 And we are here. It's this week in science ready to Science the heck out of your Wednesday or your Thursday if that's what day it is for you Maybe it's a Tuesday Whatever day it is You're here with The this week in science live podcast broadcast and we hope that you are going to enjoy the next tight 90 minutes science And Yeah, there may be things in the show that are deleted for the podcasts and the radio show later But this is the big old live thing. So that's what you're watching. That's what you're watching. Are we ready for a show folks? Let's do it. Let us science. I mean, I Was there lettuce in there? All right. I don't have lettuce science tonight. I'm just letting Let us Starting the show in you gave up I never give up I just save it for later. I mean, I thought about the little holes in the teeth Beginning in at three at two This is Is twist this week in science episode number 874 recorded on Wednesday may the 4th 2022 May the 4th be with us And with you with all of us. I'm dr. Kiki and night on this week in science We will fill your head with birds bats and black holes, but first Disclamer disclaimer disclaimer The Supreme Court of the United States has written a legal opinion to overturn Roe vs. Wade joining a short list of countries Which prevent women from having reproductive rights, which include Egypt, Libya's Sengal Iran Afghanistan El Salvador Honduras Philippines Laos, Nigeria and the popular pseudo Socialistic right-wing boogeyman Venezuela Now it is important to keep in mind that the legal shift would primarily affect states that have already passed laws to impose Abortion bans should Roe vs. Wade be overturned. These include states like Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia to name a few all of which Voted for slavery the last time that was the thing you could vote for in America Which isn't completely fair seeing as how that was over a hundred and fifty years ago The Confederacy only lasted for four years and only some people in those states still claim the four-year fight for slavery as Their heritage despite having a black president for eight years in very recent history Yet curtailing the rights of women or LGBT communities or minorities or anyone else for that matter is a deep Matter of cultural identity for some Americans is ugly as that sounds and while some will frame it as state's rights Giving the state the ability to impose restrictions on individuals is an act of taking rights away forcing women into Essentially a legal contract to give birth is a sort of thing that even most authoritarian governments feel is a bit much But maybe these laws however misguided are in some way out of a love of children Consider then how states spend tax revenue on parentless children now California which is definitely not going to outlaw reproductive rights spends three times as much on children living in foster care Then Texas which definitely has outlawed reproductive rights New York State spends More than Texas as well despite having only half of the population Oregon spends twice what South Carolina spends on foster youth Washington spends three times what Mississippi spends Despite only having twice the population Maryland spends three times what Arkansas spends despite having half the population States that already have the greatest restrictions on reproductive rights consistently under fund foster care systems Also, those happen to be the states with the highest rates of incarceration Again and again everywhere you look the commitment to actual outcomes is missing The actual outcomes of criminalizing reproductive choice will be an increase in youth at greater risk for incarceration incarceration that could find these children performing unpaid prison labor in States where that's legal states like Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas But keep in mind These are again the states that voted for slavery when they had the chance which doesn't seem so unfair to mention now So maybe they are committed to an outcome for children by suppressing your reproductive rights of women But isn't one anyone should be in favor of the only thing we should be in favor of There's more this week in science Coming up next science to you Kiki and Blair And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We have a whole week of science to get who tonight. Are we ready? Let's do it. I think we can do it. Yeah, I answer. Yeah, there's quite a bit and Thanks for that great disclaimer Justin. It was It's it's a thing that is on our minds these this week I'm gonna strange week this very strange week. Yeah Whatever your opinion is on it. I don't care But you know what we're not talking opinion here, we're talking science and so let's just dive into what we've got for the show and I have stories about brain resets Sweet co2 and black hole sound What you found I've got dr. Justin's poo pills raising stakes on global warming What veggies are doing to our kids and Where have all the fish gone? That sounds like a song or it should be oh Where have the fish gone? I don't know what have the vegetables done to your kids Oh So I have daytime bats and I have sleep deprived birds so all sorts of weird stuff happen You can songify that too Can you are you ready daytime bats I Do a sing songy voice I guess anything becomes the song We can we can make it work. We can oh my goodness But as we jump in here my first story is not Songs that we'll be singing but maybe they will be music to our ears We're jumping into the show if you're not yet subscribed to the podcast make sure that you look for us on your favorite podcast Platform we are this week in science You can also find us live streaming our broadcast of our podcast on Twitch YouTube and Facebook at 8 p.m 8 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesdays right here right now is what we're doing and We are twist science on twitch and Instagram everywhere else Like I said this week in science you can find a whole bunch of information also at our website twist.org Okay, let's get into the sounds of science Black hole sounds of science Researchers are looking for reverberations from black holes in outer space Like the banging of a gong Like the ripples on a pond Gravity waves they're looking for It's it is reverberations of x-rays that have been burst from the black holes Released when in falling matter is pulled into the black hole and the energy relief it release It occurs as x-rays. He's very high energy x-rays And so MIT astronomers and others are looking for these echoes of X-ray bursts from binary black holes And now these are systems that have a star that's orbiting and occasionally being eaten by a black hole And when the end when they're being eaten Especially then you have all that you know the gas and the dust and other stuff from that star and that stars little solar system Being pulled into the black hole as well. So you get more x-rays and more energy signatures So they've just published their study in astrophysical journal and they it's they've coined it a term Which I think is gonna stick. It's the reverberation machine and they've used this this algorithmic Automated search tool to look through satellite data for signs of these x-ray Echoes bouncing off of objects in the local space around black holes And when they compare the echoes from different satellites across different systems They're able to get kind of an idea of how a black hole evolves During an outburst and so when an outburst occurs It first has a hard state Where there's a whip of a corona of high-energy photons and a jet of relativistic particles and Speed of light launch. Oh, there it goes. And then after that point, there's There's a final energy Burst that occurs and then it transitions to a soft or low energy state where it's just kind of hanging out and And So they can Understanding how these bursts of energy occur and how they how they happen. They've been been able to identify eight more Black hole binary systems that they hadn't seen previously. They used data taken by NASA's neutron star interior composition explorer has a very nice Algorithm not algorithm acronym Nicer, it's it's the nicer the nicer way to look at black holes Which is a high time resolution x-ray telescope that's on the International Space Station Originally, it had looked at 26 different black hole x-ray binary systems And then they found eight out of that that were that were Not known to emit these echoes that they were looking for and so they are able now to be able to check out these echoes and listen to the sounds of the black holes and get an idea of What stars are around the black holes what objects are around those stars because it it's like a bats echo location They're able to take advantage of all of these x-rays reverberating bouncing off of things and Because they're use using different satellites to kind of triangulate the different signals They can really get a picture of what's there and and start taking a look at the space around black holes Which is pretty fun stuff now I Keep talking about the sounds of black holes, and so you're probably like what do you mean the sounds? Yes, so I So the outer limits was right That sounds like the beginning of a flash Gordon episode or something So that is one black hole and apparently NASA is releasing a whole bunch of black hole Recordings currently because it's in honor of black hole week That is that's coming up But they have recordings of the Perseus galaxy cluster Then they've sonified the Black hole at the center of this galaxy cluster, and this one sounds a little bit different than I think the Perseus has ghosts Very much So this is Various like a radar like scan And these are the waves admitted in different directions, and this is the x-ray data collected by Shondra In addition, they have another black hole the messier the black hole at the center of messier 87 and 87 this was The first release from the event horizon telescope This is not event horizon Telescope data, but this is a number of different x-rays from Shondra the optical light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and radio waves from the Atacama large millimeter array in Chile and this one I think is just this one is my favorite Oh Wait, oh, yeah, oh, that's some deep sleep meditation sounds. Yeah You hear the background when you get a deep tissue massage I Can't wait to see what people do with these sounds because obviously, you know, this is gonna be publicly available because it's all NASA data That's being released, but this is these we're led by the Shondra x-ray center Included as part of NASA's universe of learning program with support from the NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Goddard Space Flight Center But they've got a whole bunch of things that they're gonna be Looking at and sonifying and it's so neat that we can take the energy of the universe and Make it something that is tangible to us. Hmm I don't know speaking of like where I'd want to go if I were to visit a black hole I'd probably be heading for Messier right right about now. I don't know about you about me Justin You want to move on to? From I don't know space to poo pills because that makes sense Yeah, so when Ponce de Leon went searching for the fountain of youth He may have been looking in the wrong places. I didn't know about dr. Justin's Not a real dr. Poo pills not necessarily a pill form cure for weddles, yeah It's a scientist at the Quadrum Institute in the University of East Anglia I found that transplant transplanting fecal microbiota from young into old mice can reverse Homarks of aging in the eyes the gut and the brain So they also tried it the other way around found that microbes from aged mice Induced inflammation in the brain of young recipients and depleted a key protein required for normal vision these findings show that gut microbes do play a role in regulating some of the detrimental effects associated with aging and Kind of opens up the possibility of finding gut micro based therapies for Decline later in life Long-time listeners of the show where they get microbiota have positive effects most diseases are at least associated with changes in the types of behavior of bacteria viruses fungigating other microbes in the end of the gut There's always a question is it well is it because you know we've talked about a little bit Is it the medications that you end up on later in life? Perhaps that have this influence. Is it the is it the disease itself that's causing it? Is it causing the disease? There's definitely the association Some changes in microbiota composition just happen naturally as we age negatively affecting metabolism immunity inflammatory bowel diseases cardiovascular autoimmune metabolic and even neurodegenerative disorders, so A lot of stuff is involved here This study published in the journal microbiome Found that the microbiota from old donors led to loss of integrity. So this is taking the old mice Beagle microbiota putting it into the young mice They found that it led to a loss of integrity of be lining the gut Allowing bacterial products to then cross that gut blood barrier And enter circulation which results in triggering immune system and inflammation is Far away is in the eyes and the brains of these mice. It's all connected Yeah, and the eyes are breaking down the the linings just it all goes It's all yeah, and I and this is Like I still have like lots of questions about like this like why is Different the microbiota of the old mice like are they just Mutation is taking place, but then when's the starting point of a microbiota when you're talking about the time frame that it's It's existed in the gut. Is that what's going on and the eye the team found specific proteins associated with retinal Degeneration Elevated in those young mice receiving the old donor mice and old mice these detrimental changes That were already there in the gut the eye the brain they actually reversed By translating transplanting got my group biota from the young mice Which again you're talking about then a causal effect of the microbiota To these to these ailments But what is causing that anyway, that's the ongoing part of the study. They are now working to understand how also these long How long these positive effects of the transplants will last Trying to identify the beneficial components of the young donor microbiota and how and why they impact organs So distant from the gut, although I think they already have a clue with that with the gut blood barrier being leaky Yeah Oh, I was just gonna say I know that with the With the the blood transplants where they take the old The old blood and put it in the young mice or the young blood and put it in the old mice the same kinds of Things happen. They see the same changes Right. So is it metabolic? Is it just a component that maintains the Microbiota, is it the interaction like there's got to be something similar in the crossover happening here Yeah, and that's what I was gonna ask too is, you know, if they do Isolate what they think are the beneficial bacteria in this poop What I was not laughing because the word poop I was laughing because I oversimplified things so much Anyway, if they find out what the beneficial bacteria is I'm very curious if Transplanting just that bacteria will have the same positive effect in the same way because of what you're talking about ki-ki Like is there something in the special sauce of this? That we have not yet figured out and and can you can you extract or do you really just need to take the full Gut sample and throw it in there for it to have the full effect Do we just need to consume our children? No Oh gosh, so I think it's gonna be I think it sounds like it's gonna be a little bit of what kiki said in the latter version of What you were suggesting there because in this case they actually had Uh somewhat enhanced The fecal transplants with what they considered to be beneficial bacteria From healthy mice because they wanted to make sure that they you know We had they had a healthy mouse bacterial samples in each So there was there was a little of a probiotic involved in both transfers meaning Something other than just the microbes present That uh are a factor in this there's some other there's some other ingredients to this mix And like you said kiki when talking about the blood reversing aging Aspects when they did those transfers in the past Now that we're talking about a leaky gut allowing these things to pass through maybe it's maybe it's just things that aren't there Uh in the blood of the younger mice that are could be the contributing factor the the amazing thing is they keep getting this effect Whether it's a fecal transplant or a blood transfusion So how do we keep the lumen the epithelia Healthy, this is the this is how do we keep? Those barriers from breaking down because I feel like that's going to be the big direction How do you keep in the brain in the blood in the blood vessels in the gut? How do you keep the barrier from breaking and and do you want to because we've also had studies No, you do you want it to be controlled because homeostasis is important to the management of a proper Physiology that's him homeostasis. It's it's essential. I want the I want modern medicine to hurry up and figure this out because I feel like Well with all the money that we throw towards cancer research and all the money that we throw to our towards brain research And all the money that we kind of throw towards these very specific ailments The more we learn about the gut the more the gut is related to all of it And it would just be so great if you could just go, you know what people with healthy guts are healthier So maybe it's time for us when you're young and healthy to do a panel to figure out What kind of microbiota you have going on in there and then check it when you get sick? I would just love that. It's just crazy to me This is not part of standard modern medicine yet How many times do we have to learn this lesson before it becomes integrated? It gets the money and the backing that it needs to be part of that Well, it needs to be able to to be part of the the pharmacometical industrial complex Yes, right before before it becomes A part of everything until then though. It's technically a supplement So that's why dr. Justin's not a real doctor poo pills are still on the market Not necessarily. I just want I just want like That when you have even just the stomach if you just want to focus just on the stomach Even though we know it's wider than that That when you have stomach problems, what do they do they test you for viruses and very specific bacteria But they don't test the levels of beneficial bacteria from a baseline Very frustrating Well, so so yeah, so there's there's some baselines. Yeah, because they've associated technically they've associated specific Bacteria with things like irritable bowel syndrome So they have a correlation there for some of those negatives But yeah, knowing what the What the right makeup is and then we're like this is the whole other layer We're gonna have to figure out is their gene interplay to the point that your beneficial bacteria And my beneficial bacteria are gonna have a slightly different mix based on how they're interacting Which is why you need a baseline We need a baseline and we need a lot more research We need a baseline and we need it now. Yeah, I'm getting ready for my I'm practicing my my my microbial Activism, all right Blair. Yes speaking of activism speaking of activism. Yes So related to the disclaimer today, I wanted to bring an An actual peer-reviewed article from University of California, san francisco Looking at OBGYN residence programs So for for those who are not Acquired and familiar if they don't see their OBGYN every six to twelve months that that's a doctor that deals with the Uh the female reproductive system and so The problem is I didn't know this but the residency programs it makes perfect sense once you hear about it Depending where you do your residency as an OBGYN You may get taught different things Especially in the light of the strike down of roe v. Wade. In fact, this study this This research found that 128 of the 286 residency programs in the united states are likely to Ban the teaching of abortion because the state will not allow abortion therefore The residents can't watch abortion happen and be trained on how to do it or how to coach someone through that And so that's about 44 percent of the residency programs that they looked at and 2638 of the 6,007 residents who were in accredited programs across the country Were in programs in states that are certain or likely to ban abortion. So that's 43.9 percent. So The same numbers basically so that means about half of residency programs will not be teaching abortion Um once this goes away Um in 2020 92 percent of obstencers and gynecology residents reported having access to abortion training So this would plummet to close to 50 percent Um, and so the problem is sure if you train in texas and you live in texas and you practice in texas for your whole life And abortion it continues to be illegal for your entire career Okay, but the problem is doctors move and policies change And so this doesn't just affect the individuals who can't get abortions right now It will actually affect access to abortions for years Because it will affect who is trained on this practice The other problem is that learning Abortion training as a resident also teaches bedside manner Counseling trauma informed care miscarriage management And uterine evacuation all of those skills come through abortion training in most cases because abortions happen They are scheduled you can watch it. It happens as a resident, right? And so it is a training opportunity to learn these very valuable skills that you might not otherwise get And uh, one of the oh the first author cavita vinnicar md assistant clinical professor of Obstetrics and gynecology in the ucla school of medicine She says those are the skills I got in my abortion training that I use every single day in all of the non abortion care that I do So researchers are very concerned about this. They suggest at the very least in this new world we are moving into That uh, when whenever possible there should be out-of-state travel rotations in residencies so that clinical Students so that the educators um Running those residency programs kind of force those students to have those out-of-state experiences so that they are better trained for No matter where they go to practice They also suggest abortion simulation curriculum for Um All residents regardless of where they intend to practice and where they are going to school So I bring this up Just as a reminder I already kind of said it but there are farther reaching results of this Beyond just limiting current immediate access to abortion care um and this It we could feel it for years or decades potentially so This is a big deal. This is bad. This is bad for health and um I without getting too intense on it. I will say there are things all of us can do google it But this is a real problem for public health Yeah, and I think that is it on You know in in the face of the politics it's being sold as this political Dividing issue, but really it is a public health issue I had added a different a separate story that was also published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences this week On the u.s. Foreign aid restrictions and maternal and children's health evidence from the mexico city policy in which the funding that goes to groups that support Abortion services or family planning services Outside of the united states often have that funding removed when When the g.o.p. Comes into office and then reinstated when Democrats come into office And in this particular instance, they're looking at the mexico city policy Which restricts u.s. Funding for abortion related activities worldwide Since its enactment in 1985. This has kind of been the the back and forth uh aspect of it and They estimate that reinstating The mexico city policy between so when the democrats came back into office and And gave them funding back They estimate that between 2017 and 2021 it resulted in approximately approximately 108,000 maternal and child deaths and 360,000 new hiv infections because the The lack of information on and support for reproductive health And so this higher maternal and child mortality rates and hiv rates will be higher worldwide Not just it's public health around the world. It's when you talk about abortion. It's health It's family planning. It's other services and As a result Yeah, we're we're facing it here in the united states, but it's There are other things we might you know, if people aren't getting education. They need it could lead to the resurgence of many diseases That maybe have been This whole thing doesn't sound very pro-life to me, but That's fine. I'll just not it's a it's anti reproductive rights and yeah, and you know That swing back and forth that you're talking about depending on who the administration is uh translates Out to human rights in general has been a pattern between the two parties that vibe for control Of the u.s. government some with the electoral and some with popular Yeah, I I had a bunch of stories that I found I thought about bringing on this issue But none of the ones that I found were from this week So that I didn't bring them because that would be unprecedented for our show I see This stories we've brought now are precedented much precedence Much very precedence. Okay moving from this issue that we are Very uh focused on this week Generally, let's move on to another that seems to keep our attention fairly regularly You want to talk about fish? Justin? Oh, yeah, so this is uh Greenhouse gases Missions are continuing to warm the world's oceans as we've been talking about on this show for 15 20 years or however long we've been talking about it marine Biodiversity it seems could plummet According to this research to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs That's according to the recent study in the journal science by Princeton University Researchers papers authors model future marine biodiversity under different projective climate scenarios They found that if emissions are not curbed species loss from warming and oxygen depletion alone Could mirror the impacts of humans The effect we've had on marine biodiversity over hundreds of years of fishing By the year 2100 So the impact humans have had by overfishing Um matched over the the rest of this century Aren't we amazing? We're so fast. Yeah, we do things. We do things right when we do it Sorry, yeah, this is uh senior author Curtis Deutsch professor of geosciences at the high meadows environmental institute of princeton aggressive and rapid reductions In greenhouse gas emissions are critical For avoiding a major extinction of ocean species study found that reversing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the risk of extinction by 70 percent Meaning we're already 30 percent of it's just not as there's no avoiding at this point. Well, we've already done a bunch An extinct is forever Yeah, so it's a part of what there's uh, I'm going to kind of summarize here the part of the things that they are talking about is uh higher rates of extinction in the polar regions Because those fish are used to those waters Key thing here sort of being cooler waters colder waters are higher in oxygen So fish in the already cold waters are used to having a more oxygen Available to them. So they're just only going to experience Oxygen depletion. There's nowhere else for them to go. That's not even warmer tropical fish Are going to experience biodiversity loss, but many of those fish will actually be able to move Because as temperatures warm elsewhere, it'll more closely match where they were In the tropics the equator itself could just end up being a dead zone Because it's already a very low oxygen environment one of these trade-offs too is As water temperatures warm it increases the metabolic rate of fish increased metabolic rates require more oxygen so there's almost a limiting factor on where fish can live just from that scenario right Yeah, so there's a lot because they're Metabolically if they're in the oceans, there's Certain amounts of pH they can deal with there's oxygen that they need in certain depths of water There's also going to be saltiness that they that they require. There's also yeah all those factors feed together The problem is though fish can move but a lot of times The parts of their environment that they depend on cannot So yes So that's that's the problem with the tropical fish is they might be able to move But if the corals don't move with them like you're saying it's already a low oxygen environment. It's also a low Um nutrient environment, so they depend on corals and and stuff to to kind of help with that so Which in the in the in a rather slow Play pace transition everything you would kind of assume would move together to some degree or another And fish can to some extent adapt some Others won't and that's why that's how you end up with these that get left out of the ability to adapt or ability to find the food or the ability to maintain That high metabolism on lower oxygen so anyway All the fish are going to die Oh, no Well, okay. Yeah, not all of the fish right, but this is they've they've compared their model to It tracks what took place at the last really big extinction event This is the endpermium extinction And the distribution of species that we are seeing are following the similar pattern To that massive extinction event So, you know, just not good Yeah, well, we're we're doing a good job of that worldwide I think We are making our mark in the fossil record We are making our mark. We're uh, not in the best way and if yeah if we If we destroy the fish stocks, we're destroying a major source of protein For humanity we've we've relied on fish for eons. Additionally, it's destroying an ecosystem that is You know productive that then supports other life and other life on land, so You kill what's in the water you kill what's on the land and none of that is any good What can we do What can we do? I don't know. I don't know. Well, here's some potentially good news for the corals um researchers have uh, just been mapping corals around hawaii and they've published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences researchers from arizona state university global futures laboratory They have been looking with their center for global discovery in conservation science with a tool called the global airborne observatory gau and with the gau Observatory mapping they were able to look at how coral in different areas or in 10 different areas around hawaii um responded to the 2019 mass bleaching event and they discovered that there were winners and losers of the mass bleaching event and Do you want to take any kind of a guess as to what? Led to winners versus losers coloration Coloration yeah, if you if you're like a uh, uh, uh a An ivory colored fish You know Not coloration not coloration um shape Nope nothing to do with shape. It had to do with how close they were to people along the shoreline Right, right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, so uh as part of the hawaii's Conservation efforts they're trying to create 30 areas or preserve 30 percent of their land and water areas and 30 percent of their ecosystems Uh and in doing that this information will let them know the best places to really preserve corals and different populations that Could potentially make it through the ever-increasing oceanic temperatures So the next time there's a bleaching event the corals that are near shore where all the sunblock and the waste runoff and all of the other pollution pollutants that come from streets and our use of vehicles and Just even air pollution that gets down in there all that stuff that makes life harder for those corals When they bleach they're gonna just have a harder time rebounding And so that's maybe not even though it's closer to people and tourism Perhaps not the best area to protect because the corals that are Further away from people do better who knew Aside from maybe raccoons. I think that's true for all Cockroaches cockroaches like us There's lots of species that like us my crows like me. Yeah crows vultures squirrels Squirrels pigeons. Oh california condors. That's not it wasn't a story that I added But there were more california condors released into the wild in northern california this week. So A little bit of good news out city. It's not impossible. We we can fix things Yes It is possible. We can raise birds in a zoo and then let them go Yeah, but also like you know DDT poisoning prevent people from using lead ammunition And different poisons at DDT and all that. Yeah, so it's yes, it's the capture Lead gas for years. We were just burning and putting lead into the environment like Yeah, yeah We are putting all sorts of carbon dioxide into the environment and that's the big deal, right carbon dioxide Uh, well researchers. Yeah research in china though have come up with a new method which kind of involves old methods It's an electrical bio Firmamentation product and so what they're doing is they're using yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae uh and electricity electrolysis to break up carbon dioxide and turn it into sugar glucose Long chain fatty acids that can be used for other purposes And with this with this methodology that they have come up with it could be possible for For manufacturing plants that have carbon dioxide coming out of their wazoo's To be able to capture some of that carbon dioxide and turn it into Other useful products. Could you imagine though? Maybe we're not using uh, not clearing as much forest For sugar cane because the local plant down the street that was doing something else Is now making the glucose that the sugar cane factory was doing It still doesn't get my head around uh Yeast making sugars Yes Yeast making sugar. It's the it's like backwards, right? Yeah Usually they eat the sugar Can you convert it? Huh? Yeah To alcohol. All right. Yeah Yeah, so it's uh, it's a very interesting process that they are using they have a bioreactor They've got feedstock. They've got carbon dioxide um, and yeah, there's Products glucose long chain fatty acids that can be used for all sorts of things are soaps Those are long chain fatty acids Yeah, all sorts of things so new process soap New soap it comes from the air Wash yourself with the air Pour some air on your cereal Okay, anyway, I'm taking it too far But I'm excited by the possibilities of this new process and hope to see it go someplace Somebody use it. Please so is the idea from this one quick question Is the idea from this to catch CO2 as it exits a factory or is it to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere that currently is up there It could be either so uh here what they're doing is it's specifically recycling of carbon dioxide So it's a carbon dioxide source that goes into Their bioreactor and the whole system But if you had a carbon capture system that's taking Carbon dioxide from the air and isolating it. There's no reason why you couldn't just be making Sugar from the sky. Yeah, so because that's somebody very energy intensive though So somebody in our youtube chat room or youtube comments said, you know that that's not a fix that's that's just Dealing with the symptom not the cause or whatever, but so the Yes, we need necessarily O2 However, one of the reasons CO2 is so bad especially compared to methane is that its latency is on the hundreds 2000 of years in the atmosphere So even if we completely stopped using CO2 right now There's still a lot in the atmosphere and it's going to stay there for a long time unless we get creative with how to pull it out Exactly. Yeah, and people love sugar. We love sugar and fat Yeah Take it from the air from the sky This is this weekend science. Thank you for joining us for another episode If you are enjoying the show, please head over to twist.org and consider clicking that patreon button Patreon is where our listeners you Support the show anyone who supports us at $10 or more per month is thanked by name at the end of the show And there's lots of other fun goodies that come in the mail as well Thank you for your support. We really can't do this without you Okay, I'm gonna Come on back. We don't want to talk about covid right now. Do we? I mean it's happening. It's still happening. I don't have anything to do Yeah, nothing All right, so what we're gonna do instead is go straight to blare's animal corner With Blair What you got Blair, oh my gosh, I have I have all sorts to do with nighttime and sleeping So first I want to talk about magpies I love magpies. They're so fun. They make the coolest sounds. They're so smart This is a study on Australian magpies Cracticus Tibbison Sure. Yeah that It comes from Latrobe University in Melbourne and they wanted to see basically what would happen if they messed with magpies sleep So they they wanted to see what happened with their singing if they Gave them a bad night's sleep But also specifically they wanted to see some of their problem solving and thinking processes and how they were impacted by sleep I know if I get a bad night's sleep My brain just slowly gets worse and worse throughout the day until I can't even form complete senses if I don't get my sleep so We know that humans and mammals in general have This non rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement sections of sleep and we need it for our brain to work right And when we are denied those things things go to pop pretty quickly So this is the first study As far as these three researchers know it as far as I know looking at birds and Sleep loss and how it would impact the brain in similar ways to how it impacts mammals They picked magpies because they're smart because they have a very cool song that is kind of varied and And has very specific purposes to their survival and they're also known for their social nature Their cognitive abilities complex vocal behaviors all that good stuff that I basically already said I guess I'm sleep deprived currently I got it So then they investigated how sleep deprivation over a full night of 12 hours or a half night six hours affected the cognitive Performance in these magpies prior to each treatment. They were trained on an associative learning task. Just kind of like Really simplified the the blue Cube you get a treat the yellow ball You do not get a treat to learn to associate The blue cube with a treat that's an associative learning task if I pick that one I get my treat Then on the day after experimental treatment where they basically kept them from sleeping The birds were tested on a reversal learning task to look this up because this was a term that I was not super familiar with in an experimental setting um kiki probably knows all about it, but uh Reversal learning task is basically to follow my example of the blue cube and the yellow ball If you taught that magpie to pick the blue cube and he gets a treat Then suddenly on the next day He has to pick the yellow ball to get the treat and the question is how long does it take this magpie to figure out That the rules have changed So, you know, yeah, it takes a person a long time to figure out that the goalposts have moved So, I mean Because there's a sense of no, this was right yesterday. This is this is how I get it. Yes. Oh Yeah, wait. Are we talking politics again? I didn't think so. I thought we were talking about magpies Here we're talking about magpies and behavior. Yes. So, okay So they they tested them on this reverse learning task They changed the rules and so this was a good way to glean whether sleep loss affected Kind of the way their their cognitive processes were working They indeed when sleep deprived showed slower responses to reversal learning tasks They were less likely to perform And complete the task and those that did Did far worse than better rested birds. So some of them didn't even finish. They just gave up poor things. So tired Um, so so this the idea is to measure how quickly and successfully animals can adapt to changes Of reinforcement contingencies, which obviously is an important survival technique If you can't adjust to changing needs and stressors and Uh signals to food in your environment, you will die Very plain and simple So they need to be able to have that kind of mental plasticity To adjust to changing rules in their environment in order to survive So if they are sleep deprived and they have trouble with that that is a big problem the other thing they found out is that um They They recorded their songs for three days Leading up to and then after this Were they slurring their words? Kind of they sang longer Yet fewer songs they shifted singing from twilight to midday They just wanted to go to bed get it over with And during the post recovery day their frequency bed with narrowed. So yeah, they were basically slurring They were they were enunciating their songs less Um, and so they were specifically it appeared choosing physically less demanding songs Some things like the trills, which are one of my favorite magpie sounds it almost sounds like a clicking This is a really important Song that they do because it's it's physically difficult to do it shows fitness And it receives a stronger response from rivals and mates So, um, if they're not doing these more complicated songs that is going to impact their survival as well So ultimately what did we learn birds like other animals? Sleeps important to them it optimizes waking performance and um It shows that birds just like mammals have the same problems from sleep deprivation It impairs cognition it alters communication I am sure this is not That's a very good, uh Burden personation Magpies also oh kiki you're muted magpies also go kind of like I like that one a lot There's a donovan song called the magpie that has that in a bunch. I really like as well So everyone can look that up there. Anyway, um, yeah, so I'm sure this is not the last we will hear of this I'm sure most animals that sleep Kind of respond to sleep deprivation in one way or another But this is how we slowly figure it out you take the kind of more obvious answer of do birds care if you keep them up The answers. Yes. Yes. Yes. They do how what parts of their behavior is impacted by that and then The bigger how is what's happening in their body what's happening in their brain that causes those things to happen so, um, I think it's a very cool kind of initial Toe dip into this this world of sleep deprivation and birds. I'm sure it's not the last we're going to hear of it well, I'm also going to say that sleep deprivation as, uh If the birds are not used to human encroachment in their in their areas and people are coming in traffic Construction things are interrupting them keeping them awake lights on all night long street lights and whatnot Suddenly you have birds that are sleep deprived. They're not singing well They're not singing their peak songs and they're not getting mates So you're going to affect reproduction. You're going to affect all of it down the road Right and some bird species will be able to adapt quickly But others it might impact several generations before they get used to it And then it can it can have really intense long lasting effects on their population for sure Uh digging into chat room saying some take issues with people and even take revenge This uh, this happened, uh on like a couple block radius around the capital and Sacramento capital of uh, california The capital building somebody must have done something bad to Some of the birds around there Because they started dive bombing and attacking people And it was just in this one. It was like in this one like couple block area People walking on their way to work or going to lunch and going about their business. We're getting dive bombed and the birds were like Snatching like uh at their hair and like So yeah, they can like and and they've also shown that uh, they can recognize individuals They did this series of experiments with these with these uh, big mask People you know people wearing these masks that were being mean to the local birds I think it was Covins or something. I don't know if it was they were crows. Yeah crows. Thank you Uh, and then yeah, they the crows would talk and they and the weird thing was Word got around somehow they were describing This masked individual because even crows that hadn't had the initial encounter knew That's the bad guy Crows talk what they do to each other Pretty smart Don't interrupt their sleep. Um, yeah, so moving on from uh Sleep deprived birds to bats that have decided to stay awake during the day I have a story out of televieve university looking at a very particular group of fruit bats I was not aware of this when I first saw this I was just like, oh, I guess there's a diurnal kind of fruit bat There's just me but must be the species in the way that they're no Oh in recent years In israel particularly around televieve, but also in other cities nearby Egyptian fruit bats have begun roaming around during the day so my guess my guess Is that they have become so habituated to humans And humans dropping fruit or outdoor markets of fruit or some sort of kind of carrot for them A metaphorical carrot not an actual carrot because they like fruits not veggies Um, some there is a reason that they switched to diurnal. That's my that's my guess But for whatever reason these guys know that they're not going to get predated upon There's food for them to eat and they are awake during the day So this was a perfect opportunity for researchers to look at how bats act during the day Their main question is how do they get around because fruit bats actually have pretty good eyes Blind as a bat as a myth so They have pretty good eyes And so they they really can get where they're trying to go by just looking because it's daytime slide out They don't need echolocation But photography and audio recordings of the bats have found That they do in fact use echolocation even though they can see Just fine. They did this in three different Situations They looked in the morning as bats went out to explore tel Aviv later in the day when they visited the sick and more trees And then in another time during the day when they were drinking water from an artificial pool Why water for a pool? I will tell you in a second. This is very interesting But in each of these situations There was clicking they used echolocation So first the trees they wanted to see landing and flights between trees They found that prior to landing bats increased the sounds they admitted To use the echoes to estimate distance to the ground So they were definitely using this to aid their depth perception or their landing abilities They uh with the water This is such a smart research kind of setup In the water they they had these calls the echolocation calls right before coming in contact with the water And then they reduced it when they were ascending away from the water So it's different from trees in that it's just this kind of flat obstacle Where they have to land they don't want to land, you know, in a in a too hard was sick But they also uh don't have to worry as much about branches and things like that So they don't have to echolocate it when they're flying away So the water is this awesome opportunity for them to see if they're adjusting how much echolocating they're doing Based on the need at hand And so what they found was that bats who emerged from the pool didn't echolocate unless Researchers put a wall in front of them And if they did that then they returned to using echolocation So they knew how far they were from the wall So this proved to them that there was functional use of echolocation Despite the fact that it was the middle of the day Their hypothesis is that this is due to The fact that echolocation would help them measure distances. It's all about depth perception It's all about a smooth landing and a smooth takeoff And that their brains are combining the visual information along with auditory information The the researchers kind of draw a parallel to how when we cross the street We look both ways, but we also listen for cars or honking or anything And so If you have headphones in you might make a mistake you might Step out into traffic when you shouldn't because even though you're using your eyes We use all of these different senses to kind of gauge our environment It is part of our perception of our space. And so bats have come To uh, they've grown accustomed to using echolocation as a fundamental part Of the way that they navigate their space. And so even if you turn on the lights They still use it and they still find it useful That's really cool. I've that's I love I love the idea that it's it's a part of their total proprioception That it's a part of the way that they understand Their environment it's not just sight and hearing but they're using The echolocation to really give them that that extra sense Yep, I think this whole story is terrifying Why? Well, this is the outset at least before they realized that these bats have become diurnal Usually the only time you see a bat during the daytime is if they're rabid And if all of a sudden there's lots like bats You can still get rabies. I would assume yet probably less than one half of one percent of all bats are capable of contracting rabies But those are the ones we'll see during the day fascinating Blair that's a little statistic that I hadn't ever that I hadn't no that's interesting Google, you know, I could I could do some more. Uh, what is that? Is that because I thought I had heard that I thought bats didn't actually get rabies. So I just there's like thousands of species of bats Yeah, and it's like so many of them cannot contract rabies, but are they the most populous ones? They're not the ones at least in my hometown because those ones definitely got rabies And if you saw one during the day you had to like Call the fire department or something. I don't know who it was just It was like trouble and like it would be in the newspaper Second bat found during daylight hours Are your children at risk? Well, not from these fruit bats most likely but these fruits it's it's fascinating to know that that uh, that the adaptation of echolocation is something that even though they've made it into daylight and use vision They have big eyes. They're using vision obviously But they're still making they're still taking advantage of that They can close their eyes and fly with their eyes shut if they needed to And I'm sure they do that when they've got like the baby bat that that is hanging on them and Thanks for that Blair. Yeah This is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of twist Hey, Justin, you want to talk about oh, you got to talk about dinner Blair's talking about sleep You're talking about dinner from fruit bats to fruit humans researchers at st. Michael's hospital of unity health, toronto Published a study in the journal pediatrics that looked at growth rates in about 9 000 children It found that those who eat a vegetarian diet had similar measures of growth and nutrition compared to children who uh, whose diets contain meat also found that children with a vegetarian diet had higher odds of being underweight emphasizing the need for special care when planning the diets of vegetarian kids, although to be fair, this is a study from canada So being underweight in the land of maple syrup soaked bacon and cheesy fries smothered in gravy might just be normal According to jonathan maguire, dr. Jonathan maguire lead author of the study over the last 20 years We've seen growing popularity of plant-based diets in the changing food environment with more access to plant-based alternatives However, we have not seen research into the nutritional outcomes of children Following vegetarian diets in canada. I guess vegetables just got to canada New You're just using this as an opportunity to make fun of canada because we we just don't get too often enough I mean, they're just they're just sitting up there Being better than us. What have we fed? What have we fed kids vegetables? What would happen? It's listen, you you're an american you're one to talk Catch up with the vegetable here for a while I come from uh ag land in the biggest Agriculture state in the union which even out Sends food out to other countries. I think we sell we sell California sells rice to china in japan Well, I'm just saying the country in the whole if you're if you're painting with broad brushes like for all of canada I can't travel anywhere as a californian and find a thing that looks like what I identify as a tomato Hot house hot houses greenhouses there are tomatoes in canada. Yeah, they get sun It's not just but apparently they've just introduced them in terms of eating so Researchers found children who had a vegetarian diet had similar mean body mass index they had Similar height their iron levels of vitamin d levels were fine and cholesterol levels compared to those who consume eat all Fell in to line there. So there was really no Difference except they say the vegetarian diet was associated with higher odds of being underweight limitation of the study is that researchers did not qualify the quality of vegetarian diets So, you know if somebody's eating nothing, but cereal I guess they could technically be French fries are vegetarian. Yeah, if you eat french fries vegetable oil, right? Yeah cheese and bread Um and gravy they put see this is the thing I was mentioning that It's called poutine And it's a canadian thing. That's very not vegetarian No, I know but they take poutine is it's a canadian dish. They have french fries smothered in cheese And then they pour gravy over it stuck gravy right and it's They all have to eat it. So but so jesson. What were the years of this study? What what? When was this does that matter? You're asking? It doesn't I will tell you why Okay, the study was so it was between age six months and eight years and the years the data was collected was 2008 2019 right so I grew up 80s 90s not eating meat The options for me Were much less than they are today and doctors were constantly concerned that I did not have enough iron or protein and part of the reason is that My parents had to go to a special store a lot of the time to get the fake meat or the soy this or the you know the The soy milk to make sure that I was getting protein, you know, it was it was a lot harder It took a lot more effort to make sure that my diet was balanced, right? and so Now there are so many vegetarian options everywhere that you go That hat they have meat substitutes There's you know the number of times I went to a restaurant and had water because they didn't even have a salad that didn't have meat on it was like My whole childhood, right? And so I just I think it's better now potentially than it than it could have been in the past if they and I think that's the That's the point here really is that this study is happening during a time when Dietary choices are healthier for people who would like to raise their kids vegetarian for kids who would like to be vegetarian And the study is showing that it's healthy that the kids have good growth rates They are getting the vitamins and nutrients that they need. They're not deficient And um, it's interesting. I think the interesting question is, you know underweight like Is it underweight and not thriving? It doesn't sound like it Yeah, it is the underweight really underweight. What is the comparison? Is it the body mass index in canada? Body mass index is in canada We've all we've talked about it before being kind of questionable It's not even body mass and they they have a different it's pseudosite canada. Yeah, they can't use the body mass index because then everybody's But there's But there may be uh, there may be something better than being a vegetarian soon. Oh, yeah Do tell so. Yeah This is the intro greenhouse gases are raising the stakes for global warming Postam Institute for climate impact research has done some research into the impacts of climate specifically those that originate from meat About a third of greenhouse gases are from food production. Most of that comes from meat production It's not just the animals. It's it themselves. It is the animals themselves. But it's also the production of their feed the uh, fertilizers that are used there deforestation contributes quite a bit to the problem because it's also taking out Uh, carbon sequestration when you do that part of the solution Could be the thing kind of thing we've sort of been talking about in different ways. Uh, I was a bio technology That is the thing nutritious protein rich biomass with meat like texture produced from microbes fungi via fermentation They're calling microbial protein where i'm calling bioreactor burgers Could really uh be the game changer but after the researchers put microbial proteins into a computer and it resulted in a terrible mess So then they ran simulation models instead to plot the environmental effects of the food and agriculture system They ran it forward to the year 2050 accounting for even future population groups growth land uses food demand dietary patterns that sort of thing according to florian humped neuter Read author of the study We found that If we substituted 20 percent of the ruminant meat per capita by 2050 annual deforestation and co2 emissions from land use change would be halved Compared to a business as usual scenario The reduced numbers of cattle do not only reduce the pressure on land But they reduce methane emissions from the ruminant of cattle and nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizing feed Or manure management So while a traditional veggie burger might also show positive results The fermentation derived microbial protein fungal patties take agriculture production out of the equation completely well nearly completely anyhow because Fun guy, do you have a bit of a sweet tooth requiring some agriculture for sugar production unless Unless we are making our sugars from There we go Even better for the environment then then we do and to meet We can do it people fermentation people just need to make those choices and you know, maybe it's not No meat monday, maybe it's fun guy a fun guy friday or microbial monday According to this it would need to be like a fungal friday and maybe a fungal tuesday or something too like about About 20 percent is all they used and they were able to halve the impact which is pretty amazing I think I think that that is you know the The difference in scale that for just a small amount a small reduction or a small change It has such a massive impact and it just goes back to what we've talked about so many times Which is the huge impact of beef production on carbon dioxide and on climate change and on our environment in general It's a massive massive impact Yeah, well, yeah, I mean using land to feed an animal to then eat Decreases the amount of calories you're getting by a factor of 10 It's trophic levels That's like the thing that I learned in high school environmental science that just keeps me reaching for the veggie patties over and over and over It's a huge waste Reach for those veggie patties everyone Keep reaching for them as long as you can see them We talked a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it was last week. I get confused sometimes about when we've talked about different stories We talked about uh the pupil and Having aphasia of not being able to being able to determine whether or not somebody could Imagine visual scenes in their minds. I based on how their pupil moves Well researchers at the university of california san diego have Gone a step further toward just a more generally applicable and useful smartphone app that could be used to look at people's pupils to determine whether or not they are Whether they have or are prone to neurodegenerative diseases neurological diseases like alzheimer's adhd and others so the researchers have Have developed this smartphone app that uses a near infrared camera Which is built into a lot of newer smartphones. So it's already in smartphones themselves It's used for facial recognition So that added to the selfie camera can track where a person's pupil is in the screen and within the app measure The person's pupillary changes and use those changes to assess cognitive condition and they uh have assessed this in comparison to uh to other Tests that are used currently within laboratories to determine cognitive condition and it performed as well as as These as a device called a pupillometer, which is the gold standard The pupillometer Yeah, so uh, they tested it on uh, you know how you know Your device and your technology is working well if you can test it on People who are elderly and not really good with technology and you can get it to work for them That's what they did. So they gave their smartphones and their app to a bunch of elderly people to try and make it user friendly for older adults and And so that's what they've developed now is this very simple app interface and their hope is that they will be able to Use this kind of an application With technology that people have in their houses everything, you know all around them all the time now uh to be able to kind of start going into that medical care assessment at home You know people who aren't able to go to the doctor or who live in rural areas and are experiencing issues You can have a test and immediately or do it while you're talking to your doctor over, uh, you know Over a video conferencing app or you know, there's so many implications and applications for this to be accessible to be able to diagnose People's neural health, which is very exciting Yeah Yeah, I could see myself Just using it over and over all day. Just like am I okay? What's happening? What is happening now? but I could also see you could you could um Allow permission. This is where it gets kind of dicey But you can allow permissions where every time you'll get your phone and use your face to unlock your phone over and over and over It could be tracking changes in your pupils over time Without right an app right so you could you could you could use this technology to collect that data Longitude oh Yeah, and then actually that data could be used to market to people Well, no And usually the way these kinds of tests happen is that they measure pupillary changes in response to certain stimuli. So it's not just Randomly measuring what your pupil looks like because your pupil is going to be changing all the time dynamically Or it should be changing dynamically to light levels in your environment And other things but it they change your pupils constrict and expand dilate based on how excited you are how relaxed you are like there are all sorts of psychological factors that can influence the way that your your pupils move and so Those are the kind if you're remembering things or not remembering things we have anxiety if there's There are a lot of things that can influence and so those stimuli that would happen under controlled Conditions during the measurement process are very important to be considering as well That'd be great to have an app. I could open to tell me if I'm having an anxiety attack You are having an anxiety attack you do not need to go to the hospital Yeah, they're like that's why you suddenly are freaking out about the fact that you bought the wrong postage This is because you were having anxiety attack That's right Moving on from smartphone apps and you know in the in the sense that maybe you have anxiety and you wish you could get rid of it Would you if you could? Edit using gene editing your brain To change the brain chemistry chemistry in your brain In your amygdala If it could help you get rid of epigenetic programming that through your life, maybe has led you to be be more anxious or binge drink or do behaviors that are Not good for you Wait binge drinking is a form of anxiety No So binge drinking starting at an early age can have long lasting effects on the brain And one of the and some of that has to do with epigenetic Programming and so the there there are epigenetic markers that end up in your brain depending on how young you were when you started drinking How much you were binge drinking especially has its own specific category of of alcohol use um, but What it comes down to is researchers at the university Let's see u i c university of illinois chicago. They've just published in science advances that Binge drinking and adolescence alters brain camp chemistry specifically in the enhancer region of a particular gene called the arc gene This is the activity regulated cytoskeleton associated protein immediate early gene It decreases arc expression in the amygdala In people and in rodents and so they went, huh? Epigenetic reprogramming is changing this arc stuff. Oh, let's use rodents and see what happens So they went in and they showed that they could Take crisper d cas9, which is a a type of crisper cas gene editing tool and they manipulated The epigenome in the rats histone acetylation um, and they were able to change the way that the arc protein was expressed in rats and so these rats that they basically Made into young binge drinkers who had then anxiety and drinking problems. Um, They changed that for them and the rats had reductions in their anxiety And a reduction in their preference for alcohol Yeah, that's Sign me up for less anxiety. Please. Thank you. Yeah, I mean this is so fascinating because it means there's a target and if you had certain exposure in your life Could it could it erase some of the behavioral chemical triggers That are in existence in your brain Would you do that? Right now. It's just rats. So we don't really know exactly what it does, but it made rats Not want to drink and less anxious So what is this epigenetic changes then? Is it some bit of tangled bit of uh, the genomic code that is the not Expression proteins. Is it I mean, yeah, yeah, so it's this it's this histone this histone methylation, yeah So I'm of a certain age So it's basically like for all those changes you're taking your etch-a-sketch genome and shaking it upside down for a minute Huh Yeah, what would that do? And if you're like if you're like, oh, I'm I'm I'm 29 and I bitch drank when I was 17 That sounds great, but I'm 50 or I'm 75 and it is there a difference You know, it will there be a difference in what happens based on how long what the impacts will be I don't know. I just I find this a very fascinating potential road that we are going down this idea that uh with With gene editing and targets like this that these become options for people to change And reset their brains in a certain way. Yeah blood transfusions age reversing fecal transplants Like all of it In behaviors. Yeah, and and what's great is, you know, I'm very spry very wrinkly young men Yeah, you're not trying to erase memories that cause something to happen. You're just trying to change the way you're You're reacting. Yeah, your brain kind of urges you to do things or not do things or respond. Yeah Yeah, but is that like there's I and I it's probably just a cartoon version of my head that, you know You race all the Yeah, erase all the evidence in your body of all the all the drugs that you take all the drinking that you did all the The experiences that you had in the world that affected your DNA and you get rid of it all And then you're just a different person Right, how different would you be? Well, I guess some people But I think you're like I said, you're not erasing things that happened to you in the past You're not changing how you became the person you are today You're just less anxious or less alcohol dependent, but otherwise you're the same person. Yeah Well slightly the same person because you're not going to react in the same way that you used to But that's not a bad thing if that's the change that you want to see in your life Okay, so my last story isn't so much about changing yourself Later after, you know, a lot of experiences have happened. What about a genetically modifying Children So you see San Diego They have used and used lab-grown human brain tissue to identify neural abnormalities in A certain syndrome called the pit hopkin syndrome And they've published this in nature communications They were able to use gene therapy to Recover the gene function in these brain organoids that caused The brain organoid that that caused the brain organoids in the dish To malform. So this pit This pit hopkin syndrome is the result of a mutation. It causes Misformation of the nerves as a result of Of developmental genes not getting turned on in the right way They went in in the brain organoids gene therapy. They fixed it They were able to do this in the dish, which means that they could You know do this embryonically and they did in uh in mice. They were able to embryonically change Where those neurons were going and how the brains Of mice developed but what about genetic interventions for a child That was not caught by genetic sequencing early on well before it was Before it was born, right Who's had this syndrome the syndrome has developed. They're now a couple of years old Would this therapy be something that would you I mean this is a new question also gene therapy for Children so that they can have a life So this is like this is and I don't think a controversial issue at all right When we talk about all of this gene Therapies gene splicing all this sort of stuff It is very easy for most of us to I'd be against it right like you know Because if you what if you could choose the color of your child's eyes that sort of nonsense But there are families that have Genetic mutations that predispose the a disease that you know the you believe it's like oh my Uncle my aunt my cousin my they all died of this thing or they all have this Whatever it is There's there's diseases that run through gene pools And if you remember one of these families and you have a child and you've identified it like of course Knowing what the ramifications are knowing how the disease progresses and knowing You know when it would be crucial to when not absolutely you would want to do this if I think though If it's one of these things it's a late stage disease and you can intervene in the 20s. Maybe you hold off on it for them But yeah, you know all of the all of this is there's no different than an antibiotic Or anything else when you're when you're talking about combating your disease. Well, if something is clinically tested And you know, it's gone through all of the appropriate rigmarole To show that it is safe to use Then why not do what science can provide to prevent illness or Challenge or any number of things that we would we would like to make sure is not in the way of our children's lives Of course, we would do it. Right. It's just and I think that's the problem. Justin. You're you're totally right It this particular kind of medicine is getting compartmentalized and colored in a specific way But is it really that different from other medical interventions? When you look when you get down to it and you look at the processes by which we deem something safe And we we figure out how to apply it to humans Yeah, and it hasn't been you know, this hasn't been applied to humans yet They still have to do that the team is optimizing Their gene therapy tools that they've licensed. They are preparing they would like to do a trial in which they are able to do spinal injections of the genetic vector To recover the gene function in the brain the the mutated gene that goes goes wrong in this particular disorder um The researcher who's in charge says the fact that we can correct this one gene and the entire neural system Reestablishes itself even at a functional level is just amazing So the researchers, I mean if it works it will really I mean it could really change lives, but there's a long way to go Long way to go I don't know so many interesting questions gene therapy. Where is it going? Where will it take us? humanity Have has it taken us to the end of the show? It has I think it has I think it did bring us here. Oh my everyone. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for another episode of This week in science. We've made it to the end of the show We appreciate you being here with us time for some shout outs thank you fata for all of your help with show notes and show descriptions and social media really appreciate that gourd and Our and lore and all the others who help keep our multiple chat rooms safe and happy places to be. Thank you for being here identity for Thank you for recording the show and rachel thank you for the editing and assistance that you are bringing to my life and Of course as always. 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if you've learned anything from the show remember it's all in your head this week in science is the end of the world so i'm setting up shop got my banner on pearl it says the scientist is in i'm gonna sell my advice show them how to stop the robots with a simple device i'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand just this week science is coming your way so everybody listen to what i say i use the scientific method for all that it's worth and i'll broadcast my opinion all over the because it's this week in science this week in science this week in science science science this week in science this week in science this week in 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 i've got a plan if you listen to the science you may just get understand did the music stop the music stopped we're at the we're at the end the after show i get to sit because i turned that down duh kiki don't you know how to use your computer no you don't lend into this that's right that's the end and three we hope that your big toe massage was fabulous oh how was that science for everyone yes asmr time oh have i tried any vegan ice cream um this is an interesting question and i am happy to talk about it because recently seeking of microbiome um i wish that i had a baseline of my microbiome but um over the last couple years uh no last year or so um i've been having um some stomach problems i've been trying to figure out what the problem is nobody can figure it out i've had all sorts of labs done um nobody can figure it out but i have um started eliminating dairy in some cases and that has helped in some ways but like unclear anyway yes i've been doing a lot of milk alternatives as a result and um i have found most milk alternative ice cream to be terrible except for oat milk ice cream has been pretty good i like coconut milk ice cream oh yeah i hate coconut well okay that'll do that for you then coconut milk ice cream tastes a little bit like coconut and i'm like i can't eat this i can't do it what about uh there's some flavors of like there's like this really rich soy delicious that's really really good oh soy delicious and there's like one kind that's i don't know that's it's like an extra rich and i quite enjoy it don't like if don't give me rice milk anything i will throw it in your face oh yeah almond milk yeah not even so i've learned some things like oat milk is good in cereal i love oat milk and cereal um but if you try to cook with oat milk it makes everything sweet oh interesting so i've uh i found that i will either cook with lactose free milk and just brave it that's what i do um or i will i have cooked with cashew milk which is kind of savory so that could be kind of good but it does provide a kind of a nutty tang to whatever you're doing so it's yeah it's tough there's no replacement for true dairy there's not it's true i have yet to find a vegan cheese i like oh don't even i've tried vegan cheeses it's gross it's it's so so maybe maybe cheese sometimes maybe they'll eventually be a gene therapy that can cure you if you're lactose intolerant that would be great i don't actually know if that's wrong with me it would be great if somebody could look at my microbiome and tell me exactly what's wrong with me that would be great yeah you could also uh just do you could knock it out and and oh yeah just you know drink yogurt you know no don't drink what are you talking about no you're an antibiotic take a heavy dose of antibiotics i know and then eat a bunch of yogurt and yes you would but i think it's a genetic link to this isn't it certainly i mean i've never i've never had a problem with this stuff and then just all of a sudden like overnight i would just be like i i missed work just because of stomach pain you know things develop over time and yeah things but that might be that makes it sound like it is microbial like microbiota related then yeah so much mystery i don't know the mystery of the microbiome i'm trying to do the math uh oh are in lore oh is there a chance cooking the lactate lactose free milk would kill off the lactase enzyme it doesn't matter because by the time that the milk's gotten to you the enzyme has pretty much gotten the lactose out of the milk so there's not lactose in the milk anymore what's a2 milk i don't know what a2 milk what is that yeah i don't know what that is either i'm looking it up oh it's a brand real what oh what is the difference between a2 milk and regular milk oh beta casein interesting uh that's i have never heard of this i have never heard of this before this is fascinating okay thank you for bringing this up uh the main difference between regular milk and a2 milk is that regular milk contains both a1 and a2 forms of beta casein where a2 milk may contain only the a2 beta casein some studies suggest that a1 milk might trigger certain diseases and a2 milk is more beneficial to health i've never heard of that before gourd is uh being the voice reason problem is not the that the bacteria actually does something to you the problem is that you lack the enzyme necessary to digest it that's a problem that would be if i am lactose intolerant see that's the question though right because still sometimes i'll have dairy and i'll be fine eric nap is wondering if it could be an allergy or some sort i mean i know it so sometimes you have it it's fine i know it's not wheat because garlic gluten actually makes me feel better usually if i eat bread then it like chills my whole system out yeah i don't know it's i've tried a lot of things it's been about a year um i found a way where you know nine times out of 10 i'm totally fine now i've i've like figured out foods to avoid but every once in a while just all i'm doubled over in pain and i can't figure out why the only thing that i can think of food allergy wise for me is uh red peppers red bell peppers bell peppers uh the immediately caused me to vomit it's just like ouch i don't know what's in there but it's it's terrible and i think it's the cheapest form of vegetable at least uh carrots i think i think there must be some like nobody wants to eat them or something or they grew too many of them because this is just because i've flown so much over the last couple years an airplane meat the thing i thought you know i'll avoid it but every vegetarian anything on every flight had tons of red bell pepper in it yeah it always yeah yeah we want Blair to have a happy tummy you know yeah i know what it is it's a journey i've reached the point at which my body starts causing random problems started a few years ago it just it happens it's funny it's like it was pretty much right at uh i mean it was it was i guess it was like between 32 and 35 stuff started happening then it's like oh yeah your your your your body's not young anymore friend yonks wow yeah you're getting up there uh question though this is to me this is getting it too personal never mind start and then back off yeah well i was gonna ask i was gonna ask about what was it when it's like when did you meet brian and like does he have these issues and because no he has a steel stomach yeah that's what i got i can aside from the red bell peppers which is also just like once i discovered that because i thought i just got food poisoning every once in a while and it was like uh and then it turned out it's always got a red pepper involved it's always got a red bell pepper involved every time other than that though yeah like i can eat everything and it's never never an issue it's eric nap thinks i'm too young to have my warranty expired well so in in the olden days when humans were first a thing right okay i was like practically done like you had lived between like 40 and 50 right so like um in the home stretch but also uh it depends what you did in your life and i did spend several years doing manual labor on concrete in bad shoes so i feel like that's you know that doesn't how i also you know went to concerts without ear plugs for like 20 years so my here you know it's just oh that's something that we didn't talk about warranty isn't it there's like mit scientists some no is it mit some researchers are are basically curing uh hearing loss with eardrops oh wow not all hearing loss but there's like some new thing i gotta look that up i totally forgot about it was something i tagged and then forgot about hearing loss eardrops i don't know it's gone oh here we go new mit science yes it was mit mit scientists found a way to reverse hearing loss that may be as easy as lasik yeah i can it's lasik easy i feel like that's i mean i i get that it's common but it doesn't seem like easy like i don't feel like your eyeball and laser it yeah this is gonna go over to the mirror there and perform a little bit of lasik at home i feel like that's yeah i'm scared of lasik i have terrible eyesight but i'm so scared of it i know it's a fine thing that many people do but yeah i don't want lots of people do lasik it scares me i'm i'm ready i'm ready okay so this hearing loss it's a company it's spinning out from mit called frequency therapeutics they've been testing a regenerative therapy that uses small molecules to program progenitor cells so these are the ones that are in between stem cells and the adult cells they put them in the inner ear and those can create the tiny hair cells that our hearing relies on so they're trying to replace the hair cells that are damaged that's the business in the first place that's the only downside is that there's a good chance of developing super hairy ears hey i'll take it and replace those kinds of inner ear hairs that i lost from sitting in front of the tuba in band i was always like tuba was like here and the entire trombone section was right here so it was definitely in between the bass drum and the tuba yeah not yeah not okay what is this story so they've dosed more than 200 patients with the therapy so far they have three trials that have shown positive results one study showed no improvements they were looking for improvements in speech perception they're going to they've got a clinical trial that they're trying to get started a 124 person trial and they'll get results available by early next year but if that those clinical trials go well then that this they're saying that they're expecting 10 or 15 years this would be something we might be so just in time for me to have completely lost my hearing it's gonna be perfect we are going to have to keep an eye on this frequency therapeutics and see what they're doing stimulating the growth of hair cells in the inner ear it's not going to fix all kinds of hearing loss though because some hearing loss is due to damage of the nerves the auditory nerves some is capillary damage but the hair cells are the big one that's the big one that's what yeah the there's also some weird right now I don't have this is too old information but there was something about rock stars uh despite having played this is not the drummer drummers go deaf by the time you're a good drummer you probably can't hear a conversation properly uh but I think this was the singers at least uh in the band they had a great hearing like your people like your Mick Jagger who's played more concerts than anybody else in the probably in the face of the thing outside of bobby weir bobby weir I think he's played most live shows uh but these big you know arena things still have just perfectly fine hearing again though I guess the speakers are pointed away aside from the monitor but uh yeah over the so over the last 20 years in ear monitors have become quite the thing and apparently now uh people are performing on silent stages so they've got the stacks of speakers that are out away from the stage and so maybe you've got the drums on the stage but everybody's got the monitors in their ears and so there's no there's like nothing except for really light twanging of the electrical guitar strings you know that you would hear because all of it is in the speakers and in the system so there are these silent stages and uh I was talking to a musician who told me that those those stages where you have like the VIP crowd down in the very front to like do the special like dancing and oomping for the for the band they they're like in front of the big stacks of speakers so they get like this really quiet experience compared to everybody else so you don't actually necessarily want to be in that special little upfront VIP area yeah yeah but it's the whole idea of silent stages to me is so fascinating where it's all just in your monitor and you control the volume of the monitor and if you have a really good engineer the engineer has everything totally balanced so it's not loud and it's just it sounds perfect and you're not hurting your hearing and you you take off your your monitors at the end of the show and you're just like oh my ears aren't ringing everything's fine you know I think I'd probably go to a lot more concerts if they were silent just buy some earplugs yeah I get some good earplugs I always forget oh but then there's the crowds that's right then there's the crowd the sweaty crowd what you don't want to touch you gotta go to a concert a band that's like not that new that's kind of on the older side and then if the people watching it are over 25 then there's more likely to be a seated section this is what I've learned and so then you can sit and then you're not brushing up against other sweaty people as much there's some now it's gotten to the point where I want a seat for the concert I want to say this is from a This American Life episode but there was this uh this group like it's sort of like a performance group that went and found some you know small band that was doing the little traveling gigs or clubs or whatever some totally small band and and spent like a week or two learning all of their songs and and then all showed up at one of their venues with singing along to the show like like and all of a sudden they're like what the bass is like ringing out like how do these people know all of our songs and like and they were like went and performed being their biggest fans and you know showed up with like 30 people they're all singing along in this little you know bar the stage whatever it was like that is like the most amazing thing like to think of doing it and then like they interviewed the band and they're like yeah we were like really blown away like we didn't know we had this huge fan base and then like yeah later we kind of found out kind of a letdown but it was also sort of fun at the time yeah devastating when the truth comes out but you know for that one night they had the crowd know singing along with them to all the songs that they wrote and probably only performed you know I had the CD that they sold at the end of the performance and that's how they got the gas money to the next gig kind of a thing it's awesome I love good music stories good music probably be it's not a thing silent disco yes so you have you have it's it's uh earbuds it's a then so then I could actually I could actually dance uh at one of these things because nobody else would know what music I'm listening to they just assume oh he's he's listening to something else that's why he's different dancing exactly very different rhythm than the one I hear okay I like that idea it's perfect I could actually hit the old dance floor that way yeah I mean it doesn't matter everybody's just there dancing listening to their own music I mean you're supposed to be listening to the same music everybody else's but I mean you could really just bring your own headphones and listen to like whatever you want in dance what was it uh the foo fighters uh what's the guy's name the foo fighter guy this is the singer David growl yeah he would grow he described uh coming up with not the first but some of the later foo fighter albums I guess uh he started to base the tempo on uh somebody jumping up and down because he said there would be like some songs where the whole crowd would be like jumping up and down to really I'll just do all the songs that way that's awesome I like that beat that's great yeah and so they got everything timed out for just the natural being able to like when you jump up in the air and then you know come back down again that became sort of the tempo for all the foo fighter songs their own for his for his big stadium big is his stadium band performances if you call it the old dance floor maybe you shouldn't be hitting it at all yeah it's probably wise my eyes were open mechanic 88 very wise words indeed oh my goodness Blair you're you're just leaning back what are you saying I'm not any friend of yours is that what you're saying the kid you can dance if you want to leave your friends behind because they friends don't dance and if they don't dance well no friend of mine got it we got it we got it here if I lean back then I have to do this there you go now you've got the steering wheel in your face there we go here how about that it's good so Friday Friday can you bake it 11 a.m. Pacific time which would be 8 p.m. the same day here this sounds like a very doable thing Blair love will you be joining this I don't know send me the invite it depends I'm I'm working from home so it just it all depends how my day goes cool oh yeah that's right that's right I've got a tab in the rundown for Friday and I will send you the link invitation on Friday probably about 10 45 15 minutes ahead like usual if I can't attend as long as I'm not in a meeting maybe I'll be in the chat room awesome like yes that line and I have to work on it I'll put you guys on in the background but if I'm not in a meeting and I'm not on a harsh deadline I will I will I will come I'm setting the alarming thing just because and then I know what's going to happen is that I'm going to be because it's out of the normal time I'm going to be I'm going to go why is my alarm going off at this weird time that's why you name your alarm I must can you do that yes I don't know how to do things stop it wait is that don't you have a Google or a Siri or a no I just have the I just use the alarm thingy from the clock on the phone that's the only thing I'm using okay my uh yeah I ask Google to set me alarms all the time hey hey you googly boogly I use reminders on my iPhone a lot uh-huh I use post-it notes uh on on the bathroom mirror those work is so I use my my my big moment of like realizing I was supposed to do something is while washing my hands oh oh I was supposed ah oh gosh at least you don't put the post-its in the shower because then like what was it I was supposed to do something I was supposed to get up from school I was yesterday though I wonder yeah probably your baby's going to school college already really college I mean they're already in the fall or every has been has been going yikers yeah him I don't really need to pick up no no no he's picking himself up oh my gosh prep school starts early for sure did you see the what you want to who to have a yeah I don't and I don't know that for sure that all of my children fit into the same generation like I don't know if they're still naming generations anymore we're done with that no you have you have a cross you're crossing generations now yeah uh yeah well because your oldest z yeah right yeah he's a z yeah but what comes after z I forget what's now yeah is there anything in between because then I have that too I'm just trying to make sure that oh we go back to the beginning it's alpha alpha generation alpha is from 2010 to 2024 got two at m generation z is 1995 to 2009 got two of those two yep there you go forest school what's a forest school oh it's where you the kids go to school in the forest but yeah it's like I guess it just depends on the time of year for most of the most of the time it seems like that would be cold and rainy although this has been people like I've heard I don't know how many times now oh yeah this is just a freak spring day in winter uh it'll be cold again uh in the next couple days it's been spring time for the whole it was spring time for the whole second half of winter that's nice it's been winter here in Portland and then it was spring and then it was winter and then it's spring then it's winter and it can't make up its mind so I guess it's just spring now but um it was 85 in St. Jose today so it's fully summer there I know I've got friends who are like posting pictures of like their their first pool days and I'm like what is going on who gets in a pool right now it's so cold outside yeah well and uh we went to a cabin over the weekend and it was 38 there so oh god I don't know he says it's an all outdoor school raised by wolves so I I was like I went to get all outdoor school when I was a kid actually I went to a actually I was the teacher this explains a lot I was a counselor at outdoor red camp I think I told Justin raised by Justin and I actually had and I actually had a pet wolf a Russian timber wolf uh but I think I told this story a few times probably but uh as uncle who has had a horse ranch well he didn't have any horses he was on a caretaker in what had been a horse ranch he was living out there in the in the hills mountains in California and uh back around that time they were uh they had been killing off wild mustangs in Nevada deer land management was slaughtering these horses and then the news came out and it was like everybody was horrified that they were doing this so like sorry what we'll do instead is we'll collect them and we'll just give them away to people we'll relocate them my uncle signed up for about a half dozen or more of these wild mustangs and uh was breaking them you know teaching them to put it started with getting a rope on them and just walking around in the circle over and over and over again and then at some point he'd try to put the saddle on and they would kick and jump and fight him eventually he'd get that saddle so they would stand still long enough for the saddle to go on and that's when me and my cousins were allowed to ride them at that point on uh me and my cousin uh three cousins we were all city kids but we'd be up there for the summers uh i was seven i think the oldest was 11 just to put this in age ranges we're basically then our jobs were to teach these horses how to be ridden how to take direction from a human granted that was the first horse i was on was an adult probably probably two weeks ago three weeks ago was a wild horse running around in nevada now he's out in northern california with a seven-year-old in the saddle and they were they were not broken because i just want uh my uncle's uh long since passed but if you can if you get he knew i think this was a character building exercise more than it had anything to do with horses but yeah kids today like oh gosh my own kids put them on a wild horse like i was all four it was like ah this is great this is exactly what i want to do with my summers ride this wild horse around i don't think any of my kids would want to go do that there's one of them that would do it actually there was one that wouldn't even need it to have been have a saddle actually yeah she my child absolutely would not she would be like is there is there a joystick or a computer attached to that horse is this is this is this programming a horse in a computer virtual simulation that i'm in outdoor school for kids they shouldn't actually not i wouldn't i would not when i was a kid weren't even allowed indoors except at school and then right as the sun was going down between school and the sun going down or on a weekend you weren't allowed to be indoors that was only for the adults on the weekend same you were supposed to leave the house to get outside now i can't get my child to go outside go outside nah you have to like reverse latch kit just take make sure they don't have a key lock them out trick them hey is that an amazon box maybe that's a new electronic device on the porch and when then he goes out and just lock the door behind them don't even explain don't even explain that's the that's the character building part you gotta figure it out just take them on a walk somewhere and and get lost you're like that's always a good one that's like oh man i thought i thought the gaming store was right around the corner i guess you have to walk through this park oh shucks ah darn i don't know where i am anymore setting up my email to send to our interview with all of the details for friday okay all right i'm gonna go to bed i'm gonna go do the nighttime things say good night say good night blare jinx good night blare good night justin good kiki good night everyone thank you for joining us again so glad you could be here and we hope that you will join us for our live stream on friday at 11am pacific time i will be tweeting and all that kind of stuff but thank you have a wonderful wonderful couple days if we don't see you this friday we'll see you next wednesday eight p.m pacific time. Stay well, stay healthy, stay safe, stay curious!