 Hello everyone welcome to the latest podcast broadcast of this week in science. I am so excited to be back here again with you this week to talk about all the science that has happened. And as we love to tell you before the show gets going. This is a live streamed program any bleeps bloops and I guess bloopers bleepers bloppers get edited out hopefully by Rachel and then the edited happy version is podcasted out for people who don't like bleepers bloopers and bloppers. Yeah it's it's become just word salad the live show all the actual information is then coupled together through editing. Yes and so now's the time also for you all to do the likes the notifications thumbs up hearts shares etc let's get it going so that we can start this show and go live. Yeah you ready. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's make noise out of people's computers right now. Okay. Starting the show in three, two, this is twist this week in science episode number 963 recorded on Wednesday, March 6, 2024. Mr. Watson come here. It's science. Hey everyone I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on the show we will fill your heads with the colossus some chemistry and some chills but first disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer. Down through the ages the human species has evolved and adapted to the world around it with staggering results. Humans have mastered almost every climate and terrain. Humans seem to find a way to engineer almost anything into existence from buildings that soar above the landscape to vehicles that fly above the clouds technology that orbits beyond the atmosphere records data from ancient societies, snapshots and trillions of worlds billions of light years away. Any history shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man. Despite the advances humans are plagued by self inflicted wounds. Those of violence poverty and discrimination leftovers from eight brain ancestral tribalism and those of environmental destruction as humans pollute contaminate and forever alter the world they live in. Making even the mastered environments uninhabitable. There is hope for humanity. The greatest human accomplishments show that they have the capacity to take on big challenges to make good choices. And in order for humans to continue to survive, they must choose this week in science coming up next. And a good science to you to Justin. There's still no Blair, but everyone out there welcome to another episode of this week in science we are back as we love to be every Wednesday, 8pm Pacific time ish on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch broadcasting live. Oh, we've got so much science for all of you that we have been considering pondering. We want to tell you about it. We want to talk about it. We hope that you have thoughts and questions as well. So thank you for spending your time with us this week. Let me tell you what I got for you up ahead. I've got a lot of new stories about RNA and life, stem cells and elephants, a little light chemistry and human behavior. What do you have, Justin? I've got a lot of echo. You do. You're like in a tunnel. It's not a huge studio room. I've got set up here, but there's nothing in it. So the sound is bouncing around all the walls. Yeah, tap your mic. Just prove everyone. Yep, that it is what to tease. It's not a mic problem. It's a physical echo. But aside from that, for the show part of the thing I'm talking about, I have a way to get that pesky oxygen separated from hydrogen in a way that doesn't cause explosions. There is a perhaps newer, faster, cheaper, but still with some issues, method of removing some forever chemicals from the environment. And two stories about ancient humans. One in Ukraine, an interesting find there, and the deepest genomic search of the origins of the people of India. Well, fantastic. I can't wait to dig into all of these stories and so much more. Spoiler. What? It's not India. Oh, what? Oh, now I'm confused. Okay. Let's move on forward with this program. If you're enjoying the show, make sure that you click the likes, the notifications, all the things, and share with your friends because that's how we make it out there in the world. Every time you share twist with a friend, an angel gets their wings or maybe a laboratory assistant gets a new test tube. I don't know. So we're going to keep bringing you this program every week on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. And you can look for us all places podcasts are found on this week in science. Our website is twist.org. But now it's time for the science. Yeah. Yes. Okay, Justin, you're ready. Yeah, where are we going? RNA, so much RNA. We've talked before about the RNA hypothesis. Yes. So this is the hypothesis that DNA, which for many, many years has been called the blueprint for life that another little molecule very important in the body, ribonucleic acid or RNA may have been the precursor brought about life. It could have been that chemical situation, the molecular situation that just made everything possible for deoxy, ribonucleic acid to end up creating life as we know it today. People have been trying to figure out, okay, okay, RNA, it is really important for transmitting the message that's within our chromosomes, our genomes. There's this idea that RNA hypothesis that the soup was made of RNA first, maybe there were viruses and other little things that everything was RNA before the DNA happened. And also just a clue there is the first thing that DNA does is make RNA. Yes. It's the first, it's the job of DNA just to make RNA. And then RNA runs around and it does all the things. Like it basically goes, okay, now you make this, you make that, you make this, you make that. But how did that begin? How did life get its origins? What ended up happening? How did RNA did it rule the world? And if it did how? So researchers at the Sulk Institute have just published this last week their work in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looks into this idea of the RNA hypothesis. And they've been taking a look at RNA catalyzed enzymes. So enzymes are really important for kind of being the gas to make things happen. Enzymes break things down, enzymes make molecular processes move faster. And so these researchers were like, okay, we're going to look at the idea of kind of Darwinian evolution, descent with modification. All right, so how does that happen? And how could RNA have had that kind of descent with modification? So let's look at how RNA might have had molecules involved in making other molecules and allowing RNA to change and not be modified too much every time. Actually descend evolutionarily from generation to generation without making too many changes and actually staying pretty consistent to its function. Like DNA does, there are little mutations that occur that allow change, but that would have had to occur in RNA as well. And so RNA can hold information, RNA can code for proteins, RNA can be enzymatic. And they determined that the latest RNA polymerase ribozyme. So that is an enzyme that's involved in, it's an enzyme involved in breaking things apart. They developed it in their laboratory. And for the first time ever, they were able to copy the RNA in such a way that it kept going without too many modifications. They created one type of RNA and then another type of RNA and they just kept looking and going, okay, how are you going to change? What are you going to do? This particular RNA polymerase ribozyme that they created, it held its course. It didn't get too many mutations. It was able to continue just holding on to the information that it was supposed to hold on to without too much change. It was called 7189 polymerase and its function and its form was able to maintain within certain enzymatic bounds over the course of the experiment. And so this evolution, yes, laboratory evolution, but basically increased the fitness of this molecule of RNA. And it was specific mutations that allowed it to replicate in a very specific way. And basically, this is like the kind of thing that would allow the basis of RNA life to take place. And that really would be the big leap forward for life. So if you think of the soup as being full of chemical reactions, well, chemical reactions use themselves up. The amazing thing about enzymes is that they have their reaction and then they go and do it again. And then they can go and do it again and then they can go and do it again and they can do it again. That's what makes it such a catalyst. So having a sort of repeatable chemical reaction without needing to make new stuff each time or find new stuff for it to cause reactions each time really is the powerhouse behind life. And so in their abstract in this paper, the researchers say this study demonstrates the critical importance of replication fidelity for maintaining heritable information in an RNA based evolving system such as is thought to have existed during the early history of life on Earth. And they think that they moving forward that this kind of work with with RNA fidelity and heritability needs to be looked into further and also also actually supported more that this is what is going on with these RNA enzymes. RNA soup was good for life. Yeah, it was sort of like the first sustainable product. Yes. The thing about it there is that everything else is always single use in nature. It happens and then it can't happen again. It's done. Yep. And this kept happening kept happening. They were able in the laboratory to go, oh, look, there's a formation. They called it the hammerhead. There's a formation that just just keeps working. Yeah. Okay. So now I have to figure out why the hammerhead works so well. It's not a shark. What do you want to talk about? Oh, I don't know what did I bring? Oh, Swedish researchers. That is researchers in Sweden. It might not be speech have found a new way to produce hydrogen energy. And they decided they would split water into oxygen and hydrogen. And you're probably thinking, well, isn't that the way they're always trying to do it? Yes. But the new process that they've been working at the KTH Royal Institute technology in Stockholm. Decouples standard electrophoresis processes by that produce hydrogen gas. In such a way that the gases at the end do not mix. Why does that matter if the oxygen and the hydrogen floating around mix? Together, they're making water. That's fine. But when they're split, they're both flammable. And the way that they've been sort of splitting them is usually with electricity. And then they sort of are separated. And then they need to kind of go out of a membrane barrier. Anyway, in this one, because they're splitting it, it means it's less likely to cause fires. Which in a lab, a little bit of igniting hydrogen and oxygen, you're usually not too big of a deal. Maybe hardly even noticeable when it happens. But if we're upscaling this to industrial scales, then suddenly it becomes a very important thing to not have explosions taking place while trying to make this energy. Nobody wants explosions. I mean, it's not like foof, but still. Yeah, so this is published in Science Advances. They're showing that the efficiency, the hydrogen gas for radiac efficiency was going to be 99%. And I'm not sure what that means exactly, but 99% sounds like pretty good. They also showed that there was no, this is incredibly important. This method showed no apparent electrode degradation, which is one of the things that also has been a problem. And this is that the little electrodes that are being used to sort of break things apart and break down themselves. Yeah, there's usually some kind of corrosion because of certain elements that are present. And because of the electrolysis procedure and just kind of how the whole thing occurs. There's stuff that gets left behind, but that's not happening in this. No, it's getting through their alternately storing and releasing of ion system that separates the hydrogen oxygen production. So we may have just stumbled upon, when I say stumbled upon. People have worked really hard, but I didn't have to. I didn't have to list a figure to figure these things out. The hydrogen economy that we talked about, like it was right around the corner 20 years ago, might be 20 years away. That's one of those things. Getting closer to being within reach. And that's really something that's interesting as well, given the infrastructure bill from last year where they're really pushing a hydrogen sustainable economy as a way to move past so many other like fossil fuels and other forms of power. And it's just we've been talking about it for so long. And then it's like, well, how's it going to work? And then if you put it in vehicles, it's heavy. What's going on? And so it's this kind of work that really could make a hydrogen economy more feasible. And when we start thinking about the way that hydrogen can be used in generators in power plants to make it so that we don't actually have to use fossil fuels at any point in the energy production process. It's not just cars and transportation vehicles. No, but I think that is an important one. And I think the, I think the thing that people need to still understand is this is the missing component from electric cars making any sense. Right. Because again, if you're driving your electric car, but your grid is powered by a burning. Your car is burning coal as you go down the highway and less efficiently than if you were burning the coal in the car. Yeah. I mean, there is exciting though, we are on the grid being powered by sustainables, but that, you know, things are changing, but it's still. Yeah, tremendous progress has been being made right now. But this is just one more element that you can picture hydrogen power plants. And then creating this clean electricity that then is fueling cars so that they aren't running on coal or whatever manufacturing industrial uses or home electricity or whatever it is that the electricity is ultimately used for. But it still means battery technology needs to continue to get better and more environmentally sustainable because it will be. It is the future we batteries are going to be how we get the whole idea of pulling up and filling up a car with hydrogen works. But there's probably a much better way to do it. Hopefully there's a better way to do it someday soon. Paul Disney said, says, Oh, my car is water powered then. Nice. All right. Moving from power. Let's talk about bringing back the past. This is one of those subjects that we talk about you and Blair debate constantly. Should we bring back the mammoth and I'm like, we really have a place for them in today's world. I think that that is entirely opposite from what normally happens in this show. Or maybe you're right. History is written by the person who is sitting at the show in front of the microphone. So the company that is trying to bring back the mammoth extinct company is called colossal. This company has been working at this, this idea of bringing back the thylacine and mark marsupial predator. The dodo, maybe, but the mammoth also. The thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger. Yes, the Tasmanian tiger. But the mammoth is like this big one that they're going for. Why the mammoth? Well, this is the idea is that northern arid, not like the Siberian steps, the grasslands, the places up in Canada that are melting. They're the great wild plains of the north that they don't have the right kinds of animals on them anymore. And they don't have the right kind of animals on them to manage the future environment that's coming as a result of climate change. And so the idea is like, well, hey, if we could bring back the mammoth, then the mammoth could stomp around, eat the grass, do the stuff, spread the seeds, boop de boop ecosystem. Yay. And that would be really good. But there's a lot of problems with bringing the mammoth back. It's like, there's really, how are you going to surrogate a mammoth? And so they were like, all right, well, the mammoth is very, very close to elephants. And so maybe we can get elephants to be the surrogate parents for the mammoths that were hypothetically to come in the future. Yeah, to get things started. Yeah, to get things started. And so this is in itself a challenge because nobody has ever gotten the, gotten elephant stem cells to work. So additionally, like there's all sorts of other things that are involved. Elephants are long lived. Elephants are different from a lot of animals because they're long lived. And they don't get cancer. And this happens to be one of the things that has been a drawback in trying to develop stem cells from the cells of an adult elephant. So these researchers have gone through all sorts of processes. I want to point out this research has not yet been published. It's supposed to be published in the bio archive as a peer, a pre print, and then hopefully go on to publication. This is an announcement by the company really. So I just want everyone to be aware of this disclaimer. Probably can't rely upon this in any way other than they said they did it. Yeah, it's interesting because what it comes down to is a very interesting set of steps. To get them to their announcement, which is that they have successfully created stem cells from adult elephants cells. They used the original cocktails that were suggested by Shinya Yamanaka, who got a Nobel Prize for first reprogramming adult cells back to embryonic pluripotent states. But it didn't work with the elephant cells. And what they discovered is that elephants in their genome have 29 additional copies of a gene called P53. P53 is it's supposed to keep cells in check. It activates to make sure that cells don't divide when they're not supposed to divide. And so all the extra copies of P53 are possibly and probably involved in the reduced amount of cancer that is seen in long lived elephant species. Like compared to humans who live a long time yet we have a lot of cancer. We have a lot less P53 and when P53 goes wrong, cancer often follows. So the reef searchers targeted P53 using RNA to block its production and they were able to basically encode a protein that made it so that P53 did not get turned activated or turned into a protein. So when they put that protein in there with the other reprogramming cocktails and genes that were involved, they were able to get adult stem cells. However, usually it doesn't take really a long time to reprogram adult stem cells, maybe a week, 10 days, humans, it's about three weeks, two months for elephants. They divide really, really slowly and so the stem cells for these elephants are not happy to be dividing and going back to an embryonic state. They really don't want to do it and the researchers are like, nope, you're going to make you do it and they're dragging their feet like a toddler at a grown up event that doesn't want to be there. But that's also a huge advantage. Yes. It's a tremendous advantage because that's actually been the problem in doing other sorts of stem cell treatments or manipulating stem cells is that, oh no, they're reproducing too fast. In fact, when we do studies on rat stem cells, we have to actually slow things down artificially. Right, because they're going too fast to be able to really see what's happening. Yeah. So that could actually make it, not only is that a fantastic finding and solution, it also then makes I think the further research that they want to do easier because of that slow doubling. It allows you to insert genes easier, for instance. Right, and so that may be beneficial to the insertion of mammoth genes into the elephant genome. They've already sequenced the mammoth genome. We've gotten the elephant stem cells to happen and so it step by step, they're moving forward and it is a long process. But in addition to the good news of, hey, we learned this new thing and now possibly for colossal, the mammoth thing will happen. Even more importantly, this could lead to new ways to help with preserving other species. Maybe it can help us with the preservation of elephants that are endangered, rhinoceroses. There are so many species that we know we're at fault for them going away and we know that ecosystems are falling apart because of what we're doing and what we've done. Perhaps this will make it even pro or con for or against bringing mammoths back. What they're doing is adding a lot of really interesting information and understanding to how development and stem cells and all this stuff works. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. But making mammoths isn't easy. Who knew? I think in mice or rats, it took a long time for us to figure out how to slow it down and they ended up using a, I think a tumor medication that was designed to slow down tumor growth that then slowed down the reproduction of the stem cells in the rats, allowed them then enough time to make those changes in cultivation as well as alterations when they needed to. Which then unlocked all of the research that we've been doing into genomics using the rat model. There's so much. So much to understand. But you know, what's really easy? Getting rid of forever chemicals. It is easy. But not as easy as putting them into the environment. Yeah. That's the problem. That ratio. It's a darn ratio between the two. As a scientist from the University of Rochester, they have developed new electrochemical approaches to clean up pollution from forever chemicals. New study describes nanocatalysts developed to remediate substances known as PFAS. This is actually, they've narrowed it down to the PFOS. This is the perfluoro octane sulfonate. This is something that was widely used for stain resistant products. Clothing and that sort of thing. It's been banned since the early 2000s because, oh, it keeps showing up in the water and it has negative health effects in animals and humans are an animal. So it's having bad effects on people. So it's been banned. But it's still there. It's still showing up and it doesn't have the way of naturally being removed from the environment. So this is researchers. They created nanocatalysts using a unique combination of expertise in ultrafast lasers, material science, chemistry and chemical engineering. So they've shown some success. Because they're experts. They're also utilizing lithium hydroxide at high concentrations. They completely de-fluorinated the PFOS chemicals from a water sample. Everybody's got some of that in their back pocket. They say that for the process to work at large scale, they need to treat at least a cubic meter at a time. So that doesn't seem to me like a whole lot. But I guess that's replicated many, many times in their approach. Their approach also does use non-precious metals, which is important because some of the existing methods required boron doped with diamonds are forever chemical remover. And also not necessarily very cheap when it comes to using them for this kind of process. So they also calculated, hey, if you look at the old method of doing a cubic meter of polluted water using diamonds, it would cost about $8.5 million per cubic meter. Yeah, diamonds are expensive. That new method is nearly a hundred times cheaper, which sounds great, except then you started at a million. So it's a $850,000, that would be about $10,000. And then, oh, $85,000, is that $100,000? Oh gosh, that still seems expensive for a cubic meter of water. So future studies, they want to understand why their process worked as well as it did, see if they can make it less expensive, find more abundant materials that can be used to bring costs down further. But really the final destination of a technology like this will be a combination of treating drinking water so that we're not drinking forever chemicals, as well as manufacturing plants that they're still using in certain contexts, these forever chemicals in the process of making other things to treat their wastewater. It doesn't do anything for the entire rest of the planet where all of these forever chemicals have found their way because we can't sort of filter a whole planet through systems like this. But we can make our water good. Maybe if we make our water good, then that'll spread around and, you know, condense out of water sources and end up in rain and other places and fix other places. Maybe over time it'll make, you know, it's going to take a really long time if we're just doing that. Yeah, like a butterfly effect that, you know, 60 million years probably won't have to worry about this stuff anymore. I think though, stuff like this, there was some other story that came around this last week that was like, oh, if you just boil your water, you can get rid of forever chemicals in your water. And yeah, I don't know, there's specific aspects to it, but it's still not really getting rid of the forever chemicals because the forever chemicals are condensing, getting into the air and they're, you know, they're just ending up in water vapor. So maybe the water you're drinking isn't as full of forever chemicals, but a plastic. Oh, you'll just breathe them instead of drink them. Is that what happened? Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, let's see, what was it? Was it PFOS? Boiling water, PFOS from the news. Was that what it, yeah. People were, yeah, there's a story that, but no, you should don't do it. Boil your water if you don't have clean water. Maybe it's just plastic. Okay, here it is. Boiling water can remove 90% of microplastics from your tap water. So not just that, but it's going to. What do you mean to remove it? Right, they're not going to be, you're not going to drink it, it's going to go in your air, they're going to get filtered. It's like condensation. Yeah, anyway. Also, if you have leg cramps, you should put a potato under your mattress. It feels like that kind of level of advice. There is potassium in a potato, which can reduce leg cramps. However, the method of applying that potassium within the potato seems all wrong. Drink some water, eat a banana. Oh my goodness. I do hope though that we can come across more efficient, less expensive technologies that, you know, like the one you mentioned earlier are able to, for the hydrogen energy are better able to deal with the mess that we've been making with our environment. The plastics, the PFASs, all the things that we were like, oopsies. And it's a good point because a lot of what chemically we have done on some, some of us, a lot of things can be either mediated or prevented from being used in the first place if we had abundant energy that was cheap. Sometimes the decisions that are made are like, oh, we could do this with, you know, a tremendous amount of cost of energy, or we have this cheap way of doing it that doesn't use the electricity but uses chemical reactions or something along these lines. So there's all sorts of positive environmental impacts that can come from unlimited power. Oh, so many. And thank goodness, goodness are super electromagnets are starting to get to the point where they can really, really support fusion and those, you know, big reactors that we're trying to use to control and create little tiny suns and make. And hey, yeah, maybe, maybe this is what how it happens we have a hydrogen power plant that produces and then you can have this fusion thing. Yeah, that that gigawatt into a megawatt. Yeah, and a terawatt. All the things. Oh my cash. Wait, get go make it hold on. Yeah, that was intentional. That was intentional because they keep producing less energy than it takes to make it just making fun of them. For now. Yeah, I don't know it's like the food cascade right at every level you lose 10%. What is it who said Patrick peccaro says if you you still have to filter the water after boiling it and Gary Al says it clumps so if you boil to get the rid of the micro plastics what you're doing is your clumping stuff and then you have to filter it and then you can take the plastic out. So, okay, thank you for adding those details to this. I'll let my body. Just drink it lazy. I already was like, take me forever to boil this water, let it cool down again if I just wanted to drink water. Hey, you know what, how about coffee. Okay, so a new study that is out now in nature chemistry was published in the chem archive by a group of researchers out of Hokkaido that we're have been working on. How do you use light to change molecular confirmation so we know in our eyes and our retinas we have red ops and other light sensing molecules that when they are hit by a photon of light they change their confirmation that change in confirmation creates a cascade of steps that leads to like, oh I can see the screen on my computer I can see you can visualize things because of the actual chemical confirmation change that occurs as a result of activation by light we also know that we can activate certain certain molecules with light and we are using that so like for optogenetics and other things to control we edit the blue receptive genes and to receptors into certain cells we're able to turn on genes. We can turn genes off based on light exposure. So, these researchers were like, okay, we're going to play with synthetic synthetic chemistry and we want to make a whole new category of molecules that have internal rotation when they interact with light. So, this has been difficult and they say, you know, this all comes from biomimicry they're trying to do what nature already does in certain situations, situations, and they have in their paper saying that they are hoping they can use these synthetic molecules to create molecular switches that can be used for various applications. So, all of their chemical chemicals that they're that they are calling a whole group of chalcogen or chalcogen molecules where they involve a nitrogen atom bonded to carbon atoms they have a lot of elements like sulfur or selenium that are bound to an amide or nitrogen containing compound and the largest one was based on a six bonded carbon ring around the central atom. But they were able to demonstrate that when they exposed these molecules to light they and also temperature changes they were able to change what the molecules looked like and because of the confirmation change. It changes the way that they act so they can potentially turn like a switch certain actions on or off. Maybe they could be developed as drugs or as I don't there are all sorts of targeted applications that could be possible within biological and also potentially industrial applications, which I think is kind of the fun of it. Super cool. Take a molecule give it some light it switches around and it might do something different. That's my song for this story. That's a good song. I think we should record it. No. Oh no. It's gone forever. Forever never. Yes. Oh, everyone. I hope we are bringing you some light and wonderful, enjoyable science on this day. Tomorrow, March 7, I guess is Alexander Graham Bell day, the day that it's anniversary of his discovery or patented your dad and it was the day that he said Mr Watson. Here over a telephone created the first telephone which has led to so many advances in communications. Yeah. However, what was really annoying was what came after was the invention of the second telephone. Because there was only one person you could call at that point. And then bring all ours. Hey, isn't this crazy? No, I know. It's a phone. What was it like this? It was like a horn. Yeah, they had. Yeah, I know it's really neat. Thanks. Mr Bell Watson. Okay. Watson stopped calling me. Please stop calling me. Please stop. I know. But you need to invent like a third one. You can like break it up between. I really need to go. They did break it up and eventually we had people like Hedy Lamar who came up with the technology that led to our mobile phones or cellular technology, all sorts of things that are so amazing to us on the internet that we use right now. So what we do in science and understanding of our world is what drives a lot of these technologies forward. And it's curiosity about questions that makes this world keep of humans keep changing and moving into different confirmations all because we get, you know, sunlight hitting us changing what we do. Anyway, this is this week in science. Thank you for joining us. If you're enjoying the show, please share it with a friend right now. That's right. Take this show. Share it. Share it. Share it. I don't know what social media is you use anymore. Maybe you need to text a friend. I don't know. Maybe you actually use a phone. You could call a friend and say, you should be watching twists. So head over to twist.org. Click on the Zazzle link in order to find our catalog of merchandise. A lot of it created by Blair and her wonderful art calendars for 2024 are still available. You head over there. A portion of the proceeds do go to supporting this show. And from there also at twist.org, Patreon, click on that link. You can join the Patreon community and support us in an ongoing fashion, $10 and more per month. And we will thank you by name at the end of the show. Honestly, really can't do any of this without you. Thank you for all of your support. Let's come on back now. Justin, do you have some stories? Oh, let's see. Yes, story. Once upon a time in what is now Ukraine, humans take stones into cutting and scraping tools. What makes a particular site in Western Ukraine so interesting items found with the tools and other stone artifacts are dating to around 1.4 million years ago. This is pushing back the time frame of human ancestors in Europe by around 300,000 years or the entire run of current modern humans. According to a paper in nature. They're the most likely candidate for the toolmaking. Homo erectus. These are Homo erectus. They had bodies, pretty similar to current modern humans. Only their brains were smaller. But brains big enough to still develop stone tools to game hunting techniques that allowed the Homo erectus to spread beyond Africa, and initially reaching as far as Western Europe and Southeast Asia out through the islands. They considered the most likely ancestor to even the Homo florensis and these sort of island locks. There's Homo erectus bones found in Java, Indonesia. These are islands that still can't figure out how they got there across the waters. So definitely an industrious species. Figuring out all sorts of things on how to survive on planet Earth. But here we are now in Ukraine. Fossils also placed Homo erectus in sites in, what do I can't even pronounce this? De Manassee, Georgia. Maybe as early as 1.8 million years ago. There are sites that lack fossils but have tools that look like the other Homo erectus that are 2.4 million years old in Jordan. And in a little bit more recent spots in France that are around 1.1 million years ago. So they really expanded out of Africa really, really long time ago. The site in Western Ukraine has attracted humans across all deep time. This site was discovered in the 70s. There were at least the excavations started in the 1970s. And as they sort of dug down through this site they found tools that were left there by our current modern human species that are around 30,000 years old. And below that back in time, tens of thousands of years before them, there's tools and artifacts related to Neanderthals. And the deepest oldest layer, excavators found 33 artifacts that they're crediting to Homo erectus. Now the date, the earliest date hadn't been calculated yet. We're going to tell this study. Younger sentiments above it had been 1.4 meters above this lowest layer with the artifacts. There's a known sort of heliomagnetic event that takes place. The flipping of the poles on the planet Earth. And that shows that that part of the site is around 770,000 years old. So as they dug below 1.4 meters below that level, they knew they were going back in time. So tools weren't made, stone tools are terrible for dating. Direct dating on a piece of broken rock is not usually ideal. So, but the collection from this earliest lowest layer included rich stone cobbles that were precisely excavated. So they took a good note when they dug these up. So they know right where, what layer and what depth they found them at. And quartz can be dated using radioactive decay of beryllium and aluminum. So these diminishing known rates over time once those stones are buried. Seven of the quartz rich cobbles, one kilogram or less, had been buried sometime between 1.5 and 1.3 million years ago. The error range of these dates is pretty big and require some further types of dating to solidify these findings as they're usually prefer to have multiple data points whenever doing this. But it's pretty good to get that 770,000 year old magnetic reversal event above it and wait pretty decent. You know, when you're talking about layers of earth accumulating over time on an area 1.4 meters is a significant amount of time. But at least it has, you know, with having that layer above and having that sort of be a known event in time. Yeah, like a boundary layer. Yeah. And that's the sort of thing that they like to find. They also prefer to have some sort of fossilized bone that they might be able to extract dating information from or other sort of organic materials of something that they could, yeah. So they need to go and do more research as with any good study findings, more research is needed. That research is of course currently on hold because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Yeah. Okay. One of those things that when you you're talking about a site like this that can contain a history of humanity that's millions of years old or over a million years old. And that puts into some context this fighting over an area of dirt and within a human lifespan is how ridiculous these things are. And it's just now it's so much more destructive. You know, hit throughout history we fought over areas of land but now we are able to destroy things much more completely and thoroughly and make it so much harder to find them but maybe part of that destruction also. No, I'm not going to try and put a happy spin on any war or destruction. If it makes you feel any better, the conquistadors in South America upon reaching Mexico and decided to destroy all evidence of the civilization. Yeah, did a great job. You know, I mean, spreading disease and sleeping people were like these things that I wouldn't I wouldn't blame the modern age for the eight black brain. I think it's been so long. Yes, what I was saying. Yeah, it's just now we have bigger, bigger tools for destruction. More stones destroyed and turned. But tell me about India, not India. So it turns out the people of India don't come from India. How is that? Well, because before the people of India got to India, there were other people that weren't black as they would still be. How does that work? How does that work? People moving different places and then displacing other peoples? Yes, like if there were neanderthals in India before current modern humans, are they still we could still consider them Indian? Like, how does do we still keep our current modern human. Political regional definitions of humans in the same contrast when we go back in time to unrelated or distantly related human species. This is the largest ever. Constantinople now Istanbul now Constantinople. Anyway, go ahead. This is one of the largest ever modern whole human genome analysis from South Asia. As they preprint that has been published last month and bio archive. Researchers reveal new details about the origin of India's Iranian ancestry. And when ancient hunter gathers settled the region. We also had some surprises that there was a sort of a richer diversity of genes from neanderthals and Denisovans, then we find anywhere else. Which is also very curious because it's one of the few places, I guess, in throughout Asia where you we haven't really found fossil records of these things. So we don't really have fossil records of neanderthals in India, nor do we really have anything I think in the way of Denisovan. We don't have a whole lot of ancient human stuff going on there. But we have through this study discovered the genes. So they discovered that most people of India are primarily a mixture of free ancestral populations. One is hunter gathers who have lived there for tens of thousands of years. Then there's farmers with Iranian ancestry who arrived sometime in the 5 to 8,000 range and herders from Central European steppe who moved into the region right after that around 3000 BC or 5000 years ago. Or perhaps even more recently in the 3000, 4000 year range. Okay, there's three main waves of people that came up. And the study of the out of University of California Berkeley sequenced more than 2700 modern Indian genomes. And they were intent on getting people from nearly every geographic region, speakers of different major languages, different tribes. It wasn't 2700 people of one location really spread out to try to get an overview picture of the peoples. So they found, yeah, there's the best fit for the Iranian contribution. Ancient Iranians came from ancient agriculture center called Sarzone, which is what is in today Tajikistan. So basically that's going backwards. An ancient population of Iranian, I don't even know if they're in these terms that sort of predate our current geopolitical situation. Would they be considered Iranian or from that, it's just from where they came, right? Yeah. At some point, this is where the related ancient genome is seen. And so this is how this works. So the best fit for those that came in, they found from this region of Northwestern Tajikistan. One individual also carried traces of Indian ancestry there. So even in the ancient people who were moving into India, there was evidence that people from ancient India had also moved there. Back and forth, yes. There's a little back and forth. Populations mixing. Yeah. And also there is they sort of doing that genomic clock that kind of figures out how long a people have been living or mixing or surviving an area. They have decided that based on the data that the main population of hunter-gatherers that make up the Indian genome moved out of Africa 50,000 years ago, which is much more recent than had been. So the sort of prevailing idea had been that that happens about 80,000 years ago. And then that a bunch of people stopped there and other populations keep going so that around 50-ish thousand years ago, people are reaching Australia. Right. I'm just thinking about though, like a study you brought up a while back about, you know, geographical challenges that kept people from moving from one area to another and the timing and how that was potentially related to the movement of the Denisovan populations and the timing of their movements through the Georgian areas, like the Ukraine, like into Eastern Europe and from Asia. And, you know, I find this kind of interesting as another Asia and the way India are combined as a subcontinent in the way that people would have moved through it, you know, over time. It's interesting to think of it on a timeline scale and what would have made or allowed people to move different places at different times, what would have led to it. So in this, then, the, the, additionally, I find that modern, the current modern humans sampled 1 to 2% of their ancestry from Neanderthals and their close cousins, the Denisovans, which is about the percentages you see in Europeans. But collectively they found a, what they're calling a stunning variety of archaic genes and paired with other worldwide populations. About 90% of all Neanderthal genes that have made their way into human populations globally can be found in these 2700 Indian genomes. Yeah, a lot more that has been recovered in a similar study of like in Icelanders, they have 27,000 genomes in study in Iceland found half of those. They also may have been discovered, they may have also in the study discovered Denisovan and Neanderthal genome data that hasn't been captured elsewhere. You know, so they have to now try to figure out is it this, is it that, and then why did it survive, why did so much of this survive, are there in benefits to it that made it. There's also the possibility that these are because of the sort of traditions of marrying within a closer family circle. Things that happen when you get into caste systems and that sort of thing where you don't want to marry outside of a circle you end up having close kin marrying traditions. I don't know how long those persisted throughout the history of India. But according to the study that could have artificially preserved more unique handoffs of genes over time but that also sort of indicates that there was possibly a inbreeding, not inbreeding but a what do you call it, an ingression of Neanderthal, Denisovan genes in India when the humans were 50,000 years ago, which is interesting for a couple of reasons. But if that were the case you'd expect there to be like a higher percentage, especially with like the preserving of familial lines and that you know if you're thinking about it in terms of greater relatedness within reproduction you'd expect there to be a higher percentage of Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA than in other places. But also there was another study that came out that was like, oh yeah, all those farmer people and the Vikings and everyone who came and they killed, we're going to come and farm now. Oh, we're going to kill you people and whatever. There was lots of stealing of women to make sure that there was no inbreeding or there was less inbreeding. There was cultural practices in the great north, the European north that reduced the amount of inbreeding and so I would think that would lead to, you know, lessening the percentage of those particular types of genes within certain populations or familial lines. So this is slightly different though. This is saying that because even though over this geographic region is just a country, there was over long periods of time. Lots of mixing and desire not to do a lot of mixing within each of these groups. And then so then if you ended up with the yellow Neanderthal gene and didn't mix with a group that didn't have it, you were less likely to lose it. So it's more of how specific unique genes managed to survive within populations because of less external mixing in that sense. But my question is like, where did they get all those Neanderthal denation in DNA? Well, because they were like, you know, hey, Eastern Europe, this is boring. Let's go over those mountain. We're going to move. We got to move, go different places. We're going to, we got lots of time on our hands here. I mean, you know, Neanderthals, Denisovans, are we talking like you said, 80,000, 90,000? I don't know. Human history. We need more evidence of the dating. More evidence for the dating. Yeah. So, so one of the things that's always been the Levant, Southern, Southern France, Spain. Yeah. Or Middle East. Middle East. Okay. Right. So people moving out of Africa, encountering Neanderthals right away, who had already been intergraced with Denisovans at some point. It becomes more and more difficult to figure out how that everybody who's in India, eventually Europe, eventually Asia, eventually everywhere else. I'll be right back. Oh, I'm losing a Justin, probably because of a child for a moment or something like that. Who knows what happened. We're still digging up these pieces and trying to determine based on genes, based on tools, based on all of these bits of evidence. How and why ancient humans beget humanity in particular places where we are today. How did things occur? Sure. But the story that Justin is bringing up is so fascinating with a kind of representative sample of the Neanderthals and the Denisovans on par with Europeans, and that there were a lot of Neanderthal genes in those 2700 Indian genomes. Like he said, more than in isolators, which is fascinating. Now, I would like to turn you to some chilling science. Not chilling in the sense of winter, not chilling in the sense of fear, necessarily, I don't know, could possibly have to do with fear as well. But science this last week, published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nexus, researchers have presented their work on who gets the chills and why. So if you've ever been listening to music or hearing a speech or reading a book or, you know, listening to a podcast, talking about science, and suddenly you've gotten goosebumps or a feeling of like that feeling of. It's a physical sensory effect makes your hair stand on end makes you feel like you're feeling whatever it is even more so. Isn't that isn't that when a ghost passes through you. Isn't that when you get that feeling. It's not it's not as I'm not talking about it but you could say that but I don't think so I mean that's that's you know people say in mythical whatever. But you can go to a website called chills db.com if you are interested in trying to see some of the things that the researchers were using in their work to induce the chills in various people so speeches, music, movies, etc. There's a compendium a database of what they're calling the world's most moving content. But what is it that is moving and what is it that it creates the chills and can it can it can it be predicted, whether or not one person or another is going to get the chills. So the researchers looked at a bunch of people and did personality profiling, had them watch things basically checked them all out and figured out you know who you are, and they got a large learning model algorithm so to study all the data of these people to be able to predict who would get the chills versus who would not and in the study, they were able to determine that there are certain socio cultural typologies that are involved that are predictive of getting the chills certain psychological traits that they could say and demographic aspects as well and Well, there were certain things that they they couldn't really figure out some of them were pretty interesting because it was personal aspects like extroversion or conscientiousness that were predictive of whether or not you would get the chills. So that's on a psychological scale and so I guess that's like, oh, you're more likely to be emotionally moved if you're more in touch with other people. I don't know as an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert. I get the chills all the time. You can't be both. I'm kind of in. Yeah, I can. I can do what I want. I can do what I want. Some of some other factors. This isn't causative but correlative were being 35 to 44 years old, being male, being a Democrat and having a graduate degree. Also being absorbed in the moment is important. But their model eventually was able to predict with about 75% accuracy, whether or not someone would get the chills based on their learning about the psychological aspects and the demographic aspects and all the other things about people. Not perfect, but it's interesting 75%. So it's above chance. They're at a point where it is starting to become more predictive than not. But again, a lot of it is at this point correlation, not causation. But do you get the do you get the chills? Yeah, I do. But not very often. But I was thinking about this because I'm like, there's got to be some sort of priming to it. You know, like it's like in a movie that has like, could pay off at some point in a scene, you're like, oh, you might get the chills like, like when in a movie, babe, when a little pig, it's cheap to go everywhere and it comes back. And the audience is like, in awe that the little pig did a sheepdog's job so efficiently and beat the other sheepdog. And then the farmer just says, I don't do a pig. And then it's like, oh, I get the chills that I'm just thinking about. Oh, boy. And in music, music, I get the whole like the certain parts of crescendos of music or something. Again, it's a payoff. It has to have that priming that comes ahead of it. Yeah. But then when there's a song, a writer's on the store. Riders on the store. Yes. At the point when I suddenly heard that Jim Morrison is whispering all the lines on top of singing it from the studio. So he's while you're singing, writer's on the store. Like he's singing that, right? Writer's on the store. Writer's on the store. He's whispering it into the microphone. It's chilling. And when I heard that and realized like, oh, there's another track on here I was never listening to that's part of the effect of this song, it gave me the chills. So there's also like chills can come in that moment of discovery, aside from having a built up crime to pay off. It can also be when you just realized something that can like give that feeling. Yeah. So there's the emotion or the evoking of emotion or something that's involved in it. But yeah, I guess not everybody gets chills. And it's the interesting thing is determining what context, what factors are potentially involved in getting people to the point where they do have chills. So yeah. If you're tired or in a bad mood, you're less likely to have the chills. That makes sense. Yeah. I don't care about anything right now. I'm tired. I don't know. Don't care. Um, well, whether you My default tired brain. I'm tired right now. Careless. Right. So tired brain right sometimes you get tired brain you get like in patterns and just kind of do things and whatever. Well, sometimes, you know, you get in patterned behavior behavior and there are certain human neural disorders or brain confirmations that lead to things like obsessive compulsive disorders in autism. You know, in risk aversion in anxiety and stress and other things. Researchers have been trying to figure out, you know, what is involved there in regulating these behaviors that they call perseveration. So in perseveration, it's, you repeat the behavior over and over again, you kind of continue to do it. So usually maybe I'll just be twisting my hair. Yeah. Twisting into it. It's just a behavior. It's a, you can call it a behavioral tick, but if it's, it's perseverant. It's perseveration. If you continue to do this thing. And to date, we know that there are neurons involved in regulating these aspects of the brain and our, and our behaviors. But in recent years, we've been talking a lot more about other aspects of control within the brain. Like astrocytes, astrocytes or astro star cells, they're, they're shaped like stars. They're really pretty. And there's a population of astrocytes that are in an area of the brain called the central star item. And this area of the brain is involved in a lot of these behavioral disorders. And so the researchers were like, Hey, let's do some knockout experiments in mice and see what's happening here. And they discovered that there is a particular molecule that is involved called crim plus CRYM plus in the striatal astrocytes that they were able to control knocking out, knocking in, which is taking out or take, putting them back in to the brains of mice in the area of the brain that I was just saying. And the astrocytes release the protein, the gene gets activated. It creates a protein called mu crystalline. And the mu crystalline is then essential for certain behaviors to occur or not occur or occur too much. And so these crim positive striatal astrocytes are responsible for gatekeeping in the perseverative behavior that occurs in these cases. And like I said, in turning them on and turning them off in the mice that they were, they were studying when they deleted the astrocytes that made the, were crim positive, then more perseveration happened. The mice were more likely to do certain behaviors over and over and over again. And so what's fascinating is, you know, it's not just the astrocytes, but it is the, the full system of the astrocytes working in combination with the neurons and releasing this mu crystalline. And whether or not the loss of that mu crystalline occurs that then leads to the changes in the neuronal activity or in the release of certain factors that control the neurons and the downstream control of the behaviors. And so the, the astrocytes are like these modifiers. And if they change, if they're, if, if the substances that they produce or don't produce are there or not, then it impacts the way that behaviors take place. So, very exciting. This could be a target for treatments for OCD, for, for subrative behaviors for lots of people, this mu crystalline specifically, it doesn't necessarily have to be the, these crim positive astrocytes, but the crystalline, the mu crystalline molecule is something that's going to be of great interest. Moving forward. What sort of duration is required for it to be perseverance? Perseverance? Perseverance? Well, it's usually like in a constant repetitive basis. Can it be a weekly basis? Like the show? No. Yeah. No, no, no. This is not what I'm not bringing this up to treat anybody for watching the show or us doing the show. No, not involved in that at all. Anyway, perseveration can be remedied using inhibitory, but they call chemo genics and that they can correct deficits and the synapses. And so there's, there's, you know, a convergence there from cellular synaptics, circuits, molecules, and the behavior. It all comes together. And it's, there's a lot going on in our nervous systems that allow us to behave and do the things that we do, do what you do so well. And my last story for the night is just here to remind you that humans aren't special. We think we're, we think we're so special, but you know what? Bumblebees are special too. Oh, they're very special. This study is so exciting and so fascinating. Researchers just published their work in animal behavior and it's a study looking at bumblebees and their ability to learn a behavior and then teach it to other bumblebees. I thought this was a known thing. They give each other directions with the wagglebees. Not just directions, but new behaviors. So in this, this nature paper actually was in nature in nature. The bumblebees were taught how to move. It's something completely not in their normal, normal wheelhouse. They were taught how to move one part of a puzzle box out of the way to get access to another part of a puzzle box that then gave them a sweet reward. So they had to move a blue tab, then a red tab moved, and they could push these things around. But then when they got to the end of it, they were able to get this yummy sweet reward. Researchers trained a whole bunch of bees to do this. So hang on. So now we've got a puzzle box. And we have bees that have, they're being trained on it. So they've been exposed to this puzzle box. By the end of the training, I would assume that they're getting through there quicker. Because they've learned how to solve it. It's the same puzzle every time. So now are they going to introduce some newbies, some novice bees who haven't seen the puzzle? They introduced newbies. Yes. And they had the original bees who learned it, teach the other bees what was going on. And they said, hey bees, why don't you do this? This will be really awesome. And you're going to have such a good time. And the bees are like, okay, I'm going to listen to you and I'm going to follow what you do. And this sounds really cool. So yeah, so they taught the bees, I'm trying to get the video going here. And you're right, bees learn very well. They're able to learn locations. They can share those locations because finding pollen, finding food sources, all that stuff is very important for their survival. Okay. So the bees, they pick bumble bees because they're really, really great at doing things and learning. And in this, they were like, okay, can we, can humans teach bees? Not just, okay, the bees teach bees. And then can the bees pass on this knowledge to other bees? And so the bees learned. Human knowledge. Yeah, it's like we, they made up the test and we're like, hey bees, could you do the test that we're giving you? And then the bees were like, yeah, sure, I could totally do that. And they, they got the bees to learn based on the sucrose reward, of course. And they pushed their little, little blue thing out of the way. Oh, I'm not at, they pushed little things out of the way. And they got their sucrose and it was really awesome. And they were very happy. It'd be simple, but you know, we've trained squirrels and birds and others to do these kinds of things. But this is a multi-step process. This isn't just go find a flower. 15 pairs of bees. And then they gave the naive bees access with the other bees. And not a lot of them, not all of them figured it out, but a number of novice bees learned from the other bees. And they didn't learn it just by having access. So it was like the original bees had to be taught by people. And then the second situation was that the, the second generation or second group of bees learned it from other bees. You're saying this, but I want to have this clarified because here's the part that is, did they learn it by watching them do it? Were they in the room or they were told how to do it before going into the room and then already knew how to do it? The people showed the bees originally what to do. And then they put the other bee in the room with the first bee. And so the first bee was like, look at me. They got to just, they learned by watching, which is great. And they followed the other bee around and were like, what you doing? Oh, you're doing that? Okay. But then they could do it when the other bee was gone. Yeah. And bees that were just put in the place in the testing arena, they never figured it out by themselves. They never figured out, oh, I got to do this and I have to do that. So there is learning. And that learning can be transferred from one individual to another in bees. Just like humans or orangutans or some dolphins. I don't know. Yeah, so many, but big brain social species. This is an insect social species like sociality. If we can take it like taking this kind of teaching back to insects. This means this is a very basic conserved aspect of being social. The spread of social knowledge, right? Being able to transfer information from an individual to individual. So I would have been slightly, I would have been more impressed. You would be more impressed if the bees had this conversation in a box away from the puzzle. And it's like, okay, when you go in, you can see this, you can see that. That's what I was hoping this was. This is still good. Learning by observation. Don't get me wrong. This is an amazing learning ability on the part of bees. That's why I'm more impressed. I've always been impressed at least with the waggle dance. Yeah. Because they're giving coordinates. Yeah. The waggle dance is amazing. As opposed to like here, follow me until we get there. And then you'll remember where it is. But this is very cool. Yeah. So another aspect of this that's really interesting is so the first set of bees. They couldn't figure it out themselves. And then when they were trained by people, they took a couple of days and they needed a reward at the first step, you know, originally like, oh, push the blue thing, get a reward, push the red thing, then get a reward. Eventually to learn that you push the blue to get to the red only getting the reward at the success of pushing the red. And then the untrained, untrained step two bees who learned from the other bees, they didn't need the reward after the first step. They just watched the bee that it was learning from. So this is reward based. Yes. But it's also cultural transmission. Still yes, based on survival, but. And it, I think also illustrates that. In sex society. With time and training, you can get bees to do work for less. Yes, I was going to agree with that. Yes. Yes, it's called teaching and I would like you to be so happy about. These wonderful bumblebees and their cultural transmission and learning. With their little tiny. Neuronal ganglia. They don't even really have brains. They have ganglia. You know, brains are overrated. I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. Alrighty. Have we made it to the end of the show? Oh, we might have. I think we have. We had a story's already. For this week, we may be back again next week. But for now, thank you all for listening. And we do hope that you have enjoyed the show. It's time for some shout outs. I do want to say thank you to Fada for all of your work with social media and show notes. Descriptions that you do online is so helpful. Lauren Gord. Thank you for helping with. Civilized situations in the chat rooms and everyone who's in the chat rooms right now. Thank you for being there. Thank you for being there. 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All this week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science, science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news that what I say may not represent your... Justin ran away. I don't know where he went. He went away somewhere. Ta-da-da. Thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of this week in science. It's the after show. Fada, I was asking about the chills thing and whether that would be akin to the ASMR feeling. And I have absolutely no idea because the ASMR stuff just makes me uncomfortable. Julian, is that not me, but maybe other people? I don't know. Maybe other people get the chills and relax like that when the ASMR stuff happens. I don't know, do you? Is that what you feel like? Yes, and there's medication for OCD out there, Robert Werner. But yeah, that new understanding of how it all comes about and maybe if astrocytes are dying or dysfunctional or other aspects, maybe it makes things more or less likely to occur or not occur in the human brain and behavior, oh my goodness, I don't know. Wow, something just dropped very heavily downstairs. Bang, bang, bang. Yeah, thanks everyone for joining. I honestly don't know where Justin just ran away to for a second. Oh my gosh. And you're back. I am, but I gotta go. So next week, time change, you gotta run right now, I know. Because I know there's life happening. I don't know what's gonna happen next week because of the time change. So yeah, let's figure out what the times are and if you can make it or not. And if not, it's usually what, two weeks in between. So, okay, we'll take a look at that. Either or, or every other, every other little bit. Okay. I'll figure it out, we'll make it work. Thank you, it was good to see you this week. Everybody out there, yeah, yeah, I hope everyone out there is having a great time doing as much with as little stress and as much joy in their lives as possible. I don't know, fill your life with curiosity and science, you'll never be bored. Okay, yeah, we'll see you next week. Come back Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific time. No, yeah, even though it'll have changed on Sunday, whatever that is. It'll still be the same time here. Yes, and stay safe, stay healthy, stay curious and stay lucky. We will see you next week. Good night.