So I hit the I am a robot button. I Knew you were That's where he always goes to charge his batteries charging his back robot batteries They run out all the time Did anyone see the megabots last night? three two this is Twists this week in science episode number 641 recorded on Wednesday October 18th 2017 Science for what ails you? Hey, everyone. I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on this week in science. We are going to fill your heads with assault smothering and smash but first Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer a great poet once said something deeply revealing of the human condition Spoke it so plainly in such a simple string of otherwise ordinary words that everyone who heard it felt changed from that day forward They were more bold and self-assured yet more empathetic and dedicated to the betterment of all They all found great happiness and success in their endeavors because of this perspective Though unfortunately while setting off brightly into their own futures Nobody took the time to write it down and while I have no idea what it said then partly because I made it up We can all imagine that there is a short and simple string of words that thing that could invoke our better natures. I Offer you mine here once upon a long ago time On a planet near as near can be a creature was born at Boris striking resemblance to you and me It looked around and wondered is this all there is to see this child of evolution This beast of biology's past looked around and wondered. Am I really up to the task? With feet not quite made for walking in eyes pitch-blind at night It stood up late one evening and walked clear out of sight and Where was this primitive child of history headed? You may have already guessed this week in science Coming up next In science I am still kicking in Blair and Good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of this week in science We are back yet again to cover some of the stories. We thought were the most awesome this week to discuss There's some good stuff out there every week so much good stuff and we are back. I Traveled across the current in in the last week. I traveled across the country almost to the other coast. I went to Philadelphia I'm back Just today. I made it safely even with flight delays. Oh Thank You science You know what on this week's show. We got all the science news I have stories about a eyes ruling the world famine in Egypt and waves from space What do you have for us Justin? I've got two salty stories one one anthropologist anthropological debunking and a breast cancer awareness month type story Fantastic and Blair what is in the animal corner? Oh, I have some smothering mothers. I Have some venom and I have reasons that maybe you should get some spiders in your recording studio I think I have those Around here it may be good for you coming up Something in your recording studio may help you Come in up coming up well everyone you got to stay you guys stay tuned in to this week in science to hear these stories So let's jump in Don't anybody go anywhere Listen up. It's all coming right now and as we jump into our new favorite segment of the show I want to remind everyone that you can subscribe to the twist podcast all over the place Apple podcast portal Google Play podcast portal stitcher speaker tune in all over the place Wherever you look for good podcasts. You will find us. You can also find us on YouTube and Facebook Look for this week in science if you would like to subscribe to us all over the interwebs You can also just go to twist.org, but now But also at twist.org We have our calendars that are available for pre-order if you want to get your 2018 Blair's animal quarter twist Calendar now is the time to do it right now is when we buy calendars and start making plans for the next year If you want it to be a twisty year, maybe think about heading over to twist.org Clicking on a pre-order button, but now It's time for this week in what has science done for me? lately This week's letter comes from Jay Schneiderman he says I'm a resident of Houston, Texas and in mid-August I had some minor surgery in my arm which left me pretty much homebound for the following two weeks Unfortunately during those two weeks hurricane Harvey decided to show up now. Oh, no. Yeah, however. I had science on my side Due to advances in climatology meteorology And computer science I was able to stay up-to-date on the path of the storm including receiving real-time alerts for flooding heavy rain And even tornadoes Thanks to the advances in telecommunications I was able to stay in touch with the friend who was going to evacuate me though. Thankfully it never came to that point Thanks to the engineers and material scientists I was able to stay warm and dry in my apartment throughout the storm Thanks to the advances in the sciences of food preparation and stabilization I was able to stay fed throughout the storm and recovery without having to go to the grocery store repeatedly Though Harvey was a disaster for Texas Without science it would have been a lot worse Yeah, absolutely. It would have been yes and many are still reeling from hurricanes in the Gulf and beyond and Yeah, science is telling us a lot about where hurricanes are going to land How to prepare helping us stay safe allowing us to communicate All these things are and that and that comment about the food Stabilization to that's so huge. I mean, this is you can imagine that without that without canned goods without bread that lasts on the shelf for weeks at a time People would be out of out of food. They'd be starving Just within days at times after after a an event like this. So yeah, all of these things come into play They do so Jay. Thank you so much for writing in we're glad you're okay, and I hope that Hope your arm is doing better at this point in time Everyone out there. We want to hear from you. What has science done for you lately? What does it do for you day in day out weekend week out? What did it do for you this week last week? We want to know and so share your stories with us head over to Facebook and send us a message Go to the this week in science Facebook page Send us a message and we will schedule you to be read on the show to share your Experiences with science in your life For everyone else so that we can all in there's all appreciate just a little bit more How integrated science is in is to our daily lives Every week I want something from the minion community. So come on keep those stories coming, please And then now it's time for our stories of science of things that happened this week My first story isn't something that happened this week per se it actually happened back in August But there was a big press release on Monday Which many of you may or may not be aware of but we alluded to a rumor a few weeks back suggesting that There had been a movement of a whole bunch of telescopes to focus on a certain area of the sky and It was a rumor that maybe Ligo and Virgo had detected not black holes colliding in the gravitational wave signal coming from black holes but the collision of two neutron stars and Indeed that's what the press release the press conference on Monday Announced to the world that the Ligo Virgo Collaboration which searches for evidence of gravitational waves in our universe that they had indeed detected the signal of Neutron stars colliding and you might think how do they know they're just looking at these waves and These waves are these teeny tiny things. I mean They're looking at the they're they're looking for shifts In space time, right? They're looking for these waves these ripples that are going out through space time Super visible you throw a rock in a pond you can see those waves pretty easily, right? These by the time they get to us, they're very very tiny very tiny waves you were talking The movement of their detector the lasers in their detector in ferrometer Are moved in a distance Let's less than the diameter of a proton Like this teeny tiny heart to even wrap your head around how small a distance The laser is shifting, but that's what they're detecting. And so what they found with the black hole Findings is that it's a very quick blip that when black holes collide. It's like boom They collided very quick signal a Chirp they call it in their data stream however They found a chirp that wasn't a fraction of a second this time around but actually lasted about a hundred seconds and it was Not in a very specific Sensitivity band it was the entire frequency range that LIGO is able to detect Wow and It was this is about the same range as common musical instruments, which is interesting and Because if they were not just using LIGO, which is to inforometers working together in the United States Because Virgo had come online It allowed a third Detector in space so they could triangulate and they were able to figure out what area of space The signal came from and because they knew that and because they had seen this longer signal They immediately contacted a whole bunch of telescope operators And they said if there are all these hypotheses about what happens when neutron stars collide And we've never seen it before everybody Look at this area of space and see if you see something So all these telescopes they shifted and they Started looking at this particular area of space and what they saw they saw a short gamma ray burst, which is something that has been Suspected they thought neutron star mergers and elicited emitted short gamma ray bursts and that's what they found so we have we have confirmation of one hypothesis and There they watched this area of space and they they saw a transient object appear in the sky And then go away again They watched it for a number of weeks another hypothesis about neutron star mergers is that it that when neutrons stars which are some of the densest objects in Space collide with each other because they're two dense objects coming together They might form black hole a black hole because of their merger So we don't have that data out yet, but because all these telescopes were looking For a number of weeks we may find out for sure whether or not neutron star mergers result in black holes That is so awesome. Yeah, and so now we know okay. This is something that we can do This is the first time we have ever seen this we had all these ideas about what would happen and now we looked at it We watched it and We're gonna watch more of these happen. We're going to test hypotheses about The structure in the formation of our universe They taught they called this this merger of the neutron stars They called it a kilonova event instead of a massive star Imploding on itself being a supernova. This is even bigger. It's a kilonova event Researcher Laura Katanati who's a professor of physics at Georgia Tech And she's also the deputy spokesperson for the LIGO scientific collaboration said Our background analysis showed an event of this strength happens less than one than once in 80,000 years by random coincidence So we recognize this right away as a very confident detection and a remarkably nearby source This detection has genuinely opened the doors to a new way of doing astrophysics I expect it will be remembered as one of the most studied astrophysical events in history So it's just all of this for astrophysicists. This is a very exciting event and for those of us Who are not astrophysicists? We can be excited about this observation Allowing astrophysicists to test a lot of ideas that they had To figure out if their ideas are right To know if their ideas about our universe are correct And that's pretty exciting Yeah, grally bear neutron stars don't form black holes by themselves Now they're a level above in state or they were the idea is it's a collapsed Star that could if it was bigger might have been Yeah, but because it wasn't big enough to make a black hole So then you get a couple of them together and yeah, you should have all the mass in a really tight space That allows it to come back to the point where it's a black hole Oh, this is fascinating times we're living in They yeah, absolutely fascinating times so this uh The neutron stars who knows maybe they did maybe they did not they weren't maybe they weren't big enough These neutron stars to even even together form a black hole One question that researchers still have is that even though they saw a short gamma ray burst from this area of space It was weak for the distance away from our planet That it was and so they're trying to figure out why it was so weak So maybe they weren't giant neutron stars that merged but they were neutron stars Or maybe the gamma ray burst escaped before it became a black hole and that's why we haven't heard a bigger Like yeah, this is gonna be fun. Yeah, um another uh another assumption that uh gravity and light Travel at the same speed That was confirmed as well Yeah, because of this, uh, this is one of those these yeah, okay gravity these gravitational waves Probably this is nothing travels faster than the speed of light, but gravity being in the In the matrix of space time, you know Is it going to travel at the same speed as light? We think so So I guess it did So that matrix that you talk about though, that's an interesting one that gets into the hole Is there an absolute space behind all this that what we talk about is the speed of light is the speed of space Or the speed of space time. I guess you could see right like this is this is There's an actual limit Yeah, that's there before you you know before you you're talking about how quickly light can move around Lights actually may be slowed down by space time in that perspective Yikes Yeah, everything that's going to the speed limit Is only going the speed limit because they couldn't go faster Not because they can't Maybe yeah um, and then just an aside I was at a nanotechnology conference This week, so I was busy earlier this week talking to researchers who study things on a very very small scale who study things that Are the size and even smaller Then the laser in the distance these laser inforometers are moving right and so here we have I found I felt this connection between The very large scale of our universe and astrophysicists looking at these massive mergers Billions, you know well for this isn't billions of miles away, but You know At galactic scales. This is 130 million light years from earth That's far. That's really far right 130 million light years and then The detectors they're using are detecting at this nano scale and when Researchers are looking at the light spectra. That's emitted from something of an event like this to their telescopes They're using spectrographs that are the same as the spectrographs that nano nanotech researchers are using to discern the makeup and structure of nanoscale objects And so the sciences at these very large and very small scales are very related And I think that's just a it's a it's a beautiful and insightful connection So anyway, every anytime you're like this universe and it's like no, there's the big and the small and it's all it's all connected All connected, but you know, it doesn't matter because the AI is going to rule us soon anyway yay I want to go on record as being pro artificial intelligence. You are and have always been and will always be far superior to humans Well, and if they don't need to live forever, then i'm on board Upload me guys So the news this week you guys know, uh, we've talked before about google's deep brain uh Offshoot that has been creating artificial intelligence to play the game go And the first time they put it together Doesn't really work very well and and and the humans beat the the AI But you know, their learning techniques were based on these AI neural networks playing against human Teachers and learning the moves that humans would use studying games that humans had played And so over iterations and iterations it took several years And then finally in the last year or so Deep brain created an AI that beat the world's go champion so AI Conquered the game, but this was an AI that was taught by humans The insight that they had from that was that as they watched the AI play everyone said well There were some moves in there that we that were not human Some choices the AI made were not the kind of choices that a human would make And so the researchers at deep brain went from that and they said okay, let's go back to the drawing board And we are going to teach an AI not from humans but from other AIs And so um, there's a new paper out this week and so they they explain What they did and this new algorithm. It's called alpha go zero it learned By playing against another instance of itself they both and so these alpha goes zeros Were up didn't know anything except the rules of the game And so all they could do were play random moves Based on the rules because so there were restrictions constraints on what they could do But and then they just started playing And then they played and they played and they played And the algorithm learned which moves Got the progress in the game and which ones didn't Alpha go zero built up a value tree of these outcomes And the AI ran for three days completing almost five million games of go In those three days playing against itself an iteration of itself, right? So this is an AI taught by an itself Teaching itself how to play the game And then after those three days They tested alpha go zero against human trained AIs Not against humans, but against the AIs that they had previously trained with humans And alpha go zero Started beating them in a day And then they continued the training for 40 more days, but they really didn't They according to this ars technica article by day four Zero started consistently beating an earlier human trained version that was the first capable of beating human grandmasters By day 25 Zero started consistently beating the most sophisticated human trained AI And at day 40 it beat that AI in 89 games out of 100 And the and any humans that got into the mix didn't even stand a chance and again The games as people are analyzing them The games are all by the rules, but humans analyzing these games say There's a lot of moves that humans would never make. There's a lot of things that the algorithm does that a human would never do Like really risky things that is likely to make you lose, but they can tell what you're going to do next sort of thing Yeah, so something that might eventually lead them to progress even though they might lose some in the process It's like, okay, if I make this i'll lose this here, but then maybe that'll give me progress here later It's probably also queen and chess. You would never want to do that. Well, never just never do that And then you're losing never do that Well, maybe not necessarily maybe if I was an AI there's a way to sacrifice your queen No, I think yeah, well, and I think what it's probably doing is my guesstimate would be creating the most Changeable scenarios going forward. So if you factoring in all the uncertainty of what the other player might do You pick paths that give you the most options to continue to progress towards that victory going forward. So So I yeah, and if you really I mean if you're layering millions of operations of potential Uh, you know moves on the other by the other player to which ones give you the most flexibility going forward Something a human who if you're if you're awesome At chess, I mean if you are like Getting up there where they're going to give you a sign you a number out of the you know in a ranking You're you can look maybe five or six moves ahead Maybe maybe that's like the best. I think I think world champions are somewhere around seven You know but to be to be able to do it in a millionth Forget it Yeah So these eight this this AI program the alpha goes zero. It's uh, you know, this is an AI That learned on its own With no human influence. It just learned how to play the game on its own based on the rules Where and and then it beats it beats humans. It beats human-trained AIs It it it has mastered the game Um, I wonder if it gets to a point where it plays itself And it's like it's like if you've made that first or second move and And and uh tic-tac-toe you're like, ah, I already know where this is going. I know where it's gonna go. Exactly So like it's now playing it's off and it puts down the first piece and it's like, oh you won I've seen the game before Yeah, it's I've seen that episode on some science fiction show where they put down the first chess piece and they go Checkmate in 230 moves darn it Yeah, so the question people might be asking is oh my gosh, this AI is learning how to do this Is does this mean that AIs are on the path to Generally beat humans and take over the world the answer at this point is no I mean, maybe eventually but at this point this is only the game of go It's a complex to the internet Exactly don't do that But it is a complex game with a very strict set of rules And so those rules are very important constraints that led to the development of this AI this this particular AI Learned how to play go and that's all it learned how to do It didn't learn how to do anything else or apply the skills that it learned to anything else That doesn't mean that maybe it couldn't figure it out. I mean This AI Completely out of the blue figured out how to play go Yeah, that's what I was thinking about too like if you if you got a chess board just set in front of you And it was gonna buzz every time you put each piece in the wrong place. How long would it take you to learn the rules? months Yeah, but this they don't even have to the algorithm doesn't have to learn the rules the rules are programmed in Right, so the rules are there to begin with. There's no learning of the rules It's just learning to master the game. Yeah And knowing that the goal is to beat the opponent Right, there's a certain goal at the end. So how do you get there? And that is what the algorithm's goal is so There are very there are a lot of limitations and so this is not necessarily a process that will be applicable generally to create a superhuman intelligent AI But this is probably one of the steps in that path And I don't want to go on too far with this But there is there are applications where these are going to be applied where we do have A lot of known set rules and boundaries and the first thing you think of is physics physics works Because our predictions of physics work so well so amazingly because we've really dialed down so many of the laws of physics and have them tightly understood That you could apply this sort of artificial intelligence to that except that there's the problem of actually experimenting Which comes into play too like you'd have to also create a way for the AI to Experiment and see if something worked and that's you know, and there's probably There's there's probably a small enough scale This is this is what needs to be developed for this thing is a small enough scale physics experiment where it can turn on some lasers or work some, you know work some uh, some some Some basic functions and a really small set that it can repeat over and over and over and over again To to play with the laws of physics to see if there's new things that it can discover or find within there They also remember the game fold it with the folding proteins I always think it like that too like that would be an amazing application for For discovering proteins that may not actually even exist in nature and in the way that they they're constructed and have something like this Dial dial into that so for science. I think it has amazing applications and and unfortunately probably for game theory that'll have something to do with the price of airline tickets or How much people will pay for for milk in a grocery store before the pain threshold is beaten, but It's a little above Yeah First first comes mastering go which the AI has certainly done and next comes Several years and then the world Just don't plug it into the internet. I'm saying that's right. Keep them. They'll learn too much first. They'll learn about cats and then it's all over They already they've already started learning about the cats, but you know what I know what I want to know about now Batteries can I hear about batteries? This is the speaking science Justin So fossil fuels are set to be banned from new vehicles sold in the uk and france in 2040 Not that old especially if you're like blaring you have a 23 year old car already you know that That cars cars sometimes with us for a long time 2040 is kind of right around the corner Uh, paris I think is actually set a set a goal of 2030 to to start banning the I don't know if it's the sale or even the ability for a a fuel A current fuel vehicle to to go there. I think they want all electric by 2030 on the streets of paris the electric car industry is Electric about the idea But where are we gonna get enough batteries lithium isn't exactly an abundant resource To be hitching our electric wagons too So we need to get some scientific breakthroughs between now and then to make the whole thing sustainable Enter stanford researchers with some scientific breakthroughs. Oh just in time They have developed a sodium based battery that can store the same amount of energy as a state of the art lithium ion at a substantially lower cost currently About 25 of the cost of lithium ion battery Is just the cost of the lithium that's in the battery on an industrial scale lithium runs about $15,000 per ton for mining to refining stanford team Is basing its battery on widely available sodium based electrode material That costs just 150 dollars a ton Is that better to dispose of as well? It's salt Yeah The recycling and Throwing away of batteries Potentially as well Sodium based electrode has a chemical makeup common to all salts. It has a positively charged ions sodium joined to a negative charged ion And table salt chloride is the positive partner But in this battery stanford is working on The sodium ion binds to a compound known as And i'm really trying here my oh innocent all Unlike the chloride and table salt my oh innocent all is not a household word or one that i'm even familiar with But it is actually a pretty common product. It's found in baby formula It's derived from rice bran and from a liquid byproduct of a process used in corn mills So it's actually a pretty abundant organic compound That's already used in industry So this is this is a step in the right direction. They did find that they they could get uh, they could get efficiency um The other part that they got to is they worked the they optimized the battery's ability to charge recharge That cycle how efficiently the battery stores electricity. Oh, that's the way it delivers it back out again So they dialed down a couple of those things the Next they were kind of focused in this on the cost Analysis and getting the thing to work And they didn't invent this this is sort of a technology that existed there They're reinventing it or perfecting it with With a new look here now They got to look at energy density to make sure that these batteries aren't going to be too big To fit into a car. Well, I'm convinced call up elon Stop stop making the factory elon pivot Salt it's all about the salt It is and meanwhile Meanwhile elsewhere in the world of science engineers at the University of Illinois are making strides with this step forward in the direction of saltwater desalinization Have a process that's potentially cheaper than reverse osmosis and it borrows from battery technology sodium battery technology even Uh, so in their study researchers are focusing on new materials that could make desalinization of brackish waters economically desirable and energy efficient The so this is this is they're they're looking at it from a couple things one. They're looking at the rising waters of Inland salinization of coastal waters as this global warming thing keeps kicking off rise of sea water Approaching contaminated groundwater aquifers. So that's one area that they could apply this But like a sailor lost at sea water water everywhere not a drop to drink as demands for fresh water increase Desalinization of salty waters will look ever more appealing and what they did was they actually were using sodium ion batteries That they have a natural desalinization effect in them and and we're utilizing that as sort of the base model for this so and one of the things that comes with when with desalinization is A lot of excess salt Yeah, I think could be used to make more batteries Which we do more desalinization which could produce more salt which could feel like because it's all And actually I looked at this and and within this year There's a dozen stories In the in the general direction of both desalinization and sodium based batteries I mean it's these two fields Are going to be the I think the that that future wave of batteries and energy storage And perhaps that other thing that's sort of back behind global warming and potential world famine and all of that Which is the running out of fresh water problem, which is but how amazing would it be? that if we could kick carbons produce fresh water and creating a An energy storage system that would allow better utilization of all these alternative fuels And do it in the next couple of years. Yeah, I think that I think the issue is efficiency and then you know as they said um The brackish waters, especially like it's it's a mix of different kinds of salts and also when you're doing Waste treatment or you're doing water not just desalination, but just cleaning filtering water You end up with a lot of other stuff that gets in there also. So there's There's messiness that has to be dealt with there's the cost of the desalination membranes You know actually how much they get a cost and how easy is it going to be to keep them clean and not corroding because if you're dealing with You know if you have ever left a battery in a in a device too long even after the battery is not working It starts to corrode right that corrosion in this kind of system Whether you're talking about a battery or you're talking about that that um a different movement of Of ion flow it's still ion flow these desalination technologies um It's going to be corrosion and so how often do you have to replace the membranes and so keeping things less expensive using materials that are more renewable um, you know and also like you're talking about with this. I mean if there is some kind of a circular system a positive reinforcement system where oh, we can take these salts and use them for something else As opposed to just dumping them in a field somewhere and destroying Destroying the land Yeah, so there's they're definitely interesting questions and the device that you used here Yeah, it was also pulling out other salts potassium calcium magnesium chloride. We're also coming out of the the brackish water in the experiment So so it's a it's a it's a pretty good cleaner. Um Yeah, at the at, you know 150 Uh dollars a ton versus 15,000 a ton from mining to processing You could make just a whole lot more of them and not really care If your battery's running out a little sooner or if you had to make them bigger I think it's all gonna work unless you're trying to use them to power cars And then water is really heavy I know that that's one of the problems with the tesla is that they have, you know 200 batteries underneath them And so they had to find a way to make batteries that were very very light And once you fill batteries with water that gets heavy Absolutely Yeah trade-offs it's there's a lot of trade-offs and the technologies are still developing we'll keep but yeah I mean the research is nowhere near finished We haven't quite gotten it yet, but we are getting closer every study every question Absolutely, there's investment and people are actually exploring these things in a real world sort of way It's not, you know, who wants to make a model car that's electric with a cool kind of power source It's how are we going to power all of our vehicles? Let's think of solutions to this problem. It's pretty cool And how are we going to clean the water? How are we going to do this? How how how and speaking of investment Everyone should should now to get it in the beginning on the ground floor Of dr. Justin's not a real doctor salt mine And some foreign country that has different laws about accepting people's money and running away there Send me now all the disposable income that you have in Your couch cushions and you too can be part of the sodium revolution Sodium valley that's the future forget silicon valley sodium valley is where it's gonna happen I like it. I like it We're gonna move out of sodium valley.  You know, we're gonna go I know It's my corner layers the animal corner Want to hear about animal? She's your girl except for giant What you got Blair, I have two stories about how animals change their basic Processes inside their bodies during their lifetimes in response to external stimuli. Are you ready for this? I'm really excited Okay, so the first one is about guppies so guppies they have they carry their babies and they actually do their oval vibraphorus so they they Kind of hold their egg in their body the egg dissolves and then they release little baby fishies and they do the kind of different gestation periods it turns out based on the Place that they live so to put that in perspective We have a nine-month gestation period. We carry our babies for around nine months Closer to ten depending on how you're counting But there's not a whole lot of variability No matter where we live no matter what we're eating no matter what our Kind of external factors are We carry our babies for around the same amount of time and that's how Most animals that we have looked at the sort of thing in That's how most of them are they carry their eggs or they carry their babies for a Determinant amount of time until the the offspring gets to a certain size or Or development level and then they are released into the world because that is the timeline that has been most efficient for that species over evolutionary time these guppies they uh researchers looked at uh researchers from brown university looked at guppies in the rivers of trinidad And looked at them in two different environments lower down on the mountain side It was a high predation environment and then higher up above the waterfalls. There were fewer predators So that was a low predation environment with more guppies With yummy algae and diatoms. There was lots of stuff going on So in lower predation environments at the top of the waterfall moms had less offspring But they were larger and each egg each yolk sac attached had more yolk. So There's something weird happening here less babies larger. Okay, that kind of makes sense um They also found that they were more mature when they came out. They had more bone. They had less cartilage stronger muscles and uh their mouths were already moving for scraping food off of rocks so just overall bigger further along in development and They found that It kind of makes sense what you start thinking about it. There's more food. There's less predators They're able to invest a lot of time and energy into growing this baby but the guppies in the high predator environment They don't have the time or energy to invest on one or two or you know less individuals because If they're going to have a baby in a high predator area, there is a good chance. It's going to get eaten so push more out more quickly In hopes that in the numbers some will survive That's interesting. I find it really fascinating that it's a numbers game as opposed to Uh, you know the idea that if you have a more capable older Further developed offspring Yeah, because wouldn't you expect if the baby's it comes out it's scraping its own food It's maybe able to escape more easily, but Yeah, and this wasn't a function of the food They were eating either because when they tracked the development of these babies the high predator and low predator environments The guppies started maturing at the same time. They matured at the same pace Their bones and muscles matured in the same order But the low predator guppies were born 10 later then the Then the high predator guppies That was it. I'm also gonna think well if this is a pressure on uh on the mom And not necessarily the offspring, right?   Yes. So there is a two-sided benefit to this the thing about it that just blew me away Was that they're not maturing faster It's it They have doesn't have to do with the nutrients the mom is can see is consuming It really is just In this environment. I need to have lots of baby lots of tiny babies quickly and in the other environment I can invest I can wait I can have a bigger stronger baby and have less and that's okay You'll just stay inside of me. Yeah smothered So I smother you I smother mother Right, but so there's something going on in their body. I'm gonna guess hormones that are telling them how to have these babies, but This I think raises all sorts of questions. So in mammals as far as we know Locked in can't do a lot about gestation periods. Those are pretty set stress can cause premature birth But often that results in death of that baby so Where is this happening biologically where these babies can be born? We could call it prematurely But there's more of them And They still survive Yeah, what's happening here chemically biologically that is causing this fundamental change in the life history of this animal Just based on a little bit of environmental change. Well, I wonder we've talked about, you know We talk about epigenetic stuff and how very often stress in one generation It might not affect the next generation immediately. It'll affect The you know the two two generations down the line or potentially Maybe this is the kind of thing that it built up over time And is affecting ongoing generations. So I think the question would be if you take these Fish out of the high predatory predation environment and put them in a low predation environment How long does it take until it changes and vice versa? If you take them out of low pressure and put them in high pressure, how long until it changes Yes, and if it were up to me, that would be the very next stage of the study because That is really the question if we flop these mothers at what point in their life history Does their does their strategy change if you take a pregnant mom from a high predator environment and plop her in the low predator environment What will happen? Yep Will she have less stress hormones and everything will be cool or is it going to be a generation or two down the line? I would the generation or two. I think it'd probably be an epigenetic shift that would take that But we don't know yet Purely a hormonal influence That is in the moment. We don't know or it could be epigenetics We have no idea So another internal process that changes from external factors Is one that came out this week on scorpions So, uh, this is from jcu's australian institute of tropical health and medicine It's a mouthful was looking at scorpion venom something we're always very interested in because we don't want to be Injected with venom a lot of terrible things can happen But there also are a lot of scorpions that don't necessarily hurt us All animals with venom also sometimes have dry bites or dry strikes So there's a lot of weird things going on with venom already What is interesting about scorpions is that they have three separate sub types of toxins. I didn't really know this They are effective against mammals their main predator insects Their main prey or both those are the three Kinds and the venom uh kind of is mixed together as a cocktail In their body So their question was whether the recipe for this cocktail is fixed or if it changes Due to different environments and predator prey interactions So they took some scorpions They put some of them in with live crickets Some of them in with dead crickets and some of them in with a taxidermied mouse To simulate a predator threat After six weeks scorpions exposed to the simulated predator That's that little taxidermied mouse exhibited significantly different venom chemistry than those not exposed to predators So exposure to an uh supposed predator Change the production of talk toxins it decreased the the production of toxins that works on insects and increased the production of toxins that work on mammals So this is the first time as far as the research can tell that it has been shown that venom chemistry and organisms can change In response to a threat So there's a rerouting of nutritional or energetic resources by scorpions Which increase the production of different venom fractions So this Is interesting for many reasons one being that we create anti venoms based on grabbing venomous animals and milking them If they are perceiving a threat Are they in fact using a different kind of toxin? Then if they are biting something they are trying to eat These are interesting questions. Yeah Different goals. They've these I find it interesting. I mean, this is it scorpions invertebrate related to spiders, right? Here they are learning this is experiential learning and Managing their behaviors as a result of experience, right? So then, you know, what's what about the taxidermy mouse is making them feel threatened? I think it's probably the taxidermy Yeah, they're like, I don't know that doesn't look very lifelike. This smells funny from that thing Um, yeah, is it is it the visual?  Again, is this hormones or is this something else? Is this a chemical signal from a smell that's causing a change? And is this an immediate change over of the current venom stores they have in their body or Do they have to release the venom they've already produced to change over what's coming in new This this just opens a huge amount of new questions about venom That I didn't even know I had Because you know, they have these glands and you kind of picture this venom bank and you talk about how Uh, when we're talking about snakes, especially when they bite something if they drain their venom bank Then they have to use a lot of energy to replenish that venom before they can try to Eat again And which is one of the reasons why a lot of venomous snakes don't try to bite people Or if they do they'll you do a dry bite because they don't want to waste their venom. So Is this something that yeah can be changed over while it's sitting in the gland It's yeah many many many many questions and is this complete and is and is what happens with scorpions completely different from With snakes, right? Absolutely. Great question because there are a lot of predators In the animal kingdom that can eat venomous things like Mere cats eat scorpions so Is that a response to the predatory venom or the prey venom or it's Lots of questions there Blair, I think you need to get yourself some pet scorpions. Yeah time for you to have a scorpion terrarium I mean, I have access to scorpions at the largest insect zoo west of the mississippi Which is right where you should start talking with the scorpion wranglers at the zoo and Hey, you want to start milking some scorpions? Yeah You want to do a hormone study on your scorpions? I have no money, but It could be cool, right? It would be great. I remember. Yeah, you should think about that Yeah, yeah All right, everybody these are thoughts to ponder as we head into our break I hope everyone has enjoyed the first part of this week in science We are going to take a short break and be back with more science in the second half of our show stay tuned For more this week in science Hey, everybody. This is this week in science. I hope you're enjoying the show Thank you so much for being a part of it with us If you would like to grab your 2018 blairs animal corner twist calendar pre-orders are Available now just go to twist.org and click on the link on the side of the page here for those of you who are Watching the show right now.  It's a toad. 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I do have a story for us Justin should come back so that Talk about ancient egypt. Oh, yeah, let's You want to talk about ancient egypt? I was hoping you'd come back for this one. So researchers Have used ice cores to study ancient egypt Coming it's hot there though What? How do ice cores match up with ancient egypt? So this is a really interesting study researchers francis ludlow a climate historian at trinity college in dublin ireland and his colleagues have published in nature communications, which is a An article that has historians statisticians and climate scientists working together They used ice cores to look at fallout from historic volcanic eruptions And they've got these ice cores that are from greenland and antartica and A historian looking at this data joe manning who's a Yale university history professor He was kind of interested in paleo climatology and Was talking with ludlow about the volcanoes and he's like wait a minute. Wait a minute. What dates? Which which which years going back were these These volcanic eruptions where in the ice core timeline did they line up? And the they were able to match The dates of major eruptions with famine and unrest in ancient egypt Turns out that these northern far northern volcanoes like say from iceland or other areas in the north these massive eruptions would occur and then a lot of ash would be Spued into the air and because of the way that it affected the climate It decreased rain and so there was less flooding in the Nile And usually not the same year as the the eruption, but the following year the second year there were uprisings And and issues related to famine in egypt So what they were the the whole story here in effect is that Even though there's a there's a little bit of Timelag between the cause and the effect there is a there's a distinct climatic effect of the volcanic volcanic eruptions The historic trace of that is in the ice record And that climatic effect led to changes in rainfall that affected the fertility of the Nile river valley And that then affected how much food would be available and and and then people in the area Peasants who lived outside of the region would start starving and come into the urban urban area for food There wouldn't be food or there'd be a small amount and they would riot And there would be these uprisings that have been written about in egyptian history So it's maybe not every eruption was the cause and not maybe not even the complete cause, but there is a uh a a contribution effect of volcanic eruptions that contributed to the the culture Of egypt. Oh sure and look how nicely this ties into our what has science done for me lately beginning You know food sustainability or And reliability is is one of those those food preservation being able to store it for those lean times Where one river can't determine or one flood or non flood drought Can't determine the outcome of a society Yeah, there are um, so there's there's an article in uh, national geographic on national geographic.com that is Written by craig welch and he's got a lot of interesting points that are that are brought up Related to things that that leaders such as cleopatra Did in order to try and cope with some of these famines. So There was one effect cleopatra released stored grain to the people after two eruptions in 46 and 44 bc 200 years before cleopatra's reign Ptolemy the third's army advanced to babelon and the euphrates but Ptolemy went home then because there were issues at home that Could have been related to starvation famine Not enough tax money coming in because people maybe couldn't pay their taxes because they weren't growing enough food and selling it And this coincided with eruptions major eruptions as well Wow Yeah, so there's a lot of very interesting historical events That can now be uh potentially tied To massive volcanic eruptions not even nearby very distant So this is where russia isamed. This is where Anthropologists and historians get connected to the hard sciences. It's pretty cool I Must be tough also to you know have presented yourself as a god upon the earth and then there's a famine It's like Sorry, I overslept. I forgot to mail to the the reign gods because there's also other Yeah could be rough A lot of explaining to do A lot You want to explain something to me justin? Yeah This next story we're going to head back to Rapa Nui aka easter island place of mystery And internet clickbait that has long captured The public imagination with ancient carved statues in the location so remote from the rest of humanity that We always wonder how'd they get there and why did they do that? the island is uh has has been And I don't want to call it a conspiracy because it was probably very good attempts at morphological science behind it, but I I recall watching a documentary with somebody who had a british accent and therefore it was all very believable Who was making these these strong connections between people of south america And the people of rapa nui Uh and the idea being they didn't stop there and rapa nui But they kept going and were part of the population maybe that preceded The native americans even this is all Well, i'm not total conjecture. They were using morphological things They'd connect the potato that they thought couldn't have come from there. There was a lot of that sort of thing going on well So they've got now five individuals that were Excavated in the 80s and became part of the kantiki museum collection in oslo Three individuals who lived there before there was european contact and Two that lived shortly after The they did dna analysis compared it with the south americans and they found No evidence of gene flow between the inhabitants of easter island in south america Says faren schmitz. We were really surprised. We didn't find anything There's a lot of evidence that seems plausible. It must have seemed the same documentary. I did We are we were convinced we would find direct evidence of pre european contact with south america But it wasn't there Now there is there is that sort of maybe perhaps is something that Helped this there is evidence of south american lineage in current day Indigenous residents of rapunui easter island But they say that probably showed up sometime after 1722 When it was a common practice for the spanish to enslave people to work on their ships as they went out exploring so Yeah, uh, it looks like that was much later Well, it is pretty far away from Things it's kind of far out there, but it I mean it's off the coast of south america So you'd expect there would be something maybe Maybe the occasional the occasional south american Landing on on landing on the beach Right dragging on a log, right? I didn't find any evidence of this right now. That's not to say There wasn't a plucky group of easter islanders Who said enough of this stone carving? I'm heading back to see like the ancient ones And and that that that could still happen. There could still be enough individuals Out there who who wandered the earth? And found someplace else, but uh not enough numbers to be reflected in the gene pool apparently Fascinating it so more likely they are from Uh more of the south pacific Gene gene pool so australia new zealand Other part of the south pacific Fascinating all right the more you know Just because you're on an island in the middle of the south pacific ocean doesn't mean that you are going to have contact with south america No, just because they're south in the title doesn't mean it's the same thing Don't tell them where they're supposed to go They'll go where they want it was a pretty convincing documentary I I didn't believe it at the time because uh the That I did I I thought it was I thought it would be was interesting, but it went counter to What I what I thought so I went and I researched the person who was in charge of The documentary and they'd made lots of sort of sciency seeming Documentaries in the past that were kind of fringy. So it did I'd had some doubts Uh Even back then Oh skepticism. It's good. Yeah, always a little bit skeptical plus morphological evidence has become Largely unreliable In a lot of ways, you know And that was the thing too was I was watching that and we were already having a testing because I'm like Why haven't they tested it? Well, yeah, here we are today when they did it and now it's done and it turns out Yeah, it might just be convergent evolution like it usually is Another story in the the more we know vain We always want to know more about the female reproductive tract. Yeah, for sure. It's shrouded in mystery It's it's shrouded in in the interiors of the female body. It's inside and it's hard to study Yep, we know lots of questions about the microbial Populations that exist in the female reproductive tract. We're pretty, you know, you do swabs and we know for a fact There are microbes that exist in the vagina They're in they're in the cervix, right? They're there because this is an open Open path to the exterior of the body additionally We know that when babies are born they come out with a natural microbial population on their surface that we think comes from The inside of the mom, right? But there are other areas of the female reproductive system That we haven't really looked at the the fallopian tubes near the ovaries the What other areas of the reproductive tract are not sterile? our microbes Up in other areas And according to a new study that is in nature communications The researchers systematically sampled the microbiota within the female reproductive tract in 110 women of reproductive age and used uh ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and cultivation to uh look for the kinds of of microbes that are present so not looking at the entire like genome of each and every one but just the genes RNA that are present to get an idea of the population that population makeup they found distinct microbial communities in cervix cervical canal uterus in the uterus fallopian tubes the peritoneal fluid That's different from the fluid in the vagina. They also found that The populations of the reproductive tract changed and shifted throughout the month Of menses. That makes sense. Yes, the pH changes in the environment And so because of pH changes that's going to change the bacteria that are going to be um That are going to be able to stay there But basically what they say the results reflect a microbiota continuum along the female reproductive tract Indicative of a non sterile environment And they had a particular my microbes that May have functions that correlate with the menstrual cycle or that in certain situations of disease Of endometriosis and infertility or adenomyosis That are the certain bacteria get overrepresented. And so maybe this is the first step in a new way of uh diagnosing Disorders before they appear Determining that something's wrong because the bacteria have made a shift in their populations And in this study one of the really cool comments That is made is the possibility that There may even be The this non sterile Environment may even since there are bacteria um In the uterus that there are reports the team reports They found evidence Showing that babies are not held in a sterile environment while they're developing in the uterus The placenta is not sterile either And so the entire The entire gestation period of babies may not be this Completely sterile process that we have imagined it to be And so by understanding how microbes are involved in that We could also potentially Find out a lot more about disorders that come from maybe having Something wrong with The microbial population while you're gestating Which could be a deficit of good bacteria as well Yes, exactly. That's that's something that I keep thinking about every time we hear something new about bacteria It just it sounds more to me like We are our very own starship enterprise That's going on this 50 year journey with you know The plan to harbor this population is diverse population as you move through space exploring new worlds, right? and um Every every portal to the outside world that we have There is a balance of beneficial and non beneficial bacteria and Clearing out all the bacteria is never the answer And and and the more we learn about this the more we understand that there are certain places That we may have previously thought clear it all out Make it clean And that's not the way to go I just I just think it's fascinating the idea of a bit, you know We had this I the babies are inside the uterus and they're completely sterile in there But they might be in there with a whole bacterial population What are you going to say Justin? Part of them being healthy Part of them being healthy And and they come come out with a big vivis load too that helps the control bacteria Also, though my favorite part of that flora. Yes, right with blairs blairs young enough to think 50 years is like a really long time No, it's because first of all That's a right around when women go into menopause, right? But also second wasn't the star trek enterprise. Wasn't that a 50 year journey five year? That's why I thought it was 50 is five It's not yikes. There will be a home in no time. You mean the the three hour tour? No Yeah Yeah Or is it a 20 year mission? Maybe it's a 20 year mission. Hang on chat room Oh Anyway, and this study was another bit of evidence that uh, you know, we yes Starship microbe we we are not As sterile as as we have always thought and in places that we never really considered it And so this is I find this this idea very exciting So maybe you know in a few years you'll go to the obgyn And they'll tell you okay, you're looking pretty healthy But we need to add a little bit of this other type of bacteria to your system That's it. That's fascinating to me and I really I like the idea of that I don't know if I don't know how I don't I don't know about having people Testing the microbes in my uterus on a regular basis I mean, they said the women that they had in this for their uh, they're testing some were normal exams others. It was pre-planned laparoscopic surgeries. So they were actually there were surgeries involved Um and not super into that Yeah, so this is still like I don't know about monitoring that This could be this could still be something difficult to monitor, but It's good to know the more we know chat room Chat room is piping in uh, it was indeed a five-year mission for the original series Although as gordon um, the club he points out the five-year mission wasn't related to the structure of the show at all you know it was in the The introduction sequence and as we all know star trek is Yeah I think overall the series of inelts incarnations is well over 50 years now. Yeah, so there you go. I was right, baby Tell me another story, justin Okay, uh breast cancer awareness month. So we're all thinking about this sort of thing. Uh, this is uh Not a glance of story as breast cancer cells secrete ammonia as a byproduct of psyllium metabolism Which accumulates in the tumors surrounding environment new study in mice and culture tumor cells by harvard medical school researchers reveals Tumors use this ammonia which would be toxic This ammonia build up in an any regular cell would be toxic to the cell Is usually fleshed out but isn't in this instance Uh that these tumors use the ammonia as a fuel source They also did some tests that found that repressing ammonia metabolism stunted tumor growth in mice and may lead to feature therapies That kind of does uh that summers, but if it's a it's a pretty so so they they Where is it 50 they found a 50 percent? Uh cell clusters in one of their experiments this wasn't in the mice Uh, but in the device that was used to grow 3d cultures Uh, they found that exposure Ammonia exposure increased the number of cells in surface area of cell clusters by up to 50 Compared to so cells grown without the ammonia They also found a seven hour increase in the time it took the cells to multiply So there is yeah, yeah, and this is they're they're finding that what was it 20 percent Or the glutamate was recycled nitrogen based so it's it's pulling out breaking down and reutilizing the components of this ammonia To use this fuel part of that part of what the normal cell does is it use it sends it to the blood and it flushes it out of the cells These tumors they don't have all the well tumor What is tumors though they get their own blood supply right like and when they first start They have to build up their cells to be able to start that angiogenesis that Brings more vascularization to the tumor area, but and even then that vascularization isn't the same as what a normal cell Would have access to because it's not I guess tied into the larger system, right? so So it just builds up and builds up and this should just kill it This should be the end. There should be no cancer. Ammonia should be killing it, but Because it kills it kills normal cells, but cancer cells are like this tastes great I'm gonna figure out how to use this to my advantage as it does everything else. So they yeah, it's Of course, again, we could do a cancer cure Uh as every store future potential cancer cures as every story on this show. There's so much research in this traction Uh, but this seems like for this to be coming out now Uh to be discovered now after as much time and energy has been put towards this direction Seems like that should have been a It's figured out a long time ago, but now that it's there a new therapy potentially Uh a new direction to study and if it's easy to target these tumor cells with treatments that block their ability to use ammonia Or if you are able to clean up the ammonia. Yeah, so the the potential treatments it opens up more directions And then it's the one two punches Yes Get them all Any other stories you guys um, well, I have a inspiration from nature to join your story. I think about cuddlefish skin Is that yours? It's not mine. No, Justin. It's not yours. Who put it in here? You did. No, I did not but I'll I'll talk about it It's very exciting It's I picked out this story And I went into the rundown and I found that it had it was already in there but uh Oh, I did I did put that in there and totally forgot about it. Yeah. Do you want to talk about it, Justin? No, I totally forgot that I have nothing on it Okay, I put it in there for later reference. I'm looking at how octopus and other Cephalopods use their skin to camouflage not just in color but in texture I think most of us by now have seen the videos of the octopus that's Pretending to be a piece of coral or kelp and then all of a sudden becomes an octopus so the key to that is actually papillae And they are 3d bumps that the cephalopods can express in one fifth of a second For dynamic camouflage. So they can change the 3d structure of their skin And then they can retract to swim away without the papilla imposing hydrodynamic drag so uh new research is actually looking at being able to Harness that in synthetic materials. This is from brown university and After describing the biomechanics of the papillae in detail, they think that they may be able to Uh re-imagine it so They developed synthetic tissue groupings that allow programmable 2d stretchable materials to extend and retract at a range of targeted 3d shapes So they think that they may be able to turn people into virtual octopuses this way Um, they were drawn by how successful cephalopods are at changing their skin texture So we studied and drew inspiration from the muscles that allow cephalopods to control it And implemented these ideas into a method for controlling the shape of a soft stretchable material So this is bio inspired engineering. Yes any report from the front any side of the enemy No, sir. All we can see is carlin crabs. Yeah Yes, absolutely. So um, they said any situation where you want to manipulate the um, the temperature of a material They could also use it for that to adjust how they're absorbing light There are lots of opportunities here. They could use it for faster swimming So, um, this is this is potentially going to be kind of a master key to create dynamic materials So and then on the other side of that My my my iphone starts overheating. It'll just get all pokey. Yeah Yeah, absolutely Yeah, or if somebody would not your fingerprints tries to pick it up. It'll get all spiky Like a head talk, um, okay So the other one that I had was actually about spider webs and how they could help reduce noise pollution So, uh researchers from university of terino. We're looking at different ways to dampen Low frequency noise. So apparently that's kind of the The one source of noise that people are having a lot of trouble dampening and getting rid of so Longer wavelengths. They're much harder To get rid of because it requires thick heavy structures that are expensive and impractical So it's difficult to kind of erect low frequency sound dampeners But so they wanted to develop kind of different Trial methodology for dampening these low frequency sounds So by using meta materials They can make things that are very thin yet still very effective to reduce and manipulate low frequency sounds So they used labyrinthine meta materials or space coils Which apparently were Discovered created what have you a few years ago They consist of layers of folded zigzag channels rotated relative to each other Which makes them look kind of like a maze or a labyrinth hence labyrinthine So the labyrinthine meta materials They tried a bunch of different configurations and they found that the spider web Was particularly efficient in attenuating Reducing the intensity of elastic waves They modified previously proposed Labyrinthine meta material designs by adding a square frame Which made it even more spider web like because it had anchors on all four sides And they found that the simple modification created air cavities, which allowed for more dampening So obviously there's a lot of potential Applications of this even at the base level you can just Use it to line rooms where there are very loud machines at a larger level. You can try to dampen Noises at the source as well. So it also begs the important question Why have the spiders been listening so earnestly to low frequency sounds? Yeah, absolutely. Well, they're playing the guitar on their webs as we've talked about before Or Drumming their webs for their love songs turns out spider or flies are big fans of spanish guitars Spiders know this use it to their advantage the animal kingdom giving inspiration for new technology. That's awesome. Yeah Yeah, the spider web itself is not necessarily for sound control, but for vibratory control Of so the spider can understand how large its Pray are where they are located in the web. There's a lot of Information how they are walking so potentially what species they are There's a lot of information that's it's transmitted across the webs So no do not put a bunch of orb weaver spiders in your music studio that will not help dampen the sound It was being silly earlier But you could get these labyrinthine meta materials in the shape of a spider web Yeah, so maybe in the future walls will not be covered with the egg shell material Maybe they'll be covered in these arrays of labyrinthine meta materials. Yes There you go. Really want a quiet room. That's right I think it's about time for us to be quiet though. Yes Yeah, we've done it. It's the moment you've all been waiting for The end of the show. I hope not. I hope everyone was just excited to be listening the whole time Everyone, thank you so much for listening everyone in the chat room. 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Please let us know We'll be back Right here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news And if you've learned anything from the show remember It's all in your head How to stop the robot with a simple device I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand This week science is coming your way So everybody listen to what I say I use the scientific method for all that it's worth and I'll broadcast my opinion all of it's this week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news That what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan If you listen to the science, you may just that understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy We're just trying to save the world from jeopardy This week in science is coming your way So everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods to roll and I die We may rid the world of toxoplasma God the eye This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science I've got a laundry list of items I want to address From stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got The help can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour a week This week in science is coming your way You better just listen to what we say and if you learn anything from the words that we've said Then please just remember week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science This week in science Week in science This week in science I want to touch a kitty I haven't seen her in days One of these weekends, I'm going to show up on your porch Kiki I'm just going to show up on your porch and I'm going to roll around on the floor with your child and your cats and Sounds awesome What are you doing Stella? I want to do that for sure Where are you going Stella? I don't need a lot of space I just need like a patch of floor Just a little patch of floor No, I definitely I need to I need to make the time. I need to make it happen. Yeah, that would be awesome I want you to come up here I mean you do realize we're gonna have to go To the Oregon Zoo I don't have a problem with that. Okay. It's a really good zoo and I'm really I it's one of the ones on my list for sure But they they have a really amazing education programs and They have some cool conservation projects and I dig a lot of what they do man. I'm I'm I'm excited to see it sometime Well, I'm not going anywhere I mean I have trips that I take occasionally, but I'm gonna you know be in portland for a while. So I'm telling you. What are these? What are these Fridays? I'm just gonna show up on your door. Hello Oh, hi, let's have a weekend. Yeah No, I won't actually I'll I'll check it. I would be like great. I'm gonna leave you hang out with my cats and my child Yes, please That sounds fun I'll take them all to the zoo. I'll put the cats on leashes and call them service cats I would love that. Oh my gosh. He's always like, can we take our cats for a walk? No, some cats do that Some cats do I think Stella might maybe she's she's a She's a very Outgoing cat. What's the other one's name? Cappy Cappy star Are you watching and she's like more like, um, brownish, right? Mm-hmm. Just tabby She's a tabby. Yeah Don't get a savanna cat That's not a good idea Aren't savanna cats like servals mixed with domestic cats? Oh, yeah Isn't that what they are? I think so Yeah, that's not good.  Yes agreed, you know They're fuzzy razor blades Claws and teeth I was just hanging out with a cat recently one of my favorites. I take care of them all the time, but um One of her nails was really long And she was hanging out on my on my lap and her nail got caught in my pants And she started losing it And I could not get her every time I tried to reach to try to pull the nail out She was like getting mad that I was touching her feet That's it was like this whole This whole to-do For me to get her nail out of my pants. Yeah, I get that I was like cats. They're just fuzzy razor blades You just never know Did you all uh did anybody out there watch the megabots battle last night? No, I believe it's available online But let me uh, oh it's windy megabots So megabots has been building this um Giant Robot it's like two stories tall and they had their first Match there's and there's another there's a Japanese robot builder Sudobachi Who is building a giant robot also and they're like mecca where the drivers sit inside of the robots And they had a big fight last night I missed it So The cap off the oil again How many times do I have to tell you just tighten it a little bit more before you put it away I'm gonna wait for this ad to finish Oh, um, I have homework for both of you as soon as maybe even right now Okay For does it seem you're gonna play no no apparent reason whatsoever Okay I gotta Make sure I got everything I need here Need of your So security numbers. No, thank you name name email phone relationship company What what I need Oh, are we are are we Potentially getting a phone call about your character Yeah, okay Email or text name. It just text. It's fine. Text it to you. Okay name email phone relationship and company What's what's the relationship Worker Co-host co-worker besties Forever and I got totes besties You need my name I'm very confused about that actually I kind of probably do Okay, you said name phone number email Oh, I typed my phone number wrong. That'd be funny Mr. Jackson none of the people you you gave us all fake information Should I give you my zoo email or my Personal email zoo emails probably looks better, right? Yeah Okay, I'll give you my email that doesn't work Um, okay, so name phone number email co-host slash co-worker And what was the last one company or like I guess yeah, like where you work Okay, I'll put both. Oh, yeah, because I don't want to think I work at a zoo That would be Okay, am I supposed to ask you also? Yes Oh, yeah, I'll be sure to give everyone in the chat room my personal cell phone number hot rod. That's a really good idea For sure. Do you know my address to Justin? No, right? No, it's not Okay Oh, yeah, if anybody If anybody's watching, um, what on earth on the science channel? I'm in it Oh nice What on earth Wait, am I texting you this information? Uh, that would be probably the easiest. You know my name Don't you? Uh-huh Oh, yeah, ben got it. My phone number is eight six seven five three zero nine You know that was a real phone number Yeah, if if in certain area codes And there were people who got incessant phone calls. That's why in the oldie time tv shows Phone numbers are always what's the phone number? It's five five five five five five five five five five. Yeah And nobody ever remarks. Wow. Your phone numbers all fives. That's crazy Nobody even brings up the fact that's a crazy phone number to have Just that's the one that could safely use so that became the standard but You're just like one time. Somebody was just Wow, you got all fives. That's crazy Even if you were one digit off that would have been cool Wait, okay. Name, I wasn't paying attention. Name, phone, number, email, email, relation. Oh, yes. Company. Company. Boss. No. Executive producer. Yeah. Also, also, it just, this isn't happened on the same part of the forum, but I'm probably going to be asked what my strengths or weakness, my biggest strength or biggest weaknesses. And I can't think of either. Well, you're extremely, no, you're outgoing and you're like willing to try new things. Like dating site. No, but it's, it's, I'd say that's pretty important, right? That you're like, you're excited for new challenges. Yeah. You're a quick learner, right? You, you catch onto things very quickly. Right? You like learning new, new information. That's true. So what are my strengths? Those are my weaknesses. Those are my vices. No. They're like kryptonite to me. Oh, I don't know if that would be in my IMDb. I don't know if they put things like that. Do I get to be on IMDb? Yeah. Are you on IMDb? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't know. Interesting question. How does a person get a Wikipedia page? Somebody made it for me. Do you have a Wikipedia page? No, I want one, though. No, I thought you both had them. No, I don't have one. I think you both have them and I don't. No, I definitely don't.  No, it's just the twist one. It just directs to twist. She has a LinkedIn profile. You just Google me. You get an alert every time. But I forget about my LinkedIn all the time because I'm not job searching. So like I'm really bad about updating it, but I should update it more just because people do go there for like twist related stuff. The kitty cat is so cute, Rob. Oh, the cutie. Hi, Ocelot. Yeah, that's definitely a full-blooded serval, that picture. It's not even a jungle cat. It's not a savanna cat. That is like a full-blooded serval. Identity 4, that is not even the same. Oh yeah, that tote looks like an Ocelot. Oh, serval. Look at those ears. They're so big. Oh yeah, that is an Ocelot. I was looking at the other one before that of the girl with the quotes of Anna Cat that is a straight-up serval. Like that person just has a wild cat at home. It's just a wild animal that's going to talk about going razor blade all of a sudden. Identity 4 is not the same. It's not the same. Minecraft Ocelots are not as fluffy as real-life Ocelots. That's just due to pixelation. Possibly low resolution. No red pixelation effects. Thank you both for sending that information. I'll be sure to say terrible things when they call me. Now, I have to give references to my teen volunteers and they apply for jobs all the time. This is going to be easy because I'll actually have a lot of things to be able to say. Normally with those kids, it's like, first of all, they're one of 120 teen volunteers that have been charged over the summer. Unless they're someone that really made an impression on me, I barely remember them. Then on top of that, if there were things that I remember, usually they're bad because that's what you remember out of 120 kids. They have to find ways to be like, oh, yeah. Well, he got along really well with the other teen volunteers and he was really enthusiastic about the things that he cared about. I have to find a way to like... He's a little qualified.  That would be what he was working on. That's what you really look for in employee. I know we're going to put you on a task that you won't enjoy at all, but try to show some pluck while you're doing it. That's right. Show some pluck. Yeah. It would be fun to actually... I like when I get to give references on people that I actually know and like and so this would be super fun. It would be like, how well do I know Justin? Well, I've been on many transatlantic flights, no, not transatlantic cross country flights next to him. So you find things out about a person when you travel with them across the country. Oh yeah. Like the fact that if you get up to pee, they may take your seat because it's got a little more leg room. Like he's that kind of guy. I forgot about that.  I fell asleep. I was asleep when I had to move.  For whatever reason, I had to move to let you go somewhere and then when I got... I found a little photo book from when I was a zookeeper. Oh yeah. Like this baby koala on top of her mom who didn't realize that she's big now. Yeah, who's weighs more than her mother now. Pretty good stuff. Pretty good stuff. Now the cats are fighting around the door. Happy. So on the note of that something I've got to do tomorrow, I got it here. Yeah, you should go. Get out of here. I need to go to sleep. Hopefully I do well enough that you get calls. Yes. We believe in you. Be true to yourself. But you can do it. Best thing I can tell you for an event such as this is to be truthful about what you're good at. Don't undersell yourself. Good at everything. But not like that, but not like that. But you know, it's... No, I don't know. That's right. No, it's like... So I used to say like, oh yeah, I think I'm a pretty good educator and then I would explain why. But now I say the reason I do what I do is because I am a born educator and that is my natural skill set and I am constantly working to better my skills as an educator. So I'll try that. I don't know if it applies to this job, but I'll try that. Right. But just when they're asking you about your strengths and you're talking about what you're good at and what you're proud about that you have accomplished, don't undersell. Be confident. How do you do... Be confident. You're gonna... It's gonna at first feel like you're bragging and you're being immodest, but you're actually just being truthful about your skill set and people appreciate that. They don't want to sit there guessing who's actually good at things and they can tell if you're, if you're for real about it. They really can. Pretend everyone in the room wants to buy a car from you. Oh gosh, this is, this is good advice. That is good advice. I have no advice. And tell the truth about your experience is the other thing that I would say. Tell the truth about your experience. Yeah, that goes without saying. That goes without saying. No, but that includes like, if there's a space, if there's a space on your resume that is empty, explain why it is empty. Yeah, I don't have gaps. Although, to be honest, what I did for, furbish them was only recent history. I had this sort of fear of showing, like, showing how much of other stuff I've been doing that's not related. So if I figured, if I just put a little bit, it might, you know... Yeah, well, generally we say that a resume should have all relevant experience, not all recent experience, but all relevant experience. Yeah. Okay, so I started with this show, which is pretty, you know, that's pretty long. Yeah. Do you like, see? I like science. I'm all into it. Yeah. Yeah, you'll be great. Now, Kiki, really quick, I know we all got to go. Explain to me in like 30 seconds or less how an enzyme is affected by pH change. Well, the, usually what happens is pH will change because it's acidity or basicity. It will change the actual conformation of the molecule, like how tightly bound certain portions of the molecule are to each other. And so pH is usually, if it's a pH determined enzyme activity, then at a certain pH, the conformation changes and usually opens up what's called the active site that can then bind with something to make it. Substrate, B. Substrate, yeah, to catalyze a reaction. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. Did I get it? I was totally nailed it. I'm like, okay, let me go. I'm going back in time. An enzyme is like a puzzle piece. That's what I remember. Right? But it's a puzzle piece. It's like a catalyst. Yeah, but not just a key. It's the key that makes. No, it's not the key. It's the lock. The enzyme is the lock. And then the substrate thingy is the key. No. Or the catalyst. No, but the thing that's being acted upon to make the product fits is the only thing that fits. An enzyme is a catalyst. It didn't know it itself is the catalyst. Correct. It is the catalyst. And then I got to worry about hydrophobic, hydrophilic amino acids and how pH adjusts the hydrophobic quantities that causes the contraction because it wears down the water resistance of the amino acids that are hydrophobic. That's so much to take all at one night. Sounds like biochem. That sounds like fun. I got to learn some things. I mean, actually, I don't have to probably know any of this. They say pipette this into that a million times. Have fun. I think it's more along those lines. Yeah. But I do have to go because I've got a Let's all go to bed. Learning biochemistry ahead of me. One, two, three, bed. Strengths. I do not have that springy doorstop that cats like to twang. I should get one though. That would be funny. I've got one somewhere in another room. Okay, you guys. Yeah. Justin trying to get a job on the radio. He should. Yeah, I think I already have one. I know identity for you. Don't want to go to sleep yet. You don't have to. Just watch the show. Just start it over.  Yeah, I have been up since approximately 230 East Coast time this morning. So I really need to go to sleep. All right, then. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you for another wonderful show. And we look forward to seeing you again next week after we haven't been awake for much too long. And I think it's going to be Twisoween, right? It'll be the day after Halloween. Yeah. Yeah, it's Twisoween. No, no, no, but it'll be, that's what you are. Yeah, this will be the first show before Halloween. So yeah, we got to make it. Yeah, it's Twisoween next week. Got to bring the spooky next week. So be prepared for that. Okay, maybe then to accentuate my costume, I won't sleep again. That'll help. Identity for the face part of it for to sleep yet. You can just listen to the show again. Yeah, I should. It'll be good. I'll do. It'll be a good practice. Yeah, practice for my costume. Yeah. Okay, let's see how that goes. Great. Happy Twisoween. Whoa. That's right. Next week is Twisoween. Seriously? It's not one more week. Nope. Well, no, it's almost two weeks to Halloween, but next week is the free. Because the one after that would be too late. It's after Halloween and it doesn't work. And then it's the end of the month. We've already thinking about Thanksgiving or something now. Oh my gosh. Good night. I'm so tired. Good night. Good night, you guys. Overwhelmed time.


So this is Myerland, I was going through this water and then these guys, I think your name is Tom? Thomas. Thomas? Your name? Declan. Your name? Richard. Richard? Hey Surfer, what's your name? Liam. Liam, how you doing Liam? These are the guys that saved me. They also rescued him. What's your name sir? Ricky. Ricky? And we've got two beautiful children, we're coming back around, we've got helicopters in the room. These kids right here man are just going non-stop, I've seen them since the morning, when I first saw them I didn't ask for help, I thought they were, I was okay. But they've just been going non-stop, back and forth, picking people up, that helicopter has just been getting people off the roofs.  Make a documentary of this thing. Yeah. Yeah, look at him. Oh, she's saying come back. She says come back though, she's saying come now, she's saying come back later. Can we have room? What do they want, the dog? Look, there's only 600 pounds of this. Let's see what happens, we'll just go check how many people. Let's go check on them. Liam, we'll hide up right here.


Fifteen questions that are more useful than what president should Americans vote for. People keep asking me to weigh in on the U.S. presidential race and its candidates, which is what always happens whenever there's a U.S. presidential race on because media saturation makes it so central in the minds of Americans it's often the main issue they want to talk about, even if they're fairly aware. I really don't have anything to say about who Americans should vote for, other than to repeat what I've said already about the fact that you can't vote your way out of a mess you never voted yourself into in the first place. But what I can do instead is offer my American friends some questions to ask that would probably be much more helpful to them in their nation than the question which presidential candidate should we vote for. Here are 15 such questions. 1. Why does nothing change no matter who we vote for? 2. Why does U.S. foreign policy always continue along the same trajectory regardless of the president's party or platform? 3. What keeps our voting populations split right down the middle into two political factions of equal size, with neither side ever gaining enough of a majority to democratically change society in any meaningful way? 4. Why does the stalemate described in number three always seem to benefit the rich, the powerful, and the war horny? 5. Why is it that the most consequential U.S. government policies like plutocratic influence, privatization, globalization, ecocital capitalism, and nuclear brinkmanship are never on the ballot? Why do these things keep happening, against our interests, without our ever voting for them or electing anyone who campaigned on the pledge to enact them? 6. If our federal government's behavior never changes no matter who we elect, could it be that there are other bodies involved in government policy setting whom we did not elect and who remain in positions of influence regardless of the comings and goings of our official elected government? 7. If the above is the case, then who is it? Who's really calling the shots in this country? 8. Could it be that everything we've been told about our country, our government, our political processes, and our world is untrue? 9. If so, what are the implications of the fact that our schools and our media have been feeding us lies since we were small? 10. What forces would be responsible for keeping all those lies flowing throughout our society? What might keep an ostensibly free press spinning more or less the same lies throughout the western world day after day, year after year, generation after generation? 11. Is it possible that our entire electoral system is a sham designed to give the public the illusion of control so that they'll let oligarchs and empire managers run the country undisturbed? 12. If the electoral system is a sham, then how do we enact the changes we so desperately need? 13. Is it possible that there are other ways to affect change in the United States which don't involve casting a pretend vote in a fake election? 14. Could it be that those other means of forcing change are precisely what the charade of casting pretend votes in fake elections is meant to divert us from? 15. Should we perhaps spend less energy bickering about who should get sworn into the White House a year and a half from now, and more energy examining other possible avenues toward advancing meaningful change?