 Hello everyone and welcome to another episode recording of an episode of this week in science We are without a Justin Jackson fly at the moment don't know where he is other than somewhere in the state of Denmark and If he's sleeping he probably deserves it as he does have a newborn and I do know that he was probably up very late at night Denmark time Because I saw him in the twist rundown this afternoon Pacific time But we had a time change. What happened in Denmark? I have no idea Falling forward falling back. We are falling in love with science Blair. Are you ready to record a show? Yeah, I wonder if that's what it what it is. He thinks it's an hour earlier than it is Oh, I bet you he does That is totally what it is I think our international Collaboration has been taken down by the by the magic of Time-changing which apparently Congress has now voted to make daylight savings time. They did it the wrong way They did it the wrong way. Yeah, they let's please talk about it in the after show because I'm mad about it We we are definitely going to be talking about the wrongness of the laws that are being passed They did it backwards They did it backwards because they don't listen to the scientists They listen to the people who like having more sunlight in the summertime And then they forget about the fact that that's really not very good for people in the mornings and melatonin production and Setting your clock cycles. But anyway, I blame capitalism. We could talk more about that later But I think it's all they think more people go to restaurants and go shopping longer if it's light out At night that is absolutely What is that they don't care about the human body and how it wants it to be light out when you wake up? fine Well, maybe restaurants will open later and people can sleep an hour longer. I have no idea Extra vitamin D. I don't know about that. I don't think so No, no instead people are gonna get in accidents on the freeway because they're driving in the dark in the dark And they're still a half asleep The science The science, yes does not support a forever daylight savings time All right, so that is probably we're gonna find out when Justin shows up in approximately 45 minutes that that is why I When he shows up so everyone be ready in about 45 minutes for Justin to pop on in here In the meantime, we're gonna do the show as we do the show and we will bring him in and he'll Blair's gonna do the disclaimer now. We'll get Justin to read the disclaimer later and Yes, we're gonna talk about These time changes in the after show. So let us begin shall we flair? Yeah, let's do it This this this show that we like to do on a weekly basis. Yes Let's record this show in three two This is Twist this week in science episode number 867 recorded on Wednesday, March 16th, 2022 When Irish pie are smiling I'm dr. Kiki and today we will fill your head on this week in science with homeopathy jockeys and a winning mindset but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer. No daylight savings time did not turn me into Justin Instead I am going to read his disclaimer having never read it before here. We go Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer of all the things in nature There are few as perfectly constructed as an egg which egg am I I am referring to doesn't much matter But picture if you must the egg of a chicken It has a protective shell able to withstand the weight of a chicken resting upon it Within the egg is perhaps the very meaning of life explained inside are all the ingredients needed the nutrient building blocks the instructions of dna and eventually a fully formed baby chicken will be living in there Free from the worries of the outside world Unconnected self sustained and perfectly happy in its little egg world until it's time to break out of its shell and get on with Being a chicken sent out of the egg life with one overriding mission make more eggs People have pondered the question of which came first chicken or egg the answer is egg egg came first Chickens are less than 60 000 years old a relative newcomer to being a species dinosaurs lizards amphibians All had eggs long before there were birds let alone chickens The first mammals were likely egg layers too hundreds of millions of years before any of these fish were laying eggs But that's the genius of eggs fish dinosaur turtle chicken It doesn't matter to an egg to an egg. Everything is about eggs Every niche of the food web and each adaptation of evolution The structure of the genome and every instinct of every life form upon the planet All just strategies towards making more eggs more eggs and more episodes Of this week in science coming up next I've got the kind of mine that can't get enough Discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek Good science to you kiki and a good science to you too Blair Welcome everyone out there to another episode of this week in science. We are back Well, two-thirds of us are back at this very moment in time thanks to The changing of the clocks the changing of the time guard the rising of the sun Well, it always it rises and sets. We're in a solar system. We're going round and round and we're spinning It's just gonna happen And as humans humans, we will debate but There is no debate on this show about the weekly science that we like to enjoy We like to discuss we like to enjoy and Let's see. I have stories this week about eggs Single eggs very important eggs. We'll we'll talk about those eggs cells and mouse perceptions Yes mouse perceptions. What did you bring Blair? Oh, I have jockeys I have uh sea turtles. I have smelly birds and of course elephant tusks Of course you have elephant tusks. No, you would never have elephant tusks unless it were just a story All right, and as we jump into the show here, I want to remind You That if you are not yet subscribed to this week in science, you can find us as a podcast On all the podcast directories pretty much where podcasts are found look for this week in science And we broadcast weekly live on youtube facebook and twitch We are twist science on twitch twitter and instagram if all this naming and siting and Mediaing is hurting your head. Just go to twist org That's our website where we post show notes and links and all sorts of fun things They just go there start clicking things. You'll find some good stuff Just click the things you'll find the stuff as you click around. Yeah Oh And it looks as though we have a just woken up Justin joining the show. Hello Hey, did y'all have that daylight saving stymie thing happen over there? We did It's not the same. Yeah It's not global thing And I thought you just got rid of that any didn't we get rid of that the united states came We're talking about that in the after show, Justin. I'm mad about it. We're gonna yell about it later Oh Okay, did you start the show start the show like was there the streamer and stuff? We're we're yeah, we're in the show right now Oh, this is the actual show. Oh my gosh Sorry, Rachel. Enjoy the edits Ha ha ha ha ha Do you need a minute Justin? Do you need to pull yourself together? I I'm pulling uh stories up Yeah, go for it pulling stories. All right nothing open Yeah, I figure as much like what's happening need to drink the coffee Uh comb my hair. What who? Sorry, you're awake so early in the morning But welcome to the daytime I've got some story Some story a story that I really am excited about leading off on especially following Justin's disclaimer about eggs What the egg wants what the egg needs? Well in this story it's about researchers figuring out what an egg wants in order to I guess not have to have a sperm involved So there is a form of reproduction called pathogenic reproduction and we have found it in lots of species Other than mammals when the question is Why don't mammals reproduce pathogenically pathogenic reproduction is when females of a species Just they go i'm gonna have a baby now and they just have an egg and that egg is able to divide just egg Eggs I don't need Anything I don't need anything is that you you essentially have a duplicate genome instead of having half from mom half from dad You just get the egg and it just replicates. It just it divides and it divides It works off of it. And so my favorite thing about pathogenesis is depending on what animal is doing it and how their sex Chromosomes work either end up with all boys or all girls That is fascinating that is very interesting. Well, uh researchers just published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences their work in which they used crisper to edit the genes of the egg from a mouse So that it mimicked what would happen if a sperm had been contributed During fertilization But fertilization didn't happen. They just crispered the egg made it think it had been fertilized by a sperm and They injected an enzyme into it to Get some things kicked off as enzymes tend to do catalyze reactions And they implanted it into a female mouse's uterus and it grew They did this a number of times and they Resulted in a large number of viable offspring. So they had uh 227 reconstructed oocytes They had 192 of those oocytes developed to the blastocyst stage Blastocyst is when they that little ball of cells after fertilization decides to start really dividing dividing dividing They transferred all 192 blastocysts into the embryos of females There were 14 pregnancies three of them resulted in live pups and they had one survive to adulthood also To reproduce itself Okay, so actually successful adult not just lived and died but Reproduced this this ratio is terrible though. It's not a very good success ratio. And it's also This is my question. Why on earth would you want this because let me follow up Exactly the thing I mentioned you end up with a duplicate of genes, right? And so that is exactly why inbreeding is bad and you end up with detrimental mutations and high mortality rates and all sorts of Diseases popping up in the offspring of Inbreeding right and so that is exactly the issue with parthenogenesis You end up with a higher propensity of mortality of all sorts of diseases So why would you want to use crisper to make? Parthenogenesis happen in mammals The idea is that If you only have a female of a species left You could potentially Help to perpetuate that species. Maybe not forever, but it could kickstart things It would be a severe population bottleneck genetic bottleneck But you could it could be used in zoos. It could be used in the conservation of species It could also be used in Situations in which humans humans want to have A child but don't want to have a sperm involved There or maybe there are situations in which maybe the male Partner or the sperm that would be contributed to an offspring does have a known genetic Mutation that is a problem and the woman in the relationship the female The person with the egg doesn't want to Bring that genetic mutation into the situation They know that they have Great genes. Why don't I just use my great genes? No I can see all sorts of reasons or ways that it could be useful. It's not going to be Humanity being taken over by parthenogenic reproduction because because it doesn't make sense But there are examples in which it could be useful I think it only makes sense if it's going to be to like stop extinction because I feel like it's a huge risk it's a huge um It I feel like there's a huge ethical issue with trying to do this intentionally because diversifying genes makes A healthier offspring and you're basically welcoming all sorts of problems What was the reason that we yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go Justin exactly what you what you were saying all the problems that could come from from Uh attempting to create monotheism and mice Yeah, oh Yeah, this really makes me feel uncomfortable because I understand why people would think it's a good idea who don't have a deep understanding of the genetic Fallout from making this choice right like so I know we're very far away from that. We just made one mouse, but like It's oh There's also part of this is this even better. Is this is this better for preventing extinction if you're going to end up with Animals that don't live very long or you know, it's all of these issues Right. I mean part of it does help us, you know, the research itself does help us understand Okay, we didn't understand why mammals weren't able to reproduce parthenogenically Previously now we do know it has to do with epigenetic imprinting And it is this imprinting that occurs during fertilization that That you or that usually happens that keeps an egg Sorry, it is the imprinting that happens that causes an egg to Not be able to divide itself in mammals. And so the sperm is part of knocking out those Uh those markers that keep the egg from starting to divide and doing stuff. And so Now we understand a bit more about how the process works So scientifically, this is great for potentially working in fertility for all for humans and lots of other species Even if we never use parthenogenesis ourselves Okay, all right. I'm on board standing is important Okay, you you convince me this this research makes sense. I still don't want mammals be a parthenogenesis I think it's a very bad idea, but Your rhinos, what about your rhinos? They would they would last only a few generations probably with all the issues. It's uh, so I would 100% do that use that as a resort for rhinos. Absolutely Yeah, and you said About last line of defense here And you said no in in the species that do reproduce in this way where the egg just divides and uh and copies itself Sometimes it ends up with all females. Sometimes it ends up with all males. So you could So if we did mammals, I could only you'd only get females because you would only get xx and yy So why yy is non viable? So you'd only end up with female offspring Interesting. Yeah Yeah, yeah, let's move on All right, who's next on the science stories Justin, do you have something I got I got some uh Uh Just when you thought it was safe to go outside again Volcanoes And not just your you know, the volcanoes you grew up with either. We're talking pre post covid post pre world war three era type volcanoes University of Copenhagen. This is a study of ancient ice from quarters drilled out of Antarctica and Greenland. So bipolar there Associate professor Anders Svensson at the University of Copenhagen Niels Bohr Institute and associates were able to look back over 60 thousand years of the ice courts longer than there have been chickens They were able to look 60 000 years of history and they were able to piece together that history and magnitude of volcanic activity They were even able in some cases to I think uh on 70 80 Let me look actually see if I can find the actual number. Uh No, it's not here A whole bunch of times They were able to actually match up 85 times they're actually able to match up the same volcanic activity that affected both poles So so those are really big global Uh affects so What did this tell them? What did they learn? The research revealed that some really gigantic volcanic eruptions have taken place in the past 69 eruptions were bigger than any in modern history If you don't remember the largest volcanic eruption in our modern history And why would you it was over 200 years ago? It took place in indonesia's mount tambora 1815 That eruption blocked out the sun Caused tsunamis drought famine caused global cooling nears that followed 80 the 80 thousand people died, but that was in uh 18 15 people numbers Back then there were only a billion people on the planet today and today humans that number would be about 640 000 Or as covet likes to call it a good start It's supposed to be a good start. All right. Uh, so yeah 60 000 years 69 eruptions 69 enormous volcano eruptions bigger than mount tambora three three of them Were in a category of their own larger than the other 66 So this is uh quoting anders stensen The new 60 000 year timeline of volcanic eruptions supplies us with better statistics than ever before Now we can see that many more of these great eruptions occurred during the prehistoric ice age than in modern times Because large eruptions are relatively rare A long timeline is needed to know when they occur and that's what we now have We can expect more at some point But we just don't know if that will be in a hundred years or a few thousand Tambora sized eruptions appear to erupt once or twice every thousand years So the weight may be shorter Uh, they did see a connection between volcanic eruptions and global climate Were post Big eruptions global eruptions. There was a five to ten year cooling period at the global scale Uh, so yeah 85 of the eruptions they identified were observed by researchers at both of the polls 25 of these were larger than any eruption in the past 2500 years Well 69 were larger than the 1815 tambora eruption and the largest eruption on record That uh in the last Which was the largest in the last 500 years But you know, it's gonna happen now, right? Like this is right like it's gonna be COVID world war three and Supervolcano Earthquake tsunami just do it all The 7.3 off the coast of Tokyo was good And the tsunamis and all the massive death Compared to COVID numbers really nothing. Yeah, right? Park Hey five to ten years of global cooling Wouldn't be such a bad thing silver lining Right Yeah, yeah, sure for some things but there would be like, you know, die-offs from not as much sun and you know And animals dying because of the cold snap that happens super fast You know, but silver lining last line of defense. We'll save this one We'll make this like the part the geneticists for the species We'll save this one for last But okay, so things you're putting on the list for how to save the planet Parthenogenesis and volcanoes Supervulcanic We sound like super villains now. No, we don't it's like no, no I was trying to save the planet by firing my laser into the volcano to make it Now you guys don't understand I'm helping Blair tell us how we're gonna win the race. Yes. Well, it turns out it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman Great University of Nottingham has done a study to figure out if it matters if a jockey is a man or a woman Because this is what we're writing a different athlete. Oh, yeah, that makes sense for I guess so I apparently there is a huge expectation in the the horse racing world that Male jockeys Are stronger. They're able to push the horses harder and they thus perform better in races than female Jockeys more than 90% of jockies in most racing nations are men um, I thought it was like Basketball or something like that where it was a men's league I assumed because I had only ever seen male jockeys. No women And men are female jockeys. I didn't know that but it turns out the reason I didn't know that is because 90% of them are men Yeah, exactly. And so there's I'm surprised. It's not even more than that. But yeah Yeah, so there's this baked in unconscious bias that men are going to be better at this um, and so there was a study to look at the effect of sex of a rider on racehorse performance and physiology during training And they they found uh, this is this is only possible because to your point, Justin There was a marked increase in Precipation of female jockeys In the last decade and so it's only at 90% now Because there have been way more in the last 10 years than there ever have been for And so they were able to look at 530 thoroughbred race horses written by 103 different riders 66 male 37 female At a total of 3,568 workouts at a single racing yard in australia They looked at speed stride length frequency horses heart rate rate of recovery They recorded all these things with a fitness tracker and um, they found no effect of the sex of the jockey on any objectively measured outcome variable Then they looked at 52,464 races and found that female jockeys had a very similar when Percentage to male jockeys 10.7 percent female versus 11.3 percent male So they found a minimal effect of the sex of the jockey on both training and race outcomes so I I'm not surprised to hear about this. I I'm not bringing this because this is breakthrough science. I bring it because this is a really good example of using science to just do a uh A comprehensive look at why we have certain expectations and whether they're based in any fact And guess what? It's not So so if this was almost any other athletic competition I would have objected and said ah, no, it's definitely meant like you shouldn't like there's a reason There's a reason why you have sex divided sports And this is a whole slippery slope and that people are like, oh, but then how do you define sex and everything else? I'll just say if you were born a woman Don't get into a fighting ring with a born a man Uh, I don't know I depend on it. Maybe we need some studies to figure this out They've actually tried it. They've actually tried it in fighting events before it's the worst Men and women who are the same size who are like the featherweight for the welterweight The top woman with the like middle trained average Joe fighter guy It they've done it in boxing. They've done it in kickboxing. We've done it mix much It ends very badly and it should never be done again because it it looks like domestic abuse It looks horrible And I'm not kidding There's certain But I'm just I'm just wondering if they've if they've have done this like you're saying within the sport But I mean you don't want like a five foot five foot not Person up against a seven foot tall month, you know and they have weight classes too They do have weight classes that would be part of that and that should be part of the determination But that's not what this is about necessarily This is somebody who sits on a horse because actually it is to your point and it's very specifically weight and And yeah, actually very very specifically to your point. Yeah, what you're saying though anyway I never thought about it like that is a weight class If you can get down to the weight class of what is it a 10 year old boy? I'm not even sure They're very small. You have to be very slight to be a jockey. You can't be a grown average person So jockeys jockeys just so you know since this is kind of what you're asking about they're weighed in before and after races And there is a handicap based on weight So the the race is adjusted for the weight of the jockey And this study was also adjusted for the so they took that variable away Right and so this is something somebody asked in the chat room isn't a lighter jockey more likely to win and Sometimes depends there's a lot of of actual Kind of skill that goes into Kind of steering the horse and pacing the horse and all these sorts of things So there's other things that go into it But yes And so you might expect that a woman might actually do better than a man because overall they might weigh less Right, but but they're adjusting for that variable, right? So that variable is not it We're not asking who weighs less who weighs down the horse more, right? We are asking All other variables are raised from the equation who is doing the best job as a jockey and it's equal and I understand what you're saying Justin and I understand that that may be true I also know that they're that they're part of it is optics So you might be foreseeing something because of expectations of how something looks and that's one of the things that you mentioned Right, and so I I also just challenge that this is an excellent opportunity to use data To actually look at what's happening in a space because yes the way that something looks might might Impose a narrative that may or may not be supported by the data involved I'm just So but my point was that uh, I would think it would actually be easier for females to get into Uh, or to have That would be jockeys and that jockey thing. So and I mean, I'm envisioning a 90 female if their interest is there because There should be more candidates That fit the weight class There just should be the sizing weight class. It's sort of should is not what is and the science sort of like, uh, when Is what we're seeing went to the the uh, that cave where they they discovered homo naledi And they were putting out the request for slight build, you know archaeologists Preferably with spelunking ability and I think it was something like under five because they had to be tiny. Yeah Yeah, they ended up with an all female crew and I think it's just you know, by the numbers you're It's just how things work, right Well, except culture comes into who ends up being a jockey and that is a male dominated culture up to this point So that also is going to impact who's going to go into training for the sport. There's a lot going on Um, I just wanted to bring this story to talk about the fact that it might be worth bringing some data to these Yeah preconceptions. I'm glad you did because I don't know how to put my foot in my mouth without Talking about Gender equality if you hadn't Brought that story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, believe it or not. That was not the reason I brought it But here we are Oh, here we are here we are here we are and you know where we are we are in this wonderful place in time where we have sent a an optical space telescope out to a Lagrange point and We didn't know whether it was going to be able to get past its 300 some odd challenges of things to fail And NASA just released the first image from the web space telescope They have successfully aligned all of the mirrors in the telescope and they have this image they released is What they say it's like the best you can possibly get from a telescope this size highest resolution image highest Fidelity highest focus and the interesting aspect of this is it's focused down to Basically like quantum levels. It's the diffraction limits of each of the mirrors Coming together and so the image itself has beautiful diffraction And even galaxies that you can see in the foreground and background of the focus star that they they chose Are in focus the galaxies around it are also in focus The so there is so much that is going to be seen from this space telescope when they're ready to really start doing science with it And at the moment It's not quite ready because there's still a couple more instruments that they have to calibrate with the mirrors to make everything work But may it sounds like may they're really going to get going and be able to start looking Off into the universe. So at least the picture that they've put up of this Looks like a 1970s sci-fi lens flare it does I saw that image and I'm like Really, I think you're trying to look at I can't see it all Really, it's just all lens flare all of it looks cool Because it's a star. It's a point source. It's a point source of light, but the I think that is that a little bit artistically Image thingy not a useful because it's It's all the stuff around it. It's all the stuff around it. That's very important It looks amazing. Yeah, the stuff around it is the stuff that's very cool the ability to be able to Peer into the dust because that's really what web is going to be So useful for not the light. It is an optical telescope. And yes, we're looking at light, but it's infrared That we're focused on infrared is going to be the heat The spectra of heat in the universe Not just the light that the visible stuff the rainbow spectrum that we love to look at Yes It's very exciting. It's very exciting images to come Technology for the win Justin tell me another story All right, uh, it's time for that sporadically produced yet unyieldingly questionable segment of the show Did we really need to study for that? homeopathy edition So there's very little evidence offered uh for homeopathy treatments cures immunizations That said occasionally there are randomized controlled trials performed These aren't exactly studies, but they are trials where you know, this many people were given this micro dose I guess it would be of something over this period of time Uh to attempt to relieve x y condition Okay, so scientists at danube university crems in austria looked at a large sample of these trials I think they ended up with 97 by the end They started with a large one and had to wean it down to the 97 found that they lacked basic scientific method methodology and uh, we're riddled with red flags And this is in the way that the trials were Were sort of conducted and reported The proper way to do a clinical trial is to register it And there's many organizations that you can register with There's a few really big ones. They're usually government or institutions And so you register the details of the research you are about to do And so here's the number of people involved. Here's our methods. Here's what we're testing Here's how we will evaluate our outcomes. Here's the outcome that we're going to measure. That's a big important one Here's the thing that we're gonna you don't just give somebody Like a new drug or something and then we're just gonna wait and see what happens So we've given this drug to a number of people of different ailments and we're gonna see if it cures one of them That's not that's not experimenting. That's getting pinging, but that's not experimenting if you're doing a trial You should already know the outcome that you're looking for at that point. Okay So part of the purpose of registering advance is so When you first that you follow through with publishing your results You're saying here's the study. I'm going to do You do the study and then you publish regardless of the results, it's it's a it's a sort of a way of Of creating Level of credibility, but removing bias from publishing Because you've already announced here's the research I'm going to do and you follow through with it and you publish it and people know before they even did this study Before the outcome was there They had already laid out how this study was going to proceed that way nobody can change The study if they get a different result or just decide not to publish okay Yeah, so uh important safeguard against say running 50 studies 50 trials And then only publishing the one where smoking hemlock looks like a really good treatment for whooping cough Which you shouldn't have had in the first place because there's vaccines for that But okay, why bother when you can smoke hemlock to make it go away and one of 50 trials Registering trials is important. That's my whole point 38 of homeopathy trials were registered So they did register But were never published So that's a big red flag. They ran the trial. They did the study they got a result And they decided not to publish that result That's a red flag because that Why you would not publish that's cherry picking but I mean In science very often negative results or null results are not published Researchers tend not to publish them all the time. I mean this happens in This happens all over the place. We complain about this But not in clinical trials when they do a clinical a randomized clinical trial A drug company will publish the result It's like here. This is their pipeline of here's what we looked at or here's what we're gonna look at Then we looked at it. We got it. Do you hear this all the time? Oh Poor big pharma company xyz They their trial for this to treat that Didn't work didn't look good after all now the investors are dumping a stock Whatever hear about this all the time So 30 38 of homeopathy trials decided eh, yeah, you don't like the result not going to publish 53 of the published homeopathy trials Were never registered So for every one of those There could be 50 trials where smoking hemlock Didn't get a favorable outcome Hmm. I wonder why that would happen. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, it's a poison Uh Socrates died that way. I think I think he smoked Oh, no, this is so you can say a hundred percent of published studies show Exactly exactly. Well, there's one of the other things they point out too. It's like anytime I don't know if they public actually they put they point that out Uh, but one of the things you should uh homeopathy if it says this product cures x y and z And uh, that's probably homeopathy. It's probably not true most most actual Products that we use we use to treat symptoms Yeah, there's very few cures for anything in this world Just just note if you see cure on a packaging Like my Anyway, uh, where was I? Okay, so of the trials that were published Right and and there's some percentage of the ones that were published also that uh That did end up registering but only after they published Which seems like you shouldn't be allowed to do it at that point Mm-hmm. Yeah, they then register after they published the study they then said, oh, here's the register In the study we're gonna do. Oh, by the way. Yeah, we already did it though. Like that's not it's not the right order How's the trials that were registered and were published? Some of which again were registered after they were published 25 altered or changed completely the primary outcome in the published version. Wow So Yeah, okay. So uh primary outcome You is is basically you have to choose that ahead. It's like calling your shot and pool. It's it's yeah This is what we're going for. Yeah, this is what we're looking for This is how we know our study is successful or our hypothesis is successful So the idea is in the register study, uh, you've got your uh, what you might call it there your primary outcome You called your shot that uh studies smoking hemlock to treat whooping cough Primary outcome hypothesis being less coughing And you might even define it by a number 10 coughs per hour is bad less than five is good two or less would be great in terms of your outcomes And then you publish and in the published version, it's 30 Cops per hour is bad Lesson five things should be considered good and ten or less is great Completely altering the goalpost So that was in some of them or worse They changed the primary outcome into something entirely different and this is the sort of like You know whooping cough study results in acne cure Something completely off target. They decided oh no, that's now the point of the study Uh end result homeopathy even when they have a trial even when they make a paper is still not doing science It's uh, you know a question though is As part of the segment did we really need to study for that homeopathy is already an unregulated grifty feel To a kind of a business and since those who believe in it tend not to trust science A study by scientists about about why you shouldn't trust homeopathy Is a lot like singing at a choir I don't know. I still think it's helpful I I like to hear actual actual numbers actual information about how much smoke and mirrors are involved with homeopathy Um, just because I mean you're right a lot of people who Follow the teachings of homeopathic medicine Don't want to hear from scientists However, as is the case with many controversial topics related to science They may be interested in having a debate or a conversation with someone that they know who is not a scientist And so this is information that you could give to someone to bring up To a friend who maybe doesn't know that that their their homeopathy is not based in actual trials reliable Reliable research. Yes, I think I think at that point there's nobody left in their social media feed Who has a different so you have like a conversation in person? I don't know. I think there are people out there who believe in homeopathic medicine who don't understand How separated from from medical science it is. I do believe that is the case. There are people that don't know that Yep It's so okay. So actually we did need this study then because I think we did that's how science works It does the study it doesn't just assume and guess things and it's also I think important because to note because homeopathic cures Uh, at least from the study we're uh in 2018. So before the pandemic era Was a 5.5 billion u.s. Dollar industry around the world Which is why we have to get on board now every one of us and everyone out there listening right now You're on the first floor ground tier of a brand new triangle shaped homeopathy campaign To study solarium infused sugar pills What you do is you take something with sugar in it hold it into direct sunlight for a period of time Then eat it and report back to us what it cured We're gonna publish this study Let's do this man Uh Blair. Yes, you had some some news Oh, yes, I have some good news some good news, but but just blarely This is this is Blair's segment in response to Justin's Good news segment. This is good news, but just barely segment Next week i'm gonna have to come up with like a Just Next You'll never survive in there. Um, I have said okay, so a half century protection pays off for sea turtles. This is good news The at the al dabra a toll in the seychelles. There has been a ban on turtle hunting since 1968 and since then Turtle numbers have skyrocketed. They have gone from about 2,000 to 3,000 eggs per year in the 1960s to more than 15,000 in the data collection period of 2014 to 2019 That's sorry. That's not individual eggs clutches of eggs sea turtles Lay hundreds of eggs in one sitting. So yes, that would have been bad. Um, but anyway so the so the egg The egg numbers are skyrocketing since turtles have been um taken off of the hunting Kind of menu and so this study demonstrates the importance of long-term monitoring So it's not often the most glamorous part of research But the long-term monitoring of something like this shows you what's working And so it takes decades for a long-lived animal like a turtle to rebound after you illegalize hunting them But it shows that commitment to that ban and to collecting the data afterwards can show The benefit to making these sorts of regulations And so they now these al dabra green turtles could be a conservation success story that we could use as a marker for future studies the reason I say this is good news, but just blarely is That I want to remind everyone that turtles Are in big trouble from climate change because of the fact that they have temperature dependent sex determination. So As uh, the temperatures rise there are more and more in most case in most turtle species more and more females which means You if you have an unequal Percentage unless you're going to use parthenogenesis you you are not going to be able to see populations rising. So it's important to make these changes now before The animals have other issues that cause further problems. It's like it's I always think about that There was an episode. I'm sorry to go way pop culture on this But there's an episode of the simpsons where they were talking to mr. Birds about how he had so many Diseases that all of them were like caught in a doorway and so none of them could get through and it was a perfect balance But we just need to make sure that it's not too many So if there is one too many then, you know, it would be a huge problem, but anyway, um sea turtles they're being hit by the plastic pollution the climate change and um Hunting and poaching and and if a location like in a toll is where they lay their eggs by sea level change as well Oh, don't forget that also But yeah, so so the good news here is we have the opportunity to give animals in danger a head start before some of these larger issues start to impact them So a lot of animals are adaptable to one or two threats But you throw five at them and they their population starts to collapse So this is an example of a band working populations rising and perhaps they will be able to Rise to the occasion when other threats come by It's a good place to start. Yes. It's good news. It is and yeah Not just blarely. It's good news. I'll just take that as a piece of hope not just for sea turtles, but for other animals on the brink and just really quickly as a Brief let you know some other cool scientific discoveries that are going on published in nature genetics this last week researchers have published their study systematic reconstruction of cellular trajectories across mouse embryos So I talked about the egg being turned into an embryo earlier but There's a lot of proliferation and diversification that goes on in that process between the blasto sites to Turning into an actual embryo and then into an actual organism So what happens to the instructions that take cells and turn them into the various types of cells? they're going to be researchers have created kind of maps of this kind of cellular transformation in other species before like in sea elegans and worms in Zebra fish so in very simple like some simple organisms that don't have a lot of tissues to diversify into And so these researchers are really starting to look at some very complicated Very complicated mapping of tissues of Of genetic instructions of mRNA that's involved of the genes that are involved in turning different tissues into other tissues and they're creating this really amazing map of the tissue change that is The just the very beginning it's scratching the surface of being able to follow a tissue or a a particular cell from its very initiation to Where it ends up in the end organism So they've mapped a bunch of different pathways and it's I think I think it's very cool and the maps remind me somewhat of You know subway maps These these cells are taking their trip And they're going to wind up wherever they end up in the final organism but this is new information that is once again very important for our understanding of development of different organ systems of whole organisms of being able to Treat diseases for understanding if something goes wrong at a crucial point in the cell division process How is it going to affect tissues downstream? What kind of markers targets therapeutically need to be approached in order to prevent disease or to fix disease? And I'm not going to say cure because I know Justin will yell at me for that one, but Prevents yes, yeah, but I find it a very interesting exciting study and it is in nature genetics and You can read it if you want to Pretty cool study. Oh my goodness This is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of this science talk show We're talking about all the science that we enjoy learning about and we hope that you enjoy learning about it too You want to say share some of this science with a friend? Oh, yes. We are your water cooler Share it with a friend today All right this week in science. We've got some very quick COVID update news. I just want to report as Blair was saying earlier that You've been listening to the radio every day this week and nobody's talking about COVID anymore And the reality is COVID's still with us. We just want to pretend that it's not to not and we just we love having a distraction That is, you know terrible in its own right With lots of terrible things going on in the world right now And there's a lot to pay attention to so Just so you know several european countries are seeing increases in COVID 19 cases and hospitalizations And it seems as though the gap between Case numbers rising and hospitalization numbers rising is Even less than it used to be so it's much much more tied together more in in time um the reasoning for this is so far they think it is an increase in the omicron variant ba2 and uh in some cases up to 75 percent of new cases are This omicron variant, uh, which is thought to be not shown definitively but because it is spreading so much more rapidly Uh seems to be supported that it is more transmissible than the original omicron even And uh, yeah, so what does this mean for COVID generally will Blair? What have you seen? Uh doctors like jeremy foust saying Oh saying to uh buy it rapid tests in n 95 yeah, so people we trust uh Are starting to say that You know just be ready. We put our masks down temporarily and like we said last week our behavior is the thing that controls the uh the spread of these viruses and so your n 95s your kn 95s are going to be your Best protection well fitted of course if you can get them that way and any mask is better than no mask certainly um and Along those news there a study has come out looking at school mask mandates during the delta variant period of time They found that mandatory masking in schools during the delta delta spread lowered transmission of the delta variant by 72 percent What? Yes, and now with the increase in vaccination with the five to 12 year old age range and also in The spread of omicron researchers did say with the beginning of omicron the The students that they're tracking Uh, they've got tens of thousands of students and staff across nine states 61 districts answering the call But they said that even short periods of mask removal like lunchtime result in higher transmission Also during the delta wave they're going to keep collecting data from schools and uh And and they and they said that it's a discussion that we need to be having They have created also so if you know people in the uh in the school system The researchers who have published this study looking at mask mandates in schools They've created a tool for schools to use called masking and mitigation considerations calculator It allows administrators to input their community COVID-19 rates of spread and determine how masking decisions in schools will affect case numbers Because it was shown that case numbers in schools do affect community spread Not massively but by about 10 so masking in schools can reduce Community case numbers can reduce spread So kiki can I ask you a question about ba2? Sure So it seems like a lot of the united states got omicron like a lot. Yes. Yeah Is if they got ba1 of omicron are they protected from ba2 or do we not know? We don't know We don't know And it also depends on the timing it depends on the timing so When you were infected could also impact it as well So we don't well our booster numbers are bad So if you haven't gotten your booster, please go get it boosters are now People uh everyone 12 and older are eligible for boosters now depending on how long it's been since your second dose or your final dose and something that was brought up uh on a political aspect of As politicians decide that the pandemic is over What that means is that they will let uh emergency regulations lapse and some of those emergency regulations aren't the regulations that mandate masks or closed businesses some of them are emergency regulations that Allow for free health insurance so vaccines boosters The treatment if you are intubated in the hospital for covid 19 a lot of these things Will not be covered anymore as soon as the As soon as the emergency regulations lapse and here in the united states That could mean even less uptake of boosters and vaccines and so this is uh just something the things that you don't know are important Or you don't think of I I wondered if there was something that that wasn't being talked about widely in the press a few weeks ago because California brought back supplemental paid sick leave as omicron was kind of like dying down And there is a part of me that was wondering is there something going on here? Do they know something we don't know? It's very possible. California does have a tendency to create patchwork in state legislation to Cover what the federal government lets lapse. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, there might be a little bit. Hey, but you know, uh Before we think that this is over, you know, obama just got covid Last week It's still like, you know, you know, there's still like a famous person list you can run through Who hasn't gotten it yet? Kind of a thing At this point, I know tom hanks isn't on that list. No Because he died where he was like the first death from No How dare you Say that about america sweetheart This is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode If you do enjoy the show, please head over to twist.org and click on that patreon link And help support the show moving forward 10 dollars and more a month We've been a thank you by name at the end of the show Help produce the show and keep this show going. We appreciate your support. You really can't do the show without you All right, let's come on back with That part of the show that you know and love us Blair's animal corner with Blair By pet milliped no pet at all. If you want to hear about this animal, she's your mom Except for giant Let's grow Oh That was me running to the animal corner Running your corner Blair. All right. My first story uh is an amazing story one of my favorites of the year so far I think it is about smelly birds Birds aren't smelly. Well, they preen all the time. It turns out kiki. Perhaps they are So actually they are anyone who owns birds knows they stink. Yeah, go ahead. Yes, it's true. Um, so we have So many times on this show talked about the fact that You were told for so long. I was told When I worked at a zoo as a teen That most birds have no sense of smell This is something that was considered kind of scientific consensus for so long and then what happened kiki They found the part of the brain that they found it. Ha ha ha. They realized they'd been throwing it away The olfactory bulb. Yes. So they they can smell birds can smell get out of here. Well, anyway So that has opened this whole field of research Where there had not historically been research on smell olfactory communication between birds Anything related to smell And and and kind of any sort of strategy or social structure or anything relating to smell in birds because if they couldn't smell Why would they do these things right and so in in recent years? There have been papers coming out looking at smell and birds and how they might be using it And all of these kinds of things that we've been neglecting the whole time It was assumed that they they just had didn't have the capability to smell So the the latest this one this piece of research from bielfeld university Is looking at their europeigial or preen gland And the preen gland secretes an oil that birds spread on their feathers They do this several times a day throughout the day. They're preening themselves as kiki mentioned. They're keeping their feathers all nice And that oil for a long time was thought to just help with kind of removal of dirt or mites and also helping to make their feathers Hydrophobic so if it rained on these birds the the water would just kind of roll off their backs So if you see like water off a duck's back, right? That's partially because of the oil that they are spreading over their feathers And so we know all of these functions of the preen gland And that was enough for a long time, but it turns out there might be others And this all comes from a review of 187 studies 55 of them investigated preen oil composition and researchers found that there were differences among them So the the actual molecules in the preen oil differed between the sexes In half of the studies that they looked at And it varied seasonally So this could mean one of several things One it could be camouflage based They could be using it to uh kind of Hide their presence from predators This could make sense seasonally because The seasons when this thing changed usually had to do with breeding season and therefore It could be related to When they were sitting on eggs Protecting their eggs. They can't run away when a predator comes by so they have to hide. They have to hide visually They also might be hiding smellily olfactorily That's a huge thing that humans don't really think about when we think about hiding. We're like duck behind a thing I tried to hide an entire train car with smelly socks once As a child No, well backpacking well well backpacking across europe We got a train car my my partner and I at the time And we wanted the full bench to sleep on and we didn't want to have to share the train car So we hadn't done laundry. So I hung our stinky socks up right over the door And people would open the door and then close it very quickly I see I see so that's almost um an offensive maneuver related to most definitely offensive Yeah, yes, as opposed to a defensive maneuver where you want to blend in with your environment, right? But the other possibility is again because this often Related to breeding season This could be A chemical signal it could be related to attracting a mate It could be about whether you smell good It could also be that there are cues to the genetics of the individual with that So the whole I the the t-shirt test, right? You think that somebody smells good After a workout because they are genetically dissimilar from you and therefore have good genes for recombination into offspring Right? And so there could be something about that here as well So there's three different hypotheses here about what could be going on But There needs to be some study. This was just looking at past studies looking at past studies on compositions of the preen oil So now it's time to move forward. It's time to look at Taking samples during breeding season record them during the different breeding stages Record how preen oil differs or is similar between successful and unsuccessful individuals Look at whether the preen oil composition is passed down to offspring. Is it genetic? Also, look at things besides shorebirds. So a lot of the ones who had this seasonal change were shorebirds Who nest on the ground who are way more likely to get predated upon than birds who nest in a tree? So do birds that are less likely to be predated upon Have the same changes in their preen oil So it's just it this opens a whole new field of research Which previously would never have been considered because birds can't smell or something they can't smell Why would they be smelling each other? I'm gonna uh, love it. I'm gonna have to do the the joke that was posted in the the chat room here by kevin ridden Three birds are sitting on a wire First bird says my instinct says we should fly south Second bird says my instinct says we should fly north Third bird says my instincts too, but I have no idea where to fly There's a story I didn't bring out of uc-davis this week, uh, that was looking at redwood trees and discovered Yeah, redwood trees have two distinct types of leaves one that's focused on uh, photosynthesis and the other is Dedicated to absorbing water Right and can like take in something crazy like 14 gallons of water in a day or something just through these This other leaf that there's you know 100,000 hundreds of thousands of on the on the tree, but it's fascinating because We've studied redwood trees. We've been around redwood trees. Yeah, and and I guess people looked at the other kind of Uh Funky looking leaf and just thought it was a malformed leaf Like a leaf that hadn't of course because it's just sort of tubular as it sticks out They also noticed I'm sorry Read during the story story a little bit even though it's not here. They also noticed that it had they have different oil or waxy coverings depending on their use depending on their climate and that the And depending on where they are if they're in a wetter climate those tubular ones are towards the bottom No towards the top Towards the bottom so they can collect uh water they can hold the water as opposed to the evapotranspiration Yeah, and the photosynthesis leaves tends to be towards the top of the canopy When it reverses in places where it's not rainy, but foggy Then the tubular ones are pulling water out of the top of the tree and you can actually tell the climate that that tree is supposed to be in based on where those leaves are and Something about the they can actually just by looking at the type of waxy residue on the leaves Determine what sort of climate it's uh, it's fighting to survive it Because that also changes whether it's propelling to get photosynthesis or whether that uh, it's absorbing Water right so really fascinating thing, but that's another example like Redwood trees the biggest oldest tree that's everybody. We've studied them in the pacific northwest people have been studying these trees for years and years years And just completely wrote off One of the two types of leaves on the tree Just ignored it so, uh, great job you see davis for uh Go davis go aggies go mustangs. I don't even know what your Thing is anymore. Uh, it's like a course I yeah, I don't know what it is, but I went there. I don't know I don't do the sports. I just did the science blare. You had one more animal. Yeah. Yeah Uh, so another kind of area of study that I always like to bring to the show is related to Preventing poaching and I talked about poaching a little bit with the turtles already But I keep bringing it back to elephants because they are One of the most highly poached animals on the planet pangolin is the most poached mammal But elephants pretty high as I say over and over 96 elephants a day are killed for their ivory insane Yeah, and so any way that we can find any way that we can cut off the ivory supply at the source Is going to help this is part of the problem right is if you illegalize selling the stuff But you can't stop them from hunting it Then people will still buy it illegally you have to stop it at the source So how can you do that? Um, and so in uh in recent years there have been explorations into dna testing to try to figure out How to prevent poaching well, how does that work? in a university of washington Project the researchers Wanted to find a way to use dna testing On elephant ivory to identify where the tusks came from and Which ivory is related to which? After yeah, this is this is fascinating. They were able to track smuggling networks based on the the genetics of They pulled from the ivory Right, so they looked at dozens of different ivory seizures And they found that the majority of smuggled ivory and the connections between those networks Are are are pretty They're narrowed down to a very specific area So they were able to see connections between ivory seizures across continents Find I kind of narrow it down to which port it came out of and which Ivory samples are related You know siblings cousins, etc Because if they're closely related Then they probably came from the same area. So then from there they can figure out not only which port it came from But where in africa likely that these these uh tusks came from they found that the majority Of the networks behind large ivory shipments were from ports in kenya uganda and nigeria So already figuring that out you can push the majority of your resources to checking shipments from those ports already That is extremely helpful. They looked at 4,300 tusks from both forests and savanna elephants collected from 49 separate shipments in 12 different african nations between 2002 and 2019 And they found that most of them were related So they were all coming from these three ports and a lot of them were related They were all coming back to the same populations year after year to get their ivory So not only do you know which ports the ivory is coming out of but you know, which populations of elephants They keep targeting predated on yeah. Yeah. So now you know who to protect So it helps you figure out where to search but also which individual elephants to put your resources into to prevent poaching So they're also now the next step of this center's project Is to try to address this by training dogs to sniff for contraband at these ports Without having to open shipping containers. They would blow air from the shipping container Through odor collection pads and then the dogs would smell the pads So they hope that this screening method would then be able to be used to detect Illegal wildlife contraband timber species, etc. So They're using all these different things together, but I think what what really I wanted to bring here was the idea that Poachers are going back to the same populations of elephants over and over and over they find a source They're going to keep using it because if you think about if I if I was a poacher I would not want to spend days weeks months Finding another herd of elephants if I know where one herd is and what their patterns are over generations Yeah, and I know how to get individual elephants out of that and get their ivory. So That and then I back in my mind. I would suspect that there's perhaps a little bit of What would you call it bureaucratic? cover Like I would I would be I would also want to sort of interrogate the the local authorities Of whatever reason that is to see if there's a corruption thing taking place because it also aside from knowing where the population is there's Would see there are routes. There are people involved. Yeah. Yeah, they know what their path of least resistance Totally totally. So that that's right. So perhaps these ports are Are not doing as good of a job of screening things You know intentionally or just because they don't have the right resources who knows but um, then cites can go in there and And and bring in their own kind of inspection forces to protect these animals. So I really like the idea of using dna to track down the elephants that need the most protections and the Places where these items are being sent through I love it. Yes Use the dna to our advantage Yeah, thank you Justin you're gonna follow this up with some hot hot hot science Oh, gosh Oh hot you're on fire Yeah fire bad Fire very very bad Let me pull up my story Had that Do we have like waiting music? Can we put on the go from Ipanema for just a minute? Fires Have gotten larger and more frequent and more widespread across the united states since the year 2000 according to a new University of colorado boulder lead paper So we kind of know like this like it seems it seemed that way Your every fire season seems to be like the most horrific fire season that we've ever seen This is an actual public study in science advances paper shows that large fires have not only become more common They are also spreading into new areas impacting land that previously did not burn To evaluate how the size frequency and extent of fires have changed in the united states researchers analyzed data from over 28,000 fires That occurred between 1984 and 2018 From the monitoring trends and burn severity Database which says that combined satellite imagery with the best available state and federal fire history records to give a picture of fire trends Team found that there were more fires across all regions in the contiguous united states in 2005 to 2018 Compared to the previous two decades. So this isn't just in the west. This is everywhere Uh in the in the west and in the east fire frequency doubled So if you were feeling like there was more fires Fire season than when you were a child in those areas, you're absolutely right You're absolutely right twice as much in the great plains Which you don't really think of tornadoes floods What that's about it in the great plains, right? fire frequency quadrupled They have four times as many fires Breaking out in the great plains regions in the united states So as a result the amount of land burned each year increased from a median of 1500 to For it was 1500 square miles in the west is now 5,500 square miles in fire season and And it went from 465 square miles of the great plains to 1295 That's Yeah, it's quite a bit. It's a lot research. Yeah Researchers also took a closer look at the most extreme fire events in each region They found that in the west in the great plains the largest wildfires grew bigger And ignited more often into 2000s than they had in the decades previously Throughout the record large fires were more likely to occur around the same time as other large fires So a large fire by itself Taxes the crews whose job it is to mitigate those fires So having frequency of large fires occurring simultaneously Is just devastating to your ability to fight them Finally team discovered that the size of fire prone areas Increased in all regions of the contiguous united states in the 2000s meaning that not only Is the distance between individual fires getting smaller Than it was in the previous decades, but that fire is spreading into areas that didn't used to encounter Burn seasons Right places that you'd think would not be burned are now burning Yeah, uh, so unfortunately they say the results align with other troubling risk trends such as the fact that development of natural hazard zones Development in natural hazards. So new housing is going up in places that we're like, oh, yeah Forest burns every couple years. So instead they you know cut down the trees or whatever and started building houses there Uh Yeah, that's also sense We got to put the people somewhere. Where are we going to put the people? Uh, I tell you if you if you live if you if you love nature Stay out of it. I know you all do Yeah, move to the biggest urban develop density City that you can find And stay away from it get as far away from nature. You can go visit And it'll still be there if you do that But if you move into it, it's not nature anymore It stops being nature and then you've removed the nature from Well, you you have two you've I feel like you have lots of people but you have two big different groups moving into natural spaces you have Wealthy people who want to live in nature because it's it's kush and it's nice and they get a giant house and Lots of land and it keeps you away from all the people in the very dense urban places. Yeah, there's also People who can't afford to live where they work and get pushed into rural areas. Yeah Yeah, but then you think rural areas is everything outside of the bay area, which is still cities It's still we have running water. We have city services. The scenicrious mountains burned That's bay area. Those are people who can use Then you can use mountains that is like mountain lion territory. That's the only thing that really that uses that Raccoons and mountains humans live there. That's what I'm talking about live there People who have gotten priced out of living in san jose live in the santa cruz mountains. That is a thing So that's all I'm saying is that that there is an just like with other climate change issues Okay, this is tangential Okay, sorry. Yeah, this is all tangential Yeah, of course it is. This is part of so anyway my last story of the night fire good Oh, really, you know, that was fire bad and this is fire good uh, so Yeah, this is a study titled how indigenous burning shaped the climate forest for millennia it's published in journal proceedings national academy sciences at uc berkeley study combines scientific data with indigenous oral histories And ecological knowledge to show that the cultural burnings practices of the native people and the klamath mountains The karuk and yuruk tribes helped shape the region's forests for about a thousand years before the european colonization Made it out west so the study found the forest biomass in the region Used to be approximately half what it is now And that cultural burnings by the tribes played a significant role in maintaining the forest structure and biodiversity Even during prior periods of climate variability. In fact, that's actually part of how they were out able to Sus that it was man made fires looking back through the records they uh, they looked back through some soil cores and lakes And they could see by pollen counts diversity Of fauna that they were there and by charcoal airs. They could see when there was big fires there and they found that during wet seasons there were actually sometimes more fires because the the wet seasons would aggregate more growth to the forest floor and then they would need to be burned sooner than in dry seasons This is also linked to recent study in sierra nevada found that density of trees in that region Had increased dramatically over the past century by a factor of six to seven fold six or seven times the amount of density of trees then there had been previously Which is also contributing to more. We had some really severe like south like tahoe almost caught fire Right so much of the of the sierra's was ablaze And uh in the past year study focused on the the rocky mountains so outside colorado the The lands in the middle of winter in the middle of december wet snowy season and they had a massive massive fire Yeah, so to estimate how the forest biomass needed lakes had changed because they went to the couple of these, uh, fish lakes Uh, they did the the pollen grains and sediment level core samples to to To sort of research the past to get a glimpse of it Says co-author frank lake research ecologist of the u.s forest service and a crook the senate growing up among crook and new york tribes uh In many cases the ethnographic information actually helped explain Both the geographic and temporal patterns In the fire history records for example fire scars found near the lakes suggested that fires occurred more often Near fish lake than lake ogre rom duck can't pronounce it sorry Uh, which is consistent with accounts that the areas and lakes were used for different tribal purposes in addition Patterns and fire frequency and fire Enforced biomass during the cool wet little ice age also indicated a significant human influence on the forest This is quoting One of the researchers if you're trying to detect a signal of induced fire due to human stewardship Having a cooler wetter climate is a perfect time to do so because it will really stand out in the record That's exactly what we found more charcoal accumulation more charcoal production So therefore more fires and decreases in biomass that correspond with that fire and for those who aren't familiar uh Native american controlled burns Were just common out west that was the practice of the native uh peoples common across the united states common across north america Really? Yeah So then It was outlawed by the the invading you know, uh post european populations So those two studies, uh, just kind of brought those out there too because the first one that's mentioning how fires are just getting worse everywhere doesn't mention The fact that for a thousand years there was stewardship taking place The second one does focus on that thankfully, uh, but uh, yeah, it's getting worse The stewardship was definitely a part and we didn't You know didn't know how to manage and we thought our way was better And we didn't do it correctly And I remember the interview that we had uh written about the tree rings the uh woman who wrote a book about uh tree rings the dendro chronology And how she found that there were In the tree rings burn scars and those burn scars went back and some of these trees were Super old and then it's these major fires that have started burning the super fires that have started happening that actually take the trees out And they have but these these trees actually have scars within themselves that go back Hundreds had hundreds of years not hundreds and hundreds but go back decades decades decades Well, they they can't I mean if you're if you're talking about a redwood Which is a very fire resistant tree. I mean it's it it can handle fire and it likes fire. It's good for the seeds So now we get more trees um Yeah, then you can be talking about a record that goes back. Yeah a thousand years really you can be you're a further you really can Uh, you really can't get some history out of that old growth Yeah, so I think the the good news is here There's more and more research related to this happening and there's also more and more efforts to reconnect to the native peoples um, especially in wilderness areas national parks state parks county parks and so um There isn't it there is an effort right now to try to build these partnerships learn from the people who were the real stewards of this land before us and and and try to To grow through that and start to to take those lessons to heart Well, it's also we have to get past the damage that we've done already by allowing the understory to grow to such a point that you have these major fires that we now have to deal with across millions of acres of land And now we have to figure out how to get past that to get it back to a place where it's sustainable Because that's part of the problem And climate change is compounding that so it's it's a number of issues. Yeah And you know climate change is a tricky one too because we like the idea For it's being a carbon sink And so you think more forest the better the denser the better and then having to burn it To manage it sounds like you're working in the wrong direction. So it's that's really tough But I would just like to point out the people who managed before Are still here Maybe the solution Is to transfer the land back to those people who managed it for thousands The floor And and and make it and that's happening in some ways their land Yeah, yeah Yep, these things these kinds of things are starting to happen and it's it's promising But like you said Justin there is actually I was looking for the link to your story And there's another story out of Oregon State University This is huge forest fires that don't kill the living trees Don't release as much carbon as we think they do into the atmosphere. So The trees that burn. Yes, they're releasing biomass. They're releasing carbon into the atmosphere But the ones that survive They're keeping the carbon. So it's not they they said that in this paper in forests, they discovered that The estimates of how much Carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere didn't match with what they were actually seeing and so they did this study And they discovered that no and behold living trees Hold on to their carbon Yeah, and you know, you're also the sprinting growth because you've made the forest more open So there's more new growth, which is actually taking down carbons quicker Also, one of the interesting things is putting it in the ground I guess it's part of that one of the other things they found in the the indigenous controlled burns story was that You end up with more Fast burn because you were talking about the scarring when you do controlled burnings You end up with a forest that is made up of those more fire resistant hardwoods And so that when the lightning strike thing happens It's not in a fast burning wood scenario It's also in a fire resistant tree environment And so you don't get those out of control fires that are taking place today It's if you do the controlled one, you don't have the out of control one later, so So fire good fire bad this week in science good Good, I'm just gonna keep it there this week in science. Good. We hope you're enjoying this show I have a couple more stories here. Let's talk about brains. We've talked about the the slow brains Forests trees those are the slow brains on the planet. Let's talk about fast electrical brains And how Do mice How do we Know what's going on in the world? So One thing about mice very interesting Uh We didn't know Previously whether or not they could look at a picture of an object and transfer that to A memory or a recognition Of a real world object. So say you see a picture of a chair and then You you come to a chair as a person You go, ah, I saw a chair in that picture. That looks exactly it's a chair It's the same thing and so you can transfer information gained from a two-dimensional symbol or representation of something in the real world You can transfer that to three-dimensional and vice versa You can take your three-dimensional world stuff and stick it in two dimensions and we are fine with all of this and part of the brain that's involved in navigating this transfer of information between multiple dimensions Is the hippocampus hippocampus of the brain is also part of Navigation allowing us to understand where we are in space. It's also involved in creating memories Very important area of the brain for so many reasons Well researchers wanted to find out, uh, what other animals out there Can actually take this transference and and make it work They've never tried it on mice before and so they said hey, let's do this Let's let's put mice in a situation where we measure from their brains We're going to measure their hippocampus and we're also going to give them pictures of things and then we're going to test them on the real things and low and behold The hippocampus definitely involved when they um Used a sedative in the brain injected directly into the hippocampus muskumal It reduced activity of the hippocampus and it reduced the ability of mice to be able to make this transference from two-dimensional to three-dimensional But in just the general knowledge, which is very interesting these These mice were able to just look at look at pictures And recognize objects in the real world. So look at pictures within a sample area And then when the pictures were replaced with three-dimensional objects They recognize them how'd they know they recognize them? Well novelty is interesting and so The object that had the picture that had been replaced with an object They had never seen before was the object that was investigated the most The mice Ignored the object that they had seen in the picture because it wasn't novel So this is kind of a correlation The way that we can get an idea that they're really making this transference from 2d to 3d is the fact that the The hippocampus seemed to activate in The appropriate manner the way that we know that human hippocampus activates But I don't know it's very interesting This question of you know, you look at a picture on the wall and you're able to know oh, it's my family And you can have memories associated with it. You write you, you know, there's a lot of stuff We associate with pictures with symbols And it's interesting to know that another mammal Who doesn't have any reason to use pictures can still Transfer a picture to an object This test design is tough. I have a suggestion for another experiment Okay, so you you train them to you give them like two or three different objects And you train them to pick a to pick a particular one to get a treat And then you replace them all with pictures And vice versa. Do they pick the picture of the thing for the treat? It's I have to make sure they're not just learning About where the treats are right you have to say you have to like carefully Well, but Allen it so that they're not always there and yeah, right like if I if I had a glove a thumbtack And a post-it note and if every time they walked over to the glove they got a treat and then I had pictures of a glove And a thumbtack and a post-it note right and then they went to the the picture of the glove and got a treat Right, that would mean they think it's the same thing as long as it's not in the same location, right? Yeah, yeah See I I question whether or not this is actually showing that they can't distinguish between A 2d and 3d look if I had if I had a picture On my wall of the Mona Lisa that I walked by on a daily basis And then walking by and there's a woman who looks very much Like the Mona Lisa standing there I would be very much intrigued and I think that was very novel Right as opposed to somebody else saying that Like that like I'm I don't know I think that would be a little bit more like I've identified that it was two dimensional I get the kind of familiarization thing of Of the image replaced by the object, but I I guess I guess I don't know that's doing a distinguishing thing It to me it almost sounds like they couldn't really Well, it's yeah, I mean they they they could tell that The object in the picture Was the same as the three-dimensional object in their room and But weren't at all that about the fact that the two-dimensional object is just poofed into three suddenly turning that would be How does that happen would be the first That's actually a very funny point um, you know, the big the big thing here is that if this study is actually Determining this concept of 2d to 3d transference and conceptual I guess rocking or judging Then what it means is that mice have this capability that's really only previously been seen in primates So maybe maybe douglas adams was right. Maybe we I mean we just need to be Looking at the mice a lot more another study in mice Because you know researchers love mice so much. They want to solve all the problems and cure all the things in mice Researchers at the salk institute Wanted to understand how we navigate social situations and how our brain identifies social rank and an example that is given is say your You know, you have a pizza and there's pizza on the table if you go into the room and Your seven-year-old niece is is in the room go in for the pizza or and your boss is in the room going for the pizza You're very likely to jump in and snag a piece of pizza Before your niece takes it Because you're like niece whatever. I'm gonna eat that pizza But you will recognize that your boss is your boss And maybe you'll let your boss have that slice of pizza and go get that pizza before you I mean, it could be very different depending on you You're a jerk aunt or uncle But we have these social situations all the time and mammals mammals live in these social environments and we figure out how to How to navigate social hierarchies and situations and it's not always the same Situation and they just published a paper in nature in which they looked at the brain and a particular area of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex and Determined how it was involved in the mice Representing social rank in their situations. So they put their they put mice in Social groups about four mice four to six mice And then in those social groups, they let them kind of get used to each other And then they made them kind of like round robin compete to get food And they put one mouse up against another mouse and while they had mouse versus mouse they While they were doing this they Were recording with wireless Brain recordings from the medial prefrontal cortex to see what kind of signals were happening And what they found is that they could predict with like 95 percent accuracy Super high accuracy based on the activity in the prefrontal cortex how an individual mouse was going to behave in the situation and it came down to not necessarily the actual social hierarchies But it came down to a particular mindset and they're calling it the winning mindset So even subordinate animals with particular signature of activity in their medial prefrontal cortex would go in there and take food The more dominant mouse would and they could predict it based on How active this area of the brain was and so they're talking about this area of the brain If you're going into a social situation and you're like feeling down on yourself or you're like Oh, whatever you're already getting yourself out of that winning mindset You have your activity in that prefrontal medial prefrontal cortex going So be assertive what i'm hearing It's actually and it's interesting in what we conceive of as a non-conscious species of mouse that wouldn't necessarily say Oh, you're my boss. You're dominant. Whatever, you know, it's those amorphous social Situations where even maybe you're you're Kind of on even footing But some days you're not feeling it or other days you're feeling it more and It it comes through in your brain activity But were you going to say just Well, I was gonna say like whatever that is like I wonder if it would register when I because I feel like I just always take The piece of pizza but not because of a winning attitude Not because of a just because I wouldn't think about The other you wouldn't even be noticing it. It's not on your radar It's just like I feel like this is also like the history of all the problems I've had at workplaces over the years too with bosses like I don't I don't get the the that part that The wouldn't take the piece of pizza like you this is the boss. They probably provided the pizza probably for the employees That's why there's a pizza. What is he gonna eat? He's gonna provide pizza for the employees and then eat it all No, that's for us. Anyway, what? He's gonna go eat a fancy dinner later. He's the boss my goodness Well, I don't think I would think it like I don't think you're not in competition like the mice were No, I don't think it's a winning attitude I feel like I feel like there's just a some sort of path of least resistance in this universe that I'm walking through That would just I would just take the piece of pizza without thinking about and the niece too The niece too that because I'm trying to beat the niece to the pizza You should be faster learn reflexes So, yeah, so is it winning or is it not being able to read social situations? I think it's not caring But so I think it's not caring Yeah, so it's gotta be it's gotta be some combination though. That's interesting is You know, this is internal to the mice and you know, like I said there's There is in normal situations you would expect Subservient mice to always let a dominant mouse win But they said there are lots of situations in which the the subservient mice did not they would actually go get the food first and so What is it about that they're more hungry? They've been they've probably all been Without food for the same amount of time. What is it that changes to create the signal that their computer program could Could see would predict that that subservient mice mouse was going to go get the food and win the food Out over the the the dominant mouse Like what is it and so I bet I bet the same signal is happening in your brain. I want to know what the kind of long-term success of these mice Would be because on the one hand you have better access to food because of the winning attitude But on the other hand, do you have um A situation where Their dynamic within their social group Reflects this Where there's maybe not as much give and take or as much care given to this individual, right? So this is the thing I'd be interested about is the long-term impact if they keep ignoring social cues and taking food And you know pissing off other mice or rats. Does that impact leadership? We can get rules and management mouse management rules does it or does it mean they get kicked out when there's communal food And and they don't get told right so I don't I think that would be because otherwise why evolutionarily? Why wouldn't they just all move this way? So but there is a diversity in it and you know and you culturally if I was thinking about I don't know why I've got this picture of some Meeting with a business group of Japanese businessmen who were negotiating for something And and you could see they there was the the guy with seniority and their side of the table And if he nodded it was like A chain event of everybody who was then the guy under him nodded and then the guy under him nod It was like you think it was like a wave That went down this side of the table and this is sort of the picture like I think there's also a societal thing where where people and some societies or cultures might put greater deference or weight to a business structure or a caste system or a military hierarchy of that sort of thing So I wonder if then because then I'm starting to think is this a cultural effect and not a genetic But it would be but it would be influenced Different group of mice. Yeah, so this is yeah different groups of mice This is a group. These are groups of mice who were Allowed to live together for a period of time before this competition started. So they created their hierarchies and they They created their little Society, you know, they're a little their little tribe of mice and To compete and so if you then took those mice and put them with other mice and made them Get it together and do it over again. Would the same effect happen? You know, would the same mice have the same results if you had that other group doing Collaboration type things For like right instead of competition. Yeah social engineer them differently To have them doing different like social tasks or one's a more competitive task before they get into that environment And then see if those differences were actually like a a evolutionary genetic based thing Or if it was a learned sort of a strategy survival strategy Right. So yeah, is it instinct or is it learned and that's that's I think A very good question that they didn't answer but with this they were able to tell that this area of the brain activity in it Is indicative of social outcomes Of of knowing Like basically recognition of The hierarchical social status of the other individual in the situation And then making a plan based on it. So this this brain region can be Used In mice not in people. This isn't in people, but I mean we have that brain area. So Hmm And we're social, what does it mean? Nothing yet, but it's interesting to think about sure is And that's all I've got for science stories Yeah, did we do it? Did we make it? Did we do it? Did we make it? We'll type 120. Here we are Youses, we make it we make it long. We make the science long and fun So much fun. Thank you for listening everyone. We hope that you enjoyed the show I would love to shout out to people who help with show fodder Thank you so much for social media and show notes show descriptions very very helpful Gord and arnlor and others who help to keep the chat rooms above board. Thank you for all of your help there Rachel, thank you for your amazing editing and assistance and identity for thank you for recording the show And additionally, I would love to thank our patreon sponsors Thank you, too, richard badge Kent northcote pierre velezarb ralfi figaroa john ratness wami carol cornfield Karen tozzi woody ms chris wozniak dav bun vega chef stad house nighter donathan styles aka don stylo john lee ali coffin matty paren gaurav shrama Reagan don mondes steven albaran dale myshac stew pollock andrew swanson fredes 104 skylute paul ronovich kedwin reared in noodles jack bryan kerington matt face shonanina lamb john mckay great make Greg riley marquesson flow jean telly a steve leesman aka zima ken haze harrod tan christopher rap and dania pierce and richard brendan minnish johnny gridley romney day flying out christopher drier arty i'm greg briggs john atwood bob coburn reedy garcia dav wilkinson rodney lewis paul philip shane curt larcen gregland in mountain sloth jim depose to duster jason olds dave neighbor eric nap e o kevin parochan erin luthan steve de bell bob calder marjorie paul disney david simmerly patrick pecker our attorney steele uses And jason roberts Thank you for supporting twist on patreon and If any of you would like to support us on patreon head over to twist.org and click on the patreon button On next week's show We will be back broadcasting wednesday eight p.m. Pacific time Uh or thursday four a.m. Now central european time surprise Casting live from our youtube and our facebook channels and from twist.org slash live Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast perhaps while you tend to your garden? Just search for this week in science if our podcasts are found if you enjoyed the show get your friends to subscribe as well Uh for more information on anything you heard here today show notes and links to stories will be available on our website www.twist.org and where you can uh also sign up for a newsletter You you can also contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekandscience.com Justin at twist minion at gmail.com or me blair at blairbaz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist twis in the starting line or your email will be Spam filtered via a preying gland that covers up and camouflages the scent of said email and we will never sniff it out Or you can uh It is up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr kiki at jackson fly and at players menagerie We love your feedback if there's a topic you'd like us to cover address a suggestion for an interview A haiku that comes to you in the night. Please let us know We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from the show Remember It's all in your head This week in science This week in science This week in science is the end of the world. So i'm setting up the shop got my banner unfurled It says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the robots with a simple device I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand This week science is coming your way So everybody listen to what i say I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and i'll broadcast my opinion all over the air Because it's this week in science This week in science This week in science science science This week in science This week in science science science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That what i say may not represent your views, but i've done the calculations and i've got a plan If you listen to the science you may just See after show For the long show are you awake? Justin is gone. No We made it through the show Justin uh Maybe read the disclaimer. Maybe not. You did a great cold read. That's fine. It's fine He forgot about a the eggs that humans lay That's that's the one i always get in fights with people about we lay eggs once a month We don't lay them I don't lay an egg like I don't well you kind of do Well, I don't like sit on a nest and no, but that's not the same as laying laying an egg is just it exiting I know but I feel like laying an egg is Where the bird has the nest and they put the egg in it special and it's It's a very very complex behavior in my brain Not just the body passing this thing out Some chickens don't Take care of their eggs at all. They just let them fall wherever I know I just i'm thankful that we don't have hard shells on our eggs because like Laying eggs as hard enough as it is without putting calcium shell around that sucker word Right. Yeah, I know they make it hard enough Hey Gaurav is asking Blair. I missed the first bit. I'm sure you all discussed daylight savings time already Yeah, so They passed it at the wrong time guys. It did It's a mess the senate passed to keep daylight savings time Which now I will remind everyone it is currently daylight savings time, which is the altered time We just left standard time So if you were gonna keep something would you keep standard time? Or the messed up different thing Obviously the messed up different thing because That's what the united states likes to do so Economists want daylight savings time to stay Because there is a belief and I'm sure this is based in real numbers. I'm sure I don't know But that people will spend more money go more places stay out later Buy more things eat out more if it is light out later In reality the other issue is there is a wealth Of science that tells us that standard time is better for our bodies It is better for our telomeres. It is better for our immune system. It prevents depression Standard time from being great to the show It prevents that It prevents accidents on the road because everyone's tired and it's dark all of a sudden and Selfishly if I'm just talking about myself. I'm gonna put all the science aside I care way more about waking up and seeing the sun Then about having one more hour of daylight when I'm out and about at night seriously The sun for me in the morning is one of the most important things. I mean it It's like as the year goes and the morning gets darker and it's later. It the sun comes up later and later later As that happens. It's like I am completely unable to get out of bed It's just like I Why is it dark? I can't know I'm supposed to sleep when it's dark I don't know and what about children that go to sleep now before it's dark out Do they want to go to sleep when it's light out? They sure don't they don't no Not to mention, you know parental life. What does it do to the babies that you've been sleep training over the last months Justin So nothing. They don't care. They do. It depends where you are in your sleep training journey. Yes For a one month old it doesn't matter Correct for a kid for a toddler or for a young kid who's like my parents want to say it's light outside Why do I have to go to bed? Yeah, it can be very hard. It totally matters Especially yeah, if you're trying to set up a particular nap schedule or anything like that It could absolutely matter. Yes for you time means nothing right now. I understand that Time is a flat circle for the newborns. I understand but um Yes, if you're working on sleep training There's that also, you know animals my dog doesn't understand That that changed No, yeah, that's hilarious. Uh, you mentioned animals. I had uh As a youth I had a donkey a mule That was that lived in the backyard. This is uh Quincy, California Yeah, hashtag hashtag classic davis, right? Not davis. This was this was uh, this is quincy, california Quincy So totally normal. We had a a pen Back there a little corral back there for the for the mule and and yeah The mule woke up like clockwork Uh half hour before my alarm was set every morning and then You know and start Uh like time to feed me. Come on. What are you doing? And so I got and then the daylight save didn't care. It didn't it didn't switch Nope It didn't switch with the clock. It's like, no, what are you doing? It's now it's too early. What are you? Ah, I can't get up Because I also wake up the whole neighborhood too. It wasn't just my Well, see that neighborhood should have petitioned to not have the time changed That is yeah Make make the mule stop Yeah, I mean, I think the one there were a couple of studies However, that did show there were uh areas That switched to uh daylight savings time Permanently for a while and they they actually had an increase in deaths hospitalizations In all all caused injuries like a whole bunch of things that were Not great Um in the time and when they switched back to standard time Those things Evened out again Yeah, so I also want to call to attention here if we keep daylight savings time In december it won't get light out until like 9 a.m Yeah, it's gonna switch it. So that's the other so up here. So I think it was identity four was saying He doesn't like that at night because it's dark early and you get out of work And it's dark when you get out of work, but with daylight savings time It's gonna be dark when you go to work and it'll probably Because we're so far north. It'll probably still be dark when you get out of work At least with the way that it was there's just there's the possibility of maybe seeing sun in the morning There was and now there's not That was this weird affect. So I was working at job. It was all it was like 13 hour night shifts And in the sort of interesting that kids didn't work. Um not nocturnal like that But but one of the interesting aspects of it was I went to work when it was sunny. I got off work It was sunny and if I was uh up for any period of time in between It was sunny out and it was kind of nice It was like living in a world of perpetual sun Because when you're in work and you're in the building and you can't you see, you know, even looking at the window It doesn't matter. You don't see anything There's you know, maybe maybe that's the way to go. It's just all become nocturnal workers And then we have sun all the time Yeah, we're all of our free time and we'll never sleep Eric nap you're saying yes, man Eric nap up in alaska. Yes all this that we're talking about totally normal for areas like alaska also Denmark, norway, sweden, finland all these places that are very dark up in the the northern uh The northern circle Yeah region it just you know, there's some places where it's very very dark almost all day long very very light almost all day long In the winter It switches to where the sun will be out here in the summer all the time and you won't even notice that it gets dark Yeah, right you have to have blackout curtains because you can't sleep because it'll be like 11 o'clock at night And it'll still be you know nice sunny day out there right, so it's interesting because there are people who live in these extreme areas of You know daylight or darkness and Yet here we are in these kind of middle zones and it it's you know It's a concern, but I don't know Um, whoever said in the chat who said it in the chat room. Um Oh, yeah the marked isn't time just a reference to when noon is yeah, that's standard time That's what standard time is Why are we leaving that behind it? Oh, it makes no sense. I don't At it, yeah, you know I thought the thing they always said was like is because the farmers want it the farmers gonna get up in there No, it doesn't matter Sun comes up every day. Anyhow, they're already working. They're working when the sun goes out there. They don't Restaurants and malls. It's for restaurants and malls. That's why they do it. That makes sense And we don't use those anymore. So Also, I don't that never bothered me. Is that really a thing like oh sun went down I'm not gonna go out to dinner anymore. Is that really a thing? Well, maybe All right, but you know, it's hard to eat but just by candlelight, you know So, yeah, when did this thing start anyway? I don't know. I think it's more my budget How old is this? Yeah No, it's it is strange and then it's also strange that We do it in the united states on a different timeline than than everyone else Um, I experienced that when I was living abroad and I suddenly had to wake up An hour earlier. Yeah, it's a week ahead of everywhere else. No two weeks in the fall. It's like I want to say a full month ahead of europe Yeah, but I think I think europe changes the week is two weeks after because we do we've done our science talk conference And we usually have rehearsals this week And so it's like get the europeans ready for our time change and then the conference happens And it's still in the same time difference And so nobody has to get used to anything new and then the time change happens in europe like right after So I I never talk these things. I guess i'm not uh, I Like my phone just does it right my phone That's how I find out it happened is that I didn't even notice it because my phone switched automatically My computers all switched automatically and I just be like, maybe I didn't get a great night's sleep Or maybe I got a great night's sleep. Yeah, but it just I did Everything changed the clock changed. I didn't know I didn't even notice Uh, but yeah, of course everything right now is on central european time here. So nothing changed What is arizona arizona doesn't switch. Yeah, they don't do it But yeah, good question. Are they on they're on standard? Yeah, I think Arizona is on standard. So now I'm always gonna be different from we're now and all on arizona It's gonna be on arizona time. No, we're not we're all not on arizona time. Oh, we're not doing standard time We're doing we're doing like saving time right now. I've been yelling about the whole time. Oh, I see I kind of Is that we should be doing standard time because that's the standard right one. That's normal time. Yep Okay, I didn't realize that the senate said Keep it at daylight savings time year round and I was I was talking about is the economy. That's all they care about So I was talking to my dad about this this morning and he said that in 1973 they did this But it only lasted nine months because everyone got freaked out when it when it got dark in the in the fall So they were like never mind yes And kids because p because families were sending their kids to school in the dark Yeah And everybody was like, oh my kids are walking to school in the dark. Uh, duh Yeah, that's you just did that So why so this is the thing they only talk about it now Because they talk about it when you lose the hour sleep And that's all people seem to really care about right is that you lost an hour sleep when you go back to standard time You get an extra hour sleep. So everyone's like, yeah So it's not front of mind, right? So they only think about it when daylight savings time happens and that's what they're like just keep it like this No It's fine at least I don't ever have to worry about trying to figure out the fall back fall forwards spring back Fall back spring forward That's the problem is that when you compress a spring what happens? Springs back broings. That's that's why now that never helped me analogy or that we're thinking too hard justin It was confusing Even with a little I know gaurav. We should we should be starting school later anyway That's right. So what about work too early for kids work? We should start later and end earlier correct. Do you have less hours? Yes You're correct, but that will never happen. I think it would be great in a survey of in a survey of uh Happiest nations, you know how they do that every once a while there's there's a couple of trends all the happiest nations Uh tend to be western which could be you know, who values what kind of happiness more another They also all tend to be socialized countries where things like there's a lot of universal health care involved and that sort of thing another trend uh two trends Uh tend to have a more disposable income, but us is pretty high on that list us doesn't make the top 10 by the way but they also have shorter work weeks And more of a some more vacation time as well is a big part of that And I bet they have paid sick life too That makes people happy. Yeah Longer parental leave all that good stuff. Yes, that's a so uh and and in some cases uh completely covered child care as part of like universal child care So there's a lot of things that if we wanted to be happy We could be voting for or initiating his policies, but we don't because America doesn't like to be unhappy It's not a priority Well-being quality of life not the priorities in this country. No. No, we're gonna focus on Corporate just work harder. Just work harder everybody Work harder. Let's just be work harder then oh I have gone down the rabbit hole of anti-establishmentarianism anti-disestablishmentarianism And anti-disestablishmentarianism, yes Um, I still am uh a gog at the word grok that you brought up earlier I'd never heard it before and I had to look it up and now I'm really excited about it grok is a fantastic word and its history is wonderful too um Empathy okay, so No, so it just means to understand something intuitively or empathetically Establish rapport grok What's the what's the origin? Yeah, so uh, it was From uh science fiction Oh stranger to strange land. Yeah Heinlein Yeah Yeah, so it was a word that was part of the lexicon Okay, so it's a it's it indicates a concept of self-transcendent experience and emergent Identification beyond those of many subject object assumptions It's a lot of words I just want to point out kev kev being in the chat rooms pointing out something average work They should start 30 minutes after all the schools start and end when the schools get out. Yeah, like yeah It's also like this really ridiculous Uh way to construct a society Where you have kids that need to be in school for all the child rearing portions of your population They got to get the kids into school and they got to pick them up after school But you have a work day that's longer than the like it doesn't match up you can't parent You just simply it aren't it's it's like one of those it's a catch 22 It's set up for a um for a stay-at-home parent That's what it's set up for that's where it all is set up for having a stay-at-home parent You're right and if we're going to charge rents for two incomes, right? We need work weeks that match, right? The the other problem is that the thing that I say over and over and over and over is that Automation and the internet and technology have allowed us to do our work Four times as fast as we used to at least But that means we have to do four times as much work not work a quarter of a time Which is stupid and I will never forgive society for doing that When we found out how to automate things and make things go faster and we didn't have to mail or fax and we could email That shouldn't mean we do Do more work Home early Yeah, that's how I was how it's been and you know, we we used to have a way in the united states of Making sure everybody could get a good paying job and and support a family on it But then we let women work Which ruined The you've been that you've done that you've you've been down this one before Hey My point though is if we if we had a maximum work week of 30 hours Uh, every every big company would have to hire more people to fill the roles and the hours that they needed So you'd have job creation would be You know and then and then oh, but we don't have enough workers Oh Well, then now we have a situation where the workers are worth more It could be paid a little bit more because now you definitely need to keep them Yes, well, but that's the problem. Justin. Who's in charge Unfortunately No, not the people certainly not I was just thinking patrick p says hey, I liked having two hours parent free growing up after school It was a time to chillax, but i'm also see Honestly I would have been horribly disappointed with my upbringing if there was always a parameter out that that you're right That was those were precious hours as a precious parent free hours some of the best hours of the day But i'm just thinking how this has led into the uh, the work continued the work ethic Where our generation of latchkey kids We were so proud of the responsibility of that key and everything that key Like meant and then we wanted to go into middle management because then we got to have the keys to the building It's all about having the keys to the building and maybe if we just take the keys away from the kids No one will care about that anymore I'm gonna start a no keys for kids campaign Yeah, everybody in my my school looked up to the janitor because boy he had a whole mess of keys Boy that guy's like the most responsible guy You've ever seen he's got that Ring of keys that they're jingle jangling around so you can open all the building you can chillax in everybody's house No, wait, what? Yeah That's how the janitor did it. He was always like you come home and then the janitor to be there You're like, oh wow you got to keep it this house too, don't you? Oh days Ah Oh, yeah, identity four says that I can solve all of this kids stay in school all day and night forever Adults stay at work all day and night forever schools and office buildings have no windows Makes none of this a problem anymore Well, isn't that the whole point of like the tech companies having like the chill sofas and nap couches and laundry And food it's so you don't leave Yeah To make a nice atmosphere and you know, there's a regulation In Denmark I think it applies to all forms of office space So it definitely applies to lab space, but I think it's all forms of office spaces That they have to have to Have a window and it might be even multiple windows because you see this weird phenomenon of a window to the outside And if that is missing Right, you have windows to other areas. It might be window to another office It might be a window to the hallway, but you have you cannot have an enclosed space without windows And and I think it might even be like two windows. It's like some really weird thing where you I wonder if that's for emergency egress. This has got to be what it's for, right? No, I think no For mental health. Yeah It's mental health built into the architecture. Yeah, interesting. Yeah Which is very different from a lot of the architecture There were so many classrooms that I spent so many hours in that didn't have any windows. Yeah Did you hear I I haven't looked up to see what's happening with the construction project down at uc santa barbara? I think is the university There is a Donor who donated a chunk of money toward a new Student housing building with But it wasn't even enough money to build the whole thing But anyway, the money came with You know the Poison pill that he got to design the building and he designed the whole building like basically with double rows or like stacked with like lots of rows of Of student apartments with no windows like basically to Pack more housing into the building. So he had this idea of Make having certain aspects of the building with no windows and just kind of having big lcd big screen tv's that like showed Scenes of outdoors Oh my god But something happened because of the money and people but I I I lost I lost track of what was going on with it It was probably about six months ago last time I checked in on it, but So there is there is a building. They actually build it There is a building that was built in Denmark that I'm going to mess this up a little bit, but it's a Like a very green building. It was a very green design Open spaces windows Open architecture plans all this sort of thing Uh sustainable materials were used and it's designed to be As self sustainable a building as possible. I think they do water collection. There's solar. There's all this sort of stuff They didn't Put in bathrooms And somehow the thing got built without bathrooms. So I guess it had been designed But it was still like undetermined where to put the bathrooms But the final design got built without a restroom and this is a large building. This is like, you know, like 80 offices or something like it's like it's like decent enough size Building that you would expect there to be multiple bathrooms down multiple hallways within some sort of walking distance of the People but it was built completely Somehow, I don't know how that can't even miss that in our architectural plan Build bathrooms got built into it Uh, wow Yeah Might be pretty but you can very pretty But there's no facilities for you Yeah and it's like building that vaulted ceilings everywhere into a An architects draft But then the the building facilities people got to come in and put in like hey, we got to put in like Heat and air and pipes. There's all sorts of hardware that goes into a building You can't just have the ceiling go all the way up and then start the next floor above it Here's the hole and then they end up having not vaulted ceilings You have to do all this building infrastructure anyways infrastructure So it looks like there isn't an update on monger hall since that's what it is. Yeah So I think they're they're being real quiet right now, but the guy did resign After the reveal of the lack of windows and lack of ventilation Right like not and it's but you know just drawing it on your little home architecture 3d graphing thing whatever it is It's not how buildings are built. There's a whole infrastructure that needs to be Put in there It's like a living organism. You can't just build it without the the all the the The the uh, oh god, where am I trying to say stuff that keeps people alive Yeah I can't build it without all the organs and the systems Required for a thing to be alive living Buildings living dollhouse It's a dollhouse. Yeah Yes With fake windows Oh monger Unless unless you designed the building to look like a spaceship And we're wanting it to be like part like experiment like uh, hey Can you live for a couple of semesters on this spaceship? Well, that's what it Yeah, it's a so it's a social experiment for sure Yeah Eight people to a room Almost no windows or oh for 4500 students to building exits Yeah, oh gosh. Yeah, that's just bad design Yeah, well, thankfully the person resigned. Hopefully they at least left the money on the table when they did I don't know. We'll see Gosh, it's awful It really is Oh, I'm sorry students. How is your box? It's like Oh I've seen some of the new student housing that they've been building uh around uh Copenhagen because they were they were Massively under housed. I guess. Yeah, we're on. Uh, it's gorgeous It's gorgeous. It's like oh, these are like the sweetest little Modular apartments with huge windows nice nice view areas of the city and They're absolute like I want I would love I would love to live in one of those things When you see a student housing and then you're like, oh, I would totally do that. That's that's not this I would not live in this. I would not do that I'd be miserable I don't know my basement is okay because I have a window right here during the day The light comes in and I have another window right there and I see the light You don't have to go to one of two exits to get outside And rush to those two exits with the 4,500 other students. Oh my gosh, it's just insanity Yeah It'll be interesting. I mean people can get used to all sorts of things But it's a very interesting question of you know, the social experiments that Should be done or you know, did we do them with the pandemic to kind of determine the kind of isolation That people can put up with for long periods of space travel Or the the isolation with very small groups of people and how those work out Oh, you need to travel for two and a half years before you get to your destination with eight other people put me to sleep There's also a phenomenon of just not even student housing, but like large apartment complexes, which are big thing around in the university town, but they're all you know throughout the Every north central valley at least they're everywhere Big sprawling apartment complexes and and you know, they're their design Is really bad Just like the the one that sort of get the types that you sort of see over and over again mostly designed probably and built in the You know late 70s throughout the 80s, maybe even into the early 90s Small windows You know, yeah, it's it's tiny dwellings because it's an apartment. Maybe you can get that's not the worst But then these like very cramped Floor plans where every room has a door And so it's like you go in and it's like oh, here's all these doors And they all go into small little cuboglareas. So it's like very closed Footprint not an open footprint and then the windows are the smallest windows If you look at those apartments that have been built for the last few decades across the united states, I'm sure There's no accommodating light Or or anything else that's like a human living environment. It's that said Again, I'm comparing Denmark, which seems to put a premium on these things It probably has a regulation about them But all these new apartment complexes that you see going up gorgeous looking You don't see the a whole lot of that same Uh Thing being built over and over again. They most of them seem like concept one-offs architects balconies big windows Yeah, you know nice open floor plans. It's being built for people So I don't know who what architects or Economists or person putting up the money got to design the apartment complexes that are most common in the united states But they're just horrible They're utilitarian They're not even Is there just mean right if you got straight like bow house Utilitarian right you would have ergonomic open what it'd be also it'd be yeah, it would It would be very efficient use of space. These are inefficient uses of space, right? That are like interesting. Yeah, all crushing in in in a lot of ways Maybe it was intentional. Gosh. Could that be like people figured out? Oh, this is how you make a nice house Yeah, but then you don't want people Renting to be content with life. So let's make all housing horrible Identity four has copied and pasted that monger hall has a ventilation system that meets california building codes fresh air is provided Fresh outside air is provided for all rooms at twice the volume required by the california building and mechanical codes To balance air pressures the fresh air is mechanically exhausted to the roof from the suites galleries kitchens in great rooms Resulting in no recirculated air which in a post-covid 19 world is highly beneficial to building occupants But you also don't have windows. Okay, majority not very many windows except on the outside of the building do those windows open um What happens when there's an earthquake? Santa Barbara, it's possible. You have an earthquake the power goes out The doors lock you can't because they're all on Keycode thingies nowadays and the ventilation systems stop working What happens to the air in those buildings? And and and i'm sorry. Did I hear right that it was eight people per room? Like eight people would be assigned to sleep in the same room That's not possible Having two people sharing a room Is tough That's a tough thing Having eight people share a room to sleep in impossible Absolutely it looked like they're like little um Like bed cubicle like you have a closet that your bed mattress platform Is in and then there's like it looks like there's a central place and so it's like there's eight spots These are humans not extra pairs of shoes. These aren't the winter boots You don't just jam them into a closet and forget they're there No, no, no, no, no No, no, no, no, no first thing we need to do is for america is a thing eric. Yeah First thing we need to do for america is come higher away all these danish architects who are building Are absolutely gorgeous Yeah, they're amazing and and and do that Instead and then everybody who's still building those old soul crushing inefficient space usage You find out who's got that burn the blueprints Fire the people who built them last time and if we can find the people who actually design them I'm sure they're long gone. I think this is their one. They was like, I'll do this Yeah, take that world. They'll build this for a hundred years. Ha They're probably long gone. This was probably their last act of aggression towards societies those apartment spaces Oh I don't know as as Populations are going to keep continue increasing for a while then they'll start coming down again But in the meantime as they increase Wait, you have to figure out where we're going to put what do you know? What wait, what do you know? What's decreasing? population will decrease within The next well not from where we are now, but by 21 decreased over the last two years Well, not enough to make a difference What's gonna happen that's going to billions of people decrease. I'm very confused, geeky So, uh the international health metrics evaluation Uh Group they have Determined that with and also the other people like the un and other groups determined that with increases in education for women and family planning throughout the world um, and also, uh, basically improvements in reproductive health for women around the world that, uh, there will be reductions in birth rates similar to like what japan already has what the united states is in the process of Of hitting and many countries around the world are going to see decreasing birth rates And so what's going to happen is even though it's kind of like the ocean heating up right now even though You know, we've we're starting to slow stuff down. There's still a lot of inertia in terms of large countries with their growth growth rates, so africa um india china like those Areas are going to continue growing substantially for a long time Even as other countries are coming down. So we're going to end up going up to like eight or nine billion people Maybe 10 billion we might peak out at 10 billion, but then it'll start dropping um That's still too many but yeah the estimates right now suggest it's going to drop to about eight Eight and a half billion by 21 That's going to be really strange to have like That much of a decrease Right, I mean right now. We're not that high. So it's an increase from where we are now It's gonna go up and then go down again the the earth adjusting To having 10 million 10 billion people And then it going back down to eight yeah in Less than a hundred years. Yeah in less than a hundred years. Yeah is catastrophic like that means you create infrastructure and space right and um and jobs and all this stuff for Two billion people That will disappear. There will be space left Yep Because what's going to be is is populations are aging and so as populations age. There's decreasing birth rates Yeah, and so you have those populations then start to decline Yeah, so it's just really it's a really interesting wave, but that's a very interesting point that you made that's I don't know So for part of the volcano study we're talking about the 1814 uh Volcano in indonesia And I looked it up because I was curious Because they said this is many people died, but I was like wow how many people were alive It was about a billion people on the planet 200 years ago one billion We're now at eight billion My prediction is we're gonna be at around 64 billion people in 200 years Or attempting to be That would be my like I don't see anything that's really really really really slowing it down No, but that's exactly it is it's um aging populations and Reductions in birth rate as as what yes, but as Yes, new people, but what's happening in especially in developed countries is that Women become educated and they want to get a job or they want to do something other than just have children and you also have improvements in health and well-being for for and so you don't have child mortality and so People don't have as many kids and so you have Basically like we have I think we have below the replication rate so what they the standard is is 2.1 children is an increasing population rate But if it's less than that then you have a decreasing population and uh the united states is like something like 1.7 or 8 right now. I think and so it's starting to decline Japan is really significantly low. I don't remember what their number is but you can look at all of this stuff the ihme they actually have Like they do projections and you can look at what their projections are for different years and Because of the the replication number You don't end up and if the replication number decreases decreases decreases in more and more countries And you have aging populations So you have people dying and then not as many people being born Suddenly you have a shift in your population and your population won't grow. It'll actually shrink And what's going to be a what's going to be the big problem though? So someone in the the chat room said that It's bad aging aging populations are bad for the economy and that's true because fewer people are working But the other side of it is that you don't have enough young people entering the workforce to take care of the older people So the like anybody who wants to get into healthcare or into like Helping elderly care That is going to be a growing industry For decades Part of the problem I always have with this I guess I've heard this before For because the problem I'm having with this is that What ends up then happening based on this idea of more educated more Women taking control of reproductive rights and that sort of thing is that Then the people who Aren't having reproductive rights or and or aren't educated Reproduce a lot more than the educated Having rights people and then that's just then they just they they run the Governments and democracies they become the general population of the world and and there we go again We're gonna be right there 60. I'm sticking. Hey, I'll give you the two. Maybe we need better public education 62 billion people Now in 200 years Oh, okay. There's not nobody's gonna it's actually hard work though because I think I figured out that I've only I've only replaced humans even even through My that's right. You're working on replacement. You are here. I'm just a replacement. I'm just a study state. Yeah No, do the math not Yeah, do the math No, you have been in two reproductive relations three reproductive relationships Or kids That's just replacement Actually, yeah, maybe you're right. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I was like I was thinking that's really hard work That's really hard work To add more humans than Yeah Adding humans. I'm I'm I'm removing humans. I added one human. I'm not adding any more humans Yeah, that's a it's a decrease of one human. I'm at a solid negative two currently That's right. Yeah, just keep that negative rate here. We'll see But no, this is just but we should be encouraging Dr. You we should be telling Blair. No, we need more people Raised by uh, Blair and Brian types and so you should have like seven children This is my dad's my dad's argument to me like was his argument to me for many many years That's the plot of idiocracy, right? Is that the also the smart people aren't having children because they feel guilty about it Or they wait too long or whatever and then and the world becomes dumber. Yes Well, that makes total sense. That's I think my objection Uh, and actually just just to throw this out there Blair because I know I I don't want it I probably should have done this in the after show and said now but That is generally not Blair pretend. I didn't point it Blair and say this just generally people listening audience Every year you don't have kids Is the year less you will spend with your grandchildren and at some point that's the only reason You will get out of bed and live another day. Thanks for the guilt Justin thanks for the guilt to I don't need Oh, no, that's not that was not the Blair. That's just not everybody can have grandchildren No, no, no, and I'm not saying like that's the whole point of life, but at some point That might be your only reason Also, my generation is screwed monetarily in terms of caring for children. So that's a whole extra piece Yeah, I think we were talking about that been a pre post post pre show at some point We were designing a society against having children. It's really what America is becoming I don't know. We need to have a little child climate change army So, I mean, let's just all have the kids so they can all solve the climate change problem for us All the baby activists so they can all get upset that we've handed them the bag Yeah So The alternative To ruining the plan As we as we saw it back then was just not having more children, which Would have been you so that's kind of your fault But it's I think a very interesting On the future I mean the population is still growing it's still going to impact Climate change and we're still going to continue to use resources and we're not doing things sustainably And so the billions of people that we will still increase is not a good thing It's still going to be catastrophic to the to the ecosystems around the world but The one thing that I have learned over the last couple of years that I thought was it's so interesting is You know, the whole idea of the population bomb It's not necessarily as true. All right, it's because populations are Losing their fertility because they're aging out because they're going to start shrinking. It's not as big an issue We just have to hurry it up To help get more women's reproductive education and rights into developing areas of the world so that they can get To the point of shrinking their populations faster because that would be good Probable equality, that's what we want No No, I mean if you if you're Not necessarily Every country needs to have a country to look down on is that what you're saying? No, I don't mean to look down on but I don't think we want to Take the world as it is now and make the standard the mean acceptable We don't want the Like that sounds like a horrible plan Right though, that's not That's not what I said. Okay. Oh, that's just totally what I heard. I'm sorry. Okay I'm gonna go to sleep now. Blair's already asleep. Yeah, I'm just going through the motions I know I I opened twitter and I I looked at Uh, what was trending? That's always interesting to see what's trending after the show Because it changes and uh, I saw the john stewart trending and I was never changes Yeah, the the john stewart's trending and I found out why and now I'm sad and I just want to go to bed Now I have to look it up and now that He has a new show on apple tv or whatever and I guess he said that um fossil fuels are not our enemy Oh, yeah, no john stewart, by the way, uh, be afraid of having idols who have writers Yeah, yeah, you're hella right about john stewart post have actually john stewart before he had writers Was a horrible guy Then he got writers on the daily show and was amazing And then he stopped having writers Yeah, and became awful and then he said those things about the vaccine that were terrible and now he's saying like Give the fossil fuel companies a break Sometimes those people like I'm afraid to actually meet john oliver and find out that he doesn't believe Anything that he talks about is just behind anything in the show. He's like, I I don't care about anything I've seen his stand-up. So I feel pretty confident that that's really yeah Yeah, I know I'm I just want to know why my trending topics are not interesting like yours Why does twitter think I want sports? Yeah, I found out that about john stewart and I found out that Stephanie Beatriz Uh, who performed, uh, one of the incanto songs. She recorded it while she was in labor That's my trending Why don't why basketball? Why I don't twitter doesn't know me twitter doesn't care about me Somebody's using your twitter to look at sports stuff I never do. Why are you logged into an ipad in your house or something? No All right, never seriously, it wants me to like know all sorts of things about What does it want me to know about it wants me to know about fashion Oh, I do like this Simone Biles rocked a y2k inspired chainmail dress for her 25th birthday There you go It was rather I don't know why I don't care why but yeah, I've got I've got john stewart No, uh Something trending in panama John stewart shame cha me have no idea. Oh, and you ask that nasa okay I've got uh batman Jesus Also trending in panama, you know, actually Man jesus Most of it is stuff trending in panama My this whole now you should wonder Yeah, your vpn thinks you're in panama I I don't even I don't even think I had it on right now But apparently yeah, and it was like other things like I went on to the what do you call that the the amazon to look for a product and And it said do you want this sent to lebanon and I'm like you're at this lebanon. I'm like, no No, I'm not anywhere Uh, just change your passwords I don't think it's passwords. I think it's I think it's like, uh, sometimes I don't tell the vpn where to go and I think it just chooses something But it shouldn't even be on a vpn right now. I don't know You're like this is a little bit weird. Okay All right, I am gonna go to bed now now that I got depressed about that time to go I'm just depressed that I don't get to hear news like that. I've got door dash disrupted by girl scout or disrupted girl scout cookie sales Of course it did Whatever wherever you are. I hope that you're getting the trending topics that you deserve Or you know what just stay clear of twitter's trending topics and go outside and smell the fresh air if that's possible I can't believe that jesus is just now trending in panama But you said batman jesus batman jesus and batman Oh, no, that was too different. Oh, no, you have me great batman jesus. Yeah, you haven't seen that It's the new movie coming out only in panama batman. Good night blare. Good night blash. Say good night, justin. Good night, justin Good night, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another fun night of this weekend science science news From all of us to all of you. Have a great week. We will see you next week Stay safe. Stay well. Stay curious. Not so curious