This is TWIS, this week in science episode number 611. Recorded on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2017. The joy of science. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight on This Week in Science, we're going to fill your heads with happiness, laughter and cannibals, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Global warming research is facing obstacles, not in data collection or analysis, not in consensus or modeling, and unfortunately not obstacles to actual warming of the planet, but obstacles of opinion and willful opposition to science. Rarely in recent history has the scientific community been so vigorously opposed. Yes, there was that dust up over evolution and there may still be some who believe that cigarettes don't cause cancer and no matter how hard teachers try, some folks will continue to think that physics is just too unintuitive to be true, despite the modern society in which they live being dependent on the understanding of such things. And this is the challenge. What can we do to take the body of knowledge that science has compiled, the obstacles we have overcome in the past and communicate to the world that is living within its solutions? If we blind ourselves to the obstacles of today, if we abandon solutions for a better future, how many brighter futures will we fail to realize if we turn our backs on? This Week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I wanna learn everything. I wanna fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna know what's happening. What's happening. What's happening this week in science. What's happening. What's happening. What's happening this week in science. Yeah, that's science to you, Kiki and Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome once again to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back to talk about all the science that has happened in the past week. Wait up, wait up. All of it, because that's a lot. That would be a really long show. It'd be a very long show. We picked out some of it. We did, we picked out some. Some, right, highlights, our own personal. We're like the highlighters to the science world. We're like the yellow highlighters in Blair's backpack. Or I guess. Which are actually green or blue. She can't tell. No, I can't tell. They could be pink, who knows. Okay, stories tonight. What did I bring? I have got stories about spider venom. Bum, bum, bum. We love spider venom. I've also got stories about the poor Arctic sea ice and sleeping HIV and how you wake it. What do you have, Justin? I've got a small scale self-sustaining symbiotic fuel cell, C through silver and YBs should avoid almonds. What? Okay, no. All right, Blair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I have a whole lot about lab animals. It's important to think about them every once in a while on some heroes of the animal world. And I also have some tardigrade news. Oh, tardigrades. The gift that keeps on giving. I know, the water bears, the little water bears that could. Yes, they could literally do anything. And they do, and they do, and they do. All right, jumping in, science time. You know, usually I try and like load up the first part of the show with my serious science stories, you know?  Well, you know what? Nope, you know what I'm jumping to right away? Cannibals. Because, because, yeah. Cannibals. We have a few in our family tree. We humans. We do. Cannibalism is something that happens. It has happened off and on. It still happens among certain tribal groups in this world. But throughout human hominid ancestry, our history, people at various times have eaten the flesh of other people. And researchers, archeologists have found more evidence of this happening in a cave in Spain. Cove de Santa Maria, Santa Mayra, sorry, Cove de Santa Mayra. They have found fossilized bones dating back using carbon dating to the Mesolithic period about 10,000 years ago. Oh, that's very modern human. Yes, not very long ago. Still hunter-gathering, kind of going into, you know, we've got lots of stone tools in action. There's lots of hunting and using those tools to scrape skin off of animals and prepare pelts and not quite agricultural at this point in time. It's a classic caveman. Yep, very caveman. So hence cave in Spain, Alicante, Spain, 120 kilometers south of Valencia. Now, a paper in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology describes the discovery of these human bones that were found in a pile with a bunch of other animal bones that seem to be discarded and covered in lots of marks of many kinds, some seeming to be toothy marks, some seeming to be cutty marks, choppy marks. Many different kinds of marks. There were just putting the just putting the Y at the end of cutty, choppy and cutty, choppy, bernie bones. There we go. They just sound so much like much happier seeing. Yeah, they're trying to make it. Yeah, and it's brought up by the I found this in an article on Ars Technica by Anna Lee Nuits, who's writing about this article she found in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. She says that they delicately referred to these practices as anthropophagic practices. Oh, my gosh. They don't call it cannibalism. They call it anthropophagy, right? A new word for everyone out there. So they found 30 different human bones buried in the cave. There were skull remains from three individuals, one that was heavy set, one smaller stature and an infant. Only the infant skull showed no sign of cannibalism. So they only having two skulls that had that showed signs of this anthropophagy, two people at least were eaten and maybe more because there were a lot of bones there. And so what they say is their proof, aside from the markings on the bone, there is a their proof. It was in the pudding or in the pooping, the coprolites. Yep, they found preserved, fossilized human excrement and they were able to accurately say that they found the presence of human bone remnants within those coprolites. Well, that's the final fork in the stake, nail in the coffin, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, it's kind of like if there's bones in the in the stuff that comes out, then the probably were bones going in. Not much. There's no denying that there's that. You could say, oh, maybe they tried to burn them as a ceremony. Maybe they cut them up first before they burnt them. Any number of things. But once you know, you know what I'm saying? Smelling barbecue. So it's fascinating. They did find lots of other interesting evidence. So like I said, lots of cuts from stone tools that had been used for getting the pulling the bones apart at the joints for taking the flesh off of the bones, skinning and also evidence of burning the bones and then cracking them open afterwards, as if they were trying to really get at the marrow in the bones. There was a whole process at hand with the butchery and the burning and the consuming. And the interesting thing is that these bones were found at the bottom of the cave in kind of a discard pile with a bunch of more animal bones. So if we take it at face value, it seems as though cannibalism was just a thing that they were doing and the bones were discarded with or discarded of unceremoniously. Right. We got the bones. We're going to throw just throw them out in the corner. That's our garbage pile, right? And and if they're intermixed, you know, then it's not a time of famine, which is kind of what I was thinking. Like hoping for, right? Is this a Donner Party situation? So they did they were eating other animals. It wasn't just human bones that had been burned and appeared to be eaten. And so the question is, though, had these been discarded of another way and then over the thousands of years been washed to the bottom of the cave along with all the other bones. And that's where they came to rest. Are we just seeing their final resting place and reading into it? So was this a ritual eating? Was it something that maybe these individuals died and they were ritualistically eaten and then the bones were discarded of? Were they starving? Was this cannibalism because of hunger and starvation? These are all questions that really with the data that these anthropologists have, they can't answer this question. So what we know cannibalism has come up in times of hunger as a ritualistic practice in multiple cultures throughout history. We don't know the answer to what exactly happened in that cave, but something did and people ate people. Gnarly. Yep. Yep. I don't know. I mean, we've got one. I love our culture now. Like, thank you for modern culture and not eating people. Thank you. Thank you for the advancement of society and for it to be looked down upon culturally to try and consume one's compatriots. Yeah. Yeah. It's thankfully not the finish to like a successful MMA match. Yeah. Yeah. No. Moving on from there, like, I'd like to mess with your brains a little bit more. And this time with a spider venom. Oh, yeah. So one of the most venomous spiders in the world. I'm guessing it's in Australia. It is an Australian funnel web spider. How'd you pick that one up? This funnel web spider known as Hadrian Nike in Fenza. It has a chemical that has been identified that shuts down an ion channel in nerve cells. And the this ion channel usually malfunctions during stroke and can lead to massive influx of calcium into nerve cells that can cause brain damage. And currently we only have one drug that can really that's been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat strokes in which the brain cells become damaged and start dying in this way. And it tries to restore blood flow by breaking up blood clots. But it causes brain hemorrhages a lot of times as well. So maybe it didn't get the stroke, but then you get a brain hemorrhage. So not necessarily good. Also with the drug that we currently have, it has to be used within four and a half hours of the stroke. So it rarely, rarely ever actually gets used. So could we find another drug that could potentially work? Well, these researchers have been trying to figure out what goes on in the cells after stroke occurs and the this and the and the cells are deprived of oxygen and this create and it can't move away metabolites increasing hydrogen. And so P the pH becomes more acidic in the cells. So very they want to find out what's going on. And so there are ion channels called acid sensitive ion channels, ASICs and when the ASIC 1A ion channel has been destroyed in mouse brains, they they don't have as much damage as mice that haven't had that ion channel destroyed when they when they go through a stroke. 60 percent less damage to their brains, actually, which is significant. That could be a lot of function, right? So they're like, all right, what can we figure out that can block this or act on this? And there was a chemical that was found in tarantula venom. That specifically blocks the ASIC 1A receptor. Researchers gave it to rats and it they showed that it could protect protect the rat brains from this oxygen deprivation, high acidity environment that causes brain damage. And so in this new study, these researchers were like, hey, look, similar kind of protein peptide that's in this funnel web spiders venom and we, you know, we milk funnel web spiders for their venom all the times because we're in Australia. So they named it high 1A and they tested it and found it. It can inhibit this ASIC 1A receptor, this ion channel as well. Much better than the tarantula venom can than the protein from the tarantula venom. So it's like, all right, this is even better. It could work even better. They tested it in rats. The high 1A venom protected up to seventy seven percent of cells. So we have an it's much better. Yeah, yeah, up to three quarters, seventy five percent ish of protection. And it limited peripheral damage. It seemed to rescue tissue in some of the hardest hit areas of the brain. And it had enough a protective effect in the rat brains up to eight hours after the stroke was suffered with no side effects. Oh, wow. No side effects. No, I mean, to rats, you know. So next step, let's move it on the train of getting human experimentation. It's going to take a while, but monkeys are next probably. Yep, we're going to start injecting spider venom proteins into the monkey brains. Sometimes when you talk about science with certain words, it sounds like, you know, Dr. Moreau's crazy mad laboratory to me, but it's going to be great. It's going to be great. Yes, we're injecting spider venom into monkey brains to help humans. That's right. It's not that difficult to understand, guys. Yeah, it just makes perfect sense. Come on. How do you do this? That's how you do. And I did have another story, but I think I'm going to skip on it and let let it let I'll talk with Blair about it later. Because it's all about spider personalities and how so many spiders have such interesting personalities. And so I think that this is the kind of story that deserves a little bit more Blair attention. So it is now time to move on to Justin's stories. I know Blair's doing her spider dance. There we go. Justin, what do you have? Some things just work well together, like all of us or peanut butter and jelly, heads and tails, ebony and ivory. Doctor Who and pretty much any companion. It doesn't really seem to matter if things always work out. And like phototrophic and heterotrophic bacteria, which is the latest Yang meets Yang dynamic duo out of Binghamton University Electrical and Computer Science Assistant Professor Xiaokin Choi, who paired the bacteria in his small scale self-sustaining symbiotic fuel cell to generate electricity, which would have been impressive had it sustained operation for a few hours. But instead, it lasted 13 straight days, during which time gifts were given, songs were sung, and a lot of doughnuts were eaten. In a cell chamber, about one-fifth the size of a teaspoon, researchers placed a mixed culture of the phototrophic and heterotrophic bacteria. Phototrophic bacteria uses sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to make its own energy, while heterotrophic bacteria must feed on provided organic matter, in this case, the phototrophic bacteria. In which case, it needed that to survive. So there was a little, not cannibalism, but, you know, bacteria on bacteria, prey predator thing going on. While the cell was exposed to sunlight, an additional or an initial dose of food was added into the chamber to stimulate growth of heterotrophic bacteria through cellular respiration. The heterotrophic bacteria produced carbon dioxide waste, which was used by the phototrophic bacteria to kickstart the symbiotic cycle. After that cycle was established, researchers stopped adding food source for the heterobacteria. And there was enough phototrophic, trophic bacteria to sustain the metabolic process of the heterotrophic bacteria and the metabolic processes generated in electrical current, eight mega microamps, eight microamps per square centimeter of cell for 13 straight days. Importantly, the power was about 70 times greater than the current produced by the phototrophic bacteria alone, which is often used because it can be sustained easily with nutrients. And but now this symbiotic pairing, 70 times greater current being produced and sustainable for 13 days in this micro simulation. Says Choi and Quotee voice. The evolution of this technology will require additional exploration. But we, for the first time, realize this conceptual idea in the micro scale device. There are some challenges to using this technique. He goes on balancing both microorganisms growth to maximize the device performance and the need to make sure that the closed system will permanently generate power without additional maintenance or two of the problems we found. Long term experiments are needed. The current work is the latest in a series of battery related microbial based power studies, Choi's worked on. Last spring, I think we've talked about this guy in some context before. Research has connected nine biological solar cells into a working biosolar panel for the first time ever. The bacteria used in that experiment were the phototrophic. That panel panel generated the most wattage of any existing small scale biosolar cells. Choi has also developed an origami inspired micro based paper battery, a micro based paper battery that can use human saliva as a power source. And the battery can be printed on paper and battery designs are were inspired by a Japanese ninja throwing star through our.    And you're dope. And you've got power. So should I copyright the name Bacteries right now? Bacteries. There you go. Yeah, if nobody has somebody will now. TM, should I mail that to myself? Is that how that works? I think that's all you got to do. Yeah, well, no, trade markings a little bit different. Just text yourself, Blair, and then sit back. Yeah. Meanwhile, I will get out my envelope and send myself this letter. No, that's probably still not in there. This is so interesting.  What is, you know, permanent status? You know, how do you get the battery to live quote unquote forever? What is for every forever in the sense of a battery like this? And, you know, and how often do you have to add food to it? How often would you have to maybe add new bacteria to it? Seed it with new bacteria? It's kind of I'm kind of thinking about it in sense of, you know, the development of terrariums, terraria, you know, a couple of hundred years ago, where it really changed the ability of people to move agriculture from place to place. I mean, you know, we couldn't move plants from different climates because we had no way to get them on the ships to the places where we were going until terraria were created where these jars could encase the plants and be a living ecosystem that the plants could just exist in and thrive in and basically create their own weather system in there, right? And so is this that kind of thing, but on a micro scale? Because it's like a bacterial terraria. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's creating an ecosystem, right? And our desire is that if we perfect the balance of this ecosystem and can have it sustained, you know, beyond a 13 day and beyond that micro scale, but on a larger scale over, you know, I don't know how long it would take to have it be super feasible a week, a month, a year on a very large scale. Then yeah, then, and then the maintenance then is you have this ecosystem and when you have a functioning ecosystem, little things you do can have big effects. So the maintenance might just really be more about monitoring and then a little bit of tweaking, a little bit of a, so you could, you would have your power plant sort of manned by microbiologists who are doing a lot of monitoring and a little bit of tweaking here and there, but the more sustainable you can make it, which is one of the factors, the more sustainable you can make it, the more mobile it becomes or the more you can sort of set this up in a rural area that doesn't have another good place for power generation and these are microbes, these are living things they can reproduce. You can actually start perhaps with a small amount and grow your power plant over time. And yeah, the carbon footprint portion of it is there. The power output of this is still rather small. It would require something on a very large scale. You have to find a way to put many more cells together. Many, many more cells together, but if you picture something like a large operation of many, many warehouses of tanks of swarming with bacteria, producing electricity for us in the future, that may be what a power plant looks like. Bacterial power plants, the wave of the future. I like it. I like it. You know what else? Much better than my original idea of putting mice on those little wheels and having millions and millions of them running on apparently that actually doesn't produce very much.  Yeah. Keep pedaling, kids. Daddy, can we go to bed? I got to keep the podcast going. No, kids, I gotta watch two more episodes of Doctor Who. You stay out. Oh, they wouldn't even put, no, it's worse than that. It's they're doing my lighting right now, which is why my lighting's not that good. Apparently even at full power, they're about a 40 watt light bulb. You know who rates higher than a 40 watt bulb? Blair does. It's time for Blair's Animal Corner.  Wanna hear about the animal? She's your girl. Except for giant pandas, that's girl. She's your girl. What you got, Blair? Oh, I have some new, new news about mice and rats in labs. So in 2015, I talked about a, no, 2016. In April of last year, I talked about lab mice and some new research about what temperature to keep them at. And we kind of posed the question, uh-oh, have we been doing this wrong? Do we have mice in kind of environments that are not cohesive to good data? So a new study tells us a little bit more about mice and what they might need from us to be good lab animals. This recent study is from the University of Liverpool. And it was funded by the National Center for Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research. And I looked into what that meant. And it is an organization that was started nationally by the House of Lords. So the government in Great Britain decided that there needed to be some sort of national organization looking over the treatment of lab animals in that area. And so this group called NC3RS, they funded this research to look at lab mice. And specifically, they wanted to see how lab mice, how are you feeling? And particularly that was in regards to the fact that some experiments, they were not responding very much to stimuli. What could be causing that? So this new research looked at how mice were moved from their holding area to experimental arenas. And so the standard practice is to pick mice up by their tail. It doesn't hurt them. It's an easy, quick way to grab a mouse that might be scurrying around a container, move them into a new space. It's harder for them to curl around and try to nip you any number of things. It's very easy just picking by the tail, plop them down in the new spot. But not very nice to the mice. It's not very nice. It's kind of scary, the bottom line. I would not like to be picked up by my feet or by my ponytail. Yeah, nope. Absolutely. And so now in this new experiment, they looked at picking mice up by the tail versus putting them in a tunnel. So it was an autoclavable, so sterilizable, plastic tunnel. Kiki's showing it right now. And the mice would go in. You'd just kind of corral them into the space. They would go in willingly. You'd kind of cup either end of the tube with your hands, move the tube into the new space, let the mouse run out. And by kind of letting them facilitate the movement, they saw a huge difference in these mice, their response to stimuli in the experimental space. So they're particularly looking at their ability to discriminate between two different scents, the scent of a familiar urine smell, of an individual that they had smelled before, and a new one. And in fact, the ones that were picked up by the tail, they did not discriminate between the known and new scents. And some of them showed so little interest that there wasn't even enough data to reach statistical significance. So many of them were just not into smelling anything. They were just so traumatized. They're like, I'm just gonna be here. Can I get out here? I'm not doing what you want me to do. Anxious, scared, mad, who knows? But somehow the way we were moving them made them not want to do that. The way we know that had anything to do with it is that the ones that were moved in the tunnel showed what they call robust discrimination between scents, consistently smelling things and smelling some things more than others. So they actually were able to get statistically significant data. And odors are a great way to test this because mice have an amazing sense of smell. This is something that they should be able to discriminate odors. This is something these mice should be able to do. And when they don't, it shows that there's something wrong. Right, and so there's kind of a two-fold concern here. One is that the data won't be robust enough because animals are too stressed out. But my real concern is that a mouse acts differently if they're stressed versus if they're comfortable. Is it giving us different results as a control because it's not a control because this variable was happening that we didn't know about? We could be doing hormone-related tests on mice and their anxiety, their stress hormone could be spiking right before we experiment with them because we're picking them up by the tail. And here's why I think this is also very important because of course, we're going to base results in these trials on things that we later on are introducing to humans. And we have two choices. We have two directions we can go. We can either make the entire experiment an experience of the mouse as comfortable as possible or when you receive a treatment you can be put into a cage. There's going to be some unfamiliar urine smells but this is how we know it works. This is how we tested this.  We're going to pick you up by your foot and drop you into a cage. You're going to eat canola and drink water out of a metal pipe. But trust us, this is the way we've proven that this works. Yeah, so anyway, this organization NCE3RS now has a mouse handling video tutorial and they have announced that 2017 will be the year of laboratory rodent welfare. So they are hoping to, I mean, their main motivation is to increase welfare of laboratory animals which is super duper important. But I think also it is so important to make sure the science that we're using these animals for is good and is sound. And the way to do that is to reduce negative stimulus on these animals as much as we can. So if that means making them a little bit warmer like we talked about last year, that means moving them in a tube, that would be great. Directly related to that is a study I wanted to mention about lab rats. And this study from the Division of Animal Welfare at the University of Bern in Switzerland wanted to see if they could measure rat facial expressions. So that again, they know if their lab animals are stressed or if they're content, which now we know is super duper important, right? And they tested that by the two-handed tickling experiment.  I love it. I don't need to go too far into that, but there are two-handed and one-handed tickling methods. And by tickling these rats, they could then measure facial expressions. And they saw a actual measurable change in the facial expression of these rats. The main difference being their ears. Their ears were up and they were pinker when they were what we know as happy or stimulated positively basically by the tickling. The reason we know for sure that they like the tickling is that we could measure ultrasonic vocalizations from the rats that are essentially rat laughter. So it's associated with positive experiences like play, sex, rewards, desirable behaviors. They make this rat laughter squeaking sound. And so for sure they liked the tickling and then afterwards they had this kind of up pink ear. So they're not sure why they're pink. I would guess it's because they get flushed. But yeah, maybe the same way when you start laughing, you know, it stimulates blood flow that there's an increase in vasodilation in the skin and the extremities. And yeah, and that is also a signal of it's the pink color in humans and lots of mammals is the pink signal of attractiveness and it's like, okay, I'm open to engagement at this point in time. Yeah, and this is something that could be measured and recorded by a camera as well. So this isn't something that you'd have to have a human going in and Mr. Rat, how are you feeling today? Mr. Rat looks happy today. You know, they could actually measure this with a camera on a holding cell where they have these lab animals that they could just be taking this data and measuring the overall essentially happiness of these animals now that we have some of this metric to use. Yeah, and then the last little bit I wanted to mention before we go to the break, since I was talking about animal laughter is an awesome study about New Zealand parrots called Kia's. They are bizarre parrots.  They're still cute. They're very cute. And they have this crazy hook beak, but they have been found to make a play call and research has shown that it's contagious just like laughter is contagious in humans is kind of the analogy that they're making. They would play the call and Kia's that were not playing would start engaging in play either by themselves or if there were other birds around with the other birds. And more than not, they would pick other birds that weren't already playing to play with. So the play sound these, this parrot laughter sound was contagious and encouraged them to play. Yeah, absolutely. So emotional contagion of laughter might be not so uncommon. So we've measured it in chimps and in rats. Now it's also in birds and Kia parrots. And maybe this would be a good way to keep lab rats happy would be to play some of these lab rat laughter tracks and encourage them to play with one another. So then suddenly they're watching sitcoms. Yeah, a live track. One rat at a time, one rat at a time. So animals, they're just like us. And it seems it's interesting though with this contagious, the contagious factor of the parrots. So we've got parrots, social, rats, social, people, social. You know, all of these laughter, contagious laughter examples are very social species. Absolutely. Which is, you know, kind of makes sense, but it's, you know and maybe adds to the cohesiveness of groups. Yes, yes. Yeah. Interesting stuff. Last week we had, what, what did I have? Contagious itching. Yeah. Now at least we've got some laughter instead of some itching. It was an unusually happy animal corner this week. What? As soon as you say itching, I'm starting to. All right, well, should we take a break and let Justin peel off the top layer of skin? That's right. It is time for us to take a break. So without any further ado, you guys stay tuned. We've got a few messages for you. And when we come back, more science news. We've got sea ice. We've got see through silver. We've got all sorts of fun stuff. You're just going to have to wait and see and just join with us for the science. I'll be back. Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us once again for another episode of This Week in Science. I do hope that you're enjoying the show so far. We certainly enjoy bringing it to you week after week after week. And I mean, science, come on, it's so interesting. It fills our brains with new information, a new way of looking at the world, new things to question and be curious about, right? I often leave this show with more questions than I started with. And I hope that that's what we do for you as well. And if we are making you happy, if we are feeling you with contagious laughter, then I hope that you will head on over to twist.org where you can find all sorts of ways to show your happiness and to also help us out and keep this show going week after week after week after week after week. That's right, twist.org is the website that's the portal for all the fun stuff related to twist. You can get links to the podcast and the show notes, which have links to all the stories that we go through. 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The more people we can reach, the larger we can grow and the more we will be able to do. We can't do it without you, really. We thank you for your support because without you, we would not be able to do any of it. I can't believe you believe in that show. We disagree, but I still give a damn. The ramification of treatments from holy men leaves me slightly queasy deep down in the atmosphere. And we're back with more This Week in Science. Yay, more science, everybody. I hope you're all excited. Drumroll. Justin, what you got? OK, so if a reputable sounding gentleman in a shabby tuxedo beckons for your attention as you pass by an alleyway and offers you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase the rarest of the rare precious metals one coin of see-through silver, it may sound like something of a hoax. And in that scenario, it is. But see-through silver is now a reality thanks to the University of Michigan. By combining the silver with a little bit of aluminum, researchers found that it was possible to produce exceptionally thin, smooth layers of silver that are resistant to tarnishing. With this technique, they reached 92.4% transparency. So why would you do this? Well, for one thing, it could change the way touch screens and displays are made. Screens need transparent electrodes to control which pixels are lit up. Touch screens are particularly dependent on them. The modern touch screen is made of transparent conductive layer with a thin, non-conductive layer as opposed to the, I guess, old-fashioned version of touch screens, which were made out of paper. Touch screens sense electrical changes when the conductive object, such as a finger, is pressed against the screen. Ta-da! So we have an application. But we already have this technology. So, yeah. Well, is it just because screens now are made of glass so they're extremely predictable? The glass part is a portion of it, but we're actually relying on indium tin oxide, which for a long time was great because it didn't have a whole lot of other practical uses. So it was cheap. And then we created a whole lot of practical uses for it and it's now becoming increasingly expensive. And there's not really a whole lot of sources for indium. So demand for touch screens, not likely to diminish any time soon. And they even use this now for, they use it as a conductor within the glass of airplane windshields to help defrost. I mean, it's being used in a whole lot of applications now. Before it was cheap, now it's becoming more and more expensive quickly. And usually it's impossible to make a continuous layer of silver. So even if it didn't have a particular use, the fact that they can do it is a breakthrough. To make a continuous layer of silver less than 15 nanometers thick, which is about a hundred silver atoms, silver has a tendency to cluster together, make small islands rather than sort of extend out and be self-leveling. By adding about 6% aluminum, researchers coaxed the metal into a film of less than half that thickness, only seven nanometers. They exposed it to air. It didn't immediately tarnish as pure silver films would. After several months, film maintains its conductive and transparent properties. It also stayed put, which is important because if you just infuse glass with silver, you can pull it off by applying a mild adhesive such as tape. That doesn't, yeah, no. This is bigger though than a new ingredient to touchscreens. Teams showed that the silver coating could guide light about 10 times faster than other, as other metal wave guides, a property that could make it useful for faster computing. They, and they layered the silver films into metamaterial hyperlens that could be used to create dense patterns with feature size of fraction and what is possible with ordinary methods. Okay, so additionally to the potential surface of the transparent conductors, the thin silver films can do the transport of visible and infrared wavelengths along its surface. The light waves shrink and travel as so-called the Plasmon polar itons, showing up as oscillations in the concentration of electrons on the silver's surface. What that means is the light that goes in, condenses, moves across, and comes out the way it went in. So currently we have problems with our fiber optics. Our optical fibers can't scale down to the size of copper wires on today's computers. So you kind of actually have not the full use of optical speed. Plasmonic wave guides could allow information to travel in optical rather than electronic form for faster data transfers. We could actually get what optical fibers are putting down. As waveguide the smooth silver film can transport the surface plasmon's over a centimeter enough to get by inside of a computer chip, right? So perfect. But that's not all! There's more? That might be the least less significant portion of it. It can also be harnessed in metamaterials which handle light in ways that break the usual rules of the optics that we use today because the light travels with a much shorter wavelength as it moves along the metal surface. The film alone acts as a super lens or we can make small features. The thin silver layers can be alternated with other materials such as glass to make something called a hyper lens. Such lenses can image objects that are smaller than the wavelength of light which would blur in a regular optical microscope. It can also enable laser patterning such as used to etch transistors into silicon chips today and achieve even smaller features than we can currently make within those silicon chips. So this is like, it's hitting on all kinds of levels here, this breakthrough, right? Paper on this research is titled High Performance Doped Silver Films Overcoming Fundamental Material Limits for Nano Photonic Applications and it is published in Advanced Materials. Yeah, I mean, it really does from everything. This is this kind of a development, like you said, the silver not clumping, the silver actually being doped into the material and not coming out of it easily. And then all the properties of the silver metal inside of the material, it really is overcoming these fundamental limits that we've had to this point. I mean, even to be able to miniaturize the laser patterning that can etch transistors in silicon chips, that can allow things to become a little bit smaller on the chips that we use until we figure out how to go even smaller, right? So it could be the stop gap that we need to go smaller and keep that Moore's Law doubling. Yeah, it really is that sort of a breakthrough, right? Plus, it ensures that we won't be seeing a war over the few remaining materials allowed to make touch screens. Which is good.  It's most likely just going to go up. Yeah. Everybody's got smartphones with touch screens. Everybody's got devices. Laptops now have touch screens on them sometimes. So, which also brings me to a site story. Buy new Dr. Justin's, not a real Dr. Silver coins. The prices will be going up. Stock your shelves with Silver ingots now and be prepared for the future where we are forced to trade in Silver instead of Bitcoin. I'm not really sure. I have one right here. Oh, nice. It's a little like that invisible coin. I can't see it at all yet. Okay, everybody, it's time to talk about the future. What's going to happen in the future? I have no idea what's going to happen in the future, but there probably isn't going to be as much ice at the poles. It's probably what's happening. We're heading that way. We are heading that way. And this last week, data has come out through NASA and also the National Institute of Sea Ice that they have been looking at the Arctic and also the Antarctic. And they've discovered that this is the lowest extent of the maximum, because we're coming out of winter right now, right? In the Northern Hemisphere. The North Pole is deep in winter. It's been dark, starting to come out of that now, but we are at the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice that has ever been measured. We thought it was bad back in September, August, when we spoke with Walt Meyer from NASA about the sea ice measurements. And he was interviewed yet again and basically has said, yep, it's still bad. It's still bad. It's still bad. And the sea ice itself has been declining and normally we have declines in the Arctic to some extent, but not so much in the Antarctic. And the last year or so in the Antarctic, we've seen a much more extreme sea ice loss which has really affected overall loss. Normally the Antarctic can kind of moderate the losses. It's like, oh, well, the Antarctic grew a little bit. So hey, we lost some in the Arctic. It's all right, the Antarctic got bigger. But this year, since they both got smaller, it's really not necessarily great. And another piece of data from some climate modeling that researchers have done has determined that this, at least in the Arctic, maybe not so much in the Antarctic, but at least in the Arctic, we are looking at at least 50% human induced sea ice melt. So at least 50% of it is our doing whereas about 30 to 50% is the result of natural variability. We still can't pin down exactly how much, but it's only about 30 to 50% that's natural variability. All the rest of the sea ice fluctuation, that's us. And so there were some headlines out there saying, oh, 50% of sea ice loss is natural variability. It's not humans. And it's like, well, that's one way to look at it. But at least half, no, it's a classic ocean half full scenario. No, we are responsible for the other 50%. And the way they determined this was basically running different climate models with human anthropogenic forcing or without, with natural circulation patterns or with different kinds of circulation patterns. And basically this is the conclusion that they've come to from their various climate models. So another way to say that, humans are 100% responsible for all of the unnatural fluctuation. Yeah, the unnatural fluctuation. That's kind of like half of my beer is missing. You drank half my beer or half of your beer is still in the glass. That doesn't really help the half that's missing. That doesn't change the fact that you drank my beer. Well, you placed it so close when I reached over. I was in the conversation. I didn't even notice. And an interesting comment that's made by Scott Johnson from Ars Technica. He says that this particular study on the Arctic ice climate modeling has some interesting implications, starting with the fact that sea ice loss has generally outpaced climate model projections so far. And much of that discussion has centered on the need for improvements to sea ice models to make them better. And this study suggests that the models might be doing better than they appear. And the results also will remind us that predictions of when the Arctic Ocean will first become ice free in the summer can't get much more precise than a range of a few decades because natural variability will have 30 to 50% of the say in the matter. So there will be, we are not 100% of the sea ice. We're not 100%. So that there will be variability and the models are going to have to learn how to take that into account specifically. And one of the interesting things that like NASA is doing right now that is very exciting is that NASA's ISAT2, it's the ice satellite that is, it's called the ice cloud and land elevation satellite. It's going to be measuring vegetation and all sorts of stuff, but mostly ice and cloud cover and what it's going to be able to do is while we're, historically we've only been able to see the surface area of the ice, the ISAT2 is going to start providing us data on the depth, the thickness of that ice very soon, which will be much more, it will give a lot of help to those models to help us make things even more accurate and precise than they already are. So that's very exciting. Oh yeah, and then I also wanted to tack on to this that since, you know, the science, NASA science, lots of groups helping with science to study this stuff, I would like to request all representatives in the government and Congress people who are actually watching twists right now. I would like them to consider supporting pro-science budgetary actions as opposed to following the budget that has been proposed by the Trump administration at this point because it pretty much cuts science. It's like taking a Ginzoo steak knife to the science in the government. And I understand the need to reduce government spending overall and I get that, but what I don't understand is hey, let's reduce the budget for the Department of Energy, but just make sure, you know, we'll reduce it for science, except we're gonna take this part of the science and we're gonna put toward making more nuclear weapons. Right, yes, absolutely. So maybe we can moderate that a little bit. Yeah, and I think it's important to remember that projections are extremely valuable. They are projections, they're not always accurate, 100% of the time because things change, like maybe we'll start using less fossil fuels and then projections will not be as bad as they currently look. There's all sorts of things that can change them, but those projections help us adapt in time to make sure that societies are safe. Food is available, fresh water is available as the sea level rises. Which is national security issue, right? National security, this science is directly related to the well-being of us and future generations. Yeah, and if any of these budgets were intended to do that. Yeah, so I was going to say that the budget as it stands is not as is, it's a proposal to Congress and Congress is responsible for the budget and if you are interested and think science is important to be supported by the budget and how the Congress appropriates money, places like fivecalls.org are a wonderful place to start to find out who your representatives are, who your Congress people are and get their phone numbers to be able to call them about issues like budget appropriations. Pretty simple like that. Justin, now, okay, California almonds are fantastic. We love them. We're coming into springtime. The almonds are gonna be in full bloom and a buzz with bees. Why do bees need to stay away? So this is according to research that's about to be published in Entomological Society of America's Journal of Economic Entomology. So into entomology it's twice in the journal. The fungicide, hyperdeon, deon, hyperdeon leads to significant reduction of 10-day survival rate for forager honeybees when exposed at rates common to usage in the field. Cody Voice, this is Julia Rangel, PhD assistant professor of apiculture in the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University. She's a co-author of the study. She says, given that these fungicides may be applied when honeybees are present in almond orchards, our findings suggest that bees may face significant danger from chemical applications even when responsibly applied. They tested the effects of fungicides on honeybees via a wind tunnel experiment which groups of honeybees were exposed to various dosage levels and combinations of fungicides sprayed and carried through the wind tunnel at speeds simulating aerial crop dusting. They were then removed to separate habitats and monitored daily over a 10-day period. They tested the hyperdeon fungicide on its own and in combination with others. The trials were repeated three times. The results showed a significant increase in mortality rate among honeybees exposed to the fungicides compared to the control group. For instance, in two of the three trials, bees exposed to the recommended concentration died at two to three times the rate of the unexposed bees within that 10-day time period. The effect was even more pronounced when the hyperdeon was combined, was not on its own, but was combined with other fungicides. They don't know the exact reason why this is happening yet. But what's kind of crucial here, the almond industry, which in California produces 80% of the almonds consumed worldwide, according to the Almond Board of California, the growers of these almonds rely almost entirely on managed honeybee populations for the pollination of those trees. So this is, I think this is going to be one of those cases where industry that is somehow causing harm to the environment might be the most proactive in finding a solution because their industry actually relies heavily on this natural environmental agent. So I feel like this one's going to become self-correcting rather soon. We'll probably look for alternatives, do more testing, try to find a way to safely, you can lose several hundred acres of almond trees without worrying so much as if you've lost your population of bees that you have to pollinate them. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Fungus, dead bees, fungus. The bees cannot be replaced with any amount of workforce. Yeah, there's no way to do it. And just this week, the rusty patched bumblebee has been added to the endangered species list. Yes, on Tuesday the rusty patched bumblebee became the first bumblebee, the first bee in the continental United States to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. It used to be found all over the place. Now it's only located in small groups and about can be found maybe in 13 states at this point in time. To be fair though, to be fair, the American honeybee in general has the evolutionary robustness of like a hybrid poodle. These are not sturdy creatures that have survived throughout a long history of evolution, going up against different environmental factors over the ages and are able to adapt to them. They're a very new sort of life form to the planet in the ones that we have here. They're very hybridized, they're not accustomed really to dealing with anything. So they're very sensitive. So it's not like the fungicides are have to be in this case extremely poisonous. They don't have to really, they could be benign to pretty much everything else in the ecosystem except the funguses I suppose, but which could have other ramifications for soil and everything. But the bees being so sensitive, we really have to have a heightened awareness of what is affecting them at any time because of the huge reliance that we have on them for pollination in agriculture. In California, which is the, this is an agriculture state. It dwarfs what the movie industry does by magnitudes. Yeah, what I find interesting is the, we have the honeybee, which is managed for pollination. We have the bumblebee, which is a different species, which is a wild pollinator. And then various places, US news was reporting Kauai as having a robust honeybee population. Kauai, an island is doing just fine.  So it's, they call it the garden island. Yeah. It's why it has a lot more natural habitat that's maybe not affected by these insecticides. I think that's, it's small farming territory too. It's not, it's not like big managed farms that you would think of when you think agriculture. And it's, it is, it's, there's vegetation everywhere. You can walk around me Kauai and pick avocados off trees that are just growing on the roads. I mean, it's, it's sort of like paradise. It is like paradise. No, no one want to buy me a ticket. The, but the, but there are various species of bees who do respond differently and they're in different locations where there are different factors. You know, and so there are very, you know, it's interesting that the bumblebee is being listed as endangered as, you know, just, what was it the end of last year, October, November-ish, there was a report that the bees are doing fine and their populations are not declining. You know, so, and people are, so this is still something that people are really debating, counting, you know, which bees are we counting? And so I think that's something that really is still, there's still a lot of questions. And unfortunately, our very lives, you know, our food, the food on which our lives depend is at stake. So- Depend on our ability to count bees. Okay, one, two- Help those bees, people, and get it right and- This is hard. This is much harder than I anticipated. So much harder. All right, what was my next story? Oh yeah, I had a story about my, mine was about finding things also, maybe not in counting them, maybe not counting them necessarily, but finding them. So there is a problem with treating HIV infection. Do you guys remember what the problem with treating HIV infection is? It hides. Yes, it likes to hide.  And so researchers for years have been trying to figure out how they can basically shock those T cells into shedding virus, into opening up and basically delivering their infected payload to be treated so that an individual could actually be considered cleared of the virus entirely. And so years ago, they started, 2012-ish, they started using a new approach that's called shock and kill. And it was supposed to start the viral replication in these latently infected T cells. And then with the HIV coming out, the drugs should be able to locate and attack the cells. However, it just hasn't been working. Like it works a little bit, but it doesn't really get at that latent infection. And so the researchers think that maybe the drugs they're using to shock the cells just aren't shocking enough, but there's just still a lot that hasn't been understood. And so a researcher, Monsef Ben Kerain, he's a virologist at University of Montpellier in France. And he has been looking for a marker that would tell researchers that a T cell is infected, yet not showing virus really. And so they exposed resting T cells to a fluorescently tagged HIV. So now you've got this HIV that's got a fluorescent marker on it. They exposed them, and then they searched for differences in gene expression between T cells that got infected by this fluorescently marked virus and the T cells that didn't get fluorescently marked, right? So they're starting to look for differences between them.  And they separated out the groups, basically like having a yellow highlighter. Here we are highlighting again. We're been diagramming now, right? Between the glow in the dark and the non-glow in the dark T cells. Right, so now we're looking for the glow in the dark ones. And so they took the ones that they're, so some of those infected fluorescent glow in the dark T cells became active and started expressing virus, and then a group of them didn't. These are the quiescent cells, right? And so the researchers were like, boom, you're the cells I want.  And in completely uninfected cells, it's almost undetectable. This protein just basically is not there in cells that are not infected. And they found that it's really not showing up in cells that are infected, but expressing the virus all over the place. So this is a marker that is very specific to quiet infected cells. And so what this means is that this could be a target to be able to find the needle in the haystack that we've been looking for to be able to get rid of the latent HIV infection. And in doing so, I assume then we're talking not managing. No, that would be finding them because you have to manage infection because you can never get rid of it. You can never get rid of it completely, but if you can target, you can get rid of it. We're talking the C word, yeah. We're talking this could, you know, we don't know for sure, it's just a marker. It's just a target at this point, but it seems to be only these latent cells. Right, but this is not potential. It's got potential. Talking about this, you know, I mean, research was going on for really a long time, but we've been talking about, I think for 10 years, the discovery that I think when we, just when we first started doing twists, they were discovering that the hiding was taking place. And that was, so here we are 10-ish years later and now they've drove down on a potential way to target. I mean, we don't do a lot of HIV stories. And partly because everything is maybe further down the road at some point able to do something positive except we have this problem that the HIV hides. Like every story ends except, so there's still nothing we can do, even though there's the potential of a window of opportunity for at some point, but this, this is awesome. The real deal, yeah. Yeah, so this is exciting and I don't know, this is one of those stories that I have my fingers crossed about. Very excited about, very excited about. And I've got some other, let's see, other stories for, I'm coming down to the end of the hour here. So let's see, end of our hour, I like calling it an hour, even though it's not. Covered an hour. Hour plus. It feels like less of an hour though. Our hour extra. It means we're having fun. Here's a couple of quick news stories for everybody.  It's postpartum depression that is hormonally related because of a drop in estrogen and progesterone levels that are naturally high during pregnancy and breastfeeding. And these declines, they're trying to figure out how to manage them. And if women are breastfeeding, they don't necessarily wanna be taking antidepressants that could be getting into their baby's bloodstream and affecting their baby's development. So what are some other ways they can do this? And so researchers looked into giving them, giving people women, very small group, 21 women, 20 women, 21 control women, a cocktail of blueberry juice, blueberry extract, L-tryptophan and L-tyrosine. L-tryptophan and L-tyrosine are thought to help initiate sleep, which is very important for getting rest. It's great for treating depression. Blueberries have antioxidants in them. Blueberries are antioxidants, but the blueberry juice is palatable and sweet, but blueberry extract has been shown to help chemicals cross the blood brain barrier. And tryptophan and L-tyrosine are also possibly, can possibly help mow monoamine oxidase A activity, which can help regulate neurotransmitter activity and reduce that oxidative stress. So this could be a very kind of natural way of reducing depressive symptoms. So results, very exciting.  It's amazing. The other, the control group didn't have any effect whatsoever, but here's the big but. It's already a small control group, right? Small 40 women altogether, very small sample. We're not really learning anything. And it wasn't randomized control. No, no, it wasn't properly controlled. So the women knew what they were drinking, which means that this could be all placebo effect. Yeah, that's too bad. What was the control? So the experimental group was drinking this blueberry extract and tryptophan. What was the control group taking? You're getting the fake one. They didn't. They're not gonna get the good stuff. They just got nothing. That's why they knew. They got it or they didn't get it. Either they got it or they didn't get it. They're drinking water. What a bummer. You don't care what you're doing. I know. Why are you even here? Here's a blue milkshake at least. Here's some blueberry juice. I know. Here's some water with food coloring in it. Worth doing over, I guess. Yeah, I'd say so. Science needs to do do-overs every once in a while. It's not a bad idea. Science constantly needs to do do-overs. That's part of the deal, replication, right? This one really needs to be done over. This one really, like, come on. If this could work, I mean, blueberry juice, el tryptophan, el tyrosine. I would probably, I don't mean, I am six years postpartum and I think I would drink that stuff. That would help my mood. I'm curious as to how this happened, because science experiments in a middle school science fair have blind studies. I'm very confused. It wasn't blinded. The women knew what they were getting and so, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. How did they even get that funding? I don't know. We go out of blueberries at my house, so. Blueberries are good for you. Antioxidants are delicious. I love blueberries. They're wonderful. Let's see. No supplements for old men. Another study looking at supplementing individuals this time, a very large group of elderly gentlemen who were in the prevention of Alzheimer's disease by vitamin E and selenium trial, pre-advise. This is a double-blind, randomized clinical trial. It began in 2002, turned into a cohort study from September 2009 to May 2015. So this one, very well-controlled, very good, trying to find out if antioxidant supplements, vitamin E or selenium alone or in combination, could prevent dementia in asymptomatic, so men without symptoms, older men. Nope, doesn't do anything. Supplements don't do anything. Didn't change any cognitive outcomes. Didn't change outcomes for men with suspected dementia. Nothing. This is a very long-term trial with thousands of people in it, and it zip zero, zilch, nada. So vitamin E, selenium. Nope, it's not gonna help your prostate cancer either, because that was the other part of that study that came out like last year, a couple of years ago. Anyhow, yep. Oh yeah, and Mars might have had rings and might have rings again. Ooh, yeah, this was kind of a fun one that the planet Mars and its moon, its wonderful little moon of Phobos, they think that it's on a collision course with the planet, that gravity's pulling it in, but basically they've kind of figured out that it's kind of like on a gravitational yo-yo, and they think that since the planet was formed about 4.3 billion years ago, which they think happened by a very large object, colliding, that there's a mace, I mean, the moon was formed about 4.3 billion years ago, and that there was a large object that collided with Mars, creating a big basin, and maybe Phobos came out of it, but it wasn't Phobos then, maybe it was a ring of debris around the planet that then consolidated and became Phobos, and now Phobos is on a 70 million year long course back to the planet that tidal forces are gonna rip it apart and it will turn back into a ring again, which will then coalesce back into a moon at some later date, and then be pulled back into the planet only to be driven apart by tidal forces and back into a ring again. OMG. OMG. I think Mars has an alternating ring cycle. That's sweet. Ring moon, ring moon. Yeah. How fun. Super fun. Super fun. Blair, tell me about tardigrade. Oh, tardigrade's the gift that keeps on giving. They can live through pretty much darn near anything as we've learned. In particular, scientists are very interested in their ability to withstand drying out. They go into their ton state where they live with a little barrel. So how can an organism completely desiccate and then come back? For a long time, they thought that it was a sugar called trehalose that gave tardigrades the ability to tolerate desiccation. It's found in a number of other organisms that survive being dried out, including yeast, brine, shrimp, and some nematodes. But biochemical studies of tardigrades found that trehalose at low levels were found only at low levels or not at all in them. And sequencing has not revealed the gene for the enzyme required to make trehalose. So how the heck are they doing it? It turns out that it is something they have now called tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins. That's right, they have their own proteins so unique they have been dubbed a tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered protein, TDPs. They have found that tardigrades have evolved unique genes that allow them to survive drying out. And these genes that encode for that protein can be used to protect other biological material like bacteria, yeast, and certain enzymes from desiccation. In particular, they're extremely interested in the idea of using these TDPs to stabilize sensitive pharmaceuticals in a dry state so that they don't have to take something in a liquid state and keep it refrigerated as it travels to remote areas. So once again, tardigrades have something we don't that we could potentially take to help us out. This also supports my theory that tardigrades are from another planet, just saying. Yep, they're like, they'll just take this new technology to Earth. Maybe that's what tardigrades are. Maybe they're a technology transfer protocol. They can survive outer space, as we know. So maybe they just hitched a ride on a meteor. We don't know. Right. It's possible. Right? It is possible. It is. Mermia all the way. Yeah. Tardigrades. Tardigrades. Water bears. Alien life on our own planet. We don't know that. Breaking news. Literally no evidence that tardigrades are from another planet. Literally no evidence. But perhaps. Oh, my goodness. And Justin, what are we? What are we? Who are we honoring? What honor is being bestowed? This is a scientist at the University of Leicester discovered a 430 million year old fossil complete with the soft parts of the animal, such as legs, eyes, very delicate antennae. Fossil determined to be an ancient crustacean new to science, distant relative to the living lobsters, shrimp and crab. And they named it in honor of Sir David Attenborough, who grew up on the university campus. Love that. Although they didn't just like name it after him, name it after him. Yeah, what's its actual name? The name is Cascolus Ravitus, which doesn't sound anything like Sir David Attenborough. Yeah, can you explain that? Cascolus is derived from castrum, meaning stronghold in colus, which is dwelling in, which Attenborough is a stronghold you live in. Ah, OK. And then rativus, which is a combination of words. It's Roman derived, it's Roman. It's basically for Leicester. So it's kind of an indirect naming in honor of. It's the Roman name of Leicester, which is Vida life. And so anyway, yeah, so they've got tricky with it because. They're he probably already has other things named for him. Seriously, this is this is the scientist version of getting jiggy with the nomenclature. Look how clever we are. Look at how seriously I appreciate. Definitely British Sir David Attenborough, who's done so much to increase people's appreciation of good voiceover work. A good animal behavior and biology. That part of the sciences. He's an amazing science educator and communicator. He deserves to be honored. He already had a certain name. Yeah, but he is a master voice of a voiceover artist as well. Yes, there's a bunch of animals named after David Attenborough already. There's a beetle. There's a marsupial lion that's no longer with us, which might explain why they had to get so creative. Yeah, no, I think that's why they're like, we want to name it after him, but he's already so popular in the nomenclature. Land. There's a ghost shrimp. Strengths Sir David Rattenborough or Rabbitborough. There's a pygmy locust named after Attenborough. It goes on. Maybe someday there will be a there will be something, I don't know, maybe some kind of a spider or an ant or I don't know, something named after this week in science. Yeah, twisty eye, twisty eye. That's right. You heard it, science, scientist, twisty eye, twisty eye. The plural of tardigrade is twist. All right. A twist of tardigrade, a twist of tardigrade. There we go. We did it right there. We're going to. Oh, we do coin so many things here. We do have so much fun, and I hope you enjoyed this show. We've come to the end of another hour. Ish, we're back. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, I would like to say thank you to all of you who have helped support us. Thanks for your support on Patreon. Let's see if I can find the right window to open. Did I know I think I closed my window? That's why did I do that? I do things. Oh, I know why I didn't open it. Because I haven't updated it and I need to update it. So maybe I'll just read the names. There we go. Maybe I'll just do that because I can. Old fashion style. Old fashion style. Thank you to Greg Guthman, Chris Clark, Paul Disney, Arlie Cummings, G. Burton, Lattermar, John Ratnisswamy, Richard Ono, Miss Byron Lee, E.O. 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Just Google this week in science in your iTunes directory, or if you have a mobile type device, like say a phone, you can look for twist, or number four, Droid app in the Android Marketplace, or simply this week in science in anything Apple Marketplace-y. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes will be available on our website. That's at www.twist.org. What? That's www.twist.org, where you can also make comments and start conversations with the hosts, oh, and other listeners. And, and, and you can contact us directly. Email kirsten at thisweekin science.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com, or Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. Be sure to put twist, E-W-I-S, somewhere in the subject line, or your email will be spam filtered into oblivion. Oh, you can also hit us up on the Twitter now, where we are at twist science at Dr. Kiki and at Jackson Fly, and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you'd like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week for another hour, and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember, it's all in your head. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, it's the end of the world. So I'm setting up a shop, got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in, I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device. I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand. And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. This week science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth. It's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news, that what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get to understand. But we're not trying to threaten your philosophy, we're just trying to save the world from jeopardy. This week in science is coming your way.  We may rid the world of toxoplasma, got the eye, eye, eye. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, I've got a laundry list of items I want to address, from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness, I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got. But how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour a week? This week in science is coming your way. You better just listen to what we say and if you learn anything from the words that we said, then please just remember this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science. Wish I could reach through and help you. I put down my, I love these glasses, but I can't really see out of them except one at a time. Those are fun. They are fun. They were for, it was like they're lenticulars also. I don't know if you can, if it really. Oh yeah, okay, yep. Those are fun. Yeah, so the eyes move all over the place. They were supposed to be a Halloween card for somebody. I bought them at the airport a long time back and never gave them to anybody. So now they're mine. Maybe they'll be, they might be a Halloween card for somebody at some point or they're just my fun costume glasses. I don't know. Either way. Hey everybody, we're now in the after show. I don't know if I told you that. Thanks for watching, Twizz. But here's another Halloween card that I never gave to somebody. Let me get a little. We love that. No, that one cute. Free, free. Fuzzy monster. I love fuzzy green monsters. I do too. How's those glasses great, Bleak? Oh, where'd you find that of these glasses? Let me see what those are. Ultimate glow effects, ultimate diffraction glasses. What are diffraction glasses? They do. It's category best rave glasses. So they diffract the light so that any light that you're looking at are gonna is going to be crazy. You'll see rainbow, yeah, different lens effects. Ecstasy glasses. No, that's not glasses. That's just funny. It's just funny that that's a category. But here are some of the lens effects that you get. So there's three diffraction. There's diffraction right there. Here's a standard kaleidoscope and diffraction. Those would be fun. I'd fall down immediately. Right, and then I'd fall down and go, boom. Double spiral, what's happening? What is happening? Right, you just down Sydney's George Street. That's awesome. Yeah, who needs who needs drugs when you've got fun glasses like that? That's cool. Have you guys, my friend sent me this fun fun, but an interesting story last week that suggested that teams, that, let me see if I can find it. Let me see if I can find it. Yeah, it was even in, it was in, okay, Teen Vogue. It was also in New York Times. It's so funny that I'm like actually reaching for Teen Vogue more than I'm reaching for New York Times right now. Now, a study published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse Monitoring Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkov, director and her team found that the past year use of illicit drugs other than marijuana was at the lowest level in the 40 year history of the project for eighth, 10th and 12th graders. I don't know what's going on with the ninth graders. What's more, marijuana use declined despite shifting attitudes toward it. So kids, teenagers have more positive attitudes toward marijuana use, but it does have, it did have a bit of a decline. And so- Well, sometimes it works that way, right? Like, if you feel like it's not bad, then you won't- Wait, it's, wait. Rebellion. Listen now. Yeah, exactly. That's aversive. But the thing that came out of this is that there's a direct correlation to the increase in, I'm saying correlation and so did Nora Volkov, that there's a correlation to the rise in cell phone or smartphone use specifically in that age group as well. And so while this is not causation, it is something that they are going to look into because it seems as though smartphones are habit forming in some ways. And so the researchers are actually suggesting that it's possible that teenagers are using less drugs because they've got smartphones. Cause they're addicted. But it also could just be- Smartphone, they're, and instead of using drugs, they're maybe sitting and playing on their phone. Yeah. But maybe that just means they're less bored. Maybe they're less bored, exactly. Or maybe they're at a party and instead of feeling like they have to engage with other kids who are doing something, a kid can sit and do, what do they do? Snapchat? Look at me, I'm the old person. Snapchat or they can scroll through whatever. But, or they can sit there and like share things on their phone. That's what a lot of kids do now is they'll kind of go through their Instagram or their Snapchat, they'll like, they'll share it with each other. So- I like how we imagine this is limited to the kids today too. Like, what are you talking about? Like, people of all age brackets are doing this with their phones. That's a great thing though. Like- This is not supported. It's just a correlation. It makes sense. It makes sense that we have a form of entertainment. We have less bored people. Less bored people go to less extremes to find something to entertain their brains because brains have appetites. I think- Yeah, one thing. Oh, sorry, I was just saying one funny thing about this. So marijuana use has risen among 12th graders. Cocaine, hallucinogens, ecstasy and crack are all down but LSD has remained steady. Oh! That's right. Steady at a very low percentage? Yeah. Yeah, LSD use is not, that's not one of the big ones for most.  But I do like the idea that it, because it's been, marijuana has been talked about as medicine. Yeah. Quite a bit.  Woo, all right, let's be rebellious. Hey, would you like to do some medicine that my grandmother also uses? One, I think that would work, too. I don't know, she uses it for what? Or glaucoma, it helps with the, oh, I don't really know if I wanna do glaucoma medicine at a party, that doesn't make sense. Well, and that's it too, I think, is that so many of these kids have parents that did this stuff, right? So again, not taboo, not new. You know, these kids find their parents' weed stash in the bedroom side table drawer or whatever. And that's- Oh, it's old people stuff. Oh yeah, it's oregano, it's not, that's of course I keep my oregano in the bedroom under my underwear. I think it's just, no, but you know what else is in there? It's the, it's like the drug that the parents use. But it's also in there with like the preparation age in the bed day. You know, it's in the same location. Okay, but Justin, I think you're overestimating how old- Like the antifungal cream. How old do you think parents of a ninth grader or an eighth grader is? No, I'm one, but I'm- That's what I'm saying.  Like this is, I may be speaking from experience. Fair enough. I just feel like you're painting this image of the senior citizen. I don't mean to exactly, but I do think, I do think that this is always, I mean, this, you know, demystification of anything takes away a lot of levels and layers of the lore. The unknown is somehow always a bit more enticing than full knowledge when it comes to doing anything. It's sort of illicit or otherwise even, you know? Yeah. So that's, you know, but I think that the connection to the smartphone is probably really, really strong. And I would have put that into lots of, thinking back to lots of my own childhood bad behavior or those that I witnessed in others, a lot of it was sort of like having really nothing to do. That's a bunch of, you know, adolescents out in the world with nothing really stimulating or interesting going on or to engage in other than banter shenanigans and antics and what happens. So, yeah, I mean, you could point to, you could even take it maybe a little bit away from just being the phone, the phone although giving constant access to but something like gaming, you know? I feel like kids today probably talk about gaming a lot like me as an adolescent talked about maybe drugs. Like it's sort of like psychedelic music or music in general and drugs was always like forefronts of topics that kids talked about. And I think it's really been replaced by gaming. Well, but can I also say to these kids, maybe they're spending their money on technology so they don't have money to spend on drugs. Drugs are expensive. Well, so it can be video games too. That's what I'm saying. So if they're spending it on video games, if they're spending it on apps, if they're spending it on music, if they're sending it on new phones, that's money that they can't spend on drugs. So what would be an interesting experiment is to find a region or a school district or whatever it is that seems to have a high narcotic use. Oh, and give everyone a smartphone. And give everyone a platform, an Xbox or a smartphone or something in which they can go gaming and see what the effect is. See what happens, yeah. So many studies. I played video games since I was a kid. I also did drugs when I was a teenager. Yeah, I used to score my drugs at the local arcade. Like, so I mean, it's not direct correlation, but you played video games as a kid likely out in the world somewhere. I'm aging you, which I have no idea what your age is. You might have had a console. This is totally possible to be much younger than me, but still. Actually, yeah, the local arcade growing up, that was like a freaking opium den. It was a drug culture going on there, for sure. Absolutely. Oh, my goodness, yeah. I mean, I grew up out in the country. There really wasn't a lot to do.  Right. I know, you missed out.   And that was always some of my favorite time coming to San Francisco. Let's go ride the elevators. Yeah, and running to museums on free days. And there was just so much to do. Even if you just like ran around a park. It's just, we held a seance in a park after hours. That was like one of the baddest things I ever did. I'm still trying to figure this out. Like, I'm still trying to picture young Justin me like, hey guys, I got an idea of what we're doing tonight. We're gonna go ride an elevator. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. A bunch of 16 year old nerds walking in there pretending we have a room in the St. Francis Hotel. Yeah, we're supposed to be here. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Whiskey, retigate. They didn't get rid of them, but now you need a room key to get to the space where the elevators are. And then you need a room key to make the elevator move. They ruined it. And now there's kids strung out on heroin in front of the place. You got a room key. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually, one of the days we did that, now that I think about it, we went to the restroom in the St. Francis and then we found a little vial of white powder spilled on the floor. And we thought it was hilarious, took a picture of it and then left. Good for you. Oh, that was the whole story. You're like, that's it. It's a good adventure, though. Yeah. I do love how, though, how all of your stories end in, it was hilarious. It was hilarious. We found it hilarious at the time. Yeah, absolutely.  It's nice to have a space to do that. Yeah, it's important. It is important and I think, yeah, that's one of the things is, yeah, finding ways to occupy people, teenagers.  I mean, teenage brains are still forming. So it has a thirst for stimuli and that stimuli might come in the way of LSD or it might come in the way of riding a crowded muni train in... On LSD, which is really where you learn a lot about both your own personal sense of security in the world and all the different forms human beings can come in and the ways that they interact. It's very enlightening, in fact. Riding muni and then sitting in Union Square and making stories for the random people that you see passing by. It's just something that as a thirsty brain, you're learning about the world and you're doing fun stuff with your friends, just whatever.  That's also good though. I mean, that's also good. Like, it's not necessary to do drugs to have those experiences. In some ways can be unforced if you don't do them. But yeah, I like the idea that the kids today, those kids today are actually, I don't know if I do like it, but they do seem like they're becoming more responsible. Oh. Better citizens than we were. So, oh, there's something. You're umming an eye, but you also grew up in a different circle of people than I did, so we can both be wrong. No, no, I'm talking about right now, these kids in this story. Oh, oh. I'm not convinced they're more responsible at all. At all. No, they're still kids.  I think it gets too far too quick. Too far too quickly, right? But at the same time, there is this movement for people to work all the time and to be busy all the time, you know, and there's just kind of, there's this, I've been seeing articles about the rise of being busy and how just people are more and more often they gotta work, they gotta do this, they gotta be busy and there's just no downtime anymore. So maybe teenagers are not using as many drugs because they are too busy. It's not that they're responsible, any more responsible. They're just busy, busier than they were when we were young. There's more to do. Yep, I was doing teen volunteer interviews today and every single kid I talked to was on at least one sports team in the band, in the play, volunteered on weekends at the SPCA, applying for this program. I felt like I was busy when I was in high school. Well, yeah, this is way more than I ever did. And when I was in high school, they made us pick band or sports, you decide. Yeah, I can't do both, no. Band or drama, art or drama. I didn't have to choose, I did them all. Wow, I didn't do sports, well, I did gymnastics until... You did the kung fu thing. No, that was in college, that was later. Kung fu was later, gymnastics was in high school, but then I quit so that I could hang out with people because I wanted to go to sports games. Yeah, there you go. There you go, but I was in the band, I did band. What did you play? Clarinet, the band. And then I also, my junior year, I decided not to take any smart kid classes. And so my entire schedule was made up of, because I'd taken classes over the summer at the junior college. So I didn't have any classes to take because they weren't offering them that year. So basically I had band, drama, choir, and yearbook and PE. Oh, and French, because I took French every year. So those were my classes. My junior year was rock. That sounds like camp, that sounds like your school. I wasn't in the band, and I didn't do sports, and I wasn't part of the yearbook or in any of the clubs at school. And yeah, and I did a lot of drugs. There's a correlation, maybe that was it. I was in four bands and volunteered at the zoo. Yeah, I was in symphonic band. I was in maybe five. I was in symphonic band. I was in the jazz band. I was in the community music center jazz band. I was in the pep band. I was in the pit orchestra. And then, yes, I was in a funk band as well. Wow. Yeah, you just didn't have time. Relax the funk. Relax the funk, yeah. Relax the funk. Relax the funk, yeah. Sorry, I'm getting down. And then, yes, I volunteered at the zoo as well. So those are my things. But compared to these kids I was interviewing with today, they are up to way more than I was up to. I know. It's like, I'm like, wow, am I an underachiever? No. These kids are just micro-scheduled, I think. I don't like micro-scheduling. It makes me really, really concerned about what I'm going to be doing with my child. You know, what's the environment going to be like? What is it going to require? Yeah, there's going to be pressure to do a lot. But just this past weekend, last weekend, we had a teen career conference at the zoo.  So it was on the career side of things, of course.  And one person said over and over, it's more important to do one or two things well than to do a bunch of things half. Right, yeah. So especially on college applications. If they see that you're in water polo and volleyball and the yearbook and the musical and the orchestra, and they see all that, then they just see someone spread really thin who's not excelling at any one thing. But if you say, I was, for example, I was in the band for four years. I was the captain of the pet band. And I was accepted into this special band in the community. That's at least showing that you picked a lane and you're trying to specialize, even if it's not something that you're actually trying to study in college. It shows that you have commitment and... Commitment, that's it. And also that you can focus. If you're working on a bunch of these different things, you're not focusing on any one thing. That's not good in college or in a career. Strengths wants to know why my son isn't already in three choirs before his voice breaks. Because he's doing kung fu, man. That's why. To be fair, Blair, the same thing actually applies to the drug culture.     And they're like, I don't know if I can handle it. Dead in the gutter is what to call you. Maybe. No, no, no. And then it comes down to then it usually will translate into what music you're into. It's just kind of interesting. And so then there's, you know... What does it mean that I'm not into jam bands? That means you're probably not a pothead. That's what that means. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Jam band, jam band and pothead go together like the... Peanut butter and trout. No, like the heterophotic and... And auto-photic wasn't one. Got it. Oh. Oh, that's a moth. Yeah, jam band translated directly into a pothead. Phototrophic and autotrophic, right? It wasn't autotrophic. No, phototrophic and heterotrophic. That was it. Yeah, jam band equals pothead. At least when I was growing up, kid, LSD translated into punk rock music. Really? Really? Yeah, and alcohol. LSD and alcohol both translated into punk rock. Yep. I thought cocaine was punk rock. No, not at all. No, not at all. Uh-uh. Yeah, that's Madrigals. That's jazz choir. Jazz choir. Not what I have experienced. No. No, no, no. Cocaine was punk rock and ska in my experience. No. No. Ska is so weedy. Ska is heavily weedy. Well, that's also about it. But like... Yeah, I don't know. Anyway. It's culture. I'm sure it's relative. Cocaine was like Phil Collins. Oh my God. Yeah, that's what I would think.  Identity 4. Wall Street banker in the 80s. Yeah, totally. So it's like Genesis and Phil Collins. Maybe Michael McDonald. But right now, there's no Michael McDonald or Phil Collins. So what is cocaine now? Oh, yeah, there is. They call it yacht rock. Yacht rock. It's music you listen to while you're rocking out on your yacht. It's me. And then the ecstasy became the drug of choice for those listening to the electronica music. The electronica. It's not interesting like the cultural music connection to drugs. It's, you know, some music is better with certain drugs. Yeah, I've heard that they're in the dance music scene that certain music has evolved in the scene because of certain fats and drugs. Yeah. No, that's totally true. Like the Shafi's band? So there's like one, I'm not remembering what it is, but like there's one form of dance music that people who listen to ketamine really like, who use ketamine really like to listen to when they're dancing. Makes sense. Yeah. And like that, because like it started out with MDMA and then ketamine came into the scene and so the music kind of like evolved as a result. Interesting stuff though. Interesting stuff. If we really want to talk about the brain and different kinds of drugs, we should get somebody from MAPS on the show. They're the, I think they're in LA and they're the, what does MAPS stand for? Something like MAPS. You're going to find MAPS if you just put that in. No. Yeah. That's all you're going to get. I have to find more. MAPS stands for MAPS. MAPS stands for apps. PAPS stands for paps. Stands for ss. I'll just put drugs. Drug. There it is. Yeah. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. That's what he said. Let's have him on and talk about it. MAPS. They can talk about, they look at all sorts of psychedelics though. They're like ayahuasca and for treatment of drug addiction and PTSD and MDMA and all sorts of things. Mostly psychedelic stuff. LSD, mushrooms. And there really is something, I think to where we started from. He's excited about that. He's like, yes, do that. I like this idea too. I think it's something to the whole being busy thing. I can't imagine doing drugs anymore. I'm not an active drug addict. How would you find the time? No, it's like the time, but it's not just the time in which you do it even. Recovery time. You're going to have expected down time after. There's a necessary recovery phase that you have to live with for a while. Even with alcohol, there's the hangover investment. But that's normalized and fairly well calculated. Treatable by coffee. If you drink the night before, you might be hungover in the morning.  But so many drugs, you don't know how long it'll last. You don't know how long it'll take to wear off. You don't know how long the hangover will be. There's so many variables. Right. It's not controlled. What was it? The happy Mondays. They got their name because of the rave scene and clubbing and MDMA, ecstasy use, people taking it on Friday nights and partying Friday nights, maybe Saturday night, and then coming down and having the come down on Monday. So Monday is the day you're super depressed. That's why they named the band the happy Mondays. Is that part of the deal with ecstasy is you get super sad when you come down? Not necessarily. It's usually not necessarily, but it can be a day or two later. That's a bummer. Yeah.  I just dumped it out. I'm good. Hard math. I don't need to make myself intentionally depressed. I'm good. And everyone, I can talk about this stuff because I worked for a while in San Francisco at UCSF at the psychopharmacological laboratory doing human drug research studies. Full disclosure. Full disclosure is what I know about. Kiki's talking from a professional point of view whereas I'm just talking from experience. She's a doctor. I like to talk about this. Everything's under control. Kiki has only ever been a very smart professional doctor lady. Only ever. Only ever. She's starting into existence. That's right. I'm not just Dr. Kiki. I'm Dr. Lady Kiki. And don't you forget it. Don't you ever forget it. Also, we have a full disclaimer here. We also have to point out that all drugs affect people different. Exactly. Yes. Yes, it all depends on your personal brain chemistry. Regardless of what you heard a drug is like through either things you've read, what people have said, what you expect going in. Chances are the reality for you will be very different. And I also, again here, speak from... I'll speak from direct experience on this. And I'll say, this is actually why I don't smoke marijuana. And I may be accidentally telling something about my cognitive ecosystem here, accidentally without knowing it. But the slightest interaction I have with marijuana is like a sleeping pill that works almost instantaneously. It just makes me go to sleep like right away. It's because you've already got such a good chill going, Justin, all the time. I'm already so stone natural. Your natural level is stone. Look over the line with that first talk, right? That could be it. Also, in many, many, many years ago, experimentation with uppers, they didn't have an uppery effect for me. You went to sleep. But I could like on things that were making other people maybe be pumped up or grinding their teeth or whatever, and I was like, this is very calm. This is very relaxing. Yeah, you're an alien. What are you, a tardigrade? Get out of here. But it's actually, it may be like a little bit, I may have a bit of the ADD thing, because they prescribe uppers to people with ADD, and it actually has a calming effect on it. So there may be like, you know, whatever you have, that you may not realize. I don't have an active, appraisable ADD about me in my day-to-day life.  But I'm not super agitated going about. I'm not hyper type person. I'm pretty laid back. But yeah, it has the effect that's prescribed for people. So there is probably a diagnosis further back in my overall mental makeup that's possible. So, so whatever you, again, whatever you think the effects of a drug may be going in, know that it may not affect you that way. That same drug, marijuana, that makes me, oh, I gotta go to sleep right now. Gravity gets turned up like 10 times and I'm like, I'm laying down now. I don't care where I am. That's exactly what happens with me. I'm like, okay. And I had this. I need to go into a corner. Yeah, I'll just curl up, I'll be fine. But I had this friend grown up who could go to a BMX race meet after smoking equal proportions of joints as I had consumed and go through this intense athletic event with the bright lights and coming down a hill and racing to jump it over stuff and there's like five other guys trying to like knock you out of the way as you do there. And he'd like win a race. Like he could be super active under the same molecule ingestion. So don't know what you're getting into. Gotta do these things, try to be in a safe place. But again, realize you're kind of rolling the dice. Don't put yourself out somewhere in public reliant on society to take care of you while you are doing any sort of experimentation. But also don't do them alone. But also do them with a friend or a group of friends. But Justin is not saying that you should do anything. Justin is not saying. No, I'm not. I'm cautioning against anything ever, always. He's cautioning against. Yeah. But if you're gonna cross the street, look both ways. That's what I'm saying. If you're gonna cross the street, look both ways. Make it your decision. Make it your decision and look both ways. Head on a swivel, people. Head on a swivel.  Ooh. No, Blake. Do not do drugs with a sitter. No, that's probably a really bad idea. Especially if your sitter is the one suggesting it. That sounds like a bad idea. Red flag. Also, maybe the first time, don't wear those glasses, Keith was looking at. Those glasses look fun. I think I have a pair or something like that around here somewhere. Somewhere. Got something. I want. That sounds fun. All right. I'm getting sleepy. Yeah, it's about bedtime. It is getting to that hour. Blake suggests, don't do hallucinogens in an unfamiliar situation. But also, I'd add to that. Understand that the familiar situation may seem very unfamiliar very soon. Not right now. You think it didn't work, but don't take more because it's only been 30 minutes. And in about 45 to 50 minutes, it's gonna start kicking in. Don't take more. It's working. You just don't realize it yet. That's the people. Oh my goodness. Not saying you should cross the street, people. I'm just saying if you're gonna look both ways. Here's another one. Don't make brownies of the special variety and then have only brownies in your house. Because then when you get the munchies, you'll just eat all the brownies. These brownies look really good. Oops. That's gonna be bad. Yeah. Okay. I do remember it like and not, you know, it's not that it's not that doing drugs is gonna really be that exciting. But it was under a very, you know, patron saint of my favorite hallucinogenic that I first discovered the little strip of molding that goes around the base of the wall right there along the carpet. The baseboard? That little strip. It was the first time I'd ever noticed it. That is hilarious. And I'm like, where did this come from? Oh my gosh. It's in every room. It's around the whole house. It's in every room, everywhere. Every room, everywhere? Who's making a fortune on, this could like go to the moon and back. Every foot of every wall has this. Like where's this produced? What is it there for? Why do we have it? This is so wild that I've never noticed it and it's everywhere. Oh my gosh. Like it's not like you're necessarily like breaking on through to the other side. No. It's the brilliance. Very simple observations that you would never made before and really realizing the full impact of what that simple observation means. That's right, Brandon. Is it on the ceiling too? Where is it? No, dude, that's different. That's molding, man. That's separate. That's not everywhere. It's some places, but it's not everywhere. Just remember gravity is still working. You're on a planet. Gravity is in full effect. You're not going to float away. Everything's under control.  You got to breathe. Are you breathing? Breathe in. I can't because I'm laughing. I'm breathing in. It's hard. Sorry. Is it like a law? Is there a law? Is it like, like, can you not build someplace without this stuff on the bottom? Because it's literally everywhere. And then while you're doing that, Identity Four is telling you it's there because the interface between the carpet and the bottom of the drywall rarely look good after it is built. And then your mischievous friends like leaning over. It's like, it's aliens, man. It's aliens. They've been working on this. They've been working on this for a long time. That's how they get into us. It's where the tardigrades live. They live in the molding. No, the tardigrades are in your garden in the moss. They're growing moss. Well, I live in Portland, so there's moss everywhere. You can find tardigrades in moss if you have moss by your house.   Yeah.  We'll find them. Okay. So question then. We have moss that we buy dehydrated. And then we rehydrate it for exhibits, right? So does that have dried up tardigrades in it? Probably. Probably. With tardigrade-specific proteins. Find a tardigrade. That's right, Google. You know how to complete my sentences. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe, but it has to be, so it has to be, but it has to, I mean, I don't know if you'd find it in the dry stuff. I mean, you have to. What does a dried up tardigrade look like? Well, I mean, you'd want to, it would have to be rehydrated. So maybe it would be in the dry moss as long as the moss were then wetted. Oh, yeah. So much. Yeah. That's what we do. We soak it. Yeah, but you can seriously look online how to find a tardigrade, and there are how-tos on how to actually get your own tardigrade out of moss or lichen. Will a dissecting microscope be good enough to get to C1, or you'd have to have a better one, right? The dissecting microscope wouldn't be strong enough. Maybe. The baseboard is there to keep you from accidentally pulling up the flooring by the edge. It's also there because it holds the wall down from flying around since wall insulation is made out of anti-gravity. It's just the basics. Yeah, fun fact. Hashtag fun fact. Yeah, you probably want to compound microscope. Okay. And one with a silver super lens. Oh, like this coin. Yeah. Which you can buy for only $19.99 right now from Blair's Precious Metal Corner. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. All right, everybody. I got to go. Oh, I dropped it. Oh, no, you're never going to find it. Oh, man. We're going to have to get a little metal detector in there. I need a magnet. Wait, is silver magnetic? It's not. It's not. And a metal detector wouldn't even, well, a metal detector might find it. Yeah, a metal detector will find it. Yeah. You just got to go find somebody on the beach. Knock them out. Take their metal detector. Or, actually, what you could do is take a AM FM radio, tune it to, I think, a low AM station, but in the static, and then tape something with a magnet, like a calculator, and tape that to it, and tune it to that station, and then hold it over your floor, and you'll hear the difference. You can make your own. It's how to make your own. How do you tune a calculator to a radio? No, you tune the radio. Wow. You tune the radio to a... I can't remember. I think it's AM. It could be FM. But there's a certain range you kind of want to be in. I got to go find the details to make this thing work. But you can actually make your own metal detector in a pinch if you need to. OK. DIY metal detector with a calculator and a portable radio. Totally doable. Really cold, guys. I got to go cold. My room got real cold. Yeah, Blake, I think it is AM. It probably is. Everything cool is in AM. 15 to 30 is all I need to find a tardigrade. Magnification. It's pretty decent. That's cool. The dissecting microscopes will work for that. I'm asking because there's a chance I'll have a bunch of dissecting microscopes at my disposal very soon. Cool. Yeah. Wow. Maybe I'll have children find tardigrades. That would be awesome. Probably don't need much. You probably just need like 10 or 15 also to do... It depends on what you want to see of the mushroom spores. If you just want to see them or what you want to do with the mushroom spores. Blake, maybe 100 times. 200 times. If you want to identify them and see identifying characteristics. More than that, maybe. They're small. Little tiny. 500. That's what I'm going to say. I don't know. Just look at them. Maybe 100. 100 would probably be good. Here it is. Turn a calculator into a metal detector. It's a video. What you need. A little calculator. Oh, this one's with a cell phone. AM radio. There you go. A calculator. That's what it is in the AM. You tape it through. And then I guess you do a calculator side down. That's what it looks like. But I don't have time to watch this video. AM radio. Calculator. And the calculator is just the magnet. Or the... The display. Not the display. You're not using the display. That's what's interesting. It's that bit of... I don't know. I have no idea how it works. Kids and teachers. That's awesome. I'm going to get some... I'm going to get that. Look for tardigrades with my son. That looks rad. Yup. Buying this. I've got to go get my... Where am I going to find moss in the Central Valley? There's no moss anywhere. You can also have lichen. Like lichen that's on a fence post, a wooden fence post, or a tree that's kind of dry. I don't know that we got lichen around here. You have like... There's lichen in Davis. I have lichen outside my front door or my house right now. There's probably tardigrades in it. Oh, that's so... Where do they come from? Outer space, according to you. Yeah, but like how do they get to the lichen on my bush? I said something really terrible. The action was priceless. Oh my God. I'm tired, guys. But yeah, how do they get to the lichen? That's for real. I have to go. No, I want to know. Kiki, answer my question. How do they get there? Where do they come from? Let's find that out. I don't know. Because it sounds like it's just like... Lichen shows up. Boop! Tardigrades. Oh my God. Oh my God. A tardigrade in the hand is worth. How many in the bush? Yeah, you tell me, honey. I don't know. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Okay, you guys. Say goodnight, Justin. Goodnight, Justin. Goodnight, Justin. Goodnight, Blair. Goodnight, Kiki. Goodnight, everybody. Thank you, Boop. We must lose it here at the end of the show. Oh my goodness. Oh no. Oh my gosh. So much hilarity. So much hilarity. This was a fun after-show. Goodnight, everybody. Thanks for watching. We'll see you again next week. May science be with you. Bye.