 Hello everyone and welcome to another podcast broadcast of this week in science Justin and I are back again We're gonna talk about other things we'll announce something in just a minute on the podcast But it's not the podcast yet because this stuff gets edited out because this is pre podcast and then there's post podcast and then there's other mess ups sometimes get edited out by the wonderful Rachel and So if you're watching right now, thank you so much for watching Everyone in the chat. Thank you for chatting We love you being here Okay, we're gonna do this show Not everything will show up in the podcast please Press the likes the shares and all the things that let other people know who don't already know that this show is happening right now Yeah, no, all right. Do you go like that? Is that what we do? Is that that? I don't know There's a button Mashed that Imaginary button of like We're gonna do a show now. You ready Justin looks Know you're gonna say the thing but for some reason when we go to single shots now, I feel it does is extra zoom So it's not just the shot that I see here Right here is perfectly framed when it goes to the single It's kind of a new I see in the last like a couple weeks anyway, this is a new we use StreamYard for our broadcasts so It's their system. I can reframe myself so that that doesn't happen in the future, but Thank you for bringing it up Yeah, let's go foreheads and science starting the show in three two This is Twists this week in science episode number 939 recorded on Wednesday, August 16 2023 all in all we are all just bricks in the science Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will bring you We will fill your head with music flies and extinction but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer and Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago the Babylonians were recording Astronomical observations laying the foundation for the scientific study of the cosmos Ancient Greeks invented the computer 2,200 years ago the Antikythera mechanism masterpiece of advanced mathematics astronomy metallurgy and engineering that could track celestial objects predict moon phases and eclipses and still Get you to the next Olympic event on time Pythagoras and followers explored the mathematical relationships governing the universe Aristotle brought a systematic approach to scientific inquiry The Islamic Golden Age brought a comprehensive medical Encyclopedia that influenced medical surgery practices for centuries Algebra was invented chemistry and astronomy advanced the Renaissance man Lee Narder Da Vinci's anatomical drawings and technical designs and equations of gravity Nicholas Copernicus and Giudano Bruno challenged the Earth centric model of the universe Galileo Galilei's telescopic observations confirmed them Isaac Newton's principal Mathematica brought together the laws of motion and universal gravitation providing a unifying framework for understanding the physical world Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection reshaped the understanding of life's diversity and origins Albert Einstein's theories of relativity Upended classical notions of space time and gravity the Copenhagen interpretation led by Niels Bohr challenged our understanding of the subatomic world and the discovery of DNA structure by Rosalind Franklin Revealed the inner workings of all biological life and now just now. It's being announced that there is another episode of This Week in Science Coming up next I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want to learn everything I want to fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek Thanks to you Kiki And a good science to you too Justin and everyone out there Blair is out this week and we would love to send her and her partner Brian and Ments congratulations Because Blair has brought another human being into this world and who better to do so Right wonderful caring people intelligent curious And so excited and I hope everything's going well, and I hope that all of you out there Use whatever social medias or whatever's and you know do the Congratulations give them the love because they have now embarked on a whole new adventure in life Bring in life one that does not include sleep Yes, not not a lot for a long time. We'll see how that one goes But thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science We have Justin and I lots of science to share with you. I have stories about dead flies sexy flies fake meat and demons What'd you bring Justin? I've got music from brainwaves hidden consciousness and coma patients the extinction of all humans in Europe and The best darn dino tracks anywhere in the world Dino tracks like music It's a teaser you have to wait around and find out it's gonna be at the end of the show And In the meantime, I'm gonna tell everybody that if you are not yet subscribed to this week in science You can do that look for this week in science on all the podcasting platforms that you're familiar with Twist is another name we go by we're also on some social medias as twist science to develop TWIS CIE and CE We broadcast live weekly on YouTube Facebook and Twitch Look for twist org in the interwebs and there's all sorts of our website with other this information And then you can get show notes and links to stories that we talk about I always feel like we're giving directions to a party that somebody's already at Yeah, a little bit, but you know, maybe there's not many listening to this You already found us. They're already at the party. You don't have to whether you're gonna take a left Before you get to that big here's it. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing This is the party where you're allowed to invite your friends So tell your friends Does ready for some science? Yeah It's a demon haunted world For real this this show is already What are you talking about? I know what am I talking about? Okay 1956 there was a theoretical physicist named David Pines and he predicted that there are demons in matter Is this like little animals that follow you around and share your thoughts or something No Nope, this is not I don't I don't think so nothing to do with that but We know that in materials especially those that form structures where Electrons like to combine and act in a similar way and they're like we're happy now. We're sad now We're happy now. We're sad now and everybody the electrons are like We're doing it all together and so that's like a nice frequency of the matter and how the matter is oscillating in space and time Well, this guy David Pines He was like not all matter seems like it would do that like maybe sometimes there's like a couple of different frequencies and maybe they're kind of opposite each other and so researchers in the last several years Definitely showed that there are these things called plasmon's where the electrons combine and have this wonderful mass full great Interaction and this is good for superconductivity. It's good for all sorts of stuff But David Pines idea was like maybe sometimes they combine because of the way they combine they're like the opposite of those like mass full Maybe they're massless and maybe they don't interact with light and maybe just maybe They're like these weird things hiding in matter that we can't detect. Let's call them demons Okay Okay, so it was predicted very long time ago And researchers were like that was a great idea Nobody's been able to figure it out and see it Prior to now. So there is a new study that is just out of University of Illinois Urbana Champagne and researchers kind of accidentally found these demons they were looking at uh at samples of a metal called strontium ruthenate and it's kind of similar to the metals that are used that Work as high temperatures superconductors But it's not so the researchers are like what's going on with this metal but Why is it acting the way that it is? What are its properties? What's happening there? So they started trying to look at the electrons. They're trying to see what's happening within this substance and they found that there was What there were two different frequencies and they were kind of like parallel to each other and There was an electronic mode that had no mass The researchers say at first we had no idea what it was demons are not in the mainstream the possibility came up And we basically laughed it off. But then we started ruling things out We started to suspect that we had really found the demon the researchers calculated the features of strontium ruthenates electronic structure and They performed all sorts of microscopic calculations and they found that it was just as pines had predicted that there was A demon observed as a 3d acoustic plasmon in strontium ruthenate published in nature this last week And it wasn't what they were trying to do but they saw it and Like he said they tried to laugh it off. I couldn't So I can't tell if I'd be like really Impressed and excited to find out that uh, my experiment had discovered the demons a 70 year old paper confirming Or if I'd be like Somebody already figured this out Seven years ago somebody already wrote the paper on no No, it's not as big a discovery because somebody but what's going on in the 1950s That people are figuring out The entire future of hidden physics It was the future on paper They didn't have the the equipment. So they're like, I'll just I'll just sketch everything out with math and figure it out Oh, look what I'm discovering with math on a piece of paper And then 70 years later a physical experiment will be able to find a Higgs boson or this demon state Of the lecture matter That's wild It is wild and it goes it goes along with you know, we need theoretical physics to Do the math and see what's possible what you know predict lots of different things And then we get the technology and we do the experiments and we do the measurements and sometimes the measurements don't make sense and so we Get rid of other possibilities until it's the only possibility is the reality of a prediction that 70 years old yeah There wasn't like that many papers 70 years ago Not there were a lot but not it has that air. No, there weren't there weren't that like like we have we have I think Uh, it's just some of the 5 000 papers come out a day or something ridiculous now. Then it was like maybe that many in a year Like it was it wasn't like people were just cranking out Theories, you know You came up with one in your career and you wrote it up and you presented it. That's my idea But I do come up with papers all the time. No. Yeah, the publisher perish is a bit of a trap, but uh I do love that they went into this trying to go. Okay There's this metal that we know of that's just like other superconductors high temperature superconductors But it's not super high temperature superconducting. So why is it different? and then they made measurements that came out with this Result that they did not expect at all and I you know that in itself is You know very exciting and pretty cool electrons We got a lot of a lot of learning to do Want to tell me a story sing me a song? Yeah So it's just a snippet of a song Just a snippet, but we're not going to play the snippet We are going to play this we're going to play the second snippet, which is so this is neuroscientists at albany medical center Which I think is berkeley Recorded activity from electrodes inserted into the brains of people with epilepsy The doctors had placed 2668 electrodes into the brain Of each of 29 patients to record brain activity during a seizure Having gotten the folks completely wired up. They decided hey, wow, we're here. Let's Investigate how the brain responds to music part of the brain Responsible for understanding spoken language tends to reside in the brain's left hemisphere But there have been studies that have suggested when you're listening to music It's not it's not centered in language Deciphering part of the brain. It's more complex. There's a network of brain regions involved in appreciating music It might even include both hemispheres of the brain. So uh subjects listened to various snippets of songs while their brain waves were being recorded Team used these recordings to train a computational model to recognize which patterns of brain activity corresponded to which musical features so do you have Do you have the snippet of the brain wave? I do have the snippet of the brain wave and we'll play it right now. Let's see if people can recognize it Yeah, I can't hear anything Are you you're muted too I keep going back and forth with all the buttons. Okay, hold up So I'm not gonna I know what the song is. I'm not gonna say it with the snippet But just listen to it first. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but don't look at the screen here at cups They look at the screen Should I play it again? Yeah, so now If you haven't gotten it, I will give you if you're if you're listening along to this not looking because it's saying the If you're listening along to this I'll give you a hint if you haven't figured it out. It's a a intro To a pink Floyd song. Can we play it one more time? Intro to a pink Floyd song if you're just listening along Oh It's just a another brick in the wall. That's from brainwaves All in all from now Now I've told you this amazing thing that they can read your brain Using I'm gonna take it away. So you're gonna take it away. Okay Ah So here's the part that I don't understand and we would want to talk to them about a little bit so The the this model was able to reconstruct recognizable version of the original song somebody electrodes Functioned somewhat like they say a single piano keys representing individual notes the they had to the the algorithm also needed to interpret things like Some acoustical elements volume rhythm that sort of thing But then it says specifically the rich researchers trained the algorithm on about 90 percent of the song Well, wait a second If you've trained it on the song Then it then it does the algorithm already know what the song is Before it interprets it because then is it just matching it? That's the part I don't understand But I don't think that's where Yeah Still, yeah, maybe it's matching and and pattern recognition But it has to start somewhere It has to start somewhere you have to be able to connect those brainwaves to what's being heard But if it's if it's just trained it on okay, this should sound like this this should look like this if you hear this sound like that fine and then By monitoring the brave brainwaves They can actually hear the song. So the researchers hope that this will be used in the future for mind reading. Oh wait No, no, no the teams that they weren't they weren't interested so much in the They're interested in the mind reading aspect of of this but They're more interested in identifying the brain areas responsible for perceiving different musical features And part of this is because they might be able to one day use it With patients who struggle to speak as a result of strokes injuries Degenerative diseases and allow their minds to communicate directly The minds communicating directly that's like the big one. No No, we want we would be amazing to have technology that could Enable people who are you know locked in syndrome to them to Communicate right to talk with people there's so much As to the potential of this we've already looked into the the visual cortex. We've done some speech recognition Rebuilding of speech in some experiments, but this with music is a different way of looking at it and it's pretty interesting Yeah, and we would play with the original version of this Somebody's asking is that the choir? No, that was that was the waters It's it's not uh breaking the wall part two. It's breaking the wall part one. I guess I should have So that's because it's for the aficionados out there. You got to know yeah, uh Anyway, we're afraid of the youtube algorithms Like they might they might be like, oh that was close enough and and but we get booted over everything Uh here on this little niche show on the youtube's so For the youtube portion of it at least we're not going to play it I think the other aspect of this aside aside from the music whatever it's uh, you know, these were epilepsy patients this was Not outside the skull. These were electro electrodes placed on the brain itself within the skull these were People who are kind of waiting to have their surgeries done and had holes in their heads and so I was like, oh We're already in there. Let's take let's let's do this. Um They're on the surface of the brain and In that we're still A distance away from the resolution that would be necessary to have a little cap on your head that could read these You know you listening to music or imagining music in your head. Um There's a ways to go still a long ways to go. Yeah and they by the way, they specifically chose pink floyd for a number of the snippets that they use in this because it uh scientifically had been determined to be Uh, everybody's favorite band Yeah Whether they've heard floyd before or not they're like this is just good music. It's just good music. So, you know, whatever It's all good. Everybody's people's auditory cortex likes this stuff. Um The other side of it that I really liked is like, uh, we think of where language Is located and we've talked about where in the brain like music should be and while it's a question as to where the lyrics are interpreted and process it processed and listened to the researchers also Point out that their results show that music is more Cross hemispheres both sides of the brain but more right brain. No, no, sorry. Yes more right brain oriented than left brain language is more left brain So it's very that in itself is interesting Yeah In some people Most people in most people Most people love flies don't they No, nobody likes flies Who everybody loves flies flies flies are amazing Right, are they awesome? lies Well, some researchers presenting at the fall meeting of the american chemical Society are presenting about their work Trying to make Plastic out of black soldier flies Yeah, he's nice Just little little flies Okay, okay. Plastic Plastic, yes Biodegradable, would it still be biodegradable or would it be just unbiodegradable fly? degradable digestible In fact, they do want to create a circular System in which the plastics that are created from the chitin powder that is Created from the exoskeleton of these dead black soldier flies Is then later fed to Flies So they can live The waste products are fed to the flies and then they can so they want to create a circular fly economy It's dark, but okay it is So researchers previously have looked at glucose that comes from sugar cane from trees from all sorts of products that also have other uses and so economically if you can come up with a source of lycosides glucose-based Polymer products, uh, you have the potential To not have like weird pricing in the market and have it's just its own thing, right? And so you can harvest the resources just from the flies and that's great. The flies are great. So, uh, these researchers They have been Trying to work on these natural products from harvested from regular resources for a while started working with another researcher who's trying to work on expanding the black soldier fly industry and uh, so they They worked on Examining these dead flies found that the chitin could be used to make a sugar-based polymer And manufacturers already use chitin from insects shrimp crabs things that are kind of waste byproducts, but uh, we don't necessarily need them Need to use shrimp and crabs for these things be like them for food Anyway, can we use insect carcasses make Plastics that don't cause a seafood allergy triggering Could I fly larvae? It's still very dark, but I mean, I guess that would be You know in the realm of life. It's just the feeding it back to the flies thing. I think that's the only that's the part but I Yeah, it does it for me as well, but um I think they're not thinking that 100 through because there's always energy loss at every trophic level. So that's there's It would have to be supplemented with supplemented, of course um, maybe They're hoping they can also use uh these chitin powders to create um Use the polymer to create stuff like chitosan That can actually be used to create super absorbent hydrogels that could then be Put into the soil to allow soil to hold more water, especially in drought areas So the soil would hold more water and then it would be better for agriculture and all sorts of things and it would then It would it would degrade and that caused a lot of microplastics problem. This would be It's the fly science flies. Yeah flies Who needs them? Maybe we do Okay, tell me Yeah, another story. So I have for Many years had a standing request demand Not a request an ultimatum of the highest kind possible Not to be unplugged if I fall into a commutative state of outwardly unresponsive brain activity I assume that somewhere in the rest recesses of my brain I will still be functioning Having a perfectly enjoyable conversation with myself And I never needed any of you anyway. Actually I did but I've done enough reading that I've got plenty inside To to work over For a very long time Now a study by Columbia Researchers has finally offered a rational perspective to my request demand non-negotiable Researchers have identified brain injuries that may underlie hidden consciousness A phenomenon in which brain injured patients are able to respond to simple commands Unconscious or unable excuse me to respond to simple commands making them appear unconscious despite Having some levels of awareness This is quoting the study leader Jen Closen associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Our study suggests that patients with hidden consciousness can hear and comprehend verbal commands But they cannot carry out those commands Because of injuries and brain circuits that relay instructions from the brain to the muscles Findings could help physicians more quickly identify brain injured patients Who might have hidden consciousness and better predict Which patients are likely then to recover from rehabilitation? therapies So hidden consciousness, this is also known as cognitive motor dissociation Occurs in about 15 to 25 percent of patients with brain brain injuries Stemming from head trauma brain hemorrhage or cardiac arrest that seems high in previous research Closen and colleagues found that subtle brain waves detectable with EEG Are the strongest predictor of hidden consciousness and eventually recovery for unresponsive brain injured patients But the precise pathways in the brain that become disrupted by this condition were unknown In the new study the researchers used EEG to examine 107 brain injury patients The technique was able to determine when patients are mentally trying Just unable to respond to commands such as Keep opening your hand or tighten your hand The analysis detected cmd In 21 of the 107 patients Researchers then analyzed structural MRI scans from all the patients looking for patterns Researchers found that all of the cmd patients had intact brain structures related to arousal and command comprehension Supporting the notion that these patients were hearing and understanding the commands, but were simply unable to carry them out This is quote from Colson We saw that all the cmd patients had deficits in brain regions responsible for integrating Comprehended motor commands with motor output Preventing cmd patients from acting on verbal commands Findings may allow researchers to better understand which brain injury patients have this cmd And of course how to treat it And more importantly they provide a scientific basis for keeping Justin plugged in now. I do want to point out Yes, I do want to point out. Please do that this also Has to do with the awareness of the outside world still being persistent I still don't need that You're fine. So if I fail this test, if it doesn't turn out I got the cmd Still do not unplug. I don't need you any of you I I did early on and then sometime in the mid 20s. I'd read enough stuff that I'm like I have enough to work with now The rest of this is just posing composing novels within your brain It's posing out of softening mysteries of the universe, whatever it is I'm fine I think the great thing about this Is that it starts to get at a A methodology that is more achievable by more medical institutions. So things like MRI fMRI more Complicated imaging techniques. They're not available to every hospital And so if you have a technique that you can work out that's like, hey Here's the brain's brain signal you can get by EEG, which is You know a little more available To to medical doctors you look at it. You go, oh, we got the signal Maybe we need to transport this person to a facility that can confirm with MRI. And so you start really getting at the root of Being able to to treat patients correctly Which has been a huge question for a very long time because we haven't known We don't know Yeah, like before it was like people were in a coma and you decided well, pull the plug don't pull the plug Some people just there's no they're not they're not plugged in You've um plugged the that you just Now they're fully charging Yeah, that's all But but then people come back People have come back from these states and just become functional again at some point Such a mystery is what was preventing of course, it's The networks in the brain being able to communicate and the plasticity of the brain being able to repair itself at some point then Reestablishes those controls in some in some but the being able to Detect these very subtle nuanced brain waves. This is really a step forward. So this is very hidden consciousness It is I sometimes feel like I have hidden consciousness already even Like in my conscious state like there's another Hidden consciousness not the same about something else. Yeah, that yeah, that's a whole other thing psychological thing Yeah, not the same is what you're talking about. That's something I should take up with my therapist. Is this what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, maybe no or just don't whatever just leave it push it deep down inside. It's all good That's usually I Stay hidden. Don't let them find out Never let them know. You'll be don't think you're too weird. Oh my gosh. What we're all weird. That's the whole thing. Um What do you think about fake meat? So In a few cases I think I'd have to get some brand specific and item specific. I've been like I need to do that. Yeah I've been like wow, you know this uh Fake chicken frozen patty thing is actually darn good. I don't know why I'd bother going and get a chicken one versus this This is perfectly acceptable And then I've you know, one of those hamburgers are like, uh, it's Hamburger, but it's made out of things, but you'll never know in the first bite. You're like, oh, no Oh, no, this is different And even if it even if you called it if you called it not meat I might have been like, oh, this is a different thing to eat But you called it meat and so I took a bite and expected that and then it was different if you just called it like a Fungus burger I might have been like, well, I'll try that and I go. Oh, this is what a fungus burger tastes like. Oh, that's interesting Yeah, that's not bad at all, but you called it meat. And so I took a bite and it wasn't meat and now I'm like Ah Even if it was fine. So yeah I think I think they set themselves up for disappointment if they call it meat and it's Really not there I think so So some researchers just just two stories out this week actually related to different kinds of fake meat a research team just publishing in nature communications has been trying to make fake meat juicier More palatable put that him in there put that put that blood that Not blood, but it's the fat, right? So when you really like a burger if you're a meat eater a lot of times it's the fat It's the marbling. It's the you know, it's that Juiciness that comes through that makes you really appreciate this thing that you're chewing on as opposed to the very dry Powdery thing that was the fungus burger that you tried to eat just a moment ago, but are now like Spraying as you talk These researchers uh in trying to figure out how to make the meat more palatable and better said What we just had water What if we just made it's like juicy is juicy add more water and so they Created a hydrogel plant protein basically a lattice that can Be part of the plant protein that is whatever the fake meat is going to be And the micro gel goes. Yay. I like water. I like the plant proteins. I like all of it and it pulls it all together and makes An ultra lubricated Fake meat for your mouth hole In this they say they offer a unique platform to design the next generation of healthy and palatable and sustainable foods they used atomic force microscopy to figure out whether or not their Molecules were doing what they wanted to do and the researchers say seeing the images from the atomic force microscope was an exciting moment The visualizations revealed that the protein micro gels were pretty much spherical and not aggregating or clumping together And so we could space out the plant proteins within it and our theoretical studies said this is what would happen, but It's nothing like seeing it for real and now the researchers are wondering if not only they can add this to the future of fake meat but also to reduce fat in Foods that we currently eat that are processed that have fat added to make them more palatable. So can we Use this micro gel to make things Juicier Hey, what would happen if we added it to uh, uh ground beef to make a hamburger with Would it make it even better? What if you took a one percent fat ground beef thing and added this as opposed to like the Regular fat ground beef, but I don't know. I don't know I'm I'm not in charge, but uh, this microagulation process Does have potential and we'll see where it goes. It's not adding anything Odd to the food is it's adding water and that could be better for a less meaty future Additionally, uh, a different group of researchers Decided that they are going to try and figure out how to make great fake seafood. And that's a problem So this is again, they're going to present the results at the fall meeting of the american chemical society and We all know seafood It's not fished sustainably very well. We have issues. Who knows how long seafood's going to last When are we going to be eating the jellyfish? I don't know um But these researchers decided that they were like we're gonna Approach this and so calamari. Let's do it Make some deep fried calamari rings 3d printed from the micro algae protein and mung bean protein And mung bean protein is also a byproduct of some mung bean processing and other things So it would be using Stuff leftover from the use of the mung beans So potentially we'll be able to have think these mock seafood products in the future They think that this uh micro algae will work in a non immune stimulating way We wonder sometimes some algae supplements and some algae product based products have caused uh allergies Um But we hope that uh that that these will not and they don't think that they're going to specifically Um, but the question is is the future is this to be black solder flies We can use the black solder flies exactly, but is this the beginning of like the uh the the replicator Is this the beginning of of star trek and the replicator I would like calamari And you wait For it to be produced. Yeah, I can I because I have never been impressed with calamari to the point where the the fungal black soldier fly combo version of it would be just as palatable Probably it depends some people love calamari other people don't this could be 3d printed to be other products that are seafood related They've given it a nice fishy flavor. It's got lots of omega threes very healthy 3d printing And I do I find it fishy? I didn't make that joke although obviously I did This is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us for this new Weekly venture into the world of science. We do appreciate you being here with us once again as we Just in an eye this week discuss the stories that we think are most interesting to bring to talk about with you If you love the show, please head over to twist.org click on the patreon link and become part of our supporter community on patreon You can choose your level of support ten dollars and more per month and we'll thank you by name at the end of the show And if you can't do that, please just tell a friend about twist We really can't do this without you Thank you for your support All right time to come on back now except Justin just disappeared He honestly just disappeared. So, uh, I think he was playing with a cord I don't know if you you want to see you want to see He went bye-bye. I don't know where he went. He's gone. He played with the cord and he disappeared I'm gonna wait by my phone and see if I need to Make any Arrangements Not seeing any text messages Would anyone like to join me for a plate of fried 3d micro algae mung bean calamari rings? Maybe possibly We only have a few stories to go But I don't know where Justin went. He decided he was gonna leave a little early apparently Even though he had some wonderful things to talk about Oh, there he is. He's back now. Oh, nope. He gave me the one minute signal He'll be right back because he figures things out We're gonna just keep on talking here right now and potentially Rachel's gonna be editing all of this out. That's the way we do it Yeah, it's lighting and plugins. Yeah new normal. Yeah So But hold on one second. Let me just say We're all gonna come back right now for more this weekend science Justin, do you have some stories for us? This is editing for Rachel Live from video land It's technical problems I see plugs And we're hanging out There's light coming But I agree with Justin. I don't want to eat a fake burger. I just want to eat I I know that's a you don't agree with me. That wasn't my point. No, no, I don't I would totally love a fake burger Just call it a vegetarian burger They do that already burger. They do that already It's when you call it fake meat That's when it becomes a problem Even better than the real thing Even better than fake blood Even better than the real thing. Are you lit up? Yeah, I'm trying Okay, so where were we we were talking about Justin you got some stories for us Yeah, uh once upon a time in Europe over a million years ago. There were humans Not current modern humans other humans before the neanderthals There is a kind of poor record of these humans Some debate and controversy about how to define them within the hominin family tree And how they may have played a role in neanderthal or possibly even modern human evolution But now perhaps much of those considerations can be laid to rest Paleo climate evidence is revealed that around 1.1 million years ago Southern European climate cooled dramatically And likely caused the extinction of any archaic humans on the continent according to a new study led by the university college london researchers Ouch Yeah, so there's this uh homo antecessor Oh, this one Is the is the precursor to neanderthals It's already in europe. It's probably the wrong but And it was probably the wrong for for a lot of reasons Uh as as the just ancestor there could be a version of early hominin that did Uh through a different tract through a related ancestor becoming neanderthal the problem was the anthropologists In europe were trying to make a progression of everything that they saw Linearly through evolution And whereas we've been learning over and over and over again That's not how hominin evolution Necessarily works. You don't go from one form to another You have lots of disparate forms and then they recombine and then they become other disparate forms and then they recombine It's the braided stream. It's all of this that whole linear Evolution thing isn't how Isn't how humans have have sort of gotten where we are Anyway, this is uh publishing journal science the team of researchers discovered the occurrence of this previously unknown extreme Cold snap around 1.1 million years ago The glacial cooling pushed the european climate to levels beyond what Archaic humans could tolerate So this would have been this is the oldest known humans remains in europe are 1.4 million years ago Thought to have arrived from southwest asia Which is also They think it arrived from there because there's other things that seem similar to it in southwest asia, but then again Braided stream all of these things will be updated at some point doesn't matter The climate around that time Would have been generally warm and wet when these early humans got there So they might have had some mild cold periods, but nothing Nothing severe Up till now the prevailing theory is that once these humans arrived They were able to survive through multiple climate cycles and adapt to the increasingly harsh conditions But this is senior author and professor chronos It's a greek name. Oh gosh to dacus UCL geography Said our discovery of an extreme glacial cooling event around 1.1 million years ago challenges the idea Of continuous early human occupation of europe So they did some modeling. This was actually all based on marine microorganisms And then they went further and examined a pollen content and deep sea sediment cores to reveal These were all off the coast of portugal to reveal the presence of an abrupt climate change That culminated in extreme glacial cooling Ocean surface temperatures off lisbon dropped below six degrees And there were semi-deserts expanding on the adjacent lands lead author valsic Margarity also ucl geography to our surprise. We found that this cooling Was comparable to some of the most severe events of recent ice ages They ran some modeling and they found that there's basically no way That small bands of hunter-gatherers could have survived especially since early humans may have lacked adaptations sufficient fat installation also the means to make fire effective clothing Or other shelters So I can't that's the things I can't even imagine you've got this looming climate crisis no way to prepare for it And it just be tragic You know nothing You know nothing you have no no no idea it's coming. It's just coming Yeah, because it's a planet. It's not you. It's the planet So they also kind of find this backed up with a somewhat of a mystery in the archaeological record where there's some 200 000 years Where there's no stone tools or remains being deposited So looks like humans got wiped out Which uh, and then and then other humans started moving in after this period This is uh, this is where jesson should pivot to the jesson doesn't believe denisovans were neanderthals cousins, but uh Right, yeah, but it does make sense that The neanderthals become such a distinct hominin for a really long period of time in one region It makes more sense if the homo erectus which has spread throughout all of eurasia and oceania It just isn't there It makes a lot of sense why they would be sort of distinctly Isolatedly classic neanderthal for such a long time whereas deck Because because they hadn't opened they had the open human hominin niche there. Yeah, that they could go compared to the neanderthals that went that headed east that became denisovan And I think likely Uh interacted with late Homo erectus although late homo erectus also the further you go along late homo erectus like everything Technically, I guess at some point be late homo erectus like they have like the The homo florentis the little hobbit One of the things they think oh, that's a late Homo erectus that uh, eiland dwarf isn't and then there's the other one Lou the louzensis is something else. It's it's very much hobbit like but instead of uh, Flores it's yeah a different island. Yeah, it's in the Philippines. Uh, it's another one Also, the the one in the in the philippines The indigenous people have the highest rate of denisovan dna Out of anybody at around Five percent Which is very interesting, but I think what's really Fascinating here is this just kind of adds another I don't know. Is it another thread to the braided stream or another brick in the archaeological history wall of humanity? To bring it back around All right, so what else you have that the If you have I have five six percent native american dna or ancestry Ancestry ancestor from the dna right from where 23 of me think That means and that fits because I have a great grandmother. It was native american When you're talking about five percent in a population That's interesting today. That doesn't mean that anybody there. Everybody's great grandmother was a Uh Was a denisovan Right in these in the larger population when you're when you're attributing something to an archaic You're not talking about ancestry. It's a little different. I just want to clarify it. Um, yeah, that's an important What you're talking about is conserved dna And what's likely being conserved Is also selective And what those so it's what's really curious is There's been a lot of information about Genetic responses to things like COVID long COVID severity of COVID Based on genes and I think it was the neanderthal genes that they found that were like, oh, this reduces your your chances of getting the infection by 23 However, apparently whatever enzymes eating up the the virus in that phase of your immune response The there's another immune response that apparently was was selected for a different type of viral infection Because you're more likely to die From COVID if you have it. So it's like a double-edged thing But these that's likely immune. It's likely some sort of immune or survival related gene selection For something for that much to be conserved for that long. So there might be I think you were talking about this a couple weeks ago. There may be Things that medical science needs to look at Therapeutics and the genetics of whatever. Why are these conserved? What are they doing? Right, and can we use that to our advantage? I hope we can eventually Yeah anyway, last one is a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists have discovered and documented the largest known single dinosaur track site in Alaska This is in the They're calling it the Denali National Park and preserve. I thought that was renamed, but maybe the the mountain was just They've dubbed this the coliseum Is the size of one and a half football fields contains layer upon layer of prints of preserved rock And so what this was this was an ancient seafloor bed that dinosaurs used to walk across And when they walked across they left tracks and these tracks Got fossilized got hardened And over years many many layers of sediment would drop and more dinosaurs would walk across and they'd get more tracks Then there was over geological time Sort of up pushing the crust and this whole seabed Ended up turned vertical And sort of sliding apart on a cliff face Most amazing thing so when they went they looked they were like Oh, there's these prints that you should go look at and the researchers went to look at it and They said they they really were underwhelmed. They found a few prints near the base of this cliff, but Other than that, they're like this isn't really, you know That big of a deal They say that when as the sun was going down And the light sort of hit it sideways All of the prints started to pop up And because because it's the seafloor bed with all these layers that had been built up of sediment and new Footprints being put in by different generations of Of hadrosaurs and t-rexes and what have you as the thing turns and slid you're actually looking at Different eras, you know different years different layers Of of footprints beneath the footprints as they're sort of sliding out from this this cliff face It's really an an amazing site and is Completely just covered in dinosaur tracks I still wonder how do you know it's a dinosaur track and not just a little divot from the wind or the rain or whatever I mean So This was uh, yeah, actually some of it. They're saying Is so detailed so well preserved so detailed that they're like You can see skin imprint outlines. You can see toes. You can there's like some of it has Really high levels of of detail to it also makes you wonder like Are there other areas of footprints that have footprints hiding below them? I yeah, yeah, if these are all sediments that sit on top of each other, right the yeah But if a footprint gets filled in does it Still exist as a footprint? I guess it does because it's I wonder if you could uh if you know deep ground penetrating With the right way could like could find more of these. I don't know how but then again I don't know like I get it repeatedly intelligence is like be really excited. Like how many do you really need? All of them. I want all of them. You need all of the data all of the time every time What is this this tells us that these dinosaurs We're running around there. What does this tell us about? I mean, is it just okay? We now see these footprints. I mean, what is it put together for the environment? Is this well? It wasn't just dinosaur prints, too. There's also like apparently florin fauna I mean like floor a plant of Imprints and stuff. So there's actually this is 70 million years ago. So Alaska was pretty tropical apparently It was a very lush. This is a very lush area with all Kind of the flying dinosaurs and the walking dinosaurs and the carnivorous dinosaurs and even dinosaurs that preferred fungus burgers Catcher catcher Jurassic fungus burger at burger for health So it creates a really nice snapshot of everything that was active in the area along with the plants that they would have been encountering and It creates the picture of an ecosystem 70 million years the planet earth is like a time capsule If we know how to read it, right? How to uncover it So cool I'd like to go to the Coliseum someday Denali. I've never been to Denali. That would be an amazing trip Twist trip we need to do it Let's find dinosaur tracks everyone. Um, I have a story. I want to talk about, uh, the octopus brain researchers want to know how octopuses learn and remember things and in this recent study that was just published in e-life researchers Uh from Hebrew University in israel harvard university And also rupin academic center in israel have been Trying to figure out how The nervous system of the octopus works together to allow it to learn and remember stuff because we know the octopus is smart Generally octopuses as a group of animals, right? Uh, so they looked at a very common octopus. It's a common octopus. It's called octopus vulgaris That's oh, that's the octopus is always telling all those awful jokes It's vulgar uh, they checked out a part of its brain called the vertical lobe and this Vertical lobe is known to be involved in behavior related to Long-term memory and so they're like, all right. Let's look at these neurons Let's see how they piece together and let's figure out What's going on in there? And so they connected a whole bunch of things and they determined that These these octopus brains this part of the brain the vertical lobe Is really special in that it manages long-term memory using something called long-term Potentiation, which is also found in mammalian brains However, it does it in a different way. So long-term potentiation in the mammalian brain We have these particular receptors and we have circuits that are involved in Connecting through what's called a hebbian mechanism of association and so these associative memories in the mammalian brain happen related to uh, ion flow and receptors that are present in particular areas of the brain, however The octopus has these really neat Vertical circuits is beautiful. They've done some beautiful work putting these these Pictures together of how the neurons connect within the vertical lobe of the octopus brain And what they determined is that there are basically Like seven different cell types in there There's a couple of cell types that are called amicron cells that do the majority of the work And they're simple amicron cells and there are complex amicron cells and the Simple and complex amicron cells both work on a feedforward manner They both go information information information and they tell the motor neurons and everything else in the octopus what to do The simple amicron cells are more likely to just full speed ahead just go go go and the The complex amicron cells are like the moderators They're like we're still giving you information But you don't necessarily need to do it as much as you were going to do it before so they're like Modulating the activity, but the entire system Ends up recreating long-term potentiation which is found in the mammalian and other vertebrate species But in a different way using different mechanisms doing a different cortical or neural pathway It's like they figured out a different way to do Something that we know we do And that's the cool part so now they can compare between the octopuses and the vertebrates and other species that have this long-term potentiation to be able to see if There's lots of big differences octopuses have really interesting brains This is more than one strategy to an active intelligent brain and I think that's the very interesting perspective with this which is that we know that that of course the active intelligent brain of an octopus is different like they've got Different limbs. They've got a whole different setup. They're invertebrates. We're vertebrates. You know everything's Different there, but this is part of that learning for us that there's not just one way to solve the problem and that and when we look at neural networks and the way that Information processes through a neural network. There are different ways to put it together to come to Solution that's very similar This is also I think the greatest evidence for me that None of the eye witness reports of alien encounters Like yeah, well if you take those that they basically they they're they usually describe a hominin Right, usually describe something that's human basically a human ancestor that would have to be removed by evolution If you went to the the way the evolution finds solutions to things Isn't just to say oh, here's where we're heading Here's the one thing In the in the billions of stars that we would create as life And it's not it's not a linear progression. There's other strategies that could be taken advantage of to the point where if we ever got visited by Uh interstellar traveling civilizations They wouldn't be Hominance they would have it might be you know, and I think I would be just as surprised If they look like tardigrades or octopuses because those are also earthlings those are also earth solutions Right. So you're yeah different planets are going to have different solutions and that's different solutions that will have to to handling problems uh to overcoming things to To to build on to improve on And you once you've started building and improving on a thing You keep that form octopuses are unlikely to go You know this whole eight tentacles is just more complicated than it needs to be Why don't we just focus on becoming bipedal and using just two of them to manipulate objects? Like it doesn't make Any sense So any time I see something like this that shows of You know a different strategy to do something that we sort of fundamentally take for granite Uh as as mammalians like that's just how the brain of brain should work. You know A different brain And that learning and associative learning specifically is not always the same Uh exact mechanism as of what we have learned for long-term Potentiation with nmda receptors invertebrate brains according to heavy in biology. It's just one planet We have a very in one system. Yeah Yeah Yeah feed forward though. It's very exciting researchers are interested in this because of Uh where it could take us uh for understanding memory networks General Hogan says don't they have separate brains in their tentacles? Well, they've gotten neuronal tissue elsewhere. So you have from your colon up to your esophagus The your entire digestive system is lined with neuronal cells Absolutely, which you could say you have a brain in your stomach but Do I mean, I think I mean it pushes you to do things But you have neuronal tissue. Yeah That yeah, you know When is a brain a brain when is the brain not a brain when is a collection of neurons a brain? These are very interesting questions that should be addressed So now of course, let's talk about uh fly sex Of course Yeah So a recent study in cell Has just uh been released investigating the uh The neural circuit for sexual behavior in male fruit flies and In this study researchers have determined that there is a Indeed a circuit that they can control and at the flick of a switch they can turn male Needs or wants on or off And in addition to that they can even teach the fruit flies how to push a button with their nose and Turn their own needs and wants on or off And but add your own correlation to uh modern male human existence These are these are flies. These are not modern male humans. These are just flies and they're looking at the uh various areas of the fly brains To see how they are were stimulated Oh, actually wait. I thought this was flies. No, this is mice. Oh my goodness. I'm totally I thought it was flies. I've been off circuit for male reward I was I was convinced it was fruit flies, but it's mice I think in my brain. I thought they were the same thing, but they're not, uh These mice in this study again still published in cell they were trained to uh to understand That if they hit a button with their nose that they could turn their own Their own needs and wants on and off to promote or not promote Mating and they were the researchers were also able to turn off the neurons that were related to mating to Make it so the males didn't want to mate if they were around around females or So that they were so interested in mating that they would want to mate with inanimate objects Oh gosh yes so Now I now I want to figure out It's not flies. It's it's mice. Now. I want to know if we could do this in flies. I'm sure So what's really interesting is that you think of especially sexual drive is largely deriving from sort of an automated maybe hormonal and conceptual to some degree Part of the brain that has you have control, but it has what a desire and impulse a thing like this where you have in mice where you they would be attracted or wanting to Reproduce so if you turn off that signaling But you've given the mouse the option to hit a button to turn it back on What is that the drive? What is that separate from? already wanting already being told by this sort of Uh, what would you what would you call it the is it not an executive function? But this sort of regulatory Functions of the brain that that are the hormones that are involved in sex drive and how that works Yeah, now you've removed those impulses now that but the mouse can hit the button and decide I would like to switch that Or the mouse can be like Oh, yeah, this is not the right time to be feeling like this. I got to hit that button to turn it off Yeah, so uh, they can figure that out these researchers went into an area of the mouse brain that they call b n s t and they started Putting what's something is called substance p And this is in the hypothalamus and the substance p seemed to be very important for Being secreted from these neurons and they accelerated activity and ramped things up and Not only the drive, but also it impacted what's called the refractory period so normally after um, a mating period males have a refractory period of a stretch of time and this Research that that they published was able to shorten the refractory period so that the males instead of having like 10 to 15 minutes or 90 minute delay That the males wanted to mate once again and were driven to mate once again So, uh, they had a what they quote as more than 400 000 fold reduction in the refractory period Make the the males already Substance p containing neurons and the pre-optic hypothalamus Go down to brain centers that are critical to movement and possibly anticipating or experiencing pleasure And this could be uh, very important for understanding hyperactive sex drives lack of sex drive um Being able to discover ways to boost sex drive or decrease it therapeutically Maybe there are molecules or drugs that could be developed Following up on this I can't believe I thought I I totally read this study and I thought it was flies I think I was reading about the dead flies and then I thought it I conflated the flies and I'm very sorry everybody It's not sexy flies. It's sexy everybody forgave you a long time ago They actually forgot and you just reminded. Oh, she did make that mistake. I forgot about it Gosh darn it. I was thinking flies and it turned out to be mice now I want my money back. Oh good thing the show is free That's right Have we done it have we made it to the end of our show tonight? I think we might be there. Yeah, I think we might have done all the stories we were going to do Thank you everyone who's been part of the chat. Thank you everyone who is in the discord Thank you fata for your help with The creating of the social medias and the show notes. Thank you identity for for recording the show Thank you. 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Just click on that patreon button on next week's show We will be back wednesday eight p.m. Pacific time and again five a.m. Thursday central european time same time broadcasting live from our youtube and facebook channels and twitch dot org slash live and from twitch Yeah, I gotta change that Okay Oh, want to listen to us as a podcast just search for this week in science wherever podcasts are found If you enjoyed the show, please get your friends to subscribe as well For more information on anything you've heard here today show notes and links to stories We'll be available on our website What's our website www.twist.org and you can also sign up for a newsletter We won't send you one, but you can sign up for one. Well, I said you would It's a thing. We've done it before You can also contact us directly email me kirsten kirsten at this week in science.com Justin is at twist minion at gmail.com blare is at blare bass at twist.org And if you want to make sure that it doesn't get filtered into oblivion to put twists into that subject line especially if you want blare To get your congratulations for the new baby in her family. Yes You can also hit us up on are we still are we doing the the what do you call it the platform? Formerly known as twitter. Are we still? Kind of I don't think I've been there for a while Uh If you go there though, you can find at twist science at dr. Kiki and at blairs menagerie We love your feedback if there's a topic you'd like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview A hike who that comes to you in the night. Please let us know And we will be back here again next week. We hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from the show remember It's all in your head this weekend science this weekend science This weekend science is the end of the world. So i'm setting up a 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 head is coming your way So everybody listen this weekend science this weekend science science science science This weekend science this weekend science This weekend science science science science science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what I say may not represent your views But I've done the calculations and all you just might understand or you might not understand This is the aftershow once again. I do not know where justin has gone. He has Family considerations over there. It is work time. Harry there. Yes. Whoa There's there's just on a baby There This is what little ones look like when they are a little older than what Blair's little one is looking like right now They start out very small Small little squirmies and squishy faces and all the cuteness is Yes Um, we normally do after showy type stuff, but uh, oh look at that headphones There's a born podcaster. He wants to eat it. Don't eat the headphones You want to eat the headphones Who's there? Can you hear me? Hello? Hey Hi, hi Hey, hey Yeah You like you like Yes, we're just all of the twist babies right now at some point Bring the twist babies together Um Yeah, we normally do after show, but I see you have a child duties. So I don't want to Um push it a lot further. So Okay Well, I will see you next week Yeah We yeah, I love Seeing the little one Great to do a show with you again this week Justin They all wish Blair well and hope that she's I can't wait to meet the I have to say that it's a human baby. It's a human baby. Okay. Yes Oh chocolate. Oh here daddy have a cold that I caught at my little school. I love you now be sick. Okay Little germies they're wonderful. All right, uh, say good morning, Justin Good morning, Justin. Say good night, kiki Good night, kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of this week in science We'll be back again next week 8 p.m. Pacific time on wednesday. Uh, stay safe. So curious and stay lucky