Oh blue inch of green. We are live Blair is multicolored With flashing lights. There is There is some kind of electronic illumination magic happening over at the Blair the Blair la house Yes, you can do you you choose it is your home studio. You can be whatever color You dream to be this evening. Welcome everyone. This is the live broadcast of the this week in science podcast We hope that you're ready for a good show full of the science We're here to talk about the science with all of you and you know how it goes This is the live thing that's happening right now. Everybody watching on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter. No, we rehearsed this And that's true It may get edited for the podcast But you won't hear any of this in the podcast what we're saying right now There's nowhere Yeah Before this happening now Which was a combination of face spiders. No space spiders. Okay, and that was totally fine Yeah Sometimes you walk into the the preamble to the show Nothing makes sense that it's normal and sometimes you walk into the show and nothing makes sense But I hope that we can help you make sense of the science news this week with a few fun stories and some good discussion and Yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot of enjoyment of the science together. Okay, we're ready for the show We're going to do it. Yeah Amble to the preamble. Yes later Happen to a show Indeed it is And we will begin this show in a countdown of three two this is Twist this week in science episode number eight hundred fifty four recorded on Wednesday December 8th 2021 What time does science say to eat? Hey there, I'm dr. Kiki and tonight on the show.  You've just crossed over into this week in science coming up next I Science to you Kiki and Blair And a good science to you too Justin Blair and everyone out there Welcome to another episode of this week in science. We are back again To talk about the science We have science stories Justin welcome back We hope that you are having a lovely honeymoon Yes Yes, and that you've got many well wishes Yeah, people were like Hey Way to finally stop being single all the time. There you go. Yeah way to do it You figured it out. We're like about time mostly was the responses, oh People people people it's about time for the science though. I have stories about pollution correlations primate cavities and proteins to fight aging Those are the good kind they're the good Got somewhere in here, okay, I've got just good news Melting ice edition Yeah, I have unrepeatable science experiments unreproducible bear feet of Tanzania and Why every prison should be a college Interesting very interesting Blair. What is in the animal corner? Oh, yes the animal corner I have a story about bird feathers and another about orbiting spiders and then outside of the corner I have a story about smoke salmon the food and also Chewing gum for COVID Hmm, and that's not like a fundraiser where it's like how many pieces of chewing gum Can you stuff in your mouth to make money for no or not by long you chew the same piece of gum? Yes. Oh, is this gonna be like all the The previously chewed gum like on banisters under tables and on the subways No, no, don't touch it any don't touch it Well, I'll tell you all about it, okay As we jump into the show because that coat COVID update is coming in a little bit as are all those stories I do want to remind you that if you are not yet subscribed to the twist podcast You can find this week in science on just about every podcast platform out there We are also on YouTube and on Facebook and on Twitch for live-streamed episodes and you can find us as twist science on Instagram on Twitch and on Twitter. We're out there. We're doing things spreading the science. We hope that you follow Now, let's see if you can follow us down this winding trail of science breadcrumbs. Okay, let's talk about Pollution correlations.  They looked at a 150 million people in the United States over eight years nine million people in Sweden over 30 years and we're trying to figure out what Factors might be involved in the shifting sex ratios of males to females in human babies because there is You know even odds that you're going to have the x y or the xx chromosomes There are other odds in there for other determinations, but for a general averaging. It's pretty much even odds that you're gonna have Males or females and so researchers have been trying to figure out all these many societal biological environmental issues factors that could potentially be shifting The predominance to males over females because they have seen a Larger number of males being born than females over the years. So why is it happening? Why is it slightly skewed in that direction? Well this massive look at this massive collection of data Just found a whole bunch of correlations and they really just trying to pull statistical significance out of this massive collection of data and It could be said that they are that they were digging For trends that they were trend hunting. It's not really p-hacking But this could be on the level of similarity to some of the the large G was the the genome-wide Surveys that find statistical significance between different genes and and biological factors that we've discovered are not really is as As as amazing as we thought they were because they were just kind of digging in these big big piles of data for connections so that said they found connections between Aluminum chromium mercury And they also and these are airborne and water borne pollutants They also found an opposite correlation with higher levels of lead in soil So more lead in the soil led to fewer male babies being born, but then they also looked at stressful events Hurricane Katrina Didn't have any effect on the sex ratios But the Virginia Tex shooting in the United States did it affected the The numbers of males versus females so you can look at some of these correlations and go You know Virginia Tex shooting versus Hurricane Katrina and what are you talking about and how is that going to have an effect? And there are a lot of things in there that There are correlational trends that it's like yeah Probably isn't anything at all and thank goodness the researchers do say these are correlations But maybe they point to a direction where real research should be done Nope Yeah, this one's tough for me I think that it's in the life of a human outside of a lab you can't How can you possibly narrow this down to one thing? Mm-hmm. I don't think you can Yeah, I mean so maybe there these are you know as similar to the GWAS to those genomic analyses and correlations Like a small percentage influence Maybe they have a small It's pushing things over the edge just a little bit, but yeah Study cells they need to study Mechanisms they need to be looking deeper into it But yeah, this was like digging in a mud puddle and going all I found dirt at the bottom Yeah, so Mechanism all that stuff does come later and you kind of start with a correlative You have to have a thing that makes you start zeroing in on something in the first place And so correlative evidence for things or correlative associations of things is a great place to start looking for these things like the lead in the soil versus the You know birth rate of the males versus females is something that might be interesting enough to look into But it I think they do a good job in a weird way of showing the limits of Relying on that by using the hurricane Affected a huge swat of an entire state row of people No effect and then the umpteenth Shooting at a school that year alone having this dramatic effect shows you that like well You could have been possibly like what was the you know, what was the topic on the the John Oliver show? This week and how did that affect and how did that affect right? Oh, well, you know, he talked about this subject which is controversial and the birth rate went this way and the next week it was more jokes And so they went the other way So it shows the limits of using correlative at the same time. I think so. Yeah, that's why that's why when you do These things they have to be there has to be a level of previous knowledge Have brought to bear so something like an exposure to a heavy metal in the soil Might be something you might know that have to say hey We've seen different effects and other species with this now We're looking at the correlative between where this pollution exists and birth rates in humans And we found a signal that we can then go and investigate Versus just blanket looking for like for those p-value hacking values or whatever looking for hits You you start to create them without previous knowledge and then that that's when they become less Yeah, but I think it's important for people to understand when they look at some of the headlines Like they're probably this week seeing headlines that say sex ratios at birth linked to pollutants It's like, oh, which ones how's it? How does that work? What's going on? Oh pollution bad? Yes, pollution is bad. It's not helpful for many things But this the word linked Usually means there's a correlation. It doesn't usually imply some sort of mechanism or proof And so it's a good way to to critically View the headlines that you might look past before you go. Oh, right. I know this no Yeah, I think the word link is I think the word length is used inappropriately actually I would say the fact that they're saying it's linked Is inappropriate Right, is it I it's just it's it's correlated. It's that they found some things that look like all they might go together Yeah, anyway Be on your lookout when you're looking out there at those headlines everyone Justin, what do you want to tell us about right now? Oh I've got just good news this week Yeah, that's the news segment It's designed to put a good science news story in your head despite the subject matter maybe being something that's not as Ideally suited for positive information things that you would want to have a be thinking about just good news melting ice edition same phrase University researchers looking into retreating glaciers in North America have found that lots of freshwater glaciers To produce more than 6,000 kilometers of potential new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100 So there's some 46,000 glaciers just between southern British Columbia and South Central Alaska and They're melting rather rapidly. It seems underneath them is bedrock and they will as These melts take place. They're going to create new tributaries new rivers new Lake areas and they're going to create some a lot of salmon friendly Landscapes these are the landscapes that are going to have water fresh water with Access to the ocean so the salmon are going to be able to find it swim up there lay eggs reproduce All the conditions they need for a salmon colony This is cloning voice of Pitman who's one of the researchers involved in looking all this It's a common misconception that all salmon return home to the streams. They were born in most do but many individuals will stray migrating into new streams to spawn and if conditions are favorable the Population can increase rapidly so they have another example Something called the Stonefly Creek in Glacier Bay, Alaska there are some glaciers that retreated back in the 70s and these salmon pink salmon moved in to the retreated area and became a spawning ground so potential good news for Salmon habitats in some areas where there used to be glaciers and other ice melting news a new technique designed developed by McMaster University in Canada Samples DNA from ice core permafrost Which is good news because there is still permafrost to use this technology on at the moment Although rapidly melting the technology has showed up just in time. They published in Nature Communications. They Preachers present a 30,000 year DNA record of Past environments from cord permafrost sediments extracted from the Klondike region in the Yukon Researchers use DNA capture enrichment technology to observe fluctuating animal and plant Communities at different time points Very notably they found the presence of both woolly mammoth and North American horses Until as recently as 5,000 years ago So that's a lot a lot more recently than we thought Yeah, it's about five six thousand years More current. Yeah Then our last run Because that's there on that eleven thousand year time point is a bit of a bottleneck I think when we lose the saber-tooth Saber-tooth tiger and some other Large Large fauna and North America and it's not the horses and Man with one way to but no man with the horses. So This is a quoting. Who is this here? We this is Tyler merch. He's a postdoctoral researcher at McMaster's Department of Anthropology and a lead author of the study Now that we have these technologies we realize how much life history information is Stored in the permafrost the amount of genetic data and permafrost is quite enormous and really shows Really last for a scale of ecosystem and evolutionary reconstruction that is unparalleled with other methods to date, which is really amazing if you think about it like all of the All of the time we spend Fossil hunting we've got to find a thing that happens to be preserved well enough and aired enough or buried enough Situation for us to even find the evidence of it. Here's permafrost There's frozen soil that's been there for 30,000 years And they're able to use this this technique to gather DNA out of the layers of the frozen soil and Reconstruct from once it had come Yeah, and I'm thinking I mean we've talked so much on the show about you know, oh ancient bacteria or fungi that could be Thawed and potentially come back spores that could once again become active and and and join the modern world that and not have been seen for for thousands of years if That's possible then why wouldn't? DNA be just this DNA these records of these other animals. That's a five You know you take one and one and sometimes you don't put it together to make two You need you need you need the scientists to lead you there This is a Ross Mackie the American Museum of Natural History co-authors is a The horse that lived in Yukon 5,000 years ago is directly related to the horse species we have today biologically this makes the horse a Native North American mammal and it should be treated as such So We think of the horses being introduced to North America. Yeah, but the horse that was introduced in North America Was in North America not that long ago 5,000 years ago Well, there's different types of horses on different continents, right? I think that's the thing. No That's the other thing. That's not quite quite true. So The horses that were that that propagated in Asia You know with the you know the Mongolian hordes the for the horse first horse riders Like they were like really like dedicated horse riding People those horses used to move back and forth from North America to to Northeast Asia when that whenever they There was there were grasslands between the two the bearing straight was grasslands for a tremendous amount of time and Horses move back and forth and they'd get stuck on one side of that And then they'd be there would freeze again. We'd be a little wander back and forth again So so this idea that we we have horses on such disparate parts of the planet Actually, it's you know if you move the map over those parts of the map when you have the U.s. At one end and all of Europe is always shown on the other side of the map and you can scooch that that globe around and it's all connected at some point Anyway, it is This is probably part of the bigger conversation about native versus invasive species and right, you know, where Where did it come from and when and how fact far back are you talking and yeah, you know, and At the level Yeah, it also shows that the idea We've had this conversation before about re-introducing the mammoth Because it was 10 11,000 years since it's been in North America. That's only 5,000 years How are the wild horses doing in the America's Justin? Great Land management started shooting. Yeah, they're doing so well that the BLM wants to get rid of them So how would the mammoth do? Probably the same. Yeah, I really do just great just like bison and cattle. Okay Blair. Tell me a story Well, I want to talk about them specifically Danish smoked salmon Yeah Yes, so this is a study from University of Copenhagen looking at smoked salmon, which is extremely popular in Danish shopping markets always everyone's eating smoked salmon and the majority of smoked salmon in Denmark is sourced from Norwegian agriculture farms Conventionally farm salmon from Norway Just like farm salmon here has a questionable reputation Everyone wants the wild cock salmon, right?  So the act of having to source food for salmon is not an environmentally Friendly practice not to mention because they're kind of in these in these confined and high population environments they have to be pumped with vitamins and Antibiotics and all sorts of other things also. They're often died. There's lots of things happening with farm salmon Where if you're trying to be an environmentalist and maybe also if you're trying to show off in your grocery cart You're going to buy the wild caught salmon. The wild caught salmon is also usually more expensive so What University of Copenhagen wanted to do was to take 92 Danes and ask them to taste samples of Conventional organic and wild caught smoked salmon. The first round was a blind test in which the test subjects were Uninformed what type of salmon they were tasting and then in the second they were they were informed as to what they were tasting Can you guess what happened? I'm going to imagine it was like the wine tasting where they had people test taste Which is the the cheap and which was the expensive wine and they really couldn't tell and they picked the two buck chuck Right, that's exactly what happened. So in the blind test the conventional or an organic Sammons One over the wild salmon. So the farm salmon did better The wild salmon scored significantly lower than both of the farmed products, but Once the test subjects were informed what they were eating It completely changed among the farmed it responded as the conventional salmon placed last Wild salmon took second and organic first and so in this case This seems to be a very specific bias that people want to say that the organic is the tastiest this could be a A larger issue that that If you ask someone does the organic produce taste better, they might tell you yes, but in a blind taste test that may or may not be the case And so part of this has to do with the perception that wild caught salmon should taste better because it's better for the environment And it's more healthy um, but the other thing that they wanted to bring up is that farm salmon is Much easier to get and is cheaper And so therefore taste buds could be accustomed to farm salmon Over what people usually eat Right another option is that the wild salmon has less flavor because it's leaner than the farm salmon so There could be a couple things going on here I think it's an interesting thing to mention that it could be about kind of confirmation of familiarity Of just yeah, this is what i'm used to this is what I grew up on but I also think that this is a a good reminder that often the The food that's not as good for us tastes better Well, I think it means just that if you smoke food If you're having smoked salmon you could smoke a shoe at that point You're not tasting Fish anymore Well except you are because they still had a very clear preference Right. Yeah, so if if if it doesn't matter what you're smoking then they would be able to tell the difference It's hard not to find a smoked fish. That's the problem and then mark. It's hard to find something that's not smoked Sure, and I'm not a big fan Just give me the fish. Well, just you know, do yeah, just stick with it.  Well, anyway, I think so a couple takeaways from this one being If you want people to choose the more environmentally friendly option label it Yeah, because then people will choose based on the fact that they want to be environmentally friendly Yeah, or healthier or whatever it is. So Labels actually could benefit Basically the act of greenwashing could benefit the environment if used appropriately, which I think is funny, but also Yeah, it's just a good reminder that What the thing that's healthier or cleaner or better doesn't always taste better And you can't always tell the difference. Yeah You don't always make the the the right choice. Yeah, and it might not be healthier. Hey, I've got an organic thing here It's taste worse and it's less healthy, but it's better for the planet Like that's another it's like a third real option right there you know, you have to admit at some point like Sometimes the thing with a lot of preservatives and additives that tore down part of a rainforest It's tastier snack It's not tastier once you say it like that Justin Ah, I'm not nothing that tore down a rainforest is going to taste delicious But when you're thinking of delicious things, have you ever thought about how those delicious? Yeah, how those delicious things affect your teeth And how you know when you're going for the really delicious stuff that possibly has sugar in it suddenly you're potentially prone to more cavities Or if you're drinking something acidic that maybe that's going to affect the enamel the dentin and the enamel on your teeth Making you prone to more cavities Have you ever thought about whether or not other primates get cavities too? Yes, I have I'm gonna guess that I was gonna guess that you had there I don't I can't think of Uh single time when I've seen another primate species brush its teeth Exactly so Blair have you have as a as a As a zookeeper in a previous incarnation Uh, did you ever brush a primate's teeth other than your own? No, however, whenever we did a full workup We would do a close tooth inspection To make sure and sometimes actually a few times a human dentist came out To work on primate teeth Oh fascinating Yeah Did you and this is going to be definitely anecdotal because you probably weren't looking for it But could you say What different primates ate based on whether or not They got cavities were some primates more or less prone to cavities. Oh No, I have no idea I feel like I feel like carnivore teeth usually is grosser Is that a thing they're grosser from the meat eating aspect, but uh some researchers Just published there the other way around. Yeah, they published a study of They they looked at 11 different primate species a bunch of different a bunch of different catarine primates and Looked to see what was going on in their teeth. So checked bacterial levels for dental carries looked for I guess you don't call it weathering, but erosion periodontal disease in the teeth They looked at chimpanzees western lowland gorillas Clauses gibbon Hamadryas baboons pigtailed langurs japanese macaque dense mona monkey blue monkey mandrel Raffles banded langur and the menta Why langur? All of the specimens were wild So none of these were receiving zoo diets. These were all wild diets that they were eating and while Cavities have been seen in zoo primates because and and we're feeding them whatever food seems good From the zookeeper perspective wild animals are potentially out there. Yeah getting their own food And they found that out of the 11.  This practice is called wagging They they wadge these fruits in their mouth and suck out the liquid So they determined that yes, chimpanzees gorillas A bunch of these animals that tend to enjoy the sweeter fruits Had cavities whereas others that don't do this wagging behavior don't get or they didn't Have The cavities So that in itself was very interesting something new but really it's uh, it's interesting to note that Cavities are shared by many different species of animals if they have teeth They have the potential for getting cavities But they don't always have dentists unless they're in the zoo Well, they also the the other thing that's really important to remember is they they often don't live long enough to get cavities in the wild When you have full-time veterinary care in captivity animals often live a lot longer than they do in the wild Which allows their teeth to To rot right interestingly though this particular study they found more decayed teeth In female chimpanzees than male chimpanzees. They don't know why that was But overall Their conclusion is that the cavities seem to be indicative the patterns of the cavities themselves seem to be indicative of food Processing behaviors and diet so by looking at teeth of maybe Trapped animals that you're sampling or of deceased animals that you've discovered You can get insight into what they eat how they eat and their ecological behaviors Which is kind of cool cavities The scientist's best friend Yes Justin do you have another story you want to reproduce this one? uh What was it? What did they call a thing? Uh wadging wadging.  You are engaging in wadging Oh It's basically chewing on or playing with something that is non chewable or digestible in your mouth Okay Wadging wadging Who knew that was a thing new word vocabulary vocabulary for the night wadging All right, this next story is troubling To say the least eight years ago team of researchers launched a project To carefully replicate influential high impact lab experiments in cancer research Uh, they picked papers and major science journals like cell science nature Uh between the years 2010 and 2012 All the papers were preliminary research So this is research on mice or in a lab dish type of a thing These all were things that hinted at future therapeutic uses Results in all these studies. No doubt had caveats of optimism embedded in phrases like May one day lead to the foundations of a new path to open doors Into novel therapies or approaches to advance the science of blah, blah, blah, blah They recreated 50 experiments And there was a problem About half of the claims could not be replicated And actually it may have been much much worse than that because uh while they're Talking about they're publishing about the 50 research experiments Uh only having about 50 percent reproducibility There were actually about 200 experiments in 53 papers at the outset of their project But there was insufficient information about how most of the experiments were done Uh, so muddy and vague were the published papers and detailing experiments That uh only the 50 could be done with confidence and even then Uh, uh, I think about 40 third of those needed them to contact the researchers to get more information about reagents involved or techniques involved Some of the researchers they contact He listed as Unhelpful some were more than unhelpful 32 they listed as more than unhelpful, which is you have to think is like Not helpful. It's just i'm not going to help you more than unhelpful Sounds like they were upset that their research was they're actively unhelpful Yeah, sending them bad data. Yeah something Yeah, ultimately 50 replication experiments from 23 of the original papers were completed generating data about the uh repeatability of a total of 158 effects reported in those papers Replication effect sizes Uh were 85 smaller on average than in the original findings Only 40 46 of effects replicated successfully On more criteria than they had failed at And original positive results were half as likely to replicate Successfully actually 40 percent Uh, and then they had uh null results from the originals that replicated 80 percent 20 percent of null results produced results when they hadn't before Collectively the evidence suggests opportunities to improve Transparency sharing and the rigor of pre clinical research. So there this is this is uh I get not uh, these are not drugs that went to market that were being tested Those have made it through many many Rounds of evidence and experiment and Trials and all of that sort of thing. This is all preliminary stuff There is this is quoting, uh, marcia. McNutt who's the president of the national academy of sciences There's little incentive For researchers to share methods and data So that others can verify the work Researchers lose prestige if their results don't hold up to scrutiny And there are built-in rewards for publishing discoveries so there's pressure to publish and I don't want you to look at how I did my science I don't want you to make fun of me if I made a mistake kind of a thing That's not a good system That's not a good system to be There's it's not wanting to be made fun of but it's also, you know Maybe the data was Transposed or maybe there's something incorrectly entered because they you know had a student entering instead of doing it themselves Or there were no quality control methods to make sure the data was entered correctly or Or fraud or there's outright fraud. Yeah, when you're talking about 50 percent Well, and but it's the publisher parish pipeline is a real thing and it is not it is not created in a way that It benefits science because this is the kind of stuff that comes out of it people rush to get papers out They don't make sure they've got the the the best data You know, it's like, oh, we didn't okay publish Or do it again. It's and there and there's just not enough money To maintain the pipeline of let's do that experiment over again and let's do it again And let's make sure our methods are really rigorous, you know, sometimes it's Labs running on a shoestring trying to get Daniel Smith and Daniel Smith in the chat room saying or just buy a seeping in and that's 100 percent Going to be part of this you you believe You believe your your experiment Will reveal something important And you run your experiment and you get a signal and you say, aha, this means x y z therefore So it could just be bias. It could be bad Some poor experiment setup part of it is just it could be that people aren't sharing how they did the experiments in the first place Yeah I love the there are the pre the pre experiment Open servers that researchers are using now where researchers Put their plan for their study Out to be critiqued by members of the community and their statistical method methods like basically all the logic for what they're going to do Before they do the experiment And so then the community can say no you need to change this statistical test or this isn't this reagent isn't going to work And so the process is transparent from the very beginning, but those are Those are really just getting started at this point Yeah, this is uh, there was a couple things that they found here among the studies did not hold up was one that found a certain gut bacteria Was tied to colon cancer in humans another was for a type of drug that shrunk breast tumors and mice A third was a mouse study of a potential prostate cancer drug Didn't hold up although that one apparently is Has been moving through and is in preclin or is in clinical trials right now so Some of this is going to be not being transparent perhaps about how you did an experiment If you've got a result that can't be replicated Is it because somebody didn't want to share how they did their experiment? In the first place and if so The information that's out there is that false information And is that and then going to mislead others down so many questions. So many questions. It goes way A lot of it is uh, so this is the this is the from The folks came from here This is the second major analysis by the reproducibility project Is what this is called. I think this is through the center for open science who's doing this In 2015, this is the group that found similar problems when they tried to repeat experiments That were in the psychology Right. Yeah, and similar. Yeah similar problems were found lack of ability to reproduce stuff. I think You know psychology is impacting For a lot of those studies. It was impacting things like self-help books But you know also mental health practices and other things but It with the cancer research that very often is directly impacting medications treatments um You know and heading for research dollars, you know, this is it's all research dollars If we have if we have this pool of research dollars that we're going to spend and there are individuals Doing confirmation bias within their experiments have bad experience poor experiments set up Are falsifying results of their experiments to the you know, there's a point when you are now Engaged in the form of theft of of those research dollars Uh Shouldn't shouldn't be allowed and so there should be a better standard of transparency And for these experiments to be done in a way that can be replicated anyway Just for the sake of science. Yeah about your institution that you work for. Yeah and speaking Get it right and speaking of replication and What you do over and over again something we do every night. Hopefully many of us sleep I mean, it's hard to come by for some And there are those of us who have shift work that keeps them awake all night long and we've talked a lot on the show about How do you Stay healthy when we know that there is a mismatch between The circadian rhythm of the normal 24 hour day with the sun coming up and wanting to sleep at night and the timing of shift work that can be negatively and has been shown to be negatively effective on on many people and Research just published in science advances looked at the question of How does food play into this and the timing of when you eat So what time does science say you should eat? In the daytime according to this study Yes, we should all be eating in the daytime and shift workers apparently based on this study in which they They Mismatched they dysregulated people's schedule and had them exist in a shift work type schedule or a normal schedule and then had them eat In daytime or at nighttime and measured glucose glucose tolerance intolerance insulin levels these factors the glycemic control factors that are Involved in metabolic dysfunction As a result of shift work and previous work had really only ever been done in mice In this they saw that the people it was very small groups like around nine and ten people per group So this is still very small research study, but the effect was very clear That the individuals who stayed up all night, but ate during the day They had better glycemic control than those individuals who shifted their eating habits to their nighttime waking working hours And the mechanism behind this they think is that we have a central Circadian clock that is triggered by light and the melatonin system But that eating affects peripheral zeitgebers the zeitgebers that When you eat it it triggers and retunes other clocks in your body related to metabolism So your brain will be on one clock going this is the day. This is the time sun comes up We're just fine.  And so then they're shouting at each other and they don't get along anymore And you don't want that So this this is interesting because I will say um my personal experience with with a shift worker Is that he does not eat Lunch when he works at night, right?  It's uh, I think it's both Uh, I do think that he doesn't get hungry for food in the same way at night Which might be a response of his body He's like it's nighttime. It's not food time Yeah That's interesting. Yeah, so it's it's an interesting bit of evidence, uh, it's like I said small study, but uh, the animal evidence the cellular evidence the now now humans evidence is accumulating and Yeah, try not to eat at night. It's an easy take home message science says eat during the day time I hope they use this on jeopardy Okay I guess that's it for the first part of the show. Whoo Stories stories stories. This is this week in science I do hope that you are enjoying the stories that we bring to you every week. Please head over to twist.org And get yourself a calendar the twist 2022 calendar is available now for you And for your family and friends as gifts Coming on back for the covet update. Let's try to get through it quickly because we don't like bad news Justin just left you know Justin's like covet update. I'm leaving. All right the omicron variant that we Love to talk about now It's the new the new hot variant on the covet zine Is spreading rapidly around the world causing concern on the basis of potentially increased Transmissibility and immunity evading mutations. It has been detected now in 19 States in the united states But delta is still the dominant variant while neutralization of omicron is decreased by 41 fold This was based on a study of under 20 people So take that with a grain of salt in previously infected or vaccinated individuals Protection against severe outcomes does appear to be maintained so You're vaccinated for the original variants you can still fight off delta And you might not be able to fight off omicron as well But maybe you still won't end up in the hospital Additionally, that's winning That is winning additionally vaccination after infection and booster does seem to get those immune responses Going again boosting the antibodies that do help with protection against omicron So there the boosters and infection do continue to give you some protection It also appears that immunity against delta gained from infection Lasts up to 13 months a study looked at people who had been just Infected with COVID-19 with SARS-CoV-2 and had COVID-19 and how long they seemed to produce antibodies to Protect them against the delta variant not looking at omicron But they saw that the antibody levels from immunity From infection lasted up to about 13 months So if you got Vax if you caught COVID now you can get vaccinated now that omicron's working its way through and All of those antibodies will be additionally protective So all of it can work together to help keep you protected. Yeah, all the antibodies The omicron perseviate variant is showing up everywhere very rapidly. So it is ruining Christmas No, no, it's not for everyone.  Yeah, it's we okay. You can remember the variant There are that first variant the second one the third variant and how those pandemics were slightly different from the one We're now in I think we're just going to be in constant pandemic stage from here on out so hopefully A lot of doctors are and scientists are Thinking that these mutations we're seeing in omicron They are still highlighting the fact that the ACE2 receptor is very important for the virus to gain entry into cells and because of that that limits the mutational ability of the virus and the The ability of the virus to increase its Infectivity or virulence because if it only has limit if the mutations are limited because of that constraint It's going to be better for us However, there's a question well Oh, I was gonna say yeah, you can actually You can mutate into a less lethal version. It could and this is the thing This is the thing and early data early data for omicron has scientists and doctors very optimistic That omicron even though it's highly transmissible might not be as virulent Or dangerous as previous variants Although it could be a vaccine effect as well and it could be you know a bias effect based on different populations that have been vaccinated and the age groups that are ending up in the hospitals, but Right now evidence from South African hospitals do suggest that fewer individuals are on ventilators or oxygen and that You know people have come into the hospital for other reasons and they're like, oh, I have COVID. I didn't even know So this is a good thing in a way But it's too early to celebrate at this point in time but everybody's crossing their fingers that maybe omicron is a step in the direction of a little less nasty Yeah, it's a reminder that a good parasite or a good virus doesn't kill its host Right So it's so many of us it becoming less virulent isn't it doing a bad job It's actually kind of doing a better job at surviving if it can maintain in the environment Without killing its host Yeah, because that's the other thing the what would have actually helped the it became extremely lethal And just killed everyone within the first 24 hours If it didn't that we wouldn't have had this huge spread because all of the hosts would have died almost upon contact It's this whole being sick for weeks and being able to spread it without you know dying right away that that makes a pandemic Oh, it's that early asymptomatic phase where you're like, I feel fine and you're like out You go breathe on everybody You know, that's what I do when I go out in public I breathe on people Pull your mask down and then breathe on Yeah Uh blare that you want to give us some good news about cove. Let's let's let's let's do an upswing Can we can we do it? Good news everyone? I'm gonna tell you this story, but Maybe maybe This is from University of Pennsylvania. It's for a chewing gum that could reduce sars-cov-2 transmission Okay. Um, yeah, so they have have made this chewing gum Which is laced with a plant-grown protein that serves as a trap for covid which reduces the viral load in saliva which is often the main method for transmission And so we know that sars-cov-2 replicates in salivary glands We know that when someone sneezes coughs or speaks or sings or laughs or yells That the virus could be expelled and reach others We know it's aerosolized, but the droplets definitely have a big punch, right? And so the idea of this gum is that it offers an opportunity to neutralize the virus in the saliva Which cuts down on a major source of transmission So this was a combination of two things, which is why I think it's interesting. So originally There were research groups showing that injections of ACE2 could reduce viral load in people with severe infections Meanwhile, there was another line of research Looking at developing a chewing gum infuses plant-grown proteins to disrupt dental plaque So they took those two pieces of research combined them took the ACE2 Protein synthesis in plants And then put that into this gum made out of plants And so for those two things then they were able to have this ACE2 from plants in chewing gum That enables the protein to cross mucosal barriers facilitates binding and incorporates the plant material All together into a delicious cinnamon flavored gum tablet So then they exposed saliva Yeah, they exposed saliva samples from COVID-19 patients to the ACE2 gum And found that the levels of viral RNA fell so quickly that it was almost undetectable Uh, totally not working So here's the other thing I'm thinking about is how much how many other things If you chew gum with a mask on What happens? The mask will fall off or go up or go down It's definitely I don't know if chewing gum is congruent with wearing a mask because I don't know that's one of the things I would let you know that I chew gum and wear a mask. Oh, yeah It just depends on how aggressive it makes it smell nicer I don't know. I don't know how you're going out. Okay. Okay. Okay Uh, you'll say it instead of having masks will have a lot more gum on the sidewalks Yeah, I don't think it's worth surviving a pandemic if everyone's chewing gum I think that's a worse outcome than the Well, that's the other thing like a percentage of people die You know those aerosol graphics where they show how much how many droplets are exiting your mouth if you're walking around Chewing on gum is Maybe but maybe that's actually helping To destroy the virus in the air because of the proteins in the gum Operating is it filtered? I don't know. Anyway, the research team is currently working towards obtaining permission to conduct a clinical trial So that they can officially evaluate whether the approach is safe and effective When people are infected with SARS-CoV-2. So you can check into the hospital.  I mean that could I mean listen It's not going to prevent you from getting sick and it's not going to get you like Better if you are sick But what it would do if you showed up in the hospital with covid 19 and you could choose this gum It could reduce the risk of getting people working in the hospital sick, which would be pretty great and it it's known that nasal saline spray can help rinse out your sinuses and help rinse out viruses that are in there so that saline spray Saline rinses can help reduce your chance of getting infected with a respiratory virus So i'm thinking nasal spray and chewing gum I mean that's the drugstore list that I need every step one neti pot step two gum gum. There you go. Yes Just be sure to use distilled water in your neti pot. Yes. Yeah for sure. Don't give yourself a Brain eating an amoeba. Oh, yeah, this is very dangerous But uh, I love the aspect of this chewing gum that it's plant Based that it's plant derived. There is also a vaccine being Uh produced in canada by a company called medicago with glaxosmith kline And they have created a plant derived virus like particle vaccine So the virus like particles are basically little tiny bits of protein that look like the saras kobi 2 virus and Then the uh, then there's an adjuvant that gets Packaged in there also and then when you get the vaccine the adjuvant works with those virus like particles to tell your body This is what you want to fight off But they are growing it in Tobacco plants. So they're growing it in plants that are being used for the production of other drugs. It's uh a Or also potato plants these plants are are consumed by people widely and plants like potato are Very unlikely to produce a uh an allergic reaction in people. So these This vaccine it's thought that it could be safer for a large number of people in its production And that it works pretty well. It has finished a clinical trial stage three clinical trial Not against omicron, but this is the first clinical trial with like over 20 000 people that looked at things like delta variant and the other variants that are out there And while the early trials had like 90 ish 95 percent Effectiveness the effectiveness has gone down to about 70 75 percent with The newer variants don't know what it would be with omicron But this vaccine in combination with all the others or even to boost vaccine supply Is very likely to be a huge benefit Where'd your vaccine come from? plants in canada potatoes potatoes Taters taters I got my potato vaccine and I got a side of fries tater shots tater shots You love it That sounds like a um a food you would eat at a party where there's uh, there's molten cheese and a syringe Oh boy This is this week in science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode We have more stories yet to come And we do thank you for joining us and hope that you're enjoying it if you are enjoying the show Please share us with a friend today All right, we're gonna come on back right now and it is time for Blair's animal corner with Blair By I have migratory birds How did you keep them? Oh, I didn't they ran away Oh So they do you see what do all migratory birds have in common? They are birds true atlantic accent They're light colored Yes, what yeah, I would not have Having studied birds. I still would not have put that together. Yes. This is yeah This is something that is a one sentence story But I had to explain it further because It it's wild to me. So this is from max plank institute for ornithology in germany They had this theory Casper delhi Had this theory that lighter plumage Is selected for in migratory species because it reduces the risk of overheating when exposed to sunshine So this would be particularly important for long-distance migrants because They can't stop to rest in shade Take a drink do lots of other things to help temperature regulate. So if they are too hot, they They're in big trouble. They they can't they can't stop So, uh, this research group had been studying the effects of climate on bird coloration in general. So as Temperatures rose the expectation was that birds would get lighter colored and in earlier studies They showed that in general that lighter colored birds are found where temperatures are high And there is little shade around that same time the researchers came across studies by others That showed that some birds fly at higher altitudes during the day compared to at night, which is a huge cost uh energetically to go higher in altitude There has to be a really good reason to do that because you're you're flapping more You you have to you know, it's just it's way harder than than coasting closer to the water. So The what they thought their kind of guess was that by flying higher Where it's colder that offsets the heat absorbed by plumage when the sun is hot so The the cost benefit analysis, right? It's beneficial to go higher up even though it takes more energy because they they don't get as hot And so another way to reduce risk of overheating would be generally to just be lighter colored and so Their general question was has have migratory species evolved lighter feathers They were able to quantify their plumage lightness from zero as completely black to 100 completely white For all bird species using bird images from the handbook of the birds of the world And then they compared their data on coloration with the species migratory behavior And they while doing that they also controlled for other factors that are known to affect plumage color So overall they found that bird species Colors get increasingly lighter as they migrate more. This is true on On aquatic animals or on land dwelling migrants And so similarly resident birds were darker than short distance migrants So there really was this kind of gradient from a super sedentary bird Really dark super migratory super light something in the middle in the middle in color as well Hmm. Yeah, so the consistency across different types of birds large and small Geography all of it It seemed to really be true around the world And so what this means is that temperature has a really important role In color animal coloration, right? So Of course, this has implications for birds in climate change potential adaptive evolutionary responses to climate change identifying future winners and losers and evolutionary pressure And so they they plan to continue to explore the connection between migration climate and other factors that shape the evolution of the color of plumage in birds But yeah, this is something I've never heard before Kind of makes a lot of sense But also Is surprising It is surprising. Yeah I mean I would I mean it's not something that you would just You know, oh make that you wouldn't just notice it because you notice maybe the darker colored birds Or you know, it's different color. I mean seabirds. Yeah, they're lighter colored But maybe that's because of predation You know and maybe that they need to look lighter from the bottom When they're floating on top of the water countershading Yeah But the impact of the actual temperature And coloration that's fascinating. Yeah, which makes sense. You don't want to go to Some place that's 90 degrees wearing all black It's not comfortable No, but then uh, if you're if you're gonna hang out some place where it's cold Maybe you'd want that because then you'd warm up easier But if you're if you're running a marathon even if it's cold, you don't want to be wearing all black And I think that's the point right is that these birds are putting in such an intense metabolic effort Yeah, there's trade-offs that have really influenced. Yeah. Yeah Yeah Cool Yeah, now I'm gonna look at birds.  Just remember there's always Yes, there's always exceptions and there's outliers. This is a mathematical model. So this is on the whole If you kind of like smooth and average out the graph, this is the information that you get but of course, yeah, there's outliers speaking of trade-offs Do say If you are a male golden orb weaver spider You have a very difficult trade-off to balance You said spiders so and you said male So I imagine that we're going somewhere with like the trade-off being the spider's death Correct. So if he gets too close to the female too soon, he'll just get eaten That'll be it If he gets too close to competitors on the web, he could also get eaten or killed So this male orb weaver spider has to perfectly balance a slow orbit around the female To get her attention But not too fast And not too close But faster than the other males But not too close to them Just enough to be able to mate with that female If he makes one wrong move He's dinner So this uh was a piece of research also from max plank institute this time from the institute of animal behavior They looked at spiders for over a decade And wanted to figure out what What optimization technique do these male spiders use To know exactly how to approach a female They have a clump of nerves that's barely a brain It's I mean they're not they're not dumb in terms of animals they do lots of cool things But are they they're doing Intense statistical analysis of how close to get to a female. No, they're not so how do they do this? And specifically how do they do it with the precision of an orbiting planet around a store? What yes, so they were able to I mean is the female spider that is it is is it are these gravitational dynamics that we're dealing with? Yes Yes, so they there's they're likening gravitational dynamics and The push pull of an electron around Around a nucleus right as similar to the animal magnetism that is a system of pushes and pulls As these male spiders orbit around the female They kind of as a joke said they looked like electrons orbiting a nucleus or planets orbiting a star And then the the more they looked at it The more it kind of fit And so they were able to develop a physical model and they performed experiments in the panamanian rainforest on spiders And so To kind of to put it eloquently As uh, alex jordan did He said yeah, i'm not going to do it. He said quote Imagine electrons orbiting a nucleus or a massive star in space So large that it generates its own gravitational field pulling in objects around it The giant cannibalistic female can be thought of in the same way Now imagine the smaller planet satellites or comets coming near this attractive force. These are our tiny brave males Approach the star or female too rapidly or at the wrong angle and you risk getting caught up in her attractive pull On a cosmic scale this would result in cosmic collision that vaporizes the planet for the intrepid male An incorrect approach means falling into a fatal attraction and ending up prey So they were able to through these observations see how overzealous males became dinner And how others were successful Just as the smaller planets have their own gravitational pull the males also had their own within each other as they approached rivals The males started to repel each other as they got closer and closer behaving much more like electrons around a nucleus So this is where the the kind of the nucleic method comes in um So then the motion the motion of the males resembles Interactions between particles that attract or repel each other depending on the distance between them so They were able to very loosely I will say apply these two models kind of the planet and the The planets around a star for the female and then the electrons around a nucleus for the males To demonstrate That the push pull attractions of these animals and the kind of the the constant cost benefit Move of like oh not too close. Oh, but I gotta get close. Oh, but not too close It actually shows that it's not a complex set of decisions that the males are making They're not sitting there with their pen and paper going like okay, but if I approach it 90 degrees, right? So they're not doing this It's actually a very simple Dynamic force that is played out in other places of nature. And so This is a way of explaining this extremely complex behavior without Quote-unquote complex cognitive machinery Got it, right. I don't need a big brain to do all this, but there are these little pieces that add up it's I very precisely it's also kind of like It's like the Roomba Sensing the wall and moving away from it before it touches it, right?  So it's just it's basically a constant Reaction to the movements of these other spiders on the web in a way that looks very deliberate But really is just the dynamics of these different things moving in concert and responding to each other in real time It is the emergence of order from a complex system order from chaos Yes Yes, it is Yeah, but I don't know isn't it uh Isn't there gonna be some like mechanism within the tiny little spider brain? Oh, of course just going like danger. Okay. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And that's the push pull. That's the like Attraction. Oh danger. Oh, look other male. Oh, but you know, yes, they're stimuli If you look at it genetic memory then at this point you're talking about something the spiders aren't learning but they're born with an innate Knowledge that there's danger They're getting too close to the female. Okay. I think you're you're pulling the wrong thing. Let me try to explain one other way. So What this is saying Is that if you observe a male spider Get to a female orb weaver and successfully meet it looks like a deliberate Series of actions. It looks smooth. It looks beautiful. It looks like this very clear Circular orbit of dynamic factors It looks like a dance. It looks very specific and orderly What this research is saying is that it is the exact opposite of that. It is not orderly it is reactionary and it is reaction and that's why the the talk about gravitational forces or repellent forces of electrons is a good analogy here because those things also look beautiful and deliberate But they're really not Yeah, I guess I'm still not quite seeing the connection there like uh, like For me, those are just like this forces of nature the physics. They're just abiding by like what's what and how and where energy can and Uh, gravitational forces of planets and stuff. It's like you got these Tracks that you're going to fall into and then you're going to have to be there no matter what Yeah, we're talking about spiders.  But what were you talking about spiders? You're talking about mind in general You know humans do things all the time that they aren't consciously thinking about I mean you can go and talk about the mathematics involved with throwing a ball in the air and then catching it Yeah, if you had to sketch it out on paper All of the physics involved all the mechanics involved all the engineering involved all these things Never catch the ball. What does the human throw it up in the air you catch it just does it the mind processes things There are things that the body and the brain can do without conscious control There are things that we know that humans can do without consciously controlling it We have spinal reflexes because of our spinal ganglia that allow us to walk without thinking about it That's why people can walk down the street while typing on their iPhones and you know not run into I mean people do get run over by buses. Unfortunately all the time, but you know you can Continue to walk and chew gum and do all these things because you have automatic mechanisms that are Stimulate that are responses to stimuli these responses to stimuli go way way way way back Yes, but there is a point where you take conscious control over that when you realize There's something i'm going to trip over. I need to step up. I need to move my leg I need to run. I need to jump and you are changing The input and I think that's what the spider is doing. No, and that is what Blair is saying Is that what the study is about? I get it. I get it. I'm not quite buying it I'm thinking the spider is like uh, so you're thinking the spider is thinking you really I don't think the spider is mapping it out, but I think the spider is thinking jump And just being able to jump So this isn't about jumping This is about this is about being on a web full of one A cannibalistic giant female and two a bunch of other males. Yes And so if if they were being Deliberate they would say okay. I'm gonna duck around that guy then go over here Then go over there then get closer to her get her attention back up then come back and mate with her Right, but that's not what and that's not what's happening. Correct. And that's what this study says They're not planning it out. They're not thinking about it. They are still doing things, but it's not with the Top-down conscious control that we we would say is thinking about something Yeah, it's from a spider's eye perspective. I don't know. Well, we're not spiders So, yeah, so we don't know what kind of consciousness they have We don't know what thinking to a spider is for sure because we can't talk to a spider Can't talk to my cat other than in meow language You know and I apply a lot of anthropomorphisms to my cat People apply anthropomorphisms to their dogs, you know until we can answer these questions or get the conversation with these All these animals we don't really know but And there's all computational and planets at the same time Problem with it, but the computational power. This is something that also could be Probably modeled with a neural net with something that's very simple black box style inputs and outputs Justin do you want to talk about science now because we got to keep this show going Oh, do they stop actually it's time for the show to be over. Bye everyone. Good night. Good night The show's stall Okay, I'll talk fast, uh Tanzania on the east coast the african continent home to many of the world's mightiest beasts Uh, the elephants the lion the leopard the buffalo the rhino and the bear Uh, also the oldest evidence of upright walking hominins They're ever discovered. It's at the leotoli Tanz in Tanzania In 1978 paleontologists mary leaky may have heard of that uh name before and her team found two sets of fossilized footprints that date to 3.7 million years ago And are thought to be australopithecus Afarensis the species of the famous loosey skeleton So they got footprints They got a couple of tracks of these footprints out there and they go great We can see 3.7 million years ago upright walking There's another set of footprints Partially excavated in a nearby site. I was actually found a little earlier than that few years before That was uh dismissed because it was uh bears It was bears walking on bipedally Uh, apparently Recent re Excavation of those footprints are reported in the journal nature and revealed that the footprints were Not made by bears Made by Also by bipedal hominins however Not australopithecus afarensis So yeah, they went they had some fun here This is uh given the increasing evidence of for locom locomotor species diversity in the hominin fossil record over the past 30 years These unusual prints deserved another look says lead author ellison mcnut assistant professor at heritage college of osteopathic medicine at ohio university and the second mcnut That i'm reporting on in this same show, which is very interesting Uh the to determine So they did all this one set so they had they had found these they had these bears that are in a rescue park and Uh, they they lured them With with treats on sticks basically and got them to walk over mud So that they could they could see they could check out what a black bear footprint might look like They also did the observations of black bears In the wild and found they only walked on their back feet less than one percent of the time So it was very unlikely that the footprints that they they found and they had totally especially since there are no four Footprints in the ground at any given time the individual only is on uh the two legs Unlikely the bear they studied some chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Uganda Again, one of the discoveries they made is the heels for both bears and chimpanzees tend to be rather thin compared to the footprints that are That are found in leotoli Uh, also the there's a large toe and a large second uh, toe next to it, which also kind of nailed it down As to being a human and comparing the these footprints though To the morphology and the and the gait that they would expect from the osteopithecus afrancis. They said no, it's distinct It's a different foot. It's a different gait. This is some other hominin walking around But we don't know who don't know who just some other Yeah, we know there's a lot of variation in within a species So it could have been or it could have been an osteopithecus that was hopping or playing around that had a lame leg or Yeah, so sir also part of one at one I guess some of this footprint also involves a crossing over step That is almost as though Someone were losing balance Or like an off-balance step where you're recovering balance Maybe they were carrying something and tripped or Could be could be Uh, but also very unbear like in the in the narrowness of the stances bears also tend to be much wider But it's very interesting that in 1976 this got dismissed as bear And then here we are. I don't know how many years that is 40 something years later We're like, oh no, we just discovered a possibly new hominin in these footprints That uh, we didn't know was walking around Well, we thought brontosaurus's were real then too. They are right. We've learned so much. They are They got brought back. You haven't you heard there's brontosaurus is a dinosaur now Okay The sores sores I'm gonna finish where I started Only go so far in this world We'll find before you find yourself at a door You unlock that door with the key of education. But what if you don't happen to have a key on you? What do you do then? Prison that's what? Uh, we've all been there staring at the walls of our cell wondering What I wind up here. We have more importantly, perhaps we all have what can I keep from coming back? Yeah, okay New study. Yeah, everybody's been to prison a couple times. Come on. How are we kidding? Uh, you study looked at the effects of college in prison in a prison program called Uh, the barred prison initiative bpi barred prison initiative Study found a large and significant reduction and recidivism recidivism is the rates at which people Who have gone to jail? prison and been released End back up again Go back to prison make bat more choices that led them To get arrested again Study by researchers at Yale university as well as folks working at bpi Appears in justice quarterly a publication of the academy of criminal justice sciences This is quoting matthew gt denny phc student at Yale university co-authored the study Incarceration is bound with systems of poverty and a lack of access to opportunity especially education And socioeconomic mobility participation and intensity of engagement in programs like bpi Might disrupt these cycles. So there's a somewhat of a history of the federal government backing Prison education beginning back in 1960 1965 People who were incarcerated in the united states were eligible for Pell grants from the federal government to receive funds to attend college even though that they are incarcerated so you have then jailhouse Education programs colleges show up to educate these people who could spend the money. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks to federal government 1994 Clinton administration part of their 356 page violent crime and law enforcement act had one of the provisions which Banned incarcerated students from receiving Pell grants Effectively shutting down college in prison programs for especially for lower income inmates It's kind of hard to understand what exactly they expected the outcome Of making sure that people who were incarcerated for some period of time left incarceration with the same level of education with which they entered incarceration and the first was just a recipe for The the spiral to the bottom Yeah, it's not helping anybody. Yeah so, yeah, so So the mid 90s Clinton administration wants to look tough on crime They've been assault rifles.  They they dedicate money to combating violence against women and they take textbooks away from imprisoned students because that last one was really Needed to happen 2016 the bottom administration started second chance Pell pilot program Federal aid once again is being offered to select colleges within the prison program systems Uh, this study though looked at the largest and most rigorous It was the largest and most rigorous to date on the effects of college in prison programs on recidivism The program, uh, they looked at actually has been Has weathered some of this storm of Pell grants being there or not. They've been uh Had this prison program in place a prison college program in place since 1999 And they are operating campuses in six new york correctional facilities They they found that it the study found that participation reduced recidivism by 38 percent Greater levels of participation correlated closely with even lower rates of recidivism So that's a huge number uh returning to prison Occurs within a year For nearly half of people who are released from prison nearly half I think it's uh, 40. Yeah, it's 40 something percent Uh released from prison end up back in prison Within a year That's staggering within nine years It's about 83 percent Yeah, it's too much. It's here in the united states. It is a system that is meant It's a it's a profit making system for the prison industrial complex. It is A way to keep people in their place and it yeah, if we really wanted to benefit society Prison education systems would be Well funded they would be try we would be trying to help people graduate from college while they are in In prison teach them a trade while they're in prison Reeducation if they fight fires while they're in prison allow them to actually be firefighters. Yeah, that's smart, right? Yeah dropping 38 percent recidivism Uh that has a significant impact on the population within the prisons Which like you're saying could impact the that that prison fire that What do you call it prison economic system? Industrial complex, whatever which maybe how it ended up in a bill in 1994 What other reason Would there be right? Well, it's tough on crime. We're gonna show them They did bad things and we'll show them. They'll be punished show them I mean my forever line and my vacation home Yeah, so a few things at one since education and opportunity are factors in how people wind up in prison in the first place Uh, maybe focusing on those things in the first place might avoid needing to support the world's largest pop the prison population industry Uh for america To why wouldn't we want a system? That rehabilitate rehabilitates people and gives them those opportunities when they leave to make other choices on the outside So how how a prison operates is entirely up to the society running the prison We can we can do it as a warehousing Of dangerous individuals. We can do it as a warehousing of people with mental illness or people who are Poor or lack access to education or housing that sort of thing Right now it's a little frightening because there's a Interesting side statistic and trying to look into this and see not gonna bore you numbers The u.s spends a lot of money on law enforcement courts and incarceration Yes, but the trend is uh, it used to be a one-to-one what we spent on law enforcement and what we spent on Social programs that were meant to prevent poverty Uh lift people out of poverty or prevent poverty from you know, things like food stamps and social welfare stuff and Temporary aid to get people on the road or grants for education for poor people These used to be about a one-to-one Talking about 50 years ago 60 years ago one-to-one Now it's two-to-one what we're spending on the law enforcement side and sort of plateauing the amount of spending Or even dipping the amount of spending on that social poverty prevention and increasing the amount we are spending on fighting the symptom Even though the first one is preventative of the second And it's a batch of this is trending towards if you just follow this out across the infinite horizon Which is how congress does it for Uh For retirement right first. No money social security. Yeah I think it means that we're going to be in a police state where everybody the entire economy is driven on People in prison or working in prisons It's it's sounds sounds logical. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's that's good That's a nice future that I'm looking forward to We I'm lying. I'm not looking forward to that at at all and maybe through science And scientific evidence we can benefit our society enough that we can make better choices That really work for us Uh in the long run. Okay. I have a couple of quick stories related to blood and proteins And things that we love To help us we would love to have them help us live longer better stronger lives One paper was just published in Nature aging and this paper in nature aging Uh out of the university of pittsburgh has pinpointed that there are Little transcripts little bits of a protein called clotho that has been uh indicated as being beneficial in the Uh longevity process trying making Aging not happen as quickly rejuvenating aged individuals that Uh clotho can have a very beneficial effect and in this particular case these researchers were looking at Muscle wasting and as people age it gets harder and harder for their muscles to rebuild themselves You have increased scarring and Weakness and oh it's someday it's just weak. I don't want to get weak. I want to stay strong So this really makes me happy. Um these researchers discovered that The blood contains extracellular vesicles And this is not you know beam me up scotty talking about the vessels. This is extracellular vesicles and they contain Clotho and in older individual Younger individuals you have lots and lots of clotho in lots and lots of extracellular vesicles and all that clotho It gets it those those vesicles uh, they They link to and they merge with the cells of the myofibers and the myofibers They like the clotho transcripts and the clotho transcripts like to help the muscles grow and regenerate So young muscles can regenerate better have reduced scarring are nice and strong as you get older fewer vesicles in the blood less clotho in the vesicles And they have Discovered that if they take of course the young the vesicles from the young blood and give the vesicles to the older blood Then the older blood can begin to rejuvenate the muscles like the younger Blood like the younger muscles once did so We maybe will not have to go ahead with the drinking the blood of the young To maintain our our muscle strength. Uh, hopefully understanding that proteins like clotho and the little bits and pieces of the protein that uh, the muscles respond to that maybe we can use those and they're uh, and they're receptors as targets for Muscular regeneration anti muscle wasting drugs and treatments as we get older one aspect of of this Of this work. Oh, no, this is the next the next study as is something also very interesting Moving away from the clotho So bare blare these these are proteins that you need to remember to look for in the mix That you're going to be drinking But how will I remember them if I haven't been taking them? You will exercise and the exercise will help keep you young long enough to remember that you need to start taking them Before you get too old. Yes. Okay. So the other the other protein is called Cluster in Clotho and cluster and stop clotho and cluster in that's not real Yes, everybody's cluster in Yes, I would like the clotho cluster in immortality pills, please. Yes, please Stanford researchers published in nature today on their work looking at cluster in in mice now They determined that mice that exercise exercise exercise produced a lot of Cluster in and then when they took the cluster in from the exercise mice and gave it to Lazy sedentary mice. Well, they just weren't allowed to exercise the sedentary mice Suddenly were smart like the exercise mice And so the benefits of exercise to cognition Were passed along by a bunch of little there's a whole bunch of anti-inflammatory Markers that are in the blood from these young adult fit mice Cluster in was the one that seemed to be the most important in the transfer Of the abilities of the cognitive benefits to the sedentary mice and the big thing That I thought was really uh interesting about this study is that not only were the the sedentary mice getting smarter they looked at The blood of veterans who had been on a multi day. These are Military veterans that had mild cognitive impairment six months aerobic exercise program At the during this at the end of this six month aerobic exercise program These veterans had elevated cluster in in their blood so exercise Potentially is connected to increases in cluster in Cluster in is anti-inflammatory. It also gets past the blood brain barrier And potentially has cognitive benefits They did not say in this study whether or not they had been able to link the increase in cluster and to cognitive improvement in these individuals with mild cognitive impairment that hadn't been done yet Ladies and gentlemen exercise in a pill Getting sweaty at the gym breathing the air and Delving into the sweat of all those strangers is now a thing of the past you can now pop a pill We can all the benefits of somebody who exercised a lot without having to do any of it I was thinking more If I exercise and take the cluster in will I get younger? Can you get more benefit to be younger moderation? moderation Abusing the drug right look there's a new drug. I want to abuse it. Can I what all of it? You can't have too much of a good thing It's science It is science, but it's fascinating that we're a we're beginning to be able to dial in some of these factors that are involved in In aging and by understanding not only the factors so that okay, maybe we can Yes, create an anti-aging pill or a you know, mold, you know a cocktail of Things that you're able to take But for people and especially for people who are bedridden who are sedentary who are unable to to do To do movements and exercises that would be beneficial but for people who are excuse me able to move able to get out able to Have exercise and that this is not like, you know Professional athlete level exercise that are talking about it's movement. It's getting your body moving and your heart rate up for periods of time Yeah, but this yeah that natural movement that our body That it's good for our body To move and there are some really interesting hypotheses out there about how it all feeds in together to To have healthier Healthier aging reduce inflammation Live long and prosper Yeah with clotho and clustering Name my my first two children clotho and clustering I think the whole exercise thing Makes sense to a certain point throughout the history of humanity Persistence hunters where we ran and ran and ran everywhere. We ran around the whole planet We went everywhere. We did a lot of running and a certain point that you get to an age where you're like Uh You know the prolonging of life Is really going to be for the something like this is really going to be at the end When it's like running is not a thing your Old tired body wants to do anymore Or is even capable of doing or is risk of injury becomes Severe to go even doing all that moving. This is a perfect time then to get those benefits Uh to counteract the what we consider natural aging effects on cognition We're more and more learning. It's not just the date of on your uh driver's license or the idea if you no longer driving But it has to do with uh anti-inflammatories and other proteins and things you're running around in your blood That we're being generated perhaps by exercise or eliminated or filtered out through exercise or however This is taking place. We know that young blood is working Say if we can put it in pill form Fantastic get rid of the exercise portion of it for when you're later in life when you're young you should still be doing laps We should now we should Do whatever you're able to do. Let's keep moving We have these muscles and joints If we can Let's use them Right Strong muscles and brittle bones could be disastrous. That is a truth. Yeah Yeah Oh, well, um, I'm gonna say that I think we've done it Come to the end of another show We have oh and oh I did want to say did get a letter from scott roads Says this may have already been addressed since I'm an episode behind But I was listening to the story about vulture bees and as a beekeeper wanted to clarify something pollen and apparently meet Provide a protein source for bees, but the honey is made from nectar While some pollen makes its way into honey in minute amounts because it's on the bees themselves It's stored in separate chainers than the honey and is not used directly for honey. Love the podcast But I do need to say I I looked it up and vulture bees Actually produce honey. It's not honey honey. It's a honey like substance correct not derived from nectar but from Protein rich secretions. Yes of the hypo pharyngeal glands. Yes. It's it's still be barf And it comes from the meat This is yes I I did additional research after the show as well because I was also very interested in that idea of where this honey comes from and yes You would think That they need to get to nectar to make it but they don't The vulture bees do not These vulture bees are fascinating and I also want to say thank you very much to those of you who did write in related to last episode's disclaimer And there were some positive comments and some educating comments And I am taking them all in and appreciate them all very very much That was a heck of a disclaimer if you got comments on it like that People jumped in there. Wow I I think it was a pretty good one. Yeah I enjoyed writing it. All right. Well, we have come to the end. Thank you for that letter scott roads. Thank you to uh Let's see who lori who wrote in and Who is somebody else? We had Uh lori who wrote in judy wrote in and who else did we have jenelle and Yes, a couple of other people. Thank you for your letters And thank everybody. Thank you for listening I hope you did enjoy the show. I hope you enjoyed every little bit of it I would like to say thank you to fada for your help with social media for uh show notes gourd Thank you for manning the chat room keeping things clean identity for for recording the show. 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Blair's tired, they're all tired. And we're gonna not eat dinner tonight in the nighttime or lunchtime in the nighttime. And what was the other story that if you smoke too much weed that it is bad for your sleep? Did you see that one?  That makes sense. That tracks. Yeah, it tracks.  So, Kiki, after tonight, next time I see you will be our end of the year show on the 29th, what? Okay, so you're not gonna be here next week. Correct. Correct, okay. Correct. All right, no Blair next week, everybody. What are we gonna do? Excuse me, what are we gonna do without you on the 15th with your birthday in the middle there somewhere? Yeah, yeah, I'm officially middle-aged. What? What is that?  I know, wait, what is that? I thought you were gonna be lived to be 200 at least. Yeah, I'm middle-aged, right? I'm in the middle. We're all middle-aged now. I'm not even half, I'm not, we're near halfway done. Blair, you're not allowed to grow up, come on. Well, you know, in one month, it'll be 10 years of me on the show. That's wild, it's true, tis true. It is. Yeah, she's turning 25, that's right. I don't know if to be happy about that or to be offended that somebody thinks that we're only gonna live to 50. You were 15 when you started this show. That's right, it was not. I remember we were always like, remember we have to keep it age-appropriate on this show because of Blair. That's when it started, that's when we stopped cursing and talking about really adult subjects. I came on the show and was wearing like a mini skirt and red lipstick because I was going to the club afterwards. Yeah, I was 15. At 15, oh my goodness. Yeah. Well, if you were, you were a child prodigy who graduated from college very young. Right. Yeah, because I graduated, what? I don't want to say, I don't want to say. I'm not going to do that. Yeah, I'm not going to say. Brine is the last millennia. You don't have to do that, Matt. Really? I'll tell you what, back in my day. Well, like, so Brine just brought this back. Telephones were attached to the wall. Brine just brought this back from his parents' house. And like, I was thinking about how... Oh, I love those. This is like actually a thing from my childhood. And if you tried to show a kid today this thing, they'd be like, what's the point of this? What is going on there? This is like an actual toy that we all enjoyed when we were young. It had the coolest type of image in there, too. It wasn't just, it wasn't like you were just looking at a cell of a thing. Yeah, it had this sort of dimensionality to it that was very neat. What's her name? Lacking in today's child entertainment value of things. There is an artist that I love who... Of course, Mab's. Blair's annual corner, yeah. If I can... Mab Graves. Here we go, Mab Graves. She made one of those, those viewer things. And she does, her art is amazing. And she does like miniatures and felted creatures. And so she set up like all these little scenes with her art that she made, these little miniature scenes and took 3D pictures of them. So it's like you click through and there are pictures of her artistic creations in that stereo view. It's very, very cool. Mab Graves. I recommend if you have not looked into Mab Graves, her waifs and strays. I love her part. I love somebody's bragging. What? Chatroom.   All night. All night, butter. That was funny. That was... Blah, ha, ha, ha. I love Mabs. Oh, that's pretty cute stuff. Yeah, look at her axolotl. Look at this guy. Look at this guy. It looks so cute. Yeah, she's one of my favorites in the art world. Tanneth is one of her ongoing characters. She makes these little witchy characters.  I wonder if the Etsy store has her. It's visitational. All right. Hey, great show. Where do you have to go? I gotta go. I got stuff to do. I got a whole day ahead here. Okay, I know you have a day. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah. I'll stop looking at Mab's stuff. I like Mab's stuff. But we have a next week. Blair's not gonna be here. Are you going to be here next week? Yes. Yes, okay. So no Blair plus Justin. This is the month of people and no people and people and no people.  So everybody who's watching now, we will be taking a night off on the 22nd but then the 29th we will return with our top 11 of 2021 show year and review. Year and review. Yes, will COVID make the list? Yes, yes, it will. Yes, it will. It certainly will. No, it will. Come on. Oh gosh, okay. Can we already, can we just say right now that on the list you can't have like COVID and then like number one, number three, the Delta variant. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. Because then we could do like the whole. We never do that. We always combine things. I'm not making 2021 just the different variants. No, no, no, I think COVID will make the list. Because good science came out of our response to the COVID pandemic. So there were important science stories. So it will be on there somewhere because this is the weird optimist pessimist thing. Right. Is that this is not our last pandemic. Probably even in our lifetimes and our experience throughout this pandemic has hopefully helped inform our response to future pandemics. 2021, the year we thought it was over. But it wasn't. We were still doing things and pretending that it wasn't over, even though it was over. Yeah, yeah. So we will need to schedule a time in the next weeks for all of us to connect and talk about our stories that we think are the top stories. So everyone who's watching, you can use the hashtag top 11 science or top 11. Right now you can't or we got to have one. We got to switch. Well, our hashtag. Okay, here's five hashtags. You can give multiple hashtags. The whole point of a hashtag is you send people to one place. What have we used before? Top 11 or I think it was twist top 11. But we've used top 11 science. That's what we've done. Top 11 science. We also had twist top 11. Yes. Yeah, we have done twist top 11. Yeah, we've done both. I'm looking. Oh, boy. Top 11 science going back to 2015 there. Oh, that one for sure. 2020, we had top 11 hashtag top 11 science. Top 11 science trends of 2019. Top 11 science countdown for 2016. I think top 11 science is the hashtag that I forget every year. Twist top 11 will work work as well. Dan Christiansen that hashtag is not that's confusing. Number one. Oh, are you saying the word number one? I like that hashtag. I like this hashtag there number one. Right. Is that what one? Twist one. Love it. Hashtags. Getting the hashtags. Yes. Let us know you can send emails to let us know what stories you think were the top stories of the year. We have tried in the past to just choose individual stories, but there's just so many. We end up lumping them into categories of top 11 categories every year. I don't know. Maybe we'll change it and just make it easy on us and do certainly could individual stories. We could. We could be a very short show. Would it? I don't know. I don't know. Can we do a short show with the three of us? I don't know about that, especially the end of the year. I don't know about that. I can't believe we're so close so close to the end of this year. 2022 is on its way. Amazing. Y'all ready to go? Say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thanks for joining us tonight. We will see you again next week. And in case, in case you need a little bit more entertainment, I'm going to be talking Science of the Fly with Scott Sigler on his Monster of the Week livestream on Friday 4 p.m. Pacific time. We're going to be talking about the Brundle Fly. That's fun. That's gross, actually. Very gross. Very gross. But you know, maybe, maybe we won't talk about genetics or, you know, genetic modification or anything like that. Maybe we'll talk about fly feeding habits. Fly biology, ecology. Yes, I will share links on Twitter and all that kind of stuff. Stay, stay well. Stay happy. Well, do what you can to do what you do. And we do hope that we will see you again next week. Stay safe. Stay curious. Thank you for joining us. Good night.