Are we live? Are we here? We're here! It's time for the show! Blair will be joining us later. She is giving a presentation for her real job. I mean Wait, what? Her job job? Side hustle. That's what we like to do. Her side hustle, exactly. Yes So Twizz is here. We are very happy to be bringing you our weekly science stream as we jump into broadcasting our podcast recording. And just remember that some of the things in the show tonight might not make it into the final podcast. So count yourself lucky in that you get to hear and see the whole thing. The other people they won't get to. Haha, you're in on the secret. Hello everyone in the chat. I see you in there. While you're in the chat, while you're online here, tell your friends. See if they want to come join our fun stream for the night to talk about science. Justin, are you ready to do a show? Yes, what would you like to do a show about? French fries. Oh, okay. Yes. What is your favorite french fry? Okay, that's a tough question. It doesn't exist anymore. Oh, it was the graduate and Davis. It was across from UC Davis. The graduate had the biggest thickest, they were like potato wedges more than they were french fries maybe, but they were really good. I just had fries tonight from super deluxe. And I have to say, very good french fries. Very good, very, very good french fries. Oh, no potatoes for R&L. Gore of Sharma likes the Cajun Spiced fries. Wendy's from Grouchy Gamer. All right, well everyone, now that I've got you thinking about french fries, maybe we can start a science show. And like I said, Blair will be joining us later. She said she's going to jump on in here towards the end of the show. And you will not miss the animal corner and the fun that is in it, because I do believe she's got legs, spider legs, not french fries. Yes. Okay, so yes, let's do this show thing. Okay. Starting the show. One, two, three, four. Beginning in three, two, this is TWIS, this week in science episode number 836 recorded on Wednesday, August 4th, 2021.  Hey there, I'm Dr. Kiki. And tonight on the show, we are going to fill your head with microbes, trade-offs, and melting. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The following program depicts actual things being studied in the actual world by actual scientists. While the rest of the world engages in misinformation, either for entertainment or human manipulation purposes, we offer you a conversation about science. Not a class, not a lecture, nothing you will be expected to remember, just a conversation based in reality. A place we can all imagine humans will one day live, despite all the evidence to the contrary. If you haven't been here before, welcome. If you have, welcome back. It's time for This Week In Science, coming up next. Yes, good science to you too, Justin and Blair, who will be joining us later, apparently. She's got other places to be tonight, but we're here to podcast, to talk about science. We've got all the science stories from the last week here to discuss with you, because yes, Justin said this is a fun science conversation, so let's get talking. I brought stories, what did I bring tonight? I have stories related to some of those microbes. I also have a sinkhole, red bodies, and parenthood. What did you bring, Justin? I also have a microbe story, and I have a segment that I think I introduced once or maybe twice, but then forgot about. It's the, did we really need to study for that segment? I always like those segments. It's like, yeah, really? Okay. So this is the thing about the segment. But let's back it up with science. Yeah, so the thing is, the segment is, did we really, and then sometimes it's like, probably not, and then sometimes it's like, oh yeah, maybe we did. So it's all you never know. It's a mixed bag segment. Also, something about a mass extinction on planet earth and how Russia is melting. Oh no, it's melting. Did somebody throw a bucket of water on the which of the west? Sorry. And I would ask Blair what's in the animal corner, but she's not here. So I'll just let you know that there's some legs coming, some long legs that will be coming up in that animal corner among other science newsy bits related to animals. So let's jump on into the show. And as we do, I want to remind you all that if you have not yet subscribed to this week in science, you can find us look everywhere for this week in science, twists. We are on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch streaming weekly, the live broadcast of the show and our podcast is available all over where twist science on Instagram and on Twitter. And you can find our website at twist.org. Okay, it's time for the science. Let's dump, bump, bump, bump, bump. We already have theme music. You don't have to keep making up. Sorry, just do the theme music things every once in a while. Just keeps me going. Sound effects. Who brought the sound effect, Kiki? I brought some competitive microbes to start off the show. Did you ever think that it could have been the competition between microbes and also maybe the length of the day that was related to the oxygen in our atmosphere? Did that ever cross your mind previously? No, no. Yeah, well, it crossed the minds of a few researchers who have been studying the question of where did all the oxygen come from in the Earth's atmosphere? We know there were a couple of oxygenation events throughout our billion, multi-billion year history, right? So these events, many of them were related to cyanobacteria, blue-green algae that they grew within the waters of the planets, soaked up the energy of the sun, releasing oxygen as a byproduct of their metabolism. But were they just there? And how did it just come to happen that suddenly they put enough oxygen into the atmosphere so that there was enough oxygen for organisms that use oxygen as a source of energy to start living and surviving on the surface of the Earth? These researchers were looking at a sinkhole in Lake Huron. So the sinkhole at the bottom of Lake Huron is covered, the bottom of it, is covered with bacterial microbial mats. And there are a few different species of microbes down there. The dominant species, however, are sulfur-eating, so they don't use sunlight at all, and blue-green algae, cyanobacteria that use the sun. And what seems to happen as these bacteria are existing on the bottom is that at night, when the sun goes away, the sulfur-eating bacteria start covering up the cyanobacteria. They grow because they are using all the energy of the sulfur that's bubbling up from the ground beneath the sinkhole as their energy source. They're dividing and multiplying and growing, and they're taking over until the sun comes out. And then the sunlight using bacteria start growing and releasing oxygen, and there's lots of oxygen that gets released. And so these researchers discovered this, and they've been looking at the bottom of this deep sinkhole because it's this wonderful model system for what they think the early Earth might have been like. And they also thought back, oh my gosh, the Earth was spinning a lot faster once upon a time. So there was less daylight necessarily. The length of the day was like six hours at a time. It was a completely, yeah, so billions of years ago. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so day length was completely different, much shorter. So wait, I'm just trying to get there, because this is very important. So like a work day would be like max four hours. Yeah, like, no, Matt, two hours, come on. Okay. Yeah. And so they would have their sunlight workday for the cyanobacteria way back when, and it perhaps took a long period of time for these cyanobacteria to get enough oxygen or to get enough sunlight so that they could begin to grow and take over the extremophiles who, or the chemophiles who had been existing off of the sulfur as their energy source. And eventually the Earth started slowing down and the day length became longer, more consistent. And we had more sunlight and oxygenation events. So maybe it was the spinning of the of the Earth in its orbit around the sun and how that changed through the geologic history of the planet that set the stage for the potential of the great oxygenation events to even occur. Very, very fun combination of things, not just bacteria at play, but also how much sun was available and when that sun was available and where. Looks to me like we have a Blair. She has joined us. You made it. Yeah. So happy to join. Yeah, we are so glappy. We're glappy. Are you glappy? We're so glappy to have you here tonight to bring us the animal corner. We were just finishing up our first story. It's time for Justin to tell a story. What you got there, Justin? So last week we talked a little about bees getting trained by caffeine to be better pollinators. What about the flowers? How do we get flowers themselves to be better pollen producers? One way we could support the plant's natural abilities has been discovered by Sean Christensen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in the wonderful town of Davis, California. Christensen, quoting here, we found out that certain bacteria and flowers, an acinado bacteria or a bacteria can send a chemical signal to pollen that hijacks its systems and tells it to open the door from the inside, releasing protein and nutrients for the bacteria. In terms of potential significance, this bacteria can double the amount of protein released from pollen. So it's important for bacterial growth, but it also could be exploited by bees or other pollen consumers to get more nutrition from their food. In the study, they found that the bacteria induced over five times greater pollen germination and 20 times greater pollen bursting than that of uninoculated pollen. There was also, they had found some nectar inhabiting yeast that they studied that neither produced nor hindered benefited anything that had nothing to do with pollen germination. So they conclude that the acinado bacteria both specifically causes and benefits from inducing pollen germination and bursting. So now that we have this whole other, we have this whole other thing we can look at in farming in terms of what's on my, what bacteria is present and what amounts, and should we be seeding? Should we spraying bacteria on plants instead of insecticides to get more of these pollinators attracted to come and do their job? Yeah, I mean, I want to know how can we not just, how can we stimulate even more pollination when we have a decrease in pollinators? So if insects are dying, can we enhance the ability of flowers to find the pollinators they need? Yeah, can we feed them? Can we get the plants that, that they are still being attracted to, to feed them better? And if so, we'll have, should have stronger healthier insects, pollinators that are going around and pollinating more and keeping, keeping, this is, this is one of those things too. It's like, who cares about a bacteria and a beet? Actually, our entire food web depends on them. If entire food web is so critically dependent on pollinators in the state of California, which is the largest ag state in the United States, one of the largest food producing regions in the world, absolutely critical that we do everything possible. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's good bacteria, it's back, the bacteria need to be there to protect, I guess, to also fight off fungi that might be bad for the flowers, the bacteria are gonna, inhibitors, they can actually be pollination inhibitors. So, so having a bacteria there to, to fight off that fungal is absolutely, I think, and this is also, this is, this is not something like weird, out that is being added into nature. It's already present and they're finding it in nature. This is actually a sort of a microbiota of bees, this bacteria. It's because they're attracted to pollinators, this thing is on the pollen. So it's already in that system. But the idea is that you could actually enhance output of, of that pollen. It's good for the flowers, good for the bacteria, good for the bees, good for people, good for people. Uh, we are all, it is microbial earth, right? It's just every, the microbial web is what is important.  Oh, yeah, I am. Oh, yeah, actually. Oh, yeah. Uh, I want to tell you about Daddy Short Legs. What? There's a, I know I've heard of a Daddy Long Leg. What's a Daddy Short Leg? It's, uh, something scientists created. So anyway. It's not Halloween yet. Hold on. Scientists shortened the legs of Daddy Long Legs and changed their functionality by tweaking their DNA expression. There was a reason for this, I will say. And it was to figure out which genes cause spider relatives to develop these crazy long legs. Makes them a Daddy Long Legs. And the researchers assembled a draft genome of them, a phalangeum opilio. They looked at three genes that act as a blueprint for where various body parts should go. And then they used an RNA interface, a technique that reduces gene expression to knock down hundreds of developing embryos, these specific genes. When they did so, six of eight legs were half their normal size. And they had transformed into short pedipalps, which are like limbs for food handling. And when the researchers knocked down a third developmental gene that they thought was to help build embryonic legs, they didn't turn into pedipalps, but they did get shorter. And they also lost their Tarsomeres. What's a Tarsomere, you ask?  So basically, they helped identify the genes or the gene groups that select for the use and the type of legs that they have and leg length. So this is also similar to other studies that have been done in fruit flies. And so this gives scientists an idea for how these crazy long legs evolved if they know kind of the gene that it came from. So it maybe is interesting, but this is a good reminder of just just because you could doesn't mean you should. They're using RNA to suppress a gene that in development, like this is like real time this isn't they didn't go in and edit the genes of the parents or the embryo and then have a next generation. They figured out which RNA can inhibit or stop the stop the translation of an activity on the leg. That's that's the really to me amazing part of this is that that's a thing now that we can do real time. And it's if you go forward, take this spider study now and zip us into the future. That means they could actually potentially apply RNA to defeat, say a birth defect that they can tell was coming by modulating how that gene expression takes place. Yeah. And I think that's an important point is, you know, looking at these genes, which are which are responsible for body form, and which go back to our, you know, the sponges, our last universal common ancestor, right, which ones split off and led to spiders and their eight limbs and which which genes are responsible for humans and our our fingers and our toes and how yeah, how how could we potentially use RNA in the future to control these things? What, how does RNA control the transcription and translation of this now? Yeah, our Lord in the chat is saying, does this mean that we can make everyone tall now? No, our no. So, so what science, the plan, I'll just give it up. This plan that science has for the future with the exploding populations and too many people with too few resources is actually we're going to make everyone much shorter. We're going to make everyone a maximum of three feet tall. That makes no sense. No one will be able to reach the cabinet above the refrigerator, Justin. That's because we'll make the cabinet smaller. And now your single, your single story, one bedroom apartment is a two story, maybe three bedroom, right? So it's, but what about the Olympics, Justin? They'll still take place. They'll just have a height limit. You must be under this height to compete. Yes.  You could also get that done as well. But yes, this is a terrifying in thought exercise, very interesting in actual scientific implications. Okay. And as we're ending this story, I just want to point out I had no idea daddy long legs could wrap their little legs around things like monkey paws or like a monkey tail. This to me is mind blowing. It's gross. Listen, I am both spider averse and a spider advocate. So I will be the first daddy long legs are the best. I love daddy long legs. Come on. But also creepy. Oh, they're fantastic. They're daddy long legs are cool.  This is very different. Oh, long monkey, daddy long monkey legs. I don't know if that's better. No, no idea. Alrighty, let's move on to another story. Speaking of legs, no, we're not talking about legs anymore. I'm going to talk about some the discovery of some very red bodies. Not here on earth, but in the asteroid belt, where they shouldn't have been, because apparently, objects with a reddish tinge or a reddish reflectance should be trans new type neptunian objects. So we have these delineations in our solar system, related to where objects were when they were created. And the distance from the sun determines what stuff freezes. And so there are different places like there's the snow line for water. It's where all the water freezes. There's the snow line for carbon dioxide. There's a snow line for other organics to freeze as it gets further and further and further away from the sun. And red bodies are typically found out past Neptune. They formed super far away from the sun. Everything's frozen on them. Yet these objects, these two objects that have been discovered, 203 pump Asia and 269 just Tisha are super red. And they're tip they're basically somewhere that researchers did not expect to find them. So what they can think based on this the implications are that when Jupiter moved at some point during the development of our solar system, it knocked things around. And the gravitational pull and gravitational forces of these movements of these big planets potentially jostled some of these trans-Neptunian objects and made them come in closer to earth where they have taken up residence in the asteroid belt. And within the asteroid belt, this makes them a tantalizing target for exploring these objects to get evidence about the earliest stages of our solar system, but without having to go all the way out past Neptune. So we can explore some of these frozen organics. We can get samples potentially like we've gotten before from other asteroids and bring them back. And potentially learn a lot about the early solar system and some of these objects that got stuck in an early developmental phase of the solar solar system. So potentially easier targets to go out and learn more about our solar system without having to travel as far away from home. So it would be less time, less money intensive, and we could learn a lot. So very red bodies. Researchers are excited about them. That's a clever find. Yeah. You know, and where there are two, there are probably more. So now that researchers are looking for this kind of a signature, potentially we will find more out in the asteroid belt as we continue looking. What else do you have, Justin? Okay, this is the occasional reoccurring segment called, Did We Really Need a Study for That? Study from the University of Kansas published in the journal Appetite finds food choices that all you can eat buffet tied to weight gain. What? So an immediate takeaway on the story is that choosing to eat all the french fries then. Choosing to eat at an all-you-can-eat buffet is likely tied to weight gain regardless of the choices you make after entering. Choosing to study people in an all-you-can-eat environment is likely to give you a view of people who aren't also making the wisest food choices. But the study actually has some nuance to it. The researchers took young participants without obesity to an all-you-can-eat buffet recorded their food choices. Researchers measured their body composition before they went there. A year later, they measured body composition again, which you would think, but wait, have they been at the buffet for the whole year? Yeah, every day. No, they just went once, but they recorded what foods they were picking out. And then found correlations between what types of food they were putting on their plate during that one-day visit and their body composition outcomes a year later. Participants who consumed a greater portion or proportion of carbohydrate foods and sodium, everything had sodium. So the sodium just sort of becomes noise. It's everything had sodium in it, like on pretty high levels. But the participants who consumed greater proportion of carbohydrate foods in their buffet meals had significantly greater weight change and percent body fat change at the assessment a year later. The study found no significant body changes a year later for those in the buffet who ate high proportions of fat, high energy, dense, and ultra-processed foods. Researchers believe that what they're looking at here isn't necessarily something specific to the caloric quantitation of those foods that they were picking. Researchers believe that the weight gainers were choosing foods that triggered more of a reward system than the not gaining group whose choices were more energy-based. They had more of a physiological hunger satisfaction based on their foods than the group who was picking the carbohydrate foods that tended to be more more of a psychological reward. An important factor that researchers also point out is that that becomes the trend. What are you seeking food for? Like, I need to get a cliff bar. I need some energy to get through the day versus, oh, I need to get a glazed cinnamon bun thing because that's really what I'm craving. That's maybe the difference. One of the important factors that the researchers point out is that 90% of babies begin eating meals from adult plates, creating what they're calling sort of a cycle of these food choices. So what they're talking about also is hyper-palatable foods. So these are foods with like lots of sugars or sodiums, things that are designed to trigger reward system. No manufactured baby food in the United States is in that hyper-palatable category that would sort of trigger that. However, if the first thing they're eating beyond that is something that is designed to get an adult human pilot triggered, an reward system triggered, which probably has been an increase over time of how insane that can be. This is quoting Terra Fazino assistant professor of psychology at KU, hyper-palatable foods have combinations of ingredients that can enhance a food's palatability and make foods rewarding properties artificially strong. If babies are consuming foods that are artificially higher rewarding at early in infancy, this could essentially indicate that there's to their system physiologically and to their brain that, hey, this is what food is supposed to taste like and this is how rewarding it's supposed to be. Our concern is- Okay, okay, okay, okay, but is that what they studied? She's like making this assumption, this is not what the study was about. This is like, okay, babies, they're going to be learning this from the grown-ups. Of course, they're learning this from the grown-ups, but she didn't do that in the study. She just was like, hey, people make bad food choices and this relates to their bad, they're okay. Science! No, no, you're absolutely right. I 100% agree with you. That's a previous study that she did. Okay, so I didn't articulate that based on a previous study on- Yes, you're absolutely right, but she's covered because she has done that research. Yes. I have one other thing I just want to mention is that you talked about body composition. So is that BMI? Is that what that's about? Because BMI is like really problematic. Yeah, that I don't know. I don't think- So I'm just curious what- I don't know what all of the factors that they looked at for assessing- Because categorizing obesity, especially in children, is pretty hard. So okay, so hang on. It was the other one was about what children are eating. Right, but like the older study, right? When are they getting exposed to the children? For this newer one, they were taking body composition earlier and then later. And you're late. Right. Of young adults. So somewhere in the 20s, I guess, as a young adult? Body composition is- I'm just putting out a word of caution that the whole- if they really are talking about BMI, which is what it sounds like, the whole foundation of BMI is very- They would have said BMI. So body composition, I don't know. I didn't look, but we could be talking about cholesterol levels. We could be talking about weight and height. So body composition isn't cholesterol levels, but if they're doing a study, perhaps they are actually measuring total body fat too, because you can measure body fat to body muscle composition and actually get at composition. And that is going to be different than just BMI. What is that ridiculous thing where you stand on a thing and hold the two metal- Like the electrical current tells you- Yes.  So it's- Yes. All I'm saying- I'm not saying that this is all bunk. I'm saying that when we're talking about human obesity, there are lots of different terms for what that means and lots of different ways to measure that. And some of them are used historically with very little reason. Okay. And that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying anything about this- According to- Throw that out there. According to the Google, body composition refers to the portion of fat you have relative to lean tissue. Yeah. And they looked at the percent of body fat change and weight change during the period of the study after one year. I'm sorry, but it's carbs. Compared to what they ate at this ad libitum meal. And they're still defending them. You're like, no, we don't defend them. I'm not saying the carbs are not bad. I'm just saying, especially if you're talking about adolescents too, like- These are in their 20s. Are those still adolescents? Yeah. That's what you said before. You said adolescents. But anyway- Young adults. I said young adults. Oh, young adults. Okay. Which is also a magnificent band. If you've never listened to the young adults, you should go find them. Anyway, my point stands potentially even more for that group because they're- The shape and distribution of weight changes in that group very rapidly. And there's- I just wanted to throw it out there as food for thought. I don't need to have a whole like- She's a psychologist studying food. It's a food for thought. It's absolutely a food for thought. That's exactly what the study was covering and what the results that they found. I do think that what they're trying to look at is the pattern. So it's going to a buffet and how do people respond to a buffet? Do they respond with what they're calling hedonic eating where it's like this, I am fulfilling a psychological need, the reward aspect, which what they're suggesting could go on and lead to a problem because then you're not, you're not watching what you eat as carefully as you should. You're just rewarding yourself at any chance you get. So that will lead to potential waking versus going in and making choices. You know, actually picking and choosing and not just going for the- I want to feel really good from the carbs, which is what I do. I go to a buffet and I'm like, give me all the rolls. No, wow. See, I'm the opposite. I'm like, I need to get my, I need to, I get very like, I need to like fatten up for winter off of this. I need to go get all the roast beef and bacon and put it on my plate. Everybody has different ways, but I think it's an interesting way to get at this question of how do people respond to food and how does that potentially influence future weight gain? And how are we trained on this? And how are we trained on it?  I will eat the carbs, which I will. Give me the pie, the bread rolls, I'm going to eat them. Oh yeah, and the butter. I like, and give me a whole thing of butter. I like that too. Okay, but you know, everything in life is trade-offs. It's always got a trade-off. There's always a trade-off there. Well, some researchers just published their study in nature communications related to their work on a little molecule called CAMK2, CAMKINES2, this is calcium motor protein. And it's involved in a lot of muscle and these researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have determined from their work with mice and fruit flies that this is a molecule of trade-off that it gives the young that young vertebrates have evolved to have this CAMKINES in place for fight or flight to go chase after prey, to run away from predators, to survive and be a success in life. But because CAMKINES is an oxidatively reductive molecule, it causes oxidation reactions. These oxidation reactions are what lead to many diseases of aging as we grow older. And so what they're thinking is that CAMKINES2 may be, or at least the effects, the oxidation effects of CAMKINES2 may be targets for therapy as we grow older because this has, the elevated CAMKINES activity has been linked to tissue damage and heart failure, atrial fibrillation, cancer, lung and neurodegenerative diseases. So Blair, we like our CAMKINES but we also maybe need to modulate our CAMKINES as we get older so that you can survive longer. Got all the forever. Yes, but it's one more molecule for the researchers to look at to see if we can live longer. And they did discover that in mice and fruit flies that they messed around with the CAMKINES2 levels in these animals, they were able to shorten the length of the animals and insects by increasing the CAMKINES2 activity. So when it was more active, they died younger. And then when they decreased the activation of the CAMKINES, the flies in the mice weren't able to climb as quickly. They weren't able to get food as quickly and get all the energy from it in the same way, but they lived a little bit longer as well. So target potentially, but we need it because it's good. It's in our muscles. It's important. So how do we manage something that is really important to us and our survival? But that has a trade-off. So does that mean exercise is bad? Yes, Justin. No. No, not at all. Exercise is bad. Buffet is good. Yeah, exercise. This is what we're learning. Yeah. Thank you for joining us for twist. There we go. The science is getting really, I'm starting to really like the advice. Drink your coffee. Eat your steak. That's great. This is This Week in Science, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Science Fun. We hope that you are enjoying it and having fun. And if you are, please tell a friend. We're going to come on back right now with a little part of the show that we know and love to call Blair's Animal Corner. With Blair. Wait, hold on. I started it and I didn't even have my thing on. Hold on. Blair's Animal Corner. What's up, Blair? Oh, I have a great story about garbage birds. What? Garbage birds, a.k.a., cockatoos. What? So-frogressed cockatoos.  Yeah, they're really pretty. What are you thinking? They're so pretty. They're so smart. But they belong in the garbage or at least that's what they think. What? So, let me tell you why. In recent years, cockatoos living in Sydney suburbs have figured out how to open household garbage cans. And they love it. They can eat all of the sandwiches, fish bones, fruit, garbage wrappers, whatever they want. They get to eat all of it. And it's so much easier than foraging for food, breaking open nuts. It's definitely, definitely preferred. And so this kind of, as far as I can tell, it's just these, some of these cockatoos in Sydney in the suburbs figured out how to open garbage cans. All of a sudden, the behavior started to spread. Birds in different locations. Because it's smart. Yes. Started to open garbage cans all over, well, not exactly over all Australia. I'll tell you more about that in a minute.  And so, a behavioral ecologist, Barbara Klump, at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, decided, I want to study this. Why? Because this is an amazing opportunity to study a behavior from its origin. When we think about animal behavior, we can't travel back in time and figure out the first time that a cockatoo figured out how to open a nut. How to crack open a nut, right? We can't figure out the first time a new Caledonian crow figured out to use a stick to get grubs out of a hole in a tree. But now, we have a very small group of birds that know how to open trash cans. And that behavior is currently spreading. So this is an amazing opportunity to see how behaviors spread in the animal kingdom. So what they did is through social media and a mailing list from organizations like the Royal Botanic Garden and other organizations that would be interested in the environment and nature and animals, they ran public surveys. So this is a citizen science project, essentially. This is in 2018 and 2019. And they asked if people had seen this behavior, if so, when and where, how they were opening the trash cans, all this kind of stuff. Over 1,300 people responded, and then they were able to make a map to kind of see what was happening with these garbage birds. I'm going to keep calling them that because they were in the title. And so before 2018, cockatoo dumpster diving had only been reported in three suburbs. By late 2019, 44 suburbs out of the nearly 500 in the survey. And so that's a substantial growth. There's still a lot of space to go. So there's an expectation that this is going to continue to spread. And the spread had a pattern. It started near the three original suburbs and trailed off as they got farther and farther away from those suburbs. So very clearly, these cockatoos are learning from each other in these three original areas. And then other cockatoos are learning from them or learning from them or learning from them. And it trails off as it kind of gets more and more diluted. In one neighborhood, it appeared to pop up on its own, but come on, birds can fly. So who knows, right? But that does mean that that would be at least a new nexus point, right? That would be a new starting point for cockatoos to break open trash cans.  Or as I might suggest, it may be perhaps a strong gust of wind brought a bird into a new area. But regardless, this is a new area for the garbage hunting to begin. There's also some anecdotal reports of it happening elsewhere in Australia. But anyway, this is like a very rich area to potentially study. And so they then secondarily caught and marked 486 birds in garbage can opening hot spots. And then they filmed them. They filmed 160 successful dumpster dives. And they noted some common steps. So first, they would lift the cans lid at the front corner with their bill. Then they held it slightly open, and they'd waddle towards the hinges.  See, it's all back to buffets. And so what's interesting, though, is that different individuals had different techniques. Some held the handle of the lid. Others held the lid itself. Some held it with bill and foot. Others just used their bill. And the farther apart the dives were geographically, the more their techniques differed.  That's a good idea. No, this is indicating that it's not just the knowledge that there's good stuff in the dumpster, but that it's actually the how is what's spreading. Yeah. So they called it and then having slight mutation to the method. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, so regional subculture. So this is like we've talked about with dolphins. They use sponges to forage. And so, yes. So this is the idea that this is another situation where there is what you could consider animal culture developing based on foraging techniques. And so it's not new to think that animals might figure this out. And we know that parrots and citizens in general are extremely smart. So that's not too much of a surprise. But what's really cool is to be able to see this behavior spread and differentiate across Australia. And I hope that they keep up with this research because like I said before, this is like a golden opportunity. So rarely do you get to watch a behavior begin and spread throughout a community. Yeah, yeah. This is, yeah, it's the beginning of a new behavior. I wonder if other birds that are generalists like these sulfur-crested cockatoos that come into contact with human civilization. So crows, ravens are very common pigeons. I'm not going to, I'm not really going to go very far with that one. But a lot of the big-brained birds that are generalists and in contact with human civilization, I wonder how many others are paying attention and might pick it up as well. That kind of interesting thing is to think about if humans exist for another 10,000 years, 20,000 years, 30,000 years, and we continue to have the same garbage can design. Yes, yeah. You can imagine like a little bump or a little pad starting to form on the beak that's being used to sort of lift the, you know, this is how evolution starts. And what's sort of interesting then it's not just, this is that, it's not just a random maybe mutation that's taking place. It's an activity. It's in a pursuit of a certain type of food over and over and over and over again that then leads to those who are also pursuing it who have a little bit better, better take, better ability to flip open the lid, getting more of their genes out into the thing. And I'm sure though, I'm sure though that these cockatoos are creating a big mess.  And so people are probably getting annoyed. And so what we're going to see is adaptation of the people and people are going to start making it harder. They're going to put latches and locks on the garbage cans, maybe make it a little harder for the cockatoos to get access to. And then the cockatoos, will they adapt in response to this energy source? This experiment in action. Yeah, this is one of the things I was thinking about reading this story was like, oh man, it's very clear that Australia does not have raccoons because you could not have trash cans this easy to open in the United States. It's funny you say that because literally this morning, there was a raccoon out on my eating on the fence, eating berries out of the neighbor's tree. Eating berries out of a tree much, much cleaner than dumping over your trash. Because it seemed like they're like, yeah, maybe they're like, oh, yeah, birds in the trash now. So we're going to have to go back to birds. You got another story there Blair? Yes, I do. It's a quickie but a goodie. So this is just, it's a very convoluted story, but basically just something that I wanted to bring up for us to talk about for a second. So this is a report on the fact that Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida, has made history. By allowing chimps to make their own NFTs. They did the programming? No. No, no. So actually Save the Chimps has been working for a long time with chimp artwork. They really like to paint, paint supplies, paint brushes, paint and canvas are really common enrichment items for lots of animals, especially primates. It's definitely something that they enjoy to do. But Save the Chimps has used that as a fundraising opportunity. And now this is the first animal artwork as far as I know, and this publication knows, of animal artwork as an NFT. So non-fungible tokens, which I could try to explain, but I don't fully understand what they are anyway. They're made up digital things that no one else can own and are therefore very expensive and are kept on a server. That's kind of what I understand. So anyway, really. I like your explanation, Blair. It's not completely inaccurate, right? So anyway, the especially funny thing about this, without me getting all into a tizzy about NFTs, is that the chips physically painted paintings. And then they like scanned them into the internet and made them into NFTs. So you could buy the paint, but instead people are paying for the NFTs. But regardless, the reason that this was brought up in the scientific community this week is that this reopens the long and complex debate and history of non-human animals and the art they create. Who owns it? Who benefits from it? Where does the money go? Is it actually art? Lots of questions. The thing it reminded me of was the selfie, famous selfie of a monkey, right? Where the monkey picked up the photographer's camera, took its own picture, probably on accident because it's just picking up, but it was a picture and thus does the monkey own it? The monkey took the picture. Whose copyright is it? Yeah, yeah, which, you know. It was smiling and it wasn't focused perfectly. So I don't know. It was? It was a very nice picture. Natural, the monkey's a natural. If animals don't have the ability to spend the money, I don't quite understand. Should we treat the animals like children? Where children are managed by their parents for acting or now there hopefully are some new laws coming into play for the social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram where kids are being used for financial reasons, but same thing. I mean, if there's an organization that wants to raise money to save or help conserve certain species of animals, is there, is that, I mean, why not?  Did they get angry when their art is taken away? No. No, they don't care. No, they made the art, they had fun. They care more about the paintbrushes themselves being taken away because it's about the process, which is really what art's truly about, right, is the process. You would know as an artist Blair. Hey, but isn't also part of it then what we were talking about is like we would need to convince the chimps to use money and buy into that system. I just think it's an unconvincing argument. Yeah, I agree. I think that. So is this backed up by a stash of bananas somewhere? No, not at all. No. Yeah, yeah. Yes, so you own the picture of the banana and no one else can own the picture of the banana. Do you see? Okay. So that's my, I sell those. It gives you a unique ownership. Yeah. Yes. So the chimps are selling a digital image of a painting that they made. Yes. Yeah, I know. Okay, I know that the chumps are. But there's one and only that digital image because it has been coated and linked to this sale. Ooh, look at Clay's work. That looks like a brain. There's only one. There are not multiple copies. You're saying there's only one, but I see it right there. I could take a screenshot of it. But that's not the one. This is my problem. Regardless, the reason I brought it. It's only $25? That actually looks like a deal. I like that. That one by Clay looks like a brain. I have a picture of the Mona Lisa. I mean, I took a picture of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre once upon a time. So I own the Mona Lisa. Yeah, but the difference is if you actually own it, you can touch it and hold it. And it's the resolution's better. Whatever. NFTs, I think they're dumb. Come at me. Regardless. It's helping, if organizations can use it as a way to fundraise and help their cause, is this a bad thing? I would love to hear from our audience and hear what others think about this topic. Yeah, and I think ultimately that is the key. Exactly what you said. If somebody is benefiting from the artwork of an animal, that animal should be benefiting in some way. So the thing that they came down to when they settled on the monkey selfie was a percentage of the profits went to conservation research for the rainforest or whatever. And so for these guys, these chimps are directly benefiting from this fundraising because it is fundraising for the place that they live. These are all rescue chimps that were either used in medical testing or were in the entertainment industry. And so they cannot be released into the wild. And so if the animals benefiting from it, I think that's great. I think that similarly, if you're just taking a picture of stuff or in the case of the photographer who's the monkey took the picture quote unquote, it's good form. It's good form to make sure if you are benefiting from wildlife that that wildlife benefits. I think that I think that I think the closing here is the fact that these are celebrity chimps. Basically, who are being put to the forefront of the center as a fundraiser. It's not I don't think we're in the point where we're going to have secret warehouse of deprived chimps pumping out artwork because people can't get enough chip paintings in their lives. I don't I don't think we have to be worried about this at all. At this point, I do not. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, you can buy an NFT painted by a chimp or you can adopt a manatee. I mean, there are all sorts of ways that you can help animals. If that is a cause that you are interested in, there are many species around the world that can use our help. So on that Blair, thank you for bringing up the interesting question of who owns it, who gets to benefit from it. And once again, we'd love to hear from you. This is This Week in Science. Thank you for joining us for this episode. If you appreciate us coming to you every single week, please head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link. Once at Patreon, you can choose your level of support and receive gifts from us in return. Yes, I can get the words out in return for your support. But I mean, really, you keep getting twists every week when you support us. Choose your level. $10 and up we will thank you by name at the end of the show. And I do hope that you head on over to twist.org and click on that Patreon link right now. Thank you for your support. Can't do this without you. All right. I mean, I would come back and say it's time for Justin to talk about science. But he seems to have disappeared. So I guess it's my turn. I guess that's all it is. Yeah. Kick you by default. Go. Kick me by default. How'd that work? All right, everyone, I have a couple of fun brain stories for you. I have brainy news as I like to bring it. First, I want to talk about parenting in birds. We know that in mammals, there are certain compounds that are released that lead to parental behavior and parental care. Now, not all birds, reptiles, not all species care for their young in the way that we think of as parental care, like really doting on the young and taking care of them. But beyond this, there are changes that can be induced by being sensitized in the presence of young. Those virgin individuals can be induced to have changes through transcriptomic ways, where there are release of certain factors in your brain that allow different hormones to be released that change the way you respond to young individuals of your species. This happens in humans. This happens in mice. It happens in all sorts of mammals. But we really didn't know whether or not it happened in birds. And so published in Nature Scientific Reports this week, a couple of researchers, Patricia Lopez and Robert De Bruyne, they wanted to look into this question in birds. And so they took a look at a domesticated species, Japanese quail. And the Japanese quail have been domesticated to the point that they have lost their ability to care for their young. They just lay eggs and they don't pay attention to the legs anymore because it's been bred out of them. However, when the Japanese quail are put into the presence of little baby quail, they start to have parental behaviors after a night spent with the young. And so these researchers wanted to know what happened, what's going on in the bird's brain. And they found that through sensitization, just basically getting a virgin bird together with a bunch of young baby birds overnight that they had gene expression changes in the hypothalamus and what's called the bed nucleus of the striaterminalis. And one gene is called that was identified that was of interest to them is neurotensin. This is involved in maternal care in mammals. And the other is urocortin three. And this is causally demonstrated from their abstract here. I'm quoting to affect young directed neglect and aggression in animals. And so their studies, they think what they're what they're concluding from this is that it reflects core neural changes that can be associated with avian young directed care independently of extensive hormonal stimulation. And it opens new avenues of research into understanding the neural basis of parental care in non placental species. So it's just a fascinating story of how animals can come to be interested in taking care of their young or uninterested in taking care of their young and why and when that happens. I just think it's really amazing that we bred it out of these birds.  And now I must care for them. I will take care of the babies. And then they do.  Right. But this I think I wonder how involved this is in so these were not the parents right of the little baby birds. Right. So these are just like I said, virgin birds being put together with the babies. Is this some of the are these some of the neural changes that take place when adoption happens? So when we have, you know, we've seen various species take on the young of others in their social group when the when the parents have died. And I wonder if these are the kinds of changes if these are the kinds of of neurotransmitters that that start becoming active and and allowing animals that are not parents to suddenly start acting like parents. Yeah. I mean, that's also this is a jump. But you know how domestic animals, the babies are extra cute. And we always say that's to like spark parental care essentially in in in us most likely. But but yeah, I wonder if there's something similar going on when you adopt a puppy or something.   And yeah, are these the kinds of do you have a shift in your brain that's like this? This is you're going to take care of a baby now. And you need to have this these things active so that you're not aggressive and so that you're caring and so that you're you're giving them what they need. You have an emotional response when they act distressed. Yeah. Oh, there's something wrong. I have to fix you. What can I do? Yes. Ah, what else do we have also in the brainy news? I also have some sleeping news and it's not about yawning, but it is. It is to do with our need to sleep. So we all know sleep is important. Right? You need to sleep when you don't sleep. Things start just going wrong. Right? If you're not sleeping suddenly, you're like, you start forgetting things. You're clumsy. Like just things start going downhill pretty quickly. You're describing my day today. Yes. What these researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered and published in their latest study is that in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have found that there is an actual shift in your brain when you do not sleep. They looked at neurons in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is an area of the brain responsible for navigation and also very important for consolidating your memories, taking in information, linking it all together and going, okay, we're going to store this stuff somewhere in the brain. Okay. The hippocampus is active to help you remember things. All right. So they looked into the brain and looked at the interaction in hippocampal neuron activity, how things changed between sleeping and waking. And specifically at what's called phosphorylation of the S6 component of ribosomes. These are the ribosomes or little tiny organelles that help turn mRNA into proteins. So you can imagine very important for protein, the creation of proteins that are going to be involved in memories, in memory formation. They used mice for this study. And of course, because learning in mice, it's all about fear. They used a fear stimulus. And when the mice were allowed to fall asleep following the stimulus, they saw that this S6 phosphorylation increased in the dentate gyrus portion of the hippocampus. And this is the first part of the hippocampus where memory information starts to come in. Without sleep. What do you think happened to phosphorylation in S6? Decreased all through the hippocampus. It was down and the fear memory was disrupted. They did not remember the event that the fear stimulus as well as the individual mice that were allowed to sleep. So they wanted to know exactly what was going on there. They found that this whole process, there was increase in abundance of RNA transcripts that are present in interneurons expressing a neuropeptide called somatostatin, as well as an inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA. The interneurons with GABA, if they're releasing that, then they are inhibiting surrounding neurons and inhibiting all that phosphorylation in the dentate gyrus in the hippocampus, slowing down, firing, making less activity happen. And this is all happening because you are not sleeping. You need to go to sleep. You have to turn off your computer every once in a while. It needs a restart, right? Your brain needs it.  And if it doesn't get to turn off, it starts telling itself to turn off. It's like, I'm going to put the slowdown switch on. It's like, when you don't get sleep, get sleep. It's like inhibit, inhibit. Why are you not asleep yet? Inhibit, inhibit. I don't want to remember things. I should be sleeping. Your brain is trying to tell you something. Yes.  Just a little bit. No, no, I feel like this is the internal conversation. I had three hours, I think, of sleep last night, which for me, for some people, they can function. No, it was not enough. It was very bad. And I had to, yeah. So I'm going to, as soon as we're done, I'm going to go to sleep. I hope you do get a very good night's sleep so that you will have plenty of S6 phosphorylation in your hippocampus. I didn't even know I was missing it. And that was the problem. And now I know why I was tired this morning and could remember anything. I didn't have enough S6 stuff in my brain. Yeah. No S6 phosphorylation. You don't have any of those memory transfer proteins. No memories or less memories. Anyway, memory formation inhibited in your hippocampus. When you don't sleep. So Justin, it's your turn to tell us a couple of stories. All right. Do you remember what you wanted to talk about? So yeah, there was 250 million years ago, much of the life on the planet was dying. No. Yeah. It was an event that marked the end of the Permian period. 96% of the planet's marine species, 70% of land life, went extinct in a relatively short period of time. Largest extinction event in the history of the planet. Florida State University researchers, they looked at this. They published in Nature Geoscience. They found actually that there was a sudden spike and then subsequent drop in the oceans. Oxygen content. Now the drop in the oxygen content had sort of been known, but the spike of oxygen in the beginning of it was a new finding. One of the things they say is that although ancient marine oxygen levels were on a downward trend ahead of the spike and remained low afterwards, it's on a very geologically rapid shift back and forth. They think it happened over just a course of about 10,000 years. Something like this. So it's a very fast event that took place that changed oxygen levels. And sort of like you were describing that deep pond where like the sunlight the sinkhole where you could sort of see the alternating population shifts during daytime and nighttime. You know these massive shifts of oxygenation in the ocean may have been a big key driver to the mass extinction event. One of the other things is they also know that there was a lot of volcanic activity. So this the lower oxygen levels and then you have an the only reason I think is to be what you were talking about is the massive volcanic activity could have been a dimming event for sunlight making it. Oh absolutely. Right so then there's that whole there's a whole other reason this component. So anyway interesting oxygen it's what we all breathe and keeps us alive but it's also important for everything now on the planet. This is an older extinction event where you know you were talking about the red-green algae were producing oxygen when most things probably were more like that sulfur sulfur eater. There was a time when oxygen was a toxin to life on the planet. And the red-green algae is producing so much oxygen they think actually led to an extinction event there for a lot of the critters that didn't like it. Also in the news here glaciers and ice caps in two archipelagos of the Russian Arctic are losing I like this enough melt water to fill nearly five million Olympic-sized swimming pools each year. Which is a scientific quantification by the way. That's how they talk about large volumes of water as units of Olympic-sized swimming pools. Satellite data suggests that the amount of ice loss between 2010 and 2018 would put an area the size of the Netherlands seven feet underwater. They didn't do it in Rhode Island which is unfortunate because that's usually that's an American that's how we know what we usually do things in units of Rhode Islands not in units of Netherlands but okay warming of the Arctic Ocean appears to play a key role in accelerating ice loss from two groups of islands that border the Karsi. Reachers have said these were like quite heavily on satellite data mostly because these are areas that are hard to access they're up in that Arctic region it's really cold and there's not a whole lot of support services. But yeah they say thinning of the ice has already had a major impact on the stability of some of the region's glaciers and ice caps which could further increase ice loss in the future. Apparently there would be around 16 Rhode Island's in the Netherlands. So now I can conceptualize 15 to 16 Rhode Island's in now I can actually conceptualize that under seven feet of water 15 Rhode Island's yeah under seven feet of what that's pretty impressive a lot of water that's a lot of water yeah but that's the story yeah rush is melting it's not just it's not just Greenland it's not just Antarctica it's not just the the caps in the Sierras it's everywhere it's happening everywhere. So this is the Russian Arctic it's not Siberia this isn't just the permafrost this is this is frozen ice over land similar to our Arctic just on the other other part of the planet yeah if it's ice it's gonna melt and if it's Arctic it's Arctic it doesn't matter whether it's United States Arctic or Russian Arctic it doesn't matter it's all the far north and it's melting because climate is changing. Climate change does not respect lines drawn on maps. No it absolutely doesn't care and yeah we're going to the last few weeks because IPC stuff is IPCC stuff is happening a lot of researchers are talking about climate change and politicians are starting to are discussing what we're going to do and how we're going to address things but we're going to have to get ready for ice-free Arctic we're going in Russian Arctic American Arctic what what is going to happen there we're seeing plastics being discovered micro plastics found in the Arctic we are also if shipping increases in the Arctic we're going to see further pollution through diesel oil gas if there is mining if there is further searching for fossil fuels in the Arctic there's there's exactly why Blair's Blair's short Blair's shortening the story about shortening the legs of spiders needs to be implemented in humans to have smaller humans to use less resources so just give the planet some time to recover before we do it again yeah we need a little bit of recovery please everyone yes well we need critical thinking I love your comment yeah if there's fresh water coming from that can we pipe it to California the American West can use it it's great solution and this is always the part where I have to point out that California still has plenty of fresh water for all of the people and for the rivers and just when you add in all the farming and the almonds I'm really upset with all this it's just the almonds it's really these just give her to the almonds will be fine yeah can we just I mean is it inaccurate to blame it on the almonds no I just I don't feel like it is it is not yeah the whole thing when they're talking driving California California like personal people consuming water in California accounts for about 10 to 11 percent of of the fresh water used in California the other 90 percent is farming and industrial yeah so yeah like they're telling people not to water their lawns when they could just be getting rid of some of the the almond fields that they built while the drought was already known and building they were they were opening more and more territory for almond growing which I and this is like my probably the number two thing I eat like I would go to the buffet and eat nothing but almonds if they were available I love almonds it's my it's my favorite part of the problem I see the problem no I'm not saying that I'm not I'm just saying yeah there's not really enough of a drought in California to be so I have I have a question as a possible solution we are seeing artificial intelligence being used to find patterns in all sorts of things to find solutions for protein folding to find to solve complex problems in resource distribution people are using artificial intelligence to work the stock market we're using artificial intelligence to identify cancers better than better than doctors can now can we develop artificial intelligence for complex systems to help us distribute our water no would that be a good solution to this problem so so the thing is the thing is going to is going to spit out an answer yeah and the answer isn't going to be liked by somebody who has a tremendous amount of money and oh for sure sir yeah isn't going anywhere it's I was going to say a similar thing and say that we could also ask the AI to find the solution to climate change but it's going to be to reduce our use of fossil fuels and no one's going to want to do that so well what I think you know that we could do is that we could tie this AI in to the AI that controls the stock markets and and bids in the stock stock markets and potentially we could get the people with money to follow along with what the climate change and water distribution AI wants to do because it will affect the stock markets in such a way that it will take away all their money if they don't do what the AI wants so there's there's absolutely 100 percent we need a benevolent AI to rule everything what could go wrong there is always an argument for and I 100 percent believe that you could change those levers of resource flow and create a system that is working better for everyone the problem no matter how good the system or bad the system currently is somebody's winning and whoever is winning does not want change even if it could be a little bit better for them but maybe it would be a lot better for a lot of other people if you're winning the system of capitalism money thing you grab uh you don't want to like yeah you're not gonna like the AI telling you what to do I get it right and that's who unfortunately holds undue power in the system of governance that we have that is fueled by that money this is like what we've been dealing with with climate change and now again with trying to get people vaccinated where we're like what if this person says it will you listen that no how about what if this person what if a robot no what if Paul McCartney no what if what if the press no what so yeah I don't lair what is the most popular owl what what is the most the the superb owl popular how who gives a hoot oh I like the burrowing owl I think burrowing owls are very adorable a diurnal owl of all things diurnal owl there's the barn owl only owl in its family sounds like a dying banshee yeah there's the great gray owl the tallest owl there's the eurasian eagle owl the heaviest owl at a whopping five pounds I think the eurasian eagle owl is a pretty amazing owl that's really like the saw wet owl which is like this big it has that name because it sounds like you're wetting a saw this one that was a little ground owl that I think was in Greece but was on all of their money it was like one of the first mass produced coins and it's a it's a little owl well today is owl appreciation day so I hope everyone appreciates a little owl today and if anyone wants to send us their opinion on their favorite owl or on their whether or not you would listen to a benevolent AI you know where to find us have we made it to the end of another episode yes I think we might have I think we might have made it we might have made it to the end we might have and I think I might have shut my show notes up what did I do there doesn't matter I want to say thank you for joining us for another episode of this week in science thank you for watching for listening for being a part of this adventure this science stream and I do want to say a very specific thank you to a few people who help out the show thank you to our moderators everyone who moderates the chat a bit you are absolutely helping us do these streams and make sure that we can maintain the community the kind community online that we have thank you for doing that thank you fada for help with show notes and show descriptions Gordon cloud thank you for your help in the chat rooms identity identity for thank you for recording the show and Rachel thank you for your assistance now in editing it's very wonderful to get that help and I definitely want to thank our patreon sponsors and I have to take just a moment because of course the screen isn't sharing the way that I want it to write when I want it to so let me change this really fast and hopefully Rachel will edit this part out echnap 49 woodsy owl yes I am old enough to remember give a hoot don't pollute absolutely best owl ever give a hoot about science everybody all right thank you to pierre velizar brawlfee filo figaroa john rataswamy carl cornfeld malinnie stagman de cramsta karin tozzi woody ms andre beset chris wozniak dave bun vegaard chefstead house knight or donathan styles aka don stylo john lee alley coffin matty paren gaurav sharma shoebrew don mundus steven alberon darrell my shacks to pollock andrew swanson fredes 104 sky luke paul ronovich kevin reardon noodles jack brian karrington matt bass joshua fury shonanina lamb john mckay greg riley marqueson flow gene telly a steve leesman aka zima ken haze howard tan christopher rap and dana pierce and richard brennan minnish johnny gridley kevin rail's back flying 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Thank you for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. Thank you also for flying Twist Airlines. We hope that you have enjoyed the science-y skies. Knock, knock. Who's there, Arn-Lor? Twist Science, knock lot, knock, knock. Owl, owl who? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. That's a good one. Very good. Thank you, Arn-Lor. I like, I like, I like knock, knock jokes. They're especially cute when young children are trying to make them up and just don't understand the humor at all. And they're just funny. I could be somebody, I could be the AI voice. I could do that. You were a robot voice for Justin's radio show. I was. I've been a robot voice. I still want to bring that back.  We got the characters stolen a little bit by the Han Star Wars movie, but nobody watched that, thankfully. And we'll follow the character. Which character, the L3? Yeah, yeah, that was, she was totally ripped off from Jack the Ex-Medibot. Totally, totally taken from yours. Who is an Android rights activist and who does liberate robots on occasion. But isn't going to get, and even ends up running from the authorities by being incorporated into the spaceship. Mm-hmm. But then gets out again and has the whole rest of the story that you can follow. So. Yes. Yeah, so someday, someday we'll get back to that. I think I don't know how to use Discord. Yeah, I've tried like several times. It doesn't work. I got a notification. It doesn't work. That I got a message from somebody and now I can't, I can't see it. Up on the left-hand side, if somebody sent you, if you have the sidebar open. Yeah. If it'll show up as a little circle of somebody if they sent you a private message and. So then it just lied to me. There are also, it looks like there might be something in the Blair's Animal Corner category. No, that was how the Jaguar might save its ecosystem, CC Blair Baz from FADA. Yeah, no, I think I just got one that was like, hey. The Jaguar. All right, 70 in the chat room. Right, Gaurav, if you ask Alexa. Okay, let's Google that. Wait a minute, where did Justin go? What just happened? Did he just pull he leave? Did he just out without saying good night? Which has happened? That might be what just happened. Did we get Justin ghosted? What? I know he was tired, but come on. That was, that was rude. That was rude. Jeez. Oh man. FADA's tired and is going to bed. Good night, FADA. It is a Wednesday, we're all a bit midweek punchy. Indeed. Going through the things of the weeks. Oh, he's back. He didn't just ghost us. What happened? It's the, I don't know. I moved over into the chat and it kicked me out. It did. Here. Snored Prefect said you got eaten by an owl. I'm going to put something in the private chat that you can share to the not private chat. Oh, onto the chat chat? Yeah. All right. Because I don't have access to the chat chat. I can't talk to people in chat. Unless you go into Twitch or, yeah. So Justin, the episode I recorded on is fully lost, right? Fully lost. That was like eight hours of work. That's crazy. It was tremendous recording session, but the KDDS studios had a ghost static thing happening and yeah, it's all terrible. Soundcloud.com. I mean, technology's so much better now that was almost 10 years ago. We could record it without all going to KDDS now. Yes, this is true. This is true. It's no longer required, so it would actually be very easy to record it. It would. It would be. The Adventures of Jack, be back. This was when drum and bass was a thing. Is it still? Jungle? Jungle? Hey, where did it pass? An overbearing autopilot. Come on, Jacks. Lighten up. As much as I like Betty as an autonomous Android sidekick, I couldn't standard just now. Most quarters on an interstellar interceptor is one thing. This was smothering. There is a Carlubian quadrium dealer set to meet you at a traveling hotel lobby. He hasn't given us a price quote, but the going rate looks like it's more quid bits than we have, so you'll need to negotiate. Just remember whatever he says do not agree to more than we have. I can handle it. The key is to not want what they're selling to have somewhere else to be and to be absolutely unsure about the value of what you're buying. I've negotiated before. I'm sure you have, Jack, but please be careful. Carlubians have a way of controlling negotiating expectations that hasn't been documented properly. I'll see. And on it goes. The link has been shared. It does feel very 2003. For sure. My gosh, someone in Discord just said, well, I started buying masks again as they bought one of the Mammoth masks today. Nice. Yeah. It's like two weeks ago, three weeks ago, maybe I don't, what is time? I was like, aw, man, I'm never gonna get to wear my fun masks again. You were thinking that? Yeah. No. No. I was just kind of like, aw, man, like it's, I used to have like, I have like 15 masks, so I could like. Well, you're gonna be wearing them. Yeah. Every day. Forever. Forever. Yeah. Our Lord didn't stop wearing them. We have to start wearing them in the office again, even when we're just in a closed office, not open to the public, and everyone's vaccinated, we still have to wear them, which I totally understand. I understand why, and I'm happy that it's happening. I just think it's very funny. And my workplace is not alone in this, that everyone has put the train on the tracks to get back to work. And now, as all these things are coming, that train has not slowed, stopped, or left that track. Like, people are still like, well, we said we're going back to work, so we're going back to work. Oh, shoot, we need to do our masks if we're not vaccinated. That's okay, we're still going back to, oh, we need to do our masks no matter. It's okay, we're still going back to work. It's like. Hey, is it all right? If I move my desk a little further from the wall, I need to get my respirator in here. It's rather large. Yes, yes. People are, I don't like saying that people are dumb. It brings me no joy to say this. People do not like reading the writing on the wall, because I gotta tell you, the writing is on the wall right now. It says stay home for eight weeks and you won't ever have to deal with this freaking wall again. Yeah. Yeah, everyone is frustrated. I don't know anyone who's not frustrated, but. It's, yeah, I just don't understand to your point, Justin, I don't understand. Eric Knapp. Why, okay, we've recognized, we messed up. Okay, they said we were gonna mess up, we messed up, but you know what? We're still gonna keep moving towards reopening and returning to normal. Let me do my little bit of voice of reason thing. Voice of reason. I'll tell you that if we were just, if we could just stay home, have that cessation of bills for a minute, a little bit of unemployment if needed, whatever's to do. I don't think that there are any workers who would say eight weeks, I couldn't do that. That would just be preposterous for me to take eight weeks off of my work job to go make the country, the world safe and healthy again. It tends to be, like we were discussing before, the people who are winning at economy thing are the ones who don't want anything to change and are pushing that drain. Even if there's not one rail, that's plenty, we'll get there. What's interesting is that there's a majority of the, I think, millennial generation who do wanna continue working from home. It's a majority of my generation, Gen X, which I'm interested, this is fascinating to me, are interested in going back to the offices. So this is, I think, it's a generational difference, comfort maybe with office environment versus home environment. Gen X are maybe starting to age out of having kids in the house and millennials maybe have kids in the house more often now. Well in the culture, the kids are at different age. Millennials want hybrid, yeah. That's what happened in my workplaces. Everybody with like 10-year-old and up kids want to come back to work because their kids are at home and they can handle themselves and they can't be productive when their 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old is around. But the people with two-year-olds, three-year-olds, they have to be home because daycares still aren't fully open. It could be the kids, it could be the relationships too with spouses. You know, if you're a year or two into a relationship, eight weeks together, no interruptions, might sound great. If you're 25 years together, why don't I have friends? Eight weeks of uninterrupted time together. I don't know, maybe there's.  People do miss the social connections at work. It's very true. And people are tired of zooming. People are, there's a lot, there's a lot of psychological influence at play with what we're doing. I hang out with some of my best friends on the planet through an interface of audio and video at least once a week. You talk about us? No, I meant somebody else, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  Yes, Blair. Aw. Yes, yeah. Well, it's, I mean, it's a very personal decision if you want to be at home or at work. But I think it's very funny, Garth was saying that his workplace did a poll and hybrid workplace one, which is not surprising. They keep doing polls, but as to my knowledge, I have yet to see a workplace that did a poll and then actually made a decision based on the poll. The poll. Yeah. Like they do a poll hoping for something.  So we're going to do the thing we wanted. Workplace polls are to give you input, not output. No. Just input. That's what they're for. We want everyone to have a chance to give input. Are we going to have a chance to give the output? No. No. That's how it works. But some people feel like after the input, they're like, hey, I've made my input. No, I know. I don't really know. Probably maybe something's going to happen someday. So Shubrew said something that we had, that their work, they had three new cases of COVID, but thanks to HIPAA, they don't know if they were vaxed or not. That has, I don't think that has anything to do with HIPAA. It's not HIPAA. It's not HIPAA. HIPAA is hospitals sharing your information. Yeah, you can ask, you can ask whether or not people were vaccinated. That is totally fine. So we can actually make a mandatory. Yeah, we can make a mandatory in your workplace. Like, it's not against HIPAA if somebody says they're a teacher, but I know they've gotten a series of vaccines. Like it's because you have to to have that job. Yeah. So that's nothing, there's nothing HIPAA, I can't tell you what I do for a living because of HIPAA.  Like all that conversation is. No, that's all silly. If they said, if they said I can't tell you because of HIPAAs. Yes. Because of HIPAAs. That actually has some gravitas to it. I mean, it's, I was telling someone the other day because I've worked with animals my whole life, to this point, I have never had a job that did not require me to have a tetanus vaccine. Yeah. Because I've worked with animals. So like, also if I had ever chose to work with bats or with skunks, I would have had to get a rabies vaccine. That is required.  It's not, It's no. Yeah. And kids are required to show a bunch of vaccinations to go to schools in most places. Yeah. Not Marin County, but otherwise. Yeah. If so many answers, Hannah is exactly right. Anyone who answers HIPAA, when you ask that they are vaccinated, definitely not vaccinated. Definitely not. Yeah. Yeah. It's... Anyway. Yeah. Well, so technically, workplaces, I mean, at least in California right now, I think in, definitely in the whole Bay Area, maybe in most of the state, workplaces are needing to get vaccine status of their employees. And that's part of the reason why. So if you call in and you say you got a positive case, they know if you're vaccinated or not, because the response is different. Yeah. But it shouldn't be. I mean, there should be, if somebody has COVID, people who work with them should be informed that they were exposed, regardless of whether or not that person was vaccinated. Correct. Because here's the other thing that is also a huge part of the problem. The Delta variant is a honey badger. And the Lambda variant. The Lambda variant, honey badgers. Does not pair. Can still spread asymptomatically between vaccinated people. Less often. Still less often. The percentage of individuals who are vaccinated, who are ending up in the hospital is still less. But the idea that people have now that because I'm vaccinated, I'm done and everyone around me, then we're all done and we don't have to worry about anything anymore. I wish it were true. Gosh, we hoped it to be true. Layers of protection. It would have been true if everyone got vaccinated. It would have been true if nobody got vaccinated. We stayed home for eight weeks. Also that. Yes, that too. Layers of protection. Yes. One of the big questions right now that I am finding interesting is whether or not to start promoting booster shots among the more privileged nations when there are still billions of people around the world who have not even had a single vaccine yet. Well, and the thing that I was talking to Brian about the other day because he was amongst some of the very first people in probably in all of California to get a vaccine because he got one in early December. That the majority of the population that we're talking about when we talk about boosters, their vaccine is at most six months old, but his is eight months old. And so that's what I'm being curious about for the booster is like, at what point are we going to decide? Oh, shoot, you should get a booster after 10 months. The majority of the population might be fine but the exact people on the line and he's seeing COVID patients again every night, right? So like the exact people who are interacting with COVID on a daily basis are the ones who maybe should have already gotten them. So this is why I'm like, I'm very interested. I feel like they need to figure this out quickly because the people most at risk are the farthest along on a booster. Keep an eye out. The frontline workers, yeah. A lot of places are probably looking at this. I know UC Davis is currently doing some research on the booster. So she keep an eye out there to see what that research. Right, yeah, there are gonna be pilot studies, clinical trials and think, yeah, that you could be involved if you wanted to, yeah. And yes, our and Lord, we will need a new shot based on the new variants. Absolutely. And I believe that Pfizer and Moderna and the others are already looking at new formulations for new variants because what it's going to be is that the next booster you get won't necessarily be, I mean, maybe right now it'll just be, oh, a third jab of the same Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Or a second, if you're me. Or if you got Johnson and Johnson, then maybe it's another Johnson and Johnson or it's another. I bet it's gonna be a Pfizer and Moderna. Or you get Pfizer and Moderna. Yeah. Or AstraZeneca, whatever. But it could be any combination. But after that, the next what they call booster is just, it'll be a different formulation. It'll be something slightly different to help with whatever is out. Kind of like the flu, just like whatever has changed, yeah. Yeah, which I think is part of the important messaging around this too that we all need to do is when we talk about a COVID booster shot, talking about it like it is the flu shot, which I know like talking about COVID like it was the flu at the very beginning was a problem.  A flu shot is for variants of influenza. Yes. That's exactly what this is. Yeah. This is gonna be a COVID shot for variants of COVID. Yeah, I think what's going to happen when somebody in the chat, where was it? Where was it? Rick Loveman saying that Lori Garrett said that the virus that viruses like COVID have never been solved by vaccine claiming that quarantine is necessary similar to Justin's eight weeks. And yeah, because it's airborne, it's going to be something that does rely on quarantine. Part of the reason a virus like COVID has never been solved by a vaccine is that we haven't had things like mRNA vaccines before where we've been, our vaccine technology has been coming along slowly, but now hopefully in leaps and bounds, we'll develop it further. But it's also because not everybody gets the vaccines because people refuse vaccines because we need a large portion of the population to gain immunity or partial immunity to be able to block it from continuing to circulate in the populations and create more mutations. And so what's going to happen is because we're not doing that, there are gonna be pockets and it's gonna mutate, they're gonna be another variant. We're gonna have to continue to follow it. Hopefully what it'll end up, what'll happen eventually is that maybe it won't be like the flu. Maybe eventually because the flu really does shift and is seasonal and so that gives, there's like a time for the body to just forget all about the flu and then the next year you have to get the new vaccine to be able to deal with the new variant. But because COVID might not, I don't know, hopefully enough people will get it after being vaccinated even and that immunity will eventually, what's gonna happen is that eventually we're gonna get it. You're gonna get it, I'm gonna get it, we're all gonna get it eventually because we can't stay at home all the time. We're gonna learn to live with it. Hopefully vaccination will expand. Unfortunately, infections will continue but that number is gonna grow and grow and grow and hopefully eventually it's just something, a bad thing that we have to deal with. Hopefully and eventually, but it becomes a bunch of your point that you made at the beginning of this, the weighing of the foregoing of booster to getting more population. So we don't have pockets that are still being ravaged and getting those doses out globally as opposed to having the focus be on boosting. I think we should be able to do both. I don't understand how a global effort can't get that done. But I am also sort of waiting for the pivot of the, I'm sort of waiting for the pivot to take place amongst the more xenophobic minded Americans who are like America first. Okay, so we should all get the vaccine. I don't want the vaccine. Wait a second. How can you be both against sharing it with the world before the booster, but against getting the, it's the same way like the news from the border, immigrants with COVID are coming to the United States but COVID's nothing to worry about. Like it's the same broadcast. What are you, how is it impossible? Your head does not explode from the different directions. Anyway, it does have to be, it does have to be a global effort because just in the same way that the state of California was doing better while the states of Florida and Texas continued to increase to the point where they're like worse than what was the worst at this point. We can't as a nation of even not traveling outside of the nation or shutting off the rest of the world protected by mostly ocean, we can't overcome this with those pockets of a vector still out there. I mean, it's the government. Same thing in the global, same thing globally. Isn't going to shut down international travel. I mean, maybe we could at least shut down travel to Florida. I have my whole life. Florida and Texas are two places I've agreed never to step down. That's again, diseases and climate change don't respect borders. And this was always part of my complaint too, right? It's like, yeah, if you don't shut down travel then that border doesn't mean diddly. Like this whole idea that like, well, California's vaccines are great. It's also summer. And so people are coming from all over the United States to California as they do in the summer, especially after finally I can travel now. So like it doesn't matter that California's vaccination rates are good. People are bringing COVID in here from all over. Disneyland. They're bringing it in. And we're exporting it. We're also exporting it. The borders don't mean anything. I thought for sure that we were gonna shut down state borders at some point in this mess and we never did. But then there's the borders, but then you're like, there's a pocket of people in say the neighboring town also refusing. Like it's that idea that we're of one mind in California is also never. California is definitely not single-minded. California is got, it is a big state with lots of opinions. Your next city might be predominantly a very different opinion.  You're like all of these, like it's the people everywhere are having not getting on the same page is gonna be part of the problem. And in the summer, at least people can enjoy outdoor activities. It's when the winter hits. It's not, you know, one of the reasons that the flu is seasonal is just because people are spending more time indoors. Indoors. Yeah. Where if the flu is kind of airborne-ish too and ventilation, it's a big deal. Fun fact, fun fact, if you go to a mall in the summer, they've also got the air handlers on full blast to keep the little cooler in there. If you go in the winter, they actually don't have heaters. They just stop circulating the air because the human body heat is enough to make it a comfortable temperature. I'm really grossed out now. Okay. Go to the mall. Let's go to the mall. But I haven't been to a mall in a while. I don't go to the mall. Do they still even exist? They do. They sure do. I went a couple of months ago. I spent a whole day in a mall. Graduation gamers, people are quickly leaving California. No, they're not. They're not leaving California as much as people say. Yeah. They're not really. We usually have a lot of immigrants from all of the other states. That makes up for it. It's fine. People come from other states here and then people leave here because they can't buy a house. Yeah, that's basically right. Tonight's like little hopscotch. Little exchange. So Grouchy Gamer is bringing up public swimming pools and children with the letter P in the pool. Putting the letter P in the pools. See you anywhere. I don't care about that. I feel like that's what Lollapalooza was. It was like Lollapalooza in Chicago.  We're like, I'm bringing the COVID to Lollapalooza. Yeah. Can't wait for that data. Can't believe they're doing it. They did it. It's done. Oh yeah, I can't believe it. It looked terrifying. It looked terrifying and I was glad I was home this weekend. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't understand. I understand people don't want to cancel things again. I get it. That full capacity? I don't get how they then dig in their heels and do whatever they want anyway. You can be bummed about it, but you still have to make the right choice. Yeah, it's wild. Vaccinate if you can, wear your masks, social distance because the COVID honey badger has come before you. I haven't seen anything about social distancing in months. Like they completely dropped those words and they never brought them back. This is what I was like, I was thinking about the other day. They're talking about masks again, but nobody has brought social distancing back up, which I keep asking like, hey, so still no masks outside, right? And yes, the answer is still no masks outside. And I'm like, okay, but then should we be asking people to keep their distance?  You don't necessarily have to keep that much distance, but if you're going to a public thing at a park, maybe there's a music event or something, keep your distance, right? People are saying it and spraying it at every moment. The distance is like, not part of the conversation anymore, which is why like, capacity restrictions outside haven't changed in the last couple of weeks. Social distancing is out of the equation and I don't understand why. This is, it's fascinating. It shouldn't be. And as much as I'm changing. Physically distancing, yes.  I'll join you in some mental distancing. That's fine. S3 phosphorylation. Let's all make it happen tonight, everybody. Let's remember some of this stuff. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Have a wonderful week. We will be back again with more science next week. Woo-hoo! Stay well, stay safe. Wear a mask in public. Thank you for joining us for another episode. Have a good one. Good night.