 This is Twist, this week in Science episode number 725, recorded on Wednesday, June 12th, 2019. Kidding about science. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight we will fill your head with worms, elephants, and the moon. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. You know, they say that the children are our future. But in order for that to be true, there has to be a future to begin with. I'm not surprised when children get upset hearing about the world that they will be left. So in order for us to nurture the curiosity and promise of what could be the greatest generation yet, we have to do our best to right wrongs, set the stage, and leave nature, beauty, and creativity for those generations to come. The first step preserving this future is to foster that same curiosity by encouraging questions, celebrating individuality, and setting the stage for wholesome education that is accessible to everyone. Let's start all of that by exploring this week's discoveries on This Week in Science, coming up next. That's the epic kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn every discovery that happens every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I want to know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. Good. Science to you, Kiki and Kai. And a good science to you too, Blair. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back again, and we are just in lists. Well, actually, we have a miniaturized, not Justin. With us tonight is our, is our, no, is my, my son Kai. Say hello. Hi. Hey, awesome. He wanted to join us tonight, and I was like, ah, this sounds like fun. So we hope that we will all have a really good time tonight. Justin is on his way to Albuquerque, Santa Fe. He's laying the groundwork, getting there before us. We will be seeing him this weekend at the show at the Interplanetary Festival on June 15th, Saturday. We are very excited and hope that we'll be able to bring it to you through live streaming. You excited, Blair? I am so excited. I'm definitely feeling a little bit out of my element. I started preparing. I was like, did these animals have anything to do with space? But I'm very excited to learn a lot of new things, which is what the show is all about. Exactly. It's all about learning Kai. Are you excited about anything for Santa Fe? Well, I'm really excited to go to Meow Wolf. Oh, Meow Wolf, yes. It doesn't have anything to do with space, but it's going to be cool art. I'm going to have tons of burritos, quesadillas, and tacos. That sounds great. Excellent. Got to have some good goals there. All right, everyone, we are ready to jump into the show. I brought stories about worms, our ancient ancestors, and blood. Because I do love the blood. Kai, what did you bring? What story are you going to talk about? I'm going to talk about the mass anomaly on the moon. South Pole. Okay. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. Blair, what is in the animal corner? Oh, my goodness. I brought mathematic bees. I brought elephants. I brought twin guts. And I brought feather lice. All those feathered accessories that makes me a little worried. Oh, my goodness. You just wait. Lice rule the world. Don't share feathers with friends. Okay. And as we jump into the show, I want to remind everyone that you can find out information about the show at twist.org. But if you're into this podcast thing, you can find us and subscribe to us on Twitter. You can find us and subscribe to us all places that podcasts are found. Stitcher, Spreaker, Spotify, Pandora, radio.com, tune in, iTunes, Google, all the places. And now let's jump into some science. Let's do it. Yeah. We love the science. So to start, you know, because my offspring is here this evening, I thought I would talk about offspring. Well, how we, as parents, pass things on to offspring. I mean, the study wasn't done in people. So it's not exactly applicable, but worms. We use them as a model species for all sorts of genetic things. And so researchers have done it again, looking at at Senorabditis elegans, C elegans. If you're going to say it a little bit more shortly. Don't fall out of the chair with so much excitement. He's just so excited about the worms. I know. So there were a couple of papers published this last week on the passing, not just a genetic information, but of behaviors from one generation of worms to the next. And the thing that's really cool about these two studies is that they are really starting to get at a mechanism of how behaviors learned during an organism's lifetime, like to avoid a predator or a fear response to a particular stimulus, how that can potentially be passed on to offspring and last over multiple generations. And so one paper published in Cell, yes, earlier this week, was out of Tel Aviv University. They used C elegans and they demonstrated that small RNA molecules, these little RNA, single small interfering RNA molecules get transferred from one generation from the adults to the offspring that allows a changing of how genes get transcribed. And that changes the way that behaviors are expressed in the offspring and it can last for multiple generations. Another research lab out of Princeton University observed that bacterial species can be avoided by these worms. So C elegans, before they die from a pathogenic bacteria, they learn avoidance of them. Some kind of stimulus from these bacteria leads them to want to avoid them and then they're able to again use these small RNAs to pass on that ability from one generation to the next. The Princeton group, they were really interested in how these worms exposed to a bacteria had a higher survival rate compared to young that had been born from unexposed parents and they discovered that there was a gene called DAF7 that is actually linked to pathogen avoidance behavior in C elegans. After the worms were exposed, DAF7 got upregulated. The expression of this gene was increased in a subgroup of neurons and it stayed elevated for generations. So it was learned one exposure to the bacteria occurred and then this behavior persisted for four generations. So one of the big questions coming out of this is why would something a behavior like this, this avoidance behavior last for so many generations? And one of the ideas that they've come up with is that these worms don't live very long in the scheme of things. They're not long-lived organisms like we are. And so the bacteria, the pathogens are probably around the same similar amount of time. And some of the bacteria may actually be beneficial. So it could have been just kind of a chance meeting or maybe certain bacteria became pathogenic in a particular situation, but then the pathogens died back and the beneficial bacteria take over. And so after several short generations down the line, you don't necessarily want it to persist indefinitely, but you do want it to be a persistent avoidance to help with that, with that ability to survive. And then the other study that came out of the Tel Aviv was actually looking at these small interfering RNAs, these sequences that can silence genes, they bind to messenger RNA transcripts, and by binding to the messenger RNA, which then goes to transcribe genes, what it does is it silences the messenger so that the gene never ends up expressed. And these were transferred from neurons to the germline. So these were behavioral neurons in the worms. They produced a protein that's called RDE4, and it had to have these small interfering RNAs in the nervous system and they get generated alongside the RDE4 in the neurons. They don't get generated anywhere else. The question is how did these RNAs go from the nerves to the germ cells? But we know that they are involved. So there are some really interesting questions going on here. So I have so many questions. Me too. So the first thing that comes to my mind is we've talked before about genetic basis of behavior. We've talked about epigenetics. We've talked about genome editing. We've talked about all these different things. This is a weird kind of Venn diagram of all of these different concepts. And so my mind can't help but go, mostly just because I'm obsessed with corvids, but to that story about how there were people that wore a particular mask and treated crows badly, they would throw rocks like not directly at them but near them or do something to disturb the crows. And then generations later, they would avoid people in these masks. So the previous assumption was that there was communication happening from generation to generation. Obviously, this is a way bigger behavior thing than just being able to avoid a particular bacteria. But this is, if I'm going huge big picture on this, if behaviors could be genetically influenced, there could be assumptions that we're making in the biological world that are wrong. If there are genetic bases to some of these behaviors. Yeah, and then the question is, at what point does something go, like we know there are lots of innate behaviors, things that animals just do, right? And the question is, how do they go from being learned behaviors to innate behaviors? Something that's a reflex, something that just happens when a certain stimulus occurs. And so is this part of that process? At what point does it go from these interfering RNA molecules, these little tiny snippets of RNA that either affect messenger RNA or like actually bind to the genes to upregulate or downregulate their transcription. But then how do they go to actually being encoded and changing the behavior? And so that is something that eventually happens. And so sometimes the behaviors, the RNA goes away, right? Behaviors go back to the wild type or the RNA maybe gets inserted, something happens, and the behavior changes forever. So this is to me, we're starting to get at these mechanisms, like you're talking about how does this persist over generations? What does learning really mean? Yeah. And when we talk about animal instinct, is this stuff that is in their genetic code, you know, that a wolf has to be raised by a mother wolf to learn how to hunt and be a wolf, but an alligator pops out of the egg, knows how to be an alligator. So is there a genetic difference there? Right. So, and it just adds, we knew epigenetics was, is complex, right? And how it, how it moderates and modulates our genetic code. But now this is like this extra layer of complexity. It's like, it's fascinating. It's a treasure trove. It's a treasure trove of research. Hey, researchers, get on out there. Just get out there. Kai, do you have any thoughts about all this? Yeah. Well, mostly hers, but mostly Blair's, but one of my, one thing that I found really interesting was that how like it basically makes an RNA copy of it after it gets attacked. And then like, and then whenever it gets attacked again, like throughout like four generations or this generation if it survives and lives on, it will not, it will have a defense against it. Right. It'll avoid it. Yep. It learns it and it gets encoded through the RNA. So the RNA is changing. That expression of those little RNA molecules is changing. And what makes that persist? Yeah, good question, kiddo. Good question. Moving on from worms to sponges because let's go even further back in our evolutionary history. Why don't we? Apparently there is a story out of the University of Queensland this week that may rewrite evolutionary textbooks. Oh, give it to me. I love it. Yeah, let's get it. Let's get in there. Look at you drinking with your little metal straw. Oops. Holy. How ecologically and environmentally conscious are you? Yeah. So this study, scientists at the University of Queensland decided they wanted to go back and look at this idea of who really was the multicellular organism's ancestor. Where did our multicellularity come from? And what did you learn in school, Blair? When did we become multicellular? When did that happen? Who were the organisms? So that was one cell, ate another cell. And then they formed a union and the bigger cell provided shelter to food while the other one uses free stuff to create more stuff that's harder and more complex to get and made it more efficient. Right. But the organism when you take basic biology is the precursor, not just archaebacteria, but when you're talking about multicellular life, sponges. These are the old organisms. And so researchers went, okay, sponges, multicellular. Well, look at this other organism that are known as... So there are these multicellular sponges, coanocytes, but they look, the cells within these sponge coanocytes look a lot like single-celled coanoflagellates. They're single-celled organisms that have flagellum. But based on the way that they look, they lumped them into the same group and said, these single-celled coanoflagellates must have turned into the multicellular sponges where their coanoflagellates are all working together. But they took a look at that assumption, at this idea that we've always just taken as single-celled to multicelled, and this is how it worked. And they compared the transcriptomes of these sponge coanocytes and the coanoflagellate single-celled organisms. And what they discovered is that they're not the same. They're not as closely really have different transcriptomes. The sponge has all sorts of instructions in its genome, the transcriptome, the things that get transcribed, those proteins that make it what it is. And the idea is that they're looking at it, and the researchers say they're looking for signatures, these cell types, that they're like, if they evolved along a lineage, then their signatures should be similar in the transcriptome. But when they looked, they were not. The researchers say these biologists for decades believed the existing theory was a no-brainer. Sponge coanocytes look like single-celled coanoflagellates, but their transcriptome signatures simply don't match, meaning that these aren't the core building blocks of animal life that we thought they were. And so by looking at the transcriptome, they say they're taking a core theory of evolutionary biology and turning it on its head. I mean, at least a page or two of evolutionary textbooks will have to be rewritten. It's like page one and two. Yeah. And so the interesting thing is that the signature for multicellularity really is one of differentiation. And so what they hypothesize now is that instead of these coanoflagellates is that there was a sponge precursor that had more stem cell-like characteristics, where it was a cell instead of being differentiated and saying, I'm a coanoflagellate cell. It was a cell type that was able to switch and change and turn into supporting cells that would allow multicellularity, where cells take on different roles, as opposed to just being a colony. That makes sense to me. I mean, overall, you know, the sponges, when we were, when I brought my sponge story, I think it was last week, the very first thing I said was, you know, a lot of people don't realize sponges are animals. But I think that, you know, you look at a sponge and you think it's pretty simple, but when you look at a diagram, yeah, it's pretty simple. But they have different parts of their body. They have this differentiation that you're talking about. It makes perfect sense to me. In some ways, I would expect that other multicellular organisms, like plants, those seem more like something that's just a multiplication of a similar cell, because, you know, you look at those under a microscope and they look kind of the same. They're little bricks. Yeah. But I mean, it's, it means there's a lot of unanswered questions out there, for sure. I know. I mean, and this is like such an assumption that forms this basis of how we have thought evolution took place. And all of a sudden you look at it a different way through a different lens and realize, oh, we characterized things wrong. Kyle, you had a comment. Yeah. It's actually something that's actually kind of like one of those, like that take different roles. The Portuguese made a war. Yeah. There's different cells put together into different clusters combined, making different like animals combining together, creating like stingers, which have drops, and then things that eat the food after the stingers, kill them. And then there's one that keeps it buoyant. It just looks like a pot on Kyosa. It looks like Kyosa. Looks like Kyosa. Yeah. It looks like purple Kyosa. Don't eat it, though. Don't eat the pot sticker of the sea. Yeah. That idea. Do not do it. Do not do it. Yeah. So I mean, to Ky's point, that's a perfect kind of next step, which Nidarians are after the sponges. So you have this kind of specialization in an amorphous blob of a sponge. And then you have the specialization of cells within a progressive organism, which is totally weird. Yeah. It's pretty neat. Yeah. It's a big question. How did this happen? Anyway, this paper from the University of Queensland primary author Bernard Degnan published in Nature, Pluripotency and the Origin of Animal Multicellularity. It looks like it might be a very interesting read for those of you who are so inclined. That's a little bit of light reading about multicellularity. A little bit of light reading about evolution and ideas being turned on their head. All right, Ky, you were going to tell us a story. Yep. Oh, you can leave that right there. Nope. Okay. Just put it down. What are you doing? I can barely see it. I couldn't see anything. What you need to see is notes. That's very important. Yes. Otherwise I couldn't read it. I need a screwdriver now. What is going on? Okay. Microphone. You're not looking. Yeah. Oh, we've got microphone issues. I always tell Ky not to touch the microphone. I got an idea. Why? I'll just take off the top microphone. Nope. No, you won't. I can just talk in that. Oh, you won't. I don't know. I think we got it. Bear with us some technical difficulties. Okay. Ky, can you read from there? Okay. Scoot forward. Put your head in here. There we go. You want to sit on my lap? There. There. Oh, look at you there. Okay. We can't see your face, but that's okay. Okay. What were you going to tell us about? What happened in the movie? The mass anomaly of this mass bunch of mass found on the South Pole crater. Right. So who found what is going on when you say mass anomaly, a bunch of mass found in a crater in the South Pole of the moon? Well, there was this thing of, there was this like iron thing that was found that was about too big for it to come up, to all come from the moon. And it was like this just giant glob of iron that wasn't supposed to be there inside a crater on the South Pole. And it was about, I'm lost. What are you trying to remember? Well, there's some ancient, yeah, I'm kind of lost. Come back to me later. Okay. I'm having a bit of technical difficulties. You're having technical brain difficulties? Yeah, my brain is off. Okay. So let me ask you the questions then. So who, do you remember what the, what the things were that discovered this mass anomaly? One was Lola? I forgot the name of the other one. Grail. Grail. Right. And what were they looking at on the moon? This big mass anomaly of iron from an ancient meteor of a decent size that hit the moon. And they think that it was either two, two rocks each other and one, and then this rock, this like space rock native iron hit this other one. And that one, and this one stayed there and destroyed the other one, making a bigger crater. This is like this really big crater, like really big one. Right. This is this, this eight can basin is a very large crater and it's a very, it's a point of interest for lots of, lots of people. And if it's an asteroid, a big chunk of iron from an asteroid, what can that tell us if we go there and we learn, what can we learn about it? Do you think we can learn how craters are formed? Yeah. Yeah. Probably. And if it turns out that it's not from an asteroid, what does that tell us? Probably from the core of the moon. Right. And would that maybe mean that there's some kind of something happening in the, in the moon that we didn't understand before? Like maybe on before, maybe it's not cooled off and it's technically active or something like that. Right. But the big question is like, why would there be this, if it's just something from inside the moon, why would it have all of that mass collected in one place? Good point. Why would there be that much mass in one point? Why is it confusing? So we knew about the crater, right, before, but we didn't know about this deposit of iron. Yes. Okay. And so we think two things hit on the moon around the same time, or one of the things was in the moon and one was another thing. Yes. Okay. And so we have had this assumption forever that the moon is just kind of dense, solid, kind of dead, right? But it's also possible that this came from within and therefore things are still moving in there. Which it's locked in orbit, right? So then it might make sense that things might pool kind of unevenly. Right. Because it's constantly moving. Yeah. The interesting thing is this is on the far side of the moon, on the south pole. So we can't see it from Earth. If you were thinking of it, and if it is something that is a lot of mass, means that it is an element that's collected or a bunch of elements that are collected that are mass heavy, which would indicate something like iron, like Kai has been saying. And so you think about iron and then you're like, ah, maybe the Earth's magnetic field has pulled a bunch of iron to collect in one part of the moon. But it wouldn't really make sense for it to collect on the far side. You would think that the magnetic field of the Earth would, or gravitational forces, would pull some, pull stuff closer to us. So what if, if it is in final processes, it's just kind of weird. What if this is a relic from when the moon broke off of our planet? Oh, that's another idea. Interesting. That's a good one. What if, yeah, there was like this pool of molten iron, or the bit that broke off the planet, or the part where the meteor hit the planet and fused and broke off of our planet. What if one of these scenarios involved an uneven mixing? Great. I mean, these are great questions. Sounds like we might need to ask some of these questions. Sounds like we need to go and actually get some material from the moon. I have a great idea. Let's go. I heard there's an interplanetary festival happening this weekend. Let's go. There we are. We're going to ask about it. Let's do that. That's fine. We're going to find ourselves a moon scientist. A geologist. We'll find somebody, a space geologist to tell us all about it. I'd also like to say that there's more than just iron and heavy metals. There's gold. There's... What can I also do? Copper. Yeah. There are lots of heavy metals. Rust. Maybe one combined with iron. Rust. Iron rust. That's a heavy-ish metal. Well, rust is an oxidized metal. Yes. Something oxidized, yes. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for telling us about the mass anomaly. You're welcome. What does anomaly mean? Do you remember? No. It means that it's something strange and unexpected. An anomaly. It's not normal with your data. It's anomalous. No, it's supposed to be there. Not expected. An ominous anomaly. An ominous anomaly. Say that 10 times fast. An ominous anomaly. You don't have to. That is a band name. If I've ever heard one, I have not updated my band name list in years. I'm adding it. Let's do it. Omnous anomaly. You can't even say it. The band name that nobody can say. Omnous anomaly. I can say it. As we're moving forward, hey, everyone, this is This Week in Science. Do you know what time it is? Oh, what time is it? I think it's time for Blair's Animal Corner. What's Blair? She loves her creature. Great and small. By this millipede. No bread at all. You want to hear about this animal? She's your mom. Except for giant. And let's grow. And then a bloke's mother. What you got, Blair? Thank you. I was like, uh-oh. Thank you. My brain broke. So you know whose brains aren't broken? Bees. B-brains aren't broken. B-brains aren't broken. Go ahead. And don't say that five times. Okay. Bees. As we know, they are very good with numbers. We've talked on the show about how bees can tell relative amounts. They've even recently been tested to show potentially the quantitative value of zero. So they have a good reason to be able to do that. They also have good language abilities. We've talked a bunch about their waggle dance and how they can actually signal direction and distance of nutritious flowers to other members of their group, of their colony. And they can interpret that dance to know exactly where to fly. So it is no surprise that they were the most recent target for a study on matching symbols and numerosities amounts. It's basically a science word for amounts. So they were used as the latest one to test this theory. There have been other animals in the past that have shown success with the symbol versus numerometer tree. Chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, pigeons and a single African gray parrot. That's right, our buddy Alex. They have all been able to associate either Arabic numerals or English names to actual numbers. So already the idea that our understanding of math and number symbols as being uniquely human is kind of falling apart, but researchers wanted to see how far this went. So in this study, it's pretty interesting, they took honey bees and they had them match symbols. They called them for the course of the study signs and number amounts called numerosities. They used a subset of symbols previously used in training pigeons so they know that they can differentiate, the pigeons can differentiate enough between these different symbols. So they were well tested. They didn't want to use actual numbers probably for a bunch of reasons, but one of them I would assume is so that they don't accidentally tip off the bees by something that they are doing. So it's a little more blinded to the researchers. So bees were trained to fly in a Y shaped maze. Inside that maze, they would look at a stimulus. The bee would then fly into a decision chamber where it would view two options, one correct and one incorrect. So they were trained to match a sign to a numerosity, a number symbol to an amount while a second group was trained to match the opposite of an amount to a symbol. If the bees were learning to match a sign to a numeral to an amount, they would first see the sign and then have the option to choose shapes or amounts. If the bees were learning to match a numerosity an amount to a sign, they would first see the number of items, like three squares and then have the option to choose from two signs. And Kiki showing them right now on the video stream, the examples they show is an N and an upside down T and then the numerosity they're showing is two circles or three squares. So because they're different shapes they have to understand the relative amount despite the different shapes. So if, for example, if a bee viewed an N that would, that bee would need to choose a display presenting two items. In this case, N is the symbol for two. She would need to be able to do this regardless of shape, pattern, or color. If she chose correctly, she would get a sugar solution, delicious. But if she chose incorrectly she would taste bitter quinine, which we've talked about on the show before as being this kind of, it's just a bitter tasting thing. It's not pleasant, but it doesn't hurt them. It's just, it's almost like quinine. Quinine, it's the ingredient in tonic water. So that makes sense. It's also, I think, in some more natural bug repellents because bugs don't like the taste. It makes bitter. So neither the, what do you say, quinine, I've always read as quinine, it's quinine. Nor the sugar. Neither of these are able to be smelled by the bee. So their only cue is the visual cue. They definitely would not be able to cheat in any way. They were trained for 50 trials. They matched the signs to the numbers and they had an accuracy of about 75%, which is pretty good. This is the first time symbol matching to number has been shown in an invertebrate. So all those other examples before are kind of those like, kind of, higher level organisms. They have a much more developed brain. So that, we kind of wanted to see how far back this starts. After training, they were tested in several conditions with new patterns, new colors, new shapes. They continued the preference at about the same percentage, 75%. So it seemed that they really did learn these number symbols. But where this gets interesting and where I kind of call some question to the interpretation of this experiment is that when they tried to reverse their tasks, they did not do well. If a B learned to match a sign to a numerosity, they could not match a numerosity to the sign or vice versa. So the association between number and symbols was only learned in one direction. They do argue that in children, this directional learning outcome called operational schemas are common. And so you kind of teach a one-way learning process and then you have to reverse engineer. I think that's one of the reasons that word problems are so hard for students when they're learning math is because you're trying to make them do things backwards and it can be problematic for their learning kind of directionality that they're used to. So the question I have about this is how do you really truly know that you are not just teaching basic association and you're developing something akin to a language skill which is really what they're asking here. They're identifying math and numbers and symbol based numbers to a language, a universal language that humans use. And so at what point are you just associating a visual to something else? And at what point are you developing a lexicon which I recognize might sound a little bit nitpicky but I think that if you're trying to extrapolate this into a mathematical concept you have to understand it a little bit better than that. So if they can say when the N in the upside down T are in the same circle then they have to find the five objects that are together then you can start to understand what those symbols actually mean. So I wonder maybe that's next who knows, but I wonder how well this actually tells us if they can't reverse engineer it. How well is this really proving this universal language of math is capable by bees. But they do understand zero so I feel like also I kind of want to give the bees the benefit of the doubt here. They probably got it. Yeah, it is this interesting question of what are the symbols and which are the things which are the symbols that represent what and we're trying to enforce something that is a human ideation a human concept onto an insect cognition and so the question is are as we're doing all of these studies okay one works one way one doesn't work it doesn't work in the reverse what does that mean does it mean that we tested them appropriately and their cognition can't support it or does it mean that our test was inappropriate. Right. And that's always the question right I mean for so long we thought that monkeys some the kind of old world the lesser monkeys the more primitive monkeys whatever you want to say that probably none of those words are correct we thought that they could recognize themselves in a mirror and it's because we developed a test that was not relevant and now all of a sudden we found out they can't. Yeah and then you put in the right test the animals are able to do this thing that we've been looking for and it's just a matter of asking the right question in the right way and so and then and then the question is you know bees don't really count they're not going one two three four five flowers yay that's not happening they're they're doing they are there is some kind of numerology obviously because we're able to find these concepts that match zero the you know two boxes three boxes but there are concepts that are equivalent but that equivalence is not the same right yeah there's something else there's something else going on in their cognition about what they're actually re-hending right they don't need to know exactly how many flowers there are they need to know that the nectar in this field is sweet and abundant yes it's sweet and abundant yeah what do you think Kai what do you think of the counting bees it kind of sounds like we're torturing bees them in mazes and making them do things and if they get the answers wrong they get they get a gross stuff poured all over them that sounds like torture to bees well I feel like you could get the quinine most research if you boil it down to some really harsh terms probably doesn't sound great also a lot of things that we humans do probably sound like torture if you explain it to another organism right I like to put on really tight clothes go into a hot building and run for an hour but never get anywhere sounds like torture but it's it's all it's all it's all a matter of perspective speaking of counting animals we went from the very simple brains and the bees to the very complex of elephants elephants are some of the most intelligent animals as far as we can tell in the animal kingdom they have very intense cultures and they have their own types of language they have amazing memory as the sayings go and so elephants we know are pretty smart an international team of researchers found that elephants Asian elephants are smart in a whole another way the nose they can tell which of two food sources has more food in it by smell alone oh wow yes this is I'm just trying to imagine you know you go into a pizzeria and you're like this pizzeria has more pizza than the other I know you have lots of tacos I smell them imagine somebody put like a bowl of spaghetti fresh spaghetti with meatballs on it or red sauce or cream sauce or whatever you prefer put a small bowl piping hot put a larger bowl right next to it a box over both of them with a slit for you to smell do you think you could tell which one was bigger the answer is you can't we could test it let's test it in Santa Fe let's get a small burrito and a giant burrito you close your eyes you can tell us which one you think is bigger but in the meantime as far as this international team of researchers are concerned they are looking at an aspect of odor detection that as far as we know, Kai could be the exception as far as we know, no animal including humans has ever been known to discriminate between food portion size using only olfactory senses their research process was quite simple but very effective they took two buckets they filled them with sunflower seeds sunflower seeds I did not know this are an elephant favorite they locked the lids and had small holes on them you got to lock the lids because elephants are very smart and very good at opening things they put small holes in them and then allowed an elephant to sniff both of the buckets they then loosened the lids unlocked them presented the buckets again and then they saw which the elephant chose to open and dive into first they repeated the experiment many times with different elephants varying the amounts of sunflower seeds in the buckets sometimes it was a very vast difference sometimes it was a more subtle difference in the amount of sunflower seeds the elephant showed a clear preference for the bucket containing more seeds even though they never saw what was inside before they opened them they also found that the greater the difference the better the elephants were picking out the best so they could usually pick out the greater one but it was much easier when there was more of a difference between the two they also found interestingly that the males were better at determining quantities than they were the females which makes sense because males are extremely territorial they have male based harem based structures one male and a bunch of females so they have to be able to sniff out males from a very very far ways away so they would it would make sense have better olfactory systems than the females this is the first example of an animal ever documented of an animal being able to differentiate between quantities by smell alone they also note that this may prove useful in Thailand now this is where this gets really interesting aside from just whoa elephants are so cool in Thailand elephants are a nuisance and a pest yes you heard that right elephants are a pest they encroach on human occupied areas as you might imagine elephants showed up in the middle of my commute to work I would definitely be late and that would be frustrating although I would probably be more fascinated by the fact that there was an elephant in San Francisco up until now here in the US the only time you run into an elephant or a giraffe in your path is at a wild animal park where you get to drive through it yes that's right up until now most of the efforts to deter elephants in these cities have been based on attempting to scare them away they'll use firecrackers or loud noises or stuff like that to kind of scare them off shoe them off but if they can find a way to lure elephants away from areas where there are lots of humans with bountiful food they might be able to convince them to stay away from those busy areas so that's definitely interesting application that I never would have thought of but it makes perfect sense you can't really put a sign up that says elephants this way but if you put a nice big pile of sunflower seeds in whiffing range that might be enough to pull them out away from civilized space huh yeah look at all the sunflower seeds I have psych no psych it would actually be there but if you think about it sunflower seeds are much less expensive than firecrackers and much less expensive than disrupting entire city traffic flow so it's true it's true maybe we can use this maybe we can use this but I mean I think yes it's interesting that we can potentially take this new knowledge and put it to use the idea that elephants ecologically would be able to in their habitat figure out where there is more food potentially are they putting their trunk down into an ant hill what are they sniffing out and why do they need to know whether or not there's more of it yeah so that's a really good question I think one of the questions that has to come from this is how far this works what the distance of their abilities would be because elephants will walk hundreds of miles thousands of miles across Africa following rainfall following their food because most of what they eat is vegetation so if they can sniff out the rain I mean we all know that rain smells a particular way but if they can smell the areas that have the heaviest growth for example then that might be really advantageous for them to know which direction to walk all day to cover this vast vast path to food because otherwise they're just kind of going ok the rain's roughly over there I'm going to walk over there but if they know oh there's a giant patch of grass if we walk northeast instead of just east that could make a huge difference for the survival of their herd so they're kind of like like mods except instead of pheromones that they're catching on their very sensitive antenna they're sniffing out the scent of rain or other sensory, other olfactory sensory stimuli that tell them which way to go in their environment there's a whole other possibility and that this the use on food is completely kind of a byproduct and actually what they need to be able to quantify via smell is the amount of a hormone how mating hormones, aggression hormones are there more females over there I'd have a better chance of sneaking in and being a sneaker male over there now I have imagining elephants sneaking in on tiptoes we do imagine a ninja elephant a ninja archie they'd get up real close and they'd go pssss pssss elephant you scared me you snuck up on me so stealthily stealthy elephants there we go thank you Blair everyone it is time for us to take a break we have come to the end of the first half of our show and we'll return in just a few moments with more stories I got blood in the second half of the show we'll be back in just a few more moments for more this week in science thank you for watching or listening to this week in science we appreciate that you have spent part of your week with us to keep this show going we do rely on support from audience members like you so I ask that you head over to our website twist.org where you can find information about how you can help our show out number one is just clicking on that big orange subscribe button click subscribe it'll help you you can choose whether to subscribe youtube itunes or google and then you'll be all subscribed you can tell people to go to twist.org and to subscribe if you think this is a wonderful podcast additionally we have a zazzle store our zazzle store is where you can find all the twist goodies t-shirts polo shirts tote bags pillows wonderful things twist logos all over them art right art from Blair's animal corner calendars of years past and a portion of the proceeds supports this week in science back at twist.org you can also click on the yellow donate button on the side that allows you to choose one time or recurring donations to this week in science through paypal we also have a link to our patreon community and patreon is where crowdfunding takes place that's right you can click the become a patron button and then choose the level of your support you will be charged this once per month ten dollars a month and more and you will be thanked by name on the show so get in there patreon paypal support this podcast independent science media coming to you every single week and if you want more this week in science this weekend we're going to be in Santa Fe New Mexico at the interplanetary festival at the interplanetary festival you will be able to find other wonderful podcasts on the podcast stage but we will be podcasting June 15th this Saturday 4.15pm mountain time we will do our best to live stream to you through our youtube channel and twist.org but if we're not able to do that we'll be recording the podcast and sending it to you through our podcast channel oh we couldn't do any of this without you we thank you so much for your support and we're back you're listening to this weekend science and what time is it Kiki oh my goodness it is time for this weekend what has science done for me okay and since Kai is our guest this week I'm gonna throw this out to Mr. Kai what has science done for you lately well science lately has I'll go last no must tell us what you what does it let you do in your life well I did my animal report thank you Blair for giving me an idea of doing snow leopards and I did as good as I could and it was actually pretty good that's awesome what did you learn about snow leopards or how did you learn about snow leopards since we're talking about what science did one thing that I searched up to learn it was this one place called well I just searched this up on google well yeah it I searched up 15 amazing snow up facts about snow leopards I copied out the facts and I changed them up and I changed up the facts about snow leopards a bit and then I and then I changed with them and then use them inside my book in your report yeah right you wrote them yourself right so Kai when I had to do anal reports when I was in school it was a little bit different so I feel like science has helped you a lot because I would have to go my mom would have to take me to the library I would have to go find a little card file find little card with a number on it then I have to go find the book then I would have to check out a bunch of books take them home read through them copy things out and there I got very excited when I was in high school and I got some CD ROMs that had an encyclopedia on them that was like a very special day because I didn't have to go to the library anymore which the library is still very fun but it's pretty cool that you can learn 15 snow leopard facts all in one place just like that that's awesome yeah did you go to the library no I didn't have to oh my gosh do you remember any of the snow leopard facts that you really liked favorite one was probably if they walk in really deep snow and they actually they kind of don't like sink into the snow they kind of just flow on top of it in a way yeah why is that do you remember what they have really furry paws that um spread their weight more evenly across the snow so that they don't just sink down and they help isolate the sound of their movement yeah they have these huge feet that are like snow shoes and so they can spread out their weight so awesome nice why yeah that's why we have snow shoes yeah you'll just spread that out we have to strap things on to our feet to keep us from snow leopards can just walk outside snow leopards just get to do that yeah not as graceful as the snow leopard yeah and Kai watches all sorts of youtube videos about science and so I think I would say that technology and science come to him all wrapped up in a nice little package all the time probably my favorite videos to watch shout out if you're watching this well um probably shout out to this um this uh youtuber who um he's really good at animating I'm surprised they actually animated so what well cruise gap well I don't know how to say it I don't know how to pronounce it it's a good account in a nutshell yeah it's german I mean it's german for in a nutshell it's really really good they talk about like everything they talk about lots of stuff like twists basically an animated version of course very cool thank you Kai for sharing what science has done for you lately it helped him with his report if any of you are working on reports or whatever you have little notes for us about what science has done for you lately send us a note he doesn't have to be a crazy thing doesn't have to be long and involved let us know what has science done for you lately send me an email kirsten at thisweekandscience.com or leave us a message on our facebook page it's facebook.com slash this weekend science alright Blair you got a story for me yes I'm channeling Justin tonight by bringing a nice microbiome story all about the gut this is all about specifically the guts of twins this is the largest ongoing scientific nutrition study of its kind it's an international team of leading scientists from kings college London massachusetts general hospital the nutritional science company zoe and more and they showed individual responses to foods that are unique to every individual even between identical twins so this long term study was specifically trying to figure out dietary guidelines and if there is any potential to a one size fits all guideline for diet and I think this could be extrapolated I don't know if this is exactly what this team of research was thinking about but I'm thinking about things as simple as the 2000 calorie a day guideline so there's all sorts of guidelines that we have that we use as the baseline for what a healthy diet is for a human being and the more we're learning the more specific it is to each individual human so these one size fits all dietary guidelines have now proven to be too simplistic there is a personalized approach that is necessary to nutrition in order to provide long term health benefits so the researchers measured blood levels of markers like sugar insulin and fat change in response to specific meals and they looked at that along with data on activity sleep hunger and their gut microbiome in thousands of participants in the US and the UK most of their study were twins which is an amazing opportunity to be able to rule out genetic reasons for dissimilarities between these individuals so the the kind of key to this huge study was that they were able to use a machine learning technique from this company Zoe to look at all of this nutritional data and they're actually taking this to try to make a test and an app so that people could then do a lot of their own testing in on their own in order to maintain health and and diet and stuff like that this is a 25 year investigation in 14,000 twins this is a big data set they found that genetically identical twins had very different food preferences and responses so some highlights of their findings in 1100 UK and US adults 60% of these were twins they looked at two weeks of regular blood sugar monitoring of glucose insulin fat levels triglycerides fat levels and other blood markers to look at standardized and freely chosen meals they had a variation in responses to the same meals whether they were carbohydrates or fat in them some had rapid or prolonged increases in blood sugar and insulin which experimentally are also related to weight gain and diabetes other had fat levels peaking and that lingered in the bloodstream hours after the meal which is a pretty big difference from one person to another this large variation only partly was explained by genetic factors less than 50% for glucose and 30% for insulin and less than 20% for the triglyceride fluctuation there was only a weak correlation between individuals response to fat and carbohydrates and their genetic make up this is the one that really blew me away identical twins who share all their genes of course and most of their environment who are raised together had different responses to identical foods they found that identical twins shared just 37% of their gut microbes two unrelated individuals share about 35% so in this specific study this is a huge difference the genetic make up of these people had very little to do with their microbiome so this is something that we've talked about for a lot of times this is the microbiome something that gets passed on to you when you're born it potentially begins when you're in utero and that it gets passed on to you while you're born and through breastfeeding or through life experience and antibiotics can have an effect on it and so there's all these environmental impacts to what your microbiome actually is yeah so I feel like we keep going back and forth a lot we'll have a study that is exploring genetic links to microbiome I feel like mostly it's been something else, it's been environmental stuff but one of the researchers from Harvard Medical School a gastroenterologist there kind of chimed in on this is that it's actually super reassuring because it shows that the genetic make up actually explains how our body responds to food which means our metabolism is not fixed and we have the power to change it which also means we have an avenue to tailor our diets to the bacteria in our gut which helps us metabolize nutrients so I think before we've talked a lot on the show about changing up your microbiome this is kind of a completely different this is turning that on its head and saying identify your microbiome diet to that so I think neither way is perfect but both are probably part of a perfect symphony of taking care of your body if you can recognize I mean this is something that there are people that are gluten intolerant there are people that are allergic to gluten there are all these different levels of gluten sensitivity that are often the butts of jokes these days but what some of this might be is a particular microbiome that doesn't process gluten well that doesn't mean you can never eat gluten again that you have celiac disease or anything like this but it might mean that it's a food that you might want to avoid just like there are people who are lactose intolerant right so like if you can identify that you have foods that don't make you feel good or that spike your insulin levels that would be a good thing to know and if we can figure that out from a nice microbiome swab that would be great yeah I mean the one thing this you know this is research that's done by scientists these are these scientists have great credentials but they're also this is a company Zoey is a company that wants to sell a product right and so there is this small bit of my mind that goes well this is a company that wants to I mean there are many companies nowadays that are using science based reasoning or design behind their products and so it's not necessarily that there's anything wrong with what they're presenting but I do think that we need to also look at this with a grain a little little little grain of salt I think that's a very good point I think that what something you could take away from this though is that in the future part of holistic healthcare from your general practitioner will be looking at your microbiome and I think that's pretty clear yeah and I think your point also is you know is your allergy or your intolerance is it genetic in nature or is it because of your microbiome and if it's because of your microbiome is that then something that you can change can you take probiotics or prebiotics that might help influence your microbiome can you do fecal transplants you know whatever they happen to be to influence your microbiome to be a different state to change that yeah yeah like some people can take their their little lactose eating enzyme booster before they have their ice cream and then they don't feel so crummy afterwards if this is something where I can know hey bread makes me bloated it makes my insulin spike it makes me feel terrible I'm gonna pop a little booster a probiotic pill that will help with the process of this bread that I'm about to eat that would be great I'd be so into it yes let us eat all the foods that we want to eat without the gaseous byproducts or we can just give strength to the poop pills honestly sign me up or just bino whatever gaseous bino all those things yeah let's talk about blood let's report from the gut microbiome to blood so we have talked on this show many times about the shortage of blood for transfusions anyone who has given blood knows that they are giving to a very good cause helping people to survive in all sorts of situations where if they did not have that blood they would not now Blair you are a universal donor is that what I remember no I am the universal recipient so my blood is almost useless you can take them all yeah I can only give my blood to other universal recipients right well what if something could change that yes our our blood molecules have these sugar molecules on the outside of them that are very similar to molecules called musins that line the inside of our intestines and so researchers from British Columbia trying to figure out could we develop a system to take away those sugars that mark them as particular blood types and also make basically influence the way that they can interact with each other and with immune cells and with the body if we could change them or eat them away could we say take type A blood and turn it into universal donor type could we turn it into type O blood well because type O blood is the one that's basically naked right naked it has nothing on the outside yeah no antigens it's got nothing not necessarily the it's good for being able to give blood but in terms of how it interacts with the immune system it's potentially not as good the antigens are a protective factor so so there are pros and cons but when people are dying because they don't have enough blood if you can make more blood that everybody can have then it's great like I'm type B and so I can take blood from universal donor I don't know it's a great question universal donor or I can take from other type B's but I can't take from a type A person I can't take blood from Blair but what if I could and so these researchers were looking at these musins in the gut and they found bacteria that eat these musins that have enzymes that break them down and allow them to do things in the gut and so they started looking at these E. coli and started looking for enzymes that could do to blood what they do to cells in the gut so the researchers found a bunch of enzymes they found two that when they tested the one of them by themselves it didn't really do anything but when they put two of them together cut off the sugars there were no sugars that they could detect in their tests on type A blood potentially indicating that they had turned type A blood into universal donor type O now there are more tests that need to be done but there are other methods of creating type O blood from blood types however they're really expensive and not very efficient this could potentially be are inexpensive efficient answer bacterial gut enzymes for changing blood types so this is you'd pull my A B positive blood and you'd put this stuff yeah you'd basically have your bags of blood that have been come from the transfusions and then you would put the bacteria in there shake it up real quick shake a little blood cocktail I'm imagining that it wouldn't be the bacteria because that's less efficient but actually the enzymes and so isolate these enzymes create manufacture these enzymes at scale and then I feel like you would probably run them through the membrane so you could select for the only the blood molecules that the blood cells that have been altered so you could potentially select for the type O blood that has been transformed and then you would end up with this clean system where you wouldn't end up with any enzymes on the other side of this membrane you'd only get the changed blood I feel like that's yeah that seems doable it seems doable and it's very exciting and then another exciting medical discovery this week that I saw this story and it kind of blew my mind one of the big issues with people aging is hardening of arteries, cardiovascular disease that very often leads to heart problems, heart attacks that lead to death researchers looking at for over the last 10 years basically doing just basic research into proteins and DNA and cells were able to determine that there is a molecule called polyADP ribose or PAR, PAR for short and it's normally associated with DNA repair and so when damage occurs inside the cells to DNA PAR comes in and is part of the system that fixes it however they used to think that PAR only existed inside cells but it turns out it also exists outside the cells too and they've found that hardening of the arteries is the interaction of PAR reacting to damage stress damage so say you're smoking or there's stress of some kind like dialysis or something that is affected the way blood is flowing through your arteries leading to cellular damage, PAR interacts with calcium and crystallizes hardening the arteries so now they have a mechanism for how artery hardening is occurring but beyond that they also found that a very commonly widely prescribed antibiotic called minocyclin used to treat acne very often can prevent the buildup of calcium in the circulatory system and remove and repair hardening of arteries so this is something this is a treatment that's already out there approved by the FDA very widely circulated and people are able to they don't have bad reactions to it and then secondly they've got a mechanism and so they're really going to start pushing forward to see if maybe this antibiotic can treat this cardiovascular disease so this is great I think it's awesome but I feel like this is the third or fourth story I've heard in the past couple years but an antibiotic used for one specific thing turning out to do something completely different it's always beneficial which is great but it also just sounds to me like we have no idea how our body works but this is also the interesting thing it's like the way that antibiotics work is fascinating as well they have these interactions with bacteria that prevent the bacteria from reproducing but at the same time these antibiotics interact with our bodies and our cells and the chemical processes that are taking place inside of us these antibiotics yeah they have there's all sorts of stuff that they do that's where side effects come from that's where they're not just affecting the bacteria the microbiome yeah which is another reason to not over prescribe them I feel like we're very good about recognizing the dangers about super bacteria and all these sorts of things but this is just another reminder that any medicine or drug could have all sorts of we're a complicated system we are a complicated system for sure I mean the thing that I'm also interested in is so many antibiotics are becoming there's resistance in bacterial species and so alright the antibiotics don't work to actually get rid of bacteria anymore but hey we can use it to stop your arteries hardening we have these potential tools that we can continue to use just not for bacteria sure good yep that's great we'll just put it in our little basket do you have another story yes I have one more story it is a thrilling tale of feather lice and the witnessing of evolution in a very short amount of time parasitic feather lice they are a very particular type of lice they live on pigeon feathers and they have some very interesting traits about them one of them being that female lice are about 13% bigger than males that's a sizable difference and they in particular it is a size difference that can cause problems when it comes to mating so basically there's a size at which the male can still mate with the female but at a certain point if the female is too large it's physically not possible and so this kind of perfect storm of specialization was the perfect backdrop for researchers from Emory University to look at reproductive isolation they started with a single population of parasitic feather lice they split that population into two transferred them on to different sized hosts pigeons with small feathers and pigeons with large feathers the pigeons preened the lice naturally and populations adapted to evolve differences in body size to what was best on the different sized feathers populations which is just for years the biologists saw larger lice on larger pigeons and smaller lice on smaller pigeons they paired them to different sized male and females from either population and when they did that the females laid zero eggs this is reproductive isolation those are such weird looking animals those of you listening please go to twist.org and click on the show notes from tonight and check out the video of feather lice copulating on videotape it is hands down probably the weirdest thing you'll see today but it's also fascinating so the female is much larger than the male but the body size differences as a result of separating them on to different sized pigeons appear to be preventing the lice from physically mating with each other this is speciation this is the beginning of a new species reproductive isolation is usually the first step to what becomes a functionally distinct species so in order to find this out they wanted to see why they weren't getting any eggs and in order to figure that out they wanted to film the lice attempting to mate but this is where I just got a love the narrative style of biological research because you get to hear these scientists and the troubles they had trying to figure out how to videotape lice mating they would not do it on videotape then just one day an undergraduate researcher brought a heating pad into the lab for her sore back and Eureka the head researcher had an idea he used a hot pad which was tuned to the birds core temperature so they tried to replicate how warm it is on a pigeon and all of a sudden bam the lice started attempting to mate but what they saw as a result was that male lice physically could not mate with females so they had they figured that was what was happening physically they could not reach over from the larger to the smaller or the smaller to the larger there is this kind of very specific size at which the females about 13% larger than the male where all of the puzzle pieces fit just right but if the male is closer in size or farther in size than that very small margin it's not possible and so this is considered ecological speciation that's when first championed by Charles Darwin of course this is when a ecological change causes a shift in adaptation that makes reproductive barriers and so in this case the different size pigeons were enough of a barrier so that the lice didn't lay eggs this is all so fascinating just the all of the way all of this is working together so you have to fit in the space between the feathers to be able to not get picked off and then you gotta be big to have lots of eggs but you can't be too big because in the males don't work with you so you have to fit within this very specific set of parameters for size it's a reminder that that life persists because of so many random changes that eventually one works everything has to be exactly right and it only makes sense if you have a million iterations of a thing and eventually one thing fits and then it has to fit over and over again so that you have enough genetic diversity to actually make a species which is mind blowing conversation in four years genetic diversity mind blowing we'll see so will they be calling it a new species we will find out that is a great question honestly based on my previous conversations about species I don't really care but I feel like identifying species is important in one case and it is protection of a species other than that it's just nature doing all this crazy stuff sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't sometimes they curl back in on each other like in hominid it's just whatever man it's just us trying to define things but really what's interesting here is because we have to put everything in our boxes you must fit in this little box never mind what you're actually doing fit our characterization yeah I think if I were to kind of rebrand the study I would say ecological reproductive barriers in four years nice I like that there we go there we go not necessarily a species just barriers building a wall I mean if nature did it right but since I did say that the what other political things decisions are affecting our science recently the trump administration has put a ban in place on fetal tissue research within the national institutes of health yeah there was a nine month review led by officials at the department of health and human services and it was it issued a decree on this policy and it has three components one is that there is a contract between the NIH and UC San Francisco and UC San Francisco was using fetal tissue to develop humanized mice for HIV drug testing to create a model by with which we could actually start to create better drugs to stop the HIV epidemic that partnership is done the NIH there is no scientist within it allowed to do any research using fetal tissue anymore none not a zip zilch and the third aspect of this is that there is a longer review process in place for anyone applying for funding from the NIH research that involves fetal tissue now you might wonder why this is such a big deal well humanizing mice and using fetal tissue for research does allow certain studies to take place that cannot be done in any other tissues for example study into human development what happens during the time of fetal differentiation you can't study that without fetal tissue and if you want to know about humans specifically you need human fetal tissue so historically going back a little ways the NIH director Francis Collins in 2018 had noted that the agency was putting up 20 million dollars over two years into research on into alternatives to fetal tissue but you have to have fetal tissue to test the alternatives against otherwise you have no way to determine the validity of those alternatives and so at this point with no fetal testing being allowed and the longer review time what we're going to see are researchers just abandoning their research which is what some people wanted to have happen but it will stall a lot of research taking place into human health and treatments for disease what kind of policy is this is it something that can be lifted once things change yes this is a policy this is not a law so it is something that if a different administration were to come in or even the same administration were to review these considerations and come to a different decision the policy could change well I guess call your congress person right but it will hold back a certain amount of important research just think about all of the what has science done for me lately submissions that we have had that involved somebody's life being saved that in some part of the testing probably involved some of these labs yeah and some labs there are researchers whose entire grants actually cover much wider scopes of research but a part of the research relies on fetal tissue and so they will be abandoning the fetal tissue aspect so that they don't compromise their entire grant and so there is there's compromise that is happening there's compensation that's happening this is going to affect research moving forward in the united states so they're at the time being there's a really good question in the chat room as well does this affect non-federally funded fetal tissue research it does not this is only related to the national institutes of health and any research being done at the NIH or research that could be funded through the NIH or that very specific partnership between the NIH and UC San Francisco okay so there is this is yeah it's not it's not affecting everything private research or different funding funding sources will absolutely continue but this does start to limit the influence of governmental funding into this area of science it's getting toward the end of the show my son has gotten tired he's moved over to the corner and put his head down for a minute you're yawning there I'm so sorry you're yawning well so a new study suggests that it may not be yawning just because you're tired it may be that you yawn because your brain is getting overheated what? yeah so researchers those kind of tired maybe your brain is tired and it's not thermoregulating appropriately appropriately but researchers used a warm or a cold or a room temperature pack against their carotid artery to change the temperature of the blood heading to the brain and then the researchers looked at how many times people yawned or didn't yawn and then whether or not those yawns were contagious and who found the most contagious what this study determined is that cooler heads were less likely to yawn and also less likely to pick up on somebody else's yawn so it adds further support to the idea of yawning as a thermoregulatory mechanism interesting so we're pulling in cool air we're pulling in air and oxygen and it's improving circulation blood pumping yes yes the yawning that's the idea that maybe yawning has to do more with temperature is it left? yes so now that we're yawning this last story comes about what's after yawning yes and after the yawning we go to sleep and that's what we're gonna be doing here in just a moment but another study this one out of the NIH if you like these yeah National Institutes of Health you know very important research and organization for our government too loud you cannot make any noise the researchers at NIH looked at they just published a study in the journal Diabetes Care and have been looking at how problems with sleep or regular sleep you're going to bedtime and the number of hours that you sleep affect your health they followed 2003 men and women ages 45 to 84 these people were involved in the multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis Mesa they were studied for about 6 years to find out whether there were any associations between sleep and metabolic abnormality people also kept sleep diaries and they responded to questionnaires about their habits and their lifestyle and other factors and the researchers looking at everything determined that yes indeed if you have messed up sleep schedules where you go to sleep late one night early another you sleep a lot of hours one night not so many of the other you're more likely to have metabolic problems like lower HDL cholesterol higher waist circumference higher blood pressure total triglycerides and also fasting glucose which these are all indicators of metabolic disease that can lead to problems like diabetes and so the researchers suggest that maintaining a regular sleep schedule can benefit your metabolic health and can benefit you overall and we know for a fact that circadian rhythms are very important and we've talked before about shift workers and why shift workers seem to have health issues this may be a link between that these irregular sleep times leading to that yes and for those individuals who have to do shift work because of their their profession the more we casting or you know doctors nurses nurses anyway security guards there's lots of people that work overnight or have varying schedules the more we can learn about that the better we can try to prevent future medical issues related to that if we know that those people are in those lines of work yep it would be great if I knew everyone could sleep from 10 to 6 every night but it would be amazing but that is not the way the world works it's not the way our society works and it's even not the way that people work I mean what this is suggesting though is it's the irregularity that is the thing that affects things the most so it's not the 10 to 6 aspect although there is other research that does lend itself to this idea that night time day time there is a difference there because of circadian rhythms but it seems to be that it's the lack of a schedule the irregularity that is the issue I like schedules schedules are great they're good like hey we just came to the end of a show we did it pretty much right on schedule we did pretty much just a few editing issues from here there in there but it's all gonna be it's all good it's all good you know we have come to the end of another episode and I just want to thank everyone for listening thank you for listening thank you for being a part of this program thank you for sharing your week with us sharing this time with us thank you to identity 4 for helping to record the show so that I have a podcast to put out thank you to Fada for helping with show notes, social media and our chat rooms thanks to Gord McLeod for helping with the chat rooms and I would like to thank our Patreon sponsors thank you to Paul Disney, Richard Onimus, Ed Dyer Andy Gross, Duke Pollock, Phillip Shane, Ken Hayes Harrison Prather, Charlene Henry, Joshua Fury Steve DeBell, Alex Wilson, Tony Steele, Craig Landon Mark Mazzaros, Jack Matthew, Litwin Jason Roberts, Bill K, Bob Calder Time Jumper 319, Eric Knapp, Richard Brian Condren, Dave Neighbor, David Williams Corinne Benton, Adam LaJoy Sarah Chavis Rodney, Tiffany Boyd John Bertram, Mountain Sloth Steve Fanol, Baran, John Ratnaswamy Dave Friedel, Darryl Meishak, Andrew Swanson Paul Ronevich, Sue Doster, State D. Wilkinson, Ben Bignell Richard Porter, Knudels, Kevin Reardon Kristoff Zuck, Nurek, Ashish Pants, Ulysses Adkins, RTM Rick Ramis, Paul John McKee Jason Oldes, Brian Carrington, Christopher Dreyer Lisa Suzuki, Jim DePauw, Greg Riley, Sean Lamb Ben Rothig, Steve Leesman, Kurt Larson Rudy Garcia, Marjorie Gary S, Robert Greg Briggs, Merdyn Aminish, Christopher Wrappin, Flying Out, Aaron Luthin, Matt Sutter Kevin Parrachan, Byron Lee, and E.O. Thank you for supporting us on Patreon. If you're interested in supporting us, you can find information at twist.org. Click on the Patreon link or you can help us out simply by telling your friends about twist. On our next show we'll be in Santa Fe at the Interplanetary Festival, June 15th that's a Saturday, 4.15pm Mountain Time. We will try and live stream, but we'll be at least in the show as a podcast. We'll also be back again next Wednesday live, twist.org slash live at 8pm pacific time our normal time. You can join our chat room but if you don't make it, don't worry because we do have past episodes at YouTube and at our website twist.org Thanks everyone for listening to our show. We hope you enjoyed it. Twist is also available as a podcast. Just search for This Week in Science on iTunes or Twist4Droid in the Android Marketplace or you just go to any Apple area and search This Week for Science will be there. And for more information on anything you've heard here today show notes are going to be available on our website twist.org You can make comments and start conversations with the hosts and other listeners there. That's pretty good. Or you can contact us directly. You can email Kirsten at thisweekinscience.com Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or me Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org Just be sure to put twist TWIS in the subject line or you are likely to be spam filtered into oblivion. You can also ping us on Twitter where we are at twist science with 1s at Dr. Kiki at Jackson fly or at Blair's in the Nazary. You can also check out at shouty Blair. I've been very shouty lately. We love your feedback. If there is a topic you would like us to cover or address or a suggestion for an interview, please let us know. And we will be back here next week. We hope you'll join us once again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything at all from the show tonight, remember This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science It's 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 robot With a simple device I'll reverse global warming With a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you This Week in 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 Earth Cause it's This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science I've got one disclaimer And it shouldn't be news That's what I say May not represent your views But I've done the calculations And I've got a plan If you listen to the science You may just get to understand But we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world From jeopardy This Week in Science Is coming your way So everybody listen If you use our methods Let it roll and it die We may rid the world of toxoplasma Got the eye Cause it's This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science I've got a laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger To dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote More rational thought And I'll try to answer Any question you've got So how can I ever see The changes I seek When I can only set up shop One hour a week This Week in Science Is coming your way So just listen To what we say And if you learn anything From the words that we've said Then please just remember It's all in your head This Week in Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science This Week in Science And that brings us to the end Of another show With some different kind Of audio today It was good But we're on the air Still even though we're done You did a good job Kai That was good That was fun It was fun I'm on the air right now How do you have a pen on your face Look here's a good one Lamas could help beat the flu Right Lamas could help us beat the flu I believe we talked about that story Just in brought it There's lots of good Science news out there So much So Somebody forgot how to Spell Blair's Animal Corner Blalers Blalers Blabber Blabbler Blurbs Animal Corner Blurby Blurbs Animal Corner Blurby Blurbs Animal Corner Do you have any questions For Our trip this weekend Oh I have so many And I can't remember any of them Right now Um Uh Are we doing anything that requires me To have something besides Flats And jeans No It's gonna be in the low 80s apparently So just make sure you're comfortable Yeah I think I'm gonna be wearing Jeans With a little bit of ankle showing And I'm gonna bring a bunch of sleeveless shirts What is it like In England or something Here's the problem I don't really own any Shorts anymore It's sticky, what did you put on What did you find to eat I have pickle chips What did you eat It's sticky and sweet Is there something sticky and sweet over there No What did you eat Pickle chips I don't believe you You have sticky stuff all over your face The evidence says otherwise Oh my I just tweeted out from Shouty Blair my latest piece of art Yeah Look at that beetle Look at that That's a cool beetle, what kind of beetle is it That's a Hercules beetle I think Yeah Hercules beetle It is tweeted out there so if there's anyone watching You gotta follow Blair on Twitter At shouty Blair Yeah I also retweeted it on my real Twitter Blair's Menagerie Look Oh my gosh Oh my gosh darn it dude You know Blair's shouty Blair account It shouts all the time Yes she only shouts Shouty Blair only shouts Which is pretty awesome Most of the time I feel like That is unfiltered What's going on in my brain Is shouty Blair I don't know how I mean how do you Make a podcast happen While a child is on a jungle gym No idea This is something that probably needs to happen Because Sitting still is an issue Yeah You can get one of those chairs That like does this Oh I love those I love those As if he wasn't doing that already It was already making so much noise No actually they're really quiet But they're really good They have them at school they make no noise But they go around in circles And they're really nice Do you have one in your classroom We have like five For the people who need movement No Just the sticky stuff What did you get into What did you That's not pickle chips Pickle chips aren't sticky and blue Seriously in like 20 minutes Did I get frostbite No in 20 The frostbite tasted Mmm I didn't Look pickle chips No I know you got the bag of pickle chips There was something else in there Nope you found something somewhere And you're keeping it from me I did not Secrets I did not hide anything Candy secrets Do you want that back I did not steal anything So I am going to ask you this question Kiki What's Meow Wolf I can answer that too Oh yeah Kite tell me what Meow Wolf is It's an interactive art museum And I'm pretty sure every week it changes That's very exciting I bought tickets because I was like You know what I'm sure it'll be fun Whatever it is It's going to be amazing Yes it's interactive art It's going to be fun You can go through it Meow Wolf in New York No there's not There's something like it Oh no Well maybe something like it but there's no Meow Wolf In New York They just opened in Las Vegas And also they're opening in Denver Stop picking your teeth on camera Go off camera if you want to pick your teeth Santa Fe, Denver, Las Vegas There it is Interactive art The thing that I think is so cool Is the Santa Fe Meow Wolf is that it is backed By George R. R. Martin No Yeah Is he from Santa Fe I don't know Yeah he must be somewhere around there Quick Google on that God Google knows me too well You smell like pickle chips Cause I was eating that I had handfuls I had two handfuls I heard you eating them Yeah he lives in Santa Fe Maybe we'll run into him At dinner That would be amazing I wouldn't count on it I wouldn't count on it How many people are there in Santa Fe I'm going to look Santa Fe It's small isn't it Well there's only two people in Santa Fe Well there's only two people in Santa Fe A little more than two More than two 83,000 That's still very small Yeah Very tiny town Less than a tenth of San Francisco Yeah And probably if we go to Unless all 38,000 People went to one place Right Unless they're all going there But they're going to be at the interplanetary festival So we'll be able to go to Meow Wolf On Sunday Yes I'm looking forward to that I'm so thrilled that you planned some things Because I started looking At what to do in Santa Fe And I kept getting lost And just kind of distracted or whatever And I was like I don't know I'll figure it out I guess So you were like we're going to do this stuff Do you want to come? I was like Yes I don't have to make the plans I will follow the people Yeah I just figured Saturday would be festival stuff All afternoon Because it's like It starts at one or something on Saturday afternoon So maybe we can do Go find a cool breakfast or something on Saturday Perfect Maybe hit a museum If we want to Or we could just stroll around And look at That'd be fun We'll find out I don't think they have science museums In Santa Fe We have to alert Alamos For the science museums Or Albuquerque But there's lots of art In Santa Fe Art and food Yes The Bradbury Science Museum Is far away It's in White Rock That's alright There's plenty to do We're going to see some turquoise Lots of turquoise I've heard there are Hot air balloons according to You need to stop According to Grace and Frankie One of my favorite TV shows According to Grace and Frankie One of my favorite TV shows There are hot air balloons in Santa Fe I imagine there are many Yes high altitude We've got high altitude Very kind of Flat plain desert But there are hills nearby I'm sure it's gorgeous You want to go to Los Alamos I wish we had time to do that What is Los Alamos National Labs Oh yeah I wish I could make that happen I wish Next time Next time we're in Santa Fe Yeah I guess I was Describing to someone The other day No shade thrown at Santa Fe at all But I One of my favorite things about traveling for twist Is that I end up going places That I probably wouldn't have picked On my own And it is amazing I love that When are you going to pick Baltimore Or Philadelphia Or Yeah I've always wanted to go to Denver But I wasn't like Banging down the door of Denver to go And then we went And it was lovely And yeah We were in Philadelphia We were also in Phoenixville Which I never would have been in Probably otherwise Great that little tiny town It was beautiful with its drive through Liquor source So odd Okay so I'll bring my laptop I'm going to bring my HDMI connector For my laptop I will Try to print out Intro and outro scripts For us Oh cool great The whole thing I'll print the intro and outro So we don't have to Look too far for those I'm going to set myself an alarm right now To do that And I'm going to try and get my stories Printed out Before Friday I'm going to try to do that too So My stories are Adjacent But not directly relevant That's fine Like One of them is something fun that we could talk About about the social implications At some of the festival Mixers That's interesting Yeah just about peer pressure You know I have something about food preservation Which could be relevant To space travel for instance Right And I have A super armor That's good And I have for the short stories I have satellites that are like Legos So that's Did we need to do A sound Sample for my fan Yeah We should do maybe identity For identity may have Already finished his recording Probably got it Enough bit of time in there At least a couple of seconds Of quiet Yeah It's just how my life works What? Just how I talk It's just my nature My nature as a kid to be loud Mm-hmm Yes But we weren't talking about you being loud Her fan is loud Oh Yeah I know Kai you're my biggest fan But this is also a large fan Ha ha ha Oh that's really loud Yeah recording is uploading Awesome that's cool we're good There's gonna be There will be points in the recording Where I will be able to get a couple of seconds For noise You know what Just the way it is It's just the podcast Live recording this is what we do It's a million degrees Yeah are you super hot It's hot in my basement which is rare Yeah it's like It's like a nice summer day How hot was it in San Francisco today? Today It got to 81 Which isn't too bad That's not that bad Yeah today We got to 92 I think No it was like 95 Maybe my car yesterday Said it was 102 Yeah yesterday it was 95 In San Francisco and the day before that It got to 101 Last night it didn't get below 80 degrees until after midnight Yeah Last night the past two Nights I haven't slept very well at All because it has been so Hot It is 81 degrees outside right now It's after 10 o'clock at night Boiling hot in Seattle Yeah we're having a serious heat wave Right now all down the western coast Yeah I can barely Believe the house where I left the house After Kung Fu I was actually I could barely see it I was actually getting dazed And seeing weird things It was so hot I'm trying to teach him how to like I'm like yeah it's hot outside You just slow down your walk And you just got to like Swim through the air You just kind of go through it You just got to part the Part the air in front of you And you just move through it And you just do it So of course My teen program started For the summer this past week And so I have on some days I have like 15 teens And I'm checking in on them And all this kind of stuff And you know how teenagers are So of course The past couple of days They have just been so like irritable And grumpy And like one kid yesterday I was like hey have you had water lately Do you need to refill your water bottle I want to make sure you're staying hydrated And he was like I already did it And he like turned around and stored out Somebody's grumpy Because of the heat Oh my god That's funny I mean teens are predictable I don't really drink that much water That's not good guys But I'm probably drinking a lot of water On some days I barely have water On other days I check up all the water Got to just drink your water Every day it's good for you You've been drinking it tonight That's good I'm drinking it I've been drinking it tonight that's good Say no to yellow pee Orange pee No brown pee I've been having Orange pee lately That's not good That's terrible Orange ish I need to take you to the doctor Or you need to drink more water Okay I found a very funny Let's see Meaning I found a very funny one a couple of weeks ago Maybe this is it It's from the Mayo Clinic Is this the right one? Oh what different colors mean Yeah it was kind of snarky Explanation Is there a purple one? Purple Yes purple is one but you have to go to the doctor Yeah you should not have purple pee I won't That's like absolutely no water And you're also like Bleeding Sodium perchlorate pee You should not be producing that Combined with blood and very low water Mmm That's probably what purple pee is Let's see This is Clinger you've been drinking too much water Cut back Yellowish to amber Typical healthy urine Red or pink You ate red dyed things Or you have an enlarged prostate Kidney stones, tumors and bladder Talk to your doctor Orange it could be just dehydration But if combined with light colored stool It could mean issues with their bile duct Blue or green Very rare Most likely connected to something you ate In rare cases it could mean a bacterial Infection Dark brown Dehydration Diet related or a side effect Of certain medications Porphyria Or liver disease Cloudy Dehydration Or a symptom of chronic diseases And kidney conditions That's not That was real That was accurate And also very dark And gross And very nasty You don't want to know I do I find it very interesting Oh this is the one It says purple There's no such thing as purple urine Oh yeah Pale straw color You're normal, healthy and well hydrated Transparent yellow You're normal Dark yellow Normal but drink some water soon Your body isn't getting enough water Drink some now Syrup or brown ale You could have liver disease or severe dehydration Drink water and see a doctor if it persists Pink to reddish Have you been eating beetroot, blueberries, or rhubarb? If not, you may have blood in your urine Which could be a sign of kidney disease Tumors, UTIs for prostate problems Orange Or you ate a knife Or you what? Or you ate a knife Oh no That's awful Or you ate something really sharp Blue or green There's a genetic disease that gives your urine Blue or green tinges Foaming or fizzing A harmless hydraulic effect If occasional But it could show signs of excess protein In your diet or kidney Problems You'll foamy pee Go see a doctor There you go Good to know There's no such thing as purple urine You heard it here Can I just tell you a weird syndrome that actually sometimes happens? Yeah With people's brains So sometimes When people are Eating they forget to stop eating And they eat the utensils with it Really? And then like they have to get surgery And once this Works and like spoons And stomach I understand that with goats Yeah Goats need surgery Goats need serious surgery How do they eat stuff like that? So I think that's That's actually usually a myth They don't actually usually eat tin cans Or anything like that But they can't eat paper They just seem to chew on everything They chew on everything And then they put on my jacket When I go over to the farm Yeah They'll bite zippers off of jackets Yeah Yeah, you gotta watch them I think every It's really cute I remember a long time ago We went to this farm In San Francisco I'm pretty sure it was really really nice And the goats there were Really really nice to us Except one kid got Rammed by a goat Yeah, it was the most Tutorial goat But all the other goats were really nice And they didn't seem to chew on anything They basically just fed them And one of them just stood still So goats are Really really really smart So I feel like Sometimes they're Trying to just see what they can get away with Sometimes they're bored Sometimes They're like, you have food If I chew on your jacket long enough Maybe he'll give me some food Or sometimes they're just trying to be silly Yeah, sometimes they might just be Silly Absolutely Do you think goats Play Yes Like are they playful? That would Oh yeah, they're little troublemakers There's a goat at the Jerusalem Zoo His name was Jacob He would jump out of his pen Just so you would turn him and go Jacob get back in there And then he would jump back into his pen That's play For sure So yeah, I think they do Especially since They will Play kind of ram at each other When they're smaller When they're learning how to Like learning how to fight Yeah, but I feel like There's It's associated with play I don't know I think that's potentially an interesting question Right I mean play in all species is For young A method of learning adult behaviors Right Yeah You could say that things like tag And dodgeball How related to learning Primitive survival tactics For humans Like aiming rocks And throwing them at your enemies Those games just taught me I didn't like playing those games Yeah One person over here Says that goats climb on things They do King of the mountain They love it I'm looking at the mountain We put the little head harnesses That you see on dogs sometimes We put those on the goats and walk them around And they'll jump up onto benches And stumps and stuff It's very cool They love it I can handle little baby goats Adult goats are creepy Yeah They're weird Eyes Horizontal pupils Horizontal pupils are weird They look like they have fan days I'm not a fan I look in their eyes and I'm like You're not like us Goats I guess that makes sense Why they're a symbol of the devil Is because they have weird eyes And they have these crazy horns And the crazy horns And the cloven feet Goats The devil That's right The devil over here Dave Shorty is bringing up fainting goats I was talking about this with somebody Recently My dad had videos When they get scared Their muscles freeze They're just solid And then they just fall to the side Do they lose consciousness? I don't know a lot about them I'm pretty sure they lose consciousness I don't know That's a good question Fainting goats Do they just fall over Or are they like opossums And they fully lose consciousness And play dead Or are they just falling over I don't know This is a very interesting question There you go You gotta find it out Do fainting goats really faint? This is the Google This is the thing that This is why all of us need the internet This is what science did for us today Look at that Second result, Google search Do fainting goats really faint? Technically no They do not lose consciousness Because they just fall over Interesting You can go to die from fainting Do you know Kiki, since we were talking about blood types before What Marshall's blood type is What blood type is No I don't, I mean I said In the show that I type B But I actually don't even really know If that's what my blood type is I don't know what my blood type is Where's your daddy said my blood type is A I don't know At some point your blood When you were born was tested Oh do they do that Oh, yeah They type you At one point Blood test and they're like your type whatever And I'm like great I don't know what I'm going to be Yeah, but I have no recollection I have a piece of paper somewhere That says what blood type I am What if my blood type changes over my years That doesn't What if blood actually changes them What if that actually happens As far as I'm aware it doesn't It'd be cool if our blood types Actually change I want to find out If they do change or not change Aging everything Will start changing Getting weaker or changing And like the sugars on it might start collapsing And like a type A or a type A Or a B or any of that would turn into a type O When they're older When they're more older they'll get closer And closer to a type O It would be like that enzyme ran amuck Right It's interesting it's like a punnett square I forgot It's like something from high school bio That I totally forgot That I looked up while we were talking That if you're type A You either have two A's or you have an A and an O Well the first one that came up Do blood types change And then like the fourth one that came up Is do blood types change With age Very rarely an individual's Blood type changes Through addition or suppression Antigen in infection Malignancy or autoimmune disease Autoimmune disease Or with a bone marrow transplant Now that makes sense Because the bone marrow is involved in producing Your blood so if you've got a transplant It would create a different type of blood Yeah but it's interesting in infection Don't think you'd prefer to match you for blood I guess For bone marrow They're looking for a genetic match Of a different type The worst case They might go for a mismatched blood type But the proper genetic match for the blood marrow Can you close up on that And I want to see which one I'd probably Most likely be like So it all depends on what Marshall is because Well it all depends on what Both parents are really So for example I'm 80 positive So I can give either An A or a B to a child If I have a child and so it all depends On what the father has So I don't remember What Brian is To ask him Right and as Hot Rod says yes If you get bitten by a spider you become Spider-Man Oh yeah there's that Right active spider and checks His own genes into your genes And turns you into a spider human And then you end up turning And then over the years it'll You know and then you turn into An actual spider Oh Spider-K Spider-K Have you ever seen The comic strips where Spider-Man Ends up talking to an actual Spider No that's funny They're really cute The spider just keeps going like At what point do we wrap them up And suck out their insides No no no no We don't do that No no we stop the bad guys We wrap them up we stop the bad When do I get to eat them Don't Great so I'm going to meet you at the airport Both of you Yeah all of us Now here's an interesting Thing about Spider-Man though It's time for bed He tried to remove his powers once He failed and then he ended up Giving himself four arms And then increasing The speed of him turning into a spider And then eventually he turned into A spider human and then he was Turning back and forth from human to spider What When did that happen In the TV shows In the TV shows And the comic books Now this is a 1997 Spider-Man So specific Okay I'm going to inquire further with the Spider-Man expert in my life And I will I will be very interested to hear about That Also into the symbiotes The symbiotes They're really interesting I'm going to say good night Good night Good night player Say good night Kiki Good night everyone Thank you for watching We hope that you get some Regular sleep Don't overheat your brains Have a wonderful, wonderful Science week We look forward to talking with you Hopefully streaming to you on Saturday We'll be back here next Wednesday I will be Probably on an airplane When I'm supposed to do my twitch stream This Friday so probably no twitch stream And But I will do what I can We'll see what we can do So we will try to be there Thanks everyone We will see you very soon Bye