 We're live. We're live. We're waiting for the news from the peoples that we are actually live. I see myself live I think we're good. Oh Somehow chat is disabled for the stream interesting See what happens there? Anyhow, I did not disable the chat somebody can Re-enable it that would be fantastic We have our chat room at twist org slash live if you are interested in chatting along With this show the show that's beginning in three two this is Twist this week in science episode number 709 recorded on Wednesday, February 20th 2019 dark energy and red shifts Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science. We are going to fill your head with sharks old sperm and space but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer. Have you ever wondered what things were like in the good old days? What did they do all day? How did they have fun? What did they eat? Whatever you imagined about that time and those days was most likely totally wrong chances are that Life was a lot harder, but people were still not so much different than they are today Chances are bad that the diet you were eating based on any peoples of the past Actually resembles a diet of anything other than the current humans who read the same book magazine article watch the same talk show nutritionist Informercial most diet data on days gone by is based on what diet data we have found so far and Despite the many revisions of ancient diets that have come from an increased supply of discovery most diet Fads stick to what they've been hearing from 10 year 20 year old news sticking instead to the myth of the good old days In fact fake ancient diet fallacies don't stop with people It's a fad with people's pets as well Dog food pitches ancient diet all the time telling you your dog needs meat after all Your dog descended from an apex predator as if this was yesterday as if your fur baby was just weaned from the wolfy wild As we will report later in this episode Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, your furry friend might be better evolved to enjoy a veggie diet All this and much more furry fun ahead on this weekend science coming up next What's happening Good science to you Kiki and Blair and The good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there welcome to another episode of this weekend science We are back yet again to talk about all the science that we enjoyed and want to talk about this week So it's just fun times with science. I have stories What do I have stories about I have stories about gene drive and the great white shark genome Those stories don't necessarily go together Yeah, and we also have an interview this evening with a Fermilab researcher to discuss the dark energy survey and its findings Justin, what did you bring for the show? I've got vegetarian dogs of the Neolithic native California shrub used by Native Americans to relieve relief information the inflammation could be a treatment for Alzheimer's and cost-benefit analysis to industries that kill more people than they employ Cost-benefit analysis is not that that's not the two industries. Okay, never mind Moving on Blair's animal corner. What's in it? Oh my goodness. Well like Justin I also brought news about a shrubbery, but this one is about deer I also brought a story about cassowary casks and of course I brought some old sperm Yeah, what else would I expect from you when it's time for a show? But as we jump into I am so happy to remind you all that if you have not yet subscribed Please do so you can subscribe to this week in science all good places that good podcasts are found So I tunes the Apple Marketplace Google Play's podcast portal stitcher spreeker Spotify Pandora tune in just search for this week in science You can also find us on YouTube and Facebook or you can visit twist dot org All right, let's jump in to our interview for the evening I would love to welcome Dr. Antonella Palmis to the show Dr. Palmis is a postdoctoral researcher associate at Fermilab and At Fermilab she is part of the dark energy survey and she does Observational cosmology Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me here It's wonderful to get you on the show to talk about this dark energy survey I mean we have these names for things the dark energy survey I find it very interesting that the survey itself though is looking at light Okay, to tell us about this dark energy. Can can you explain what the dark energy survey is? Sure, so the dark energy survey is a large-scale galaxy survey So we just finished actually last month with the 9th of January 2019 After almost six years six years of observations and we took images of 5,000 square degrees of the southern sky. So this is about one-eighth of the whole sky. So it's a lot And sorry I was wow, I because yeah, usually we're getting a Pinpoint of a sliver of a tiny aspect of something and then there's a billion galaxies there Which is really cool But then there's all this other that we're we're not looking at when we're that dialed in focus So this is a huge wide Scan of space. Yes. Yes. So usually when you go into some smaller area We're looking into deeper things. So you're trying to image the faintest thing of the universe in this case We are also going deep as compared to the ancestor of the dark energy survey Which was this long digital sky survey, which imaged a lot of the northern hemisphere But that only goes to say you rush it point three We'll talk about rush shifts may be more in detail later and with the dark energy survey We go out to rush shift about one So we've taken images for hundreds of millions of galaxies And so this is what we're kindly taking care of like trying to analyze all of this set of data that we have So at the moment we analyzed only the first year of observations and we have six of this Some results are already out using the first three years of observations. So these are really exciting But there's still a lot still a lot that we have to analyze in terms of cosmology and how to understand better what dark matter is and dark energies and so on So what we do with the dark energy survey is we take just images So this means that we are looking at some colors of the galaxies in particular These are in the optical and the visual bands that we can see with our eyes and towards also the nearing for that a little bit So that we can go towards higher rush shifts. So these all of these galaxies that are farther away And so this is how we try to trace The dark matter in the universe and its evolution by looking at these galaxies that are also much farther away from us We have done actually a lot of science with DS We have done some cosmological results, which is what we were expected to do with this particular survey But at the same time, we've also done some say non-dark energy discoveries which include dark galaxies gravitational waves and so on and stellar streams So it's been very exciting, you know, like you get a large data set and there's just so many things that you can learn with that So I don't know if you want to pop up some images there's So there is a footprint image Which shows like the tank shape of the dark energy survey So I don't see the image of my mind to see it. Oh, okay here Okay, so this tank and this is the the shape of the footprint of the dark energy survey This is what we have observed Well first during the first three years of observations But also during the the full Observation time of almost five years because we are trying to make ten passes over this whole region So that we can go deeper and deeper. This means like we are increasing our exposure time so that we can so we can see the fainter things So you're just passing over the same areas multiple times and allowing the light to To be additive that's right. Okay It's like exposure time in your in your own camera But just much better And so then you can see how we started with this science verification as B That's what that's what we got in 2012 when we got the first light With the dark energy camera, which was actually mostly made here at Fermilab and then it was sent over to CTIO the Cerro Tololo inter-american observatory, which is in Chile close to La Serena Yes, and you can see this is the dark energy camera. So this is actually on the focal plane That's where you see all these CCD's. I think these are 74 CCD's Some of them died one of them came back to life at some point two years ago. I don't know why Fickle the technology Yes, so this is this is how it looks so that the the reason why one of the reasons why this camera is so special is Because it has a very large field of view. So this Focal plane that you see here this camera that you see here is able to take an image with just one pointing Which is about three square degrees, which is roughly 14 times The full moon. So this is this is very yes This is huge And and this is one of the strengths of our white survey and also one of the strengths of our Garotational way follow up so that we can actually search for The the the candidates that the the sources of gravitational waste very quickly because we have this very large field of view and so From the footprint before we also saw that there were some smaller pointings and these are the supernova fields So we have a white field where we're taking images for this hundreds of millions of galaxies And then some smaller fields over which we focus and we well we have focused because it's over Still think it's on sorry But yeah, we were taking images almost every week or this yellow Small fields that you see there and so that we could see all of these supernovae events coming up and And so identify supernovae and then use those for cosmology Were these that were these areas that were the supernovae? Occurred where you were studying them had supernovae been identified there And so that's why you focused there or did you just randomly pick some areas of the sky and say we're gonna sit here and Just wait until a star goes supernova Yeah, that's pretty much it Well in a way that the survey was defined Taking into account different things for example overlap with other surveys As you can see the on the the northern part you see this gray and green areas This is other surveys that the I think that the yes of the The gray area is the boss as part of the Sloan survey And so you want to have some overlap with this previous surveys that is always good for calibration for example, or like you already have some spectroscopic rushes some very precise rush shifts From this boss data, for example, so that could be helpful In combining the data sets, but no if we there was no particular reason We just wanted to define some areas that were observable for most of the time when we are up observing in the sky during the the observing runs that we have and Yeah, just take observations Week after week and there will be new supernovae coming up all the time Something else that really stands out to me is the fact that I mean, this is the southern hemisphere You're looking we're looking at the southern sky and all of the the boss survey the gray and the the green regions In the image that you that you've given us are in the northern hemisphere Is this one of the first southern hemisphere surveys? Yes, so in terms of this very large photometric surveys without photometry, so we just have some Filters, we will see later how these filters look like Instead of having like a full spectrum the full spectral energy distribution of the galaxy We just have some particular filters. So some particular colors of the galaxies So, yes in the northern we had as the assess that was the first big Galaxies and this is the second one, but let something that we're really missing in the south is actually spectroscopy So something that allows us to just look at the full spectrum of the galaxies And and so to find their the rash shift and thus their distance very precisely So that's something that is actually missing in the in the south We have some but they're very shallow They only see the very bright galaxies So let's talk about redshift for a second before we go much further because you've mentioned it a few times How is redshift important for what you're studying? Okay, so let's first say what for the rash shift is Okay, so this works more or less as the Doppler shift that we all know from the example of the ambulance When it's coming towards us has some frequency for this sound and then when it's going away from us It has another frequency So when it's coming towards us the frequency becomes faster So this higher energy let's say that's the same thing with the photons when something is coming That is emitting photos and it's coming towards us We get a higher energy radiation. So like what we call a blue shift So the energy is shifted towards the bluer colors and when it's going away from us We get a different frequency again, but in that case it's towards Redder wavelength so lower energies and so that's a rash shift So in the case of the galaxies because of the expansion of the universe This is something that Hubble back in the 20s found out Is that most of the galaxies are actually receding from us? And this is because of this the what was called then the Hubble expansion And so what he realized is that the velocity of recession from us was actually always proportional to their distance from us So in a way the rash shift of a galaxy is telling us something about its distance and so this is what we try to measure using the The dark energy service well, so that there was a figure there. I think it's called rash shift Okay, I'll bring that up just a moment. Yeah See if I can get to these things quickly enough And so then and so then if it's if the red shifting or the expansion is proportional or the amount of red shifting It's proportional how far away something is that kind of indicates that it's happening everywhere once at the same rate Yes, that's right. That's right. That's one of the our cosmological principle You know is that the universe is actually homogeneous and it's isotropic and this expansion is also happening isotropically everywhere In the same way the same rate. Yes, but is this something that's up for debate though Whether or not the the universe is Homogenous in this way. Yeah, well it is of course It's not on very small scales because we have earth we have the Sun we have the galaxy we have clusters So we know that on smaller scales That there is clumpiness in the universe, right? But if you go on large enough scales, we know that it becomes homogenous And then but then there are other some theories that say maybe maybe it's not completely So maybe we have to measure that better, but let's say that is For the sake of argument, we'll just say that Well, but I mean is there is there like how do we know that we're not essentially Expanding away from our Sun at the same rate that the rest of the universe is expanded because it's actually is as big as it is On a large scale on a small scale. It's actually not that much. It's taking a really long. It's moving Really slow. Yeah. Yeah, essentially so so it could be happening all around us But we would never have enough time to notice it that could also be I could be a possibility Yes, that's true, but usually what we consider is like our Galaxy is actually not part of this expansion We usually consider. Yes The center again once again, do we get to be the center of activity now? No, we don't want to be the center. That's why they were not special That's why we know this is happening in the rest of the universe and and some of it is is dramatic though Because the further way it is that there's like a multiplier because then it's also moving away from the thing That was closer and then it's moving away So it's is as much as this is like is accelerating is a word that's used. It's actually consistent everywhere It's not that it's accelerating. It's just that stuff that's already further away Has all the other the points in between that are slightly expanding away from each other And so it looks really big and fast on a deep scale But yeah, the closer to home you get the less it's really because it's tiny, right? Isn't it? It's I don't know how many how you quantify this the what the quantification is of this growth But it's really a small movement of things apart, right? Yes, so the the Hubble constant now. We know it's it's around 70 kilometers per second But per megaparsec And and for those of you who aren't familiar With the megaparsec. What's a megaparsec? If you're not familiar with a megaparsec go read Douglas Adams. No That's like, I mean it's it's uh, it's it's a it's a measurement of Speed of light over a distance, but it's many many. Is that how that works? Okay Well, according to star wars For a measure of time, but we now know that parsecs are a measure of distance that i'm sure Yes, but uh But it's those those kilometers are over Immensely mind-bogglingly vast Amount of space timey distance That's right. So so it's really It's really slow. It's just dramatic because space is so big and the further way you look the more it's It's had time and space to move That's It's mind-blowing, right? That's one of the things that got me into this So when you're looking at redshift where you're looking at this photometric data and you're considering What all these frequencies of light are telling you? What are you what do you consider and um, what does it tell you about the age or the distance of certain galaxy clusters and How they're how they're acting within the universe? So, uh, so in this figure here, what is showing is the spectrum of a galaxy being redshifted a different uh redshift So say a redshift zero so that where is that z equals zero is that the blue line? Uh, and then there's just the same galaxy different redshift is just uh at different heights just for figurative purposes and so As you see that the galaxy spectrum has a lot of features one of the best feature one of the Well, probably the main feature that we use for determining the redshift of the galaxy is this 4 000 angstrom break So this is a feature that we see in the spectral energy distribution of the galaxies of almost all galaxies Uh, it's that like it's like a break Uh in the spectrum around four hundred four thousand angstrom Uh, and so we see this in most of the galaxies and so by looking at the position of this break We can tell what the redshift of the galaxies So this is how you see that going through the different what we call filters that we have in ds These are the g r i and z filters So this means that we're not looking at all these features the single feature that we see in the spectrum But we're looking at all of the photons that have that range of energy in g in r in i and z Um, so we're not able to discern all the small features But we are able to see if between one filter and the other We have a big difference in the flux of the photons that we reach we see Uh, so if say there is a big difference between g and r we can say that that galaxy is a A smaller redshift than a galaxy that has a a larger difference between i and z for example um So this this is how we try to estimate what we call the photometric redshift Which is different from what we call the spectroscopic redshift Which is what we can compute when we have the full spectrum of the galaxy And so in that case we can fit the whole Spectrum and it's much easier to get a precise and accurate measurement of the redshift, but in our case we only have four filters And is this limited by what you can what's what what can be fit into the ccd like into the actual technology on the In the camera So it's like it's like rgb You've got you've got certain filters and and that's what and and that's the day That's the light that can be collected, right? That's right You have certain filters and to do spectroscopy is much more complicated. It's just a completely different instrument You cannot use the the same imaging Detectors that we use in this case and it just takes much more time So if you you know with the imagery we take, you know a big chunk of the sky You're ready with just one pointing when you want to do spectroscopy you you have to For example, you you have some fibers so you can point to fiber each fiber On on a particular galaxy and and stay there for longer. So it's much more expensive, right? You already have to know where the galaxy is so that you can point your your detector there Versus, you know, just take an image everything that's there you detected And so in this way we can take we can look at many many more galaxies So the statistics was the reason behind, you know, doing an imaging survey versus a spectroscopic survey And so what I mean, we like you met you said there have been many discoveries like even matching there was there was Work that was done with this dark energy survey that matched up with some gravitational wave data And so there there's lots of crossover But what is the main intent of this dark energy survey like you're looking at this photometric data and What what will this six years of data actually tell you? So so the main goal is to actually try and understand How much dark matter we have in the universe how much dark energy we have in the universe Well, I would say what they are, but I I don't know well We can measure how much we have and how they behave, but who knows who will be able to to understand better what they are So so we have different what we call cosmological probes And and these are The clustering of galaxies The weak gravitational lensing Galaxy clusters and supernovae So these are the four ways for observational probes that we use to try and answer these questions So I can go a bit more in detail into this Into these probes. So, um, we have Well, one of my favorite ones, which is galaxy clusters So the galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures that we see in the universe I think like one galaxy cluster is has a mass that is like 10 to the 14 times the mass of the sun So it's huge. It's just can be hundreds or even a thousands of galaxies bound together gravitationally and so We can use this this this large structures to try and probe the peaks of the dark matter density of the universe So this is one of the ways that that we do it. We try to count how many clusters And what what mass they have in some in a certain volume of the universe and and so we can tell how they're expanding And how the universe is expanding and how the structure is behaving say between redshift almost one and today So this is one. The other one is weak gravitational lensing So the light we know that for general activity the light Can be bent by a gravitational field. So say i'm looking at the galaxy that is far away And we see the light Coming towards us And along the line of sight there is structure So by looking at the distortion that we see in this what we call the source galaxies We are able to and every construct the matter that is between us and the source galaxies Then with supernovae you have a Luminosity distance measurement Because the supernovae tend to have more or less the same what we call light curve the same luminosity over time uh, and so uh intrinsically and so by looking at how dim this thing is we can say whether it's farther away as closer to us Uh, and so by relating this distance to the redshift of the host galaxy, which we can also measure Then we can measure the Hubble constant And this is also something that we did with with gravitational waves Uh, it was not of the best the most precise measurement of the Hubble constant But it was uh, you know a new a new technique used for the for the first time um, and then uh, we have galaxy clustering also that you know, we we can ask Okay, we have a galaxy here. What is the probability of having another galaxy at this distance? And so by trying to understand how matter is distributed Within the universe and at different red shifts we can again try to reconstruct Uh, the the matter the dark matter density of the universe and its evolution So there did I can show you one plot. I don't I don't know where For you if you want to talk about this more, uh, there is a plot that is the results from the year one Dark energy results, but you also popped up another image. Maybe you like that more No, it's fine. Yeah, whichever whichever you want to talk about. I'm I'm I'm interested in uh, you're talking about the probability of galaxies being clustered together and dark matter I mean, no, I know recently there was a survey that Discovered we've been trying to figure out where's this missing percentage of baryonic matter in the universe And so it was like, oh, it's in the dust in between all the universes and they're finally able to figure out It's lost in the dust. Is there a proportion of I guess dark matter dust that's that's expected as well Like beyond even, you know, this galaxy clustering or from what we've seen Do you expect most of the dark matter to be sticking with the big massive objects? um Yeah, I think that most of the dark matter is stuck with the most massive objects, but of course There's also what we call filaments structures that People have tried to to to look into this uh within the dark energy survey But looking at voids and filaments of the this large-scale structure But uh, but yeah, I'm not sure about the results that they got there I I know about this other study about the baryonic matter and that's something that is very relevant also to to what we study um And it's a striking that you know, we we are still Debating about 70 percent of the universe is dark energy and 30 percent is dark matter But wait even the five percent That we are meant to be already aware of like all the baryonic matter. We cannot find even right It's like we can't find the baryonic matter. How are we going to find this stuff? We can't even see We we need better instruments obviously um, yeah, so let's look at the let's talk a bit about the the year one um results and Kind of what what came out of that assessment Yes, so this is one of the money plots from the the year one um results that we had um So this is only taken into account the galaxy clustering and the weak gravitational lensing So we're still not taking into account other two cosmological probes Uh, unfortunately, we're a bit late with the galaxy clusters cosmological measurements Uh, but the great thing about that is that we will have similar constraints to the other probes combined So what our uh cluster working group coordinator likes to say, uh will be last but not least So that's really an interesting result. Uh, we'll come out soon. Um So here, uh, what we're showing in blue is the the constraints So so how big the constraints are in the cosmological parameters in in this case? We have two of the Six cosmological parameters that are usually taken into account um So how big these contours are shows you how precise Your measurement is So the the first thing that that we look into is that okay that the y1 ds y1 contours are more or less the same size of the blank contours, you know, and blank is a is a space mission that uh looked at the at the cosmic microwave background And it's just striking that, you know, even from a ground telescope and just one year Of observations, we are able to get something that is similar to what Plank got Uh, and this is just great So what we're showing here is on the y-axis s8 So this is telling you something about the clumpiness of the matter in the universe And then on the x-axis We are showing omega matter. Uh, this is the density of matter everything. So dark matter plus baryonic matter in the universe so What what is very interesting to see is okay this these two contours plank and ds might Look a little bit off, but they're actually consistent within each other. They're they're still overlapping Uh, so our statistical measurements don't cannot claim that there is no agreement between the two at the moment at least Uh, and so so what is really great to see is that plank was observing the cosmic microwave background So that's something that was emitted More than 13 giga years ago 13 billion years ago, right and and dea is observing the universe in the last giga years And and we're still getting something similar. Uh, and this is just great So it's just like saying we put a seed in the grass and and we want that to become a tree And in this case it apparently an avocado tree Yeah, and we take an avocado tree and it's going to be this high And then when it grows it we find that it's actually that high So this is this is just uh, this is just striking. Um, and then, you know, this is just year one data We'll have year Well, it's year six data, but really we kind of almost lost one season because of weather So it's why year five really it's five years of observations And you know, we we don't know where these contours are going to shift. Will they shift closer to plank? Uh, closer to what is our say our standard model the the concordance model that the this What is called the lambda cdm model model in which the universe is made up with this lambda Uh cosmological constant and of cdm, which is the cold dark matter. Maybe we'll shift to something else This is this is uh, the question that we hope to answer hopefully in the next year That's always the the most interesting thing when it's kind of it's this preliminary analysis, right? And so you're just looking with one looking at one subset of the data and While it there's agreement now it could end up completely disagreeing later Or it could end up staying where it is Or it could end up shifting into even more agreement Than what it has now And so there's there it's it's it's a fun place to be you're kind of like teased a little bit It's like it's kind of like plonk, but Not quite Yeah, that's that's really exciting. So the uh So there are people just working on this data now like how is this uh, how is this analysis taking place moving forward? Yeah, so it takes a long time from the day we take we said we finish the the Year one data to take the year one data or the year three data till the day where you know We get all the data being processed, you know and calibrated and we get all the what we call the the the source gap catalogs And then we get star galaxy separation done And then we also try to compute the photometric press shifts And so it takes a long time between, you know, the last day of observation and when you actually start to do The cosmological analysis We also have something another step in between which is The blinding So with the blinding, uh, we are trying to avoid confirmation bias And it's actually a big thing nowadays in cosmology. So we we blind our results so that we cannot actually say Well, you know, uh, I don't know, uh, the cosmological that that kind of g is a cosmological constant because w is equal to minus one or The the matter density of the universe is 30 percent. We don't know. So we shift this by an amount. We don't know So that we we cannot tell the result And so Yeah, this also takes time and then, you know, you want to really make sure before you what do what we call the unblinding That you're really, you know, you're really sure about what you're doing. And so that once you're blind, that's what you're going to publish Right. Yeah, so you can't go back and say and pretend you never saw it No, I'm just going to pretend I never saw the way that the data worked out Let's go reanalyze it before we publish again Yeah, um, you mentioned that there's that there's this time period to it and your advisor or the the program leader saying You know, we well, we're going to take our time and we're going to make sure we do it right And we might be Last but not least, right? So, uh, we we've had it We had an interview recently with someone who was talking about kind of the opposite side of that of the race to publish of And how it it affected The the results because people were so pressured to publish and so so blinded by The I guess the ego driven aspects of the potential of getting a Nobel Prize or you know, the What would come from publishing first? uh on on on whatever it was and, um, do you have any thoughts on on the The competitive versus the cooperative nature of these You know, very large projects like the one you're working on Yeah, so in our case, we don't have a competition Yeah, in a way, you know, we are the only ones with the daytime for someone else To try and take do the same measurement that we're doing will it will take, you know, a long time So that in that sense there is no competition At the same time you have to move on we have to move on because you know gs has already stopped and And then ls st will start soon actually dark energy spectroscopic instrument and other Experiment in which I'm involved will start this year. And so at that point what do you do? You know, you still have four years worth of data to want to lie from des and then you have the new data So you want to get going But I know that it's a it's a different thing from for example the gravitational wave word Which I've seen where you have, you know new discoveries And and that's very very competitive. And yes, I understand how sometimes that's uh, That's not the best. Um, I wish there was a balance between these two Like you want to take years to to make a measurement and blind it and then you know But um, yeah, you also don't want to publish something. You're not sure about Especially if you're claiming something important about the universe Exactly. Yeah, and there's some some danger too and and having the claims made ahead of time And then going in and trying to verify it. So I love that this is being done with the proper amount of blinding So that so that you know the the outlying data The outliers of the experiment are really outliers and just not non-conformists To to the assumption. I mean and that's it's very important. Um, yeah, absolutely We remember when you know people played the with the new trainers were traveling at faster than light And you don't want to be these people I have to work But it did that one really went back to the the the old it question of is it plugged in, you know, have you checked the table? No, you don't How did you come to get interested in uh in in cosmology and this observational side that is so very data heavy Yes, good question. Um Well, I actually started when I was a kid thinking I wanted to be like an observational astrophysicist But my father got me this telescope, you know, and I was looking at the planets the few planets that you can see in rome because it's very light polluted But then for some time I kind of thought that I was going to become more of a theoretical astrophysicist during my studies. That's that was a bit more of my Uh of my way But then somehow during my masters I started, you know, I was like, I don't want to do anything with hardware You know, I don't want to build anything. I feel terrible. I you know, I just Things I'm bad at that Um, but then you have to pick something for your laboratory Uh, and that's when you know, I did I was like, well, you know, I can do something with a lot of data And it's just programming and I don't have to touch anything and destroy telescopes um, and so that's where I got involved into actually that was Herschel mission looking at the At the galactic plane and try to find out about star formation in our galaxy um And so and so that's how I started being involved and I actually realized I I really liked it and well my first passion was cosmology And uh, and so yes, these two things came together and I started working on cosmology for t. Yes Can you give any advice to young women who are Interested in astrophysics and cosmology. Uh, this is Physics in general is traditionally a very male dominated field and although there are many more Women coming into it. It's not always easy and I'm just wondering if you have any Any words of advice or of encouragement to young ladies who might be interested Yeah, sure should I mean don't give up ever you know, you will Sometimes you will be treated as if you're not as good as others. I feel like sometimes I have to prove myself twice more than than men uh Sometimes it's frustrating But you know, I think there there has been a lot of programs being made in the last few years on this topic And then so I think that things are getting better and so don't give up ever Keep on believing in what you want to do and what you want to try and that if your theory you think is right You should just bring it forward And and I'm sure the things are getting better for women in science That just makes me think some of the having to prove yourself twice or like, you know You double the work to to show that you are an equal It's like well, that just shows that I'm better Yeah, so so are you disadvantaged? Uh the women who are coming up behind you by not expecting them to be twice as good No, it's brilliant and uh, and what are you in like you said you're going to be moving on to the next Uh dark energy survey that's coming up. Um, are there any other projects? I mean Probably quite busy with data analysis from this dark energy survey and moving into the next one But is that is that just what you're focusing on or are there other projects that keep you awake at night? Big questions that you just must know no things about Yeah, well, there's just so many things. Um, yeah, the the dark energy spectroscopic instrument is No, it's different because it's spectroscopic and it's uh, it's also about their energy and the Hubble constant, etc But then the big brother of of ds is going to be Alice esteem The the large synoptic sky survey So this will image the whole southern sky not just One eighth of the sky It's going to be huge and it will image it like every night. It's it's going to be just huge amount of data um, and and you know, this is this is good for A cadence survey what we call cadence arrays is good for looking at transient stuff. So I I hope to get involved with that and look into Um, kilonova events that are associated with the merging of neutron stars um We have tried to search for this also in ds But that is still just be so much better for this and and we hope to observe the first what we call untriggered Kilonova event So we don't get any gravitational wave, but we are able to observe it just from our telescope Um, so that will be something i'm really interested in Do you think that's going to be something like that this the lsst will be will will go online and Do you think it'll be? I mean, what was it the the ligo vergo ligo came online and it was like and bam black hole mergers You know, it was like immediately. We've got what we were looking for. Do you think that the advanced nature and that large Large survey and just the the time that's going to be given to the to surveying. Do you think that it'll be a pretty rapid discovery? Uh, I don't think so because I've seen how complicated it is to find this type of transience and It's it's hard also wants to find it to claim it is that So, uh, I think I think it will be a bit harder and we've been so lucky for At least with the binary just our event. I feel It's not a yeah I would love to someday look at like a data management and workflow for all of this like Yeah, it must just be absolute like I bet you there's there's there's probably 10 meetings on just data management And and how to get it into the right hands and in the right format Then there is actually, you know Getting to do the the analysis on the final data It must be an intense endeavor just to control How the information is is labeled and and how it is moved through this this workflow Yeah, it's it's just huge. I mean with with ds. We had something like 50 million megabytes of data And you know, you want to transfer it quickly for for the data management people to to look into this From from chili to to uh, well in this case is in Illinois the ncsa the national center for super computing And uh, and then there are people there that yes are just doing a huge amount of work to process this data And we have to thank them a lot It's your generality is going to be even more massive unbelievable Just just amazing and I was reading something today. There's the the lo-far which is a radio survey throughout europe and They've got like something like 20,000 different radio telescopes spread out all over europe that they're doing radio telemed radio detection with and Yeah, they their data they've got massive amounts of data and at this point They're still juggling it and they they can they only have 20 percent of the data and of that only 10 percent is available to researchers This is what happens now. We've gotten really good at collecting the data But just it's really hard to move around so So that's a that's a first world science problem. That's what it is But it's also it's also funny because yeah You've got a new project starting this year that you you've got to go venture out on and there's going to be like a generation Yes, but there's going to be a next wave of people working on this project As the data slowly becomes disseminatable To people so so it's it's it's it's kind of awesome in a couple ways because One it means the project actually isn't over that we're going to continue to get good discovery from this likely for many years to come And then it's not going to slow you down from being on to the next thing That's right. It's it's something for people to cut their teeth on Before they start a project is see how you do with this this data that was collected over the last six 10 15 years Yeah, sometimes I actually have the feeling that we don't get enough people to work on all this data right Absolutely So we're coming to the end of our first hour here and I would love to know if you have any Any insights from from des or any other Any other work that you've done Cosmologically that you think people should understand like if there were one Kind of insight or take home message that you think people should understand about this work. What would it be? um, so so At first glance one might think well The universe is so boring, you know, we we're just getting what we expected to get That might be a take home message if you just look at the results that we got but At the same time it's just even more puzzling. Why are we getting exactly? What we expected to hit to get? um, so that's just You know a big question mark and we should just keep going and get to analyze all these data and Find out more about dark energy and dark matter Thank you. That is such an interesting and interesting point too the Why now we're starting to We've got these predictions these theories right and then we're testing them observing and it's like it's working out But we still don't really understand the mechanisms We don't we don't know that's that's great more questions It's like the the simplest universe or so we could imagine, you know the fund with the cosmological constant like perfect and we're getting that We are yes, that is the That cosmological conundrum right the that we are, you know, we're here and we're lucky enough to see it and It's because and it ties back into it's because it is the way it is and we have the cosmological constant Anyway, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Dr. Palmes. It's just been wonderful talking with you Is there a website or and are there any social media accounts anywhere that you can send people to find out more about The dark energy survey or to follow you online Sure. Well on the the dark energy survey dot arc That's the dark energy survey website and you can find a lot of the news but you can also find it on on twitter and on facebook and You know, there's mostly link to all of our papers there Uh, and also what we call the dark hives. So the where we explain for the public the papers that we write Um, and the dark hives the dark eyes. Yes That's great Yeah, back them out. Uh, very nice. Um And voila, I'm starting with just now to use twitter so you can follow me there. I'm ella palmes Um, and yeah, I started just recently tweeting stuff about science cool Very cool. I look forward to following your tweets and Learning more as you do. So I think that's it's I just love social media for its ability to allow us to communicate with people and Kind of that that joy of understanding and curiosity that we can share I will be following Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time this evening and I look forward to hearing more about The dark energy survey you will thank you very much Awesome All right, everybody that does it for the first half of our show We are going to take a quick break and when we are back science stories. That's right We've got all sorts of stories for you. I've got gene drive and genomes Justin's got bad businesses and Businesses and vegetarian dogs vegetarian dogs. That's right. And Blair has old sperm just in case you forgot This is this weekend science. We'll be back in just a few moments. Stay tuned See Hey, everybody, thank you so much for your Time this evening. I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about the dark energy survey and all the complicated Wonderful Stuff you can learn From light right light carries so much information. It's just fabulous Thank you to dr. Palmies for her time. I hope that you are enjoying the show so more enjoying the show so far And I'm going to run through my messages so we can get back to our stories asap So I would love to send you to twist.org twist.org is Where you can find all good Twissy things. That's right. 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Thank you for your support More than intuition And we are back with more this weekend science And it is time for that wonderful segment of our show that has not gone away. Thanks to all of you This week in what has science done for me? All right, John Coleman writes in this week and he says every once in a while you hear the phrase Donate my body to science I have started a business retrieving brains from people who donate their bodies to science In this role, I have provided brains to research on the cures of Alzheimer's Multiple sclerosis ALS multiple systems atrophy louis body dementia and notably chronic traumatic encephalopathy In football players and boxers Science has provided me an ability to work independently and Do a thing that not many people can claim Thank you science That is red So red John what you do is It's valuable and we thank you for providing this service. I mean people don't think about What happens when you're a donor when You donate your organs to science. What does that mean? And it means that there are companies individuals companies who Do Assure the transport of those organs in safe condition To places where they can be valuably used For research and can contribute to our understanding of so many Human human diseases I It must be difficult the idea of my body going to science I This kind of thing helping with with medical Research is really important helping train doctors is really important My personal favorite if I one day when I die can donate my body to science and put a little clause in there That's like hey send me to the body farm. That's actually my personal favorite of I think it is Fascinating that you can figure out exactly how long someone has been dead by these species of maggots that are living in them I know and it's because of people donating their body to science to just let it rot to be able to survey What? Oh, it is so cool. I'm like, yeah Oh, I'm so stoked. I'm so excited to become a science experiment. That must be a tough job He's he's got that uh, because you know, you don't get a lot of you probably have a hard time I would I would imagine getting decent feedback From people that you talked to because as soon as you're like, can I pick your brain about something? They like run That's you're gonna have to wait for that Yeah This is this is one of those science dad jokes. Yeah, but this is one of those jobs one of those careers that It it this is not something that would uh, it would occur to people, you know This isn't something like there are so many little roles that are so crucial to the scientific endeavor And this is one of them and it's you know, who would ever think that this could be a job that you could do Right? This is there are keep your eyes open everyone because you never know where Your next opportunity will arise and where you might find yourself and how you may Be a part of science So, yeah John thanks so much For writing in everyone else out there if you haven't written in yet Why not come on share share with us what science has done for you lately. It's gotta be something I know it You don't have to think too hard. It's just right on the tippy your tongue. I know it Send me a letter. I mean you could send me a letter if you wanted to hand write it. I have a mailing address There's an old sad violin in the background Ken Burns soundtrack. Yeah. Yeah Um, I think I'm my violin is more a theremin. I think yeah You're hot Okay, I have an email address though that might be easier for most people kyrsten k i r s ten at thisweekenscience.com And the other way that you can reach us is to leave us a message on our facebook page Which is facebook.com slash this week in science Leave us a message. I can't wait to read your note. Can't wait All right, everyone. Let's jump into the science. You know how gene drive is one of the things that we keep Bringing up on the show Well, there's no new data yet But an article from npr that was passed along to me by pierre one of our listeners for a very long time Uh, he says he he said you need to know about this one Turns out in italy there is a research lab doing which is associated with the university college london lab that Performed the research that we reported on at the end of last year on gene drive in mosquitoes being entirely successful and wiping out the lab population because of the strength of the gene that had been edited in these mosquitoes to reduce reproductive capacity in the females They're using this same system in this italian Research facility. It's a high security lab. So this is not this is no joke It's high security, which is great. They're taking this very seriously And they are trying to create an even more real world ish situation for these mosquitoes But in the lab And so they're not actually putting a jungle in the lab Which would be kind of cool instead. It's It's the white fairly sterile lab facility rooms except with the humidity and heat jacked way up to Start to approximate the conditions that would be occurring in Countries where malaria is a is a very large concern And where these mosquitoes would potentially be spreading disease and so this new experiment Is on its way and I can't wait to see what happens You get rid of Nice 70 degrees and sunny weather and give it a little bit more humidity A little bit more heat what happens to these mosquitoes and does it change the outcome of the gene drive experience experiment, I mean No, I I have to say I I have a hard time I mean, I know heat and And humid heat heat has a very large impact on proteins proteins denature at very at different Temperatures and so there could be an interaction between temperature and This gene drive the reproductive ability of these of these mosquitoes But I I think that they need I mean really what they need is they need like predators and they need they really need to Make it more real world And I don't think that there's one factor. I know it's just adding in one factor. It's kind of like, you know An elimination diet you start to add them in one at a time. Then you add zucchini. Yeah How does the gene drive turns out it didn't but we had to try you have to try it You had to eliminate all variables. I think yeah, this one's tough for me because mosquitoes do well in the heat and the moisture and so Internal processes Shouldn't really be affected. So that's what I would think. Yeah. So if you think about like protein folding and all this kind of stuff Sure, if you take um, like a like a chinchilla from the andes mountains and throw them into heat Yeah, their internal processes aren't used to being Being exposed to this variable. But yeah, if you think about the biological processes of a mosquito So Yeah, I'm not guessing that this is going to change much There'll be different activity by the mosquitoes. They could be more or less active or something I mean that would only make the gene drive more effective if they're more active If it makes it more active, yeah Yeah, so we will see I just wanted to update everyone and thank you pierre for sharing this news I appreciate the tip and We'll definitely keep people posted because this is one of those experiments that Organizations around the world are very concerned about and so far it looks as though these researchers are taking the potential dangers of Releasing this technology into the wild very seriously and they aren't releasing it into the wild yet They're creating a little bit of the wild in the lab That's much as they can which is cool Uh, moving on though. What I thought was really cool is that the great white shark genome has been completely sequenced They've been around forever Yes, they've been around forever. They're apex predators. They live for a very long time They grow to massive sizes like these guys can end up be like 20 feet long Right. They're these great white sharks are an incredible animal They dive also they can dive up to nearly 4 000 foot depths So they're able to withstand incredible changes in pressure, right? 4 000 feet. That's no laughing matter I'm like 10 feet. I'm done That's enough for me. What is it? I think it's like, uh, I might be wrong 14 every 14 feet is an earth's atmosphere Yeah, something like that. I don't I don't know but it's it's not much um Yeah, so this research has come out of a consortium But it was led by researchers from nova southeastern universities Save our seas foundation shark research center and guy harvey research institute cornell university college of veterinary medicine And one of my favorites moderay bay aquarium They have taken this genome and published The findings in the proceedings of the national academy academy of sciences And the results reveal that it has a huge genome It's one and a half times larger than the average than than a human genome And it has lots of jumping genes in it these linear interspersed non random Transposons or elements um, and it's also, uh And there are lots of areas of very specific dna sequence change positive selection And the genes that seem to be changing Help to keep the genome from mutating A little ironic there, but you know the the what these what this Gets at is there's this hypothesis that very large animals elephants sharks um These large animals don't tend to get cancer And why is that why is it that they are not prone to cancer? We get cancer all the time And what's so different about these really large animals? I mean sharks can get cancer, but they the the great white shark can get cancer, but It's really not common and part of the reason is that they have defense mechanisms within the genome To counteract the accumulation of damage to dna more data more data management required Needed a way to manage all of that data and it got good at it Sharks are I looked it up. I I knew it was a crazy number 400 million years old So that is a lot of genetic Conservation over the years Right, but the fact that they are this positive selection, which means these areas of the genome are changing a lot To maintain the integrity of the entire genome, right? Yes. We don't want this change to happen. Yeah, so the to maintain the stability So, so okay, so this is an interesting thing though there because What comes first? Like it are our sharks sharks because for I mean for so long because of this management Uh is because everything is just as evolved as anything else on the planet today we all had a starting point go and everything is just as evolved but lots of us Have mutated in different ways and evolved in various forms more so than the shark And is it perhaps partly due to a system like this that is conserving Yeah Yep. Yep Researcher dr. Salvador Jorgensen a senior research scientist at monterey bay aquarium Who is part of the study says decoding the white shark genome is providing science with a new set of keys To unlock lingering mysteries about these feared and misunderstood predators White sharks have thrived for some 500 million years longer than almost any vertebrate on earth Um, there are other adaptations that are also really cool They have a lot of genes that are involved in wound healing pathways So it uh, these particular these gene adaptations May explain some of the abilities of sharks to survive and even heal from some pretty pretty damaging wounds um And they've just started digging into the into the genome Which is the exciting part. There's a lot more that we can learn And the interesting thing is maybe there there are genes within the shark genome That can be used to aid in human health later and also, you know, it's not it's it's the sharks can help humans But also it's gonna help us potentially understand this Amazing creature that much more Plus I can figure out how to get some more rows of teeth Yes, something I've always wanted you got plenty of teeth in their fabulous Blair. They're fabulous. That's all I want You don't need more They just keep coming So one of the one of the uh, my favorite, uh, shark facti oids things which has to be a sort of genetic based reaction Is strategy for survival Which is amazing in an apex predator But makes perfect sense is Uh that when one of them is rendered It like the classic example is there was that uh orca attack on a shark. I think off Monterey Um All of the white sharks who got that little bit of scent of a shark being Uh torn up alive in the waters Left the coast of california And mass all at once go away And That's how that's how you have to be if you're an apex predator, you're you are One of you We're not gonna fight We're gonna we're all gonna just take the summer off and hit it boom I think that's such an amazing strategy to have across a species to avoid conflict Uh, that that it's it's I I've always appreciated that Because that's what I would do. I would run away I would just run there's something ain't a human. I would just run I would eat my strategy too. That sounds good. That sounds great But don't run away here because I want you to tell me a story now Ah Oh, this is okay. So this is my one of my favorite stories. I teased it in the disclaimer uh So around 4 000 ish years ago Neolithic people of northeastern iberian peninsula Lived with dogs and they not only lived like in proximity with dogs, but they were Feeding their dogs And when their dogs died They buried them This is out of the university of barcelona study analysis They they did the analysis on remains of 26 dogs Found in funerary structures From four different sites and necropolises in the barcelona region They conducted isotopic analysis for 18 of them To determine their diet what they were eating the highest uh in so So it shows that because there were so many and these recorded in catalonia It suggests there's a general practice and it proves that there was a tight relationship between humans and these animals Uh, which apart from being buried next to them They were fed the same diet that the humans were eating Oh, they got table scraps. Yeah, that that follows kind of the previous conversation We've had about did we domesticate dogs or did they domesticate themselves or did they really domesticate us? Because they wanted our food Right. So what's interesting about this too is that the humans were largely vegetarian In their diets and the dogs diets Were also vegetarian Ancient domesticated dogs Were had a high presence of cereals Uh, such as corn and other vegetables Uh And some of the puppies and two puppies and two of the adult dogs nutrition was mainly very vegetarian And only a few of the cases had a diet rich in animal proteins So what you're saying is this is part of the pro meat conspiracy That has humans eating meat in every no i'm joking No, that's not human eating meat We we also there's this idea that we need meat with every single meal And then recently we've kind of learned. Okay, it turned out we were eating a lot more vegetables than we thought This is kind of just the the sister story to that And unless you're a neanderthal in which you were neanderthals did have a largely meat diet other than that It's not true ever Uh, and they weren't exclusively meat diet either But what I think is fascinating this is is all if you If you you walk through and there'll be I love there are my kids down the the animal food aisle You know, there's a big chicken on the dog food that must be chicken flavored And then you get to one that's got a cat on it, you know for the cat that must be cat flavored Right that must be full of cats in that game. Yeah. Yeah, but but they did they push like livers not very pretty No was descended from wolves. Yeah needs a good meat diet No, actually more chances are your domesticated animal was eating domesticated food, which was cereals and vegetables Yeah, and and they think that there might have been a side benefit of having The the work in guard animals, uh eating vegetarian, which is that they wouldn't get distracted Uh, when when they were doing guard duty or when they were doing whatever tasks that they were put to By going wanting to go and chase animals for food Because in their head like, you know, maybe maybe you're like the dog is supposed to be herding sheep But instead gets distracted by a carrot that it finds growing somewhere But for the most part, I don't think I would ever expect that to happen Right, but I you know, it's sideways to the vegetarian aspect. It it does sort of explain dogs loyalty to man the dedication to mankind and and that fierce resolve to To sort of defend their owner In that these dogs were buried next to the humans and Unless they all died together That meant that if the owner dies the dogs all got put down and buried with them Yeah, and and a lot of the Yeah, a lot of these animals were puppies too And so you could sort of picture it as the human dies and all the other humans go well All of these dogs are bonded to them. They'll never be really my work animal I'll never be able to to right and so all those work animals Go down and get buried, uh, which is also showing reverence for the animals and maybe reverence for the human um But but if you're a dog you really quickly learn that if anything bad happens to my human I'm getting put down. I'm going to make sure my human survives as long as possible If they lose their sight, I'll help them cross the path They lose their like whatever right if there's a fire. I'll drag them out of the house I'm going to keep my human alive because I've seen what happens to dogs when they're human dies And I don't want that to happen to me So yeah, that that's fun But I mean it's it is about selective breeding a lot of these things whether it's being done intentionally or not And you know, one of my favorite stories we've ever done on the show was about how um wolves follow other wolves gaze their eye direction And their head direction dogs don't really care about other dogs gaze. They care about human gaze Which means they are evolutionary locked in As a human animal not a dog animal So of course it differs breed for breed kind of when we've bred in some some breeds are historically very good at communicating with other dogs and being with other dogs But really the dominant trait in a lot of the this breeding that we've done and again the first Tens to hundreds of thousands of years depending on what evolutionary history we're looking at Was unintentional most likely part of it, but especially in this more intentional stretch that we've done. It's all about Being focused on and linked to a human I'm gonna just do the whiny high pitched voice for a moment as I didn't The I thought that the wolves actually outperformed the dogs In the knowing what was under what cup or what direction thing I thought the wolves were better at both human uh, I tracking and other wolves and dogs were Dogs were dedicated to the human vision But didn't care about that but the wolves actually outperformed them That is a good question. I will have to check I can check and we can talk about it in the after show But regardless my point was that the dogs were better at humans than other dogs Whether or not dogs are smarter than wolves. You're right. They might not be they're probably not because we've done a whole bunch of inbreeding on them, but Um in terms of my point I was just trying to say that the dogs were better at recognizing human cues than other dog cues That makes Yeah And at this point, I think it's time to queue up some music because it is time for Blair's animal corner with Blair Oh Um, do you want to hear about old sperm? I think Actually, this story is fascinating Simultaneously totally interesting and a breakthrough and a well-duh moment and I love these kinds of stories This is from University of East Anglia and Uppsala University in sweden And this was looking at sperm that survived for a longer time In ejaculate versus sperm that died quickly and the efficacy of that sperm at creating Successful progeny. So this was specifically done in zebrafish. So obviously this is a few steps away from human implications as of yet But they took sperm um, and In the zebrafish they can produce thousands to millions of sperm in a single ejaculate But only a very few end up fertilizing. So what they did Is they is they took some sperm they they took Some of it and in one half they selected for shorter lived sperm the stuff that uh That was going to die very quickly and then the other they selected for the longer lived sperm The stuff that outlasted the other guys They added the sperm to two half clutches from females to fertilize their eggs and reared the offspring into adulthood They then monitored monitored the lifespan and reproductives output for two years. So they weren't just seeing Which which created babies they wanted to see once babies Happened how long did those babies live? How successful were they in life and how successful in reproduction? worthy and they found That not only does the ejaculate vary in shape and performance, but also In the genetic material of course But there was this general assumption that it didn't really matter which sperm fertilizes the egg It's kind of this grab bag of the males genes whatever but as Makes sense There's this huge difference in the genetic material in the sperm and how they affect the offspring And so what they found was that the longer lived sperm Ended up creating A better lifespan in the offsprings longer lifespan Healthier fish And they in turn produced more and healthier offspring Themselves than the short lived sperm In the same ejaculate. It's not even like the the zebra fish. It was mondays and thursdays. It was the same batch But they took The longer lived versus the shorter lived And the longer lived sperm did better. So I mean it makes sense because it It's a higher fitness in sperm. What is the name of the game in sperm? Not just to race but to outlast outwit out survive. Sorry survivor. That's no I'm not here to make friends with other sperm. I'm gonna win. Um, so anyway They outlasted them. And so there's there's something to that That that's actually Reflecting fitness of the genes inside the sperm so so then from a Yes, and uh Wishing well on the next generation context. Is there Is there a benefit to a longer probiscus or a lack of having Dispensed with the Uh between like no, I understand what you're trying to say implication Is he is saying if the Copulatory organ was perhaps I think actually Actually shorter right because they have farther to go So the sperm that made it the farther distance would mean they were more fit That might make sense. But of course in the grand scheme of things in In the females organs That's it's not It doesn't quite work. So this is an external fertilization technique in the zebrafish So this is the stuff move it around in the soup that is the ocean Getting to an egg. So I think in this particular case Um being long-lived is extremely helpful if you're just kind of Sloshing around yeah, yeah, absolutely So you want to be around long enough to come into contact or to find the chemical trail That's going to lead you to the eggs, right? I mean even if you are Spawning on top of an egg bed That sperm's still kind of like floating around in the ocean and has to get somewhere So there's still something to do there To extrapolate this to anybody that does internal fertilization is going to be tough Because the strategies are so different. I think that has to be the next step if they're trying to Bring this to a larger conclusion, which the two things that they bring up as potential Applications of this information obviously with more research would be for actual for breeding techniques in livestock Um, so they think that they could help with with that Potentially, but the other big thing is if you're doing IVF if you're doing assisted fertilization as a human If you can select for the strongest, healthiest sperm if you're already having reproductive difficulties Maybe you have the sperm chill out a little bit grab the ones that are still alive use those in your IVF That might actually have a better chance of creating Successful fertilization So of course, this is a lot of what ifs based on a lot of things from a zebra fish But not just successful fertilization optimal offspring for babies No, it's just successful just getting Somebody is a new soul or an old soul. Yeah You must have been an old sperm. Yeah old sperm for sure that quality Old sperm okay moving on Speaking of sexual selection, I will skip to a different story about the amazing creature called the cassowary Are you familiar with cassowaries? No, of course not. That's right. Oh my goodness. So Cassowaries are a ratite They are a large flightless bird like the elephant bird that we've talked about on the show like the ostrich like the emu Um, cassowaries are from just the very tip of australia and they are also from new guinea and indonesia So these guys they used to have a much wider range. Of course, they are being encroached upon because they're a forest animal they're these big Five foot four or five foot tall ratites flightless birds And they have a giant cask on the top of their head How do I not know about this bird? Why isn't this come to the zoo? Justin? I'll show you the cassowary. Have you not been to the zoo recently? Oh, goodness Cassowaries are wonderful without cassowaries. So cassowaries their colors are so beautiful too. Do they make you great? They have a bright blue face. They have a waddle like a turkey on their neck. What? Yes So this cask This cask is something that has baffled biologists for a very long time Because this thing First they thought it had to do with defense Then they thought it had to do with foraging techniques Like they could use it to push around stuff on the forest floor to grab then guess what they looked inside It's made out of keratin and it's hollow and it's actually extremely fragile So is it a cooling thing then they thought Then they thought it was about um display Doesn't seem to be sexually selected for then they thought it was about So dinosaur-y Yeah, so they thought it was about sal because they do make this very low Oh, yeah long distance. That's a long distance communication thing did not appear to have anything to do with it The latest hypothesis is you got it. Justin all about Heat Yes So then the the latest idea is that it has it is a quote thermal window To help large flightless birds keep cool in hot weather. This is a research project from australia And they took 20 captive cassowaries From victoria through northern queensland all in australia in different weather conditions And they looked at thermal imaging They found that the birds released minimal heat from their cask when it was five degrees celsius and large levels of heat from their cask when it reached 35 degrees celsius Now these guys are warm-blooded since they're birds. They're also covered in black Feathers and some of them are actually kind of hard and keratinized to look they almost look spiky But they have this this kind of dense heavy structure And so it makes sense that they might have trouble with any sort of evaporative cooling They don't sweat as far as we can tell um Panting for birds usually means they're really really really really hot and not doing well So painting isn't something that they can do so they think that this is an evaporative cooling technique um So what what makes this so interesting is that as just mentioned they look like dinosaurs I would encourage anyone to google the word cassowary feet and look at them they look like Dinosaur feet they legitimately do and actually these these feet are used To eviscerate they can jump up high and come down with these big Nails on their feet that are very strong and cut somebody right open Yeah danger bird They are a danger bird absolutely But so they are kind of these dinosaur-esque animals. They look very primitive But they also Have this cask that dinosaurs some dinosaur species also have And we know that some dinosaur lineages are kind of in this middle ground between reptile and warm-blooded bird-like thing And so there is this question of evaporative cooling for especially larger dinosaurs And whereas you know the stegosaurs or the dimitridon have these big fans on their back for evaporative cooling This could be a more mobile Thing that also, you know, who knows that could have to do with with other sorts of displays But ultimately that's what they think this is this is what the science is telling us now So it's evaporative cooling Yeah, very cool nice And it could be various reasons for Different species of dinosaurs and you know, we can't take this one species, you know of bird Yeah, and track it back The argument of the uh of the sounds and the low tone sounds going further with a hollow resonating Uh head ornament is something that has been applied Uh to to some dinosaurs as maybe so so to have a a living example of something that has this this morphology And doesn't use it for that Right, uh, that's a pretty good clue Especially because it has dinosaur feet It's potentially but the but at the same time we it's a it's a great clue But at the same time we can't take this one data point and say all these other dinosaurs species with these Features, yeah, you can't say that why we need a real life Jurassic park. Yes, sure You can also start to look at the distribution of casked dinosaurs on the planet if you only see them in really hot Environments very good or very large or if it only seems to show up in very large Animals as well also that if you if you start to see them in colder spaces Maybe that's not what it is So, yeah, there there's clues that we can do without going full Jurassic park, but um, that would Still go full Jurassic park, right? Sure. Why okay sure. Why not? Um, I do have one last animal Corner story to quickly close it out and it is about shrubbery White tailed deer are acoustic architects in shrubs So the recent piece of research Looked at white tailed deer populations throughout north america and they are on the rise. Why because we wiped out all of their predators And they wanted to see how this affects vocal communication of understory Songbirds and other vocal species They played recorded sounds representing song songbird tones and trills and white noise In plots that were either fenced off so that deer were not allowed inside or left open for deer to forage as normal They looked at fidelity amplitude attenuation of sounds across both plots They found that songbird vocalizations are likely to be effective and more effective and transmit information more clearly Where they have deer Intensely deer browsed plots So it makes sense. They've cleared up all this brush that can That can disseminate No, they can kind of like break up the noise And so open space is an easier place for us to hear things that makes sense But the problem is it might help songbirds hear each other. It also might help predators hear the songbirds more So all we know at this point for sure white tail deer browsing has acoustic Effects that have therefore ecological effects what they are. We don't know yet But it it's a good reminder. I think that any animal could be a keystone species We talk all the time about how this animal is so important and I feel like All the animals are so important Because you're just waiting to find I mean the second you remove one You just find out what they were doing the whole time that you didn't realize and so deer Clear brush so that songbirds can hear each other better and wolves kill deer So they don't clear too much brush. So songbirds aren't eaten. There's this And and also, uh, wolves. Uh, I'm glad that they agreed to all these relationships. Yeah, I'm so glad they they worked it all out They had a nice fun day. Yeah Interestingly too wolves also keep deer Uh in open spaces Because they had the deer then have a better view in open spaces and when they're in open spaces They drop more seeds into open spaces. So more forest and brush and shrubbery Grows up where where they wouldn't have been able to deeper in the forest where they could have been walking around Without your predator Yeah, it takes it takes apex to to make that this is this is exactly my argument for bringing back the mammoth too Okay, that's a as a plant transplant here in a fertilizer of Yeah, I mean this this argument we've had before but the idea that animals adapt and adapt to fill niches in ecosystems and so when a hole is Opened up because of an extinction It does have reverberating effects on multiple species, but there are often Uh, those effects lead to other species pulling up the slack and closing that hole And with things like herbivores if you take out an herbivore not to say they are less important They are absolutely important But there are other herbivores in most ecosystems that can fill that niche if you take out an apex predator Where's where where's the next one coming from? That's not gonna happen for a long time. Which is why we also need to bring back the saber-tooth tiger Oh, so there's a few steps to the to actually getting this right. Justin. There's no understudies in ecology. No Hire them, uh, just oh wait, I've got a couple of stories a couple more stories And then on and Justin you can do your last story in a minute um So a couple of quick stories here citizen scientists Have been involved in a pretty cool new discovery published through nasa researchers have Started up through nasa a program called backyard worlds planet nine And it is a project that has basically been looking in our solar system for stuff like planets extra planets like planet nine and outside the solar system for Objects brown dwarfs and other objects outside the solar system. And so there was a citizen scientist checking out the data in the project database looking through it looking for brown dwarfs and They came across something that looked weird that they thought was wrong And they're like, there's something wrong with the data and so they turned the day they looked at it again And still were like what is going on there? They turned it over to the researchers And lo and behold it is really it's a it was a very old white dwarf and It is located about 145 light years away in the constellation capricornus Uh, this object j zero two zero seven It's about three billion years old Because and they figured out that uh that temperature based on That age based on its temperature Which is just over 10,500 degrees fahrenheit or 5,800 degrees celsius. They Use the wide field infrared survey explorer Looking at infrared light and they found the presence of dust And so this is the oldest and coldest white dwarf with dust That we have found If dust rings are found around white dwarfs It's usually because they're young and they haven't burned up all their dust yet. And so They think that this white dwarf which should have blown up and just just Fused all of its dust and and and then through the gravitational field the the mass that that it had Attracted all the material to it and not been left with anything around it because of its age Well, no it does and they think it has rings They think it has a ring system, which would be a beautiful sight to behold so citizen science has left scientists scratching their heads as to How this ring system or it could be one ring it could be multiple rings They don't know How How it can be? So It's going to lead to some more investigation, which is pretty cool Um, and then vitamin d. What do you guys think about vitamin d comes from the sun sun Vitamin d it had a huge resurgence a few years ago. It's kind of like this vitamin d is going to cure everything You know, it was like just go outside Yeah, well, you know vitamin d is great. We need vitamin d there It is involved in many metabolic processes within our body And it is highly involved in cognitive functioning. It is important to brain plasticity and uh people who are extremely vitamin d deficient often suffer from cognitive deficits and Uh deficiency can lead to depression and schizophrenia So how does it do this? Well researchers from the Queensland Brain Institute They just published in brain structure and function A paper that shows that vitamin d levels influence the integrity Of neuronal scaffolding in the brain. It's like they're they're called peri neuronal nets and they don't go around all the neural neurons in your brain, but Many of the neurons in your brain have these little nets around them. It's kind of It's kind of like then those Christmas light Nets that you put over a bush at christmas time. You know for christmas lights look pretty well Is peri neuronal nets are made of proteins and sugar molecules and it's a supportive mesh Scaffold that surrounds neurons and In doing so also stabilizes the position of those neurons and their connections their contacts their contacts to other neurons And in this particular study researchers removed vitamin d From mice so not people but mice but they found that the peri neuronal net in mice that had vitamin d removed from their diet Suffered specifically in the hippocampus of the brain, which is really important to your memory formation and also a lot of cognitive function as well and um And the strength of connections in between neurons was also reduced and so they are proposing that Normal vitamin d levels are important for Stabilizing these peri neuronal nets And that when you don't get enough vitamin d Your brain's gonna suffer these nets degrade and your neurons can't talk to each other as well anymore Then your hippocampus isn't happening happy and then you aren't happy so So people who work inside a lot people who maybe I don't know have a night shift. This is problematic Yeah, so but this is getting at a mechanism for how vitamin d actually it's you know, okay vitamin d is important But what is it? How is it important? What is exactly that it's doing and it's it's got it's like holding your brain together vitamin d is involved in like Keeping your brain Fine-tuned you So at least in mouse brains in mice. Yeah, which it may be The same in people, but we don't I need to get more sun. Yeah, that's right. Go outside more mice Why are you stuck inside all the time? Yeah, and there is a also a literature review and proposed mechanism That's also been published in the journal trends in neuroscience if you are interested in Yeah, read more of that stuff. Um, and then finally lobster armor I love this story. Do you want armor? made from lobsters I sure do smell terrible I'll be safe So researchers looking at lobsters are taking inspiration from lobsters to potentially create next generation very flexible protective armor because Lobsters, you know, they've got their little tail That moves and flexes and bends and it's like these lobsters are mobile motile They're able to and they their shell protects them and so does The material that's in the the flexible areas and so they analyzed this flexible connective Tissue that connects the plates of the lobster shell together and they found That it's a hydro gel. It's a natural hydro gel. That's 90 water that has really incredible toughness and strength and is in It doesn't crack very easily either And so they have demonstrated That this the structure is also multi layered and there's a specific ordering of the fibers within the hydro gel which are chitin fibers and those the way that the fibers are all lined up and ordered dissipates energy to make it so tolerant and so strong And so I mean seriously next generation body armor is going to be tough and flexible And we are going to have an army of lobster men. Yes yes Lobster armor lobster I would do be a lobster man All right, Justin, what's your last story? I actually have two more. Uh Uh, when is missing a link still we'll find that in the after show get it quit. Let's do it five minutes. Boom go Okay, I will attempt to speed up the recitation of the final stories So there's always been a balance that has been struck amongst humans between safety convenience and cost Uh cars could be built Much safer, uh, but become completely unaffordable to the public by having every potential nasa engineered safety feature thrown into We could pass a national speed limit of 15 miles per hour And it would greatly reduce accidents, but the entire society would be horribly inconvenienced Uh, some jobs are more dangerous than others Uh, but benefits either to the individual doing the job or to society At large outweigh those inherent risks So Michigan technological university researchers asked a question in a in a much broader context Uh, is there a threshold in which an entire industry Could cross that threshold and be actually doing more harm Than good. This is about football No, but that's kind of fascinating This is about the petroleum industry Very close Very close. So and and actually I would I would I would have a uh, uh Hard time not throwing that into this equation Uh, but they kind of did keep some of it narrow basically the metric was uh Everyone has the right to life everyone has the right to work and Human law should give corporations the right to the exist if they benefit humanity so Those are the sort of 3d Matrices, but they did it very one to one. They didn't include. I don't think like war's fought over oil versus You know because part of it is like people affected by Or people working in oil that number could be like, you know gas station attendants Like it's always very difficult, but Here's what they came up with. Here's the two That that one and you're very close uh coal industry employs 51 795 people Total number of animal premature deaths from coal fired electricity based air pollution and this one too is like That's the fact that you could tie it to this It's probably much bigger number But the number is 52,015 So it's about 230 more people Die from coal then Uh work are are working in the industry weird Right. It's a weird metric, but it's sort of like Right. Okay. So it's because a certain number of years ago. There were more people doing it And so they're dying now from what what happened before But then also like I imagine like a lot more coal miners died like a monument But also like there's there's like you take into global warming and an increased Polar vortex and you take into account like the radiation that goes out that that could be cancers downstream Like I think the number for the deaths on on coal are probably much lower than they actually are But it's an interesting uh matrix the number one should be obvious, but it probably didn't occur to you yet The tobacco very good the tobacco industry employs 124,342 people The total number of yearly deaths from direct and secondhand smoke is calculated at 522,000 Which would make it a little more than like a four-to-one ratio if they hired completely new people every year Right But it's the same It's it right. It's probably if you if everybody works in tobacco for 10 years That 522,000 turns into five million right right Uh, so so the Uh, this is uh one of the researchers pierce says after running the numbers The results are shocking Every coal mining job in the u.s demands literally one Uh person and one american die every year for that job For tobacco it's four times worse and again. This is in that year if somebody's employed two years it requires two people to die in coal or 10 people to die in tobacco Uh, he's making a case for there may be a make There may be a way you can analyze uh an industry's cost benefit to society and essentially, uh Create legislation that removes it from being an industry. Yeah that we engage in uh my last story Of the evening is native california plant makes good Uh Plants have been a source of medicine and and pharmaceutical for a long time This is salkin's discovery of a potent neuro protective anti inflammatory chemical in a native california shrub That they think they can utilize for treatment for Alzheimer's And this is in the february 2019 issue journal redox biology Uh, quotey voice of senior staff scientist pamela mayor Alzheimer's disease is a leading cause of death in united states and because age is a major fact risk factor Researchers are looking at ways to counter aging's effects on the brain our identification of sterubin a potent neuro protective component of native california plant called Yerba santa is a promising step in that direction so, uh native this is an interesting um line in this in this uh pressure release at least it says native california tribes So native american native nation folks Dubbed the plant holy herb in spanish I don't I don't think that's what they call. I don't think that's when they named it I think I had another name before that Uh, but it may have been that the spanish, uh figured out that they've this plant was very important to the natives And they liked it for its medicinal properties. One of the things it was used for Uh was to handle things like Uh inflammation I don't figure Had this effect elsewhere in the body, right? Uh But yeah, so they had this this is actually pretty fascinating to say they to So to identify natural compounds that might reverse neurological disease symptoms Uh, they applied a screening technique Used in drug discovery to commercial library of 400 plant extracts with known pharmaceutical properties The lab had previously used this approach and identified other chemicals Uh flavonoids from plants that have anti Or inflammatory, but this uh, but the the the molecule Sterubin that they got from the urbisontas Uh was the most active component that they came across and so this isn't yet Uh a a human study It's not that but this is this is a good indication. They've got past good discovery Uh using this process and this is a standout that they think They're that uh that they're going forward with an animal model of Alzheimer's to determine the characteristics and toxicity Which toxicity this is also something that people have used as a tea Uh to some uh decent potential and as an extract. It's also like one of those things that you can Uh take a large You know dosage of an extract of the plant who knows how much of the this actual molecule is in that Uh, but then You know, you don't need the The entire plant when you turn into a pharmaceutical you can drill it down to certain molecules that you're producing So if there are side effects that come with the rather things that are in the plant, you don't have to deal with them So it's really a fascinating thing and and it's it's We've talked about this has come up a few times over the years like Where where they go back and discover something That has been like we we had this conversation about cannabis Discovery of something that's been used for a curative effect for thousands of years and then for whatever reason Stopped because the native culture that utilized it usually got a pressure or whatever. Yeah, but there are there and then we rediscover it Yeah, but yeah, there is definitely that rediscovery kind of aspect and it's like yay colonialization awesome, but The other side of it is getting to the point, you know, where somebody is paying attention and doing a survey of what plants Are known to native species to have particular Effects right and then taking having the money in the time to do An an assay of these plants to find out what they have in them that might be an active compound And then you know, and then it's like okay It might be an active compound and some of these things that That cultures have taken for years It could be placebo effect that you know, that is a reason they've been taking it But we don't but we you don't know until you do the research and and study it and and once you're on the right track The research will take five years and and the other thing The other thing is though there were people going around eating people and this is always the thing I always think about like how do we figure out what we could eat? It like there's probably pretty important that you had somebody with you when you tried the red berry for the first time Who could report back don't eat the red berries? Justin's dad He tried the red berry killed him immediately if you didn't have somebody with you Nobody else knows don't eat the red berry somebody else walks around Says he's the red berry tries it they die too that knowledge still hasn't been passed along But people went around they must have eating things in groups and seeing what those effects were and with no television No radio nothing else to do in the day. Let's eat everything and see how it makes us feel Let's see what's going on. So I think we should do that entertaining thousands of years of research We shouldn't people running around eating things and should probably go go focus back on some of the the native indigenous folklore around plants To understand how it got those monikers because it wasn't casually And it wasn't I think absolutely I think there's there's one other thing that that's kind of analogous to what we're talking about here That I think is worth mentioning is that that is that that there are elements of homeopathy essential oils things like this right that Some of it can be a placebo effect for sure. Some of it might have a basis in something chemical that's happening and Where we can really move forward and make life saving Cures to things is by looking at some of these things and doing the actual research to figure out what's going on Is there something in this essential oil that's synthesized from a plant that actually in a more pure Version Could could have a much larger effect on somebody who is having a problem. So I think that you know For for all of our our jokes about the the indigenous peoples There's there's there's potential Well jokes about you know trying the berry and maybe dying but finding, you know, there's There's there's stuff There's logic in some of this that I think has a potential to be out there In some of the stuff that's happening now, but there has to be there has to be A desire to do research On on some of this stuff And there has to be a conversation back and forth to kind of figure out what's going on scientifically Right and again again the the the the less scientific aspect of homeopathy and all that too You have to also keep in mind Isn't a direct conversation with the native users of those plants and indigenous peoples It's through a colonial filter of people who adopted something They didn't really understand and then made claims about it So there's so we also have to remember it's it's a colonial argument amongst the colonizers About what's right and what's wrong about a thing. We don't know anything But I think I think it's it's it has vestiges is all I'm saying right it has these kind of these Uh Almost like fossils of previous methods that That that might there might be something in there, but that's where research steps in right that's where research comes into the equation Yes, absolutely Science. Yeah, let's figure it out. Let's see why things are working how they're working. What are the mechanisms? What is going on there? And what's going on here is that we have reached the end of our show Thank you everybody for listening to the to the program to our wonderful interview from antenella palmis and for The stories that we got to discuss in the second half of the show Thank you to fada for helping out with show notes for our youtube descriptions and also with social media Thank you to identity four for helping to record the show so that we can have an audio podcast to send out to everybody Thank you to gordon mccloud for helping out to keep things working in the chat room And I would also like to thank Our patreon sponsors Thank you to paul disney richard onamis ed dire stu paulic philip shane ken haze harrison prather charlene henry joshua furie steve debel alex wilson tony steele craig landon mark mazaros jack matthew litwin jason roberts bill k bob calder time jumper three one nine eric nap richard brian kondren Dave neighbor idin jeff sef oh great me sef oh grad me. 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Yes. I love the Dimetrodon pillow. Yeah. Hey, click on it. Click on it and look at the back. Ooh, look at that. Bam. There's a twist on the back. I love that. Look what you did there. Look at that pillow. Dimetrodon twist pillow. That is so cute. Did you see the Kiwi purse also? I did, yeah. I love, look at this little purse. Look at him go. Oh, look at the twist and the Kiwi. Oh, it's adorable. I love that. It's on both sides. I had fun. I had fun. Yeah, you did. What are these things? And for those of you who absolutely must wear a tie to work. Yes. Which one did I put on there? May Haps. What a sea turtle. May Haps. I made a sea turtle. Yeah. Look how fantastic that is. That's a good thing. I had fun. And the inside of the tie says twist. Wait, what? Yeah. Look at that. Branding. I love that. That's amazing. I put on one of my favorite movies, A Mighty Wind. And I just messed around in the Zazzle Store for the whole film. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I made a laptop sleeve, as you can see, and a phone case. Mantis phone case. Mantis phone case. Yeah. I love that. I had a good time. Yeah. Oh, I think it's great. There's this huge, like, these products are awesome. There's this huge movement right now. I'm not so into it myself for my own fashion choices most of the time, but there are all sorts of people who want to wear sciency fashion. Mm-hmm. I feel like we're addressing a little bit of this here. I love, seriously, the T-Rex tie. This is. Yeah. I like that one a lot, too. Oh, my gosh. It's just awesome. That could say twist. And the wrapping paper. Are you tired? I'm sleepy. Summer Zoo Camp registration opened today. Oh, OK. And so I was on the phone for about four hours answering phone calls, phone calls, questions. Yes, yes. Where's Justin? There's Justin. So Justin, I was thinking about your last story about, like, the cost-benefit analysis. Oh, yeah. And I mean, people are getting real down on sugar these days. I mean, if you were to think about metabolic disease and. Like fast food. Yeah. Sugar. Is it as easy to connect sugar as tobacco to deaths? Death by sugar. Right. One of the things, like anything diet related, you have to realize that we don't know anything yet. And it's microbiome. And genetics, too, like genetics is part of it. Yeah. But and one of the sort of examples that sticks out in my brain whenever I start to think about what does diet mean is like people from Hawaii and Fiji exposed to a Western diet gain a lot of weight. More so maybe than like somebody like myself who may have ancestry or genes or history of microbiology associated with fast food restaurants. That does not get affected in this way. You know, you look at like, well, you need to roll around a diet. You have to have plenty of vegetables except the Inuits in Greenland have no access to vegetation. And they're doing just fine. Right. So that, you know. There's lots of variables. Yeah. There's variables in evolution and in adaptation to region and everything else. So there's a much bigger conversation that eventually we will get to where we will be able to determine whether or not sugar will affect you negatively. Whether or not excessive alcohol use is something that is excessive based on your genes. Whether or not exercise is something that your people really engaged in a long time or whatever the scenario is. These things are going to have different effects to different populations. And as these peoples of the earth merge and meld and build upon their genetic code and have reliance on medical advances, we're going to look for more alternatives to evolution because they won't be serving us in our environment. Right. So with smoke, for example, like it's very easy to know because you have a built-in control of smoking versus not smoking. Right. Everybody. Something that everybody does. Yeah. But there are even confounding. There is, I mean, smoking aside, but there is even some confounding evidence there or information there. Smoking kills people. Smoking kills people. I'm not detracting from this. But when you're talking about causes of cancer, we know that they spring from multitudes of places. And so as we are at the same time reducing our smoking as a society in America, we're also removing those carcinogens that were preventing mattresses from catching fire. Why did we have them there? Because people smoked in bed and started fire. So there's a lot that's moving together in this sort of awareness of carcinogens that will largely be associated to smoking, but we're also making a lot of other progress in a vast bevy of carcinogens and understanding that maybe it's not great to wash those auto parts in the diesel fuel without gloves on. We're learning a lot that we didn't take into account for so long that we should be reducing cancer rates. There's this whole thing that I went to a science on tap here last night to check out the theater where we're going to be doing our show. And the woman doing the talk last night was talking about the microbiome and she was fantastic. And one of the points that she made, she's like food with preservatives in it. It's like we're talking about processed food, but what about food that is made to sit on a shelf for a very long time without molding? That has preservatives in it that are meant to kill bacteria to keep bacteria from growing. So when you eat that... Hey, you're killing bacteria in your tummy. You're killing bacteria in your tummy. And so this is one of those things where people are like, process food is bad, but they don't really talk about... It's like, oh, well, sugar and fat and they talk about that kind of stuff, but they don't talk about the fact that very often there are these preservatives added to food, which actually may be worse for you than the sugar and the fat. By the way, do you know what bacteria love to eat? Sugar. Sugar. So this is the thing, it's such a... This is the argument that I know I've told on this show like a dozen times that I had with my dentist or my oral hygienist, that the dentist brought in to talk to me about, you know, knocking out the bacteria that are in your mouth causing plaque. Because I get... Yeah, we've talked about this. You want a competition, right? Right. I get the rapid plaque buildup, but I have like no cavities. So my argument was, why would I knock out the bacteria that I get it? I have to come in here, you got a scrape and chisel and get this gunk off there every once in a while, but why would I get rid of that if that is populated and prevented the bacteria that causes cavities from having a foothold in my mouth? Why would I ever want to destroy that balance? I like the fact that I can come and get cleanings and no drilling. Yeah, but then the other thing she brought up that was really interesting is that personal hygiene products are not monitored or have never really been studied for their effects on the microbiome. Like deodorant? Deodorant, lotion, just all these things that were everything that we put on in our bodies. I will throw into that. I will throw into our super organism. I will throw into that the all natural hygiene products, too. What is it? Lavender is a synthetic estrogen? Right. It's like all sorts of things. Even that whole natural versus man-made component that you are putting on your body. Just sweat and smell like a human people. Come on. People who don't wear deodorant say they like a lot of people say they don't need deodorant and so they don't wear it and people who do wear deodorant they create a need for it. So there's some of that happening but there's also some of like maybe you just don't wear deodorant because you don't need it. So it's like really hard. Maybe some people's microbiome in their armpits is really stinky. Maybe that's because they're natural state. But in some cases I will say in my own uncontrolled experiment I have noted that when I used to wear deodorant every single day I noticed immediately days that I didn't wear it I got sweaty and stinky and when I stopped putting it on every day it was a tough few weeks but then it started to kind of like re-equalize and it's not as much of an issue for me anymore. Deodorant is different deodorant is also different from antiperspirant. Which I don't use antiperspirant. You're going to get sweaty if you're wearing deodorant no matter what. So odor is going to be affected. So I only wear deodorant. If I did the armpit sniff test I should probably knock that down. It's the only time I've ever put it on. That's what it's for. It's like I could go and but there's a bacterial component to this too so like if everybody's saying like your B.O. has got to go that might be the one excuse to use an anti-back soap on your pits. I'm just going to give you it's like using an antibiotic. Like only do it if it's absolutely necessary. Don't use the anti-biotic soap every day because you'll never get anything else that can infiltrate. But if it's really like I just showered and my pits stink it might be the one excuse to allow a little triglycerin. Recently I just grabbed whatever product I was out and my normal antiperspirant deodorant was not at the store so I was like I'll just grab this one close to it's close enough I couldn't stand the smell of myself and I would be like I'm like what it was like a week and I was like I smell wrong and so I don't know whether it was you know what I mean it's my bacteria interacting with this new deodorant and it was I did not like it I was like this is the worst I was uncomfortable and unhappy for like a few days until I could get back to the store oh my god this is the worst but it's also like because we become I think nose blind to an extent to our own sense right and I think you want to but I think you also I don't want to smell myself all the time but I think people also become nose blind to their covers their their deodorants their antiperspirants their colognes or perfumes they can become nose blind to them to the extent that you know whether you have really bad B.O. and don't know it or your cologne is like magnitude more than you should have applied and you don't know it you are you are nasally offending people in both those directions and I think it's interesting that when you did that switch you were very aware of a scent that you might not have been with your regular brand but it might have been as strong like this is like an interesting I'm very aware of changes and how I smell so there I find when I eat I don't know if I've talked about this before when I eat curry food that has curry in it like I will smell like I'm like I smell like curry and I wander around going I smell like curry I smell and I ask my husband do I smell like curry and he's like no you don't smell like curry and I'm like I smell like curry I can smell it the one that does that for me is if I accidentally ingest cinnamon which I think I've explained the best for some reason is in my brain the same smell that I smell when hair is burnt horrible cinnamon is the most disgusting smell it's there's like there's like cat urine is like an 8 or a 9 and then cinnamon is 10 I made snicker doodles yesterday you would have hated the smell of my house I wouldn't have been able to come here home I'll eat something not realizing there's a cinnamon component to it because I just didn't like the factory didn't kick in in time and then now it's like I'm like emanating like cinnamon with every breath and I have to find something to cover it up ugh it's just so gross never Christmas there's like cinnamon sprays which I don't know if the general public notices I definitely notice oh no during the fall the cinnamon broom the cinnamon broom is a big thing the flower area the Ponsettias in any grocery store horrible sad flower area they do a spray of cinnamon on the Ponsettias to make you think about Christmas when you see a Ponsettia and they start adding cinnamon scented stuff to like movie theaters like it shows up everywhere and I'm like I can I'm like acutely sensitive to this one you need to go to a non-cinnamon country for the holidays no cinnamon no cinnamon on this island yeah I don't know many places where there isn't cinnamon everywhere it's everywhere hey Black did you ever manage to google whether or not will this be a crack yeah no I forgot I think we've had this conversation like I'm deja vuing as if we've had this like two or three times but uh apparently neither of us remember the results of the conversation yeah let me go to twist.org to see if I can find it cause I want to find like I'm gonna go wolf this was years ago oh my gosh this would have been uh a 2012 ish story no it was that long ago it was that long ago and the only reason I know is because I was uh where I was living we had a dog that uh I always think of when I think of that story and because at the time I was it's also how I remember when your movies came out because I remember who I went to the movie with oh dog directions I feel like that might be it I think that has to do with anything at all yeah you're right that's what that was so we are confirmed for April 3rd tells me what that story is about that's kind of funny April 3rd April 3rd everybody we're confirmed I uh we now have a theater the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon on April 3rd for the live twist show I booked my flight I haven't I might drive up who knows it's a long drive for the show you can do it that's hard call up hi do you have airplanes to go to Portland do you yeah we have several every day and you're like give me the early one so I can get there I'm gonna book the pdx and I'll end up in phoenix don't go to phoenix find a hotel with good wifi okay let's see maybe we don't have wifi in phoenix dogs are able to follow human keys okay this is from 2015 2015 uh is it wolves versus dogs hold on I'm waiting let's see dogs may present a special case we find evidence that they are able to follow human gaze to objects such as food or toys but not for the comparatively simpler task of falling gaze into an instant space no uh no this is not um hmm this is the same thing okay so wolves following human gaze is in 2011 but it doesn't appear but it does not appear to compare it to dogs at all it's just saying hey wolves follow human gaze um okay so the version of that was the following year because I remember 2012 so so I have to be right this from 2014 says uh 25 canid species comparing variations in facial pattern and coloring variations about their social behavior evolutionary history canines use facial markers to highlight or deemphasize the eyes species with more distinguishable eyes live and hunt in groups where gaze communication facilitates the teamwork that is necessary to bring down large prey and stay safe those with camouflaged eyes are more likely to live alone or in pairs where communication with other members and species may not be needed in the same way that's pretty interesting but not really an answer to this question maybe studies have shown that domestic dogs are more likely to make direct eye contact with humans than wolves raised in the same setting so that's something um so dogs are more likely to make eye contact with humans than wolves so here's also this is also follows check this out the wolves aren't different this is December 3rd 2013 domestication of dogs may have elaborated on a pre-existing capacity of wolves to learn from humans in this study what they demonstrated that uh wolves were less likely to follow dog demonstrators to hidden food than humans wait say it again wolves were more likely to follow dogs wolves were more likely to follow humans than the dog demonstrators oh that's interesting so that it's it's sort of builds off that when you were talking about but it's like they are tracking like they both actually track us more than they trust each other for the um yeah wolves and dogs this is interesting this is actually kind of finding a middle ground wolves and dogs were two to four times more likely to find the snack after watching a human uh or dog demonstrator hide it and this implies that they learned from demonstration it's definitely running on their sense of smell moreover they rarely looked for the food when the human demonstrator had only pretended to hide it and this proves that they had watched very carefully wolves were less likely to follow dog demonstrators to hidden food uh it's not necessarily mean that they're not paying attention to dog demonstrators on the contrary the wolves may have been perceptive enough to notice that demonstrator dogs did not find the food reward particularly tasted themselves so certainly did not bother to look for it hmm interesting uh okay so i found a couple other interesting things scientific american in 2017 uh say um when a dog gazes deeply into the eyes of a human um extended eye contact triggers the same hormone responses that helps human mothers bond with their babies aww uh so oxytocin floods um the owner's brain and there's a similar spike in the dog um which is neat but not an answer to this question um dogs but not wolves use humans as tools this is from 2012 um see where's the actual research come on okay uh hand raised group of dog puppies and a group of wolf pups from birth resulting in roughly equivalent experiences at differences between the two groups social cognitive skills would be attributed to genetics at that point um from six days after birth before their eyes and fully opened they started interacting with humans um da da da da da da da da da da da da okay um a plate of food was presented to the wolf pups or the dog puppies the food was inaccessible to all the animals human help would be required the trick to getting the food was simple all the animals had to do was make eye contact with the experimenter that's cool he or she would reward the dog with food from the plate um all the animals attempted to reach the food by the second minute of testing dogs looked at the humans being this increased over time and by the fourth minute there was a statistical difference dogs were more likely to initiate eye contact with the human than the wolves were okay also not answering this question but um it's along similar lines so here's one from 2017 wolves understand cause and effect better than dogs mmm uh both dogs and wolves were able to follow communicative cues to find hidden feud however without direct eye contact neither the dog nor the wolves chose the correct object in the absence of a human to show them where the food was located only the wolves were able to make casual inferences in this experiment wolves showed an understanding of cause and effect with which the dogs lacked hmm so that's not reading humans any better but it's just about being more clever uh I'm trying it's just really hard to search for dog v dog versus dog v human gays you know but I swear I read something about that at some point it's just been studied a lot more than I thought maybe we're having but uh so it's yeah some of the but basically I guess I guess the the uh underlying point that uh I could I could ground this on is that there doesn't really seem to be a huge advantage for these thousands of years of co-evolution of man and dog being able to communicate it's really looks more like the wolves and then they're they're often you know and the the lineage that came it's just clever just clever and maybe it's just you know we all we all it's maybe it has less to do with cohabitation it but is the reason for the cohabitation is that we adopted similar communication cues around similar understandings of our environment and that's why the friendship started in the first place yeah I think that um it's really popular to talk about like oh well cats domesticated us like cats are not domestic I kind of agree with that like they definitely don't need us they could get by on their own but they're I mean the second you kind of shift the perspective that way it really sounds like dogs also domesticated us they were kind of like hey here's the deal I'll give you companionship I'll do utility things for you you're gonna keep me warm and feed me like it really seems like because everything that that that we kind of know about the hypothesis of how dog domestication started was with dogs coming towards us not us going towards the dogs the dog started reducing their their flight distance over time as there was more and more food and and warmth and shelter near humans so they kind of domesticated themselves they were kind of like uh some speed some of the wolves were like I'm gonna go hang out with them and it worked out for them and um from there it kind of you know it progressed but I think that there's there's this narrative of like um you know man wanted companion man lured in dog became companion yeah like people are like kind of affectionate toward baby animal anything well exactly my point like other things haven't been domesticated that are cute as babies wolves will kill you like there is some there is this disconnect where this is a really dangerous animal how come it didn't attack humans when humans started getting closer to it because they were already self-selecting for being calmer around humans so here's what I kind of think is interesting and it's uh bit of a chicken in the egg but we all know it's the egg that can push um wolves are hunters and humans did persistence hunting and then if they were in the Neanderthals they did the up close hunting and where domestication happened is in places where Neanderthals had been for hundreds of thousands of years and so the question is who's the better hunter and who comes in scavenges after so the wolves to make a kill humans notice this they wait to the wolves have had their fill and we slowly scotch in see we were domesticated wait a second but on the other hand Neanderthals made big kills and they can only carry so much back and so who's waiting around for the humans to start to kind of back off with the finish with their kill the wolves and so there's this interesting sort of dynamic of both being hunters both making these big kills and the other kind of moving in and so we sort of shared a lot of territory in these sort of scenarios where we weren't the interest we weren't the party of interest we weren't we weren't predator or prey we were both sort of sharing it but then also fascinating that then once domesticated we're like okay you're now eating cereals right well also if you think about it like the human the human uh predecessors um their teeth were kind of I mean they're definitely better than ours but not great for eating meat so I feel like they left a lot of scraps uh and yeah although we do also have interestingly like a lot of evidence of stone tool used to break bones to get to marrow yeah but there's still something for the the dogs to chew on there's still something um yeah and anyway um Ed I disagree there are definitely dogs that want you to stare lovingly into their eyes for all of time they're called golden retrievers and laps they just love it no there's lots of dogs actually that that really enjoy eye contact that's the thing I was just reading about oxytocin apparently there's an oxytocin spike in both dogs and humans when they stare lovingly into each other's eyes whenever I do that I say to a dog don't eat me oh don't eat me don't eat me and they like they get it on like I think a lot of levels okay well uh I think I've reached the end of tonight's episode Blair is yawning ginormously so I think it's time for you to say goodnight Blair say goodnight Justin goodnight Justin goodnight goodnight everyone thank you so much for joining us for another episode of this week in science it's late everyone go to bed or don't stay up and do what you need to do um we'll be back I'll be here I'll be on twitch on Friday at 1 p.m. for my twitch stream and we will be back here next Wednesday we're looking forward to it you signed up for a newsletter I hope you got one this last week yeah I hope you got one for hippo day for hippo day and we'll be sending out another one again soon so we'll be in touch everyone and if you haven't signed up for our newsletter sign up for our newsletter okay we'll see you next week wait how do I turn this thing off I have to hit the stop broadcast button goodnight