This is TWIS, this week in Science episode number 560, recorded on Wednesday, March 30th, 2016. Science, no foolin'.  But first... DISCLAIMER, DISCLAIMER, DISCLAIMER! The first time human ancestors left the tree to go walking about in the wide open world, they must have been afraid of everything, or everything must have been afraid of them, or nothing much noticed them until it was much too late, and humanity had spread worldwide. In any case, the few things that were noticed or not caused or overcame fear had one thing in common. Knowledge, our ancestors ability to acquire knowledge made them powerful enough to set out, even with eight brains, and conquer a planet. And so, in the spirit of our eight brained heritage, we offer you knowledge that you may set out from the trees of humanity, and conquer the world, or do something great with your day. Yes, it is time once again for 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? Good science to you, Kiki and Blair. And good science to you, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there, welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. You know what? It's not April Fool's Day today. No, it is not. So we're not doing an April Fool's Day show with a lot of fake science. We're just doing a show with a lot of science. Because there's a lot of good science this week. I know, there's tons. I'm super excited. Lots of great stuff out there. What did I bring? I brought stories about steps to synthetic life, fecal transplants, and Saturn. Justin, what did you bring? I've got a handful of human ancestor stories, as the disclaimer might have anticipated you towards. I believe that with you, with your hands full.  Bring that. Blair, what did you bring for the animal corner? I brought the aforementioned bloodthirsty prairie dogs. I also brought some vengeful birds and a couple new ways to save endangered species. Oh, be like that. I like good ideas on how to save things. Neat and nice. Let's get this show going. Right off the top, crazy awesome, what?  Craig Venter is back at it again. He's been kind of silent, or at least the papers on synthetic biology, synthetic bacteria, creating a synthetic organism have not been flooding academic journals as they were a couple of years back. It's actually been a couple of years since we've seen a paper from the Venter Institute on synthetic biology, on creating these synthetic organisms. The last paper, they booted up an empty bacterial shell, basically, with a bacterial genome. That was an existing bacterial genome, but they printed it and then stuck it into another bacteria's nucleus and said, haha, let's see if it will divide and conquer, and it did. So they showed that they could print these things. If they had a bacterial DNA sequence, they could print the DNA and they could make a bacterium go, but that is not everything they need to know to create a completely de novo bacterial species. What they're trying to figure out and what they've been trying to figure out since then is how to create the most minimal genome possible. This is something that's really important in the pathway of creating life from scratch is what genes are necessary for life to go. What do you need? What kind of instructions do you need for it to start translating itself and making itself reproduce and survive? How does that happen? So they took the bacterium in this new science paper, bacterium with the smallest genome that is known, and this genome is called mycoplasma mycoides. It's a tiny little bacterium and they've been working at it and it hasn't worked. They tried a few different methods and they didn't work. This is why it's been so long that we haven't heard from them for a while. Things have not been working except they basically said, okay, we're just going to start with our bacterium the way we know it and then we're just going to start deleting things and see what happens. So they've been doing a step-by-step iterative process figuring out which genes of this mycoides genome were necessary. This genome started out with 500 some odd genes, 525 genes actually, and they came up with a genome finally after round, after round, after round. They call it JCVI, J. Craig Venter Institute, SIN 2.0, so synthetic 2.0. That kind of makes sense for the naming. And so starting from 525 genes, they reduced it down to 478 protein coding genes and then another 38 genes that were not protein coding but are used in RNA and creating say messenger RNA, interference RNA, various kinds of RNA that flowed around the cell. So another 38 were used for that. And they said, okay, that's great, that's a little smaller. We still don't know what all these genes are for, so let's see if we can get it even smaller, see if we can get rid of some more stuff. So more mutating and making things not work. And they created JCVI SIN 3.0. They got it down to 473 genes and according to their paper in science, the 473 genes have genes involved in transcription and translation of proteins. So some of the proteins are necessary for creating the ribosome and getting the ribosome to work. Others are for specifically taking DNA, turning it into RNA and then getting it over to the ribosome itself. So this whole process, transcription, translation, those proteins are in there. But then there are 149 genes of completely unknown function. 149 genes out of 473, they still don't know what they do at all. But so far with all the mutations that they've done, 473 genes is the smallest they think they've been able to get it so far. Of course they're still mutating it, of course they're trying to get it to be smaller if they can. But also the next step is to figure out what these other genes are involved in. So what undiscovered purposes or undiscovered functions are necessary for life? So there's some really interesting stuff there. From the conclusion of their abstract, they say that the minimal cell concept appears simple at first glance, but it becomes more complex upon close inspection. Yes it does. In addition to essential and non-essential genes, there are many quasi-essential genes, which are not absolutely critical for viability, but are nevertheless required for robust growth. So the bacteria can live without some of these genes, but they don't grow very well. They don't flourish. And also they found that, of course, a lot of genes are interlinked, and so the functioning of one gene affects the functioning of another, and so there are these downstream effects. Consequently, during the process of genome minimization, there is a trade-off between genome size and growth rate. JCVI Syn3.0 is a working approximation of a minimal cellular genome, a compromise between small genome size and a workable growth rate for an experimental organism. It retains almost all the genes that are involved in the synthesis and processing of macromolecules and then those 149 genes with unknown biological functions. And finally, JCVI 3.0 is a versatile platform for investigating the core functions of life and for exploring whole genome design. So they're back. They're mutating this minimal genome. They are looking to see what genes are essential for life, and like they said, the trade-off between life and growth. And so they figured out that you need this almost 500 genes to survive. That's the minimal genome. But the fact they don't know what a third of them does, but they know they're essential. There's something about that that's fantastic to me is that we figured out, okay, we really need this. We don't know what they do. We've taken them out. And then the thing dies, but we don't know why it dies. Something breaks. We don't know what. And this might not be the only configuration, right? This is the smallest stable version that they've gotten, at least. Yes. This is the most stable, exactly. Like they said, the best trade-off between it living and not just being dead and actually growing and not just kind of sitting there going, well, I'm here, but I can't do anything. Yeah. And John Timmer over at Ars Technica, in his last paragraph of his write-up of this work, he said something that was one of the first thoughts that I had as well. And the idea would be to take these cells, and right now the cells that they're using are bathed in this super luxurious nutritional bath, so they don't have to worry about making any of their own nutrients. They don't have to worry about manufacturing vitamin K or any of the things that they might need to survive. So this is what helps it be a minimal genome. So what if we just started taking them, just taking stuff out of that bath, taking nutrients away and seeing what came of it? And then you have actually a system or a platform for some really interesting research into evolution to find out, as John Timmer says, to tell us a lot about how much of what we think of as being typical life is a clear optimization and how much is simply the result of lucky accidents. That's real. It could actually be experimentally checked now, which is pretty cool. Pretty cool. So yes, I'm sure there will be much more on this synthetic biology front from the Venture Institute in the future. They've sped up their process, so maybe it won't be two years until we see their next paper come out. Moving from a little small space to outer space, Saturn. We all love Saturn and its beautiful rings, and the Cassini mission has brought us so close to those rings. Who would have ever thought that we'd be as close to Saturn as we've been for the past decade? Anyway, researchers have been trying to figure out the dynamics of the rings and the moons around Saturn. How do they form? What's going on there in the gravitational forces that allow them to have formed where they are and to have the orbits that they hold? There are some really interesting thoughts that start to arise when you start to think about the gravitational forces of Saturn itself and then between the different moons. In our own solar system we have some really interesting oscillations that occur as a result of gravitational interactions between large planets like Neptune and smaller outer dwarf planets like Pluto. Pluto is tugged around by Neptune's immense gravitational field. Some of us, like Earth, we have a very stable orbit, but that's only happened as a result of many interactions that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago when the solar system was formed. So how much do we know about the stability of the orbits of these moons around Saturn and where they came from? There is a researcher named, and I'm going to probably pronounce his name incorrectly, Matija Chuk and is the lead author of this research paper published in Astrophysical Journal and it's authored by a bunch of scientists from the SETI Institute and Southwest Research Institute. And they're using observations from the Cassini spacecraft of the interior moons of Saturn and the rings. And what they have concluded from their analysis is that the inner moons are super young. They're nowhere near the age of the planet. Like our moon is thought to have formed very shortly after the formation of our planet.  Luck would have it. They think, however, that the inner moons of Saturn might have gotten their start only about 100 million years ago. Wow, so there's dinosaurs. The dinosaurs. Yes, the dinosaurs. Looking at the sky, seeing brilliant Saturn up in the night sky, we're watching the moons form like Enceladus forming 100 million years ago. So any ideas what brought this about? Because there's plenty of moons there. Is it that other moons that were already there bumped into each other and then had to reform new moons or is it an asteroid hit kind of a thing? How did they get these new moons? Or has Saturn just been slower than some planets and sort of forming its moons? That these were other dust rings or something that were floating around out there. Yeah, so the idea is that maybe they had been little moons and then they got broken up into rings and then those rings again formed into moons. So there's kind of been a back and forth over several billion years but the most recent is that there were rings of debris around Saturn that formed up into these moons around 100 million years ago as a result of the orbital dynamics and particular oscillations that occurred at certain resonant frequencies around the planet of Saturn. So then the rings that Saturn still have might just be like a sweet spot, like this weird sweet spot that should have formed a moon. Anywhere else would have formed a moon but in Saturn they're either just sticking around or maybe this is how a moon starts. It starts as a ring and we've just seen all the planets that have moons should have rings or did once and now we're just sort of seeing one that didn't form. Yeah, so that there would probably some collisions that occurred that there was instability at some point. There was, they kind of started shaking. If you've ever watched like waves start going in pattern and they kind of get out of sync and the instability grows and that probably ran some little moons into each other. Crash debris, debris all over the place and then soon after that the newer moons of the inner Saturnian system got started. So it's a really interesting idea and one of the things that comes from it though is that depending on the stability of the system now and I don't know if the system is now stable it may yet deteriorate again. It happens to be stable as we're looking at it currently because there are tidal forces and the inner moons are moving away from Saturn very quickly. So since they're moving away from Saturn so quickly maybe there could still be some disturbance in their system that could lead to more crashes and bangs and debris fields and more new moons later. Additionally though it suggests that Enceladus is very young and Enceladus being this wonderful water carrying moon we've seen from these beautiful water jets that shoot out from the stripes on Enceladus that there's water, ocean of water beneath the frozen surface of the moon of Enceladus and if there is water we've thought hey maybe there could be life right? It's like oh with water comes a possibility but if it's only 100 million years old within the time of dinosaurs is that long enough for life to have gotten a start? So now people are wondering about this idea that Enceladus might hold life in it. Yeah seems a little young right? Now it sort of throws off that whole time scale upon which you think these things could by chance or happen stance or conditions even get going. Exactly. Yeah so we don't know. I mean if life was populated our solar system on comets that happened a long time ago. You know if the building blocks were brought and life got its start just from the right conditions happening that happened still a long time ago. We think again but we don't really know the conditions exactly but yeah this doesn't look like it. This doesn't have anything going for it that would then say like well maybe. So Enceladus in addition to having these wonderful cracks in its surface from the title of forces the gravitational forces of its orbital path around Saturn has these water jets that are brilliant in relief against space. And researchers have been trying to figure out how exactly these wonderful water jets work. So some researchers have published a study this week that's a model of how they work. So wonderful computer model to make the whole thing work. It's published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the take home message from it is that they've been able to recreate one aspect of the geysers behavior which is that there's a five hour delay between the title forces pulling the cracks in the ice apart to their maximum width and the peak of how much water sprays out how much erupted material comes out it's about a five hour delay. And so their model was able to do that it's pretty awesome. And the model has discovered that this occurs because there's turbulent flow in the crack between the surface of the ice and the ocean underneath it. And the turbulent flow down that crack it's like spiraling and turbulent if you can imagine lots of you know like a rapid with lots of turbulence in it. The turbulent flow slows down the refilling of these slots with water as the title forces change. And so the title forces are changing the crack width is changing during that time but the water and the amount of water that is held in place in those cracks and is getting pushed out is not changing as rapidly. So the other thing is that the model was unable to capture there's this different five fold difference in the amount of material that erupts at different points in the orbital cycle. So as it's as this moon is orbiting around Saturn there are times when it's just spewing tons of water into the air and then other times when it's really not five time difference. So they were not able to narrow that down with the model so they're still working on it. But basically it's you know we've got these cracks and they're being pulled open and then the title forces are shoving them shut again and it's kind of like a pipe if you could or a hose. If you take the hose and squeeze it shut and then open it up again and it changes the amount of water that comes out. And so they're trying to just figure out the mechanics of how it works. But the key thing big thing that about this is it does tell us that these jets even though Enceladus may only be a hundred million years old these jets due to the title forces the title forces that are at play could keep the pressure up to keep it going for up to a million years. So the pressure and the heat that's generated by the title forces tweaking the surface of this little moon can create all that all that energy and keep a sustained water flow for a million years. So we had plenty of time to send Cassini out and to image the beautiful pictures that we have. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So this is This Week in Science moving on up Justin tell us some human history. Some human history. Well this is actually an update on this one. This is a Homo Floriensis the so-called hobbit folk of Indonesia have been redated. International team of scientists investigate the original site and have published their findings. This is the site the little hobbit folk in Indonesia found on the island. They're only a couple feet tall have these tiny tiny chimp sized brains and yet have tools. And we're thought to coexist because the modern humans got there 50,000 years ago. This is saying that the site is no longer thought to now be between 13 and 11,000 years old but is much older. The most recent hobbit skeleton remains they say occurred around 60,000 years. Evidence of their simple stone tools continue to about 50,000 years ago. And after this there's nothing to indicate the little hobbit people persisted which would put their disappearance pretty much in accordance with the earliest modern human settlers arrival on the islands and removes the tens of thousands of years of cohabitation or at least co-settlement of the island. The site they say is large and complex and the original excavators dug only a tiny portion of it. Years of further excavation have led to much clearer understanding of the order of the archaeological layers and it is now evident then when the original team collected samples for dating. They did so in the main layer containing the hobbit bones but it was mistakenly from an over-lang layer that is similar in composition but far, far younger. So, homoflorensis much older than we had initially thought they were. Which is really interesting. I read something along with this. I mean if we go 50 to 60,000 years ago around the same time humans were making our way down to Australia. That's when a lot of animals were going extinct. So could there potentially be a link between the spread of homo sapien and the extinction of homoflorensis.  And from the hobbit's perspective, being that they were, they topped out at about 3 feet tall. They were little people. Yeah, it would be as though suddenly the planet where Earth were invaded by a much advanced race of humans that were 10 feet, 11 feet tall and much smarter than us. Well, size isn't everything. Well, the brains are bigger too. We were much smarter. Better tools, craftier. I don't know, they had tools. They were pretty advanced, right? A nice advanced little civilization. Sure, I guess. They had some primitive tools. And they had just enough brain for their 3 foot size and probably much more than their 3 foot size even really needed. And a lot of these animals that humanity encountered weren't from the African plains and jungles previously. They hadn't been brought up in a place where you've really got to fight and hunt perhaps. I'm surprised there's pandas. The first humans that came across pandas probably could have just taken them right out. We were just too darn cute. Right, we were too cute. We did, for all of the failings of early humans, we did appreciate cuteness. But yeah, you know, anything we got to an island where there were flightless birds, they pretty much disappeared in our way. Unless they were terrifying. Who were terrifying? The flightless birds, yes. Like the cassowary, we didn't dare try to take down the cassowary. Okay, we'll take down the dodo. And the dodo apparently we just rounded them up. We would just sort of heard them like they weren't scared or really impressed with us. But as reported on the show, they were not as dumb as we thought.  Just like already domesticated. Just not afraid of humans, which why would they be? They've never seen one before. If they had those big schnauzes, the dodoes should have run away the first whiff. The first whiff. What does that smell? The other story I had on this tip, Australopithecus afarensis are ape-like. The upright ancestor of Lucy fame is in the news again. They were alive between 3 to 3.7 million years ago. Fossils are found only in the East African Rift Valley. That is until now as they have popped up some great distance from it. New fossils from Kenya suggest that Australopithecus afarensis lived far eastward beyond the Rift Valley. International team of paleontologists, left by Emma Mumboa of Mount Kenya University of Masato. And Masato Nakasukasa of Kyoto University. I'm over-pronunciating things now. Report findings of fossilized teeth and forearm bone from an adult male and two different Australopithecuses from an exposure eroded by the Cantus River in Angara-Rungae, a settlement on the outskirts of Narobi. So far, all the other Australopithecus afarensis found have been identified in the center of the Rift Valley. Explains Nakasukasa. Previous discovering, Chad confirmed that our Omnid Ancestor's distribution covered good parts of Central Africa. But this is the first time an Australopithecus fossil has been found east of the Rift Valley. This has important implications for what we understand about our ancestor's distribution range. Namely that Australopithecus could have covered a much greater area. So part of what I think is really the great interesting part of this story lies in the terrain east of the Rift Valley. Stable isotope analysis reveals the Cantus region was humid, but had a plain-like environment with fewer trees compared to the other sites in the Great Rift Valley where afarensis fossils of previous appeared. The Omnid must have discovered a suitable habitat in the Kenyan highlands. It seems that afarensis was good at adapting to varying environments as Nakasukasa. So adapting, yes, and important because Australopithecus afarensis is such a hybrid of ape and man. Upright, yes, but also absolutely they were built for a boreal environment. So to find them in the less, they were definitely climbers. They still had all the apish curvatures and wrist bone strengths and developments for spending a good part of their time in the trees. So not only did they adapt to this new environment, but this is to find them in a less wooded, more plain-like setting is really setting the stage for the evolution to come. This is when the ape man left the cover of the trees and goes out into the plains and starts to live much more of a modern human-esque way. So very interesting. Team also turned up masses of mammal fossils, including a few that probably belonged to a new species that previously had been discovered of bovids or baboons. The site was first noted in a 1991 geological survey. At that time, a farmer had told those doing the surveying that their family had come across a number of fossilized bones back in the 70s, but they didn't recognize the importance. But following the airing of Kenyan television programs on paleontological research, locals started to appreciate these fossils, and they started to identify sites around the area where these fossils could be found. So it was really the local population there that after watching some of this, probably a NOVA special of some sort, BBC special, said, oh yeah, we've got those, they're all over the place. Come take a look. I need to make xylophones out of them. Now let's see something else with them. I just think that's an amazing point to show how important science communications are. You know, how people can be a part of discovering our own human history if they only know what to look for or what is important in a particular story that's being told. That's just awesome, fantastic. We need more. More science for television. Is it time for more science from Blair's Animal Corner? What you got Blair? I have some chilling news about a darling of the biological community. Of course I'm talking about prairie dogs. They're adorable. They're little rodents. They live together. They make colonies. They call out to each other if there's danger. They're harmless little herbivores. Well it turns out they're not so harmless. What didn't you report a little while ago about prairie dogs? Prairie dogs killing other endangered species or something? Oh my goodness.  What was the story? It was another animal that was killing prairie dogs. Prairie dogs have had population troubles because they're a prey animal. A recent pair of researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Tulsa found white-tailed prairie dogs living on the North American prairie. They found them doing some interesting things. A long, long time study. It was covering the years 2003 to 2012. And they were sitting in trees watching the activities of prairie dogs. Four years into the study, so this is in 2007, they witnessed in horror a prairie dog killing a ground squirrel. This was the first time ever that there has been an observation of a mammalian herbivore killing another herbivore without eating it. So this was weird. A mammalian herbivore killing another mammalian herbivore. There was no necessary consumption of nutrients. Why on earth would they be doing this? Well, over the course of the rest of their study from 2007 to 2012, they continued to watch out for this behavior, now knowing that it was possible. And they witnessed 101 instances of prairie dogs intentionally killing ground squirrels. And they noticed another 62 squirrel carcasses that looked like they were also the victims of prairie dog attacks. What's more, they identified 47 individual prairie dogs killing the squirrels. So 162 potential squirrel murders and only 47 individuals. 11 males and 36 females. And 19 of the 47 killed multiple times. And I did some math on that, which on these 101 confirmed killings, there were 47 individuals that did the killing, but only 19 of them were repeats. That means that those 19 animals killed three to four times each in just a few years. So this is a recurring phenomenon. And researchers watching them would watch the interaction beforehand, see what was going on with the resources.  Prairie dogs were killing squirrels because they were competitors for resources. They eat the same food. And in many cases, the squirrels actually take over abandoned prairie dog tunnels. So the prairie dogs are saying, nah. What's more, they found that mother prairie dogs who killed squirrels tended to have more offspring than did ones that did not kill squirrels. And that their overall, quote, fitness levels, something that they were addressing in this research, were much higher than non-killing females. Wow. So murderers did better. Right. So they killed squirrels. You could kind of jump to the conclusion that by killing the squirrels, they're reducing competition in their territory. Therefore, resources come easier. Therefore, they raise more babies. Right. Now, what I think is particularly so interesting about this study is that we've been studying prairie dogs for a really long time. So if we haven't noticed this until now, that means there is a high potential that there are other herbivores doing this that we haven't figured out yet. Just last year, I think, I reported on deer eating meat habitually in the wild during winter when they can't find a lot of plants. They eat meat. Right. So what we call resource competition, it's a big leap to think that there's a cognitive process going on in there that's saying because they're not killing their fellow prairie dogs who are also competing for resources. Right. So there's something really interesting going on in the prairie dog brain to lead them to this action. There's something really interesting going on. Eliminate the competition. At all costs. But only the non-con-specific competition. Correct. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, so these are also animals that live in colonies. And then you have to wonder if they came across prairie dogs from colonies that weren't theirs. Right, other colonies, that's a good question. Would they then attack? So this has opened an entire new field of research about prairie dogs but definitely also for other mammalian herbivores. This is something that we have to kind of put a closer lens on for all of these species that we might be trying to protect. There's a lot more going on. These little mammalian herbivores are not these cute little helpless creatures. There's other stuff going on. And then the question comes if you're trying to protect a ground squirrel colony or population because say they're locally endangered, what do you do to the prairie dogs that are killing them? Do you start calling the prairie dogs because they're encroaching on the ground? Right. Look, we can't be the world zookeeper. We can't be the world's referee. I mean, I guess we mentioned that this is the first time we've seen an herbivores. We see this in meat eaters. And at the end of the fight between a lion and a hyena, one of the others is going to get eaten. But that's because after the fight ended, the other one's going, oh look, all of a sudden there's food here. It just sort of happens that they also wouldn't be opposed to eating them, but they weren't hunting them for food. They were fighting for the same context, fighting over hunting grounds, fighting over the access to the resources. Right. The question here though is that with a lion and a hyena, let's say your example that you were just talking about, they're expending so much energy in the fight. They get some of it back afterwards by eating what they've killed.  Right. And to be fair, lions will do this. Maybe lions will attack, at least everyone I've seen will attack a hyena and kill it and not eat it. So there is some of that. It just also happens if they are hungry. It happens to be. Oh, this is great. Whereas if you're not a meat eater, you just have to go forging a hyena or whatever they do. Interesting stuff. We have just more things to be looking out for. Categorizing things often does not work out. It's kind of back to that age old story. Speaking of which, another animal that we might not have thought up to, it's devious tricks, Antarctic birds. So there are these Antarctic birds that are called skewers. Skewers, yeah. So skewers, yeah. So they are a relative of the gull and the ox. If you guys know what ox are, a UK. And if you've ever seen the penguin happy feet, the penguin animated movie, the skewer is the mean bird that comes after the little happy feet character. Right. That makes perfect sense. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. So the skewers, they are Antarctic species that until there were research stations in Antarctica, these species never saw humans. However, now researchers have figured out that these birds can identify specific humans and hold a grudge. So these researchers have to check the bird nests once a week to monitor breeding status, populations, all those kinds of things. And the skewers attacked at closer distances with repeated visits from the researchers. And so once the researchers noticed this, that even if Yung Dyok Han, a PhD student at Inha University, noticed, they said, I had to defend myself against the skewer's attack. When I was with other researchers, the birds flew over me and tried to hit me. Even when I changed my field clothes, they followed me. The birds seemed to know me no matter what I wear. So after that, they decided to actually do some experiments on this. So the researchers checked the nests once a week. But when they did that, they would have two researchers walk towards the nest. And as soon as the birds took notice of the pair of humans, they would turn and walk in opposite directions. And one of them would be a, quote, nest intruder. So that was someone who had previously assessed nests and a neutral human, someone who had never assessed the nests before. And they, when they walked in opposite directions, all seven pairs of birds followed and tried to attack the previous intruder, never following the neutral human. So they could identify these humans despite what they were wearing. What's really interesting about this is that, as I mentioned before, these birds have never seen humans before the research stations showed up there. So in a very short period of time, birds have figured out how to recognize specific humans. So the question is, was this predisposed or is this something that was a learned discriminatory behavior over a very, very short amount of time? And I think that it also, it kind of begs the question of, we look at certain animals and we think that they all look very similar. And I've always kind of assumed that looking at a different species, one animal looking at another species, it's kind of hard to tell the individuals of the different species apart until you learn kind of discerning bits. And so a bird being able to identify specific humans that does not have the magnificent cognitive abilities of say a J or a crow, but still they were able to differentiate humans in such a short amount of time. I think it's really fascinating. I think it may also help that there's not a lot of humans there to differentiate between. A pigeon in New York is going to see too many faces and too many humans going by to remember one of them the next day. Whereas I guess the Arctic bird here in this scenario, there's not even another species to stare at and sort of identify. Well, that's not true. There's species in the Antarctic. There's lots going on. I will say I understand your point that in New York City humans are white noise. However, in a place like a very well attended park in the middle of a city, crows recognize individual people. That's still a lot of faces that they have to see. Yeah, there's a lot of evidence that crows and ravens, these Corvid species are quite able to recognize individual people, hold grudges as well. We just don't, distant birds like those that live in the Antarctic, we don't have a lot of experience around them even to know what their cognitive abilities are. We've done a lot of studies into Corvid species. We haven't really done a lot of studies on Antarctic skewers onto how they're recognizing of any individuals. This is a new area. Beyond that, the ecology of this system is that there's probably very limited resources. It is probably very resource intensive to be able to raise a nest of young. If anyone is going to be coming by that nest, they're going to remember who, why, what, when. They're going to remember all the information about it so that they can protect their young at all. However they can. Yeah, I think that ultimately them being able to discern that information is something that isn't necessary to defend their nest. They could just attack anybody that comes to it, but it does definitely, going back to resources and energy again, just like we were talking about in the previous story, it saves energy if they know who to attack and who is kind of cool and you don't have to worry about. In a place like the Antarctic where it's hard to come by resources and it's hard to get energy, it would make sense that they would have to figure out how to assess threats very effectively. I wonder what they're using to identify the people, especially if it's really cold, so people are wearing these bulky jackets and hats and maybe even a scarf that makes the face difficult to see. Is it the way that the people are walking? Because gate is very personalized, so it could be something about the way people walk. A lot of people are going to wear brightly colored jackets in the Arctic because you don't want to go missing if you do. You want to get spotted by a helicopter, so it's maybe not unlike fancy bird plumage. Part of the study was them changing clothes and it didn't have any effect. Definitely there's something going on. I was wondering about that too because you don't have very much of your face showing when you're in the Antarctic. There's something going on that these birds are able to identify humans that way. It just goes to show you that even these animals that have never seen humans before, they will learn how to identify a threat quickly. I don't know much more about the interpersonal relations of scuas and how they interact with other scuas. Other scuas are probably coming around and trying to steal eggs or even chicks because they aren't meat-eating birds. Maybe recognizing individuals is helpful because they're often protecting their young from the same individuals that they see around them all the time anyway. It had me thinking because how they identify an individual bird might be very different from how they identify an individual human, or it might be the same. I think that's what's really fascinating to me is that when I suddenly had to learn 20 different squirrel monkey faces, I had a really tough time finding individual things to pick out. But when you meet a new person, you don't find yourself going, oh, this person has this color hair and a mole over on that cheek and blue eyes, and they kind of have a frowny face. Okay, that's Steve, right? Steve has a frowny face. So it's just a very different cognitive process that I go through and I would assume other humans go through when you're trying to identify individuals of a different species. So I then was putting my brain in the brain of a bird wondering if it's similar or different. I do wonder that too. I don't know. I don't know if we'll ever know. Well, we're not going to answer it in this half of this show, but we'll answer more questions in the second half of this week in Science.  Because we have more science coming for you in the second half. I got fecal transplants for you and your dogs. We'll be back in just a moment. Stay tuned. Hey everybody, head on over to twist.org to check out our Zazzle store. There's a link at twist.org for Zazzle, our Zazzle store, where you can find hats and mugs and t-shirts and all sorts of things so that you can proclaim your twisty love all over the planet. Wherever you are, you can order these Zazzle products to be able to wear the twist logo and blazin' all over. And I have artwork from Blair and I'm going to see if I can get it up in the Zazzle store this next week. 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It really, really does. You can listen to us on iTunes and you can post reviews on iTunes, post comments on YouTube. There are all many ways that you can be a part of what we do with twists. There's something you think that we need that you'd like to help on. Just send me an email. We'll see what we can start talking about. We thank you for your support. We really could not do it without you. And we're back with more This Week in Science. Justin, tell me another story. Well, let's talk about ants. Or rather, ants talking. University of Melbourne Sciences looked into the complexities of ant communication with the discovery that ants not only pick up information with their antennae, or antennae, antennae, antennae, antennae. But they use them to convey social signals. This is a two-way communication device. And this study is believed to be the first time that antennae have been used to be that two-way communication device rather than just something used to pick up information from the environment. This is a biologist from the University's School of Bioscience analyzed the behavior and surface chemistry of hundreds of ants to examine how they interacted. The key focus was the use and function of cuticular hydrocarbons, the CHCs they're calling, a layer of waxy buildup that covers the ants body and out of many other insects such as bees, wasps, flies, and beetles. The CHCs are a group of multi-purpose chemical compounds that not only protect animals from dehydration, but also are used as a communication toolbox. Ants use these chemicals to identify whether another is friend or foe. According to the research, when the CHCs were removed from just the antennae of the ant, her opponents were no longer able to recognize her colony identity. This told them that the CHCs on the antennae provide information about which nest they come from. Wow! They smell like a certain nest, kind of. Yeah. Ants antennae are their chief sensory organ, but until now we never knew that they could also be used to send out information. PhD student Quik Wang said, over 125 years ago, feigned entomologist Augusta Forel removed the antennae of four species of ants entirely and put them together instead of fighting as they had been, would have been inclined to do. They huddled unnaturally together entirely peacefully, Mr. Wang said. So, Forel's experiment told us about antennae being used to receive chemical signals, but our research suggests that they are also a source of chemical signals. Like everyone else, we assume the antennae were just receptors, but nature can still surprise us. Mr. Wang and his co-authors also found that CHC profiles were different depending on where on the body they were. This contradicts the conventional wisdoms that the profiles in different parts of the ant's body are just the same. It's just one big covering swath of the stuff. Compared to visual or acoustic signals, we know rather less about chemical signals and one reason might be that we are analyzing a mixture of different signals all compiled together. What we'd like to know is what else they might tell us. So, there's a lot more going on, you know, in the world of animal communication than when we talk about human ability to communicate and talk as being this super advanced thing that we have with language. Very likely, none of us could tell what town another person, stranger that we met is from just by their smell. But understanding how this system works, I mean, I would love something that interferes with the communication of ants as they try to hijack my kitchen. Right, so you make it smell or seem to them so they would sense it with their antenna that that area is another nest turf. And then they go, oh, the tough ants have the kitchen. We'll be back over here in the garden. You guys, you keep the kitchen. That would be some pretty clever next level stuff. I find that disc soap works just fine. Because they're following, they're just following the chemical trail that some sort of prospecting scout ant, some recon ant that found your little bit of sugar left on the counter or whatever it is, is found it and then left the trail back to the nest so that all the other ants are just following that trail. So if you can eliminate that trail when it's soap seems to work fine back to where the ants are entering your abode, they'll stop coming in. Right, and it's, you know, if I could not kill ants, I'd like that. I feel like Justin, you haven't had a really intense ant battle if you think that a little soap can fix the ant problem. I think that you're due for a full-scale invasion. All I'm saying is is that I, you know, I track it back to the entry points where they're coming in and I put a little line of dish soap over there and they stop. That's it. It's that simple. They're not, they're not, they don't have a map, right? They don't have a map and they're like okay, if we can just get around this soap and over that wall there and climb over that and then somehow find their way down that crevice will be to where the good stuff is. No, they're just following a trail. They're pretty simple that way. Yeah, right. Well, fecal transplants are pretty simple too sometimes. Pooh pills. Right. Just take the poop, put it in a gel cap. You're good to go, right? Right. Well, yeah, sometimes. So anyway, we've learned that fecal transplants are amazing for treating gastro, for treating chronic gastrointestinal disorders. Disorders which lead to chronic diarrhea, chronic distress that are bacterial in nature, that are of a bacterial origin. So researchers, not researchers, veterinarian Kevin Conrad of Palmetto's Southeastern Guide Dogs had been seeing many dogs with a recurrent diarrhea, adult dogs, puppies with disorders that have led to recurrent diarrhea. He found out about the human research and he said I wonder if we can do this cure gastrointestinal problems in dogs that are caused by bacteria and often the bacterial infections that causes are, they're transferred from puppy to puppy because the puppies are going around, they're sniffing and licking everything and then they're going to eat each other's poop. They're eating it. The past time. The big puppy past time which is not necessarily a good thing if there's a problem like diarrhea. So Kevin Conrad created a procedure to take stool from healthy dogs, screen it for pathogens. They let it, they took a sample of it and then let it grow on agar plates for a couple of days to see if what showed up and then identified what microbial communities grew if they were, if they stool the poo was fine then they liquefied it and used a rear end feeding tube to insert it in puppies. Basically what they found though was within 12 to 24 hours puppy symptoms, good very good treatment for puppies that their problems or gastric problems went away very rapidly. He's now using the method on adult and pregnant dogs and according to Conrad from this artist technical article so what we tried to do is a fecal transplant on a pre little litter mom while she's pregnant and she's dropping a whole litter of puppies without diarrhea issues so now we are not only treating it but preventing it and now what we'll find out is have we cured diarrhea throughout the dog's lifetime so what they're wondering is if they treat a mother dog while she's pregnant will it help the puppy stay healthy throughout their life. We don't know that's what they're looking for but it's great to just diarrhea gone forever. It would be but I mean what happens is when you get an imbalance is how are you going to fix that and create a balanced system right the gastric problems that we're talking about they occur when bad bacteria are ingested and overgrow right so taking the healthy fecal sample and putting it in transplanting it in basically you're saying this is what your body should have and you're inoculating the body to have a healthy system again so I don't know if it is saying that the dogs will be cured they're not going to cure it forever I mean if they go around eating bad poo then this might be yeah so I think that it sounds like his next step of his research is looking at seeing at the lifetime of the animal after the treatment right so that I think is really going to be the illuminating part of this I'm not that surprised the fecal transplant plant worked in the short term the question is the long term effects I think that will be fascinating to see yes and so now another fecal transplant story came out this week this is the week for fecal transplant stories published in mBio it's a molecular biology open it's an open access molecular biology journal that you can get access to if you so desire without paying any fees researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Perlman School of Medicine have published their findings looking into alright well we screen feces for what we know our pathogenic organisms but what about stuff that we haven't discovered yet or stuff that we don't know whether it actually does good or bad but it's just not considered a pathogen at this point in time does that stuff that stuff also squeaks through because we're not looking for it we're not screening for it it's not basically we're not looking for it so if a person has something or in another case a puppy or a dog has something in their stool has something in their stool whatever it is is going to get passed on if it is not actively screened for so what they did is they did a normal transplanting technique getting fecal matter and analyzing the fecal matter that was transplanted into people with chronic ulcerative colitis from a single healthy donor what they found is that there are a bunch of things that move between the donor and the recipient which we would expect not just good bacteria but also viruses most of the viruses were bacteriophages so those viruses that only affect bacteria that's the biggest thing and what they say specifically is we did not see any viruses that grow on animal cells that may be of concern for infecting and harming patients but they do say that the phages that they find while they're not a particular health risk they could conceivably carry toxins or contribute to antibiotic resistance in recipients so they're saying that further research needs to be done on this as we start to implement it as a common treatment yeah not only are you transferring your good bacteria you're also transferring all sorts of things that live on bacteria as well when you take poo from someone you're not just taking the good bacteria you're taking all of the bacteria and viruses that live in there and test them that's right yep so good things to keep in mind also don't try this at home don't try this at home folks not something we would recommend here nope Justin, another story? I wonder how long it is though until Dr. Justin's poo pills? something like a Dr. Justin's poo pill I approved something that you could pick up at Whole Foods down that one aisle oh that along with the homeopathic medicines yeah I'm wondering if this shouldn't be we shouldn't just put the next round of twist dollars into funding a little start up here because this seems like this could be the wave of the future we've read enough about it, we're educated enough about it that we should create the Dr. Justin's poo pill well and then you can have your designer poops, you can have your Angelina Jolie poop I'm serious this is like a huge market I mean we could create the the laboratory tested specifications for you know so that everything will be scientifically um um applied to this particular product but yeah I think we should get on that take a bottle of the Tom Cruise no no no so my next story has a university I've never heard of and can't pronounce great so a university uh-huh but it's Guelph could there be a Guelph university it's apparently in Canada G-U-E-L-P-H anyway I'm gonna call it the University of Guelph uh professor has uncovered the secret to staying as uh young I guess and it turns out it's exercise Jeff Bauer found elderly people who are elite athletes in their youth or later in life uh and who still compete have as much healthier muscle at the cellular level uh have much healthier muscles at the cellular level compared to those non-athletes of the same age and of course perhaps better than younger people the study compared world class track and field athletes in their 80s with people of the same age who are living independently these individuals in their 80s and even 90s who actively compete in world masters track and field championships in uh world championships these individuals are the creme de la creme of aging the study found that their legs were 25% stronger on average and had about 14% more total muscle mass in addition the athletes had nearly one third more motor units in their leg muscles than on athletes and uh motor units means muscle and consisting of nerve and muscle fibers the stuff I guess that's in there telling us to activate so it's just sort of another thing that tells you that you should exercise now we have learned recently that even exercise doesn't prevent you from dying in all mortality across the wide spectrum but certainly if you are less likely to fall in older age or more able to move about so that you can live independently you'll probably have a much better quality of life yet another study that says exercise is a good thing to be doing for your body and you pronounced it correctly it's Guelph it's not just something that you call it yeah yeah but this goes along with you don't want to sit all day long and maybe exercise is good for you so eat healthy protect your gut bacteria and uh and move around do your exercise and don't sit whatever you do don't sit it's okay to sit last week's show said sitting can kill you that's a little run run yeah well I don't know that I'm gonna be actively track competitive when I'm in my 80s and 90s but I do hope to be at least able to stand up that's where we're going for it um a study that researchers just published in I believe let's see which where it was, nature medicine there it was researchers for the first time gotten corticospinal neurons to grow in the broken spinal cords injured spinal cords of partially paralyzed rats now the corticospinal column the part of the spinal cord that comes from your brain the neurons in your brain from your voluntary movement centers where you go I'm going to reach for a pencil motor cortex goes bing bing bing bing and then it says need to send a single signal down the spinal cord and out to the arm to move the muscles of the hand and the arm to go grab that pencil right so the brain neuron from there from the thalamus goes down sends an axon all the way down the spinal cord some of your axons just go to like the arm to synapse on to something some of those axons have to go all the way down the spinal cord to the leg before they synapse on to something the problem is when they get injured those axons do not easily regrow so it's the worst part it's the hardest part of this corticose the hardest part of spinal cord injury regeneration has been getting these particular axons to regrow and to connect to the motor neurons the muscle neurons that actually make things move and do stuff we've had all sorts of successes previously in this area but not with these corticose spinal neurons and what the researchers specifically did is they used stem cell grafts to enable the in between the injury and the new area and so the corticose spinal axons actually ended up connecting very nicely with the grafted stem cells and then which had which were developing into neurons and so they grafted the stem cells in turned into neurons the corticose spinal axons connected to them and then those they also went on to connect to other things so they filled in the lesions with new tissue and the rats were able to move much better stretch out their front legs to grab treats that injured rats were not able to do so it's not we're not at a point where it's going to be used in people yet but these patches they think are really promising and using stem cells might really be a way to go to be able to get corticose spinal neurons to do what they need to do to get people moving again stem cells, yay! They're kind of a good thing stem cells Candida Sorda Blair's understatement stem cells understatement of the week kind of a good thing alright let's show what kind, what are the last stories we got here? Yeah, so sea turtles they get caught in fishing line a lot and a new study tells us that there could be a really easy and cheap way to keep sea turtles from getting stuck in fishing nets and that's green LED lights costing a whopping $2 a pop these green flashing LED lights discourage turtles from getting stuck into the nets but do not discourage the actual target fish species so this could be a viable option to decrease turtle bycatch in fisheries the one thing I will bring up that was not mentioned in this press release about the green lights is these LEDs are probably plastic and if those fall off of the nets that's plastic pollution in the ocean so that's not great so I don't know if flashing green lights installed on boats maybe could solve this problem so that they're on the boat but I think that's something that we need to keep in mind when we're putting lights on fishing nets well yeah, how permanent they are, how easily they'll fall off yes, but if they'll save a few sea turtles then we should really consider it $30 a light, that means that the estimated cost of saving one turtle was $34 but if this was done on a wider scale the cost would go down, of course but that doesn't include I was trying to do some research on the cost of a turtle taken out of the ocean which is very hard to kind of assess but as a fishery back to the dock there are fines for catching sea turtles so there's a way to figure out the cost benefit here, ultimately it's worth it to save turtles so this is potentially a new option and the fact that it doesn't let any of the animals you're trying to catch out is fantastic my very last story is actually a bit of really good news out of India micro sanctuaries are actually extremely beneficial to survival of protected species so when you think about, for example an antelope species like a black buck in India that lives near densely populated areas but has huge huge areas that they use in the wild as their home base, as their territory giving them a teeny tiny little sanctuary in the middle of a city might seem like it's not going to do anything but this new research shows that it actually does do amazing things for a species even to put aside a tiny bit of space so any space we can give a species we want to protect is beneficial and I think this is fantastic news oh, it's wonderful yes and I don't know, this kind of goes along with these stories but some recent research shows that a lot of the research that's being done into conserving species is not really being done in areas with lots of biodiversity where the threats of extinction are the highest so a lot of the actual conservation research is not happening in the places where it really needs to be researched yeah, unfortunately there's lots of political stuff going on when it comes to that, there's a lot of really biologically rich areas that are difficult to get researchers into it's also kind of difficult to get the government to support those organizations sometimes depending on the space and then also if you're a country that's struggling just to feed and protect its populace, it's kind of hard to tell them to fund research projects on species yeah, but I think that directly with that I would also say that any research is helpful we'd rather be doing the research in spaces where the animals are found naturally but ultimately anything we can learn about these species and what they need is still going to help us in the long run absolutely agreed research at the Korea Advanced Institutes of Science and Technology have they've created a fridge laser a laser for refrigerators fridge goes pew pew yeah, pew pew and as the writer for our test technica said pew pew, nom nom it's perfect it's absolutely perfect so anyway the idea is that this laser can can shoot the way a laser does illuminate food in your refrigerator and and detect the bounce back of the light and if there's any shift in the light that would occur as the result of movement of microbes microbes have all their little flagellae and they're like flagellae-ing around on top of your food if they're there on the surface of your food moving like little microbes do then they would slightly shift the laser light and that would be detectable they tested it by swabbing chicken with E. coli and be serious and they determined that they could figure out which infected chicken samples were which chicken samples were contaminated or infected with the bacteria and which were not and how contaminated they were so was it just a little bit of bacteria or a lot of bacteria so could now we create these little lasers that scan your refrigerator once a day to determine the sanitary status of your food and to somehow give you or if it's a commercial refrigerator or a food processing location could it give warnings if some contamination and how much is detected yeah so Shnago in the chat room is asking a good question so it sounds like you'd have to leave your food uncovered I think yeah there are a few issues with this technology that would be one of them so I would imagine the ideal way to get this done would be to create a laser that's like a a heat gun that you, it's a laser that you point at something and you pull the trigger and it tells you what temperature it is on the surface of whatever the laser is pointing so something like that would be fantastic because then you could take out your weak old dinner leftovers and crack open the Tupperware container and go phew and go mmm not today right yeah so maybe that's maybe that's a better way I would absolutely love this I think this would decrease food waste I think it would decrease illness of course yeah but I think food waste is a big one is that we say okay I bought that a week ago I gotta throw it out but if we can actually just shoot it with a laser and say oh no actually those leftovers are still good that's gonna decrease food waste money spent on food yeah absolutely Justin we can't hear you at all you've muted yourself where'd you go Justin almost as if you knew you'd say something inflammatory I didn't do anything I would not no Justin did it to himself no I can't hear you well while he figures that out how to make himself heard he has to be heard for the end of the show chicken pox possibilities so a lot of us get chicken pox as children and you kind of go yay I got chicken pox I won't get chicken pox ever again awesome and that you think the benefit of chicken pox is to not get chicken pox again well turns out there may be other benefits like not getting brain tumors so researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have found and they looked at information from the glioma international case control study with data on 4,533 cases and 4,171 controls across five countries and what they found was a 21% reduced risk of developing glioma when people had had chicken pox 21% is pretty substantial and they said that the protective effect was actually more in higher grade gliomas so you had less of a chance of getting the worst gliomas with chicken pox and so there have been previous studies that have suggested this link but this is the largest study to date that has come up with this connection and so researchers are saying this is more of an indication that there's something happening with chicken pox and it's interesting because chicken pox is also related to shingles and shingles we know is a disease as a result of nervous stimulation so the disease is harbored within the nerves and then when stressful situations occur like illness or heat or just many situations that can cause shingles to express themselves what happens is that is virus being expressed through the nerves themselves so nerves, brain and maybe there is some what the connection is we don't know but this is a suggestion that there might be a role for studying chicken pox and the chicken pox vaccine to brain cancer research yeah so whoever gave you chicken pox when you were a child you can thank them now right thank you for reducing my brain cancer risk thank you older brother for giving me chicken pox that's good we lost Justin and he has not come back but you know what the show must go on and it is the end of our our we did it we have completed another show and it is time for me to thank our patreon sponsors I would like to thank Kevin Parachan Keith Corsale, Steve Debell Patrick O'Keefe, Jason Schneiderman Rudy Garcia, Gerald Sorrell Greg Guthman, Dave Neighbor, Jason Dozier Matthew Litwin, Eric Knapp, Jason Roberts Patrick Cohn, Chris Clark, Richard Onimus John Ratnaswamy, Byron Lee E.O. 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now and if you have received this message from Patreon you will be joining a live hangout on air hooray hooray huzzah it's not a private hangout it's public you'll also be able to talk back at the people in the chat room okay you have a pretty picture of a nautilus there do you know what this is Kiki it is a nautilus but this piece a piece of art is the very first Blair's Animal Corner Art in 2016 that is available to new Patreon supporters or old that jump back on the bandwagon because I noticed that currently there is no one in the Blair draws you a picture item of Patreon so anyone who goes back in first come first serve this one will be available so the background is oil painting and then the front the nautilus is actually made out of construction paper that I cut and pasted together freehand so can you guys really not hear me you sound like a cyborg yeah we can hear you now you're just cyborgian okay I need to open a window in here it is springtime it was like 70 degrees today and this room is hot I don't know what I'm going to do summer again I'm going to die of sweat again okay now we cannot hear you you're no hearing wait say that again nope can't hear you look here's piece number two does not yet have an animal in it we'll see who lives on this plane we'll see who lives on this plane soon I haven't decided yet the canvas has not spoken to me yet that's so weird did you try did you mute yourself how come it went did you try changing the settings in the settings yeah yeah Cylon by your command right AC and fans it's what it's going to have to be it's going to be the very loud room I need to install a ceiling fan in here is what I need to do I can do that I only rent okay no hearings just in we are no hearing and you went Cylon which is the weird digital problem that happens occasionally and I think it's through Google am I not hearing you after you muted you muted yourself and you're just not coming out of mute or is it through your mixer I can't I don't know your mixer right Kevin you can unique is saying unplug it I'll get back in so I've sent a Patreon message to people with a link I haven't heard back from anybody I don't know if anyone's going to be able to join us tonight ooh I just got invited to do a segment for dear Veronica yay Veronica I'm excited about that one so okay Justin's muted now he's going to unmute you're back and it sounds good oh my goodness this is ridiculous okay so as I was saying I actually think this laser is going to create more food waste because the germaphobes such as our lovely co-host who is now a toad ahh she's not a totaphobe is going to see anything show up on that laser and toss it out whereas if you didn't know you were eating it you'd just been fine so I think people will overreact to anything living in or on their food and throw away much more food much quicker than they do now that was that was my point that's interesting although I think that anything with a flagella on it is not something you want to be eating I don't think that's true I think that's something that's fine if people eat all the time flagellas I have a little bottle of flagella that I like with peanut butter but I mean I would put this in the category if you had the same laser and it was on your toothbrush and it indicated something I bet you'd throw that toothbrush away quicker right Blair well yeah or I would sterilize it right but if it's food you're not going to sterilize it you're probably going to throw it out yeah that's my point but I also think in America we throw things away way too fast I don't know if that's necessarily true maybe you don't especially if you think about cell by dates and things like that and best used by and all those sorts of things the dating system is absolutely obscure best of used by you know cell by used by best before is it still good after I've been told by my grandmother that milk is good seven days after the expiration date as long as it's been refrigerated like it's but she's also from a generation she had two full-size freezers in the back because she was expecting another great depression I my household I had this discussion on the science island hangout the other day my household I throw away a ton of the food a third of the food I buy for the kids actually makes it to them right because they're a little bit picky eaters all of a sudden they don't want blueberries and then they want blueberries and they have to have blueberries so sometimes there's blueberries that go through and we're out we need to rush to the store to get more sometimes they sit there and they don't get eaten also there's a with a two-year-old there's a tremendous amount of food that just ends up on the floor right so there's a lot of food waste in the household already I don't think that and I don't think that knowing that the leftover spaghetti's got a little action to it that it didn't last time we busted it out where we would have eaten it and just been fine I think it'll just add to that well the idea is that you know with science we could find the threshold at which you get sick and identify that but I think that's going to be different for everybody because of their for certain things but for other things like salmonella or E. coli it's going to be bad no matter what so I think there's probably a better usage of this in the context of of this at the supermarket for the supermarket to utilize something like this as a check on food that maybe shouldn't go out in the first place but I don't, I don't know leaving it up to the general public to I think we'd just be throwing away more food I think that would just be it could it keep one or two E. coli breakouts from taking place maybe maybe instead of maybe it's something you would add to that salad bar at Chipotle to help them prevent future outbreaks but let's see so E. coli have several flagella per cell yep so I think that's part of it too is that they were targeting specific bacteria that are really detrimental I don't think that necessarily this laser is just going to find any bacteria it's going to be specific bacteria that it's just going to find things that move it is but they were using the flagella right so it's so amoebas who move slowly maybe it will not be picked up is red those that move by the extending of a foot and then there are some bacteria that have cilia that move more smoothly but the flagella just kind of causes phew behavior that cilia would cause a movement that could be detected by but I think it's a different type of movement and what I was reading in the article earlier was that it was specifically focusing on bacteria that move via flagella but now the new and improved laser that you can buy for your home refrigerator will track 99% of all things that can grow on your food this is the natural progression will be very quick for it to be more sensitive tell you anything that's alive on your food but you know maybe then again this is where we're headed but if you eat food bacteria on it but then take your poo pills you're all set then everything's fine yeah there you go right and then we can eat completely dead processed food and still have a gut bacteria that can process it thanks to the pills and then one day we'll just 3D print all our food just make it out of cardboard remnant it'll work yep this is more and more this is supporting my conspiracy theory about aliens being microbiologists from the future they're just maybe now they work for Dr. Justin's poo pills of the future and they're going back in their space ship time machines to probe for better samples to re-colonize the poo factory ew that's what the probes were for that's what it was all for ew yucky oh I know what I was going to open up let's see if I can get this open and we will share results of the twist survey that's what I need to share both of you guys took a look at that did you not I don't know I'm going to click on that and then I'm going to go clickity clickity click and then to summary and go yeah look at that boom okay you guys and they're in the chat room let's look at our survey the twist survey is it going to help us do anything with twist so asking whether or not people actually subscribe to twist the vast majority of responders said yes which is good and I think looking at the reasons that were reasoned within why or why not people like being reminded and subscriptions help just kind of go they go oh yeah on a regular basis and it makes it really easy and then a lot of people most people still get it via podcast and the duration of the podcast so talking about show duration the duration of the podcast people prefer is 30 to 60 minutes is the largest percentage but we also have a very high percentage of over one hour so long form well but don't you think that's kind of self-selecting is the people taking are the ones that like our show as long as it is I believe you have a point there yes yes yes however Blair with what we're talking about and expanding our audience is finding more people like those who already found it this would be the sample that would be but we can also look at the fact that there's more than half right of our listeners now I want to look at it again more I'm sorry I'm not even putting I have to put it up here so you can see it there we go so almost half of our listeners want to be 30 to 60 minutes which means if we're going to get more people there's probably more of those people than anybody else right then there's more right there are more of those people yes so something within the 30 to 60 minute range is good in thinking about about YouTube though it's interesting the majority are kind of in this 5 to 10 minute to like 15 to 30 minute yeah the biggest number is over an hour right actually you're right the biggest number there is over an hour but these are again maybe the people who are watching twists on YouTube which is pretty awesome so there's a difference between there's a difference in these audiences whether you're looking for going in to find 5 to 10 minute bits of stuff on YouTube maybe because you've only got time for a couple of quick looks just scanning around watching a bunch of different shorts on things but the over one hour category is telling you that for these people YouTube has replaced that sort of sit down in front of the television time right they're no longer using it like that yeah right so there's people who are utilizing it as people have utilized television in the past where you turn it on you sit down and it's there in the room whether you're directly focused on it or doing going about doing your other stuff it's just on playing a program in the foreground background whatever it's there anyway the five minute people I think typically are looking for a certain type of info or infotainment and then scanning through some stuff or maybe just jumping into YouTube for a bit looking around and then moving on I find this is why I've always sort of talked about preferring myself the long term or long form on a YouTube is that I do use it like a television I put it on and now it's on I'll watch a YouTube program or it'll be in the background while I'm cooking and doing something else I do mostly podcast type stuff but good informational stuff too and so for me it would be annoying if the content changed every five minutes and I think partly because a lot of times you would end up stuck in commercials if you're going around trying to watch different things at the beginning of each one there'll be this commercial whereas and it can be five to ten minutes can work if it's on like a play all sort of a section which I don't think we have yet but if you hit a play all even if somebody has broken up their podcast into five minute segments you go through the commercial maybe the skip ad maybe the first one but the play all the rest of it can be up commercial free and so then it's fine if you're going into a segment or a YouTube channel that's a segment of it can be music for instance I was looking up different surf guitar bands and stuff from there people have these playlists and you click on one and each one's a couple minutes but it continues to play through them so I don't know depends on how people are utilizing it I think it's a good idea to have shorter segments but I think it's also a good idea to have them running together sort of like a theme so within this we can science some of you can click into Blair's Animal Corner and a whole mess of Blair's Animal Corners could play one right after the other right right like so if we were to get them edited out and create playlists of Blair's Animal Corner yeah or the short science news at the end of the show is probably also something that people would want to hear quick stories I'm just saying to get to that question what do people listen to the majority say they watch or listen to entire episodes and if only part then it's the first half but then I asked about the second half if it was only Blair's Animal Corner only interviews or other and then other was giant and I don't know what other is the after show yeah yeah so the first half of the show is the part that people will start watching and then if they drop off then they drop off from watching it but that's if only a part of the show so I think that one sort of says right there that the only reason somebody leaves the show once they started watching it was because they had to it's not that they're skipping ahead to or you know the majority are like just watching 170 70.6% said they watch or listen to entire episodes yeah which is awesome but then the other huge chunk 24% was also sometimes yes and sometimes no they all intend pretty much everybody intends to watch the entire show but then you know doesn't always finish yeah cool most answers about what people wished we did more of revolved around physics and space and interviews people like the interviews they want more interviews but a few people I noticed too also said that they liked interviews standalone things as well so if we put those out as their own individual things yeah yeah that'd be a fantastic segment for that youtube channel is just the interviews right yeah no they're all all sorts of good recommendations coming out of this rambling this quotey voice yeah most people love it as it is just kidding face mites some people don't want anymore face mites I can't say that there were a couple about about religion and making it more discussion one wanted me to stop bashing religions in general another one said we should do more of it and yeah yeah and there are like the this reporting results that nobody on the show understands every once in a while we think that we've got a story that we're like yeah we got this this is really interesting and this is going to be an interesting discussion topic and then you go to talk about it and it's just you don't explain it right or I don't know we all just sit there and go huh the excitement and the discussion and the understanding we're just sometimes we don't do it right that's the gamble though of having a live show and that ultimately like we could rehearse everything beforehand and everything could be canned and we could know what we are going to say but then the payoffs when we do have an insightful conversation would not be as high and I feel like ultimately we get a lot of amazing conversations you know not to toot our own horns here but like I like hearing stuff from both of you guys about things that I didn't think about and then exploring that topic and I think that that means that every once in a while maybe nine times out of ten we have a good conversation but one time out of ten nobody has anything to add whoops yeah and I can be responsible for a decent amount of that too especially in the the last quarter I'd say of the show I start to become a less active listener start to get very distractible because the show has been going on for a while I've been talking about stuff I'm also fidgety are you saying the show shouldn't be as long I'm saying the show is way too long good yeah it's good we got a lot of really great responses and it's pretty awesome I think from here I don't know whether I think we'll stick with this survey for a while I don't know we might use this to ask some other later questions I don't know figure out more specific stuff we should do with it I don't know great responses in there I think what's important in all of this too is that we can do all of it because we have a pretty long format we have a long enough format we have unlimited time available but we use a good hour to two a week putting the show together for the long form listeners who like this also the sort of behind the scenes the after show conversation stuff we have all of that content it's all there perfect boom we put that out there and because we have already the long format it's easier to take out segments shorter segments of the show and spin them out there so that we can have 5 minute segments 10 minute segments or 15 minute segments of the show broken down that's doable the tough thing would be if we had a 5 minute show and people were asking for an hour long show we'd be like how do we come up with a whole hour how do we do that we'd have to do the show we'd have to be doing it 10 times it's too difficult we're already in long format a live show that's the hard part everything else is an easier version of this and everything else the content is already created it's annoying that we have to edit that's the whole tedious painful part of it but it's a lot easier to do that than go from a 5 minute show to or think of the contrary if we're doing our hour hour and a half and somebody was like really you need to be doing 12 hours that's what the difference would be really you need to be doing a 12 hour show that's what people really want that would be really hard but we're already at the long form if we were doing this if we were doing this an hour a day right if we did this show an hour a day I think that would be the next that's sort of getting it into the longer format where we have a long format and a lot more content of it that would be the next thing that would be rough but as it is I think we've got I like the part somebody said in there we need to do more of the shtick more like Blair's Animal Corner you know more of like the Kiki's Casper Cas9 sort of segmented stories I keep imagining I'm going to start doing more of this week in Science History I think I did one not too many weeks ago well I feel like you always have this weekend hominids yeah I've been I've been sort of on I've been working on the human history angle for sort of this week in your family tree the origin story stuff is always fascinating there's always a I'll pick up anything toxoplasmic gondii related but there is a good world robot domination there is a good point that this week in the end of the world there is a good point and we don't and we never really have to a great enough degree focused on space space works its way in but we don't I think we have the best interviews on space I think we focus on those quite a bit I think we do really good finding somebody else to talk about space that's what I try to do because we don't bring a whole lot of it and this is why like years ago I tried to get a guy who was studying physics to be a co-host on the show he was great for a little while but it didn't work out long term because I knew that my background was not the hard sciences physics and astronomy so I was hoping that someone else could kind of bring those stories but you know I love the mix that we bring right now and I do try to bring physics and the space stuff but unfortunately I I don't know it as well we touch on it so this is also I think okay I think if you had somebody Michikaku is one example who is a physicist who understands these things very very well and as a communicator when I hear him talk about these subjects I walk away realizing I've learned nothing because he's he's developed a way of talking about physics that can be completely digestible and as such you can't learn anything from it and there's an element of this I think that's a problem in science communication and I think we can do a efficient enough job of breaking down that there's something really interesting going on without absolutely being able to digest it and understand it ourselves and still bring it without it being without being afraid of not being thoroughly able to vet the subject matter ourselves and especially if we're talking about quantum physics which if you talk to two different people quantum physicists they might both say that they actually don't really get it themselves but they're working through it too there's some really intensely conceptual versions of reality going on there that have actual reality based things that the science is discovering and working on but it is not going to be something that you can talk about without just talking in complex numbers it just it's not there's no easy analogies out there we'll try so for the time being until I'm able to I don't know get more editing done the time being I'm going to stick with putting the time codes in our YouTube descriptions that at least people who go to YouTube will be able to skip through to different stories individual stories and segments if that's what they so desire and that'll be a pretty easy clickable thing to do for people and then the next step after that is to hopefully be able to get to a point where we can start editing things and scheduling more I'll try and schedule more interviews maybe like once at least one a month try and do something like that where it's somebody from physics or space sciences to discuss something so that we get that into the show I think that would be awesome and maybe have them not just be an interview be an interview like we've done before but also like we had we've done with other people like physics girl have them join the show and bring a few stories yeah that's always a blast we'll host for the hour we also interview them too I love doing that I also like it even if they haven't brought a story but they hang out and comment along with the stories that's always fun that's an easy place to start and then we can hopefully start expanding to getting more things edited and you know do that before we expand into doing other shows do you know that twitch tv has your jtv videos back on their service just like jtv had what no what twitch.tv slash dr kiki did they did twitch they must have absorbed them because I did not ever open a twitch tv account but if you had a jesson tv I guess that's interesting really I'm going to go look for that right now you know loading what's loading but I definitely suggest kiki looking at some podcasts on youtube there's a few that I follow that you guys I have a whole channel there's a few that I follow that have done they'll do the long form we'll show up as a podcast and then at some point later they'll have that same podcast broken down into smaller segments like sort of the subject matter segments within that podcast in a podcast they have it actually where you can skip to sections they don't have time codes they don't have skipped segments what they do is they put out the full thing which can be like an hour and a half two hours whatever it is that comes out first then later it's that same episode but broken down in like five to ten minute segments or half hour depending on how long the subject went so they sort of then just cut out and post those segments afterwards hmm I wonder if people would hate that like getting bombarded with like the same show over and over and over I don't think you're getting bombarded by it it's sort of like you can then just go to instead it's sort of like what you're doing with the time stamping but instead it's already separated out and so it also creates if somebody did sit and do a play all and the play all button I don't think we had a play all button on ours but if you hit the play all you can go through all the short segments and then at the end of those short segments it would go to the full episode so you can either skip all those go right to the full episode or start like I don't know how much time I'll have I'll just do short segments and then you can just leave it leave it off there whenever you like and if it goes all the way down you've gotten to the full show you can either listen to it again or you can just decide I'm done hmm interesting but then you're also instead of getting one viewer for the full show on those segments you're getting a view for each one which looks like a larger amount of viewers overall but it also means that people can not have to watch the whole show but we sort of get credit for what they did watch of it so the thing I was just thinking about too is that we do we don't do a lot of it but we do definitely reference earlier moments and other segments throughout the show and sometimes topics return and I definitely think it's it makes more sense when you listen to it all at once it does I totally agree certain topics you gotta listen to them I think I should get a mohawk I live in Portland now I need colored hair and a mohawk I think Justin I think you need to go pirate scuba diving I always find David Jones locker and I'll bring it back to the surface I said hmm I wonder how that will go where did that sound effect come from that was awesome sound effects are good how do I get this there we go a mohawk put glasses over my glasses crickets seems unnecessary I would like to be in Amsterdam right now I know this is Venice I'd like to be in Venice right now here we go look at my amazing background it's blurry so I don't know if anyone actually got invited to this hangout or not I tried I put I sent a link I sent a message and sent a link to the Patreon people who should have gotten something and I sent it to 10 people I want to see what 10 people it was I know we're sitting here I try to do this I try where are you? it's the fjords the fjords fjords fjords I went back there on purpose loop dee loop one maybe the people who would have gotten it are asleep right now because many of them are on the east coast so tomorrow I'm going to have not tomorrow Friday I'm going to have the hangout um Justin's floating he's like he's decapitated I'm a decapitated decapitated you're decapitated ah I need a new face here we go meow I had to go to the beach meow right meow right meow ah that be the fjords talking again um so we're going to do I'm going to try another Patreon hangout on Friday at the specific time for those individuals who are able to come to that one and um I was talking with Chris Clark who is a donor we were talking about Chris Clark who is the uh well you can't see it now because it's hiding but he's personally sent me this boom mic that's right he did send the boom mic yes Justin you're killing me I'm trying to hear geeky and um well he would like he's on east coast time and there are other people I'm sure on east coast time but who work and so for them 4 5 p.m. is probably optimal but on like a Friday but could maybe I don't know it would be hard for me to do much later but um like 6 or 7 p.m. on a Friday is that achievable for Blair alright I just muted Justin oh no he unmuted himself can I kill you what's that Blair? nothing okay yeah Friday works Friday Friday at noon Pacific time Friday at noon Pacific time what? I did not understand that I thought you said 6 or 7 no I'm a little distracted I wonder why I'm having trouble following and so the hangout this week is Friday at noon Pacific time the hangout that we're talking about having could potentially be a Friday at like 4, 5, 6 p.m. 7 p.m. Pacific time could you do like a 6 p.m. yes what if any earlier than that or a 6 p.m. good um it depends on the Friday are you talking about this Friday no so yeah depending on the Friday I could get off work early I could go to work early and get off early and I could do earlier than that for sure I could do potentially as early as 3 or 4 o'clock if I was given enough notice cool alright but noon I might be able to jump in the chat room on my lunch break this week oh cool maybe if there's a chat room will there be a chat room will it be on air it will not be on air it will not be on air pirate Justin it will not be on air no it will be a private hangout a private patreon hangout I think it should be live I won't have a camera at work but I would be able to watch and then I could do that the pirate says it should be live or at least record it so we can post it to the YouTubes sometimes I don't want things posted to the YouTubes it will be but it's okay this is a casual show we can call it a casual Friday show it's a casual hangout we can even label it the casual minion hangout it's okay to have casual stuff it is okay to have casual stuff this is the new media the new media is made up of casual people doing professional things professionally casual hey are you trying to come on remove all effects there we go where'd the cat go where'd the kitty cat go I don't know I got distracted oh now he's got sunglasses ah actually that mustache looks pretty good identity 4 the hangout is not usually live streamed I usually just do it as a hangout and it's just a private patreon hangout if people are okay with live streaming I'll make it a live streamy thing but I thought that some people just wanted it to be a hangout again and think no no anyhow yes what donor level get hangout invites those at $10 and above the hangout invite um what else and what else who, what, when oh going back to the comments about the twitch stuff got the comments about the twitch stuff it's interesting that they have merged it all over JustinTV started the twitch and then yeah I wonder if they are trying to get old users back and one yeah at one point in time I had lots and lots of views because JustinTV was promoting it and so when I was doing it like all these people came in and viewed and took part in discussions it was crazy for a little while there and then JustinTV was like we gotta do the gaming we're only gonna do the gaming so did you record a voicemail message for this person that pledged $25 no because I asked Justin to and Justin has not oh yeah I need to do this yes um just give them $25 um so identity 4 I do not believe that you are borked but you are he's wondering if his patreon is borked borked it is not borked but you are in the no reward donation area so you're at the level I don't know yes you're at the level so you definitely could and I will invite you sorry that I did not invite you tonight but you are in the no reward section sometimes people do this and I don't know if they're doing it on purpose or if they have done it accidentally because sometimes the patreon system gets a little confusing as to what you're actually signing up for so send me the details of the of this people I'm making a message for I need to figure out how to do a message it would sound too ridiculous but they wouldn't use it I think you wanted a disclaimer a kind of message I just did the name of what I'm doing this for I'm going to guess Kiki sent that to you before you know it's too bad I turned off where's my sound effects hang on where's my mute button again I need to have that I'm muted again again I can't go to the noon one and you're standing here right now and we're thinking of going home and going to bed you see that head nod right there I saw that blur head nod how come we've been here for 45 minutes nobody wants to hang out with us except the people in the chat room you guys are hanging out with us you're awesome but so I'm going to have to make up for identity 4 hopefully we'll figure it out maybe we'll have to do another one next week if I can maybe another one next Friday Fridays are a good day for me stand by afternoon hangouts April 8th I got nothing going on on April 8th I'm at a climate change workshop at the exploratorium that sounds like fun identity 4 twist night you're busy recording twist me too Blair's reindeer corner what someone was saying Finland did you reindeer corner so Janiske wants us to have Science Island in Finland someone said it was too cold and there was too much snow but I said but then I can have a pet reindeer it's awesome yes Ben yes I want to hang out yeah I know I know no figure our chat room has worms you guys what I mean our chat room has worms oh yeah it does people in the list worms our chat room now has worms awesome when is my stem cell podcast so I recorded the first episode of the stem cell podcast today and it should be released on April 12th I believe is the date that they have planned for release what is this I have been um hired I guess yeah I am a co-host now for a podcast called the stem cell podcast cool and it's stem cell focused but I get to so they're kind of important right yes stem cells they're kind of important that's what I said before right stem cells they're kind of important what happened to Justin's video it's still here I think you should have me on the show to say obvious things we'll just be in the background stem cells aren't they kind of important kind of important what what what yeah there's worms worms are saying hi hi ya hi ya that's what pinworms say in the middle of the night hi ya anti-worms threat no worms what you promote growth that's fantastic gunshots identity hasn't this happened before didn't this happen another day didn't we tell you to drop and cover drop and cover identity no gunshots oh yeah hot rod you're right we do need a user named bird now that would be awesome don't you live in washington state I didn't know they were known for their crime rate up there it's hardcore up there apparently I know I'm reading backwards through the chat list crack me up Wisconsin guy gonging Jackson fly nice what we need to do more gongs exciting exciting neighborhood drop and cover if you hear gunshots drop and cover get low聯ман la la la la yeah you you fixed your patreon oh good eeeeeee now I want to go let me get tired get tired I thought you were in Seattle I wasn't sure if you wanted to tell everyone what city you lived in you've been outed I was trying to So let's see. Let's look at the calendar because we have to look at the calendar every time we do a show so we can determine whether there are things that we're looking forward to. April Fool's Day on Friday, you should maybe not trust anything that I post on Friday. For me. Except maybe the link to the show. And then we have Square Root Day on Monday, April 4th. So I'm not going to go to the dentist that day for a root canal. That's not going to happen. Then we have Yuri's Night coming up April 12th. That's fun.  And so the 20th of April, we're supposed to go green and be earthy. So we'll have a themed up show for that. Did we have something where we're going to get an interview? No, yes. For which? Earth Day. Oh, I don't know. I know I wanted to get an interview for World Day for Laboratory Animals. So it wouldn't actually be Laboratory Animal Day that we would do that interview. It would more likely be on World Tape Year Day that we would do that. Love me some tapers. Gotta love the tapers. Yes, it's a big April. It's a big month. Some good days in there. I think Identity Forum might have just bought my Nautilus. We'll see. You'll have to let me know. If anyone else wants that Nautilus, you'll have to get in the $15 reward now and duke it out. That's right. You've got to get in there. I have more coming though. Haha. Going green was March 17th, says Ben Rotherg. I did. I wore green that day and I posted my video about the green dye in the Chicago River. Yeah, Identity Forum. I think you might have been in no reward for a long time now. I'm glad you fixed that. Fix it. Do we have World Not Tape Worm? I said Tape Year. Tape Year? Not Tape Worm. It depends on where you are. In America, we say Taper. Taper, okay. But in Brazil, they would say Tape Year. What's that? Quantum Club. Oh, right. Quantum Club. Oh, Twit Refugee. Portland. It's awesome. Rocks. Shh, but don't tell anybody I said so. Where did Justin go? I don't know. I'm still here. Come back so we can say goodbye. I can't say goodbye while you're not even here. Goodbye, everybody. There you are. Oh my goodness. It speaks. All right. Red. Red. Oh, you guys. So rude. So rude. Yes. Yeah. I'm excited. More shows next week. It's going to be good. I'm going to edit this here podcast up tomorrow.  I am falling asleep. I know you do. We're all very tired. I will see you next week. Okay. Good night, Vanians. Good night, Kiki. Good night, Blair. Good night, everybody. Have a wonderful night. Have a wonderful week. We will see you next Wednesday. I do hope you'll be back in the chat room again, or back watching us live. Have a great one. Bye.