Welcome back to our Wednesday Science Conversations on This Week in Science. This is the podcast broadcast, where we livestream to you who are here with us and also people who watch a little bit later. And we're gonna talk about science this evening as we always do.  There may be moments that are edited out of the program that end up in the podcast because the podcast is the more edited part. This is not edited at all, just letting you know. And are we ready to go? Yeah. Yeah. All right, so let us begin our show in a three, two. This is This Week in Science, episode number 915, recorded on Wednesday, March 1st, 2023. What's your science superpower? Hey everyone, I am Dr. Kiki. And tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with brainy computers, urination superpowers, and lots of old people. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. With each test and trial, science finds new ways to thrive, pushing past boundaries through the microscope. Science sees wonders of life, large yet very small. Inside every cell, DNA holds life's blueprint. Science reads its code, stars light up the void, cosmic darkness all around, science will explore. Clever problem solved, animal minds amazing. Blair has got the proof. Within our own skulls, the brain's electric light show. Kiki points the way, ancient bones and tools, the past revealed under earth, Justin brings to light. This week's disclaimer, somehow stuck in haiku mode. The show won't be so. Sit back and relax because This Week in Science is coming up next. I've got the kind of mime I can't get enough. I wanna learn everything. I'll discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I've won. And a good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there. Quick break note for Rachel, everyone else who might be downloading and other things. Apparently I am live streaming on the wrong episode. I have this little tiny screen for my, for my, yes, I, yeah, and I picked the wrong one, apparently. Wait, what does that mean? Does this mean that we are broadcasting from last week now or next week? No, we're four weeks in the future. We're four weeks in the future. Oh my goodness. That's right. Wow. Hey, we should see what the news is today because that would be neat to know. Anyway, this is all going out. It's fine. It's getting streamed. It's getting recorded. It's all happening. We'll make it all work somehow. So let's go on with the show. We have so much science for you today. As every Wednesday, we like to bring you our science news stories that we think are fun to talk about. Thank you for joining us. Hopefully you'll enjoy the show ahead. I have stories about brains, brains, more brains. And, oh, hauling logs and also an unexpected insect at Walmart. What do you have, Justin? Oh my gosh. I've got an ancient platypus of Patagonia, meandering Iranian neanderthals, and a couple of stories out of Max Planck Institute about the origins of current modern humans in Europe. More origin stories. We do like the origin stories. Yes. Super hero power origin stories. Blair, what's in the animal corner? Well, I see that Kiki, you have stuck to your wheelhouse. Very, very strictly in this week. Justin, also, I have as well in the animal corner this week, I have urine and hormones. So it's very safe territory for me. Also, I'm going to do a quick story about Norse sea beasts and octopus brains, just for fun at the start of the show. Yeah, octopuses and wee beasties, the Norse version. Big beasties. I've got three guesses of what the Norse sea beast could be. Well, you'll hear in a second. I'm getting all squiddly about it. As we jump into the show, I would like you all to remember that if you have not yet subscribed, you can subscribe to us. All places podcasts are found. Look for this week in science. We are also streaming weekly Live Wednesdays, 8 p.m.ish Pacific time on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch. We are Twist Science on Twitch, Instagram and Twitter. And you just go to our website, twist.org, if you have other questions about things, show notes and all that. But it's time for the science. So let's do it. Who wants to talk about brain computers? Wait. So is this going to be a computer that goes in my brain? Or a computer made out of brain? Right. Yeah. Is this a big... That's a big difference, right? Yeah, huge difference. This is a computer that researchers in the Disaroth lab have just published their roadmap for in Frontiers in Science that they're calling Organoid Intelligence. These are little brain organoids that could be used as computers. That could be connected together to create neural networks, working computers made out of neurons, biological materials. This is Johnny Mnemonic, is what this is. This is, it's a fascinating idea. And we've been talking about the concept of brain organoids and what we're using brain organoids for. And the basic idea is that we can use brain organoids, which are several thousand, maybe 50,000 cells or so. Very small little models of the brain so that we can look at developmental issues. We can look at disease. We can start figuring out how components of the brain work together. What they're wanting to do is, you gotta scale up to like 10 million cells per organoid, which is not a small deal, but they wanna make bigger organoids, bigger, better, enrich them with cells and genes for learning, make sure that they're able to remove waste, because that's very important for the living creatures and also have precise chemical signaling. They have basically created this idea of three-dimensional cultures of cells where there is biological hardware and wires that connect them together so that these neurons, these little organoids could work together and create larger computers. The current researchers who are working on this have said, actually I said this was the Disarothalab, and that's actually a study that is later that I was gonna talk about in the show. This is actually out of John Hopkins University Professor Thomas Hartung, his lab, and they're thinking that they might make good computers because the researchers say, while silicon-based computers are certainly better with numbers, brains are better at learning. So the learning aspect is superior to the way that computers learn at this point in time, and so from an energy perspective, it might be better for information storage and learning, and we are also reaching the limitations of where silicon chips are going to be able to take us. Yeah, but we've always been reaching that. We've always been reaching that limit. Haven't we always been reaching that limit, and then a new computer comes out and we're like, oh, look, the limit's totally different now. True. And that's what we're getting. That's what has 16 cores. True, but so Moore's law of computing is that the transistor is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, so we actually are reaching basically at that point where the atomic limit of the size of an electron hopping from one part of the transistor to another, we are reaching that limit. And if we want things to get smaller, components of computers to get smaller so that we can have faster, bigger, better, stronger computers, we need different materials. And so there are wide-ranging efforts in this area, arena, trying to figure that out. But it's fascinating what they're thinking about doing here. They want to adapt tools from bioengineering and machine learning. They want to engineer new stimulation recording stuff.  So here's my problem with this. Without opening a whole can of worms here. Oh, I opened it already. Worms everywhere. That's right. So machine learning. We are now going to enact that in a biological living entity. So now you are trying to basically engineer your way towards AI in something that is alive. Problematic. Is a neuron, is alive? Yes. It's certainly more alive than a computer chip based on our current standards. So this is very, this is very interesting territory because this whole like is AI alive conversation becomes more complicated when you're dealing with organic matter. It is specifically human brain cells. Yes. Yeah. So. It's funny because then also you're saying normally we might define life as something that is intelligent. And then here we would say, oh, it's only intelligent. Right. And that's the biologic. But the rest of it doesn't have like, wait a second. Well. So first of all, I'm okay with avoiding this and just having computers double in size. Yeah, same. Because they're small enough. We can have much bigger computers. That part's fine. I am all for having like the 1980s boom box cell phone. That'll be great. It'll be easier to find. The thing though is too, this changes that sort of cyberpunk future of humans adapting and having a technology added to them piece by piece over time to integrate with machines. This route, the future cyborgs are gonna be biological tissue based again. We're just, it's gonna go the other way. It's gonna slowly be adding more biology instead of more tech. Right. And so then you start getting into ethical issues. And so the researchers always, not always, they also took into account the fact that they need to be talking to all sorts of stakeholders in this situation. They're gonna need to be taking the public ethicists, scientists, all sorts of that, politicians. People are going to have to be taken into account in the conversations about all of this as we go forward.  One little organoid with 50,000 cells, not a real brain, fine, no consciousness, whatever. But what if you connect them all? At what point is consciousness developed? Does it develop consciousness? Can we measure that? And then if it does have consciousness, can we model Alzheimer's disease in it? And is that okay? Right. Oh no. Yeah, so there are a lot of very interesting philosophical questions, ethical questions that need to be asked and considered as these researchers are pushing toward developing a community of researchers who would work in this direction. And on that note, let's move forward to something else like ancient platypus agonia. So this story, I kind of at first had real reservations. Could they really have found what they say they found? So, cause all they found so far is a tooth dating. It's found down in part of Patagonia as the southernmost region of Argentina in this formation where they've also found dinosaurs, seropods and theropods, snakes, turtles, frogs, mollusks, this was a very different climate, 70 to 60, something-ish million years ago. And they found this one tooth that they looked at and say the morphology of it clearly belongs to a monotreme. More specifically, they think it's a platypus tooth. Now, a couple of things there. First of all, this Blair might know right away. Platypuses don't have teeth. So there's one problem. The other thing is, this is the southern tip of South America. Platypuses only exist in like Australia. Australia. That's it. So, did they just like, oh, we couldn't identify this tooth from the creature that we don't know what it is? Well, so, okay, hold on, hold on. So they currently are only found in Australia. But if you prescribe to the previous explanation, monotremes are the ancestral mammal. And so in theory, you could have had monotremes all over the world that then later developed a placenta. So that's possible. However, I did bring a story a few weeks ago that ruined that entire theory potentially. So I don't know. Okay, so here's what's kind of going on. First of all, it turns out there was another platypus discovery in Patagonia, or in Argentina at least. That study 30 years ago, also only found a tooth. So then I'm thinking, well, maybe they couldn't identify it but because somebody else had identified a tooth as being an ancient platypus tooth, maybe that was it. And it turns out ancient platypuses did have teeth. Current ones actually do too when they're young but they lose them, which is I didn't, right? They lose them and they get replaced by a Pat's when they're juveniles. Okay, so all right, and the morphology of this tooth is so specifically different than other things that yeah, okay, maybe the other thing is you're talking about the ancient ones, the ancient egg-laying mammals. That stopped like 160 million years ago. So this is at 70 million years ago and the other, the older find, the 30 year ago find was 62 or less million years ago. These are much more recent than that. The thing is at that time, 70 million years ago, Southern Australia and Southern America were both much further south and connected to the landmass of Antarctica. And fun fact that I didn't know before reading this story, all of the marsupials of Australia, you know the place known for the evolution of marsupials, they all came from South America. That's their origin. That's what I said before too. There are marsupials everywhere before.  Apparently there's still like a hundred species or more of marsupials in South America. With no O in front. Without the O. But yeah, if you look at the map, like our standard map, it's like, whoa, there's thousands of thousands and thousands of miles of open ocean. But if you look at the globe from 70 million years ago and turn it to, I guess, upside down depending on where you're standing. You see that this is, there's a land bridge from Australia to South America basically that allowed animals to go back and forth. So yeah, so pretty exciting. They again, still only have found two teeth. Yeah, I have trouble with that. A few different specimens. So they really need, they really need more finds to flesh out this fossil to see what this creature even looked like. Yeah, not enough teeth to really draw conclusions but maybe enough to make it interesting. But thankfully though, what they're saying too is the other interesting side sort of the piece of this is looking through tooth morphology of ancient planipus, the morphology of their teeth changed very little over tens of millions of years. Most mammals, their teeth evolve pretty rapidly. I mean, our own tooth evolution between days of Homo erectus or even Neanderthal compared to Neanderthal within Neanderthal changed more dramatically than a 60 million years stretch of platypus evolution. So their teeth are very conserved which was part of what allowed them to led them to the conclusion initially that these would be connected. Okay. Well, if you eat bugs, I guess to a certain extent you can only improve on the teeth for eating bugs so much just need squishers. I'm still, I'm still a very, now that we were in the age of genomics and being able to look at DNA, the phylogenetic just morphology approach always seems like they need a little bit more. Yep. It's the, when it's the best thing you got it's the best thing you got. It's the magic at, yes, exactly. And then of course, you're right. DNA is the best thing that we've got. Yeah. So if we can get it from a tooth like this that would be terrific. 70 million years old. Don't think there's going to be a way to do that yet. But. Not yet. You're right. You're right. That would be, that would answer many questions. So many. Blair, tell me about some ancient sea creatures please. Yes. This isn't 70 million years ago. This is maybe 2,000 years ago. But this is all related to something that was actually found in 2011, which is scientists recorded a really weird feeding strategy in whales around the world. Whales are known for lunging at their prey when they feed. But in 2011, whales were spotted at the surface of the water with their jaws open at a right angle waiting for fish to swim into their mouths for thinking that their mouth was just a place to shelter from predators, but actually chomp. And so scientists speculate this is either the result of changing environmental conditions or they were hybrid with a Venus flytrap. Good idea. Yes, no. Or that whales are just being watched more closely by drones, by other and modern technologies. And so we're just catching this behavior, which we couldn't really catch from it, which is probably what's happening. So wondering if this is a recent phenomenon or if this is something that we just haven't seen but has been going on for thousands of years. I don't know. Dr. John McCarthy, Marine, a maritime archeologist, excuse me, in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, noticed interesting parallels between this phenomenon and some historical literature about Norse sea monsters. So in the Norse description of the Haaf-Gufa, Haaf-Gufa, they had a very similar behavior. They were, it seemed to be just like these whale traps. At first it was thought to be an interesting coincidence, but once you looked closer into the detail of the description of the Haaf-Gufa, and once he discussed it with colleagues who specialize in medieval literature, they realized that the oldest versions of these myths most likely described whales. So these old Norse manuscripts describing this creature from the 13th century alongside other myths up until the 18th century, including Kraken and Mermaids, they were doing this strange behavior. So they actually think that this could be a clue that whales have been doing this for thousands of years. So this is a really interesting use of mythology, ancient mythology to describe an actual biological phenomenon. This is pretty cool. And so this has a potential answer to the question of how long whales have been using this strange technique and forever. Obviously, yeah, obviously Marine Bial just thought there was no way to figure this out, but medieval manuscripts about monsters had a clue.  You can sort of see the game of telephone that takes place from in a literate, between perhaps the literate sailor and an artist rendition later, getting a verbal explanation of the half-glimpse creature that was seen in the water and then trying to do that artist recreation based on that limited information and a sort of preexisting knowledge of what animal parts should look like. It's pretty amazing. Well, it's also, yeah, not having all the information that we have now about how things happen under the surface of the water and the fear of what's under the water, yet people sailing on top of it. And so only knowing what they see from the top or what they drag up from below in nets or on fishing poles or these, like you said, these tails that the sailors bring to port while they tell while they're drinking or what have you, yeah. Imagine if you only saw that first video, Kiki shared, of just a giant mouth. You did not see anybody.  And then you think about maybe like 100 feet away, there's another whale cresting. Then you're like, oh my God, it's a sea monster. It's fully a sea monster. So you could see how that, to Kiki's point, thinking about just the surface, what you just see on the surface, you could totally kind of manufacture this phenomenon. But I love using this kind of cryptozoology lens to actually help with real science. We have all sorts of evidence like that going back years. It's just a matter of figuring out how to put the pieces together, right? Absolutely, yeah. It takes people. Yeah, and there is another example of this in some cave art that was of a bison. And the bison didn't fit any existing bison.  And then they discovered, actually, this was in a channel in the Ice Age where there was two separate groups of bison and they discovered a hybrid between the two. That looked exactly like the cave art. Ah. Yeah. The ancient peoples, they were actually seeing the real world from their perspective back when they were seeing it. So we should be paying like more attention to ancient stories like this is probably more truth to them than we actually. Absolutely. Lots of truth.  What? No. So an interesting story out this week published in Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington. Researchers have been talking about a find of a researcher, Michael Skvarla, he's the director of Penn State's Insect Identification Lab. He was at a Walmart in Fayetteville, Arkansas. So what he looked like a lace wing insect kind of thing was just like, oh, he didn't, I don't know. He's like, oh, what is this? This doesn't look great. And he grabbed the insect and he said, he cupped it in his hand and did his Walmart shopping. And then took the insect home as well. And in- No barcode on that. No barcode on this particular, this insect. But the story is really fascinating because he found this insect back in 2012. Held on to it, but then COVID happened. The pandemic put all sorts of researchers as instructors online doing things that they would normally not be doing. So he took this insect to class through Zoom and did a, basically a demonstration to look at the characteristics of what he thought was an ant lion. But then started going through the characteristics through this Zoom class and live and his students and he realized totally mislabeled that this was a, for the first time in maybe since the 1950s, the identification of what's, I'd called the giant lace wing, Polly's doughy coats, punctata. It used to be all over North America but it really, really hasn't been and it hasn't been around since the 1950s. They think that the populations might be relics of the Jurassic era. It's just a very interesting point that the researchers are wondering now, is this a discovery? How the heck did it get here? Is this just random insect that showed up with bananas at Walmart or whatever? Or is this recovery and is climate change and all sorts of other stuff that's going on impacting the environment that this insect can live in? It could be, but then it's not going to bring it back. You know, like, if things been surviving somewhere unseen all this time.  So it used to, according to this article, used to span from Alaska to Panama, multiple ecosystems, eco regions, Eastern and Western North America. But this is the first time. Now survives on Isle Six. That's right, in the Ozark Mountains. Yeah, so they're saying this is where it was found. It's possible that it could have just been hiding and populations dwindled and nobody's really noticed it. But it's also possible that they've started recovering and so this is the big question that we don't know the answer to. I think it's much more likely that it's a combination of a lack of the species being present and a very small percentage of the population that are entomologists. Those two together. Lover, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Walmart, go to Walmart, find your rare insects. Or go to Europe. What do we got it? What do we have to go to Europe for, Justin? Oh, we got to go to Europe all because that's where all the action is. If you're looking for Neanderthals. This is a, this study is researchers took, I kind of like to say because they use a lot of open source data systems. Researchers were looking and we're modeling the Neanderthal migration from Europe into Central Asia and Southern Siberia and Russia where there are known sites. Known sites of Neanderthal occupation that have also been genomically linked to having their origin in Europe. So they know they ended up over here in Central Asia and Southern Siberia, but they don't know how precisely they got there. This modeling starting in the Caucasus with some groups that they believe are linked to those other, basically took climate data. And created what is called a least cost path for that migration. So least cost path kind of works like your car's GPS. Your car's GPS is gonna find the least cost path to get you from point A to your destination, right? Now, it's not going to divert you off road over the mountain and across a river without a bridge. It's gonna keep to the roads because there's less cost in driving that way. It's also going to route you around any kind of construction or heavy traffic because in the model of your car's GPS, the cost is weighted by time. So the quickest way it can get you there is the path is going to go. And the modeling that they did, the cost is weighted in resource availability, how that's affected by climate, how sustainable a region is for a living creature. And what they came up with is that that path would have taken the Neanderthals below the Caspian Sea and this Southern Caspian corridor into what is Northern Iran. And what was interesting is they found that this region actually would have been not just the best path to keep walking through, but would have been really ideal to settle in. And it's an area that isn't that well archaeologically explored, but it's not that much. Well, archaeologically explored. So they're kind of suggesting, hey, this model that we did trying to figure out what the best migration path might be could be a very important spot to go start looking very intensely for evidence of ancient hominence because aside from being a neat way to get out of Europe and over into Central Asia, it's also the known and proposed and ideal location to move into Europe from Africa via the Levant. So we've got this region that looks like it would have been a really intense hot spot, but we don't have the fossil record there yet because we haven't done a whole lot of... So when we go and I'm gonna grab my brush and my shovel, let's get over there. I'm ready. And according to the researchers there too, they're pointing out that there's lots of cave systems. Like this is an area that aside from having a very, one of the things the model looked at is for stable climate over long periods of time. Aside from having pretty stable climate, it also is an area that has had, has a lot of cave systems, which early hominence, that was the free housing for the early hominence. We loved, hominence loved them some caves. So we need spelunkers. We need some cave spelunkers and field archeologists to go out and start surveying this Southern Caspian Sea corridor of Northern Iran because it looks like, according to this, there could really be some interesting finds there. It's also, I think, it might even butt up against Denisovans to this. So this really might be a good nailing spot as well. So there could be, this could be a source of some of the, some of the Neanderthal, Denisovan, current modern human mixtures, just find it. Right, if there are people going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, they're gonna run into each other, right? A lot of mixing, trading. Back and forth.  You're here. You have everything that an early hominence needs to have a good life right here in this location. Yeah, there's, there's are still areas of the world that have not been archeologically explored well enough. And this points to one of those things that we've mentioned on this show a few times, more research needed. Lots more research needed in this particular area. So how many Colorado universities, Boulder researchers, does it take to carry a log? Depends how big the log. And how big the researcher, I don't know. And how big the researcher, well, some researchers, again, using their time during the COVID-19 pandemic to their best advantage. They've just studied, not just studied, they've just published their paper describing their experiment, trying to figure out how people may have carried big giant logs, 200,000 big timbers, over 60 miles to a place in the Southwest that is called Chaco Canyon. And so the question is, there's no big trees in this canyon, yet they built things with big trees. How'd they do this? How did they get them there? Well, it looks like they use their heads, literally. The researchers have devised a wonderful device that allowed them to use their heads to share the weight of carrying logs long distances. They used head straps that could be attached to logs and then use the support of the spine, the head and the spine, to be able to take the weight of these large timbers and allow individuals to move very long distances. The researchers say that this makes sense because of additional evidence that has, is local to the region in the way that locals carry things around the area. They used all sorts of suggestions, archaeological evidence of ancient peoples in the Southwest, what they called tumplines that are woven from yucca plants that are used to transport everyday items. But yeah, so anyway, big project, researchers having fun, they carried big logs on their heads. My neck hurts looking at it. Yeah, I thought it was a follow-up study.  Well, they discovered that it was better to carry it with their heads. They took the idea of these tumplines, which are depicted in these ceramic statues from the Canyon area. They tried carrying logs on their shoulders and quote from the researchers, it was just debilitating.  Wow. So using their heads, they were able to train and as they trained, they were able to carry heavier and heavier loads. They were able to carry them longer distances and they think that this is a very possible way that they used these tumplines or these head straps connected to big logs to carry them long distances. They used their heads once upon a time. But speaking of heads, Blair, let's talk about the octopuses. Yes, their heads, I mean, brains. Brains, yes.  That's what gastropod means, head foot or no, stomach foot. Stomach foot. I don't know, anyway. I thought I was onto something there. Anyway, this is a study mostly about proof of concept for a new type of mechanism to study brain waves. This is a way to measure octopus brain waves on the move. And it is a critical step forward in determining how octopuses' brains control their behavior and could provide clues to the common principles needed for intelligence and cognition to occur.  They have advanced cognitive abilities, as we've talked about many times, they're super smart. And their brains and cognitive abilities have, as far as we can tell, developed independently and differently from the majority of intelligent animals we look at, vertebrates, right? But measuring the brain waves of octopus is really hard for a few reasons. One, they're underwater. So a lot of the ways we study brain waves involves electricity, that doesn't work too well.  So you can't really attach something hard to their body, they also have no skull to anchor the recording equipment onto and they have these very powerful, ultra-flexible arms which can reach literally anywhere on their body. So if you put something on the outside, they'd rip it off immediately. Nope, don't like that. So they have to figure out a way. Too bad they couldn't get the study done. Yeah, I think it was the end. No, they had to figure out a way to, of course, implant it internally. So they used small lightweight data loggers that had previously been used to record brain activity of birds during flight. They modified them to make them waterproof, problem one. They attached it to 12-hour batteries. So they don't have to worry about sourcing electricity to it, so that's part of problem one also. But then they also were able to attach it internally in a way that the octopuses could not rip off. So they did the day octopus, octopus cyania, which is a larger octopus. So it's definitely a better choice for this because you don't have to make things quite so miniaturized. They anesthetized three octopuses. They implanted the logger into a cavity in the muscle wall of their mantle.  And the scientists then implanted the electrodes into an area of the octopus's brain called the vertical lobe and median superior frontal lobe, which is the most accessible. That brain region they believe is used for learning and memory in octopuses. So doing that, then they were able to return the octopuses to their home tank, monitored them by video. They woke up after about five minutes from anesthesia. They were covered. They spent the next 12 hours sleeping, eating and moving around in their tank. They were not tested. They were not asked to do anything in particular. They just wanted to see, again, this is more of a proof of concept. They wanted to see if they could record brain activity as these octopuses moved around. Then after 12 hours, they were able to remove the logger and electrodes from the octopuses and then they could look at the data and synchronize it with the video. They identified several distinct patterns of brain activity. Some looked very similar in size and shape to those seen in mammals, but others were long, slow oscillations that we've never seen before, which makes sense. Again, they have a completely different brain. It's shaped like a donut, people. It's completely different. Everything is different, anyway. So they haven't been able to assign this brain activity to specific behaviors because they didn't ask them to do anything and because the area of the brain they were recording, again, they think it is part of learning. So they would have to have asked it to do something in relation to learning and memory to try to figure out what the actual activity meant, but really this is just, can we do this? And so they were able to record brain activity on the move. They think they could use this in other octopus species and they want to answer questions about octopus cognition, how they learn, how they socialize, how they control the movement of their body and their eight unique arms. And now they have a means by which they can look at the brain while specific tasks are happening underwater. This is so exciting. Yeah. Yeah. So no exciting scientific findings yet. No, but just doing that. I don't know. I'm gonna go ahead and run with the long, slow oscillations as being octopuses doing really deep thinking. Oh yeah. Could be. Could be. Could be what they've got going on with the camouflage. And there could be the function before we are. So much to learn. Yeah. So much to learn. It's so exciting.  Yes. Underwater in an animal that's famous for escaping things. Yeah. And being flexible and being able to get rid of things and being smart and being able to be like, I don't like what you're doing. I'm gonna do my own thing. Yes. All of these problems. I wonder though, if not having the skull in the way, actually is a benefit for doing the brain reading. I could see that. Put the electrodes right in there without a saw. Yes. All right. Well, no sawing on and on and on here. This is This Week in Science. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of our Science Talk Show. We love your support. And if you are able to support us, we would hope that you would hand over right now to twist.org and click on our Patreon link. Patreon is how we are supported by you, our listeners. Our $15 a month and above level. You'll get a special sticker package, one new sticker every quarter of the year. There's also our $10 and more per month. We thank you by name at the end of the show. Anyone over that, we thank you by name. We love to thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But really, thank you all. We cannot do this without you. All right. Coming on back for more This Week in Science with that part of the show that, wait, weren't we just doing this part of the show? I think we're gonna do some more. Blair's octopus hour. No, Blair's animal corner. With Blair. That's all. By this little pet, no pet at all. If you wanna hear about this animal, change your girl. Except for giant panda that's grown. What you got, Blair? Do you ever think about how insects pee? Nope. Never. Well, you're gonna now. That is because an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Saad Bamla, was in his backyard and he noticed an insect urinating. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How do you notice an insect urinating? I mean, normally they're just there. Looked very closely, I imagine. They're chomping on leaves. Maybe he was taking a photo with his macro lens. I'm not sure. But if you look close enough, you can see, I mean, they drink, so they definitely pee. So he noticed an insect urinating. What was strange was, if you wanna picture an insect urinating, you'd probably picture it just like any other animal, a stream. But in this case, this insect formed a perfectly round droplet on its tail and launched it away so quickly that it seemed to disappear like a catapult. And it did that for hours, just over and over and over. I think we learned the dynamics of water droplets in the bug realm from, what is it, a bug's life? Oh, right, yes, yeah, they would drink it. Well, we've also talked about spiders that wear water hats, right? I feel like we've talked about that on the show. But anyway, this is a very interesting phenomenon. It is so cool. The video that was just played. So cool. Basically like a water droplet, kind of like a water balloon without the water balloon because you don't need it because you're a bug. Creating the water droplet on a little hind quarter. Yes. Flipper, and then once it's formed, just sending it flying. Yes. Boom. Yes. Out of here. Yes, so this is a glassy winged sharp shooter is the name of the bug. I don't think we like those in California.  So we have decided. Notorious for spreading disease in crops. What they do is by using this kind of, they have this thing on their tail. It is called an anal stylus, which is what you kind of saw flipping back and forth as the researcher of Balmala termed a butt flicker. Really? When they're ready to urinate, well, he's a technology student, I guess, I don't know, it's not, you know. Anyway, this term is probably not used in the research literature, but it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it, got it. When the sharp shooter is ready to urinate, the anal stylus rotates from a neutral position backwards, kind of on point to make room. The insect squeezes out the liquid in this droplet. The droplet forms, grows gradually. The stylus remains at that same angle, like almost like in the 90 degree angle. When the droplet approaches its optimal diameter, which somehow this animal has figured this out, the stylus rotates farther back, kind of cocks it 15 degrees, and then it launches the droplet. The stylus can accelerate more than 40 Gs, which, wait, comparison is 10 times faster than the fastest sports cars. That's a lot of force. What's going into that? Sod Balmala was very interested in this and wanted to now look at the fluid dynamics of excretion, which has not been studied too much. We kind of take P for granted. But so he wanted to use computational fluid dynamics and biophysical experiments to study the fluidic, energetic, and biomechanical principles of excretion to reveal how an insect smaller than the tip of a pinky finger performs a feat of physical and bioengineering super propulsion. But so it makes the, it's the push that propels it that fast, right? So, so, I'm so glad you said that. It's not just the flick. It's not just the flick. So they used high speed videos and microscopy to observe what was happening on their tail. They measured the speed of the stylus movement, which they measured the speed of the water, which was 40 Gs, right? They measured the speed of the anal stylus movement, compared it to the speed of the droplets, but the droplets were faster than the stylus that flicked them. How is this possible? They expected the droplets would move at the same speed because it's just pushing it, right? Yeah, flicking. But the droplets were 1.4 times faster than the stylus itself, which means the presence of super propulsion, which is actually a specific scientific term, which is a principle previously only shown in synthetic systems, in which an elastic projectile receives an energy boost when its launch timing matches the projectile timing. And so they liken that to a diver timing their jump off a springboard at the exact right moment. Oh, fascinating. So they found that the stylus compressed the droplets, which stored energy due to surface tension. And so at this tiny scale, when the water droplets are launched, the energy stored from surface tension, if time just right, propels them even faster. So... Wow, so it's timing. It's timing, it's all about timing. It's all about water tension, it's all about super propulsion. So this is crazy enough, but now let me remind you, this is an insect that's doing this. Why? So that was the next step of the study. Why, why would the sharpshooter need to super propulse its urine? So they have, they only eat plant- It doesn't like it. They only eat sap. It's nutrient deficient. It only has water and trace minerals. They drink up to 300 times their body weight in sap per day. And they have to therefore constantly excrete fluid waste, which is 99% water. And it can be tracked by predators. Not exactly. Okay. Or it could be, if it weren't for our way. No, that's a great inclusion though. I mean, that would be a great inclusion because if it's trackable, you want it nowhere near you. I actually don't know that. That is possible, okay? That's totally possible, you're right. This did not study that. That could be part of it. What they did look was at micro CT scans of the sharpshooters. They use that to calculate the pressure required for them to push the fluid through their anal canal, which is like the act of peeing, right? And determining how much energy would be required to do that. And so they think that this is actually an energy conservation strategy. Since they have this constant fluid dynamic challenge due to their teeny tiny size, their energy constraints, the poor energy value of the food that they eat and the fact that urinating normally would cause a deficiency in energy. So the droplets are the most efficient way, but then they have to get rid of them. So let's do it in a nice little bouncy way. I'll pretend my pee is, what's his name, Brian Boytano. No, Greg Luganus. Are you trying to think of swimmers? Never mind, diving people. Diving people. People who dive. Michael Phelps didn't swim, he dived, he swam. He was a swimmer. Yeah, he was divers. Greg Luganus, that's a sad story. Anyway, moving on. Yes, so anyway, this whole concept of the sharpshooters and their urine has applications for ecology and population dynamics.  So this could provide insights on how you could kind of get rid of these guys or how disease is moving through crops from them if they have these fluid dynamics. It's kind of a stretch. But it also has insights on how to design systems that overcome adhesion and viscosity. And a perfect example of that is if you have a smartwatch and you hit the liquid eject button when you do that, that uses speaker vibrations to repel water from the device. So it could actually potentially use that, this kind of fluid dynamic study to enhance water ejection technology, which is very cool. There's definitely some industrial engineering application waiting for this somewhere. Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. It could be something very obscure that just completely revolutionizes some microfluidic transfer devices. I had absolutely no idea there was a liquid ejection button on your apple watches. Oh, yeah, there is, yeah. Oh, now you tell me. It's true. I do it whenever I go swimming. You hit the water button and then you hit the water button when you're done and it goes, it's very cool. We need those for kids ears. Yes, that would be nice. You don't understand the fluid dynamic. No more swimmers here. Let's get past it. Anyway, super propulsion. Super powers.  Our atmosphere is a fluid. Can we use this to superpower diving boards that launch rockets into space? Blair, your face right now. What? Sure. Why not? Flick a spaceship like a ball of urine.  Yeah, you're right. That's substantial. And if we can use any kind of fluid dynamic technology that maybe does not involve human beings in the crafts but helps get us to launch things off the planet, using less toxic fuels. Well, you'd have to launch from like a trampoline, right? You have to like, I don't know what I'm going. Sometimes you just got to throw ideas out there. No, no, no, I'm taking all the kids down to Cape Canaveral to watch the giant anal stylus. Yes. No, it's a rocket launch. Flick a... A rocket flicker, thank you very much. It's the super powered rocket flicker. OK, Blair, you wanted to talk about hormones now. Oh, yes, yes. It's a pretty simple story. Red-bellied lemurs, they find each other. They fall in love. They're monogamous. They live together in close family units.  But as they do that, they're one of the mammals that you can look at that have a really significant parental care from the father as well as the mother when the father is around for the whole pregnancy. And the pregnancy for a red-bellied lemur is about 126 days or a little over four months. And in the third trimester of their pregnancy, males see a four-fold increase in estradiol, which estradiol is an estrogen steroid hormone and major female sex hormone that is usually associated with an increase in maternal sensitivity and responsiveness. So this is something that hasn't really been looked at before. There's been lots of studies on changes in hormones in females and corresponding changes in hormones in males. There have been studies on different hormones, though it's cortisol, oxytocin, prolactin, androgen. They've all been shown to change significantly in humans, monkeys, certain rodents, in response to partner pregnancies. But estradiol has never been looked at, mainly because it's historically a female hormone. So it's just not looked at. So this is the first time this has been seen. This was looked at in feces in lemur poop. So it's something hormones are usually really easy to test in fresh poop. So if you can get there when it's still warm, you can find some really good hormone readings. And so the suspicion is that this hormonal shift is nature's way of preparing male lemurs for fatherhood. There have been some experimental lab studies with rodents that shows that estradiol impacts parental care. And it's important specifically for maternal care. But so now this is definitely one of those more studies are needed. Now's the time to really look at estradiol. They weren't able to find, because it wasn't like a controlled experiment. They were just picking up poop from the forest. They weren't able to find a direct link between estradiol levels and specific parenting behaviors, like holding, carrying, grooming, playing, huddling. But they do think, based on the fact that it is so clearly in the third trimester, just this huge spike, that it does essentially have to do with preparing them for parenting in general. It's also interesting that they don't drop immediately after birth. The estradiol levels stay high until they're weaned, which isn't just a timing thing, because they can give birth at different times of year. But they always wean in the spring, which is when there's the most food, so they don't need the milk as much. So the fact that the estradiol levels plummet when weaning happens, regardless of how old the baby is, means it definitely is related to the presence of the baby. Right, but this might be different in species that don't have paternal care, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that would be the expectation. Yeah. It's all about that new baby smell. Yes. Yes. Yes, but also like, I don't know, I could ask both of you, do you think, Justin, do you think you acted differently when your significant other was in their third trimester? Do you think you were being impacted by hormones? Yeah, but I don't think they were mine. But see, this study is saying her hormones are affecting your hormones. Yeah, but I had no idea. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Kiki, do you think you saw any changes in Marshall? It's a long time back now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. It's an interesting question, though, because it's, it all becomes so real when you get into your third trimester. Right. Baby's bigger. Things are really starting to get into preparation time. And so there are a lot of social pressures. And so I don't, you know, I would love to say that, yeah, I saw these things. And oh, how interesting that they could have been influenced by my hormones. But it's, you know, it lacks with people. Yes, there's lots of variables, right? It's just another example, though, honestly, of men's health being understudied. Because nobody's paying any attention to male biology. I'm just going to go to sleep on my microphone here right now. Well, so it's interesting you say that, Justin, because as silly as that is, that is kind of the point of this study is that there's so much focus and pregnancy on the individual carrying that there's not a lot of study if there's a monogamous mate in the picture on that individual. And so obviously, the most important thing is to pay attention to the oven, like the individual carrying the baby. But there is this other piece that's really interesting. And so it might be worth looking at in many different mammal species that are monogamous. You specifically have to look at the monogamous ones, or the not even monogamous, but ones where the males partake in parental care. Parental care, yeah. Yeah, I think it's a very interesting point to bring up that we have segregated the research studies that we do based on the roles that we expect particular sexes to partake in during particular social activities. Reproduction, OK, women, we're going to study all your female sex hormones. We're not going to look at them in men or even check to see if they exist, like if you're being influenced or what's happening. All sorts of things that we've seen over and over again. Yeah, it just goes to show. There's more work. To be fair, what the scientists were assuming is that, like you said, Blair, it's all about the oven, which is what you learn as a man who has somebody who is about to be giving birth is that it has nothing. Nothing has anything to do with you. But why?  But it's perfectly logical. And we've learned it's not just oxytocin. Now, oxytocin doesn't really play as much of a role in all this bonding. Like bonding, yes, but it's all very dopamine, and there's a lot of serotonin and other stuff involved here. But that's the question, right? Social animals, monogamous social animals, the males are taking care. And if there are no cues to tell them to do that, then why are they doing that? Right, which also leads me to my other question about, like, if this same thing is happening in humans, and there is a hormone imbalance in one of the individuals in this relationship, is that impacting the other individual? Is that impacting parental care given to that baby? Similarly, there's lots of research on postpartum depression, and if that has to do with hormone regulation, and if that is happening, is that impacting the other individual and the care that is being given to that child? Like, it could potentially have pretty big impacts. And it could lead to a screening test where it's like, okay, well, before we even talk about dating, I need to see your capacity to produce hormone profile. It's like Gatica for hormones. Biologically, you're predisposed to fatherhood. Well, I just think about like, so if you have a problem producing estradiol as a man, okay, and you are having trouble bonding with your baby, that is something that you could look at medically. There could be a hormonal cause for that. Maybe there, yeah, could be. Better parenting through chemistry. It's part of it, man. It can be part of it.  I think it's so interesting how much they can impact us. Oh my goodness. You think you have free will, but really you are just a movable sack of hormones. And bacteria and viruses. Yeah, the hormones, the bacteria and the viruses, they're affecting your hormones too. Those are affecting your neurons. That's all making your behavior change. So really it's all about the hormones, everybody. That is what's gonna separate us from the organoid AI. Brain computers. Brain computer overlords. Ah! Oh my goodness. This is this week in science. Justin, what do you wanna talk about? So I'm gonna wrap up the show today with my portion of it with two studies about ancient genetics in European current modern humans. Both of these are published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. Both of these are from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. And the first, they talk about how, well, there was the first current modern humans to spread across Eurasia started over 45,000 years ago. Previous research has shown that those first modern humans that arrived did not contribute to later populations. Which is weird if you think about it. This is an aside to what the story's gonna talk about. Which is weird if you think about because this is the group that would have had the most, assuming the most contact with Neanderthals, yet isn't the ancestor of people with Neanderthal DNA. Researchers that however did focus on the people who lived in Europe between 35,000 and as recent as 5,000 years ago. This is that the group that would have been there right before the Bronze Age, populating out of the Caucasus, which is where that mapping system said there would be a really good spot to be looking in Northern Iran. So they look at the genomes of people living during the last glacial maximum in there as well. The super coldest part of the Ice Age around 25,000 years ago. The team analyzed the genomes of 356 prehistoric hunter-gatherers from different archaeological cultures, including new data from 116 individuals across 14 different European and Central Asian countries. Research team found that populations from different regions associated with the great Gravidian culture, which has been archeologically identified by their artifacts. They all use, even though they're kind of spread out over a large region, you can tell they're part of the same culture because they use similar weapons, produce similar portable artworks, have similar techniques within their tool manufacturing. And it was very widespread across the European continent between 32,000 and 24,000 years ago. But kind of like you were talking about earlier, Kiki, until you get genomic, as long as you're talking about morphologies or artifact culture, you may be missing part of the story, turns out right here. Two groups, one from the sort of Southwestern Europe, today's France and Spain, and the other group of Gravidians from Italy into the Czech Republic, not related. Very disparate, unrelated populations, despite the appearance of cohesion from the artifact record. Turns out the gene pool in Western Gravidian populations was found continuously for about 20,000 years, sitting out the ice age in the comfort of Southwestern Europe. Meanwhile, the Gravidian population on the Italian peninsula was no longer detectable after the ice age, as people with a different gene pool, the epigravidians, settled all of Italy and Sicily. So they got replaced. Then these epigravidians, these sort of invading inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, spread across the rest of Europe about 14,000 years ago, replacing the populations of Gravidian cultures there. Study also reports that there is no genetic exchange between hunter-gatherer populations in Western or Eastern or Central Europe from more than 6,000 years span, and only detected about 8,000 years ago that they started Intermingle. And once they did start to intermingle again, they would have had very distinct ancestries and even appearances in the second study. So that's kind of what we kind of think of as humans coming in and eventually populating Europe and then Europeans today, completely unrelated. The Europeans of today are more descended from much more recent arrivals. And then the second study, which is probably part of the overall analysis there, researchers analyzing human DNA from several archeological sites in southern Spain discovered a 23,000-year-old individual from Cueva del Malemurezzo, which is near Granada. And it is the oldest DNA from a current modern human ever recovered in Spain. The researchers were able to genetically link that individual with a 35,000-year-old individual previously found in Belgium, making it part of one of the earliest lineages that settled Eurasia around 45,000-ish years ago. The study also includes a number of more recent individuals from the Neolithic, 7,000 back to 17,000 years ago, time period when farmers started to first arrive in Europe from the Near East, found that the genetic heritage of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers was still detectable in these early farmers so that the last hunter-gatherers of Europe did mingle with the first farmers who arrived. That's fascinating. Findings further suggest, well, I'm suggesting, but based on this, that people still hadn't invented boats. Boats is one of those things that we have a hard time decisively saying when they started, because if they're made out of wood and they were kept coastal, it's very hard for wood to stand the archeological tests of time. So we might've just lost evidence of it. There is DNA that had been recovered previously from 14,000-year-old North Africans in, I guess, what it would be, Morocco, the 13 kilometers across the sea from Southern Spain. And there were no signals of the North African DNA in the Iberian genetic cultures, and none going the other way either. So even though you might've been able to see a shoreline on a clear day off there in the distance, people walked all the way around to do that darn Southern Caspian Sea corridor up through the caucuses, back down into the, it took a long way. It's gonna take me a while. There's sea monsters, you can't go in there. Definitely, but yeah, haven't you seen the pictures that my friend drew of a thing he heard somebody describe when they were drinking? I'm not going in the water. No. No.  I'm still puzzled at how the Neanderthal signal doesn't come from the folks that were the most likely to have encountered it. And a couple of times over, which then means that despite the early interactions that we could have been having with Neanderthals, the ones that led to the current DNA admixture must have happened either much more recently or they must have taken place somewhere like the Southern Caspian Sea corridor before people, before the new waves entered Europe. Right. Yeah, so that's all of these stories that you're reporting on tonight. They all kind of tie in together into this potentially new way of looking at that. The potential narrative there that could make sense. It just of course needs, what's that thing? More research. That's the thing that's needed. Oh, I'm so glad we're gonna need scientists for a very long time. We need scientists and all the scientists thing. All right, I have a couple of stories to close us out.  Yeah, yeah, that was, that's the... Fantastic, I have a story out of Caltech, Nature Communications, researchers in the lab of John O'Doherty. This is Caltech's Fletcher Jones professor of decision neuroscience. They have been trying to figure out what it is about people's brains that decides what art you like or don't. Do you like abstract art? Yes. Do you like renaissance? Do you like realistic art? Not as much as the abstract. Right, what art? So everyone has their personal differences and the things that they like aesthetically. Food, making a food decision, now that's something that can be broken down into components that make sense related to nutrition, related to energy levels, related... There are all sorts of aspects that food choice and the brain kind of make sense. Those decisions seem a little bit easier to break apart, but what about liking or not liking particular kinds of art? So these researchers in their study in Nature Communications had a whole bunch of people lie in fMRI machines and look at art while they answered questions like, did you like this? And then they, on a scale of one to three, he said, no, absolutely not. Or yes, very, very, very much. I like it very much. I like that scale. I like a one to three scale. He's not a big scale, just very much. But that's a one to three is a perfect scale because it's either yes, maybe no. And that's all your answers should only, it should be no one to ten, one to 100. It doesn't make this too much. There's not enough nuance in a human being for that big of a scale. One to three is perfect. Who needs all of this nuance? Well, okay, visual system, we know recognizes images based on lines, on contours. It looks at these things like low level aspects and then they get built together to create higher level context or features. And so you have to start thinking about at what point in this train of your visual system, breaking everything apart into its component little parts and then putting it back together again, at what point does the, I like it or I don't like it happen? And so by looking in the fMRI machines, they were able to start taking a look at the various parts of the brain that were responding to the images and that coordinated with the particular liking or not liking, the art reading task, which I really like the creativity of their task. It's called art, A-R-T, art rating task. Each participant, there weren't very many of them, but each participant completed about 20 scan sessions over four separate days. So there were each individual was like a repetition in themselves. So they had a lower number of people involved in the study, but each person did a lot of repetitions. And they were able to create a computer model that correlated changes in different parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex and other areas that are higher level cognitive areas that are responsible for decision making and our cognitive control. And they were able to see how the lower levels of the visual system eventually affected a whole bunch of other areas of the brain and determined this subjective value.  So their model works in terms of breaking apart of things and putting them back together, but they have not yet developed the predictive aspect. So we're not at the point. Yeah, I was expecting you to say that. Yeah, we are not at the point yet where this research is going to be the AI that's in your Siri or your Google or whatever's watching you while you're watching things and doing more than just responding to your clicks. They're not reading your brains yet to be able to deliver you specifically, the next Jane Austen novel re-adaptation. But they are following our purchasing preferences and the things that we like online and the things that we share. And so there's still a pretty good predictive power going on in other ways. What I would love to see is, for this same study in the future, to include those horrible little artwork descriptor, posting out things that are near paintings. That tell you what you're supposed to think about. Exactly, and see how that affects the actual appreciation. This plain white canvas is supposed to evoke sadness. Yeah, because I think those things should be illegal. I really do. Because it's telling you how to feel about art. Is that why?  Don't tell me how to feel. View this painting with my brain. Get out of the way, stay away. Never read those, never read those. And if you see one of the museums complain. I like when museums have them where they don't explain what the painting means, but they maybe explain something about the artist or about the context in which the painting was made. I like that. I think that's interesting. Oh, that's tough. Oh, this was a painting while the artist was living in isolation in a cabin recovering from a bad relationship. Stop it, stop. If I couldn't tell that from the painting, that's not what the painting's about. Well, I mean, it's a little bit better, a little more context. Yeah, there's never enough context. Even the title of the painting. Walden Pond, the dude was supposed to be like by himself isolated on Walden Pond, writing and writing and writing, but it's like mom and sister with coming and bringing him food and doing everything for him. So he didn't actually have to struggle. There's a whole different interpretation once you learn that. Of the painting, I find a stark, like if it was like covered with a flap where you're like, I want to know the name of this painting after I've looked at it so that I can reference it. Absolutely, the painting, she could have a title, but you shouldn't be able to see it. And the artist's name. Until after, until after you've looked at the painting for a little while. Well, but like watered art, the painting, the title is half of the art. Like when you have a urinal and it's called Water Fountain. That's the whole point of the art. My favorite part of my trip point of, yes, sure. My favorite part of my family's trip to Europe this summer, this past summer, was going to the Modern Art Museum in Paris and having my child walk stubbornly through the entire museum going, I hate this. This is dumb. Why did they put this in a museum? What is this? This is white. I could do that. What is that? Listen, Kai and I would get along in that museum for sure. I felt, I felt, I was like, I'm going to keep my distance from my child here. I'm going to go enjoy some art. Oh my goodness. Last study for the night. Now we're going to talk about Carl Disaroth. Carl Disaroth, you might recognize his name because he has been involved in the development of optogenetics, which is the technology that allows us to be able to use genetic modification, to be able to insert genes into neurons, into cells that respond to light. Usually blue light. The blue light's really awesome because like if you're dealing with cells on the very top of a thin-skulled animal's head, you can cause behavioral changes in the brains of animals. And it's really amazing. We've talked about the problems with how that would not necessarily work in people very well because blue light doesn't go very deep and like, ah, also the gene modification and all that kind of stuff. But new study researchers, they have in the Disaroth lab, they've just published in Nature, their study that found, you're going to be so surprised about this. An elevated heart rate can cause anxious behaviors in mice. What? But only in risky circumstances. So if it's like the mouse is in a place like it's running wheel, where it's running and running and running and its heart rate is normally elevated, if they optogenetically made the heart rate elevated in that place where the heart rate is normally elevated, there were no anxiety behaviors because that's normal. But if they made the behavior, made the heart rate change out in the open where predators could be, then anxiety in the mice. New part, yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. So it's context related, which I think is also, we're looking, I mean, this is not, I have no science backing this up. I'm putting multiple scientific things that I've read together in an analysis just in this idea that we talk about exercise is good for people who have anxiety and depression, that getting outside that doing, and these things elevate your heart rate normally. So is there something to be said about the fact that you are going about behaviors that elevate your heart rate to normalize the feeling of elevated heart rate with respect to certain circumstances? Okay, that said, this new technique, they have been adapting their channel radopsins that they use. One is sensitive to red light. Red light can go more deeply into tissues. And so that is how they were in this particular circumstance able to change the heart rate of the mice. They used channel radopsins too, which they call curl mean, C-H-R-M-I-N-E. And pretty much used the same optogenetic techniques that they've used previously for the brain, but they have been able to develop basically an optical pacemaker of sorts where they could turn on the light. Red light makes the heart cells go, and the heart would pump more quickly and actively, or they would let it go down and it would go back to a resting heart rate. Additionally, they changed the activity in different brain regions that they know are related to anxiety in these animals to determine what was happening in particular situations. But yeah, what they've determined is that the ability to be able to turn off some of the brain cells and to stimulate the heart in certain situations, they were able to see what areas of the brain are potentially important when responding to anxious or fearful information versus just physiological information. But isn't it the, right, but the physiological information in this, the increased heart rate, then triggered that risk. I wonder if the mice are like, oh, oh, hey, I think I'm having an anxiety attack and that made them nervous. I had a big day planned, but I'm gonna have to. I don't know about that. I don't know if I'm gonna go through. I might have to cancel some of my, I won't be there at the cheese mongers today. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna stay home. Wherever mice go, that's where I'd go. If I was a mouse, I'd go over to the cheese mongers place. That's where all the good mouse actions take place. Yeah, so. Interesting, so there's a feedback loop there. Yes. Yeah, there's a feedback loop. You would normally think that heart rate is driven by the anxiety, not the. But it could be the other way around as well. The heart rate itself is a driver of anxiety. And people who have had tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, who have heart disorders that do lead to changes in heart rate that are unexpected. You do feel these anxious symptoms and very often you go, oh, I'm having a panic attack.  And they go, oh no, you've got this, you got a little heart murmur going on. You got this atrial fibrillation. So maybe you shouldn't be taking that medication. Maybe you should take this one instead.  I was gonna say, when people, if you have anxiety, they tell you to cut out on the caffeine. Yes. So I wonder if that also is about this, right? The caffeine gives you a heightened heart rate, or it can if you have too much of it. Right, but it's caffeine, it's affecting all sorts of things at the same time. So I don't know, but the techniques being used are really fascinating. It's like, yeah, Justin, what you were saying there, it's the feedback loop. It's not just brain to heart, it's heart to brain as well, body to brain. So there's, these feed loop, these feedbacks are loops. They're not just one direction. I mean, that was a bad band from, I mean, ages ago, but anyway. It's, that whole phrase is, I feel like belongs on a T-shirts thing. The feedbacks are loops. It's not just one direction. I love it. Put that on the wall of a museum. Put it up there. Yeah, interesting stuff going on, non-invasive. Quote unquote, optical pacemaker. Like maybe someday we'll be using these channel redopsins with red light, little flashlights stuck to your chest to manage heart rate. Maybe there are, maybe the optogenetics technology is gonna take us very interesting places. Have they applied it to the organoids there at the lab? It's the same lab. I know, I'm not gonna, I don't know, probably. See what we did with the mice? Let's see if we can control the behavior of our organoid computer. Let's make these brain organoids we're teaching to learn anxious. Let's connect them to a heart. No. Make an inch, oh gosh, then you've got an anxious AI. Wait a second, that was in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the robot. That was, uh. Horribly depressed robot. Man, so sad, yeah. Depressed robots, not only Hitchhiker's Guide, they're all over the sci-fi universe. But have we made it to the end of the show? We've done it. We might have done it, oh my goodness. I would love to say thank you to everyone for joining us once again for another episode and give some special shout-outs to people who help us every week with the show. Thank you so much, Fada. Fada isn't here, he's doing stand-up improv tonight, so hopefully break a leg. Fada, hope everything went well there. Gord, Arun, Laura, everyone who helps out in the chat room, thank you for keeping the chat rooms wonderful places to be. Identity four, thank you for recording the show. I hope my choice of streaming links didn't mess things up too poorly. And I'd like to thank Rachel for editing everything so nicely. And finally, of course, I can't forget our Patreon sponsors. Thank you too, Teresa Smith, James Schaefer, Richard Badge, Kent Northcote, Rick Loveman, Pierre Velsar, John Ratnaswamy, Carl Kornfeld, Karen Tozzi, Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn, Vigard Shefstad, Hal Snyder, Donathan Stiles, aka Don Stilo, Ali Coffin, Regan, Derek Schmidt, Dan Mundes, Stephen Albaron, Daryl Meishak, Stu Paul, like Andrew Swanson, Fredes 104, Sky Luke, Paul Rinovich, Kevin Reardon, Noodle Jack, Brian Carrington, David E. 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Perhaps while you get your heart rate up in a controlled fashion on a treadmill? Just search for this week in science or have a podcast you found. If you enjoyed the show, get your friends to subscribe as well. For more information on anything you've heard here today, show notes, links to stories will be available on our website, www.twis.org, where you can sign up for our newsletter. You can contact us directly, email Kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twisminion at gmail.com, or me Blair at BlairBazz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist T-W-I-S in the subject line, or your email will be flung at 40 Gs, and we'll never find it. Ever. But if you, if the, never mind. You know to find us on the Twitter where we are at twiscience, at Dr. Keehee at Jackson's Line, at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would like us to cover or address a suggestion for an interview, a haiku that comes through in the night, please let us know. We'll be back here again next week, and we hope you'll join us for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science, it's the end of the world. So I'm setting up 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 global warming with a wave of my hand. And all of the grass is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific. 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. After Show. It was a show. Now it's over. And this is after that. Yep. The after show. You got it. Thanks, everyone, for joining us for another show. We did it. How's it going there? I'm good. I'm really trying to not see. I need to tape over Blair's feed. Is she drinking water? I can't help it yet. I can't help it. I'm really tired right now. Guys, oh, you know. My one-year-old has been fake yawning. My one-year-old has been fake yawning. He saw Papa Yon, and he was just like, imitating Papa Yon. Ah! He's still uncertain what are all of the lines of communication that he needs to develop. What are these social signals? Yeah, I don't know. That's an important thing. I'd better pick it up. Which we still don't know, maybe. That's all yawning. And then looks at me for my reaction. What did that mean? And just a few seconds later, you yawned back. Yeah, because seeing somebody yawn makes me yawn, and then it just went on for hours. You're like, kiddo. I know this is a teaching moment, but come on. Gary L on the chat room. You can end every segment with it needs more studies. That's science for you. Absolutely. Absolutely, well, especially good science. Very true. Terrible science would be. And so because of this study, we figured everything out. There's no more need for science. We figured everything out. That was it. We're done now. We got to the end of science, ladies and gentlemen. Congratulations. We did it. Figured everything out. It's like making it to the rest on at the end of the universe. Yeah, it's very much that story, too, right? Because in that tale, if you recall, they asked a supercomputer the answer to everything. And the first attempt at it resulted in the supercomputer saying, you need to build a better supercomputer. Don't spoil the story for people. Well, no, that's sort of like how you get into the story, because that's when the excitement really takes off. Yeah. Yeah, that's where all the real excitement happens after that. Towel day is coming up, everybody. It's in May. It is. How? It's March now. It is in May, right? Oh, I have my calendar right here. Yeah, I know. And I'm just saying it's March now. That was just my response. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, it's March now. It's March now. Black Widow Spider tells you it's March now. A beautiful Black Widow Spider. Available as a downloadable PDF on our website if anybody's interested. I haven't decided if I should try to put any of this stuff on Zazzle on merchandise to see if it can stay up there. Just don't put Lego in the keyword. Yeah. Yeah. Harja, I missed your comment earlier there. It says, deep breaths to slow the heart rate. You know, I would have been an interesting thing if they could, I don't know if they could. Maybe they only figured out how to accelerate the heart rate. Of course, the mice. Slow down your breathing, mice. Yeah, well, I mean, maybe they didn't have found the button or maybe they weren't able to slow down the heart rate. But what would have been really interesting is to take anxious mice and slow down their heart rates and then see if that feedback causes the anxiety levels to drop. Yeah, you got a feedback loop. And as Blair was saying earlier, the feedback is a loop. That's what Kiki said. It wasn't one direct, oh, well, you put it on a t-shirt or something, anyway. So I will say there's a lot of anxiety remedies that you are, I don't even want to say remedies, but exercises that you're given that have to do with your breathing, which has to do with slowing your heart. But part of that is just because you're trying to chill your body out. Oh, whoops. And hang on. Sorry, chat room. That was JG that made that comment. I'm sorry. I got the wrong new glasses. Still trying to learn how to see with them. JG, that was a great insight, yes. Oh, we lost Dr. Kiki, but I can actually see a couple examples of Blair art in the background there. Look at that. Yep. Quite the collection. Look at, well, this is to analyze this, right? Look at all the interesting things Kiki has hiding behind her. I don't know if I ever really paid her. There's various anchors and bottles. It's like she's got a whole lab back there. Yeah. Which lignette? No, nothing. Your stuff. Yeah, look at it. I was just petting my cat. I have many things. I have ancient scales, pharmaceutical scales. These were my great, great, great, no. Great, great. Grandfathers. Terrific fella. Yeah. And then, and then a little bit of microscope. Yes, I have. But then you have like a pharmacy there. Over here? Yeah, what is that? Yes, yes. Here I've got some granulated aluminum, some phenylphaline. I think I have some hydrochloric acid, sodium bicarbonate, charcoal. You always need charcoal. Well, Kiki does. Is it activated or is it inactivated? That's what I want to know. All sorts of fun things back here. Oh, and here is my, I have a bat skeleton. You can see it. It's so tiny. I can see glare. I know, it's just this little. Oh, I can kind of see it. It's his teeth. Tiny thing in there. It's so cute. I've got glare art back here. I've got old, old books, Robert's Rules of Order. An old, old wooden book. Blair and Blair has got all sorts of bowling trophies and yes, pop culture, kitchen. Elementary photographic chemistry from the Holden Drug Company. I just live here in this void. 1824. This undecorated soundstage. That's what Blair said earlier. You're like in a void or something. Did I? I don't know, you're like, I think his microphone wasn't working right before we started the show. I don't know, I don't remember what I said. It happens, Blair, you get older and the memory just goes. I may be a bit of a minimalist. It seems. I don't know that word. I don't know the two of you at least, yeah. Yeah, I don't know that word.  Yeah. Why? Well, why? I have Martian regolith simulant. Simulant. It's not. I have Dracula soil. I have Dracula soil. I also have a Megalodon tooth. That's cool. And I have a piece of a Krait Dragon skeleton. Very cool. They're actually, they're all brides. I have given him multiple items from the mini museum. That's what those are. Actually, I'm like looking around right now because Phil Plait gave me a meteorite and I think Marshall took it because he liked to play with it. And I'm gonna get on my meteorite back. I have actually behind me, if you look closely, the all of the evidence for ancient alien contributions to ancient humanity. All of them. All of it displayed behind me. You know why there's none? Because we are the aliens. We all evolved from tardigrades that came from another world. That's not true. You don't know that? No, I mean, not 100% but I'm pretty sure all those genetic phylogenies do not take me back to a tardigrade. I mean, no, they're a different branch. There's someplace else that we're not tardigrade material. Hey, did you know, which makes it so that I'm saying it? What is that thing that, how chickens lay eggs? Where do they use it? It comes out of their. Cloaca. Cloaca. Lizards also have cloacas. Cloacas, snakes have cloacas, birds have cloacas. And so does the platypus. Yes, yep. Which of course, because they're. We're the weirdos with our separate holes. We're such a weird creature. We're the weirdos. The other thing that I learned about platypus is and a kidney. That they lactate just out of their skin and it drips down specialized hairs because they don't have nipples. That I didn't know, that I didn't find out. You're wrong. But these are two versions of these egg laying mammals that still exist today.  Like these separated probably at the same time our ancestor, whatever little shrewd. Yes, that's the story I brought to the show like a few weeks ago. Yeah. Oh. You learned it from Blair. What? Justin. Come on. I learned it from watching Blair. Come on. Is that how I learned that? I don't know where information comes from anymore. I need you to learn this, Justin. Like every Thursday, I like walk around with new information in my head and I don't know where it came from. That's the aliens beaming it into your head. Very good. Well, I'm here. I could give you some more monetary info if you wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring it. I didn't know about that. That... How about the platypus is venomous. Did you know that? Yes. So it has a venom fang or something? It's a nail. Yeah. A nail. A nail on it. But it does actually produce venom? Yes. Yeah. What? Venom is injected. Poison is ingested. Okay. There you go. It's crazy. Teacher Blair's got that for you. And it's got like a duck-looking bill. And you know when they first discovered it and they drew pictures of it and sent it back? They thought it was fake. They thought it was a hoax. They did not believe it was a real thing. There's no way this thing... The thing about the bill that people don't realize is that it's fleshy. It's not a hard bill. It's fleshy. It's soft. And part of that is that they have a lecture reception in their bill. So they can actually sense where like bugs and worms are under water. They pray. And then they use it to kind of shuffle the... I was very interested in platypuses in the fifth grade and I did a report. Just I still have some of that. Well, if you can find it, dust it off. I also... I'd love to read it. When I had to do a report on proteins for microbiology, I was like, I have to find a way to make this a strange animal thing. So I did it on monatreme lactase. Was my protein report. So how baby monatremes break down lactose in their mother's milk? Yes. It's different from placental mammalian lactose and lactase. That's how I learned about the specialized hairs. So lactose intolerance is different between these species. So maybe I could have platypus milk. Maybe it'd be fine. Although you can't really milk a platypus because they don't have nipples. And then... Sponge, sponge. So much hair in this milk. Oh, I'm going to start a milkshake bar. Platypus milkshake? It's going to be called the hairy platypus. Oh my gosh.  Not at all. None of it. All right. It's time, everyone. Let's call it. Hey, Blair. Hey, Blair. Say good night. Good night. Say good morning, Justin. Good morning, Justin. Good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. And we will be back next week Wednesday at the Amish Pacific time. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay curious.


The thing about hard times is everybody feels them. And when someone in charge comes to town, they're going to be questions. Even if he talks to the budget, which I think he will, I really believe he's going to talk now. I want to know what the second and third order of effects are going to be. What do we see in the future? Soldiers like Master Sergeant Michael Sadler came prepared. I'll be like, uh... Today, we are honored to have with us... He's a tall guy. I'm the 38th Chief of Staff of the Army, General Raymond, for the year now, and his wife, Linda. Well, first, it's great to be back here. I was here about a year ago. Soldiers know how much can happen in a year. I know it's been difficult. Deployed or not, the enemy they're fighting now... So we have a question over here, sir. ...is uncertainty. Okay. Morning, sir. Master Sergeant Sadler from Use of Retention. Yeah. What type of effects do you see with the decisions that are being made today that will affect us three, four years down the road? Great question. So one of my concerns right now is... Sometimes the best answers aren't the ones you want to hear. It might be frustrating, it might be a bit unpredictable, but it will work itself out. And the one thing I know is we start right now from a position of strength because we have the most capable, experienced combat force we've ever had, and we start from a position of strength. Another thing about hard times is... Thanks, everybody. God bless all of you. ...a little reassurance can go a long way. It was a very good brief and glad I made it. For US Army Europe, Jesse Granger, V-Spot in Germany.


As COVID vaccinations continue to tick up in the United States, countries like India are seeing an absolutely brutal second wave with more than 300,000 new cases per day, which has of course led to a lot of problems, shortages of hospital beds. Patients are now dying without oxygen. It's just absolutely gut wrenching and horrific. And on the screen, you're seeing drone footage from New Delhi's mass cremation site that they actually had to construct because they didn't know what else to do with all of the bodies from deaths due to COVID-19. So I mean, you see this footage and it's obvious that had India been able to vaccinate at least as many people as the US has, or as the UK has, then the situation hopefully wouldn't have been as bad. So obviously the conclusion is we need a people's vaccine. And Jessica Corbett passionately argues for this in an article in Common Dreams, which I'll link you to down below. But part of the reason why there isn't a people's vaccine is because of the greed of pharmaceutical giants who recently dispatched an army of lobbyists to block the production of generic COVID vaccines as reported by Lee Fong of the Intercept. And before we go further, it's not just the lack of a vaccine that's leading to an increase in COVID cases. I mean, this surge can be attributed to incompetence from India's far right fascistic leader Narendra Modi. On top of that, a lot of cities in India are densely populated. So there's a number of factors, but of course, having a vaccine, having the ability to vaccinate for months, or at least as long as the United States had, would make the situation better. Now, in an article for The Guardian, journalist Stephen Barani explains how the world is desperate for more vaccines, but patents from pharmaceutical giants have actually stopped countries in the global south like India for manufacturing their own generic COVID-19 vaccines. Stephen explains, many governments and organizations back the idea of opening up production. India and South Africa have asked the WTO to suspend patent protections to allow other companies to produce existing vaccines and drugs, but they have been blocked by rich nations. Former world leaders and Nobel laureates have called for suspending patents and coordinating production across the world. The kind of global effort that eliminated smallpox and polio in the 20th century. But so far, their efforts have been unsuccessful. So this begs the question, why aren't these countries manufacturing their own generic versions of the COVID-19 vaccine? Why are they waiting on Pfizer and Moderna to manufacture enough to distribute them across the world? It's going to take forever if we rely on just a couple of companies. Wouldn't it be more efficient if we just have multiple manufacturing companies around the world make these drugs to distribute them to countries that desperately need them? And the answer is, of course. But companies like Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, they don't want anyone else to manufacture their vaccines, the vaccines that they have control over, because they want to be the sole manufacturers because that's how they make a lot of money off of it. It's more lucrative for them to be the sole manufacturer of the COVID vaccines that they have rather than allowing these other companies to manufacture generic vaccines, because then they'd missed out on that money. So, I mean, this is becoming a bigger issue. The need and demand for a people's vaccine is growing. And just a couple of weeks ago, I posted a video on this channel that's super long where I talk about Bill Gates' role in global vaccine apartheid, how he helped perpetuate the system of global apartheid where the folks who want a vaccine in other countries can't get it because richer countries are effectively hoarding the vaccines. So, if you watched that video, I go over a new Republic article that explains his role in this, but he was asked a follow-up about this and whether or not now we see the need for the vaccines shouldn't be the case that the IP rights are waived so other countries can really quickly rush to manufacture these generic COVID vaccines because they have people dying in the streets. And he proceeded to double down and outright lie. And as John Keely of Salon writes, Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution despite a growing international call to do exactly that is a bad idea. Directly asked during an interview with Sky News if he thought it would be helpful to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered no. Asked to explain why not, Gates, whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth said, Well, there's only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines and so moving something that had never been done moving a vaccine say from a Johnson and Johnson factory into a factory in India. It's novel. It's only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all. The thing that's holding things back in terms of the global vaccine rollout continued Gates is not intellectual property. It's not like there's some idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you've got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process needs to be looked at in a very careful way. Critical advocates for robust and immediate change to intellectual property protections at the World Trade Organization when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines. However, issued scathing indictments of Gates's defense of the status quo. Nick Deirden, executive director of global justice. Now one of the lead partner groups in an international coalition calling for the WTO patent waivers at a crucial meeting of the world body next month characterized Gates's remarks and the ideological framework behind them as disgusting. Who appointed this billionaire head of global health asked Deirden. Oh, yeah, he did.  You have countries like South Africa and India begging. They're saying we have the capacity and there's a strong demand for these COVID vaccines because our citizens are dying. They're literally dying without oxygen. So all we're asking is for you to give us the ability, the recipes to manufacture our own generic vaccines so we can save lives. And this billionaire oligarch who unilaterally appointed himself the head of global public health said no. I say no. I say that lifting the patent obstacles and waving them even temporarily, that's not going to help the situation. So he's seriously arguing that it's better to just have three companies manufacture the vaccines rather than having generic alternatives throughout the globe being manufactured. Is that seriously the argument that he's making? Now I watched the actual video interview and I didn't play it because it's from Sky News and I don't know if there'd be any copyright issues with them because I've never played a clip from Sky News to my knowledge. But there's no follow-up from the interviewer. Just a softball question, no follow-up. And he just lies casually with a straight face. It's unreal. It's unreal. But to be fair, Bill Gates isn't alone in perpetuating global apartheid because on the campaign trail, Joe Biden promised to lift any and all barriers that would prevent the manufacturing of generic COVID vaccines. In an interview with Adi Barkan, he was asked this question, would you lift these IP barriers? Would you provide other countries with waivers needed to manufacture their own generic COVID vaccines? And this was his response. Quote, it lacks any human dignity what we're doing, Biden said, of his predecessors refusal to participate in global vaccine initiatives. So the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's not only a good thing to do, it's overwhelmingly an hour interest to do. However, since taking office in January, the Biden administration has upheld Trump's opposition to India and South Africa's proposal to temporarily waive sections of the agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. A step that would allow generic manufacturers to replicate vaccine formulas and bolster global supply. So there was a segment from CNBC about a month or so ago, and apparently Biden's administration told a reporter that they were looking into whether or not they would temporarily waive the IP rights so that way this can actually happen. And time sticking. Where's your answer, Joe Biden? On the campaign trail, you said yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Five yeses. You said that it lacks human dignity what Trump was doing because he wouldn't waive the IP rights.  How much more deliberation is necessary? How much more time do you need to decide whether or not to do the humane thing? And then we have folks like Bill Gates, billionaire oligarchs, whose organization is inextricably linked to the World Health Organization dictating unilaterally the terms of vaccine distribution. I say this every single time I talk about vaccines, but I'm going to say it again because it's really important.  Understand that pandemics don't work that way and it's only a matter of time before a new strain, a new mutation emerges that is resistant to the vaccines. If that happens, all the progress that we've made getting Americans and people in the UK vaccinated will be undone. All because we're protecting the profits of pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Moderna. It is truly just antithetical to a thriving human society. This is all the evidence that you need that capitalism and neoliberal governance has failed. It has failed human beings because it is not giving us the capacity to adequately address a highly contagious, deadly pandemic. And if this doesn't turn every single person into a socialist, then I don't know what will. So I can't believe that Bill Gates is so brazen, but he tripled down here. I'd say doubled down, but he already was really testy with reporters when they followed up beforehand about him defending the IP rights of these companies. But if things go south, if we have a new strain that's resistant to the vaccines, thank folks like Bill Gates, thank folks like Joe Biden, who went back on his promise to waive these IP protections to make sure that folks around the world can actually make their own generic vaccines. Because that's the only way, logistically and feasibly, that we will vaccinate the entire human population before a new strain pops up.