 Hello everybody, we are here for our weekly podcast broadcast of this weekend science This is the slight pre-show part where I put everything in air quotes and tell you all that this is The live broadcast and that the podcast will be slightly edited maybe majorly edited It all depends on what happens during this entire program, which we endeavor to create a tight 90 seconds Not 90 seconds. No 90. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you again next week This is 90 seconds Preamble that we do each week. Bye No, you're here. We're here. Let's do this make sure you hit those likes and hearts and all the things and notifications So that the algorithms love us. Are you ready to begin? We will start in A three do this is Twist this week in science episode number 923 recorded on Wednesday April 26 2023 Why aren't we studying sex in space? Hey everyone. I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show. We are going to fill your heads with guts poop and sex but first this Cool lame or disclaimer disclaimer You can have doctors without science. You can have medicine without science You can have doctors who without science recommend medicine unsupported by science. They just need to be clear That what they do is not related to science What cannot be allowed is doctors generating fake science Which is what we have now in the case of Florida surgeon general Who altered the findings of a 20? 22 COVID-19 vaccine study from the mrna mRNA vaccine poses no significant risk to young men To suggesting mRNA vaccines increase risks in young men a complete opposite of what this study Initially found this is the same individual who's also an author on a separate research paper back in 2020 in That paper the authors advocated for a treatment method of Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 that research was led by dr. Zelenko Who went on to sell anti-covid supplements? Before dying of COVID at the ripe old age of 49 some of the other doctors on that paper Well, at least one wound up with a position in the US Department of Health and Human Services during the pandemic a Another one was a non practicing cardiologist became a guest on the Joe Rogan show promoting COVID conspiracy theories another doctor listed as an author went on to invent his own treatment using asthma medication and claiming it had a 100% success rate another doctor became a guest of the Alex Jones show and had a list of people prominent Americans that he would like to kill in order to end the pandemic Another is a practicing cardiologist somehow still to this day tweeting vaccine misinformation a large number of the members of the study Were members of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons a political organization that believes This is their words that doctors should be autonomous in treating their patients with less government oversight medical quality standards insurance coverage limits and No legal penalties when they make mistakes So if you have a God complex and you're a doctor, there's an organization for you Some of the members appeared on Fox News suggesting people should not wear masks during the pandemic to accelerate herd immunity and on and on for 57 Incredibly unscientific doctors listed as authors who have and likely still do treat patients real patients Each seemingly had a motive beyond research for being part of the study and each wanted to call their ideas Science, but I draw the line right there at science Go be bad doctors if that's your calling But don't call it science and don't publish that trash if you don't want it seen here on This week in science coming up next I want to learn everything. I want to fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge is seek I want to know Kiki and Blair And a good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of this week in science Blair Justin, thank you so much for taking the helm last week while I was away you know Robin elbows with YouTube podcast elites That's awesome. Yeah, it wasn't the same without you, but we we carried on happy to happy just to wave the flag of science Thank you for letting me. I got to go to space camp for an afternoon. It was amazing. Wow I would I took a space shuttle to the International Space Station and did science. It was awesome You took this space shuttle Yeah, yep. Yep. Yes Yeah, it's it's you know, it's It was fun, but I am so glad to be back here again to talk about science with All right, so this week I have stories about gut systems Nervous systems and gassy asteroids. What do you have Justin? Oh? I've got a bear that turned into a woman. I've got Also, I've got stories some some poo pills What else is oh, and then I've got that we're gonna talk briefly about the the lunar lander that didn't or maybe did as Well as the most frightening thing I've ever heard about antibiotic resistance the Scariest scariest story I have ever heard Okay, Claire what's in the animal corner? I'm moving on Oh, I have some some relaxing animal corner to kind of counterbalance this With some sleepy seals and then I don't know how relax some roadkill Don't never mind. I don't know Well, we're off to the races everyone As we jump into the science I would love to remind everyone that if you are not already subscribed You can find us as a podcast most places that podcasts are podcasts And you can watch us weekly as we stream live on YouTube Facebook and Twitch 8 p.m. Pacific time Wednesdays and we are mostly twists, but sometimes like on Twitter Instagram and Twitch We are at twist science. Oh also on the universe adon mastodon But it gets confusing so just remember that our website is twist.org. That's where you can find all the good stuff Okay, so It's time for the science Let's dig in Since this last week was This last weekend was Earth Day. I wanted to start the show with a little bit of earthiness and attempt a little bit of discussion of you know the possibilities of Living sustainably on this planet Can we do it? Who's doing it? I mean anything's possible Some researchers published in one earth this past week their work looking at basically the limits of ecosystem sustainability and what they call The attempts to be socially just and also environmentally safe so carbon sequestration or carbon usage and then also Allowing everyone in their countries to meet their basic needs The bottom line for this study is that at the the current rate of usage of things and How we're doing stuff only six percent of Nations in the world have the ability to be both safe and just in their use and delivery of resources to their populations By population or just by number just pure how many countries? So it was looking at 178 nations around the world Yeah, and they they used biophysical models and data to determine requirements of meeting needs such as food water energy Etc. So they have used Frameworks that other studies have used already, but they have developed what they call a biophysical approach for the quantification in terms of ecosystem goods and services, so There's this idea of You know the basic limits The carrying capacity of the the earth how many people can the earth Sustain and we just keep adding people and we're like technology is going to take care of everything. It's totally great yet It has a few times right yes So they found that 67 percent of nations are operating within their safe and just space for water provisioning So six two-thirds are getting water to people the way only Only nine percent are doing so for carbon sequestration and six percent for both Yeah, so anyway, yeah, there's a lot of work to do people Is the the bottom line and the countries that seem to be doing really well. They've got this framework determining What they consider to be the countries that are able to do both the safe and the just and these countries include Canada, Sweden Gabon But not the United States Denmark's not on that list. Oh, come on. Denmark's not on the list. Come on We're getting there. Um, yeah, but there's a lot of work to be done and there We talk a lot about I think I think the big take-home Message here is that we talk a lot about oh carbon dioxide and we're releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere We're using resources but we're not thinking of everything within The actuality of the energy hidden hitting the planet how we use it currently It's like we're taking a credit card out On the future that we don't really know how we're gonna pay and Uh in our sustainability is very limited at this point in time So anyway, wait later today everyone. Hang on a second. Wait. Is this a canadian study? Because there's no way can it Canada it makes that list they've got the heater on all the time But they have a lot of resources so their ecosystems supply And they also have smaller population than a lot of other countries and so the resources to pop smaller Have you met a canadian recently? These are not small people. Look I'm not talking about little tiny small people. I'm talking about the numbers people There's no way that they're using all sustainable energy and doesn't have a jank carbon footprint I don't buy some things right if it's by space if you're saying oh because of look how big Canada is and how few people and therefore And but otherwise something's not right Canada made the list but Denmark didn't I gotta I gotta interrogate this this week in science the show where Justin refutes data No, I haven't even seen the data, right? No, I haven't even seen any of the data. That's the thing It's it's that it's that much of an outlier That canada made that list That I with even without seeing the data something little actual information Justin you just have You have like a gut feeling about canada that you don't like Yeah Canada Just jealous It's just yeah, it's the comparative Thing here like like there's just I don't understand how people who are snowbound for 70% of the year could could be conservatively using carbon emissions When I know that because they are snowbound for 70% of the year They are more energy efficient because they don't want to lose heat from their buildings No, because there's there's plenty of places in the world that don't have the heater on all the time I haven't read the study, but no, all right. No, it just doesn't but it just can't be Yeah, anyway, there is a food energy water Nexus that is important to consider as we have plenty of water into Sustainability for the future. It's not that we can't do it. It's just that at this point in time The majority of countries are not doing it and this is not just Carbon dioxide, you know, we talk about just carbon dioxide climate change, whatever This is sustainability for humanity on this planet Into the future and we need to think more about the way that all of these things work together in a systems management perspective and not just get Singularly focused Yeah, happy later. It's day. Anyway, Justin, what do you want to talk about? Our Canadian in the chat room is pointing out that they a while ago have replaced their cars with the Dog sled teams. So so now it makes sense. Now I get how that happened And the igloos were well insulated. Yes Yeah, oh and somebody's pointing out that yeah, Canadians we Canadians are much bigger than you Americans Okay. Yeah, I should probably watch my Talk to you. What's the story? What's oh gosh? What's the first? I'm not even looking at there So becomes a woman Yeah, this is this is an interesting story. So this is uh, which is why we're talking about it First people who live in the Americas migrated From Siberia across the Bering Strait. So the story goes at least some 20,000 over 20,000 years ago Uh, populating then two continents from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego Where they ran out of new places to go Not all of the early settlers were as struck with the wanderlust wanderlust Some were completely happy with where they wind up and never left. This is the University of Buffalo evolutionary biologist Charlotte link list and collaborators using ancient genetic data analysis They found that some modern Alaska natives Still live almost exactly where their ancestors did 3000 years ago While examining Mammal remains that had been found in a cave in southeast Alaska A bone identified as coming from a bear Was genetically analyzed and it turned out it wasn't a bear It was a woman That's a big surprise. You're like, oh gosh, we must have contamination. This is coming back. We all our results are human Bear bones and human bones look very different normally So that's surprising. Yeah depends on what the uh, the Yeah, so a lot of human remains at least I know in the California area where I'm at A lot of times when they find old remains, uh, they're bovine How you mix up a cow's bone with a human bone. I don't know but there's Similarities and different bones that can appear to be other things. Anyway Uh, plus the condition may be Pretty deteriorated. So you're not working with like a a whole bone Yeah, like a flesh Uh, this guy really led to an effort to compare this genome to the local community And so they did the earliest people had already started Moving along the pacific coast and inland route between ice sheets Uh, before the ice sheet pack became completely viable. So it's still glaciers Across the the northern parts of the Americas Some individual Including this female found in the cave made their home in the area that surrounds the Gulf of Alaska That is now home to them. I'm gonna mess this up to Tlingit nation and three other groups The genome from this 3 000 year old individual Determined that she is most closely related to Alaska natives living in the area today Very interesting. So cooperation between Alaska native peoples and the scientific community has been a big significant Component of the cave explorations that have taken place in the region The genetic continuity of southeast Alaska is now Thousands of years old. This is the the first time they found something that uh a human remained this old That they could get a genome from That could be linked To that that native population. So This is uh the the migration Began to maybe 24 something thousand years ago. We don't really know exactly when it began. It must have been At least about the right time frame. Yeah, it must have been at the very least that we're finding 24 maybe even 3000 year signs of human occupation Uh down in central america The southern north america central america That may be as old as 30 000 years So there were waves one of which was about 6000 years ago that included the paleo inuit Formally known it says here as paleo eskimo But eskimo is considered a derogatory term. So nobody uses anymore except Every time that they use inuit for some reason they feel compelled to point out that they aren't using the word eskimo And why it is that they aren't using the word eskimo Because it's apparently derogatory Although when you look at the try to figure out where the word eskimo comes from it apparently comes from an american kree tribe referring to inuits as either raw meat eaters Or folks who lace up their shoes Juries still that doesn't really matter. We're not using that word Uh, but it does also matter part of the story because they they checked to see if there was Inuit influence in the genome and there was not So this Ancestor of those tribes living there is from the much earlier migrations Fun side that is uh that i'm glad that they added into the telling of this story in the paper There's an oral origin narrative of the Ting it i'm gonna mess it up again tlingit people Which includes the volcanic eruption of a local mountain That mountain erupted they know 4500 years ago So the people are already tied through oral history to an event older than this ancient one at 4500 years ago now part of it is that story had to be passed down continuously Generation by generation for thousands of years for it to make it to the modern day But it also means that that story would have been going around 3000 years ago had been going around for 1500 years means the the lady in the cave likely knew the story as well and Could have been telling it to her. Yeah, that's really that's cool. Yeah Being midstream of the folk history being midstream of the folk history and And so there's that that sort of a strange connection for an oral tradition that goes back that far when you realize like It would have been the same story Maybe a little bit of game of telephone here in there you never know Yeah, I mean when you think about it really to be part of a culture that has stories that go back so far I mean we all have stories right there stories going back through all branches of humanity, but so many times they get mixed up and switched around but to have cultures that really Focus on their storytelling and have it go back thousands and thousands of years. It's amazing And I think it might also help If you don't have too many writers In your Only got a couple of stories Then they tend to probably stick if everybody's coming up with a new story all the time Then it's like, oh, wait, which one is this? This is the guy with the one with the volcano or is the guy with the you know But these stories can be used now to help us understand our past Evolution human movements all of the cool things But then there's the future And where we're going to be going in the future and there's some stories and thoughts and ideas Blair yes, so Uh in the future you might be telling your buddy's story about the time you joined the 62 mile high club, huh? what um, so This is I just have a real quick story. I wanted to bring from cranfield university This is a green paper, which um is basically just Uh, uh document that kind of calls scientists to action To invite discussion and approach a problem. So so basically cranfield university just published this green paper to say Y'all we gotta talk about sex and space We do Yes, is that the title of the paper? It should be it's not but it should be um, so Space tourism it's coming Some of it's already here It is a part of our future people will be going to space for fun Even if it's just for a few hours Yeah, and when people go to space for fun They will be having sex. I'm not saying They're gonna have fun this room are gonna want to do that but people will And so this paper is basically just acknowledging that If you take people to space for fun Some of them are gonna find a way To have sex up there And that is a problem something that needs to be discussed it turns out For a bunch of reasons so Yeah, I'm sitting here going. Why is it a problem? So great question because of zero gravity No, people don't figure it out. But like why is it of course? There's like There's like liability litigation and and Reputational damage related to these things but specifically we don't know what happens When conception occurs in zero g's Specifically, we don't know what happens. We don't know what happens to the fetus later on so A people will be having sex in space b people might be having unprotected sex in space Which could then see lead to space conception Which is a thing that needs to be looked at It hasn't been and so um professor cullen from cranfield university who led the work said quote Our starting point was a throwaway comment about sex in space But when we checked we were surprised the sector has not openly considered the risks This led to the study. So basically they made a joke about it and they were like well But surely they've looked into it a little and they looked around and went no Nobody's looked So there is a strong recommendation that relevant parties involved in space tourism Enter into some open discussions talking about risks mitigations and Create and disseminate best practices for the sector Wow, well, I know there's been physics Research and there have been studies, but I think the the social science aspects of this are very interesting Yeah, I mean at the very least you gotta You gotta put some mice in space and get them to have babies and see what happens the very least Have we not done that yet? I feel like we should have done that I feel like that's already been happening. I don't know. But did it happen then with artificial gravity or did we not chart fetal development over the course of zero g's or like There's radiation concert like there's all these sorts of factors that yeah most likely have not been measured specifically So back in 2017 there was work that showed that sperm that had been stored in space Was able to make healthy baby mice on earth Sure, but that's Uh is mice can reproduce after they've been in space. Sure. Sure But yeah, that's the thing the sex in space Needs some study turns out Yeah, interesting because especially if it's space tourism, it's a holiday. It's a short period of time People are going they're going to have a good time and then they go home And then what? What happens in space? Stays in space. Yeah. Well, and then I mean this is also related to the conversation about if you're sending people to mars Right and they are spending months in space They will have sex so then what? And you may want them to create a population On mars then what right so this is still part of that same conversation That it's this green paper is just saying hey, let's talk about it. Let's figure this out Hey, nobody's talking about it So Yeah, there's so many things so first of all just the the physical act of sex with without gravity seems like that could be tricky But manageable, but manageable. I just I do believe you yourself said life finds a way so It was my it was my uncle, but yeah Oh dear Well, the other thing of course then is the beyond the act There is of course the fluid dynamic containment aspect of being In a closed capsule with no gravity And you know, you've seen the astronauts where they were like Smooch something out of a tube and then go up and So there's There's that whole concept So that needs to be studied because yes, that is it that is a risk factor in taking people to space Figure out bodily fluids destroying for a shared environment Yeah of passengers as opposed to a personal capsule in space. This is Very different And then you know the like if you're talking long-term pregnancy in space Like first of all, that's different. Yeah, what what pregnant woman? Getting into the later justational Area there wouldn't like to have no gravity for a while Right, what does that do to your ligaments and your muscles and all sorts of things if you they're already messed up Actually, they're already ready Zero gravity the whole time you're growing a fetus and then all of a sudden you have gravity You that's that's bad That's a really really severe issue And we've already shown with bacterial studies and plant studies that when they're growing in space They figure their way out, but things are different. There are different developmental factors and growth factors that become activated in space because of The low gravity situation. So this could impact development of a fetus big time development and then and then positioning Just the little bambinini How does it know which way to go? Yep, which way that way? They hang out upside down for quite a long time Well, they turn around and that's at a certain point. Yeah, but how will they know which way to turn? I know There's no up and there's no down and yeah Yeah, this is the thing. There's lots to consider There is a lot to consider. So even if it's just like, oh, this needs to be avoided at all costs Then that has to be considered For space tourism. I almost said sex tourism. That's incorrect space tourism That's the next step they at the very least you need to include that as a waiver of liability to say like This is not something that we encourage. This is ill advised for the following reasons You need to say that you will not do this and if you do do this and it results in problems. It is not our fault So that's that's part of this too is that you have to kind of you have to you have to set up precautions But in the end humans are going to do what humans are going to do But you got to at least warn them and protect yourself As a company also from people doing stupid things So, it's you know, hey everybody, we know you're gonna do it, but just know this Yeah, we're not we're not we're not in charge ill advised Yeah So So, yeah, still question. Why aren't we studying more sex in space? Time to do it needs to happen time to do it. Yeah Why haven't we been studying intestines our guts More that I thought we do a lot We do we do and then you're like, oh, you're intestine. If you were to take it out, it would cover the The size of the grand canyon. No, it's huge. It's the tennis court. It's whatever Tennis court's the lungs if you spread the lungs out there at the tennis court, so I don't maybe it's a Rhode Island I don't know Tennis court is like my default for internal organs getting spread out over the lungs is the is the tennis court I think the the intestines is the is if you go around the the track, maybe I don't know Yeah, it's our length of a football field So there's this idea it's like the intestines. That's this length and it's fine. Everybody's intestines are like the same It's great. It's just all good and apparently There's an individual variation And we just haven't been taking it into account and so some researchers from north carolina state university have published their work in pier jay this last week of studies of the diversity of intestines pigs frogs rats humans all across the board the intestines comprise buried and very different sizes so The researchers said there was research over a century ago That looked at variability in the relative lengths of human intestines But then people went we don't care and it's been ignored pretty much ignored since then and then these researchers dug into it and they determined that quote from One of the authors of the study if you're talking to four different people Odds are good that all of them have different guts in terms of the relative sizes of the organs that make up the system For example, the cecum. It's an organ that's found at the nexus of the small and large intestines One person might have a cecum. That's only a few centimeters long while someone else Might have one. That's the size of a coin purse They found other variability. I love these analogies though. I have my cecum. It's the size of a coin purse But again, also women Additionally have longer small intestines that than men and they think that this might help women withstand stressful situations like Lack of food a little bit better than men do because you have the longer small intestine It helps you to extract more nutrients And so this might lead to women's ability to survive better during periods of stress Yes, I I'm sorry. I missed part of what you said there. So Be in it's just because of the way my brain works You said coin purse and I immediately thought Who is referencing anything in terms of a coin purse like the generation before hours Didn't use coin purses. You have to go back at least one more Cecums for The coin purse to be an analogy that anybody should Should wouldn't have any reference. What's an analogous size to a coin purse though? I can't even really think of anything that you would use in like 2023 terms that would be similar. Oh, yeah, I don't know wait. What can possibly be? Oh And the size of an iphone airpod case That's too small for a coin. That's way too small. That's a little small size the length of an iphone Maybe but then are you talking to pro or maybe you're uh, yeah, yeah Maybe maybe coin purse just has its own nature of size that nothing else is close to maybe that's why it's Don't little kids get their allowance and coin purses still What are you talking about? No, they have refillable credit cards. Oh my god Or an app now. See I'm probably a generation behind other the kids today. They probably got an app news So anyway, the Yes, tell me about the small episode the small intestine So the this is also based on the assumption that Women can handle lack of food stress better than or right so that when you you get any food You're able to extract more nutrients from it. And so that makes I think that's really funny because if you look at like social media or general societal expectations I feel like women are always the ones that are getting pegged as being hangry all the time Maybe there's a reason We're just like sucking all the nutrients out of life. Okay. All right I don't know. I have no idea. I'm making things up here, but Laura in the chat room Palm of your hand. There you go Palm of your hand perfect analogy I also want to comment sideline as well. We're just destroying your your study kiki This this this artist's depiction of animals and their guts is a nightmare And the frog looks like kermit and it looks like kermit's head has been placed on top of A macabre like chicken made out of Yeah I see it I see it too And I can't handle it, but I I take your point that there's variation between species and also between individuals and Uh, that's important to me sounds like Duh Because also yes species have different Um Diets Exactly. You also have different needs to extract nutrients over short or long periods Depending on what kind of food you're eating and how often you eat like reptiles and mammals or amphibians and mammals are vastly different in that They process food at different speeds So a snake might only eat once a week and poop once a week And we eat three times a day Right. Yeah. So one big meal and doesn't eat again for a month. Yeah So what do you Are you suggesting that Ancestrally diet-based populations Could have different lengths of intestines Or configuration of intestines based on Thousands of years of diet differences. Why not? Yeah coastal communities having got That's the that's the interesting aspect of this is that form follows function. That is a very very solid tenant of physiology So the form length of the intestine is going to have been Led to over Evolutionary time by the foods the environment all the stuff that all ties together as an organism Evolves, but the individual differences I think are going to be interesting moving forward, especially as it comes to medicine. So we talk a lot about the microbiome but if you put that also in the context of the amount of time or Length of intestine that is there for food to be digested and absorbed It's going to that all is going to interplay and so maybe there has is something to do with the shape the length The way that the digestive system is formed in between individuals that we need to be taking Taking into our view of how to treat people medically for gut issues So so how do we how do we measure our intestines? Take better care because it's not it's not just processing time because that is not necessarily Directly related to length. Yeah, so you need to figure Swallow a string or something No I'm joking. Come on. That's a terrible idea. No, no, but there has to be a way I don't know some sort of MRI or something but If if it's so important to know how long your intestines are for specialized care Yeah, there's a whole field out there for people. Hello to try to figure out how to measure your intestines Right. So this and this Getting into this the fact that they're saying this has been ignored for a very very long time Maybe this kind of a study is the start that we need to kickstart a bit of investigation into how these Diversities impact our health overall. How can we how can we look at it? What can we do? I don't know Justin Are you wanting to talk about poop now? Uh, yeah, okay. So here we go. Let's just go from the gut to if we can follow in with it This is researchers out of upstate medical university, which I looked it up as a real uh, real university And and upstate new york, which is where it got its name sounds make ity up I oh I went to upstate medical university Anyway researchers there I found that compared with standard antibiotic treatment Stool transplantation Can increase the number of people who recover from clostriditis deficit C. Diff bacterial infections So this is a condition which causes life-threatening diarrhea Yeah, it's a big deal C. Diff is particularly pernicious because it can go into this dormant shell-like state And when it's there, it's it's almost indestructible So you can be on antibiotics that would normally kill the C. Diff, but if it's in this If it's in this sort of hibernating state It it it evades it evades everything it just waits and then reemerges later And reinfects And we'll uh, so this is uh Also when it reinfects, it's probably you've probably had antibiotics right So you've had antibiotics to kill this it evaded it and then popped up Where there is an open area To fill in its niche because it's like the can become the predominant thing there 77 percent of people who received stool transplants did not experience reinfection And within eight weeks of the study compared to just 40 percent of those who were on antibiotics So the while antibiotics can be a very effective First round against so you have a viral Bacterial or not a viral. Excuse me. You have a bacterial infection of your gut. It's not C. Diff. It's something else It's really bad So you you go on to the antibiotics They also take out The beneficial bacteria so it takes out whatever is Ruin in your stomach plus it takes out the beneficial bacteria C. Diff hides out comes back After The beneficial bacteria is gone and the whatever it was you were trying to get rid of is gone and takes over Okay, and then this is when you get that real serious next round of diarrhea that can be life threatening So the standard treatment of C. Diff is more antibiotics so Further depleting any beneficial bacteria or knocking them down again as they're attempting to reemerge And so this you can already see this is what you would call one of those vicious cycles Yeah, absolutely treatment is followed by a recurrent infection And an over familiarity with the reading material at your doctor's waiting area Ridiculous pattern happens in nearly a third of infected individuals According to the cdc every year there are around a quarter million C. Diff infections in the u.s. alone Causing approximately 12,000 fatalities In this study transplanting healthy donor stool into a gut To jump start The gut microbes and reestablish the healthy microbiome significantly reduced the risk of C. Diff reoccurring because when it reemerged There was competition Yes, please initiate all the fecal transplant studies, please Everybody do it. Yeah, this was a pretty decent size for fecal transfer This was a research examined data from six clinical trials the total of 320 adults that addressed the efficacy and safety of stool transplantation for the treatment of repeated C. Diff infection And what was the methodology for transplant in this one? Very careful No, it looks like they looked at a number of different studies. So there's going to be different Probably different methods, but uh, there were there were this is uh, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Canada, and the United States So it's probably all the bum. There's probably some pills. There's probably some suppositories. There's probably some surgery happening There's probably Yeah, hopefully not too much surgery. Yeah Um, yeah looking very quickly. I'm not seeing anything in the study that looks Like surgery, but anyway, it's uh, uh, just another good reason to order dr. Justin's not a real dr. Pooh pills Geron Teed Spelled wrong for legal reasons to fix whatever ails you and make you better at the things you want to do I think uh microbiome transplant is is something that We've had such a strong Gutt feeling about for so long It makes the most sense It seems like a potential lifesaver as you mentioned here. C. Diff is a terrible disease Yeah, you basically starved to death, right? It's terrible. Um, and and so It's it's always felt like in my bones like a really obvious smart thing to push forward through studies to get to kind of Medical practice and I just I I am so happy to hear that more and more studies are happening with it because that's all we need We just need to get some data and it will become practice But that you have to get that middle part done Where you go? Yes, this sounds like it should work And then you need the proof of exactly how it works and if yeah And when it works and then you can and it needs to be done in a regulated way And it needs to be done, you know in a safe way because there have been studies that have shown that if it's not done In a safe way it can cause more problems, right? So you need to make sure that it is coming the The transplant materials are coming from somebody who's Healthy that you have safe practices in the handling of everything in the And you know how it's all produced and put together for the one thing that you can't do Is do it all in a sterile environment? right To an extent, you know, because like there's a certain Yeah, there's a certain aspect of it that's By its definition the opposite of star But is there for example like a really targeted specific Narrow band antibiotic that you would want to feed to someone who is going to be a fecal donor To prevent bad bacteria from getting over, right? So these are the these are the things that need to be figured out like Are you just taking a healthy person and moving their entire microbiome over? Are you trying to move a specific band of microbiome over? Are you trying to eliminate bad bacteria and only put good microbiome? So, so let me give you an example And that's not a relative to how you put it all together Perfect example Uh, are we going to preserve this entire? biome Of animals in an ecosystem or are we going to take some of the animals and put them over here and grab one from over There and put it in and grab what you would do if you were trying to preserve an ecosystem is not Preserve invasive species, which is basically what I'm talking about No, you make a healthy you you try and promote The the native species exactly, which is what you want to do But if you've got a problem like this, you can't just go Antibiotics bra kill the entire biological ecosystem, which is basically what we're doing there. So that's what we do That's how they work right now. I mean, we don't have I don't think a narrow enough band Otherwise people would probably not ever Have this it's a problem. It's it's but this is what needs to be studied, right? Are there specific Bacteria that you want to see their opportunists versus others or This is what needs to be looked at is my point because you need to do it safely You can't just say you're a healthy person. I'm not a healthy person. Give me your poop. You can't just do that Why that's exactly what the hell doctor just was not a real doctor poo pills not guaranteed to be in poo or pill form It's other works. Oh my goodness Oh my goodness. Let's move to space very quickly before we finish this segment of the show. Um Asteroids comments meteor showers, what do you know about meteor showers? They're pretty Hey, yeah, but if you It's burning So the idea is that you got You've got a chunk of Or you've got a which is an asteroid and bits of pieces are coming off of it Dust that ends up we're going through the tail, right and those little bits those pennies are burning up in our atmosphere And or the idea is comments that have similar Dusty gassy trails. So we know Comets they go around the sun comments. We know are like icy And so they're melting and vaporizing and there's water and vapor and gas That's streaking behind them and that's what we see with the comets There is a particular asteroid called faithion 3200 faithion and it acts like a comet But it isn't a comet It's an asteroid and it is responsible for the annual geminid meteor shower So for the longest time everybody's been like, oh, it's like a comet. It goes around the sun. It heats up and Oh, but it's just dust. It's just got a tail of dust and that dust is what our planet's going through and Dusty dusty meteor shower. Yay exciting geminids Well researchers From nasa have been looking at all of the wonderful Tools that they have at their at their ready these days nasa's solar terrestrial relations observatory Also the solar and heliospheric observatory so how not from new york Uh, they're looking at a whole bunch of things part of the sun grazer project looking at things that go near That the sun they're looking at these images comets other things But these tools have never been made to look at asteroids meteors Comets these tools are supposed to study the sun and they're looking at the images in a completely different way And they determined That faithion does not release A gassy vapor or or it doesn't release a dusty tail. It has no dusty tail. There's no dust So number one, there's no dust Where the heck is the geminid meteor shower coming from and why is faithion a part of that? We have no clue number two They determined that instead of releasing dust it is releasing a sodium gas So it's heating up and releasing a gas vapor No dust No physical stuff that should be like debris that we're going through um so there's Everybody is very confused now interested curious. What the heck is going on what is Is there some kind of Orbit that faithion ended up in that something else was in that was broken up Maybe faithion was part of something else that got broken up We don't know how Faithion which we thought was the source of the material for the geminid meteor shower We don't know how it's related to that material anymore. Okay. All right. Yeah I like uh, I like uh, uh, yay science. Grouchy gamer in the chat room saying it's free salt Yeah Salt little chunks of salt hitting that sodium hitting the atmosphere. Ah, yeah But you could be hitchhikers just sort of caught in the In this but it could be hitchhikers. Yeah But just not detectable enough I guess because otherwise they'd be saying that hey, we didn't find dust that we found or faithion is It was big and at one point got broken up and maybe it has that tail because something shot it out somehow. It's in an orbit It's going Yeah, and they think ocean to rename to gasteroid a gas I love that second that one Yeah, but the I mean if you think about it, so Faithion they the geminid meteor shower the material the debris stream that makes it up is estimated to be a billion tons of debris Ah, no big deal. Just a billion tons Where'd it come from? What's going on everybody? How many road islands is that? Right, how does it compare? I believe that's about a billion coin purses I Would make each coin purse way a ton. Yeah It's got a lot of coins in there bigger than the palm of my hand for sure Yeah, all right. So mysteries in space, isn't it? You know, we keep looking and the more we look the more questions we have Which is fantastic We love it This is this weekend science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode And we hope that you are enjoying the show if you do love joining us every single week I do hope that you head over to twist.org and click on the patreon link because that's how we do support this little show here so click over there and Click on the patreon link choose your level of support $10 and more per month We will thank you by name at the end of the show Thank you so much for your support. You really can't do this without you All right, coming on back now with more this weekend science and it is time for Blair's animal corner with Blair It's our creature great at small By pet milliped no pet at all If you want to hear about animals, she's your girl Except for giant pandas and squirrels What you got Blair? Oh, I have I don't know what that sound was, but you know, I had no idea I'm gonna take that as a sign that I need to tell you about roadkill It's an oncoming semi but weird so It's that time again to hear a study that happened because Researchers were stuck in their homes in 2020 They had to figure out what they could collect data on and what they could do with it and you know what cardiff university and their road lab It's in europe in the uk They used data of road killed records to assess 19 wildlife species most frequently involved in vehicular collisions to see What changes there were in road mortality during two major lockdown periods march through may 2020 and december 2020 through march 2021 And by comparing the lockdown rates to the same time periods in previous years. It's in 2014 through 2019 Pretty sizable data set. They were able to identify the traits that put species at higher risk of becoming roadkill They found That there were fewer records of nocturnal mammals Fewer records of animals that visited urban environments And fewer records of mammals with greater brain mass As well as fewer records of birds with longer flight initiation distances found in roadkill during the pandemic Species that have several of these traits like badgers foxes and pheasants Are therefore more likely to be hit by cars and have the highest mortality rate in normal traffic levels So they've benefited the most from the lockdowns And so suffer most during normal times By those measures they were able to see What kind of you could do to prevent future roadkill instances Once traffic returned to normal overall across all species wildlife vehicle collisions were 80 lower during the lockdown Seems right. There were not a lot of people on the roads But so this can help inform wildlife conservation. Who needs an overpass? Who needs an underpass? Who needs slower driving in certain corridors during certain times of year? So this kind of data, I mean, it's It's one of those things that like what can you do During the lockdown and what can you do when you come out of lockdown when you haven't collected normal data for A year or two comparisons You could do comparisons, but If your whole thing is you're the road lab, this is actually great work to do Because it can help inform conservation decisions and road planning in the future. So This is, you know, not surprising information that came out of this not earth shattering, but I think it's a really good reminder of Ways that we can take existing information roadkill data And turn that into Real actionable conservation outcomes. I think it's cool I think it's very cool I think the the data that has come out of it actually is quite interesting aside from the hey people drive less their few is less But the whole uh concept of What kinds of animals are more likely to become roadkill like large-brained Animals less likely right be roadkill. So this is Brain size is usually related to mass, right? That's that's the that's the Relativity, but at the same time You know, what else is going on there that's leading to these animals not becoming roadkill Yeah, no, absolutely. And so yeah, are there little tweaks you can make to city planning or road laws Yeah, or is are there new structures you can build that can that can alleviate these issues? So Yeah, or like different times of year. Can we yes? Absolutely Like are there certain times of year that this is a 15 mile an hour road And then the rest of the times of the year it can be a 35 or 45 mile an hour road 75. Let's go for it Yeah It's auto bonnet, right? Yeah, anyway, um, and then I have my main story for the animal court I really wanted to have some time to talk about this cool Um Elephant seals They're so cool There's so much weird stuff with elephant seals like I can't even Start to explain all of the amazing science that exists in relation to elephant seals They are some of the deepest diving mammals They dive over a mile Under water which he's insane. They have specialized eyes to prevent their eyes from popping into their head from pressure from There's there's so much when I was in school We went and we did metabolic studies on them because they died for two hours How does a mammal hold its breath for two hours? Well Scientists have been working on that for decades and there's lots of good explanations Basically, they slow their metabolism down and just process oxygen really slow But there's so much biologically going on with them not to mention Just their whole mating structure and all sorts of other things just Elephant seals. They're really really really cool. But this is a new study adding To the many ways that they are just these specialized amazing animals, this is from uc santa cruise And they wanted to record brain activity in free-ranging wild elephant seals to look at their sleeping habits that's because when they're When they're on the beach And they're like either growing up. They're young or they're it's during their mating time or their um molting time. It's all kind of overlapping seasonally They sleep about 10 hours a day That's what we usually see when we google elephant seal. We see them loafing around on the beach But when they are at sea for months They can be at sea for eight months straight They sleep about two hours a day So Researchers really interested in When are they getting this sleep? How are they getting this sleep? And how are they surviving off of so little sleep? So they they went to um to some wild elephant seals And they fitted them with these like swim caps basically They they put them They put an electro encephalogram or eeg That records brain activity on wild elephant seals During their normal diving behavior time with a neoprene head cap over it They also had a small data logger to record signals And then they recovered the the system when the animals came back to beach at onya nuivo It's basically the same sensors that you'd use for human sleep in a in a sleep clinic And they're removable. They're flexible. They're adhesive They attach the cap and the water It's mostly protected from water despite the crazy pressure and amount of time that it's underwater So it doesn't disrupt the signals In addition to the eeg they also carried time depth records accelerometers and other instruments so that they could then compare What was happening in their brain and with sleep To seal movement to correspond that with the brain activity. When are they sleeping? When are they at rest? How deep are they sleeping right? And so the recording showed that they go into a deep sleep stage known as slow wave sleep While there's diving underwater And they maintain a controlled glide almost like a corkscrew down Then they transition into rapid eye movement or REM sleep And at that point the sleep paralysis makes them kind of just drift And their natural buoyancy is negative at that point when they've gone deep enough Yeah, you get to watch this uh this video if you're listening check out our show notes You can watch this seal kind of meaningfully Drive down uh swim uh swim down and then all of a sudden They hit kind of slow wave sleep and they kind of start to drift And fall kind of sideways and then they hit REM sleep and they do this corkscrew pattern downward as they are completely like Wonkily upside down and kind of sideways. They just Let gravity take over As they are pulled downward and then after about a 10 minute cat nap Elephant seal nap they wake up and can forage along the ocean Floor Then they'll surface later on. They're all good That's amazing Yeah Adaptation yeah, so one of the things to consider here is that elephant seals are actually at their most Uh vulnerable when they are close to the surface because that's where sharks are That's where killer whales are orcas are and so when they're at the open ocean on the surface They can only sleep for a minute or two Well, they can't really sleep at all. They can only surface long enough to breathe And then they're back underwater. They're not comfortable sleeping So they don't get to sleep until they've reached this area of the water column where they don't have many Threats predators. Yeah. Yeah, and so that's when they're like, oh, I'm safe. I'm deep enough conk and then they kind of go into this spiral downward um And it's also interesting that they're spiraling downward because you'd think that They're buoyancy with all their fat stores and everything would keep them up But somehow they're continuing to go down. So they're releasing air. They're going like they're They're getting deeper, which is yeah, so it sounds like it ends on the depth There's a depth at which they are Neutrally buoyant right and then deeper than that they become negatively buoyant There's a there's an aspect of that too that it's curious that that corkscrewing Might limit the speed of the descent Right. Absolutely. Right. So that like his divers do some level of this not to get Bubbles in their blood or whatever it is horrible awful bends the bends. Yes happen. Yeah So I wonder if part of this is also strangely timing That descent properly So that if they had got if they did just go straight down Yeah, would it cause a problem but having this corkscrew motion where it's right Because you would think you want you'd want efficiently as possible Which maybe this is Get to the bottom But it's efficient in the sense that it allows them that time To rest which they wouldn't be able to do otherwise because they're in zones where predators Are also inhabiting. Yeah Yeah, and so this is really interesting because they've had dive records for a while That show a constant dive So They've assumed while they have to be sleeping while they're diving. There's no other way that when else can they possibly sleep So they just kind of slowly sink in while they sleep But they don't they didn't know any of the specifics of it now They know exactly at what point they hit REM sleep and it is at this corkscrew moment So there's actually a specific Connection here between the place that they're the safest the moment when they become negatively buoyant And the moment at which they let themselves kind of succumb to full sleep So, of course, this is important just because it's really cool Like what the heck like add it to the list of crazy things that elephant seals do But also of course It is important for conservation And it's because as the researchers point out, I think it's really interesting There's a lot of pressure and an emphasis in the conservation conversation Going towards protecting animals feeding time But there is not a lot of protection on sleep time. Yes, exactly. So if there's a specific space at if we're thinking about like marine protected areas And there's a specific part of the water column or a specific type of environment that is conducive to sleep At specific times of year again, you know, there's like temporal variables are important Is that something that needs to be protected just like we would protect feeding or breeding spaces It's a really interesting question I would like somebody to protect my sleep Same rate Oh, yeah, but The the ability number one to be able to do EEGs on these animals while they're in water to go Get this data is just amazing. And yeah, understanding this now is a new step in understanding how these animals exist in their ecosystem and how we can work if we want to to help them Yeah, yeah, but how does this how does this evolutionarily How does a system like this Even get started. Yeah. So I think you you're awake until you die And then some individuals figure out how to catch 10 minutes here or there They survive better And the ones that figure out when and where is most advantageous to fall asleep survive the best And then that becomes selective pressure, right? So Obviously not sleeping at all You're not to be able to pass on your genes. That's not sustainable so There has to be a way to do it and if you're falling asleep on the surface and immediately getting eaten by a shark No babies for you No more dna, right? so Yeah There you go. I think it's already such it's already such a a an intense Number of adaptations to just be able to do the dive And then add this. Yeah. Oh, yeah And then have this whole other layer on top of it, right? But I encourage you again to look into the myriad of ways that this particular species Is hyper evolved for deep sea dive That is their whole thing Yeah, you think the elephant seals whole thing is that big old nose? No, no their whole thing Is that they are the deepest diving mammal to my knowledge? I could be wrong I think I think they are the deepest diving mammal on the planet, but so that that is an extreme amount of evolutionary pressure That is gonna Show up in all these different kind of aspects in an animal's physiology. Yeah Awesome Evolution I love it elephant seals. Everybody do yourselves a favor. Do a quick google Read through that Wikipedia. Maybe I should do a short You do an elephant day about elephant seals I love them so much also just google an ode juvenile elephant seal pictures because As crazy as the adult males look the juvenile elephant seals. I think are the cutest pinniped Uh marine mammal biologists fight me I think they're the cutest Vista cuffs All right moving from animals. Justin tell us a story about oh great, uh bacteria and resistance Yeah, well, you really don't want to hear this story I didn't want to I don't Unfortunately These researchers out of uh oxford UK which also had to look up that turns out that's also a real university They've investigated the evolution of antibiotic resistance properties of antimicrobial peptides so antimicrobial peptides are Something that is a it's a natural Antibiotic that all life forms have In some form or another This is in and in humans. It's in part of our innate Immune system meaning it's not like a reactive learning thing. It's just compounds that will kill Bacteria if they make it into our ourselves into our blood or into our system somewhere So uh long time ago they isolated some of these from bacteria from from a bacillus strain And it's Was used for quite a while in china because it turns out if you give it to chickens They get bigger And they also fight off Infection and so hey, this is great. Let's let's give this to all the chickens and Something bad happened Which is there became a outbreak of ecoli That was resistant To it and so that resistance actually started to affect humans and The livestock and so this this really bad ecoli Then went worldwide went global So they stopped using antimicrobial peptides amps for agriculture And they're they're still used quite a bit because they're they're the that last line of defense Against a multi resistant uh bacteria or microbe So colostin Is an amp That was derived from this the bacillus. That was part of that big Outbreaking in china back in 2016 ish Or early 2000s, I guess it was it was banned in 2016 these researchers Honey Had a little bit of a they looked at they looked at they were looking at this and they thought well, that's interesting. So It became this ecoli strain became resistant To the peptide Antimicrobial peptide that was derived from bacillus, but oh gosh That's conserved throughout the animal kingdom We have that in us a version of it an amp In our in our system our blood systems that that is finding this so if it it can become Resistant to it when it was used as an antibiotic Would it also have gained Resistance to our innate immune system Oh, no, here's here's what I need you to think of oh no, you have an infection and you add an anti microbial agent to it Yeah, right it kills that infection it kills that invader Okay, now an invader starts to become resistant to it. So it doesn't work as well So then you find something else and you apply it and maybe that works great. That's resistance this Is a resist this is overcoming a resistance that is a natural part of your immune system not some secondary invasive combination of What is that that that arms race of microbes fighting each other or overcoming a chemical That attacks it This is our innate immune system That this has gained some level of resistance to So there they went and tested it They found that Using amps found in humans and animals against this E. Coli This this E. Coli with this adjusted this new gene this resistant gene Increased its resistance to natural amps In innate mutant systems by 62 percent In a blood serum experiment the researchers found high levels of resistance to the human serum showing that this This one strain of E. Coli at least that they tested Had been trained To avoid our innate immune system So we already think of E. Coli is invasive The takeaway from this is using this thing that is so conserved throughout the animal kingdom to use that as an antibiotic and livestock or anywhere else Creates the possibility That you could get resistances to this From things that aren't currently pathogens You could train microbes out in the environment to become invasive to humans and All living things I mean, it's not like we're going hey Here's a treat every we are kind of but not on purpose. It's not like training a dog or an animal, but yeah So normally normally the these you got to think of these also working in you know that like you've got to take your antibiotic treatment to the end till the end So normally if one of these microbes gets invasive ends up in our blood something like that it can't leave And the work will be done all the way So there is no chance for it to go out and do a horizontal gene transfer or Some of them survive and now they're going to reproduce. It's there till it's gone. It's it's it's caught We've captured it We're this lab experiment when it gets into a body Placing it out in the environment allows things to train on it before they get stuck in that lab environment of the body It allows them to build resistances in populations It allows them that then once they find themselves in that body Can overcome the system Horribly terrifying antibiotics to a whole different level that we would be training An external population of pathogens or currently not pathogens because whenever it gets into a human body We don't even notice it because we kill it right away because we've got this innate system It's conserved from bacteria to humans But yeah, but that's the point right there So we have this innate system That is conserved And so we have a lot of peptides that are very similar to cows to chicken Like we've we've got peptides that are very similar This is as you said an arms race and this is something that has been going on much longer than you and I have been alive yes, so Yes, we should be concerned about the possibility of training Bacteria or other pathogens against these very specific Peptides, but at the same time we should we also shouldn't think that these bacteria E. Coli which we've been evolving with for all of time That these interactions haven't taken place already You know, there's yes. It's an arm. It's an arm. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely Absolutely, but but you don't tell your secrets You don't share your secrets on mass Right Hey, we know there's an arms race. We just want you to we've got the blueprints Right here of our next the weapon system. We haven't built yet, but we're planning on it and this is oh, it's got a couple So you can see it's a giant orbital round spherical planet destroying thing It's only got one weakness if there was one vent right here If you if you shoot a little torpedo thingy in there it blows up the whole thing Other than that though It's perfect Yeah, and yeah, no I take the point I I totally see the point of this and the importance of this study I'm just saying that we shouldn't overplay The significance of it. There is a there's a balance to be kept because yes We have been evolving with E. Coli forever These peptides many of them are in common with lots of our relatives on this planet already. So But yeah, you're Yeah, we don't want to share the plans. We this is this is dumb Let's not do that 62 percent more resistant from this one strand. Let's not do that Can we have new antibiotics yet? Can we figure that out? I really would like to figure that out Well, the other thing is like it's one thing if it if it's one thing if it overcomes this too because this is just This is our last line of defense right now. Yeah, it's another if it doesn't even if it doesn't even care And can attack our bodies with it. That's the other thing. It's just we need yeah, we need a completely different Different way to attack This this aren't we're gonna lose this arms race because we we're bad at it No, we're getting better. We're learning We're figuring out how to you know use the the phages that the bacteria like to use to fight each other So we're learning the page. I'm being asked for a happy defense To end the show here or at least my section of it. Uh, this isn't really so much of the story is just to update the lunar lander spacecraft that japan Planned to land on the moon May be on the moon He don't know Was schrodinger's lander or what? So everything was going fine. We sent it there They sent it there. It was uh above the moon surface Uh Only you know pretty close to the surface 90 meters above you know pretty close And then Lost contact completely craft. They saw the craft was picking up speed Which it wasn't supposed to because it was supposed to have a reverse thrust kind of a thing to slow it down It was accelerating Towards the moon Oh smush. No We don't know Most likely smush kaboom The thing i'm curious about is can we can't we just not I don't like the part I couldn't figure out is Why can't we just look like don't we have the ability to see the surface of the moon from the planet earth well enough to I don't even know where it was landing and take a look Yeah, it's got another rover over there To approximately where you thought it But then you're just gonna end up with a pile of exploded rovers just on top of each is just gonna keep happening Anyway space travel is tougher tougher than you think Even if you want to go be a moon tourist Go have fun just understand that You may be watching the moon you may be getting closer and closer and then next thing you know, that was it Bring a trampoline problem. So now you're moon detritus Oh detritus such a beautiful word And I love that word No, get trampolines on who needs a trampoline on the moon Sounds great to me. I mean you have less gravity. So you can get some real air Or maybe maybe it's the opposite. Maybe the trampolines don't work as well. That's a great Now if we had sex in space now, I want to know if trampolines work in space Oh, they would work Um, it depends on gravity It depends on all the forces of course trampolines would work in space But you need to have the thrust that goes one direction to have the rebound the other I want to know I want to know what a trampoline is like on the moon because I feel like it would be Very disappointing That's why I said why do you need a trampoline on the moon? Because the down pressure is not as much. So you wouldn't you wouldn't really push it. It'd just be like stepping on anything else I see what you're saying Okay Let's talk about brain stuff. I got a couple of brain stories for the end of the show here Researchers have been looking at the brain They like to do that Do you know about the homunculus? You mean like a creature that you make in uh in fantasy that no Is that a word that means something that's like even bigger than super gigantic? Nope. That's not what that means either No, the homunculus is the little person. I mean in the like the little man in your brain Uh researchers forever and ever never have been like, oh our motor cortex our sensory cortex it maps to the human body in some very interesting ways and we've had this imagining Of the homunculus is kind of starting at the toes and then it goes like a Feet and it goes all the way up in your face and places that need more nerves Have bigger representation Within the brain and so really the homunculus is this terribly distorted idea of what a person looks like Represented in the neurons in the brain and they found this And tiny back kind of all right. Let's see it. Come on. I know you have a picture. Let me see it I do have a picture But the thing is this particular new study that was just published in nature this last week They have determined that there's more involved in the motor cortex homunculus than has previously been considered So whereas we used to consider Oh, it's the classical ideas There's a map of the body in the cortex and it's weird looking and some things are Really big and other things are really small. It depends on how many neurons are involved Um, there is based on this new fmri work. They've done A new kind of context what they're calling the integrant isolate model and this model has to do with there's Certain actions and things that we do where it's not just the motor cortex like When we think of how Motions take place. There's this very steeped in Dogma idea of how it works. It goes. Okay. I have an idea in my brain The idea in my brain goes to the planning area the pre motor cortex and the pre motor cortex goes Ah, it's a great idea and it shoves the information to the motor cortex and the motor cortex says nerves act And then you go boop boop and you move your finger or you bend your knee or you do any number of motions But it's been this idea that hey the homunculus is the representation of everything and if you look at it In an fmri, it should be very one to one You move your finger The motor cortex nerves for the finger light up and get excited But that's not what they found and so they found that there's some Some overlap of those very specific one-to-one things but more so There are multiple regions of the brain that are involved in planning that are involved in Pain that are involved in just taking context of the whole system and the environment and the motion itself So the motor cortex is integrated With the rest of the brain as if it were part of a system and not just acting all by itself It's how your brain's supposed to be isn't it? Yeah That's why like if you if you get brain damage you it's not like You can't use your fingers anymore all of a sudden not necessarily everything else works. It's fine Yeah, and there are instances that we've seen over and over where particular areas of the brain get damage that we think Oh, they're never going to be able to do this again And then they're able people are able to surprise us all the time our brains are plastic But they're also very interconnected Isn't there like a like if somebody loses A limb say somebody loses A hand right? I'm gonna keep that keep that graph up there for a little bit. Yes Let me see. I'm gonna find it see if I can find it a little bit better So somebody loses a thumb, okay? And so there's no there's no information coming from the thumb anymore There's no sensory information coming from the thumb The the part of the brain that was that was there waiting for signals from the brain Now let's take it over And then like here you have neck. Okay, right is next to the thumb So what could happen is you could start to you could go like this to your neck and feel your phantom thumb Because this part of the the register for this part of the brain is now taken over That space that used to be kind of like there's really strange Sensory interactions that can that can happen if one section is lost and sort of Uh Wants to keep doing its job But it now has to go work for the neighboring part of the brain. I guess exactly. Yeah But it even beyond that there are other cortical regions that are involved and Influence the motor cortex whereas previously it was like if the signals get to the motor cortex and the motor cortex fires You're gonna move but now they understand that there's actually a lot more integration happening And yeah, this is yeah, your homunculus is not the homunculus. You thought it was anymore I don't like it. I require a story That is less terrifying that has a less terrifying graphic. Please dr. Key You really we had horrifying antimicrobial news. We had all like it's all been road kill and and uh, is icky strangers having sex on your trip to space Hopefully they're not strangers to each other unless no, no, no, but I don't know But I'm just saying if I'm assuming that When I get to go to space, it's not gonna be like Mr. Justin your capsule is awaiting for your personal right. This means I'm gonna be in there and coach Well, like people ever like shoulder-to-shoulder guess what there'll be a bathroom Where do you and the people I know but things float around. It's anyway. It's been a horrifying show Oh, what can you do to save us? Well, we're gonna talk about the understanding of nervous of nervous systems and evolution So let's go back in history to people first looking at nervous systems Under a microscope and coming into the idea of like, what is the nervous system? How how do things work? And there's a 19th century scientist Ramon E. Cajal Santiago Ramon E. Cajal at working with Fridjof Nansen And they came up with the neuron doctrine the neuron drop doctrine is that neurons are individual cells And that's what they are. They're just cells their neurons like them go um and Then Camilo Golgi came around and he's like Wow Nervous system. You can't just have individuals in a system. So they're gonna touch each other These neurons touch each other. They influence each other. It's a continuous network and then we found Synapses and that confirmed the whole idea that all these individual Neurons actually touch each other communicate it is as a continuous system And oh, it's amazing. We have a nervous nervous system But where did this nervous system come from? How did it evolve? researchers Just publishing in sciences last week have been looking at comb jellies Cute little comb jellies The jellies that aren't really jellies the jellies that aren't jellies exactly And so these jellies that aren't jellies but are very very cute and little they We're easy to look at for these researchers. They're like, well, let us Take a look at what's going on. We're gonna add some fluorescent dyes. We're gonna take a look at what's happening in these what happened to be Early evolutionary ancestors Of ours. So it's we're related to them. We have ancestors. We have relatives that go way way way back to the same place historically and in evolutionary time So the idea that we can look at these comb jellies we can look at their anatomy and get an idea using 3d electron microscopy to See what's going on in their Nervous systems that it might give us an idea of how nervous systems in general evolved well What they determined is that tenaphores they Don't have nervous systems They have Neural nets they have nervous nets So what they have are neurites that have Combined together and so in essence are one single neuron And so this is challenging our understanding of what a nervous system actually is The reality is they have multiple Neurons that connect in a way that Is more net like Than system like so instead of being like our nervous system where we have these Neurons touching neurons touching neurons. They have neurons that are connected And net like over the entire surface of the organism And so the question is how Does this net like structure? Really work as a system And if it's working that way as a system Why didn't we keep it that way? And why do we have the nervous? Yeah, why do we have the nervous system that we do today? Yeah So it's uh, it's a very interesting finding that has not been seen previously and it's I think it's going to be interesting looking forward for comparative reasons. It's going to be Evolutionarily interesting and additionally Considering our look at AI and neural nets and machine learning How the kinds of intelligences or systems that we can create that we use by biology to inspire us to create How is that going to? Inform us. So there's some really interesting stuff going on there Like would it be better to move from a neural net to like a node based system? Which is right and or would that what that is worse? Because that would mean that the AI would be way more Smart, I don't know. Anyway, or when you've got node based stuff. Is it uh less resilient? Right. Like does if you if you lose a node, how does the rest of the system work? Uh, you know, so is there some aspect of the evolution of our nervous systems and the plasticity of them? We can lose a neuron And continue functioning but in the case of these neural nets, like is it less resilient and does that influence it? Well, it just seems like it would be uncompartement uncompartimentalized, right? So Yeah, what would their homunculus look like? Right Because the the difference between it could be really weird like the difference between touch and smell and uh Vision like that we have which are sort of these separate ways the the the brain process the information the sensory input All of these would be in the same Note, I suppose To a a neural net like it would be very it would be very difficult to differentiate Uh, what was what was causing the activity and the way that our our brains and our neural systems are set up To have all this compartmentalization and even just nodal Or is it nodal or module? Activity that's taking place in different parts of the brain. So yeah, so yeah So instead of synapses where we have these things budding up against each other and communicating What if they like all of our nerves just really grabbed on and held hands, right? So that's that's what I want to see too is like Tnata for's uh comb jellies are are thank you for pronouncing it correctly. Yeah Hey, you have to take my zoologist card if I got that wrong. Anyway, um, there's there's such their own little phylum They're their own little phylum just comb jellies. So what I want to know is Across the animal kingdom. Who has a nerve net? Who has it at one point? Did it disappear? Did it appear at multiple times and then disappear? It is there some weird conversion evolution where unrelated Kind of phyla have it I'm so curious It was this a predecessor to what we currently have or is it just a different way of having? Yeah, is it just yeah I don't I don't know either, but it's yeah a fascinating. Let's find out. Yes episode 2000 of twist Absolutely, we'll just keep on going and going and going we've come to the end. Yes Yeah All the science for this week everybody. We've made it Thank you all for listening. We appreciate you being here and being Being present and talking and chatting in all the chat rooms. 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you walk around your local aquarium staring at comb jellies just search for this week in science however podcasts are found if you enjoy the show get your friends to subscribe as well for more information on anything you've heard here today show notes and links to the stories are available on our website www.twist.org you can also sign up for a newsletter perhaps yeah who knows it could show up you never know just bam there it is you can contact us directly also but don't email me about what the deepest diving mammal is because i looked it up and there are two whales that dive deeper than elephant seals so that's covered oh so you don't need to email me about that i got it corrected but it's the deepest diving pinnipet regardless you can email me that i guess but i've i've got it i have that now info now regardless you can email kiki and tell her how wrong i was accused of this week in science.com you can email justin and uh i don't know send him gifts at twistminion at gmail.com or you can email me but not about that at flairbaz at twist.org just be sure to put twist twis in the subject line or your email will be sent up into space uh on a tourism flight and i don't know what's gonna happen there uh-oh well but uh after your space trip you can tell us all about it on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr kiki at jackson fly and at players menagerie we love your feedback if there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview a haiku that comes due in the night please let us know we'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news and if you've learned anything from the show remember it's all in your head this week in science this week in science this week in science it's the end of the world so i'm setting up a shop got my banner unfurled it says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the robots with a simple device i'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand and all this is coming your way so everybody listen to what i say i use the scientific beacon science this week in science this week in science science science this week in science this week in science this week in science science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that's what i say he may not represent your views but i've done the calculations and i've got you just might understand that this is the after show we are here after the show in the after show what are you showing oh look at these idiots i love them so much these idiots i love them they're like they're really good have you ever heard um what a baby elephant seal sounds like they used it in jurassic park what yeah they recorded elephant seals at the brine mammal center in sausalito and used that in jurassic park they like slowed it down yeah they sound like a drowning chicken is what i can only say it sounds like it full speed no it's what it is man no drowning chickens maybe elephant seal sounds so much scoosh exactly jason bombardier let's see scoosh scoosh scoosh you're finding it's just everything is ads beforehand it's the worst what happened the internet the internet is made of ads the internet is made of ads ads ads ads ads oh any images and swim caps i couldn't find any that's a great question although the marine mammal center puts little hats on their elephant seals it's really cute yeah i tried to open images and stuff from the story and from the paper but we couldn't get the images of the little swim caps i wasn't there yes gordon says i took an audio design course and found that when you want to create sounds that feel threatening it's usually the less obvious species that work the best a lot of herbivores and other seemingly harmless species i like this seemingly and in parentheses so i did this i did this for the the radio play that i did a long time ago where i needed i wanted a t-rex sound and i think the news of the day was that oh you know the closest answer relative of a t-rex today is chickens chicken and so i took a chicken kind of sound and i slowed it down and i pitch shifted it and it's you're right gordon it was terrifying that you scale the chicken up to the size of a t-rex in audio uh and it's whoa it says oh the fun you can have the fun you can have making innocent creatures terrifying i can't find pictures it's so sad there should be pictures of the the elephant seal swim caps there should be i looked before the show too i was like oh uh no that's something else it's a related article about just like the normal tags i was just showing you but maybe they sorry everybody maybe they didn't take photos oh well yeah they're too silly for the internet you're right jason that's not possible too silly for the internet come on let's no the internet loves silly doesn't it i mean we want more silly yeah they just were very focused on the dive i like to picture that it wasn't just like a swim cap that it like had um a strap that went under so it almost looked like a pilot hat that's what i picture in my mind a pilot hat see this is this is i'm having this like contextual problem with coin purses and pilot hat yeah like a million a part you know has worn a hat with a strap under the chin world war one hat i guess for a pilot here's an image i found of a just tracking device for monitoring um this is from 2008 yeah so that's different they used just from monitoring and collecting data in the Antarctic seas yeah so that's probably just for dive uh dive depths and um temperature and location yes the temperature and stuff like that exactly yeah but yeah because it's a it's basically a sleep study eeg i have to say that seal looked very proud yeah look at me and my little guy it looked like like i've got a hat i've got an antenna hat it's amazing oh my goodness oh uh going back to sex in space oh yes i determined i determined i didn't determine anything i learned this last week that uh and this is from an astronaut that we don't eat astronaut ice cream in space there's no astronaut the ice cream that's the freeze dried ice cream that everybody's like astronaut ice cream nobody eats it in space be yeah isn't it actually camping ice cream isn't that actually what that was created for well it was a no it was originally created for the astronauts okay but what they learned very quickly is that when they eat it in space it goes crunch and there's all these little dust particles and little bits like when you eat a potato chip or something it it exploded and then crumbs in space it comes in space that then get moisture from the air and become not freeze dried and land places and gum everything up so it's and everybody died no ice cream and then everybody died from ice cream yes space death ice cream and this is the problem and this is the same problem with sex in space but this but this is the whole point of this of the paper justin is that we have to identify the problems because people are going to do it no matter what you say yeah i so i have by the way i just want to be on the record i have not in any way argued against sex in space that is not my position i just i just don't want to be in coach yes i understand think about i want my own well we know you're not doing space tours we're going to mars anyway so no i'm not leaving the planet i've i decided that long time ago i'm not interested i like the planet i like being on a planet i think it's hard to get on a planet in the first place so then to like be like oh i want to get off the planet once you're here is like a very silly idea i like this planet i'm happy i think i think a lot of work went into the planet and to evolving to survive in whatever niches that we have found on this planet and i and i think that's we're just let a lot of other people leave so that there can be that would be fine i feel like i do feel like it's everyone else you go ahead so leave space for us we're getting crowded here we can i is this we're in the after show can i admit that i kind of miss this the lockdown i'm because i i did a bit of traveling of course you can i did a bit of traveling during the lockdown and you know the the hotel rates were really cheap the you'd get on an airplane and you didn't have anybody sitting next to you but just it sounds like you and didn't enjoy you you didn't have a lockdown is what i know i didn't i totally know i didn't like that home everyone else being locked down but yes yes okay i like just i like the i like the i like the planet with a severe reduction of population and i don't mean that i would want to get there the wrong way i'm just saying everybody was nice well are you are you suggesting maybe that each of us has a day of the week i think that would be a great idea except for you know what you you have tuesdays and i actually did this for here in letters a through d you bring a salad or so i did this i did this for years unless you're such a worker and then you're screwed you just have to be you have to work every day anyway because we need everybody to serve the coffee to the people whose day it is so maybe two decades of my life i worked every weekend and had a couple of weekdays off yeah and then then i got one of those jobs where you get the weekends off every weekend and it was horrified by the sheer volume of population that's like now there's a line at the grocery store there's traffic and and yep we should shift it should be like very shifted weekends should be at various points throughout the week all the time but then you never see people as the like that was exactly lockdown come on is that you would you didn't see your friends for two years let's all work when we want to work and take vacations i would say even let's use ai and burgeoning technology to work 16 hour work weeks i really love it and then we can have time to travel and see our friends i don't know maybe just get paid the same and it'd be great and then yes i love it don't threaten me with a good time blair says gordon oh not seeing your friends in two years is that a good time oh man i don't know i thought it was sad yeah that part was sad for sure i know patrick machine learning not ai but we are you know there's the extrapolation to the idea so according to an ai expert online that was interviewed by wired just to let you know patrick i i'm not trying to start a fight yeah you are machine learning is an aspect of ai according to the ai expert and therefore it is not wrong to say ai when you're talking about machine learning is just machine learning is a type of ai right it's just general like machine learning is specific yeah it's a more it's a more specific thing to say yeah so so what as a science show we should we should try to be more specific about things that we unless we're at the after show talking generally well it's also i don't always know the difference in the moment but i but if i know that if i say ai that counts machine learning do you see i'm saying like sure patrick patrick okay fine patrick just pulled out is is nasa yeah okay okay i'm sorry what was that you were saying about what sure sure so here's the here's the i would love to explain to me why that's wrong then i would explain to everybody why everybody's wrong let me find the link of the guide that i watched i'll explain to everyone why they're wrong individually and i'll get to everyone eventually but right now i know where you're going but right now right now what i would what i would say is that based on what we were talking about earlier about the separate functions of of brain and like machine learning is sort of like brain nodes it's sort of like that yeah it's sort of like so machine learning is like really good by its design to think about this or to do visual things or to do image categorization or or very specific and it's very like you just it's artificial intelligence i think is when those things get connected and work together and can work together that's going to be artificial intelligence when when your machine learning thing that's trying to do some sort of image thing has got this crazy output and it goes hey chat gpt how do i explain this to humans oh well let me put language to this that the humans will understand okay well how do i do right so once it once they're interconnected and communicating with each other that's when i think you really start to get to oh look i got a hundred percent correct from a guy who works at nasa by the way i do like gord's comment though we haven't really come up with an adequate definition of intelligence yet and that yeah yeah so if we don't know intelligence generally how do we define artificial intelligence and there's very often in the general lexicon and the way we talk about stuff a mushing up of intelligence conscience consciousness and sentience and these are very different concepts yeah so like yeah yeah yeah you know what i'm wishing them up but people mush them up all the time i don't know patrick are we intelligent i mean yeah the little the mean voice in my head says you're so dumb oh gosh if you are on the show or you are watching the show you have some intelligence how about that that's yeah oh i like okay patrick says as far as i've learned from twist we are biological robots who think we are intelligent all right we're the city bus for microbes also i think yeah we're we're uh what we think are smart city microbial city buses there we go yes yeah we're like teslas for oh my gosh so hey we went to huntsville alabama rocket city where space camp is got to go to the us space and rocket center it was amazing first night there i brought we brought a brought marshal and kai so it's a family trip to this rocket town because rockets and awesome marshal decides he's gonna rent a tesla we've never driven a tesla before our flights are delayed and delayed and delayed we arrived in huntsville at like 130 in the morning and had to find this rental tesla that was like through just like it's like an airbnb for cars oh sure so somebody's car that they let they let you for the weekend or whatever that's in this parking garage at the airport we get there and i really never realized that a tesla was like a steering wheel with an ipad screen yes and trying to fit we couldn't open the glove box oh yeah you gotta hit the little car icon and then hit one of my best friends has a tesla i spent all day on monday on monday in the tesla and it's hilarious how yeah it's it's it's just a touchscreen with wheels it is in that vehicle yeah awful and it's this crowded did you find the way to get out of the car this is what i'm curious about because the first time i got in a tesla i think i was stuck it took a while five minutes yep nope yeah that's you there's no it looks like the window button it looks like the window button exactly but it's not the window button it's the door button anyway we're 130 in the morning trying to get in the car kai's like crazy sleep deprived 12-year-old you know i'm tired everybody's tired marshall's like i watched seven videos on youtube i know how to drive a tesla it's like keanu reevesing the freaking car and it was the most ridiculous i was like we are going to die just leaving the airport tesla that's supposed to be its main objective is to keep you from dying at all costs no no this car unless there's a software mistake so you know we put it we put in the destination we figured out how we thought we figured out how to use the navigation told it where to go to go it could not get us out of the parking lot very good we it had us driving to the far corner of the parking lot where there was no exit and it wanted us to exit there and i'm like can we drive there yeah i've noticed that the tesla map is not as good as like google map it was so bad it was really funny like how how you're in the hot bed of silicon valley how do you have bad maps in your car they did i don't but we all have an invitation to houston johnson's well that's fun that's awesome yeah unfortunately as uh as patrick is acknowledging there it is in texas and i have i have it's it's part of my bucket list uh in life going to never set it's to never set foot in texas yeah it's on my bucket ever ever ever yes well as a as a person with ovaries it's a little dangerous to go into texas also so uh these days ask to you kiki for uh making their back no i didn't go to texas oh they have a oh oh even better yeah even worse yeah yeah yeah yeah you did it i did it anyway huntsville it's like this island of rocket engineers and scientists the hudson alpha company is there which is like one of the most advanced genetic sequencing companies in the entire united states maybe the world in in huntsville like there's this girl it's the population is freaking smart number of rocket scientists per capita is off of the charts but it's in alabama yeah and everybody's very nice to you oh welcome welcome to huntsville would you like to stay a while here can i get you can they talk like that they're gonna take y'all you're gonna y'all come hang out here i did not luckily get a oh bless your heart bless your soul i did not get one of those so that is i felt when i was in texas i got a lot i got that a lot i also got the you're not from around here are you yeah oh nope i got that part of it really no how could you tell nope you know very funny anyway oh my oh america the the the the patchwork quilt that is our country uh desperate provinces we have named states here we are oh my goodness oh yeah jason got the you aren't from around here also very good we're in the same club it's like a badge of honor at a certain point yeah although you're like oh god i gotta hide all right yeah a little bit when you're in the middle of it but then it's a good story yeah oh yeah it's i've actually got a water thing thing a lot that's like that's something i actually covered in so yeah wait what in california i got that from california once i had just come back from uh i think i actually i don't remember i can't was coming back from maybe maybe it was from denmark something like probably you became European too fast got got picked up uh at the airport by a friend and we went uh grocery shopping because that was part of their thing and so i i had bought i bought some alcoholic beverages and the only id that i got id and the only id i had was my passport and i had to explain what it was it's a passport not a and and the girl looked at me and she said uh oh where are you from yeah that makes sense with the u.s passport it's weird at all no she's asking what state right no she wasn't no i had a u.s passport which i think was a thing that you got to enter the country oh my you needed the u.s passport it's a fine thing but i gotta like so where are you from in in california and that was that was like i'm from that's a that's i'm from here well i um when i was a tour guide in college at the zoo multiple times multiple times got asked when did you move here from canada oh i had never left the country at this point i had left california maybe twice i think at that point in my life and uh i guess i had a canadian affectation in the way i talk because i was like what are you talking about i was never just go native like oh you have a slight canadian accent and you know you use some you have some canadian mannerisms and use some canadian language i was like what yeah excuse me yeah i think jason i think you're right i was too polite too polite maybe i talked kind of slow it's like that california like kind of slower talk i don't know but that's california yeah i don't know where are you from canadian i'm the from the part of california that has a very insincere accent ha yeah even even when we're being totally you know excited about something people are like it's that whole like yeah no yeah means yeah no yeah no yeah no no yeah no yeah i'm actually excited yeah exactly that sounds like a great idea there's like some sort of like sense that people are being passive aggressive but they're not they're just have a yeah unattached tonality yeah it's funny though people are a light sometimes to a fault here which when i did live abroad it was wild to me that people would just tell you the truth about things it was like very jarring at first it's so rude but i was like no they tell you the truth this is quite convenient so if you invite somebody like oh do you want to see the new james bond movie they might say no that that doesn't sound like something i'd enjoy and you would you go oh my what that's so rude you're supposed to make up an excuse or say yes and then fail or like go anyway but no they just go no that doesn't really sound like fun but like let me know what you're doing after it's just like oh how cool you tell me exactly what you actually what you actually mean look at that it's also good but that could also last because it's a state y'all yeah Alaska's a state Alaska's a state y'all put it out there thanks Eric it's pretty big and pretty far away from the rest of us but it is a state it's how can we if you look on the map you'll see it's right there next to Hawaii yeah and it's and it's small it's like the size of Oregon if you look at a map right oh nor cal don't call it yeah no call it did i did i talk about the the monarch not is it the monarch or the the butterflies uh wintering in Africa did i bring that story to the show i can't remember if i do not tonight no so this is oligo but one of the interesting things that was uh doing some uh research on this yes story was Africa it turns out is really big yes really oh i think you did talk about this i may have i vaguely remember this because uh you know if you look at a map the way it works is where the equator is everything is kind of squished and things get expanded uh far northern southern hemisphere so if you look at a typical map Greenland might be half or 40 percent maybe a third of the size of Africa but Greenland actually would fit in there uh into Africa along with the entire United States and China yeah and still have room for a whole bunch of road islands it's it's uh it's really big i don't know why i got started on that it's yeah i've forgotten the way it's the orange peel the orange peel map is i think the most accurate and it's still not accurate because it's a terrible map because it's it's all broken it's a sphere buddies you can't flatten it okay anyway i mean you could try but it's gonna be messy i mean if anybody's ever tried to make a swimsuit top you'll understand sure there's a very small percentage of the population that is not like ah yeah right right right right it depends on the individual topography i would expect as well exactly um but is it that time it is i'm gonna go to bed yep for sure yes so what do we say now say good morning Justin uh good morning Justin say good night Blair good night Blair good night night kiki good night everyone thank you for joining us for another episode of very specific random thoughts and science and we're gonna keep waving as long as i talk and Blair yonnes and no i'm kidding everyone stay safe stay healthy stay curious and we will see you again next wednesday night thank you good night