July 3, 2025 • 23 mins
We explore groundbreaking science developments from space discovery to environmental innovation and canine intuition. The James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged an exoplanet for the first time, marking a pivotal moment in our quest to understand distant worlds.
• JWST captures first direct image of an exoplanet orbiting star TWA7, 111 light-years away
• The Saturn-sized planet orbits 52 astronomical units from its star within a gap in the star's dusty debris disk
• Scientists used a coronagraph to block the star's light, enabling them to see the much dimmer planet
• Researchers genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to convert plastic waste into acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol
• The bacteria achieved 92% conversion efficiency in 48 hours, offering potential solutions for plastic pollution and sustainable pharmaceutical production
• Though promising, this process is not yet scalable for industrial applications
• Study reveals 65% of participants noticed behavior changes in their dogs during pregnancy
• 27% reported these changes occurred before they knew they were pregnant
• Dogs showed increased attention-seeking, guarding behavior, and anxiety around other dogs
• Canines can detect changes in human biochemistry, emotions, and scent during pregnancy
If your dog detected your pregnancy before you knew, we'd love to hear your story! Check out our Patreon at the link in show notes to support the podcast and join our Paw Pack community.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody and welcomeback to the Science Podcast.
We hope you're happy andhealthy out there.
We're on holidays, chris.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
We sure are.
We started actually at the endof June.
I went to the bitter end ofJune, but you definitely had a
few extra days off than me.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I did.
As I mentioned, I banked acouple days doing these science
shows for the district, whichare, quite frankly, a ton of
extra work.
So the deal they made is wecan't give you any time off now,
but at the very end of the yearyou can take a couple personal
days for free and on us.
I thought that was cool.
It's not a bad deal.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It isn't a bad deal, but the main thing is that the
kids got to see Amazing Science.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
And speaking of Amazing Science, we've got three articles this
week, Chris.
One is about the newdevelopment from the JWST, which
is very exciting, and the otheris the possibility of turning
our plastic waste intopainkillers Cool.
And then the third one is dodogs really detect when people
(01:44):
are pregnant?
Now, we didn't have a dog forboth of our children and then
when you were expecting, therewasn't any dogs around really,
so this will be interesting tosee.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, I'm interested to find out a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
All right, let's hop to it.
There's no time like ScienceTime.
This week in science news, thefirst of two articles is about
space and the JWST.
So every summer I buy books andthen I usually have a book I've
been waiting to read all year.
And the book I read inbasically a day and a half is
(02:22):
Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and it'sall about space and planets and
other stars.
So I saw this news article thatjumped right out at me.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, and you were gobbling up that book and you
kept telling me about it, abouthow awesome it was and how much
you enjoyed it, which I delightin your joy and you were talking
about it turning into a movie.
And then you watched thetrailer and you're like, oh, I
(02:51):
wonder how they're going to dothis part and I wonder how
they're going to do this part.
And then another part came onthe trailer and you're like,
yeah, so you're very excitedabout this series, for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You're very excited about this series for sure.
Yeah, I'm very excited.
It's a book unlike any I'veread.
It starts off like aninterstellar slash Martian book,
meaning that there's a loneprotagonist who has, I guess, an
interstellar.
There was a couple people, butanyways like a lone, very small
crew or a single person andthey're all by themselves and
(03:25):
they have to survive to savehumanity or save themselves.
But it definitely takes a bigtwist about, I don't know a
quarter of the way into the book, which is the twist is just
amazing.
It is very cool is that we haveknown for many years, chris,
that there are planets beyondour own in our solar system and
(03:49):
our telescopes have had to useother methods to detect them.
One is the transit method,where they have to kind of wait
for a planet to go in front of astar and then it blots out the
light, and then they usecalculations to calculate that
it's an exoplanet the light, andthen they use calculations to
calculate that it's an exoplanet.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
But for the first time ever, the JWST like took a
picture directly imaged anexoplanet, which is wild and
this discovery was reported onJune 25th in nature, and what
they found is the planet orbitsthe young star called TWA7,
(04:28):
which is not near to us.
It's 111 light years away andit has a mass that is roughly
equivalent to Saturn, andSaturn's my favorite planet.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
And yes got.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It's got a ring on it , many rings, and the mass is
about one third of Jupiter.
Now it orbits actually quitefar 52 astronomical units.
And an AU or an astronomicalunit is the distance between the
Earth and the sun.
So it's 52 times farther fromits star than Earth is from our
(05:07):
Sun.
And how they were able to seeit is, it appears, within a gap
between the first and secondring of a dusty debris disk
surrounding the star.
So they like to look at newlyformed stars with the dusty
debris to be able to maybe seethese exoplanets.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
That's one of their strategies and taking an actual
picture like a direct image isextremely hard, because stars
like our star are wicked brightand planets are so much smaller
and they don't emit their ownlight.
They reflect light, so they'rejust drowned out by their own
(05:49):
star's light.
So here's the cool thing howdid they then take a picture?
The JWST has a chronograph.
This is like a light blotter itblocks out a star's light and
they can look at things thatdon't emit light nearby, and the
team looked at these youngstars from pole on, so that
means above the pole, and thatgives them a clearer view of the
(06:12):
planetary systems.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, jason, it was like a bird's eye view to give
them a clearer view of thepotential planetary system
system.
Twa7 is a star that is 6.4million years old which,
although you might think wow,that's old, it's actually quite
young when you're talking aboutstars in space, and its debris
(06:37):
disk contains three distinctrings, and what the James Webb
Space Telescope detected was afaint object in one of the gaps,
which alerted them to say, hey,maybe that's potentially an
exoplanet.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
But they don't want to be wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, they didn't want to be wrong, they want to
rule out other possibilities.
So the object could have been abackground galaxy.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
So the object could have been a background galaxy,
but their calculations showedonly a 0.34% chance that it was
anything other than a planet.
And they're pretty confidentbecause other scientists that do
the simulations they ran asimulation of what a planet
would look like inside thisdusty disk and it closely
matched what JWST spit out.
Good job, simulators.
So the big deal, because thissuccess really opens up the sky,
or opens up the universe todiscovering other exoplanets by
(07:36):
direct imaging.
I've talked to scientists onthe show before and I've asked
them will we directly image anexoplanet?
And they weren't so sure.
There'll be other telescopes welaunch in the future, but they
didn't think JWST would be ableto do it and that's why this is
turning heads and making all thespace nerds like myself very
(07:56):
excited.
Yeah, and I guess if we everhave to send Ryan Gosling to the
star to save ours, we knowthere's some planets orbiting it
hey, there you go.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's a nod to the book that jason was reading.
Yeah, ryan gosling is rylan.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, ryan gosling is rylan.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Grace in hail mary yeah, all right, that's our
first that's our first sciencenews item.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Our second news item is turning waste into
painkillers.
I saw this one.
It sounded too good to be true,and it maybe is, but it is such
a wild way to get rid ofplastic I thought we could talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
We sure can.
Now we're going to start bysaying that this is not for the
near future.
This is something for thedistant future.
So don't expect that yourplastic is going to biodegrade
into Tylenol tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, please don't dig a hole, throw all your
plastic crap in there and thenexpecting to get some headache
medicine out of that pit in theday or two.
It's ways down the road, you'reright.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It is way down the road, but it's exciting in terms
of pharmaceuticals and science.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah.
So the main discovery here isthe tagline scientists
genetically engineered E coli,which we've all heard of before
type of bacteria, obviously andthey were able to turn plastic
waste into acetaminophen, theactive ingredient in Tylenol and
Panadol.
And this is relatively recentit's published in June 23rd in
(09:30):
Nature Chemistry.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Jason, you know what I'm going to.
Let you break down the complexscience and how the process
works, because you're able totalk about this maybe more
accurately than I can all thesedifferent types of amino acids
(09:58):
that are possibly going to bechanged, and that's what they
did.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
So they modified these E coli so they could no
longer produce PABA, which ispara-aminobenzoic acid.
This is a precursor, sosomething you need before you
make folic acid, and the onlyway the bacteria could survive
was if they got PABA from someother alternative chemical route
was if they got PABA from someother alternative chemical route
(10:21):
.
So they set up these bacteriato basically die unless they
evolved to eat some otherchemicals.
And the other chemical thatthey looked at was the Lawson
rearrangement.
This is a reaction thattransforms nitrogen-bearing
molecules into PABA.
So nitrogen-bearing moleculesis the plastic and PABA is the
(10:41):
thing that the bacteria need tomake folic acid and other stuff.
Otherwise they die.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Just to clarify they gave the bacteria a compound
that became PABA only if theLawson rearrangement occurred.
So the bacteria survived, whichproved that they successfully
carried out this chemicaltransformation.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Some didn't make it and the ones that did, they
moved on to the next round.
Okay, all right so how doesthis Off the Island Chris?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Survivor.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Okay, so how does converting plastic into these
precursor chemicals work?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Okay, so you take PET , that's polyethylene
terephthalate, that's what's inplastic bottles.
It's the precursor needed forthis rearrangement, and these E
coli that were engineeredconverted this pet chemical into
PABA, so they were able to takethis plastic thing and turn it
(11:43):
into PABA, which is what theyneeded to survive.
Now, with additional genemodifications, the E coli were
then able to convert PABA intoacetaminophen.
So that's the big jump.
So they had, like survivorround A sink or swim bacteria.
Can they make PABA?
They did, and then sink or swimround.
Two, they modified a secondround of E coli that turned that
(12:05):
PABA into acetaminophen.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
The other word that the study talks about is
paracetamol, and I think that'sanother word for acetaminophen.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, that's the acetaminophen.
Is paracetamol.
Yeah, the bacteria did great92% of the PET-derived precursor
was turned into acetaminophenin 48 hours.
That's pretty good.
That is not bad.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, and it's significant, jason, because this
process offers potentially amore sustainable method for
producing painkillers, becausecurrently, paracetamol is
manufactured using fossilfuel-derived chemicals.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Technically, this way it will be as well, because
plastics do come from fossilfuels, but they'll be recycled,
right, we're not going to runout of plastic.
There's so much plastic wasteeverywhere, everywhere, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You want to do plastic waste everywhere,
everywhere.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, you want to do potential environment benefits.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Sure.
So this study and thisbreakthrough in science has
environmental benefits, such asreducing that plastic pollution
and reducing our dependency onfossil fuels, and it does
represent a new way to upcycleplastic waste into valuable
pharmaceutical compounds.
But there is challenges tocreate this on an industrial
(13:28):
scale.
Right, it goes all the way up.
The current method of breakingdown the plastic is not yet
scalable for industrial use, andthis breakthrough could inspire
developments of a more scalableand sustainable plastic
degradation techniques in thefuture.
But right now they just can'tscale it up.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
No, we're talking about a tiny amount of bacteria
and a tiny amount of plastic.
A few cultures of bacteria doesnot make a solution for the
plastic waste around us, butit's a start and, just like any
snowball rolling down a hill tobecome an avalanche, you do have
to start somewhere.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You have to start somewhere, and that's what you
always tell me You're like youjust have to start.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, yeah, I tell the kids that starting is the
hardest part.
You just have to start.
Yeah, yeah, I tell the kidsthat Starting is the hardest
part.
You just have to start.
And who knows, we might betalking about this in five or 10
years and you have a littleplastic, a little bottle of
Tylenol, and it's this Tylenolwas made from plastic or
something on it Recycled plastic.
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And it's contained in a recycled plastic bottle.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Oh yeah, there we go, upcycle that back into
painkillers.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Wow, the cycle is endless.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It is.
Hopefully it does end, becauseplastic's not so good.
We need it, though, but we needa way to recycle it.
All right, that's science newsfor this week.
This week in pet science, we'regoing to talk about pregnancy
and puppies.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But not pregnant puppies.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
We could talk about pregnant puppies, but that's not
what this is about.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
It isn't.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I know people see, remember when we got Beaker
people were like, oh, gonna havebunsen beaker puppies.
We're like no, we are notequipped for that speaker was a
bit of a handful.
Can you imagine 12 Bernoullipuppies?
That would be a lot because hewas a lot as a puppy.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
He was a lot as a puppy and he's a lot as a dog
now, but he's a good boy.
He's such a good boy but he isso mischievous Like unbelievable
.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, all right, let's get back to people.
I don't know if you've seenthose touching videos on social
media where a woman finds outshe's pregnant and the dog
starts acting differently.
Or they have the story of thedog resting its head on her
belly and then, all of a sudden,there's a baby.
It's very heartwarming.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, I just actually saw one on the dodo.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
On the dodo yeah.
Yeah, two days ago the dodo onthe dodo yeah, yeah, two days
ago and, of course, I shed atear because I love that.
It's cute, we might have thewet blanket.
Come to the situation chris,aka science, because, um, there
was a study done to investigatewhether pet dogs do change their
behavior when owners becomepregnant.
Because that is either a myth,an old wild old wives tale, or
(16:32):
perhaps it's real.
Perhaps it does happen.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But I think they have to be careful looking at the
different factors and having areal clear control, because then
you don't really know whatvariable is causing the dog to
potentially change.
What factor is actuallypredicting these behavior
changes?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
So let's get to the study.
Let's talk about that and themethodology.
There are 130 participants inthe study who were pregnant in
the past or were currentlypregnant.
They used a questionnaire thatassessed the dog's behavior
before and during pregnancy.
They also had cool things likeowner dog demographics and how
close the person was to the dog,which is important, right.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Is that bond between the dog and the owner?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
What did they find?
Chris, Because it's cool.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Well, 65% of participants reported a change
in their dog's behavior duringpregnancy and about 27% said the
behavior change happened beforethey even knew that they were
pregnant.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
What did the dogs do?
Like I've never been aroundthis, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
I don't know so the behavior categories that they
looked at to increase duringpregnancy, some significant
increases were found inattention seeking behavior,
guarding around familiar people,guarding around unfamiliar
people, and fear and anxietytoward other dogs, and there was
(18:08):
no significant change reportedin fear or anxiety towards the
owner themselves.
Interestingly, some predictorsof the behavior change there was
no significant effect from thedog owner demographics or the
pregnancy symptoms orcomplications that may have
arisen and, interesting, nosignificant effects from the
(18:31):
relationship closeness,according to the scores of the
survey so when they looked atwhat.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So that's interesting .
So there appears to be agreater, like a statistical
probability that dogs will reactto pregnancy or even before.
Um, you yourself know you're,but why do dogs do that?
And I think if you've listenedto this show long enough, you
probably know dogs can detectchanges in our emotions and our
(19:03):
health extremely well.
So if you are actingdifferently or you have a
different, you're sweatingdifferent, your biochemistry is
different.
Dogs can detect that you might.
I don't know if I don't want topoint any fingers, but
sometimes people who arepregnant might be a little bit
(19:24):
emotional and have some moodswings due to hormonal changes.
Behaviors change and, of course, those volatile organic
chemicals change in pregnancyand dogs can pick that up.
All of these are supported.
Dogs mirror human emotionalstress.
Dogs have olfactory clues thatthey're cued into.
(19:46):
You can train a dog just aboutany dog to detect when you're
low in blood sugar.
They can detect how you smelldifferent when you have less
sugar in your blood, which iswild.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
So there's not a big stretch of the imagination to
know these creatures who are soin tune to us and how we act and
how we smell, could detectsomething like that.
The study comes with someparticipants, mostly women aged
25 to 34, mainly located in theUK, and the dogs were mostly
mixed breeds, evenly matchedmale and female, and most were
(20:29):
sterilized, and the majority ofdogs were aged two to four
during the time of the pregnancyand they were owned by the
owner for one to three years,and 77% had no specialized
training in sensing all thosethings that you were talking
about.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I guess one thing we should just mention before we
wrap up is there's aself-reported bias.
Whenever you get people to do asurvey or questionnaire, so
probably what they could do inthe future and what maybe
they're looking at doing, is youjust you have some people who
are perhaps trying to havechildren, so they don't know
(21:10):
exactly when they are going tobe pregnant, but they are
actively trying to be pregnantand then you just have some dogs
sniff out some sweat or someclothing or see if the dogs and
some other dogs could detect ifthe woman was pregnant or not.
But then that doesn't change.
That dog wouldn't necessarilybe around that person to see how
(21:31):
they would change emotionally.
The dog could probably detectthe pregnancy.
That would be a fun test, butnot necessarily you wouldn't
have that dog in the housebecause you'd have to have some
kind of training for that.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
But, Jason, the practical application of a dog
being the pregnancy tester.
You probably should go to thestore and get a pregnancy test.
I know, the dog isn'tnecessarily the most accurate
predictor.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, it would also spoil it right If some dog you
have like out in public andthere's like a dog and you're
like, oh, what's that dog?
It's the pregnancy detectingdog.
You're pregnant.
That would be an awkward timeat the mall.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Maybe exciting, maybe shocking.
Who knows right, who knows?
You never know.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Here's the thing Since a lot of people listen to
the show, let us know if yourdog, at the time when you were
expecting or before, acteddifferently.
If the dog seemed to detectthat you were pregnant, that
would be cool to know, just on aour case basis.
All right, that's pet sciencefor this week.
That's it for this week show.
(22:40):
Thanks for coming back weekafter week to support us.
We love that we have such agreat core audience that listens
to our show.
One of the groups we would loveto, one of the groups we always
like to shout out, is the TopDogs.
That's the top tier of ourPatreon community, the Paw Pack.
We would love your supportthere as well.
So check out the show notes,chris.
(23:00):
Let's hear those names.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Amelia Fetting, rhi Oda, carol Hainel, jennifer
Challen, linnea Janik, karenChronister, vicky Otero, christy
Walker, sarah Bram, wendy,diane Mason and Luke Helen Chin,
elizabeth Bourgeois, marianneMcNally, catherine Jordan,
shelley Smith, laura Steffensen,tracy Leinbach, anne Uchida,
(23:25):
heather Burback, kelly andcuteness.
Hello science enthusiasts.
I'm Jason Zukoski.
And I'm Chris Zukoski, we'rethe pet parents of Bunsen,
beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The science animals on social media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you love science.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you love pets.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
You've come to the right spot, so put on your
safety glasses and hold on toyour tail.
This is the Science Podcast.
Hello everybody and welcomeback to the Science Podcast.
We hope you're happy andhealthy out there.
We're on holidays, chris.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
We sure are.
We started actually at the endof June.
I went to the bitter end ofJune, but you definitely had a
few extra days off than me.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I did.
As I mentioned, I banked acouple days doing these science
shows for the district, whichare, quite frankly, a ton of
extra work.
So the deal they made is wecan't give you any time off now,
but at the very end of the yearyou can take a couple personal
days for free and on us.
I thought that was cool.
It's not a bad deal.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It isn't a bad deal, but the main thing is that the
kids got to see Amazing Science.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
And speaking of Amazing Science, we've got three articles this
week, Chris.
One is about the newdevelopment from the JWST, which
is very exciting, and the otheris the possibility of turning
our plastic waste intopainkillers Cool.
And then the third one is dodogs really detect when people
(01:44):
are pregnant?
Now, we didn't have a dog forboth of our children and then
when you were expecting, therewasn't any dogs around really,
so this will be interesting tosee.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, I'm interested to find out a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
All right, let's hop to it.
There's no time like ScienceTime.
This week in science news, thefirst of two articles is about
space and the JWST.
So every summer I buy books andthen I usually have a book I've
been waiting to read all year.
And the book I read inbasically a day and a half is
(02:22):
Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and it'sall about space and planets and
other stars.
So I saw this news article thatjumped right out at me.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, and you were gobbling up that book and you
kept telling me about it, abouthow awesome it was and how much
you enjoyed it, which I delightin your joy and you were talking
about it turning into a movie.
And then you watched thetrailer and you're like, oh, I
(02:51):
wonder how they're going to dothis part and I wonder how
they're going to do this part.
And then another part came onthe trailer and you're like,
yeah, so you're very excitedabout this series, for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You're very excited about this series for sure.
Yeah, I'm very excited.
It's a book unlike any I'veread.
It starts off like aninterstellar slash Martian book,
meaning that there's a loneprotagonist who has, I guess, an
interstellar.
There was a couple people, butanyways like a lone, very small
crew or a single person andthey're all by themselves and
(03:25):
they have to survive to savehumanity or save themselves.
But it definitely takes a bigtwist about, I don't know a
quarter of the way into the book, which is the twist is just
amazing.
It is very cool is that we haveknown for many years, chris,
that there are planets beyondour own in our solar system and
(03:49):
our telescopes have had to useother methods to detect them.
One is the transit method,where they have to kind of wait
for a planet to go in front of astar and then it blots out the
light, and then they usecalculations to calculate that
it's an exoplanet the light, andthen they use calculations to
calculate that it's an exoplanet.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
But for the first time ever, the JWST like took a
picture directly imaged anexoplanet, which is wild and
this discovery was reported onJune 25th in nature, and what
they found is the planet orbitsthe young star called TWA7,
(04:28):
which is not near to us.
It's 111 light years away andit has a mass that is roughly
equivalent to Saturn, andSaturn's my favorite planet.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
And yes got.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It's got a ring on it , many rings, and the mass is
about one third of Jupiter.
Now it orbits actually quitefar 52 astronomical units.
And an AU or an astronomicalunit is the distance between the
Earth and the sun.
So it's 52 times farther fromits star than Earth is from our
(05:07):
Sun.
And how they were able to seeit is, it appears, within a gap
between the first and secondring of a dusty debris disk
surrounding the star.
So they like to look at newlyformed stars with the dusty
debris to be able to maybe seethese exoplanets.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
That's one of their strategies and taking an actual
picture like a direct image isextremely hard, because stars
like our star are wicked brightand planets are so much smaller
and they don't emit their ownlight.
They reflect light, so they'rejust drowned out by their own
(05:49):
star's light.
So here's the cool thing howdid they then take a picture?
The JWST has a chronograph.
This is like a light blotter itblocks out a star's light and
they can look at things thatdon't emit light nearby, and the
team looked at these youngstars from pole on, so that
means above the pole, and thatgives them a clearer view of the
(06:12):
planetary systems.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, jason, it was like a bird's eye view to give
them a clearer view of thepotential planetary system
system.
Twa7 is a star that is 6.4million years old which,
although you might think wow,that's old, it's actually quite
young when you're talking aboutstars in space, and its debris
(06:37):
disk contains three distinctrings, and what the James Webb
Space Telescope detected was afaint object in one of the gaps,
which alerted them to say, hey,maybe that's potentially an
exoplanet.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
But they don't want to be wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, they didn't want to be wrong, they want to
rule out other possibilities.
So the object could have been abackground galaxy.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
So the object could have been a background galaxy,
but their calculations showedonly a 0.34% chance that it was
anything other than a planet.
And they're pretty confidentbecause other scientists that do
the simulations they ran asimulation of what a planet
would look like inside thisdusty disk and it closely
matched what JWST spit out.
Good job, simulators.
So the big deal, because thissuccess really opens up the sky,
or opens up the universe todiscovering other exoplanets by
(07:36):
direct imaging.
I've talked to scientists onthe show before and I've asked
them will we directly image anexoplanet?
And they weren't so sure.
There'll be other telescopes welaunch in the future, but they
didn't think JWST would be ableto do it and that's why this is
turning heads and making all thespace nerds like myself very
(07:56):
excited.
Yeah, and I guess if we everhave to send Ryan Gosling to the
star to save ours, we knowthere's some planets orbiting it
hey, there you go.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's a nod to the book that jason was reading.
Yeah, ryan gosling is rylan.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, ryan gosling is rylan.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Grace in hail mary yeah, all right, that's our
first that's our first sciencenews item.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Our second news item is turning waste into
painkillers.
I saw this one.
It sounded too good to be true,and it maybe is, but it is such
a wild way to get rid ofplastic I thought we could talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
We sure can.
Now we're going to start bysaying that this is not for the
near future.
This is something for thedistant future.
So don't expect that yourplastic is going to biodegrade
into Tylenol tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, please don't dig a hole, throw all your
plastic crap in there and thenexpecting to get some headache
medicine out of that pit in theday or two.
It's ways down the road, you'reright.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It is way down the road, but it's exciting in terms
of pharmaceuticals and science.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah.
So the main discovery here isthe tagline scientists
genetically engineered E coli,which we've all heard of before
type of bacteria, obviously andthey were able to turn plastic
waste into acetaminophen, theactive ingredient in Tylenol and
Panadol.
And this is relatively recentit's published in June 23rd in
(09:30):
Nature Chemistry.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Jason, you know what I'm going to.
Let you break down the complexscience and how the process
works, because you're able totalk about this maybe more
accurately than I can all thesedifferent types of amino acids
(09:58):
that are possibly going to bechanged, and that's what they
did.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
So they modified these E coli so they could no
longer produce PABA, which ispara-aminobenzoic acid.
This is a precursor, sosomething you need before you
make folic acid, and the onlyway the bacteria could survive
was if they got PABA from someother alternative chemical route
was if they got PABA from someother alternative chemical route
(10:21):
.
So they set up these bacteriato basically die unless they
evolved to eat some otherchemicals.
And the other chemical thatthey looked at was the Lawson
rearrangement.
This is a reaction thattransforms nitrogen-bearing
molecules into PABA.
So nitrogen-bearing moleculesis the plastic and PABA is the
(10:41):
thing that the bacteria need tomake folic acid and other stuff.
Otherwise they die.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Just to clarify they gave the bacteria a compound
that became PABA only if theLawson rearrangement occurred.
So the bacteria survived, whichproved that they successfully
carried out this chemicaltransformation.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Some didn't make it and the ones that did, they
moved on to the next round.
Okay, all right so how doesthis Off the Island Chris?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Survivor.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Okay, so how does converting plastic into these
precursor chemicals work?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Okay, so you take PET , that's polyethylene
terephthalate, that's what's inplastic bottles.
It's the precursor needed forthis rearrangement, and these E
coli that were engineeredconverted this pet chemical into
PABA, so they were able to takethis plastic thing and turn it
(11:43):
into PABA, which is what theyneeded to survive.
Now, with additional genemodifications, the E coli were
then able to convert PABA intoacetaminophen.
So that's the big jump.
So they had, like survivorround A sink or swim bacteria.
Can they make PABA?
They did, and then sink or swimround.
Two, they modified a secondround of E coli that turned that
(12:05):
PABA into acetaminophen.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
The other word that the study talks about is
paracetamol, and I think that'sanother word for acetaminophen.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, that's the acetaminophen.
Is paracetamol.
Yeah, the bacteria did great92% of the PET-derived precursor
was turned into acetaminophenin 48 hours.
That's pretty good.
That is not bad.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, and it's significant, jason, because this
process offers potentially amore sustainable method for
producing painkillers, becausecurrently, paracetamol is
manufactured using fossilfuel-derived chemicals.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Technically, this way it will be as well, because
plastics do come from fossilfuels, but they'll be recycled,
right, we're not going to runout of plastic.
There's so much plastic wasteeverywhere, everywhere, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You want to do plastic waste everywhere,
everywhere.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, you want to do potential environment benefits.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Sure.
So this study and thisbreakthrough in science has
environmental benefits, such asreducing that plastic pollution
and reducing our dependency onfossil fuels, and it does
represent a new way to upcycleplastic waste into valuable
pharmaceutical compounds.
But there is challenges tocreate this on an industrial
(13:28):
scale.
Right, it goes all the way up.
The current method of breakingdown the plastic is not yet
scalable for industrial use, andthis breakthrough could inspire
developments of a more scalableand sustainable plastic
degradation techniques in thefuture.
But right now they just can'tscale it up.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
No, we're talking about a tiny amount of bacteria
and a tiny amount of plastic.
A few cultures of bacteria doesnot make a solution for the
plastic waste around us, butit's a start and, just like any
snowball rolling down a hill tobecome an avalanche, you do have
to start somewhere.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You have to start somewhere, and that's what you
always tell me You're like youjust have to start.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, yeah, I tell the kids that starting is the
hardest part.
You just have to start.
Yeah, yeah, I tell the kidsthat Starting is the hardest
part.
You just have to start.
And who knows, we might betalking about this in five or 10
years and you have a littleplastic, a little bottle of
Tylenol, and it's this Tylenolwas made from plastic or
something on it Recycled plastic.
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And it's contained in a recycled plastic bottle.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Oh yeah, there we go, upcycle that back into
painkillers.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Wow, the cycle is endless.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
It is.
Hopefully it does end, becauseplastic's not so good.
We need it, though, but we needa way to recycle it.
All right, that's science newsfor this week.
This week in pet science, we'regoing to talk about pregnancy
and puppies.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But not pregnant puppies.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
We could talk about pregnant puppies, but that's not
what this is about.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
It isn't.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I know people see, remember when we got Beaker
people were like, oh, gonna havebunsen beaker puppies.
We're like no, we are notequipped for that speaker was a
bit of a handful.
Can you imagine 12 Bernoullipuppies?
That would be a lot because hewas a lot as a puppy.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
He was a lot as a puppy and he's a lot as a dog
now, but he's a good boy.
He's such a good boy but he isso mischievous Like unbelievable
.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, all right, let's get back to people.
I don't know if you've seenthose touching videos on social
media where a woman finds outshe's pregnant and the dog
starts acting differently.
Or they have the story of thedog resting its head on her
belly and then, all of a sudden,there's a baby.
It's very heartwarming.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, I just actually saw one on the dodo.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
On the dodo yeah.
Yeah, two days ago the dodo onthe dodo yeah, yeah, two days
ago and, of course, I shed atear because I love that.
It's cute, we might have thewet blanket.
Come to the situation chris,aka science, because, um, there
was a study done to investigatewhether pet dogs do change their
behavior when owners becomepregnant.
Because that is either a myth,an old wild old wives tale, or
(16:32):
perhaps it's real.
Perhaps it does happen.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But I think they have to be careful looking at the
different factors and having areal clear control, because then
you don't really know whatvariable is causing the dog to
potentially change.
What factor is actuallypredicting these behavior
changes?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
So let's get to the study.
Let's talk about that and themethodology.
There are 130 participants inthe study who were pregnant in
the past or were currentlypregnant.
They used a questionnaire thatassessed the dog's behavior
before and during pregnancy.
They also had cool things likeowner dog demographics and how
close the person was to the dog,which is important, right.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Is that bond between the dog and the owner?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
What did they find?
Chris, Because it's cool.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Well, 65% of participants reported a change
in their dog's behavior duringpregnancy and about 27% said the
behavior change happened beforethey even knew that they were
pregnant.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
What did the dogs do?
Like I've never been aroundthis, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
I don't know so the behavior categories that they
looked at to increase duringpregnancy, some significant
increases were found inattention seeking behavior,
guarding around familiar people,guarding around unfamiliar
people, and fear and anxietytoward other dogs, and there was
(18:08):
no significant change reportedin fear or anxiety towards the
owner themselves.
Interestingly, some predictorsof the behavior change there was
no significant effect from thedog owner demographics or the
pregnancy symptoms orcomplications that may have
arisen and, interesting, nosignificant effects from the
(18:31):
relationship closeness,according to the scores of the
survey so when they looked atwhat.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So that's interesting .
So there appears to be agreater, like a statistical
probability that dogs will reactto pregnancy or even before.
Um, you yourself know you're,but why do dogs do that?
And I think if you've listenedto this show long enough, you
probably know dogs can detectchanges in our emotions and our
(19:03):
health extremely well.
So if you are actingdifferently or you have a
different, you're sweatingdifferent, your biochemistry is
different.
Dogs can detect that you might.
I don't know if I don't want topoint any fingers, but
sometimes people who arepregnant might be a little bit
(19:24):
emotional and have some moodswings due to hormonal changes.
Behaviors change and, of course, those volatile organic
chemicals change in pregnancyand dogs can pick that up.
All of these are supported.
Dogs mirror human emotionalstress.
Dogs have olfactory clues thatthey're cued into.
(19:46):
You can train a dog just aboutany dog to detect when you're
low in blood sugar.
They can detect how you smelldifferent when you have less
sugar in your blood, which iswild.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
So there's not a big stretch of the imagination to
know these creatures who are soin tune to us and how we act and
how we smell, could detectsomething like that.
The study comes with someparticipants, mostly women aged
25 to 34, mainly located in theUK, and the dogs were mostly
mixed breeds, evenly matchedmale and female, and most were
(20:29):
sterilized, and the majority ofdogs were aged two to four
during the time of the pregnancyand they were owned by the
owner for one to three years,and 77% had no specialized
training in sensing all thosethings that you were talking
about.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I guess one thing we should just mention before we
wrap up is there's aself-reported bias.
Whenever you get people to do asurvey or questionnaire, so
probably what they could do inthe future and what maybe
they're looking at doing, is youjust you have some people who
are perhaps trying to havechildren, so they don't know
(21:10):
exactly when they are going tobe pregnant, but they are
actively trying to be pregnantand then you just have some dogs
sniff out some sweat or someclothing or see if the dogs and
some other dogs could detect ifthe woman was pregnant or not.
But then that doesn't change.
That dog wouldn't necessarilybe around that person to see how
(21:31):
they would change emotionally.
The dog could probably detectthe pregnancy.
That would be a fun test, butnot necessarily you wouldn't
have that dog in the housebecause you'd have to have some
kind of training for that.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
But, Jason, the practical application of a dog
being the pregnancy tester.
You probably should go to thestore and get a pregnancy test.
I know, the dog isn'tnecessarily the most accurate
predictor.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, it would also spoil it right If some dog you
have like out in public andthere's like a dog and you're
like, oh, what's that dog?
It's the pregnancy detectingdog.
You're pregnant.
That would be an awkward timeat the mall.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Maybe exciting, maybe shocking.
Who knows right, who knows?
You never know.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Here's the thing Since a lot of people listen to
the show, let us know if yourdog, at the time when you were
expecting or before, acteddifferently.
If the dog seemed to detectthat you were pregnant, that
would be cool to know, just on aour case basis.
All right, that's pet sciencefor this week.
That's it for this week show.
(22:40):
Thanks for coming back weekafter week to support us.
We love that we have such agreat core audience that listens
to our show.
One of the groups we would loveto, one of the groups we always
like to shout out, is the TopDogs.
That's the top tier of ourPatreon community, the Paw Pack.
We would love your supportthere as well.
So check out the show notes,chris.
(23:00):
Let's hear those names.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Amelia Fetting, rhi Oda, carol Hainel, jennifer
Challen, linnea Janik, karenChronister, vicky Otero, christy
Walker, sarah Bram, wendy,diane Mason and Luke Helen Chin,
elizabeth Bourgeois, marianneMcNally, catherine Jordan,
shelley Smith, laura Steffensen,tracy Leinbach, anne Uchida,
(23:25):
heather Burback, kelly andcuteness.
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