 Yeah. Do it. Hello everyone. We are getting excited to have a show. Just tonight both are bundled up. It's freezing cold here in California or as many of you on the east coast would call it. Summer. Yeah. It's very cold here. I want to look up what it is. You should guess, Justin. I would say it's like 40 degrees. Where you are or where I am? It's where I am. 37 to 40. It's like it's cold. Okay. So in Daily City it is a whopping 53 degrees. Oh, it's warm out there. You guys have some marine layer or something kicking in. Yeah. And in Davis, California, it is 45. Yeah, we have fog here, but my house is freezing for something. Let's see. IJedi4 says it's alive. Pop Rod says I see people. IJedi4, yes, Kiki is on an airplane right now. So she made a joke in our email saying she would join us via airplane Wi-Fi. So, yeah. So perhaps any moment, any moment during the show, she might pop in. Right. Especially if we go eight hours. That would give her enough time. Yeah. We're going to go for eight hours. Totally. Okay. Are we ready to do a show? Yeah, it's great. Okay. It's 802. This is Twis. This week in Science, episode number 695. Recorded on Wednesday, November 14, 2018. Take a breath. Hi, everybody. I'm Blair Basterich and today we're going to fill your head with air pollution, primates of the Caribbean, and venom. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Perspective is everything. That said, and with some authority, I will now state an equally authoritative statement in a voice that will be very similar to the first. Perspective is not everything. It is true that there is a proper perspective for most situations that allows those things being perceived to be more manageable, more positive, more insightful, more inspiring, or simply more informative. And of course, the opposite is true as well. But a glass half empty or half full contains the same amount of water regardless of your perspective. A Petri dish left out over a weekend could be perceived as sloppy lab work. Following this perspective could lead to countless meetings on the best way to prevent such things from happening in the future, maybe followed by some dirty looks from some of your fellow folks in lab coats for making them attend such meetings through no fault of their own or could be seen as an experiment all into itself. What happens when you leave a plate of bacteria out overnight in the lab? What were the results of this mistake to experiment? Regardless of the perspective, there is always one that can attain something. This, of course, is what happened when Alexander Fleming assumed a positive perspective. What had attacked his bacteria in the dish that was left out overnight? Well, regardless of the perspective that Fleming had that day, the occurrence of soil fungus finding its way into that sample would have been the same. But because of the proper perspective, for that situation, hundreds of millions of human lives were saved by the antibacterial properties of penicillin, the soil fungus that found its way into that dish. And while the following program promises to make you smarter, wiser, faster, taller, more tuned in yet with an air of being comfortably tuned out, all the while secretly developing your inner fish brain to have a telekinetic ability to astral project your mind to a quantum dimension of synergistically organic digitally disruptive string of nonsense words that we like to call this week in science coming up next. Good science to you Blair. Good science to you, Justin. We are without Dr. Kiki tonight, but we are going to bring all of the science that is fit to talk about this week, or at least enough for about 90 minutes of it. Today, we have a great show ahead. I have so much science news. I'm going a little bit outside of my comfort zone tonight, just a toe, just a toe out of there. I have a lot of stories about climate change. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. Wait a second. That's your wheelhouse. That is my wheelhouse, but it's not animal related climate change. I also have air pollution and its impact on humans, which is different from things that I usually talk about. And I also have a little bit about sperm very much in the wheelhouse. Back in the wheelhouse again. This sounds very wheelhouse. You'll see. You'll see. What did you bring, Justin? What do I have? I have completely wheelhouse stuff. Great. Mysterious monkeys, something about Neanderthals, and epigenetics. I've stayed completely within the comfort zone. Good. I mean, that's why that's what we're known for. If you're looking for some neuroscience tonight, I'm sorry. Unless Kiki can join us towards the end of the show. Yikes. Anyway, as we jump into the show, as we get into our very comfortable wheelhouses, I want to remind everyone that you can subscribe to twists on iTunes and Google Play, Stitcher, Spreaker, TuneIn. You can find us on YouTube if you want to look at our beautiful faces or Facebook, or you can just search for this week in Science on any of those items. If you visit twist.org, you can also find us there. And while you're at twist.org, guess what? The 2019 Twist Blair's Animal Corner calendar has dropped for pre-order. It's going to print within the next day or so. So get your order in if you want to be guaranteed a calendar before the holidays. But all that said, it is now time for some science. And I'm going to start us off with some climitia. All about climate change. I have three different, very different, very, very pressing, but distinct stories about climate change. This new one is from the University of East Anglia. And it's about how climate change is affecting deserts. How could they be even more dry? How is that even possible? Well, it actually might be swinging in the opposite direction. This story is looking at the Atacama Desert. This is the driest and oldest desert on earth in northern Chile. And there is a hyperarid core in this desert in which no rain has been recorded for 500 years. Wow. This place is dry. This report, sorry, is not from the University of Anglia. I was looking at the wrong page. It's from the Center for Astrobiology. And that's a mixed center of the Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Research and the National Institute of Aerospace Technologies. This is a lot of technological information. They're getting this 500-year record of no rain. This has changed in the last three years. Rainfall has been documented in the hyperarid core of the Atacama. And what do you think that might do to a desert, Justin? So, first of all, my first reaction is despite the fact that there's desert and super dry, there's all sorts of life forms that are there. And, of course, they're used to whatever humidity is in the air for being able to attract. So, I would sort of think of it as a reverse fish out of water scenario where there would be a lot of drowning of organisms. Yeah. So, a lot of people think that deserts are these barren wastelands devoid of life. But that's not true. Deserts have a huge amount of life, but they are very adapted to this dry lifestyle. And so, what we are seeing is a huge change in the local life in this desert. This never-before-seen rainfall has triggered not a flowering, as many people would assume, because they're like, oh, this super dry soil is now wet. Things can grow. No, no, no. The rains have caused... All those seeds that have been just sitting around doing nothing for 500 years. Well, yeah. Turns out, they have caused devastation in microbial species in the region. So, they found that high rainfall has caused the massive extinction of the most indigenous microbial species. The extinction rate has already reached 85% in the three years of rainfall that they received as a result of osmotic stress that has caused a sudden abundance of water. So, these microorganisms were perfectly adapted to thrive under conditions of extreme dryness and had strategies optimized for the extraction of the scarce humidity of their environment. Exactly. You were talking about Justin pulling the humidity from the air. And they've been unable to adapt to what, to them, is sudden flooding and they've died from excess water. They've basically drowned. So, how does climate change, just real quick, make the desert wet? Well, when we burn fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas, it accumulates carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and it creates a heat-trapping blanket. It makes the whole earth hotter, but it puts stress on the ocean. So, the oceans are like the heart of the climate system. They're pumping heat, they're pumping moisture. That's what the oceans do. The tides move this stuff around our planet. And so, when you overheat the planet, it disrupts these systems and it messes with the flow of heat and moisture all over our planet. And so, you see these air currents with water moving into spaces that they don't normally go. And so, it's kind of caused this jerky motion. It's almost as if a river jumped completely on land. This air stream is jumping into this space it wasn't in before. And you end up with this dumping of rain in a space that hasn't had rain in 500 years. So, this is a problem for the microbes. As you can imagine, microbes are pretty important to the rest of the life in the space. And so, if the microbes are not responding well to this new inundation of rain, that is a problem for the space. Now, what I think is really funny about this article or interesting, I guess, is that they mention this kind of effect and talk about it a little bit. But then, the bulk of this seems to be examining the Atacama as an analogy for Mars because there's this idea that the recurrence of liquid water on Mars that's kind of recent, right, could have contributed to the disappearance of Martian life. This idea that this super dry and arid Mars had life on it. And then, it got wet and it was kind of blown out. So, if Martian life existed, instead of water coming being an opportunity for things to thrive, it could actually have extinguished microbiomes. Well, yes. So, when primordial algae blooms were producing lots of oxygen, this was basically a toxin to what was here. There was nothing that he had evolved to use oxygen previous to this. And it was toxic to what life forms could encounter it. So, yeah, makes sense. So, there is, of course, this silver lining perspective that life which can adapt and will find a new environment for which it can prosper where before there was too much competition, then it wasn't quite as well adapted as its neighbors. So, this is an evolutionary driver as well. We must not forget that. The silver lining of global warming will be that species that perhaps didn't have niches which they could expand and flourish will now finally have their chance. I think there's one flaw with that, though, and that is that what you're describing is extremely quick. So, it's very hard for me to think that any good number of species will be able to adapt and adjust quickly enough to expand into new open niches in the amount of time we're looking at things on. Again, remember, 500 years this thing was dry and now wet. Not even like, oh, it drizzled there and it's been dry for years. I understand, but after every mass extinction, mammals included, there are species like the mammal that take in these niches and take over and expand. But there has to be something left. That's really the problem, I think, is that you're describing it as though the mass extinctions we've had in the past were a Thanos snap of the finger, right? And that's not how those things work. No, they were not that quick. They were not in the measure of a decade. They were short, they were fast, but on evolutionary time, not like this. When a meteor or asteroid or whatever was landed in 20 miles, created a 20-mile deep crater in what is now the Gulf of Mexico, it was pretty rapid. And my point isn't to say that it's all going to be fine, because some species will persist. Some will take up these things. The problem is we're reducing diversity on a very massive scale and doing everything this quick. And that creates a planetary bottleneck of microbes, species of everything that has evolved to this point. And as we've talked about many times in this show and it's come up, especially when it comes to the microbial world and all that we can learn from it, that diversity and the disclaimer, there's a soil fungus that added antibacterial property that fought this bacteria. That was penicillin that we have utilized. This one little fungus we've utilized to save tens of hundreds of millions of lives and make the standard of living better for humans for 50, 60, 70 years, 80 years now. So that massive drop in diversity is not beneficial to mankind. So to put some numbers on this, the KT mass extinction, which was a, quote, geologic blink of an eye, which was an asteroid impact most likely, took a few dozen millennia. To wipe out every dinosaur. Yeah. But that's what I was saying. But that's to wipe out the very last. I mean, okay. But mammals expanded into that space. So to parallel to the story that I was just presenting, 85% of the microbes in that desert died over three years. So some people, this is not directly to you, Blair. This is to the audience. Some people have a thing that they want to say and are waiting for you to finish talking so they can say it. Blair is looking up information to counter you with while you are making your first point. That's pretty impressive. It's my days as an intern. It's what I learned to do. It's not just I have this point, I'm going to wait for you to finish to say, I'm actually going to develop. I'm going to go and do my research. Yeah, research, science, fact. Okay. So that was my first climate change story. But next, I want to talk about something a little more tangible than those microbes. I want to talk about sperm. So this one is the one from University of East Anglia. And it turns out that your sperm could be at risk from climate change. No. Okay, now we must do something about climate change. We must stop it from happening because my, wait, what will happen to my sperm? Well, let me tell you. So this is looking at male infertility during heat waves. This is not in humans. This is in red flower beetles, tribalium castanium, exploring the effects of simulated heat waves on male reproduction. They found that male infertility during heat waves could help to explain why climate change is having an impact on species populations in the numbers that they are, including climate related extinctions in recent years. It could all come down to zapping the sperm and the negative impacts for fertility are measured across generations. So we know that heat waves have damage, have kind of damaging effects on habitats, on ecosystems, on food sources, local extinctions happen when temperature changes are quick and intense. And to look at why this happens, some of the arrows here are pointing to sperm. The beetles in this study were in a lab experiment, they were exposed to either standard control conditions or five day heat wave temperatures, which are five to seven degrees above the normal thermal optimum Celsius. Afterwards, a variety of experiments looked at the damage to reproductive success, sperm function and offspring quality. So they were looking at how well they were able to inseminate and bear children, how well the sperm function just in general motility, and then how long their offspring survived. They found that heat waves halved the amount of offspring males could produce, and a second heat wave almost sterilized them. Yeah, females by contrast unaffected in their main components, but female reproduction was affected because heat waves damaged the sperm within the females in their reproductive tracts before they could reach the egg and inseminate the eggs. This was actually a birth control method in the 70s. The idea that if you were in a hot tub. Well, and they tell you if you're trying to have kids to stay out of the hot tub if you're a man. I didn't know this. Yeah, if you're having trouble conceiving, they say stay out of the hot tub, dude. But that's why it's because the extreme heat can repeated stress and the extreme heat can damage sperm. So anyway, so the females are impacted because the sperm inside them can then be killed essentially. Following the experimental heat waves, males reduce sperm production. So we've already looked at they make less babies as a result. Okay. But now they're making less sperm by three quarters. And any sperm produced struggled to migrate. They had trouble moving into the female tract. They were more likely to die before fertilization. And heat waves caused impact on male sexual behavior. They mated half as frequently as the controls. When it gets even more interesting, you look at the quality of their offspring, the offspring sired by heat wave dads or their sperm live shorter lives by a couple of months, which as far as beetles go, is no small thing. So these, these results are very important for beetles, but they're also important for other animals. We know as we were just talking about with the hot tubs that heat shock can damage male reproduction in warm-blooded animals like mammals, humans. Okay. And password has shown that this can lead to infertility in mammals. So knowing that heat is part of this factor, and then turning that and looking at heat waves and then looking at these three different pronged impacts on men, they're on males, male beetles, their ability to sire babies, their sperm quality, and their offspring quality. This is no small thing. It's a pretty big deal. There's a, there's a song written about this. Oh yeah? Yeah. It's too damn hot. It's too damn hot. Something about like, I'd like to smish, smish, smear with my baby tonight, but it's too damn hot. So that's that behavioral side. Heat waves caused impact on male sexual behavior. Males made it half as frequently. This is a human thing too. We have evidence in a song from maybe the 30s or 40s or whatever. Yes. The opposite of baby, it's cold outside. Yeah. Okay. My very last opening story, it's a quick one, but it's an important one. This is from University of Waterloo. And this time, so we talked about microbes, then we talked about sperm. Now it's time to talk about money. So University of Waterloo, looking at impacts on companies that fail to curb carbon output in terms of asset devaluation and stock price depreciation. They say that failure of companies within the emission intensive sector to take carbon reduction actions could negatively impact the general stock market in as little as 10 years. So what they're saying is that these companies could experience devaluation in stocks when climate change risk gets priced correctly by the market. So this is all based on the idea that eventually, eventually we are going to be faced with the impact financially of climate change on the stock market. So the climate change impacts investment portfolios in two distinct channels so far that they've identified directly and indirectly. Directly, it elevates weather related risk to properties, infrastructure, crops, which extend to increased market risk in holdings with material business exposures in climate sensitive regions. So if weather gets more extreme and has a greater impact on things that are being produced, then those things being produced will have to be ensured for more, they will be worth less as a result. Indirectly, it triggers environmental regulations and higher emission costs in an effort in emission control. So this is just the, hey, it's the right thing to do. There's other things happening as a result of this thing. So we talk about carbon taxes, carbon incentives for people doing well, all of that knowing this indirect conclusion is that eventually the global market will recognize that companies that are going more carbon neutral are more resilient, are more responsible, and will stay the distance longer. So assuming those two impacts on an item on the stock market and the stock market in general from climate change, looking at 36 publicly traded large emitters and related sector indexes from Europe and North America around the ratification of major climate protocols, they found that only nine of the 36 samples were found to display recognizable carbon pricing. So a quarter of them started to price themselves accurately, and that when they looked they saw that carbon intensive sectors ranked at the bottom of the list across metrics used and underperformed the market indexes for both Europe and North America. So they're saying not only is it in the best interest of companies in the financial insurance and pension industries to price carbon risk correctly, but they have to in order to build an optimal and sustainable portfolio in the long run under climate change risk. So looking at this, they're saying don't care if it's politicized, don't care if you think it's happening or not, don't care if it's going to affect your short term profits. In the long term, your company will only survive if you start to address this issue, which individuals are very compelled by these big picture issues, saving ecosystems, being responsible, but companies, it's all about the bottom line a lot of the time. And if you can demonstrate through clear research that their longevity and their staying power as a business is hinging on adjusting to this threat, perhaps this might start to turn some heads, fingers crossed. Interesting idea. I'm trying to picture the mechanism that makes that so. And really sort of the thing that occurred to me is like, yeah, but I feel like there's going to be less opportunity going forward because I'm maybe insanely optimistic or insane and optimistic. The capacity to utilize carbons will start to disappear. And so then you'd have to be going at some point out of your way not to be using winder and solar or a hydrogen fuel sale. You'd have to go out of your way to be burning coal at your factory versus using the green grid that's available to you. Yeah, well, that's part of it for sure. To an extent, I don't think it's the company's, I don't think it's a thing that the company, if it's not an energy related company, has to worry about. I think if you're an energy company or an energy provider, this is something you might really want to be focused on. But if you're an industry of any sort that uses a tremendous amount of energy to complete the work, the work energy to facilitate what you're doing, I don't know that it matters to them in terms of how it's achieved. I think that that decision is going to be made elsewhere. So I think that that matters to them, even if it does matter to them, I think the decision will come from elsewhere. The putting these things in place will come from somewhere other than the end user. So that's part of this is acknowledging the idea that carbon taxes, carbon incentives are part of our future period. So that's part of this is recognizing that if you are in a carbon intensive business, that is coming. Whether you're doing it now or not, it's going to be part of your reality. But I think there's this other side of... Not everybody is fully experiencing the cost of their industry yet. For example, if I am a meal assembly app that delivers stuff to you to make your fancy dinner for one or for two or for four, whatever it is, and I can get tomatoes that were locally grown or I can get tomatoes from Mexico, one of them is cheaper. It's possible that tomatoes from Mexico are cheaper, but they got trucked here. So it's not directly reflecting the real cost. So my point though would be that long before there's an extra carbon tax on the Mexican tomato, there will be an electric big rig that's transporting it. That was the energy that fueled it was green sourced. It was all solar or wind or hydrogen fuel cell. My point is, I think that before we get to a carbon economy, we will have already transitioned to a green energy economy that doesn't care anymore about the few rural, stuck off the green grid communities that are forced to have no choice but to burn coal or whatever they're doing in those few pinpoints. I mean, I think before we get there, and maybe because maybe I can throw out the olive range and say because of the threat of the carbon tax, which I don't think is really the thing, I think it's just going to be actually economically driven. It's going to be cheaper. It's becoming more efficient. The technology is overcoming the traditional mining and transport and refining operations. Well, I think part of the reason that infrastructure might get pushed forward is that companies want it, which is part of it. This is kind of a feedback loop. This is part of companies recognizing that resiliency in the market is about being carbon smart. If it's because it's cheaper, that might be why that's kind of what this is talking about. We're circling around the same point here. This article is saying that it will be the smart business decision of the future to be more carbon neutral, period. But I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the only choice in the future will to be carbon smart. It will not be up to those who are using the energy at all. That tomato will still come from Mexico, and it'll still be cheaper. It will be coming here on a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and that's the only difference. To the actual end price of that tomato, it will still be the difference that it is now. We have to move on, but I would argue Mexico could become the superpower of economic height, and then America could be doing all the labor for Mexico. We could be, and then we were like, ah, why did we build a wall? Now we can't get over there and get the good jobs. This could all happen, too. But there's a hump to get over on all of these things, where for a split amount of time, for whatever it is, it will cost slightly more to do the greener thing for whoever it is. That was yesterday. I don't think that's tomorrow. For some things, not for all things. For big rigs, not yet. It's coming, but that thing, that's still a fiscal decision that somebody has to make. And as long as it's cheaper, regardless, I don't think it becomes an ideological- It won't be cheaper right away. It can't be. It won't immediately. There's always a hump where you're changing infrastructure, where things are more expensive. To that point, you're right. To that point, I think if you're an established, large international trekking company, you may not make that jump just yet. There is a mechanism of reinvesting- That's a carbon-intensive company. I think it's a dollar-intensive company. I think it's the dollar that drives it, and it's not going to have- I mean, you will have companies come out and tell you, hey, for the love of carbon reduction, we did this completely transformative thing where we have all electric big rigs bought from Tesla. We did this for the carbon footprint. That sounds great to the public, but they also realized we don't have to do oil changes. We don't have- So that's what this article is about. That's the direct- Nothing to do with carbons. It has everything to do with dollars. And that's what I'm saying. That's going to be the thing that does it, is the cheaper, faster, better, more efficient. Okay. Whether you believe it or not, you're saying the same thing that the article said. Okay. Moving on. I'm going to mechanism. Justin, what did you bring? Oh, it's- What do I have? Oh, yeah. This says I should have been ready for this transition better because now it's going to be awkward. Yo-ho, yo-ho, a monkey's life for me. DNA of an extinct monkey called Xenothrix has been sequenced, revealing that it was most closely related to South America's TT monkeys. But this monkey, this Xenothrix is no ordinary TT monkey. First of all, it was not found in South America, but it is a rare primate of the Caribbean. That's the Yo-ho, Yo-ho stuff in the beginning of the story. Thought to have taken to the seas in search of adventure 11 million years ago, or maybe washed out to sea during some sort of terrible storm, where many such monkeys clung to floating vegetation long enough to land in Jamaica, then the interesting morphological oddities. Unlike any other monkey in the world, Xenothrix was a slow-moving tree-dweller, relatively few teeth. It had leg bones that made it look closer to a rodent's leg bones. Unusual appearance made it difficult for scientists to work out where it came from, what it was related to, how it might have evolved. Plus, it's extinct, so all they have are some bones they found in a cave in Jamaica. So, research published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences carried out by a team of experts from International Conservation Charity, that's the Zoological Society of London, and London's National History Museum, as well as the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Pretty much everybody got involved in this one. This is a big group. They revealed that the monkeys also might have colonized the Caribbean islands more than once. Study reports an incredible discovery of how the unusual ecology of the island itself influenced the animal's evolution. So, yeah, so from South America to Jamaica about 11 million years ago, and then, so there's also, I guess, a couple others. Oh, the cap, what is this thing called? The capuchin? No, the capromite, the hutias. This is like a large rodent thing. Oh, hutia? They're also on the Caribbean islands. They came from South America. So, it's not like this is the only one that made this crazy trip. Oh, hutias. Yeah. Yeah. So, really, it is just a oddly evolved TT monkey with its unusual morphological features, not a brand new new world monkey. But it's sort of, you know, this is a adapting to a new environment. And it must have been sudden, because first of all, you couldn't have just been, you know, well, it could be one pregnant monkey that made it. I kind of picture like a whole bunch of monkeys getting washed out to sea and just enough of them hitting the island of Jamaica to make it go at it. And then evolution is different because there's no, now all of a sudden you came from the jungles of South America, now there's no predators. There's no need to move quicks and start slowing down. The diet there, maybe there's a softer food. You don't need all these teeth to gnash it, things. And so, even very quickly, they had to adapt. It says the living TT monkeys, this is because they never, they thought it might look like a kinkajoo, maybe a night monkey. I don't know what a night monkey is. It's the opposite of a day monkey. Night monkey, opposite of the day monkey. So, but they didn't know what these things look like. Now they're comparing it more to the TT monkeys, which are small tree dwelling monkeys found across tropical South America. They have long, soft, red, brown, gray or black fur. They are active during the day, very territorial, very vocal. They can live up to about 12 years old and the fathers often care for their young. They're night monkeys here. Oh, there's the night monkey. I've never heard of night monkeys before. They're the only nocturnal monkey. There's one with a nice suit and tie on. I thought there was a few nocturnal monkeys, but maybe this is the one that is then being. There's nocturnal primates. There's lots of nocturnal primates. These are the only nocturnal monkey, tricky, tricky stuff. And now in Neander news, 1983, a partial Neanderthal skeleton nicknamed Moshe, which belonged to a young male Neanderthal individual who died 60,000 years ago, was found at the Kebra site, Mount Carmel, Israel. The skeleton did not have a head because sometimes after it was buried, the head mysteriously was removed. They don't know why. However, unlike most Neanderthal finds, all the vertebrae and ribs were well preserved as were other fragile anatomical regions, such as the pelvis and the hyoid, the hyoid bone, which is the bone in the back of the neck to which some of the tongue muscles are actually attached to, which I didn't know I had a neck bone that my tongue was attached to. That's news to me. I've never apparently been able to look in the mirror well enough. So despite losing his head, Moshe is the Neander skeleton with the most complete thorax in the fossil record of Neanderthals. News statistical and virtual reconstruction methods were utilized by researchers to glean more information about Moshe's abilities to breathe. So they did this. They had the 3D computers and they did models and they put everything together. They found some interesting differences between the thorax and the Neanderthal in a modern human. First of all, the spine is located more into the thorax with respect to the ribs. The thorax is also wider in the lower part and they think this is a sort of an interestingly stable design. But what their research came up with is the idea that Neanderthals breathe utilizing their diaphragm more. So humans, we use our diaphragm to breathe. You sort of breathe with your belly, we're sort of pulling the air down. Pull your stomach out or pull your stomach back in and the air goes out. The diaphragm. But we also expand and contract our rib cage. We can sort of do a rib cage in and out. They're saying here that it looks like they most likely utilize the diaphragm more so than this expansion of the rib cage thing, which is following up on a study that showed that they have much larger lung capacity than humans. I was going to say they're related to alligators, right? They have a diaphragm. Well, we do too. I mean, we do too. We utilize ours too. I sort of think about this interestingly, and I don't know enough, even though I had ran track for like years and years as a youth, I never really, I mean, I paid attention to the sound of my breathing, but I never really thought of how I utilize it. And I know in martial arts, they spend a lot of time training diaphragm breathing for martial artists. And I'm sort of curious now, because ancient humans with our expanding chests and our sort of going back and forth between diaphragm and chest breathing, we were fantastic runners. This is the one thing the modern human was like with long distance runners. We would chase things until they just passed out because they couldn't keep running. You know what else the diaphragm is good for? Playing the saxophone. They played the saxophone. Oh, so now, can you imagine, now are you with me? Bring it back to Neanderthal, teach you to play saxophone, greater lung capacity, totally about the diaphragm. Yeah, greatest saxophone player of all time will be a future clone Neanderthal. Yeah, also opera singers all about the diaphragm. Oh my gosh. Neanderthal opera. Oh, can you imagine Neanderthals must have been great singers. Yeah. So it's sort of interesting, maybe this larger lung capacity, but diaphragm breathing, maybe this is a benefit that helps with that sort of upfront fast, fierce sort of hunting that they did. Or actually, that was what I came into this with, but actually now I just love the idea that Neanderthals were all singing opera. Yeah. I mean, that's why it developed. We know they were good with the arts. And now that's it. Yeah. Oh, thank you, Blair. Yeah. Or they're just yelling at each other across a field, like really loud. Hey. Yeah, there weren't as many of them. They had smaller packs, so they couldn't just yell to the Neanderthal next to them to pass it on. They had to yell all the way across the valley. Hey, you guys. Yeah, this is perfect. Great. Okay, if you just tuned in, you're listening to This Week in Science with Justin Jackson and Blair Bezderich. Do you know what time it is, Justin? Is it time for Blair's Animal Corner with Blair? Yeah. It is. Put your gap, Blair. I have some sad, sad news. Pollution could be killing insects. Yeah. Which insects? Because some I really like and some not so much. Good question. This study from University of Sheffield looked at plants exposed to pollution stay with me. They found that a particular element of the air pollution nitrogen dioxide NO2 exposing them to similar levels from major urban centers found that they had higher levels of pollution, sorry, higher levels of defensive chemicals in their leaves when present in the pollution. They are better at defending themselves against herbivorous insects. Okay, wait. This pollution primes the plant to beyond the defense for an attack. Yeah, it's like if the plant was like, if they just put out all of the defensive stuff all at once, high levels. And so they found that the insects feeding on these leaves grew poorly, which suggests that high levels of air pollution may have a cascading negative effect on herbivorous insects and maybe other herbivorous creatures as well. We know about nitrogen dioxide as a pollutant that causes health problems in humans. But now they're looking at the impact on something a little bit lower on the food chain. These are insects mostly that are an important part of our ecosystem, unfortunately. They are pollinators. They are animals that ensure the survival of wild flowers, shrubs and trees. They return plant nutrients to the soil when they die. They are themselves food for birds, reptiles, mammals and other insects. And so these insects are kind of the base of the invertebrate part of this food web and their loss as the result of this pollution could be a big problem. So without these insects, soil quality could go down. And then guess what? Plants are now in trouble as well. So these declines in insect over some air pollution could be alarming, could be a big problem. And it could actually impact availability of human food in the long run. Eek. Eek indeed. Moving on to, these are both pretty, pretty short and sweet stories for the first time. Yes, go ahead. So I got a story in the second half where they did something that sort of turns on a lot of the, you'll hear the story in the second half, but it's sort of interesting because, again, this is perspective. They're going to take soy plants in the second half, expose them to a bunch of stressors, and the plant performs robustly in the next generation. They do it to the previous generation. I think they did a transplant of a gene from a different one. And the plant responds robustly. But if the downstream effect is that it's robust against its cohabitants in the insect world, that this robust growth, man actually, so now this is a curious perspective to listen to that soy story in the second half. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. It's a good reminder that we should always do systems thinking. Right. We're thinking about environmental impacts. For the first time ever, plastic microfibers were discovered in a wild animals poop from South American fur seals. Yes. These findings are made by a team of Morris Animal Foundation funded researchers at University of Georgia, and they suggest examining scat for pinnipeds can be an efficient way to monitor environmental levels of microfibers and microplastics in our environment. The team examined the scat of 51 female South American fur seals on the remote Guafo Island in Southwestern Chile from December 2015 to March 2016. I'll let that sink in real quick. That is three solid months of searching through seal poop. And as somebody who knows these sorts of things, I will tell you right now, seal poop, it is rank. It is one of the grosser poops out there that I have discovered. Regardless, they did very important work these researchers. They sampled inorganic material that was dissolved in a solution in a lab and left only the microscopic plastic particles to be analyzed. Researchers then found 67% of the samples showed a remarkable abundance of microfibers, which until now had only been reported in animals in captivity. So these samples, they're invisible to the naked eye, they're very small, but they want to see what's driving distribution and what that means for animals all over the food web. They think that the microfibers arrived through changing ocean currents, so something from just Pacific, from one of the garbage patches, from one of the gyres or maybe another location, just trash out in the ocean. So changing ocean current caused these microfibers to be consumed by plankton, and the plankton is eaten by fish, eaten by bigger fish, eaten by bigger fish, eaten by seals. There is enough evidence to determine if they had any adverse effects on the mammals, but we've talked on the show about how microfibers, microplastics can have morphological changes in fish. So there's a good chance that it might have some sort of impact on them. But as far as we can tell right now, we just know it's showing up with their poop. When flying out in the chat room wants to know if poop varies in unpleasantness and yes-a-ree it does. We can talk about it in the after show, perhaps. Stay tuned. We can actually, oh okay, this is gonna be fantastic. In the after show, we can delve into Blair's Zoology of Scat. Yeah, there you go. So yeah, plastic microfibers for the first time found in seals in the wild. So they're getting out there. Okay, what do you think, Justin? Are you ready to take a break? I am, but of course you've got a lot of reading of stuff to do. So I'll see you back here in just a few minutes. Oh, just a few minutes. Hey everybody, did you know that the 2019 TWIS Blair's Animal Corner calendar is now available for pre-order? If you go to twis.org, you can click on that neat little toad right there and they will take you to a pre-order page. There we go. You can select how many to buy and put in your information. We'll ship it out to you. If you order it soon, it is guaranteed by Christmas. Pre-order window is about to close. Soon it'll just be regular old orders and then we're out. We're out, but the pre-order allows us to buy exactly how many that you want so that we don't earn out. So please go to twis.org, check out that calendar. I am so excited for all of the art this year. And if you want to see some more of the art pieces, you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram. Instagram, I'm at Blair Baz, Twitter, I'm at Blair's Menagerie, and you can see all of those pictures so you can kind of get an idea of what the calendar will look like. Also on twis.org, you'll be able to find some merchandise. You can click on the Zazzle Store tab and you can see what we have. Let's see what we have here. Let me click on Zazzle Store and we have, these are our most popular up top. Some people bought our Twispolo shirt, which some people said that they needed something a little more formal to wear to work. There was a couple of high school teachers that said that they wanted their Apollo shirt with the twist logo. So that's there for you. The very popular lumbar pillow, mouse pads, t-shirts, mugs, so much good stuff, tote bags, trucker hats, yikes, onesies, all sorts of things. So go over there. That will help us out. And of course, also, twis is supported by listeners like you. Your donations help us pay for hosting, bandwidth contractors. We need to hire fun things we do for the show. When we do live shows, it helps us pay for our flights, all that kind of stuff. Any amount that you can give us is great, $2, $5, $10, maybe $100. You make this show possible and we literally could not do it without you. We accept donations a couple of ways. We have PayPal donation buttons all over our website on each show page at twist.org. Or we also have a Patreon account, patreon.com slash this weekend science, which is like a Kickstarter, but it's for media producers. And so you can donate a certain amount over a certain amount of time. You can set a limit. There's a bunch of different things you can do. And we have different kickbacks for the different levels. So we have our Patreon supporters that we announced at the end of the show. I now have 13 new pieces of art that I can send to you, autographed to you in the mail, the original piece. Those are for you at a certain level of Patreon support. So please go check that out. And whatever you like to do, go to the website, listen to our episodes, comment on the show, please make a donation. But if you can't afford a donation, that's okay. We can always use your help getting more people listening to and watching twists. You can use your social networks, those beautiful social networks for science, tell people to tune into twists, tell five friends to listen to twists. If a few of them make it, that's a win. If you listen to us on iTunes, you can help by posting a review of twists. And this is a very important part, giving thumbs up to recent reviews that were helpful to you so that we can get some of those reviews from like 2002. So they're not really at the top of the list anywhere. That would be great. Wait a second. We weren't podcasting in 2002. I'm pretending that we were. It's hyperbole. But by 2005, we were. Yeah. So there you go. That was just a little bit of hyperbole. So no matter what you do, no matter how you help us. If you listen on iTunes, if you're using your social networks for science, all that good stuff, we thank you for your support. We are here for you. We would not and could not do it without you. Thank you. Yeah. And we are back with more of this week in science. That's right. Do you know what time it is, Justin? You keep asking me that. I think you need to get a watch. I think you need to look at the run sheet and help. No. It is time for what has science done for me? Lately. That's right. And today comes, we have a what has science done for me lately coming from Minion Carly. Hi, Twist. I've written in before but wanted to share recently not only what science has done for me lately, but what Twist has done for me lately. Yes. As an ecology student, science does a lot for me every day. It's the core of all my coursework and therefore I'm constantly immersed in all of its awesomeness. Recently I was given an assignment to give an oral presentation on any scientific topic of my choice. I was elated as any nerdy scientist should be as I ran home to play one of the more recent Twist episodes for inspiration. As a wildlife ecologist, Blair's Animal Corner is my favorite part of the show and was especially intrigued by her stories about sea star wasting disease. I was even more intrigued when I heard that the most recent study discussed was conducted by UVM marine biologist Melissa Pespini because UVM is where I hope to do my graduate work. The world's colliding. So I found the perfect topic for my oral presentation. I dove deep into the world of sea star wasting disease and learned all kinds of new and important information that I might never have stumbled upon had it not been for Twist. So thanks Twist for inspiring my most recent assignment topic and thanks science for teaching me new things about the world every day. Best wishes and good science, Indian Carly. Wow, that's awesome. That is great. Thank you Carly. So remember everyone, we need you to write in to let us know what science has done for you lately. What does it do for you every day? Now more than ever, it's really important for us to acknowledge what science does for us and keep it front of mind. So please leave us a message on our Facebook page that's facebook.com slash this weekend science or you can email Dr. Kiki at kirsten at thisweekandscience.com. So we want to keep filling this segment of the show forever, at least for the rest of 2018. We're in the home stretch on that one, but we really want to keep going. So please help us out, write us your stories. We can't wait to read them on the air. Okay, Justin, do you know what time it is? It's time for more science. Do you have some science? It's always time for some more science. Okay, yeah, so this is this is building off of a story that you kind of left off with at the first half. This is let's see, temporarily silencing the expression of a critical gene. Researchers were allowed to fool a soybean plant into sensing that it was under siege, encountering a wide range of stresses. Then they selectively crossbred the plants that were exposed to these stresses with the original stock of soy that was not stressed out and the progeny remembered the air quotes remembered the stress induced response to become more vigorous resilient and productive plants. So this is an epigenetic effect. They put these they put plants through a lot of stresses which we've seen in the past causes next generations to be a little bit more what's the prime to to encounter these sorts of stresses, even though they didn't go through them themselves. And yeah, so the the new plants were much more vigorous growers more resilient. They're very productive. Epigenetic reprogramming of soybean plants combination of a decade long story was accomplished not by introducing any new genes, but changing how the existing ones were expressed. This is interesting. So this is important because it pretends how crop yields and tolerance for conditions such as drought and extreme heat will be enhanced in the future according to lead researcher Sally McKenzie, who's a professor in pharma biology and plant science at Penn State. Researchers identified a gene they called msh one, which I assume other people call msh one because we weird for them to name a gene just on their own and like we the only ones that called it msh one. I call it Frank. They could be really awkward if everybody was just naming genes whatever they wanted to and not doing it in some sort of coordinated effort. But they identified the gene that exists in all plants and when they down regulate or turned off its expression, the plant becomes convinced that it is encountering multiple stresses even though it's not. The plant senses as it were that it is dealing with drought, extreme cold, heat and high levels of light simultaneously. So it thinks all this is happening once it amplifies the expression of a gene networks that are designed to respond to those stresses. So what you basically what they've done is they've got this sensor gene that's in a pathway that's looking for you know once it's triggered in some way it's supposed to tell the plant now is when we set these other pathways in motion and because they they shut down the sensor in such a way it thinks that all this stuff is taking place. So this is pretty brilliant and in as simple as it sounds this requires a tremendous amount of research of knowing what these pathways are and how they this is why this is a decades long thing. This is this is how brilliant genius stuff works. It didn't just happen. Boom. It was tens of years and hundreds of people. The original discovery was with the same research group and oh they discovered that the MSH1 gene so maybe they did name it. Maybe I talked too soon. Maybe they actually did get to name it because when you discovered it they discovered a decade ago at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This is Mackenzie again. Studying how the genes are that are necessary for energy generation photosynthesis and respiration communicate and coordinate at the time. Mackenzie did not realize how important the gene is for modifying the way a plant plant expresses its genes. So this is quotey voice recently by serendipity. We discovered that after we replaced the MSH1 gene the plant has a memory of that stress and by memory I mean its growth features are very different from the plant we started with and it will remember the stress generation after generation after generation as long as we don't make any crosses and keep it in that same lineage. Which by itself is difficult when you're talking about plants that not in a wild but in you know even in agriculture but to a good extent if there's not other soil planted around this they should be very successful with it. Part of the research lines derived from crossing with the memory plants were grown in large populations in four different field conditions at four widely separated locations in Nebraska and they proved to be more vigorous higher yielding and better adapted to their environment than a typical soybean plant. Important for the political reality of these times this is a technology that could be rapidly applied because this is not a genetically modified organism. Well it is but it's got all these same genes that they didn't add anything right and this is this is also the most ridiculous thing in the world what is genetic modification labeling to all that this whole yeah so uh so but the brilliantly this uh works its way through so it does not require any special regulatory approval they can just go and plant it in a field which is a problem uh for for those who are trying to improve agriculture by adding genes to things you can't just go put it out in a field somewhere there's all sorts of laws that prevent you from doing so so but yeah she's there she's also pointing out that this uh they they did this in soy but again this is a gene that is a cross it's conserved meaning that you know evolutionarily this is a conserved gene across many many many many many plants so this just doesn't just necessarily apply to soybean this could also work in other plants as well so you know it's one of the this is this is kind of this could be a really big deal right like it's one of the things that I often think about in terms of growing populations resource management you could put it into the carbon footprint uh field if you like as well which is that we are going to need to sustain more people on this planet and you always feel like you're at the very it's like we had a couple big things that happened over the years that prevented a mass famine on this plant one of them oh it's just transportation being able to move things from where the food was grown to where the people want to eat it in a quick enough manner so that they could they could get there and they could eat it um that prevented famine the fact that you could freeze food and transport it anywhere in the world or preserve it at home refrigeration at home you know that you could preserve food and place longer so that food lasts longer between when it is grown and when somebody desires to eat it these were these these seemingly simple things uh prevented famine on a massive scale on this planet uh our population today with the our ability to preserve food and transport food from 150 years ago we would all be dead we wouldn't have this population we wouldn't have gotten this bit and then our farming practices have improved uh higher yields uh more efficient use of water more efficient you know the tractors now move up and down fields making those rows via gps satellite you know they're so precise and utilizing every bit of the land as efficiently as possible so something that can boost the efficiency of the plant itself and providing nourishment to humans of course is another thing that we can do to keep this show going you know a little bit longer but to circle back to the conversation we were having before i think the next step in this testing is to see how pollinating insects and other animals are affected by this if at all maybe not maybe because it's it's a genetic thing and not really a chemical thing maybe it doesn't have an impact but maybe it does so yeah so this is the stressors that they have on this look to be very environmental yeah but not not the not necessary not specific well they're not specifically uh focusing on a pest uh a pest or what would you call a predator uh balance here because they're looking at these other factors but what if the but if that exists as well uh and you have this this plant that can repel pests as it were or predators who may be pollinators who may you know and it to this could you're right this could potentially not be or the story but you did before gave for the first time this could potentially be the end of the agriculture of this marabas plant at the same time uh it does it it does at least throw up a flag of of research that they need to do in these fields that they have and they can do it because they're they get to go out into the big fields in nature and do those counts because that is definitely something that needs to be added to their perspective yeah absolutely and speaking of pests um scorpions if there's a scorpion in your booths you're probably not very happy most of the scorpions we think about are very venomous to humans uh there's actually about 2,400 species of scorpions only about a handful of them are dangerous to humans but when we say the word scorpion we immediately think about that thing stuck it to your boots you're going to put your foot in that foot in there you're going to have to have your foot amputated well uh these these animals they they're really fascinating for a bunch of reasons but one of them is that they have not very well been categorized mostly they've just been kind of compartmentalized and grouped based on similar body plans but they're all kind of the same so things are kind of confused they're not very well sorted a recent study from University of Wisconsin Madison from Carlos Santabanez Lopez he actually was fascinated with scorpions as a child and now he the scorpion researcher he is trying something brand new he is trying to organize the scorpion family tree based on the shape of the venom molecules by predicting the three dimensional shape adopted by the venom molecules he has been able to identify and split to common ancestors of today's scorpion so he has pretty well organized that family tree already one branch has narrower venom kind of shaped like a puzzle piece the others is rounder kind of like a marble this distinct form underlies the venom's function as well each shape has its own molecular targets in prey so this is the very first time that shape of molecules has been used in place of anatomy to organize evolutionary relationships which i think is yeah it's so smart this could totally shake up the way that we do things we already look at genomes right the researchers also looked at genomic sequences from 55 scorpion species and more than 3000 genes to look at a preliminary family tree these molecule shapes followed that and gave more clarity to it past that so this is really a new tool that evolutionary biologists could use to figure out how animals are related and how their tree is shaped so they actually identified or could turn into morphology all over again it certainly could it certainly could but they predicted the shapes of 41 different venoms from across that family tree and they were able to categorize them down and it really jived well with the genetic analysis so not to say to throw the genetics out the window but to say that this could be a piece of the puzzle there if you know that two rodents are related and they both have a potassium they both have like a like a flying squirrel like skin flap that is and then there's a third squirrel that doesn't have that and you know that they're all closely related you can guess probably the two flying squirrels are closer related yeah but already already already they they they looked over that large that large grouping of molecules and they said they did pretty well which either means that there was enough convergent molecular evolution to throw off a perfect you know so I mean this it's it's not that I'm disagreeing with but but morphology is a rougher look than the genetics the genetics is is a it's a it's a longer read code right it's you know the problem the problem with with the easier to correlate the problem with the scorpions is that they're arachnids and they're all scorpions so their genetics are so amazingly similar yeah that it is extremely hard to parse out those very specific breaks there are other groups of animals that make it much easier but the scorpions the reason it pretty much fit is that there were a lot of them that the genetics they kind of just had to throw their hands up and go it could go here or here or here so based on that they were able to then look at the shape of the venom and they think assemble this family tree so this is a situation where you have to use both yeah and that makes sense and and you know but that and it's gonna you're right because also what is the shape of this venom based on genetics right so exactly you're you're finding at least a preserved along a lineage genetic which may again may not be may not mean as closely related they could be divergently related but this was just preserved in both groups but it is it is a good clue absolutely anyway it's still morphology do you want to talk about is it a story about aliens that you brought something from space it came from space and landed in greenland and nobody knew it was there until somewhat recently the checks out you know is that international team led by researchers from the center of geogenetics and the natural history museum of danmark university of coban howl have discovered a 31 kilometer wide meteorite impact crater buried beneath the ice sheet in northern greenland this is the first time that the crater of any size has been found under one of earth's continental ice sheets researchers worked for uh the last three years to verify their discovery that was initially made in 2015 the research is described in a new study just published in the internationally recognized general science advances crater measures more than 31 kilometers which if you're not familiar with kilometers 31 kilometers is approximately the same as 31 000 meters in diameter corresponding to an area bigger than paris wow that's huge planks in the mine the 25 largest impact craters on the earth crater formed when a kilometer wide iron meteorite that would be a thousand meter wide iron meteorite smashed in northern greenland uh but then of course because it's all that's just sunk in the ice just disappeared there didn't know it was there uh this is quotey voice of professor kurt car form center of geogenetics and natural history museum of danmark the crater is exceptionally well preserved and that is surprising because glacier ice is incredibly efficient erosive agent that would have quickly removed traces of the impact but that means the crater must be rather young from a really long geological perspective i'm assuming so far it has not been possible to date the crater directly but its condition strongly suggests that it formed after the ice age began to cover greenland so it must be younger than three million years old but also could be as recent as 12 000 years old which is i think uh at a time of a mini ice age uh which which would be interesting uh so yeah well no actually it says here toward the end of the last ice age so the ice age would have already maybe have started oh but it could be yeah it could have been then it also that means it could have been at the beginning of it uh so it's a giant circular depression discovered as researchers were looking at a new map of topography beneath the ice sheet they noticed an enormous but previously undetected circular depression under the hyowatha glacier the very edge of the ice sheet in northern greenland we immediately knew this was something special but at the same time it became clear that it would be very difficult to conform the origin of the depressions as professor kia so that was horrible trying to like quickly say a name so they couldn't pronounce and then also whisper it at the same time uh uh so yeah so they're gonna figure out a way to try to to date this thing nice that's pretty cool we're we're as um cratered as the moon it would turn out yeah so a lot of this stuff can hide like you know the the biggest one that i'm aware of is the in the gulf of mexico it's you know ginormous but under the sea and has been and it collapsed at some point and is still you know uh and it's silt and everything else so these things these things hide in a in a very active planet like ours you'd be able to see all of our all the warts and scars if you we had no atmosphere and we didn't have the tectonics or you didn't have a darn atmosphere like a moon or something we just you know yeah but it's but it's interesting because it could this could uh it's big enough that it this could have impacted uh an extinction event or a climate shift event or something of that nature and the fact that we don't know when it took place if they can identify when this this thousand meter diameter iron object slammed into the earth they can identify when it took place it may actually answer a bunch of questions that uh we had somewhere else along the three million year uh time frame is to what why or how something happened wow that's pretty cool there's still many secrets to be learned on the surface of our own planet if we can make it is the thing because the air here in california particularly not great right now i have actually the worst i've ever seen it and i've lived my whole life it's the absolute worst i've uh thick with smoke you know darkened it you feel like it's twilight at three o'clock in the afternoon uh the the fires that are going on the smoke that's that's settled into the valley is ominous and the horrible debris yeah it's not great so air pollution is a pretty big deal right now we're dealing with particulates from a fire but in other places like in detroit there's just constant smog and a new piece of research published this week in jama international or internal medicine sorry oh end of the show university of michigan's um frankle party of vascular center looked at uh pollutants in the air and the impact on your heart in particular we think about lungs a lot but we don't think about our hearts when we think about air pollution despite improvements in air quality across the united states during the past few decades more than 80 000 deaths per year occur in the us due to fine particulate matter um in air pollution so researchers have found in this new study that a very small inexpensive inexpensive portable air purifier used inside your home is powerful enough to round up a good enough amount of these particles to get them out of the indoor air and it's actually enough of an impact in this small study to help people's hearts wow so this was um they tested three-day increments um and they tested uh blood pressure um in in people in senior housing in detroit this is low income senior housing um they put these air purifiers in living rooms and bedrooms 40 seniors participated it was randomized it was double blind it was it was between the fall of 2014 and the fall of 2016 it's a pretty long study 95 of the participants were black and all were non-smokers so it was a very specific sample set low income non-smoking african-american senior so like very specific so already there's lots of confounding variables here but it's a good start of a study each person experienced three different three-day scenarios sprinkled throughout this time a sham air filter as they call it which is an air filtration system without a filter in it a low efficiency air purifier system the cheap one and a high efficiency air purifier system very expensive participants were uh were allowed to do whatever they wanted they went through their normal business they were allowed to open windows they were allowed to go outside blood pressure was measured each day and participants wore personal air monitors to see personal air pollution exposure they say that fine particulate matter exposure was reduced by 40 by the small inexpensive air filter and systolic blood pressure was reduced by an average of 3.4 mmhg so normal systolic blood pressure is considered less than 120 hypertension begins at 130 stage 2 at 140 so the benefits were marked in these cheaper systems but they were they were even higher in the more expensive ones but they did not lower blood pressure more in the expensive ones pollutants were reduced blood pressure was not so the the cheaper air purifiers were were available for $70 or less so that's pretty affordable if you're thinking about it in terms of something that could really change somebody's life so this the next steps for this is to test this approach in a more diverse population to see if the personal reductions in particulate matter leads to fewer heart attacks so do kind of a longitudinal study and then see if there if other negative outcomes from high blood pressure are also impacted so this is this is interesting to see kind of air pollution it's not just about the lungs it's about your heart how can just a small change to the the expectation of what a senior has in their home if it's a cheap air purifier will that help improve their quality of life in their old age or I would be really interested to know giving it to kids in their room will that improve their lives later because whenever there's things like what's going on in California right now they always say keep the kids and the seniors indoors yeah and me too I've been coughing a lot and I mean you can hear my voice I did a tour today and my voice is is leaving me yeah uh somebody did a comparison it was like the air quality in California over the central valley right now too is is as bad as Beijing and I realized we're having a massive fire they live in this every day every day yeah yeah but now through the uh with the help of Dr. Justin's not a real doctor cheapo air filters people lower your blood pressure just as well as you could if you had the more expensive models sold by my competitors who's your competitor I don't know okay all right um Justin did we do it did we do a show I think we did but we're only an hour and a half in so we're going to take another break and we'll be back with the second hour and a half there was a specific text from Kiki I believe that said 90 minutes please so we're going to stick to it plus we still have a few minutes of stuff to do here at the end of the show are you ready yes okay so first I want to remind everybody that our twist calendars are available for pre-order that's at twist.org again you can follow me on all of my various social medias more on that in a moment if you want to see pictures of the calendar pieces. Shoutouts to all of our various minions and our helpers out there in the ether that help us make this show possible and all of the special bells and whistles that we have shoutouts to Fada, Identity Four, Gordon McLeod and our other Patreon sponsors also shoutouts to everyone in the YouTube chat and in our IRC. Thank you for all of the support on Patreon as well I cannot read the Patreon list since I am not Kiki she has all of the master controls but know that I would if I could and I acknowledge all of you separately right now at once if you're interested in supporting us you can find information at patreon.com slash this week in science also remember you can help us out just by telling your friends about twists on next week's show we are having twist giving we'll be talking about risk and science fiction movies with Dr. Andrew Maynard from Arizona State University this just in that'll be fun once again we'll be broadcasting live online at 8 p.m pacific time on twist.org slash live where you can join and watch in our chat room and YouTube but don't worry if you can't make it you can find our past episodes recorded on youtube.com slash this week in science or twist.org and this Justin would like to thank you for enjoying the show twist is also available as a podcast just google this week in science in your iTunes directory or if you have one of the mobile type devices you can look for twist the number four droid app in the android marketplace or simply this week in science in anything apple market placey for more information on anything you've heard here today show notes will be available on our website that's at www.twist.org we can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts and other listeners or you can contact us directly email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekin science.com Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org just put twist which is twi s somewhere in the subject line otherwise your email will be automatically spam filtered into oblivion you can also hit us up on the twitter where we are at twist science at dr kiki at Jackson fly and it players menagerie we love your feedback if you have a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview a haiku that comes doing the night please let us know we'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news and if you've learned anything from the show remember it's all in your head science this week in science this week in science at the end of the world so i'm setting up 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 below the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of greek sciences 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 because it's this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in science 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 understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy we're just trying to save the world from jeopardy because this week in science is coming away so everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods instead of rolling a die we may rid the world of toxoplasma got the eye because it's this week in science this week in science this week in science this week in This Week in Science Got a laundry-list of items I want to address From Stopping Global Hunger to Drenching Loct예 ts 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 in a way. You better just listen to what we say. And if you learn anything from the words that we've said, then please just remember it's all in your head. Because it's this week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, this week in science. And that is it. We did it. Waiting for Justin to come back. I do not know how long I'm gonna make it tonight because I have a massive headache from breathing in smoke all day. California's on fire, kids. Not good. This is definitely worse than, I guess it was last year's when it happened last time. This is worse, I'm pretty sure. It's, you can really, you can see it in services codes visible. And I talked outside for an hour and was coughing and could like feel, feel stuff kind of in the back of my throat afterwards. It was really yucky. I should have worn a mask. Like, oh, no one will be able to hear me if I'm wearing a mask. Talking to a big classroom, it'll be fine. Just an hour, it was not great. I know, it's yucky. So hopefully, hopefully they can get a handle on it all. Oh, we did a show in 97 minutes. I'm pretty proud of what Kiki said. Okay, I need some help. What? I'm having a serious mental block. Yeah? Yeah. About what? I can't remember a word. Okay. All right. So describe to me, what is a somersault? Acrobatics. Right, it's like you go and it's hands and the thing. Okay, I'm looking for the other thing that's less acrobatic, huh? Cartwheel? Oh no, cartwheel. So cartwheel, somersault, right? Same thing though, right? Okay. What's the thing where you just are on the ground? You don't go up on your hands and do the thing, but you just tumble forward. Log roll? No, log roll is sideways. Oh, you're going head over. Oh, you're describing a somersault. Is that a somersault? Yeah. So it's not the same. No, cartwheels are on this. Okay, so it is, so I was conflating in my head. Cartwheel and somersault is the same thing. The somersault is where you just do like a forward tumble and you're not trying to do a hands, okay. Yeah. Okay, now I feel better. So I didn't forget the word, I just absolutely conflated it and it was bugging me because I thought there was another word. And then they came across tumble and I'm like, ah, no, that's not the one I'm looking for. So that's a somersault, okay. I feel much better now. Do you have any pressing new business because I got a heck of a headache from the smoke. Nope. Okay. I'll address the questions about poops very briefly. Guinea pig and rabbit poop is the easiest and cleanest and least gross because it basically just looks like they're food. It's just like pellet food. The worst is probably a tie between pinnipeds of seals and sea lions, big cats, like snow leopards, tigers. Is it a cat poop because I thought it was big cat pee. So big cat pee is also the worst pee but it's also some of the worst poop. And then reptile poop. Why would a predator smell so loudly and fouly? To mark their territory. Or maybe they don't care. No, no, I'm a predator. I'm gonna have stinky pee. I don't care. It's to mark their territory. It's completely intentional. Reptile poop is terrible because it cooks so long. So reptiles only poop. Well, cooks, they only poop like once a week. So it's been so much time in there. My opinion, my guess is totally unscientific but my guess is that it's like fermenting in there. So it's extra pungent when it comes out. But I don't know why seal and sea lion poop is so gross. It's probably because it's just fish and salt water. Yeah, you know, I mean, some of it's gonna be the bacterial effects too, the microbe, my only thing. But it's like, what if seals were... The key to a gross poop. Maybe that's why seals went to sea is because their poo is so stinky that like predators could find them easily. So they're like, I gotta keep moving. Okay, I don't care, it's cold, it's wet, I'm going. The key to a yucky poop. Can't hide anywhere. The key to a yucky poop is two-fold. One is moisture. Moisture is key. So a dry poop is not a smelly poop. So it's the aerosolization or the, what is it? Like the activation of the smell somehow, I don't know. But the second thing... Because it's evaporating the scent into the air. I'm sure that's what it is, it makes it so much grosser. The second thing is, it's definitely related to eating meat. Any sort of meat. Herbivore poop is not as smelly across the board. Except for in reptiles. Reptile poop is still really gross no matter whether they're herbivore or carnivore or an omnivore. Thank goodness they're small now. Does that mean dinosaur poop was probably very stinky? Justin, tortoise poop is not small. Alligator poop is not small. Oh, well, okay, there's some biggings. That's the biggest you got, you know. And bird poop also does not smell at all pretty much. So, but this isn't just a conversation because we're of course have the perspective of being humans. If you're... Yeah, see we poop into the water, so there's no smell at all. No, but I mean, no, I don't mean that. But I mean, we have, we're a long way from tracking prey by the scent of its poo. Well, I suppose some people still do this. For most of us though, that's a bygone era. You know, in the animal kingdom though, I bet that there is like the stinkiness of the, you know, the top predators who are using it for territorial means. Yeah. Again, I would think you would still want it to be subtle because you don't want a telegraph that you're predatory. You want a telegraph, you really do because you don't want somebody else in your space, especially another member of your species most of the time. Like tigers, solitary, don't want other tigers around. But I feel like, okay, but I feel like if I'm, okay, tiger, lying a weight in the jungle for prey to come by, so I can pounce. I'm like, ah, but I really gotta pee. But I know I can't because then the whole jungle will know exactly where I am and I'll have to move spots. So it seems like there's a trade-off. I think our bodies are flawed in that we are presented with the urge and must act on it immediately pretty much, right? So like, I mean, I've seen this in other humans. Think about a dog, like taking a dog for a walk. They save that pee up. They only pee where they want to pee. This is true for other animals. They have a spot where they poop. They have a spot where they want to pee. They do not do that while they are hunting. It's very regimented. Yes. But I mean, to add to that, predators like tigers and polar bears that are solitary, when they have babies, sorry everybody, the moms eat the baby's poop until the baby is almost full grown, like for an insane amount of time. And it's because they don't want the smell of baby poop anywhere. Wait, what animal is this? Tigers, polar bears, most top predators. I've heard deer do this though. Prey do this as well. So prey usually do it and get nutrients from it. But they're also hiding from the scent of the predator. The predators don't really get nutrients from that poop. It's pretty well digested, but they're doing it to hide their trace from cannibalistic others of the species. So like polar bears are famous for the females have to hide the babies from a male anywhere nearby. If a male comes across a mother and babies, they're done so. Oh wow. And it's because it's either that the male just wants the territory back to himself, so he'll take care of everybody or he'll just eat the babies so that he can then impregnate the female. Well, if the polar bear goes extinct, they think it's its own fault. It's how predatory solitary animals roll. I mean, I was just talking to somebody about this a couple of days ago. It's a sad reality, but most sex in the animal kingdom, non-consensual. It's just the way it is out there. Anyway, I could talk about poop longer, but I feel like we're losing people. So, any other new business? Ah, no. No? No. Okay, I'm pretty excited. I took Next Wednesday off so I can bake pies all day before twist. Pretty excited about that. Oh, tortoise shoulders. What Dave Shorty? What about tortoise shoulders? I saw something about, oh, I couldn't remember what you asked. Something about scoots, right? What's a scoots? The scoots are the individual pieces on a tortoise shell. Is that what he's asking? Or is he asking about, is he asking about like shoulder blades? What is that called, scapula? No. Oh, gosh, it's too late. I can't remember things now. Dave Shorty. I can't remember summer salt. This is what the smoke is doing to us. Yes, the scapula. So, that's a good question. Scoot, that's a good question. I don't actually, I think it's a U? I think it's S-C-U-T? Sure choice. Scoot. Yes, S-C-U-T-E. Okay, I love when I know things. So, let's look. So, tortoise scapula. It's a good question, Dave. Ooh, it looks like they are quite anchored, which makes sense. So, on tortoises, they don't have like the free motion that we have in our scapula. They pretty much can do this, and this, and that's it. It looks like they're really well anchored to the ribcage. It's what would appear. Yeah, I don't feel like. So you can't like high-five a tortoise. No, definitely not. Yeah, so they can do this, and they can do that, and that's it. Yeah, there we go. Hopefully that's helpful, Dave. Super scientific. Okay, Blaire. Yeah. Thank you for stewarding the ship. Oh, yes. And navigating us through another episode. You can call me Skippa. Okay, Skippa. Minions, we'll be back again this same time next week for the Twisted Giving episode. We hope you will join us. We hope we will be there. Yeah. Those outcomes would be fantastic. If only you could have smello vision. You could smell apple pie and pumpkin pie. Watching from me. Yeah, just make sure you have it tuned into Blaire's channel. Not mine. Yes. Yeah, what will you smell like, Justin? As usual, I will smell like coffee and black liquorice. Great. Okay, cool. Good night, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Are you gonna say good night, Justin? Good night, Justin. Say good night, Blaire. Good night, Blaire. Good night. Good night. Dr. Kiki, wherever you are. Good night, Kiki. Who's editing this later?