 I'm a show we're on the air. I'm starting this show machine show show for show show. Are we on the air? Are we here? Are we here? Are we here? Are we here? Are we here? Are we here? Yeah, a little bit of a delay, but I believe that we are on Let's do a little sound check check check check check check. Justin Mike check like check one two three Why do you have to get right in it like that? And then and then the rest of the time you're like Justin and microphones in a tree Podcasting all night and day. All right, everyone. We're gonna start this program in three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 712 recorded on Wednesday March 13th 2019 daylight science time All right, everybody tonight on this week in science We are going to fill your head with a mammoth of a mouse a stork story and intermittent anatomy but first Disclaimer disclaimer People have opinions about everything and while deep learning algorithms set to work on determining how those opinions Turn out to represent reality throughout history are either still running or with no end in sight or they have crashed Due to some sort of human programming error Preliminary data suggests that in general humans are no more accurate at forming opinions that represent reality at age 8 then they are at age 80 and Even this was far below the threshold of coin flipping between actual answer and utter nonsense 7 year olds interesting note 7 year old opinions were excluded from the study because of their unaccanny uncanny ability to recognize nonsense and By illumination therefore chose the correct answer every time it was the weirdest thing the following program is designed to assist in Disregarding human opinions about how the world works by listening carefully You will accumulate the knowledge required to deflect erroneous opinions in favor of super awesome facts if you listen Carefully you will accumulate knowledge required to deflect those Wait, I just said that part if you listen carelessly Which I was reading carelessly if you listen carelessly you might get some things wrong But you will still be ahead of the average human We offer this service free of charge because we too Understand what it's like to be curious about reality and a sea of self-deluding human opinions And in our sometimes less than humble opinion There is no better way to stay above the opinionated fray then this week in science Coming up next Happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge. I see And to you Kiki Blair and a good science to you too Justin Blair And everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are back again to talk about Yeah science, that's what we're gonna talk about my memory is a little cloudy this week because my sleep's all messed up because it's daylight savings this week Farmers or something like I don't know. There's a whole mythology around daylight savings time Yeah, I do know that there are It's a conspiracy Conspiracy to keep us down man to keep us tired and to know coffee. It is it actually has a very good Interestingly farm tide effect of allowing more time for bus builds on a farm A little bit more daylight at the end of the day There's some data behind that Okay, well, we've got we've got multiple points here on this show and we've got stories ahead and the stories I've brought this week. What have I brought? I've brought budget cuts mammoths and mice and Justin what do you have I have got the ancient art was for the birds Stonehenge mystery revealed again and Something something to do with oh, yeah, something awesome about avocados that nobody knew But people know that already there's more All right more what's up in the Blair's animal corner. Oh, I have some blue-blooded Earth-aborn aliens I have the aforementioned intermittent anatomy and I have the scientific best way to comb your hair I Don't come my hair. I have wavy curly hair. You can't go man If you wanted to science has the answer. That's all right science. That's why I love you All right We'll see if you still love science after you hear this All right as we jump into the show I would love to remind you that if you are not yet subscribed you can do so easily by heading over to twist org or looking for this week in science in any place you find podcasts you can also find us at YouTube and Facebook Also, if you're in Portland, Oregon the week of April 3rd, don't miss our live show We will be live at the Alberta Rose Theatre tickets are available check our website for information Now I've asked you to buy something. Let's talk about budget cuts All right, so the Trump administration came out this week with its Proposed budget for fiscal year 2020 which would go into into action in October of this year, however between now and then there's gonna be a lot of back and forth between the administration and The and Congress because that's usually what happens. They had the president goes. Here's a budget This is what I think we should do and then Congress goes. Mmm. No, but you forgot about my corn subsidies or very important very important or you forgot about our part that little widget that is being built in our state for the SLS rocket and so we think that we should continue putting money on the SLS rocket because that'll bring money to our state because we are creating a widget and so there are lots of back and forth between now and Accepting the budget. This is just a proposal. However Did they're just a hack job when it comes to science this year? Seriously the president's request represents there is a significant That's significant reduction across the board for For Everything pretty much so federal science agencies 13% cut for the National Institute of Health 12% cut for the National Science Foundation R&D investments for 2020 would be an investment of overall about 134 billion which if enacted would be 11% lower than the 151 and a half billion that are that's being spent this year on R&D significant reduction meanwhile Kevin Drogmeier the new Presidential science advisor says this is an important down payment on America's future and I'm wondering where the reduction in R&D research and development is leading to an investment a down payment in America's future Just wondering how he ties that together. However, he does go on to say that the budget Quote promotes responsible spending by prioritizing high-impact programs that have been shown to be effective All right, so so to quote a mid last century philosopher Gomer pile Surprise Surprise Yeah, we had to know this was coming from yeah for sure like I Mean why would we want to know stuff? Right well, it's just a matter of priorities and so a new pediatric cancer initiative at the National Cancer Institute Is going to receive 50 million for drug discovery studying biology of pediatric cancers pool data from cancer cases and existing data sets to create quote a comprehensive shared resource to support childhood cancer in all its form and it would begin a an effort that Trump proposed in a state of the Union a 10-year long cancer pediatric cancer research research initiative initiative that would Total 500 million dollars, which actually is going to get more data Going forward than was currently available because of the repealings of so many emission standards There is that aspect of the some things are being repealed and the money gets repurposed to other things Yes, NIH's Centers for AIDS research would receive six million dollars To reduce each in a goal to reduce HIV infections by 90 percent over the next decade And this proposal would maintain the level consistent level of 500 million dollars for NIH's one-year-old helping to end addiction long-term initiative to combat opioid Addiction so there are some issues that are going to continue getting money, but others that are not so like I mentioned going into this the SLS the space launch system May not be getting money that it needs to get off the ground NASA Their proposed budget would drop 2.2 percent from this year's levels with more than 8 percent Going down in its science portfolio Well, I heard that space was full of women now anyway, so well, and I think it's the fun juxtaposed to the Proposed space force, which will really be stationed at Space Mountain in Disneyland Yeah, we can't actually get off the planet. They got the uniforms the design knows, but they're doing their training Down here because we haven't worked on the program to get up there again So going going to space though the idea is that instead of creating the SLS that Congress would that the budget would be used to fund a commercial space launch system So Europa's you're the Europa Clipper mission, which Is the next flagship science mission instead of going up on an SLS rocket would be a commercial rocket in 2023 Additionally it there are Missions such as the wide field infrared survey telescope as well as earth science missions the plankton aerosol cloud ocean Ecosystem satellite and the climate absolute radiance and refractivity observatory path winder pathfinder have been suggested to be canceled Congress has blocked these proposed cuts cuts on previous occasions, and so it is likely that they will do this again There are also budgetary continued budgetary funding for Mars the next Mars mission and also the James Webb space telescope We're gonna keep it's almost there. We're gonna launch it keep giving it money. Let's get there It's gonna be amazing when it gets to space. It's going to be cool. So money still goes there Yes money's still gonna go to the James Webb because I mean we're almost there Could you imagine taking the money away from the James? Yeah, I know it would be very sad the EPA There's Proposals to axe climate and research programs the budget would shrink by nearly a third from 8.8 billion to 6.1 billion Yeah, science and technology programs would be nearly 40 percent below the current level Additionally at the Department of Energy the office of science budget would shrink by 17 percent to about 5.5 billion the office of energy efficiency and renewable energy would shrink by 86 percent We forget about efficiency and renewable energy. We don't need to do that anymore So what I'm hearing here love to know the logic there God is just oh So hold on so I am always the the non-cynical one here, right? But this really just sounds like what areas of science are in no way controversial Okay, health care saving lives great take care of those what went to Mars We want to do has any sort of hot button even word or vocabulary part of a word item Association with a word that might be politically charged Kill it That's what this sounds like which all science is science This is so frustrating that the same scientific processes that are getting you that cancer Procure are also trying to figure out what the heck our planet is gonna look like in 50 years So we can all survive through that. It's it's all about survival But one of those things has a political agenda Which is so frustrating Yeah, it's a pretty clear lobby. It's a pretty clear lobbyist agenda with reduction and renewables. I mean that that's just Absolutely Bare-naked truth That serves a very specific donor class in industry period and of But even beyond that the general goal of the White House this year is to cut spending on domestic and foreign aid programs and increase spending on defense and That is the goal. They definitely don't have enough money over there. So Anyway, what this what this all means is these massive cuts like I mentioned in the beginning of this that these These cuts are going to be cuts to programs that are Things that members of Congress want to stick around the members we and members of Congress are gonna fight tooth and nail to keep some of these things in Spending caps may change over the past year spending caps have increased because of these budgetary fights that the president and Congress get into so we will see how it plays out and where the spending ends up But that is the proposal as it sits at this point in time yikes and Moving on up from that really fun news Yeah, happy audiences Let's get to the good stuff All right, so Justin we have had this conversation many times on the show about Bringing back the woolly mammoth, right? Yeah, let's do it. Right. You're all for it. Well the closest Re-energization of a mammoth has taken place Not really Nope, not that at all some researchers publishing in Scientific reports this week with a paper called signs of biological activities of 28,000 year-old mammoth nuclei in mouse Oh, oh sites visualized by live cell imaging. So what what did they do? researchers took the remains of 28,000 year-old woman woolly mammoth Yucca as Yucca was found in Siberian permafrost very well preserved and they recovered what they call the less damaged nucleus-like structures from the remains and Stuck the nuclei of the mammoth cells into mouse egg cells Because why not let's just you know take those nuclei and do this nuclear transfer business that we do for cloning and IVF Let's just do that. Let's take this mammoth nuclear So so don't tell me how this don't tell me how this ends. I'm now picturing the a tiny Furry mouse with tusks. Yeah, of course That's not how it works, right? It gives you the most relatable recognizable trait and confers it to whatever you put the DNA in Yeah, no No, so no just looking at these eggs cells these oh sites and What they found is that these nuclear components they They found they did immunostaining we're able to visualize them and the nuclei showed the spindle assembly Which is an important component for cell division histone incorporation and part partial nuclear formation and the full activation of nuclei for cleavage though for the division process was not Confirmed DNA damage levels varied among the nuclei were comparable to those of frozen thawed mouse sperm And were reduced in some of the reconstructed oh sites and so they did not make a mammoth out of a mouse Mousy mammoth they did not do this But what they have done is they have created a validating platform for moving forward Looking at cellular structures nuclei specifically which contain all of the DNA and the machinery right for making new stuff making new cells for for looking at the these structures From extinct animals where the cells themselves might be too damaged to be able to Reanimate whereas you can take the nuclei nucleus out put it in a living cell Remove that that nucleus and see what happens see if you get division see if you get cellular Metabolism continuing to function Very as Blair was saying Frankensteinish. It is very Frankensteinish. Yes, but it's I I I think it's rather I think it's rather thrilling and it is a It is a first step in Being able to move to the point of you know, can we bring back an extinct species? You know, are we going to go to the you know be able to get to the Jurassic Park? Reality is that something that we you know, even though Jeff Goldblum is you know Basically said that you know, if you even though you can do something should you do something? Good question Jeff Goldblum, right? It's a very famous line. I think I believe from the first Jurassic Park movie As well as a nature finds a way So this is this is I think I like so I have a bit of a dividing line Mine is is Temporally different than Blair's We do agree That you shouldn't reintroduce species that have no place Being here I I would say we agree on that we disagree about the woolly mammoth because I think temporally in my trajectory of the going looking backwardsness the the time frame in which they went extinct is the habitat that they could Could the niche that they could fill still exists I believe and I think it could actually transform Arctic regions into a better habitat by having them present If you're talking about a velociraptor I'm maybe not gonna sign up I like the idea of seeing them in a zoo and stuff but Even then having you know, the Jurassic Park movies kind of ruined that for me actually I think the issue with that is are you really just bringing something back to life to ogle at it, right? So the the idea is modern day zoos, you know A long time ago zoos started as a I want to catch this thing in the wild and I want to ogle at it But now modern day zoos are all about two things education and preservation of species So unless you're bringing this woolly mammoth back to reintroduce to the wild I think that it's a it's a tough sell other than to just say because we can which my stress there is Why wouldn't you use that to bring back an animal that has a functional space that is in the same climactic? era as As now as when it is when it disappeared such as the Tasmanian tiger And bring those back instead of something that's been gone for 24,000 years So but I also think it would be a good flagship for those sort of projects though Because a lot of people have love for a thing that they've never seen in the woolly mammoth And a lot of people like don't really miss the dodo bird because they don't General public wise like to get the support behind an idea I think there is a sort of you know, maybe it's the muppets. Maybe it's a snuffle up against Maybe that's why we all have a sentiment towards the mammoth, but but I think it's I think it's worth picking a first flagship species To endeavor to do this with and I think this is a fantastic candidate and and well I don't want to get too Depressing this early in the show with with the subject matter But I'm guessing there are some really charismatic species that are going to go extinct Before this is perfected that you could use this on Right, but but but that are currently around. Yes, but my that's my point is Maybe if you can bring back a Sumatran tiger That is a very charismatic species that would get people on board That would be interesting to do that has a space And maybe that's number two And maybe we could and maybe we could stop the species that are currently going extinct There you go. Maybe we could stop, you know, just focus on what's still here Yeah, but don't stop there. There's why I'm saying there's this the news the news came out We're probably not going to talk about it later, but the news came out the news came out this last week that Uh, the forests in california that have burned over the last few years may not come back in the same way that They did before that the trees are find are going to find it difficult because The habitats have changed because of climate change Additionally, we're finding fish species moving up the coast moving northward Cal fish has shown up in northern california. Yeah because of because of climate change And so we have this changing environment that is you know, it's moving on things are changing and so to look at these extinct species and think about bringing them back um, I think that's I kind of think it's wrong headed. I mean if we can if we can if we can Glean some information genetically about How they survived when they survived why they might have gone extinct what they were related to how did how did they Where did they come from? You know, maybe it can help us to conserve what is still left on this planet Absolutely. Yeah, it's fun to talk about. It's a fun case study species for this research And I love that as kind of a frame But yeah, I completely agree. I think that if you're looking at a finite amount of resources as the first story reminded us all There might be better use of Of that right, but again, we don't have to only do one thing and and and well I'll end it and I won't go on and on about this but but I I look at the mammoth Question not just about bringing back an extinct creature for the ogle value I think of it as the reintroduction of the wolf to territories Was missing for years and how that massively transformed the the ecosystem and and I do think that we may We may be under appreciating some of our more arctic regions potential ecosystem robustness Because a top herbivore apex an apex herbivore is missing from the scene So and and maybe you know the warmer it gets maybe that Tundra will be just the just the right balmy environment for a woolly mammoth. Well, yeah But you have a great point like the one of the things I keep thinking like with the with the fish moving north is the ocean is a great A a great repository. It's like a a life seed bank of sorts and that fish can just kind of move with relative ease To transform their location to another and and continue life going despite climate Flexuation The terrestrial critters have a bit harder Go at it. It's hard for everyone Just like David daylight savings time Justin tell me a story Oh my gosh, I don't know if I have one ready. Oh, here's one. Uh, this is published in the journal Lee anthropology university of barcelona researchers found a rock Which by itself is not that impressive But this particular rock had carvings that depicted a story It's a 12,500 year old 30 centimeter long bit of limestone with engravings on it that shows two human figures and two birds Which the identified the researchers have identified as cranes This is quotey voice of researcher inez demingo This is one of the few found scenes so far which suggests the birth of a narrative art in europe And this theme is unique since it combines an image of hunting and a motherhood one a birth with its young one In the represented scene the birds catch the attention They are copied or chased by two human figures We do not know the meaning of the scene for prehistoric peoples But what it says is that Not only were they regarded as prey, but also as symbols for european paleolithic societies I immediately thought like that the fact that there's a a birth Portion to this story here. Is this where the story of the stork came from? Right cranes and storks. I mean you could kind of right like over time a little bit of Uh, a little bit of verbal history to the story. You start to lose some of the details. It shifts not far Uh But it's a pretty interesting. Did you have do you have a screenshot of that that you can pull up there kiki? I just did. Oh, okay. I guess I was reading so yeah, this is uh, that's a pretty it's a pretty interesting representation Uh And and what's it's also sort of fascinating. This is a site where they've found Other rock arts at different times. They've also found across europe Uh different engravings of birds. This is the first one. I guess that they're saying that really had a narrative It wasn't just a one piece. It's a couple images that sort of uh Follow a storyline or at least but justin How do you make sure they're in the right order? You just hand somebody a pile of rocks and go figure it out Exactly. Yeah. Well, this I guess is on one one rock. Oh, it's on one rock. It's like a comic strip Yeah, it had panels. Okay and bubble dialogue, which there's no there's no bubble dialogue That's the first comic strip. That's right You don't come with a handful of a handful of rocks. You just you throw them at somebody one Oh one by one, of course. There you go. It's sort of like this refrigerator magnet When you can move them around and and make different poems out of the thing The old days they write a word that they wanted to say on a rock and then they yeah, they hucked at it somebody That's how they that was the old email He's sort of rock with with a symbol on it. Uh-huh. There you go So this is so how old is this 12,000 years old 12,500? All right, and so they're thinking this is just The beginning so really actually could be the beginning of comic comic book art The first yeah first anime the first anime Look, they're flying throwing the rock Want to see a comic book fly Other interesting things around the site, I mean it sounds like this is a pretty, you know 12,500 years ago they found flint tools. So these were likely fire users Uh, which was it was sure it matches that point in history just fine now, but they also had structures that were um Where they had rooms that were dedicated to having a fireplace in which may have been an oven may have just been for warmth and comfort Uh, but yeah, you know and and art that told stories to go along with it. I mean we think of We think of the written word has as having come much later and everything having to be These oral histories being passed down, but this is actually I think more of a glimpse on uh early data storage early, uh, you know either Either traditional or religious or historical or just storytelling Being preserved in a way that it could be passed down for many many generations Uh, and and not be fully defined by an oral history. So I think that's sort of the more Important aspect of seeing a story carved in stone Yeah, that it uh, I mean there is also the aspect of oral histories change You know, it's like that game of telephone Over time things the message mutates, but if you write it down It stays there and the original is Is the same thing that you told that as you told it and uh for it to start with this artistic perspective could have been a Good place for at the start. Yeah Language math, where did it all start? What did when did we get get going? It all started back when we were animals Oh and guess what We're still animals, right? It's time for Blair's animal corner with Blair What's up, Blair Uh The phylum tino for The majestic sea creature with no butthole The marine The marine biological laboratory in massachusetts lead biologist, sydney tam has spent a considerable amount of time filming the wordy comb jelly pooping Why do you ask? Well the phylum tino for comb jellies They are what we've considered in a lot of ways the most ancient quote-unquote complex animal Before that, uh all animal life to our knowledge Only had one opening The same place where food went in waste went out Yeah, so So other jellyfish sponges anemones all these things, right the tino for us are the first time that we start to see This dual opening so protostome versus deuter stone so that you have this like You have the secondary opening so they have um a place where food goes in and then they have an anus where um Waste exits that is separate that is distinct So they have an entrance and an exit and it'll kind of this one-way digestive system So what's interesting about this though is that in Dr sydney tam's Observations He was unable to find said anus What I thought he was a I thought he was a poop photographer Yes, and yet he doesn't know where to set up the camera Correct So when it is time to defecate there is a very clear opening and this waste escapes But in between defecations the anus appears to be invisible It appears to be appears invisible invisible Cannot see it. So this is both by the naked eye and by um by microscope They cannot find this thing. So um There is no documentation Of a quote transient anus in any animal That we know of Wait, wait, wait, wait. Say that say that say what is this is the first time A transient or an inter intermittent anus you could go either way Yes, so these jellies they gobble up tiny crustaceans. They eat baby fish They go through something that looks basically like a mouth with lips Then the meal goes down the throat down the esophagus In there it grinds up the food and it goes into a funnel shaped stomach bulky components that can't be digested go back out through the mouth Sounds like they're barfing and then it's almost like an owl pellet if you think about it really right And then the rest goes into these canals that distribute nutrients around the body Remember, they don't have a full fully fledged circulatory system like we do so then at this point There are two canals at the very end that are shaped like a Y It's it was always assumed that there was some sort of opening in each of them But no matter how hard they looked they could not find an opening at either end in between Defocations It looks like each individual animal only uses one of the two ends of the Y So one of them is a dead end. Why we don't know The other Didn't form an anus. So one of them was just totally unused At least in the 10 days they were observed, which is a pretty long time for these animals considering they defecate every couple of minutes most days So they looked at a bunch of different jellies They looked at a bunch of life stages of these jellies They wanted to see how they responded to different amounts of food in their in their water different temperatures all sorts of things They could not figure this out Um But what they did see was that when one of the two ends of the Y swelled up with waste It would push up against the outer edge of the comb jelly until a bump Forms on its skin from the inside and then the jelly essentially quote grows a butt The canal fuses with the jelly's outer skin to form an anal pore Which is the sciency word for a butt in this case Which immediately seals back again once the waste has burst through So it's like a cyst Yes, like it it fuses and it it's kind of like, um Or it's kind of like likes like, um Not phagocytosis, but when when cells When there's stuff inside a cell and it merges with the membrane and then gets blurped out Yeah, the little vacuoles, right? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So it does kind of mimic that and that's a really interesting point I haven't really thought about that all the time we see things at the cellular level that are in some ways mimicked system wide By a larger organism. And so I I totally agree. This does kind of sound like the way vacuoles work. So, um What's what this actually matters to the larger study of organisms Besides just the fact that we love saying transient anus over and over again. It's my prog rock band. Yes transient anus transient anus so What this actually Has a chance to teach us Is why a secondary open opening arose in the evolutionary tree of animals Why did we get from the point of having one opening for entrance and exit to a second Uh opening that is actually it means things can only go in one direction If you think about it, there there's a lot of benefits to having One opening one being that you can absorb nutrients on the way food going in and going out, right? That doesn't mean I would like to experience that but it does mean that there are benefits to that system So this is an interesting almost intermediary way of existing where they have this one-way digestive system, but The the it's not a permanent anus. So it has it has this this non permanency That makes it particularly interesting. Um, so why would you develop this? Uh This is as far as you know the very first example of an animal with a dynamic opening There's another sciencey word for this thing dynamic opening It is possible. They do admit it is possible. There's some sort of structure lurking that has not been identified So there could be an anus there all the time Hence the apparent invisibility, right? So there is a possibility that there is a structure there that we're not recognizing But as far as we know this is something that It's basically they're breaking their skin every night to every time they need to poop Which is as I said sometimes every couple of minutes But it's always at the same end Yeah, they have one that's always a dead end. Is that right? Yes. Yes, okay So this though if nothing else is proved positive of a species that could have had two Anuses, yeah, but found it to be ineffective Just the one butthole is enough for me. One is apparently all you need. Yes. Thank you And although I didn't think we needed to uh, we should probably get a genetic sample of sarah silverman Who also claims not to have one, right? Yes. I have heard about that. We'll see how closely related they are We need to do pilot pilot genetic And has a transient Yes, absolutely um, so I guess Twist listeners Tweeted sarah silverman to ask her if she's a tina for at this point. I don't know Are you related to the warty comb jelly? Yeah. Yeah We want to know So a transient anus um, so instead of just Having the mouth that open that one opening that acts in both directions They have the mouth and then the transient anus And this could I'd love to see if I would actually like to see um, how this Particular comb jelly fits in to the evolutionary tree Where is it? Is is it actually like an early? Early branch of the tina force or is it did it a is it later adapting? I'd I'd love to know where it's sort of one one clue might be the fact that it sort of maintains transient as it might be Uh, a a specific location Like it got beyond being having a transient anus that could actually show up anywhere And it's okay. There's actually if you just keep it in one location Uh, there's some sort of benefit to this Which then may have in other Uh species led to a more permanent structure Yeah Yeah, so it's it's definitely I think tina fours are also something that Are they're just little bags of mystery for a lot of different reasons Little little sacks of mystery, I don't know but um, they They're very unusual. They're they have all of these kind of basal properties And then they have other things about them that are really Unusual and unprecedented in other ways. So they're I encourage everybody who's listening right now to look up on comb jellies because they are so interesting and diverse and Unusual and they they have always been this kind of dotted line in the family tree So this actually might help us Figure that out and speaking of dotted lines in the in the family trees The perfect segue into my next story, which is all about the blue-blooded creatures of the deep. Who am I talking about? It's horseshoe crabs Horseshoe crabs the little face huggers that they are they are so amazing If you've never seen what the upside what a horseshoe crab looks like when you flip it upside down I'm sure everyone's imagining the top part of a horseshoe crab It kind of just looks like a tank with a long pointy tail if you flip it over. It looks It looks kind of like a face hugger. It looks in say Yes, so these animals Are so bizarre for so many reasons They we call them crabs, but they have To be fair, they are not related to horses or horses. They're not related to horses. Very good point Okay, so they are not related to horses A lot of scientists put them in a family with crabs because they are after all horseshoe crabs They but they have book lungs like a spider So that's weird and They have blue blood Which is why they're so often blood leaded for scientific research is a lot of interesting properties of that blue blood Right, and these guys are they are arachnids though So that's what this study is about so university of wisconsin madison evolutionary biologists from university of wisconsin madison was looking mainly at huge huge troves of genetic data And looking at all these different permutations of ways to examine it Because they wanted to figure out for once and for all Where do horseshoe crabs belong? So there are kind of two camps in this horseshoe crab debate The first is that they are more closely related to crustaceans The other is that they are related to arachnids spiders and scorpions. I thought it was going to be horses. Okay, sorry Unfortunately, no So in 1881 actually was the first time that somebody said hey I think these might be related to spiders and they were laughed out of universities As scientists that are correct often are But finally Looking at this genetic data Trying to massage it to put it in the crustacean family and then trying to massage it to put it in the arachnid family This is how a lot of genetic Relationships are tested which one of these kind of forced relationships is easiest to make which one makes the most sense Right, uh, they did indeed plant them in the arachnid family tree So most people at this point were on board with this theory But there were still kind of some people who weren't convinced There also was this idea that they might be related to arachnids and they might be most closely related to arachnids, but that they are not actually arachnids that they are a distant cousin But they are in fact as far as we can tell part of the arachnid family tree so this is Classifying arthropods is really hard because you have butterflies and lobsters and spiders and Yeah, they're all in that way stop what butterflies arthropods are butterflies Yeah insects insects beetles arachnids And crustaceans they're all together in arthropoda. They're all these these animals with exoskeletons, right? Yeah and so Insects crustaceans arachnids they are all together in this group And they are so different. There is this huge radiation because they were these these These animals that were tough and mobile Very very long ago in the family tree these guys popped out And so they just radiated all over the planet into every single niche you could possibly imagine in the sea On land in the air everything at during the day at night and so because of this very long-standing 450 million year old radiation Just looking at horseshoe crabs. It goes even way before that with other arthropods It's really hard to parse all this out because 450 million years of genetic change How do you exactly trace that back to the source? But in this case they were able to figure this out Basically just by By trying to make the data do something it didn't want to do um So previous analysis of the genome showed them to be related to arachnids as we were saying But scientists assumed this was actually an error something with the data that that caused it to show these links that were incorrect and so the all of these kind of uh phylogenetic traits these these um Items about their appearance and their structure This made them want to put them in with some of these other hard shelled aquatic invertebrates like crabs But then they have these issue of the book gills and the book lungs that spiders and scorpions have And so now looking at this data. It is pretty clear looking at three out of the four living horseshoe crab species and sequencing them against 50 other arthropod speedy species including water fleas centipedes and harvestman spiders They found that they could example for example force their data to put them in crustaceans But it took a lot of massaging This they found hundreds of g's gene supporting incorrect trees when they did that So if you if you force the crabs to fit in the crustaceans, you saw other Relationships showing up in that tree that were also incorrect So that's your guess that okay if a equals b and b equals c then a equals c Well, we know that this isn't right. So this forced relationship cannot be accurate So that means that in fact we were right They are arachnids and so their suggestion here is is to encourage others To subject their evolutionary data to this kind of rigorous methodology Because quote evolution is complicated. I love that. Hey evolution is complicated. Um, and in this case Part of good science is testing the thing that you know is wrong To make sure that your methods are accurate Right, but also to test things that you think might be wrong Because sometimes it's right Right. Yep, exactly And I I think you know for so long we had we had put things in categories based on Morphology external features, right? So hard shell versus not hard shell Let's put all of them in the same group great place to start Yeah, you know, it's a great place to start But now we have genetic information that goes beyond that so that we can get molecular clocks And we know when mutations have taken place and we know When something arose versus versus another trait and So we can actually start getting a lot more accurate And so we need to revisit these relationships as we dig up As they said evolution is complicated. It's complicated. Birds and bats aren't related Porcupines and hedgehogs aren't related. There's this really tricky confusing thing called convergent evolution Mess you up every time It's a beautiful thing and one of the sort of interesting thing I thought about your story was too that the They put it before the geneticists to decipher and the geneticists spider The closest match spider and they said no, no, no, no, no. No, no, you're doing it You're doing it wrong. No way we force it to be Uh, if we force it to be a crab, okay Then uh, then we'll take out the misses and that just means that crabs aren't related to crabs Okay, that doesn't really work. Yeah. No, okay, so let's go back um Yeah, you know, I mean morphology is all that we had at one point and so it was a perfectly acceptable way Of defining the past but now that we have this deeper dive. There's this great insight into how these things Uh may have come about There's a little bit of rewriting that needs to be done. Absolutely. Keep searching. Never Chew spider never give up never surrender Never surrender never accept the status quo. That's right. Let's keep changing and making our under the name now That's the next step They need to change the name the horseshoe scorpion Horseshoe spider horseshoe water spider That's too complicated. We'll see where it goes Later, but now it's time for us to take a quick break. We are going to Say a few words and when we come back we will have more science. We'll have what has science done for me lately and We will have the second half of our show. Stay tuned for more This Week in Science Music Hey everyone, thank you so much for listening to the show today We really appreciate that you have joined us once again for another journey into the world of science conversation curiosity If you want to see it live in person, you got to be in portland, oregon on april third We are going to be broadcasting live from the alberta rose theater and tickets are now available You can find information at our website with a link to where you can buy those tickets Don't forget april third alberta rose theater live twist For other stuff that's twisty and good, you know, you can always go to twist.org twist.org Is the place where you find all sorts of information about This Week in Science find the latest episodes and you can find ways To support twist and keep us going right now. We are 100% little listeners supported and to keep us that way We need you to continue helping. That's right. 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Thank you for watching We appreciate your support. We could not do this without you It's a hypothesis in patients are the only things I need Put on a pair of goggles and go look at all the things I couldn't see The answers lie somewhere within this scatter plot First some should work correct please prove the rest And we're back you're listening to this weekend science. What time is it kiki? You know it's time for what has science done for me? Yeah, what has science done for me lately. Well, what has it done for You lately we have a new letter this week from Ashley Minion Ashley Ashley writes in and says my whsd fml That's a mouthful. We should have planned that better. I know the acronym is a bit much right Um, she's actually says my what has science done for me lately is more what has science done for a stranger lately I've been on the non-profit bone marrow donor registry from be the match.org for nine years Last month. I donated peripheral peripheral blood stem cells for a person who I was matched with a patient with all acute lymphoblastic leukemia This is often the last resort for someone battling this disease It was a simple process for me zero side effects other than the wonderful feeling that science has discovered A simple and effective method that let me give a stranger another shot at life The standard method of blood stem cell donation used to be bone marrow aspiration where the cells are obtained by Drilling into a bone and sucking out marrow Needless to say this life-saving process is painful invasive and requires significant recovery Scientists developed a drug to help stimulate blood stem cells in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy Realized it was a good way to stimulate bone stem cell production in donor patients After five days of injections with this medication My white blood cell count was high enough to have the blood stem cells harvested through aphoresis Similar to platelet collection a small amount of blood was removed The desired cells harvested and the remainder of the blood was put back After a few hours enough cells were harvested to be able to repopulate Excuse me Uh repopulate the recipient's entire blood system I felt totally normal two days later after essentially providing a life-saving organ transplant. Wow I encourage all twist listeners to sign up to be on the registry Donor blood stem cells are used to treat many different mostly life-threatening diseases It is quite rare to match with a patient So I feel particularly lucky to have been able to do this for another person Check out bethematch.org to learn how to get on the registry Thank you to the three of you for bringing amazing science to the spot like every week kindest regards, ashley So ashley is a good person because Based on being on the registry for nine years meant that she signed up for the very painful Trans went in the first place And when it came time to donate they had found an easier way to you know Give her a two days of recovery and feeling totally Don't but had signed up nine years ago when this was not a painless procedure And uh and and and yeah be the match.org you never know yet you might end up helping me Yeah, yeah, you never know who that might go to might go to a mother of Children where like Most mothers are mothers Wow, that did not come out That is clarification. There are a few mothers of not children I meant to say single mother is what I meant to say and I just couldn't put those words together Um, or you know a scientist, you never know guy with the podcast Or a single guy with the podcast Who knows it could never know who you might be helping absolutely Yeah, it's a and It sounds like it. It's not as bad as it used to be it makes it much easier for Just about anybody to be able to be a donor. That's uh, thank you for asking Yeah, thank you for bringing this story This this letter this experience that you had and also for sharing that website Be the match.org And I yeah, I hope that some of our listeners do take you up on your request Everyone out there Remember you can send me a message. What is science done for you lately? Tell us Tell everybody out there talk to us. Let us know because this is a wonderful uplifting Portion of the show where so much in life can get us down. Let's talk about the things that uh remind us About the good. What is science done? Let's talk about some good things and what did you want a song Blair? Yes, I want a musical hold on. I want a musical WHSD ML is what I want So it doesn't need to be a fully fledged musical, you know with with five-part harmony and three acts But I would I would like it to be an mp3 Middle that would be my request. Yes Okay, let's see if it happens But if you're not musically inclined, don't let that stop you. You can just send us a couple of sentences Send us a note. Send me an email kirsten k i r s t e n at thisweekinscience.com Or a message on facebook or pages this week in science All right, justin tell me a story in ancient times Hundreds of years before the dawn of history the strange race of people The druids No one knows who they were what they were doing, but their legacy remains Hewn into the living rock of stonehenge I'm really tempted to go into the fall like stonehenge Where the demons dwell where the banshees live and they do live well, okay, okay actually archaeologists have long been unearthing evidence of stonehenge's Uh creation many uses mysteries have been unveiled almost weekly in in clickbait over the last decade Uh in the most recent discovery though, they found that it represented the first Burning man the first wood stock the first historic prehistoric palooza type event with people and animals traveling hundreds of miles for a prehistoric feasting ritual now feasting rituals By the way is what we call things people used to do current humans Call what they do now holiday traditions But when we're talking about ancienty people, it's a feasting ritual not just a holiday tradition Which is really what this kind of looks like This is uh richard madwick of cardiff university examined the bones of 131 pigs Uh, this was the prime feasting Uh, it was sort of like the Thanksgiving turkey of stonehenge and it's in the in the late neolithic day, which is Uh, approximately let's say they're saying 2,800 to 2,400 bc So about 5 000ish years ago so, uh What's sort of interesting they they used pigs because at stonehenge there's not human remains around for them to decipher who the people were who were utilizing stonehenge in these periods But they didn't just look at the pigs there. They looked at pigs of that time frame across britannia And because they can use sort of scientific methods to determine where the animals were actually raised The results found that the pig bones At stonehenge were raised as far away as scotland northeast england west wales numerous other british aiili locations So this is this is like these are hundreds of miles away and they these pigs were slaughtered at stonehenge family reunion Yeah, well, it's it's a sort of really like, uh, you know, these are these are Celtic times And there were you know as as little as we kind of sort of know I suppose we we don't usually speak about the Celtic civilization much Historically Uh, it was very broad. It was you know, iberia up into germany France it was in britain. It was kind of a widespread thing but to see a a large cultural event that could span this sort of Of a region of territory and that day and time Does sort of alter maybe a little bit our perspective of what communication Was like in that time because these things don't just Happen spontaneously Everybody sort of had to know and plan Um We're gonna spend several weeks traveling to this place. We need to plan on it. Yeah Uh, cody voice of richard madwick These gatherings could be seen as the first united cultural events of our island. I'm assuming he's british or some sort With people from all corners of britain descending on the areas around stonehenge to feast on food That had been specially reared and transported from their homes, which is also a thing. I guess that pigs I don't know. I don't think of pigs as Like if it was if they were moving like cattle like it could be a cattle drive to stonehenge And that's sort of you you can imagine that being done pretty efficiently But pigs have short legs And that thing against pigs, but they just can't possibly walk that fast And then also I mean the idea the idea you you talk about Fatting up the the pigs, right? You want them to be nice and fatted up before the the slaughter But if you're going to make them walk a long distance, they're going to get lean Well, but they're probably eating all of the leftovers that the humans are eating while they're moving, right? so I I wonder if that's helpful for a bunch of reasons it it um It probably keeps their their camp cleaner. It keeps away potential predators or scavengers But it also means they don't have to wait for them to graze if they were cows They could just throw them their leftovers and eat and be done Yeah, so according to madwick though, one of the things that he found very interesting is that That there was a a big resource investment in taking your local Pig and bringing it to this almost like a livestock market kind of a thing because Procuring them the akoti voice procuring them in the vicinity of the feasting sites would have been relatively easy Pigs are not nearly as well suited to movement over distance as cattle and transporting them either slaughtered or on the hoof Over hundreds or even tens of kilometers, which if you're not familiar with tens of kilometers that would be tens of thousands of meters would have required a monumental effort Suggest that the prescribed contributions were required and that the rules dictated that offered pigs must be raised By the feasting participants coming in on their journey rather than being acquired locally. So this also does sort of like Uh, you can't just you can't just uh, you have to bring something homemade to the Thanksgiving Dinner, right? Store by it, right? You have to you have to Home make something that you are are are bringing Interesting Yeah, they use multiple isotope analysis To discover that these pigs had been raised Uh a a bit abroad Yeah, I love I love the insight from this. I love it. Yeah, this was a this was a festival a festivist It was yeah the celebration the heart the harvest feast, maybe But then why stonehenge? Because it was stonehenge and it rocked you yeah So it was so it was already there. It was already there They had already made it for whatever other nefarious reasons. We've not There was nothing nefarious No, it was not nefarious Yeah, they were trying to summon. I don't know she-ra. I don't know No It was a bit of an observatory But there's also there was also a lesser known stonehenge because it was made out of wood That countered and one was like sort of the winter festival and one was the summer festival Or the summer went you're like was utilized in and uh, so I guess my question is is Is is this feasting site? They they built stonehenge to be a feasting site is what you're saying or it already existed So it was very likely repurposed repurposed. That's pretty yeah because the stonehenge was built over a very long time. So the initial reason for building stonehenge And the ultimate usage of the thing were probably very unrelated Because it was no like yeah probably like worship versus more of a social Like seasonal gathering. Yeah. Yeah, possibly But again, we always we always do sort of fixate on ritual and worship and religion as being the reasons for The fact that there is such a high ends to astronomical observation As well doesn't necessitate a religious aspect to it Absolutely, it could just be like let's do something cool because it's awesome And I mean we don't really know we infer a lot of things. But yeah, yeah multi-purpose over a few times There's a lot of uh evidence that the wooden version was used in marriage ceremonies So it was sort of like It may have been the first like event center Where whether it was the big feast or the wedding or the funeral like you if you wanted to have to have the special venue This is where you went Well, and now we have these rituals at stonehenge where we have these tourism rituals where we show up And we point these small electronic boxes at at the at the stone formations and flashlight at them So someday people will be asking questions about our rituals The ritualist use of flashing lights must have symbolized early human Well speaking of humans looking into space Do you know how dusty space is? So dusty it's really dusty out there and we didn't realize exactly how much Dust was out there until we really started looking and it turns out that there's a lot of dust in rings circling the sun And so back in the 1970s there was a discovery of a dust ring around venus But no one's really looked at it much since then and so coming into modern day There is a new paper that just came out this last week looking at The dust ring around venus and trying to figure out Where it came from where did the dust come from and they're trying to model exactly how the dust ring formed and so earth has a dust ring we've got dust in our orbit too and researchers think that our dust ring comes from the asteroid belt that there are these asteroids You know knocking into each other and there's dust particles and then earth comes by and it's like Oh a little gravitational tug and we pull some dust in with us And so we get we've collected some dust over the years. Ha. Ha. There's no no space housekeeper. Yes Anyway, it's like your long-haired cat going under the the couch for the first time in many many days coming out covered in dust Yeah so Researchers were trying to figure out. Okay. Well venus has a dust ring. Let's Figure out what's going on They were been looking at these german-american heliospace probes data from back in 2007 and then They confirmed all of it with with stereo data in 2013 And then scientists determined Uh Recently in this most recent study. They looked at dust spiraling From the sun toward the asteroid belt and that's not how venus got its dust They're like, whoa, where did that come from? And so they researchers have just written an astrophysical journal letters that Maybe there's a never before detected group of asteroids that are trailing venus Just like those dust bunnies on the cat that instead of just dust that perhaps there are some actual asteroids in venus's orbit Some little hangers on And so they've modeled this entire system and and tried to come up with the explanation of how it might work In this they've also looked there's a dust ring very newly detected just reported in 2018 around around mercury um And so they're looking at the difference between mercury's dust ring and venus's dust ring and earth's dust ring and going What is going on and they started they they're like, okay rocky objects We've got asteroids work cloud comets haley Haley comet type things jupiter family comets collisions in the asteroid belt and when they threw all these things into their model Nothing worked. And so then they started making things up Of course, that's the next step It's not making stuff up. It's hypothesizing. It's it's hypothesizing creative hypothesizing. It's informed Hypothesizing so they understand how things the stuff work These are astronomers and they're able to figure a lot of things out And so they've reasoned that there's a group of asteroids that may have gone undetected because We can't it's hard to point our telescopes in that direction because the sun's there And so when we're looking for things following venus, they may be obscured by the light of the sun most of the time And just in the same way that we have put Put spacecraft in the grange points in our own orbit Um There are these resonant points these orbital resonance points in venus's orbit as well And so they think that that asteroids could have like clumped up there in one of these venus venus the range points for a while and gotten to be there and of all the possibilities one of their ideas produced a realistic simulation and it's a A pack of asteroids occupying venus's orbit matching its trips around the sun one for one And now they actually have to test the hypothesis And find it and so we have to look now for these elusive asteroids How are we going to find them? Where are they how big are they are they really there is this hypothesis even correct and oh wait If there are these asteroids in venus's orbit, does that mean that venus hasn't cleared its orbit and is venus not really a planet? Never Never happened or do they have transient asteroids? Transient Bringing it back Transient to your anus is that it? Yeah Yeah, that's uh, it's pretty impressive I like I like the idea that everything has rings though that this is just an affect of Being a spinny thing of large mass. Yeah, the sun has all sorts of rings There are planets in those rings and lots of dust Everything has rings you could even look at the planets as rings Around the sun. Yeah, exactly And thinking about where the different dust sources comes from Will allow us to pinch. I mean, who knows the dust around mercury is going to be completely different and maybe very much older Then because it hasn't gotten burned up by the heat of the sun Whatever reason What's it doing there? How is it there? Is it really old dust? Um Or is there a new source for that dust around mercury that we're not aware of? And so this could give us idea thinking about this kind of ring system aspect, you know Solar system formation. Where does everything come from? I think I just figured something out I think science is the process of answering one question and coming up with hundreds more. Oh, yeah Actually just it made me wonder why like range points aren't all part of a destering because these points are the where You know, if there's a little grain point between The earth and the sun it's the point where the pull of the sun or in the gravity of the earth Which means it'll be much closer to the earth are equal Which means the thing just can sit there. You can just put an object there and it's not gonna wander off anywhere. It's stuck between uh, the gravitational pulls Uh, that seems like that would be a perfect place for dust to collect and and I've not heard of that before so No, no, no Yeah, who knows tell me another story. What else we're gonna talk about here Ah, oh, is it uh, it's time for me to so this is uh an extract from the seeds of avocados Oh, I thought those were toxic Has been found to exhibit anti-inflammatory properties in a laboratory Wait, yeah a potential it's toxic. It might be good for you. What? Potentials wait, I've never heard that they work on apple seeds I'm looking it up. You you continue all time and later. Yeah, google it google it up Uh, so it represents potential source for anti-inflammatory compounds that could be developed as a potential pharmaceutical even Uh, the researchers developed the extract over the last decade. That's how long it takes to get anything out of an avocado pit Yeah They initially I guess we're looking for a food color. They get this very interesting vibrant orange color Out of the out of the avocado pit But uh in their laboratory when put through some some differing tests. They noted that it had this anti-inflammatory uh mediators in in there so What they did is they used cell culture models and enzymes important immune response and inflammatory disease a class of immune cells called Macrophages were grown in petri dishes and activated with a pro inflammatory stimuli In the presence or absence of the avocado seed extract the researchers measured the production of pro inflammatory mediators and signaling pathways in the cells after treatment with the extract cody voice here of Uh, remember who's co-director of the state's center for plant and mushroom food for health Next step before we can draw further conclusions about the anti-inflammatory activity of this avocado seed extract is to design animal model studies So the first look looks really good, but they still need to do more for example We can look at a mouse model of ulcerative colitis where we Formulate the avocado seed extract into the mice diet and look at whether it is able to induce or reduce inflammation, so So your your animal trials will have issues because this is what I found out avocado pits They have person a fun fungocidal toxin similar to fatty acids It's in the pit and this is something that is poisonous in massive quantities to humans But um is so toxic to birds particularly parrots. I knew not to feed it to parrots ever dogs horses cattle At least just those animals is that it can be so toxic that even just feeding them the fleshy part of the avocado It's possible some of the toxin has gotten into it from the pit and can get them really sick Yeah, so it it is a question of if you're scaling this into animal models You have to be very careful because for some reason we can handle our avocado Well, and so we're also talking about an extract, which means we're not necessarily using all of the compounds Which you're discovering or or anything and it's of the pit not of the flesh and and what's also sort of interesting, too I think about this is that The avocado by mass is mostly the pit Right by or by weight Anyway, it was mass right so so and you think of how many avocados californians go through in a year There's a lot of and not everybody's growing avocado trees with the pits It's only occasionally some kid does this for a lab experiment at school So there's a lot of these available to science like if this has A productive value There's plenty of the resource available to convert to this use right Yeah, I mean the big question would be you know, the extract is great as is but can you find the active compounds within the solution And focus in on those isolate those even more and then And then just have yeast producing and then put it in a lot of five yeast produced in the lab in a Bioreactor and you're off and around you don't even use the avocado bits and I mean I I immediately jump to okay It's anti-inflammatory, but how does it work? What's it acting on? How is it? I mean, you know compared to other anti-inflammatory agents that we that we use How effective is it going to be? I mean, I know this is just the beginning But it'll be really interesting. It's always nice to have another tool in the basket And to see you know, who knows there are diseases based on inflammation that come from inflammation And so if we can figure out better ways to control inflammation Uh, then that's great That is great. Oh, hey speaking of better medications We've got a couple of interesting medication stories right here for you. So, uh birth control ladies in the audience We yeah, I'm right here. Yeah in Blair, uh, you know the birth control pill is uh said to be 95 effective if taken rigorously No days missed you take it at the same time every day. It's still only 95 effective implants and uh hormone dose Um iud's are 99 effective Why not a hundred percent if you're putting it in there Yes, why isn't it working? Why isn't it working? Well, some researchers decided to Ask this question. Why isn't it working? And so they got a bunch, uh, this dr Aaron Lazarowitz a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at university of colorado school of medicine Who has just published a study in object obstetrics and gynecology um No, hold on. Hold on. They they did a study on a large number pretty significant sample of women 350 healthy women median age 22 and a half years old All of them with contraceptive implants. So It should be a hundred percent effective. They looked For things they had in common five percent of these women tested positive for a gene cYp3 a seven star 1c It's a gene that breaks down hormones In most people it's active during early development and then turns off But apparently in a subset of women it is still active And while they did not link it with any, you know Pregnancy effects in these the five percent of the women nobody got pregnant during the study So ostensibly the birth control was working just fine. Yeah, it was working just fine But this could be the beginning of an of a delving deeper into this reason of why Why These implants why birth control doesn't work all the time And they looked at hormone levels In the women and they found that those five percent of the women with this gene had lower circulating hormone levels than women Without the gene So this is great. So you could test for this gene And if you know birth control will not be as effective on you Hormonal birth control will not be as effective on you and you can use other methods There's the copper iud that doesn't use hormones at all You can you can just use condoms you can you can know No, that's like the least effective. Well, I mean There's a bunch of reasons for that But maybe that's an opportunity to use both then maybe if you know that birth that hormonal birth control isn't as effective Maybe you double up, right? So I think this is this is Excellent the more that women can know their own bodies the better they can make their own decisions Yeah, and Oh go ahead. Well, I'm just okay. I'm so There's I think a leap being taken here because what I'm hearing is that it's a implanted birth control is a hundred percent effective And based on the study that they just did it was a hundred percent effective And and the the pill Having a five percent fail rate I would attribute to a five percent y rate about having taken or just five percent memory failure About having so just in the statement that you are making I just want to bring up a quote from the author of this study that gets at this point He says we've all seen women come in saying that they got pregnant when they were adamant That they were taking the pill every day or using a different birth control method Perfectly. It seems that for the longest time We have just always assumed a woman had done something wrong when using her birth control instead of considering Whether there were other factors affecting how birth control works in individual women No, I I get that and I but but but I don't think that five percent uh of Five percent failure rate is indicative of people doubting the woman is recollection. I think that's just Absolute range of normal human error. Maybe even maybe even A little bit better than normal human error would would attribute to And I think that until they can do this study and show a pregnancy with somebody who has this hormone Depleting gene. I think it's still like this is a hundred percent like I It's not a hunt. This is a very small study We know from many many many studies Previous to this how effective the birth control is 99 percent on the implants and iud's 95 percent for the pill that is the the common effectiveness If these things are used perfectly this study, there just didn't happen to be any pregnancies During the study that doesn't mean anything But it's it's a but they found a percentage of people who have the gene as the pregnancy rate So in that scenario though, then you're also having to say that 100 of people who got pregnant on the pill Didn't lie didn't misunderstand didn't forget to take the pill that it was I don't know. I think I need a much larger study before I would say that the pill is being unaffected in this case I'm saying that nobody has every I like the researcher's Point and I think you're getting at it perfectly Is that everybody has always said it's something that the women have done wrong And so nobody has looked into Other factors like this genetic one and now people are doing it and we are at the beginning of a Of an investigation that may elucidate some very important mechanisms in female physiology Well and and one of the side effects of iud's is ectopic pregnancy, right? And so I think that this actually These things could also potentially be linked. I mean I realize that's that's a pretty big jump We don't have the science behind that by any means But knowing that that is one of the main risks of an iud Means something is not happening, right in the hormonal channels with that So it I would not be surprised if those ended up being linked and this is totally a guess This is based on nothing at all Yeah, but but it is interesting that that's one of the leading side effects And that You're not supposed to be able to get pregnant at all if you have the iud so right So, yeah, I'll give you a very interesting Right and I'm saying maybe there maybe the possibility is somehow linked to Hormones getting messed up because of this genetic situation happening. It's possible And then my other medication study, which I you know is Also very interesting is that researchers have just published a report looking at the chemical ingredients lists for thousands of pills and researchers they looked at a database containing 42,000 recipes for oral medications that are available in the united states 92.8 percent of them contained at least one of 38 inactive quote unquote inactive ingredients That have triggered allergic reactions in patients This is published in science translational medicine What kind of pills in time is this like vitamins and stuff like no so very often the active ingredient The one thing that does something is you know, they package it in starch or sugar or you know There's a bunch of other stuff that's inactive in the pill itself to make the pill headache pill or cold pill or like Yeah, or or a medication for depression or your heart medication or you know, whatever you're taking orally In order to make the pill that pill that you're taking is not 100 active ingredient It's active ingredient that's been mixed with a bunch of other stuff to make the pill That's a certain size that can be broken up and partitioned out and swallowed or swallowed whole whatever and So 55 of these pills contained at least one of a class of sugars called FODMAPS which can cause problems in people with irritable bowel syndrome and very often these Inactive ingredients are considered inactive and so there are not really Uh, they're not notifications on medications about them because they're not considered huge problems So if there's a pill that has that's made in a peanut factory that pill will probably have a warning on it Yeah, when you get your flu vaccine, they they ask you if you are allergic to eggs Exactly that's because many of them are uh, they're they're created in eggs. They're injected in this Part of the process. Yeah, and so these ingredients these potential allergens and so many of us are on one medication or another And we're just taking them. Um lactose cornstarch gelatin soybean oil vanilla sesame oil sucrose aspartame Brilliant blue dye and allura red dye. These are all common ingredients in many foods that People actively avoid in their diets, but maybe aren't considering Staying away from in their medication and so when the the the Suggestion now is that if you're getting a medication from your healthcare provider and they're suggesting one to you It's great to get the one that's going to work with your insurance But maybe ask if you can get an ingredients list or talk to the pharmacist when you go pick it up to find out if there are any potential allergens or Um, I mean, they're very small, but who knows could could could be causing some of those issues that are unexplained in people so i'm very unempathetic towards this issue having zero allergies um, but uh, but knowing people who have severe allergies to very specific things That's a minefield Of things that you normally have to do in reading ingredients lists Before you ingest any kind of food Or or go to any kind of restaurant. You have to be very specific and very clear And and it's hard to trust The message to the waitress or the waiter is going to get to the chef Who's going to prepare the thing that doesn't have any of that ingredient that Can be very harmful for you Uh, but I would not have thought Uh of of this as a potential threat zone. It doesn't fall into that foodie I would feel like it's going to be you know just the drug thing and then some magic Yeah, it was made in a lab by someone in a lab coat and which would have nothing Nothing natural in it. They just put a bunch of these and h's together A bunch of letters with little numbers underneath and no no natural allergens Would not have suspected that as a source and I wonder I wonder how many people have been affected by this Yep. Yep. It's a good question Uh, Blair, do you have a story for the end of the show? So as famous as the end of the show As physicists Often say Assume a spherical cow you've heard this before right where we make our assumptions to be able to model something that is not perfect researchers from harvard university asked For us to imagine A two strand head of hair So these these physicists from harvard university all men If you were wondering wanted to find out what the best Combing strategy was For hair and what general principles you could derive from studying tangled hair So They imagine others heads For clues on how to begin and there was done one more than two hairs are necessary. Yeah So they they imagined two twisted strands in a double helix shape They expanded insights from this model to describe the more general head of tangled hair They Recreated the twisted strands as twisted fishing line And then inserted a single rod to represent a comb at various locations along the twisted mass And dragged it downward. So this is a very fancy way of saying they tried to comb the two strands of hair So then they measured the forces and the shape of the twist as they went To see what the easiest path was. Hey kiki. You have some some uh, a very voluptuous hair What do you think would be the best method for Combing out tangled hair? Um You a little bits When I start at the end you start at the end and move up work your way up Yeah So everything that uh that these physicists found out I learned at six I think but um Anyway, uh, they started they built a model it worked So now they were able to move on to experiments using a comb through Horsehair where they were able to create a computational model to explain the results and extrapolate Of course, this does have actual potential as um as something that you could extrapolate to other questions about tangles and about Straightening There's there's lots of physicsy things you can do with that but in the meantime we found out. Hey, so you Start at the end work your way up What I would like them to do with this information now is to Use it to develop a round brush That can be used for straightening or neatly curling longer hair without getting tangled in said hair when Person using the brush gets distracted and rotates it the wrong way a few times. Well call call harvard Come on. Um, I need the tangled proof round brush for fixing my hair. Yeah I might only thought of uh, actually the structure of the double helix in this story and that uh Which is like the strongest possible structure for it to have Have have been created because it can't be pulled to the sides and then therefore can only be cut and in this instance meaning uh separated From one of the ends, which is yeah Kind of what happens and Yeah, yeah Yeah, that's very true. Um, this also had one assumption about the hair that I think is very funny that it is only slightly curly so Not super helpful That's slightly curly um super curly is this That like I have usually have hairs down here that do that that are just yeah I have some in the underside that are more that are more spirals Yeah, exactly because then those I'll end up just after a day or two I'll end up with little almost dreadlock style clumps right at the back of my head from the curls We just want to make it clear There's no solution for that. There's no combing that out. What our formula only works on on white people hair This is what they're saying Well, no, I'd say it only works on the recessive genes of straight hair That's right early here. My last story. Hey, Justin. Do you have any more stories? I know I'm good. All right. My last story. I'll make it a quick one researchers out of portland state university My town these days researchers they looked at burnout in nurses or again nurses and they found That when the nurses were thanked More often and people at work thanked each other more often. There was less burnout And so they conclude that That gratitude at work is important For how you feel about your job Yeah, and so the bottom line is employees that receive positive feedback are healthier And so and and that can impact things you prevent headaches and other stress related symptoms fewer sick days Cut down the cost of replacement nurses and overtime pay so Express gratitude when you see someone doing a good job. That's right Blair Justin I'm grateful for you. Thank you. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm grateful for you guys too I Yeah, thanks I don't need science. I don't need science to tell me to say thanks, but it's yeah power gratitude in the workplace It has power I'm doing I'm doing the experiment uh accidentally. I think I've been I've been calling out people for apologizing at work That's good. Like people apologize to California. We apologize constantly for ever somebody came around the corner the other day And apologized because I was heading down the hallway when they came around her We were no danger. We were not close to colliding Nobody had to jump out of anybody's way. They apologized. I was like, wait, wait, wait Did you just apologize for turning a corner or we're coming down the hallway? It's like I apologize for the breeze I created as I walked past you. I'm like, okay, that's fair But there is like there might not be enough thanks and maybe too much apologizing going on I think So much it's not I think it's not so much maybe amongst nurses The pat on the back as the thing that I would assume a drive a nurse as Is knowing that they're needed and every time you thank somebody you're telling them I needed you in my life. I needed you. You helped me through my day You helped me in this situation So thinking somebody isn't so much just pat on the back. Good job. Well done. It's also letting them know Hey, you're important to me getting through this With with it could be much worse. Look here. Somebody else here does a terrible job compared to you Thank you for the way you do things so it is important And that brings us to the end of our show Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of our audience. Thank you for joining us for another episode Thank you to fada for helping with show notes and with social media Thank you to identity four for helping to record the show every week to gordon mccloud and ben rothig For helping out in the chat room keeping everything working over there Thank you all of you in the chat room and thank you to our patreon sponsors who of course I forgot to I got into patreon and then I got distracted by conversation Here's my list i'm getting there one second five four internet connections slow view the patrons I will view the patrons who I remember I remember Paul disney richard onamus ed dire stu polyc philip shane ken haze harrison prather charlene henry joshua furie steve debel alex wilson tony steele craig landon mark mesaros jack matthew litwin jason roberts bill k bob calder time jumper 319 eric nap richard brian kondren dave neighbor aiden jeff mountensloth seth o gradney stefan albaran john ratness wami dav fridel darryl myshak andrew swanson paul ronovich karin benton sue doster dav wilkinson ben bignell richard porter noodles kevin reardon christoph zukenorak ashish pants ulysses adkins sarah chavis rt m rick ramus paul john mckay jason olds brine carrington christopher drier lisa sozewski jim drapeau greg riley shon lamben rothig steve leesman curt larson rudy garcy m r gerry s robert greg briggs brandon minnish christopher wrappin flying out erin luth and matt setter matt kesenblow kevin parochan biren lee and e o Thank you for all of your support on patreon and if you are interested in supporting us on patreon you can find a link at twis dot org also remember that you can help us out By telling your friends about twis get someone else to subscribe this week On next week's show We will be back once again and we will be having an interview So it will be joined by a guest to talk about some interesting genetics and some Aspects of al s and other diseases related to uh to that Additionally that show will be wednesday Like always 8 p.m. Pacific time at twist dot org slash live You can watch it live and join our chat room there But if you don't make it don't worry because we are also On youtube and there's our podcast where you can find things archive forever's Thank you for enjoying the show as kiki just mentioned twis is also available as a podcast Just google this week in science in your itunes directory Or if you have one of the mobile type devices you can look up twist the number four droid app in the android marketplace Or simply this week in science and anything apple market placey For more information on anything you've heard here today. Oh gosh. What did you hear about today? Maybe some intermittent anatomy A space desk show notes will be available on our website. That's at www.twist.org Where while you're there you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts or other listeners Or you could just contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at this week in science.com Just in a twist minute gmail.com or blare at blare at twist.org Just be sure to put twist Somewhere in the subject line Otherwise your email will be You can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr Kiki at jackson fly and at blairs menagerie We love your feedback if there's a topic you'd like us to cover address a suggestion For an interview a haiku that comes to you in the night. Please let us know We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news But remember if you learned anything from the show you should try to remember that It's all in your head This week in science This week in science This week in science is the end of the world So i'm setting up the shop got my banner on furrow. It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice Show them how to stop the robot with a simple device I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand Science is coming your way So everybody listen to what i say i use the scientific method for all that it's worth And i'll broadcast my opinion all over the air because it's this week in science This week in science science science this week in science This week in science science science i've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be new That's what i say may not represent your views, but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just get understand But we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy And this week in science is coming away So everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods that are rolling to die We may rid the world of toxoplasma Got the eye Yeah Because it's this week in science This week in science science science this week in science This week in science science science I've got a laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought And I'll try to answer any question you've got So how can I ever see the changes I seek When I can only set up shop one hour a week This week in science is coming your way You better just listen to what we say And if you learn anything from the words that we've said Then please just remember it's all in your head Cause it's this week in science In the after show, which is talking to Blair We're not going to go super late tonight Not a huge amount of conversation It's this daylight savings thing It's taking its toll on us all And as the show went on My child did not go to sleep And so it's been a clock here and he's still awake And he has school in the morning I have school in the morning too It's got work Yeah Work, school, school work It's work, work, work Everybody gotta work, work, work, work Actually tomorrow is the day Gotta go to work, work, work, work Speaking of school, when all of the students In the climate change communication study circle That I've been leading for the past five months Graduate Oh, I know, it's very exciting That's great Yeah You feel like they learned a lot Yeah Came a long way Yeah, they all did final projects They had to video themselves Doing a climate change communication Like having a conversation Using everything that they learned Over the past five months Wow And then everyone else had to do peer review At the same time Because it's a trainer model So we're trying to make sure Not only that they know how to do it But they know how to evaluate others So we did that That was a five hour Five hour webinar that we did And then It's happening already I know And then, yeah, so then tomorrow They just get to, they're making action plans And we have a cute graduation ceremony Cute And they'll get to feed giraffes Nice And then they feed the giraffes Yeah, it's brilliant It's wonderful It'll be great We can't believe I always forget to write down I'm always like Oh, so many things to check I always forget to write down Next week, Chris Donnelly Chris Donnelly Yes, that's who we're interviewing Sounds vaguely familiar to me From the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center I feel like it's only a matter of time Well, it already happened We interviewed somebody And I'm like, I read this story once And they're like, oh, that's mine Yep That did happen to us It did happen, isn't that great? That was Ayanna Howard The roboticist Yes, that's right I was like, I think this story Was great About a robot And she's like, yeah Yeah, that was mine That was great Yeah, misbehaving Yeah, next week ALS Misbehaving Proteins Frontotemporal dementia Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy We're talking brains and proteins Yeah, I'm excited about it I'm excited Trying to reach out to a woman From Gladstone Institute To talk about her blood vessel work For Alzheimer's stuff Speaking of studies that we've talked about I think this is work that we've talked about On the show Identity four Bought a Portland show ticket Yeah Oh, dang That's awesome Oh, my goodness You're coming I think both of the people doing the Science Talk workshop with me the next day Are coming, I think Awesome That's very exciting Gotta get them to get their tickets They asked me yesterday Do we need to buy tickets? Yes I was like, yep, you do This is not a comp situation Sorry Sorry Yeah, no No comp situation Buy a ticket, it's not that expensive Just get a ticket and support Support Cause I don't know If our sponsors I don't even know Fifteen dollars Oh, my gosh They can definitely handle it They can handle You don't need a ticket, Justin You need a plane ticket That's what you need Okay, I have I think I have your info somewhere In a text message But I'm gonna buy Tell me what time Actually, I need I don't have my wallet down here But let's see I don't have my wallet down here Let's see Sacramento Sacramento Sacramento to PDX It's always on these twin turbine planes They're on the edge of obsolescence It's always the funnest flight Well, at least it's not a Boeing 737 Wow, we don't even know Two out of how many flights You're just gonna go overnight, right? Third to fourth Yeah, I'll go back Where are you gonna stick around for? It's gonna stay longer I don't care Yeah, we're gonna be conferencing the next day though Which will make it kinda Which means I'll be free To go have fun Do whatever Do whatever you want It's sort of intriguing But you're gonna have to let me know Head of time Head of time All right So the third is a Wednesday, I'm assuming Wednesday Okay No What time do you want me there? Just plot it for that What time do you want to pick me up? Blair, you're getting in at like 11.30, right? Or noon, 12.30 I'm trying to look What is happening here? I don't care I'm already packed United changed their So I can go anywhere at any time Functionality Oh, I also am not flying with them 11 a.m. is when I get it Like how come United doesn't have my info? Oh, right, because I'm not flying with them That would explain it Flying glass How is it a two-hour flight? Yeah, mine is an hour 45 What's happening now? That hardly makes any sense So I've got There are three flights I'll take one of them, only one Well, I'm trying to So there's an 8.30 a.m. That gets in at 10.15 a.m. Which you'd have to be at the airport at 7.30 a.m. Ish Oh, I'm excited I got TSA Pre-Check Or there is a one o'clock flight That gets in at 2.30 We'll have to go to the earlier one I'm looking to see if there's one Oh wait, Southwest Maybe Southwest is good Yeah, they got 7.37s that make that flight all the time Yeah, 7.37 There's 7.37 Two flights out of a billion Relax, people Let's get some data on this then first But why When I could just jump to conclusions Yeah, it's We're gonna make a jump to conclusions, Matt Wednesday, 4.30, return date Oh god When are you gonna do overnight trip Or are you gonna What do you wanna do, Justin You know, the city of Portland Is one of my favorite cities that have ever been created I would like to spend a second night I'll have you go home on Friday One adult, let's see And the flight home can be whatever time You feel like you could wake up to drive me to the airport So my flight, Justin Since I am also going home on Friday Just to let you know Is at 1.20pm Okay, that's close to Because Blair is better at navigating Transportation things than I am It would be great to have a guide Luckily, it's very easy Go in this line No, no, face this way Okay, hand them the paperwork Don't make me sound like a jerk No, you're not a jerk It's super helpful because I'm always like Ah, I got to the airport Now tell me where to go Nobody's like being helpful I'm like, ah, I gotta read Excuse me, sir, how much I get home Where do you live? In California This is me abroad I'm the worst traveler When it comes to logistics I live in the town of Davis Might you know where that is? There's a big tree I turn to get to my home Do you know this big tree? Have you seen it? There's a water tower there It says Davis Davis It stands for University of California Did I mention I'm trying to get back to California? Alright, there is a On Southwest, there is a 10-10 a.m. flight That gets in at 11-40 That sounds reasonable, yes? Yeah, okay And it's similar to Blair So I can pick both of you up at the same time Yeah, that works Oh, enough time to get coffee Yeah, okay 11-05 Returning flight Friday, I'm gonna be busy all day Yeah, we'll take the light rail from the What time are you leaving on Friday, Blair? 1-20 1-20 Do you want a 2-10 An hour later flight, Justin? 2-10 You can hang out at the airport for a bit You guys can go I've already etched Well, actually, I could go revisit Because I got laid over Last time I was trying to leave They bumped me off a flight And so there is some corner of PDX where I etched in The hours To keep track of time Now I can go revisit that and just add more Well, I'm not gonna go very soon Before my flight because I have Pre-check now, so Even if you're flight The line is not like, it's not like it's good But you're also talking to somebody Who normally gets there 90 minutes Before their flight I'll go with Blair and I'll do that Time framey thing That sounds great Yes, let's do that Look at us organizing Trying to get away In fact, I think I have family That's currently stuck in a layover At PDX So maybe I'll just reunite I doubt she'll have left by then Is it snowing right now, Kiki? No, here? No, it's not snowing It's not flying I got distracted, sorry Birds Southwest is lame Thank you for disparaging the people Who are going to have my life In their metal cans Dale Poco asks, ain't there an elon tube You can take I would love to take an elon tube up there Someday Is it big enough to fit a bus? Who's flying? Justin Yo mama Uh oh I'm tired This is what happens Is our show part of Science Talk? No, I mean it's a satellite event Science on tap Yes, so it's an affiliate event Basically, right? Yes And what is the name of the theater one more time? Alberta Rose Theater I'm excited, we're going to meet Identity 4 If it comes on the train Okay, now I'm trying I've got so many texts from you guys Maybe Justin, you can Should we put your Is your middle name on your license? No, of course It sounds like you're ducking something No, it's Justin The voice of reason Jackson Let me do this once a year I should put all your info in a file But it's in my phone somewhere Can you text me your date of birth And your middle name If your middle name is in your ID And I'm guessing you don't have a Southwest Rapid Rewards account And doubtful I can't remember what mine is I want to make a difference anyway No suffix Date of birth December 11 Because Blair's the 12th Got it I got it 1982 Yeah, 1982 Nope What? I'm pretty sure Well, maybe it was 83 I sent you a pic I sent you my driver's license pic Yeah, you can pull it off of that Great Did you You mail it to me I texted it to you I texted somebody in my driver's license I'm not really sure Hopefully Now I've got a check Did you text? Oh, it's still sendering I don't know why I think I might have sent a high definition version Which my phone Occasionally does without my knowledge But yeah, it's on the way Oh, there we are, look at us Shut up Oh, yeah There we are Did it come across? Found you Secure traveler information I don't need that, right? No Special assistance, no Should I add early bird check-in? It costs money It does What assures a seat? You'll get a seat It's more like Especially if you're traveling with people on Southwest Then like You're trying to make sure you get to sit with them Oh, yeah Well, I need a window seat I can't fly with that one It's just primitive Oh, you can't That's very sad You might have to deal with whatever you get I mean, suddenly Getting there early doesn't sound so bad No, does it? Hmm Paypal I'm gonna do that Yay, because I don't have my credit card Awesome I got that Business Share your plans We're gonna Do the buying of the things On the line Purchasing the tickets I hope I got the date right I forgot to double check We can always change it Within like 24 hours Otherwise, I've got tickets Tickets on Southwest, anyone want them? Yeah Justin, someone commented On my post of our text conversations Quote, are you ready for this? I'll never forget I'll never forget the day I learned a fecal plugs Oh my god Like Ugh These are great people Talk about this, this is pre-show Pre-show, what happened? Somebody came to me with a Fun fact About Hibernating bears And how they construct their Fecal plugs to keep bugs from going in their Non-transient anuses While they're sleeping Or not sleeping, hibernating And it sounded very Suspect to me It sounded to me like Either they would need the help of another bear To Implement this Or that It's just very unintuitive And so I texted Blair As I do Whenever somebody asks me Or presents a fun animal fact That I'm either skeptical about Or I have a question about it Where I get curious about something She writes me back Like what did I write you like I need to know everything you know About bear fecal plugs You texted me Tell me all your knowledge Tell me everything What do you know about Bear fecal plugs So on my side I am still At my desk I received this text message I laugh out loud And then I just announced to my office This is the text message That I just received What do you know About bear fecal plugs And everyone starts laughing And then each of them In their own way basically says What's that What do you know About bear fecal plugs This isn't one pool of zoology People by the way Yeah I mean they're education people There's a Venn diagram there They know a lot about animals And the text of like What you'd need to tell a zoo visitor About animals And fecal plugs do not Often come up at the zoo But I know About this kind of stuff For two reasons One is just sheer interest In like the bizarre evolutionary Adaptations of animals But secondly a lot of these things Come to my attention Because of twist For seven years now So it definitely It pulls me down rabbit holes That I didn't even know existed Or you know down fecal plugs Which I will also I have to preface a little bit Down transient anuses I have to do a little bit of prefaceing Initially was like When bears hibernate They have And then I had to go whoa Whoa whoa whoa whoa I know for a fact Because Blair told me Bears don't actually hibernate They just like sleep really deeply And what was amazing then Is I got a response from Blair That mentioned hibernation In quotation marks And so that I had prefaceed this And then everybody there had been informed And then saw the quotation marks And laughed at the quotation marks Because she was using hibernate In the like because they don't really And all the zoo people were like Ha ha ha Yeah absolutely Yeah so I'm I'm looking about them now Because I knew a little bit Obviously more than anyone else In my office did But it does seem Like it's just because They're not eating a lot Their fecal material Is very few and far between And it's also very dense And so it does indeed Make a plug It also shows that the bears Groom a lot Right before they hibernate So a lot of the plug is made up of Hair Well and the other thing that was Fascinating about this is that From my readings on this Because I had to look into it too They lose their foot pads And they eat their foot pads And that's a component of the plug as well Yes that's true Which makes sense Because we also know that Again I'll do it hibernation Is Coupled with A very Very intense regenerative Experience where They can regenerate skin They can grow back skin So that there's not even a scar Or an injury And so I guess it would make sense If you have callus feet you might want to You might want to regrow Those pads anew And that was I quoted you And I did so With caveats I think they can even Undo scars That might not be true It might not be true but I think I learned That they're so regenerative That they can Remove a scar that was there And now you're saying this again And I'm wow So yeah it's a very wolverine Thing That bears do To put everything In the common language of a Marvel comic That people can easily relate to But that's pretty They go through a pretty intense regenerative state So here's the question What defines hibernation Versus what bears are doing So it's all About how much their metabolism And their body temperature is Dropping so with smaller Animals your body temperature Can drop and it's a lot easier To bring your body temperature back up But because this animal is so Enormous If they dropped their body temperature Enough to achieve true hibernation It would be Near impossible to build Their body temperature back up In that massive body So the difference is That they're not falling Into such a deep sleep That they cannot be woken So they will wake up Re-adjust Wake up drink water They will wake up and re-adjust And then go back to sleep So they're not quite As Like out As some other animals like smaller Animals that hibernate or Estivate They'll like you could like poke them And they're fairly unresponsive While they're hibernating because their Metabolism has dropped so low And their body temperature has dropped so low That they're yeah they're like Basically in a coma Yeah Shouldn't the threshold of what hibernating Is be bears Because that's what that's the one thing That most people think hibernates And It's not true I mean it's just making a truth Easier for more people to Achieve By calling what bears do hibernating Yeah I mean it's close But the thing is Anybody on the street what hibernates They're gonna say bears Yeah you're right about that It's I think it's just because It's not hibernates Right, lizards but only because You told me so Yeah exactly So it's just because they're They're doing it in cartoons They're the charismatic Macrofauna And rock bands probably do this Yeah so a lot I was gonna say reptiles and amphibians Who they end up having To go into the mud During the dry season That's not what you think of hibernation Taking place right? So there's So there's I would argue A huge amount of animals Probably the majority probably more than half Of animals that live In anything that is not a temperate Climate Do it So it's either too hot or it's too cold And they gotta get through that because How else do you survive The lack of food or water Yeah but are you including Torpor in your Hibernation oh okay then birds do it Some birds do it too They hibernate overnight Insects dry out and sleep Right Yeah The Crocodiles or alligators do it In the cold Hedgehogs do it In the warm Because you called it winter sleep Instead of hibernation Then somebody brought up To Polar bears hibernate because It's winter all year round And the answer we came up with Was by Googling Was that Black bears brown bears Do hibernate Winter sleep Polar bears do not Unless Unless they're pregnant sorry Then a pregnant female Will den down for the harshest part of the winters But what it didn't reveal Was the thing that you were then telling me in the pre-show Which was Sorry There was a motorcycle outside I was like the aliens are landing I don't know if you guys can do it Polar bears can give birth and be breastfeeding While in their winter sleep Yes and they're not the only species To do that they're other animals That give birth and nurse During hibernation But giving birth while sleeping As I think the thing that I think that's amazing As the other will tell you That's a super That's an evolutionary advantage Well you also have to remember Like I don't encourage You to watch a bunch of different species Giving birth but Why wouldn't you? If you saw videos That kind of looked If you could do some very scientific measurements Of the ratio of the size of the animal That is being birthed To the size of the mother We are kind of unusual We are pushing this Big cantaloupe sized head Out of a pretty small passageway And there are Lots of animals Especially animals that give birth to litters That their babies Are like teeny tiny To what we do in terms of ratios So I can kind of Understand how That might not be As terrible as it sounds I'm not saying it's fun I'm saying it's probably A lot less Painful Also keep in mind That like life in the wild is pain And And these bears are The bears especially they're Down and they're usually like Kind of in a nice little safe space And the babies are not running around And doing their own thing They're like just there hanging out with the mom Yeah and she makes milk And they get to sleep And grow Unperturbed Which for polar bears is really important Because If they can't swim yet Then the mom can't find food Because she can't leave them behind And also Baby polar bears I'm sorry people who love polar bears And think they're really cute They are Sawed after By male polar bears To eat So hiding them until They're a little bit bigger They're old enough to find their own food They're old enough to run Is really important to the survival Of that species Isn't it difficult to that To be asleep So what they do is they actually They dig themselves a den In the snow and cover it up So it's like totally enclosed Yeah it's like an igloo So the scent doesn't Travel very well from there They're hiding This is a strategy also then That prevents them from being Wow It's not just a winter sleepy thing It's also a hide From the male polar bear Yes Hide from daddy That makes sense Alright Let's, we bought tickets We've discussed fecal plugs There's so much more It's a deep, deep vein If you'll forgive But the ultimate story is That formed in the colon Moves into position And from the reports Actually has a bit of a sweet smell to it Yeah it does not smell bad And now I'm wondering And I haven't looked yet but Is it possible that this is something Someone could buy on ebay Like how do you get your moves on there You could definitely buy a bear fecal plug Yeah you could definitely do that if you wanted I don't know why you would want to And are they hardened? I mean could you like make a necklace out of one Yeah I'm sure that you could I'm sure there's elephant poop Stuff that they make all the time So like they'll make like an Elephant polished elephant poop Paperweight and stuff like that So I'm sure you could do that This would be the marketing campaign To preserve all endangered species What? Where poo is prized Fecal aphrodisiacs Well here's the thing It's not their bones, it's not their claws It's their livery Something that you can actually get more of If you keep them alive It's only special if you collect it Hot and steaming from the wild Yes it has to be a living So I don't want to poop all over Your idea here But The utilitarian value Is not Successful in saving species Period It's something that since the 90s With the rainforest there's cancer cures out there Not good enough It doesn't work It's a bummer Because you know like But this is the beauty of the science Behind science communication right Is that you can look at different Tested methods For inspiring value And saving species And you can see what is effective And unfortunately that one Not effective This is the only Send them to Mars You gotta get this last thing going Send them to Mars I just want to put a solar panel On every damn building on the planet That's what I want Yeah solar panels everywhere Why is there a roof Without a solar panel on it Give me one good reason The roof, the roof The roof is on fire Sorry But the solar panels Actually have a reflective property So you would help with that Yeah Mostly fireproof They can actually stand up to All right Blair You're obviously time Good night Blair, say good night Justin Good night Justin Good night Kiki Good night everyone Thank you Thank you for a great show And a good after show And I am looking forward to More and more shows Friday 1pm Pacific Time Twitch.tv slash Dr. Kiki For my Friday science chat And next week we'll be back With Chris Donnelly from The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center To talk about proteins And brain disorders And we're excited about that Miss it, it's gonna be some good stuff And get your tickets To our live show And get on our newsletter Letter, later, list Newsletter now, not later Yeah Kai you can come to the show Kai wants to come to the show He can come to the show Yay, alright everyone Thank you so much And we will see you Later, have a wonderful night Bye