological disorders is at about 600 pulses per session. They've upped it to a level that has been used for disorders like Parkinson's disease to this 1,800 pulses per second. And instead of providing the transcranial stimulation one day, one session every day for like six weeks, they gave participants 10, 10-minute treatments with 50 minutes in between. So over 10 hours, basically you go in for your 10-minute treatment, you got 50 minutes off. 10-minute treatment, 50 minutes off. Magnets to the brain, 50 minutes off. Magnets to the brain, 50 minutes off. The participants, not a huge number of them, but the participants that they involved in the study, they said they felt a little tired for a day or so after, but then things cleared up. And the results that they are reporting with this treatment is that over 50% of the not placebo group, of the actual treatment group, met the FDA criteria for remission. And it was remission over several months. So people, their depression went away and was gone for months afterwards. That's wild. Yeah, magnets to the brain. This is great. I love the idea of non-pharmaceutical, intervention. Pure viewed, also I'll say, intervention. That's very neat. So we talk sometimes occasionally about how homing pigeons and migrating birds find their way home. And there's been some conversation, like, ah, maybe humans have this thing about them. It's possible that having these magnets is making people think, oh, I must be home. I'm finally there. Now, what happens is this is an intense magnetic field that induces an electrical current in the neuronal tissue of the brain. So basically treats the neurons like little wires. And so there are, because of the right hand rule and the way that magnets, we have induction stoves that you get magnetic induction. The magnetic field actually can induce electricity and electrical current. So is this something I could do at home? Some people do. They use TENS machines. They're like the muscle, there are... That's not magnets. That's electrics into the muscles. Right, so there's electrical. Yeah, so there's electrical. Those are the ones I've seen, yeah. And yeah, so most people are doing electrical. I don't know if you can do a magnetic at home. Yeah, so those are the... You have to go through, you have to do magnetic. The TENS, by the way, I highly recommend for if you have back pain or muscle issues kind of stuff because it does like TENS up and it's almost like getting the most amazing massage. And it's just like a couple triple A batteries in these little pads that you stick on. That has nothing to do with this brain treatment though. But if you stick them on your head... Yes, people are doing that. Be careful. They're using transcranial direct current stimulation It's a similar kind of thing. It's usually direct current to send current into the brain in a kind of generally targeted way just to adjust the ability of the neurons to transfer electrical information because neurons work through electrochemical potential, electrical currents. And by inducing a big enough current potentially what's happening is that it is changing ion channels in the membrane of the neuron and changing the neuron's capacity to respond to other stimulation. And so by targeting the magnetic beam, basically, where it goes, you can take an area of the brain and turn it off or change the way it responds. And in this case, it's helping people possibly beat their depression. 11 out of 15 people who had received treatment met the FDI criteria for remission. It's so interesting. It's almost as if the electric shock therapy of the, what was it, the 70s? Yeah. They were getting more refined. It was earlier than that. It was earlier than that. I love how this 70s, you're talking about like the 30s or 40s or something. 40s at like 50s? It was popular then. So there was a whole thing about Carrie Fisher doing it in the 70s and 80s. What? Yeah. It had a weird resurgence in popularity then. Anyway, point being. Because it has worked for extreme cases. It does work. They were close, man. They were like right up against it. Just lack some finesse. Needed to figure it out a little more. Get a finesse it a little bit more. I would still rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Yeah, all right. I just want to be on the record. And my final story has to do still with the brain and how our neurons, how do they keep doing what they do for a really long time? We have long-lived neurons in our brains. Like, yes, we have new neurons that are born, but really like you get neurons and the neurons are there and they're gonna live. We have some neurons that live our entire lives. How does a cell, when we think about our bodies, our skin is constantly refreshing itself? Like your skin is constantly new, it's new skin. You don't have the same skin on you right now that you had when you were a baby. You've lost your skin like a billion times over, right? And our intestines slough off and the lining and the thelium of our blood cells it sloughs off. And things are sloughing and dying and cells are refreshing and dying and being replaced constantly. So how do our neurons exist for years and years and years and years and help to support our long-term memories? Yes. They do. Yes. And now- I always assumed like the cluster of neurons, like some are dying and some are growing, but they're like, hey, oh, by the way, welcome aboard. Yeah, here's the information that we carry for forever. Yeah, more so the neurons are pretty much there because we don't have a big neuron regeneration thing in our brain, it's not big. No, not a huge deal. What's refreshing are the synapses and the neurons are kind of like pruning back and then they grow. It's like the tree in front of your house, like it leaves and maybe the branches come back a little bit and then it grows out a little bit more and then it comes back again and it grows out again. And so the neuron itself will exist for a very long time but not always in the same conformation and not always connected to the same exact things. And through these changes, it connects differently and so you have like long-term memory. It's a crazy thing. We're still figuring out exactly how it works, but basically it's like neural networking and it's an impressive and complex. That said, the cells themselves, they power themselves with mitochondria. And researchers at the Salk Institute have just published in Developmental Cell that there is an aspect of mitochondria that they had never realized before, that mitochondria have proteins that are long-lived. Some proteins just stick around. They're structurally stable. And they are there to make sure that the protein complexes in the mitochondria are stable enough for the electron transport that has to happen to allow power generation. So even in the face of cellular degeneration, aging while the neurons, the neuron around the mitochondria may be wanting to die, but the mitochondria has these superstructures of proteins that it's created that allow it to continue. Which is really cool. So it's like the cement blocks that make up, or the marble blocks that make up some of those big old Roman buildings, the Colosseum. Oh, Roman cement, Roman cement. It works under in the marine environment and works above the ground and works everywhere. It sticks around. So think of it that way that our mitochondria, they have a job to do. They have to keep the neurons running. And you have to make sure that the engine doesn't break down. How do you make sure that the engine doesn't break down? You make it with really, really great German parts. No, I mean, long-lived proteins. German cars last longer than Japanese cars. It would have to be Japanese parts. I think we're being technical about the analogy. German cars never make it past 80,000 miles. But yeah, the fun thing in this study though that the researchers did is they used a kind of like carbon dating. Like it was as if it was like a form of carbon dating that, so they used a radioisotope that slowly decayed and it's similar to like what you would do to kind of date fossils and see different fossils in the fossil record. But in this case, they were looking at proteins and marking proteins in the mitochondria and were able to determine that they had different populations of proteins. And there were like old proteins and then there were young proteins and they did not mix. The old proteins hung out with the old proteins, young proteins were like, the old guard were like, get over, stay away. Don't come near me. Yeah. So I mean, and I don't really know how proteins work. But within the cell, there's things that will take a protein and break it down. So we're talking about, is it the stability of the protein, the fact that it's long lived, anything to do with its structure or is it more that there's nothing that the cell manufactures that is built to disassemble that protein? I think it might be a combination of that, but being within the mitochondria, if there's nothing in the mitochondria to break it apart, but then additionally, this paper makes a big point to highlight the super complexes of these proteins and that they're not just individual proteins, they are super complexes of multiple proteins that have bonded together to make themselves stronger. It's like Voltron. Yeah. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it all makes sense. That's a bunch of power rangers running around at one point and then all of a sudden you got this giant lion robot transformer thing that's can, yeah. You're mixing so many. I am, I'm totally, I'm taking like three different cartoons from my childhood. One of them's not a cartoon also. Yeah, so we're learning more about these things that keep us going. How do the little parts of us that make us, us last? How do we last? How do they last to allow us to last? And how can we help them last longer? Because that's one of the big things. If we can help mitochondria avoid oxidative damage, then we can keep the mitochondria going longer and being stronger. And that helps our neurons to keep going and doing the things that they do to keep us being us for longer. And so we can live longer, better, happier lives. This all, well, had a happy ending folks. Yeah, that's good news. I knew that I could, I knew we could bring it. Yeah. Happy ending. You're right, you got the happy ending. People might even live long enough to see that 20 degrees Celsius rise when the oceans are boiling. Yeah, if you just live long enough to see that day. I mean, great. Have we done it? We did it. I think so. Thanks for the good news, Justin. Well, next week, next week, I promise I won't report on anything climate. I'll just ignore it as if it doesn't even exist. Oh, like the rest of the world. Just like the people at the UN conference who are supposed to be talking about the past climate. Oh, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode. It is always wonderful to have you here with us, joining us, sharing the science and your curiosity. We hope that we bring you curiosity. I mean, I know we're curious. I hope we help you. Oh gosh, we totally forgot. Curiosity made an interesting discovery. The rover found the more organic compounds on Mars. Despite its drill being broken, it had these cups that the drill was supposed to pull the thing out and lift it. It just started dragging the cups that it was using to do analysis. That's a good boy. Isn't such a sweet, oh, curiosity. It's like, shh. Yeah, but curiosity made some, found more organic material compounds. Not life, but yeah, but anyway. Yeah, curiosity. The compounds that we didn't know. More discoveries. And there's always more. We hope that you come back again next week. But until then, time for some shout outs. Thank you, Fada, for your help on show notes and on social media. Thank you, Gord and Aaron, Laura and others who help keep our chat rooms clean and happy. Thank you to Identity Four for recording the show and thank you to Rachel for editing the show and other assistants. Additionally, of course, I need to say thank you to our Patreon sponsors. 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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, this week in science is 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 all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. Science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air. Cause it's this week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science, science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what I say may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world. And I fated it just like that. I'm bad at fating. Good. And that's it. Time for a sound editor to help us. Yes, it is done, but I forgot to upload it to my device so it would be usable. This week in science, this week in science, science, science. Okay, that's it. I should not be allowed to use this anymore. Go away, Kiki. Go home. I'm gonna expire. Yes, both of us are in the tiredness direction. So we will expire, but when Justin comes back. Let's see. I need to look at a calendar. And what else did I need to do? I need to tell you that Fada needs, what does Fada need? Fada needs, Fada would like to do a 26 days of Twistman's advent calendar app and is interested in 26 stories for linking. So if you have a couple of cool stories or interviews. From the last year? Yeah, from the last year. Just fun things, stories that you liked. And we can let Fada know and he will do that. Yes. Justin's not back yet. Just tremendous needs. Yeah, if anyone in the chat room has specific stories that you really liked, put them on the list. Yeah, I hope Fada had a great, what was it? JS, a coding conference. I hope you had a great time. Enjoyed your people and your fun. Meow, meow, my cat is here saying meow, meow, meow, meow. And then we need to think about next year's calendar holidays which Justin's not here. November, that brittle advent calendar chocolate, yes. Cascadia JS 2021, yes Fada, thank you. Yeah, Fada, go get your sleep. We will get you stories that you want. Okay, next year Halloween is on a Sunday. So that's great, no worries there. What did we decide about the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? We do a show, right, normally? Okay, great. Yeah, I think, yeah, we can do the show. The issue has always just been traveling, right? If I'm traveling, getting the edit, if I'm traveling, getting an edit done and all that kind of stuff. So it's just a matter of me getting the edit done at some point before the next show, getting it posted because it is the holiday but yes, doing a Thanksgiving show. We have, we don't have to do a Thanksgiving show but we have always done one in the past. I think there was one year we didn't. Yeah. But yeah, we usually do it, you're right. Uh-huh. Let's see. Oh, am I in the wrong year? How did the calendar, I hit all the buttons. Why didn't it go where I, thank you Eric Knapp. It's on a Monday, Halloween's on a Monday. I'm on the wrong day. That makes sense. Blech. Thank you. Groundhog day is a Wednesday, that's fun. Calendar, see, this is why I need a calendar. I need a twist calendar, twist calendar. Oh, there's Justin. Okay, here we go. We're doing our 2022 planning. Oh gosh. I'm booked. 4th of July is on a Monday, that's good. I'm booked by the way. The whole year. All of 2022, huh? Yeah, I'm booked. You're not gonna do twists at all? No, no, no, I'm doing twists. That's what I'm booked for, what are you talking about? Just checking, just checking, what are you booked for? Okay, Labor Day, that's not a Wednesday. Yes, Grav, twist does do an annual top 10 stories from the previous year and we also do a top, no, we actually do a top 11, I'm sorry. Incorrect, it's not a top 10, it's a top 11. So I think someone's asking about that because Fada wants to do an advent for the top 26 stories for all of December, which that's an interesting point. Does that infringe on our top 10 at all? That's a top 11, first of all, I don't know why everybody's calling it top 10. I even fell for it. No, no, because I was gonna pick out like some interviews and other things that are not. Oh, interesting. So it would be a throwback advent? Yeah, I mean, so hey, let's just do the advent calendar, it doesn't even necessarily have to be this year, just bring back fun stories. You got things that you wanna get a throwback to? Hollerback, send ideas, we'll send them, we'll get them forward. Yeah, it's a treat, it's just like every day, it'll be a twist treat delivering a little blast to the past. And then we'll have our top stories at the end of the year like we always do. November, okay, thank you, Thanksgiving, of course. Should we take a vote for Thanksgiving? Will we do a Wednesday, the 23rd Thanksgiving show when Thanksgiving is on the Thursday? Not going to be a problem for me at all. Yeah. Who's the first animal corner? I might actually be pulling a Biden that show because I'm gonna be severely jet lagged for that particular episode. This year. This year. Yeah, you're gonna be next year. You're talking about 2022? Next year, yes. We're talking about the calendar. Oh, stop it. Oh, stop it with next year. My suggestion. We can't plan a year in advance, which is insane. Okay, so watch me. My suggestion is that we take Wednesday, December 28th off. It is in between Christmas and New Year's. Yeah, I wouldn't take that one. What year? I like it. 2022, yes. Because the one before for those people who are prepping for Christmas, the 21st is pretty early. It's not like it's Christmas early or something. So I think that'd be fine. Yeah, the 28th. Yeah. I think that would be great. Wait, what are you guys actually discussing? Yeah, and then the fourth would make sense. You're changing dates over a year from now? You're thinking of this? Because we're making a calendar. Good grief. We do this every year, Justin. Do we? I don't think, I think this is the first time I've been present in these conversations. No, you're definitely part of it because you always say, no, let's not take any days off. No, I'm against it. Yeah, and I say, I think it is good to give your brains a break every once in a while that is good for you. Look, look. And also, it's normal. Here's what I'm saying. It's good for not having to edit a show and publish a show and do all the things. There's three, four, five, six of us, eight, maybe a dozen people involved with the show. I added more people. There's like a half dozen or more people involved with the show. But we have at least twice that many listeners. So I feel like just the numbers ratio there means that we should show up and do the show so they have the show when they expect it. And not to let anybody down. This is the situation that we have every year. Yeah, I think so. Okay, now it's all coming back. It's all coming back now. They're podcasts that have literally millions of listeners who take every holiday off. They take a week off for every holiday. I think I just realized why it is I don't plan a year in advance. Because I don't remember back far enough. It's not that I can't plan forward. It's I never remember back to what the big plan was in the first place. What did I? So I'm constantly forced to wing it. This is why I like doing the review shows. Like what did we say last year? What were our predictions? What did we say? How did that go? And every year I say, I'm going to track my predictions all year. I'm going to like keep them open and each week I'm going to cross reference my predictions to the stories we cover. And I'm going to see if they, you know, never. It never happens. I need somebody to do that cross referencing for me. Yeah. Yeah. I need more interns. I need a team. Oh, thanks, Gaurav. Gaurav in the chat room is saying, is a Patreon I support you all taking a few days off. Yeah. Yeah, that's so the 28th. Yeah, that's great. And then we'll manage other stuff. But yeah, for sure that the 28th we'll put that one on the calendar. Sounds great. Yeah. Right, it's hard. Will Power's hard for cross referencing R and Lore. Totally agreed. It should be enjoyable. It's always be enjoy. I enjoy doing the show. Enjoy it. It's always enjoyable. But I think by the look on Blair's face right now and the pain in my head. Oh, gosh. That you can't see. Except for a slight tightening of my eyes perhaps. That I think we would really also appreciate a good night's sleep tonight. A good night's sleep keeps the Alzheimer's away, everybody. Get your regular sleep in if you can. Good for your brain. I'm screwed. We're all, we're all, it's just, pshh. Do your best. Go knock yourself out for a few hours. Okay. Justin, you're going to be here next week? Yes. Yeah, yeah. You're starting to get, you're starting to get danish liltings. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's good. You could be here. Dan. Yep. I'll be, yeah, I shouldn't miss any shows because unlike some people, I don't take shows off. Yes, you do. You do. Oh, yeah, I don't take shows off. Yes, you do. Name the week. Name the week. Name the week. Don't put the burden of proof on us. Of course. That's it. No, it's not argument fallacy. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It's called the burden of proof. That's the real thing. So I have to prove my innocence? You have to prove my guilt. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode. And we will be back next Wednesday as we do because we love doing this and we love seeing you every weekend. Yeah. Hope you have a science week. Stay healthy. Stay well. Stay curious. Bye.