This hangout is live on air. I'm just gonna wait to see Get that little the It's go from the chat room that everything is five by five We are live. That's right. There we go. So it is time to start the show in Three two This is Twists this week in science episode number 7-eleven Recorded on Wednesday, March 6th, 2019 We are pro biotics Hey everyone, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight we are going to fill your head with more heads heavy sound and spiders, but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer we live in Interesting times not that other times weren't equally as interesting, but it is a Specifically interesting time if you happen to be a human for one Humans weren't always around so just being on the planet now is in and of itself an interesting thing for another Despite all of the interesting times in which were there were humans on the planet This time is perhaps the most interesting not because humans are in and of themselves more interesting now than humans of the past But because our access to interesting information is greater than at any other time in human history And this as it turns out means that times are likely to just keep getting more Interesting as the time goes by making this moment Just a little less interesting than the next one to come or in this case The moment spent listening to a protracted prolonged show intro will be a lot less interesting then This week in science Coming up next I Good science to you to Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science Bringing you all the science news that we have found that we love and joy I want to share with you this week. There are so many wonderful tidbits. I am Just excited for the conversation. I brought stories about what did I bring stories about I brought stories about? regeneration and we have an interview About probiotics for the ocean, which is going to be very exciting Justin. What did you buy? Let's see. I've got the dangers of dog walking And something else. Oh, uh Yeah, does sound carry mass I'm sure you're gonna answer that question I was just like hoping too many new Blair, what's in the animal corner? I have spiders that look like ants. I have bachelor dolphins and I have Wikipedia saving species Wikipedia interesting, we know it's good for For lots now interesting. Okay. Well, let's jump into the show I would love to remind you as we do that if you are not yet subscribed to this week in science You can find full episodes at twist TW is org and All places that podcasts are found also YouTube and Facebook if you're interested and if you are in the Portland, Oregon area For April 3rd, we will be broadcasting our podcast live at the Alberta Rose Theater Check our website for information All right Let's jump into the interview. I would love to introduce our guest. Dr. Raquel Peixoto Dr. Peixoto is a visiting assistant Professor at UC Davis from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a research Associate from the Rio de Janeiro Marine Aquarium aqua Rio in Brazil She also coordinates the beneficial microorganisms of marine organ marine organisms the BMMO network Which seeks to unify and facilitate studies on the manipulation of the microbiome associated with marine organisms doctor Peixoto welcome to the show. Thank you Thank you very much for having me. It's exciting to be here We're excited to have you and like we were talking about before the show started this was this chain of events of Introductions of you just need to invite her onto the show Justin was told so Justin told me and then I reached out to you and now you're here. So If there's a huge amount of pressure Because it's something that I didn't know until Blair brought it to the attention of the show is that half of the Oxygen on planet earth isn't coming from rainforests isn't just already that it's being generated by the coral reef system. And so Working on ways to preserve a coral reef Even more pressure because it's maybe the fate of humanity that's in your hands. Yeah I mean the bacteria the microorganisms are providing This huge amount of oxygen, but there are several other things so the corals are very important for instance They protect the coast against waves and storms and and things like that they produce they are responsible for most of the economy for the economy of many countries that depend on fisheries and tourism and every other activities associated with corals diving Their source of cure for several diseases because of the huge amount of biodiversity and most importantly More than 25% of the marine species depend on coral reefs. So And they are also associated and interacting with several of all other marine ecosystems with the rest of environment so They are really important Very taken on their preservation. It's absolutely more important than any pressure Yeah, it's a huge pressure and people ask me can probiotic safe coral reefs. Oh my gosh, I don't know I have no idea. I'm trying to figure it out. I think that maybe they can contribute For sure at least for us to understand more about the relationships that we see With the in corals because corals as us. They are not alone. They have this microbiome this Community of microorganisms associated that it's very important for their fitness for their health So we are trying to understand how and manipulate it How did you get interested in this question? I mean, how did you how did you get into this specific area of study? This is kind of interesting. I start working with soil and plants And the manipulation of microbiome of plants. So trying to find bacteria that could protect plants against disease so biological control of diseases in plants and Dream I did that was my the focus of my PhD thesis and then when I start my postdoc I start working with a similar thing, but then I moved to the main groups main groups are Areas of intersection between the terrestrial and the marine environment. So I kind of mean I came from the soil I went to the main groups and I start working with a biomediation of polluted main groups oil impacted mangroves and that is very interesting because We start working with a picture that could degrade oil to protect mangroves And with this very polluted highly polluted mangrove in Brazil That the oil company wanted to turn into a parking lot and because they couldn't ravage a tape this mangrove it was Extremely polluted and they came to us to ask if we could find a solution like a biomediation approach to to make it Possible to ravage a tape this mangrove. We went there and our first thought was oh my gosh. I don't think so But Let's try it and then we selected some bacteria that could degrade the oil and we first before going to the field so long story short we we thought that we needed a Different strategy because the main groups they have the tides that could wash our probiotics in this case our oil degrading bacteria So we developed like bacterial peels that could slowly release this bacteria for a while and that could absorb In the in the sediments of these mangroves and we tested it in the in the in the plants in the small plants in the greenhouse But then we realized that our oil degrading bacteria were also plant growth promoting bacteria that are very well known and explored for agricultural systems And they thought that we could use this and And take advantage of it because we could make plant the plants healthier and at the same time we could Treat the contamination so we managed to ravage a tape this mangrove this pilot arrow using our bacteria It was awesome. Yeah, and that is at that the same time I stopped working with corals and I thought a coral biomediation And I thought that I could try to move and use a similar approach and that's how I ended up working with coral probiotics So we know that you know that the coral are these symbiotic Organisms where the zozanthellae the these little organism micro organisms within the corals Are working together and it's it's it's an it seems like an incredibly complex Ecosystem like what how much do we know about like beyond zozanthellae? Micro organisms in this environment very good question The first thing that the first thing that I realized when I tried to find the probiotics is that we You know very little about it We know more about and even though we don't know enough about the the zozanthellae Association with corals but the thing is that there are several other groups that are interacting not only with the corals but within each other and also with the zozanthellae and I went that's how everything started because I went to the literature and I found some isolated papers showing some beneficial mechanisms that the Bacteria or the microorganisms could offer to corals and then we put them all together and We coined this name this at this term beneficial microorganisms for corals the BMC that would be the specific probiotics for corals and we know something about them but we are still trying to figure out all the Connections and how they respond to stress how they protect corals And that's why it's so interesting also to work at probiotics because when we manipulated when we manipulate the conditions And we test it over time We can see how these mechanisms are affected and how they affect corals when we have corals protected or not and then that all the the whole idea Behind the development of probiotics. It's not only to protect corals, but also to understand more about all these complex interactions. I Mean, there's several mechanisms that we know and way more than we don't know And we are trying to figure out. Yeah, I mean we've got such a I mean thinking about the microbiota for humans And people are like, I'm gonna eat yogurt, you know, but we don't know how much that helps or doesn't help or You know, it's like one kind of bacteria when we have hundreds to thousands in each of us, right? Yeah And every day we have different and know a new knowledge about it new papers new studies coming out showing that even our behavior can be affected or That different behaviors are highly connected or correlated with shifts in this microbiome our gut microbiome So we are still learning we know that something's going on. I mean they at least respond to those Stresses and at some level we know that mechanisms some mechanisms are actively Promoted by this microbiome. So why not try to to use it in our favor? And as for the yogurt it's more or less the same thing The thing that we are trying to do is trying we are trying to give yogurts to corals to protect them make them healthier to resist Global change and and other I mean several different impacts. So so I was wondering about specifically What We are trying to help with With the the probiotics for the coral because I know it's kind of this mixed bag of stressors is what we're dealing with right now Right. So we have ocean acidification. We have uh, we have acidity issues We have sea level rise. So there's less sun getting to the bottom of the corals there's Water temperature change. There's Sunscreen in the water that are hurting their ability to photosynthesize So corals have this kind of mixed bag of different threats What particularly are we trying to help with a with a probiotic? so We have different aims specific aims in the lab and different research going on But the whole idea is more or less that if you use probiotics, you are not necessarily Focusing only one stressor because the idea is that you make the organism healthier and then it can resist any different types of stress so This is more or less what we try because we were at that point when I moved from the main group to corals We were trying to focus on oil. We are trying to develop a biomedical approach to protect them Against oil spews and at that point we thought because of the plants experience Our experience with plants in main groups. We thought that well, we can definitely focus on the oil degradation But we can add some other things that could improve the fitness of these corals because it's just like us If you are healthier, we are more resistant against disease or against any other stressors So it's more as the same idea, but we use this general idea And we add some specific components for different because we work with consortium consortia of bacteria for different Mechanisms or different aims. So basically now we have this background of things that we think that could promote health make them stronger like if you have more nutrients if you have if you can cope with some stressors like Oxidative stress or other things you are healthier and then we can add things for instance now we have Some studies going on to protect them against specific pathogens. So we add Bacteria that are natural antagonistic to that specific Pathogen we are also trying to develop some strategy to make them grow to promote coral growth because that could be using coral nurseries For restoration approach. So if you can if you can make them grow faster Then we can take some time and we can go for the restoration approach itself Faster and as a secondary effect that we really want to see is that maybe we can also Contribute to carbon sequestration if you make them grow faster They can sequestrate carbon and act as storage and so it's a win-win strategy if we can make it When you're looking for specific bacteria or the that make up the populations that they're that are naturally in the coral And the one and bacteria that you might want to be adding How do you go about doing it? Is it a like data-heavy genomics approach or are you are you sampling and How does it work? How do you make it? So far we isolated native bacteria from the color species that we The two species that we are working with We isolated these bacteria. So we have a bunch of Cultures and then we go and we test we test them for different mechanisms screening process that we go to look at the genes In some cases and the phenotype in others. So for instance, we test the production of catalysts that can be a very good antioxidant Thing that we want to use compound that we want to use So we test it and we check for the best producers of catalysts This is a phenotypic test that we do We can also look at the genome or we can test for different or specific genes Using pcr for instance if they fix nitrogen if they they how if they they degrade MSP or other things that we want to see So we combine those different things In some cases we also look at the microbiome that we know We know more or less the core microbiome of that coral and we try to attack to also use some of the dominant members That we think that could be there for some reason And so we at this point we are kind of combining things. We used to say that we are kind of Uh, it's alchemy. It's kind of Gandalf. Let's use these and that No, I'm I'm kidding But I mean we have this Level of knowledge that we want to add and at some point I have to decide the things that we think that that for that specific And it's more interesting to use what's sort of interesting to me too is that It's your you're almost like creating the medicine of Coral reefs from the microbiome out and it just I like I keep thinking What have we had done this in humans? What if we had like started with the microbiome in humans and then we're like, okay Well, once we have this microbiome look we have these different affects in behavior or in ailment And it's a really fascinating approach in that direction. Yeah Yeah, I think that people are trying to develop things like that for humans specific But one thing that it's interesting to mention is that at some point some people started to talk about probiotics and it was very a hot Topic everybody but it was talking about this and people start using it randomly like with no specific selection of I have I have several probiotics that I that I offer through this show that are just microbes that I like More of them There's no evidence or any trials behind it. I just like those. I'm really pro Probiotic most people are using probiotics like that some and some cases some people get probiotics for humans And they just use for fish aquaculture or something like this our idea is to develop something that it's very specific It's kind of personalized medicine for corals. That's what we want to do And and that's why what I think that we should do for environmental sciences in general not only for corals But environmental probiotics for specific aims when we are working with a biomediation that we know that we can't use A consortium that you're using Antarctica In Rio or in Bahia because the conditions are completely different And so the bugs won't have the same metabolism or won't be able to adapt And so I think that if you start to think about environmental restoration We need to Accept that this is something that we have to be very specific and start to work with personalized medicine for the environment Yeah, because the nutrients that are available In different places are so differing that you can't just apply a nutrient sort of specific model to You have to know or you have to understand the microbiome first to understand what can be processed And then maybe you can do a combination of of adding both But a nutrients alone doesn't Several other things will be different. Uh, I mean blar mentioned that some places will have other threats Not only temperatures some places will be also contaminated with oil or Or sea level rise will be a problem or anything. I mean several other things. So I think we have to look at that Uh specific area and and go with something that it's specifically designed for it Of course, you can have a general idea and a general thing that can be used, but we always have to adapt Uh, and I think that we've been always working like this in Brazil for biomediation my group Uh, uh, you know the collaborators we've been trying to develop things like that that can work there It's not necessarily the same thing that we work somewhere else. And so But lessons learned there would have formed everywhere, right? Yeah, do you have an area that you're you have an eye on for field trials right now in terms of coral reefs? This is a very good question. I wish I had yes, I have several Uh, the only thing is that we need the permits. It's great. Right. Yeah Uh, but one interesting thing that we have is that we are building Uh, uh reef from scratch at the biosphere to ocean in Arizona with Diane Thompson Who is the leader the director of the ocean there and with several other colleagues? We are trying to build this this coral reef from scratch and past Different and radical approaches before we go to the field There in this this the largest artificial ocean in the world And we are going to have several uh benefits from doing that We're gonna have all the process the biogeochemical process Being monitored from the beginning and we're gonna have answers and several not I mean new knowledge about how Things change over and along the way and then when we have a very resilient reef We are going to stress it and destroy it. No, I'm just kidding Yeah, I mean we are going to build this we want to build this resilient reef and at some point we're gonna stress it out and test different solutions Radical interventions before we go to the field so we can know whether this can be efficient or cause any harm to any of the species And I'm super excited about it So thinking from the perspective of you're Putting going to be adding beneficial bacteria bacteria that are beneficial to corals We know that when even beneficial bacteria get out of Balance in a population that they can be detrimental So is what are the various challenges to thinking about Using bacteria for coral health? Yeah, we We have the same concern that we are increasing the numbers. We are using native things that are beneficial But we are increasing the numbers one thing that we Think that we see from our bio mediation experience is that once you have The the the stress Uh, we're going to use this bacteria this high number of bacteria. They will do their job They will fill up especially because they won't allow the pathogens to establish So we have high numbers of beneficial bacteria that will take care Uh, they will take over the the environment and after the situation after the conditions Turn back to the normal the trend is that the community will also Get back to the normal and get balanced But of course, this is something that we don't know. That's what we've been seeing tanks And that's why you want to go to the biosphere to in past before I go to the field and make a huge mess I I don't think We'll just make a mess. Yeah Yeah, no, actually I I do think that it's not going to happen I think that this is the natural trend that we see in other Environments for other approaches and I think that the trend is that we're going to use it We're going to avoid the pathogens to to to establish We're going to to protect them by providing the beneficial mechanisms and once the the conditions are back to normal The community will get back to the normal balance and And get established it seems like that must be a strong Natural influence to to get to that balance because this is a microbiome that is open to the environment You know, this is a microbiome that can be carried by waves going by It's a microbiome that can be carried by the massive diversity Of fish species that are that are visiting So there must be it's not just an apple that you're eating It's not a really a contained situation to the point where Yeah, it seems like it must Through all of the other environmental factors that are there be Ultimately will always be self-regulating. Yeah, regardless of which direction we've pushed it in. Yeah, but those nudges maybe Mediate a specific issue for a while until it can get back to that balance. That's really fascinating One thing that we are trying to do is that we eliminate all the potential known pathogens that we find So we are not using zebras or you're not using pathogens that can be there are known for being pathogen Pathogens for any species So this is thought of our selection We only select things that have never been described as pathogens to any species So I really think that this is self-regulated and I really think that it's good our Challenge it's actually to keep the numbers high While you have the event So that's why we are thinking about the bacterial pears that can slow release this bacteria and probably gonna have to re-inoculate it Like in our experiments we've been using like we inoculate and then we inoculate again after five or seven days And so we have the thermal stress Happening and we have to keep the numbers high and at some point what we see is that it's self-regulated. It's just something that but and in that period then also I assume you're Out competing and filling the niches that would otherwise be possibly filled by pathogens and that's part of it Is just a numbers game getting enough People I said microbes to move in Uh to make uh it hard for anything else to to show up. This is one of the theories We have we have different theories. We think that we can be using it and they are established and they are Actually doing the job that we want them to do by providing that specific mechanisms It can be that they are just filling out the space and avoiding the pathogens to to establish It can be both things combined I mean That's why we now are running new experiments and we will have all the omics going on the genomics, metatranscriptomics The microscopy and other things because now we know that we can protect them But we don't know exactly how we managed to do that and now we are going deeper trying to understand where they're establishing how they are actually providing its this protection and the mechanisms being uh stimulated or provided or Yeah Before you started this word. Are there any studies that uh Where people looked at bleached coral areas versus that that rebounded from bleaching versus areas that Bleaching resulted in coral death. Is there is there is there any microbiology? There are some studies Comparing uh, you mean corals that are more resistant or right? So the resilience because there there are all these stories that come out They say oh this area it was bleached, but look it returned and it came back There are several works showing that and also works showing corals that are resistant They don't bleach while all the other corals are bleaching the same coral species All the corals are bleaching and people are comparing it But at this point, we don't know exactly what is the cause and the consequence if the microbiome changed because Corals are suffering and that's why also we start working with these manipulations because then we we have the whole story We have the corals have the healthy corals then we start increasing the temperature and then you have The corals the microbiome being manipulated in different conditions Like we have these microbes here and we don't have it here And how the coral respond to that and how the microbiome respond to that and then you can have more information about cause and consequence because at this point It's descriptive So so there's a again half the world's oxygen quarter the fish Okay, so this is really important part of what you're doing is in working on ways to create corals from scratch And part of it is so that you can experiment them up on but the other thing about that is Are we possibly going to get to a point where We're going to need to create coral reefs in places that they weren't before because of the temperature changes that have happened and this is going to be Trying to keep up with the changing environment less so about preservation on some level I mean we've been doing the same question to us. I mean a corals going to to to actually move to other areas that we don't have Colonized before I mean We don't know yes as we know that some corals are actually some we also have some people Suggesting that we can bring species from one area to another area that is dying because it's gone And then we can have like a chorus from the in the pacific in florida and caribbean Because because people who are arborists in the like are people in in charge of forests are already doing this and suggesting this Yeah, whereas if a forest is burned They don't replant with the trees that were there They replant with the trees that will be more accustomed to that environment 20 years 30 years 40 years from now And so there is this sort of this view forward looking Accepting a fate of global warming. Yeah, that's that's taking place in national parks And I was wondering yeah, is so the same people are suggesting the same sort of thing People are suggesting the same thing. But the thing is that diversity is very important too To I mean to keep the the ecosystem functioning and all the services that it provides So there are people suggesting as I mentioned there are some corals that are resistant Some people call them super corals, but they are super against temperature They are not the majority they don't dominate the reef. So they are very likely Sensitive to other things. So they they haven't been selected as the dominant corals But they probably are going to be selected now And some people were actually breeding this chorus and trying to go for a strategy as you just suggested Like to to to to for restoration of reefs using only These corals that are resistant But I think that most of the people even the people that are doing that are trying to use hybrids and keep the diversity Because we know that diversity is very important as source of genes and and ecosystem Balance and also resilience and services that can be provided. So this is on cards But I think that it's being balanced with the need for Diversity to be kept. So there are some efforts. There is a very good group in Australia led by Madeline Van Open Working with breeding of corals that are resistant She's also working with probiotics trying to make them even more resistant And roof gates that used to work with these two was one of the pioneers suggesting that we should go for it And we should definitely go for it too because I mean Last diversity is better than no diversity at all I agree And I think if you can if you can balance if you can Also try to keep and and work to to protect the diversity of corals that are not so resistant I think it's also important to I know my analogy use trees which are plants And I admit fully totally complete transparency thinking that corals were plants Okay We were talking about this before Sorry, just so I didn't realize I was secretly making fun of you early You were probably making fun of me by being like some people don't even know that corals are animals Yeah, amazing animals and very active animals. Well, at least you can get angry like visitors used to me No, I absolutely The interesting thing about them being animals, they do they stay in one place for the most part part of their life cycle is Like a plant. Yeah Stictionary catching food as it comes by right and then there's the reproductive part of the life cycle where they're shooting out their little Go mad go whatever they are for gametes their genome packets as it were genome packets out into the ocean and those travel over distances and so it's it is very it's interesting when you think of You're looking from an ecosystem perspective and Justin's idea of you know talking about trees made me think immediately of a succession of forests where there are certain plants that start The ecosystem and make it ready For the next level of plants and there is this is something we know very well And I'm sure it happens in the ocean as well and it probably Is also a huge part of corals ecosystems and their microbiomes that go along with it Absolutely because the the precursor to what you're talking about with the starting plants is having to might write microbes in the soil For those plants to flourish. So it does always come back down to the microbiome To support the the structures above. Yeah and sassel organism is in the ocean. They also have the microorganisms Floating in the water and they have to develop ways to attract them to keep them to use them And to to I mean, they are just stuck there. They have to be very efficient to survive and one interesting thing is also that we were talking about Refugees and and the way things will go and we've been thinking a lot about deep sea corals because deep sea corals are very important also to as especially as Store for the co2 storage and we also started now working with deep sea corals to trying to understand a little bit more about how increased temperature can affect them And also the interactions the beneficial interactions that we can find in deep sea corals Can we manipulate deep sea corals make a biome? Can we have probiotics to protect deep sea corals? at least so We've been trying to be very broad about these and compare also things that we have developed for shallow corals and deep sea corals are very different. They I mean, there's no light there They are especially in the staff that we're using around six 700 meters There's no light. So there's no This symbiosis of the ocean thing like this just don't exist Do they have chemo synthetic bacteria doing the same job? Can we manipulate it? so Trying to think of refugees and and places where we can find still find corals in the future And for those not familiar with uh meters 600 to 700 meters is approximately 0.6 to 0.7 kilometers If you're more familiar with kilometers, that's yeah So I was just looking because I was remembering that we did a story recently on the show about trying to find the ideal founding locations for new coral reefs and Back in december and it was all about sound So there's these whole other. Yeah, these other things. This is from woods hole. Yes. This is back in december on december 12th That the corals actually listen to the soundscape potentially it's just study, right? It's preliminary study But um that they're an acoustics actually have something to do with the suitability of a settling location for coral So there's definitely there's a lot going on with the music and attract them You have to put the the sexy coral music Yeah, they like tropical water A little carnival dance get it going There is a very interesting coral in brazil. It's endemic Species and it's uh very common in bahia. Bahia is a state in brazil that is very famous Uh for its carnival and how important carnival is and these coral species only spawn doing carnival And carnival is not even in the same mouth It depends on the moon and it depends on several things the spawning thing and it always Happening happening doing carnival. Oh my god. They are listening I was looking this one is about mostly about snapping shrimp They think it's about snapping shrimp and just the sounds of life, which makes sense Which is part of this other question, right is how do you uh reestablish or establish a new reef if you don't have other Biodiversity elements, right? So so even if we fix their microbiome and we reduce some of these other stressors If other species have already left, how do we kind of coax them back to make the coral reef work? Nice. Yeah It becomes this whole stream of like Actually the coral reef pays no attention to the soma music coming from the shore But the shrimp shrimp start dancing This fish excited Which like yeah, it's bring the larvae Help the larvae to move You have to have a full comprehension of this and it and it seems uh a very difficult laboratory A lot of factors can take control, especially right around the carnival. Yeah kind of all sounds like a good strategy But but again, though that is that is by the way that coral reef specific to that off the coast of that carnival That is exactly if I were to choose a thing to study that would be it Not some sort of arctic archaeology where i'm digging in snow looking for Not something not some hot desert thing where i'm gonna like track cacti No Yeah, but my students don't like it though because they have to go there and wait because they only spawn at night And so they have to be there Looking at the curves waiting with this red light in the head Waiting for them to spawn while everybody else is out there dancing and having fun That's so cool We'd love to know how to keep keep track of the work that you're doing Organizations that you're involved with that we can uh follow along with and And find out, you know about advances in this field. Where can we find more information? I think everything that we are doing is probably available on the bmmo network Website and on twitter. I'm always posting things out at the bmmo twitter my my own account There are also some things that ucdavis. It's always Sharing at the ucdavis microbiome Program, so I think those places are probably the places that you find on the Latest and things that we've been doing The the website of the biosphere to ocean is also being updated And more information about the new exciting things Coming out will be available there at the aquarium the real The general marine aquarium is also sharing but most of the things are in portuguese So it's a good reason to learn to learn portuguese. Exactly. I think everybody should learn portuguese And and now we all know And we're going to let the listeners know if you want to know how to say choral in portuguese Dr. Peixoto Coral Coral time word we can all say choral And I know I know some words in portuguese. I know Thank you so much for joining us this evening It has been wonderful to speak with you about the work that you're doing this is as justin said very important work We're not going to put any we're not going to put any more pressure on you here Of the planet depends on your success Like nothing else that's being done matters Compared to what you're working on. Okay now, but seriously the only thing that can save chorals Is the reduction of co2 emissions? We can buy them sometime We can make some things to help them because even if you stop right now You're going to have these accumulated gases that will still Provoke it i mean generate these Bleaching events, but the only thing that you can do is to with those things to count Unless you figure out a way to get them to sequester more carbon It's the fate of the planet Uh, we need to save ourselves. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. That was awesome. Thank you It was wonderful. Have a wonderful evening. All right, everyone links to these places will be on our website in our show notes twist.org We will be taking a quick break right now We'll be back in just a few moments with more this weekend science Science is coming up. Stay tuned Do I sing? All right, everyone I want to say thank you for joining us if you are in the portland oregon area April 3rd this weekend science will be broadcasting live from the alberta rose theater You can find information at our website twist.org Additionally if you would like to head over to twist.org I'm gonna do that right right now myself if you want to head over to twist.org You can find all sorts of great things at our website. 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Thank you for your support We really could not do this without you Is And we're back you're listening to this weekend science You sound so questioning Blair. Are we back? Are we really back? I was just I wasn't sure But it sounds like we're back. Oh, we are back everyone and it is time right now for our favorite segment of the show This weekend. What has science done for me? lately What has it done? All right, this letter comes from listener Todd bisque. He says I just started I just listened to you read the letter from the person who has Started a business getting brains from people who have donated their body to science to researchers My dad recently passed away due to complications from cancer He never went to college and spent his career as an electrician But he never stopped learning in his retirement. He was always reading science magazines Listening to talks from neil de grass tyson and red steven hawkings a brief history of time He had a closet full of science t-shirts and loved talking science so much Then in a doctor's office one day a person He was chatting with asked if he was a retired physics professor because of knowledge that my blue collar dad had learned The connection back to your previous letter is that my dad did donate his body to science And it brought us so much peace when she received notice from the local university that they had accepted his body into their program Thank you science for giving my dad a passion in his retirement and for giving us peace when When one of his final wishes was fulfilled tb Todd Thank you for sharing this. It is you know, it's one thing to hear from The side of somebody who is you know involved in the the distribution side of Of people's donations of their of their bodies their lives to science But to hear from a family member who has also benefited Peace of mind in this way. It is it's really touching and wonderful. So I appreciate Your letter and your and that you shared with us thank you It's I love it. It makes me think about Just how somebody takes that last step to make sure that they can help The future generations in whatever way As they exit which is so cool. I love it Yep It is amazing Thank you And everyone we need you to write in with letters your haiku your sonnets Let us know what science has done for you Lately what does it do for you every day? Send us an email Kirsten at thisweekandscience.com is my email. You can also leave us a message on our facebook page Keep us filling this segment of the show with your stories Can can I make a special request it almost died once and everybody's brought it back and I'm I'm so happy with all these letters We're getting so thank you I want to make a special request just because each of my requests has come true so far So I'm going I'm going three for three. I would like a musical What has science done for me lately? I would like someone to send us an mp3 or something For a second.  No Yeah, a musical in three acts. What has science done for me lately? I would say a tight 90 seconds or less Uh with musical accompaniment is what I mean a jingle Somebody somebody get in touch with that dude from hamilton that you know Yes Menwell brand I'm sure he'll he'll get right on it. That is what I would like All right mp3 you want something musical what has science done for you lately? All right Okay, that's gonna probably take someone a little bit more work. It probably will Yeah, what a challenge. All right Let's talk some science. Right. Have you all heard about the uh the Supposed second hiv patient who has been cured? I I did read a little headline about that earlier. I figured I'd learn about it tonight And you will because That's right. Um, so the This is not the kind of treatment that everybody with uh with hiv Is going to get uh the reason that this individual and the first individual who had this particular treatment Uh that they got the treatment that they did is that they uh developed Hodgkin's lymphoma and so they developed a cancer that doctors decided could only be treated by a basically a a stem cell transplant and Wiping out using chemotherapy to or radiation to wipe out The white blood cells the stem cells in the body wipe out the immune system effectively and to Put a new immune system in So they the first patient they did this and Found a donor that happened to have a mutation one specific mutation that is resistant to hiv And they found that it worked It enabled the body it it re it It refreshed the immune system and the hiv has not been seen since in that first patient So in this second patient, it's a similar thing. They used a Not complete radiation treatment, but a lighter chemotherapy more specific chemotherapy treatment So not the entire immune system was killed But it was a much more specific interaction with the immune system And they found and again An individual with a mutation That's resistant to hiv. They were able to give stem cells to this person That we're not from not from a complete match. These aren't stem cells that were taken from The hiv patient and then edited like we've talked about gene editing and this is something that you know Gene editing could potentially be used for this possibly But what they found is this is this is a stem a donor Another individual who matched closely enough and had this particular hiv resistant mutation They found that in the hiv positive patient That the immune system that there was rejection Initially and this happened in the first case as well but that rejection Faded away within a short period of time and a year and a half later the patient appears to be completely hiv free Wow So so many questions First one How How prevalent do we think this natural uh hiv resistances In the human population There is a small but significant number It's a small but significant percentage of people who have this mutation And so how could this be extrapolated to a larger use because you said this couldn't be done Exactly this way over and over and over well the this is you know right now we have two people that it's worked in There was a third that they attempted It in and it did not work that the there are A couple of mutations That confer a little that confer resistance one of them works slightly differently than the other and so The third patient that has also been reported that it didn't work in had that slightly different mutation Where it wasn't quite enough to be able to outwit the h hiv But it otherwise didn't hurt them. It sounds like any of this process Okay, so so in order to get this to a clinical trial What would need to happen? Yeah, so the resources. Yeah resources Of course, but you'd you'd have to grow stem cells from these Donors, right? Is that you'd have to culture stem cells? Right. So you you would want to have some kind of a stem cell culture Um, you know the other the other possibility though is we've we've reported also on uh this similar Technique being used in multiple sclerosis patients to treat multiple sclerosis There are um, also, there's another kind of cancer a lymph lymphoma that is being treated by Gene editing where they are doing a similar treatment but taking the patient's own immune cells stem cells these hematopoietic stem cells and Reprogramming them and then putting them back in and so there are a number of different Yes CAR T Yeah, so there are a number of different approaches using this same technique. The one problem However, is that this is like the last ditch effort where no other treatments are working because You're you're either using radiation or chemotherapy to kill your immune system And then this is incredibly invasive You know taking somebody else's Cells and putting them in your body and there is the chance of rejection and death And so this is not something that is taken lightly by anyone or you know, it's not like oh, I'm gonna do that You know, this is this is I don't have any other choice at this point So that's the thing with the CAR T therapy which actually uses it somehow uses a hollowed out hiv Yeah And it's and uses and incorporates the individual's white blood cells In there to then go get reintroduced It cures blood cancer in like 48 hours Which which sounds like everybody with blood cancer needs this But there is a percentage where it doesn't work and there's a catastrophic fail Yeah, and and thus they own this is the reason why you have to be at that everything else every other arrow from the quiver has been launched and missed the target before they will allow this And it's cost a million dollars, but But we are we are talking about The first indications that we have even had Yeah, that there is a and again, we this is the horrible caveats that always come with cancer or hiv curves Which is that it's a pathway to a door to a thing. However, yeah, however Actually, this is like one of the first examples of No, there's a thing that will work. There is a there is an end result There's a thing that can you can call Yeah, yeah And is is this is the final doorway Uh, we just need to figure out make sure that we know all of the other doors leading up to this one It it can work. It has worked. It may work Well, well, it may work. It may not work for everyone Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but but it does work Thus therefore like how is this now like automatically? Like is there a percentage of the national budget that goes just specifically To following up on this Well, what I'm wondering is further down the line Is is this something where you know, you get your your you give blood you figure out what your blood type is They put out calls for specific blood types that they need in certain situations You get on a bone marrow registry. You might get called up if somebody needs your bone marrow Do we all need to figure out who is carrying this hiv resistance so we can call them up? I do need to figure this out Right. Is there a specific genetic test that you could take to be a donor for Either this hiv treatment or one of those multiple sclerosis or or CAR T treatments, you know, is there is there something Or do you need not but one? Individual right and a incubation factory. Yeah Somewhere that says we're going to take this one individual I see a little bit of jerry over there. Yeah at this point. I guess two-thirds of Trials and and just Do a cloning replicating? conservation keep this person alive as long as they can so we can keep getting fresh samples and Just knowing what the mutation is. I mean similar If we know exactly what the mutation is then is there the possibility that we can Change the treatment so it's not incorporating foreign cells But actually is uh an editing of the patient's own cells And that's that is I think would be the the the better way to go But who you know who knows how soon we'll be able to get there One of the interesting things related to this story though is that in both of these successful cases cases and right now it's like Okay, one point is one point right now. We have two points. Oh look, we've got a line Is this a trend? We can't say that yet But we have we have some inklings of maybe what will come next and both of these successful cases The immune system Had a short lived Rejection where the the new immune cells that have been pumped into the body were attacking the hosts immune cells And there's a question as to whether this as it is an important part of the success of of this procedure working Whether that immune response of these new cells attacking what is left of the old immune system Is part of what kills off that dormant hiv Yeah Really interesting question. We don't know yet But this is the same this this this story of you know, we try things and can learn from it along the way and Luckily it has worked for a couple of people so far and it's giving us some really interesting information Um, yeah, they'd have a couple good what has science done for me lately Yeah, yeah, where's that one? That one should have been in the mix by now. Yeah That's quite a big one. That's a huge one Um moving forward some other interesting news. There are a couple of stories out this week and I thought it was really interesting that two stories on limb regeneration The ability to regrow parts of your body Two stories on this area of research came out this week one story from the proceedings of the royal society b looked at 35 species of marine ribbon worms You say why? Yay marine ribbon worms. Why are they looking at these? Well One of these marine ribbon worms a particular species has the ability to I think it's the ribbon worm lanaeus sanguinius Is that a blood drinker? No, yeah, probably sanguinius. Yeah most yeah this ribbon worm has the ability to regrow its whole body and head From just one two hundred thousandth of an individual And so in this in this uh, this It's press release article that it's written that that's like regrowing a 150 pound person from just 0.01 Two ounces of tissue or about one sixteenth of a teaspoon. That's like less than a fingertip Yeah, it's like okay, take a little bit of my fingertip and then regrow even more of me I can't help myself. I can't help myself. I have to say something. Can I do this for corals? Can we can we learn how we do that because we can use that for corals to regrow corals? Absolutely if the corals could learn how to do it No apologies necessary. That's great Yeah, I couldn't help myself The part that is mind-boggling is literally the part where it regrow ahead because that's the part where I figure like that's where I am Like everything else is Well, these guys don't really have a a brain as you think about it Things it's a little different. Yeah, they kind of have a glob of of nerve tissue But they don't have a Full brain like you think about it. Yeah, you tell that to the worms player What if a worm gets in a bad accident with a blender? Now there's a whole community of that same worm. That's the question, isn't it? Yeah So the interesting thing is we have this one worm and and researchers thought that phylogenetically this was like a a basal trait that these worms these group this group of ribbon worms That all the other worms who couldn't regenerate that they had seen They probably just lost the trait and so they did this analysis looking at these ribbon worms They found them all over the place and did a bunch of regeneration experiments to see who could regenerate and who couldn't and also looked at their evolutionary Relationships and what they determined is that the original trait Was not to be able to regenerate and that these worms there are certain species of them that it through convergent evolution. They Gained the ability to regenerate this crazy regenerating linear sanguinius Had that gained it in a similar way that other species in so the question is why did they gain the ability to regenerate when previous the ancestral species Was unable to And so they don't think it was an ancestral trait Right, so this is and the reason I think that we were talking about it as possibly They've had I think been an ancestral trait is because we think of like fish being able to regenerate an eye We look at we look at species that that going forward these these regenerative traits get lost over time But to know that we could converge towards it Yeah So this next study out of woods hole scientists at the marine biological laboratory Have been looking at the axolotl a salamander that is Capable They can regrow their limbs you cut off a leg. They'll regrow and they're just the most and they're ridiculously freely Yeah, really gilly things um But this paper is published in nature communications biology and They compared the genes involved in Regeneration in the axolotls to the genes that are Involved in regrowth of skin and other tissue, you know, we have very slight regenerative abilities We can regrow our skin But we end up with scar tissue more often than we end up with a new thumb, right? So They wanted to find out why What the differences and they're looking at these different genes and they found that it actually Goes back to micro RNA and that by modifying gene expression they were able to They were able to control the micro RNA and The regenerative ability of the axolotls So they found in the human injury response A gene called c fos gets paired with a gene called c june In axolotls, they found that c fos is activated by june b A different protein. There's a different protein pairing and it's these micro RNAs That regulate which proteins get turned on to be paired when and it's the axolotls and the humans Oh, we all have the same proteins. We have june b And the axolotls have c june And they found that if they played around and modified the gene expression they could control the micro RNAs and they Caused in the axolotls C fos to be paired with c june and and the salamanders to be unable to Uh to regain a functioning spinal cord after injury So but then maybe the reverses What we're looking at here is like in the worms, you know, the those ribbon worms and in us and in other species We have all of these genes that are present For our developmental process and our repair processes However, certain pairings get turned on at different times. And so it's this, you know, uh, this this musical You know, just wonderful sheet music of what when the violins get turned on versus the oboes, right And so it maybe this is what's happening in evolution that the the control of those micro RNA Is this this fine-tuned control that leans leads to Being able to regenerate yourself from 1 16th of a teaspoon of your bodily tissue It makes sense to me that there is an intermediate in between the axolotl and us in terms of regeneration Because there are regenerative abilities in other Groups in between us. So in between Amphibians like the axolotl and us there's reptiles that can regrow their tails. They're not exactly the same But there is regeneration happening there. Yeah, and in mammals, there's spiny mice that can regrow Skin sections and hair sections extremely well and we've talked a bunch on the show about how Bears in hibernation can grow back skin and hair to the point where they have no scar tissue I'd be very interested to see Good one. Justin you're absolutely accurate about that. Yes. They they undergo winter sleep using colloquialism here. Anyway Yeah, so it'd be interesting to see if To follow this narrative through to see if these same pathways these same Tools are being used across genera because I think that would make it That much easier to do some tweaking in a mammal Right and you know, we still don't know. I mean, this is this is one Gene pairing are there other genes that get turned on are there other things responsible for different aspects of regeneration?  This is what's getting turned on for a nerve to regrow But what about connective tissue? What about Blood vessels? What about the other stuff that is in there as well? There are very likely different cellular instructions for the regeneration of different things and so it's a it's going to this is just the beginning of starting to dig into this in in a very different way, but the researchers think this is potentially going to be huge not just for spinal cord injury, but also for neurodegenerative diseases so diseases in which Nerves have pruned themselves too much died back lost their connections How can you get them to start reaching out and connecting more again? These micro RNAs and this gene expression might be a big part of it. Yeah, and as rachel was pointing out though Yeah, I mean and maybe I'm over Estimating that the the coral genome is a bit simpler than the human genome Uh, because every time I think that like oh this genome versus that genome They should be and I'm like almost always wrong but if if if there if can you imagine if there's an application here Uh, but of applying a genome from something is as I would claim to be advanced even though all genomes are just as advanced over time Just everything's just as evolved. It's just didn't change as much Yeah to apply this to something like uh to corals would be Game changing for the importance of a quarter of the fish and happy oxygen on the planet People are trying to to manipulate the genome of of corals There is a very recent paper from stan for from steven palumbis group showing that they can use crisper to With abstasia and trying to use it for corals to get those resistant corals and make them more resistant So it's not exactly. I mean, but it's more less. I mean people have thought about it also trying to Maybe I mean we are finding we we've talked on this show about the interactions between our microbiota and our nervous system And the how there's a stimulatory there's a communicating effect between them the you know, the metabolites of them between those two And then we learned also that the the nervous system is actually responsible for the senile regulation of organ repair So you so very quickly these connections start to Very important and if we're talking about gene expression, you know, how is is there a microbiota Like can't can we affect gene expression that increases micro RNAs that lead to growth? And is that the pathway there is a student there's a new student coming to my lab from san diego adam barno His idea is to try to understand that if it's possible to regulate it Uh and use some kind of approaches to understand if this happened actually when we use our bmcs if some kind of regulation of genes can also Turn out to be the own of the reasons that we are managing the mechanisms behind the effect that we see Yeah, it's his topic For this thesis. It's also something that can happen So both things that the manipulation of genomes and the regulation of genes also things that people were trying to actually Reach out and see whether we can I mean we have to use all the the weapons and all the ideas and combine them all All the things Yeah, all right. Justin. Do you have a story? I might uh, let me take a look. Oh, yeah, this was uh, this one caught my eye This was uh clumb to university researchers. They found evidence that sound waves carrying mass Which is just crazy, but also feels like I've experienced this at a club at some point Uh, they're paper published stand in front of the base Yeah That's just you getting tinnitus is what you're here what you're feeling It's just all the hairs in your ear going no This is a published in journal physical review letters angelo esposito, uh rafael Cure Cure Chesky and alberto nicolese describe using effective field theory techniques to confirm results found by team last year attempting to measure mass carry about sound waves so They uh, they used quantum field theory to show that sound waves moving through a super fluid helium Carried a small amount of mass. It's very small. So this was in one second Uh of water actually in a in another state using effective field theory They showed that a single watt sound wave that moved for one second in water Would carry with it a mass of approximately 0.1 milligrams seems really small But that's not very long and that's just a little bit Uh, they further noted that the mass was found to be a fraction of the total mass of a system that moved with the wave As it was displaced from one site to another Uh, quotey voice. No, this isn't quotey voice. This is just a statement in this synopsis Importantly researchers did not actually measure mass being carried by a sound wave They just moved used math To prove that it was happening For a real world measurement. They suggest experiments could be conducted with sound waves as they move through a booze Einstein Made of very cold atoms such a setup should show enough mass being carried to allow for a measurement They also know the better approach might be to measure the mass being carried by sound waves moving through the earth as part of an earthquake That much sound could carry billions of kilograms of mass which might be visible on devices that measure Gravitational waves So wouldn't it be funny to like this is the current the way current meter from this study is Lego Which has been looking for gravity waves for forever, but it's always getting like ah truck went by and it set off the detector and And and a loud concert at the stadium and it set off the detector What if all this time they were also detecting gravity waves from sound and just didn't know it just kept ruling Ruling it out So how sorry you go kiki Yeah, the thing that's interesting here is this differentiation between The the wave In air that we all if you've heard of sound and you see You've heard of sound you've heard of sound you might have heard of it You've heard of sound before if you've just read about sound you don't know what we're talking about But if you've heard about it you totally know So if if you've seen ripples on water or the um, you know sand bouncing on the the head of a drum You may have seen the impact of sound where it is a physical Occurrence this and this is and this is so energy There are molecules that are trans that are bumping into each other And transferring that sound and it's a wave and it travels through The fluid that is air or water whatever But it is not just that physical force. There's this this idea that's been pushed along called the phonon Oh, and it's and it's not like a photon but it's a phonon like a phonograph So it it starts to allow The uh description of sound as a particle And not just the force that is transferred between the molecules bumping into each other Because of sound Yeah, and so it's a I it it kind of twists my brain up in a kind of funny way And so Justin is what this study Saying Is that the Beyond the mass of the particles in the air that are affected by A sound wave The phonon that is transferring They're saying that the phonon Interacted with a gravitational field in a way that forced them to carry mass along as they moved through a material so They're they're saying that the the Yes, they're saying that the mass is being transferred separately from the displacement And separately from the energy That then displaces other particles in their mass, but that mass itself is being transmitted Via these phonons Yeah, I don't even know what to think about that. This is that That's fascinating All right, so there is there's there's the phonon right not the photon the phonon and like a photon has mass So your brains are getting heavier just by listening to this show Yes This show is full of heavy sounds So much mass All right, moving on it is time right now for another part of the show. What part of the show was it? What comes next? Oh, I wonder I do believe it is time for Blair's animal corner with Blair Except for giant What you got Blair? Well, I'm starting off tonight with a story that was sent to me by you Justin Right before it was breaking news right before the show. I couldn't get it in. I'm so excited to bring it to you Now this is a study From university of Cincinnati Looking at spiders that look like ants now. Let me ask you first. Do you think a bird prefers to eat spiders or ants? ants I would say spiders Interesting very interesting. It turns out. I would well, I guess they both bite But I would think spider spiders might be more venomous. Spiders are tastier They're just so just I mean, I know not everybody has has taken the the taste test But spiders are way yummier than ants ants Bormic acid Okay, Blair answer the question University of Cincinnati doctoral student and lead author of this paper reported on here is She has a great way of describing this kind of this difference in opinion in birds Quote most birds avoid ants and and they're painful stingers Sharp mandibles and habit of showing up with a lot of friends try to eat one and you're likely to get chewed on by 10 More that's why nearly every insect family from beetles to mantises has species that mimic ants by comparison spiders are delicious and nutritious So she goes on to say I absolutely loved this quote That's what a lot of natural selection is about to convince other species not to eat you And to convince members of your species to mate with you and to do so at the least cost possible I kind of want to put that you know an embroidery on my wall I think it's a really good explanation Of natural selection convince species not to eat you convince members of your own species to mate with you At the least cost possible. I love it. So these jumping spiders have adapted To look like ants They look like smart spiders Yes, but this study is looking specifically at How do they go from spider ling little tiny spider to adult continuing to look like ants all the time and Still finding and attracting potential mates if they look like ants This is a very good question one that doesn't have a hundred percent answer yet But we have started the University of Cincinnati has started to gather some ideas They look like ants from the side Um as juveniles, but as adults their profile looks more and more spider-like from the top they always look like ants But it's not enough just to have the body shape of an ant They also have to act like one this is where this gets Especially interesting spiders as we know have an extra pair of legs compared to ants They have no antenna.  It's not just a morphology. They have to go through an act of mimicry on top of the more morphological resemblance It does not end there It doesn't there's more. There's more when ants against who state?  You're doing The ant mimicking jumping spider there we go. Awesome. It's so it's our new dance. Yeah, I like it um, so On top of all of this. This is a kind of jumping spider that can't jump Ants don't So these spiders cannot jump we don't know if it's because of their shape So they can't they physically can't jump or if they don't jump because it would give away Yes, we don't know so This is also all at the same time. They actually switch tactics halfway through their life They mimic two different species of ants during their lifetime. This is the part that drives me nuts the The adult spiders mimic a bigger ant And young spiderlings mimic a tinier black ant So their body shape does change somewhat subtly as they age So where does this all go here? This is all stuff that we've learned Especially this This wagging the head back and forth thing is something that we have not observed before We have observed spiders sticking their their legs out as antennas But this full-on behavioral display is something we haven't really seen before but what uh caught The researchers eyes here was trying to figure out exactly how one jumping spider Can catch another one if they are so good at pretending to be ants How can they meet each other and start little spider families? If they're just blending in with the ant crowd Especially in a group of animals jumping spiders that are renowned for you know Dancing and jumping and their courtship rituals as we know so They found something in in just kind of their preliminary research. They found something That was these spiders own sort of potential courtship rituals They found a quote-unquote handshake behavior Where they seem to acknowledge each other From a distance A secret handshake This is all a stealth spider with the secret handshake Yes, so as alexa says she's so great. I want to have her on the show now It's as if one says hi. I'm not an ant and the other says I am also not an ant Quote it's definitely there. It's distinct for just walking around and it's not something I've seen an ant do before But how do they know to do that? Is it just they're doing that because it's like it's mating season And so I'm gonna do this periodically or do they have we know that jumping spiders also sometimes do little drumming? like they have Like sound that they transmit Um, is that part of it so there are two potential hypotheses for that part of this question The first hypothesis is that it is about their view from the side So remember juvenile spiders still look like ants from the side But adult spiders look more and more spider-like from the side from the top Still totally ant-like but from the side as the age they start to look more and more like spiders So the idea is that it might be just enough of a hint that they can go.  Are you a spider? Yep, I'm a spider. Nice to see you But what if they get what if they get confused and like do the secret handshake with an ant is that and is like Hey, I'm not I'm not an ant and the ants like Yeah, you are. Oh, yeah, I'm totally an ant. Yeah, you're right This is not a behavior that they have ever seen in ants before so as far as we can tell ants do their chemical signals This is totally separate. Yeah, this is a do ants do touch their feelers So they communicate they they touch their right their their feelers, but they're not doing They're not doing these waves from far away. They're not these waves are from a slight distance. They're not in touch Hello This is a very mind-blowing spider because I mean just by itself I mean the mimicry of another species we see repeated many many times But sort of the mimicry of two sort of separate distinct forms of it's in the same family But still two different ants as it grows and as it progresses through its morphology and adulthood in juvenile That by itself is just Incredibly fascinating. Yeah, I mean it must be effective It helps them to not get eaten fine mates at low cost and it's one of the it's one of the It's one of this work like part of it is like natural selection You just happen to look like the thing Because everything else got eaten but to go through stages of multiple That's pretty that starts to get pretty intense. It's a lot of evolutionary time But it also reminded me this whole waving idea of something that occurs in other areas in the animal kingdom specifically bearded dragons They will wave at each other From a distance, but this is usually like hey, I see you don't you come over here So it's kind of the opposite, but it's more like hey, I see you other lizard. This is my space Uh and then awkwardly the other lizard didn't notice and so there was uh Did the other lizard didn't see I'm gonna have to do this again. Oh, they're looking now. Ah, stay away Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the other hypothesis that I think is worth mentioning is that they Do in fact have a complex mating behavior like other jumping spiders But they are able to do this in hiding So via this waving technique, they're able to sneak away From birds or researchers And these spiders together, absolutely So there's this is just a preliminary study. We've done University of Cincinnati did some fact finding here. We've learned some amazing things about what jumping spiders can do And uh, I can't wait to to find out more sometimes Yeah, tell me more about your next story. Yes. So speaking of mating techniques of spiders We are now going to move to mating techniques of dolphins specifically What what their social life is like prior to their dating days? This is a piece of research from southern australia From flinders university Looking at pods of dolphins specifically bachelor groups of dolphins and it turns out that bottle nose dolphins That make strong bonds with other male relatives in a social circle improve success with breeding When there is a limited number of females So this study looked at 12 different social groups in south australia And each of these groups had two to five individuals That they they formed quote beneficial alliances And when these beneficial alliances formed they had more sexual success Well, you know, this just sort of I think that sounds to me like you're comparing socialized dolphins To loner dolphins like the loner dolphin who doesn't isn't used to interacting with anyone else Is gonna have a harder time interacting with the female then at least somebody who's had a lot of casual like social interaction Or or I mean does it does it I'm hoping it doesn't say that dolphin male dolphins that have a lot of Female dolphin friends Always get friend zoned That would be awesome. Well in these in these test groups the females were in very low number So the idea is that the females were the the limiting variable So what what appears to have happened is that they tested sexual success by looking at chances for mating Which was higher if they hung out with other males growing up And that they were versus versus what that's the that's the question right so Versus smaller social groups social groups with less relatives Less bachelors More family stuff like that So, uh, the other thing was that they were they were better at defending females and preventing other males from mating with their females It's It's is use the competition in the rough housing in the in the pack of boards. Yes, absolutely. So part of it is socialization um But it also they think it has to do with training So just spending more time with the other bachelors that are related to you means there's more sparring that is not as Harmful in the end. It's more kind of playful in nature, but that means you get stronger That means you get better at defending your space so It could also be that the dolphin that was in the family environments that were was like Now I've seen how families go. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good luck. Have fun being married dolphin Sure, you have no idea the response, but then you got a house paying you got a mortgage you got a car payment I've seen it. I grew up around families Uh, the other yeah another question here that's being brought up in the chat room is You know, is this similar to you know a gang of is it a gang of males who? uh together like Helpy like, you know Good question. No, this was not a skiing up. This is not hanging up on females This was not a lone sorority girl at the frat house. This is not what that was. Okay. This was Just normal Dolphin dynamics and they just do better having had those social better Specifically when there's less females around. Yeah so my last story to leave you on a little bit of of hope and An unexpected use of technology, which I always think is very interesting in the animal science world This is from university of oxford university of birmingham and ben greene university in the negeth have found That how people use the internet is tied to patterns and rhythms in the natural world They looked at wikipedia page view records to look at people's online interest in plants and animals It was a huge data set of 2.33 billion page views Spanning three years. They looked at there were 30 over 31,000 almost 32,000 species Searched through this data set across 245 wikipedia Languages 245 languages. This is quite a data set What they found was that there were seasonal trends in wikipedia interest for plants and animals and that those Trends followed seasonality of species views In the wild So people are seeing things and going oh, I don't know more about that So that's cool. First of all because that just means people are seeing animals in the wild and then want to learn about them Which is exactly what makes the internet great When when people want to talk about how the internet has messed with society This is exactly my counterpoint is that some people use it to learn Imagine that Actually learning more about And if I saw a funny duck on my walk through the park today And then I would have to go to the library and check out a book and flip through a 300 page book of local Waterfowl to find maybe the duck I was looking at I don't know how many people would actually do that but if you can pull out your phone and type into wikipedia San Francisco duck species You probably find it pretty quick and you could learn all about it So that's the one side of this that I think is so cool Is people are actually using the internet in real time to learn about animals that they see and plants that they see in the wild But the other thing is that not only did the seasonality match the amount and the timing of internet activity Was found to be an accurate measure of when and how the species was present Yeah So you could actually reverse engineer this data to figure out Distribution and prevalence of species So so immediately I went to thinking about uh google did this uh this sharing with uh One of the medical associations or whatever. Maybe it was the cvc Um, whereas people are putting in symptoms I have a runny nose and a rash on my forehead or whatever the thing is And then suddenly there's this nexus of this symptom being typed into google In an area and then you know you might have a potential outbreak And you might be able to drill down on what that outbreak is and you get a couple of medical reports And you say okay now we have this in this Yeah, you could absolutely I can see how you could absolutely use that data of search engine queries for a plant or an animal and kind of get a A grip on the health or the motion or the The appearance of this plant in an area or the the sightings of an animal in a region Yeah migrations, uh the movements of animals around the world and the timing of those searches is going to show you that flux Yeah, and just as it visualized. I want to I want to see this data in a visualization I think that would be oh all beautiful. I'm sure it's not far off um One thing that's really cool about this too is that they were able to adjust some of their data for Not just seasonal patterns, but uh cultural events so for example page views for turkey in english were at an annual spike around Thanksgiving Um and the television event shark week also caused a spike in shark queries So if you recognize these anticipated spikes based on cultural events, you can you can kind of pull out that noise really easily So this data set is already so robust and it's I'm sure it's just the tip of the iceberg as it as were um But you could see how you could use all this data to potentially come up with something that is Pretty helpful in wildlife conservation. Yeah. Yeah All right, about 10 minutes left in the show and I have one more story quickly Dinosaurs they died right They they died out and it was this idea that yes the asteroid came and Decimated the dinosaur populations, but they were already kind of suffering from climate change issues and they just they weren't as As adaptable as maybe species today, you know, but a study just published in nature communications uh looked at a bunch of fossils from north america and based on their analysis they have determined That oh no dinosaurs were thriving And they were cut down So It wasn't dying Dinosaurs dying out finally taken out by a An asteroid strike. No, they were they were thriving and doing well and they were diverse And it's just the way you look at the fossil record and what we've been able to see From what was laid down as fossils and what we have found as fossils and the way it has been analyzed And so this new way of looking at the data these researchers from the university college london they say At these these dinosaurs they were actually very widespread And uh doing really well And and by the way, so it's great. Yeah, and and the mammals were great too But dinosaurs were doing really awesome and it would have lasted a lot longer if it weren't for the asteroid So you never know when that asteroid is Live for today everybody that is my that's my take home message the other part of that story is also Due to climate change that came much later It's very likely that the mammals would have exploded just as we did Uh, and that that dinosaurs would have gotten gotten pinched into a narrow band towards the the Equatorial region whereas mammals would have been able to expand into territories dinosaur free predator free But we'll never know See that's what I was going to say I all the time will just sit and wonder What dinosaurs would look like today if they continue to evolve? probably Man, I don't think we have our cities.  I don't know. We might have hunted them all what's actually very interesting is the dinosaur That's another story We hunted this giant we did we hunted and killed off this last But what's also interesting is the the dinosaur with the biggest brain was bipedal and about six feet tall So they're converging evolution It's like that tv show dinosaurs No, it's like it's probably like that could have been a thing if dinosaurs were allowed to evolve like a lot of the precursors and the in the Let's defeat pumping It's the brain like the thing that might have led to human intelligence. Anyway, my last story is give it Be careful walking your dog Okay, uh Fracture injuries linked to dog walking Went up 163 percent from 2004 to 2017 78 percent of the fractures that occurred while dog walking were amongst women And uh I think it was more than 50 percent Were in seniors So while you may be being encouraged if you're over the age of 65 to get out and exercise Do so without your dog because there's a compounding of it's and what's really sort of just insane about this story is that Uh, one of my kids grandmother Broker wrist Walking a dog which they say is 50 percent of the injuries. I'm sorry 50 percent of the injuries in seniors 78 percent of the seniors who walk dogs Are women who get injured And 50 percent of those injuries are upper arm fractures, which is exactly what happened in rama Which is To be describing the fact that like it was unavoidable Yeah Be careful walking a dog. I mean it's outdoors.  So it is There are injuries everywhere, but yeah, you know Anyway, be careful. Just be careful walking a dog. That's all we're saying or just get a small dog And and is as my mom used to say be good if you can't be good be careful Oh, well Thanks mom All right, we have made it to the end of another Episode of this week in science. Thank you for listening Thank you for being a part of this show for bringing us into your life for today I would love to say thank you to a few people who have helped to make this show possible To fada for helping with show notes and social media To identity for for helping to record the show to Gord McLeod and ben rothig others in the chat room who maintain our chat room and keep it A nice place to hang out and talk about science.  It's the end, don't you know? Which means it's the after show. Science friends, the end of a wonderful science show. The end. What she said? We had it. It was a good one. I liked today's show. It was fun. So I did a poll on Twitter last week about whether or not we should do change the the length of the show at all, whether I should chop it up and turn it into two shorter shows, whether we should make it like 90 minutes long, just make it one just slightly shorter show, or just leave it alone. And for a long time, I didn't, it was very, there was nothing significant for a while there. People are split though between making it like a 90 minute show and just leaving the show alone. So, though it's kind of interesting, we've got the people who are like, yeah, it's fine. I'm doing great. Interesting. Hot rod, you ordered a calendar? I didn't see that come through. I apologize. I will make sure I will go look for that tomorrow and get it in the mail for you. I will check. I will check. I will check. I will check. I mean, I can check my email right now. Are we are we in the after show? We are in the after show, the show that happens after the show. I'm looking for the poll, but I'm just finding amazing other things on Twitter. Oh, my Twitter has fun things on it. Yes. And is there, Raquel, are you still here? Yes, yes, yes. This is the after show. You're just lurking. The show, the show has officially ended, but we're still live in the post show conversation part of the show. Okay, yes, I was looking at the actually because she mentioned the poll I was looking at this now, It's just 90 minutes or other options. Yeah, I mean, it's always, you know, try and figure out how to create the best show for people so that everybody's happy and I've, you know, we've been having wonderful guests like yourself. And so I'm wondering, you know, should we have a cut it up so that there's an interview podcast feed and then there's this the science news podcast feed and people can subscribe to each of them. Should I cut it up and have it so that the interview comes out on Thursdays and the news comes out on Mondays. Same feed, but different, different things. Should I just leave it alone? Should we instead of allowing the show to go as long as it goes, clamp down on the conversation just a little bit and make it more. So, you know, manageable. This is also a, I don't know if it's an open debate, but it's obviously we have different perspectives. We do and I have different perspectives. Absolutely. And so, but I tend to look towards my own YouTubey consumption. And if there's a three minute video, I don't want to click on it because I don't want to go for three minutes and then have an ad and then have it go to something else that I don't know what it's going to be. I'm more likely to tune into something that's really long form, knowing that that's the content that's going to be on for a long time. And I won't have to fuss with the electronic device to go. No, I didn't mean for you to rabbit hole me into something completely different that I'm not interested in. I choose long form every time over short form when it comes to YouTube. And at least in that, in that moment. Now, it might be different for podcasting listeners, although I kind of suspect. So, can I, can I say something about podcasts? Because I, I listen to podcasts probably like four hours a day. Um, I, my sweet spot is for my listening is 45 minutes to like an hour and 15. No, it's just because I don't know. It's a weird, like I think it's a brainwave thing. But after about the 90 minute mark, I will start to lose interest. No matter what it is. Okay, but I will listen. But I will listen to six of the same 40 minute show in a row. But it's, it's kind of the reset of the brainwave for some reason. And also the ability to be like, I finished that show. Let me skip to another show that I enjoy and then skip back to this feed that I think is really valuable, which is why if we're going to continue to do two hour shows, I think there also is something really cool about plopping down special editions when we do interviews midweek. I think there's something really cool about that. It's like splitting it into two one hour. Yeah. So we could still, it could still be one YouTube video potentially if we wanted. And just in, in the podcast feed, we would have, we would separate it. Yeah. I, I kind of like that. That kind of makes sense to me. And then people can get the news if they want and they can like skip to the next, they can only do interviews if they want. And this is, this is pretty cool idea. And I think YouTube has at least itself the capability to break me down. If you wanted to do that. No, it's all going to be me doing the editing after. Well, my point is like, I think, I think me and Blair in agreement in terms of long form, whether it's an hour or two hour, or who knows how long this after show goes, could be a three hour podcast. Uh, but, uh, versus, versus, uh, we had talked in the past about segmentation down story by story, five minute thingies and that sort of thing. And I get there's a metric out there that helps with number of hits that you've gotten for number. I'm not saying that anymore. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to hit the good. I'm just trying to hit the sweet spot. I find that the two hour episodes, people listen, we people listen. They listen to about 60% of the episode. When the episode is closer to 90 minutes, we get more of 80% of the episode being listened to. But that's the more episode. I mean, yeah, 90 minutes. If it's, it's more people are listening to more of the episode if it's longer. But anyway, does that mean that on a, on a normal week, when we did not have an interview. We would just have a single drop and it would be like 90 minutes or less. Right. And then really just 90 minutes. And then on a week that we had an interview, our show would end up being closer to two hours and we would have two 60 minute drops. Is that kind of what you're thinking? Yeah. Yeah, but it also depends on the interview though, because sometimes an interview is 20 minutes. Raquel was really riveting. I'm serious. Yeah. And so the interview went much longer. So it's also like, then it's, then it becomes a ranking system of how interesting the interview was, because all the 20 minute interviews, people are like, ah, it was a 20 minute interview. Why tune in must not have been interesting. Raquel, she was on for like an hour. We've got to tune into that one. Well, I mean, it doesn't mean it wasn't interesting. It means we got through what we wanted to talk about. Right. So I know, I think, I think two things, Raquel is one of the longest interviews, and I think she's one of the fastest talkers. That also means like the content was. So there is, but you're right, Blair, there is an efficiency level. I can't, I can't wait to hear what people have who listen to the show on like two times, two and a half times speed in the podcast. They're going to be like that interview. It was so fast. It's good. So this is, and this is something that the audience that's still present missed, because we talked about this in the pre-show. But Raquel came to us as a recommendation of somebody really have to interview by two, two people I know, but sort, but the recommendations were disparate. They were separate recommendations for this. So this is how this became like a high priority to get you on the show. This is really, yeah, they are awesome. Two people, two awesome people. And that sort of closed the circuit too. Yeah, it's like two people who I admire told me that you were somebody that they admired. And I'm like, if these people admire, we definitely got to, got to have her as, as part of the show. I'm glad they did. Yeah, I was awesome. Yeah, I love it when people, when people let us know who they think is going to be someone good to interview.  Yeah, it's always good to, it's always good to get good recommendations from people. I love it. So, so here, okay, so you're also one of the few guests that we've had that hangs out into the after show. Oh, but I think that this is so obvious because, I mean, I'm here, it's interesting. Of course I would say, but this is a rare opportunity for us to ask you more questions to ask the guest, how the interview was, like, how did it, how did it feel to like, jump into this thing that you've never heard of before and get thrown all these questions? And like, how was, how was the interviewee experience? It was, I think it was amazing. It was, I felt like hanging out with people in a restaurant or in a bar and talking about things and science. And then because I stayed talking about other topics and somehow interacted and came back to the things that I said before and see connections and see interactions, I think you should always keep the guests throughout the show. We encourage it. Thankfully, you're here now on the West Coast. Yeah, we have, we have guests in other countries or on the East Coast. And by the time we just got to the end of the show, they were troopers, then they're, you know, they're up to one in the morning. I know, I know. Yeah, hurrying real hard would be like, yeah, in the middle of the, yeah. Yeah, in this case, of course, it's hard. But when they can, I think it's a good opportunity to get to a very different topic, and somehow find a way to connect to the other. And I think everything in science is just like that. And yeah, for so long, though, in science, I mean, it's getting more interdisciplinary, and we have these connections and people looking for them between their, you know, their silos, right? And it used to be these, you work on biology. So stay away from these other areas, right? You're in, you work on ocean science. So don't talk to these other people over here. Yeah. At UC Davis, actually, I remember from grad school, it was really, it was beneficial and it was actually something that was pushed that the researchers were like, go talk to people in other departments, you need to go meet other people, go to other brown bag seminars, go find other collaborators. I think it's the opposite of, I mean, what we have now. Now we want to actually hang out with people doing different things, because you can have ideas, you can have, you can find things that you haven't thought about and that could fit your work or could be very beneficial. So I think I'm encouraged to do that. There has been, at the lab I work at, which cannot be mentioned, there has been a sort of unsilowing effort that's been, been taking place. And it's been at the time when I was introduced to the place, and I've gotten to sort of watch it unfold over the last year and a half. And it's really, it's been fascinating because I've been in the room when two people from different departments or two groups of different departments got together to discuss a thing and realized how much either overlap or the other person was working on that they didn't even know existed. And it's been like, there's been a very sort of renaissance feel there lately of people realizing that they're part of this bigger picture and that they can contribute across departments. And part of like the departmentalization of the siloing has been a in place for a reason. Meaning you want to keep secrets close to the breast and not share with your, your, the next bench over because you don't want that they leave, they could take some of this, but the unsilowing activities that have taken place have really pushed a lot of possibilities forward that didn't even exist before. So it's been really fascinating to watch. I showed up at the absolute right time. Yeah, cool. Yeah, this is my philosophy. Let's share. That's why I created the network. Let's share knowledge and protocols because if you wait them to be published, it's bigger. We're not going to have, I mean, it's not about egos, who is going to actually do it for us. It's about the colors and the things that we want to happen to me. Yeah, that's an interesting point, too, because there are huge egos in science and they're in some, you know, you could go to some places and it's all about what they're going to do for science, not what, you know, how they can work with other people to move the field forward faster. Yeah. Yeah, and so it's just too sometimes like that.  And so there's got to be more of an impetus to work together and not to have as much ego. Most of people, most of, yeah. Maybe there's a correlation. Just correlation. Correlation. Maybe there's a correlation between, it's correlative and it's a suspect because I just came up with it on the fly. Maybe there is a correlation between the number of women in science and the sort of increase in decrease of ego and the sharing of not, I wonder if this is, I wonder if this is one of the benefits of having more women in science as the, that there's less ego and more collaborative nature about it. Well, I think, I mean, it reminds me of something that's kind of been going on in the zoo and aquarium world recently. And I remember even, you know, I haven't been in the field that long, but I've been in the field for about 20 years now. And it's a really long time, by the way. 20 years, that's a really long time to be in the field. Anyway, in the, in the, in the short time that I've been in the fields, the things have shifted a lot from kind of competing for visitors, competing for visitor dollars, competing for, for kind of people's time to collaborating, because there was this sudden realization that going to your facility doesn't prevent people from going to my facility, it actually increases the likelihood. So there's this, there's this idea that like, oh, also, since ultimately we're trying to save the planet, we can do that better if we unify our messaging. So there's this whole idea that, that it was like, oh, I don't want to let you know what I'm doing because you might steal it and you might use it for your programs, or, you know, I don't want to develop this very clear relationship with this other facility because we're, we're competitors. But so there, yeah, there's this idea that actually we're all in this together. And so we're sharing more, way more than ever before. Attempt to prove my point. In the 20 years you've been working in zoos, are there more female zoologists in places of power? Brad is a really good question. Probably. I think in the, in education departments, it's probably not too different. Education has been dominated by women across fields for a pretty long time. But I know the zookeepers when when I started there were probably 50, 50 male female. And now it's like 90% female in my institution. It's yeah, I think the nonprofit sector in general is skewing more and more female. So maybe there is a correlation there. We don't have a causal concept. No, I mean, I think that my experience and my group of people, my environment, there are women and men that are very collaborative and all the others that have huge egos. I mean, I can't see a pattern in this sense, but maybe the way women work more, not because we are nicer, but the way we work, it's more open because we need to get together because of the history and other things that we had to fight against. We had to get united to actually make it. And then maybe we have this pattern that it's more open. Maybe, I don't know. Yeah, it's so hard. It's so hard to say we are or the other. I mean, I've met women with huge egos who Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, men who are wonderful at collaborating, you know, and the other way around as well. And so, yeah, it's it's very hard to find a pattern. Yeah. Yeah, find the pattern among all amongst all the noise. But, you know, the thing that I come back to is, you know, any ecosystem is better with more diversity. Yeah. Yeah. We always find a way to get back to the other topic. Yeah, that's what I always say. Everything gets connected, not only in environmental sciences, but everything, everywhere. So, does somebody in the chat room ask me to ask you who you would recommend? For an interview. Jennifer Eisen, have you Yeah, we haven't. We actually need to get him on the show. Yeah, he's definitely a person to be invited and talk about all these things that we are discussing because he's the person who fights for minorities and inclusion and gender balance and all these things. It's quite interesting to hear his stories about the conferences that he actually go to the website, his website to talk about gender balance and ask people not to attend some conference because it's only white male dominated. So I think he's a very interesting person to talk about science and balance, gender balance and minorities. And also, he's science, science that is awesome. So Jonathan. His office might be walking distance from my office. What's that? It might be an easy introduction. Yeah, I see. I I know Jonathan. I just need to send him an email that this is this is a good reminder that I just send the email.  We have a recommendation based on multiple recommendations. See that recommend. Like this is how this chain works. Very similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jonathan's amazing. There's also Harris Lee in here at UC Davis, who's leading this earth by a genome project. He's trying to sequence all the genomes in the planet of what's his what's it? What's Harris Lee when he he used to be the vice provost of science of research. He's also a person to talk. There you are. Super interesting. Cool. Yeah. I like interesting people doing interesting things. Yeah. That was strengths. This is already turned into two potential interviews. Good question. There we go. Yeah. We will keep it going. Yeah, one thing that I think is so the combination in the last couple of decades of genomics and transcriptomics and, you know, the. Along with microbiology, has just allowed it to explode. Yeah, definitely. I feel like we wouldn't be where we are if though, you know, if these two different worlds didn't come together. Yes, yes. And and also I agree. It's definitely a changing topic for us moment for us. But we also need to at this time, I think balance a little bit of this knowledge that we have from theomics and the tools and also get back to the lab and run experiments like I'm doing and others are doing like manipulating things and looking at the bugs and trying to get also answers in the real life. Like, you know, all these mechanisms, but can we see this here? Can we use it? Can we take advantage of all this knowledge or actually see this in the real life? I think both things have to go together to get along. And because then I see that some people were just only moving to the side of the balance. And so we have all this data and data that we can't manage. And is it not the real world? Yeah, it's real world. The problem is we can now this is this is what I do. I can do this human genome project over the weekend. I set it up on a Friday and when I come back on a Monday, I did the human genome amount of base calling. Now, question is, what does that mean? It means absolutely nothing without testing. Yes, that's my point. That's my point. It's crucial. It's super interesting. It's I mean, it represents the this change, this advances that we have. But we need to actually learn how to test it, to use it, to prove it sometimes. And there's and it is so much data that it is on some level unusable because there's so much. But on the other hand, once you start to drill down on mechanisms, you can get you can really find to how a mechanism works, like we've never been able to before. And so so there's there's there's both sides of that, but we do need to we do need the experimentation that's being done like you're doing or in any lab setting gives a result to go and drill down on to figure out. Yeah, yeah, you just can't. It's not a blueprint. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The genome is not a blueprint of unfortunately. Yeah, it would be fantastic. It would be amazing. Yeah. But basically what it is, it's like a close circuit video of everything that's happened every day over years. And so you just need to know what they meant something to to zero in on and see what that close circuit TV to follow this analogy to see what event happened on that day. You need to have something of an event to drill down on. Yeah, and if you want a third indication of person to talk with, maybe Diane Thompson, who is the director of the biosphere to Ocean, because she's actually preparing the ground for us to test several things and run these experimental tests. Yeah, so this is the first I've heard of this because at first you're talking about the where else put an ocean but in Arizona. Yeah, I'm not the best at geography, but I was like, hey, I don't know if I would trust those people telling you to go to the ocean. This is the first I've heard of this project. So this opened my eyes to that. That's that's really was originally, I don't know if you if you never heard about this project, the biosphere to itself, it was designed to test like if it could build a structure that could be all self-sustaining and be built in the future in Mars. And then the concrete sucked out all the oxygen. Yeah, it calculated how much work. Yeah, it did not work because of how much oxygen that the concrete that they put within the structure is going to pull out and people are like, I'm getting dizzy in here. No, they have a very interesting lung in the system. It's quite interesting, but it didn't work for several reasons, including CO2, but they could have actually managed that. But especially people in clouds that are saturated together are not always easy to handle. Exactly. But the good thing is that they have this amazing structure where they have some ecosystems reproduce. So they have tropical forests, a main groove, this largest artificial ocean in the world. They had a reef there in the past. And I don't know if they stopped using it or looking after it. And so now we have this degraded area. And the idea is to build this reef from scratch back to this ocean and have the ways and the knowledge of having this resilient reef being built and then testing. And I think that Diane Thompson, who's leading this project, it's a very interesting person to talk with because she can talk more about the biosphere itself and other interesting things. She's super fun. I think you guys would love her. I would love that. Thank you. You're welcome. I love it. I'm trying to do two. I'm multitasking. I was multitasking after the show. I love it. I need to get. Maybe we all need to just go to Arizona. Oh, road trip. Road trip. Yeah. So we can either take your school bus, Justin, after you get it fixed up a little bit or if we can, if Marshall ever gets our V fixed, then we can we can take our air streams. It will do both. Caravan. Caravan, that's right. And we'll camp out along the way and we'll go to places that have fossils and interesting geologic structures. Ecological ecological preserves. Totally. Right. Science road trip. We're going to go meet the people who are doing Biosphere 2. Yeah. To hang out in the ocean in the middle of the desert. In the middle of the desert. You can stay there. There are some casitas and it's quite interesting. I think it's worth a visit. I would love to check that out. I wonder if they've got it on Airbnb. I'd like to reserve. It's very, very, I mean, it's it's the middle of nowhere. So there's a small play. I think it's Oracle that is the closest place of what they should have Airbnb. But you can also stay there. It's quite interesting. So in somewhere in the rundown, you're a visiting professor. I'm visiting here in Davis. I have my position in Brazil. So I'm in the scientific mission. So I'm here for three years. I'm in the middle of my scientific mission term. So but I go back and forth. I'm going to Rio in April now. Because I was wondering, because you mentioned you knew one of my cohorts for like 12 months, you worked in the same life. And I'm like, how can you be visiting if it's already been a year? And you're still like. Yeah, because I go back. I mean, I keep my lab there. Most of my students, I have 15 students there.  We have all this technology to pick them up. So they feel like I'm there. And I go there very often too. So moving forward. So you're really at, you're currently working basically at two universities or is the other the, yeah, okay. I'm here and there. I usually spend my morning there because I go to the lab here, but I have meetings and because they have five years ahead, hours ahead. So I have. And they're afternoon. Yeah.  So, yeah. Are you running? Are you managing your lab there while you're also? Yeah, it's crazy, right? Yeah. I have a lot of work. Yeah, it is. I know, I know sometimes I think, oh my God, how can I do that? But I have an amazing team there. Some people that are with me for a very long time and they actually, I have a lab manager and people that actually take care of it. Of course I have to be on it. And we, I mean, you talk every day about everything's happening, but I have this amazing team. Really lucky. That's great. You're not lucky. You are lucky, but at the same time, you put it together.  Yeah.  They're great. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it's amazing. And it's, I mean, when you have this atmosphere, I think it attracts more nice people. And so the not very nice people don't feel very, I don't get along and they naturally get exclude and they'll come along. Like the end. No, you're not nice though. Don't come along. I know. Not at the spider, the end spider. I see spider and I don't know. I'm looking in the chat room to see if there's, if there's question. Oh, Dave Shorty is wondering if there's a computer, computer modeling and number crunching that's involved in the, if there's, if there's any plan to do any machine learning and computer modeling based on the probiotics work and the interdependence. Yes. I was trying to find time to meet Marisa Baskett who's here at USA Davis. She's the one running some kind of modeling and approaches like that. And I definitely want to bring this and it's the next step. The next step. Yeah. Yeah. The strength of it. Yeah. Right here. Yeah. Just go walk down, walk, walk, walk, walk across campus. Exactly. The kind. Yeah. She's awesome. We've been in touch and we, we have discussed some ideas in the past and that we should get it, I mean together and find time to talk about potential ideas and then really need to do that. Yes. With all your spare time. Yeah, exactly. Like now. After midnight, between midnight and six a.m. And the kids have three, actually have two kids because one it's 21 years old boy. Oh my God. So it's not a kid anymore. Yeah. It's not a kid anymore. It's an adult. It's an adult. He's in Rio, so he's in college. Wow. Yeah, yeah.  Well, I have three, I have six years old boy and 15 years old girl. And are they with you? They are here in Davis. Yeah. In the Davis, yeah. Oh my gosh. For that, yeah. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. That's really cool though. I mean, you were able to work it out. I mean, that's one thing, you know, between kids and I have an eight year old son and sometimes I'm like, man, you know, could I go do something? He has to stay in school. What do I do?  Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. When he arrived, he couldn't say a word in English. And now he's kind of a leader of the group, the team after one year and a half. They're adaptable, yeah. And it's a very good experience. It's an invaluable experience for them, not only in terms of having this second language that it's a fluent language for them, but also the experience, the cultural experience. It's something else outside my small box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, traveling the world, going different places and experiencing other people and other cultures is always a way to open you, open yourself up to new perspectives. Exactly. You can do that while you're young. Yeah. If you're a mother of three children and running two different labs, two different labs. I know. I know. I am impressed. It's great. It's great. Sometimes it's crazy. I'm not running two different labs because here I'm a guest. You're doing, right. Yeah, I have some students with Jonathan, but he's the one professor. Yeah, I'm 15. I love you. He's the professor of responsibility. There's nothing more than that. Nothing more. So the next time I wake up and I've got like nothing on my plate that I actually have to do, but a couple of things that I probably should get done. Recall, I'm going to think of you be like, okay. There's somebody with a lot more on their plate who's getting it done. I should just probably, I should just probably do what I need to do. There's no date when I wake up and say there's nothing on my plate. That's what I'm saying. I have, well no, I have those mornings where there's like a couple of things I probably should get done today, but that's like the, that's usually the most fierce I get hit with. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah. The only thing I need to do now is to save the world. No, no, I'm just kidding. You're not like, you're saying that very lightly, but I hope like you're very successful in what you're doing. I hope that too. I hope you're very successful in your pursuit because I have now seen how it ties into the absolute global health of our planet. And, and we've had a fun like conversation, but there's part of me that's like, we need to dedicate a large percentage of the resources of the planet. To the kind of resources. Because like, if nobody else has figured this out yet, this is the most important thing that could be being worked on right now because it has implications across all of the things that are going to impact over the next generation. Yeah. Seriously. There is a very interesting work in Australia where they show that corals can, can build some clots and umbrellas to protect them when they are very stressed. And so they, we know that they produce some organisms living in the corals. They produce some compounds that can attract humidity and form clouds. So they can do that when they are stressed, which would be amazing. But the implications are that that could change a little bit the local regime of rains. And it can attract rains that would be in the terrestrial areas. So agriculture could suffer from it. So things are all connected. And that's right. So some people should say that corals are the canneries and the coal mining. So they are the first to that. But it doesn't mean that other ecosystems are not threatened. So the key thing is the CO2 emissions, I think. Yeah. We are always getting back to that. Yeah, of course. So at least there is an impact then, I guess, if there's suddenly like decent rainfall in Arizona, everybody out of artificial ocean. This becomes a farming tool, right? Well, except for the first 50 or 100 years, it'll just push silt off of the road if it's in a place that doesn't normally get rain is the problem. I was, it has nothing to do with what we're talking about. But I have a couple of half wine barrels that I was using as planters. And we had, Raquel was here for this. We had a monsoon rainfall today. And it turns out that wine barrels. Atmospheric rivers. Yeah. Wine barrels are very good at retaining water. That makes sense. Like pickle barrels, right? Pickle barrels, yeah. At these planters that were full of wildflowers that have just started growing.  Oh, it's running. So I had to go out and pick a drill and drill all these holes in the wine. And it was like, almost like a cartoon. Like they were like, these channels of water were like spitting out of this barrel. Like it had been shot up by, so I've lost the thread of it. Oh. Wait. But yeah, it's a bit over the too much of the good thing. Like you want the rain for the plants and everything else.  So, yeah, again. Well, it's after a fire season in California, then if you get heavy rains, you get mudslides. Yeah. Yeah. As we are having, I have flooding and things like crazy things happening in Davis. You know, it's, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if we, if we, if we follow this though, there may be the global fisheries that have a stake in this. There may be oxygen on the planet and which then translates into agriculture and every human being, every form of life on the planet. Seriously, like how, like how many industries, like how far away are we from industries tapping into understanding the connection and funding this research? Like how hard is it to get the funding for this research versus how many things did it impact? In the case of the corals and then the, it's, you know, it's, it sounds that it should be very easy to get funding, but it's not that easy at all. I mean, I've got now a very good funding from Shell, a company, because we, because we have some laws in Brazil that they have to invest money in basic research and they are really concerned about deep sea corals and things, so I've got this good funding from them. And I've got an award from the Great Bear Reef Foundation, but I, sometimes people think like, people say that, oh, you are probably swimming in money and funding because this research is so good, but it's not like that. We need a lot of money to do. I mean, we have several work that we've started, but we don't know yet how we're gonna analyze the DNA or the RNA out of it. And so we are still trying to find more funding for it. It's not that easy. I don't know if I don't know the right people or I don't know. It's not that easy. I think, I don't know, I don't know why. I mean, there's limited funds in the research world, right? I mean, there's definitely less on the whole than there should be for various reasons, but I think there's always, and this is something that we talk about in environmental science and conservation education too, is that like medicine and technology will always get first dibs. Exactly, yeah. Even though this kind of stuff is super-duper important and it doesn't really matter what technology you have if the earth cannot sustain us. Exactly, that's what I think. So it's kind of, it's pretty important, but people, I mean, it's the immediate gain versus the long-term gain. The immediate gain is always gonna win out. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Yeah, exactly what happened. And there are lots of other strategies and solutions that have been studied, like the breeding of resistant corals and other things that get some funding, but I think it's still not enough too. I saw something about, was it low electrical current? Like these grid wires put down and low electrical current being able to attract the startings of coral reefs? You know what I'm talking about? No, no, no, this is pretty. I mean, there are lots of other things that people have tried, like some people think that they can shadow the reef with some compounds in the water, but they are always bright-eyed and downside of everything, like you can shadow, but then they still need light and how to actually balance it. And so there are several, there is a very, very interesting document from the National Academy of Science that was published last October, October, 2018, discussing the solutions, the interventions that could be, actually the tools that we think that we have. And I remember that during the presentation of the document, the chair of this committee, Steve Fallouby, he said that we have the tools, the toolbox is full of things, but he actually don't know exactly how to use them. So, but it's interesting because the document lists some of these ideas, some of these things that are out there and the pros and cons and the limitations and where we are for all of them. I think it's a very interesting reading and I was lucky to be on of the reviewers and I was kind of, oh my gosh, I can stop reading it because it's so well written and it's quite informative. It's something that I recommend. Full of crazy and new ideas, full of ideas that are more like, they have more data, but... That's what we need, big, crazy ideas. Yes, that's exactly what we had this workshop at the biosphere too and one of the people there said, how can we go crazy? Because otherwise, I'm out. Because, I mean, we need to go crazy now. Yeah, that's perfect. Let's come up with all the crazy ideas, the craziest ideas and see which one stick, which ones work. We're talking about as a crazy idea, but we sort of also like 70% of the planet is ocean and we've talked to other people who are focused on ocean health in the past and one of the things that sort of just always, I guess I'm starting to get this picture of we just mentioned finance going to medical health as though it's just within the body, but it's almost as the entire environment that we live in is the ocean. Oh, absolutely, yeah. And of course it's terrestrially focused about all of our concerns, terrestrially. Most of the planet is ocean. This is the environment that lends to the atmosphere that we exist in. And it's as if we're completely ignoring the environment that our organism, our terrestrial organism is in and so focused on that internal that we're, yeah, so I wonder if we're going to be able to get to that point and I think Blair does, brings a lot of stories and is engaged in a lot of outreach in that subject and it sounds like your research is completely focused in this direction too. So Blair, how do we get the rest of the planet to understand that the environment that they live in is the ocean and atmosphere? So the social science research that I have seen and that has been used to develop the communication tools that I use through the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation, it's a lot. I mean, I'm just wrapping up right now a five month training that I led for Bay Area Science Communicators, but to boil it down to a couple of main points, you can't be lecturing at people, it has to be a conversation, you have to meet them where they are. You have to start with a shared value and it can't be an intrinsic value. So you have to meet people in a space where it becomes relevant. And in the case of climate change, the two values that they found tested across demographics, across ages, across all of the United States at least, was the value of protection and the value of responsible management. So if you can use one of those as kind of the reason to key into the conversation, it becomes pressing, it becomes important, it becomes part of current and future generations well-being. And then you need to make sure to focus on solutions that are local.  So it has to be local, it has to be achievable and it has to be a community level solution because if it's an individual solution, people have their checklist, they've done their one and done or they feel like they have the weight of the world on their back and in either situation, people become disengaged over time. So if it is a community level solution where they are working together, then it's actually the right scope to actually make a difference which is the really important thing, right? We can't just make people think they're making a difference, they actually have to be making a measurable impact but also that it feels as big as the problem. So that's like the two-minute question. Yeah, but I mean the bottom line is hope. Yeah, hope is the bottom line because if it does not feel like there is hope to be had, then smoke them while you got them. I have the feeling that when I go to a conference, I have the feeling that people get really into my talk because we go to these conferences and we only see bad news. Curls are being decimated, the predictions say that they can go extinct and then I come and show the results that I've got with our probiotics and people get so into the talk and I think it's just because of this, it's just because it's hope. It's hope, it's a solution, yeah. It's very small, like it was, I mean, I used to present the first attempt to do that so it's tank level, we have to do several things, we don't know if it's going to work in the field. So it's like when you discover a cure for one disease and then you have to go through all this process from the lab to the mice to the apps and then the humans. And so we are still there in the lab, but it's hope. It's hope, yeah, and like excitement. And so one thing that Penn State did in conjunction with Nokia in relation to this kind of hope versus this crisis or fear or idea is that hope actually creates more urgency to get to that potential better tomorrow. So it actually makes people more likely to act soon on future prospects, whereas fear and crisis actually shut down creativity, which I think is so funny. And it makes people feel kind of hopeless and helpless and isolated. So yeah, it's pretty interesting that social science is something, I mean, speaking of multiple disciplines like we were before, I feel like social science was kind of isolated from some of the harder sciences for a very long time. And this is a perfect example where social science can actually work hand in hand with the real climate science to figure out how to communicate what has been found and what it means, which is so cool. But interestingly, interestingly, this was no surprise to the hard science. It was just the communication side that was like, you mean we could communicate something that was truth? That was already, that was a real thing and convince people of a thing that's true? That's an application for communication. I had no idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that there's tactics.  And that's something that I've heard from scientists before. Scientists have said, I'm impartial, I don't want to spin, right? But that's not really what this is. It's more just making sure that you're filling kind of these cognitive holes that you're meeting people where they are and you're ready to have kind of a conversation with hopefulness and kind of this picture of working hand in hand. Like part of it also is recognizing that it's not you're burning the fossil fuels. It's not I'm burning the fossil fuels. It's we use fossil fuels for these things that we depend on. How can we continue to get the things that we need while shifting away from the fossil fuels, right?  Yeah, yeah. And it was this initial hurdle tha