I wonder. This is the part where we're not supposed to talk. I'm just a bug. Now, I've got multiple headphones on my head. What's up, Kiki, right now? I'm characteristic behavior. Hi, everyone. Nobody would know. Nobody would know because I always cover it up. But you know what? I'm not covering up anymore. I'm not going to be weird behind the calendar anymore. That's not happening. Good for you. You let your freak flag fly. I live in Portland, where weirdness is celebrated. That's right. Hello, everybody out there. Are we ready for a show? I think we're ready for a show. You guys, are you guys co-hosts ready for a show? We're ready to go? Born ready, or at least was ready at about 7.45. Yeah. And I keep waiting for Justin to tell me he's ready. And he keeps like saying, I hit the wrong button. No, I've been ready this whole, I was here, ready from the very beginning of. All right, well, the time Justin's in life. You just start when you're ready and they'll catch up. Oh, yeah, I'm right there. I don't need prep. I'm good. All right, starting in three, two, this is twist. This week in science episode number 615 recorded on Wednesday, April 19th, 2017, March for Science in April. Hey, everyone, I am Dr. Kiki. And tonight we are going to fill your heads with halos, pigeons, and frog slime. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Forget everything you don't know. Ignore anything you didn't hear. Put off all tasks, not assigned to you. And pay close attention to the unknown.  Life lives here. Wonderful wild lush life forms are everywhere. In picture of this, it all got started in the sediment at the bottom of the sea, from there to here, then to now, from ocean floor to space explorer. Even well before the magnificent human mind was involved, we earthlings took things to extremes and now look around. This wondrous world about you is but a snapshot, a still image of today. If we can go as far as we've come, what futures await will look nothing like today. And to get there from here, we will need but one thing. And science coming up next.  I want to learn everything. I want to 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 want to 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. Science to you, Kiki and Blair. And yeah, and a very good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Good, good science. We're back with another episode of this week in science to talk about all the cool stories that cut our fancy that we thought were so interesting that we just have to share with you. Before we get to that, I want to remind everyone, if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, it is Robo Games over at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California, from the 20th through whatever the Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I don't know what days, I've totally forgotten what day of the week it is. I just know it's Wednesday. It's Wednesday, that's good. But anyway, Friday through Sunday of this week, it is Robo Games and you can go to robogames.net to find out more information about that. Additionally, we are going to be in Philadelphia in June, June 10th and 11th at the Young Innovators Fair. Gonna go check out Philly. So East Coasters can find us there, younginnovatorsfair.com. All right, science news for today. I have stories about space because space is awesome, blind cave fish because they are also awesome and a brand new segment for the show. So what do you have for us, Justin? Let's see, I've got an innovative recycling story. I've got, oh, this is gonna be fun, something to do with the gut bacteria. Another use for gut bacteria. Also, new uses for marijuana and frogs. I like frogs. I don't know if I'm, gut bacteria also, I'm not so into the marijuana, but you know, new uses. After hearing this story, I don't know. You may be. All right, I may be. Or not. It's a tease or emblair, what's in the animal corner? Oh, I brought very smart pigeons and lots of noise. As you normally do. What are you talking about? No one's ever said such a thing about the likes of myself. Karen, now, shouty Blair, all these names, nicknames that come from the Blairdom. Are we ready to dive in? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. All right, so I'm gonna start it off with the new segment for this show that I think is apropos to the timing. So this weekend, April 22nd. Oh, look, there's a date coming up Saturday, April 22nd. People around the world, not just in the United States. Washington, DC is gonna probably be the big one, but there are satellite marches all over the US and all over the world for science. It's Earth Day, but it is also the day that people have planned a march for science. And while there are many questions as to what this march is actually supporting and what people are actually trying to do with their marching. None of it matters. That's the thing. The point of revolution, the clarity of vision is always right there before you have to decide those things. That's when you can get really passionate about something before there's any details. So this is the exciting part. Yeah, it's the exciting part. We don't know how many people are going to turn out. I hope many people in our audience, if they can, if they're able, will find a march near them. And you can go to the website march4science.com to be able to find information about this march for science and where different marches are happening. You can register. You can find the different marches around satellite marches. You can even, if you can't make it, but you'd like to support the movement, you can even donate money. It makes it easy. You can buy t-shirts and that kind of stuff. But a question has been raised as to what it really is all about. You know, while we here at TWIS like to celebrate science, we have been discussing the importance of the practice of science, of the gathering of empirical data and its use in policymaking. And so here at TWIS, we really do believe in the idea of decision-making, informed decision-making. And that being informed and using all of the data to your advantage is one of the best ways to make the best decisions. So our lives are totally impacted by science on a daily basis. It's not always policy, but we are always impacted by scientific discoveries in so many ways. And so we're starting a regular segment on this show, and it's going to be called this week in What Has Science Done For You Lately? That's right. What has science done for you lately? And so what we're going to do in this first installment is tell you some ways we think science is impacting our lives on a daily basis. And then from here on out, I want to make it a weekly segment. It'll be short. It'll be sweet. But I want it to come from you. And so I please ask you to email me, to tweet at me, to Facebook, me, to YouTube comment. I want to collect these comments. I want to collect emails. I want to collect stories from you to tell everybody, to share with the rest of our audience about how important science is to life, daily life. Because really, what we want to do is create this, and I love, I came up with this phraseology, of course, an ongoing compendium of scientific banality. How is it just normal science? It has progressed us from the Stone Age to where we are now. Right? Science. And so let's get it started. I'm going to get it started. So first note of how science affects me on a daily basis is, oh, I got vaccinated. My son got vaccinated. My husband has been vaccinated. As adults, my husband and I have been vaccinated multiple times. These vaccines help keep me safe from disease, help keep my child safe from disease. And new research out this last week, the measles vaccine, especially helps to keep us safe from disease because the measles virus works with this mechanism that they call, it causes what's called immune system amnesia, immune amnesia. And so basically, if you get infected by measles, because you haven't had a vaccine, then the measles vaccine, the mechanism it uses to get into your cells and to cause disease and disruption to your life, it wipes your immune system clean of its memory of how to fight off all sorts of other diseases. And so if you, and so for months afterwards getting infected with measles, your probability of getting infected with other diseases is increased. So if you are vaccinated, if you're vaccinated for the measles vaccine, that means the possibility of you getting infected by those other diseases goes down proportionally. And they have seen massive drops in disease rates in countries, third world countries, especially where the measles vaccine has been introduced where it wasn't previously. So vaccines, boom, keeping us healthy. And electric light. Oh, you're going to go next round Robin. Oh, well, I did you want to comment? I was, I was, I was actually going to broadly say electricity, but to be more specific, there are two inventions based on this technology that have truly impacted my life. Just being an alarm clock, but without, without one, without one, I'm not, I probably don't wake up to like noon or one in the afternoon. That is every day starts with that bit of technology bringing me out of slumber and roosters I can sleep right through. And the other one is the dishwasher, without which there would be, there's actually still dishes in the sink. I don't really understand, but it was worse before I had a dishwasher. It was much worse. So it's, it's okay. So a twit refugee brings up something very important. That's not science. That's engineering. And so that's right. But there's also, there's a sort of debate in my head about what is the benefit of science? It is those tools that we give to people as well. So that they're using a tool created by science to hear these things. But without the science that came first, there is nothing to, there is not a decent dishwasher made in the Stone Age. I mean, dishwashers, it's using the erosive property of water as well as physics of the pressure of the water against dishes to clean your dishes. Yeah, there's a lot going on. And then detergents on top of it, detergents is science, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's a chemical reaction. Chemical reaction. Yeah. Yeah. But also any engineering at all, the trial and error involved in designing a new piece of technology is based in the scientific method also, by the way. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, Blair, what are you, what you got there? Well, my first one is the field of optometry. I am extremely nearsighted about minus five and a change in both eyes, and I have an astigmatism. And without science, I am pretty sure I would not be alive today because I would have fallen off a cliff, gotten eaten by a wild animal. Who knows? But I would, I would not be here without optometry. It's one of those little things that it's just, you just take for granted. I think about it all the time, actually. Because I run into doors that are open and sideways. I run into the side of a door when I get up in the middle of the night and I'm not wearing my glasses. That is how much I cannot see. So if it wasn't for optometry, you would be like a panda in the wild. I'd be worse than a panda. I'd be dead. I'd absolutely be dead. And on a kind of more somber note, I spent over an hour before the show started talking to my roommate and best friend who was born premature. And without the research and medical care available to premature babies, she wouldn't be here. And my life would be very, very different. You wouldn't have your best friend. Yeah. Very, very true. And you know what? The electrical lights right here illuminating our show. This show would be in the dark without electrical lights. Electrical lights of the fluorescent or incandescent or LED form. Electrical lights. Light. Light. Can you imagine? Before light, there was dark. And we had to go to bed when the sun went down. Yeah. Candle light and that's it. Yep. Okay. I guess it's bedtime now. Good night, everyone. Good night, everyone. Oops, the sun's just gone down. So no more twists. Yeah. I'll see you sometime afternoon, sometime in the afternoon, early in the afternoon tomorrow. Yeah. So Justin would be awake for three hours of the day is what we're learning without science. No alarm clock, no light. Justin's got about a three hour window. All right. I'd have to be the candle maker. I would have to be my jobs just so I could see it night. Yeah. I'm going to be up anyway. I might as well be making candles all night. I love it. I know everyone in the chat, but chat room has come up with a ton of scientific influences to their life. Send them to me. I'm watching these scroll by and I'm very excited. What is that? Email. You can email me at kirsten. K-I-R-S-T-E-N at thisweekinscience.com. There it is. Ta-da. Yeah. And I want to do this every week, every week, everyone. And let's keep it going year round. Let's show that science influences us every day, every week for the following year. I already used my top two and I'm going to have to dig just like. It won't actually be hard. You'll just have to look around. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I thought, oh, I'm going to have to think about this. And then a minute later, I had my answers. So that does it for this weekend. What has science done for you lately? That sounds like a sound bite. Right. All right. Now let's move into some scientific research. Researchers have been appearing at dark matter, but they haven't really been looking at dark matter because you can't see it, right? Dark matter is matter that you can't see. That's the technicality of the name. Right? That's dark. Yeah. It doesn't have a light bulb yet. So some researchers have been taking data from pairs of baryonic matter, light producing objects, things that we can see. And so they looked at 23,000 pairs of luminous red galaxies, LRGs. And they're really bright galaxies, easy to tell apart from other galaxies. And so they're not getting confused about what they're actually looking at. And they took pairs of them. And we're like, all right, let's look at the weak lensing. And we've talked about lensing before. This is how matter or mass tends to distort or bend light as it passes through it. Because the mass can actually attract the light and thus change the path of the light and shift it in one direction or the other. And so they measured the weak lensing. It's just like they're looking for a connection between pairs of these LRGs. So they looked between them and they're like, all right, is there lensing happening there? And it really, it's like not a lot of lensing between these galaxies. Not a ton. But what they did is these 23,000 pairs, they measured it, the lensing, the shift in the light between these galaxies. And what they were to do is able to come up with an average. And then because they came up with an average, they were then able to subtract out any noise from the signals. And so because they had an average, take it out of all of the connections between these 23,000 pairs of galaxies. And what they were left with, they statistically propose is dark matter. And so historically, we have not been able to see dark matter, but we have seen the clumping of matter in our galaxy. Not in our galaxy, in the universe. And so we've seen these clumps, but we know that there are filaments that run between different parts of our universe connecting things together. And they've proposed that dark matter is there, but it just wouldn't be a lot of dark matter. So it'd be hard to see and hard to distinguish from the noise. And so now they've come up with a method to remove the noise. And they have statistically seen dark matter connecting galaxies for the first time. Filaments of dark matter. Yeah. So they haven't actually seen it. It's all statistics. But, you know, this is now a methodology that could be potentially used. Could be potentially. But I do know how it's, we're going to take averages, we're going to get rid of all of that. It's sort of like sort of a classical physicist's thing to do too. We're going to describe a cow. Okay. First let's assume the cow is perfectly spherical. And going from there, then we can say something about what a cow is. Yeah. Okay. All right. And I will, Kevin Unique in the chat room is correcting me and I will take this correction to heart because you are absolutely right. I simplified things much too much. I should have sent bent the pathway of the light because what happens mass bends space. If we've ever seen the marble dropped on a, elastic sheet and it bends. I never liked that. I can't. Yeah. But the idea light always travels in a straight line, but the space is bent. And so the light has to stay in that line in this space. And so the path in through space is bent. So Kevin Unique, thank you very much for that clarification because that's important. That is important to the physical understanding of this. Yeah. And then another researcher, rather researchers looking at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have been trying to figure out, hey, is our Milky Way Galaxy like other galaxies that we see? Other galaxies, look, they have this big cloud of hydrogen gas around them. Do we have that? And I love this description that was from a press release out of the University of Arizona. This description of trying to figure out what our own galaxy looks like is as if you are trying to figure out what your house looks like, but you're like stuck in one room of your house. Right. So how do you figure out what your entire house looks like from the outside if you can never go outside to see it? How do we do that? So you start by looking out the window and seeing if there's some... Other houses. You see other houses around. Yeah. Okay. They all seem to have an awning and a front porch and some sort of garage. And then I'm looking at the people and they're like, oh my goodness, look, there is a little bit of a porch kind of around the front of my door. Exactly. So you can get those clues from outside of yourself to find out what's going on in you or where you are. Yeah. And also looking at how light is... What things look like and how you would expect them to look if there were nothing between us and these other objects or if there were something in between. And so one of the researchers on this paper, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Astronomy at the Steward Observatory, says it's like peering through a veil. You see diffuse hydrogen in every direction we look. And now it's not like hydrogen here on Earth, which is two hydrogen molecules bonded together. This is just single molecules, single atoms of hydrogen diffusely floating around. And so what they have found by these observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, looking at other galaxies and figuring things out from this peering out the window of our Milky Way house, they published in Nature Astronomy based on the spectra of light that we're seeing. And they've determined that we have a halo of hydrogen around our Milky Way. And now this is not hydrogen in the galactic disk. This hydrogen is not moving with us. It's not spinning with our spiral galaxy. It is actually a halo that is doing its own thing outside of our galaxy. And it turns out we're the only galaxy that has hydrogen surrounding it. So as far as we can tell, because everywhere we look it seems to have it, it turns out we were in our own gas. No, I don't know that that's part of it. But what do I mean? Is there a little bit of like, wow, there's hydrogen everywhere out there. And then it turns out we're... No, there's hydrogen everywhere out there. Maybe there is or maybe it's just us after all. Yeah. And so they looked at how we talked, I talked earlier about the shift in light. They looked at the shift in the light to see whether or not the hydrogen was moving with us or away from us or what was going on. And based on the light signal that they got in this hydrogen spectra, it's just this, we have a, the Milky Way has a hydrogen gas halo. Yeah. Very interesting way to kind of figure this out. I wonder if it's some sort of, wow, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, very interesting. And then moving into our own planet. We've got a little bit of this week in the end of the world. People in the Western United States, oh, I know we've been getting lots and lots of rain from the La Nina this year, but don't bet on that being the norm. A new analysis published in Nature Communications is saying that based on their analysis, the observations and re-analyses indicate that between the 1980s and 2000s, there was a 10 to 20% loss in the annual maximum amount of water contained in the snowpack of the Western United States. And this is consistent with the results from a lot of different climate simulations with forced, with natural and anthropogenic changes. But if you take away the anthropogenic and do natural alone, it doesn't match up. So it's anthropogenic changes that are involved. We've talked about this previously. And a further loss of up to 60% of snowpack is projected within the next 30 years. 30 years? 60%? 60%. 60%. And if you thought the mountains, you know, the western, the mountains along western eastern California, looking at the snowpack, people are complaining about the skiing before the rains came again. You know, it's not just skiing that's going to be affected. It's also water supplies to various regions. San Francisco gets most of its water from those eastern mountains and from the snowpack. It's not just water supply for communities. It's also hydroelectric dams. It's also, so it's energy. It's fishing. It's the ecology of the regions are going to be incredibly affected. And for just a small example of how they could be, so dramatically affected, researchers reported also just this last week about a river in Canada that just up and disappeared over the course of four days. It was the Slims River and it carried meltwater north from the Cascawalsh Glacier in the Yukon Territory. And then it kind of goes north and then out west toward the Bering Sea. But in 2016, there was melting of the glacier and then the balance was tipped as to where the meltwater went and it all ended up going to a second river that redirects the meltwater to the Gulf of Alaska. So they've followed this and this is the kind of thing that can happen. Rivers can disappear over very brief periods of time and what's going to happen is that area that was receiving that water, sheep that were in protected territories are now moving to find food into areas where they're going to be more aggressively hunted. We're going to see movements of animals trying to find food and water. We're not going to be that resource available in that area. So the entire ecology of the area will be affected and not just right there, but downstream. And speaking of ecology, something that really concerns me, for example, in the San Francisco Bay Area, but anywhere where you have an estuary is sea levels are rising and at the same time, these snow packs are degrading and so there's less freshwater pouring in. So you have massive a one-two punch of saltwater intrusion in these estuaries, in these bays. And so areas that were 50-50 saltwater, freshwater, areas that were more fresh than salt, closer up to the delta, those things are going to get saltier and saltier and saltier and the plants and animals that are used to living in a specific type of saltiness are suddenly going to find way saltier water. The entire ecosystems are going to have to change. Yep. Things are going to change and while we've seen a lot of things over our lifetimes seem to change relatively slowly. Things are speeding up and I mean, I don't know if rivers disappear over the course of four days. That's really fast. Nobody can keep up with that. Yeah. So anyway, oh, good news for the future. The part that we've kind of highlighted is the least important bit of this being that people won't be able to go skiing or snowboarding as much. Might also be a catalyst for a lot of people who enjoy doing that activity but may have paid no attention to global warming. What? You mean I can't ski anymore? That's part of it? Oh, no. Or your white water rafting will be impacted or your fishing adventure. Low waters quicker rapids. You never know. Or eating food that require fresh water. Oh, wow. What? There's that whole chill stuff. We'll also get a lot of people on board when we have to go to even lower flow toilets. That won't work anymore. Everyone, we're going back to outhouses. Get your lie here. Got your lie. All right, Justin. What did you bring? Can you cheer me up? Yeah. This is a reduced reuse recycle story. Just one of the ways we can try to keep the planet less garbage heapy and also reduce carbon emission from having to remanufacture things. Even within today's current recycling programs that we got going, there are billions of glass bottles ending up in landfills every year. I think a little bit of that is they're not as aggressively pursued in recycling. Because turning sand into glass, I think I've heard and I could be wrong that the carbon footprint, the difference between recycling glass and just getting it something turned into glass isn't that big of a difference. So maybe that's why there's a little bit less emphasis. Not sure. But now researchers University of California Riverside Borns College of Engineering have found a high-end application for the discarded bottles by applying a low-cost chemical process they created, nano-silicone anodes. Yay! What are those? Therefore, high-performance lithium-ion batteries. Batteries will extend the range of electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, provide more power with your charges to personal electronics like cell phones and laptops and personal electronic type devices. An article describing research was published in the National Journal Scientific Reports. Chengiz Oskan, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Miri Oskan, Professor of Electrical Engineering, a permetron Project. Even with today's recycling programs, all these bottles are going to waste but this little tweak that they've done. Let me get down to where... To create the anodes, the team used a three-step process involved crushing and grinding the glass bottles into a fine-white pattern, a magnesium-thermic reduction to transform the silicon dioxide into nano-structured silicon and coating the silicon nano-park with carbon to improve their stability and energy storage properties. But would it actually work? Now that they went and did it, will it work? Yes, it did. They made it going by cell batteries using recycled battery, bottle-based silicon anodes and they not only worked, they greatly outperformed traditional batteries in laboratory tests. I'd love that if you reported all of that. And then you said, oh, but it didn't work. And I'm like, yeah, it didn't work. So, yes, guys, it didn't work. Because this is Chang Ling Li, a graduate student in materials science and engineering lead author. And the paper said, one glass bottle provides enough nano silicon for hundreds of coin cell batteries or three, five, or three, five pouch cell batteries. I don't know what size those actually are. We started with a waste product that was headed for the landfill and created batteries that stored more energy, charged faster, and were more stable than commercial coin cell batteries. Hence, we have very promising candidates. Mission lithium-ion batteries, Lee said. Research's latest series of projects by the OATS-CONS to create lithium-ion battery anodes from environmentally friendly materials. Previous research has focused on developing and testing anodes from Portobello mushrooms. Oh, my God! And fossil rich dirt at that. Nice. Fossil rich dirt. But mushrooms, good. I don't ever like it when science finds a new application for food as bio-friendly as it is. I'm like, oh, great. What's a Portobello mushroom gonna cost now that they're using it to make batteries out of? Now I can't. Now they're really gonna be expensive. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan. I mean, it's like, okay, you can use biomass for stuff. But I mean, why not use the trimmings and the waste products from food production? So corn stalks or... Yeah, yeah. Stuff like composting, it's great. You can get natural gases off, methane off of composting to help run cities or things that we need. Stuff like that is good. And like Dick Tell's saying in the chat room, I don't know, switchgrass. But do you have to use up land to grow switchgrass? I don't know, I don't know. Switchgrass really worked out too well. It's sort of like corn. Like nobody's talking about the ethanol thanks so much anymore. Yeah, I know.  What? Oh, no. Don't listen to me. Okay, so this is, I love it. Glass into batteries. Now, so just start offering a penny more than CRV.  People will just bring it to them. And I think that is the upside of this. Another upside of this is that if you find the really useful application for something that would be waste, then yeah, it is worth that couple of pennies a bottle that makes it so that it's more aggressively recycled. Absolutely, yeah. This is going to, this is heading right direction. And faster charging, longer lasting electronics. It's fixing the other side of the problem too. Yeah. But as my favorite invention of science, the alarm clock, mine seems to be going off telling me it's time once again for... Blair's Animal Corner. Yes. Pigeons, little pigeons, don't pet at all. Wanna hear about the animals? She's your girl. Except for giant pandas, that's a girl. Pigeons, little pigeons. Ah, blah. Come on, let's do this again. Let's do it again. Oh, let's do it one more time. So I brought some stories about pigeons. Very first story about pigeons and how smart they are. What do you think we found? Any guesses? Pigeons are dumb. No. You should let it go. When Blair brings a story to the Blair's Animal Corner about the intelligence of an animal, usually I'm saying we underestimated them, right? So this story is no different. It's a new study from Oxford University looking at homing pigeons, but in particular it's about cumulative culture. Cumulative culture is knowledge over generations that's gathered and passed on and improved on over time. So in this study, they tested whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths over time. So what they did is they removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds and they were given a specific navigational task. 10 chains of birds were released from the same site and in generational succession, they were simulated with the continuous replacement of birds familiar with the root with inexperienced birds who had never filmed the course before. So in each of these pairs, bird familiar, bird not. Then they took the bird not familiar, now familiar, placed them with another bird who is still not yet familiar. So it's like a game of telephone. The idea was that individuals could pass the experience they learned from the, of the root down to the next generation quote unquote and that over time the collective intelligence of the group would improve and the roots efficiency would also improve. They found this to be true. So the homing performance improved consistently over generations. The root was streamlined and was more direct over time and later generation groups eventually outperformed individuals that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership. What we're seeing here, overall, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is proving that this is a teamwork scenario. This is a, again, cumulative culture scenario. This is every pigeon has a different strength and they can build on each other's strengths to come up with a greater idea. Yeah, that's, that's fantastic. That's like, that sounds like human learning. Exactly. And so this has only ever been demonstrated in humans and in a couple of different primates. This is the first time. Yeah, it's the first time in any non-primate animal that they have found this phenomenon. Now, if you ask me, I have heard crow studies that sound like this. They were not systematically testing this hypothesis so they can't for sure say that's what was going on, but I have heard several crow studies that sound like this is the phenomenon. And I think it makes nothing but sense that in any sort of social animal species, they would build on generational knowledge over time. It just seems like a good idea. Yeah, what's interesting about this is that it's different from like instinctual migration where there is some amount of learning that does take place, but there are birds who just, they're young birds. They've never flown south before and they just gotta get up and go. And then they figure it out and learn where everybody else went once they kind of get to the right place. But they do it anyway. And this is a little bit different because this is just a learning, this is young birds learning from older birds where they're going. What is the path? Yeah, hold on. Pigeons are, they have a different behavior than they do migrations. Although, even in that migrational bird, it could be taking place because the efficiency of the route, right? Learning the route that the other birds took and they learned this route. Well, they learned it because they flew with birds had done this a number of times. And where did those birds learn it? And so it may still be taking place there even though it looks just like it's the natural behavior. But the actual final route after a couple of times of doing it is part of both, a little bit of both. Right, and that leads to their next step of the study, which is still to come. They're going to investigate if a similar style of knowledge sharing and knowledge accumulation happens when they do multi-generational species of social groups. So this was simulated generations, right? So they took a pigeon that just learned and had them teach someone else. They want to actually take entire social groups and see if knowledge is passed and improved upon through generations, which will be very interesting to see. And Kevin Unique in the chat room asks, so Blair Baz, did they compare female pigeons with male pigeons? I'm so glad you asked, Kevin, because my next study is all about the differences among the sexes in pigeons. It's almost like you're working for me, Kevin. Well done. Thank you for segueing me. So in a lot of scientific studies that we have reported on in the show, but just also on the grand scheme of studies that involve lab animals, a lot of those research cases, if they're not directly related to reproduction, they don't choose an equal number of males and females as their test subjects. And a lot of the time they use mostly males. That is an interesting tactic based on some things we've learned in this show already. And a new study by researchers at UC Davis and University of New Hampshire looked at specifically the genetics between male and female rock doves pigeons. They wanted to see if there were genetic differences beyond reproductive areas of the genome. And what do you think they found, Justin? Absolutely no differences. Nope, they found a lot of difference. Yeah, so they found that when they looked at the genetics of these guys and particularly at the pituitary gland in the hypothalamus, which is controlled by the hypothalamus, these are areas that are not technically, they're adjacent to hormone creation and things related to reproduction, but they should not be in themselves that different. They found hundreds of differences in their genome. So this difference was fascinating, not only the difference in the genome, but the differences in the gene activity between males and females was astounding. And this shows that there are way more sex-based differences at least in the pituitary than they had previously thought, than previously kind of the idea was in these animals in relation to research and all these sorts of things. So this doesn't mean we have to throw everything out, but just like in previous studies where we found out we've been keeping rats or mice too cold, we found that there are certain things about the way that we handle lab animals that could be affecting our studies. Part of being scientists and part of science is making sure that our tools are up to date, that we're using the best data, that we're using the best equations, that we're using the best subjects. And now when we continue to hone our scientific method for research with animals in laboratories, it's about time we start looking at differences in the sexes to whatever it is we're studying. The perfect example of that is aspirin. There's now been proven a huge difference in the way aspirin affects men and women. Women report a higher rate of adverse reactions to aspirin than men do in clinical trials and studies. So we know this, we know that men and women have these fundamental differences and it's about time that we start using that as a variable to watch. Especially when we're talking about drugs for study. If you're talking about drugs, maybe we should be looking at how they interact with different hormone makeup. So to say the sexes are not different, we can talk all we want about how they are equal in a lot of ways, but they are very different. Equal is not the same as different. Exactly. Yeah, well, one is a legal definition. Right, right. But it is one of the questions where you can throw a ball, I can throw a ball, but when we look inside of our genetic makeup, there are fundamental differences in our biology. And that's the thing that we have to remember whenever we're doing any science is to control our variables, right? So this is just another variable that we do control and be aware of in our scientific studies. And then we also have to make sure that we haven't only been doing our research on westernized white people, right?  There's a lot, there's a lot of variables. There's a lot of variables. And this just means that there's a lot of room for more science research to be done. Yeah, absolutely. And so the point of this study was that even when you're dealing with something like a pigeon, male and female subjects are fundamentally different to the genomic level, which means it's important to use both in your studies. Or not, I mean, does that, or equal amounts of each, I guess.  Maybe. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's what you have to say now. And if you approve something for male pigeons, it is only approved for male pigeons. Just like if you have not tested if a drug has side effects when paired with other drugs yet, you cannot confidently say whether or not a drug will be good for females if you've only tested it on males. Yeah. Totally. And, you know, there's places where there's places where I've seen technology catch up to that in the automotive industry. When for decade, is decade is? Is this? Decades? A little over a decade. All airbags were designed for men, 5'11", 160, 500. Wow. There are now. Men are smaller. Right, women are smaller. Well, or bigger, like. Or bigger, yeah. Different sizes. No, there's a whole range of people of both sexes and different sizes. One of the things that's changed there is there are sensors now that determine where, how far forward the seat is. There's some, and some vehicles that determines where the actual steering wheel is tilted or telescoped. There's weight sensors that will of the weight of the passenger and it takes into account the speed of the accident as well because not every accident, a 55-mile-an-hour head-on collision and a 25-mile-an-hour rear-ending of another vehicle have, this one actually, it's totally the same thing, have different effects or require different speed of opening of the airbag. And then depending on where the position of the passengers and the size of the passenger, all these things now are taken into account. So going forward, the world is only going to get more complicated. And as we go through those complications, we can handle all of it. We really can. We can handle it all. Oh yeah, we can do this. The world is not. This is what we're really good at. It's really our superpower. Handling complicated stuff. Yeah, you know what? And I'm actually very excited that the world beyond, you know, the science and beyond is really coming to that appreciation that the world is not filled with white males of the height, five-foot-eleven. I think it's great that the world's more complicated than that. And on this note, you know, it's also not just pigeons all the way down, not rats all the way down, not mice all the way down. It's, you know, many different animals are going to help us get to this understanding including people and turtles, all the way down. And it's time for us to come to the end of our first. First half, this is the whole second half after the first half. This isn't the whole show. This is just the beginning portion of the whole show. Amazing. Amazing. So I hope you do stay tuned. We've got a few messages for you right now. This is This Week in Science. We'll be back after the break with lots of science. We've got marijuana for you and frogs and blind cave fish. Lots of stuff happening in the second act. Stay tuned. The show's the way. Let's get to our part. The suspicions are the only things I need. We're on a pair of goggles and we're looking for the things I do and see. Hey everybody, this is This Week in Science and I just want to say thank you to all of you for continuing to watch or listen to twists and to appreciate the science that we bring to you week after week after week. There's going to be lots more coming after this break next week, the week after that. I'm going to be at RoboGames this weekend talking to robotics, roboticists, people who are building robots, people who are competing. I mean, it's going to be at robogames.net is where you can find information. RoboGames is at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California. This weekend 21st through the 23rd of April. And you can also catch it live online, which is very exciting on Twitch. That's right. You can find it on twitch.tv slash robogames. And it should be on all week. You might catch me on there if you're interested. I don't know. I'm going to be doing that this weekend. And then in June, the whole twist team is heading to Philadelphia. We're going to Philly for the Young Innovators Fair to live broadcast the whole weekend of June 10th and 11th. And if you've got a young one or if you just want to come out to the Young Innovators Fair, please do. We would love to see you there. Hope we can get you out to the fair. You can find information at younginnovatorsfair.com. And for those of you who continue to appreciate the science that we bring to you week after week here on this weekend science, you know, this weekend science does have bills we need to pay and you help out constantly. Constantly help us produce this show with your purchases and your donations. And also you're just sharing of twists. Really, all these things. Buying our stuff, our merchandise and helping us out on PayPal and Patreon. And then also sharing us with your friends, family, colleagues, all the other on social media. This is part of helping twists continue to do what it does and also to grow. And so I just want to thank you for that. We have merchandise if you head over to twist.org. So you can go to our website, it's T-W-I-S dot O-R-G. Head right over there. And if you click on the Zazzle Store link that is in the main header bar, that'll take you to our Zazzle Store where you will be able to find all sorts of wonderful goodies that you can purchase. And it looks like right now there's a sale going on for Zazzle. Tax season sale on Zazzle. Purchases at Zazzle do go toward helping out this week in science. Also at twist.org, if you scroll down the sidebar you can find that nice donate button along the side and click on that. Takes you to an interface for PayPal. You can just donate very easily, just a flat fee just once if you want. Or you can click on that button multiple times if you'd like. But if you wanna donate on an ongoing basis then the way that you can do that really easily is clicking on our Patreon link which is in the main header at twist.org. Additionally, it's Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash this week in science. Where if you just click on a button, become a patron, you can be a patron of our sciencey arts and help us keep doing this show week after week after week and help us to reach our goal, our fundraising goals to be able to really make this show move. And you are the people that help us do that. And the way you get to all these places easily is through twist.org. But don't forget if you are not able to financially help produce twists we could really use your help in getting the word out.  If you're anywhere else near Twitter or Instagram, I don't know, Snapchat, take a short video, share the video that we're currently putting out, share a link to twist.org. Help us get the word out because it would be wonderful to bring more people under the twist minion banner, right? We need more, more minions, more minions. We really could not do this without you. Thank you so much for your support. The power that I do believe is the dollars and cents all these authors receive. If miracle wonders were held in their looks, why waste precious time and try selling their books before I sit and wait for your publishing royalties. Everyone has real power who needs real loyalty. If you could travel by thought to a mystical place, why go to book signings and buy four shops a day? And we're back with more This Week in Science. And we're back again with even more, more This Week in Science. Whatcha got, Justin? Tell me some science. Oh, is it my turn? Okay, colorectal cancer. What is the second leading cause of cancer-associated death in the United States? Best way to prevent dying from it? Probably 90% survival rate, if found early. So get those invasive colonoscopies early and often and to catch it as early as possible. Have them daily. Or perhaps, perhaps there is another way. Turns out the type of bacteria in your gut may be enough to make the diagnoses. Researchers, Baylor College of Medicine, other institutions have identified specific types of bacteria that seem to be abundant in individuals with colorectal cancer. Using a combination of marker-specific for these fecal microbes, scientists anticipate that a non-invasive clinical diagnostic test can be developed. A study is published in Gut, which I should probably get a subscription to. Yeah, you should. Just to get the high volume of each. Quoty voice, this is Dr. Manasi Shah. She says, a number of studies have shown an association between fecal microbes and colorectal cancer. However, there is limited agreement in the types of microbes reported. So I was interested, not me or her. I was interested, this is Quoty voice. I was interested in finding a microbial marker for the disease. One way to do this is by carrying out a single institutional study. That takes a long time for a sample collection. It involves sequencing the microbes DNA. It's expensive. I noticed that some of the published studies provided the means for assessing the raw microbial DNA sequencing data of those samples. How great it would be. I thought, not me, but this is Dr. Shah again. I thought if I could leverage existing raw data across multiple cohorts and come up with a generalizable marker for the disease. Shah then teamed up with Dr. Emily Hollister, assistant professor of pathology at Baylor, who in her own Quoty voice, Shah had the interest, we had the expertise. Hollister said, in our center, we had been planning to compare a series of different statistical tools to analyze large amounts of microbiome data. Shah's proposal fit very well with our goal. So Hollister was working with the actual DNA sequencing machinery. This is advanced DNA sequencing machinery. And Shah is more of the statistical end of this. The two combined their superpowers then reanalyzed raw bacterial DNA sequence data from several studies and confirmed previously reported types of bacteria associated with colorectal cancer and identified other bacteria not previously associated with the disease. So this is then Shah, the fact that even when we combined several different studies, we could correctly classify a sample as colorectal cancer case or control with 80% accuracy solely based on microbial abundances. It's very encouraging. This is a promising first step to develop the non-invasive test that might be used in the detection of this cancer supplementing colonoscopy or fecal occult blood tests, which only says that there's blood there. It's kind of... And there is a DNA poo test that can be taken that can alert you to mutated DNA being somewhere in that system, but they're not really as pinpointed as this would be like, aha, this is very likely this form of cancer is what we've discovered with this. And part of what made this, but when we talk about there being noise in an experiment, they had actually a pretty tough time getting this data. They reached out to 12 of these studies, only got the full data from, I think, seven of them, seven or nine of them, maybe. And what they also found was these were research projects that happened across, they were international, they were pulling from other countries. The way that the data was compiled, the systems, computer systems that they were on, they had a ton of roadblocks in getting down to the core of what they were looking for. And actually, sort of because of that, I think, this study is pretty encouraging because it was nine out of the 12 studies that they actually got the information from. Encouraging because within all of that noise, despite all of that noise, the sort of correlation managed to rise out of that, those data sets as markers. So if you can imagine having a better controlled environment for all of these studies, but the same platforms, the same way of controlling the samples that are being used, the chances might just increase well beyond that 80%. 80% is a dry run with kind of uncontrollable, you know, sample collection, preservation systems that they were using to get this. And they kind of go on, this is Shaggan. The same strategy that we use could be applied for developing diagnostic tests for other diseases. And then she mentions inflammatory bowel disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, type two diabetes, Alzheimer's, so list goes on. Among others for which the microbiome is currently being investigated. So all of these things that we've been discovering about our microbiome and the connections that has into the health of our entire body and mental states and everything else, we may be also able to diagnose disease from paying attention to how our microbiome is reacting. I love it. It's great. Yeah, how's, what is the microbiome doing? What does that tell us? It knows all. Mm-hmm, seriously, right? I mean, forget reading tea leaves. I want someone to read my microbiome. They can scatter anywhere. I have one, I don't care. You can look at my scat. I mean, nevermind. I'm gonna take us back to a topic that we have discussed many times before. Young blood for old benefits. Oh, mm-hmm. Oh yeah, and a new study published in Springer Nature. It is, this is a research letter, Springer Nature research letters. This is a study in which researchers, basically gave umbilical cord plasma to old mice. And they found that when they gave umbilical cord plasma treatments to these old mice, it revitalized their hippocampuses and improved cognitive function. These old mice started acting like young mice yet again.  Everybody who's been saving their baby's cord blood, maybe it's not for your baby, maybe it's for you. So that was my question. Whose umbilical cord were they using? That of the very same mouse or? No, this is human. Human. Oh, interesting. They used human cord plasma. Yeah, they used human cord plasma. And so then they're like, all right, what is going on?  They started looking at the different compounds that were in this plasma. And they found one in particular that is called tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases two or temp two. And this is a blood-borne factor that is enriched. There's a lot of it in human cord plasma. It's also in young mouse plasma. Yeah, and it's also found a lot in young mouse hippocampi. So baby mouse hippocampuses have this temp two in it. We don't really know what it does particularly, but there's it's increased during this developmental stage at least in young mice in this particular area of the brain, which we know to be involved in cognition, learning, and memory. So this maybe slightly macabre Marguerite night at the old folks home. It also increases synaptic plasticity, which is amazing. Okay, go ahead. Marguerite night in the old folks home. Yeah, is not the destination of this research. The destination of this research is finding a way to simulate what we're seeing take place in another fashion. Absolutely. So we won't, yeah. So the interest is this compound, temp two. And so if we can determine exactly what temp two is doing, how it has its beneficial effect, is this either this compound itself or something related to it, something that we can synthetically produce or can we isolate it from cells? Can we have it made in eggs? How can we potentially produce a compound that it interacts with a target or this particular compound itself? What could we potentially do to make it available to people to be able to reduce cognitive decline? Yes. This is one of my biggest fears, too, is losing what cognitive abilities I have. I don't want to give them up.  I don't care if my hair falls out. I don't care if I have, these things don't bother me in the least, but I don't want to lose any more than what I have already through attrition. Right, I mean, I would love to keep what cognitive abilities I still have left. I would love to keep them as long as possible. Right, and we know that we are in a phase of life in which our brains are not getting any snappier. We, mid-30s, early 30s, we already started our cognitive decline. It's already on the way down. So if we can lessen it, make that the slope of that line of decline a little less steep, that would be amazing. And for individuals who have genetic disorders that predispose them to rapid onset cognitive disorders, it would be amazing to be able to counter that with factors that can be discovered through research like this. As it is right now, we're doing it once again. We're helping mice. We're not helping people at this point in time. Right now, if you have a mouse with dementia, we know exactly how to treat it. What was it, male or female mice? Oh, where? There we go. And what temperature were they and how were they handled? Just questions. That's a great question. And I did not look into it in this. I did not look at the cohort. I'm looking at the paper right now, and it's a lot of words and figures. Oh, message. Just a question to the group, not particularly to you. Here we go, here we go. Aged male WTC57BL slash six mice. Male mice. This is only male mice. They were obtained from the National Institute on Aging Aged Rodent Colony. Young.  Yeah, and then it says they got young mice, but it doesn't say whether or not they were male or female. And then it says persistent hyperactive behavior in female NSG mice motivated the use of male mice in the behavioral studies. So females had, they were hyperactive, more active than the males. And so it works. So the results could be more dramatically revealed if you used the mellower. That's exactly what they did, yes. Yes, they used the mellower animals, males. So hey, good catch there, Blair. Now don't worry, I won't ask for every single study. I was gonna say, I think like, oh my God, this is a new whole segment that weaves through every study. Every study. I'm just not gonna bring any more stories with animals. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna avoid. So in your next story on cannabinoids, were they male or female patients? Oh, I don't know if the patients are male or female, but the plants were all female. Thanks in large part to a widespread outbreak in medical marijuana legalization. There are 28 states currently allowing comprehensive medical cannabis programs. And according to this, nearly 10% of cannabis users in the US are utilizing the drug for its medicinal reasons or utilizing the medicine for medicinal reasons. Researchers are busy examining the merry medicine for use in treating nausea, arthritis, chronic pain, anorexia, list goes on. And dermatologists are now looking into its ability to fight a range of skin disease. Quoting voice from Dr. Robert Deleveille, MD associate professor of dermatology at University of Colorado School of Medicine. Perhaps the most promising role of cannabinoids is in the treatment of itch. He noted that in one study, eight of 21 patients who applied to cannabinoid cream twice a day for three weeks, completely eliminated severe itching or paritis. And it may have reduced the dry skin that gave rise to the itch in the first place. So, you know, small sample size, but this is also building on other studies that are now showing up because of, because it's now legal to research it, right? Also believes the primary driver in these cannabinoid treatments could be their anti-inflammatory properties. And the studies he and his fellow researchers reviewed that they found a THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, the active greenant marijuana reduced swelling and inflammation in, in, uh-oh, shoot. Here I thought I had a clean study. They reduced swelling and inflammation in mice. Male or female mice, we may never know because I don't have the old cohort thing here. At the same time, the mice with melanoma saw significant inhibition and tumor growth when injected with THC. These are topical cannabinoid drugs with little or no psychotropic effect that can be used for skin disease, he says. Still, big question that most of these studies are based on laboratory models and large-scale clinical trials have not yet been performed. That may change as more and more states legalize cannabis and more and more purported uses for the medicine seek their scientific verification validation.  I do know that some people do use already skin balms that are cannabis-based, but I thought that there was actually, in those particular compounds, that there was a psychoactive result. They go on to say, those who have used medications for rich in skin disease without success may find a viable option here. Yeah, if they're using not necessarily the active ingredient but a cannabinoid that's not, like it says, the psychotropic. Right, and the mental stuff. What he's talking about here isn't psychotropic, but the variety of applications.   And it's also good for, now it's good for eczema. I mean, it's a big list for something that we have refused as a society of laws to allow the research, the path to which it leads. And now, now the damage busted. So that's putting on your skin. I've got one more, one more story I'm gonna follow this up with, which is next time you have a frog in your throat, consider sticking one up your nose as well. Not only. What? Not only is it a good look, but it just might cure what ails you if you choose the right type of frog. Turns out that the component in the skin mucus secreted by South Indian frogs can kill the H1 variety of influenza viruses. Nice. What? So frog skins were known to secrete host defense peptides to defend the frog from varieties of bacteria. The finding by researchers, this is from Emory Vaccine Center and Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology in India suggests that the peptides present a resource for antiviral drug discovery. Going on that anti-flu peptides can be handy when vaccines are unavailable and the case of a new pandemic strain or when circulating strains become resistant to the current drugs, says Senior Author Joshi Jacob, PhD Associate Professor of Microbiology and Humanology at Emory Vaccine Center. So this is also kind of, this particular peptide that they're talking about has a very unique effect on the flu virus, which really to the point of making it sort of universal for H1s. So Jacob and his colleagues, well, they named one of the antiviral peptides they identified as urumine after a ridiculous whip-like sword called urumine used in Southern India centuries ago and likely abandoned because it's so unwieldy that you are more likely to injure yourself practicing with it than gaining any advantage on the battlefield. I have no idea why they chose this. Seems very obscure. But urumine, that's the peptide, not the ridiculous whip-sword thingy, was found in skin secretions from the Indian frog, hydroflax, the bahavistra peptides, is these short chains of amino acids building blocks of proteins. Some of these antibacterial peptides work by punching holes and cell membranes. So they are toxic to mammalian cells as well, but this particular peptide was not. Instead, it appears to only disrupt the integrity of flu virus as seen through the electron microscopy that they did, microscopy. So it binds to the stock of the hemagglutinin, which is a less variable region of the flu virus. So it's less variable meaning more flu viruses have this region. It's been the goal of the universal vaccine to target this region. So we have other, we have all the other anti-flu drugs and things that are out there, they're targeting different parts, different regions of the flu virus and those differ between different flus, right? That's why you have H1, N5, H2, N7, H8, yeah, you have these different varieties, yeah. So this one could actually be usefully applied to a host of viruses. What's sort of interesting here, there's a line in the starting reading. It says, because flu viruses from humans cannot infect frogs, producing urmin probably confers on frogs and advantage in fighting some other pathogen. But wouldn't that also be like, wait, maybe that's why they can't get the human viruses? That's why they don't get the flu. That's why they don't get it, because it's there. Like that's what's already doing, the thing that you discovered that it does just go with that. Well, frogs are really sensitive to a lot of things because they have porous skin. So there's such this direct connection between their entire surface area and the internal everything in their body that it makes sense that they would kind of have some extra ammunition against any host of potential diseases or infections or any number of things. So I think this makes sense. But I also think this is a great reason to remember again that there are all sorts of untapped resources for our own benefit in the medical field that we haven't even found yet. And most frogs, a lot of frogs live in the rainforest. Rainforest is already under attack for a lot of reasons, mainly habitat destruction, but now also I think on the show, but if not, definitely I shared out through social media a study earlier this year that said that frogs are extremely susceptible to climate change in particular the ones in the rainforest because of changes in rainfall pattern and temperatures and all these sorts of hosts of things. But I think this is a perfect example of, we knew plants had a lot of medicines out there to offer us, but there might be some on the back of a frog that could help us eliminate the flu. How cool would that be? And yeah, and this was specifically, Ehrman, okay, say they delivered intranasally to Ehrman Protected Unvaccinated Mice. So the Ehrman Protected Unvaccinated Mice against a lethal dose of H1 strains of flu. Which would have been like the one that happened back in 2009. It was not however effective against other current strains such as H3. So we need to find more frogs. Find more frogs, find out, yeah, to be able to really universally, but I mean, if we can protect ourselves against the H1 version of the- That's a lot, that's a lot. And those are some of the big ones too. Those are more pandemic strains.  That is not what we're suggesting. You gotta know what kind of frog it is. Yeah, you have to identify the frog first to make sure it's the one used in this study. Don't stick a frog in your nose. There's even some frogs that are poisonous. You know, there's a poison card, right? Stick one of those up your nose. It's gonna be a bad rest of the day. Yeah, so I just wanted to be clear. Twist does not condone sticking random frogs up your nose. No, and- Unless you're doing it for science. Oh boy. No, not even that. Just unless you have- Not even that? I have been really a good idea. Twist doesn't recommend putting things up your nose. How's that? Yeah, we do not. But we do like caves. Caves are fun. And last week, Blair, you talked about an evolution story, kind of talking about natural selection and how basically the one group, you kind of thought it should have disappeared over time based on selective properties, but it stuck around. So there was definitely some kind of balance to having it in the population over time. And so this story here is a different side of that altogether. Published this week in BMC, Biomed Central Evolutionary Biology. This is an open access article. Anybody can read it if they want to. You can download the PDF. Super interesting about blindness in cave dwelling organisms, specifically looking at blind cave fish. So fish and caves, they're blind. Why are they blind? Why don't they see? Why aren't there any sighted cave fish in the caves? And long story short, they came up with a model of the fundamentals of the evolutionary process at hand, the drift, selection, mutation, and also migration that can possibly happen to get individuals out of caves. And they looked at the interaction of three forces. So selection that was favoring alleles that caused blindness. So there's certain alleles that say, okay, your eyes don't detect light versus the alleles that say, your eyes do detect light, right? What's the selection that favors that? The interaction also with immigration of sighted alleles from a surface population, and then also mutations that create the blindness alleles. And they looked at the dynamics of this model and pretty much found that these blind cave fish are blind because if they could see, they would leave the cave. Wait, what? Come again. Pretty much long story short is individuals with eyes that could detect light didn't want to stay in the cave, they left. Bill. That is a type of selection. Absolutely. The selection. And so for blind cave fish and possibly many, many other, if not all species of blind animals in caves, the reason they're blind and live in caves is because the ones that could see didn't want to be there and took off. Okay, so the extrapolation is that when there are elements of an environment that are not ideal, those that remain cannot sense the problem. Is that why I'm still in my hometown? Everybody else is in my hometown. Yeah, so. Sensing. Sensing. Not you in particular, but we're talking about you, Justin. Why do you have to make it about yourself? I just can't, like, I can't, we're just moved away. Just can't tell. Yeah, so the secondary aspect of this also is that eyes, the metabolic cost of having light sensing organs, it's not low necessarily. So, you know, they just genetically drift that it just, yeah, blind cave fish, blind because they stayed. They survived because no one else was there, probably. Right, yeah. So it's a very interesting model of evolutionary selection for an interesting trait. And then. It's also weird that it's, oh, go ahead. It's also weird to me that fish would lose it because, you know, mouth, like, having all this, like having eyes near a mouth so that you can find food happened in some of the, started in some of the earliest life forms. That led to us, you know. So it seems like it's such a fundamental trait that developed probably on where the disclaimer started on that silt on the ocean floor, deep, deep down in the darkness that even within a cave, you'd be trying to maintain whatever vision was possible. Like, why not come up with night vision? Like, have night vision fish or illuminate? Like, it seems like that would be something worth finding other energies to throw at to keep around. But, you know, maybe this explains it. Maybe this does explain it, that all the ones that were predisposed with vision left. Yeah, so, I mean, there's also the mutation rate. You have to have specific mutations to be able to allow for other traits to develop. And if no other traits have developed that have been substantially effective enough to increase the fitness of individuals, then they're not really going to catch on, you know. Yeah, okay, blind cave fish. They looked at Asteanix Mexicanus and it is one of the most well-studied cave dwelling species inhabiting caves for approximately five million generations. Wow, that's dedication. That's a lot of generations. A million years, it's a lot of generations. Yes. Yeah, kind of fascinating, yeah. I've got quick stories now. We're down to the end of our show. Wow, we're getting there. We're getting there. Quick stories, Large Hadron Collider has tantalizing sniff, tantalizingly sniffed the hints of a new particle. But, you know, we're not gonna say that they have found a new particle because they haven't. Ta-da. This is the LHCB experiment is seeing fluctuations in these really short-lived particles called B mesons. And they're looking at how these, how when protons smash together, what happened with these mesons and then what they turn into and the particles that come off of them, the quarks and the anti-quarks and what's happening and other mesons and all sorts of stuff. And they've got some results that are interesting, but it's not significant yet. It's an anomaly with a significance below 2.5 sigma, which really in physics means I don't know why I'm reporting on this. Well, No, seriously, in physics, it's nothing because the five sigma threshold is what we need to actually claim a discovery. They, physicists are nowhere near saying they have a discovery. This is a PR stunt to keep people excited about the LHC because the LHC is coming back online right about now from its winter break. And so there's gonna be a lot more data and maybe we will find more tantalizing hints and maybe we won't. And maybe it'll go, and the standard model will stand, as always, with nothing challenging it. Yeah, that'd be boring, but you're right. Yeah, that's probably what will happen. And it will be boring. My money is with finding something interesting. Well, we haven't found anything interesting yet. Yeah, no, nothing interesting is coming out of the LHC. Nothing we haven't predicted. That's, and that's sort of, that's so disappointing. And yet, yes, confirms, like, okay, there was a lot of folks who were taking courses and potentially non-standard model physics that might just be like, yeah, we're gonna take those other classes now that's sort of more mainstreaming. Because nothing has illuminated us to go in a really necessity of a different direction at this point. So it's a little bit boring, but yeah, it's gonna be good to know. It'll be great to know. It'll be good to know what goes on within the physics. That's right, we like the physics. And do you know what? A lot of people also like Pokemon Go. Yeah, a lot of people are playing. Yeah, we're cutting this particular segment. Okay, just turn your microphone off there and your video. Okay, I see you're just totally book what cutting. Oh my. A lot of video game augmented reality and virtual reality research has been done looking at the negative aspects of how video games affect behavior, make socially isolate people, keep people from actually interacting with other people, maybe increase aggressiveness and all sorts of kind of negative personality traits that have been suggested, not that there's actually ever been found any data that supports that. So these researchers, publishing in the Journal of Media Psychology, they had decided they were gonna look specifically for positive stuff. And so they're like, hey, Pokemon Go, it's a social game. Let's look at things related to things like people are people who have social anxiety are going to be less likely to play the game. Is social anxiety going to reduce your positive feelings from playing the game? How what kind of results are going to come from playing Pokemon Go? And they pretty much discovered from their analysis of individuals who were playing this game. It was like 18 to 21 year olds or something like that that this kind of a game, this Pokemon Go social augmented reality type of game actually had very positive effects on individuals. Right in this second. Are you telling me that they went out to discover effects of the game and their result was they found positive effects from the game? That is incredible. It's incredible. I was so surprised that they found the thing that they set out to find before they just looked at stuff. That's crazy. But they had many hypotheses that they were working on and they did expect to see fewer people with social anxiety having positive benefits from it. Actually, because it's a social game, they expected those individuals to have very negative responses to the game. And those individuals did not. They weren't as positive about it as people without social anxiety, but they still really enjoyed playing the game. And they had...  Like, that's not a thing that this actually, like some people do, but for the most part, they don't. What they do is they drive through a neighborhood that nobody else went to at five miles an hour collecting the pokey thingies. They did find that gameplay was associated with increases in social behavior. Yeah. And I know exactly what that social behavior is. That social behavior is me being surrounded by three people who are like, yeah, I picked up a kooky what's it, one or the other. Oh, where'd you find a kooky what's it? I've been looking for a kooky. I don't have a kooky what's it yet.  It's like, oh. Like, yeah. They're all talking about this completely in name and in... Well, okay. And I'm being highly judgmental. You are being highly judgmental. That's what I'd say is, as for somebody who has... Don't worry about time wasting games. As somebody who's never been interested in Pokemon and did not play the game at all, I will say that it's not that different from other things that people get interested in. They were talking about the kooky what's it and where to find that. Maybe you talk about where your favorite craft beer is with somebody else who is buying some craft beer, right? What could possibly be the difference there? If it causes two people to have a conversation that we're already going to have a conversation, that is the point of the study. And actually I did read another positive study about Pokemon Go where it increased people's steps. It increased people's activity out in the world. Now, whether it was into oncoming traffic, that's another conversation. But also that thing has been heavily packed to the point where there's people who are virtually now walking to locations. So it's like, how can we do this without walking? Oh, it's like every... But they probably still count the footsteps even though somebody walked from California to Japan. Yeah, and that's not everybody. But the very end, the last couple of sentences from this paper, I mean, they're looking at this with eyes wide open. I think they say our results hint at a moment in time where simply playing a video game might have made people happier, encouraged nostalgic reverie, created or deepened friendships, and motivated players to walk around their neighborhoods. These experiences might also have enhanced players' wellbeing. We hope that future research can build on this work and continue to expand our understanding of augmented reality gameplay and positive media effects. Future research doesn't even necessarily have to be done on Pokemon Go. And now my final... Sorry, my finishing thought on that is like, I'm all for gaming. I think gaming does wonderful things for our society. I think it keeps kids off of crime. And I think it's going to keep elderly, actively, agilely and mentally involved in doing something even when physical ability to go out and interact with the world is reduced. Now, I think there's a lot of positives that we're gonna have from gaming as a society. But I think all of the talk about the socialized like community of, I think it's hype. And so, you know, whatever, don't listen to me. What do I know? I don't know what you know, what do you know? I don't know. Moving on to my last story for the evening. Oh, no, I was gonna say, I wanted to interrupt earlier. The difference between the talking about the craft beer that's at this particular place and the Pokemon thing is there's actually a physical craft beer being brewed by people using science to make a beer that you can taste and drink and interact with physically. It's a real object in the world. Have you ever played a game, Justin? Good question. Have you ever played a game? I play chess. All right. Do you play imaginary games with your kids where you make up characters? Do you run around and, you know, make up characters and role playing imaginative play?  It's just because it's like a game play. Just because it's not. Just because everybody else is playing it, not over again.  There we go. Something that maybe hopefully will make you feel happier is that now on those moments when you are liking to be socially isolated and hanging out, just looking at pictures on your computer, you can now search all of NASA's images, videos and animations, all of them. Whereas before they've been, yeah, but before each of the NASA locations have their different databases and their different files and putting things places.  And they've been these disparate places. Unless you really know what you're doing, it's hard to search for specific images within NASA's database. But it's not hard any longer because now NASA has worked with a company called Info Zen to put all of their images on the cloud. And so all of the images, every single one of them is now available and you can search it if you just go to images.nasa.gov. And it's super easy. You can search for anything you wanna search for. So if we wanna search for Jupiter right now, for instance, and just let it do its little thing, suddenly we show up with images and videos related to Jupiter. So whatever search terms, things that are involved in NASA's purview, all of the images, the media is online for you to search. So this is gonna be hours and hours of fun for one. Which it used to just be, they would put their like best pictures up there first. And then you'd be like, oh, these are the best Jupiter pictures I've ever seen. Now you gotta wade through 1,700 images of just half junk, 90% junk, just like, I can't even tell. Is that Jupiter? I can't even tell that's Jupiter. That looks like a rock, like a close-up picture of like a rock I've been at the beach. Like I can't even tell on some of these. But you know, all of them, that's better. Beautiful images. You're being very...  I don't know what happened. Are you kids in there video games? Damn, NASA, tell me too much, give me too much information, help me. I know. What happened to you? I have no idea. I think you must be low blood sugar. All right, Blair, close us out with a couple of stars.  Because I have stories about noise. Noise. Story is about road noise. So when that person steps into traffic because they were looking for a jigglypuff, that traffic's noise. It's one of three I know. That traffic noise could be affecting animals. In fact, we've talked about it before, noise pollution's a big deal. But a recent study from the University of Virginia, sorry, George Mason University in Virginia, looked at North American fly catchers, particularly Eastern wood pewees. They're cute, I love wood pewees. Yeah, and they studied them in three parks within the greater Washington, D.C. area. They recorded songs and they recorded road sounds. They recorded during a 36-hour closure and then on a normal day. Overall, they found that when there's a lot of traffic noise, the little pewees change the frequency of their song and shortened the duration of their song. And so this means their song is actually completely changing when there is traffic noise. This may or may not be part of the reason that their population has fallen by over 50% in the last 70 years. So the suggestion from this article and this study is to do some road closures during mating season. So we get road closures, certain hours of road closures. So if we can study these little pewees and find out what time of year and what time of day they are most active and singing, then we can try to reduce traffic noise. Or my idea would be to just make electric cars. Electric cars would be a lot quieter or at least electric. The louder vehicles are semi trucks and the larger construction equipment-based vehicles. If we can get those off of the giant diesel engines and onto electric or fuel cell-based motors, then we're gonna be dealing with a much quieter situation. I mean, seriously, I can't see us at rush hour going, oh, excuse me, excuse me, nobody can drive through here right now. Yes, the pewees are singing. The pewees. As much as we love the birds, I have a hard time thinking.  Oh my God, I was hoping you would do that. The last thing I want to mention tonight, speaking of noise, is about the noise of flowing water.  Yeah, to pee-wee.  We've talked before on the show about plants listening to what's going on around them. In this case, a study from the University of Western Australia found that plants are listening to water sources. They tested different types of water sources near the roots of plants, actual running water, artificial running water, water running in a tube. And they found that the plants will grow their roots towards running water. They were not fooled by recordings of running water. And that they only change the direction they grow their roots towards water, if they're thirsty, if they don't have a lot of water in the soil. And this study was done with the common garden pea plant, the same plant that was the species of study for Gregor Mendel genetics test. How? I have questions. No, it's not chemo, it's not chemotaxis. Is it? This is a great question. Is it toward vibrations? Like, so they know it's not a chemical signal. Audio recording creates vibrations, that's what I'm not recording. So they know it's not a chemical signal because they responded to it running in a pipe. Right. So it's vibrational, but. But the recordings are so effective. So if it's the vibrations, then it has to be very subtle or very sensitive to those vibrations because the recording has to be gosh darn near the actual thing in terms of vibration. No, the recording can be anywhere, but the playback of that recording, the speaker itself would need to be embedded in the soil to recreate. And that's what they did because they were testing if the roots would follow the direction of the sound. Wow. Yeah. So TBD on that, but they think it probably has to do with the vibrations. Probably, I would think it would have to do somehow with vibrations, but then to isolate how the vibrations of the running water would be different from, you know, in the tube would be different from the speaker. That's amazing to me. What would that be? And the implications of this. What is going on? Yeah. The implication of this is that sound pollution does not just mess with peewees, it could mess with plants. If plants suddenly can't hear, quote unquote, where this water is, that could affect survival of plants. So when we do studies on sound pollution, now perhaps plants have to be part of that conversation. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So I just wanted to leave that out in the quick news, blow everybody's want mind and just kind of walk away. Want, want, want, want. Why running water though? I mean, water under the ground, does it, it doesn't run really? I mean, how? The water table, I guess. Water table, there's so many things about this that are strange. I need more research. Plant scientists, come on. I need more details on this one and quickly. Yes. So TBD, I'll be in touch. And then the other thing too is, can you stimulate the growth of a plant by simulating running water in these pipes in every direction? Like can you get a really insanely strong root system by surrounding your potted plants with a hose that, I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah, no, this would be, this is like fun, fascinating. But stop playing opera for your plants because apparently they don't care. We don't know if they don't care about opera. But maybe they do. The roots might not care, but maybe the shoots do. That's such an interesting point though. How many kids science experiments have there been about what music to play for your plants? And everyone's like, oh, plants get here though. This is so weird. Like what is the, this is now the proof that they can do something like here. We don't know what it is. They don't have ears, but they can do something analogous to hearing. So it makes perfect sense that they wouldn't like heavy metal. If it's something that signals something bad, for example. Water flowing through, water flowing through a tube might, no, water flowing through a tube might induce an ionic current. Okay. So we could be dealing with sensitivity to changes in ion, in charge, change in charge. Wow. Something like that. Curious, I think you should call the University of Western Australia real quick. Yes. And also, what is hearing? What is hearing? What do we hear with? Tiny little hairy filaments within our ear. What's picking up the sound? What are plants covered with?  So of course they can hear their whole, their whole body's a, is not active. Well, vibrating, but this is something else. Audio organ. I don't think it's hearing we're talking about. I think it is something different. Yeah, I think I like, if I said that before, you said the thing that you said, then that would have been more interesting. But now that you said the other thing, I actually, before I just got the same answer. Ah, all right. All right. Well, we can have this discussion go on and on and on. Yes, we've done it. We have come to the end, come to the end of another show. And I would just love to thank everyone for listening to this show. And also want to take this moment to thank our Patreon sponsors. Thank you, Chris Clark, Paul Disney, Chee Burton, Lattimore, John Ratnuswamy, Richard Onimus, Byron Lee, EO, Jared Lysette, Kevin Perichan, Andy Groh, Keith Corsale, Jake Jones, Brian Hadrick, John Gridley, Stephen Bickel, Kevin Railsback, Gerald Sorrell, Ulysses Adkins, Derek Nicolle, Dave Freidel, James Randall, Eric Schwalb, Bob Calder, Mark Nisaros, Ed Dyer, Triner 84, Layla Marshall-Clarke, Charlene Henry, Larry Garcia, Randy Mazzucca, Tony Steele, Gerald O'Yanke, O'Niago, Steve DeBell, Greg Guthman, Brian Stab, Patrick Cohn, XB, Daryl Lambert, Haroon Sarang, Alex Wilson, Jason Schneiderman, Dave Neighbor, Jason Dozier, Matthew Litwin, Eric Knapp, Jason Roberts, Richard Porter, Rodney, David Wiley, Robert Aston, Todd Northcutt, Arlene Moss, Aurora Lee, Bill Cursey, Ben Rothick, Darwin Hannon, Rudy Garcia, Felix Alvarez, Cosmic Gypsy, Brian Hone, Orly Radio, Brian Condren, Mark, Nathan Greco, Nehexator, Mitch Nieves, Flying Out, John Crocker, Christopher Dreyer, Artie Mshuwata, Dave Wilkinson, Steve Mishinsky, Rick Ramis, Gary Swimsberg, Phil Nadeau, Braxton Howard, Salgad Sam, Matt Sutter, Emma Grenier, Phillip Shane, James Dobson, Kurt Larson, Stefan Insam, A Honey Moss, Mountain Sloth, Jim Drapeau, John Maloney, Jason Oldes, James Paul West, Alec Doty, Aluma Lama, Joe Wheeler, Ducal Campbell, Craig Porter, Adam Mishkan, Erin Luthan, Marjorie David Sumerly, Tyler Harrison, Colombo Ahmed. Thank you so much for your support on Patreon. And if any of you are interested in finding out more about Patreon, you can find information at Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash this week in science. Also, you can help us out simply by telling people about twists. And on next week's show, once again, we will be broadcasting live online at 8 p.m. Pacific time on twist.org slash live. You can watch and you can join our awesome chat room. Hey everyone in the chat room, thanks for chatting. And if you can't make it, don't worry, you can find past episodes at twist.org slash YouTube or simply or facebook.com slash this week in science or twist.org. That's it. Thank you for enjoying the show. Twist is also available as a podcast. Just Google this week in science in your iTunes directory or if you have a mobile type device, you can look up twist the number four droid app in the Android Marketplace or simply this week in science and anything Apple Marketplace-y. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes will be available on our website. That's at www.twist.org where you can also make comments like by listing all of the types of Pokemon that you know and start conversations with the hosts and other listeners. Or you can contact us directly. Email kirsten at kirsten at thisweekin science.com Justin at twistmeaning at gmail.com or Blair Blair by asatwist.org. Just be sure to put twist, which is spelled T-W-I-S somewhere in your subject line. Otherwise, your email will be immediately spam filtered into oblivion. You can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at twistscience at Dr. Kiki at JacksonFly and at Blair's Nasry. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes to you in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science. And if you have learned anything from the show, please remember it's all in your head. This week in science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science it's the end of the world. So I'm setting up a shop, got my banner unfurled. It says the scientist is in, I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to stop the robots with a simple device. I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand and all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. This week science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method and I'll broadcast my opinion all over. It's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That's what I say may not represent your views but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science you may just then understand that we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. We're just trying to save the world from Japanese. This week in science is coming your way. So everybody listen to everything we say and if you use our methods that are rolling and die we may rid the world of toxoplasma. Got the eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, eye, but it's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, I've got a laundry list of items I want to address from stopping global hunger to dredging Loch Ness. I'm trying to promote more rational thought and I'll try to answer any question you've got. But how can I ever see the changes I seek when I can only set up shop one hour a week? This week in science is coming your way. So just listen to what we say and if you learn anything from the words that we've said then please just remember this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week, this week in science, this week in science, This Week in Science, this Week in Science. This Week in Science, this Week in Science. We have come once again to the end of a show. It's a long one. We have filled two hours with so much science, so much for you. We hope you march for science if you can, if you will. March for Science, April 22nd. And I was just looking at my calendar. Calendar, you know, the twist calendar. Blair's Wonderful Art, Begin of Frogs. It's a pretty frog for the month of April. Earth Day, April 22nd, same day as the March for Science. And then if you keep going into the following week, the 24th World Day for Laboratory Animals. You can celebrate lab animals next Monday. Next Tuesday is World Penguin Day, so everyone can do a penguin dance, like in Happy Feet or World Penguin Day. And then I think we're going to do a green show or something. I don't know if we're going to theme up for next week. Should we? I don't know. And then on Thursday is World Tape Year Day. Yay! Friday, Arbor Day, and Saturday, Save the Frogs Day. I think this week is the busiest week in this entire calendar. It's like all of a sudden everything fell on this last week of April. Honestly, looking through the calendar, I'm like, why aren't other weeks so filled with days? There are many days, but not the same last week of April. Yeah, it turns out happening. It is happening. You know what science I'm really thankful for? Aspirin. Are you having adverse results for me since you're a woman? That's true. Yeah, I guess I don't mean aspirin. I mean ibuprofen and acetaminophen. I mean, I've taken normal aspirin before too, but mostly those naproxen, stuff like that. I have a headache right now. Oh, no. Maybe you should eat some chocolate. Chocolate. OK, give me it. Awesome. You will have some. Can't quite reach it. I just gave Vader a haircut. Ooh, let me see. He doesn't look nearly as bad when he's missing part of his helmet. Oh, yeah. If only I could give him a mullet. Oh, yeah, that'd be great. So this is chocolate that we made ourselves. We had to go run around the last minute before Easter to find free-trade chocolate chips, because my son really, really, really did not want non-free-trade chocolate on Easter. He's very concerned about child slavery. Good. Good for him. He's already an engaged citizen. So now we have a lot of chocolate. I'm going to be eating it for the next year. Chocolate, it's everywhere now. Chocolate. Ooh, where's Justin? I don't know. I need to share something. Oh, please. Copyright infringement. I ate the copyright infringement. Are you turning? What are you doing? You're watching us well. Not intentionally. Two hours, eight seconds. We did a good, long show today. It's because of the added segment. It was the added segment. And then I just couldn't say no to some stories. There was one that I really wanted to talk about, too, about the ice islands in the sea. What was it? Was it finding my story? Because it's not on this computer. I had it up on another computer. Planet Earth narrowly avoided getting struck by a giant asteroid. You did it right tonight. Asteroid. It did not. It did, too. No. It was the size of, what is that, six football fields wide? And it whizzed past. Whizzed past at 1.8 million kilometers. I think is the equivalent of 1.8 billion meters from the Earth. Which is how far? That sounds pretty far. That's like five times the distance between Earth and the moon, I think. So it's like five times. It's the moon and then five times the distance. If it were between the moon and Earth, then I'd be more familiar. I don't care about the ones that are like, that's distant. That's way out there. That's not even close. That's a big object in our neighborhood. In our neighborhood. Close into our neighborhood. Where were you, Jupiter?  Well, now you can search for images of Jupiter to yell at. So thanks, Kiki, for that story. Kiki, I have an animal-related question, particularly Justin's favorite, cats. Have you put a square on the floor and painter's tape for your cats yet? I need to do this, not Justin's cats. Ha, ha, ha, ha, that's funny. I don't have any. That's a funny joke. I'm going to take Dave Freidahl's suggestion and put a piece of tape, square a tape on the floor, and see what Justin does with it. There was in the Twitter feed of all these people putting squares on the floor for their cats, there was one that said, yep, it worked. And someone put a tape square on the floor and the cat stared at it. And then the 20-something-year-old son got up and stepped into the box and kept pointing down to his feet to try to get the cat in there. And the cat just stood there. Hey, look what happens when you put a square on the floor. Makes humans do weird things. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't know. All I know is if I put anything on the floor, my cat will sit on it, try to play with it, basically mess with it in one way or another. Quick real-time correction. Strength is saying it was not five times as far away as our moon, but four times. Ooh, so much closer. Basically, right there. I have a package that I received. Oh, yeah? What is it? This package contained a shot glass and a t-shirt. This shot glass says Biohack the Planet. Uh-huh. It has a t-shirt. Is that from Josiah? It's from Josiah. I got my CRISPR kit today. Oh, gosh. Yeah, I put the DNA in the freezer. I put the CRISPR in the freezer, like it's said to do, so it's not out here right now. Isn't there already a drawer for that in the refrigerator? I think it's the lower section. Yeah, and I put the CRISPR, CRISPR, and I put the E. coli. Yeah, I put the CRISPR, CRISPR, and I put the E. coli in my, with my butter in the fridge. Oh, boy. So if Kiki's not here next week, well, no walk. We know exactly what happened. Exactly. Don't eat the butter. There's the coli on the butter. Glurriide toast preparation in the morning. They have peachy dishes. I got pipettes. Plastic gloves. Got microtubules to put dry ice in and explode. I got a pipette. A pipette? I got a pipette. I use pipettes quite a bit. I got a holder to put my oobs in. Yeah, and then I got a bottle, some sticks. Good, good. It's for scraping. It's for plating, for plating the agar. And the colonies on the agar. And I got instructions. Oh, instructions are important. What does that say? Instructions are very important for my CRISPR-Cas9 bacterial genomic editing kit. First thing you do, toss out the instructions. No, what? So what are you going to make, Kiki? So this is a pigeon with the nose of a pig and the wings of a bat. No, this is a very specific kit. And it's good for teaching methodology and showing how this works. But the intent is to take E. coli that cannot exist on that. If streptomyosin is in place, then it will not grow. And then you induce, you cut and clip and induce, insert a gene that allows it to grow on media that has streptomyosin. So basically, you go from E. coli not being able to grow in a particular environment, edit the E. coli. And it can then grow in an environment that was previously inhospitable. So. Phone to the clutches of an evil mad genius. I'm so excited.  I'm going to teach my 60-year-old how to be a mad scientist.  He has rubber gloves and other little things. And he and his friend were playing around with, like, gave them soda and water and different things. And they're like, we're doing experiments. And, you know, I'm like, OK, that's OK. You're just playing. I'll teach you science. We made a fully functional trebuchet today. Oh, my God. Physics. There you go. Yeah, we had like, well, it's a little bit of physics, a little bit of engineering, a little bit of it. But it was a sort of like potpourri sort of choice homework. Potpourri. Or maybe that. Like, we had all these things we could choose to make. And we were looking at this list. And one of them was a LEGO catapult. Sweet. So we go into this thing. It was just sort of it's some homework assignment. And we go through this. And first of all, we looked at the instructions. We're not really actually, it's that way we threw them out. They were terrible. It's like, here's some LEGOs. Here's a catapult. Make a catapult out of LEGO. Make a catapult. Justin, welcome to the next generation science standards. Right. And it was like, sort of like, here's all these pieces that you may or may not have in a LEGO collection. Some of these are probably from a Playmobil set. We don't know. Here's a picture. And so we're starting to like gather up something like out of our LEGO collection. And then I realized like, this is not a catapult. This is a trebuchet that they're putting forward as a catapult. There's a difference, people. I'm not sure I know the difference. Google it. No, you tell me. Trebuchet. You're so smart. Trebuchet has a, it has a, it's with a long cable, right? So it's, it can be the, yeah. But it's also, it's going to, it's going to utilize not stored energy, but gravity as the propulsion and is also going to launch things further. So anyway, we get part way through realizing we don't have the right pieces and the instructions are junk. And so we from scratch created a trebuchet that could launch something a really decent distance. Like, you're both pretty proud of it today. That's awesome. Nice. That's cool. Yeah, you can science with LEGOs. You can science with everything. Totally science with LEGOs. Absolutely. That's awesome. But I think that's, I mean, I was saying that, that's kind of what the next generation science standards are. So they're trying to move away from a procedural. Giving instructions. Yeah. Just saying, here are your materials. Here's your procedure. Now follow these directions exactly. They're trying to make students find the methodology because if you think about it, this is actually one of the main disconnects. When we, when we bring it kind of back around to where we started the show tonight, the disconnect and the reason that people are marching for science this weekend is that people don't have faith in science because they don't understand how it works. Yeah. And they see these people in lab coats as these, these holders of information, these deliverers of things without process. And so by teaching kids science in a way where they discover the process on their own, they're not just following directions given, right? That is going to bridge this huge cognitive gap between what science is and what science means to the average person. So it's also part of participatory learning. We're activity-based learning. So then this is this whole, John Dewey basically introduced that to American education in a big way in the early 1900s. And it is the way that our education system sort of the direction it followed. Because before then, Home Ec was somebody sitting at the front of the class reading a recipe and everybody had to write it down and memorize it. And if you could repeat what was in that recipe, aha, then you passed your cooking class or whatever it was, your Home Ec class. And the John Dewey system was much more like what some of us may have experienced in a Home Ec class where you bake something, right? Where you have not just the recipe that you need to remember but you actually go through the activity of making a loaf of bread or something in this class, right? And everything, this is what's bothered me about this whole teaching to the test emphasis is it was pushing us backwards a hundred years in what we had learned works and doesn't work in education. And it was basically saying, hey, we're going to create a system now based on the system that didn't work before the system that's actually produced a lot of benefits to our society. Let's do that. That's a great idea. No, it's horrible idea. So I love that the fixes in again to go back to what we were trying to do and got started a hundred years ago and has been working great for this country now in this common core stuff and getting kids to actually do the problem solving and other levels of it too. There's a lot of emphasis nowadays in working in groups where you're bringing your strengths to a project if you excel at public speaking. You may be the one to do the presentation whereas somebody else may have done the, I don't know, paper machine construction and somebody else did the artistic or whatever it is or the math portion of it or the, so learning how to integrate your own skill sets with those of others. So education has been, I think, in very recent years been taking some positive directions despite a lot of obstacles that have been thrown in its way in terms of government policy towards education, which has, it's not gonna get better anytime soon, fortunately. Well, here's the silver lining, is that certain areas. California. Are continuing. California. With the forward progress. California. Despite some overarching decisions. A lot of the rest of the country. Well, there's even, you know, there's the testing that you talked about, there are federal mandates to continue these old antiquated tests, despite the implementation of new standards. And they're newly antiquated. California has said. These are newly antiquated tests, too. A lot of it. No, the California, or the science testing, the majority of the science testing in the country is at least 20 years old, the majority. But they're developing new tests for the next generation science standards. And despite certain federal decisions to keep the old tests going at the same time. So now these kids will be tested twice as much. Certain organizations, certain states, certain counties, certain cities have said, nope. Not interested. So California is one of them that so far has remained adamant that we will continue with the new standards. We'll continue to teach science and we will continue testing to those new standards. So, you know, fingers crossed at a time like this, all we can do is think globally and actually locally, right? So that's why we have these satellite marches all across the world happening this Saturday because we can be by acting in a local march, we can be part of a global movement. We can be part of something. We'll see whether or not the movement itself grows. I mean, there's been a lot of concern by many voiced about the politicization of science. But I do think, you know, there, it's already kind of been politicized. The process itself should remain the process that it is. I mean, it should actually, hopefully the process can be improved. But the end result that, you know, that so many I think are marching for is for a reinstatement of reason and informed decision-making, as opposed to- And government funding to science. Yeah, as opposed to pandering and bias and- So, two quick thoughts on politics. Politics is not, is not- Politics is not a bad thing. It's how we work together as people to govern. That's not what I was gonna say. No, politics isn't just that governing aspect of it. Politics is also the effect it has on everything. We're a society of laws and how these laws come to be is, and how those laws affect things like actually acting on science or how we educate our children. The rubber meets the road when politics meets actual people, being able to pursue or listening to or government acting on.  I mean, we're talking about how science affects everything. There's not a whole lot in any of our day-to-day lives that aren't on some level affected by politics, as well. Even if it's just the federal regulations that mandate that proper electrical wiring went into my dishwasher scenario, but there's politics involved, even in that, okay? There's politics all the way down. So it's already everywhere pretending you can live- Politics is on the back of the turtles.  That just, that doesn't exist. The other aspect of it is- The facts are not politicized. It should not be politicized is the thing. The decisions made based on those facts will be politicized no matter what. But whether or not a certain thing exists should not be a political agenda. It's just a fact. No, no, I totally disagree. I totally disagree. This is the thing. We're mixing up, well, or I'm... I don't totally disagree. I totally agree and disagree. It depends on the politics that we're talking about. If the politics that we're talking about is the election-based politics of this party, that party, my power, your power, then absolutely. That should not be allowed to manipulate or ignore a fact. But the real politics that I'm talking about are the fact that we're in a society of laws and everything that is political and legal affects everything that we do. If a fact becomes apparent, it should rise to the level of policy and therefore politics, right? So- But the policy and the politics should not be on whether or not it exists. It should be on how to attack it or how to address it, right? So instead of this question of does carbon dioxide trap heat, it should be how much should we be regulating such and such thing, right? And that, I think, is the big disconnect for me. And that is the problem that I see. Is that if you guys want to talk, if they want to all sit there and talk about whether or not there should be a carbon tax or how much it should be, that's politics and I can't do anything about that. But if you are going to- A vote for something. Right, but if you are going to sit there and tell me that carbon dioxide has nothing to do with warming and that humans have nothing to do with carbon, then that is something that I have trouble getting behind in any way at all. Right, and my point to that is that exactly. The scientific community cannot stay out of the fray of politics and expect policy to have benefits for science. That's my point, is that you have to realize you're already in the political body.  So you cannot stand on the sidelines and expect, well, if I stay out of politics, eventually the politicians and the voters will understand the importance of the scientific findings and the research that's been done at this university. No, you have to be involved or that to take place. That's how politics affects everything because it's already everywhere. It's not like you've stayed out of the fray. You've been in the fray. You just haven't put, having a voice in that. And that's- I think that, yeah. So I recently heard an interview with somebody who used to be a security officer for national security. And they have spent their entire political career, and it is a political career because they're in an arm of our government, right? Nonpartisan, okay? And so I don't know whether or not they actually are a nonpartisan individual. I'm sure they have some leanings, right?  But they have time and time again come out and spoken in support of or against legislation or actions, right? Based on his knowledge of national security. So that is kind of what I'm thinking about here is scientists say that some scientists have previously thought that they cannot participate in the discourse of politics because science is not partisan. And while that should be true, that doesn't mean you cannot speak for policy, right? Which is kind of what you're saying. Yeah. Absolutely, and I would also like to see some scientists run for Congress. And more are. More scientists are running for political office and there are action groups that are working to get more scientists into politics if not either actively campaigning for an office and actually helping to advise because there are many people in office who just maybe they don't know scientists who know the things that they need information on. And so there are people currently working on these things, which is awesome. Yeah, I mean, it would be so great to have a scientist on the EPA. There are scientists who work for the EPA. Right, but one of the people in charge, which right now is not exactly. Yeah, I think we had, I'm gonna mess it up. Okay, I'm just not gonna say his name, but he was a physics professor out of Berkeley who was head of the Department of Energy. Mueller. Under Obama. Oh yes, Steven. Steven. What was his last name? Yeah, Steven Chu, that's right, yeah. Okay, so Steven Chu, and that's ketchup, right? And out of that, we actually ended up with the cars or cash for clunkers thing, which they needed the stimulus. They needed a way to stimulate the economy. And the Department of Energy had this other thing that it was on their wish list of wouldn't it be great if we could convince everybody to buy a newer, more fuel efficient vehicle? And because they realized that opportunity also would have an economic gain as a stimulus to jumpstart the economy, the two things came together and we had this program that looked like a financial thing for people to buy cars to get the economy going, but was also all about in all of its detail getting gross polluting older vehicles that were less safe or put out more carbons into newer vehicles with higher emission standards with better fuel mileage with everything else. So when you combine, when you combine fiscal policy, government policy with science, you get win-win situations that you don't if you're only looking at the economic side of things. So we do need more scientists to have this voice. We do need them to be more active. They have a lot to contribute whether the scientific, or excuse me, whether the political establishment is ready to accept that or not, these voices need to be much louder. Think of all the lobbying and the voices and the influences that are actually sort of morphing the decisions or evolving the decisions that politicians make in policy. And know that those, the voices of science have been on the sidelines and not proactive. Of course we're gonna see funding cuts across the scientific community and disciplines. Of course we're going to see that. You wouldn't expect anything else if you had hypothesized that experiment. You would be like, oh, if we have this one segment with zero input, chances are it will have very little input in the final result. Yeah, that's exactly what you would expect. So think about it scientifically, scientists. Well, and especially if the information coming out of those areas are not in line with what the individuals are. They're not using the scientific method. Yeah, of course, and it's all fires all the way down. Anyway, I am gonna go to bed because tomorrow I got a lot of stuff to do. So I'm gonna take off and head for the hills. We'll actually head for California tomorrow. I hope never get up to Pleasanton this weekend. I'll be at the robo games. In that case, I guess say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Good night, Dr. Kiki. You guys are silly. Good night, everybody. Thank you so much for watching. Come back next week. We'll do more science. Good night. Till then. Oh, wait, end broadcast. Wait, what am I doing? Hit that.