 Hello everybody and welcome to this week's podcast broadcast of the this week in science Podcast and as usual there's something weird going on with Facebook. I don't know what's happening there lately I'm connected, but apparently not connected Facebook's not happy with me I don't know, but I hope that I am. Oh wait, maybe we are broadcasting. I don't know But anyway, we're on Facebook YouTube and Twitch Wednesdays 8 p.m. Pacific time ish and if you want to hit those likes and shares and all that kind of stuff we're gonna start the show show very soon soon and Just know that we do edit the end podcast so this video broadcast the audio is taken turned into a podcast We edit some stuff out So what you see here if you're watching the live stream is not necessarily every or it is Potentially more than what you would get in the podcast. So welcome and I hope that you subscribe and Are we ready to go Justin? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. We are Live now. Let us go into the world of science In three two this is Twists this week in science episode number 941 recorded on Wednesday, August 30th, 2023 why are German boars so hot? I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your head with boars bees and bats, but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer the world is complicated Filled with complicated things if something seems simple it is likely a reflection of your perspective Add a few layers of inquiry into anything Question why it is the way it is. How did it get that way? Why does it do what it does? Does it do anything else? What other things is it connected to are they connected and Why does the other thing do the things it does and what else is it connected to and how did it get that way? It's okay to ask questions For the most part you can live a long happy life without questioning too many things But every once in a while you will come across something Something interesting like a news story something important like a diagnosis or something that just keeps you up at night Like how the concept of object permanence seems completely lacking in quantum wave functions so So you decide to do your own research first good for you But wait before you start choosing a Greek symbol to represent object permanence I recommend uppercase O the omega as it kind of looks like a zero and it's sure to cause necessary confusion Another way to satisfy your craven curiosity about the world around you While learning about how research is prepared executed in Analyze is simply by listening to This week in science coming up next I want to learn everything. I want to fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek I want to know science yuki-ki And a good science to you too Justin We're again without Blair. She is happily in Wisconsin parenthood with her Wonderful dog Sadie by her side and her partner Brian and they have a lovely family. They are They are growing and it is wonderful. So it's me and Justin and his cold tonight The cold wasn't invited but you know, we're gonna let that party crash happen for that for tonight, I guess So I guess for your morning Everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of this week in science I have stories about a techie treatment for kidney disease hot German boars AI racers fat brains and your plastic brain What did you bring Justin? Oh? Gosh, that would be great if I brought stories Would be oh, yeah, I've got Why do cats this is the headline I've pulled from you know, why do cats love tuna so much? Do radio waves affect bird navigation? It's a great question. Yeah, um, oh, yeah, hey, there's a story out there that challenges the origin of humanity Always sort of And and how bees shaped our opinion Bees well, I want to find the buzz when you've got it for us. Oh, wait, and where's my there's also something about oh, yeah Hacking animal communication with AI. Oh to AI stories tonight. Okay Well, let's get pretty good. It'll be all AI stories and then it'll be AI telling you these stories and one of us And why why tuna and then why AI stories all the time and it'll just be AI Listening to the AI stories is told by AI so they can be better at knowing what's going on in the world of AI But for now, it's us and you and you're here and we're here and so Let's enjoy Show as we jump in here I want to remind all of you that Subscribing to the twist podcast is a wonderful thing to do. You can find us on your favorite podcast platform Look for this week in science or twists or on YouTube Facebook and Twitch Livestreaming every Wednesday at 8 p.m. Pacific time ish and if you go visit twist org You should be able to find information about stories show notes the show Download podcast subscribe to the podcast all that kind of stuff but for now It's time for the science. Yeah Yeah Okay, let's dive in to some fun science news Top on my docket tonight is a story about a bio reactor I mean by bio reactor well Researchers call it a bio reactor because it is a bio artificial System containing renal cells renal cells are in the kidney and they are contained in an artificial System with a silicon nanopore membrane to replicate key kidney cell functions Water and solute reabsorption metabolic and endocrine functions and Researchers just published in nature communications this week Their work in planting an artificial kidney basically into pigs And this isn't taking a kid a pig kidney and making it nice for people This is creating an artificial kidney and so they're testing it on pigs and in this system They used human kidney cells and actually within the pigs. They didn't have any immune rejection there was they they monitor it monitored it for seven days and Determined that the this bio reactor basically this Device kind of like a pacemaker Didn't trigger any immune response it allowed the bodies Basically the the Diffusion gradients from high pressure to low pressure where areas of high water or solid concentration to change to low solute concentration etc to allow water reabsorption by the pigs it regulated blood pressure and Was able to remove Impurities from the blood so instead of a little future Potentially having to worry about where you're gonna get a kidney transplant. Maybe you'll have a kidney So that's huge huge and you're just waiting for you know, Amazon to deliver it and not Somebody to be on their death bed Donate you their kidney Yeah, so how do they get around the rejection issue though? I mean is it just that the cells are contained within this? Device and don't come in in direct contact with the immune system or like that's just seems yeah That's exactly it and the device itself is kind of you know Like the way you think of a pacemaker is or the old-school pacemaker is this box, right? Where everything self-contained inside the box for the beating to stimulate electrically the beating of the heart it doesn't Really come in contact with anything and it's not biologically reactive same system idea here where it's a non biologically reactive container and everything is All of the stuff is behind a membrane so that it is similar to the kidneys because in the kidneys you have a Cellular membrane that leads to these pressure gradients and an osmotic gradients that move things along to clean your blood and to To make everything work And so the idea is very similar which I think is a really I think a brilliant way to approach it They say that the data really do suggest the feasibility of an implantable bio reactor using the silicon nanopore membranes and that there was minimal damage and yeah not indicative of Acute cytokine reaction as they would call it It's not acute. It's not a acute It's not a cute device though. The device itself is about five and a half centimeters wide by eleven and a half centimeters long and it seems fairly like a plastic box but is It has a gasket inside of it. There's a what they call a trant H REC human renal epithelial cell trans well area and then a gasket that Make sure everything fits and doesn't leak and so you have these cells inserted into the system and the fluids go on one side and the other and then Everything works That's the idea anyway My question though is how long would it be that they only watched this for seven days within the the pigs and they didn't have what they called evidence of thrombosis and In in that the question is, you know, how long could you go before you had to have your membrane Replaced so do you have to have a zipper installed? Like how does it is it? Would it initially be something that might be external to the body or is it as they're trying to make this with the pigs implantable? You know, and then how long does it last? How do you fix it? Yeah? I'm obviously like the first thing you think of is This could be used, you know In waiting for a transplant or something of that nature. Yes, you know, is it is it potentially? Yeah right, but But I guess if the goal is higher than that and it just you know Yeah, it's just creating one That yeah, that can be Implanted and just left and just left in there. So it's very promising and we'll see where this ends up going But right now it looks like it is a an immune safe device. It could Maybe not replace the need for real biological organs, but you know, it's not the Borg either and it would allow people to Do away with dialysis And to also repair their kidneys and this is part of what's called the kidney project by a group out of UCSF and other places So the the silicone should be fine for a long time The only thing I'm wondering about is the cells that are in there like how's that? What's that viability right? How long do they live? How long does that last? Yeah, they only go seven days So that might be an indicator of how long it can last Right. Yeah exact right or was it just hey, we did it for a week. Good job first pilot We did a nice Then which we can run our experiment and then we all have summer break. No, that's probably not what happened They probably were determined from a previous experiment. That's not part of the study that Their cells are only viable for so long or that the system is only secure for so long And they didn't want to show a failure point Which is not at this not at this point for this paper Yeah, but I think I think having that failure point would then inform Future Runs unless again unless they already know The time frame that they can work with We might guess I don't know if they've done longer. They did three and seven day implantations in five Animals all of them were successful Everything looked pretty good, and I don't know why they why this Why they had the three or seven day? I haven't seen that within the paper as to why that would have been an end point But it could have been a preplanned endpoint for this particular part of the study Don't know that at this point, but these are good questions to be asking, but Yeah Mute is it is but but but so many butts in science What do you want to talk about Justin? Well, there's a headline being blasted across the anthropology Internet Yeah, yes new ancient eight from Turkey challenges the story of human origins Only it it doesn't actually Anything about human origins What was found was an ancient ape skull? Was found in Turkey research team is estimating to be eight point seven million years old It's incredibly old But that a 13 million year old great ape Relative of this possibly it was found in Spain back in 2002 The oldest primate ever found is in central China at around 55 million years old Humans however originated and evolved In Africa So this isn't this is an ape ancestor. What's it really interesting about it? Hang on a second. Sorry This is where the cold is gonna interrupt the show Every the occasional need for Not being disgusting on air. It's fine. We can have these brief interruptions Okay Okay, humans originate in Africa from an ape ancestor that breaks off from the ape family tree brand the same time supposedly as Chimpanzees about six million years ago. We supposedly have this current this This shared ancestor around six million years ago So this is almost 10 million years old this fossil which puts it at the ancestor of both Chimp and man potentially Potentially the thing is it could just be a radiation part of the radiation of apes Throughout a much larger geographic area We just this is the oldest that we have found the problem sort of with this and My goodness the peer reviews are savage Because they don't like how they've come up with it. It's one of those interesting things like okay like naledi The peer review post papers are also very brutal Right. You know later. I'm gonna do a study about a revisiting of an archaeological site that was discovered in the 50s And there's still debating issues with that So these are new finds so even a bad peer review is meaningless However, really really they're missing a lot of the comparables in their study with gorillas and Even chimpanzees, which is what this thing is most similar to Although it's the front of the face that they have from the skull. They don't have a full skull They've got teeth, which is great. That tells you quite a bit. Yeah But a lot of their comparables and different measurements are missing for the gorilla in pan Even though they've got them listed there in this infographic that you've got up there They I don't see a sagittal crest at all because it's missing that part of the skull Which could tell you very quickly how far in the gorilla direction This thing had had been versus what would you know if it had more Chimp and then more even human-ish features starting to emerge and It's pretty big. It's pretty good size. So there's a lot of there's a lot of size of intermediaries missing to say Assuredly that this is an ancestor You before or after this fossil But this is and then you know the headline is it's oh, yeah, you're raising I guess that's what Turkey is Turkey is Turkey to me is in the Middle East but that's just because I when I You know sort of figure out where Turkey is I do it by looking at a map because I never quite remember and it's You know if you're bordering Iraq And I ran and you know if those chances are you're in the Middle East Right, that's how I see it like eventually that you know, you're gonna bump into something else But that's where their main borders are come on. I don't know how that they part of the European NATO or something Modern day. Come on. Yeah So there's a lot anyway, there's a lot being made about this being the human origins out of Africa That's not really what it is Although it is still a really interesting find so So they've compared these different so they've compared these bones and the teeth and they're basically making these entire Assumption based on the configurations of the teeth and how the teeth look which is very very consistent with a lot of Memology and how identifications have been made historically. I mean I went my Memology class in In undergraduate now that was a very long time ago You know, we were identifying rodents and others based You know, you can tell the difference between this particular rodent and that rodent because one had one extra ridge on a rear tooth compared to the other so teeth are a very important part and they're how they form is a very important aspect of our identification but to allow that to Take priority over other aspects of anatomy that aren't even in existences And so that's also what some of the peer reviews on this one were complaining about is that they did They did that measurement morphology on a couple of teeth and used those distances But ignored other others that they have available Like didn't do it on everything that they have and didn't do comparables to modern-day gorillas or chimpanzees and some of those measurements whereas they did in other areas make comparisons So it's there the hit on it really has been that it seems like Well, that's it's the that's the problem is that you then don't know if it was just incomplete or I want to say sloppy in the kindest term Not to the extra because no study looked at absolutely everything in as much detail as somebody reading a paper later would like to to see Exactly. Yeah, sometimes that happens and in doing research project You might not be able to provide data on every aspect or from every angle Morphologically doing measurements and comparables on something like teeth shouldn't be in that category It seems like that's something when that's what all you have that seems like all you should be doing It's still very interesting It's an interesting find but as you've said based on the I Guess the critiques of this study. It's it's questionable as to how exactly impactful it is on our understanding of Late hominins right from Africa from Turkey from that area so There is a Like I've talked about before there's a state push in China to do Certain projects whether it's be to to do biotech based on Ancient Chinese medicinal herbs or to have a perspective on the hominin bones that are pulled out So there's a question mark over all of that. Yeah, Turkey's cultural ministry has also been like, oh We need more people from our country in charge of involved with archaeological projects Great That and any of these things I think the lead on this was from the University of Toronto, but I Mean you've got teeth if you've got pulp and not just the cavity. Hopefully you can go in and get some DNA as well So maybe Maybe yeah, maybe that's past it. Yeah past it. It's probably not cold You know like a lot of it the other element is aside from being dry and everything else where we find DNA tends to be places that are very very cold. I think the That neanderth no the Denisovan Finger bone The only bone found Siberian Adelaide Anyway, it That cave I think has an average temperature of zero degrees It's always cold there. It's always cold in that cave. So That that also helps do has a preservative nature. I don't I don't picture Turkey is I Guess it's the turkey is mountains to the mistake pretty cold I don't know. That's a great question. I don't know Okay, moving on from Turkey. Let's move to Germany and let's talk about Germany's hot wild boars You've been going on about hot wild boars ever since I know it's my little inside joke and that's Making me laugh inside and that's all so in Germany there are a number of wild boars that live in the forest and there have been hunted for game oven on but Oh gee The meat in the game was found to have high levels of radioactive Caesium and for a long time everybody when they started testing this radioactive meat They're like, oh it must have come from the 1986 share noble accident and that must be where all of this radiation came from and the assumption would be that the wild boars would Eventually not be as radioactive because eventually the radioactivity would it's not in everything in the in in that area so eventually the nuclear power plant accident would not be affecting the persistent radioactivity, but it's been this conundrum where researchers have kind of been like, why I mean, it's been years now 60 80 it's years and years and years and these boars have persistent radiation levels high Radiation levels and they're not really dropping like we thought they would and so Is research nice thing the nice thing about that though is that they can be hunted at night? Yes, the the researchers decided that hey, it would be really great for us to Take a look at what is actually happening with these boars and the radioactive cesium and so they did a big all mapping of Germany and Trying to make it a big better bigger, but I don't want to have a big image. I want to have the smaller image Okay, anyway, this is what we're gonna get so They were looking at levels of cesium Within Germany and so they looked across the country and they found in southern Germany. There are definitely areas of hotter radioactivity than further north so the these areas are very high in terms of the the radioactivity of cesium 137 per square meter and so they were like, okay What's going on there that could have been more than just? Cheer noble and so they say yeah, that's okay. Can I guess now what I want to say it's radioactive truffles What would keep the truffles radioactive for a very if they were if there was natural deposits There could be natural deposits, but that's not what happened Nope, no, no, no, so they're they're Comparisons of latitude and cesium ratios across various areas They determined that there was a nuclear weapons fallout from Weapons testing back in the 50s and 60s just like the United States was doing lots of nuclear weapons were tested over a very long period and this Ratio of cesium 135 to 137 that they were looking at is consistent with the levels of Cesium that have been found today And so there's negligible cesium coming from the sky anymore no more coming from the rain Nothing that's there. No, no, it's already in the ground. And yes, you are correct in the truffles that these Troubles Yeah, so Who's testing nuclear weapons in Germany? I Mean, they're not anymore to suspects What is the US and one is Russia depending on where the location is right, but that seems like Even for the Cold War That seems like too close to the other You know usually the nuclear testing that I think of the US doing really far away in the middle of a desert now Ocean war, you know Or it's still environmental impact is horrible and negative But it wouldn't be at the border with the during the Cold War that seems like it would be too Intense Yeah, so They they collected these samples used a gamma ray detector used sophisticated mass spectrometers to compare these ratios and Also in the soil and also in the meat and basically don't hunt Wild boar in Germany the German soil was definitely impacted by the Chernobyl accident, but the mid 20th century weapons tested testing not necessarily just by the United States or Russia was also You know Stuff that had come in from rain had come in all from all over the place Yeah Nuclear fallout But it's in the 1960s according to this little infographic you got up. They were doing the weapons testing Yeah, US German and and Russia like so it's in it was in the rain. It wasn't necessarily in Germany So it but Ted, I don't know why Germany maybe because it was also I don't know. They got a double doozy. There's a lack of autonomy. I would yeah That's that I mean, I love like they're like, oh, by the way Probably don't hunt the boars unsafe. Just don't do that. It's been 80 years And you still should not hunt the boars It's been 80 years of people hunting boars. Don't do it. Like Have they have they tracked any form of Anyway, a lot of people have already had this exposure a Lot of people have already been exposed if and that's part of it Is that they've had to outlaw the hunting of a wild boar in various parts of Germany because of this persistent issue with hot wild boars And yeah, I think the big the big thing that is The driving factor is that it because of the truffles So you have the acorns you have the the fruit the fruits that are in the trees those Get all of the cesium into them. They fall into the ground They get into the soil and then they like sit there and they bio accumulate and then the boar Bio accumulate more and more because they're eating these sources that are containing lots And so it's over the years forget the boys. What about the truffle trade? We should maybe we shouldn't be eating truffles from southern Truffle ice cream And I'm over here, you know Denmark has it someplace. I don't know where has a border Eutlin has a border with Germany. It's right. That's where the truffles come from But that's north. It's not in the south I don't know where the truffles come from. You think it's just like oh We're a small village across the border can only trade with the small village next to it Very don't eat the Bavarian boar. No Bavarian boar. No Bavarian truffle truffles. It's a very But now the question is you know what's happening if there's accidental release of nuclear weapons in what's happening with Ukraine and Russia and How long are these wild boar going to be hot? Just how long oh 40,000 years Yeah radio waves then move round and stuff Like radiation it's radiation electromagnetic radiation. What do we need to know about it? Yeah, well Sort of interesting. I mean it this this story isn't all that It's one of those things that I just didn't know it turns out that radio waves emitted by radio television broadcast and seabee seabee radio can disrupt the magnetic compass of migratory birds Not something I was aware of So this is a this team of researchers. Aren't they previously demonstrated way back in 2014 that electro smog human-made electromagnetic noise in the AM radio waveband and That's the same thing. I can't use the word smog for electromagnetic. Wait, isn't smog an acronym Anyway, keep going fine. I'm being finicky The so that this is also generated these waves generated by household appliances They they impair migratory birds ability to use Earth's magnetic fields for orientation So they posit that this weak electrosmog Is actually a pretty good name for a band I love it. Yeah, it's just me it'd be songs from the band smog but with light electronic beats Weak very very weak So weak electrosmog totally harmless to humans affects the complex quantum physical processes in certain cells and the retinas of migratory birds which enabled them to navigate With the help of Earth's relatively weak magnetic field It also affects free flying free flying birds such as long-distance migratory birds Whose numbers have been mysteriously declining for some time for unknown unclear reasons So this is sort of a Kind of looks like a null result study The scientists had a prediction at what cutoff frequency The interference would be in somewhere between 120 and 220 megahertz in the very high frequency range They tested some narrow bands 140 to 150 and 235 to 245 Very narrow bands in that range and found nothing. Okay They found nothing So here's the the question what was in what is impacting the birds is a different frequency range What did they actually Still they're still saying is all still fits with our theory because They didn't test the full range of where they thought it would be But what they have shown Which is I think reassuring Which is that mobile communication networks? Do not impair bird magnetic sense That's good. So the the 2.4 What is it 2.4 kilohertz that we're at or five point whatever five point High-frequency waves. Yeah, do not affect the compass sense at all. So that's that's really good to know that we're not Making things worse, but that actually as we go to digital and streaming and Put less maybe broadcast waves out there As as even radio has become digital for a lot of you know satellite or what have you We start to be a little bit quieter, which would be good for the birds because we'll stop Interfering with their whole ability to navigate, but aren't we putting these different free? I mean Technologically, aren't we putting all these different frequencies to different uses? It's like, okay, we're gonna like push it You've been reserved for this technology for communications for radio for television, whatever it is, but It's not like we're gonna we're stopping using them like they're just Becoming different, right? It's a great question. I don't know that we have Been able to reutilize it yet. So there are still am radio stations You can't just you can't just start using Broadcast wavelengths to do yet. There's still they're still not gonna let you do pump up the jams or whatever that What was it? What was that? Movie from the night 80s 90s pump. I didn't watch me pump up the volume. Was that what it was? Somebody in the chat will get it I didn't watch Christian Slater and that the Slater movie What? Yeah, okay, we're gonna talk about this one later, but okay Started to watch one and I was like this this guy's gonna do a Jack Nicholson impression for how long Is he playing a young Jack Nicholson? No, he's supposed to be his own character. Oh, forget it I can't sit So So anyway, as we yeah, so yeah, like there is a chance that we could start to reutilize all of these broadcast Frequencies for other stuff. I didn't even think of that, but at the moment Because they're already slotted for television or radio. I don't think that they've I don't think we're we Hashed them resorted and handed them out for other for other uses yet. Yeah, it also has to do with amplitude, too So like how much power is in the signal? So if it's like a really light signal It's the magnetic interference is probably not going to be that strong But if it's a big signal then that might have something to do with it as well Yeah, and then we're gonna find out that Starlink has bought all those frequencies and then all the It'll kill all the birds, but we'll have the Wi-Fi on the go high-speed Wi-Fi And we will be stuck within our self-reflecting echo chamber of earth Without any birds. I don't like it Okay, so basically this study comes down to There is an effect, but we don't know what it is and what we have published is not it More research is needed Yes, more research is needed more research is always needed after a good study if you do a terrible study Then it's like, yeah, maybe we don't need to be looking into that because this study was awful Like why would we want more of that but if you did a great study great research like the You know even the that awful Actually a perfect example is as much as I've been a fan of Lieberger and the the Naledi finds and I'm very Enthusiastic about everything that's found there. I saw the I saw the Netflix special and I now think Lieberger needs to step away completely from that site and let Let the professionals in let the professional let let an entirely different crew professionals go in there and do some work because I Don't know how much of it was set up for Hollywood, but at some point he was illustrating how you can See your way into a cave with lighting small fires And if it actually isn't the Naledi cave in which they're doing that then My mind would explode because that's what they made it look like if it was a setup somewhere else they don't explain it and they should have and then a Lot of it a lot of it actually triggered my BS detector even though I know the finds are all legit. It's some of it just like I'm finally burgers Part of it is that's exactly where his funding has been his funding has been from National Geographic his funding has been from selling story of Anthropology not an academic backing not a research fund that says here go do your research publish a bunch of dry Academic work. He's getting funded by media, which is the only thing that's been funding his work in South Africa So like I get that like that I make every apology if we leave burgers Approach because it has to be that because that's where the money is coming from to do the work He's he's he grew up on Indiana Jones, and he's like hey, why not me too? I could do that I got the showmanship. I could be there. Let's do that Have had to learn it though because that's where the money is coming from To do the work and and and so it's going to be a different reveal than other things however at this point You need to step away and that and that people who don't have the conclusion driven story in mind Take over That's gonna be helpful, but again, this is a relatively new find we might be talking about this 50 years from now It's still debating it We could be and who and with the questions of this bird stuff as well. It is This is still going to be debated and there's some interesting comments in the chat right now We leave green cure says could it be the amplitude modulation? That's the issue not the particular frequency There's you know a lot of things that could potentially be Part of the how the magnetic field is disrupted You know because if it is just you know Our household appliances all that kind of stuff I mean there should be a much bigger problem than what we've already seen and as we have been seeing the decrease in usage of These particular frequencies for our radio and our television. We should be seeing the bird migration coming back That going down and have maybe it would be balancing it out. I don't know but You say don't let's start don't list don't just starlink either Can only stream twist because of starlink in the boonies. So shoo-boo Totally worth it then. Yeah, actually I thought the most important interesting part of that study is the fact that it's a Mechanical mechanism within the retinas of birds that allows this is Just Yeah, this is like the thing for me forever that I'm like We've been following this little rabbit hole for over 20, you know Like what's going on with the bird migration and it keeps getting these it could be this it could be that and now it's like Oh, it's you know quantum electromechanical Yes Well human eyes apparently aren't quite as good as AI is Yeah, I just did that new research out of the University of Zurich has pitted AI Drones or a AI piloted drones Against human piloted drones was just published in nature this last week and the researchers were Put together what they call their Swift system this AI is machine learning and It's kind of what in the press release. They're like, hey, remember when Gary Kasparov finally lost in chess to artificial intelligence well They've they've done that here with these this system called Swift that was AI training by learning on its own it played a Number of simulated drone races or piloted a drone in a simulation a number of times in a simulated Race and then the researchers once the drone once the AI was Good enough they put the AI into the ring actually piloting drones against champion drone pilots they And these drone pilots they they look like kids, but Thomas bit mama Marvin shipper and Alex Vanover are each world champions in the world of Drone racing and when this drone But that's totally awesome. It's totally it's totally a thing and these these human pilots went up against the AI pilots and in a track covered That was about 25 square meters They had seven square gates that had to be passed through in a particular order to complete a lap There were some maneuvers and that they had to Do as well acrobatic stuff like rolling the drone and doing half of an s at full speed They did find That swift achieved the fastest fastest time faster than all of the human pilots however when they shifted the Conditions that the race took place in so changed the lighting changed the this the Changed the stage or the gates in any way suddenly the AI was not adaptable and was unable to Perform as well as the humans. So the humans were quick to adapt to new situations Although in the kind of training situation that was given to the AI the AI dominated with a faster time well like okay, but If you know the idea that you've Written your have a program for the best possible way to run the race and and then you execute the program Even if you've self-learned it Seems logical you view you Like that they would Find the quickest route in the quickest time eventually and then be able to repeat it If just by moving that the course around a little bit like a Rubik's Cube, right? You learn just the how to do a Rubik's Cube and you get your fast time, right? Yeah, I get I Can't do Smash it with a hammer and put it back together really fast But if by moving the course a little bit changing the course you've thrown them out of the contention even then It just was a program that was being executed to all the repeat Yeah, so I think that's the that's the interesting part of this that is you know this Swift Was it's an autonomous autonomous system that was trained in Simulation so that they wouldn't destroy a bunch of drones in their practice rounds getting up to the point But the fact that Pre-planning but it's also a system that is supposed to be a learnings natural learning system where learns from errors and Improves and you would think that that kind of learning could allow for a little bit of Adaptability but apparently the system with that this Swiss Swift uses is Not adaptable enough. It's not learning based enough and more probably based on algorithms then would be otherwise advisable for a bully autonomous actually iteratable Adaptable system now to be fair The AI's point It's an infant Yeah, baby without without a stable memory database meaning Meaning that if if If you go from this AI to a different AI to a different AI system somewhere else doing different tasks, they're all gonna act like infants Once this is AI intelligence is consolidated to one learning database that can handle all of the things and track them and improve then this will be There'll be no chance for humans not at all the reaction time is much faster and the way that the visual system and the computer system Work and if you know the speed at which Electrons travel down wires as opposed to our neurochemical System and the speed of reaction times of humans. There's a bit of a difference there But yeah, I wonder, you know, I wonder what the future will bring when it comes to AI pilots And how it's all gonna really come together and if Blair would be we're here. I know she would be like no uh-uh and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna ride in an AI drone taxi and I'm not gonna ride in an AI car I'm not gonna know So and far as far as the air tax is what Blair would say You're already flying on AI a little bit Yeah, the unmanned aerial vehicles. We're already doing that a bit. Mm-hmm. They are working into that system entirely so it's a it's a fascinating step here to pit human AI drone racing champions against a an autonomous AI drone pilot I think it's a kind of on the same level of the Alpha go playing against the grandmasters in the game of go of the the original I guess it was Was it alpha I don't remember the name of the AI but that went up against Gary Kasparov and others This is you know a net the next step in a different system, but also Deep blue I don't remember There's so many of them But we're still here and we're not AI and you're not AI as far as I know and You know if you are AI and we're AI then hey AI how's it going? You know what we really are though We are twists this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of science-filled Discussion and if you're enjoying the show I do hope that you are telling your friends all about it sharing the links Making sure that everybody knows all about twists because that's what we need to need your help to do and If you do want to help keep twists going week after week Please go over to our twist page click on the patreon link and become part of our patreon Support community ten dollars and more and we will thank you by name at the end of the show Coming on back for some more twists right now it's time for Justin's animal corner With Justin hey, that's me Hey Justin this Justin Hacking animal communication with AI Ever wonder what the birds are talking about the ease dropping on bees sound intriguing Want to know what your cat really thinks of you Researchers the answer to that last one isn't and no no, I don't I'm just happy this is from the school of zoology School of Neuroscience and Tel Aviv University Israel have looked into what it would take for AI to understand non-human animal communication In an essay that they're calling this the AI and dr. Doolittle challenge They published in current biology. They take on what the obstacles would be for AI to actually translate language and converse with Animals so dr. Doolittle for those of you who aren't familiar with the multiple Hollywood re-adaptions he did a lot but and There's a segment of the story where This parrot this West African parrot named Polynesia Suggests that animals are Always speaking. It's just a different language stating if I say Polly wants a cracker. You understand me But here this good gracious cries the doctor. I'm assuming is dr. Doolittle What does that mean? That means is the porridge hot yet in bird language okay, so That's unfortunately not how it's not likely to be That there's just a syntax, you know a universal translator for animals. Yeah There's multiple communication factors are gonna be required to converse with the animal world The first limiting challenge is distinguishing the context of an animal communication So we can already record and mimic to some degree Animal communications we've talked about in the show before Robotic frogs attracting Other frogs for mating attempts. There was the the robotic bee that was able to do the wackle dance Well enough to tell bees where to go in a field and get them to follow the instructions of the waggle dance Like we we've deconstructed that They you know, we can do like we can recognize like a mating call versus an alert call And when we play these back to different animals, we get the responses that we might expect but still there's like quite a bit of a Golf in communication there So, you know, we're looking at we're looking at AI. They saying could generate the right sounds the way that it's kind of like reading the electrical signals in our brains and We're figuring out like what the signals in our brains are actually saying or seeing or whatever AI We're using AI to get them get rid of the noise and figure things out Yeah, well, they so they saying that the AI could generate say the song of a specific bird that sounds like the bird But the thing is they don't know whether that song will be telling the bird that it's It's trying to establish territory attract a male or if it's making a vocalization Just convey something else entirely the The chances are that it will make a Sound that the bird will hear a song that are another bird of the species will hear and say hey, that seems familiar that's probably One of one of my kind of birds. That's why I'm paying attention to it. I have no idea what it means Right, it sounds similar Should I go check it out? But I don't know check it out might might you know make them want to like Might listen to responsive. Ah, it's some foreign bird. I got to get it out of my territory So part of the problem is in studying you need to get natural responses Which kind of makes it very difficult in the lab a lot of the ways that we get animals to do things in the lab Is that we train them? You know we trained you get a reward and you push a button or you make a sound you get you don't want to do that if you're trying to create the Nature communicator translator universal translate device right you want wild Type so now you got to take your AI and you got to have cameras out in the wild and they have to Wild of a situation is possible an ethological study. It's they've got to do observations across Body language Audio a range of audio beyond human hearing and you may need chemical Right, you might need scent hormone Sensors as well. So you the real problem is the Giant range of animal communication even within a single animal That would be required to really track all of the all of the communication that's taking place because it's not just vocal humans have become We do a lot of body language But we also Relying heavily on vocal because we couldn't start a language that can kind of infer all sorts of meaning and And intent through right, but there's there's the sound of it. There's the frequency. There's syntax There's so many aspects of our grammar So nobody ever I've never heard anybody say it too like oh Kiki I I see what you're trying to tell me I think but I can't smell it. Can you produce a scent that is Concert with your mate. No, right, but this happens in the animal kingdom all the time So that's one another one is animal communication is likely very restricted in terms of context There's going to be a lot of alarm and courtship And and that sort of thing so food and yeah food So so chances are if we get this decoded say we create the ai translator And we we put it out or we'll put the microphone out our window and we can finally listen to the birds And they're you know food emoji Angry face sad face plant emoji all day long Like do we really need to know this? Do we really need to know how often? The birds and the tree are horny I mean we already kind of but we already do that kind of we don't need ai We already do playback experiments where we go into the wild and we play an alarm call for a certain species and then you have The same species or others and you see how species around react and we have lots of these we do Trapping experiments and stuff where we you know lure other animals or birds in to an area with mating calls or with territorial defense calls or there's Yeah, there's we already do a lot of that but it's not ai we've gone and we've recorded the sounds of birds And then we play them back to other birds Yeah, but we don't always know what we're saying though. Do we like are we saying hot or are we saying? We've we've we have figured some of that stuff out. Yeah. I mean, that's what they've Yeah, what is it them meek rats meerkats, whatever they're called Uh, they have some vocalizations that mean hawk and some that mean coyote Like they they actually have some some direct lingwood language. This is pretty impressive So the potential benefits Of a successful campaign of ai living animal communication Farm animals would actually be a very interesting one. So you could distinguish mood or Disposition of farm animals that might help know when they're getting sick You would understand that they're always like animal farm animal farm Yeah Understanding chatter in a protected forest area You know, if you understand bird chatter and suddenly you're like ai detectors go off that there's an Uh, abnormal amount of alert or alarm going on You might you might be know that it might be an early fire detector for california wildfires If you could tell when the birds were screaming fire fire like They're gonna be pretty huge and then of course the highest use is psychology experiments on mice could Significantly improve If the mice were able to self report things from their own perspective without human science bias Yeah, hello rats of nim, right? Yeah, um, yeah, I mean just thinking about birds specifically I mean there was a study recently that suggests that birds Can detect when uh, hurricanes are forming and choose different flight paths because of the the changes in air pressure and uh magnetic fields and and All sorts of things, but maybe they communicate that to each other So maybe you know as we talk about cats and other animals potentially being Earthquake detectors fire detectors, you know letting us know what's happening, but Yeah, I being able to talk to dolphins might be great Actually being able to talk to our dogs And talk to talk to orca find out if they're really mad at us or if they're just Why do you want to eat the boats? Yes And I think actually like something like something like, uh An orca Might be a really good contender for for this kind of communication Or dolphin You know In that they have a tremendous amount of Sounds that they make in utterances that you know an AI might be might do a much better job at first interpreting But also in reproducing in a somewhat real time to have Yeah, I mean if we ever if we ever do make contact with aliens Having the universal translator already built and ready to go You don't want to you don't want to start trying to just You know wing it I need to get first contact and you didn't prepare at all You brought nothing Hopefully they want their translator No, I'm gonna have to go watch uh, what is the the movie? Um There's the one movie uh that I always um with the aliens and the slappy tentacles and And That one great that great movie with the slappy tentacle aliens And the red-haired actress that she plays a translator she goes and Welcome to my brain everyone. So Excalibur's Babelfish that is the that is the way things are done and hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. It's a little babelfish goes in here. I like the uh Uh farscape Farscape takes care of it with I think some sort of little nano translators that get injected Like like those little robots realize that the human isn't making any sense. So they inject him with these little things that go into his brain Arrival yes, kevin reardon and galaxy quest is another one, but that wasn't the movie I was talking about with this Alien movie with the slappy tentacle thing kevin reardon's got it arrival With amy adam's the red-haired actress I have no idea what that movie is now. I have to go look it up. Was it from the 90s? No Because I didn't watch movies in the 90s. When was this movie? Oh, no, it's like 2000 some things. Oh, well that might still be in the category wasn't watching movies Okay, do cats watch movies? Do they like it? We can't ask them, but What are they like yet? But one day with the advent All right, another headline to caught my eye today headline reads why do cats love tuna so much? And my gut reaction was like duh Because they're cats We're right. Hello. Okay Now I would I really want to know the answer to this kevin Justin's dying for a moment here. Look, we're gonna I want you all to imagine What is it more than just cats being cats that makes them like tuna? What is it? What so I guess it's such a given to me the cats love tuna That I've never given a second thought other than it's a cat. So of course you know, uh Birds gotta fly fish gotta swim cats gotta eat tuna It's just the way the world is up is up down is down. I don't need a theory of gravity But but do we for cats so? So it's there's less obvious reason I Might come down to a long history of human cohabitation and the freakish taste buds Of cats. This is pulled from a story by david grim written for science. There's a link to in the show notes Scientists report that cat taste buds contain the receptors needed to detect unami That is the savory deep flavor of various meats One of the five. It's delicious. It's a soy flavor. Yeah Yeah, so you got the sweet sour salty and bitter and then umami Love it. It's one of my favorite what you expect any self-respecting carnivore to have a taste for team also found that these cat receptors are uniquely tuned to the molecules found in high concentrations in tuna So one of the implications of this Uh, somebody's not involved in the study. Yusuke Tota is quoted here saying this could be useful and creating medicines or foods that are better tasting for the for the cats Get rid of the berry flavored Cat medicine. That's why your cats. They're so resistant They don't like don't eat sweet things. No So they apparently can't taste sugar. They completely lack the proteins for sensing sugars Yep There's no sugar in meat. So Evolutionarily Just haven't needed it also turns out they don't have they don't taste bitters as strongly as humans They don't have interesting they just cats just want the meats That's it. Right. That's what they're looking for So they sequenced proteins on from the taste buds of a cat and found Cats have all the molecular machinery needed to detect Umami researchers compared the protein sequences encoded by these genes with those of humans However, they found a striking difference two critical sites that allow human receptors to bind to Glutamic and aspirinic acid the main amino acids that activate umami taste in people These were actually muted in cats And at first they're like, whoa, wait a sec. Maybe maybe cats don't taste this we've had they're just Want the taste of meat because they're they're mean or something No So they expose exposed the cells a variety of amino acids and nucleotides Cells did respond to umami but with the twist and people amino acids bind first to the nucleotides Amplify their response but in cats the nucleotides activated the receptor and the amino acids further boosted it Sort of the reverse of what's happening humans anyway 25 cats You're part of a taste test They weren't they weren't on the menu. They were the ones getting to do the tasting In a series of trials they presented the felines with bowls of water with each Various combination of amino acids nucleotides or just water alone the cats showed a strong preference for bowls containing molecules found in umami rich foods Suggesting this flavor above all of Above the others was a primary Motivator for cats. However, they showed particular preference for bowls containing histidine and inocene monophosphate compounds that are particularly high levels in tuna So it's as though cats are specifically tuned To seek out tuna above other meats even Interesting because domestic cats evolved In the deserts of the middle east about 10,000 years ago or so We're fish of any kind. We're pretty unlikely to be on the menu Is so how is it? I I said it so it must be I read it. So I believe it. So first of all, I believe anything I read Secondly uh Yeah The cat the little cats that's a desert adaptation. You know, you don't There were no packs of wild domestic cats roaming the jungles the tundra in africa Like they just no these are little feral desert creatures That uh, we're small in stature because they probably didn't get much water and Had to chase desert mice around However Is recently is 1500 years ago There are depictions of cats eating fish in the art of ancient egypt By the middle ages felines In some middle eastern ports were consuming large quantities of fish including tuna And they weren't like being driven away because these cats were also keeping rats away from the areas in which they were You know any kind of vermin. Yeah Uh-huh Cats jump on a cockroach too tuna fed tomcats They think likely had a bigger impact on the gene pool Of cats going forward as they would have had a tremendous advantage over your typical desert rodent chasing cats So Of a recent adaptation then something that yeah That's cool So this is this is new it's like uh being like humans being able to uh drink milk Any number of our our newer adaptations, but this is i think I wonder how long it'll stick around given that we give cats such a varied diet diet now and As someone in the chat room is saying their cat likes broccoli um My cat'll eat tortilla chips and cheese if she's given a chance Your cats are freaks. So I I haven't had I haven't had cats in a really long time, but the cats and when I had cats I I think I mostly fed them tuna Partly because I don't forget to partly because I love tuna. It's like one of my favorites and and also partly because I'm horrible Pet owner and would always forget to buy like cat food Oh, yeah, and so the only thing you have then is tuna I have its tuna and so as soon as you put the little can opener and get the little turn in there Cats come running in they're like Matty And uh, and yeah, so my cat when I had cats they eat a lot they had a lot of tuna And they did absolutely So it all this story all fits But actually uh to your point How long will it last? It'll probably stay because what they're realizing is Hey, there's actually just a few chemical ingredient additives that we can make to this sawdust that we've been feeding cats for, you know 50 years and it will taste like tuna it'll have those those flavonoids of tuna so they can make properly tuna and and I think They have to have the right nutrients though sick. Yeah, they're still like they're gonna say oh make it healthy Yeah, of course. They're gonna make it healthy. I mean, I'm not saying that they wouldn't do that That's not cat food isn't sawdust. They they actually do a lot of work in uh getting the right amino acids into Into cat foods because they can only break down ones of certain sizes because they're weird freakish digestive system That's missing enzymes that all the rest of mammals have Because which is why they get tea gondia also kind of like a panda. Hmm. So they have to have sort of specially formulated Uh, you know acids in their foods. It's actually quite a bit of science goes into formulating cat food properly But if they could add this thing that makes it taste really good to them Then that might not go away, right? They might be able to keep that Uh, although they're not really being naturally selected on it anymore. Yeah We'll see what happens. Are they going to be eating tuna flavored? Whatever from the cat food simulator in the future Let's see Let's see what they need What about neanderthals and the bees? Tell me your last story Is this the last one? Uh, oh the shanadar cave in the Zagros mountains the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq So this is this is where Sanar cave is where they found I think it's it was initially eight But maybe now it's 10 could even be more neanderthal remains And this is where back in the 1950s Uh German name Ralph Sellecky proposed that Neanderthals buried their dead Not only did they bury their dead They buried them potentially on a A mat of flowers Because he found in this cave that some of the neanderthal remains were buried and they found flower pollen In and amongst the the soil of the of the burial clumps lumps areas with a high high amount of pollen and there's been First of all like that. They don't bury their dead. You're ridiculous. This is a brutish neanderthal All right Sellecky didn't didn't buy that. He's like, well, I'm you know, here's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that this is a burial I'm seeing that they're positioned in a certain way So they were placed here and covered up and I've got this flower pollen. So she suggested that maybe neanderthals We're a little bit more Human Oh, I hate to say it that way, but we're less brutish Although they were probably still extremely brutish. I mean come on. That's how you survive back now. You got to be brutish But that they were more capable of compassion Empathy and had more complex behaviors than they'd been given credit. Yeah So this has been debated. This has been attacked Over the years. There's another this is also the cave where they found the gentleman The gentleman the neanderthal remains that has the the head injury, um, I think the left side And it looks like it's probably blind in the left eye and didn't have the use of its right leg or right arm As a result of this head injury but survived for many many many many years with these injuries Which also suggested community care that this Individual would not have been able to survive on its own but would have been Cared for by a community of neanderthals. So there's a lot of signs in this case Of this sort of thoughtful The compassionate neanderthal okay so 50 years 70 years whatever people trying to discount that Later and the burial hypothesis stands these were buried neanderthals even more evidence as sort of Been accumulated to show that these were intentional burials Uh things like getting rid of the idea that the cave could have collapsed on top of them and that's why they were covered The positioning could have been from a drainage ditch. That was it's kind of so So over the years That has that has stood However, uh team of researchers from Liverpool John Moores University University of London On the UK collaborate collaborated to Reinvestigate the flower burial aspect And their conclusion is that it was likely bees Wait, what what do you mean bees bees? What did the bees do? Oh We will wait one moment while Justin clears his throat I am dying of bees over here so So how can how could it be bees? so in this cave today there are single burrowing bees that burrow down in nest In these and into the into the earth They tend to do so in the untrampled portions of the cave where people haven't been walking back and forth to this archaeological dig site And the researchers notice this and one of the things that's always been a mystery Uh about the pond deposits is Slecky himself noted a lot of his workers like to carry flowers and their belts and that could have introduced it So there's a lot of concern that the original excavation site was contaminated And somehow over the years they sort of ruled that They'd ruled that out like no that can't be because we've dug down deeper and we found pollen And so it can't be us who have done it because we're still finding it right That that had gotten ruled out but What they think it now is that these bees likely took advantage of The original burial when the earth was disturbed And the neanderthals was laid to rest and covered up again that soil would have been ideal To burrow into and put you yeah a bit softer because it's already been disturbed and Yeah, another mystery has also been persisting in that the pollen that they find At least in contemporary climate those flowers don't all blossom at the same time Of year and so It would be hard to reconcile going out and gathering flowers for burial as at the time of death There is of course the possibility that the neanderthals were gathering flowers throughout the year And then when somebody died then they took their dried flowers off of the fire earth and right that's still That's still out there. Yeah, but But it wouldn't have been in at the time of death now bees on the other hand could use the same little nest over a growing season And that would account for the variety of pollen they found They did discover too that they did some excavating In the past they've actually found other neanderthals In that cave this team But they did some excavating and found that while it was sort of apparent to them on the surface These these nests these bean burrows When you go they found them going back in time in the excavation site and the further back you go The more difficult it is to recognize that it's a bee burrow like the outline they say actually is pretty pretty resistant the little Bullet shaped cone of The the nest it fills in with dirt and ash over time Or sort of ash colored dirt But they also realized like they're using this artificial lighting and different thing That that wasn't available when the initial Excavations went on in the 50s and 60s Right, so they're able to highlight some stuff that wasn't able to be seen. So they now think Uh, it wasn't a bed of flowers that the neanderthals were put to rest on but it was likely Opportunistic nesting bees depositing pollen in the soil Which means though because now Well, is it though because maybe they were maybe they were uh flesh eating bees Uh, they're not flesh eating bees I don't know if those flesh eating bees are still pollinators, but here's the here's the thing When slecky proposed that it was flowers He got pushback Actually burial too the flowers was just kind of a part of it but the burial was even heavily contested because neanderthals are unintelligent brutes But now we know that's not so so it could still be burial and bees It could and it's still yeah, so they kind of leave the door open like There's there's there's some Scenarios in which it could still be neanderthals, but look the original conclusions outlined in the slecky's hypothesis Was for a less primitive more intelligent advanced neanderthal Even if this is just bees since his time of discovery since the there have been We've now understand now understand that neanderthals did cave paintings and etchings carved wooden Spears for throwing fashion jewelry out of eagle talons and medicine and ivory. They had uh, What is it we were talking about they uh Arranged large animal skulls around a fire hearth. We were talking about that one. Yeah few months back Definitely complex fire making kits. They made birch tar a synthetic adhesive that they had to distill in this specific type of fire pit And they were charming enough to interbreed with the ancestors of most current humans so In the time now you think about it you go Oh, and they threw some flowers into a gravesite But at the time it was novel and maybe it led the way to Looking at neanderthals as more culturally complex. I really think it did. I think that It was it was the moment in which selecky's Hypothesis changed the mindset of everybody looking at neanderthal sites And they start and that's when the discovery started to come about. We're like, hey This cave is actually too old to have been modern man making this fire or my goodness You know the little holes in those bits of bone And ivory maybe we should look at them again. Maybe they're not all in accident or whatever it was, right? um So yeah, I think it may be Uh, these burrowing bees that changed the opinions Of researchers looking at neanderthals But maybe there were flowers too. Who knows? But it's very possible. Yeah, I I love that and you know whether or not The original study is now, you know falsified or they're different. This is how science advances But it's an interesting thing that uh, you know, maybe Just looking at it differently led the way which is kind of what we need sometimes I have a couple of stories for the end of the show here my Second to last story is a little baddie If you don't believe me. No, I'm not gonna go to bees. It's all about bats and their brains and you already did So when you make a bad pun Out loud, why can't I double down? You can't then say that you're not going to do it If you've already made it to the point Did you didn't hear? Maybe there was if there was more to it. Okay, never mind. I'm sorry I was punning off of your bee story Justin I got that but then you did the pun and then you said I'm not going to do a pun But it was after the pun. That's what I'm just saying Your guy can't do a pun and then say you're not going to do a pun. It's too late puns out of the bag It's not even a pun. Don't laugh. You can't laugh it. That's not even funny Oops, I spilled my bag of puns. There's just Back in the bag That was a stinky joke, okay Uh, let's talk about bats. Like I said bat brains. I love the bat brains and in this particular study out of university of california berkeley in Yards of the neuro bat lab researchers for years Have been studying How the bat brain works how a particular area of the brain known as the hippocampus works We know a hippocampus is important for spatial navigation In humans, it's also we know important for memory consolidation and so the researchers have been kind of digging in in bats, which is fascinating because Unlike mice and rats which navigate in two dimensional space, you know Basically, like I'm going to walk across the floor Bats are like I'm going to free fly through three dimensional space and I'm echo locating and I'm paying attention to the moth food and my con specific other bat friends and What's going on in the cave here? So there's a lot going on for bat navigation spatial awareness and other things, uh, so the researchers over the years have, uh Been able to investigate using wireless neural recording and flat a flight tracking technology to figure out how The bats neural activity often can sync up when they socialize So similar to the way that like if you're having a conversation with somebody else your brain's kind of Synchronized because you're expecting what someone else is going to say and you know So there's a synchronization And that happens in bats as well how activity in the frontal cortex cortex helps bats Identify themselves versus other bats when they're squeaking at each other and echo locating And then also that the hippocampus can map entire flight trajectories not just specific locations Now this new study They're like, but what about The social interactions when they're flying around and they're like heading home and they're like, oh, let's go into the cave And where where my friends at? How do I find my friends and what's happening there? They did free flying flight tracking and neural, uh activity recording on bats that were Just held in one place and also while bats were free flying around the room They would record from one bat at a time while there were a number of bats in the space and try and and the the We're able to establish that there is a relationship between the neural activity in the hippocampus and not just The bats location But the location of other bats and how those bats move around in a space and they determined There are specific neurons Dispursed through the bat hippocampus not all clustered together but kind of throughout that Like recognize their friends and are more likely to like track what their friends are doing and where their friends are in a space versus bats that aren't necessarily like their best friends so not only are bats hippocampus is Taking a look at what's in you know What what they're doing for spatial navigation. It's also paying attention to What other bats are doing for spatial navigation? You know, you know, I would love for the this study to To follow up with Is do the same research? Maybe not in the exact same way with nba players Oh for basketball games Yeah, you know like that is that is uh There's been like the brain connectivity for basketball as can It's higher much the Brain connectivity amongst nba players is some of the highest you'll find in humans I think so because of the team the the way the team works together. Yeah team works together What about soccer or football players, right? So let's start with a with a football player European European soccer European soccer even then Even then there's probably yeah, it's probably getting into that range, but the nba is fast-paced Body's moving always close together. So they're constantly navigating a pretty close space They have aerial trajectories that they have to be tracking Friend info that they have to be tracking somebody So for some report or study on this a long time ago that showed the highest connectivity that they found was in I don't know if they didn't look at soccer players, but the highest human brain connectivity that they found was in nba players and Uh taxi drivers in london Right. So the taxi driver stuff is really interesting because taxi drivers That's one of like the first studies With people and looking at the size of the hippocampus with relation to the amount of spatial knowledge and awareness that individuals have That's one of like the first studies that that were beyond just looking at rats and mice that actually was like Oh the hippocampus Seems to be bigger and or have a denser cellular structure or be more active in london taxi drivers than in just a Country driver basketball players. Yeah And so so this I think though is like As opposed to just I know where I am in the city and I know what's happening here What you're saying with the nba players It would also be the equivalent of the nba the nba players Knowing exactly where their teammates are and knowing You know the and they're being cells firing in their brain that were specifically tuned to pay attention I think that's the other aspect of a taxi driver too. Those you're navigating traffic like london is not built for cars and It's built for horse and carriage and they've put a bunch of cars in there and They're all driving by the way on the wrong side of the road Oh really And they have to look out for They wouldn't agree for for uh tourist Who because everybody from around the world goes and visits there and none of them can really adapt To to looking the right way before crossing the street So there's constantly pedestrians wandering out into traffic looking the wrong way Yeah, like they have a lot of things that they have to track aside from just location, right? So they've also got all these Opposition things pedestrians and their cohorts of other cars that are navigating the traffic with them Yeah And I think this is a you know one of the interesting questions is you know, how does this uh, how does this balance with That paying it you know paying attention to just other humans around us You being spatially aware But just paying attention to where other people are and some people being hyper aware and being like Oh my gosh, that person's going to step into traffic or oh, hey I'm only paying attention to my friend ann or I only I only care that my friend ann is on the corner I'm not paying attention to anybody else around here. You know, and what is what is the difference in the hippocampal? behavior in that kind of spatial awareness You know the spatial awareness of somebody who's more likely to get into a car accident because they just don't pay attention Yeah, as well or the hippocampus doesn't react as well spatially or they're or they're one of those people that makes eye contact when they talk and can't help it Have you ever driven? Have you ever been in a car with somebody who's driving and they're one of these eye contact talkers? Oh, oh, I I I am very Anxious that I please put your eyes on the road. Please. Yep. No. I can't what are you saying? Were you wanting to keep my eyes on the road? Is that what you're saying? You can talk without making eye contact. It's fine. Keep your eyes on the road Yeah, but uh, it's so this is really just a fascinating new aspect of looking at the hippocampus in terms of social behavior, which hasn't really been investigated before was specifically investigated because of how interesting that Ecology is how their social dynamics, but there are lots of other animals that have Really interesting spatial and social behaviors as well birds with the murmurations fish that school together or even humans in crowds Or humans just driving what what is happening and what are the differences between friends strangers? How we pay attention or how our hippocampuses are set up to be able to pay attention to those Spatial aspects or social aspects of the spatial environment Which I think is an interesting new kind of way to look at look at the hippocampus, which hasn't really been discussed before So very exciting that hippocampus Super complex We need to learn more Let's go batty everyone It's a super double blue moon tonight Go batty We might also be going batty because our brains are full of micro plastics You eat them all and then they go into your gut and then they go into your blood and then they go to all your tissues According to a new study that has just been published Woo-hoo out of The University of Rhode Island Jamie Ross the professor There she and her team looked at neurobehavioral neurobehavioral and inflammatory responses to microplastic exposure and it's okay Inflammatory aspects of microplastic Exposure we've seen some of that evidence before but wait a minute in the brain How do would little plastics Get into the brain? well In this particular study that was just published in the international journal of molecular Sciences, they didn't look at humans. They did look at old and young mice and they They exposed these old and young mice to microplastics Three weeks of exposure water that was created was treated with Florescently labeled pristine polystyrene Microplastics, so fluorescent labels allow the researchers to then track these microplastics little tiny polystyrene Beads or polymers That and figure out where they went throughout the body They did tissue analyses with fluorescent in the immunohistochemistry Western blot and also qp cr And they found that just in the three weeks of short-term exposure. There were behavioral changes to the mice They started acting as if they had dementia and other behavioral issues and there were immune markers that got changed in the liver and brain tissues and it's differed On whether or not it was old mice or young mice that were being affected so in all of this the Microplastics, they were most surprised to actually find them fluorescently In the brain and in the liver the liver in the brain Not just immune markers being changed but actually in the brain fluorescently labeled Microplastics and so they questioned How they would get there because the blood-brain barrier is supposed to be not supposed to let it in Not supposed to let it in so there's a question as to whether or not there is toxicity that's occurring because of inflammation in other parts of the body that opens up the blood-brain barrier that allows these plastic bits to get into Uh these areas where you wouldn't normally find them um Uh Isn't it. I'm sorry. Uh, isn't the blood-brain barrier protected by like other than the tightness of cells isn't there like Some sort of reaction that it would take to Grab on to certain types of biological material trying to get in That maybe these plastics just aren't triggering so they're not going through as much of a defense Possibly but what they did find in the brain that is particularly Striking is that uh, it it caused a decrease in one of A glial cell protein. So it's a glial fibrillary acidic protein called gfap And this protein supports a lot of healthy processes gets it's it's part of the astrocytes and glial cell like garbage removal system So it decreases this protein that normally breaks things down and a decrease in this protein has also been associated with mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, neurodegenerative diseases and depression And so this is a very the link between the microplastics and the change in the gfap signaling Um, not good. It's something it's not good But it they're saying they want to understand how this is happening and specifically how these microplastics might be changing The brain's ability to maintain Homeostasis and maintain its healthy state so Yeah mice not humans it affected old mice more than young mice. So hey kids Enjoy your plastics while you can um If you're if you're older, you know, maybe we should you know stop using the straws and the Plastic bags and actually if you're older, it's probably too late. It's everywhere. It's in your brain already Ah Anyway, um, yes, we're full of plastics every single tissue they looked at If they're fluorescently labeled, uh, uh polystyrene second I thought we were just polluting the planet not ourselves Why is this? I'm not standing for this This is a yeah, well, you know one you're in that planet your organism that's in on the earth So if you the earth is in any way polluted chances are So are you and if you don't think it's true Ask the germans about their truffles Ask them about their hot boars How are your hot german boars? The wild hot wild German they're wild hot german boars Um, yeah, so the bio accumulation isn't Like a lot a lot, but it's there. They're finding it. They're finding these micro plastics there. They're finding changes in immune Signaling and this is not great everybody But uh, so there's a lot more work that definitely needs to be done to determine what this really means for aging for our use of plastics how plastics are influencing the environment and What we can do about that. So At what point do we need to start recycling? I think recycling humans. I don't want recycled humans Is that gonna that'll be like worse than the bio accumulation from the truffles in the wild boars already Sorry, you can't put that human there. It needs to go to the recycling bin Do you know what soilent green is justin? You know what soilent green is made of is it cats? No, no, it's not Why isn't it just cats? It's never cats. Why can't it be? Why is it people? I don't understand Because that's more horrifying to most people. I mean come on. It had to be people Oh my goodness, you know what this show is made of people Doing our audience are made up of people who we are thankful for and have we made it through another show full of science Unearthed by people and AI Hopefully all the stories that were reported on the show were written by people We try to go there for some Some degree Have we done this? Have we finished? I think we have although I just just quick note on what you just said I think I already did. Did I already talk about this? I was reading a story coverage of a study that was talking about a 15 billion year old virus Which I thought was I thought was pretty amazing because because Yeah, because Never mind the span of time of life on the planet is this planet itself isn't 15 The universe there we go the most part Well, it might be now, but it That might be older than the universe like 15 billion years was like a long time So I went and looked at the study to see what happened and apparently it was a notation of 15 What was it by or before before present year or something like this? So it was 15 year old The this virus had Circulated no somebody hadn't misinterpreted somebody didn't read it somebody Somebody had had the ai right there do their homework And yeah, I looked at this looks like a billion years right now. We'll put that b y. I'll put that B. Oh, whatever it is put it in the acronym for a million years ago. M. Y. A And then you know somebody was B Yeah, it was it was also it was notated weirdly in the in the paper Like whoever wrote the the original research paper did notate it kind of oddly, but it still wasn't a billion years No, I guarantee you of course it wasn't No 15 billion year old introduction of a virus and the pig's line. I think it was but the point is like It's starting to to sneak into all sorts of media now You can't just read Uh, you can't just read a news story What if we said Go to the original sources and it's pretty human Try to try and get involved in it We've said that for years though Yeah And there's a human name as the writer I think I think they edited it or Or they're not real like you always have to wonder now like they did they have a fake person that they have writing stories now This one I think is a a real science communication writer person but uh Written by fake science writer although although although Could be could be that the writer wrote a perfectly good paper turned it in and The editors said well, we'll just have the ai proof read this Could be could be ai editors Might not be the writer somebody missed it and it was a you know slip of the fingers on the keyboard It's a lack of having read it Yeah, if you're talking about a 15-billion euro virus, that's all anyway. I don't know how we got it You did that and it did yeah, but yes, it makes zero sense We have not been doing the show for 15 billion years either But we have made it to the end of our show for tonight And we want to thank everyone for joining us. Thanks to everyone in the chat room for being here and chatting during the show And yes, a shoe brood says go out after we're done here and see the super blue moon before you go to bed tonight If it's still up or justin maybe you missed it already. I don't know I saw a moon last night. It looked like a full moon. It didn't it wasn't blue. It was kind of orange I'm a whole different twice We times a blue moon I want to thank fata for the show notes and social media work that fata does I want to thank identity for for recording the show And I want to thank gourd arnlor and others for keeping the chat rooms a great place to hang out thank y'all for being here and being friendly and keeping it a place where we all feel safe and good to be and Of course, rachel. Thank you for editing the show and especially today because this is gonna be awful with all my coffee interruptions And I want to thank absolutely our patreon sponsors for their sponsorship of this show. 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with a wave of my hand and all in your way so everybody listen this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science science one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what i say may not represent your views but i've done that done all the calculations and it is now the aftershow oh the marked you have soylent green and it does not contain people are you sure about that it would never say it if it did i mean they can't the soylent product it did it used to contain shrimp or algae or something didn't it yes ah wheelie green thank you so much you you made an interesting comment so i was so glad i could feature it thanks for joining us from the uk yes even though justin will say that you the drive on the wrong side of the road oh pardon us excuse me i have my orangey water and then i have my fakie beer and it's all very good this evening yes oh final whistle fada says for those who like the european uh football soccer timbers have won go portland the timbers have won over the real salt lake two to one good job portland portland timbers is a great great football team thank you everyone for joining us for another show justin has disappeared i'm pretty sure he'll come back again maybe i don't know he didn't hang up so i'm guessing that he will oh there he is he's waving who and i am back you are back for a moment you know uh you were mentioned in the uh driving on the wrong side of the road in the uk so i visited london a little while ago and i've got these signs painted on it on every intersection every crosswalk you know look to your left or look to your right or whatever it says don't get run over look to your right that's what it says look to your right and i thought this is so ridiculous for all these stupid tourists yeah i can't figure out that's why they do it and i absolutely needed it can i tell you i absolutely almost walked into traffic several times but who are you hanging out with you're with roi as is roi but and there was there were people involved uh at some point it would be yeah but were you more likely to step into traffic after the pub or before uh probably uh probably probably before honestly actually this yeah it's a weird i don't want to get into it but there's an episode of wk rp which nobody knows that show is anymore it's about a radio station tv show about a radio station and what's a radio station even no yeah i used to love wk rp and they did a uh with oh what was this johnny what was johnny's name johnny uh booger um i just i just remember him yelling booger on air and like getting in trouble but uh but they did this they had the john johnny rocket johnny someone don't know go ahead somebody's gotta remember this somebody go into the somebody google it even i am googling worth it for this story johnny's fever thank you johnny's fever thank you johnny fever and and venus flytrap where and they were doing a a public service exercise where they had a a highway patrol person and they would take uh they would drink on the air and then do a reaction test and the more that johnny fever drank the quicker i feel like i hate to say this but i feel like on some level i share that i actually share and emulate that in terms of my head is much more on the swivel and i'm much more aware of my surroundings uh you know with a couple of social drinks in me which is if i'm you know completely going about my my sober normal life uh i'm more like stuck in my you know unsocial thinking yes mode and i'm not paying a lot of anything or anyone around me because i've got my own you know i'm all in my own head that's all we need to get social and inhibition you have to look so so so bats don't so i guess bats don't need to be drunk to be paying attention to their yeah so here we need to do is a hippocampal test of people who live in their heads a lot and so sober how they pay attention to people on their surroundings and how drunk like so what it because how it changes the hippocampal social activation social spatial awareness and i think it was trained on you know uh attending a lot of crowded parties in my youth where there's a lot of interesting conversations going on and wanting to be part of all of them at the same time yeah was associated with drinking yeah yeah oh no less nestman the turkey drop episode that was that was a funny show i'm gonna have to go find old episodes of that show and see you know you go look at stuff that that show i thought was really great commentary but of course everyone was stereotyped in a particular way as of course all the wonderful sitcoms are were yeah but you know how inappropriate the fact that he couldn't pronounce anything any last names that were spanish and in any way other than an anglo english yeah five sort of way like the golfer rodriguez what is he saying it's the chihuahua dog no it's kind of you know it's the it's the mel brook style of of comedy let's just make it really obvious we're making a statement about cult a society and culture and television was never subtle no never subtle i remember the turkey it was it it was not a good i mean it was a Thanksgiving promotion that just ended really bad really poorly yeah they would fly chubru said that he's gonna be starting a radio program on the local station in a couple of weeks that's awesome wait what yeah i missed it what is what's being said on youtube said i start my new radio show on our local station in a couple of weeks who chubru chubru yes nice congratulations i'm excited awesome that's fantastic i hope i hope you have a lot of fun no turkey drops okay and what's it gonna be about what's it gonna be about what are you talking goodness your bid you say booger what's your uh are you are you uh spinning did i spin records anymore are you playing music are you do is it a talk talk show what you do in chubru inquiring minds who've been radio people for a long time even though yeah we're still on the radio podcasters for longer but i do miss the days of being in the in the radio studio there's something something magical about not being seen and just being a disembodied voice on the radio i know what reruns of wkrp have most of the music removed due to music licensing problems that is ridiculous that just makes sense but i bet you have a lot of great talent is it so is it a musical thing are you gonna bring bring musicians on live music on the radio is under utilized underrated underutilized yes not underrated it's uh uh it's just underutilized like you just don't well it's hard to have a studio it's like kdbs had kbs had studio a studio b which had a room that they could set up a band and they had a home like mixer and everything it was great but they've got stuff now you know like um npr has the tiny desk performances and they do that because at npr even though npr is this massive org like they have to like fit this idea in somewhere and most of the time the studios that they use for their broadcasts are not set up for that big of a group of people for a band or for a live little studio audience now somebody who's explaining to me the uh uh oh the serious studio headquarters like we're all the serious podcasts we're coming from at one point in new york was just a series of cubicles of studio cubicles you know when all the cubicle goes on soundproofing and yeah but they're all they're basically these booths and so like all you could run into all the different podcasters sounded like kind of a fun thing but you go into your little room physically went to the location to do the things yep so often i mean and now here i am at home you're at home yeah which is also nice because there's no way that we can go to the same studio for the last decade right yeah whatever i know we've been able to do this because of the fact that we can be remote now and use the technology thank you technology as much as sometimes i shake my fist the technology that was a great appreciate uh who is the the oh gosh now i'm going to forget the name the uh quack psychologist is about to lose his his license not a philanthropist dr philanthropist yeah entrepreneur doctor or whatever the heck is dad's voice shit you did there which i can't even do it i can't even do the voice but you did it sounds exactly like that guy he's an awful human with jordan peterson thank you oh gosh that's who you sounded like really oh i'm so sorry no that's how he talks nowadays i'm gonna shake my fist at it not that's perfect yeah that's perfect that's how he talks so from now on we will be airing aftershows of dr kiki's jordan peterson impersonation show no dear dear goodness no not at all that doesn't no frazier yes well frazier was like that as well he was very stiff upper lip very mid-atlantic kind of accent oh yeah he kind of did do a uh mid-atlantic it was that fake action that's not really from anywhere yeah i need to go you need to go okay then i have kai started yeah kai started school this week so we are back to having to get up in the morning what so i think that's i think i think i got this cold there is child child's in school child's in school now bringing hug friends for papa little uninvited friends you look at you look at them and you say i did not invite you my little uninvited friends what are you doing yeah well what they say you know if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger unless it doesn't in which case it might just weaken you yeah wait you have to design off first though i can't do it oh we have no way to end it that's right okay say good morning justin that is really gonna freak me out like i now want to do i now like want to go grab some jordan peterson clips and have you do like different voiceovers for it it's better than a deep fake you know no one would say such a thing and everyone is saying so it's just my particular audience and boys who don't know any better and i just say things that reconfirm the 14 year old boys sensibility about the world and it's gotten me very popular so i continue doing so even though i'm getting unaccredited is that really happening now yeah it happened it's done done wow but i mean on the one hand he's making a big deal but he's also like yeah making millions of dollars being complete crud so i don't think yeah i think this is the thing that um you know so uh i know i was gonna say goodnight but um this is the thing that i think is important in science communication and there needs to be a distinction made that people like sign on to the responsibility of being transparent and as credible in the things that they talk about as possible and i think it is really important because there's a lot of misinformation out there and so you know there are researchers who've gone into the sensationalist aspect of things who muddy waters who don't who who don't talk about things and just to be clear if you're not familiar with Jordan Peterson he does much worse than that it's not even research it's not even a suggestion of research based at this point it's just idiocy and and dangerous i don't see the dangerous stuff and people believe it because there's a little nugget of truth in there somewhere not in him not for a long time at least but you're right we do need to be credible which is why next week i'm doing nothing but uap and alien stories because apparently there's a difference between credibility and having a big following and making a lot of money so i think i might are we doing it are we are we just gonna choose i think we should having a huge following are we gonna go having a huge following by saying a lot of suspect things with nuggets of truth from science and then make all these extrapolations that sound frightening or amazing or the difference is like when we extrapolate we're doing it as an obvious extrapolation it's like that we're speculating that's thinking and i'm not telling you that this thing that i am kind of processing and like kind of go through from a critical angle not saying that's the truth i'm saying oh look at this study and this is what they found so let's think about it this other way and we're talking about it but we're not no that's a science decision that's fine that's that's totally a reason why i'm still listening but but i'm thinking what we need is a set agenda that we stick to and try to make all of the science that we encounter fit the mold of this narrative we want to tell in a way that our audience finds self-fulfilling obviously if you're here now you're not the people that we're going to be looking for we're going to a a no we're not was it a greater denominator a lower threshold of uh of accuracy we're we're going to be switching up the show no no no no oh i can't wait for next week this is gonna be fun oh i can bring it i get i've told you i i told you again i've got this entire so there's this thing that i do okay i'm really you need to watch you need to watch uh who is it uh there's a new uh brian dunning and his team from the skeptics pot the uh yeah the skeptics podcast um he he did a new thing that's out on i think amazon prime videos it's like the alien movie they don't want you to see i think is what it's called or something but it's a documentary and it's actually pretty good i enjoyed it i'd love you to watch it i'll go check it out but thank you my version of all of that this sort of thing is to approach approach it actually the same way i would approach writing up a scientific study which is i just spend all doubt i just gonna believe everything that i read that's in there but i still have like maintained the critical eye so if the data that they present doesn't match the conclusion then i've got a question then i'll start to interrogate but essentially i'm just going to suspend all doubt and believe what the study is saying and tell something it's just triggered it so the idea would be if he is suspending all doubt and believing all the eyewitness accounts for whether it's ghosts or aliens or UFOs or Bigfoot or whatever it is and then see where that takes you yes and i've had quite a bit of fun with this um i'm what i might do what i might do is record it as a completely separate thing and then if we ever want to take a day off mm-hmm we could play just play it use it as a pre justin takes over twist for a day kind of an episode by the way i met i met the the person i won't say more than that i met the person mm-hmm uh who everybody refers to as they you you you met there there are a few these no i met the actual person who goes by they so i now know whenever somebody's like well you know what they say i know you know exactly who they're talking about but i am not i'm not gonna reveal more than that secret knowledge but i'll give hints i'll give hints in a little lengthy four hour podcast about how they are behind everything no they're not although i do have to admit i do have to admit in playing this game yeah i did find a i did find a really good reason for ancient aliens which was you can't tell kind of convoluted i can give you a really short version no no i'll save it for next week i'll save it for the after show next week okay save it because we've already we've already done that if you're if you're still curious a week from now i'll tell you that there's a sort of game theory future technology reason why why they have visited us visited us in the past which i didn't want to find because we're we're made of people because because we're no nothing to do with nothing to do with anything today they farmed us like uh no if it that's that's not it you know okay all right do i know do i know do you have time no it's only a half an hour or two i have to say the thing say good morning justin good morning justin say good night kiki good night kiki good night everyone thank you for joining us for another episode of this week in science we hope you'll be back again next week in the meantime stay safe stay healthier than justin stay curious and stay lucky