This is TWIS, this week in science episode number 601. Recorded on Wednesday, January 11th, 2016. Back to grinding science. Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Kiki and tonight we are going to fill your heads with marital strife, spider webs, and superheroes. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. A funny thing happened on the way to the modern world. Evolution. We are here as the result of evolution. It is the process of life that led up to the natural world but evolution is not just the thing that happened and is not just the process of natural things. Evolution is taking place in the modern world as well. Evolution is everywhere in our societies, cultures, and economies. Evolution plays out in our technology, art, and engineering. Evolution is the process of trial and error, the process of learning and remembering. Evolution is life in all of its endeavors. In science is at once the study of evolution and the act of evolving. The current state of our evolution depends more on science than it does natural selection. Yet natural selection is the prototype upon which science was built. Make no mistake, we are evolving right now, faster than ever before and nowhere else is this act of evolving. Now talked about more than right here on This Week in Science. Coming up next.  I wanna learn everything. I wanna fill it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna know what's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. What's happening, what's happening, what's happening this week in science. Yeah, science. To Kiki and Blair. Ooh, Kiki, you're muted. And a good science to you, Justin, Blair and everyone out there. Let me hope that in this second week of January that none of us are muted more than we need to be. And maybe some people need to have their Twitter removed but the science shall not be silenced. The science shall not be silenced. Science and reason for the win. Here we go. We're gonna join the rest of the world in celebrating a little bit of science this week. We got so much science happening. And you know, we still have a couple of these this week in science, 2017 calendars available. So please check out twist.org in order to find out more about the 2017 calendar for twists that Blair made all by herself with Patrick Karnit's help. And next week, Thursday the 19th, we are going to be in San Francisco, California, the Cal Academy of Sciences Nightlife, SF sketch fest event.  If you can make it, I hope you can make it. That would be really awesome. Bring calendars, we'll sign them in person. How does that sound? And is there anything else? Oh yeah, this weekend. I think it is National Citizen Science Day on Saturday.  Find something fun to do. Lots of fun stuff going on in the world. And are you ready? It's time for a fun, fun action packed show. We have so much stuff ahead. I have got stories about the appendix. Baboon speech. And scientists spider wannabes. Ooh, yeah, what do you have Justin? I've got more retro than retro viruses, one less blind mouse again. And how aging is all in your head. Yeah, I see what you did there. Blair, what do you have? Oh, I have avian marital bliss. I have avian divorce. And I have smelly armpits. Well, no, no. I don't need to do that. Do you have my? Do you have my there, Blair? Yeah, we're a lot, so. Do you have my? Hardy, hardy, hardy, hardy, hardy, hardy. Okay, it is time for us to jump right in. Let's do it. I have a wonderful story. Wonderful, wonderful story that takes us back, but doesn't take us back at all because it happened just now recently, a bunch of just happened. A bunch of researchers from all sorts of different places came together to publish a paper in Nature this week titled Asgard Arkea Illuminate the Origin of Eukaryotic Cellular Complexity. Now, the main researchers from Uppsala University in the Netherlands, Uppsala, no, Sweden, Uppsala in Sweden, hence the Asgard reference in the title of the paper. What all these researchers have done is a genetic analysis of various samples that were taken from underwater environments. And so they took, I think, six or seven different samples, seven geographically separated sites. And one of them is called Loki's Castle, another one Yellowstone National Park, another one Arhus Bay, then an aquifer near Colorado River, Radiata Pool, Takatomi Island Vent, and the White Oak River Estuary. Then instead of like normal biologists wanting to look at microbes, putting them in addition, seeing what they could get to live. Oh no, they didn't care what they could get to live. They just looked at their genes. They took the DNA from all the samples and they just sequenced them and they ran them through machines until they could figure out what genes were there. And they said, okay, based on the genes that we've got here, who lives in these places? And now this story goes back to another story that we reported on back in 2015 about an archaebacteria called Loki. Now, Loki, again, named by the same team, Loki Archea, is an archaeal clade that was previously shown to be more closely related to eukaryotes than any other prokaryotic lineage. So eukaryotes, multicellular organisms with very complex cellular structures versus prokaryotes, which are unicellular organisms, bacteria, where things potentially started, right? And so evolutionary idea is that we started with bacteria, single-celled organisms. And at some point there was a symbiotic merger between organisms that allowed more complexity to evolve. And Loki was the first discovery that really kind of hinted that this hypothesis might be true, because when they looked at Loki's genome sequence, they found a whole bunch of genes that they were like, hey, there's genes for cytoskeletal structure in here. There's genes for all sorts of things that are usually we think of as only eukaryotic. And so it was kind of like, okay, Loki must be one of the in-between species, right? It must be one of the steps between bacteria to more complex eukaryotic life, or related to, right? It's the closest living relative to those steps. Yeah. And maybe I'm conflating with this another story, but was Loki also possibly being looked at as like a eukaryote maybe that had gone backwards, like had evolved, and then it was like, eh, forget this. Like I'm gonna step back. That's one of the hypotheses. I mean, that's a possibility, but the easiest answer here is that Loki is an archaebacteria. It fits genomically within the archaea family, and that it's an archaebacteria that just has more complex structures. So it's kind of a wing of its own, you know? It's this branch on the tree coming out on its own. And so hadn't seen any other organisms similar since or before, but this paper announces an entire group. This is an entire group related to the Loki Archaeota. And they're called the Asgard, the Asgard Archaeota. The Asgardians, the super phylum that they discovered through metagenomics. And it has a number of individuals. Thor is one that they made. I'm searching your theme. At some point I feel like I'm learning more about Norse mythology. Yeah, we're dealing with Norse mythology here, yeah. Is it Norse mythology or comic book fans? Right, no, this is Norse mythology, Norse mythology, like, fetish researchers. Hard to tell the difference at this point, yes. Yeah, so we have Loki, we have Thor, we have Odin, and we have Heimdall, Heimdall Ark, Heimdall Ark. If they had football teams, they'd all be named after the gods. And it'd just be, it's like, it's like they're one theme that they've got. I get it. So it's, it's kind of neat, you know, they haven't actually, they haven't cultured any of these in the lab. These are strictly found based on genes and this Asgard clade that they have put together, they have so defined because they all contain genes that had here to Thor been only defined as eukaryotic. And so now we find that potentially the archaea bacteria or maybe other bacteria were setting themselves up to evolve that complexity and this genetic complexity was evolving well before eukaryotes came onto the scene. And so does this have to do with symbiote? Is this the symbiosis of these different bacteria coming together to become super organisms? Is that what's going on here? I don't know, but it's, there's a lot of different questions that are going to come from this and it's very exciting research that we're finding. You know, this is potentially going to lead us in the direction of understanding how we went from unicellular to multicellular organisms. Very neat research. And they don't have to grow anything in dishes. Machines are taking bacteria's jobs now. Yeah, nothing has to be alive. It can all be dead. Yeah, so it's a very cool study. No, no, no. And then moving on from this illumination of eukaryotic cellular complexity that's been given to the Norse gods, from there I'm going to take us to spiders. Yes. Because why not? We love the spiders. We love the spiders because they have spider webs. No, for a really long time, researchers have wanted to spin spider silk. Spider silk. It's stretchy, it's strong. It's very strong. Oh, it's amazing substance. I mean, we, 10 years ago, maybe even more now at this point, Justin, I mean, we reported on the spider goat where they're genetically modifying. Yeah, they're the spider goat. Spider goat. They're creating goats to create spider proteins in their milk. So that scientists and manufacturers would potentially have a very large source of spider proteins to make this silk. But they have not been able to actually chemically make all those, they have the proteins. Great, they can produce them in the goats. That's awesome. But they can't get them to mix together to create the nice threads. It's been a problem. And so finally, a Swedish group, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences have reported that they can produce a kilometer long thread. What? That is a long thread. Kilometer long thread. Those out there who aren't familiar with kilometers, one kilometer is about the same as a thousand meters. Yeah. So you put all the thousand meters together. That's very long. Probably equal to about how far I walked today. Not out walking in the snow today. Yeah, so they're able to take a highly concentrated solution of the spider silk proteins in a syringe.  And it has a tip the size of like 10 to 30 millimeters, really, really tiny. And then they submerge the tip into a low pH aqueous collection bath. And the fibers come out, can be taken from the bath and rolled up onto frames. And so it's a very exciting development here that they're able to actually create something that resembles real spider silk. And so what was important here was just was taking the actual spider gland and looking at how the spider gland puts together the spider proteins because in the spider gland itself, there's not just a bunch of, it's not like a spool of thread in there, right? The spider silk gland is not just a spool of thread. I always thought it was. Not just a spool of thread. That's not what's going on. I'm fishing it. It's a liquid protein soup. Right. And the proteins don't congeal and turn into that thread until it's exiting the gland. And it has to do with pH gradients. And so there's just a really well-regulated pH gradient between the inside and the outside of the gland that affects the proteins so that basically the fiber forms rapidly in a very defined place and nowhere else. It's kind of like, it reminds me of, I was gonna say it's a backwards glue gun, but it's kind of more like a 3D printer. A little bit more like a 3D printer. Although that starts with the spool also, but it's more like a backwards glue gun. So it starts as liquid and then it comes out as a salt. Yeah, so the pH is, I think, very interesting because it is able to, like, the high pH probably denatures the proteins a little bit and then as it exits, the proteins are reassembled. They start twisting back into their proper tertiary form, their proper formation after they've been kind of spread out and open so they can attach to each other and then they attach and so if they're able to wind up and attach, then you have the spider. And so the researcher says to our surprise, the artificial protein is as water soluble as the natural spider silk proteins, which means it is possible to keep the protein soluble at extreme concentrations, which is fantastic. And this is the first successful example of biomimetic spider silk spitting. Woo-hoo! Yes, and so this could lead to spider silk shirts. That's great. So actually I want to tease too, there was so much science news this week that I didn't get to bring it all this week. Huge week, yes. I had to save something for next week that is about making that spider silk t-shirt even cooler. Oh, it's gonna have lasers. You guessed it, I don't have to do it next week. No, no, it's something great though. You guys will have to tune in next week. It's gonna glow in the dark and have lasers. It's gonna be its own DJ nightclub t-shirt.  Sorry, you guys, I didn't mean to. It actually should cut down on bar room violence.  Oh yeah, oh yeah, buddy, we love it. I can't rip it, it's spider silk, it won't rip. Never mind, never mind. Yeah, I'll buy you a beer. Yeah. It's actually, this will be more about when you're in the club and somebody accidentally gets sick all over you. Yeah. It'll be helpful for that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that also doesn't happen.  Ding, ding, ding. No, but there's gonna be like, you get your shirt cut in the elevator or something and then instead of being able to rip out it, there'll be somebody who's like, yes, the danger is wearing spider silk.  You just hang there, your shirt would never rip. You just hang it out, your shirt's not ripping, everything's great. Okay, anyway, we've taken this tangent far enough. This is this week in the science for those of you watching and not able to see the lower thirds. We don't have any this week and for those of you listening, if you just tuned in, that is who we are. This week in science, it's Justin's turn right now. What's you got, man? What did I say I was gonna bring for? Oh yeah, retinal degeneration. There's apparently a mostly hereditary disease characterized by the death of the photoreceptors in the eyeball. Light sense of neurons in the eye which leads to blindness. This is when you're talking about blind people, this is not the somebody who forgot to put on the safety glasses and was working the wood chipper. This is sort of born blind or born and then lost sight, certainly after. There have been attempts to do retinal transplants to combat the disease. There's been some transplanting of graft receptors to the host that had some integration, science has never successfully transplanted photoreceptors that functionally connect to host cells and send visual signals to the retina and the brain. So we wait for that day for science progress to the point where I will have a story to tell you. Oh, wait, what? I don't know, wait, what? No, a team led by Messiah Takahashi just did it. Boom, science just happened. This is actually a continuation of the story I reported late last year, but what's wild is that they had initially done this test with putting these little points of luminescence where they did this 3D retinal sheets derived from stem cells and because they sort of put these little glowy bits on it at the end of the photoreceptors, they were able to tell that the thing actually went back and connected to the right parts of the brain. So they're like, wow, we have not only the thing that can pick up signal, but it's actually connecting itself back to where signal is read. So what they did in this was they used a mouse model that was an end stage retinal degeneration which the outer nuclear layer of the retina is completely missing, the outer layer is completely gone. This is they used as their starting point. They used the worst possible starting point. This is the end of the road. This is the end of the degeneration. Worst possible starting point and they applied their method to it, wanted to see what they could actually do. So they learning tasks, they had these learning tasks that they were using with light and sound for mice that had perfectly normal vision when they trained them to do this sort of little task. Right? So then they went back to those that had the complete degeneration model where they had no vision and they tried to do this learning method with them to teach them this sort of behavioral task. And of course they had no result. Then they tried it on those that had received the transplant and it worked. They were seeing stuff. It may only be certain amounts of light. We can't really tell, but we do know that vision with light is there. This is now going to go into a human trial. Yes, it's awesome. One of my predictions is already going to come true. Three not blind mice. Three not blind mice. We're planning to proceed to clinical trials in humans after a few more necessary studies. And they're going to use, of course, human-derived retinal tissue clinic. They're in a few mouse models, trying to make the whole thing go all the way around. They say clinical trials are the only way to determine how many new connections are needed for a person to be able to see again. So they're going to keep working this direction. But this is the blind man shall see science curing blindness. I mean, this is not through, you know, there have been attempts. There was some weird one that actually worked where they would implant a tooth. Remember that one? Yeah. They would implant the tooth. I mean, there have been all sorts of implants and attempts and things, but this is, I've seen or heard since we've been doing this show, at restoring natural vision without, you know, with the natural eye, I guess. Wow. Progresses. This is very exciting. I can't wait to find out what's going to happen with the human trials and, you know, the hope, very, very, you know, to put the realistic slant on it. You know, we get excited about stuff like this, but until it does pass the human trials, we don't know if this is something that will work in humans. Right, it is mice. Giant asterisk, mice. Yeah, mice are different from people. Maybe the mouse eye and the system is similar enough that it'll, you know, all of this graft to host stuff is going to work easily, but, you know. So, yeah, so there's the chance that we're just last regenerative, yeah, that our stem cells aren't going to be like, what do you want me to do? I have no idea.  They've been taken back to this early stage of tissue growth. And so they've kind of, their clock has been taken back and they want to grow and they want to do things. So maybe, you know, there have been things that have worked in humans with IPSCs and this could be amazing. Could be amazing. I think it's, I think it's your hopes up. I'm, my hopes are up already. They were, it was in my predictions for 2017. It was a human trial. It was in my people. This is, this is the type of hope you've been waiting for. Players like, I want to get rid of my color blindness. Yeah. But I mean, like if you're- That's different. Yeah, that's totally different. Now I was just, I was responding to Rob the stressed in the chat room who said, I want to see in more colors and also ultraviolet. And so I said, I want to see in normal colors. And I'm just sort of picturing this from if I was blind. Yeah. I would be exceedingly encouraged by this. And I would have, I would have absolutely insanely high hopes. I will say, I just want to mention too though, that when cochlear implants happened, when that was a new scientific breakthrough, there were individuals that wanted them and there were individuals that didn't want them. And there were individuals that got them and then had them taken out. And I think that's, that's an interesting point to remember too, is that if you were born blind, you've been blind your entire life, but this is for people with degenerative disease. Right. So this is going to be- Absolutely. This is people who have gone blind. And that's going to be huge. Because if you've learned this world with sight, losing it has got to be the worst, like the literal worst. But that does mean if we figure this out down the line, there could potentially be something for people who are born blind. And that's just something that I do.  There's, there's people who are going to want it and there's people who aren't. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.  So they'd still be functionally blind. And I don't think that is correct for this particular instance. So this is for retinal transplantation, specifically for people who have had retinal degeneration. So that they had sight, the retina of the eye degenerated. And that's the light collecting part of the eye. And so if you can replace that tissue, so that the retina comes back, the brain is all still there. Every, all the systems are still there. So if you can put the, you know, put that little part of the camera back in, then you should be able to get the picture back. Absolutely. Yeah. So it should theoretically work because these are people who could see and then lost it. Yeah. Very exciting news, Justin. Murgered. The future is now. The future is, well, it's 2017. It's happening. It's now. No, no, it's now. No, it's, no, it's later. I wonder if we'll have, I wonder if we will have trial start this year and results back by early 2018. That's what I need for my predictions to be accurate. That would be so exciting. All right. Well, if you just tuned in again, this is this week in science and we're talking about science and you know what time it is in the this week in science show. What time it is? What time it is? Let me guess. Can you guess?  You can guess. I think it's time for Blaz Animal Corner. She comes on creature, great as bull. By pet, little pet, no pet at all. Wanna hear about this animal? She's your girl. Except for giant pandas as well. That'll blow, blow. What you got, Blair? I have avian relationships. The good and the bad. Yes. The more you know. Let's start with what may sound at first like the good. And that is common turns. Common turns are birds that are, they look a lot like fancy seagulls. But they are extremely, extremely monogamous. New research from Max Planck Institute in Denmark and also several different institutes in Germany. They all did this combined study of turns. And they were specifically looking at the marital dynamics we could call them because they are so monogamous. They find each other pretty much the second they're sexually mature and they stay together for the most part till they die. They did a 17 year study. They looked at a colony of over 1,300 individually identified birds nesting on six artificial islands in Germany. And what they found was that these turns were staying together no matter what. No matter what, whether they were a good genetic match, whether they had a lot of babies or not, whether they were either of them were fit to be good partners, they stayed together no matter what. We stayed together for the kids. Right. But what if you're not having any kids? Well, we weren't happy at all. What if there's not any kids though, still staying together? Why? Usually in situations where there's intense monogamy there's some sort of benefit that that couple gains from it. So either they pick a really good individual or if the pair is not a good fit for each other there'll be what we call divorce which I'll talk about in a little bit. Okay, because I was gonna say I don't know what the difference between intense monogamy, extreme monogamy or just monogamy and monogamy. The reason I said intense monogamy. Monogamous. Is that. Oh, it is not monogamous. You're not like, it's not a scale really. There is a scale because there are animals that pair bond but have extramarital relationships. There are pairs that break up after three or four years. Penguins are the perfect example. People call penguins monogamous animals but they break up after two or three years all the time. But then they're monogamous with another penguin, right? Yes, this is lifelong monogamy. Yeah. And so these guys, they were staying together even if they were a bad match for each other even if they weren't having babies and they were not having more babies on the whole on average, you would expect overall they'd be having more babies. They would be more productive pairs. It would average out that way because in that way monogamy would still be beneficial but that's not the case with these turns. What they found is that monogamous turns even if they do in the extreme case break up finding a new partner does not result in more fledglings either. And how do you find a new partner if everybody's extremely intense? That's exactly the hypothesis now is that this is all about availability. It's kind of the greatest catch 22. The chances of finding a partner that's your age is slim to none because everybody pairs up the second you become sexually mature. So there are no single turns unless there's something really wrong with them which is also why I'm afraid of every day.  Which is why I would never date again. Kiki, you're muted, I can't hear you. It's like being a single female in San Francisco. Bingo! You got it. Yeah, so this is the greatest catch 22 because everyone's in a relationship because if they became single everyone's in a relationship so they couldn't find anybody. Yeah. That's the way it is in human society too. Absolutely, absolutely. So they just find somebody as soon as they become sexually mature and then after that it's done. They've sealed their fate. So pair bond length is not what drives the turns reproductive performance. Instead they found that age and differences in breeding quality among individuals are important and since the turns pair up as soon as they become sexually mature we see all these same age pairs in the colony. So you know what you have, not what you may get. So they stay with what they have. Okay, so. That's a strategy. Yeah. Right, as a strategy, what do you think about this? So we're sort of like, I don't know how many our turns are in a, what is it, a flock of turns? Yeah, so for example this study looked at 1,300 individuals on six different islands. So the turns are seafaring birds. So they can go pretty far. But it also worth mentioning, this is a subarctic colony and these guys are arctic animals. So the resources are pretty scarce. Right, but what I'm getting at kind of is like, is there sort of a different advantage in an amnogamy gene pool than there is of one that's sort of mixing about. And I guess in a way, when you've got a population of 1,200, 1,300, the less inbreeding or the less crossbreeding you do, the less inbreeding that'll take place, right? You can sort of create slightly more distinct gene pools that can go out a little further each time and then reconnect later down the road than if there's a lot of crossbreeding going on. So this is strategy, I think it's pretty interesting. Yeah, but I will mention also, there was another great study this week, there's so much science this week about how chimpanzees can absolutely tell who they're related to and who has the most genetic diversity from them. And this is something we've talked a lot about on the show. Animals generally know, animals generally know who they share too much genetics with and nature has a way of working that out in that a lot of the time that'll result in infertility. So I think it's more about the fact that they just don't have time to dilly-dally. They don't have resources to dilly-dally. I don't know if also, you gotta make a count. They got- Is that your feminism now? Dilly-dally. They don't have the resources, the energy, I don't know the time, let's say, to compete with each other every year. Maybe this is something where they'd rather, as Arctic species, the first year find somebody and then go, okay, I'm letting myself go now. I don't have to compete for a pair every single year. I don't know, I think it's something to look at to see if there's something about resources. Because again, we brought up penguins, Antarctic animal. All I can say is you're in a resource poor environment where the animals have to fight between, it's a struggle to get what they need. If you've got a partner who's gonna help you, that's one less thing you gotta worry about. So it seems like in that kind of ecosystem, it's a good strategy. Yeah, absolutely. You might not have any kids, but as long as you're not dying, I've got a partner. Absolutely. Helping me out. Yeah, a poor partner is better than no partner, I think is ultimately what the scientists were looking at there in this case. I would not give that life advice to humans necessarily, but if you're an Arctic turn, that might be the way to go. And then moving into your songbird story, this is the opposite. The opposite divorce. Songbirds, songbirds will undergo divorce, which is exactly what it sounds like. They're a monogamous pair that break up. And their divorce rates, coming out of a University of Washington study, their divorce rates are directly related to suburban sprawl. So songbirds are avoiders. That means they don't wanna be up in humans' business. There's other animals that maybe will nest in a bird feeder you put in your backyard or an example that they put in the story that I thought was pretty funny was a wreath on your door. There are certain birds that live in urbanized areas that will take advantage of every possible nesting opportunity no matter how close to humans. But a lot of songbirds are avoiders. They will avoid direct contact with humans. And so as suburban sprawl happens, as people move further and further out into the country, it forces these avoiders to also flee. And this makes them do things that natural selection, otherwise wouldn't have them do. And one of them is divorce. So as they flee, they may flee away from each other as well as from the humans. And then they have to find a new partner. And when they do that, a lot of the time they miss an entire breeding season. So these birds, they're traveling uncharacteristically far about one and a half football fields on average from their current home when the suburban sprawl takes over. That's a pretty far span for them to then refine a new home. And so this means they have to find new resources in their new space. They have to find a new mate and they have to set up a new home base. So in the effort of doing all of that, they will often miss breeding seasons. And so that can be really devastating to songbird colony sizes. And it can be really devastating to have that divorce rate as well. Because having to find, this is right along with what we were just talking about. That's a whole new energetic cost that they wouldn't have had to do that season multiple times in their life, however many times. So whereas exploiters, those are animals like junkos that would breed in your backyard. I love dark-eyed junkos. They're so cute. They're so cute. But it's true. They are all over the place. You will see them in cities. You see them all over the West Coast of the United States. They are in the fall and winter. They are prolific. Absolutely, yeah. And so these guys don't mind the urban sprawl. In fact, it doesn't really hurt or help them and their life cycle and their fecundity, their ability to have babies or their breeding success. But for these avoiders, it's hugely detrimental. And this is about a 10-year study. So it's a pretty reasonable study size. And this is a brand new impact. It's something that probably we could have guessed that it would affect animals, but not exactly in this way, that it's habitually going to make the mist entire breeding season. Yeah, I think I never expected individuals to get runoff in that way. You think of it in terms of groups of birds. There's a flock of birds. There's a population of birds. They all kind of know where to go to meet each other and to hang out. How can one bird or another bird get lost from the system? And so that's interesting that human behavior, human activities can really have a dramatic influence on some birds, but not others because of this. Absolutely. One main characteristic of suburban sprawl is that you still have a fair amount of wild space around, but it's fragmented. So you might have a thoroughfare of homes right down the middle of a space that used to be wild. And that for a flighty animal is going to mean that they're not comfortable anywhere near that space because they'll need a large home base. So suburban sprawl, I'm not surprised to hear it's affecting animals and of all things birds, but this is definitely something that is going to be looked at closer as we continue to look at the effects of humans on animals and birds in particular. Yeah. Divorce. It's our fault. We're making birds get divorced. It's all my fault. I'm sorry. People are splitting up very happily married bird couples. Oh, but they said the divorce wasn't my fault. Oh, people. Oh, people. Love nature. You are. Yeah, if you love nature, get out. Yes, that's what we learn time and time again. Oh, my goodness. Yes. All right. Well, you know what? Don't get out of this show. Don't go anywhere. We have reached the end of the first part of the show and we have more to come after the break here. So stay tuned for more This Week in Science. Hey, everybody, just to let you know, once again, we do have a few of these calendars left. So please get them while they're hot because there will not be any more once they are gone. This is the 2017 This Week in Science Blare's Animal Corner calendar, hand-arded by Blair. Lots of science holidays that you can follow along throughout the year. No wind to celebrate. No wind to celebrate. No wind to science. That's right. National Citizen Science Day is this Saturday, the 14th. You know how I know that? Because it's in the calendar here. That's how I know it. And you know what's gonna happen next weekend? Squirrel Appreciation Day. 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If miracle wonders were held in their looks while waste precious time and try selling their books. And we are back, aren't we? We have more this week in science. Oh yeah, we are back. And we have more science for you for the end of this show. We've got a little bit more to go. Justin, what do you have to tell me about? What you got? This is new research by scientists at Oxford University and it is redefining the word retro when it comes to viruses. So retroviruses are a family of viruses that are made out of RNA, which they then can convert into DNA and insert themselves into the host's genome. And then they can stick around for a really long time. They can actually be inherited. You can sort of inherit this virus. Yeah, within your genes. So there's a history of these retroviruses in human DNA. We can sort of track them back. There's also active retroviruses that are out there causing harm like HIV. And it's been thought that these have been with us for millions of years. But according to research, they have been with us since before the first fish walked on land or whatever happened. Half a billion years or so ago, give or take all of human history. The findings report in natural and general nature communications will help us understand more about the continuing arms race between viruses and their hosts. It says Dr. Iris Katsurakis, Oxford University's Department of Zoology, our inferred date of the origins of retroviruses can coincides with the origins of our adaptive immunity. And thus it is likely that retroviruses have played an important role in the emergence of this key tool in vertebrate antiviral defense. As we understand the nature of the interaction between viruses and host immunity, we will be better placed to intervene in this delicately balanced arms race in order to develop novel treatments and interventions. So that's in itself an astoundingly wild and awesome find that the sort of origin of the retrovirus is also taking place at the origin of our adaptive immunity. It's one of those things that, I think we just learned this last year that infants have a huge, what do you call it? A huge amount of viruses in their guts. And when they're first born, and these viruses are there mostly feeding upon bacteria and they become in a way of filter, like a screen, like which bacteria that are in this infant are gonna continue on to develop into the microbiome of this kind of depends on the viruses. And the viruses sort of drop off at about age two and the bacteria that is still there afterwards is what goes on to develop into the infant microbiome. So knowing now that these retroviruses, they've sort of traced them back in time to the invent of our immunity or adaptive immunity system, that's huge. Yeah, it's pretty neat to be able to start putting a retroviral tree together and start figuring out like, okay, where did they come in? When did the retroviruses really get in there? You know, when did they, what was the origin? When did it happen? And it's so neat to see that it was a long time ago. Retroviruses have been infecting us for a very long time. Since we were fish. I mean, this is, that's about as far back as I can. We were floating around in the water with the viruses and they were like, all right, chomp. But you guys, viruses aren't alive. Not in the way we are.  Of course they're alive, they have all. No, this is, it's open for debate. It's one of the gray areas.  All sorts, it's what I love about it. Love it, love it.  I don't know if I can make you hear this.  You know what that is? That's a bad, that's a bad boot and saying, wahoo. Wahoo, wahoo, this is right along the lines of, I love you. No, what was it? Will you marry me? That's what it was. So that story in which we talked about the finding that the macaque larynxes are totally capable of making human sounds, right? This is one of the first studies that's really, that last year, we're like, okay, this is something that's come out where forever, we've just said, okay, the monkey larynx, this early primate larynx is too low or too high to be able to create the right sound compared to humans. And so other reasons, we're like, well, maybe if we look at humans, that there are some people, there's variation in the placement of the larynx and how it works. Babies are still able to make these sounds. So- And also, it's sort of like, the whole idea of it too is like, the reason this ape doesn't talk is just because it can't. It tried to give up a long time ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because they couldn't, they couldn't articulate themselves properly. They just gave up on the whole vocal communication. Well, it's more like, well, they're not smart enough.  It's not possible. Oh, it turns out, yep. And now- They just have nothing to say. And now they have a lot to say, just not like us, but very similar to us, actually. New study reports that guinea baboons, these monkeys inhabit forests in Savannah of West Africa, can make five vowel-like sounds similar to those that are used by humans. And in fact, in fact, in some human languages, we only use about three vowel sounds. So these baboons are capable of making more human-like vowel sounds than some human languages even use, which is fascinating. Yeah, so I think this just adds to the work that the, on the Japanese macaques about the anatomy being capable. Now, researchers, primatologist Joel Fagot, primatologist at Eichsel Marseille University in France, and is the author of this plus one study. So you can actually view this study. It's open to anyone, because it's a public library of science publication. He looked at 1,400 or so vocalizations of 15 guinea baboons that are living at a primate center in France, and found, looked at their repertoire. And so they had grunts and barks and copulation calls made by females, distress calls, known as yaks, and wahoo's, and which is a long distance contact that's most often made by males. And so they produce five distinct sounds, at least that correspond to the international phonetic alphabet. So they just lack consonants. Vowels, they're not consonants, they're vowels. No, they just lack, they lack consonants. They lack consonants. That's the only keeping them from talking now. Yeah, this is the new defining feature. If they figure out how to go ta, ta, ta, it's all over. Splendid the apes, here we are. That's right. And so it turns out like in this wahoo sound, this wahoo that I played just a moment ago, this is a combination of two vowel sounds being used. So this is, it's a word. It's using a complex combination of sounds for communications. And so they have the building blocks. Doesn't necessarily mean they have rules and structure for language, but you know, this is very exciting. It's apesious, like the apes. This actually is a gray area because it's one of those things that we keep saying animals don't have language. Animals don't have the capability for language. And it's turning out to all just be gray. It's, there's a very fine difference between what we do and what other species do. And we may find out eventually that there's no difference at all. It could be. Maybe, yeah. Or it could just be like, maybe they are, maybe they literally just can't figure out a consonant. Maybe they can't make a T. Maybe, I mean, if we have the species, the study could only roll out our R's. And that's all we could do. Rrrrr. Rrrrr. Rrrrr. It only communicates so much by continually just rolling out. But that makes me wonder too, if we gained a giant vocabulary at the loss, at the detriment of our ability to read other ways of communicating. Yes. But we still use body language. I don't, I don't think so. Yes, but do you think that just as we can say that their verbal communication is not as complex, that their body language communication is more complex than ours? I would say yes. But we don't know. I would say no. We haven't looked at it. I would say no. We haven't looked at it, but I think it's, it's an interesting perspective. But I doubt it, I doubt it. I'll go with Justin on this and, and I'll say I doubt it. And I don't mean to, I guess I was saying, I was doubting something else though. I was, I was not doubting that they have a communication that's body language that they're picking up amongst each other that we can't read from them as well. But I wouldn't say that we don't read it from each other as well. And from, and if you meant from up reading other species generally, I mean, I feel like I'm much more able to recognize an erratic driver or a driver who isn't slowing down than say a squirrel, right? Like, but a squirrel might have a little better beat on when that, when that rat is coming too close to its nest or it looks like it's up to the good or whatever it is, you know. Yeah, I've run over way more Kamikaze squirrels than I have had auto accidents with erratic drivers. Yeah, sure. So, so I mean, like, I think that I think you learn to, I think you do learn to pick up on read a lot of things within your surroundings, within those things that you're interacting with. And so. Another aspect. They're having more communication between each other than we're picking up on, but do they have more communication than we have with our surroundings? I doubt it. Yeah. And then another aspect of the study, they dissected the vocal track of two baboons that died in this location. And they found, I don't know that, I don't know how nobody ever saw this before. They have the same muscles in their tongues that we do. So talking about consonants, they very likely should be able to make those sounds. So there we go. They have the similar muscles in their tongues. Let the gray area lengthen. Let the gray area go further. All right, Justin, what else do you have? So they're just, I don't know, that's weird. All right. Getting older, anybody, anybody, all of us, getting older is all in your head.  And my back. But by looking, but by looking at your brain, researchers can approximate how old you are or were, because you have to be dead when you look. Researchers who examined post-mortem brain samples from 480 individuals ranging in age from 16 to 106 found that the state of someone's glia cells is so consistent through the years that it can be used to predict someone's age to a somewhat decent degree of accuracy. Why they say the state of someone's glia cells is because they found that the glia cells, which are a support cell to the neurons, change over time. This is a, so they also, the other flip of this is they discovered that the difference between an older brain and a younger brain isn't the number of neurons. That the number of neurons isn't that dramatic. And that, by the way, that is the absolute worst infographic ever created like I'm looking at this, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, that this infographic that we've got up on this right now. I make no sense to me. Make no sense. I looked at this and went, this is not helping me understand anything. Actually, I'm more confused by what you're doing. But the fascinating part of this, the other part of that is fascinating, this is that they discovered difference between the old brain and the young brain, neurons don't change that much. But it's the functioned presence and support of the glia cells that are there to support the health of the neuron. This is what changes over time. So that's here, we extensively characterized age altered gene expression, changes across 10 human brain regions and found that in fact, glial cells experience bigger changes than neurons. It says Yernay Yule, a neurologist at the Francis Crick Institute and University of College London who led the study. There's quite a bit of regional information that will be of interest to different people. For example, some will notice a very unique pattern of astrocyte specific changes and the substrantia nigra, the nigra that we provide a lot of data that I have no idea what he's talking about there. But there are three types of glial cells, each providing different kinds of support to neurons. Oligodendrocytes that they say here, insulate the neuron, microglia cells act as an immune cell and the astrocytes, which help the neuron metabolism and detoxification efforts, right? Based on analysis of human brain tissue samples, primarily they did this from the UK Brain Expression Consortium.  UK Brain Expression Consortium. You need a brain, we'll provide one. I will express it. Express service brains. This one's name was Abby. Abby what? Abby normal. Don't worry, it'll be fine. Researchers said that astrocytes and the Oligodendrocytes shift their regional gene expression patterns upon aging, particularly in hippocampus in the substrantia nigra, important brain regions for memory and movement, respectively. The expression of microglia-specific genes increases in all brain regions. Basically the microglia, which is working on the immune system portion, it's like, ah, there's a lot of work to do. You're getting no more. Right, or, hey, but, or is it like an over- We've got to keep down the inflammation, oh my gosh. But is it also possible? Like, this is what we don't know because it just discovered us. Is that sort of like, is it possible? It's sort of like when you have a response that's, that's too strong, that's causing, could it be causing the problem? It's like, this is a whole thing though, when we've been talking about neural health age, now knowing that it's the neurons themselves seem to still be there, it's the real functional problem of aging, cognitive issues and motor function issues and the like, memory issues, may actually be in that support system of glia that then might be able to, you know, be delved into and maybe that can be controlled in some way. Maybe that can be sustained for a longer period of time and your glial health will lead to neural health, of course, but the neural health itself seems to already be there, so. Got to support the structure. Right, so this is. Yeah, keep it healthy, that's, yeah, it's interesting. This can be huge from everything from neurogenitive disease issues to just any kind of aging issues, now that we can sort of focus in a little bit better on what it is might be going on and then, and then my last story the night was just sort of tied to this a little bit. The microglia, which in this study says are constantly scanning the brain to find and fix issues. It calls them the housekeepers of the brain. It's thought that they kind of what you had is what you had for your lifetime. They just went to work says the microglia cells are renewed several times in a lifetime. So this is sort of interesting and it sort of makes me think like based on the last study how the microglia are the ones that seem to be showing up more and more in increased numbers throughout the brain, now that we know that they're renewed several times maybe there's more hangers on, you know, from before like maybe their numbers sort of actually are, they are increasing, but as they're renewing maybe something about having too many of them could actually even be an issue here.  You can't, no, don't eat glia, no, okay. Brain, I don't know if that does anything. Okay. It'd have to be human brains. I just wanna make sure I understood properly. Okay, good. So the microglia- Okay, I'm gonna express concerns, gentlemen. Then you'll be at risk for kuru-kuru. Okay. Don't worry. So eating microglia not gonna get me to my 200 birthday.  Whereas the things that support them and keep them healthy can die off and then come back and refresh. And so it's interesting this study that they can have a bunch of renewal cycles and that these microglia actually keep going. And so maybe there is stuff that goes wrong with the microglia. Maybe they stop cleaning things up as well. They stop renewing in Alzheimer's disease. Maybe this is part of what's going on. So in this other study that it says, it also found that the number of microglial cells remains relatively unchanged from birth until aging and is maintained by the spatial and temporal coupling of cell division and death, but which is slightly different story. And when they say aging, the other study did go to 106. They may have stopped at their aging at 70. They don't have that detailed here from the part that I'm looking at at least in this little overview of it. But so now knowing that, you know, didn't we used to think this about fat cells too? Like you were born with so many fat cells and that's what you have forever. And then it turns out, well, actually there's quite a bit to turn over. We're now learning this too of our microglia. Yeah, absolutely. And in the chat room, Rob the stressed says as best for eating brains, you should eat brains if you are a zombie. So I think that's probably well taken advice. And along those lines, a story came out this week. Some students at the department of physics and astronomy at a university, they put together an analysis of how long it would take a zombie outbreak to kill off the human population or if it was, it was the University of Leicester. There it is. And they published this in a student run journal called the Journal of Physics, Special Topics. They discovered that if there's a 90% probability that if an uninfected person who met a zombie, that an uninfected person who met a zombie would get infected. So 90% chance that zombies would pass on their infection, 10% chance that they would not.  Yeah, that checks out. Which is with a population of 7.5 billion people in the world with one zombie at day zero. Cause humans have to like sleep and eat. Well, I mean, the premises of this is that humans cannot defend themselves.  This is like an unfair situation. Yeah, so then they looked at it again and they're like, okay, if people can defend themselves, then it takes a period of time for the infection to spread, but then humanity will prevail if humans can actually. Oh, yeah. Yeah, zombies disappear completely over someone like six years. Six years? Yeah. That is too long with zombies. I am not into that. They're fighting zombies. The zombie apocalypse will take about six years. I'm gonna go to Mars if there's a zombie apocalypse. I don't think zombies, I've never been afraid of zombies and they're just too slow moving. It seems like most of their brain function outside of the desire to eat brains has ceased. I feel like it's not too hard to outsmart a zombie. Okay, Justin, I'll be sure to call you when I can't sleep tonight because we've had this conversation then. That's right. I mean, well, we do know, it would be a major metropolitan area. Yes, stop it. Let's talk about science. Let's talk about, let's talk about the appendix. In and out of it. Yeah, let's talk about the appendix. Let's talk about the appendix. Let's cut out this conversation so we can talk about the appendix. We're gonna talk about the appendix, that thing that gets infected every once in a while and you have to go to the hospital and have it removed. The appendix, yes. Appendicitis from its inflammation is, that's terrible. Why does this happen? Why do we have this vestigial organ? What is the appendix even good for? People, well, it's been posited that maybe it is a repository for bacteria and that beneficial gut bacteria hang out in the appendix. And so, yeah, and so a researcher, Heather Smith, associate professor at Midwestern University, Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine is studying the evolution of the appendix across mammals. She has looked for the presence or absence of an appendix in a 533 mammal species. And then they put it onto a phylogeny. I know you love the phylogenies layer to see basically how the appendix evolved over time, why some have it and why others don't. They found the appendix has independently evolved over 30 times and when organisms get an appendix, they don't lose it. So it probably has an adaptive purpose. It's not a vestigial. It's not vestigial, it's not detrimental. It's convergent. It is convergent evolution that it has independently evolved over 30 times, it's convergent evolution within mammals. And they also find the species within appendix have higher average concentrations of immune tissue in the cecum portion of their large intestine. And so it's because of this correlation, it's also supporting the idea that the appendix might have some kind of job in the immune system, that it might be a secondary immune organ, potentially helping, being a safe house, for gut bacteria. It protects you from zombification. It's like a bacteria frat house. The only people who become zombies are those who had their appendix removed. Yes, and so they also concluded that the appendix doesn't evolve all by itself. You have to have a certain shape intestine, a seca. It has to be tapering or spiral shaped for you to get an appendix. So it doesn't evolve on its own, it is part of a larger seco-apendicular complex. So it's something that's evolving in conjunction with the cecum, the small intestine, probably with this immune tissue and for some immune purpose. So very interesting. So does this mean that when people get their appendix out in the future, it might be coupled with some sort of treatment to replace what you're losing? Potentially, yeah, if we can figure out exactly what the appendix, I mean, people who get their appendix removed don't necessarily have a hard time of things, right? But there is a question that is the appendix going to help people bounce back from certain gastric insults. Is it, I don't know, we don't know. Or is there something going on? Yeah, but we've just never, we've never noticed the correlation before. Yeah. Absolutely. Right, so fascinating. And moving into my last stories here, from the appendix, I'm going to take a jump into superheroes. Ooh. Superheroes. Appendix men, right? Superheroes, they do good deeds. They save people, but they also do a lot of punching and kicking and they can be really aggressive and sometimes they use weapons. And according to a study, when kids watch programs or get into superhero culture, a lot of kids don't actually take the good side of superherodom to heart and have that be what they identify with, most of them identify with the aggression. And so researcher, Sarah Coyne, who last year, so studied princess culture, she's now moved on to superheroes. I would love to hear about that. Yeah, she published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology on this effect in which on the playground, basically kids would be less likely to respond to another child in need on the playground, even if they were into superheroes. Coyne says, though, don't worry about not allowing your kids to see superheroes.  And so some aspects of this study that I thought were interest were some of the things that the kids said. So they looked at 240 children and the parents responded about how engaged in superhero culture the kids were. Parents were asked how often their kids watched superhero media, how much they identified with different heroes. And then the kids were interviewed and they were asked to identify superheroes, identify their favorite and then explain why they liked the superhero the best. So responses included merchandise, so lots of superhero clothes and toys and stuff, image and interpersonal characteristics. And so those who specified characteristics in superheroes, 10% noted some defending ability. Only 10% noted the defending ability quote from a child. Because he shoots webs and he saves people, 20% of the kids associated the hero with violence stuff. He's big and he can punch. Some were mild, others were really, really aggressive.  Another child stated that Captain America was his favorite because he can kill. So I'm wondering about chicken versus egg scenario here. So do these kids consume more superhero stuff because they already have these violent sides to them or are the superheroes breeding this violence? I would say it's probably the other way. It's probably that the superheroes appeal to the side of them that they're figuring out. It's very, they're kids, they're animals. They're trying to figure out how to control impulses and figure out how to not do what biologically we're so well-tuned to do, which is fight. So here's, let me do a really quick clarification on everything because I see y'all, I know I wanna come. When I was a kid, being into superheroes, heavily meant reading a comic book. And in the comic book, the comic books actually can have a lot of actions. That's after you can read. That's when you're old enough to read. That's when you're older and we're talking about younger kids. So this is later. All right, all right, this is sort of my point. This is my point. And so like- It's TV's fault. I liked, right, I liked Spider-Man because Spider-Man was really snarky. He had snarky opinions on everything. He got into fights and he had like this crosstalk he'd be doing. And he had a lot of self-doubt and he'd be like, oh my gosh, that really hurt.  Then he has to fight him and he can't back down. He's being snarky and humorous about it when he's talking to the guy. But in his head, he's like, this is gonna hurt. Right? That was, that was a nuanced character. What the kids now have, it's all action movies. And you could, I think easily take a superhero out of there and just put a ninja cowboy with a gun, whatever it is, and it's an action movie. It has nothing. There was, when you were, you know, when the superhero portion of these things were created, a lot of it might just, I'll use Marvel Stanley, he was looking for nuanced characters. Some what, what some part role model, some part freak that didn't fit into the world. And that was like a home. Like if you, you could read these guys and these guys aren't perfect, but look at what they're doing. They've found a way to be heroes in the world, even though they don't fit into it, even though they don't quite belong to it. So that was like a hugely different thing than somebody who's just smashing stuff on TV and has this ability and this power to break stuff. And I think that's, I think that's a big problem. I think superheroes, as we think of them as us mining older-ish people, the whole superhero truth justice, the American way for the, you know, good as society portion of it is gonna be lost, because in an hour and a half of everything exploding on screen in one big car chase, none of that's gonna be communicated. So the superhero doesn't really have so much of the hero involved, just the super ability to break stuff. Well, so this does come down to, sorry, making sure that your, whatever your kid is consuming, it's balanced. Right. And if they love Star Wars, that's great. They can watch Star Wars, but they should also watch some other stuff. Right. Don't get so focused on one particular thing. Like Dr. Who, as I said from the beginning. And one big part of this is like, you know, I said 10% noted positive aspects, 20% noted aggressive and 70% of the other characteristics comments were benign. So just be big and strong. He's cool, it can fly, you know, whatever superhero it was, could just do something neat or could do something. And that kid can't relate to the superhero because he doesn't know the superhero also what his bed like the kid's been fighting. And if he knew that, he'd be like, he's the most awesome guy ever.  Like that's the comic book portion of it. Superheroes I think are a dying breed. Yeah, so we don't want to take this study too far. But it's, you know, it's like I said, we don't need to get rid of superheroes for kids. It's moderation, most kids are pretty cool. It's fine. They can consume things. They can like certain elements. It's up to us as humans to shape other humans. That's right. Make superhero movies more boring. Do a whole lot of backstory and talkative talking where you get to learn that the character is flawed before he goes out and smashes things. And smashes things, right? And, you know, we did our predictions show last week, but few astronomers who have made a prediction, they presented their findings at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Texas last week. They've been studying the binary star system, KIC 9832227 and these binary stars, these two stars that are orbiting with each other, they're getting closer and closer, closer and closer, closer and closer. And this system that's 1800 light years away, they predict is going to have the stars smashing to each other in about five years. So in 2022, we should be able to see a red nova in the sky. It'll be red in color and it will be bright enough that it should be visible without a telescope from most urban areas. So it'll be just a light in the sky.  Yeah, and then it'll fade away. But anyway, very exciting. Maybe five years from now, we'll have something to look at in the sky. Blair, tell me a story. Oh, I didn't tell you about my armpits yet. So, not my armpits. Orchids, orchids have armpits, no. Orchids have been found to mimic body odor. I know, yeah. Yeah, Department of Biology at the University of Washington. Dr. Jeff Riffle there has been squashing through the field looking at orchids. And the orchid platanthera obtusata has taken advantage of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are attracted to these orchids for smelling like, as they so eloquently put it, a sweaty gym sock or an armpit. And these stinky, stinky orchids, they were found to have these pollen sacs over these people's heads as they were trudging through. And on examination, when they collected a bunch of these sacs, they discovered that they were quite smelly, looked closer at the chemical signals involved and found that they were pretty similar to human stench, let's call it. And that may be, in fact, to attract the mosquitoes to have an unlikely pollinator. So we talk about mosquitoes being useless all the time and having no function. If they're pollinators, that kind of ruins all of that. Oh, yeah. So if we get rid of mosquito, we also have to lose plants that smell like B.O. Yeah. Yeah, not worth it, not worth it. But this is actually some of the first demonstrations of how mosquito nervous systems process sensory information. And what I found especially interesting is after looking at the chemical signatures behind these orchids and how the mosquitoes responded in their nervous system, they looked at the mosquitoes brain's response to DEET to see what would happen. And it activated all sorts of neural pathways, leading the team to conclude that DEET might be, quote, really confusing to a mosquito, which makes me think, now if we know a little bit more about the neuro pathways and mosquitoes and what they're attracted to, we could actually fix things like DEET to be more effective, potentially. Attracted to stinky armpit flowers and cows. Didn't we learn that? Yeah, yeah. So these orchids smell like sweat and we could use that for science. Oh, and on that note, we have come to the end of the show. Stinky armpit science. Yes, yes, yes. All right, everyone out there, thank you so much for joining us. We've made it to the end of another hour and a half. And I would like to take this opportunity to remind you once again about our twist calendars. Go to twist.org if you are interested in finding out more. Facebook.com slash this week in science to find out about our January 19th show at the Cal Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. 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For more information on anything you've heard here today, our trend notes will be available on our website. That's at www.twist.org. What? www.twist.org. One more time. That's www.twist.org. Where you can also make comments, insert conversations with a host and other listeners. Or you can contact us directly, email kirsten at kirsten at this week in science.com, Justin at twistmini and at gmail.com, or Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. You can just be sure to put twist, K-W-I-S somewhere in your subject line, or your email will be spam filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter, where we are at twistscienceat, Dr. Kiki at Jacksonfly at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover, address a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week, where that's right here. And we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. 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This week in science. Science. This week in science. It's the after show now, everybody. This is the part where we're after the show. It's the after show. I'm going to turn my space heater on. It's cold. Hush. I'm sure you're cold. I'm sure you're cold. My friends have been text messaging. They're like this long list of not wearing enough layers. Text messages. I hope it's probably what, 50s there? Well, in my house, it's like 62 right now. It's not that cold. But it's just cold for inside the house, you know? Yeah, cold for the house. Yeah. Strengths. I didn't talk about the deer molesting. It just, it's, it was funny. It was interesting, I guess, but it wasn't much of a science story. It's something they'd, they'd reported on before. It was a repeat of something they had seen a few years ago. It was, I guess it was kind of interesting, but there wasn't just a lot. There wasn't a lot to talk about there. It's pretty self-explanatory. Monkey meets deer. Deer stands there a while. Deer runs away. Deer. Oh, deer. Licks a substance off of its back. That's pretty much it. Oh, deer. Yeah. Oh, deer. Oh, deer. Hi, chai-chai. Chichi. Chichi Radwaradrigwas. Oh, get some good food, Fada. Thank you for watching. What was another story I didn't talk about this week? Oh, the Alzheimer's teeth. Pardon? Alzheimer's teeth. Researchers are using some kind of Alzheimer's drug to potentially regrow teeth or to fix teeth, to strengthen teeth. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I'm really excited. Maybe next week at Sketchfest to talk about how scheduling leisure activities makes them no longer leisure activities. That would be good. I know I need to get you a calendar, Fada. Got one for you. Oh, did we send one to Patrick yet? No, I have to send one to Patrick and to Fada. Sending of the calendars must happen. How many do we have left? I need to send one to Justin. Oh, yeah. Or you could just bring one next week, right? Which is not what's going to happen. I'm going to bring one and give it to Justin. If there's not that many left, maybe just bring them all. No, there's enough. OK. I'll be staying in the Bay Area for four days. Ooh, fun. Yeah, I'm going to leave it on Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon. Yeah, bring some and I bet I can sell more. We can sell some at the show. Maybe. Maybe. Possibly. That'd be awesome. Yeah, we'll see how many are left and I'll just bring them and maybe I'll bring a few. Great. We're getting down there. Getting down there. Almost-ish. Good. There were a few more orders this week, which is good. So. Excellent. We'll see. We might be like scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yes. Mm-hmm. That's great. I am kind of regretting my decision when we were like, should we do a show the day before we do the Sketchfest show? And we were all like, yeah, it'll be fine. And I was like, uh. Yeah, it'll be good. Yeah. It will be good. Thankfully, I did just find my printer. That's good. Print stories. This is going to be exciting. I'm going to have to actually, I found it. Now I've got to actually hook it up. Oh, I have to. The Alzheimer's teeth. That's a really good question, Dick Tell. Was this the first time Kai got to play in the snow? No. We've had some other snow before and we've gone to the snow before we've gone sledding. That's fun. So, but today Kai got some really good play in the snow in. We'll have some more play in the snow tomorrow because there's no school tomorrow because Portland has two snow plows. Yes. We maybe bought our third yesterday. Maybe. Maybe the city bought a third one. That's going to be so good. I've never made a snowman. What? Yeah. That's like a, you have to make a snowman here in the snow. I've been to the snow like a handful of times and it was very like, OK, get our butts up there. Like snowboard? OK, get our butts home. There was no dilly-dallying. No dilly-dallying. Oh. We were in the dilly-dallying. What is falling? What just happened? No dilly-dallying on snowboard. I dropped dice everywhere. Why are you playing with dice? She's just a dinner at Gamble. And we can't see what there's a whole base game going on the side over there. Look, this one has a raccoon on it. Oh, those aren't, oh yeah, those are story cubes. They're not regular dice. I don't know what those are. You don't know story cubes? No. Story cubes are so fun. I play them with Kai all the time.  So you can use them to queue aspects of a story. OK, well, they also have numbers. Oh, that's clever. I like that activity. They do also have numbers. And then there's this one that just has X and then like exponents. Oh, I don't know what that's for. Maybe I don't either. Then it's something. But story time for mathematicians. It's and then I have these are fun. Dice with. Tinkway. It's French. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, Hebrew on a switch. Hebrew, their letters. I don't know. And then I have what kind of you are you? Yeah, but their letters, they're not. Anyway, they're not words, but they're not numbers, which I'm saying is weird. There's dice inside dice. Why do you have so many different dice? Because I used to collect dice. So you did. Yeah. So then it was one of the collections where like somebody was like, oh, Blair collects dice. I'll get her dice. So then like whatever people went anywhere, they brought me back dice. But then there's the giant foam dice with animals on them, of course. I went through that for a phase for a little bit. I had for some reason people all thought I liked like book place markers. So I was getting all kinds of different book. Not bookends, but like the place markers, like so you keep your place in the book. What do you call it? Bookmarker, right? Bookmarks? Yeah. I got a couple of them were pretty cool. Did you just forget the word bookmark? Yeah. I haven't read a book in a long time. That's why I was like, you have to stop giving me a book. I don't read books that much anymore. But I might be a d-dice right here. I don't know where they are. My kids take them. But there were a couple that were shaped like little rugs. And they were supposedly like marked off of a thing. Like one of them is supposedly like Freud's rug. And then you would like, yeah, that's cool. Freud's rug. Yeah, it was a bookmarker I had. It's it's the whole thing. It is a whole thing. Deep into the bookmarker collection stick. Get into the bookmarker collection. I'm going to let DicTel join Science with Twist. I think we'll do that. I can do that. What? Did it? I'm letting people join things on Facebook. Bye, Kiki. So, yes, I've got something on to the hmm. I'm still dealing with no snowman build. I know she's playing with Dice and she's never built a snowman. I've never built a snowman. I've never like stayed overnight in a place with snow. I feel like if that had happened, I would have ended up building a snowman. But it was always a day trip. It was always like, get there, get things done. And then we're tired. So let's just go home sort of things. Like always so tired. Yeah. So at some point, I'll have to get myself to somewhere with snow in a cabin and just frolic for several days. The next winter, you know I would frolic in the snow. Oh, yeah. It's actually, I have to show you the snow suit I want to buy. You're going to buy a snow suit? Of course you are. When's the last time you went to, never mind. One of these. I've seen these. I know what you're doing. Yeah. I know what you're bringing up. There's one in particular I want, but they're sold out. So I'm definitely, that's a problem. That's a problem. Goodness. The one I really want is sold out, which is so very sad. Snow 46 months of the year. Yeah, I'm not interested in that. That's a little bit too much. It's a bit too much happening here in Portland at the moment. I didn't sign up for all this snow. I didn't think Portland was such a snowy place. Whoa, this is weird. Somebody made a kitchen backsplash out of LEDs. That would get obnoxious really fast. Oh, gosh. Oh, my, it's all of LEDs. That's terrible. Oh, I hate it. That's a little bit too much.  It's a fake aquarium. Oh, and now it's a waterfall. It's a waterfall. It's pretty. That's not pretty. Just because you can. It was lava. Your kitchen is hot. Your kitchen is so hot. Oh, now it's like bubbles. Now when you're in a bubbly percolator, percolator. Oh, it's a shark. It's an aquarium. Look at that. It's a shark player. Ah, shark, shark, shark, shark. I like that. It's acceptable. But seriously, there's too much light going on. Oh, my God, now it's like a hockey game. It is. Oh, gosh. That's kind of funny. That's funny. I don't mean that. You never miss the hockey game again. I wonder how many things got burned. Can't even. That would just be I mean, much LEDs there. Go away. They could go away. All right, so next week, we're going to bring our funnier side stories for Thursday. Yes. Information for Thursday. When do you get over here? In the morning. I get into town. That's a good question. Nope, wrong thing. What am I doing? I think I closed my calendar. Midday. Midday Thursday, I think. And then I think our call time is 5 30 PM. OK. At the Academy of Sciences. OK. Well, send me your flight info, because depending on the timing, if it is midday, I might be able to pick you up. OK. It sounds because I told work I was doing a half day. OK. Awesome. And where's Justin? I'm here. You're there. Where's your picture? What are you doing? Picking your nose or something? Yeah, hang on. Justin, when are you getting to San Francisco on Thursday? Yeah, when are you coming? What time would you like me to be there? I don't know. I guess it depends on when Kiki's flight is. OK. We'll figure that out. We'll group text. We'll group text to that. Yeah. I think as soon as I'd be leaving here is probably about 1 o'clock. OK. Then leave there at 1 o'clock for sure. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, 1 would be good. That would get me like three. Yeah, I should arrive about 2 o'clock. Well, pick you up on Thursday. It's about 2 o'clock on Thursday. SFO, you're flying into SFO? OK, I'll pick you up. OK. Awesome. That'd be great. Yeah. And then. It's a pretty easy drive from the zoo over to the airport. Yeah, it's only like 20 minutes. It's fine. Yeah, I'll pick you up, and then we'll swing by my house where I'll grab my laptop because we'll need that, right? Probably. And then we can head over that way and maybe camp out at a restaurant or something to go over stuff or in the academy or whatever we want. I'm going to pick up my badge tomorrow, I think. OK, because I sent you all the information. Yes. You got that, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So when will the episode start on Thursday? That is a wonderful question. I will find out. Last time I saw that we will be on some time between 6 PM and 10 PM. Actually, I'm going to. Our call time is 5 30, so I'm going to email my dude now. Great. What time is our performance? Are they streaming it? It's if we can make it happen. OK, so depending on the Wi-Fi. So probably Wi-Fi depends on a lot of factors. So I'm hoping we can make it happen. But do you know which? I may not be able to because I have one laptop I can bring. You'll have your laptop, and then blah. And yes, I'm going to bring my audio recording device so there will be a local recording of the show. And do you remember which venue location in the academy we're at? It was on the terrace. Or were we in Africa Hall? I don't remember. Did it say where we are? Or maybe I just know there are three spots in the academy where people are performing, and I wasn't sure which one. So I know I've done events for other things at the academy where I've had to use Wi-Fi. And so I know there's some spots where Wi-Fi is better than others. OK, so I'm just asking where to. I don't think they've told us anything about where our performance is yet. That's fine. So yeah, our Wi-Fi quality will just depend on that. Yeah, I could have also just missed it. I got a lot of things running around my head lately. Yeah, lots going on. Sometimes I just miss things. I'll do let's see what emails I have. Yeah, somewhere in the 6 to 10 PM range so far. And that's all I know. All time is 5.30. That's all I know. Cool. Great. Exciting stuff. Yeah, so next week we'll do a regular show. I don't know if we will have an interview next week or not. I'm trying. Yeah, so Hot Rod, if I can periscope it, I mean, so I'm going to try and do whatever I can to make a broadcast happen. I'm going to try and do it through the normal YouTube channel so it goes out through our website the way that things normally happen. But if we are limited by computers and technology and Wi-Fi and all that kind of stuff, absolutely I might just turn it into a live periscope. Might just do that. And I think that could be cool. And it's possible also if the Wi-Fi is acceptable, just turn on a Hangout on my computer and then just ignore it and put my screen in front of it and just do all my stuff that I normally do with my computer. It's going to be a 40-minute show, so. And I have a soundboard. I'll just keep dropping things. I have a soundboard if we want it, but I bet they're going to be taking care of all that, right? Yeah, they're doing AV. Yeah, they're doing the AV, but we might have to do our own music. So like we did, like we've done before. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. I can do that from my laptop. You can do it from yours. We can figure something out. Yeah, and hopefully we'll get video output so we can put images up for the stories that we're talking about also. Yep. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, so what did you, what aspect of the show did you, what clip did you share? Do you remember what you shared when you did the application? When did I apply? Before Baltimore, right, or after Baltimore? No, it was like in August or September. OK, so then I just sent them the link to the New York City show. They asked for a five minute clip, and I was like, hey, I don't have a five minute clip, but I do have this fully produced entire show that we did in New York. Nice, OK. Awesome. All right, all right, perfect. So I was like, I don't have the time or abilities to edit a reel right now. So here, I think I did that. And then I also linked one of the shorts. I think I used one of the shorts also. Oh, cool. I don't remember which short. Oh, now she's yelling, too. I got everybody, sorry. But it's not yelling. Yeah, which short did I send them? I have no idea. It doesn't matter, we're in. Now what matters is what we're going to do live. Yeah, I kind of I mostly just linked on the New York show because I thought it was like, you know, just very a fun atmosphere.  So it was at least it was very representative of the show we would actually be giving. So, yeah. So, but Blair, what you have to bring has to be enough to get you on Chris Hardwick's show, right? Yeah, yeah, that or I just want to I want to be on comedy. Bang, bang. OK, so there you go. So just really, I feel like I could be on Douglas movies pretty easily. Just be really funny, right?  Just don't be nervous. Thanks. Don't screw up at all. Thanks for the tip. Yeah, just don't. No, see, I'm going to go get my free massage at the performers lounge and I'm going to find a way to get my massage right next to someone famous like your Chris Hardwick. That's a good idea. Strike up a convo. This is a good plan. Yeah, I'm going to be at the open bar for the pre-show. Yeah. That sounds about power for the course. There's not. Now you got to go for it. Then I have no pre-show plan. I don't know. Maybe there's stuff in the green room. Dear, we don't know. There could be. But yeah, probably not. I know. Did you put anything in your rider like blue M&M's? No. Nope. A limo at 70 degrees. Well, do you know the story behind the no green M&M's? Yeah, it's so that they knew whether they were reading it or not. Yeah, whether they were paying attention to detail. Yeah, Ed, what happens in the massage room? Stays in the massage room. Oh, dear. Like a massage. Yeah. Yes. I want to go to bed, you guys. I'm real tired. It's late night. I'm a bit tired also. Not that late. But I am also of the yawning. Now it's. I know. I'm of the. I can go read a book. I can go read a book persuasion. I want to lay down. So while we sleep, let's all come up with something to turn the show into a dynamic comedy event for the show. I've picked some stories potentially for next week. OK. Like, like scheduling my leisure time. If you're good with that, if you think that's enough, you know, go to bed now. Don't stay up researching for the pure gold. Oh, I'm sorry, Justin. Are you are you telling me about how to prepare for the show? Is that something that you're telling me how to do right now? No, I'm just saying if you're happy and satisfied with the little bit of, you know, content that you've got, you think it's going to be good enough.   Well, you can't, you know, why not? Why not? It's a long life. And nobody ever looked back and said, I wish I hadn't slept as much. People wish they'd gotten more sleep is what they wish for their lives. How else am I going to get to live to be 200 if I don't get any sleep, Justin? Yeah, or you could just sleep less and live now. And no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm I'm going to I'm actually not going to go to sleep. I'm I've got a I've got a painting I'm working on over here. I'm going to go work on this painting for a little bit. And I'm going to fall asleep. Flare conversation in outer space. That's funny. Yeah. Oh, true. That's true. I want to lay down. Oh, my gosh. All right, everybody. Are we supposed to have jokes, though? Or is this like a stand up stand up? We're at the science. We're at the science place. We're at the. We're doing our podcast. We are doing our show. We're doing the show. Science show, right? If this is so it's so SF sketch fest is comedy, right? But it's a science. It's it's a very science themed event. And how the sketch doesn't have to be funny. It can be us doing our show. Sometimes we can be funny. I'm all the comedians are going to be doing like fart jokes. And and we're going to be the thing that has the science thing. No, OK, so for example, what we're going to be is a science event.  They've done stuff at sketch fest. Star talk live. That's that's actually how they're opening sketch fest tomorrow night is with Star Talk Live with Eugene Merman and Bill Nye. Yeah, that's very. Yeah, so that's the look at look at the event and look at the other things performing our night. So there's three different halls where people are performing. In one hall, there's like straight up ridiculous, funny, not science at all stuff. In one hall, there's sciencey stuff that's also funny. That's where we are. And then in another hall, there's like sketch comedy going on. So we're in the hall with sciencey stuff that's also funny. But yeah, that can be funny sometimes. So but we don't have to be. We don't have to come up with a sketch. We don't have to come up with jokes. We don't have to come up with. It feels like we should be doing sketch comedy, is all I'm saying. No, based on the name of the. We're not doing sketch comedy. We're doing our show. We weren't we're not we weren't asked to come. We applied and we weren't accepted based on the potential for our ability to do sketch comedy. It was because our podcast was OK. Right. There's a if I search the available Wi-Fi in my neighborhood here, hardly strictly sketch humor. Nice. There's there's one that's called Bill. Why the science? Fine. And it's not me. Oh, that's amazing about it. That's why I love Davis. Oh, there's also a Dumbledore for and a lot of just boring. Nothing. OK, not so boring. Seeking of Dumbledore, I'm going to go listen to Harry Potter on tape while I go to sleep. Oh, hmm. Don't laugh at it. I'm I'm participating in a Harry Potter trivia contest in a couple of weeks. So I'm I'm brushing up. It hurt. It's not that's my job for passion. That is my job. That is my no, I'm sorry. I'm brushing up for the trivia contest. That's great. I just fantastic. It's good that you put your work, your study time into that, as opposed to. I'm just imagining that's that's great.  I know it's great. I just want Jim Dale sometimes. Oh, wait, that's what I do. Jim Dale, he's great. He's an award winning. Audiobook narrator, narrator, narrator, narrator. You know, I'm done. What just happened? What did I miss? HP, listen to the HP. HP narrator. I'm gonna... H. P. Gonna narrate the H. P. No, no, no, no, no. Not Steven Fry. Jim Dale. Jim Dale. Steven Fry. He's great. He is nowhere as good as Jim Dale's version. FYI. Just so everyone in our universe knows. I'm not biased. I don't know it. I have no idea what you're talking about. You have two choices when it comes to your Harry Potter on audio Jim Dale or Stephen Fry and you would think Stephen Fry would be the way to go Not the case Jim Dale, you know what the choice in this house is gonna be Me reading it chapter by chapter to my son. That's also good Because in this house, I'm an award-winning narrator. Good. Good Good good my kids get my kids like I love when I read them books and tell they learn how to read and Then realize I'm not reading the book Like some really good stories out there now that you know, I've got other pictures that go with it, but Yeah, they realized there's quite a bit of ad-living Ruins the whole magic when they learn to read then they're like, I'm just gonna read it myself I want to know what's actually I want to know what's actually happening in the story Papa.  This is not what every story is about. I Know I could really record my own Harry Potter series Good, right Yeah, you could break it. I mean, that's the beat of it. You can that's what you do when you read is your self-narrating self-narrating Yeah, switching off exactly Identity for yeah reading books with parents before bed loved it My dad used to used to read to me and we did the same we'd switch once once I could read Switch off chapters. That's pretty cool so much fun. Yeah. Oh and then post it on YouTube I'll have to get my my choosing hat You're what? choosing it the hat The sorting hat the sorting hat whatever Okay, okay later nerds later I Will own that I'm out. Hey, you know what? You know what? I'm surrounded by the snow. So let it go I'll take my Harry Potter. You can take that No, first of all my kids turn this into a wrap Let it go. Let it go. Can't hold it back anymore. Let it go. Let it go turn around and shut that door Yeah, it's not turn the door No, you know, it's amazing and I've got to get this video at some point I think I talked about it my my middle child satya can wrap out the entire Hamilton thing. Oh wow She's got like and she's always been really good at remembering Lyrics and verse like it's she remembers all songs, but she can like Perform like she can do the whole show And she does it where she's like plucking on a violin because that's all they've taught her how to do so far as Pluck this thing, but she's plucking out like this rhythm on The violin while like doing the whole show like I haven't seen it or heard it But I know it now That's good. All right, you guys okay later nerds. I'm gonna go. I read my choose your own adventure Combination star. Yeah, you go watch doctor who and I'm the nerd.  So that's true now reflect on it Blair I'm gonna go watch doctor who and you are the nerd reflect on that Because that just said something very important I don't have one but it's so good to say that Say goodnight, Kiki Good night, Kiki Say goodnight Justin Justin goodnight minions. Good night minions. We will see you next. Yeah, maybe twice Maybe twice next week. That is the hope. Have a good week