Does This Show Need a Science Title?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Twists This Week in Science, episode number ten twenty one,
recorded on Wednesday, July second, twenty twenty five. Does this
show need a science title? Hey everyone, I'm doctor Keeki
and tonight on the show we will fill your heads
with fat brains, long lives, and fishy beliefs. But first,

(00:26):
thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors for their generous support
of Twists. You can become a part of the Patreon
community at patreon dot com. Slash This Week in Science.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
This coclamor disclaimer disclaimer. Just because you didn't hear about
it does not mean it did not happen. Just because
you don't know about it doesn't mean it does not exist.
Fingers in your ears shouting la la, la, la la
does not remove that which you do not want to

(00:57):
hear from being said. The sheer volume of things happening
we do not know about could fill the world we
live in every day with most of what's in it.
It would keep going on just fine. The things we
do know about are usually the important bits. So the
recent effort to remove global warming science reports from government websites,

(01:18):
including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will
not change reality. It may not even impact public opinion
or awareness. What it does show will come as no
surprise to anyone that the US government currently has its
head completely up its ass. So what do we do

(01:39):
about it? We continue to bring science news, the good news,
the bad news, the I didn't even know that was
a thing news, because that's all we can do in
this moment on This Week in Science coming up next.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
I've got that kind of mind. I can't get enough.
I want to learn everything.

Speaker 5 (02:01):
I want to fill it all up.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
With new discoveries that happen every day of the week.
There's only one place to go to find the knowledge
to think.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
I want to know what's happens, that's happened this week
in sciences? Has happenings happened this week in science?

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Good science to you, Kiki and Blair, and.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Good science to you too, Justin Blair and everyone out there.
Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We
are here on our weekly adventure into the world of
curious people finding out things and then writing about it
so that we can learn about it and then we

(02:55):
can talk with you about it, and maybe you can
you'll get it curious too, and more curious people. Oh
my gosh, it's a feedback loop. No anyway, welcome, thank
you for joining us tonight. And as usual, it's yeah,
there's stuff going on. There's a lot happening. But uh,

(03:17):
you know, science will continue I think in some places.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
In some places, Yeah, well the wave that is science
and findings and all that kind of stuff is going
to continue with or without, you know, governments, Like science
is older than any government. Anyway, it's going to keep going.
It's not it, it's.

Speaker 6 (03:41):
Not Sometimes people were executed for doing.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Science, and it was like a dark we lost the knowledge.
I mean like for you know, a thousand years or
or more. The point is, eventually, eventually everything will catch
up science.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
And during the Dark Ages, I think there were people
in places currently called the Middle East that actually we're
having a very revolutionary period of knowledge. Books and yeah,
that was not a dark age.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
There was such cool numbers.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
You know, it's like when you know, one person stumbles,
there's another person to just keep going and leave them behind.

Speaker 6 (04:32):
Yeah, that world, it's up to all of you. We
dropped the ball.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, well, I mean it's gravity that like was kind
of you know, responsible for I.

Speaker 6 (04:53):
Didn't drop it gravity.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Dropped, gravity made it be attracted to the surface of
the Earth. Oh my gosh. Okay, so now we magical stories. Yeah.
Science is like magic when you don't understand anything about it.
So it's like, you know, you want to find out
how the magicians do their tricks. Same thing about science.

(05:17):
Go go figure it out.

Speaker 6 (05:19):
It's not science is magic plus numbers exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
And there are a lot of magicians who are very
scientific about the way that they develop all their stuff.
It's very cool. All right, on this show, we have
a bunch of cool stories. I've got some bad science writing.
What else do I have? Stirring?

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Hey, didn't bring any of my stories, did you?

Speaker 2 (05:42):
I don't some the ones that you write, I don't
think so stirring things in chemistry. And I've also got
some brain stories, your fat brain and some some spacey chickadees.
What do you have justin.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
I've got a potential pill for exercising, a supplement to
live longer, why cancer has such nerve, and how memories
are stored in the brain long term revealed at last,
just kidding.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
I get wait for that one. I love those. I
like the brainy memory stores. Right, Blair, what's in the
animal corner.

Speaker 6 (06:26):
I forget, don't kidding them. I have birds, fish, and dolphins.
Keep it simple.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
I love it. Birds, fish, dolphins, They all kind of
you know the I don't you just need a land mammal,
but I guess the birds land sometimes.

Speaker 6 (06:44):
No, actually I do have a story. Yeah, I have
a story about land mammals at high altitudes as well.
I just didn't mention that one. So I got you covered.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Amazing. Okay, So as we get into the show here,
just everyone remember that if you want to find show
notes after the fact, they get posted along with recording
the podcast recording of the show on our website for
this Weekend Science, which is Twists twis dot org. And

(07:15):
if you want to subscribe to Twists for any of
the channels we're on, you can watch the live streams
on the video channels YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and also the
podcast is pretty much anywhere that podcasts are found.

Speaker 6 (07:29):
It's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
But you know, if you go to twist dot org
you'll find all the things, including our Patreon and zazzlelinks.
And those are the ways that our show is supported
by listeners like you instead of you know, corrupt business entities.
So help us keep going.

Speaker 6 (07:45):
Are you ready?

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Shall we have the science? Yeah? Okay, I want to
start this show badly with a story about how large
language model use in science is impacting publications currently and

(08:08):
what's going on there. A study just published in Science Advances.
It's called delving into LM assisted writing and biomedical publications
through Excess Vocabulary. Yes, so the researchers wanted to find
out how much over the last year or so or

(08:30):
a few years, these large language model algorithm tools are
being used by scientists in their writing process for the
papers that are being published and that are being shared,
that are indexed by PubMed in other places. So the
researchers did a large scale approach. They looked at vocabulary

(08:52):
changes in over fifteen million biomedical abstracts from twenty ten
to twenty twenty four. So you've got years of control
with really you know, maybe more of like the word
processing grammarly kind of kind of help, right, you know,

(09:14):
Google or others, you know, suggesting a slight you know,
this word change or you know. Anyway to twenty twenty four,
two years since these these lllms have become very prevalent. Okay,
they led to a very abrupt increase in the frequency

(09:38):
of certain style words, at least the umber.

Speaker 6 (09:45):
However, however, therefore.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
M dash, but that's actually not true. You should listen
to Mignon Fogerty's Grammar Girl and she debunks the soul.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
It's something that I it's something I've noticed actually just
reading studies. Is the word. However, all of a sudden
everything is however, like I don't think, however, was being
used very much before the llms came along, and now

(10:18):
almost every abstract I see has however.

Speaker 6 (10:22):
But sore. How how do you differentiate that somebody's using
an alerge an LLM versus just a change in the
public vernacular over fifteen years?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yes, so this do the frequency changes happen normally? Are
there changes regularly within language? Of course there are, And
so that's why they wanted to make sure that they
took this very very large set of articles from public

(11:00):
to look at the abstracts to quantify what was going on.
What they have found is that there was a huge
change when chat GBT was released, and what happened after
is it's like a cliff of what happened. So until
the end of twenty twenty four, fifteen point one million

(11:24):
English language abstracts from twenty ten onward. They got rid
of contaminating, contaminating strings and things that were you know,
that didn't quite make sense and that were contextually confusing,
and they computed a matrix. And this is from their
results section of word occurrences showing which abstracts contain which words.

(11:46):
They got a binary matrix for each word and year.
They found the number of abstracts in that year that
the word appeared in and obtained its occurrent frequency. So
they normalized over this over all the paper in each year,
and then they ended up focusing on over twenty six

(12:08):
thousand words with a very very with a P value
greater than ten to the negative four in two thousand
and three, twenty twenty three, and twenty four. So this
corresponds to over one hundred usage usages by words a
certain word per year. Okay, so some words increased their frequency.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
And don't tell me, don't tell me, I'm gonna guess
they're all transitional phrases.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Okay, so I want to I'm going to try and
open the figure.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
However, despite therefore, furthermore.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
I'm gonna I'm going to all of.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Those absolutely useless word filler words.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, okay, so I'm going to present these words to
you and you're gonna go, oh, my goodness, is it's
so true. So we have the frequency of delves in
twenty twenty three. Suddenly it shut up in its frequency

(13:19):
and how it was used.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Well, pandemic, you can't you can't fault on anything other
than there being a global pandemic. But that makes sense, and.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
They did take the pandemic and publications and what was
happening during that period of time into account during those years,
and so that is actually part of the way that
they looked at the data and looked at some of
the words. The word crucial increased around twenty twenty, Potential
increased significantly at the two thousand and three four year rate.

(13:54):
Important took a nose dive.

Speaker 6 (13:58):
Because it was replaced by signal eificant, crucial and potential, Yes, exactly,
that's it.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
And so as a control for like what other words
were changing relevant to societal stuff, pandemic took a huge
spike twenty twenty, right e both took a huge spike
around twenty fifteen. Convolutional, Yes, that one's wild, that's a.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Weird yea and not even a.

Speaker 6 (14:29):
Word these these these one is weird to me because
it goes down, down, down, down, down and then shoots
up again.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
At the beginning of lm use.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
So that makes sense. And if they look deeper, they
would also probably like these, the those that the it's
a what do you call it a summary form versus
a narrative or it's it's that is summarizing it for
the person who is preparing the information versus how you

(15:09):
would prepare reading for an audience. And so that's part
of what it tends to do is give the user
a summary of information. So it's it's right, it's telling
you back like your list of information that you've put

(15:29):
into it, as opposed to trying to describe something for
a reader. It has a hard time doing that for
describing something for a third party. Summarizing your notes is
what it's it's probably much better at So these make sense,
you know, these these things that we these lists, uh

(15:51):
and significant versus important. I think that's actually a pretty
good one to have changed.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
But here I'm gonna we're going to move into the
assisted writing through excess vocabulary and the frequency ranges, the
free frequency ratios of words between twenty twenty four and
twenty twenty two, and you have words, and these are

(16:17):
the freak and based against so x axis frequency in
twenty twenty four and then the frequency in the years
from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four. And what
we find is that Delves underscores Delved, excels garnered, aligning pivotal.

(16:39):
But there is a significant is significantly less its frequency,
which I think is very interesting.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
And then I think of significant is as like a
better word than the comparable important, like crucial is a
little sounds like overstatement. Significant means that, like it was
there enough that it's part of this story that we're
part of our observation. Important puts a weight on it,

(17:11):
and that's tough to do when you're just relating what
was there, you know what I mean, Suggesting that something
is important or crucial, those those are ones are tough.
It's significantly part of this story. That makes sense to me.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
But it's interesting that these words are, that there are
some words specifically coming from these large language models.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
And it's chiding the way underscores.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
And so there's another different view on the analysis, which
is instead of the frequency ratio it's the frequency gap
between and so we have words that like petition, potential,
and significant. This there through so words that you might

(18:00):
actually use more often are used less by the LM.
And then we have other information nouns, verbs, adjectives. There's
a huge increase in twenty twenty four of verbs in

(18:20):
scientific public publications. There's also huge increase in style words
like delves. So the words that are being that are
being used more and more often are changing in their

(18:41):
frequency within the writing. So there's something going on there,
and you know, whatever the final interpretation of all of
this data is is that the more we use this
writing and then put it back into the data that
is being the training data, it's going to reinforce the

(19:05):
same trends and we're going to see if it continues,
we will see a significant shift, what kind of shift,
significant shift in the words that people use. So there's
also we're seeing common words and the rare words being

(19:27):
used more often. There's a particular analysis of the frequency
of abstracts containing at least one word from a given
word group frequency gap estimates for various fields identified based
on journal names. We also have the Frey frequency gap
estimates for various countries and for different journals. So it's

(19:51):
interesting that they're they're breaking it down into kind of
what's getting published where and how and what the different
you know, what the what the what the comparisons are,
and it seems to be very similar in English speaking

(20:12):
and other language speak other languages. So they parallel the
results parallel each other. It's not just happening in English
language publications. It's happening in all places. And the bottom
line here is that they have determined that these these

(20:34):
lms are impacting scientific writing, and it is the effect
is actually greater than the effect on language that the
COVID pandemic had or concerned about ebola. Yeah, and so
at least the day that at least thirteen point five

(20:56):
percent of twenty twenty four abstracts were processed with large
language models according to their analysis.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, and that's and like some of it, like just
isn't that bad. One thing I also have noticed is
that you might have the word potential is taken. It skyrocketed, right,
everything is potentially something something. But in that I've also

(21:27):
noticed I don't read papers that say this can open
the door to the pathway to leading to like they
got rid of sentences of caveats and just say now
they just throw potentially yeah could be man might h

(21:48):
But it used to be they would be there would
be like this run on phraseology of yeah, this could
lead to the pathway of a door that would let
us through a window in the back alley of POTENTI
but someday and like it would be this totally endless cutting, right.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
But I think what's happening is maybe they are teaching
more scientists how to write now, which is I think
really beneficial.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Maybe I think I think, like I've noticed what is
it grammarly will because I need something to keep me
from messing up the English language, will will suggest rephrases,
and so I can see how I can see how
these things. If it's recommending the same rephrasing or chat

(22:37):
GPTs offering the same rephrasing of things, you're going to
see these common trends. But if it's getting rid of
the trope language, if it's getting rid of the uh,
this is a meaningless phrase that everyone has been throwing
into their scientist scientific articles for one hundred years and
it just needs to stop. Which add grammar or just

(22:58):
meaningless adds no value. I love that concise.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, there's so many science journalists that have lists of
phrases and terms that they're like, please stop using these.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
So it might just be making things more concise, which
would be not a bad thing.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, I don't. I'm not saying that these algorithms, these
tools can't help people write more clearly and tell their
science stories in in better ways, in more effective ways,
so that people can understand what I understand them, but

(23:38):
at the same time relying on them as opposed to,
you know, use it, using them, it's not It shouldn't
be a crutch. It should be you know, something that
accents it, something that you.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Know doesn't sound too bad.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Once upon a time, we didn't have encyclopedias, and you
had to figure out, like, I don't know about Norway.
Let no matter, how am I going to learn about Norway?
And then you, oh my gosh, somebody sold my family
a bunch of encyclopedias. You could go to the encyclopedia
and learn about Norway. And then came Google and search
engines and what was it? It was all whatever? Whatever

(24:19):
it was lycos all these things early on, you know,
search engines, you could say.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Site Excite, the greatest search engine that there ever was.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
There were there were there were the babie chats, chat rooms,
you know, the polices where you could talk to people
and ask questions and so you could, like we started
being able to crowdsource for information and learn stuff for
more people. And it's not that any of this it's
is bad, but when we allow it to replace our
thinking and our process of even like you, you know,

(24:52):
it's like you become a better teacher by or you
you learn a subject better by teaching it. The minute
you have to start explaining something to people, you realize
where you don't understand things, and so teaching teaching is
the best teacher.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
Okay, that's what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
So you need to tell a story about us needing
to exercise and you know, okay, all right, I didn't
leave you. I left you hanging like Tom Cruise off
of a mountain that you if you're not exercising like him,
you might just fall.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
So oh, is it the exercise story? Okay, So there's
a quick stories. This is a quick stories.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
I know I tried.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Capital Medical University collaboration with Chinese Academy of Sciences Reports
that Bettain molecule producing the kidney enhanced through sustained exercise,
operates as an inhibitor of a downstream thing that then
inhibits or would have caused in flammatory age related pathways.

(26:02):
So basically what they did was they nailed the They
narrowed down the metabolites and things taking place during exercise.
They picked this one molecule and they did an experiment
where they basically gave it supplemented to some mice and

(26:30):
they also had they had some humans in this trial
as well, thirteen humans. Basically, they managed to isolate that
this one molecule, there's one protein, was able to mimic
the effects of exercise even without exercising. Aged mice receiving

(26:58):
the Betain supplementation exhibited multiple improvements. Decreased tissue fibrosis, fewer
sin essence markers and organs, increased muscle strength, and reduced
depression like behaviors.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
So this sounds great.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, so this is like, okay, exercise and picking supplement
attractive to many, but it actually could be used in
an urgent therapeutic scenario for to give some of the
benefits of exercise down regulating inflammation and a like to
people who are unable to engage in any physical activity.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah, so people who are disabled, people who are ill
for a period of time, people if your bed bound.
Maybe also the other impacts of leading to the benefits
in mental health, which is not nossari. You know, the
impacts of exercise on mental health cannot be understated, and

(28:04):
so maybe this is something that could help people that's
not an SSR, right, something that could help help people
with depression and other mental health issues.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, they also got to drill down like this was
also mostly on mice. They had some human subjects involved
in this, but they need to do this on a
larger human cohort, the test for safety and all the
rest of it to see if you can extrapolate the

(28:39):
small study to a big world result.

Speaker 6 (28:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Like, the one of the things that is wild is
that if it's unlocking the if it's if it's allowing
the clearing of senescence cells. Right, this one supplement without exercise.
That is the thing that when you get these cells
that they get tired, they get old. The mitochondria is like, eh,

(29:05):
I'm pretty much done, but they're still there and they
start sending out weird signaling to their neighbors and start
disrupting the tissues in whatever organ they're in. And that's
an age related malady. And what happens in elder elder
scenarios is exercises a lot less. And so, yeah, those

(29:27):
things that mitigate senescent cells stops happening. If you have
a supplement that can clear sinescent cells to some extent,
my goodness, you could have a longevity boosting effect as well.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, you can end up having a situation where potentially
you are improving the way that the whole system of
circulation works, the lymph transfer, the mitochondrial function in the brain,
like all of that stuff, so that brain health and
the garbage disposal that often starts to go awry and all,

(30:07):
like you said, like the slowing of movement and the
stiffness that occurs as you get old, you don't move
as much and so you things start to break down.
And yeah, oh my goodness, But it's not about long.
It could be longevity, but it could also be h
It could be maybe extending life slightly, but maybe extending

(30:29):
healthy life longer, so that the senescent period, the period
in which you're declining, is much shorter. So in terms
of quality of life, you live better, longer.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Better life.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I want some.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
Well, let's let's let's get it. So I'm going to
jump just because we've touched on the longevity aspect of this.
Before you jump, this is a totally different study. Totally
different study. Obese mice lived twenty six percent longer with

(31:08):
a single protein over expression. What's amazing about this is
that they've tested this. This is fibroblast growth factor twenty
one FGF twenty one, and they've been interested in this
for a long time because the way it modulates metabolism

(31:29):
across many tissues and mammals, and an early investigation found
improved insulin sensitivity, lower fat accumulation in the liver, and
some of the pathways that we know are tied to longevity. However,

(31:50):
it also resulted in dwarf ism, So this was transgenic mice.
So before you jump in and be like I'm going
to try the next new thing, eh wait, wait, let's
let's test it. Let's test it. I don't know what
a dwarf mouse looks like, and I'm maybe a bad

(32:10):
person for wanting to see that.

Speaker 6 (32:12):
They would be just tiny.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, yeah, okay, small.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
So these so in the first round of the experiments
that they had done that had done previously by a
different study than when we're talking about hair, they were
transgenic mice that were expressing FGF twenty one from birth,
and there was a lot of developmental issues that took place,

(32:37):
including dwarfism where they just didn't grow as big, even
though they showed some of the other positive effects that
they were kind of trying to suss from having this
over expressed. So in this study they did something kind
of interesting. They have transgenic mice again, but this time
the expression of ff one is only going to occur

(33:03):
in fat cells, and it's got a trigger where they
have to feed it a molecule. In this case, it's
diog doxa.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Cyclinge doxa cycling.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
DOXA cycling into their fores.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
That's a that's an antibiotic.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
It's an antibiotic, but interesting for whatever reason, molecularly it
can trigger the release of the FGF twenty one in
the fat cells.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
And yeah, it's dose dependent. There's some interesting work that
I don't really understand, but there's like there's the antibiotic
threshold where it gets rid of bacteria. Kind of it's
old now, so not so well. But then there's like
the the what they call the non therapeutic level because
it's doxy cycling is supposed to just be for antibiotic use.

(33:54):
But the non therapeutic level, which is for humans I
think like fifty milligrams per day or less, it has
other impacts, like it does other things that do not
impact bacteria but impact aspects of cellular physiology. So this
is fascinating.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
They used it as their key to unlock the mechanism
in the genes. So they allowed the mice to get
a little to get past the initial development stages. Right,
so the genes are in there to over express FGF
twenty one, but they're not turned on until they get

(34:34):
the antibiotic supplement. So they get past that developmental endwarfism
risk and let the mice get a little older, and
they're also overfeeding the mice and they're doing some other
things to make it a challenge, and then they start
the over expression. And so in that group of mice,

(34:56):
of course there were no developmental issues because they're already
full grown.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yay, and it's great.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
The immediate survival versus control was two point two years
versus one point eight years in the controls, which is
about twenty six percent increased long longevity. And the FGF
two one some of them, several of them, it says,

(35:25):
lived as long as three point three years, which is
almost twice, almost twice the lifespan of the of the
average control. I don't know what the maximum and the
control was, so it's it's not quite like they doubled,
but twice what the some of them lasted twice what
the control median was, so pretty pretty cool. It didn't

(35:53):
seem to have any downside effects. They did. They they
went to you know, they took them to sliced up
with the pathologists and they're looking at looking for problems. Yeah,
it didn't really seem to be an issue.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
But in terms of something not just for longevity, but
for situations of metabolic disease where which lead to diabetes
or you know, someone depending on type one, type two
diabetes or other metabolic disorders, something like this could really
be beneficial, beneficial once more, living longer, better.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
No, and you start combining them, you know, all the
longevity things all at once, and it turns out they
cut your life in half. Wait till they've done the study.
People again, I gotta tell you, you got to wait until
they've tested it. Don't do things without validation, testing, confirmation, replication,

(36:58):
all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, no, especially now that like healthcare is going to
be like you less. You don't want to do that.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
No, healthcare are going to be more. It's just going
to be compound quackery. That's a scary thing. People still
need healthcare and you're going to see deregulation of woo
woo healthcare and it's going to be a nightmare wave
that's coming.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
I mean, I've had those nightmares, Blair. I don't want
to talk about nightmares anymore, but I mean I think
I don't know. Do you want to talk You're going
to talk about predators right now?

Speaker 6 (37:34):
Like, yeah, so you're not scared. No, get this, What
if you saved an endangered bird from predators by feeding
the predator? Yeah, this is.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
From Scotland's Isn't that what dogs and cats are? What
do you mean aren't they fed predators? The predators?

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (38:03):
But as we've discussed many times on this show, you
feed cats and they still kill things. Right, So that's
why just feeding a.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Predator, evil psychopath Anyway.

Speaker 6 (38:15):
This this is looking at Scotland, Scotland's Capper cayley population
also known as a wood wood grouse, and there is
around five hundred of them left in the wild, so
they are very endangered at in danger of extinction significantly.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (38:34):
One of the main contributors to that is that pine martins,
my old friend. The martin are often eating the eggs
and chicks when these guys are brooding, so they've been
trying diversionary feeding. That's a conservation technique where you reduce

(38:56):
predator impacts on vulnerable species without harming the predators themselves.
The pine martin is a local species and they do
that by providing an alternative easy meal. In this case
it was deer carry on provided by another wildlife conservation
effort where they were actually doing a deer coal so
this is recycled meat. I love that collaboration.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
But to the synchronization, that's amazing.

Speaker 6 (39:22):
Yeah. And so they laid out the carrion. It gave
the predators a readily accessible food source and therefore they
didn't need to search for eggs or try to eat
eggs or baby caprika Le's even though they might be
right next door. This was a partnership between you received Aberdeen,
University of St Andrew's, Forestry and Land Scotland ARESBP Scotland,

(39:44):
Nature scott and Wildland Limited for all of them. Working
under the umbrella of the Cairngorms Connect Predator Project. They
use camera traps to monitor the Capercailee broods. They were
able to find out where they're was eggs and eventually chicks,
and then they were able to provide this diversionary feeding.

(40:08):
They found that in areas where alternative food was available,
eighty five percent of capricae lee hens that had chicks
compared to just thirty seven percent in unfed sites. It's
a pretty big difference, and so that raised the per
chicken chick rate to point eight two chicks per hen

(40:32):
from point eight two chicks per hen to one point
nine so they increased productivity by one hundred and thirty percent.
Why does this matter Well, in particular, it's important because
in some of these cases they actually prevented what's called
catastrophic brood failure, so there were individuals who had no

(40:54):
genes moving on to the next generation because of pine
Martin ate all of their eggs or chick. If you
can prevent the catastrophic brood failure, then those genes continue.
There's less of a genetic bottleneck, particularly when you get
to lower numbers, and so preventing that catastrophic brood failure
is really, in some ways the most important part. I

(41:17):
don't care how many chicks you have is lee as
long as you have at least one. And they also, yes, is.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
There going to be any ramification from feeding wild martins.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
M don't they say this is not feed wild animals.

Speaker 6 (41:40):
This is exactly what I was going to mention. Next,
is that they're not feeding these guys year round. They
are really only offering the carry on during a focused
eight week window, which is when the kaperclis were nesting
and chicks were hatching. So really they were only doing
it for eight weeks of the year. To make sure

(42:02):
that this very important pivotal moment, when the mothers are
sitting on their eggs, they can't move, and the babies
are either in the egg or their brand fresh hatched.
This is the short term period that allows for increased
populations but does not create a pattern enough that the

(42:23):
pine martins will stop feeding themselves.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
So first of all, that image that was up there, well,
like I almost don't believe it.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
The male is so beautiful.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Like, if you were like, what what culture on planet
Earth is this bird attempting to represent? You could only
come up with Scottish. It's got like this little Scottish beard,
it's got the Scottish colors. It's like, oh, did the
Scottish people try to emulate them their culture after this bird?

Speaker 6 (42:58):
It's just tool it's on peacock, but make it Scottish.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Scotti a Scottish turkey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's hilarious.

Speaker 6 (43:11):
They're big too. They're like nine pounds, which for a
bird is huge. They're like thirty inches. They're enormous.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
So these pine Martins, what happens when they now that
they have a taste for deer meat? Are they the
deer in jeopardy? Are they going to start hunting them?

Speaker 6 (43:26):
You know, if they did, that would probably be a
good thing, considering there is a deer coal happening in Scotland.
But they won't. Martins are small, you get enough of them, No, no,
they're not going to swarm them like World warzy. No,
they're too tiny. They're they're mostly scavengers. There's a reason

(43:48):
they go for eggs and chicks there. It's not really hunting,
it's just finding, right, But.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
If you like, Okay, So here's the concern, like, how
did they learn to go after eggs? Is it a
top thing? Is it an instinct thing? How how much?
How long can you feed them as this easy scavenge
meat before there's a generation that unlearns egg hunting, which
I guess is good because it's the thing you're trying
to untrain them for in a sense, or keep them

(44:16):
from doing. But on the other hand, now they have
to go out there and survive without the provided food,
and what happens, it's it's so dangerous, it's so dangerous, tough.

Speaker 6 (44:29):
It's tough because yes, animals.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
So you're probably like, something bad happens to Martins, that
they brought it on themselves, And I think I've I
think I like that bird, but just fine. So maybe
it's for the best.

Speaker 6 (44:48):
Yeah, I think they're really banking on on the eight weeks,
the eight weeks to be the situation, the fact that
they're only doing it in this very particular eight week window.
They're really hoping that this is not going to shape
future behavior beyond that. There are eggs before that, there

(45:09):
are eggs after that. There are eggs that never hatch
that have no babies in them, and the pine martins
can eat those for sure, So there's a lot of
opportunities still for them to try. There's also other birds
with other eggs. Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
I'm looking at where I'm sharing the document that is
involved in this plan that they've come up with, and
it is it's very.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
Complete bird with a beard.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, But they're going to be tracking changes in the
pine martin populations as well. They're going to be tracking
other prey species like voles, They're going to be looking
at other birds species. They're really going to be taking
a close look at like the ecosystem and the animals
that make it up and how they interact, which is
the you know, the web.

Speaker 6 (46:08):
I would say the ecosystem is probably pretty disrupted already.
But so that's kind of part of the issue too,
is if these birds are already down to less than
five hundred, they're basically not fulfilling their function in the
ecosystem currently, and so.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
The like the Scottish mascot, Yeah, if you.

Speaker 6 (46:30):
Throw the pine Martin into kind of upheaval. Who's to
say that's a bad thing if the current prey item
is functionally extinct.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah, it sounds as though. Also in this plan they've got,
they're going to be removing fences, They're going to be
changing reducing disturbances that are human caused as well, like
mountain biking activity. They're going to try and deal with
people walking their dogs. They're going to be dealing with farming.
They're going to be really trying to look at land

(47:05):
management in the area. Like, the whole thing is a
really interesting, complete plan, and I'm excited to see.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
I just want to counterpoint one thing you said, Blair,
which is I get it if if they're doing a
diversion for a bird that's going to go extinct and
so they might be without it if they do nothing
fair enough. On the other hand, that would also probably

(47:38):
be maybe a smaller population of Martins as that resource dwindles,
versus feeding them all deer meat and having maybe a
larger population that is then also still maybe faced with
losing a resource.

Speaker 6 (47:55):
So I think you are thinking that the Martin only
eats eggs. No, I may eat they eat mice, they
eat rats. They don't hunt deer, they eat mice, they
eat rats, they eat pests, they eat your other carry on. Yeah, absolutely,
and so it's actually really important to keep the pine martin.

(48:18):
You don't else they eat snakes.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
So snakes in Scotland, there's snakes everywhere.

Speaker 6 (48:27):
So they are a part of the food web. When
you remove a predator, even a meso predator, a predator
that is hunted by other predators, you are still going
to have an impact. If you remove them, there's gonna
be a cascade, right, So they have a much larger
function beyond just eating eggs.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
I'm not saying get rid of the martins. I'm just
saying if you feed them and you end up with
more of them and then you still don't save the birds,
well you might be now.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
You're this is this is where I think it's getting
very interesting in that they're going to be trying, They're
going to be doing a whole bunch of stuff at
the same time because the environment has been disrupted enough
that these birds have become easier prey for the martins,
and so the martins are more easily able to take
them out because they're nesting sites or whatever.

Speaker 6 (49:16):
They do.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
The Martins are like, oh, I know where you are
and you're easy to get. I'm on to eat your eggs.
And there's nothing really to help the capper way lease
at least, But like with deer, with the deer and
other you know, in America, we've had issues with deer
and vegetation, and when the vegetation becomes too low, the

(49:39):
deer die off, and then the vegetation cause there's like
these these boom and bust cycles and what's happened is
the disrupted environment is what the Martins probably have a
bit of a boom right now because they're able to
access food supplies that maybe once upon a time they
were not able to because of the disruption. So you

(50:00):
start removing the disruption. You go over here, you distract
the Martins and other things, and then hopefully things will
get back to normal. But you pay attention to see
how does this affect the population of the Martins, and
you do it scientifically with monitoring the whole time. It's
not just like let's feed them deer.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
And I'm being informed that it is Ireland that doesn't
have snakesactly. The reason they don't is because they sent
them all to Scotland, it's true.

Speaker 6 (50:32):
And a couple to Australia.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah, I love that. I honestly, the amount of thought
and the depth of planning for this, Blair I think
is I think it's really impressive.

Speaker 6 (50:46):
It's pretty cool, it's neat. It's definitely a different kind
of perspective. Well, since we're talking about feeding animals real quick,
I can also tell you about orcas and their pet humans.
Yes please, yeah, so come on, computer, stay with me. Okay,

(51:06):
we make grape pets.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
We make great pets.

Speaker 6 (51:09):
Humans do. Yeah, I think we make great pets. Researchers song,
I remember that song?

Speaker 3 (51:19):
No, I know.

Speaker 6 (51:19):
That's researchers from Canada, New Zealand and Mexico. They reported
on thirty four interactions spanning two decades in which orchis
in the wild attempted to offer food to humans. Thess
took place in oceans around the world, from California to
New Zealand and from Norway to Patagonia, so in a
lot of different areas. This is not one social organized

(51:42):
group that kind of had this social spread of information.
Orcas are doing it everywhere. They often share food with
each other, and so the assumption is that this is
a similar activity when they attempt to share food with humans.
The thirty four incidents of food sharing, on eleven of

(52:02):
those occasions, people were in the water, in twenty one
they were on boats, and in two cases they were
actually on the shore, and the orcas were reported to
have attempted to share food with them. Some were captured
on video and in photos, others were described in interviews. Ultimately,

(52:23):
they indicate that offering items to humans could include a
situation of a learned cultural behavior that they're teaching each
other to do this. It could be exploration, it could
be play. It could be an opportunity to learn about
relationships with humans as opposed to relationships with orcas. There's

(52:46):
a lot of conversation in the article and in this
press release about how we feed our dogs and cats
and how you know those animals might potentially, if they
had more brains on them, try to share food with us.
But as far as they can tell, this is the

(53:06):
first non domestic animal sharing food with a human.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
Well, that's that's still some interpretation.

Speaker 6 (53:17):
Yes, yes, a couple.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
I can picture a couple orca talking being like, hey,
what'd you do this weekend? I went human ing? Any bites.

Speaker 6 (53:27):
Nah, Yes, yes, so that's exactly what I thought of.
First of all, are we their pet like we feed
dogs and cats? Are they feeding humans because they find
us entertaining or interesting or comforting?

Speaker 2 (53:40):
Right?

Speaker 6 (53:40):
So are we the the orchest pets? Is my first thought?
My second thought is yes, is this an attempt to
catch us bait? Yes? Is this bait? Absolutely? Or is
this something else? Entirely? Is them that this them just
playing around? Watch I'm gonna offer them a dead fish.
You watch this, It's gonna be hilarious. Right, they play

(54:03):
with dead fish on their head. We just talked about
this last week. Orcues do weird.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
Things or like when you know, people feed birds at
the park or something, so that more of them come
around so they can watch them longer. Maybe they're like
the humans are so curious, but they always are going
somewhere and said, a hurry here, why don't we throw
on a dead fish. Maybe they'll stay there and eat
it and we can stare at it for a while
figure it out.

Speaker 6 (54:28):
Yeah, they're doing their own science experiments. I love it.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
I think that's I think that's all too possible.

Speaker 6 (54:37):
Anyway, So we don't know why they're doing this a
lot thirty four instances an they're going to keep an
eye out. But they're doing it for some reason, and
it's maintaining across cultures and across the whole world. For
some reason.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Maybe they think that we're hungry because we're so small.
M hmmm. Look their boat is as big as me,
but there's so many of them on it.

Speaker 6 (55:05):
They must be hungry, or they're hungry and they want
to eat us bait.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
That's right, I'm telling you catch anything.

Speaker 6 (55:18):
You're having a nice heart to heart, Well, they're trying
to catch you.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Ye oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Maybe the salmon hats on the.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
Head, floating beer cans around the same spot just in case.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
I mean, if the if the orcas were smart, they'd
actually like start, you know, bringing bringing booze to the boaters.
But how do you get on their good side?

Speaker 6 (55:43):
I don't know what, but.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Work as so cool. There was another study published in
Pure j I think this last week that was researchers
were using large language models to algorithms to try and
actually talk to orcus so to adapt and them. Oh,

(56:09):
actually it's some twenty twenty three. Never mind, I don't
know what I was talking about. But yeah, anyway, we
still don't know how to talk to orcas and they
probably know how to talk to us better.

Speaker 6 (56:20):
Yeah, they're dolphins. They're really good at that.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Yeah, you're good. Yeah. My one last story for this
particular section of the show. Of the show has nothing
to do with dolphins. It is chemistry. And everybody who
has been a science undergraduate has had chemistry lab and
had those situations where people at the lab bench next

(56:44):
to you are doing the same exact thing that you're doing.
And there's that point when you put like the stir
bars in and they get there's a magnet on this
little lives and the stir bar is this little piece
of magnetic metal that spins aroun and stirs your solution.
And for whatever reason, the people at the lab bench

(57:08):
next to you their stuff works great and yours doesn't,
and you're like, I did everything right. I don't know
what was going on. What happened there? A paper just
came out reporting that maybe maybe if everybody put their

(57:31):
magnetic stirs exactly the same in the containers, the flasks,
the vessels for the mixing, maybe then we'd all get
the same results. The researchers looked at all types of
reactions using magnetic stirs from different manufacturers. They use cameras

(57:54):
record variations in color, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, trying my
croscopy to look at chemical changes. One thing they looked
at was palladium particles being formed in solution. And it's
just such a fascinating result is that they discovered that

(58:19):
where and how you place your stir bar can can
impact your results. And so the the difficulty with reproducibility
of some of some of some chemistry experiments may be

(58:42):
they may just be the result of not putting your
stir bar in the right place. I'm going to see
if I can share this video with y'all for a second.

Speaker 6 (58:59):
This kind of makes sense, and it kind of doesn't
like liquid solutions, I feel like are supposed to be
able to diffuse.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
And yet that there should be this liquid fluid movement
of molecules that would that that shouldn't be impacted with
how they're stirred. But what their results showed was that
the more stable the stirring positions are on the plate,

(59:33):
they the better the results. So in results that are
being published by chemists who are writing papers like what
they saw was a conversion difference about ten to twenty
percent and sometimes even more based on just the placement
of where the stirr was. They saw the same reaction

(59:54):
mixture have very very different results, and that can change
the way you can reproduce or even you know, just
get things done in your lab. And they're because of this,
recommending that in the methods section of papers that are
being published that researchers should really be describing the stirring

(01:00:19):
positions on the plate, doing a control run with a
single vial in a particular location, reporting the type of
stir bar and the type and the size of the
reaction vessel in the experimental section, So like, instead of
just being like, we mixed the solution for through thirty seconds,

(01:00:40):
it has to be we mixed it with this brand,
this thing, this way in this to get rid of
the potential confounds. But it's so fascinating that there are
these little, tiny discrepancies that you wouldn't even think about
for the reasons that you said, and such a simple variable.

Speaker 6 (01:01:03):
Yeah, it's so my experience in high school and college labs,
I thought that was standard practice. I guess maybe they
make you do that in the classroom, and then they
don't make you do that when you become a grad student.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
I don't know, like describing everything, yeah, yeah, yeah, because
that's I don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:01:26):
Have you ever seen the whole video where you asked
kids to tell somebody how to make a PB and
J Have you seen this?

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
In high school? We did this where you had to,
like you explain it to somebody who you weren't looking at,
and they had to do it. I haven't seen that video,
but we actually did this. I did this in high school,
and the messes that were made were so ridiculous.

Speaker 6 (01:01:55):
Well that sounds even worse. You're not watching, but this
one the kids watching they were in like fourth or
fifth grade, and they were like, put the knife in
the peanut butter, and she like tried to get the
knife in the peanut butter and the lid was closed,
and then they said, okay, now spread the peanut butter.
And she took the peanut butter and she spread it

(01:02:17):
on top of her hand. They said no, no, no,
on the bread and she goes, okay, So she spread
the peanut butter on the outside of the bread bag.
Because they didn't tell her to take bread out of the.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
But that's exactly yep.

Speaker 6 (01:02:31):
So it's just yes, this is that I will say though,
also though that my high school and college labs had
the the magnetic stance or the Earl and Meyer flasks.

Speaker 7 (01:02:46):
Yes, that.

Speaker 6 (01:02:48):
Pulled the stir magnet to the center of the flask, right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
I mean, that's where the main magnet is. But if
you have different sized or different different spinner based you know,
like I think it's I think it's a very interesting point.
And just the dynamics of the fluid, like how the

(01:03:14):
physics and the forces change and the chemistry changes as
a result of that, that you that these are factors
you need to take into account like this is it's
so interesting. Report your stir bars. People, It's very important.

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
And that's It's one thing that I've honestly never seen
calibrated in the lab is the stir.

Speaker 6 (01:03:37):
How many revolutions is it? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
Absolutely, every scale, every measurement device gets periodic calibration to
make sure that it's doing exactly what it's supposed to
be doing. But you put the stur bar in there
at four hundred and fifty, you assume that's how many
revolutions it's doing and if it's doing more and it's
doing less. Because this thing is a ten year old

(01:04:01):
piece of equipment, nobody's checking.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
You should have like there should be some kind of
like a laser like calibrating instrument and that you bounce
it off to be able to see there are but like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
There are all sorts of other things that do RPMs.

Speaker 6 (01:04:16):
Like stirs, because the assumption is.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
There's a little l stir on there that will tell
you the RPMs. But in the stir there isn't a
thing that is you would have to put some sort
of tracking device within the stir. Uh it's sold. But
that might be a solution.

Speaker 6 (01:04:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
I'm thinking of, like you know, the police radar gun.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
But you're in the solution, like you know, that's the
that's the problem is you're already in all this other
stuff that's in the way. So you would have to
be embedded in the stir bar itself or.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Within the device that is the stir.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
If it's if it's an agitator, agitators have all sorts
of way to verify RPMs. That's like the laser thing
that you're talking about, exactly perfect way to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
I'm an agitator. Are you an agitator? No, we're not agitators.
We're just people who like science. If you're enjoying the show,
thank you for being here. Also, please share it with
your friends, because you know, we're here to talk about
all these wonderful, weird little discoveries and big discoveries, the
questions that drive us through this world. We might never

(01:05:31):
answer some of them, but hey, we're trying. You know,
we're developing technologies, we're answering one little question that leads
to something later that potentially gets us to answering a
bigger question down the road. And that's that's that's science.
It's a knowledge generator that leads us to progress and

(01:05:53):
hopefully to wisdom through time. Share Twists with your friends also,
if you are able at this point in time, head
over to Twist dot org click on the Patreon link.
We would love to have you as a supporter of
this show. Our show is listener supported. We are not
supported by corporate interests. We are not supported by venture capital.

(01:06:15):
We are not supported by big money, dark money, anything
like that. It's just you, you helping us keep this show going.
And it would be amazing to be able to read
your name at the end of the show. I would
love to say thank you. Please be a part of
supporting this show. We really can't do it without you. Also,

(01:06:39):
there's a Zazzle link and there's really cool stuff that
is our Twist merch and everything. They're cool things that
Blair's made. Blair's Animal Corner. Oh wait, it's time to
come back to the show right now.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Because now you guys, you got me all read.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
It is time that point in the show we call
There's Animal Corner.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
With Blair.

Speaker 6 (01:07:06):
Loves Hot Creatures by pid Pad.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
You want to hear about animals except the four giant pads.

Speaker 6 (01:07:21):
School you got Blair, It's time for you to go
back to school. No, just kidding, It's time for a
theologists to go back to school. Fish school. Does that

(01:07:44):
like swim with the fishes? Like, yes, it's time for
ach theologists to swim with the fishes anyway.

Speaker 5 (01:07:53):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:07:54):
Since the seventies, conventional wisdom has been that fish swim
in a flat diamond. When they make these big schools,
it's a flat diamond formation. But recently, a team of
researchers from Princeton and Harvard ran an experiment to check

(01:08:15):
that assumption, and they found conventional wisdom was wrong. They
swim in a dynamic pattern. The researchers have coined a
ladder where they're staggered in three dimensions, like an echelon
of fighter jets. This was discovered by a professor of
robotics at Princeton who adapted computer vision software, which is

(01:08:40):
originally developed to track individual animal movements, and they use
that to collect three D data on fish school formation.
They worked with Harvard University biologists to analyze the group
of six giant danios swimming for ten hours in a
tank with recirculating flow. Found that the vision almost never

(01:09:01):
formed a diamond and instead swimmed in a ladder shape
of seventy five percent of the time. Why did we
think it was a diamond?

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
Sam?

Speaker 6 (01:09:12):
What did I say?

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
I never thought it was a diamond swimmed? Nobody said.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
I'm not trying to like bring the whole show to
a halt between swimmed and swam. I think they're both appropriate.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Is that such a swim swam?

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
I should have.

Speaker 6 (01:09:28):
Said, Okay, flew through a liquid medium. How about that
the diamond formation?

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
Why?

Speaker 6 (01:09:35):
Why do we think fish swim in a diamond formation
that was reinforced by models and experiments since the nineteen seventies.
But they were all in two D? What why? Because
why were all why?

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
Because that's what we had? But what what's amazing? And
I'm from the seventies, the whole world was two D?

Speaker 6 (01:10:05):
Yes, yes, but it's been fifty years people.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
That's the end. No assumptions like they have to get
you have to go back and challenge that stuff. And
I'm so glad that they did. But how many generally
have been based on the diamond?

Speaker 6 (01:10:23):
Yes, generally this research was limited to a flat plane
because it's difficult to capture accurate three D movement for
multiple camera angles, which I don't buy. I feel like
you can do that now you've been able to do
that for many, many years at this point. But but

(01:10:45):
it's regardless.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
Look, it's it's And the dangerous thing that with assumptions
is that there are things that have and there's sometimes
it's just little stuff that seemingly goes unnoticed, that's just
taught in school and then you've learned it it and
that's and then everybody knows that and it doesn't get
questioned because it seems it seems like obvious, or it

(01:11:08):
seems right, and it doesn't seem like it's conflicting with anything,
and so you just roll with it. And there's been
a lot of stuff. I mean, it comes up every
once in a while. It's always lots of things, especially
in genetics. Genetics started so quickly in a way once
the discoveries took place that there are a ton of

(01:11:29):
assumptions on how things worked have all been overturned.

Speaker 6 (01:11:34):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
But but if you went to school and you were
taught this is a fundamental building block and not as
our current best guess. Physics is really good about here's
our current best guess. A lot of biology.

Speaker 8 (01:11:53):
Or field biology, but like the physics of it, Like
Blair said, flying through waters looking at flocks of birds
last years and we've been discussing how they draft, why
they do this, how.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
Do they have the murmurations? We've never said birds fly?
I mean, they do have some interesting stereotyped flight does like,
but why what we'd look at for birds, why is
that not the same for fish?

Speaker 6 (01:12:29):
Great question, and in fact, I'm so glad you brought
that up, because what they found was that when they're swimming.
The fish have a jet that goes backwards, which is
similar to a jet engine of an airplane. So it's
it's very similar to kind of drag when you're flying,
and so it's beneficial to avoid being directly behind one another.

(01:12:49):
Kind of exactly what you're talking about, Like how birds
do a nice V formation, and so the latter formation
provides hydrodynamic benefits, but the fish don't have to work.
Is hard to synchronize because they can stagger on multiple
planes instead of one. So this is the part that
I have to tell you though.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Please.

Speaker 6 (01:13:10):
This computer simulation and the computer research was done by
a robotics lab. So of course why were they doing this.
They want to develop some underwater robot swarms that could
move in dynamic ladder formations and gain energetic benefits.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Yeah, because it's biomimicry. We're trying underwater robot swarms. Sounds
great to me, just kidding underwater. I mean you can
look at race cars, you can look at our planes.
That's all fast. So robotics lab, did they ever actually

(01:13:59):
have fish? Yes? Okay, so it's not just simulation. No, okay,
but how big were there schools of fish?

Speaker 6 (01:14:12):
They appeared to be pretty.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Small, which I think is a confounding factor.

Speaker 6 (01:14:18):
Yeah, no, I agree this. So now that they have
this model, they need to take these cameras into the
ocean and record actual schools of fish. But I think
it's so funny that kind of this conventional wisdom the
school of fish in Finding Nemo, all these things that

(01:14:38):
we see where they make a nice diamond. Maybe not,
maybe somebody just kind of made that up.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Did we see that in Finding Nemo? I remember they're
in that the underwater river, right, the jet stream or
that's not the jet stream, the Gulf stream underwater. They
were just they were it was like a freeway. It
was like it was like fifth element.

Speaker 6 (01:15:07):
So it's it's interesting I recall this because I haven't
seen this movie in many years. But it's after that,
it's towards the end of the movie. It's when Marlon
and Dorry get in a fight and they separate, and
then Dorry forgets who she is. There is a school
of fish, of these kind of like gray fish that
pass her by, and then they stop and they talk

(01:15:29):
to Marlin for a second, and then everybody gets scooped
up in a fishnet and then Marlin and Dorry see
each other and they have to like fight their way
out of the fish net. That's the whole thing. But
I do believe that they move around in a school
formation that is diamond like.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
I wonder if this is this is probably militarized. I'm
assuming this is a way to get to the energy
efficient and travel a long way underwater. So it's probably
like a militarized aspect of this.

Speaker 6 (01:16:07):
But okay, so you can swim in military formation to
get into the sewers of Alcatraz so that you can
infiltrate your way in. You can battle the marine that's
gone rogue that has a bio weapon, and then you
can use your friend Sean Connery who escaped from the
rock previously to find your with.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
No as were on the tangent. Do you know what
my favorite part of that movie is? Do you know
what my favorite my favorite part of that whole movie
is is that was just the standard Hollywood movie where
Nicholas Cage, his character was supposed today all kinds of
tough sounding curse words. Yes, yes, and he apparently had
I don't know a kid who was old enough to

(01:16:49):
see one of his movies. Yes, for the first time,
and so rewrote the script to his very part of it,
so that he took out all of the cursing. So
he's like, yes, oh fudge, no, oh gosh, darn it.
Like but it was like the TV friendly version. Yeah,
he wrote it himself.

Speaker 6 (01:17:05):
Yeah, I do believe that was That was Michael Bay's
directorial debut. We're talking about The Rock Kiki one of
my favorite movies of all.

Speaker 3 (01:17:13):
Time, and it is and it's kind of like my
favorite thing about the movie once you realize like he's
going to do the TV edit version of cursing throughout
the whole thing. It's that to me is like the
most entertaining part of the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
Well, it's not like the radio edit of rap songs.

Speaker 6 (01:17:35):
Uh, hey, do you want to talk about get a
while we're talking about, you know, forbidden things. You talk
about getting high in elevation that is, but don't Annimals
living at elevations of a thousand meters in higher have

(01:17:55):
been shown to have a reduction in the genes related
to smell. I had a smaller old factory bulb than
similar low altitude species. Researchers looked at genomes of twenty
seven different species of animals. They're all mammals living in
high altitude environments, and then they looked at their low
altitude relatives. They looked at monkeys, goats, lamas, guinea pigs,

(01:18:20):
and many others. So they looked across lots of different
types of mammals. They looked domesticated and wild mammals as well,
so they tried to cover all of their bases. They
found a twenty three percent reduction in the genes related
to smell and an average of eighteen percent size reduction
of the olfactory bulb, and all of these changes appeared

(01:18:42):
to be specific to smell that they measured. No changes
are found in genes related to pheromone or taste, so
it really was just the reception of smells and there's
there could be a few reasons for that. There are
environmental differences at high altitudes. They have thinner, dryer, and
colder air, which leads to difficulty in breathing. That can

(01:19:06):
also cause increased nasal congestion and hypoxia, which is low
levels of oxygen. All these conditions also make it harder
for a scent molecule to travel, so there's just less
sense in the air for them to detect. So if
it's hard to smell things, why put energy into smelling it?

(01:19:26):
The exact mechanism they're still unsure about. Reduced sense of
smell could be related to the reduction of available sense
just yeah, like I said, if there's not sense around,
why put energy into it. It could also have to
do with nasal inflammation. It could have to do with
that inflammation, meaning that they can't smell anyway, and therefore

(01:19:47):
they don't put energy into developing a sense of smell
that can't be used.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
So my guess can act Yes, I would be care
to compare the high elevation to an arctic animal to
see if it has to do with reduced population of
things to smell that are of interest. Meaning they may

(01:20:17):
not have a reduced sense of smell, but they may
just be having a reduced population of smells that they
that are important and so and so. It would be
really I'd be really curious to see if like an
arctic fox, an arctic hair, a polar bear has this

(01:20:37):
sort of differentiation from you know, in a more of
a forest version of it, where there's going to be
more because you still need your sense of smell to
if you're an animal to track prey over a distance
and that sort of thing, So you still want to
be able to smell your your prey or your predator. Right,

(01:21:01):
But because there's such a dramatically lower population of animals
at higher elevation or in the Arctic, maybe there's only
a small set that are going to be important, and
that's how it got narrowed down. So now I gotta see,
I gotta see if the Arctic, if the Arctic versions
that are not at altitude share this, because that could

(01:21:21):
if they do share that, they could knock out all
of the elevation as the driver parts. So I think
it's much simpler can be like I I nevert know,
I'm sorry when in desert desert scenarios might also then
share this too, versus a forested version where you have

(01:21:43):
to track multitudes of cohabitants.

Speaker 6 (01:21:47):
So justin you're talking about habitat differences, which are very
different from elevation differences. And in this case a lot
of these animals that they tested, the habitats were essentially
the same. The difference was the elevation. Right, So if
I'm a guinea pig who's hanging out and it's a

(01:22:09):
cold desert and I'm at two thousand feet, and I'm
a guinea pig and it's a cold desert and I'm
at ten thousand feet. The habitat and the plant availability
is essentially the same. What is different is the altitude. Yeah,
and so it could be much simpler than that. Remember
that animals are also shrinking. At higher altitudes, there is

(01:22:31):
generally less oxygen. It is generally harder to survive. You
generally have less energy to expend on growth. So there
were probably animals that had a worse sense of sight.
There were animals that had worse hearing, there were animals
that had worse senses of smell, and which ones survived

(01:22:53):
and it was the ones who lost the thing that
was least important to survival. It really could be that simple.
The other piece is that if you have less oxygen,
you might want to get things to your lungs as
quickly as possible, which will reduce the amount of nasal

(01:23:13):
turbinates you have and pockets in your nose for air
to get captured. You want everything to go straight in
there as quickly as possible. Doesn't matter if you're losing moisture.
It doesn't matter if you're losing temperature, you just want
the oxygen in there as fast as it also.

Speaker 3 (01:23:33):
Losing Then you'd also be losing heating ability, which you
might need at elevation, right.

Speaker 6 (01:23:40):
So that's why I said you're losing temperature, right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
Yeah, So there are adaptations for that though, And like
birds are, they have these really interesting respiratory and blood
flow cross exchange systems that are involved so that you
don't actually lose all that heat, and the turbinates with
all of that surface area are actually like it's part

(01:24:05):
of the way that it's conserved.

Speaker 6 (01:24:07):
Right, And so they didn't look at the size of
the turbinates in this case. I will also mention this
is specifically looking at genes and the olfactory bulb, so
this is less looking at the mechanics of how they
collect smell and more looking at how their brain interprets
the smell they receive. And they are just not putting
the effort where the brain power into interpreting the smells.

(01:24:32):
The smells are still hitting their body and their nose,
but they are they are not processing that information in
the same way that their counterparts at lower altitudes are.
The other thing I'll throw in there is they did
also look at humans. Oh, they looked at human communities
at high and low altitudes. So happy they did that.

(01:24:53):
They look specifically at Tibetans, who are estimated to have
established their mountain dwelling communities at altitudes above three tree
thousand meters sometime between nine thousand and thirty thousand years ago,
so in terms of human history, a long time ago,
in terms of mammalian evolution, the blink of an eye.

(01:25:14):
And so they compared that with the genomes of the
low altitude Han Chinese populations, and there were no changes
in the human populations, of course, because like I said,
that was the blink of an eye. This could be
due to also, they say, the mixt of lowland and
highland populations, because humans are much more mobile and much

(01:25:37):
more able to, for lack of a better word, to
kind of cross pollinate across these communities, and so there
may not have been enough generations of pure like separation
of these two communities. So that's all very fair. The
reason I think this study is especially interesting is because

(01:25:59):
of climate change, and because, as a reminder, the reason
I thought the elevation story with animals shrinking also is
of interest is because as temperatures increase, animals will chase
the habitat that they are used to and the temperatures
that they are used to. And if I'm a snake

(01:26:19):
in California and I want to go to where it's colder,
I can move north. But if I am a guinea pig,
I'll say again, and I am already two thousand feet
up the mountain, I can't move north. What I can
do is I can move higher up in elevation. And
there's two problems with that. One is there's less runway.

(01:26:42):
If I am a snake and I am in California,
I'm in so Caw. Let's say I can go all
the way to Alaska chasing my temperatures. But if I
am a guinea peg on a mountain, I can go
just a fraction of that distance because I can only
go as tall as the mountain is. High as you

(01:27:02):
go up that mountain also reduce surface area, reduced room,
more competition, and of course reduced oxygen. And so as
they do that, it's helpful for us to know as conservationists,
it's helpful to know what kind of changes you can
anticipate to that community. So you can help head that

(01:27:23):
off as well while they are facing other challenges like relocation,
like changes of their niche, like changes of their habitat,
and the and the food that they get and the
predators that they have to worry about. If you also
know that their scent is getting reduced, their body size
is going down, then you can try to help conserve
those animals in other ways as well.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
So, yeah, I love it. You got to know how
the nose works, the nose, nose, nose, and it's it's
fast that you have that. There's this convergent evolution that's
happening where things are coming together. Yeah, lost genes, but

(01:28:11):
they're not lost, they're found. Oh boy, justin do you
feel like you do? You feel like you're ready to
follow the animal corner in a more rapid way than like,
we've got to get through things. Blair is, we're looking
at the.

Speaker 3 (01:28:28):
Clar We've had a half hour before her cut off. Down,
Slow it down, you're right.

Speaker 6 (01:28:33):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:28:33):
Neurons have been duped. Neurons have been duped into delivering
mitochondria to cancer cells, and they've been getting scammed this
way for years. In fact, this is perhaps what's been
fueling metastasis spread of cancers. So this is the thing.

(01:28:57):
This is out of the University of South Alabama. It's
something that's sort of been noticed in pathology for a
long time. You find the cancer cells that are doing
a lot of growth, doing a lot of expansion sort
of embedded in tissues that have high nerve high concentration

(01:29:19):
of nerve tissues as well. So this correlation has been
seen for a long time, but they don't really know why.
And the other thing is once fantastasis gets into you know,
cancer gets into certain nerve centers in the body, the
spread becomes sort of exponential. It just sort of goes

(01:29:40):
everywhere from there. So what's going on, Well, it turns
out it's this thing called mitochondrial transfer, which is a
normal process, a healthy process. It's actually one of the
things that the cells use to try to fight off
those sinescent cells, those aged cells that have stopped working properly,

(01:30:02):
is that you'll have and it happens in neurons too.
When neurons become senescent, they're very important. So the the astrocytes,
which is not neuronal tissue that is, you know, there
is a sort of support tissues around neurons. They'll be like, hey, oh,
I can see you're having problems. Here, take one of

(01:30:23):
my mitochondria, and now you'll be a healthy cell again,
and a little sacrificing for the greater good astrocytes cells.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
It's like horizontal gene transfer, except an organ's.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
Like here's here's a better battery. Your battery is going bad.
Here you go take this one.

Speaker 6 (01:30:43):
It looks like you were trying to run a functioning cell.
Can I help?

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
So they did some really smart tagging and they were
able to track mitochondria in nerve cells as they transferred
over to cancer cells. And it's sort of interesting because
the well it is microtubulars or whatever are going out

(01:31:16):
from the neuronal cells to the cancer cells to deliver
the mitochondria. So in a way, it looks like, oh,
the neuronal cells have sensed that there is another tissue
cell that is in trouble, and so it's trying to

(01:31:36):
initiate rescue. Kind Of the problem with that is neural
cells are kind of the most important cells. They're usually
not cells that are going to be doing a whole
lot of the donating. They're usually getting donated too, because
they're so important that you need to keep them going
so they don't go around doing a lot of this
sort of freelance rescue work. Other cells are supposed to

(01:31:59):
be in charge of that, and so when it fat
what they discovered too is that it seems that there
is something in the cancer cells a signaling that it
was not defined, that was not quite discovered, but they
could tell that it was raising the amount of UH
of the the signaling networks that would be required for

(01:32:21):
the for the neuronal cells to do delivery. So basically
they were initiating the the transfers by stimulating the neuronal
cells to do these donations. Anyhow, this is kind of
a big deal because we didn't really know how this

(01:32:43):
was happening, and so this is this is a new
avenue that opens the door to a pathway to crawl
through a window of targeting nerve availability to tumor sites.
One of the one of one of the things that
we have looked at quite a bit is vascular access,

(01:33:08):
the ability for nerve cells to access nutrients by coapting
vascular networks and that sort of thing, and that didn't
really seem when they're testing this, it doesn't seem like
that was a big influence on growth and metastasis and travel.
What was was whether or not there was neuronal tissue there,

(01:33:30):
whether or not there was nerve tissue that could donate mitochondria.
That turned out to be the powerhouse. So a lot
of tumor suppression is about reduced vasculature. It's about reducing
the amount of blood flow nutrients to the tumor. And
so this is like, hey, great idea, but it may

(01:33:50):
actually be access to nerve tissue that is the more
important factor that needs to be targeted, concentrated on. So
this could be this could be one of those it's
just a you know, a study in mice now, but
it could be something that really is kind of a

(01:34:12):
big change in approach to tumor suppression now that they
realize that this is this is a sort of mechanism. Muh,
that is that is driving.

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
Fantasticis I had I think, I don't know if it
was this particular paper this weekend, but uh just dug
deep down in the rabbit hole of the interactions between
the Yeah, no, it's a different and we started we
started talking about like creons and other things, and he
dug deep out down into the glial cells and nerve

(01:34:49):
cells and the interactions between them, and there are two
groups of glial cells that are within the brain. Astrocytes
are actually from the same tissue that neurons come from,
and astrocytes can make new neurons, not just give them mitochondria.
So this is a really cool part of it. And

(01:35:10):
these the h in glioblastomas, which is, you know, a
terribly deadly type of cancer that we have a hard
time treating because of the blood brain barrier and getting
things into the brain. And they're they've discovered that glioblastomas
have these this kind of relationship in the communication between

(01:35:32):
the cancer cells, the tumor cells, and the glio cells astrocytes,
but also the is it the astrocytes, it's a anyway,
there are there are immune cells that are related that
get released by the lymphatic system that are the like

(01:35:54):
the all the capillaries and the blood supply around the
brain that release immune cells into the brain and people
this is a new thing really understanding that the immune
system actually works in the brain and the glial cells
are a part of this entire immune process and the
reason that you have some glolestomas that you can treat

(01:36:17):
or the end that never come back, and others that
come back again and again and again. It has to
do with the way that they communicate with the instructions
for growing vasculature and surrounding themselves to fight off macrophages,
and they use them. They expose major histocompatibility complexes that

(01:36:41):
say I'm okay, don't kill me, so that you know,
the immune cells don't come and eat them up. And
there's this real push pull between the glile cells that
have that come from the immune system. So there are
macrophages that become glial cells. They're like So it's the

(01:37:02):
whole story. This last weekend rabbit holes such a great time.
Our brain does have an immune system, and glioblastoma potentially
has treatment pathways related to the immune system and the
way that uh, the cells that support that are the

(01:37:26):
glial cells within the brain. There are ways that we
could potentially change the communication relationships between the tumorous cells
and the immune cells in the brain. I have to
find the study because it was it was.

Speaker 3 (01:37:39):
Yeah, you should bring that study. I want to hear
him all about it. Oh yeah, it's incredibly fascinating stuff
in there.

Speaker 2 (01:37:46):
Yeah, it wasn't just this, this study, was it. But
it wasn't this. It was something else, something else. I
read there was another one. I don't know, tell me
another story. Do you have more? Do you have another
Onecientists like more brains.

Speaker 3 (01:38:02):
Neuroscientists remain steadfastly uncertain about how the brain encodes memory.
Oh gosh, so this was this is kind of fun.
So there's like, we've been looking at the brain for
one hundred years or whatever, and there's a lot of
ideas of how memories are stored. Is it structure, is it?

(01:38:30):
Is it active brain waves in different parts of the
brain working in concert. There's all sorts of different is
it is it some sort of atomic level or you know?
So they so they so they survey or is it

(01:38:53):
all of it? Is it a combination? Anyway? They tried
to survey. They tried to survey something like three hundred neuroscientists,
but they got like, well, they actually said that it
doesn't say here what is it? Email invitations reached three

(01:39:14):
hundred and five eningram experts. I think those are the
ones that have like this concert of memory storage and
structure and signal. They got thirty three of them to respond,
and they had a bunch of other people who are
in neuroscience but maybe not experts in stored memory. Stand

(01:39:37):
it up with a cohort of about three hundred and
five three hundred and twelve neuroscientists from these different groups
and different levels of experience in different years, and different
levels of education, experience and that sort of thing, and
they just gave them a survey, gave them a survey,
and this survey's kind of waited. I think that whoever

(01:39:59):
did the survey is interested in the concept of memory
retrieval of a preserved brain, so they asked a lot
of questions about that. But those questions are kind of
revealing in where researchers think the brain is going to
be storing and how it's going to be storing that information.

(01:40:25):
What they found was there's almost no consensus on anything,
very very little, very little consensus among neuroscientists. Let's see,
they say, could detailed maps of neural structure alone contain

(01:40:46):
specific memories such as a learned route through a maze
or a memorized password. Around forty six percent of the
respondents agreed that this was theoretically possible provided sufficient sophisticated
methods existed, meaning that they do believe that memories are

(01:41:08):
structurally locked into a brain. Okay. A third of the
respondents strongly disagreed that this was possible, meaning they don't
think memory is structurally bound.

Speaker 6 (01:41:24):
We have no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:41:28):
Let's see. Respondents identified additional information potentially necessary for memory readout,
most frequently citing dynamically changing neural activity patterns forty seven percent,
contextual data on experiences, mental states forty three percent, sensory
motor information thirty seven percent, less frequently selected, where chemical,
electrical gradients and quantum level properties only reached five percent. So,

(01:41:55):
and the reason this is sort of sort of interesting
is that there's when okay, so when people say okay,
there is it is connectivity. It is these connections across
the brain, these synaptic connections across the brain working together

(01:42:15):
that create a definitive memory trace and create that resurrect
that memory. But there's things like I guess, hypothermia, where
these fine structures were that idea is based on sort
of breakdown or certain stresses or certain conditions where somebody
can go into a coma or have you know, limited
brain activity for a long period of time and then

(01:42:39):
be resuscitated back to normal and they still have their memories.
So it can't it can't be being kept alive just
by repeated synaptic activity that feels like it's got a
hard encoding somewhere, right, and then yeah, uh. Anyway, Basically,

(01:43:04):
the consensus so far is that they don't know, and
they're waiting. They're waiting for better observational things, and so
this isn't a bad thing. Though. It's not a bad
thing that a bunch of scientists who are experts in
the field all disagree or largely disagree and can't form
a consensus on something that hasn't been completely understood. If

(01:43:29):
they did have a consensus and we still had no
mechanism for memory storage, terrible thing. That means everybody's working
on the assumption that they'll figure out it's the thing
they already think it is. This way, with all of
this lack of consensus and a lack of mechanism, you

(01:43:50):
have people looking in different directions, You have people testing
different hypotheses, You have people trying to break down the
problem in different ways that might have might mean completely
different The brain works Storre's memory a completely different way
than thirty percent think it does, or forty percent or

(01:44:10):
even seventy percent think it does, because at this moment
that field is free to explore because nobody can give
them the definitive answer even though they all have their
Probably whatever they learn from their professor who's their mentor
back in school is how they think the brain stores memories,

(01:44:31):
and it's just time to get to proved. But they're
different professors with different ideas teaching their students who then
go forward thinking it differently. Is how these different branches
of exploration sort of come about. So the news from
there so far we don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
And my last story for the night, I'm just gonna
just jump in here for one moment, and I agree
with everything that you're saying. Oh good, because I think
that it is a large field and people study these
really niche topics and they maybe don't know about these,
So I would like to know exactly what was the

(01:45:11):
makeup of the particular like the emphasis of the neuroscientists
that they talked to, like the way that it all
came out, and the I mean, I'm looking at the
results of this and going no, no, no, no, right,

(01:45:32):
Like nobody knows, So why are you saying that you
do know? Like the results are the results on this
are driving me crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:45:41):
So can I tell you something else that will drive
you next? And yes, and let's see. Okay, neither research background,
experimental versus computational expertise level significantly influenced the respondent's perspectives.
So being more educated or more controlled push you in

(01:46:06):
one direction or another. That's how bad the consensus is.
And I'm when I say bad, the consensus.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
Is how little they agree, how little.

Speaker 3 (01:46:15):
That they agree, and which is again in the field
that we don't have the answers to. That's exactly what
you want, is people pursuing different narrow paths towards a
potential truth. You don't want everybody agreeing this is the thing,
this is how it works. We can't prove it. I mean,

(01:46:37):
these aren't psychologists, there are neuroscientists. They're not gonna they're
not gonna assume a knowledge that's not actually in hand.
So uh, but they kind of have to. You kind
of have to pick a lane and go study that
lane and see if it turns out to be true,
and try to isolate and try to create the next

(01:46:58):
better experiment to see if this version is true. It's
just also part of the problem I think in this
field is going to be that they're all going to
be a little bit right, that all of these aspects
of synaptic activity and structure are going to be non
isolation ly correct, meaning they're going to rely on the

(01:47:25):
other at times they're going to be complimentary and times
in conflict. But like they're going to be, there's gonna
be a hierarchy, but that hierarchy probably loops back around
on itself. It's probably so integrated that they're all going
to have It's like the elephant in the dark. You

(01:47:47):
know that that scenario, like, oh, what is this thing
in the dark? Oh, it's big like a wall. No,
it's around and it's all like a tree, or it's no,
it's They feel the tail and it's like, oh, it's
like a small snake. Everybody's got a different piece of
the elephant, and they are thinking is a very different

(01:48:07):
thing than all the others are describing. But it turns
out they're all when you add it up, they're all
describing an elephant, and it all makes sense. Last story
of the Night, I think We touched on it in
the disclaimer, but thankfully PBS public broadcasting system is still
still giving out news. Basically, they're reporting on the fact

(01:48:31):
that the websites of the government agencies are removing all
mentioned of global warming and climate change. They reached out
to NASA and they got no reply. They reached out
to Noah, they got no reply. The government organizations that

(01:48:57):
we've been relying on to give us information about the
changing climate have been told not to share that information
with us, and they're in fact, at this point not
even talking to the press about the rationale behind not

(01:49:17):
sharing that with us, because the government is working in
a way that it was never intended to at the moment,
and that's kind of all that story is. It doesn't
mean that global warming or climate change or climate eas stopped.

(01:49:39):
It just means your government can't talk about it anymore,
with all implications of what that means for society.

Speaker 2 (01:49:52):
Additionally, many researchers who are still within government agencies have
been told that they cannot re certain top journals anymore
because UH, the subscriptions to el Sevier, Nature Science, UH,
many major journals has not been renewed by our government.

(01:50:15):
So the scientist.

Speaker 3 (01:50:17):
Censorship censorship of science, not of an opinion. It's not
even censorship of opinion. It's censorship of fact. It's censorship
of research and censorship of peer reviewed scientific work. That is,
it's beyond just frightening, it's also.

Speaker 2 (01:50:39):
It is active destruction.

Speaker 6 (01:50:43):
So people are meant to report on the weather. They
are meant to, but you can't anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:50:50):
Write and shutting that down. There's a there's a the
whole thing in Florida where some of their like most
famous like people who guide you through the hurricane when
you turn on your TV news down there, like basically
came out and pleaded with everyone in his listening audience

(01:51:11):
to call their representative. He's like, I can't tell you
next time there's a hurricane. I can't tell you the
sea level rise. I can't tell you what parts of when,
what time to be aware, where, what direction to head.
I can't give you all of that piece by piece

(01:51:32):
information that I've used in the past to cover all
of the hurricanes that we've been through. It's going black
if you don't call your representatives and get them to
stop this so we'll see, hopefully.

Speaker 4 (01:51:47):
Well.

Speaker 6 (01:51:48):
My point is, while this is going on. It's on
people who are not sitting in government jobs to speak
about climate change, often because they're the ones who can. Yeah,
all these people in federal positions that are being told
they can't talk about things publicly, we have to hold

(01:52:09):
their weight until they're allowed again. Yeah, and that stinks,
but it's where we are.

Speaker 3 (01:52:21):
What is that movie? Don't look up? It is it
is absolutely don't look up in in reality.

Speaker 2 (01:52:34):
Idiocracy isn't hasn't been funny for a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:52:37):
Idiography doesn't even touch this. This is is much more.
This is much more. Don't look up.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
I couldn't actually finish don't look up like it was
so it was like it was too much. I was like,
I can't take they were it was great.

Speaker 3 (01:52:50):
Well I think it has a happy end. La. No, no, it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:52):
Doesn't spoilers.

Speaker 6 (01:52:56):
Or does it or maybe the post credit scene is decent.

Speaker 3 (01:53:01):
That's kind of a happy Okay, that's good.

Speaker 2 (01:53:05):
And you know, we had celebrities learning about and talking
about the science and everything, and the story really these
days is, you know, how can we really get across
to people how important science is for daily life? Like
what are what good does it do? What good does

(01:53:27):
your money going? To government funding of science. Do why
not have private interests? You know, I mean Dow Chemical,
What harm have they done?

Speaker 6 (01:53:39):
I didn't say that.

Speaker 2 (01:53:41):
I mean it was generally like just the spot and
everyone just missed speaking there. Yeah, but we're getting at
the end of the show here, So moving past. You
know what's happening in the United States congressionally in our
administration and what is potentially being passed, not passed, regulated, deregulated, funded,

(01:54:06):
not funded. You know, it is important for people who
who understand science, who believe in the good of science,
to not just think that people other people are going
to get it too, because that's what you think. So
it's you know why, it's it's the why why why?

(01:54:29):
Why is it cool that triglycerides are an important fuel
reserve for nerves in the brain. What so people talk
about all the time, like you know, the brain, Oh
my gosh, just thinking uses so many calories. Like your
brain is like this energy energy burning organ, machine, processor, whatever.

(01:54:59):
Most people have thought and have shown through research that
sugar is the main source of energy in the brain,
that the brain is constantly like using sugar. Glucose, love it,
Glucose is gonna get me through the night, and you know,
you eat candy bar, you have your little power bar,
you have your little you know Eminem's, you know, Snickers bar.

(01:55:21):
We're gonna get it. Sugar, Yeah, we could do it.
People haven't really talked about the fat in the brain.
The fat in the brain is usually thought of as
the you know, it's like, you know it's there, but
it's it's not something. They don't find fat globules within

(01:55:44):
the cells the nerves in the brain. You can go
throughout the body and you find fat cells, you find
lipid globules. There's fatty acids all over the place, and
there is fat which is stored energy that is easily
accessible by you know, with these storage you know, storage

(01:56:07):
abilities throughout the body. The brain. We haven't really seen
that before. So everybody's been kind of like, nah, the
brain doesn't use fat the brain, you know, whatever new
study has discovered, Oh hey, back to glia. That that
the that there are glia that come over just like

(01:56:28):
the mitochondrial kind of thing, that the glia show up
and they help to deliver lipids that they there are
neurons they're kind of fluctuating fatty acids that get derived
from these lipids and you know, and but then the

(01:56:52):
neurons use it that when the fatty acids, the lipids
get delivered to the brain, the neurons immediately take it
and they give it to the mitochondria to give the
mitochondria energy to do the work. And it's not always sugar,

(01:57:14):
but they don't store it. It's delivered and it's the astrocites.
It's the glial cells that are talking to the neurons.
And then like like you said, the astrocites are delivering
the mitochondria. Oh you're tired, Oh you're you're you're running down,
you're mitochondria or running here. They're also saying, let me

(01:57:34):
bring you butter, let me, let me bring you this
wonderfully energy filled store store of fatty acids.

Speaker 3 (01:57:48):
Neuronal waiter and concierge.

Speaker 2 (01:57:51):
Yeah, so I thought that was support. Yeah, and it's
it also kind of it's this new understanding of how
these glial cells and the neurons work that can also
be you know, used in our understanding of the metabolism
of neurons, the mitochondria and how the brain functions. So

(01:58:12):
why do neurons get tired? What breaks down first is
the mitochondria. Is it the delivery of these fatty acids
and lipids? Like, how does like how does that system
all work? So the researchers and for the first time
they're like, hey, nah, these neurons.

Speaker 6 (01:58:31):
Actually they eat fat.

Speaker 2 (01:58:32):
They like it and they need it. So, uh, there's
stuff involved in that, and it's very cool faty brains.
That's good. You should have a fat brain, or you
should have a brain that likes dad. And my last
study is a birdie study, because birds are so wonderful.
You like chickadees. I love chickadees. Chickens are chick even.

Speaker 3 (01:58:58):
Though if I really know what a chickty is. To
be honest, I don't know if I've seen one, maybe
I've seen thousands. It's a I'm assuming it's some kind
of small bird. But if you took it fifty different
small birds or even three, I had probably poor odds

(01:59:20):
of figuring out which ones is.

Speaker 7 (01:59:21):
The chickaty Okay, well let's see, uh ah, I'm not
typing right, Blair left, So.

Speaker 3 (01:59:34):
Figure out which one of these birds.

Speaker 2 (01:59:40):
We're gonna yeah, we will ask you a really quick question.
It just came out. Uh. Anyway, this.

Speaker 7 (01:59:53):
P R A.

Speaker 2 (01:59:55):
I used to work with the lead researcher who is
the head of the lab in which this research is done.
And Vladimir is also an amazing photographer and takes pictures
of chickene's all the time. It is field sites, and
they're just wonderful images. And these cute little birdies, there

(02:00:16):
are so many of them. Oh, I got to share
the page so that you can share this tamp. So
there are black cap chickadee's, there are mountain chickadees, there
are chest no chestnut back chickadees. Uh there's They are parids,
so they are related to the European birds, the great tit,

(02:00:38):
the blue tit, you know, the parrods, so family paraday
and these birds are really small. They have incredible memories
because what they do. They have adapted for food storing,
and so during the summer, their brains kind of shrink, shrink,

(02:00:58):
their hippocampus, their brain kind of shrinks up a little
bit because they're going to be running around and just
doing sexy things, trying to just get around their environment
and you know, have mates, make babies do all this stuff.
But then their brain goes ooh, I gotta grow because
I have to remember remember where I put my keys,

(02:01:19):
and so the brain grows. They start putting food all
over the place and they every day they store food
and it helps them to survive through winter conditions. And
these birds very often are in mountainous regions. They also
have a spread up to the north, up you know,

(02:01:40):
up through Canada and toward Alaska and these northern regions
and they exist in very very cold situations. One of
the very very early studies on the memories of chickadee's
was on the Siberian not chickadees, but tits, the Siberian tit,
which is a Siberian bird, and it has a The

(02:02:03):
claim is of the memory is stores some two hundred
and fifty thousand items over the winter all the winter season.

Speaker 3 (02:02:16):
A lot.

Speaker 2 (02:02:18):
Yeah. So these so these birds are amazing and they
have a variation along the ecosystem like the environments that
they live in. And so this study looked at the
evolution of spatial cognition in the food caching chickadees. So

(02:02:40):
what they did is they looked at multiple populations around
these environmental gradients to see kind of the causes and
consequences an individual variation, not just you know, population level variation,
but like, oh, oh, you're the one that doesn't remember
where you put your food versus the really good, the

(02:03:05):
good remembers who you know, survive really well. So they
also looked at the genetic basis of that variation, and
they showed that chickadees, and this is from the abstract
chickene's and harsher environments have better spatial cognitive abilities and
a larger hippocampus with more hippocampal neurons, with differences between

(02:03:26):
populations persisting in common garden experiments.

Speaker 6 (02:03:31):
So they could take.

Speaker 2 (02:03:32):
You know, it's like oh, harsh, harsh birds, but oh
I got bird feeders. We could do a little garden
test and tell the difference between the abilities of these
different birds. Chickade's tested in the wild had extensive individual variation,
so not all chickadee is remember the same, just like
you know people, And the variation is heritable and has

(02:03:55):
a genetic basis, and it's associated with significant differences in
survival lifespan and reproductive success as you would guess, but
there's also luck. So what their study is really showing
is that chickadees and the evolution of their memory and
their abilities is really shaped by the environmental conditions and

(02:04:20):
natural selection. If you have more of the good members,
then you're going to have more babies maybe that survive.

Speaker 3 (02:04:37):
It's it's all scrub the bluebirds that we discovered that
you know, they they they're pretty smart birds.

Speaker 2 (02:04:47):
They're very smart birds.

Speaker 3 (02:04:48):
Take anything away from them. Their ability to remember where
they buried things was thought to be really high because
they bury things, oh, you know, in the summer and
then go find them in the winter or what have you.
And then it turns out now they just bury stuff everywhere,
as do a bunch of other scrub jays, and then

(02:05:09):
they go look everywhere and they find their stuff or
maybe another scrub jas stuff or maybe some squirrel stash.
They're just looking everywhere, and that's what it turned out
to be.

Speaker 2 (02:05:19):
That it was kind of it's kind of both. Yes,
they put it all over the place, and they probably
don't remember where every single thing is. But there's been
study after study that has shown that like these scrub
jays and other j species and Corvid's hummingbirds even also
are able to remember the what where when in at

(02:05:43):
least a test situation, and scrub jays are also like
they're aware of other birds watching them, so they're going
to put out they're going to do fake caches. They're
going to be like, oh yeah, I put it here.

Speaker 6 (02:05:56):
And then.

Speaker 2 (02:06:00):
There's a whole dynamic perfect you know, interaction going on
between different organisms there. But the hippo campus, we have
a hippocampus. It is involved in our memories. It's involved
in our ability to remember things. It's part of that pathway.
It's like the librarian that or the that has the

(02:06:23):
Dewey decimal system or whatever that as the information comes in.

Speaker 6 (02:06:27):
It goes.

Speaker 2 (02:06:28):
You are going to be filed here in a distributed
manner that nobody will ever understand. But the hippo campus
is is is essential for long term memory and recollection.

Speaker 3 (02:06:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:06:45):
Yeah, the bigger your hippocampus, I don't know, maybe the
more you remember, I don't know. But are you read?
Are we ready? Have we done it?

Speaker 3 (02:06:54):
That's that the brain is purely structural.

Speaker 2 (02:06:57):
See, but there's that is a structural part. I'm not
discounting the rhythms of the brain that are related to
the electrical signals that happen throughout the day, throughout the
how the networks, how they stay connected. I'm not discounting

(02:07:18):
little actions that take place electrochemically at like the synapses.
I'm not discounting the glia glial cells that are also
part of sending and controlling how neurons respond to things
in different moments. And I am not discounting either the

(02:07:40):
potential magnetic like electromagnetic forces because of the electrical UH
signals that will be carrying down and the interactions between
those and individual tiny neurons and the other ones around them.
There is so much and sure quantum might be there.
We've we've found quantum in pigeons, pigeonized like quantum detection

(02:08:06):
for navigation and pigeons. I'm gonna say yes. And there
there's so much we don't know. We know little teeny
tiny pieces of it. And there's this little piece and
that piece, and this NMDA receptors, AMPHA receptors, oh, the
glutamate receptors, this all the things, glia, neurons, dendritic cells, macrophages.

(02:08:36):
Uh h, there's so much we know nothing, We know nothing.
We have so many questions. At least I do you ready.

Speaker 3 (02:08:55):
Did we do it? Was that another episode of This
Week and Science Episode one thousand and twenty one bank goodness,
I went so quick.

Speaker 2 (02:09:06):
It did go so quickly, I did. And I'm shutting
all these tabs right now related to all of our stories,
closing it down for the night. As I would just.

Speaker 3 (02:09:17):
Like to say to say everyone out there, yeah, thank
you for listening. Yeah, we really hope you enjoyed the show.
If you didn't keep it to yourself, but if you did,
let us know.

Speaker 2 (02:09:30):
Yeah, I would let somebody else know and have them
listen to the show too. Why don't you bring a
friend next time? Be great? We'd love to see you.
I have so many people to think. Thank you everybody
who was in the chat room tonight. All of your
comments were fantastic and very very appreciated. Additionally, people who

(02:09:52):
help with show on a regular basis FATA, thank you
for helping the show notes and the social media and
Gord and Arn, Lauren others, thank you for helping to
make sure the Actually everybody, thank you for helping to
make sure the conversation in the chat room is always
a good one. Right, it's there and it's ours I have.

Speaker 3 (02:10:15):
By the way, if you've ever dipped into another chat rooms,
same we have the best chat room the side chat
conversation is better here than any other show that I've
ever scooped in on.

Speaker 2 (02:10:31):
Yeah. Maybe no. Don't tell anybody about Twist then, because
we want to keep it like this to ourselves. I'm kidding,
I'm kidding, Please and thanyfore, thank you for recording the show, Rachel,
thank you for editing the show, and of course thank
you very much too our Patreon sponsors. Oh, I'm starting

(02:10:56):
at the bottom of the list. Maybe I'll read from
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(02:12:02):
Robert Norland. It was harder to read.

Speaker 3 (02:12:09):
That was amazing. I didn't I didn't think you're gonna
be able to do it because like some of it
must be like muscle memory at this point, but I.

Speaker 6 (02:12:16):
Was used to going one way.

Speaker 2 (02:12:17):
I was like, oh, yeah, that was pretty fun. Thank
you all of you for supporting Twists on Patreon, and
if any of you are out there and feel like
you'd like to help out an independent science podcast who
is trying to be unbiased and just you know, share

(02:12:38):
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please head over to twist dot org and click on
the Patreon link, because you are how we are supported.
I know the next week's show.

Speaker 3 (02:12:58):
We will be back Wednesday, eight pm Pacific time, broadcasting
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Speaker 2 (02:13:08):
And if you want to listen to us as a podcast,
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Speaker 3 (02:13:25):
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Speaker 2 (02:13:40):
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Speaker 3 (02:13:47):
The time, tragically, like fully committed to procrastination. So if
you sign up, you might still never get a newsletter.
It's just possible that the a matter of time it
will take for us to put out a newsletter might
outlast the show or us.

Speaker 2 (02:14:06):
But isn't it the like joy of not knowing like
you it.

Speaker 3 (02:14:12):
Will they or won't they ever actually send me a newsletter?

Speaker 2 (02:14:16):
What's it the bottom of the cracker jack box. We
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(02:14:36):
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I don't know, I don't know how bla the confusion
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even I don't know what is this email? I don't

(02:14:57):
know what. Don't put twists in the subject line.

Speaker 3 (02:15:02):
We look forward to discussing science with you again next week.
If you've learned anything from the show, remember.

Speaker 2 (02:15:10):
It's all in your head.

Speaker 1 (02:15:14):
This week in science, This week in science, This week
in science, This week in science, it's the end of
the world. So I'm setting up shop. Got my banner
refurl it says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell
my advice, show them how to start a robots with

(02:15:36):
a simple device.

Speaker 4 (02:15:38):
I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my hand,
and it'll cost you is a couple of grass, because
this week's science is coming your way.

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So everybody listen to what I say. I use the
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That it's worth, and I'll broadcast my opinion.

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Loberty God.

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It's this week in science, This week in science.

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This week in science, Science, science, science, science, Science.

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