If you are watching right now, this is the live broadcast of the recording of the twist podcast. We're glad that you're here. Thank you for joining us. Are we sound in five by five? Do we have everything we need to put on a good show for all of you tonight? At least something you'll enjoy. I hope so. I really do. We try. We do. We try. We do. Are we there? Oh, we're live. It's good. Justin, say something. Something. Blair, say something. Hello. It's September 2nd. Yesterday was Species Requiem Day, so I hope you all celebrated some extinct animals. This all just goes with my mood for the day. Let me tell you. Let me tell you something. Justin still the loudest, even though he's the quietest. That's always the question. That's never the thing. Always the quietest, Mike. Identity 4, it says it sounds great, so let's start the show. Starting in a three, a two. This is twist. This week in Science, episode number 789 recorded on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020. Science with a twist. I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight we will fill your head with holes, mergers, and something special. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, earth. It's at most a medium-sized planet with a lot of humans, billions of them even. More humans than you are likely to run into on any other planet. And despite sharing the same star, each one sees the world in a different light. The most part, we humans walk past each other, seldom knowing how or what the other thinks about this or that, but every once in a while we cross paths with one of these humans and strike up a conversation. Every once in a long while, we find that there is another human who sees the world very much as we do. As a similar ethic or aesthetic appreciation, chases similar sparks of curiosity into the weeds of contemplation, lighting up conversations path like lightning storm on a dry summer's night. Ed Dyer, longtime listener contributor and conversation starter here on Twist, was one of those humans for me and for a lot of our Twist family. His spark will be missed but not forgotten as he has inspired many of us to keep setting small fires to share our thoughts around and enlighten our paths as we walk this world together. Thank you Ed for being a part of why we do This Week in Science, coming up next. And a good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there, welcome to another episode of This Week in Science, we're back. We are back three voices to talk about science for a night and we are missing our dear friend Ed. For those of you who knew him, who knew him in the chat room, there is sad news of his passing that has come to light so he's missing from our chat room tonight and he's going to be missing from our lives and but his spark, his spark will always live on. Thank you for that great disclaimer, Justin. Thank you. But we have a great show ahead and in Ed's honor we are going to hopefully light a spark, hopefully drive some curiosity. I think Ed would want us to keep doing that in the way that we do. So on we go with the show. What do we have lined up for the show tonight? I have stories about some of those mergers and holes, black holes to be precise. I also have stories about brains because brains are fascinating to me, you know, and yeah, that's where I'm going to be heading. What are you doing, Justin? What are you going to talk about? I've got a gut microbiome story. I have got how insects could save the planet, as well as some insane things that bacteria can do that I didn't know that they could do that maybe nobody knew that they could do but they're doing it and so they can do it. I want to know what they're doing. What are they doing? You can wait for the show, Kiki. Yeah, it's a teaser. This is just you be watching. Oh, and a not a COVID cure, but a last ditch thing that reduces fatalities that is that based on, well, that's the whole story, basically, but some good news, a little bit of sort of silver lining in a dark cloud. I hope so. Yeah. Blair, what is in the animal corner? That's a great question. I forgot. No, I have a bunch of information about taking better care. I have lab mice, I have anemones, and a little bit about women in science in the news. Sounds like great news. Can't wait to hear it. So let's dive into the show. And for all of you, if you have not yet signed up for this week in science as a podcast, we are available as a podcast pretty much everywhere you find podcasts look for this week in science. It's that easy. We're also available on YouTube and Facebook, and we now are on Twitch. So try and find us there under Twis T W I S science, Twis science, only one S in there. This weekend, science, Twis. This weekend in science, yes, science, and our website, Twis.org. Find us if you can. All right. Into some quick stories to start our show. I have a story. Let's talk. Let's let's start it off with that black hole merger. Big story out this week that we actually already talked about back in June. Wait, what? Yes, LIGO Virgo. We do love LIGO Virgo and the LIGO Virgo collaboration, which looks for gravitational waves back in May detected four little blips in space time.  But it took, you know, much cleaning of the information of all of the multiple blips to be able to even detect these almost nearly undetectable blips, which they have now confirmed pretty much they've run analyses and come to the conclusion that the most likely explanation for what they saw in these four little blips was the merger of two stellar mass black holes into a larger, big, intermediate sized black hole. And this is very exciting because we see or we have evidence of stellar mass black holes and we have lots of evidence of the big supermassive black holes, but there's really no evidence of the formation of these midsize black holes. And if theories are correct about black hole formation that as you put black holes together, smaller ones will make bigger ones and those bigger ones will make even bigger ones. If that's correct, then they should have seen this, but they hadn't before. So most likely explanation is that this is the merger of two stellar mass black holes to create an intermediate mass black hole merger, which has never before been seen. Something new! Go science. Go physics. It's very exciting. Did you have another story about a merger, Justin? So yeah, this is that thing that we were talking about already at the beginning there. So like humans often do, bacteria will live together in communities. They're working together, taking on different tasks, individual bacterial tasks to sort of fill out the needs of the society, as it were, of the bacteria. So understanding how these interactions work is very important to how antibiotics work and how infectious disease happens and this sort of thing. Researchers at the University of Delaware, while doing that sort of research, discovered that bacteria can do more than just work together. They found bacterial cells from two different species, although closely related, can combine into a unique hybrid cell by fusing their cell walls and membranes and sharing the cellular contents of the internal portion of the bacteria, including proteins, ribonucleic acid, molecules which regulate gene expression, control cell metabolism. In other words, the organisms exchange material and lose part of their own identifiable identity. They lose that sense of self? Yeah. It's like, I'd assume there would be two nuclei, but... So yeah, this is going way beyond gene transfer. This isn't little herbiscosy things transmitting, you know, spitting DNA into one another. This is apparently an unprecedented observation, which has apparently not been seen before, which is why it is unprecedented. So this was reported Tuesday, December 1st, and Bio, which is a journal of the American Society for Microbiology, and they think this could shed light on some unexplained phenomena affecting human health. This could be applied to energy research, biotechnology, a whole lot of other things. So they mixed it. This is a quotey voice from, oh boy, this is going to be a fun... Elephaterios, it's a Greek name. This is a research team is led by Elephaterios Papotisakis. It's probably pretty close. We're studying the interactions between Clostridium Illium Dalaiii and Actobody Lichum. These are two Clostridium bacteria that are in the same clade, but they're different species. And this is a quote from Papotisakis. They mixed their machinery to survive or do metabolism. And that's kind of extraordinary because we always assume that each and every organism has its own independent identity and machinery. Previously researchers had observed that bacteria could exchange some material through nanotubes. This is that horizontal gene transfer. But the combination into turning into a hybrid cell itself was unexpected and unseen. This is Camille Charre Rubin, who is a doctoral student in chemical and bio-mechanical engineering and first author of the paper. This is the first time we've shown this in bacteria. And it's also a new mechanism for how material is exchanged between cells, which is because they're picking the same cell. So why would they do this? Actually, by sharing this machinery, they're also creating things that the other needs to exist. One bacteria is able to create a protein that the other might not be, and they both get to use it. And it just lessens the amount of work that each needs to do and gives them advantages and access to things that they may not be producing themselves. Pretty amazing, really. This is like two humans could do this. This isn't just information sharing or flopping a gene. It's like, hey, let's be conjoined twins. You want to do that? Like, forget getting married and sharing a bank account. This is like, my liver is not as good as your liver. Why don't we just goons together, we'll use your liver. My heart's really good. We can just use that one. That's all we need. It's really wild. And it makes me wonder, you know, the extrapolation that immediately jumps to mind into this is like, there's so much speciation and evolution that takes place. But this is like, could these possibly reproduce in this state? And then what does that look like?  Right.  I mean, what this really gets at for me is that there is, for bacteria, at least, there is very little fine line between different species that, you know, the fact that they can merge so easily that there's blending that can take place that, you know, we already knew about horizontal gene transfer. This is just like a ramped up version of that where they're like, let's just work together here and become one. And these hybrid species could then have, you know, if they work in that environment, then they work well. If they don't, they die out, you know, that natural selection would really act on them in that case. I mean, from an evolutionary point of view, though, what is to keep the membranes from these are just lipid bilayers, right? What is to keep lipid bilayers in a situation from melding and blurping together with other lipid bilayers? I guess if you just don't do it right, you might, both cells might die or one might die. Yeah. Yeah. But this is evolutionary. Is this like the half step to the first mitochondria? I mean, is this sort of like? It sounds like it would be. Yeah. So we know that in bacteria can just sort of do this occasionally, I guess at least, in that that pathway for our evolution looks like a lot more possible. Like we've seen the halfway, we have the missing link to merging bacteria. You just might get to a point where one's like, yeah, you can come in, but I'm not really going to share everything. Yeah. Yeah. Just too big, maybe. Hey, babe. You want to smush? We might kill us or it could be. Yeah. Talk about mashing. Talk about mashing. This is the real deal. Anyway. Pretty fascinating. I think I would love to know more details on where and when this has a tendency to happen or where and when it does not. So when, you know, if this is one of these early steps to things like mitochondria coming at being like, I guess, eaten and endocetized, which is brought into another cell, how does that happen? How does one smaller bacteria get brought into another bacteria and kind of consumed in that way, but not destroyed? How does it, how does that end up, why, why, why? And if they're sharing, if they're at the point where they're sharing, you know, ribosome and RNA, that's just a hop, skip, and a transpose on away from some gene transfer within the cell, which is how you could get like that is just in the, the, the prototype you carry it, where you could sort of see like, oh, this is how it's possibly translating not just the bacteria that's asa or that's sexually reproducing on the exterior cell, but it's also bringing in those elements that are in that cell that it's absorbed, because with time they can actually start to mix in that. And then, yeah, anyway, it's interesting, very thought provoking. Thank you. Blair, did you have something special to talk about? Yes. Female scientists, they're important. This is a study from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and this started out as a bird song study. Even just a couple of weeks ago, maybe even last week, I, yes. I, I read it, I talked about a story about bird songs and even said in the story as it was listed, the majority of bird song is carried out by males to females. But it actually turns out that maybe that's all sexist BS. So basically, Wow, from a 2014 study, a PhD in the biological sciences of a woman found out that about 70% of female birds sing. So already that's kind of thrown out the window. But also that both sex is almost certainly saying in the common ancestor of all bird species. So this kind of rocked ornithology at the time. But since then, the researcher who did that, Karen Odom, and teamed up with Casey Haynes, who's a PhD candidate from 2019, who is a biological sciences PhD candidate, they work together to document what has been going on in this field with researchers. So women are more likely than men to be authors and even more likely to be first authors on papers about female bird song. So women specifically have reshaped this field of study. So this again reminds us that a diverse group of researchers is critical for scientific innovation. And diversity could also help, as we've discussed before, a more accurate and complete understanding of biology, of science, of everything. So this is something that completely got rocked by a few female scientists and then just kept being found again, again, again. So these male scientists, it appears, were carrying a bias, assuming that males were singing for females. But once you kind of peeked in over the under the covers, I guess, of the of the bird song situation, it's under the hood, it's under the beak, it's very different. So there's there's obviously a bias there. There's also an interest, you know, people research what they can relate to. And so perhaps this was also something that female researchers were interested in, because male birds were historically researched before that, because they were more interesting, because they're prettier, because they sing more, whatever it is. But you think they're singing more. Right. Yeah. So it's just a reminder that representation is key in the sciences and that many voices in a lab doing research, because there's an implicit bias no matter who you are, no matter what you're doing. And so if researchers all look exactly the same and have the same background and have the same upbringing and all this kind of stuff, it can impact research. Yeah, it can also impact the way that research is done, because coming from a female run bird lab, we weren't studying song, but I was in the same building with one of the fathers of bird song. And his lab, he had, at the time I was there, he had a female postdoc who was working with him. And but everyone talked about the lineage, and it's very, I love science for the way that people track back their lineage through from grad student to professor and back and back and back through time. And so it was this individual and then talking about his mentor, the PI that he worked under who was another man, and it goes back and goes back. And if the people in charge of the labs who are running the labs are thinking about things in a particular way, even if they have women or a diverse representation, they're not, the people who run the lab get to tell the people who work in the lab kind of what questions get to be asked is what I want to say. So the perspective, those perspectives are important. And so the lineage may start somewhere with someone's idea, but through the generations of scientists, there can be evolution. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot harder also if you're just talking about general diversity, it's a lot harder to increase diversity in a workforce if your entire team of VPs are all white men. So yes, it's definitely, it affects things and it affects the way people look at the world, whether we want to think that we're 100% impartial or not. And there's something to the whole like learning something very complicated, dealing with a large set of information. You start to need to make some assumptions. You don't go in as an engineer and challenge every law of physics as you go along to get to the point where you can comprehend how to build a bridge or whatever. You make assumptions that these things you're being taught are pretty set in stone as you go along and fill in that information. So that's also part of why it's then hard to break out of that because where do you start challenging knowledge that has been taught and is assumed to have been well tried and tested? It's yeah. The thing though that this whole conversation made me think of is, yeah, the common ancestors to all birds probably sang since pretty much all birds sung or sing, does that mean dinosaurs were like all singing all the time, like T. rex as big and ferocious as a scavenger type predator as it may have been, had the most lovely little thing song every morning. Do you know this now T. rex's make? The T. rex's thought they had a pretty song, but because they were very big animals, it was more of like a blah. But all the other dinosaurs were like, oh, that's pretty, we're clapping because you can't. That's a great song. You have a good job. Yeah.  I think now I want to know why female birds would sing and why male birds would sing and this, if female birds are singing to get the attention of males, which species do this? I mean, I think we're talking about this, but still, if you go out in nature, you're not going to be seeing female birds out on the tree limbs doing all of the singing. So in passerines, I want to know really what the split of birds who are doing this is. I'm not saying I don't believe it, but at the same time, I'm like, I believe it, but I'm going to guess it's in certain situations where it has evolved in a very particular way, where, say, for instance, the Western scrub jay does not have a lot of distinction between the male and the female body form. So and they share in helping at the nest and there's all sorts of things that are very similar. So why wouldn't they both sing? If I may, we just talked about flamboyant cuttlefish last week. The females also can make brilliant displays. They're not trying to woo anyone. But they use them to communicate with the males who are wooing them. Yeah. Well, I don't have a conversation. Yeah, absolutely. I think you're pretty. Well, I think you're pretty. I will accept this praise.  I'm not a Black Widow. OK. All right. Well, this is a fascinating topic I want to learn more about. How about another topic that is really interesting? Water, water, where does it come from? Where does water come from? Where have we discussed water on Earth coming from? Comets from space. Or maybe not. Maybe not. No, it's from space, isn't it, Bo? This is what we think because we look at meteorites. We look these little chunks of rock from space and look at how much water is in them and get an idea of like, OK, where could water have come from? And the reason that they thought it came from outside of the inner solar system out past Jupiter is because that's kind of out where things get frosty. And also where water could have stayed out there in ice form enabled, been able to travel long distances and then landed on our planet after it was heated up. And our planet went through a lot of transformation over the years. It got hot. It might have lost a lot of water. But the likelihood that it started with water was really not considered because they were looking at these different kinds of meteorites, the ones from outer part of the solar system. Yes, they had a lot of water in them. And they start these where these these chondrites, they are called. They started looking at what are they? Let me see if I can find it in this article here. Yeah, so these chondrites, these chondrite meteorites were being looked at. And they were finding those that had makeup very similar to the the earth. So it's like, OK, this stuff seems like the earth. So it could have made up the earth. And they thought these carbonaceous chondrites were the ones that carried water to us. However, they don't really have the same isotopic or molecular makeup as earth. But they were from outside the snow line and could have held water. So, hey, let's think about those. But some researchers just published in science about some new analyses of endstatite chondrites that they have looked at these endstatite chondrites were formed in the inner solar system, in the rocky area. And nobody was looking at them before because they were like, they're all rocky. They can't hold enough water to cover the earth and water. Well, apparently looking at the water concentration in these endstatite chondrites and the deuterium to hydrogen ratios within these little meteorites, they match the earth's interior. They matched the rocks of earth. And so what they are proposing is an alternative hypothesis that the earth could have formed from these endstatite chondrite meteorites that they could have had enough water to cover the whole planet. The only issue is maybe if the endstatite chondrites maybe if they if there was vaporization, like I said, during the heating part of earth's formation, then vaporization would have lost water. But then maybe it was brought back by by those chondrite, the carbonaceous carbonaceous chondrites later. Maybe Comets brought some of it, but not all of it. And that's what the scientists in science propose. They said, why do you have to make up some complicated story like Jupiter had to move into the inner solar system and get all pushy and move meteorites out of orbit and move Comets out of orbit and then move back out? And then that would lead to all this. Why do you have to make such a complex hypothesis? They said, this is much simpler. Earth formed from the rocks where it lives. Yeah. In some ways, it's simpler. Yeah, in some ways, it's it's more complicated. Yeah, I don't know. Yes, you could have made the cake from the ingredients in your cupboard. But did you see that cake? Because it would have been a lot easier to just buy it at the store. It could have been easier to get it from the store, right? So these are now dueling hypotheses, but there is evidence now from actually looking at these meteorites that maybe there maybe it isn't a cut and dried kind of explanation of water from the outer solar system riding on comets. There's nothing cut and dry about water. All right, Justin, how are insects the future? What's going on? We are really moving along. All right. Well, let's see. Where is that? Oh, yeah. So this is one of the ways in which global warming can be combated might come from this unlikely source. Insects, turns out we could simply breed more of them, a lot more of them enough so that they could block out the sun. What? No, no, no. Or we could or we could just use them for food. So agriculture is currently a practice. The current agriculture practices that we use are one of the major drivers of carbon emissions. This is out of Indiana University slash Purdue University in theapolis, which is a university proving that you need not settle on a single name for a university combined in hyphenated university. Scientists have found a new evidence that previously overlooked insect shows great promise is an alternative protein source. It is the yellow mealworm, which doesn't sound like too far off of things that we've seen before. We ate those in Philadelphia. Oh, we didn't eat the yellow mealworm. So this is a different mealworm, a different worm. But this one specifically, research is based on new analysis of the genome of the yellow mealworm species. Tenebrio molitor. And this project was led by Christine Picard, associate professor of biology and director and forensic and investigative science. This is a program where she's no doubt asked daily to say, make it so. The work was published in the journal Insects and as Food and Feed, which is a very specific journal. It's it's pretty much dedicated to eating bugs. This is Quoty Voice from Picard. Human populations are continuing to increase and the stress on protein production is increasing at an unsustainable rate, not even considering climate change. The research was conducted in partnership with the beta hatch ink has found the yellow mealworm just traditionally a pest bug. It's crop eater can provide benefit in a wide range of agricultural applications. Not only can it be used as an alternative source of protein for animals, but its waste is also ideal as an organic fertilizer. Picard and her team sequenced the yellow mealworms genome. Results will now help those who wish to engage the DNA to optimize the yellow mealworm for mass production and consumption. Insect genomes are challenging, Quoty Voice from Picard, and the longer sequence of DNA you can generate, the better genome you can assemble. So some of the uses mealworms being insects are a part of the natural diet of many organisms. They can be yummy, very nutty flavored. Yeah, I've had them. I've had them. I've had them in cookies. So these are the mealworms. I looked it up. They are the Darkling beetle mealworms. They are the ones that we eat in Philadelphia. These are? Oh, yeah, these. Yeah, so they're commonly roasted, but they're even more commonly crushed into flour. They make a really kind of nutty flavored, but really protein rich flour that you can use in pretty much anything that needs flour. So one of the things that is being sort of indicating is that we should really we can actually use these to feed the food that we eat. So fish, so if you have fisheries, you could be feeding them to the fish. Pet food industry can use them as a protein source. Chickens, you can feed chickens with these mealworms. Oh, yeah, we feed mealworms to chickens at the zoo. Yeah, perfect. I fed mealworms to chickens when I was a kid. What kind of family farm? What kind of what kind of side of the road? No, no, no, no, no. It's part of the family farm. We got a cyclops pig.  Lastly, that's not really a cyclops. It's just a pig with one eye and again, humans again. Also, I didn't realize this is the same one because this sounded like it was like the first time they discovered that we should be eating this. But I guess what this is saying is based on the genome, it's an ideal source of protein. I love the words, though, we will optimize the mealworm for consumption. It's going to become no, it's going to become like the next cow. It's going to become the next chicken. It's because we have optimized those animals, not through genetic modification of the genome, but through selective breeding, which was modification, which is which is which is modification of the genome through breeding.  And so I find it very interesting that we're starting to look at insects in this same capacity. So I not to not to like do a product placement. That's not my intention here. But I also have eaten on many occasions something called chirps chips, which are made out of crickets. And there, yeah, they taste great. I don't like crickets, but that's OK. So so what's also interesting, though, I think is that you even when you have the genome, sometimes the best path forward is still breeding. You know, the biotech industry uses this a lot where they have a couple of different strains of of yeast or an E. coli or something. And they want to get they want to get these certain sort of robust gene combinations out of the different disparate ones. It's actually sometimes more difficult to splice them in and see what downstream effects you get than to take them and start breeding them in these massive breeding programs. Why? Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. I was interrupting with my thoughts. Oh, interrupt away. That's why why have none of these insect companies started making an insect burger to compete with the lab grown meat? That's a really good question.  Why aren't we doing that? I will say the one weird thing about eating mealworms or crickets is that if you have a shellfish allergy, it is likely to be an issue. That would be the stop. That is something that with crickets as well. Is that? Yeah, it's because exoskeletons have the same kind of proteins in them as as the exoskeletons and shrimp and crabs. That's why it's not in hamburgers. Well, it's not going to be in hamburgers, but it could. I mean, why there still could be insect burgers? Yes. With a big disclaimer, put it on the seafood aisle. Yes, confuse everyone. Do you see the danger? Hey, Blair, tell me another story. Oh, I was saving this one for the animal corner. Oh, you're going to save it for the animal corner. OK, then I have one more, one more for the quick stories. I need to tell you about how the roads kill. That's right. The drivers in cars. Nope, not the drivers in cars. The roads themselves. Because it's hot because when it's hot, they heat up and they release pollutants into the air. They release organic compounds and other things called secondary organic aerosols, major contributors of what are called PM 2.5 air pollutants comprised of air of particles that are smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are pretty bad when they get into your lungs and can have significant effects on public health. Researchers published in Science Advances, these researchers are from Yale University in the lab of Drew Gentner. They looked at roads asphalt heated to different temperatures and determined that these products emit substantial pollutants into the atmosphere without any cars involved. It's just the heating. Paved surfaces and roofs make up about 45 percent and 20 percent of surfaces in the United States, in cities, respectively. These these surfaces saw a jump in emissions up to 300 percent for road asphalt when it was exposed to moderate solar solar radiation. So heating plus solar solar radiation is even worse. So we should maybe start looking at different ways to create asphalt because asphalt is not helping us any. Well, it is. It helps us get around. It's great if we can make it nicely and neatly. Well, there is one thing that we can do without getting rid of cars right away, which is greening roofs. So that was one of the things that you were just talking about. Forty five percent of cities are asked to have asphalt. They contribute to pollution like this, but they also contribute to urban heat islands. So yeah, because they they heat up and release heat. It impacts the whole microclimate of an urban area. So greening roofs, planting on rooftops can have a huge impact on both of those things. Can I just say I find humans to be very inefficient when it comes to roofs? Yes, I agree. Two things, two things, three things. It's more things, more things. One, you're absolutely right. All roofs should be painted white to reflect heat in the warm areas. Yeah, absolutely. Covered in greenery. Two, they should also then have solar panels. Three, forget both of those. Why doesn't everybody have a deck on their roof that they can enjoy with a little bit of a view? How come that's so rare? It's like the most obvious thing. You could put the deck on top of it. Anyway, people are just inefficient and uncreated at times. When it comes to their roof, it's like an oversight. Or people have inherited or purchased buildings that have been made in one way for a long time. And we need to change it. Yeah, it's that. But I think it's also because it's unseen. I think it's like when when you see somebody whose hair looks great and then they walk by and the back is all messed up. It's because they just didn't see it in the mirror. I feel like I'm like I'm being attacked right now. Oh, no, I'm sorry. No, no, that was in general that applies to all humans. That's like anybody with curly hair at all.  You don't know and you don't care and nobody's going to tell you. Well, it's definitely now where you're on the camera every day.  Anyway, it's fine. Nobody's looking at anything. Oh, this is this week in science.  I hope that it's a nice roof. If you just tuned in. I hope that you are enjoying the show. We have a lot of science to come. If you are interested in a twist shirt or in a mug or in some kind of twist merchandise, head over to twist. Twist. What's my website? Yes, twist.org. T W S dot T W I can't speak. Head over to twist T W I S dot O R G. Then click on that Zazzle link to see what we have on offer and support the show. OK, are you ready for a COVID update? Yes. All right. Let's talk about COVID-19. I don't have a huge COVID update. I know Justin has a story coming up here. The United States is starting to come out of the second resurgence, which is really still part of the first wave of COVID-19. Since May or the end of May, our cases are starting to come down. Our deaths from COVID-19 are starting to reduce on a daily basis. There is good news temporarily. Don't think this is a moment to rest. However, everyone stay safe. Continue practicing social distancing, wearing a mask and being as safe as possible in social situations because that will keep people safe moving into the fall. Now, the big story that's really interesting this week is about Brady Kynan. Brady who? No, not a Brady. Brady who? Brady. Brady Kynan is a protein. That's right. Brady Kynan is a protein that is in a pathway that is regulated by something called RAS, the renin angiotensin system. And this is involved in blood pressure regulation and in fluid balance. And when a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was looking at the genes involved that are getting overexpressed in COVID-19 patients, he was looking through this and found that the genes related to RAS were way out of line. They were not doing what they normally do. And so followed this trail and the study published in Elife suggests a new pathway that researchers can be looking at for treating COVID-19, suggesting that the RAS pathway and Brady Kynan are highly involved in the inflammation process that occurs. So the RAS system, they followed this RAS, renin angiotensin system was abnormal in the lung fluid samples, led to what's called the Kynan cascade, which is an inflammatory pathway. And it's regulated by RAS. So RAS goes up or down, the Kynan cascade goes up or down. This Kynan cascade is regulated by Brady Kynan. Brady Kynan, if there's too much of it, causes blood vessels to leak. And when blood vessels leak, that means that fluid gets into the tissues where it's not supposed to be, and that leads to inflammation. So the fluid balance is off and inflammation takes place. Remember where COVID-19 patients tend to end up with a lot of fluid, Blair, in their lungs? Yes, in their lungs and they end up with pneumonia. This is part of this whole system. So the Brady Kynan, it makes the blood vessels leaky. Fluid leaks out into the lung tissues. And then there are other proteins that are there that interact with that fluid and create something of like a Jell-O-like material. It gels up. Oh, no. Yeah, so the fluid, it becomes like trying to breathe through Jell-O, which is part of the problem for the oxygen transfer. It doesn't happen as easily because the fluid's there, there's too much of it, and it's thick. And so they are thinking that this Brady Kynan cascade, this Kynan system, the Brady Kynan involved, can be a target. And other enzymes that are in there can be targets to to really fix the inflammation and potentially target the pneumonia and other symptoms that occur. It's pretty, it's very interesting as a hypothesis. And researchers are definitely looking into it, especially because the renin, no, I can't speak tonight. The renin angiotensin system already has a lot of drugs that are in use for things like heart disease and kidney function. The renin angiotensin system is already something that we have drugs that we're using that are already approved by the FDA that could potentially be repurposed. So this is a definitely an interesting direction that it could go. So we now have many targets. We've got the ACE2 receptor. We've also got the ACE protein that's involved. ACE is also involved in targeting Brady Kynan. So the that is a target. The Ras Kynan cascade get in there. Hopefully we can fix it. This is promising and I want to say thank you to I mean, we sometimes talk about data mining of these big giant genetic studies where they're just looking at all sorts of genes to try and find something that looks out of whack. Well, every once in a while, this kind of data mining really does pull something valuable out of the data. And this is one of those situations. Which is very exciting. So so I just have to ask because I guess I'm maybe it doesn't even matter. But we were talking for so long about this being a respiratory disease. And then there was that big story, however long ago now, time is meaningless, where they were like, no, no, no, no. It's a blood disease. So yes, that that was a story. Yeah. Yes. And this could be this would be that would this would explain that this would explain how it's a blood disease. Right. Now that part of it part of it for sure. Yeah, it would explain how there is the leaky blood vessels would also explain how there's potentially influences on the brain that would explain why there is like COVID foot was the thing to do a circulation. Yes, it has to do a circulation. This this would definitely explain those kinds of symptoms. Yeah. OK. We're just we're just peeling away the onion on this thing. There's so much going on. Wow. Yeah, but it's one of those things where at this point with medicine, it's wonderful. We're able to really dig in and we've got so many resources targeted at this field right now at finding out, you know, unpeeling the onion of COVID. You know, we've got everything targeting it right now. And it's amazing how much we are learning in such a short period of time. I don't think we have ever seen this rapid of an amount of discovery on on diseases before. Yeah, that's a very fair point. And when we've had pandemics in the past, there's been a little bit of flying blind where you kind of try. You say, OK, so based on this evidence, I'm going to try this thing. But if we really can figure out exactly what is causing symptoms that can help us treat symptoms, but it could also help us kind of attack the thing at the source in a way that maybe we couldn't before. Yeah. Hey, Justin, did you have a COVID-19 story that you wanted to talk about? I just got a quick blurby thing. The meta analysis, which is also a thing that we haven't really had access to and many past diseases throughout all of human history. Where they they looked at this is. They looked at seven different randomized trials that included seventeen hundred and three patients of whom six hundred and forty seven died. Well, that's about a third of them died. This is also these are very severe cases, patients who weren't doing well to begin with. The this was they did twenty eight day all cause mortality was lower amongst patients who received corticosteroids compared to those who receive usual care with SIBO or some other treatments. So basically it's the idea is there's effective therapies for patients with coronavirus who have according to this have demonstrated that low dose dexamethyl zone reduced mortality in hospitalized patients. Dexamethasone. Yes, who required with COVID-19 who required respiratory support. The interesting thing about this study to is just that it's a metadata study. It's just one of these things that sort of talked about like, why isn't there more of this? How come we can't how come we can't just look at the raw data throughout all these millions of cases that are going on to to suss out what is and what isn't happening? What is what isn't working? That sort of thing. Anyway, here's one example. And it's that what did you call it? How do you say it pronounced the dog? Dexamethasone. Yeah, it's a it's a steroid. Yeah. Yeah, it's one that is rather common used for all sorts of different applications and treating patients. So it's something that we have not we do not need to guess side effect. We do not have to guess health implications. It's well documented already and is showing an advocacy at that late stage for the most severe patients. One thing that also there is this is sort of a side piece to this is I've been reading accounts of people who are have recovered from COVID-19. You don't want this. Yeah, you really don't want this. When when people's when you're seeing those numbers of people who have recovered, that is not like getting over a regular flu and then just going about your deck. I'm back. Yeah. It's it's apparently that, you know, some of the testimonials that I was listening to or reading the rock himself, the rock, say his family. He said he had it, he recovered, but this is not something you want to mess with, that it really gave him trouble. Gave trouble. But if something gives the rock trouble, I don't want it. But what I was reading about was persistent like months later, like these are some of these long haulers in January and February. That's what they were calling long hauler.  So it's not, you know, when people are talking, looking at those recovered numbers and thinking, ah, they're fine now, that's not that's not accurate. Yeah, it's it's not accurate. And there are studies that suggest that even those people who show mild symptoms or are asymptomatic may still have have damage to their hearts. And that yes, their lungs and their lungs like the first thing that they were reporting from a survivor's wound and if that is something that is ongoing, then that means that there is potential for ongoing people having ongoing health issues as a result. Cardiovascular issues as a result of of this virus. Yeah, Guarav Sharma says, why is the COVID reinfection data so sparse? It's a fantastic question either because my guess is pure speculation. We still need to I still don't understand why we don't have reliable information on this, which which makes me suspect that it doesn't really happen at any. The reason the data is so sparse is because it must be either not happening or a very rare event. Yeah, that's what that's what or it's the tests were not that. Sometimes people show proteins for a few months after. So it could just be that the proteins are still in their system. Or you know, your reinfection needs to take three like it takes three months to be able to get reinfected and we weren't really testing people super well, it's kind of to the point where maybe now we might be able to get some reinfection data, but up until now it might have been pretty hard to get. My best guess is that those cases where they are showing reinfection probably didn't actually have COVID the first time because the testing initially was so unreliable that you might have a regular flu go get tested.  And maybe with them, maybe the test is improved or maybe not now it tests that you do have it because there were people who also like tested multiple times and it said that they didn't have it. And then they got a test that they said they did and they went, ah, I do have it. Yeah, yeah. So they could be long haulers too. It could be someone that's still infected from earlier, you know, could be a reinfection even once this starts to, you know, if we got that kind of data, it would be pretty hard to tell unless you were testing them consistently, you have it, you have it, you have it, you don't. OK, now you have it again. Yeah, so I'm a little suspicious about reinfections being a thing yet. I feel like we should have known that for a long time already. Like that should have kept happening and especially in places with the, you know, Italy, France, California, New York, Florida, Texas, Arizona, hot spots. We should have seen a lot of evidence and I'm hearing very sparse one offs here and there of that possibly occurring. Yeah. And a lot of these not happening. Yeah. And a lot of these when you look at it, they had initially caught the covid when the testing was at its worst. So that's why I'm. Yeah. And it's also possible that if you didn't have a bad case of it, it's like, you didn't create a lot of antibodies against it. And so you can get it again. There are many possibilities for that. Yeah. But yeah, I think you're right, Justin. It's sparse because it's rare. Oh, my goodness. This is this week in science, everyone. I keep clicking the wrong buttons and clicking all over the place. Do you want to help twist, grow? Get a friend to subscribe today, please. That would be great. And do you know what time it is right now? What time is it? It's time we are switching things up a bit this episode. It's time for Blair's Animal Corner.  Oh, I have a story about anemones. And I love saying that. With frons like these, who needs anemones? No, it's about their arms, actually. So this is a study looking at what determines how many arms an anemone has. So anemones, they're Nigerians. They're related to jellies, to jellyfish. You can kind of picture them as a sessile. It means they don't move upside down jellyfish pretty much. So they have arms just like a jellyfish does. That's how they catch their food. And they all seem to have a very different number of these arms. So in us and mammals, our genetics tell us how many arms or legs we might have. We don't have any external kind of external variables for the most part that can alter that in development. But anemones are different. So until now, we haven't really known how many arms or tentacles the anemone can grow. But now this study coming from the Gibson Lab at the Stowe's Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City has shown that the number of tentacles is defined by the amount of food they consume. So quote controlling the number of tentacle arms by food intake makes the sea anemone behave more like a plant developing new branches than an animal growing a new limb. So reminder, they are animals. They're invertebrates, just like jellyfish, like I said. So they are not plants. They are animals, but they do in fact seem to grow more arms if they are if they are fed more. So this happens not only when they're a juvenile, but also throughout their life, which is helpful because if you lose an arm, for example, if a fish tries to eat one of your little tentacles, you can grow one back. And so it might actually be pretty handy if you could activate that by eating more food to replace your damaged limbs. I lost my arm. I'm just going to have a burrito. Yeah. Yes. So sea anemones show us that it's not that it is possible that nutrients are not converted into excess fat storage. They can actually transform them into a new body structure. It's pretty wouldn't it be nice to be an anemone? Yeah. I think it's I think it's amazing. I mean, we know that there are limb regenerative abilities for so many animals, but humans have a hard time with it. Although we grow our fingernails, our noses never stop growing. You know, our ears never stop growing. If we break a bone, it's big enough as it is. It's going to keep going, man. Our ears keep growing, right? Our bones, our skin repair themselves. You know, there are regenerative aspects. Our our our livers love to regenerate. If we lose a chunk of liver, it'll just grow right back. It's really great. But why can't we and how could we make this regeneration possible? So it's fascinating to see in what we think of as an animal, a simple animal still. Yeah, this isn't a plant. Even though it's acting like one, it's not a plant and it's just regenerating limbs. And those tentacles are complicated structures. They're covered in knee day, which is why they're called Nidorians. It's the little fish hooks, little stinging cells that they have that allows them to sting fish that get too close. So they've got multiple cell types that are involved. It's not just I'm just going to take this one skin cell and just keep growing skin. Yeah, pretty complicated structure with muscles and these stinging cells. Yeah, so it's someday I just want to eat that burrito. And oh, my goodness.  I'll have a big meal. It'll be fine. Obviously, don't have a cow or maybe do. Obviously, a small sacrifice to make to regrow a limb. But I suppose you'd have to give up like coffee and alcohol sort of as if you were pregnant while you were regenerating. Probably. Oh, perhaps. Yeah, maybe you'd have to you'd have to sort of go on like the same sort of nutrient rich diet that a pregnant person might. Well, I'll say pregnant woman might have to. Yeah, I think it would be a very interesting study to take this, take a bunch of anemones and then chop off a couple of tentacles and then pour alcohol or something else or other pollutants into different containers and see if it affects their tentacle growth. You are both cruel and curious. Indeed, researchers sometimes must be, which is a great lead into my next story. Oh, let's get it. It's about ensuring better science through better care for lab mice, which is a topic we talk about all the time. I think it's going to be a little in the future because it makes nothing but sense. A happy, healthy test subject will perform more reliably. So this is looking at mental stimulation in mice and their environments that they are held in leading up to experimentation and during experimentation. So this is a study from the Germans Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, DZNE in Dresden, and they looked at the behavioral differences from different mice in different kind of living arrangements. So they designed a sprawling cage that made up of 70 interconnected cages arranged on seven levels, so they had quite a little mansion for these mice. This was considered an enriched environment. So it had equipment designed to inspire play. It had plastic toys, it had tunnels, it had hideouts, and they replaced and rearranged the stuff every week. And so that's the thing, actually, that when you look at animals in zoos or aquariums, they're expected to be enriched many times a week because that's supposed to be part of good mental health for animals in captivity. So they enriched all these animals. They had this huge, amazing play structure slash mansion. And then so what they did is to be very scientific, they took inbred twins so that they had no genetic variation. This is going to come into play in a second. They wanted no genetic variation in their cohorts. So they took five week old mice. They housed 40 of these individuals in enriched environments for six months and 40 of them in standard cages for six months. And then 40 spent three months in enriched cages and then moved to standard cages. So they have three different cohorts. So one is all enriched, all bored or enriched for a while and then bored. And then they were microchipped to record their movements. And then later, they studied their brains, which did in fact mean they had to euthanize them to get to the brains. Thank you, Lab Mice for your service. Lab Mice that sent the entire six months in the enriched environment were more likely to explore as adults. There was a great range of individual personalities. And so they started to develop kind of their own way of moving around space and and responding to test behaviors. In the in the context of mice, when we talk about individual personalities, that's relatively stable differences in behavior. So basically it got to the point where you could kind of predict what this particular mouse would do that would be part of their personality. Then they found that the mice that spent either three or six months in the enriched setting had more neurons in their hippocampus, which is a part of the brain associated with memories, learning and emotion. The group that went from enriched to standard settings continue to show high rates of exploration, even though some of their activities were diminished, they still seem pretty interested in their environment. And they also found that the mice that had been kept in enriched environments had major changes to their genomes. Their genome changed from the space they were living in. Yeah, so their their behavior is became like on their genomes and it remains them even when they went back into their standard cages. So this is the long lasting differences in their brains. They had methyl groups attached to particular regions of the DNA in the neurons of the hippocampus and that alters the genome. And it alters how it's read and indicated exactly. So it changes the proteins that are made, basically. The methyl groups kind of wrap it up and where they, yeah. Yeah, so definitely an impactful change in their genome. And so on one side, this is really good news potentially for people who have had traumatic events in adulthood, but whose childhood was otherwise stable because it appears to show that when they're developing or where you spend the majority of your life can have an impact on your genome. But they think that because the mice that went from an enriched environment to their stable environment, they called it, continued to have this genetic change throughout the study. It was a short study, but still it appeared to be unaffected. So one single event kind of is what they're implying here is not enough to mess up your genome forever and that providing a good environment early on can have a permanent impact. So they didn't study old mice versus new mice in these enriched habits, but the implication is that where you grow up is pretty important, which I'm sure we all know. But I think it's more interesting because this does impact behavioral studies. If you're using mice in behavioral studies and they're being kept in a really born mooring drawer in a lab, that could impact your study. So I've told the story before, but I was a long, long time ago in high school, I took a summer sort of internship job at the Orthopedics Research Lab at UC Davis and was headed by Neil Sharkey, who was the head of that department, went on to be head of R&D at Penn State, and I think he's since retired.  They would cut the jugular vein of the neck of the mouse and suture it up under this really intense microscope. And the survival rate was about 18 percent in these mice. And they just sort of hung out at the bottom of their cage. They were post-surgery mice that were stationed next to me. And their food was in the little in pellets at the very top of the cage. And they, you know, these recovering mice never seemed to go up to it. So I was sitting next to them and instantly enough would feed them parts of my lunch and I just sort of put it into the cage.  And he sort of was like, then it got just enough. I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not supposed to feed them snacks. Well, after that, a hundred percent survived because they were able to get nutrients that they needed without climbing to the top of the cage and they've sort of recovered and were managed to get up to the top of the cage and eat the pellets. And it was just such a dramatic turnaround. Turns out, though, the experiment wasn't about survival rate or anything like this. It was just practicing with this needle. Oh, 100 percent of the mice were destroyed anyway, and I didn't ruin somebody's experiment. Yeah. But it did prove to me that, yeah, absolutely. How how you interact with the animals makes a huge difference to the outcome of the. Yeah. And just to piggyback on that, there was another story that came out this week from Newcastle University, just showing that how you handle the mice can have a huge impact on their mood and how they respond to different stimuli. So they they transported some by picking them up by the tail, which stresses them out, and they transported some by tunnel handling. So basically they they encourage them to go into something like a paper towel tube and put a hand on either end and then take it to the next thing. Something just very simple like that. And so that one does not stress them out. And the difference is that the anxious, depressed mice, the ones who are being picked up by the tail all the time are more disappointed when something bad happens. But their low mood has no effect on how elated they are when something good happens. But so basically it does impact their behavior. It impacts their mood. And so we should be tunnel handling mice, which makes perfect sense. It might take a little longer, but it is totally worth it because it won't impact them negatively. And I'm seeing a lot of questions in the chat about laboratory animal euthanasia and all this kind of stuff. And there's some speculation going on. And I will say, as far as I know, the grand majority of lab rodents are euthanized to be a carbon dioxide gas, which is because it's a natural gas that's already in their body, it doesn't impact research. And so and they just go to sleep. And then everything that has to happen happens after that. I will also say that some labs donate their animals that were not used in chemical trials, that were used in behavioral trials to zoos and wildlife centers to provide food, so they recycle, which is cool. But there are many ways. Yeah, but something that I think is really we know we've talked for years about how animals are kept and we've talked about enrichment and we've talked about it was years ago that the hippocampus was shown to have neurogenesis in response to to environmental enrichment. So I think this next step is fascinating because it digs even deeper into what's actually happening at the level of the neuron, what's happening in the cells. And so if the at the level of DNA, you have these epigenetic changes, these are mice, but like you said, Blair, the implication that changing one's situation in the laboratory or in life can have long lasting effects after that situation, so which is important in the pandemic, because if you have been spending since March inside and not enriching yourself, that could have some long lasting impacts on you.  Or it can change. So the plasticity, it's not set in stone.  You're not going to stay unhappy forever. This will change and your brain is plastic and it will come back. And these these little tags that that get tagged in your neurons. I think this is I think the positive side of it is change can happen and that's very exciting. And that self care is a real thing. You have to enrich yourself. Enrichment is great. I just I'm really enjoying the fact also that during your story about mice in the laboratory, my cat has been very, very attentive during this story. Yeah. Who has the mice? She's she has been keeping me enriched for sure. Is that your last animal coroner story? Oh, right. Everyone, thank you for listening to this week in science. Thank you for supporting us as well. You are the reason that we're able to do what we do. You're the reason we can continue bringing scientific information to everyone on a weekly basis and we can do even more with your help. So if you are not already supporting us, please head over to twist.org, TWS.org and click on our Patreon link. Become a patron of twists. Select your level of support. Anything ten dollars and more. We will thank you by name at the end of the show. There are many levels, many rewards, but regardless, any amount helps us do what we do. So thank you. We cannot do this without you. Thank you for sort of supporting twists. All right, we're coming back. Justin, do you want to tell some stories? I've got one left. Our gut microbiota has been shown over the we've talked about this quite a bit on the show. It can influence our behavior. It can influence neurodevelopment at the intestinal microbiome composition has been linked to everything from depression, anxiety, autism, as well as neuro degenerative disorders, including Parkinson's Alzheimer's disease through metabolites produced by bacteria living in our gut. But what about our four legged friends? And I don't mean cats because they're not our friends. So it's just dogs, just dogs. Do they have do dogs have similar responses in their intestinal makeup? Surely not. Since dogs can drink out of puddles, they eat anything. They poop, they can do that and they don't really seem to get sick. Or maybe, maybe more so because of all the weird things that dogs will eat and drink. Well, I know that our microbiome is more similar to our own dogs than dogs microbiomes are to each other, I think. Right. Isn't that a thing? So, OK, good question. I know that there is overlap between there's going to be overlap between a dog and their owner. I don't know if that makes them more similar to the human than to than they would be to another dog, but there is there is an area of overlap and shared microbiome, the longer you are living with your dog, the closer your microbiomes sort of get closer to each other. But I don't know that it would make it because you lick each other.  Yes. But I have a feeling that the dog carnivore gut from another dog is more similar to from dog to dog than it would still be from a dog to owner. But that's it. So this is a new research, though, out of the anthology department, the faculty of science at Yotovs-Lorand University indicates that dogs' aging mechanism and memory performance are linked with their gut microbiome composition. So this is this is sort of an interesting they used service dogs for this, because these are dogs that they can track over a long period of time. They have a wide range of life spans, inclination to develop dementia and environment shared with humans. So these companion dogs promising model for the organism for the for the aging research to be done. And it turns out it's pretty similar. Next generation DNA sequencing technologies have enabled the identification of the taxonomic taxonomic composition and also the potential functions of the microorganisms gaining a better understanding of microbial host interactions. As Thomas Field old assistant professor of the Department of Microbiology, LTE, Budapest, who usually studies microbiome microbial communities and natural waters sort of going into the microbiome now. Overall, it was sort of interesting as they saw two things, one was one was very similar. One was very similar. They saw there's a link in a particular gut microbe that is associated with Alzheimer's that also goes up in dogs as they age and as they start to do more poorly at sort of cognitive dog tests, it goes up in dogs as it does in humans. This is a but there's also but also there's there's some that that do the opposite. There's they have they have things that had the other. OK, so they found a negative correlation between the abundance of phusobacteria phylum and the chronological chronological age in dogs. Interestingly, in humans, phusobacteria were shown to increase with aging and elevated abundance of these microbes have been linked to serious illnesses like inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, so finding that the opposite is taking place in dogs was sort of an interesting find. My favorite part of this is the this is Sarah Sander, who's a geneticist and apparently a Ziploc bag aficionado. Who explains some of how they performed their science. After we tested the memory performance of the dogs at the Department of Ethnology, we took them for a walk and collected fecal samples. We had to immediately freeze the instrument in storage containers to ensure they would provide a valid picture about the bacteria that lived in the dog's guts before defecation. The time limit is important as some species of bacteria can continue proliferation after defecation and therefore may falsely outnumber other bacteria in the samples. So they had to grab it and probably put it on ice, rush it into the freezer and stop things from growing really, really quickly, which is not easy, unless you get really good at it. Get the system down. Running all over the place, putting things in phasers. This is fascinating. I think it's even the what it. It's it's fascinating that it's similar between humans and dogs that this these species go up and down in the bacteria, the actinobacteria was the one that that increases in both humans and in dogs and seems to affect short term memory. It's one that's actually linked to Alzheimer's. But the fuzio bacteria was the one that went the other direction. It's the one that when when it goes up in humans, we start to have all these bowel problems and stuff. And it seems like as dogs age, it actually goes down. So it may be it may be a protective bacteria in that case. So it shows that the universality of a gut microbiome may not be there, that they may play very different roles, depending on the species that they inhabit and have different effects. Which would make sense, although we would we do like to think of, you know, it's like they're mammals, they're animals like this. Wouldn't it happen similarly? Can't we just assume it's all going to work the same? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Justin, did you mention the sample size of this study? No, it's 29 dogs. So that's one of the things that because I was looking at this story too, I think it's really interesting. But it is a really preliminary study because it's only 29 dogs. So it's a very interesting look. I think it definitely means we have to look closer at dogs, especially since their microbiome is closer to us than pig microbiome or mice microbiomes are to ours. So studying the dog microbiome definitely has a lot to tell us about our own. Definitely more than other common test subjects in laboratory and clinical trials and things. So I think more studies are needed. But yeah, definitely 29 dogs is a it's a it's a modest sample size. Yeah, the other thing too is this is I'm now taking just Dr. Justin's dog poo pills, not a real doctor, maybe not poo from a dog, pills off the market temporarily until we get further research done on this. Because I won't chip the new Sadie's that like we discussed before. I'll hold off on that shipment. Well, it never occurred to me until doing this study that there could be an interest in getting gut microbes from animals. Like a dog can drink out of a puddle and never get sick. I want a dog's dog's microbiome. So I can drink out of a puddle and never get sick. Like people can write like I never thought of that. Like people could actually start requesting other species gut microbiome to populate and might not be good. Although, although, you know, maybe there's a way not to be gluten intolerant with the right microbiome. Maybe there's a way to finally digest red peppers for me, or maybe it's maybe you if you're if you want to eat a lot of bamboo, you can go get a panda microbiome and stuff. So I just pictured are you guys familiar with the show Wild Crats taking kind of kind of a dark turn? Oh, Jesus. Wild Scats. Yeah. Yeah, but I think the other aspect of it is, yeah, if the if we're seeing these shifts in the microbes of the gut bacteria of dogs and they're going up or down with the same kind of memory changes, maybe we can look at that and see how we can adjust our own microbiome better to avoid deterioration of memory. Yes. Yes.  That's always sad to fix that. I have more stories. Oh, I was just going to say I'm out of stories. But how much do you want to bet that the that we have probiotics for dogs before humans? Before we have a really comprehensive one for humans. Your dementia in dogs. Humans not yet. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, it's the supplement market that might get out there. But in terms of FDA approval, that's going to take a little bit more time. And yeah, yeah, who's regulating this stuff anyway. I have some stories about what I've got. Why do we talk? OK, let's talk about brains because we've been talking about we were talking about microbiome and aging and brains and mouse brains. And now I want to talk about your brain on music.  Yes. When your brain is on music and you want to snap along to the beat, you're not just hearing the beat.  And then having an asynchronous waveform of the activation of the brain that your brain in a way is going to have to get synchronized with that beat. And then if you want to produce some kind of a snap or a tap that goes along with the rhythm, then you have to produce a synchronized output that matches the original rhythm. It's really a lot more complicated than it seems. So researchers wanted to investigate this and they looked into. They were looking into some auditory rhythms. They had a simple auditory rhythm. They had a medium auditory rhythm. And then they also had a more complex auditory rhythm. The simple one was just one to one. So the beat was just and it was just at a very basic, easy to follow tempo frequency. And the researchers had volunteers who were all experienced musicians. There were no musical novices in this group of volunteers for the study, had them listen to these beats and then tap to the beat with either a one to one, a one to two or a or a one to one, a two to one or a three to two beat rhythm. So let's see, this is the first. There we go. This is the first rhythm they listen to. Seem pretty simple, right? Sounds like sounds like what a dripping sink sounds like when you're trying to sleep. Otherwise, it's so loud. But you're thinking I can keep up with this beat. One, one, one, one, one to one rhythm. Pretty easy, right? You can do that. And then the more moderate rhythm, keeping up with one out of the two of those beats is a little harder because you're dropping a beat there, right? It's a little bit harder. OK, and then the more complex rhythm. Hold on, here comes a little bit. That room is really sure that we're about to get rolled here. There's no rolling going on here. This paper was published in the Journal of Cognitive Neurosciences. And the researchers did actually identify markers in the brain that determine differences in the musician's ability to to do different aspects of this task. And they found that brains had an easier time synchronizing with the simpler rhythm than they did with the more complex rhythm and that there was variation between individuals on how well they were able to synchronize with the rhythm and also how easily their motor output synchronized then with the with what was what they originally listened to. But they found that the brains of these individuals. Let me get this thing up here on the screen. They found that the brains of these individuals. Why did it do that? They look like donuts. They look like donuts. But they found that as the rhythm became more complex, yes, more of the brain was incorporated into synchronizing with the rhythm, not just listening to it, but actually figuring out the rhythm to be able to have a motor output and and their ability to synchronize with the stimulus, influence their ability to synchronize a tap in time to the stimulus that they listened to, which kind of, you know, it makes sense that your brain timing up with things is going to going to fit in there. Oh, absolutely. So output that matches matches the input. Yeah, the the better than coffee for me to get my mind awake and active and get my whole body and mind moving and functioning, swing music. There's this electro swing station I've been listening to that's swing, but it's also like sort of modernized and redone those beats for whatever reason, get my mind turned on and active better than anything else. And it makes total sense that there's some sort of synchronizing. My neurons are like, oh, a lot of stuff is going on right now. Let's jump in. Yeah, they they also found that the the ability to hear the music. So just the auditory auditory aspect of just listening that had absolutely nothing to do with their brain's ability to synchronize with the music and to basically understand the rhythm. No, you got to dance. You got to dance with. Yeah, so the listening, it's the stuff comes in and then your brain does something with it and then it has an output and it's whatever your brain does with it and some some people, their musicians are either better at synchronizing or worse. Does that make them better musicians? I don't know. I think it depends on what kind of musician. So so my personal experience, because I played the baritone saxophone is I was often in charge of the bass line. And I my favorite bands are always the jazz bands that I played in. And so I was in charge of this very like steady beat in the background when other people were flip flopping all over the place, having their fun. And so I think that that was something that I had to be very careful. And I think I was pretty good at keeping that beat on and maintaining that.  Maybe the drummer was having a drum solo, not on not maintaining a beat at all. Just yeah, so that was definitely I think it takes different types of people to do different parts of music. And and that's something that's really important if you're in charge of a bass line or you're a drummer. What aspect of it? Yeah, yeah, they did say what this this quote from the researchers. I find really interesting. We were surprised that even highly trained musicians that's highly trained. That doesn't necessarily mean they're good. Even highly trained musicians sometimes showed reduced ability to synchronize with complex rhythms. And this was reflected in their eegs. Most musicians are good synchronizers. Nonetheless, this signal was sensitive enough to distinguish the good from the better or super synchronizers, as we sometimes call them. So apparently there are some individuals like super tasters, like super smellers. Their brains are super synchronizing to a beat. Which this all just reminds me of some thing I ran into on the YouTubes. Everybody should go look for it because it's pretty amazing. But there's this eight year old girl who has been playing along to David Grohl's drumming of Foo Fighter fame. And they've been going back and forth. He issued some sort of challenge. She played this song perfectly, sent it. And he's like challenging her back with this other more complicated drum. But she's like incredible.  Really incredible. But it's yeah, those are two super synchronizable peoples. Is that a thing? I don't know. Superly, superlatively synchronizable. Superlatively synchronizable. It's just amazing to watch the drumming at that level where we're like. But this is like all kinds of other things going on in a physical environment where you actually have to hit things to make those beats. Pretty intense. It's very intense. So another brain story that happened this week. Last Friday, Elon Musk announced had another press conference for his Neuralink technology. Yeah. And the Neuralink. I haven't followed this one. This is one of his companies and it they are trying to develop brain implant technology that will sometimes some day be used to treat brain disorders. But more recently, he's really doubling down on the creating a human ability to integrate with computers so that we don't get overrun by AI. Because if AI is going to be super smart, then we need to become super smart as well. And how do we do that? We're just handing the AI the keys then. I feel like exactly. I feel like that is exactly what's happening. Like when you are when you are identifying your friends and family for Facebook, you're feeding face recognition, facial recognition. You're just doing the work for improving facial recognition when you do those sorts of things. When you identify things in those crypto, picturing, which McCombs to get into a what are they called? The visual ones are like, which where's the street sign or which one of these is a boat? Is that a capture? Cactus. Thank you. Yeah, you're you're absolutely training artificial intelligence every time you do that. So yeah, letting the AI into the brain. Yeah. No, thank you. Come on in computers. Come in. It's OK. But are we really getting there this week on Friday? What he announced is his his device. Last year he announced a robot that was going to eventually do brain surgery to put a brain implant behind your ear. But now they've kind of changed their plan and they are talking more about developing an interface technology where the robot would implant a little plug into the top of your skull and the plug would contain about a thousand electrodes, little tiny, tiny, tiny wires. Someday, hopefully up to 10,000 electrodes that would then interface with neurons in your brain to collect signals from your brain that could then be read by this device, which is Bluetooth enabled. And the Bluetooth enabling would allow the device to then talk to computers. The computer could then potentially do things. He showed in the press conference, the device being used as it's currently implanted in a pig named Gertrude.  And whenever her snout is touched, there's an array of electrical activity from neurons being activated in the brain. They go and so it showed a very musical display of neuronal activation. Is this an advancement on anything that we currently have? The answer so far is no. We already have brain implants. And in fact, there was a story from just in April this year of a flexible neural interface that was published in Science Translational Magazine, Science Science Translational Medicine that has over a thousand electrodes in this device that would potentially would would outlast and outwork the implant that Musk is is talking about. So this device is not that Musk is selling at this point, has not yet been approved for human use. He's gotten breakthrough technology ability from the FDA so he can start looking at it in people, but so far it's just been animal trials. They're looking at human stuff in the future. Is it a big deal? So far the the verdict is no. That doesn't mean it won't be because he is recruiting very intelligent, enabled engineers to be able to develop this technology further. Will it become the thing that lets us be equals with the AI? That is definitely yet to be seen. So Elon Musk started this app that can transfer money. We already have checks, debit cards. He started a car coming. We already have cars. We even have a couple of electric cars. Why do we need that? He started rocket coming. We have rockets. We have a space shuttle. Why would we need your thing for anything? Yeah, he seems to do a much better job at prioritizing the researchers and the developers of technology to go and do those those big things and ignores sort of the oh, well, how's the cheapest way we can produce this product based on the minimum specification that somebody's wants to buy for it? He overshoots and and so has been incredibly successful, I think. So I wouldn't I wouldn't that this is in its early stage. Yeah, overshooting is fine. We need visionaries. We also need people who are as we're seeing in COVID-19, this pandemic, when resources are put behind things, progress happens faster. And it's not taken a shortcut. It is fast tracking because we're putting more resources behind it. And so in the same way, people like Musk are able to rally financial resources, rally the brainpower resources that are required to make change happen, to get somewhere in a different way. I'm not saying that he was the first to invent a tunneling machine or the first to invent a car or a rocket, but he's doing things in a different way. And it's interesting. And I think because of people like him, we will see progress happen technologically that has not happened for a few decades. I think I think this kind of forward movement, someone hitting the gas, it's important, it pushes our it pushes the envelope a bit. And you can like him or not like him. Oh, yeah. And he's not making astronomers happy right now. I know that. Oh, that's for sure. What's that? Oh, with his Robert Haglund in the in the chat room on YouTube is saying he's not making astronomers happy. His space company is has been launching the satellites. What's Starlink at Starlink satellites into orbit and they they're very shiny. And they are going to be all over the place. Thousands of them. And he's not the only one who's going to do it. There are other companies who are going to be launching these small communications satellites into orbit and their orbital trajectories will put them very way, very much in the way of astronomical observations from ground based telescopes. Man, I was just reminded of our interview about space trash thinking about that cloud of trash around the planet and now adding all these satellites. Oh, my. That's how I'm like, oh, we're going to have a ring like Saturn. No, no, we're not. We're going to have like a cloud of gnats. Yeah, we're going to have to worry less about climate change because of the sun being blocked out by all the satellites. Like Justin was talking about the bugs. No, it was it's actually going to be all the garbage. We're getting a few. There's a few in the chat room unhappy with Elon stories in there.  It's I really do. Let's once again, let's separate the art from the artist. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I recognize that there's some really great stuff happening. His comments and actions in the midst of the comments and actions in the midst of the pandemic were terrible, awful. They were awful. Yeah, yeah. They probably cost them lives. Yeah, no, for sure. Many of his comments about many things in public.  Just somebody. It's like I get that you this is what happens. So billionaires get surrounded by people who agree with them because they work for them and never really want to cross them up. I think there's also it's not it's not that it's not that it's not that also. I think it's also that they have a completely different way of looking at prioritizing things for the world because they are not looking at the world as someone who's just I have to get a job and I have to pay the bills and I have to do the thing must and some of these other like they're pushing the people that are pushing society forward because of their financial their financial capabilities. Musk is someone who he has a vision for humanity and everything is secondary to his vision for humanity. I believe if you know if a few people, you know, get hurt or if there's you know, there's there are injuries along the along the way losses along the way. That's fine because the end goal of humanity making it to some other goal of us going to Mars of us having energy reserves of us beating the AI. You know, if those larger goals for humanity are met, everything's fine. So he I think he's looking at things from a very different perspective. It's not that he has yes, men around him all the time. And I think he does not surround himself by yes, men, but he is definitely provocative on social media on purpose. But we could talk about this after the show because I still need to talk about space and dark energy because we're not done with that story about dark energy. There's a lot of it. Dark energy, right? A lot of dark energy in the universe. It's pulling us apart, dark energy. It's causing things to spread out all over. You know, dark matter is the clumping. Dark energy is the expansion of the universe, which is accelerating. It's like someday we're going to all be spread so far apart from other galaxies and other places in space. We won't be able to see them or detect them in any way. Where is the dark energy? How do we find it? It's dark. What is it? There has been a hypothesis for decades that not all big old stars form black holes or at least not black holes in the way that they are described by physics, that there is an alternative kind of black hole. It's called a geode. Generic object of dark energy. Yes, crystals inside still. No, it has dark energy inside. And that when big old stars collapse, they don't just form a black hole. They don't break Einstein's equations. There's no singularity. What happens is you get a spinning outer layer around a core of dark energy. And it's dark, so we can't see it.  It's the black hole's dark cousin that we don't talk about. Anyway, the black hole. And there's been some evidence in gravitational wave detection that some of the mergers of black holes that we're seeing, they're bigger than they should be. And so one of the explanations is that they're not really black holes that are merging, but they're actually these geodes that are merging and that they're mergers of dark energy. But this is that's another side story to all of this. Researchers at the University of Hawaii and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, they've been working on this idea of geodes. And last year, they showed that geodes could, in principle, provide the necessary dark energy that's in our universe to explain dark energy in our universe. If they moved by black like black holes, say one of the researchers, Kevin Croker, staying close to visible matter, galaxies like our own Milky Way would have been disrupted and obviously our galaxy hasn't been disrupted. So there's someplace else. And so they've just published in the Astrophysical Journal a new study looking at the dynamics of these geodes and their spinning. And they put the spinning of these geodes into a computer simulation and determined how they moved relative to each other. And they found that if the outer layers spin slowly, the geodes love to clump and they actually clump more than black holes. They're super clumpy. But if they spin super fast near the speed of light, then they avoid each other. They're like tops that don't want to be near each other. They're like, boom, let's go to the other edges of the galaxy. And they repel each other. What this means, they solved a bunch of equations and looked at energy and mass distribution in the universe and pretty much the dark spaces in the clumpiness of our universe are probably filled with geodes and that would explain everything. They think that the distribution of matter and dark energy in our universe is explained by the fact that these geodes are there, they're these big collapsed old stars that ended up being dark energy spinning around really, really fast and repelling themselves and everything else.  And they're leading to their they are leading to the expansion of our universe. Hmm. I think we need to get somebody on to talk about this because it's so fascinating. And I don't get it. And I can't hear Blair, but I think her head hurts. I just said, I don't get it. I think I would have to listen to this podcast again because I do. I was like, I had to find the source material in the show notes. And I was trying to follow along. I don't get it. I I would love to hear from someone to talk more about this. Yeah, I mean, I think we need to call this University of of Hawaii researcher. I mean, if it wasn't for COVID, I'd say, let's go down there. Let's go to Hawaii. I'm grabbing the axe handle. You get the pitch for it. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Yeah. That's right. The universe is working. Open the door. Knock it down. We must go in and then go out of the beach for a while and then maybe look at all here by as well. This is how we deal. Yeah. We're taking you out for coffee and some explanations to your theories. Yeah, I mean, it could be wrong. We don't know, but it is another explanation. It fits with a lot of data and it's bringing together some disparate ass, some disparate ideas in astrophysics. So it's definitely, definitely interesting to look into and to learn more about. But it's a new idea that's out there. Well, it's been around for a while, but the new newly researched again idea, which is very exciting. Black holes, not black holes sometimes, but sometimes dark energy. This is what? Yeah, I need to learn more about this. Well, you know, if dark energy is this underpinning force, kind of like dark matter, it can be everywhere and anywhere. It could be influential in black holes. It could be in the suns until we know where and what and identity. It's like you can put it all sorts of places to identify that. I mean, I'm without knowledge completely. Just saying you could find a way to make it a sort of God of the Gap insert. Like, well, what if dark energy works this way and then answers all of these questions, it would have to look like this. And so there it is. I don't know that that's what's happening, though, because I don't know that we have, but I don't know that we have any observations. Otherwise, that could actually inform a reality other than theory. Just because I think in work, for instance, the the very first what do you call it, a globe that attracts the stars that could track the stars and everything had the the earth as the center of the universe. And so it had Mars moving across and then moving back and it had the stars and moving in all these weird patterns around the thing. And it worked and it could predict when you would see Mars or when Venus would arise, it actually worked, but it was it had to go through these really extreme sort of models of stars, planets, moving in weird directions for it to work. And then, you know, once the earth became we became when we gave a heliocentric solar system, then you could just make a model where a thing went around and everything worked also. And that's how it actually is, even though you might be able to predict where something doesn't mean you understand it.  I mean, it's there's so much. Yeah, we are everything is spinning, spinning in our atoms, too. Everything trying to and we're trying to explain it all. Very dizzy, so dizzy. Exactly. Even the jails are spinning. Everything is spinning. Yeah, well, we've come to the end of the whirlpool that brings us into the drain after you've plugged it at the end of a bath. So goes the end of our show. So goes the end of our show. I have a question from Jason Olds. Jason Olds writes in I am a long time listener and Patreon member to twist when you started your new segment with listener questions. It made me think about what I may have a question about. I started to think about small things first, viruses, bacteria, amoeba, fungus, parasites, then I came across enzymes. I went on YouTube and watched a quick video that was way over my head. I realized I know zero percent about enzymes. Do you mind giving some basics on them and why they exist in our world? Well, Jason, let me tell you about enzymes. Enzymes exist to speed things up. Enzymes are what we call catalase. Cata, not catalog, not a cat, like enzymes. They're the catalysts. Catalysts.  Be up, you can suddenly do things you couldn't do before. In fact, there have been enzymes discovered that speed up biological chemical reactions so much that they allow life to happen. In fact, back in 2008, there was an enzyme that was discovered. An enzyme that is called Euro porphina, porphina, Euro porphinogen, deep mic, let me try this over again. Euro porphinogen, decarboxylase, I cannot speak tonight. I can't wait to do the Patreon names at the end. This decarboxylase, enzymes end with an A's in our terminology in biology, Euro porphinogen, decarboxylase, it changes the rate at which chlorophyll and hemoglobin can be created. And if that enzyme were not there, it would take it's like seven billion years for hemoglobin to be created. We would not have the molecule that can carry oxygen because it would have taken half, like half of the I would take a really long time. Anyway, yes, chemical reactions take a very long time and sometimes. And the energy, it's called there's this energy level that you need to get over, this hump, this threshold that needs to be gotten over to allow the reaction to take place. And so enzymes are this wonderful metabolic tool that sells. I mean, sometimes it's just a chemical, but sometimes they are molecules that connect together to allow the energy to be accessed more quickly. It's like a quick elevator lift. It's like, well, there you go. You made it to the top. Now you can go down or they reduce the energy of activation. So it's not as hard to get into the into the reaction in the first place. And there are proteins in your body doing all of the work. Yeah, they do all the work without enzymes. We would not be able to do anything. They are targets for drugs, targets for many, many drugs, because when you adjust how enzymes work, you adjust the rate of reactions. And so you can, you know, you can affect diseases from even happening or not. Yeah, enzymes, I hope I answered your question. You need enzymes to consume dairy. I always think about that. I do. So thank you for allowing me to eat cheese and ice cream. You have you have salivary enzymes that pre-digest your food for you so that it's not as hard to chew and not as hard to digest when it gets in your tummy. Good job. Yes, good job. Good job, enzymes. Thank you for digesting my food for me, enzymes. And one way to visualize when enzyme does in terms of work, in terms of being a catalyst, what that means as a catalyst is you can you can think of an enzyme as vinegar to your your bowl of what you might call it, baking soda, right? Got the big bowl of baking soda just sits there. Nothing happening. The enzyme is your vinegar. You pour it in. Suddenly everything is exploded. All this energy has been released and all this chemical reaction is taking place at a really rapid pace. It's basically what what an enzyme is doing. It's it's unlocking the energy and transforming those molecules. We use it for everything. Laundry detergent, all laundry detergent. Laundry detergents are enzymes. Yeah, it's very important. Enzymes are responsible for so many things. They are just they are essential. Tenderize your meat. Clean your dishes. Allow you to live. That's right. That is right. OK, we have come to the end of the show. And I just do want to say at the end of this show, how much we are going to miss Ed moving forward. I found the earliest email I have from Ed in my Gmail. That's not even going back to my other old email accounts. Edward Dyer sent me an email. He was sending me he started sending me twist stories for the show and he sent them in emails when he said, you've probably seen this story, which gets my vote for one of the best science headlines of the year. Parasite causes zombie ants to die in an ideal spot. Hollywood could could be kept busy for years just making movies about parasites that exist in the real world. You could do an entire podcast on parasites. So could someone who does political shows? Smiley face Ed. That story was from August 13th, 2009. We're going to miss you, Ed, very much. And if you are listening to the show and you know Ed, we are going to organize a science island gathering to be able to get together at some point soon so we can talk, share memories and just be together and remember. So stay in touch, keep in touch, get in touch if you're interested in that, but I will be reaching out. Thank you all for listening. Shout outs to Fada for helping in the show notes and for helping with social media, making that happen. It's amazing. I really appreciate your help. Gord, thank you for manning the chat room. Your your assistance there is essential and identity for totally essential. Thank you for recording the show. And I would like to thank our Patreon sponsors and the borough's welcome fund for their generous support. Thank you to Donathan Styles, a.k.a. 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Hey, you got something to say to us. You can contact us directly. email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistmanana, gmail.com, or me Blair at BlairBaz at twist.org. Just put twist T-W-I-S in that subject line or what'll happen? It'll turn into a geode of dark energy in space. Been really fast.  We're at at twist science at dr. Kiki at Jackson Fly and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you tonight, please let us know. We'll be back 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. We can science this week in science, this week in science. This week in science is the end of the world. So I'm setting up shop. Got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in. I'm going to sell my advice. Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand. And a little costume is a couple of grand 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. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science. This week in science, science, science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That what I say may not represent your views. But I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just yet understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to say to everything we say. And if you use our methods, that are all because it's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science. A laundry list of items I want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got. But how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop? One hour, better just listen to what we say and use. This week in science, science, science, science. This week in science, this week in science, science, science. Science, science, science, this week in science, science, science. This week in science, this week in. Blair, thank you for sharing some arts. You're working on arts. We'll be ready for what you say. I think we'll be ready for pre-orders really soon. Nice calendar. I just have to email our calendar company. Make sure they're still in business because who knows? I hope so. I keep getting emails. I keep getting promotional emails from them. So. Oh, yeah, we're probably fine. And then double check pricing hasn't changed too much. I'm guessing we're going to probably have to raise it by a couple of blocks. And then I just definitely support the post office again. Yes, we might have to add another week for travel, though, for transit. Yeah, which is why I want to get pre-orders started like immediately. But yeah, I should be actually done with the calendar pretty soon. I would love to be able to get pre-orders up. Yeah, I should have a cover. I should have cover art for you this weekend. Awesome. That's like me taking a picture with my phone sort of cover art. The final will be better for a pre-order thing. I just need a little thing that I can put on the website. Thumbnail. Yeah. All right. Well, you have to get up early in the morning and so go do that, go do what you need to do. Have fun tonight. Thank you. Have a nice day tomorrow. Let me know how things go. Yeah, and have a nice day now, Justin. Yeah, it's just begun. Alrighty. We've only just begun. I love you. Some of the carpenter's song. Bye. Have a good night. Blair, yeah, she had to head out for some adventures for tomorrow. But we're still here for a little while. Yeah, calendars, Blair's working on calendars. You're still in Denmark for a few weeks, a couple of weeks. For more than a month. More than a month. Great. My hair doing. If I look down, I got this little. It's cute. I like it here. I'll make you bigger. This totally fits with the story earlier, but not looking at your head. Like, my hair is perfect. So there was a story this week that I did not talk about. But speaking of Gaurav, I think it was Gaurav brought up Musk again. There's a story which I find so interesting from UC Berkeley that the finding was people who are jerks at work don't they don't get promoted and don't get benefits as much as nice people. People basically people don't like working with jerks. And I like that. But there's something there's. I think it depends on the industry because I worked in the car business for a while. Let me tell you that's always, always when it works.  But I don't know if it's true. So again, this is sort of my point about the billionaire bubble.  Again, once you're in that sort of bubble where everybody works for you and it's not just yes, man, but you is you don't have that thing where you've said something in a meeting and somebody pulled you aside and went, you know, yeah, that's not really subject for work that you should let out of your face. You know, here it is. Here's the study. People with disagreeable personalities, selfish, combative and manipulative do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work. But I was wrong. It doesn't mean that they don't have a disadvantage that they that they have a disadvantage. It's they just don't have an advantage. So selfish, deceitful and aggressive individuals were no more likely to attain power than were generous, trustworthy and nice individuals. Why not? Disagreeable individuals were intimidating, which would have elevated their power. But they also had poorer interpersonal relationships at work, which offset any possible power advantage their behavior might have provided. So I guess it balances out. Yeah, Carol and Vinoy pointing out more psychopaths in upper management. I believe this. I believe that, too. You know, it depends on the industry, too. I honestly don't know that, you know, all industries are going to be the same in terms of what approach to upward mobility is going to work best for the individual. I think I think that's that's probably true. I think it's very true in and anything that requires collaborations as the basis for work to be done. I think that those aggressive, deceitful people probably will be less likely to be invited to the next group. Yeah, that there's the that if the on the psychopath side of things, then maybe there are the people who are going to be nice long enough to gain power and then they're like, I am here and I will or the power gets to their head and they they release their inner psychopath once they become powerful. I don't know. I don't know. Interesting. Yes, Gar, CEO is number one job choice for sociopaths. It's true. What do you want to be? I want to be a CEO in charge of everyone. I want to be CEO of the world. I don't I really, really don't. Well, oh, Thunder Beaver, I'm sorry, you got to do your job right. Check everything. Sometimes people don't like to hear the truth. Shubhru got booted from a board meeting for not being a yes man. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Identity four does want to be president. I have the tendency to be candid as some listeners of the show may have noticed from time to time and say the thing that is in my head comes out of the mouth. And and some places that has been appreciated and in some work environments that was not the right choice career wise. Absolutely.  I don't have a poem. And so I know Matajaro was working on a poem last week. But I don't have anything in my email. So maybe Matajaro just sent it to you. I do have it somewhere. You do have it somewhere. We did not share it. So Matajaro was asking if you had shared it. But no, I have not. I figured we could do it at a get together. We could you could do it yourself at the get together. I wouldn't mind doing it myself. But it's yeah, I think that would be great. Unless you want us to read it right now. Carol says candid. You don't say I tend to be sarcastic. So yeah, that maybe how you ended up in Scandinavia, Carol. I find I find the Scandinavian senses of humor or just conversation to be that to be couched in a dry sarcasm. That does seem to I really appreciate it absolutely fits with the way that I interact with the world. I love dry sarcasm. Does seem to sort of be a state of mind. It's although I really like puns, so that could keep me out of Denmark. So but it is this is something I have noticed in a workplace because I have a bit of a sarcastic affect sometimes, in my speaking. You some occasionally it's it's but I will encounter people who don't have that the ear for it. And so the sarcastic thing that might be said can be taken literally and responded to like you. This is an intentional comment and it's addressed in that way. And then it's like awkward because you have to back to a little obvious. But or just let it go. Oh, yeah, now you're right. That thing that I said doesn't make sense now that you pointed out the obvious that missed the word play completely. Yeah, you're right. Anyway, so what's this get together? When are we going to? Yeah. Do you I mean, should we wait until next week and give time so we can tell people on Facebook and kind of have people put it on a calendar? I think so next Friday or something next, like. Would that be it would be Friday morning? Friday morning for you? Yeah, that would work. Absolutely. Get the science island crowd back together. Yeah. That was the last time we all really talked to him. Next week. Yeah, that would be perfect next Friday. Would something I don't know what Blair's up to. She's not here to discuss a time. But I'm guessing she's not going to be doing much exciting. But if we did something like six thirty, like we did last time. Oh, OK. Oh, no, how early would that be for you? I apologize. Yeah. So I think it would be it would be Saturday morning for you, right? You'll be Saturday morning at three thirty. The morning could be that. What time would be good? I might ask how did you learn about it? Well, Ed was one of the early people to reach out to the show as a listener. He was, I think, even caught the show somehow through some RSS from when it was just a radio show. I think he's been listening that long, which would put it at over 15 years. Yeah, I need to go back and find. And Ed was, I think, a caller then. And emailer of story ideas, things like this. And then the aftershow. A lot of times we would be in the chat rooms and what have you would be a lot of conversations there. And then we did he started a thing called Science with a Twist, which was for listeners of the show to have conversations and like a Google Hangout outside of the show and sort of do a spin off of the show with people who listen to the show talking about science, he thinks. And I joined in on that a number of times. And and the it wasn't always just science. We would talk about all sorts of things we would talk about politics. We would talk about what was just going on in our lives. Just turned into these conversations. Some of those Science Island Hangouts or Science with a Twist Hangouts would go four hours long or with different people sort of jumping in and out. Listeners, listeners to the show. So hanging out, just hanging out, having conversations. And and Ed is one of the those people who you regret not having spent or I regret not having spent more time talking with even even through all those four hour conversations and such that we've had in the past, it's did you talk about his did you do his political conversations also?  The big conversations, too. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. We talked about everything under the sun on this on the shows. Nothing was nothing was off limits. It was news of the day. He would bring in he would sort of have a list of stories science or otherwise that he would he would sort of put out there to sometimes four or five of us that would start the conversation and and go from there. So, yeah, wonderful guy, always curious, always open minded and yeah, definitely feeling that loss. Yeah, planets, planets a little bit dimmer without him. Yep, totally agreed. Of course. How did we find out about his passing? I only heard at the in the after show last week. So that I didn't mention in the after show. Sorry, we after after show once we were off the air. Yeah, I I I see these names in our chat room on a regular basis and Ed was was missing for a week. And he occasionally is he had he had been kind of complaining about his internet or his computer off and on for a couple of months. And I was like, OK, maybe it's just this Internet or maybe he took a day off. But he had in the past taken off time, taken breaks from Facebook and the Internet, but he always told us. And then he missed another week in the chat room here during the live show. And I kind of kind of went where is he? And so a couple of days after that, I got on Facebook and started looking and realized his last post had been August 4th. And so I asked on his Facebook page where he was and some people. Got back and someone said that he had passed. And so it's still it still hasn't been officially announced on his Facebook page. I don't know exactly how it would happen, but he has a wonderful. He has a wonderful has wonderful connections with people all over the world in different related to science and other interests of his face. These Facebook pages and groups that he started in. So there's yeah. And he hadn't mentioned he had mentioned he wasn't doing well. I didn't nobody realized that it was so serious. Yeah, so. Yeah, just letting you know that I notice even if I don't reply to each one of your comments. Like, you know, I don't read the whole chat while I'm doing the show, but I do notice the names that are in there and I notice who's been with us for a really long time and I notice the people that I connect with on Facebook and other places and yeah. So all y'all in my chat rooms, I see you. I see you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being a part of this. It's yeah, yeah. We're all in this world together to make it better for each other. And certainly did. I hope I hope that we can all have half as much enthusiasm and energy and excitement for learning new things. Yeah, let's learn more things. Huh? Let's be curious. Let's keep that curiosity going. Keep the conversations taking place. That's what drives this show. That's what the show is. It's it's all it's a conversation. All the science, the news stories, they're just starters. They're just it's just the way to start looking at that world. That's all around us all the time. Yeah, taking this, taking this little time out each week to have that conversation is absolutely why is why I'm why we're doing the show. This is it. Yeah, that's it. And Identity Four says we're like a big, a great big family when it hurts when we lose one of our own. Yeah, we are like a great big family. A wonderful, wacky, spread out science family. Yes, science island in our hearts. And it's I wish I could talk to Ed right now because we talked a lot about science island, like what would be required, like what would we actually need to do to create this sort of, you know, off grid community, like what people would have to have what skills and how we would organize. We talked a lot about this. Yes. And I I got to visit. Science Island. In reality. What's it called? Smanholm, I think is what it's called. It's this sort of collective here in Denmark. And they've got a they've got a couple of winter binds up big ones. They got solar panels. They have like 400 acres, 130 people. They have chickens and goats and dairy cows. And they're making almost all of their own produce. And they have clean water. And it's but it was just a phenomenal setup of this this old farm that got taken over back in the 70s and turned into a collective.  And the thing is going strong. And it was just really amazing to get the tour of this thing over over this past week, which is absolutely something I would love to share with Ed, because we've talked so much about that, how to organize something like this. And here are these people. They I mean, it's to the point where they have like their own. They separate their trash out into different materials that they can then use and bring in and recycle. They've got like the metal shop and the wood shop. And they've got they've got borrowed cars. They have cars that the collective has bought that you can check out if you need to drive somewhere, as well as bicycles. There's a bike shop there to repair bicycles. They have a communal kitchen that so nobody's nobody's paying rent or paying for food. They take your income and much of it just kind of goes to the collective. But then you go in and they have people who are preparing meals all the time. So you don't have to do the cooking. You have to volunteer on rotation to do some of the work. And they all sort of help out at doing stuff. There's a preschool kindergarten on site. There's this is just they've got the they've got the actualized version of much of what we had talked about over the years at this place. Very cool. Yeah, maybe there will be more of these things working and popping up. Yeah, I think I love the I love the idea, though, of having a place that's also the other the other side of it is it's not just it's a working farm. That's that's using that's that's sustainably run that has creates its own energy and all that kind of stuff, not just that, but also that it's like a teaching facility. And you have lectures and you bring scientists in and you have people who are experts and and so the whole thing is it's educational as well as active in practice. Which this place does this place as well. And has music festivals, which is another thing we talked about. Like, how do you generate income for the thing is you bring in music festivals, you bring in the public, you give them tours, you have cafes that based on all the organic food that you're growing, you do a full. This place is doing all of those points that we hit on and discussing science and the only thing it's missing. There's no lab. You need a lab. Science Island needs a science lab. It needs to be doing some research on top of all the rest of this. I love it. Yep. Yes. An innovation lab. Oh, are you in Alameda? I like Alameda. I like this town that has a has a cave entrance, a back cave entrance to the town and the downtown with the old movie theater marquee, if that's still there. It looks like classic, but fifties, sixties, Americana and it's a little downtown Alameda is a pretty, pretty sweet spot. And oh, and it's a hundred percent renewable energy for Alameda right now. Wow. Geothermal hydroelectric sources, wind power and landfill gas. Interesting. That makes me very happy after just seeing an article in The Guardian talking about how energy companies are not expanding their alternative energy sources, solar, wind, hydrothermal, geothermal, they're not expanding those as rapidly as they have been expanding coal and and gas energy. And so so even though we're making progress, it's still not as much progress, but we need to get those energy companies to buy in and go and island is one place. It's like, oh, you have this little thing here and you can do that. But so big. So some energy companies have bought in, for instance, Pacific gas and electric in California is probably one of the more greener grids. But what we have to understand is most big energy companies that are fossil oriented aren't energy companies, they're mining and logistics companies. They have nothing to do with the final product is this is just they're already invested in the mining and logistics. Why not give it but move it out to the people? Anything else is competition to them in that business.  No, actually, the goal is so that you can leave the lights on all night long. Eat as many burgers as you want. Might be made out of mealworms.  Like the actual vision is to be able to leave the lights on as long as you like and not have an electric bill on top of it and not to be admitting carbon at the same time. It's to do more than we can do with fossil fuel. It's not to do the idea. The goal isn't to do less than we're doing out to do more. And you do that with alternative energy sources. You don't do it with fossil fuel. That's a limited resource with a major downside and an expense that can end in wars and pollution and disease. No, there's there's alternatives that are better and don't have to sacrifice anything. You still have my new and get straws back regular straws back. So have you ever heard of photo switches? The light switches switches are triggered by light. So this there are so many stories I didn't talk about tonight. Linkoping Linkoping University. It's got the umlat linkoping. I don't know how to say that. I don't know. I don't know how to umlat have created a new molecule that they say can trap energy from sunlight and then preserve it for later use. So it's like a two part molecule where it's in one form to trap the energy to like grab the energy in and then trap it and hold on to it. So it absorbs it and then doesn't release it. So it has a parent form that can absorb the energy from sunlight and an alternative form in which the structure of the parent form has become changed and more energy rich while remaining stable. This makes it possible to store the energy in sunlight in the molecule efficiently and they're calling them. It's part of a group of molecules called molecular photo switches. Hmm. Yeah, I hadn't heard of these before, but it's a really interesting use of this. Yeah, of how I'm using changing the form of a molecule to have it to have to do have two uses. So one of the issues with solar energy, right, is how do you store it? But what if you can see it? What if you can store it in the absorptive devices in the solar panels for trickle out or energy release later? Which would be cool. Anyway, I hadn't heard of them before. I think it would be part of Carol Ann. I think it would be kind of like the part. Good night, Eric Knapp. It would be it could be part of an artificial leaf. But it wouldn't it would be like it would be like a photo, a photo diode and battery in one where it would would hold absorb that energy and hold on to it until it's activated or tasks. So so what's sort of interesting to it? And who was bringing this up in the chat room? Where will the power for electric charging? This is from Hot Rod. All the solar would require a ton of solar cells, but where would? Oh, yes, yes, tons of solar cells. When there's a lot of unused land, there's a big sun, a huge star putting out energy very close by. I mean, I think a solar and some other wind is really you just need to put those windmills out there where there's wind, put them offshore, put them paint.  Exactly. The birds will avoid it. Protect the birds. But the solar panels, I mean, there are issues with chemicals and how long the panels last and the the the the garbage and how it and how processing the solar panels, how good is that for the environment? There's mining and there's other stuff that's involved. Batteries are a huge issue, but the batteries is not such a big issue. There are toxic environment issues, but I'm going along with you on this saying overall, we could take care of everything if we just put our minds to it. Like you just put the land out there and you make the solar panels and you make the wires to the solar panels and you make it done. So one of the things is that you don't necessarily need the batteries. Like this is there's some companies who have been doing this throughout the United States where they will lease you solar panels put on your roof for free. There's no batteries. What they do is they turn your meter backwards by feeding the grid. So actually, it's all of your neighbors who when you're at work, who might be using your solar grid panel, right, energy. And as that turns it back in and when you use energy, you're paying for a difference in some percentage of it. And they're taking some of they become your electric company, the people who put the solar panels on your roof. So you can actually have solar panels that are just feeding direct into the grid, just feeding energy in there. And you're sort of getting credit as if you were a power plant and and probably more efficiently than a power plant would. Because instead of having losing 50 percent of the energy that's created at the solar farm as it makes its way through the grid to somebody's home, you might lose half of the power that you generated if that if that panel is on top of a roof in the neighborhood, feeding the immediate local grid, the efficiency is much, much, much higher. So, you know, the the old method of I have solar panels, I will charge batteries and then drain those batteries and then go to the grid if I need to is sort of the old way of attacking this. The new way is solar panels on my roof feed my local communities energy needs. And it reduces the amount that I've taken from the grid. And therefore, that's the differentiation. Yeah. And then yeah. And then you can also then then you use geothermal, you use hydroelectric, you use all of the other sources, wind, that can feed feed the grid more regularly, but not everyone needs them all at the same time. Now, I'm I still think that the combination of things like hydrogen fuel cells combined with solar with solar in a house is or in a you know, in a house or in an industrial installation, an apartment building or something you've got. I think I think combinations to get the get the draw off the grid itself. There's a company working on using spent nuclear waste fully charged, right? Medigero to create batteries that apparently would never stop working. They don't have the technology yet. They're talking about they could do it. Maybe possibly based on a computer model. People are saying the output of the batteries as far as never been proven to be very effective. But maybe it makes some really giant batteries that you have as the power plant and keep them very far away from people. But apparently, you know, you look at the half life of way recycling to. Yeah, I just saw something. Oh, my God, there was another story that just came out using like citrus peels using orange peels to get the metals out of batteries and to help with battery recycling. Yeah, so there's something in citrus peels that helps isolate metals, and so they're going to be using it to clean. That's cool stuff. Yeah, so cool. OK, so coffee. Do I? I've had too much. I'm not going to sleep tonight, which is still a really long way away because I had a pot of coffee this morning to wake up and then sleep all the way through the night last night. Ouch. Yeah, it's much early. Yeah, probes in space, nuclear batteries, that's true. I can't. Time for bed. For me. Yeah. OK, good night, Kiki. Good night, Kiki. Say good night, Justin. I can't. Oh, say good morning. Say hello. Good day, everybody. Good day, Denmark. Have a wonderful, wonderful week, everyone. And we look forward to seeing you back here again next week for more science, more conversation, and I will post information on the This Week in Science Facebook page, maybe our Patreon. I will I will find a way to get information out to people about a Friday hangout for Ed Justin. Tell me what time is a good morning time for you on a Saturday? Is like, because now is getting too late for me. Yeah, no idea. Well, I suppose you can start it whenever and I could just show up late or I mean, I suppose seven since I don't have to prepare for anything before in the morning. But that's when I get up for the show anyway and try to become a cogent human being before the show starts. I could start the show a little rough and then wake up as the show progresses in the case of this perhaps is hanging out with people. It's more social orientation thing. Yeah. So if you wanted to set it at seven, I could make that work. OK, we'll see if Blair can make it. But yep, something like that. OK, we'll work through this. We'll figure it out. It may also be better for us to pick a time that it's maybe like my Friday morning, which would your Friday morning. Would you be your Friday night, right? No, I'm nine hours ahead of you. Yeah, so it would be. Yeah, so if it were not your Friday afternoon. Yeah, that'd be fine. That could be better for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. OK, maybe it'll be Friday morning next week. Yeah, people have to work, though. They do. I don't know if anybody's working. Is anybody working still? People still have jobs anymore? I don't understand. Some do, some do not. We are doing what we can to piece it together. OK, I'll see you next week. On that positive note, everybody have a wonderful week. I'll see you next week. I look forward to seeing you all. Good night, everyone. Thank you.