 Okay, we are on. Okay, there we go. I'm gonna get this thing moving. Oh, everybody ready for a show? Everybody. It's born ready. Yeah, we're covering from Halloween. There we go. We are starting in three, two. This is TWIS. This Week in Science episode number 643 recorded on Wednesday, November 1st, 2017. Oh, wonder. I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight we are going to fill your heads with an electric shock, lasers, and little oysters. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Nobody gets out of here alive. It's not a threat. It's just the cards you've been dealt by being alive. That one day you will shuffle off this mortal coil. And in the meantime, everything, everything you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, this is the world. And yet, the world is much bigger still than this, for there is knowledge. Knowledge that can take us far beyond, see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Knowledge that can fill our everything with just about anything, from the big bang to the microbial muck, from genomic manipulations to rovers on Mars, from basic chemistry to advanced chemistry, and theories on how gravity works. Knowledge is to be found everywhere, and we humans are adept as can be at it. And every bit of new knowledge that we have gives our world, our life, our everything, a little more this weekend science coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I wanna learn everything. I wanna fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this weekend science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this weekend science. Good science. Hello, Kiki and Blair. And good science to you too, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back once again to exclaim and explain all the wonders of the science world. And I don't know if any of you caught the reference of the title of the show this evening. No wonder from the Tempest. November 1st, a long, long time ago was the first public performance of Shakespeare's Tempest, which... I had no idea. Yeah, which has... All right, Justin, rewrite the disclaimer. Let's start over. Let's start over. I'm gonna put in some sort of Shakespearean reference, like shuffling off a mortal coil. I had to, I've done that. That's right. But instead, what's past is prologue. And it's into the show we go. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm so good. Oh, I love this show. I love our audience. You know, hell is empty and all the devils are here. Okay, but I'll stop. Maybe at some point in the aftershow, we will, though, get the... What's that voice you use, Blair, when you do Shakespeare? Vocal fry. Vocal fry and Shakespeare by Blair. It is worth it. Okay, it is worth it. Maybe. Okay, let's hold off on the vocal fry until we get to the later part. Don't leave. You can leave later. The vocal fry comes later. Right now we're gonna talk about science news and we have tons of it. I have new stories about electrical stimulation for the brain, cooperating chimpanzees and inevitable aging. Justin, what did you bring? What do I have? What do I have? I have salty saliva. You know, primordial soup, alien physiology and traveling at the speed of gravity. Ha, hmm, hmm. Okay, I'm excited about these. I'm excited. Blair, what is in the animal corner tonight? Oh, I have some marine monsters. I have squeamish shellfish and I have T-Rex arm. Makes it hard to get things off the top shelf. I'm excited to see T-Rex arm. I've never noticed that about you. I know, yeah. We need to spend more time in person to think, see things like that. But anyway, as we jump into the show, I would like to remind everyone out there that you can subscribe to the TWIS podcast, all good places that podcasts are available. iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher's Freaker, tune in, probably others as well. We're on all sorts of places. You can also just look for us this week in science on YouTube, on Facebook, and you can visit twis.org and go there, especially if you are interested in finding out about our 2018 TWIS, Blair's Animal Corner calendar, which is now available for pre-ordering. And also everyone, if you are in an entomology field and going to Denver, Colorado for the Entomological Society's Meeting in Denver, Colorado this week, we will be there. This week in science is doing a live show at the ESA, the Entomology 2017 conference in Denver, Colorado will be on Monday, which will be a lot of fun. We're excited, you guys, right? Yeah, and if you're in Denver and not an entomologist, we're probably gonna do a meetup as well, right? Yeah, so keep your eyes peeled on the social media account because when we figure out where we can do something like that, we will tell you, but we don't know yet. So forget that. No, because we're not from Denver. No, yeah, we don't know these things. All right, moving into one of my favorite segments of the show, what has science done for me lately? I have an update to last week's entry from Selden McCabe. I didn't see he had sent another note and said, hi, Dr. Kiki. Actually, there's more to my story. In 2010, in the Selden last week, he talked about how technology allowed him to share his experience of the eclipse with his friends around the world. He says, though, there's more. In 2010, I was diagnosed with stage four cancer with a 28% five-year survival rate. Thanks to science, new discoveries and treatments have given me and countless other cancer patients more time to spend with family, traveling and time to enjoy life. Thank you, science, and thank you, Twists for reporting on the latest science news. And Selden, thank you for sharing some of your absolutely precious time with us. And we are so glad that you shared your story with us. It is just wonderful. Then we did have another letter from Minyon. Let's see if we're gonna get her name here. Holly Hunter from Oklahoma City. Holly Hunter says, dear Dr. Kiki Justin and Blair, I live in Oklahoma City where science struggles for respect. But we also have a lot of wildlife out here, and that's where science does so much for me. I am a pollinator gardener. And thanks to countless hardworking entomologists and botanists, I have an X-ray view into the world of the fascinating insects that populate my gardens. Thanks to their studies, I can look at a monarch butterfly and fully appreciate the struggles that she has overcome just to reach my garden. And it is deeply satisfying to know that I am directly contributing to the survival of a threatened species. And I only know that because of scientific research. Scientists allow me to peer into the inner lives of bees. For example, did you know that queen bees determine the sex of their babies by choosing whether or not to add sperm to each egg? Entomologists told me that. Here's another fun story about bees. Full of intrigue and internecine warfare, bumblebees are quite different from honeybees because their queen isn't the only one who lays eggs. In late summer, her daughter, worker bees also lay eggs. Isn't that amazing? Wait, I know, but wait, there's more. The mother bee eats her daughter's eggs and they eat hers and the reproduction battle is on. By the end of the season, the colony will end up with a certain percentage of males who are not the queen's sons. Wicked crazy, right? Yeah, I did not know that at all. No idea, thank you, scientists, for making this amazing discovery. And thanks to the scientists who are working hard to find out how to save our pollinators. Our lives would be so boring without the bees and butterflies, not to mention their critical role in agriculture. And last but not least, thanks to our science mentors, like you guys. I enjoy your spirited debates. Justin's crazy ideas are sometimes really spot on. I'm so glad he thinks outside the box. And I'm also really glad that Dr. Kiki and Blair are there to challenge his really crazy ideas. There's nothing more true to science than a lively debate. Keep up the great work. Holly Hunter from Oklahoma City. Thank you. Thank you, Holly. Thanks, Holly. Yeah, Holly, that was a, this weekend would have science done for me lately that was full of information that we weren't necessarily aware of. And that is so fun. Thanks for educating us in this wonderful letter. And yeah, pollinators, let's find out more about them and how we can preserve them. I wonder where we could do that. Oh, wait, how about the entomological conference? Yes, let's do it. We're gonna do that. We're gonna find out more for you, Holly. We'll find some good insect news for you about pollinators. Everyone out there, please, please write in with your stories, your tales of what science does for you, what it has done for you lately. Let's keep filling this part of the show with your emails, with your notes, with your stories, with your lives. It makes all of our worlds a little bit richer and better. Thank you to everyone, but keep it up. Leave us a message on our Facebook page, facebook.com slash this week in science is where you go and just send me a note and I will schedule it to read it on the show. Let's move on. You guys ready? Let's do some science. Yeah, let's do some science. You know, politics these days, it makes me think that humans will never be able to cooperate again, right? Things get me down. They get me down. Well, maybe not here. Not here on the show. No, no, I meant in America. But you go in America, in America. Yeah, maybe. But there are there's evidence of cooperation all over the place. And you know what? Even our closest cousins cooperate. That there's evidence. Study from Kyoto and Oxford Universities and the Indianapolis Zoo looking at chimpanzees. Well, I guess not our closest because the Novos are supposed to be our closest now, but fairly close. They have been taking turns and cooperating to complete a number sequencing task. They're counting in the proper order or at least they're recognizing symbols in the proper order to receive a reward, of course, but they're coordinating their behavior in a very, very rapid fashion. So this research is published in the journal Scientific Reports. And the researchers trained the chimpanzees in using a digital touchpad with numbers on it. And the chimpanzees had to touch the series of numbers in the correct order. And they had gotten to do it on their own very well. So they could tap the squares on this number pad. And even though the numbers are not in any order and they were arranged randomly on this square, the chimpanzees could see which number came next in the sequence and tap out one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and get it and finish the sequence. But they'd never been asked to share the task and to have to coordinate their activation and their activity. So in this exercise, what they did is they split the touchscreen and they had the chimpanzees so they could see each other, we'll make it, but they were separated by a wall. And the touchscreen, one half of it was on each side of this wall with one chimpanzee having access to each side. Now, the numbers were randomly allocated between the different screens. I'm gonna, I'm making this, there we go, I'm gonna get this video big so you guys can watch exactly what happened in this situation and see how this turned out. And it's actually pretty amazing how rapidly these chimpanzees share the task. They spontaneously are able to touch the correct numbers to be able to finish the sequence and gain a reward. It's a fast cooperative process. But I've seen this lab before too, which is really amazing, is the, one of them is a second generation of the lab. His mother was in the lab and the son chimpanzees in the lab. And he can do that sequence. I don't know if it goes up to like 14, 15, 16 numbers where they flash it on the screen for a fraction of a second. Like, you can't even read it as your human eye cannot read or place for that instant where all those numbers are and they can put them, hit those squares in the correct sequence. So, but yeah, but this is a new task where you pause, you don't just hit them as quick as you can in the order. You pause to allow your partner to engage the other part. That is fascinating. Wow. I feel like there's a lot of small children that definitely could not do that. No, adults cannot do this. And so this is the cooperation one. The one they just did, yeah, the one before though, they were unable to. And so the interesting aspect of this study is there were six chimpanzees, three mother and offspring pairs. And so they were all really good at it. And as you said, Justin, the young chimpanzees are really good at it and they don't make that many mistakes. They made fewer mistakes than the mothers actually. And they were actually, they're faster than their mothers. But when, or during the control test, they found that the mothers are faster when they're all by themselves and they're not doing it on their own, not doing it together. And so what it suggests is when they're doing it together, the young chimpanzees are much better at paying attention to what their mothers are doing than the mothers are at paying attention to what their children are doing. I would think it would be the other way around, but yeah, wow. Yeah, and so one of the researchers adds, the finding that young chimpanzees more readily took cues from their mothers when looking to take their turn reveals interesting parallels with other aspects of information transmission in chimpanzee societies. For example, during the learning of tool use by wild chimpanzees, we also see young individuals paying attention to older ones much more than the reverse. This kind of asymmetry has important applications for the direction of information flow. For example, how quickly new innovations in behavior will spread through a group. So I think it's a fascinating example of cooperation in a social group, a social species as well, but it's a fascinating concept that this kind of coordination, this level of rapid coordination can take place on a task that really has nothing to do with their natural behaviors. So the implications for what they can do coordinating together as a group in a wild on natural behaviors, I think could be much more interesting. But- It's also got me realizing I maybe have anthropomorphized chimp behavior of the human or the expectation because I feel like I'm watching my kids way more than they pay any attention to the fact that I'm in the room, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're constantly watching me. Why don't we talk about kids being a sponge? And there's the old saying, little pitchers have big ears. There are all sorts of anecdotes about kids paying attention and learning things and knowing things that adults really didn't think the kids were paying attention to. Yeah, so maybe kids learn from models, from parents. So, but additionally, maybe the kids are also more motivated by the little Apple reward that they were gonna get than the parents were. Just be it. Yeah. So speaking about the difference between ages, kids to adults, that's development. But once you become fully developed, then it's all about aging. And you know what? According to University of Arizona researchers who just published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there's nothing we can do. All this aging research, all this stuff we keep reporting on, intermittent fasting, just starving yourself, oh, exercise all that. I'm gonna try and stay young. Doesn't matter, you're going to age and you're going to die. Aging is a fact of life. But can we slow it down so I can live to be over 200 like I've planned? Yeah, so I think that is the question there because what they did is they put together a mathematical equation and they modeled aging in a multicellular organism like humans on other computers. And so this model they put together takes into account that there are a couple of factors at play. And so you basically have the competition between, in balance, between cells that need to be eliminated because they're not performing well. And so those are the cells that are, as they become more decrepit, their metabolism stops working as well. Those are the aging cells. And so if we could just get rid of all of those cells, then maybe we would be just fine, right? But then on the other hand, you have cells that take advantage of this and become cancerous and grow out of control and go to the other extreme. So the balance point within multicellular organisms has to be keeping this, the whole thing balanced. So allowing sluggish cells to accumulate at some rate or allowing cancer cells to proliferate. And they say, if you do one, you can't do the other. You can't do both at the same time. So they say this equation expresses that aging is an incontrovertible truth and an intrinsic property of being multicellular. One of the researchers, Mazel, says, it's no surprise that we're all going to die. Lots of things are obvious because they're so familiar to us, but really why is it that we age? And this study starts to get at that and starts to explain why we have aging in the first place. Once you get past development and you end up in a point of bodily maintenance, it's a balance between getting rid of or allowing sluggish cells to accumulate or allowing these cancer cells to start going out of control. And so this starts answering this question. And the researcher says why hasn't, the question is why hasn't natural selection stopped aging yet? She says implicit in that idea is the idea that such a thing as non-aging is possible. So why haven't we evolved it? We're saying it's not just a question of evolution not doing it. It can't be done by natural selection or by anything else. Well, it would make sense that it can't be done by natural selection because the name of the game in natural selection is reproduction. And if you've passed reproductive age, then there isn't a huge benefit to you staying alive in terms of natural selection. Right, anyway, we've got things that we talk about like the grandmother effect and other possibilities. And men tend to be fertile for many, many more years than women. But yeah, reproduction does have a huge role to play there for sure. So there are interesting questions about it. And yeah, aging does seem to really hit the fast track after reproductive age has passed. But they're not looking at the mechanisms per se. They're looking at this as a mathematical demonstration of why you can't fix both problems at the same time. So we're either going to be, we can fix part of it and maybe slow it down a bit. Maybe we can fix the cancer and figure out how to stop cancerous cells from taking advantage of the system. Maybe science still has something it can do, but like you asked in the beginning Blair, maybe it's not so much a matter of stopping aging as it is slowing it down. And there's the difference between aging and then senescence. And some people undergo a very long senescence and that's really like when the body is really breaking down. So if we can shorten the period of senescence, so it's just a much shorter period and we age gracefully, maybe that'll be better. Maybe we can, maybe you can still live to 120 or 180, maybe that's possible. 200. 200, okay. I'm out of short. I'm aiming for 200. Sorry. Yeah, maybe the answer lies in the naked mole rat. Perhaps. Perhaps, they don't get cancer. Why not? So you're going to live to 200 Blair as a naked mole rat. This is how to do it. Of course. Too much fun, but anyway, according to math, we're all going to die. Yay. We won't overpopulate the earth. Hooray. This is the speaking science, Justin. What you got there? So we know all life is going to eventually come to an end for all of us. Mathematically speaking, except for Blair. But the origin story of life on earth is still a bit of a mystery. The primordial soup, the molecular muck, the deep sea thermal vent event. Whatever it was, we still don't know. There is a prevailing hypothesis known as the RNA world hypothesis that earlier forms of life may have relied solely on RNA to store genetic information and to catalyze chemical reactions. According to a new hypothesis, life later evolved to use DNA and proteins due to RNA's relative instability and poor catalytic properties, not because of just RNA being that good at transfer marketing things, trans-morgifying things, but because of a partnership between nucleic acids and small proteins called peptides. So this is sort of jumping, it sounds like it's jumping ahead a little bit. It was like, what? We've got these tiny proteins, but I thought RNA was supposed to lead the protein. So how could the proteins that are already, according to two new papers from biochemists and biologists at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and University of Auckland, their peptide RNA hypothesis contradicts the widely held RNA one, or RNA world hypothesis. Interesting. Yeah, so before there was life on earth, there were some simple chemicals research this century has previously revealed. The chemicals for the soup that created the basic building blocks of life already were there. We got building blocks, but now how do we get building? How do we get single cells? How do we get proteins to single cells, to animals, plants, life on earth? So the mystery is how amino acid building blocks were first assembled, according to a coded nucleic acid templates into the proteins that formed the machinery of these cells. So the widely, the prevailing theory, RNA world, posted RNA that is still involved in coding and regulating and expressing genes today, somehow elevated itself from this world of amino acids and chemicals to give rise to the first peptides. They somehow got them, so they created the first peptides. Carter and Wilson argues that RNA could not kickstart this process alone, but because it lacks a property they are calling reflexivity, it cannot enforce the rules by which it is made. RNA needs peptides to form that reflexive feedback loop necessary to lead to eventual life forms. So the heart of the peptide RNA theory are enzymes so ancient and important to life that the remnants are still found in all living cells, even in some subcellular structures, including mitochondrion viruses. There are 20 of these ancient enzymes called amino acyl-TRNA syntheses, which I'm just going to refer to from now on as ancient enzymes. The special attributes of the ancestral version of these enzymes, super families and the self-reinforcing feedback system that would have formed with the first genes and proteins would have kickstarted early biology, driven the first life forms to that complex mitigation of or creation or proliferation of all this diversity that we see on the planet. This is co-authors Peter Willis, PhD professor, Physicist of the University of Atlanta, he says, compared to the RNA world hypothesis, what we've outlined is simply a much more probable scenario for the origin of life. We hope that our data and the theory we've outlined in these papers will stimulate discussion and further research on questions relevant to the origins of life. Ancient enzymes, there's 20 amino acids, each one of them recognizes 20 amino acids that serve as the building blocks of proteins. So it's sort of a little bit of a chicken and egg kind of a thing, right? You have this RNA that can code and say, here's what happens next, but it can't actually put the building blocks together that needs protein to be present. But how do you get to the protein? So these 20 ancient enzymes belong to two structurally distinct families, each with 10 ancient enzymes in those families. Carter's recent experimental studies showed that the two small enzyme ancestors of these two families were encoded by opposite complementary strands of the same gene. Made one gene, just one bit of coding, and it's creating either this or that, right? It's creating two families. The simplicity of this arrangement, I love the way they phrase it here, with its initial binary code of just two kinds of amino acids, suggests it occurred at the very dawn of biology. Moreover, the tight yin-yang interdependence of these two, related by highly distinct enzymes, would have stabilized early biology in a way that made inevitable the orderly diversification of life that followed. These interdependent peptides and the nucleic acids in coding them would have been able to assist each other's molecular self-organization despite the continual random distributions that beset all the molecular processes in the beginning, Carter says. We believe that this is what gave rise to peptide RNA world early in the Earth's history. Hmm, that's fascinating. So instead of starting off the starting block with RNA, it was peptides, which is, yeah, and then the peptides would have given rise to RNA eventually after time and mutations and change. But how fascinating that these, yeah. So instead of the RNA hypothesis, maybe it's the peptide RNA. Peptide RNA, what's this? Peptides to RNA, protos, well, and then viruses. Yeah, they're also pointing out, and I think likely how they got to this is not being over to probably to overcome some of the obstacles in the RNA hypothesis. They're pointing out that they've shown it's impossible obstacles would have blocked any transition from pure RNA world to a protein RNA world to an onward towards life. Such a rise from RNA to cell-based life would have required an out of the blue appearance of an ancient enzyme-like protein that worked even better than its adapted RNA counterpart. This is an extremely unlikely event that would have needed to happen, not just once, but multiple times, once for every amino acid in the existing gene protein code. It doesn't make sense, he says. And then goes on to say that, oh, the two scientists are fully aware that RNA world hypothesis still dominates the origin of life research field, quotey voice, that theory is so alluring and expedient that most people just don't think there's any alternative, Carter says, but we are very confident there is. Yeah, and there's another interesting study that was out this week also suggesting that that these RNA, and I mean, I guess in this case, maybe it was the peptides, but that the phosphorus that's involved in the amino acids that builds these molecules that it all could have gotten at start, not in clay like we've talked about before, but actually just in little droplets of water. And that little droplets of water can actually have formed the labs, the little laboratories where components came together and mixed in a water solution. I don't know, we keep looking around at space, there are building blocks all over the place, maybe wherever we find water, if these things come together at these microscopic scales and combine and recombine, and if you have something like these peptidases, these peptide enzymes, they can do things. They can catalyze chemical reactions that end up making what they're doing valuable and interesting and build up to the RNA. People say, life didn't just happen, it kind of did. But over a very long time after a bunch of steps. Yeah, but it did just kind of happen. It did just kind of happen. And it could have happened all over the place. Yeah, and the simpler solution to it happening that it keeps looking like we're finding a much simpler chain of events. Yeah, exactly, Kiki. The more likely it's gonna be in lots of places. Well, I wanna hear more, you've got another story about, we're gonna link this to the alien life story, but that'll come in the second half of the show, right? You teased that you've got an alien life story. So talking about life starting and just happening. I'm gonna tease it again, everybody. We're gonna talk about alien life in the second half of the show. So you can just think on that. Have we discovered it? Mark, is it here on Earth? Mark? That and more, but in the second half, because right now it's time for a different segment. Yeah, because right now, you know what time it is? It's time for Blair's Animal Corner. I'm so excited to talk about the unknown that we were just talking about. The great unknown out in space, there's a lot of that, but there's also a lot of great unknown here on Earth, particularly in the space. So I'm excited to talk about the unknown that we were just talking about. The unknown here on Earth, particularly in our oceans, which is the thing that I like to rhapsodize about often. There's a lot of things we still have to learn from the ocean and the Animal Corner is full of two pretty fascinating discoveries this week in marine life. This first one is about nudibranchs. Nudibranchs are very colorful, beautiful sea slugs. And a particular group of nudibranchs off of the coast of Sicily were being studied by Dr. Trevor Willis, senior lecturer and course leader at University of Portsmouth. And they saw something kind of interesting. They knew that nudibranchs eat hydroid colonies. So hydroids are a stage of life for a lot of animals called hydrozoids in class hydrozoa. They're closely related to jellies and corals, but they look almost more like plants, but they're actually a kind of animal. And there's not a lot of nutrients in them. If you think about a jelly, do you think about a jellyfish? It's kind of just a water bag. There's not a lot of food there. There's not a lot of nutrients there. They wanted to look at these nudibranchs. And really, if they really are just eating hydroids, they were especially interested because they thought that if you did really just subsist on hydroids, they would have to eat so much of it to get what they need that they would actually deplete hydroid populations. So the risk would be that their food would run out before they could actually reproduce. So that's a pretty terrible life history strategy. Well, what they found was they found that these nudibranchs were eating pulps that had just eaten. So over half of the nudibranchs diet was actually made up of not the hydroids they just ate, but the zooplankton that the hydroids just ate. Double your pleasure, double your fun. I was actually thinking about something like a turducken in a weird way, right? This is an aquatic lower trophic level turducken. Yeah, an invertebrate turducken. So over half of the food was actually the food of their food. So they're doubling their attack rate on prey that has gorged on zooplankton when compared to hungry counterparts. They're not bothering with the empty hydroids. So it's kind of like when I have a hamburger and salad. No. My food and the food, my food. It's like if you ate a cow right after it ate grass and when we looked at your poop, it was full of grass. OK, OK. So not exactly. So they're actually using this species, the hydroids, as a fishing rod, quote, unquote, to get access to the zooplankton, which normally they wouldn't be able to get. Nudibranchs, little sea slugs. They're not the best filter feeders. They really need to. They have a radula, little scraping tongue. So they really just have to eat stuff that they can gnom on. And so they're calling this new strategy kleptopredation. Kleptopredation. Yeah, the way they figured all this out, they looked at the nitrogen stable isotope levels in the nudibranchs, the hydride polyps, and the zooplankton. They found that the nudibranchs had lower levels of the nitrogen stable isotopes than they would expect feeding only on polyps. So they were filling their tummy up with something else. And that's where they found all this out. This actually is, even though it sounds pretty cruel, a win-win for the hydrides and the nudibranchs. Because remember before, I was saying if they're eating these little polyps all the way up, they can deplete populations. Well, the hydride is usually kind of this big branching structure. And so one, quote unquote, animal could have all these different polyps. And so actually by grabbing the polyps that just grabbed food and having to eat less, they're extending the life of these colonies. So it's a weird win-win. But it's definitely a win-win. Now, the reason they had to come up with a new name for this, kleptopredation, is because it's actually a combination of something they did know about called kleptoparasitism, which is when one species takes food killed by another, like hyenas grabbing a lion's fresh kill. And direct predation, just eating another animal. So then they put those together, kleptopredation. Dr. Willis says that our ability to understand and predict ecosystems in the face of environmental change is impeded by a lack of understanding of trophic lineages. In scientists speak, that basically means we can't save a space if we don't know who's eating who. And he also says there's a lot to learn from research. I love this quote. Well, we have some great results. Like any science worth its salt, it raises more questions than it answers. Absolutely. I love that. I think I might have to write that down somewhere, because we talk about that on the show all the time. What's next? What are they going to study next as a result of this discovery? So they found this whole new feeding strategy. Chances are it's not just these one nudibranchs off the coast of Sicily. There's other animals doing this. So I'm fascinated. I can't wait to hear who else is a kleptopredator. Who else is kleptopredating? Yeah, the idea that they are eating them so soon after the hydrodes have eaten that there's not time for digestion to have taken place. You don't lose the energy to metabolism, which is what if you eat the cow who ate the grass. By the time we get the cow, that grass has already been metabolized into muscle mass. And we only get a tenth of that. We get a tenth. Exactly. And so we get a tenth of it. And so if you're faster and you eat the food that has just eaten, then you're getting all of the food. You get to have the benefit of all of it. And as they said, if it's helping their populations survive, then that's a good strategy for them. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody wins, even though it kind of sounds like the hydroid loses a little bit. The hydroid definitely loses. And so does the hydroid's prey. Yeah, the zooplankton. I got eaten twice today. That's true. That's zooplankton. OK, so the other story I brought tonight is about another animal that exhibited something we weren't really expecting. And that's our oyster friends, little oysters. Oysters are extremely important animals, before I go any further, for a bunch of reasons. But mainly, why? They're delicious. No. Oh, sorry. They're filter feeders. They're filter feeders. Yes, of course that's why. They clean our water. Too many oysters, water gets too clear, and habitats collapse. Not enough oysters, water gets too dark, habitats collapse. Filter feeders are extremely important to the delicate balance of a stable ecosystem in the ocean. So now that I've explained why we actually care besides the fact that they're delicious, they exhibited something very interesting in a laboratory experiment from University of Bordeaux, France. And they wanted to see if oysters could hear. So invertebrates, in general, juries out on their hearing. We definitely don't see actual hearing structures. So it's hard for us to identify if they're just feeling vibrations, if they can actually hear, if they respond to stimuli of sound. So this is a study looking at that. And specifically, they wanted to see if they could hear things that are similar to noise pollution in the ocean, which I brought up recently on the show talking about noise pollution. We've talked about noise pollution and light pollution in the ocean pretty recently. So it's a really important part of when we think about how we are disrupting ocean ecosystems. It's not just the oil that we dropped in the ocean. It's stuff as simple as an idling zone nearby or a motorboat or a tanker. So all those things actually have different frequencies of sound. And so each of them may or may not affect marine animals. And if they do, it's going to be in different ways, potentially. They looked at 32 oysters in a laboratory using a loudspeaker to play sounds underwater in a range of frequencies. And previous experiments looking at oysters have found that there's actually a behavioral response when oysters are stressed. So when they get threat or stress, senses, they will snap shut. And so they wanted to see what frequencies of sound, if any, cause the oysters to close their shells. They found that when acoustic energies were high enough, oysters rapidly closed their shells at sound frequencies between 10 and 1,000 hertz. Their maximum sensitivity and sensitivities at low frequencies were between 10 and 200 hertz. So that was the space where they were the most responsive. It was between 10 and 200 hertz. They found that the idea here is that oysters can hear tidal cues maybe. And that's why they need to be able to do this, is that they can hear tidal cues that trigger behavior that helps them respond to rising tides. So if they hear rushing, crashing sounds like on your white noise machine while you're going to bed, you're listening to your waves. How would they know? That's a sound that the oyster could hear getting louder and go, oh, better shut tight. And you say hear, but maybe hearing is really just that transduction of vibrations. And so if they're feeling, they're sensing vibrations. They sense the sound. Most marine noise pollution is due to cargo boats. And cargo boats, for the most part, are at low frequencies within this 10 and 200 hertz. Other things in that 10 to 200 hertz range, explosions, seismic research, pile driving, and wind turbines. Things that are at the higher frequencies that are less likely to bother oysters, small recreational boats, jet skis, water bikes. They're too high to see a response, at least in a lab. Great. So we can still just ride our water maggots around as much as we want. Sure. Yeah. Well, it more tells us that what we need to focus on are these cargo boats, which Elon, hurry up and make the electric cargo boats. We need them now. We really, those cargo boats are so loud. And it has a huge impact on marine ecosystems. And if it's affecting everything all the way down to little oysters, we have some things to be concerned about. Because as I said, they're a really important part of the ocean ecosystem. Yeah. And so the question is, how do they respond to these noises? How long do they stay closed after a particular vibratory assault? So if it's a car, and like you said, the cargo boats are loud. So whereas one kind of watercraft or activity, like a wind turbine, the wind turbine might be in the right noise range, but maybe it's farther away and not as loud. So maybe that sound of the wind turbines doesn't propagate as far. And then the cargo ships, because they're louder, maybe they propagate further. Maybe they have a larger area of impact. Right. Absolutely. And based on the loudness, how long do these little filter feeders stay closed? So maybe then we can take life history information we have about the oysters, like the time of day when they are doing the most filtering and reduce sea traffic at that time. There's lots of things that we can do to try to take care of this. Because if the oysters are essentially sleeping at night, then maybe cargo ships should be moving in and out then. But then, of course, there are potentially other species that are being impacted at that time. So you have to figure out, that's a big part of it, right, is figuring out when we will have the least impact. Because things, as we do them now, have an impact on the natural environment. That is locked in. There's no way around that. But we just want to make sure that we don't turn around and find that our filter feeders aren't doing their job and in ecosystem collapses. So it's a part of the equation. Ocean pH is a part of the oyster equation. There's all sorts of things that can stress out oysters. We've just found another one of them that we can keep in mind as we move forward. I guess my question is, I'd like to know when and where oysters sleep. Yeah, well, that's a whole other question, right? And then how do you define sleep? But definitely there are times of day where filter feeders, like oysters and mussels, are more active and times where they're less active. Yeah, we know there's the oyster season. During the winter, they're less active. During the spring and summer, they're more active. So at what point, there are different seasons when the oysters are fresh and feedable. But there are also times of day, too, that oysters are more productive. Right, and they're going to open or close as the tides go in and out. And so there are many factors that probably regulate their behavior that vibrations are one of them. Yep. Yay, no. Save the oysters! Save the oysters! And so this is how we all become a little bit of a part of the blue oyster cult. No. Cowbell? Cowbell? Do we have cowbell? We've come to the end of the animal corner and the first half of our show. This is this week in science. It's time for us to take a quick break for a few words. Please do stay tuned because we've got alien life and electrical brain stimulation coming up among other wonderful stories in the second half. So stay tuned, everybody. We will be right back with more This Week in Science after this. Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. This is This Week in Science. And do you know what's available right now? Oh, yes, you do. Yes, you do. 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Why would you wait for your agent to call? And we're back with more of this week in science. Yes, we are. Justin, what you got there? I do have a story about alien life and discovery of what it would look like. That's gonna be later in the show. First, over a hundred years ago, and theory of general relativity, Einstein predicted that gravity does not act instantaneously as Newton had thought, but instead propagates at the speed of light. Cody voice of Neil Cornish, physicist at Montana State University. A speed of gravity like the speed of light is one of the fundamental constants of universe until the event of gravitational wave astronomy, we had no way to directly measure the speed of gravity. But over the recent shows, physicists have made some really big progress in this direction. And it looks like they've got the first bounding, this is Eric quotations, bounding of the speed of gravity because of these observations. Initially, first Lego detectors, detection of gravity waves constrained the speed of gravity within 50% of the speed of light. That does not mean that it is half the speed of light. This is very important. Bounding it within 50% of the speed of light means that they've got a boundary of slower than the speed of light and faster than the speed of light, much faster. Right. Because so far, this is where that's 50%. And then paper published last week in physical review letters. Cornerson, his co-authors, came up with a new constraint that bounds it to within 45% of the speed of light. Again, that's not even slower than the last one. That's still above the speed of light and below the speed of light, but a narrower bounding, a narrower range where they can say, aha, we've got a solid detector. This is a speed of light. So this is, they are right now using all the different gravitational waves emitted by the binary neutron star merger along with some light detection. This was a very good event because it's not just gravity. There's also a light event that you can kind of detect and say, oh, that's part of this speed of light. This is part of it, right? They've got it to negative three, 10 to the 15 power and seven times, 10 to 16 times, seven times 10 to the 16 power times the speed of light. So it's a lot more, more than the speed of light than it is below the speed of light. But again, this is just the current range of which we were able to make these detections. It does not mean that gravity is faster than the speed of light or slower than it. Just means we haven't got the actual radar gun on it yet, right? One of the things they're saying is that if we have more, if we have more, part of what helped them do this is we had LIGO detectors that were located 1800 miles apart. And what they're saying is that they had five of these gravitational wave events to compare using four detectors in different places on the earth. They believe that's the good radar gun that they need to have ready or the amount of data that they need to have come in. And then they could get it down to maybe 1% of the speed of light. That's so we've got our first sort of ranges where it can't be below this or over that. And while that might sound like there's a lot of work to be done, it actually excludes a number of alternatives to general relativity when it comes to gravity. Yeah, so this is the really interesting aspect of this. Right, so scalar tensor out, theory by the Horava Lifshitz, gone, gravity and biometric gravity, they're just gone. Yeah, it seems like they're the modified, the mawned, these are certain modified gravity theories that they've been using to try and explain how everything works in the universe. And the mawned theories and mawed theories, they modified gravity, they actually, many of them don't take dark matter into account. So this is also, at a certain point, maybe gonna be mixing in whether or not there is dark matter. Right, because by playing with these constraints on the speed of gravity, you can have different explanations for the expansion of the universe. You may have worked out an idea that doesn't include dark matter and so it doesn't need to exist. So by ruling out a lot of these alternatives by putting this first constraint on, it's already progress into a correct model, right? It's already tremendous progress. So this is only going to be a story that continues to unravel and it's gonna be fun to follow, but right now 45% within the speed of light, mostly above though, that's really what's fun too. Well, no, I mean, where they are now, they're getting really, I mean, the light, the gamma ray light and the gravitational signal and the gravitational wave detector LIGO, they own, it was a matter of seconds between the arrivals that they measured. So I mean, this 45%, 50, 45%, nope, no, no. I mean, basically what we're down to is light and gravity travel at the same speed because that 1%, that little, those few seconds there, the very, very edge of detection, that's error because we're talking about the 100 million light years that the light and the gravity had to travel across, maybe something slowed one of them down a little bit. Or more likely it's just our detectors. Yes, or it's our detectors, exactly. I think that they're gonna slow those down, aren't gonna make so much of a difference. I don't think, I think that it's just our ability to, like I said, run a proper radar gun at it, have a proper detector to detect these speeds is really difficult. And now, gravity, we've almost got the exact speed but pretty much, it's the speed of light. Speed of light, at least at least at this point is definitely not ruled out. Yeah. It's not more, gravity does not, we did not see gravity travel faster than speed of light. I just wanna make that clear. Seven times 10 to the 16th times the speed of light. That's, it's, it's. Yeah, it's the, it's the plus or the minus, exactly. Yes. That's a lot of over still. But it's not. But it is, it is quite a bit of over. That's quite a bit of over. Yeah, because it's boundaries, but we saw it, yeah. It's not gonna go faster than the speed of light. That's, I'm just saying that now. That's my prediction. That's just error bar. I will jump right in there with you on this one. Just, just whiskers. You're saying it's just the whiskers on the graph. It's just the whiskers. Box and whiskers. And the probability of the overshoot is really, really slim. Gonna say everybody out there. But I, yeah, I think this is all very exciting for narrow, not just narrowing down the speed of gravity but also narrowing down the potential theories that explain how everything works. Light travels at the speed of gravity. Wait, what? I haven't seen you in gravity years. My goodness. That's right, change our cultural references. That would be fun. Cultural references, you know what they also, cultural references show up in our brains, right? When people say words, our brains have responses to those words and we can use functional magnetic resonance imaging to actually be able to observe changes in activation of the brain in response to different words that make you feel different ways, that make you think different things. So a group of researchers decided they wanted to use MRI readouts to identify, this is researchers from Carnegie Mellon University publishing in Nature Human Behavior. They wanted to use this fMRI, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to see if they could create a learning algorithm, train a computer to identify suicidal brains. And they did. Why? It worked very effectively. However, we're also dealing with a very small number of subjects that were involved. And there are certain caveats to the research that the researchers themselves bring up at the end, which is that this was a pretty long, long measuring test. And most people would be hard to have them sit or lie in the fMRI machine for a half an hour or more to do this kind of test without some kind of noise or errors taking place. But they were able to train a computer algorithm based on images of brains from suicidal and control individuals that were shown words related to suicide and not related to suicide. So they were showing words like death and distressed, and other words as well. And they identified five regions of the brain and six words that helped to identify brain patterns of behavior related to suicidal thoughts. And then they trained their algorithm. Out of the 35 participants, the algorithm correctly identified 15 of the 17 suicidal patients and 16 of the 17 control group people. And then they took the suicidal thought group and they split them up into a smaller group. Those that had attempted suicide and those that had not and a different algorithm was also able to categorize those patients 16 out of 17 times. So they say that there are particular brain responses just to the words, but those brain responses also trigger emotional responses and in the brains of the suicidal patients or even those that had already attempted suicide, very often words related to suicidal thoughts triggered emotions related to shame. And it was a different emotional response than was brought up in the control brains. Wow. So not that we're gonna go around FMRIing depressed people all the time, but this could potentially lead to a treatment at some point in the future to actually determine if people are, if someone says they're suicidal, you take them seriously, but many people never say they are. And so maybe there will be some kind of diagnostic test that will go around it. And maybe they can come up with a treatment or not a treatment, but a test that doesn't take a really long time to do that maybe it's a very quick test. Maybe there's even something that they can map to EEG or a very simple diagnostic that doesn't take so much effort. Yeah. So anyway. That's fantastic. Yeah, AI for identifying suicidal brains. Yeah. Yes. And there is a difference between a suicidal brain and someone who's just having had some suicidal thoughts. It's a very complex, complex issue. Actually. Actually. Justin. Uh-oh, what'd I do? You know what else is complex? Life in the universe. I wanna know about it. Okay. Get my cursor back. Why don't you wanna tell me that story? Okay. So we know that there isn't a single answer in human history or in science that can be answered with its aliens. Yes, you can actually answer that way, but you are just as incorrect in answering anything and everything with because of Toxoplasma Gondii. Although T. Gondii will on odd occasion actually be the correct answer. Still, let that not preclude us from discussing aliens. Right. Because there are at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy alone. At least 20% of them are likely to fall into habitable zones. And even if .001% of them can figure out those, how to use those basic building blocks that are probably everywhere and in every one of these systems, those planets will involve life. That would mean that there would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 life harboring planets in our galaxy. And we know that there are billions and billions and billions of galaxies beyond our own. So this is a study published in international journal Astrobiology. Scientists from the University of Oxford show for the first time, evolutionary theory can be used to support alien predictions and better understand their behavior. They show that aliens are potentially shaped by the same processes that shaped you and I in all life on this planet. Natural selection isn't a thing that we came up with, right? We didn't like invent it. It's not like genetic code per se for natural selection. These natural selection is largely how life forms play out on a macro scale. Yeah, that there are environmental forces. There are differences. If this is a life form, then it's passing on traits to further generations. There are certain standards to natural selection and the way that it works. Yeah. Yeah. Heritability. So this is, I'm gonna lose my place here for a second. This is titled Darwin's Aliens. It's the title of the study. If anybody wants to look it up, it's actually kind of a fun read, right? So going for the Sam Levin and Research and Oxford's Department of Zoology says a fundamental task for astrobiologists is thinking about what extraterrestrial life might be like, but making predictions about aliens is hard. We only have one example, not of aliens, but of life, that is life on Earth, to extrapolate from past approaches in the field of astrobiology we have been largely mechanistic, taking what we see on Earth and what we know about chemistry, geology and physics to make predictions about aliens. In our paper, we offer an alternative approach, which is to use evolutionary theory to make predictions that are independent of Earth's details. This is a useful approach because their radical predictions will apply to aliens, even if they're silicon based and do not have DNA and breathe nitrogen, for example. So using the idea of an alien natural selection as a framework, the team addressed extraterrestrial evolution and how complexity will arise in space. Species complexity has increased on Earth as a result of a handful of events known as major transitions. These transitions occur when a group of separate organisms evolve into a higher level organism. When cells become multicellular organisms, an example, both theory and empirical data suggests that extreme conditions are required for major transitions. And one of the things you could also think of not just as a single cell that becomes multicellular, but when that multicellular organism starts having single celled organisms, living in its gut. There's all of this in place. Paper also makes specific predictions about the biological makeup of complex aliens, offers a degree of insight into what they might look like. I love one of the photos that they got out of the sketches that they have. It looks like a tardigod, like the tardigrade of all tardigrades, right? Yeah, a multi-limbed tardigrade. Yes, it does. Oh, yuck. Yeah, okay, so I read this article. I definitely saw it got shared around quite a bit already and I feel like, once again, kind of got this sensationalist title to the article that made it sound like Star Trek was right. Everyone's just humans walking around with a slightly different skin color or a funny wrinkly forehead. So that's not what it's saying. No. What it's saying is that they anticipate the same pressures to quote unquote shape or put processes into place that will influence these other life forms for the same reasons. What I would like to know though is what is new about this paper other than some new fun pictures? Because honestly, anyone who has read sci-fi, an even hard sci-fi that has alien life that is evolved on a distant planet or that talks about humans spreading to different parts of the universe and evolving into different forms. I mean, this idea of natural selection acting on humans spreading elsewhere in the universe or on other alien species based on the planets where they come from, this is not new. We have talked about this before. Yes, but we haven't put it into a paper out of Oxford by a zoologist. We've just talked about it. No, that's my question. Maybe we should have written a scientific paper then. Geez. To Kiki's point, did they run some statistical analyses? Did they do anything kind of experimental in their exploration of this topic? Read the paper. So yes, they did. They did a little bit of that. No, that's why you're here, Justin. You're reporting on it. Tell me. I know. So now they just made some cool sketches and were like, wouldn't this be a cool-looking alien? Let's write a paper about this. So they run statistical analyses based on the assumption that natural selection will put pressure on these other rudimentary organisms on other planets and... Yes, that's it. And yes, it was found. And they found that, yes. And found... Yes. Natural selection. You're not taking the thing here. Yeah, so... What did they find? What did they find that was new? What is it that the statistical analysis told them? What they did was they came up with a couple of constraints or a couple of things that are gonna drive, which I mean, it's not that we... They're just taking it from the planet that we know to an extent, but they're saying it doesn't have to be the same biological makeup, but there's gonna be... What they're predicting is there will be hierarchy of entities which all cooperate to produce an alien. This is sort of like humans with our microbes and all that sort of thing. Each level of an organism will be... They will have mechanisms to avoid conflict that maintain or engage in cooperation that keep the overall organism functioning. So it's sort of one of the things, which I don't think is talked about very often, they're looking at the whole biome of an entity versus doesn't have two legs or six, right? And instead of just focusing on how does gravity affect the length of a limb or something of this nature, there sort of are more building a discussion about the entire... The more subtle forces. They're looking at an integrated approach for sure. Yeah. But they did not find aliens in outer space. No, nor did they have a rendering of a space lady who'd do like a fan dance or something like that. No, no. Actually, that did come up too. That was also possible. Can you do the Fandango? No. Yeah, so no aliens in outer space. Maybe there are aliens here on Earth with us, but we don't know that. They didn't find those either. But natural selection, universal, just like gravity and the speed of light. Constance. Oh, you know what else is gonna affect us in space as we spread to the far reaches of the universe? Space Brain. Unless, of course, we can figure out how to stop it. Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina were funded by NASA to look into the question of what happens during space flight to astronauts' brain structure. And so this is another MRI type study where based on studies here on Earth where they had people volunteer, and I don't understand that people would do this, but people volunteered to be bedridden for 90 days and keep their head in a particular orientation to approximate the effects of microgravity on the head and the brain and the body. During that study, they did find effects on the brain and what they saw and they saw problems related to the visual system. Researchers in that study, they saw the brains and muscular responses of these patients and the neuroplasticity that occurred, that neuroplasticity in the brain occurred during bedrest, but there was a crowding occurrence at the top of the brain. So things like there's openings, these sulcy, these openings up at the top that kind of give space between the folds and the gyri of the brain that that space went away and the brain kind of started squishing up to the top of the skull. That feels like a slow motion concussion or sounds like a slow motion concussion taking place. So there's this shifting going on and she's like, all right, this is happening here on Earth, which this could just be a weird effect of the study, but let's look at the brains of astronauts who have actually gone to space and there's been a symptom that's been reported among astronauts. It's called visual impairment intracranial pressure syndrome or VIIP, for short. And they think we've talked about like the eye pressure, the intracranial intraocular pressure that affects the visual system. The astronauts come back, their eyesight is impaired, kind of blurry, but we don't know exactly what's going on there. And they think it's a redistribution of cranial fluid or body fluid even, the spinal pressure, the fluid is redistributing, but they looked at these astronauts' brains and they did actually find the same effect as what they saw in the individuals who had been on bed rest. And they saw these openings, these sulcy at the top of the brain go away. And so there was a change, an actual change to the structure of the brain. So this intracranial pressure is a thing. The brain is either swelling or fluid is moving the brain around. There is something actually structurally changing within the brain during micro-gravitational experiences that doesn't happen here on Earth and that affects the experiences of the astronauts. And this could be part of the overarching problem of a lot of brain issues related to being in space over long periods. So should we go to space? What does that mean for our brains? Should we become space faring? Should we send people to space for longer periods than we currently have the longest being actually over a year now? What'll happen? I guess we need gravity helmets if we're gonna go. Right. Because artificial gravity, that's totally something that's legit possible, right? If we're in a situation like an inter-solar system trip where we're under thrust at a certain level of thrust that could approximate gravity, if you can cause enough vehicular thrust, spacecraft thrust through space to give yourself gravity, then your body feels gravity. Sure. And that would be okay. So we can go to Mars, just to go really fast. We just have to go really fast, yeah. So these people that were bedridden for 90 days, did their brain go back to normal? I think, I believe so. That's a really good question. I'm not exactly sure. What the after effects of the being bedridden were, but it is true that astronauts who go to space for long periods of time actually do experience trouble re-acclimating to being on Earth, that they do have balance issues. They have vision problems. They have... They come back taller. They come back a little taller, but they also come back weaker. And so there are lots of issues. They also have nausea issues. There are all sorts of problems that people don't really talk about for the returning astronaut, especially those that have been at the International Space Station for extended periods of time. Oh, which by the way, the Google Maps or Google Earth? I think it's just the Google Maps. You can zoom out now, and you can go to Mars and Venus and the moon and do like a map, like zoom in and out of portions of that. But they also have the International Space Station as a little like walk-through. You know how like you can sometimes go down to street level and walk into like a restaurant that's taking photographs all around so you can kind of see what the environment is like inside? They have that up for the International Space Station now, I encourage everybody to go take a look at it. But I can sort of also picture from having wandered around in it for a while, how odd it would be to just sort of be a largely two-dimensional creature again, where there's going to be something, you know, in front, behind and left and right of you that you can interact with. Whereas if you look around the walls, there is no walls, the ceiling and the floor could be work stations, right? Like everywhere you look, there's stuff there that you could be interacting with and doing something with. So that I could totally understand how disorienting it would sort of be to be back in a two-dimensional world where there wasn't a laptop on the ceiling that you could go and work on if the room got crowded. All of a sudden, you're back in all new parameters, of course, with the gravities there, pulling on you constantly when it wasn't before. Yeah, I mean, it's a very different environment. It's a very unintuitive environment. And so just another layer of the trouble with spaceflight. But I do encourage everyone who isn't listening to this show to go ahead and go. I want everybody to listen to this show. So stay here with me. Don't leave me. I'm not going. So right now, we reported a while back. So the 90-day bed study that I mentioned, that one occurred early 2000s. There is a new NASA-funded bed study. It's a bed rest study. It's under NASA ENVHAB, E-N-V-I-H-A-B. And this mission is a 70-day bed rest study. The purpose of this study, it's also called the VAPER study, V-A-P-E-R, is to study the effects of pressure on the astronauts' eyes and optic nerves in space. But 12 volunteers will spend 30 days in bed with a head down tilt. And in a half percent, 0.5% carbon dioxide, mimicking the space environment, thought to cause vision problems in astronauts. I have so many questions. Wait, my only question is, am I still allowed to watch TV or play video games while? Yes, so it's interesting. You can, but you're not allowed to change your orientation. And so you actually must stay in a bed on your back with your feet slightly elevated with respect to your head, or your head below your feet. And you like, you probably can't, you can't get up to go to the bathroom. Nope. It's all, you're just, you're there. See? But you have an opportunity. Hopefully it comes with access to like a Netflix thing, sort of. You're like, you get to binge watch everything on Netflix, even things that you've passed over because you know you won't be interested in them. So there's a side, there's a little bit of a benefit to get, I've just, I've watched everything on iTunes University. I've gone through all of the books on tape that I always wanted to read, but never had the time. Yeah. So. Is at some point your vision probably starts to go. So books aren't gonna do it. You need to be listening to things. Maybe learn a language or something like that. But this study I guess got underway as of October 2nd and it'll be interesting to see in the next couple of months as the study is completed and they've got their measures. What comes out of that? And to have NASA bed study. So let's keep an eye on that for when the news comes out, you guys. And everyone who's listening, if you see links, send us updates if we don't see them. Let's move to the end of the show and get these last stories out of here. It's quick news time. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. This is the quick news segment of the show. And you know what's the fastest thing that humans have ever controlled? Gravity, light. No, an X-ray laser pulse. Oh. Uh-huh. Yes. So microscopic world of atoms and electrons, it's really tiny and these things move really quickly. When there's a chemical interaction, the parts of the molecules, the electrons that are changing places, they're hard to keep up with. So if we want to make little movies of chemical reactions, we need a light source to record those reactions with that is as fast, if not faster than the reactions themselves. And so researchers at ETH Zurich have shortened the pulse of an X-ray laser down to 43 attoseconds. The shortest controlled event ever created by humankind. And to get an idea of how tiny 43 attoseconds is, which is the, this is at about the level of time that these chemical, these electron transfers take place at, get this, it is scaled up. There are as many attoseconds in one second as there are seconds in 31.7 billion years. Nope. So what was saying? You kept going and I was like, oh, nope, she's gonna stop. No, three, not three, 30, okay, 31, 31 months. No, years, no, billion years. Yes. As many attoseconds in one second as there are seconds in 31.7 billion years. And so this X-ray laser pulse is 43 attoseconds. This is about a thousand times shorter than the LINAC in LINAC Coherent Light Source. And additionally, this is shorter than a University of Central Florida team that had a 67 attosecond pulse, 43 attoseconds. We're gonna make movies of chemical reactions. We're gonna see how these things work. Maybe, and like if you wanna know what kind of movies would be really interesting, how about photosynthesis? How do electrons transfer through the chlorophyll during photosynthesis? And can we use that information to make better solar systems? The answer is probably yes. And so they're trying to make even shorter attosecond pulses even now. And then I said early in the show that I had an electrical stimulation for the brain. Well, not really because what I have is evidence of a particular kind of electrical brain stimulation, not working. Researchers and people with epilepsy have, there have been lots of claims about a particular kind of brain stimulation called transcranial alternating current stimulation, with tax. They said that it could, they said it could help memory-related brain waves and stimulate memory. But in fact, now published in Nature Communications, direct stimulation of the brain with tax, transcranial alternating current stimulation, found absolutely no effect on brain waves associated with memory. So if you're interested in stimulating your brain with electricity for memory, maybe tax is not the thing that you wanna be using. There's no, there's not much evidence there. However, this does not suggest that transcranial direct current, TDCS, doesn't work. There's evidence that that does work and other things as well. So anyway, tax, not good, not necessarily a memory booster for your brain. So maybe don't do it. Yeah. You're saying don't shock myself on the brain with electricity. Well, unless maybe it's direct current. Oh. Alternating current. That's what I've been doing wrong. You did not get it. It's the whole. And maybe just- So finally, finally there's one place where Tesla's invention is in Tisca. That's right, Tesla. Not necessarily good for memory in the brain. All over each other. Yeah. All right, tell me about T-Rex arms. Oh, well, yes, T-Rex arms. You know, why don't you ask a T-Rex to paint your house? Why doesn't a T-Rex like to wear a party hat? All these questions come with answers. I can never take it off. They have tiny arms. So the T-Rex, they're about 40 feet long. They're about 20 feet tall. They have strong, long, powerful tails. They have a about five foot long skull and they have hands. They have little arms that are less than a meter long, less than three feet long. They're pretty short. A lot of paleontologists think that they are vestigial. They have absolutely no purpose. They're just silly. But paleontologist Stephen Stanley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa said on October 23rd, that he thinks the limbs are well adapted for vicious slashing at close quarters. Not sure how you would get close enough to get slashed at with a five foot head on top of a 20 foot body, but that is his hypothesis. I'm just imagining the whole slashing. It's like with baby slaps. Yes. So they had longer arms. The T-Rex ancestors had longer arms used for grasping, but at some point they got smaller and smaller, probably when their head was getting so much bigger so that they didn't tip over. Yeah, so their head got so big and heavy that they had to lose weight elsewhere or they would no longer be able to be bipedal. So that's the kind of main hypothesis is that the hands just shrank over time so that he didn't fall over on his face. Yeah, a little counter-balancing, right? He's in the arms for a little bit. Stanley says that based on the bones that we have found of T-Rex, those arms are very strong. Those bones are robust. They could sustain impact of slashing. So why would you have big, robust bones in these vestigial arms? It doesn't exactly make sense. Each arm also has two sharp claws, about 10 centimeters long. 10 centimeters long, that's like four or five inches. So that's a pretty long claw to be doing nothing. On top of that, they had two claws instead of three as most dinosaurs do. So by having two, you actually have heavier pressure and the edges of the claws are beveled like a bear so they're not flat like grasping claws. All of that makes them say perhaps they're slashing claws. Other scientists are definitely not convinced. They say like Thomas Holtz of the University of Maryland says, although strong, the arm of the fully ground T-Rex would barely reach past its chest, greatly reducing its potential strike zone. But here's the other side, perhaps because the T-Rex arms grow more slowly than their body, young T-Rexes, young baby T-Rexes would have proportionally longer arms, which means potentially juveniles could use them for slashing prey. Interesting, right. So then you'd have a change of strategy over time maybe, but also maybe just help yourself get up when you fall down. No, couldn't do it. But no, for the juvenile. For the juvenile to be able to... And also, you know... The juvenile could protect themselves a little bit better before its head was fully formed possibly. Right, and there has been talk that the T-Rex was very much a scavenger, perhaps more than a predator or a primary predator. They were more likely stole kills or a found dead or found an exhaust or maybe just chased down once in a while. But for the juvenile, for the juvenile, and I don't know, this is the thing we need to know is whether or not they traveled like a family, like is this a pack of wolves? Is it a pack of T-Rexes together? Because if the juveniles are out on their own hunting, they may be less likely to scare off of their prey so they're other predators, so they may be not as good at scavenging. So maybe they actually needed to do a bit of hunting early on, and that's why, you know, and then those arms would have been really necessary for that stage of life, but then became less necessary as I could just scare off any other predators after they made their kill and just take it from them. Oh, yes. You know what I'm gonna take from you? Clip to a parasitism. What? Salt. I'm gonna take all the salt. Want all the salt. All right, well, many Americans, including Kiki apparently, consume more salt than they really need. Now in a study appearing in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, scientists report that people who can easily taste salt have differing amounts of certain proteins in their saliva than those who are less sensitive. If I need to help explain why some of us have a hard time shaking the salt habit and could potentially lead to the development of actually edible low sodium foods. Consuming too much sodium increases risk of heart disease and stroke. These are leading causes of people dying in the United States. Lower sodium products on the market, but people don't buy them because they don't taste good. To develop more palatable products, researchers are trying to gain better understanding of how the body processes and perceives saltiness. So saliva has been thought to play a role in clear though exactly what it is about spit that makes the difference in how people have salt perception. So a small study was done, Thomas Hoffman colleagues sought to fill in the knowledge gap. Researchers classified volunteers into sensitive and nonsensitive groups according to how salty the participants thought various sodium chloride solutions were using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Team identified several salivary proteins that differed between those who could readily detect and couldn't quite tell if something was salty yet. Surprisingly, they found the largest differences, not just in the, separate from that, they found differences, big differences in resting saliva compared to saliva produced after swishing around. The resting saliva sensitive subjects had higher amounts of endopeptase, peptase enzymes that cut up proteins than the nonsensitive subjects. So it's this higher level of enzymes in their spit as they're swishing stuff around and those who could taste salt right away than those who couldn't. Researchers suggest enzymes could be modifying sodium channels which would increase the amount of sodium that gets into cells also alternatively and perhaps kind of try to their first idea. The enzymes could be cutting proteins in the saliva to produce salt enhancing peptides in people who are sensitive. So they don't know exactly why, but it could be one of those two things. So then they could create, if they could somehow get this enzyme already in, low salty foods, they could create low salt foods that people who were not as sensitive but liked salty snacks would enjoy them and then the people who were salt sensitive would be like, oh, I can't eat salt ever again because everything is these, even the low sodium chips are too salty now. And then they'd have to come up with a product that had no salt in it at all, I guess. Or you can just eat spicy food according to a study that was published this week in the Journal of the American Heart Association called Hypertension. Researchers discovered that it appears that salt and spiciness activate brain activity in overlapping parts of the brain. So eating spicy food can actually enhance your sensitivity to salt and they found that people with a high preference for spicy foods have lower blood pressure numbers and consume less salt in general. So potentially you can just eat spicy foods and not eat as much salt. So spices, spices, you know, some spices can help you not have some. Spices are the salt of life. Yeah, and so those spice mixes that are the salt replacements is a little bit, I have science to back them up. Yeah, but this is us backing up to the end of the show. Everybody, I want you to remember, we might not have salt on our website, but at twist.org you can pre-order the Blair's Animal Corner calendars. My cat is attacking an object from underneath the door that's making all sorts of noises. I don't know if you're hearing about that. Little hands poking through. Additionally, Denver, Colorado, if you're going to Entomology 2017, we hope we see you there. And if not maybe Monday or Sunday nights, we'll have a meetup and we will be able to meet you there in Denver, Colorado. We will put information on social media. Additionally, fun stuff coming in. You know, Blair, how you asked for a whole bunch of limericks? I sure did. Well, we got a wonderful email from Fernando Haro. Yes. And he said, and we have another limerick that is very specific to what has science done for me lately that's going to come up in a couple of weeks on the show, but these are not specifically the what has science done lately version. But Fernando says, I was just listening to my twist backlog episode 640 while working on some schoolwork when I heard Blair's request for some limericks. Now I'm not the best at poetry as English is not my first language, but I still gave it my best shot. I hope you enjoy this silly compilation from yours truly. This is for you, Blair. Dr. Kiki and Justin and Blair always try to be courteous and fair with countless new stories to cater your worries, global warming deniers beware. Justin starts the podcast with an offer so that maybe you don't have to suffer. The disclaimer is in place for all the human race. A researcher is never a bluffer. Dr. Kirsten will be glad to share how their listeners are always aware about the tidbits of science that keep our lives in balance, whether it's hobbies or work or health care. You might find all the news fascinating. Those theories are indeed stimulating, yet the hosts beg to differ their opinions quite stiffer because five as a sample is frustrating. It might shock your cerebral cortex. How can species become so complex? Allow your mind to now wander down in the animal corner where there's a ton of invertebrate sex. And finally, this should be your podcast of choice. Week in and week out, we're the voice in all those darkest moments. Science permeates our comments. Twist saves us from the media noise. Well done. Thank you, Fernando. Thank you for those wonderful limericks. Thank you for that fun science-based, twist-based poetry moment. More! And now you've just made Blair greedy for more. So everyone out there, do you have limericks for Blair? More limericks. And if you can theme them up to what has science done for you lately, bonus points plus one. So it's now time for us to end this show. Thank you everyone for listening or watching. Thank you to our chat room for being here, making comments while we did the show. Everyone's applauding Fernando right now in his limericks. Also thank you to Identity 4, Fada, and Brandon for helping out with aspects of the show that we find difficult to do ourselves in keeping the show going that way. Thank you so much. And now I would like to say thank you to our Patreon sponsors. 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This Week in Science is coming your way. You better just listen to what we say. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Science. Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. Another show. It's time for the post show. And I guess there's a lot of post show to go. Kind of Blair said that we had lots of things to talk about tonight. We have some items to discuss. We have business items coming up. Jason, Justin's not back. We'll start with Adam. Yeah, we can have this. We can have conversations with Adam. Calendar. Your calendar is looking amazing. It looks good. So you think we're ready for ordering? Yeah, I just need to go over what I think my judgment on the whatever weird sciency and animal holiday are going to go on there. You're welcome to look and put in your two cents. But I think that's OK. I tried not to overload it. I mainly just wanted to decide which calendar-y holidays we want to include. Because I've done it a little bit different both years to this point. I've tried to do all of the school and work-related holidays and a couple of fun ones, but otherwise leave a lot of religion-based holidays out of it, since that's very denominational. But this time, I kind of just threw everything on there. So right now what I have is, be ready? Yes. New Year's Day, MLK Junior Day, Groundhog Day, Lincoln's birthday. Wait, hold on. Let me go to my calendar. Hold on, one second here. January, let's go to January. All right, New Year's. I want to look at this. All right. New Year's Day, Martin Luther King, Junior Day, Groundhog Day. When is that? Yeah, great. OK, cool. OK, Lincoln's birthday, which is in February 12th. Wait, OK. It's also Darwin's birthday. Yes, so that's also Darwin Day. OK, great, cool. I did not include Ash Wednesday. That's fine with me. OK, Valentine's Day I included. Because that's fun. On this calendar, they call it Chinese New Year, not Lunar New Year. Do you have a preference or do you think, what do you think? What do people call it? Is it Lunar New Year? Is that what they call it? I don't know. I mean, they also called Indigenous People's Day Columbus Day. So I deselected that, and I manually added in Indigenous People's Day. Good, I think we should change that one for sure. That's great. Let's see, hold on. Lunar New Year, right? Friday, February 16th. Correct. Should I change it to say Lunar New Year? Also says Chinese New Year. Hold on, Lunar New Year. What does it mean? Is the first day of a secular, sacred, or other year whose months are covered? Right, like are there other Eastern religions that consider that the New Year, and by calling it Chinese New Year, we're being like non-inclusive? Right, that's a great question I'm asking. That is the question. Maybe I will. I'm just going to deselect Chinese New Year. Spring Festival, Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival in modern China, important Chinese festival, celebrated at the turn of the traditional Lunar Solar Chinese calendar. But is that just how that calendar is based, then, and not specific? Then it would just be Chinese New Year, because they picked a Lunar cycle to call it in New Year. But if it's actually based on a celestial event, then maybe you'd give it back to the moon. Yeah, so it's based on the moon, but it says Wikipedia, thank you very much. Chinese New Year is celebrated in countries and territories with significant Chinese populations, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mauritius, Australia, and the Philippines. It's considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the Lunar New Year celebrations of its geographic neighbors. Okay, I'm gonna call it Lunar New Year. Yeah. Okay, great. I did not include family day. I don't know, I've never heard of that. I did include President's Day, Washington's Birthday, International Women's Day, Daylight Savings Begins, St. Patrick's Day, Spring Begins. Do we want Palm Sunday or Good Friday on there? I don't really know what those are, so probably not. Great, Passover? Is that important to you? Can we do this in vocal fry? I was promised vocal fry. All right, fair enough. Okay, so Passover. But we've never had Passover on before, have we? No, so it's more a question of whether, for me, are we also including Easter? So I would say if one goes, both goes. Absolutely, we're going to de-religicize and focus on a science-based calendar. So you're saying remove both? Yeah. Yes. Okay, great, this is why I wanted to ask. Cesar Chavez, right? Cesar Chavez, that's gonna be on there. April Fool's Day. That's fun. What about Administrative Professionals Day? That's not one I had considered. I've never... Well, they work that day anyway, because... Yeah, they do. I have to show up, so... Okay, it's gone. It's gone. Arbor Day, May Day, Cinco de Mayo. Yeah? Okay. Let's call it Fifth of May Day. No. Mother's Day. So we removed Passover in Easter, so I will also remove Ramadan. What is Victoria Day? I have no idea. Great. Memorial Day is in. Flag Day is in. Father's Day is in. Summer begins. What about Canadian Holiday? Okay. Victoria Day is for our Canadian neighbors. Okay. Do we have a Canadian company to come up with a calendar? What? Is it a Canadian company that came up with this calendar? Who knows? You have Caled Canadian, but we can't have every holiday. Okay, so it's gone. It's gone. What about Canada? We're on Canada Day. We can have that, I think. That's on July 4th. Canada Bashing Day. Independence Day. Since that's on there, we'll do Canada Day. Labor Day. What about Grandparents Day? Oh, you can't take the grandparents out. I didn't even know it was a thing, but it's something that you should be celebrating. I know. But now I will if it's on there. It's a BS holiday, but we'll leave it on there. Okay, fall begins. Canadian Thanksgiving. Oh, yeah, let's do that one. Okay, great. Okay, yes. Yeah, sure, why not? It's actually based on being thankful as opposed to devastating an entire... Oh, yeah. Yeah, they have a great track record. Okay, I remove Columbus Day. Replace it with Indigenous People Day. Halloween is in. Daylight savings ends. I don't know what Diwali is. Do you? Diwali, no, hold on one second. I have heard of it, but it's an Indian. Yeah, it's the Hindu Festival of Lights. Oh, that's fun. It is fun. Okay, I mean, if it's a religious holiday, we're throwing it out just like the other stuff, right? Okay, so Remembrance Day, Veterans Day. Thanksgiving. I will take Hanukkah off since we took all the other stuff off. And then winter begins. Christmas Eve and Christmas is not on there because instead we have... Twistmas. Twistmas. Do we want Boxing Day on there? No. Okay. No. And New Year's Eve, okay, excellent. So then, do you wanna hear the science holidays? Yeah. Okay, it's just, it's updating. I don't wanna lose it. We did, we changed, for Hanukkah, we called it Twisaka. Oh yeah, did I do that this year? Last year, you called it Twisaka. Let's see if I put that in there. Because it started on your birthday last year too, which was good fun. I think I killed it. I think it's gone. I should do that though. But then we'd have to go back and do Twisadan and Twisover. Do you still have Monkey Day? Yes. Okay, good, because I like monkeys. Good. Okay, so we have... So first of all, I have Twis every single Wednesday for the whole year. Is that correct? We should look at when it doesn't correspond to... Any holidays? Okay. So... That'll be close enough. Twis is on December 19th and December 26th. So those should be fine. They'll be fine. So I put the year in review on December 26th. The 26th, it might, yeah, it should be fine, but yeah, that's the day after Christmas, huh? Yeah, and it's the year in review, so we won't need to do a whole bunch of research. We'll have to go back and look at what we did before. Yes. So then, besides that, I mean, Twis is on my birthday, but I'll let that slide. You sure? Yeah, no, it's fine. We can do Twis without you for your birthday. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, it's every year we look at the calendar and we go, oh, yes, of course, we're gonna do all these things. And it's like, wow, 52 weeks of Twis, huh? Yeah. Twis giving is on November 21st. That's always Wednesday and Thanksgiving is, yeah, it's always, so we just have to figure out, we just always have to figure it out as it comes. Also, guaranteed, we're not gonna mess up Twis-O-E next year because it actually is on actual Halloween. Oh, is that a problem? Okay, so we're not gonna have Twis on Halloween then. I have a child, we go trick-or-treating. So do we have to do a different day? Do we wanna adjust it or do we wanna skip a week? Such a big decision this far. Well, we're making a calendar. Just, can it be Twis-O-E may not actually be a show? Linda, in parentheses under it? Well, it won't be, right? Right, won't actually be a show. Stay tuned, stay tuned for actual time. Something of that nature. Well, I can't fit all that on there. I know, we can't put all those words in there. Do you think maybe for Halloween, we could miss one episode? Yeah, I think it's fine. But we still put called Twis-O-E. Yeah, so I'm writing Twis-O-E. Twis-O-E, that's the holiday. No show. No live show. No live show. That's good, that's it. Okay, great. So we're taking a week off. And if we, or, you know, we can say no live show and as we come up to it. Pre-record, oh. We could decide whether or not to change the night. Yeah, we could also pre-record. That's true. Pre-record. Yeah, okay. So then we have, right. Let's see, October 70th, October 10th. Um, October 3rd, okay. I think if Twis conflicts with the World Series, remove it. How about we just move the World Series, come on. I know, I liked Keith coming in the thing. My, like, alert went on off on my phone and I was like, oh God, what's happening? The way everything's been. I'm like, oh no, there's an emergency alert on my phone. No, it was results of the World Series. You know, I'm not in San Francisco and the Giants weren't in the World Series. So I was like, I didn't even know the World Series was happening. Yeah, I didn't either until I went over to my parents' house and my dad was watching it and I was like, ah. You know, cool. So Twis also falls on Dr. Kiki's birthday this year. Oh, what day of the week is that? Well, it would be a Wednesday. Wait, Wednesday. Wednesday. It would be a Wednesday. Yeah, so August 1st is a Twis day. It's a Wednesday. Okay, so there will be a show. I may take the night off. Okay, great. There will be a show. Excellent. It's a Wednesday. And it's a Wednesday, so maybe I won't take the night off. We'll see. Right, right. Yeah, we'll be here. Okay, July 4th is a Twis day. Happy Twis day to me. Oh, yeah, we will not be doing a show on July 4th. Okay, so no Twis on July 4th. Great. It's 4th of July. That'll be like, it's a holiday day. Totally fine. Okay, I'm just, I'm trying to plan ahead. Okay, let's see. I think that's great, so that we don't, because we had a couple of times this year that we had told people we were gonna do shows and then something happened. Yeah, I think we still always did them. But I think they were like, oh no. Yeah, I think we did them all. I can't remember what, I sure got canceled. No, I think we did them all, but I think there were a couple where we were like, maybe we shouldn't have. Yeah, there were twist shoes. Twist shoes? Okay, let's see. I think I'm in April. Okay, I'm working backwards. I'm almost done. 4th, March, July 8th. And everybody who's watching right now, the people in the chat room know how this works. Some of you may be watching on YouTube if you're directly on the YouTubes. We go into business in the after show sometimes, because we don't live in the same city, and so this makes it much easier to connect on things. Some people like to know how the sausage is made. And this is exactly what we need to figure out for the calendar. Okay, also, wow, all the things are Wednesdays this year. Twist lands on Valentine's Day. Yeah, I'm fine by it. Yeah, I mean, I have a kid and we usually don't go on dates anyway, so. So Valentine's Day for me is, we can do it on another night. I don't need. I can go out to dinner and... Same. I like it. And I love doing a twist. You have to let you know much closer. Okay. This is not one of the decisions I'm in charge of. Right, right, right, right. I get it. Okay, great. So that's it for twists. Okay, good. I added in, let's see, we have National Bird Day. We have Appreciate a Dragon Day. We have Penguin Awareness Day. Good. We have Squirrel Appreciation Day, International Zebra Day, Serpent Day, World Cancer Day, Darwin Day, World Radio Day, Galileo's Birthday, National Hippo Day, World Pangolin Day, Nicholas Copernicus' Birthday, International Polar Bear Day, National Pig Day, World Wildlife Day, World Congress on Nanotechnology, Pi Day, Save a Spider Day, National Panda Day, International Day of Happiness, World Water Day, Manatee Appreciation Day, National Ferret Day, World Rat Day, International Beaver Day, Zoo Lovers Day, National Library Workers Day, Yuri's Night, National Dolphin Day, Bat Appreciation Day, International Cuckoo Day, some of my favorites I added, Earth Day, World Day for Laboratory Animals, World Penguin Day, World Taper Day, Save the Frogs Day, Save the Rhino Day, May the Fourth be with you, Wild Koala Day, National Teacher Day, National Shrimp Day, National Sea Monkey Day, Endangered Species Day, International Museum Day, World Turtle Day, Don't Forget Your Towel, Rachel Carson's Birthday, Slug Appreciation Day, World Oceans Day, National Black Cow Day, National Lobster Day, World Sea Turtle Day, World Giraffe Day, World Camel Day, Pink Flamingo Day, Save a Catfish Day, Tow Day, Nikola Tesla's Birthday, Shark Awareness Day, National Zookeeper Week, Guinea Pig Appreciation Day, World Snake Day, Armstrong Moonwalk, Amelia Earhart Day, International Tiger Day, World Ranger Day, found out about that one. Dr. Kiki's Birthday, of course, Owl Awareness Day, Sea Serpent Day, did I say that one already? You said Serpent Day before. You said Serpent Day, but not Sea Serpent Day. Sea Serpent Day, National Sneak a Zucchini Day, this is a real thing. You're supposed to sneak a zucchini onto a neighbor's porch on August 8th of every year. What? No idea. Yes. I loved it. Okay, World Cat Day, World Lion Day, the Perseid meter shower. Live meteors. Yes. Yes, World Lizard Day, National Honey Bee Day, World Mosquito Day, Dog Appreciation Day, International Whale Shark Day, Species Requiem Day, another one of my favorites, Threatened Species Day, National Iguana Awareness Day, Bilby Day, International Red Panda Day, Plover Appreciation Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day, World Rhino Day, World Rabies Day, World Rivers Day, those are all ours right in the room, International Raccoon Day, Butterfly and Hummingbird Day, World Virus Appreciation Day, World Teachers Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, Octopus Day, Adelavelace Day, National Fossil Day, I'm almost done, International Sloth Day, World Statistics Day, Wombat Day, Mole Day, National Mule Day, Jellyfish Day, World Philosophy Day, GIS Day, Fibonacci Day, World Anteater Day, International Cheetah Day, World Soil Day, Justin's birthday, Blair's birthday, Monkey Day, International Dalek Remembrance Day, Daleks and Visit the Zoo Day, Daleks. So we got them. On your list, is there a DNA day? No, when is that? That's 425. Of every year or 2017? It's 425 is a day that commemorates the nature article that published details on the structured DNA. The DNA day is April 25th of every year? Every year. Yes. These are the things that I have to figure out because I'm trying to make this easier for myself next year. So I can add things in differently as the same date of every year or as a specific date on a specific year. And some things are like, red-painted day is the third Saturday in April or something like that. Right, they move around. Okay, so I added DNA day. What else do you need? There's an Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. Oh, when's that? That is 220 by the Society of Women Engineers. February 20th? Yeah. And that's February 20th of every year? Probably. No, probably. You got Darwin Day, I'm sure was on there. Yeah, no, no, no. Is Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day every February 20th or you're not sure? If you look it up, I'm scanning a separate list there. What's your list that you're looking at? It's a list of, I'm having to scan past a bunch of them because it's a list of geek holidays. Okay, I'm gonna need your source material though because some of the geeky holiday sites are actually not accurate. So just look up Kiki or yeah, Kiki, if you could look up, Introduce a Girl. I am looking it up right now and Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. Girl Day is an international event celebrated during Engineers Week each year. Yeah, I'm not really finding an answer. February 22nd. Is that what you got? Okay, so you have a different day than mine. And I don't, maybe it's different locations, I think it just is a day that's celebrated during that week. Oh, yeah. Maybe different locations have different celebrations of it. No, I think it's February 22nd. 1123 is Fibonacci Day. You have Fibonacci Day? Yeah. I know that one, you already did that, you have that already? Yeah. Which is it? 1123. 1123 is Fibonacci Day. Yeah, I have it. That's the sequence of that, okay. Yeah. Are we satisfied? Justin, are you still looking? Yeah, I'm still looking. All right. This is kind of getting pretty. Yeah, I'm gonna guess. I'll leave it. Week changes every year. And so that would change every year. Yeah. Yeah, I did not do it as a work-time date. We'd have to look it up for what it is this year. Yeah, that is a problem. Now I get what you're talking about. Yeah, because then this year, I wasn't sure what was recurring and what wasn't. So I had to go through the entire list and check. And so this year I was trying to be very careful to mark the ones that recur and the ones that do not. So, cool. All right, well then the calendar's ready to roll. Nice. Awesome. So Kiki, when do you want to order this? Because I have to ask for our special coupon code and it only lasts like, what is it, 24 or 48 hours? Right. Do you wanna wait till next week or do you wanna do it this week? Did we miss Molday? I missed Molday. No, I have Molday. Yeah, okay, good. And talk like a pirate day. Oh yeah, we missed it. We missed it. Yeah. But I have pirate, like a pirate day. Talk like a pirate day? Pirr. You have to have talk like a pirate day. Yeah, something. Okay. Oh, this is another one, Hobbit Day? No, I'm not aware of that. Five, five, five, revenge of the Sith. Five, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six. That's silly. I'm just going through right now and making sure that there are any days with like four different holidays on them where it looks terrible on the calendar, but it's looking okay. Yeah. September 22nd is Hobbit Day. Okay, I'll see if we have room on September 22nd. It's looking good. It's looking good. But is that a homofloreansis Hobbit or JR Tolkien Hobbit? No, that's a Tolkien Hobbit, I'm sure. Tolkien Hobbit. Did you know that World Draft Day is always on the summer solstice? I did not. Do you want to know why? I would love to know why. Because it's the longest day of the year. Oh my God, I love that. Scientists are funny. Geeks are funny. It's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah, so do you want me to ask for the coupon code for like this week or do you want to wait? I think we could do it this week. Okay, great. Do you know how many you're going to purchase? I need to figure out all those details. Why don't you give me a couple of days? Okay, great. So I will get you a coupon code. I will tell him that we need it on Friday. Does that sound good? Let me get back to you. Okay, that's fine. That is no problem. I will tell him that it's going to be this week probably, just so he's like looking for my email. Or like next week. Oh, next week. Okay, let's just say next week. Okay, great. Let's just say that. Yeah. So in October there's a couple... Ooh, there's a couple of days that are really full, but I don't really want to part with any of them. So October 3rd is Butterfly and Hummingbird Day. It is World Virus Appreciation Day, and we have twists. So it all fits, but the square is like full. And then October 8th is Indigenous Peoples Day, Canadian Thanksgiving, and Octopus Day. I think it's okay. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. People can write over it. Let's see. In previous years I've tried to keep like one thing on a day, and this day I was just... Let's just do them all. Do all the things. So we'll see how people like it. Okay, so that's great. Cool. So we're all done. We're good. Wow. Calendar complete. So that was the big thing. I will email. I will email. Do you still have the login to the... I can send it to you, if you don't. Yeah. To order the thing? Probably in my email. Okay. I can send it to you. Yeah. Okay. So I will email this dude and tell him we're pretty much almost ready. And then for Denver, this is the other thing I had to ask. Do you need me to bring my laptop? Yes. Okay. I will do that. What are we wearing? Whatever you want. Okay. Do you want me to wear a twist shirt? We can wear twist shirts for the show. Okay. We can be there and represent twists and then people are wearing our shirt and people will be like, what's twist? Maybe. Because people want to know. I want to know. Right. Will you tell me what is this orange twist word I see? I want to know. All right. Cool. I will do that. It's going to be real, real, real cold. Justin, did you know that? It's going to be cold in Denver. The lows are in the 30s and the highs are in the 50s. Perfect. Love it. So... That's not cold. Okay. Cool. So I'm bringing my laptop. What else do I need to bring? Anything? Okay. I will call you or text you and let you know if there's something special you need to bring. I've been thinking, I mean, something you might want to bring in case you want to record interviews with people at the conference at some point, Monday afternoon. Okay. So I should bring my little microphone and attachment to my phone. Yeah. I'm thinking I'm going to do something similar. Cool. Yeah. So we can do interviews maybe in tradeoff recording. I know yours works. I haven't tested mine yet. Yeah. I'm going to bring my iPad and I'm also going to bring the Mevo. We're going to see about being able to connect to the audio for the live recording. We'll figure it all out. Yeah. Justin, you bring a pen and some paper. Yeah, maybe. Okay. Here's the other question. We're doing a how long of a show? 90 minutes. Okay. So in the rundown, it's the date 11 6 2017 in the rundown. I haven't set it up yet with the guests that we're going to have because I just got the names of those guests today. Okay. So we need to figure out those details. Who we're interviewing, what we're talking about. I just need to spend some time. Good details to have. Good details we can figure out. But I'll get that. I'm thinking tomorrow I'm going to put that stuff in the rundown so you guys can think around. Let's see. So how many stories do you want me to bring? How many buggy stories? Yeah. So what did we do last year? We didn't bring that many stories. Oh, in Baltimore? In Baltimore. Like one or two stories. For the Baltimore. We had a lot of stories. The Baltimore. Baltimore, I thought. I felt like that went the Baltimore live show. We had more stories available, but that we took up the time with the interviews is what happened. So we were over prepared, which is always a good place to be. Right. Yeah. What I'd like to do is theme it up because it's entomology. I don't know if I can do that, Kiki. I know it's so hard for you. So hard. But each of us find a bug related story or two. Because the interviews really are going to be the key thing. I was thinking if we can get an extra microphone so it might be neat to have like one audience question per interview. Also like bring in somebody from the audience, which, you know, kind of fills up the interviews. But, you know, 20 minutes, if we do 20 minutes per interview, we have three interviews. That's an hour right there. So. Okay. So I'll bring, I'll bring like two. Cool. But I will, I will also put in the names of these people and who they are so that if we want to also theme up news stories related to their disciplines, like if you find a buggy story that's related to something that these people do. Right. Or we can do the opposite, which is find a buggy story that is unrelated to what these people do so that we get more variety. Might do a little column A, little column B. That's right. Because I already found, I found like four good bug stories this week that I plopped into that rundown just depending on whether or not I find more or not. I wanted to have some depending on how I felt. So. Right. Cool. Very neat. Yeah. So theme it up entomology bug stories. I'll get the stuff in the rundown tomorrow. And we'll get buggy. We'll work out the bugs. Excellent. We'll work out the bugs. That's right. Yeah. I get to see you guys in Denver. I'm so excited. Actually. So let's see. I can, we can figure out one thing right now, which is, let's see. So it's the, what is it? Denver conference. Okay. Where are we going? The Colorado convention center. Uh-huh. That's where this conference is going to be. Let's take a look at that. Colorado convention center. This is like right downtown. We're going to be, and I think our hotel is right there also. Right near there. So we're near the Metropolitan State University of Denver. We're near the Civic Center. There's a few things there. Just outside this area. There's some place called Great Divide Brewing. It's a cozy tap room for original craft beer. That might be a good spot. Yeah. There's a place called Ophelia's Electric Soap Box. Large space for dining and live music. View house, eatery, bar and rooftop. I don't think I want to be on a rooftop when it's 50 degrees outside. Oh, Denver airport conspiracy theories. Thanks, Eric. Yeah. I heard about that when I stopped by that one time. That's right. Maybe. Hopefully. Maybe I should, maybe it's just trying to get Dave Friedel to recommend something. Yeah. That's probably a good idea. Do you ever go places? Does he do things? I mean, one would assume. Do you know there's a line from the Tempest? Now I will believe there are unicorns. Cute. Thought is free. Oh, brave new world that has such people int. I don't know if anybody has any recommendations for places to hang out in Denver. Good night, Fonzo Blast. Good night, Fernando Lopez. Good night, people who are leaving. Yes, I understand. It's so late. Denver. I don't know. Denver. I'm sure we could yelp it, but I'd like to. I don't know places. The secular hub. Is that a place strength? Are you just making that up? Sounds like a place I would go. What is that? Oh, wait, what? It is in Denver. The secular hub. Yes. So there is in Denver to build and unite the community of secular organizations in the front range. They provide a meeting place for various meetups. But do they have a bar and a restaurant? That's a good question. That's interesting. The secular hub. Secular hub.org. Strengths. What a interesting thing you've shown us here. Definitely have fundraising dinners. Oh my goodness. How fascinating. People make interesting things. Local Wendy's. Yeah. Thanks, hot rod. People make interesting things. Good one. Thanks. Yeah. People do. This is my little bits of wisdom that pop out. Justin, you have any thoughts there? Not yet. I'll sort it. You'll sort it. When is this anyway? This is like weeks away, right? It's Sunday. Everybody's going to, does everybody have their information for their place? Sunday. I know when my flight is. I know where my flight out is. Yeah. That's all you need. Okay. Cool. I just need to get there. Yeah. I can do that. The important part. Getting home is trivial. Henry's Tavern. There we go. Four stars. I'm always like, give me all the delays that you can throw at me on the way home. That's fine. I just. Talk about. Don't delay me on the way to a location. This is why we're going the day before. But we are not. Disturbed. We'll get there. So let me get there on time. If nothing else, you'll be there in time. You might have to fly all night long. How long is the flight to Denver? It's like two hours. Is it? Maybe an hour and a half. Yeah, it's quick. Oh, I was thinking it was way long. I thought it was like three. I don't think so. I'm change involved. So it might be. I don't think it's out. Two hours, 28 minutes for me. All the way there and on the way home. It's two hours, 53 minutes. Okay. Three hours then. All right. I am. I think I'm going to go to bed. I think I have some things. There are things on the map that might be good. For our meetup. Possibly. Cool man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, everybody. This is my, I'm not good at planning things like meetups and stuff. Cause I, there are too many details and I just can't. I'm like, but what about this restaurant? And what about that place? And what about that? Social media is so awesome. You can be saying it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can be saying it as we're heading there. Exactly. Where should we go you guys? We want to have dinner Sunday night. I like the brewery idea. I'm always down for a brewery. Yeah. There's a couple of places. You want a little bit of a sampler? Yeah. Great divide brewing. It is, let's see. It's like seven blocks, eight blocks. Oh, that's stumbling distance. Yeah. Eight blocks or so. From our hotel or from the convention center? From our hotel. Okay. Maybe a little bit longer. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Also remember that in altitude you can't drink as much, Justin. This is why I want a place with food. You're the one going to the brewery. I just like a sampler. Yeah. Which is why you need to remember it. Nah. Samplers are tame. But at high altitude, Blair. You don't tell me. I tell me. I really just want places to eat because I like eating. Halloween, my kids did not sleep at Halloween. On account of they were eating candy all night. They still managed to wake up extra early in anticipation of getting at more candy. So I get no sleep. So I'm going to go. So. Okay. All right. We'll go. Say good night, Blair. We're all going to go. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night. Good night, everyone. How are we getting worse at that with more practice? I don't know. On my end, we were right in sync. Oh, really? Wow. Maybe we got a little more lag than I think. Thanks, everyone, for joining us for this show. We hope to see you again next week. Hopefully we'll see you live on Monday afternoon, if not Wednesday. Maybe we'll see you for a meetup. Stay tuned. Bye.