June 12, 2025 • 53 mins
What is in the This Week in Science Podcast? This Week: Sham Panel, Strategic Hawks, Chimps, Cucumbers, and Bats Fight Cancer, Napping Bees, and Much More Science! Become a Patron! Check out the full unedited episode of our podcast on YouTube or Twitch. Remember that you can find TWIS in all the podcast directories. If […] The post 11 June, 2025 – Episode 1018 – Panel? More like Shamel! appeared first on This Week in Science - The Kickass Science Podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Twiss.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This Week in Science, episode number oney eighteen, recorded on Wednesday,
June eleventh, twenty twenty five. Panel more like shaml Hi everybody,
I'm Blair Basdrich and today we will fill your head
with bees, chimps and see cucumbers.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
But first, 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.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Science dizclaimer disclaimer disclaimer. Sometimes the show goes off without
a hitch. Sometimes all your friends are there. Sometimes there's
endless science to discuss, but not tonight. Tonight it's just
me Blair with a few simple stories and all of
(00:56):
you listening. So please join us for another night of
This Week in Science. Coming up next.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I've got that kind of mind.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
I can't get enough. I want to learn everything. I
want to fill it all up with new discoveries. It
happen every day of this week. There's only one place
to go to find the knowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Tosique.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
I want to know Lass This Week in Sciences happened
this week in Science.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Good science to you, chatroom, and welcome to this Week
in Science. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you
for being my co hosts in the chat room and
in your ears and on your various devices.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I have a great show ahead.
Speaker 6 (02:02):
It's gonna be a little abbreviated, but we have so
much to get to.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
On this week's show. I have some science news. I
have a little bit about a vaccine panel you may
have heard about. I also have yawning chimps, bees on breaks,
and bats and cucumbers without cancer. As we jump into
(02:28):
the show, I want to remind you that subscribing to
the Twist podcast on your favorite podcast platform, YouTube or
Facebook brings you Twists every time a new episode is published,
even onelike tonight. Just search for this weekend Science where
podcasts are found, or you can always go to Twist
dot org and click on any of the buttons that
(02:48):
you find there. But now it's time for science.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
First, I'm going to get into.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
The unpleasantness related to the United States government and its
current stance on science, particularly medical science.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Just a quick bit of it is science.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
News here that RFK Junior has he's our Health Secretary,
and he has removed all seventeen sitting members of the
CDC Vaccine Advisory panel, So that is the Center for
(03:34):
Disease Control Advisory Panel for vaccines, and so they make
recommendations to the CDC about who gets vaccines, who gets
preferential access to vaccines, the childhood vaccinations that they receive
at various appointments, the schedule that it comes out on,
when they decided you needed a COVID vaccine every so often,
(03:54):
that came from them.
Speaker 6 (03:56):
So they are experts in their field.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
They are up to date on vaccine science and all
of the kind of tests going on. They're following trends,
they're looking at how quickly illnesses are spreading, and that
is they'll kind of use all of that information to
come together and make recommendations to the CDC. So a
couple days ago he removed all seventeen sitting members and
(04:21):
now as of today he's placed eight people. That's not
enough for a quorum, so they can't actually make any
recommendations yet.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So they need.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Seventeen to nineteen to be able to be a full
compliment on the panel. But they need at least it
looks like ten to be able to make a quorum
and to be able to make recommendations. So he has
to still make a couple appointments. In the meantime, we're
kind of just sitting around waiting. Unfortunately, a lot of
these individuals, as we might have guessed, are not particularly
(05:01):
pro vaccine. They there, They've a lot of them have
posted things to social media or released papers that were
really later debunked that.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That kind of shined.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Uh, I guess cast a shadow over vaccines, their effectiveness, there,
the need for them, all these sorts of things. Uh
the former Deputy Assistant UH to the Department of Health
and Human Services in the first Trump administration, wrote in
a post on on Twitter today, this is a huge
(05:39):
win for the medical freedom movement and the The problem
with this, of course, is that aside from just people
are going to get sick and die because they won't
be getting the vaccines that they need. It's really not
just a personal choice the vaccinations, which is why they
need to be these intense recommends that are pushed and
(06:01):
there's strong faith in the science and the expertise behind it,
because the vaccines that you and I get keep other
people healthy. This was very clear when I had an
infant that was too young to get his vaccines, or
you'd only gotten one or two rounds of vaccine, and
(06:21):
there was more to come. I counted on everyone around
me having vaccinated themselves so that he did not get sick. Similarly,
if you're immuno compromised, if you're elderly, if you are
allergic to certain medications or vaccines, all of those things
(06:41):
depend on herd immunity, and you only get to hurd
immunity with high vaccination rates.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
And I know you all know that already.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
But it's just important to know what's going on so
we can all kind of be alert. We can ask
our doctors for recommendations on whether we should be getting
vaccinations or not.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And just I guess you have to.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Take anything that comes out of his office with a
grain of salt at this point, because just everybody on
this new panel, they have all sorts of things in
their background that prove that they do not have high
support in vaccination in general. We have a measles outbreak happening.
(07:28):
It's just it's very tough. So I bring that up
just so everyone's aware of what's going on, and so
hopefully we can make it clear that this is something
that we care about to our elected officials. So that's
kind of the glimmer of hope I'll give you all
is that this is another reminder to let your elected
(07:48):
officials know what matters to you, and health and human
services matter to a lot of us.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
Go figure, huh. So I really hope.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That our vaccines are still available to us and there
will still be ways to find out what the recommended
cadence is for these vaccinations, but it's very early, so
it's kind of too hard to tell what the long
term impact is going to be. So, I mean, I
know that one of the past chairs of this panel
(08:24):
said that we are now officially a laughingstock to the
rest of the world, which is unfortunate. So hopefully we
can turn things around in the future.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So yeah, that's the that's the that is. That is
the bummer news.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So moving on, let's get into some more fun science. Hey, yawns,
did I make any.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Of you yawn? Yawns are contagious.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
We've had many stories throughout the years on why yons
might be contagious, why you might catch a yawn from.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Another human.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Or even another animal, and ultimately, the science is still out.
We do not know why yon's are contagious. We do
not know the evolutionary kind of reasoning behind it. Some
of the things we've talked about on the show before
is that some people, some research has suggested that it's
(09:44):
it's kind of a social thing.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Like I'm yawning, you're yawning. That means you're kind of
in sync with me, you're paying attention to me.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Also, there's been a theory that it's a social signal
of I can close my eye and go to sleep
because it's safe, so you can also do that. And
then you know, there's of course just the theory that
it has to do with oxygen, just needing more oxygen, right,
(10:12):
But there's not really any good proof for any of
those items. Well, for those of you watching, I have
this truly terrifying image of what they are deeming an
android yawning and chimps yawning. In turn, this is from
(10:33):
the University of London, this research, and they say that
chimpanzees can catch yons from an android imitating human facial expressions.
In this study, they prove that chimps will both yawn
and this is what's really interesting, lie down in response
to yawns made by an android, suggesting that it's a
(10:54):
queue to rest, rather than simply triggering something that's an
automatic response or a social cue or something else.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
This is just hey, time to go to bed. So
that's the theory here.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
They used an android head that could simulate facial expressions
to test the responses of fourteen adult chimpanzees between ten
and thirty three years old.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
This isn't a sanctuary in Spain.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
The android generated facial expressions of yawning, gaping, and neutral.
Each facial movement lasted ten seconds. Chimps displayed contagious yawning
in response to the yawn. The highest yon contagion was
during the full, wide open mouth yawn.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Reduced response when the mouth was partially open, they called
it gaping, and there was no contagion when the android's
mouth was closed. This is what's really interesting. Only the
yawning condition resulted in them gathering betting materials.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And then lying down.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So this is the first time I've ever heard of
this in a study related to yawning, that it actually
sparked sleep like behavior.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
So it's not just I'm tired, you're tired.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's not just I trust you, it's not just I
care about you, which is my favorite one, so that you only.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yawn for people you care about.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
That obviously can't be the case for these chimps because
who's this android? But they fully laid down with some
betting materials like oh, sleepy time. So this is where
you know, we know that yawning has pulled uh has
a kind of a physiological response, but we don't know
(12:50):
its primary function. We don't know why we yawn. We
don't know why it's contagious. We don't know kind of
what the trigger or mechanism behind them the contagious yawning
response is. But this is a really interesting start to
see that chimps did it with an android and that
also they had this additional response of the bedding. I
(13:14):
do think it's funny that they responded to the android
this way, and they have not done a similar study
with humans yet to see if they're of a different
response to the android versus the human versus a chimp.
So that's where this gets really complicated. I also know
that like I yawn when my dog yawns, and my
(13:36):
favorite thing is my almost two year old will yawn
when I yawn if I want them to go to bed,
and I'm trying to get him to go to sleep. Well,
I take a big yawn and till yon. So it's
contagious there. So there's a lot going on here. There's
a social piece, there could be a physiological piece, but
there's also this behavioral kind of secondary action that I've
(13:57):
just Yeah, I haven't really seen disgust before, so I
think that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
In the chat.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yes, I do think that android looks like Doug Jones
as well.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
He might have sat for it, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, And if you're listening, only look at the video
if you really want to see a freakish, Uncanny Valley
style android head. But I'll go ahead and stop sharing
that image.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
How many times did I make you all yawn?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I'm hoping at least three, and then I guess i'd
combat at it because I provided the nightmare fuel afterwards.
All right, So those where my opening stories. Before we
(14:57):
move on to the next section, which is just more me,
I'd like to remind you that if you just tuned in,
you're listening to This Week in Science usually with doctor Kiki,
Justin Jackson and Blair Bazrich, but tonight's it's just Blair.
If you want to help us grow.
Speaker 6 (15:16):
Or support the show and everything it takes to put
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Speaker 1 (15:20):
Please get a friend.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
To subscribe today on YouTube, on Facebook, on iTunes, wherever
we are found, and please also check us out via Patreon.
There's a Patreon link on our website. You can help
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(15:41):
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you can help with all of that stuff. And you
can also check out our zazzlelink. So we have a
Zazzle store that's found on our website and there you
(16:03):
can find all sorts of custom merchandise with some of
my drawings on it, with the Twist logo on it.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
You can go crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And if there's something that you want a particular piece
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You can send us an email and we can put
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(16:31):
was able to get a polo with our logo on
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Speaker 6 (16:34):
So AnyWho, thanks for all your support.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
We couldn't do it without you.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Now yes, oops, all Blair, It's time for more me,
but it's the me part. It's time for Blair's Animal Corner.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Loves Creatures by Pig filled a pad.
Speaker 6 (17:09):
Why I hear about animals.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Except for giant.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Pat What you got Blair?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Oh me?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Oh, I have some animal stuff. Let's talk about it. Okay, So.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
This first section I was actually really hoping to have
Keigy here to talk about because it's very technical, but
I'm going to do my very best.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I have two different stories related.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
To animals who don't get cancer and how we could
leverage that to help humans either not get cancer or
help treat cancer. So first let's talk about sea cucumbers.
So sea cucumbers, which normally I'd like find some good
(18:01):
photos of ce cucumbers and pop them on the screen
for you, but it's I can't do that many things
it wants. So ce cucumbers they look exactly like what
they're called. They're like cucumber shaped. There there's the size.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Of like one of those Disneyland pickles. They're real big.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
They're usually in strange colors. They're kind of spiky.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I used to love working with ce cucumbers at the aquarium.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
They're really fun to kind of to touch. We would
use a nice two finger touch on them in the
touch pool when we would have kids come through. So
sea cucumbers they look spiky, they're not spiky. They're actually
very smooth, and they're basically the janitors of the sea.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
They mainly eat poop and.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Other detritus, and they themselves poop out what is basically
clean sand.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
So they are.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Essential to the health of the ocean ecosystem. Caritivores are
very important in the ocean because otherwise things would kind
of pile up. They're important up here too, but especially
I feel like in the water it's it comes up
a lot because it would just kind of float in
the water column.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Oof.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Well, the sea cucumber could also be a key to
fighting cancer. They actually researchers actually found this is researchers
from University of Mississippi. They found a sugar compound in
sea cucumbers that can effectively block sulf two.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Sulf too.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
You say, oh, yes, it's an enzyme that plays a
major role in cancer growth. So human cells and those
of most mammals are covered in tiny hair like structures
called glycans. Glycans help with cell communication, immune response, and
the recognition of threats like pathogens. In turn, cancer cells
(20:00):
alter the expression of enzymes, including sulf two, which modifies
the structure of glycans, which helps spread cancer. So basically
the change in the structure of the glycns allows the
cancer to spread. And so in theory, if you could
inhibit sulf TOI this enzyme, you could fight the spread
(20:23):
of cancer. So first they use computer modeling and then
they did a bunch of laboratory testing with cqucumbers. They
found that sugar, this this particular sugar that they have.
The sugar found in cqcumbers but not found in any
terrestrial animals.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
They let's see, oh I lost my place, where dude
I go? Oh, here we go.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
So the sugar, which they call fucos silated condroiten sulfate,
they can inhibit sulf to. So this one particular sugar,
it's not found in any land animals, it's not found
in US. It's it's really only as far as they
can tell so far, found in sea cucumbers, the fuco
(21:25):
silated chondroiten sulfate, they inhibit the sulf too, So they
tried that in a computer model in a simulation.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
It worked.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Then they brought it into the lab and they were
able to synthesize it from the sea cucumbers. And what's
really interesting is it doesn't o other previous tests to
try to inhibit sulf too also inhibits blood clotting, but
(22:00):
this one from the sea cucumber does not interfere with
blood clotting.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Why is that important?
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Right, so you don't bleed to death.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Medication that interferes with blood clotting.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
You have to be really really careful because even so,
like this tiny little small cut could end up being
life threatening if you can't if your blood won't clot
And so the fact that this particular sugar does not
interfere with the blood clotting, but it does interfere with
(22:33):
sulf to.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
This is something that could be a game changer for
the medical field.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
So it's different than anything that they've tried to use before,
but it also might be easier to create and safer
to use.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's because other.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Sugar like drugs that they have tried to use to
treat cancer. Those come from pigs or other land animals.
When they extract those, there's also a risk of transferring
viruses because pigs and other mammals are very similar to us,
so there could be a zoonotic transfer, and then there's
(23:22):
also the potential for other harm harmful agents. There's a
potential for it's just kind of too close that there's
unintended consequences. But because this is a secucumber, it's a
it's an animal that's so different mechanically than us, there's
way less risk in using a sugar from a cecucumber.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Now it's it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
You'd think that at this point we would be able
to just synthesize a lot of these things, but there's
research or scientists the medical field is still isolating drugs
from pigs because chemically synthelsie it is really really hard.
It's also very expensive. So the natural source is still
(24:05):
the preferred method for a lot of drugs, but that
means that again it comes with this risk of zoonautics
or other problems when you take it directly from the pig.
So they could synthesize directly from a sea cucumber, and
there wouldn't be these risks. The only problem there is
that harvesting sea cucumbers is a limiting factor. They're not
(24:28):
difficult to raise, but they're not quick. It's not like
a fruitfly or a mouse. So they do farm them
for food, but it's just it wouldn't be at the
level that you would need to do it at to
be able to synthesize a cancer drug yet. So really,
the way to make this come to market, the way
(24:50):
for this to enter a clinical trial, the way for
this to actually become a drug is to be able
to synthesize it in the lab. But there's This is
just the first step in a very long line of
figuring out how these sea cucumbers fight fight cancer, how
the sugar could be applied to a drug, and how
that sugar could be synthesized that drug could be synthesized synthetically.
(25:13):
So all that to say, sea cucumbers breaking sea cucumber
news for fighting cancer pretty cool and directly on the
heels of that.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Bats.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Now, I'm not going to suggest we start farming bats
and synthesizing drugs from bats, but bats have.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
A lot to teach us that's because bats, a lot.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Of them, live a really long time. And in fact,
this study from University of Rochester wanted to look at
four specific bats that live up to thirty five years.
They say that's equivalent to about one hundred and eighty
human years. Whenever you try to talk about like dog
years or bat years or it's it's tough.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
But essentially, based on the.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Way that you extrapolate animal age in relation to human
age and how how long they should live based on
body size and metabolism and all these things, they shouldn't
they should not live that long. So they live about
thirty five years at the max. And what's really interesting
is they do not appear to get cancer. So bats,
(26:25):
these four species of bats that they studied, they don't
get cancer. And they were able to boil it down
to a few specific reasons. It's not just that they're
really lucky. One, bats and humans have a gene called
P fifty three, which is a tumor suppressor shuts down cancer.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
That's a good thing, right When.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Humans get cancer, it's it's often CAUs caused by a
mutation in P fifty three that limits its ability to
act properly, and so it prevents it from killing the cancer. Basically,
(27:07):
a little brown bat found in Rochester and Upstate New York,
contains two copies of P fifty three.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Oh hi, justin, Hi, I don't know if this is
going to work.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Okay, well, thanks for joining. I'm talking about cancer and bats.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Oh I found a bat today.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Oh so, I'm so to catch you up real quick.
Four species of bats.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
They live up to.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Thirty five years, which is equivalent to about one hundred
and eighty human years.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
They don't appear to get cancer.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Why wait, that's still only thirty five human years.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I know, I know, I already talked about that. But
they live a long time.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
They live longer than they should for their shape and
their size, and their and their metabolism and their lifestyle.
They live longer than they should.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Small they don't.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Get cancer, don't live as long as it's a big creature,
which seems right it would be the other way around.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But yeah, yeah, So these four species they found out,
they live a really long time.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
They don't get cancer. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So one, the little brown bat found in Rochester and
upstate New York, they don't get or they have this
gene called P fifty three, which we also have. When
P fifty three fails, we can get cancer.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
So that happens in about It's a repair gene, I believe. Yeah,
so it can that damage that takes place normally, and
then if that gene isn't working, then the repairs don't
take place, and then cancer can.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
That's right. So so in about half of human cancer's
P fifty three failure is involved.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
In the little brown bat, they have two copies of
P fifty.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Three and they have elevated P fifty three activity and
so that is killing cancer cells before they become harmful.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Oh kid, just need more of those, right.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Two.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
An enzyme telomerase is inherently active in bats, which allows
the cells to proliferate indefinitely. This is an advantage in aging.
It supports tissuar generation during aging and injury. What's interesting
is if the cells divide uncontrollably, though, then that can
(29:30):
cause cancer. So higher P fifty three activity actually compensates
for that. So telomerase is healing injury sometimes caused by cancer,
and it's stopping it from gutting overblown and turning into cancer.
So telomerase, big deal. Three, They have an efficient immune
(29:50):
system knocking out multiple deadly pathogens, and so they recognize
and wipe out cancer cancer cells very quick and of
course as we age, we get inflammation, we get all
of kind of these areas where cancer can hide and
grow and and so they're also good at controlling inflammation.
(30:16):
So these are all of the things that are making
bats live long and not get cancer.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
And one of the things that causes inflammation and aging
is sinescent cells, which have stopped for self repairing, which
is it's that whole same system. It sounds like I'm
surprised bats die at all.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Now, right, So here's here's what's really interesting. Ultimately, through
this long comprehensive study, bats do not have a natural
barrier to cancer. Cancer cells are happening in their bodies.
They have nothing stopping cancer from happening. But their cells
can transform cancer from from turning into a problem. They
(30:58):
have all these tumor suppressing mechanis and so they survive.
So what does this mean for us, Well, there are
already several anti cancer drugs targeting P fifty three, that's
what you alluded to justin and then there's not yet
any studies on telomeriies but this could be a good
(31:19):
kind of thought to start that process. And so just
kind of between these and then what I talked about
right before this was was cucumbers. There's a there's a
couple different situations c cucumbers. Sorry it should have been
specific ce cucumbers and vats giving us some clues into
(31:39):
fighting cancer. So I love seeing that in the natural
role because cancer is a naturally occurring problem, so there's
natural solutions.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Hi, justin, Hey, how you doing. Oh my gosh. You
side note to whatever story we're talking about. Stories we're
talking about, Yeah, I just stayed at the worst Oh
I'm not even staying there. I started this day at
the worst hotel room I have ever seen in my
entire life. And and I had checked the Wi Fi
(32:14):
ahead of time, and it was blazing fast, like the
best internet at the worst motel. Fine for the show,
I'll stay at the worst motel. But there's some weird
technical thing with specifically with mac books, Apple products and
hotel wifis that they just don't get along. And so
(32:36):
it connected it first, and then when I had to reconnect,
there's no way to reset, turned everything off, started stuff,
e ray stuff. Anyway, I found I found some road
Wi Fi here, So we'll see how this goes. I
don't know how well, but.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
All right, well I had one more animal corner story,
but I'm gonna save it because you're currently working.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Please, Okay, So I have my favorite animal story for
a while. It's an animal intelligence story, so it's gonna
fit right into the animal.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
This is.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
This is a University of Tennessee. One researcher documented in
immature Cooper's Hawk for a couple of weeks, and the
hawk was using traffic pedestrian signal patterns as a concealment
for hunting for hunting other birds. So the scenario is,
(33:37):
there's this street and at the end of the street,
there's a red light with an intersection with a pedestrian
cross and if somebody hits the pedestrian crossing sign, it goes.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Boop boop boop.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Right, So now you know, okay, somebody is going to
be crossing until that signal is sounding. That audible boop
sound is happening, the hawk is nowhere to be seen.
As soon as the pedestrian signal starts boop boop, the
(34:14):
hawk shows up at the far end of the street
on a perch, and it just sort of sits there. Now,
if there's a couple of cars at the light, the
hawk just watches, and if the light turns green and
the cars go, the hawk disappears again and doesn't come
(34:34):
back until boop boop boop, and then the hawk reappears.
And what often happens is that light, or occasionally happens
at least, is that light that red light with the
cross with the pedestrian signal is about ninety seconds stop,
so cars start to build up. If cars line up
(34:58):
at least four houses is deep, then the hawk springs
into action. Because at the other end of the street,
near the pedestrian crosswalk is a yard of somebody who
loves birds, and so every morning they throw out a
whole bunch of bird seed and crumbs and things, and
(35:19):
there's all these mourning doves and sparry. All these birds
come to snack there and they're hanging out there on
the lawn. But when those cars go four houses deep,
the hawk on the opposite side of the street of
all the you know, pecking free lunch birds comes swooping
down just a couple of feet off of the sidewalk,
(35:44):
low enough so that it's hidden behind the line of cars,
and then it goes zooms all the way down to
the street until it gets almost to the end, and
then it zips in between a couple of the stop
cars at the front bumper height and sneak attacks the
crumb eating birds. So they observed for a few times
(36:08):
a few a few weeks, they saw a couple of
confirmed kills using this strategy, and what was amazing was,
not only does the bird not even bother to come
look without the pedestrian crosswalk beeping, it also doesn't show
up on the weekends. It doesn't even bother. There's not
(36:30):
enough traffic on that street for the cars to line up.
So it's it's absolutely using the traffic patterns with an
audible signal with with a uh, you know, sort of
seeing how if the enough cars have lined up to
give it the cover whether or not it's worth making
(36:50):
this attack. It's a real deep kind of a strategy.
And it knows not to show up on the weekends.
It's got it's got the schedule of days.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
So they did the study and they found that the
next season they weren't studying it, but they observed the
behavior again and they think it's even They're not sure,
but they think it's the same likely the same bird.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Well, that's what I want to know. Is this going
to spread socially? Is it just going to stay with
this one bird? What's happening in other cities? I want
to know how widespread this is?
Speaker 6 (37:25):
But yeah, I mean it's a visual and audio q that.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
They could used to their advantage.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
And and the research is sort of pointing out that
in a normal wild environment we probably are massively underestimating
the complication, the sort of thought process or the complicated
nature of the hunting strategies. It's not just oh see
a bird, go after it, you know, sea prey, go
(37:53):
after it. But they likely are using pretty deep strategy
even in those native wild that they're just applying. This
one's now applying to an urban setting that that's figured out.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
The sun is just right, the shadows just right from
this direction with that rock or yeah, absolutely, yeah, Wow,
that's very cool.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
That's that's sharp, sharp stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Anyway, that was my favorite bird story of the a
couple of weeks old. Now I've been trying to bring
that story for like a couple of weeks.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
The cars just didn't line up for you.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
What could you do?
Speaker 4 (38:39):
Just couldn't that just didn't get the right signal.
Speaker 6 (38:44):
Did you bring any other stories?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Or I have a bunch more I could ramble on about.
But let's let's finish up the animal corner.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Okay, okay, great, So let's talk about bees taking breaks.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I love this story.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
This is a story for University California Riverside looking at
bee queens and specifically bumblebees and how they like to
take breaks. So, bumblebee queens they're the sole founders of
their colonies, and in the early stages of colony building,
(39:19):
they'll they have to do everything.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
They're all by themselves.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
They forge for food, they incubate developing broods by heating
them with their wing muscles.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
They maintain the.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Nest, and they lay eggs, and if the queen suddenly disappears,
the whole colony fails. But what's interesting is researchers just
kind of naturally discovered that these queens had this burst
of egg laying when they first established the colony, followed
by several days of inactivity. They just took a nice rest.
(39:54):
They monitored more than one hundred queens over a period
of forty five days. This is an controlled insectory. They
documented each queen's nesting activity looking at their clutches, and
they saw a pattern which was that the queen's pause
reingproduction for several days right after intense egg laying. Now
(40:20):
where this gets interesting is that it turns out it
was more than just I'm pooped from laying eggs. I'm
going to rest until I am ready to start laying
eggs again. No, no, it's more complicated than that. It
actually aligns with the developmental stages of their brood. So
the way that they figured that out is they added
(40:41):
broods at different stages to the nest while the queen
was resting. So they would add young larva, old larva,
and pupe, and they found that the time that the
queen would then suddenly begin laying eggs again was different
to on how old the brood was in her nest.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
So when you throw pupe in.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
There, which are nearly mature bees, they resumed egg laying
in only about one and a half days pretty much
right away they got back to laying eggs, But when
they added the larva, the pauses stretched to about twelve
and a half days.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
That is a long wait, so if.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
You're so, if you're the queen bee, yes, and you're
there in the brooding breeding cave or whatever it is, Yeah,
that's how else do you tell time?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So it's how do you tell time?
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yeah, But it's also it's also that they use cooperative
brood care, so having the teenagers there means they have
help for the next generation. The teenagers are old enough.
The teenagers, right, the pepe are old enough that by
(42:07):
the time new eggs hatch, they will be able to
help care for the colony. So that's yes, they're measuring time,
but they are also measuring the ability of the colony,
so like they're taking a rest because they can't have
too many babies at once. They have to wait for
the youngest to grow up old enough to be able
to help take care of the next youngest. So previously
(42:31):
the conventional thinking was that these bees and other use
social insects are just always popping out eggs across all
stages of development. They're just make as many babies as possible.
But it is strategic, it is intentional, and so in
these very vulnerable early days of establishing a colony, if
(42:55):
she pushes herself too fast, too hard, she could not
survive and the whole colony would collapse. So it's really
important that she takes care of herself. But it's also
important that she times things correctly so that she gets help.
So it's time to now look and see if other
you social insects are doing this. And of course this
(43:16):
helps us understand the biological needs of queens and the
establish it of a new colony, which is important in
this world where bees are in trouble.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
You know, I hy bees never stop the metal of
the flowers when they're when they're not working.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
Just more work, I thought you're gonna say, because.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Because it's just more work.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
All right, Well that's all my animal corner stories. What
else do you want to talk about?
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Justin That's all I had. That's all I had.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
We done.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Wait, no, I've got more. Though, I got more I
can talk about. I'm sure. And let me let me
take a look into the grab bag here.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Okay, you may pick one to two.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
Well, I got okay. Psychiatric prescriptions are linked to higher
als risk, but it might not be the medications that
are doing it. It could just be that they're they're connected.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, that would make sense for sure.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Yeah, let's see. Oh, long term study finds vascular health
leads to later dementia risk. That one's interesting because it.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Kind of shows is that just because you live longer, No, but.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
That you can actually see it coming before it gets
to dementia. In somebody's like forties, you can already see
if they have vascular problems that they are headed more
likely towards dementia because a lot of dementia is sourced
by being able to get enough blood to the brain
(45:02):
through the vascular system.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Another weird thing, red blood cells. I'm gonna do all
quick stuff. Red blood cell rupturing and not actual clotting
has been driving some of the vessel block had seen
in COVID nineteen. They thought it was, you know, the
sort of coagulating blood or something was causing the higher
risks of stroke with people who had COVID nineteen. Turns
(45:28):
out now it's lies cells that are getting stuck in
weird places. Oh doing it you know?
Speaker 6 (45:37):
Yikes?
Speaker 1 (45:38):
That sounds bad.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Yeah, hey, men and maybe women too. I don't even know.
If probably everybody colonoscopy screening, you should do it younger.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
How much younger?
Speaker 4 (45:59):
They found no difference in terms of chances of finding
stuff in people forty five to forty nine versus the
group fifty to fifty four. So as much of it's
ten years younger getting that colonoscopy, the chances of them
catching something that's not supposed to be there is just
(46:21):
as good.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I see. So there's no point to wait.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
No point in waiting. Hey, there's a new diagnostic pen
on the market that you can write in the air
with or do some handwriting, and this electronic pen has
a ninety six percent chance of correctly diagnosing Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
What just because it has a.
Speaker 6 (46:51):
With like a gyroscope in it, and I can tell
how you're moving.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
It's got a sensor and it can. Yeah, it's sort
of tracking the movement types. And it's also I think
the firmness with which the pen is being gripped is also.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Part of Well, that wouldn't work if you had a
bunch of nerve damage in your hand from an animal plight.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
But yeah, so you have to you have to try
to write with your other hand.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
I have there's damage on both.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Oh my gosh, there's all sorts of other stuff out
there in the world of science. There's always more. But yeah,
I guess that's if we're near the end of the show.
I don't know where we are. I just jumped in.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I know you've we're near the end.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
I mean we've been on the air for fifty one minutes,
but the first forty was just me talking, so.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
That sounds like a solid Hey uh, dear twistman in
the audience, how is this? Is this sufficient? I can't tell.
I can never tell the connection on this side because
it always looks fine.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
So to me, your sound is perfect. Your your visual
has glitched out a few times, but your sound has
been fine.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
All right, So.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Who needs a hotel?
Speaker 4 (48:09):
I have a backup? Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah totally. I
think it was the one place I had been going.
Everything is booked this week. I didn't think ahead. It's
the university is graduating graduation, and so they've brought all
of the relatives from all over the world to see
(48:31):
them where they have. Of course, so Patrick says, my
my sound is kind of muffled. It might not be
on the setting.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yes, it is what it is, all right.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Well, since we're doing the after show and the actual show,
maybe we should close it.
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Let's do that part.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yeah, Hey, I think that's going to do it for
us tonight on This Week in Science. Thank you for listening, watching,
joining all of us tonight. Hope you enjoyed the show.
Shout out Staffata for his help with social media and
show notes, Gored for manning the chatroom, Identity four for
recording the show. Rachel for your amazing assistance. I think
there's only a couple flubs for you, Rachel tonight. Thank
(49:14):
you in advance. And I'd like to thank are Patreons
sponsors for their generous support. I do not have the list,
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Speaker 7 (49:26):
Robert Norland, Robert W. Farley, Lauren Gifford, Dana Lewis, Eden Mandel,
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Stephen Alberon, Darryl Meishak, Andrew Swanson, Fretis Win of Fours,
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Flying Out, Christopher drier, Ardiam, Greg Briggs, John Atwoodriudy Garcia,
Redney Lewis, Paul Flip, Shane Lesson, Craig Landers, Sue Doster,
(50:09):
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Kevin par Chan, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul d Disney, Paco,
Tony Steele.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Thank you, Patreon sponsors, thank you for your support. If
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patreon dot com. Slash This Week in Science. On next
week's show, we will be back with Justin, Kiki and
Me Blair. Don't miss it.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
That'll be at eight pm Pacific time, broadcasting live from Twitch,
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Speaker 4 (50:44):
You take mine now to us as it When did
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You didn't have to hand off the baton. Just listen
to This Week in Science wherever podcasts are found. If
you enjoyed the show, force your friends to listen too.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Yeah, grab their phone when they're not looking and twists.
They'll never know until it pops up in their queue, and.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Then they'll be like, yes, this is amazing.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
For more information on anything you've heard here today, show
notes and links to stories will be available on our
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Speaker 4 (51:24):
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(51:45):
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pod of unborn bees. Then that aren't getting ready to help?
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (51:57):
Sure, not so easy? Is it?
Speaker 4 (51:59):
Just it's hard to come up with it?
Speaker 8 (52:01):
On the floe like that?
Speaker 4 (52:02):
I feel like you must get you must have a
sharper mind than me.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
We look forward to discussing science with you again next week.
And if you've learned anything from the show, remember it's
all in your head.
Speaker 8 (52:20):
This week in Science, This week in science, This week
in science, This week in science. At the end of
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it says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell my advice,
(52:40):
show them how to stop the robots with a simple device.
I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my
hands and a little coffee is a couple of grass.
Because this week science.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
Is coming your way, So everybody listens to what I say.
Speaker 8 (53:00):
I use the scientific method for all that.
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It's worth, and I'll broadcast.
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My opinion all overty. Oh, it's this week in science.
This week in science. This week in science, Science Science, Science, Science, Science.
Speaker 5 (53:16):
This week is science. This weekend Science, This week in science,
This week in science, This week in science, This week
in science, This week in science, This week in science,
This is Twiss.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This Week in Science, episode number oney eighteen, recorded on Wednesday,
June eleventh, twenty twenty five. Panel more like shaml Hi everybody,
I'm Blair Basdrich and today we will fill your head
with bees, chimps and see cucumbers.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
But first, 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.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Science dizclaimer disclaimer disclaimer. Sometimes the show goes off without
a hitch. Sometimes all your friends are there. Sometimes there's
endless science to discuss, but not tonight. Tonight it's just
me Blair with a few simple stories and all of
(00:56):
you listening. So please join us for another night of
This Week in Science. Coming up next.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I've got that kind of mind.
Speaker 5 (01:09):
I can't get enough. I want to learn everything. I
want to fill it all up with new discoveries. It
happen every day of this week. There's only one place
to go to find the knowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Tosique.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
I want to know Lass This Week in Sciences happened
this week in Science.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Good science to you, chatroom, and welcome to this Week
in Science. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you
for being my co hosts in the chat room and
in your ears and on your various devices.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I have a great show ahead.
Speaker 6 (02:02):
It's gonna be a little abbreviated, but we have so
much to get to.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
On this week's show. I have some science news. I
have a little bit about a vaccine panel you may
have heard about. I also have yawning chimps, bees on breaks,
and bats and cucumbers without cancer. As we jump into
(02:28):
the show, I want to remind you that subscribing to
the Twist podcast on your favorite podcast platform, YouTube or
Facebook brings you Twists every time a new episode is published,
even onelike tonight. Just search for this weekend Science where
podcasts are found, or you can always go to Twist
dot org and click on any of the buttons that
(02:48):
you find there. But now it's time for science.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
First, I'm going to get into.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
The unpleasantness related to the United States government and its
current stance on science, particularly medical science.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Just a quick bit of it is science.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
News here that RFK Junior has he's our Health Secretary,
and he has removed all seventeen sitting members of the
CDC Vaccine Advisory panel, So that is the Center for
(03:34):
Disease Control Advisory Panel for vaccines, and so they make
recommendations to the CDC about who gets vaccines, who gets
preferential access to vaccines, the childhood vaccinations that they receive
at various appointments, the schedule that it comes out on,
when they decided you needed a COVID vaccine every so often,
(03:54):
that came from them.
Speaker 6 (03:56):
So they are experts in their field.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
They are up to date on vaccine science and all
of the kind of tests going on. They're following trends,
they're looking at how quickly illnesses are spreading, and that
is they'll kind of use all of that information to
come together and make recommendations to the CDC. So a
couple days ago he removed all seventeen sitting members and
(04:21):
now as of today he's placed eight people. That's not
enough for a quorum, so they can't actually make any
recommendations yet.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So they need.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Seventeen to nineteen to be able to be a full
compliment on the panel. But they need at least it
looks like ten to be able to make a quorum
and to be able to make recommendations. So he has
to still make a couple appointments. In the meantime, we're
kind of just sitting around waiting. Unfortunately, a lot of
these individuals, as we might have guessed, are not particularly
(05:01):
pro vaccine. They there, They've a lot of them have
posted things to social media or released papers that were
really later debunked that.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That kind of shined.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Uh, I guess cast a shadow over vaccines, their effectiveness, there,
the need for them, all these sorts of things. Uh
the former Deputy Assistant UH to the Department of Health
and Human Services in the first Trump administration, wrote in
a post on on Twitter today, this is a huge
(05:39):
win for the medical freedom movement and the The problem
with this, of course, is that aside from just people
are going to get sick and die because they won't
be getting the vaccines that they need. It's really not
just a personal choice the vaccinations, which is why they
need to be these intense recommends that are pushed and
(06:01):
there's strong faith in the science and the expertise behind it,
because the vaccines that you and I get keep other
people healthy. This was very clear when I had an
infant that was too young to get his vaccines, or
you'd only gotten one or two rounds of vaccine, and
(06:21):
there was more to come. I counted on everyone around
me having vaccinated themselves so that he did not get sick. Similarly,
if you're immuno compromised, if you're elderly, if you are
allergic to certain medications or vaccines, all of those things
(06:41):
depend on herd immunity, and you only get to hurd
immunity with high vaccination rates.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
And I know you all know that already.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
But it's just important to know what's going on so
we can all kind of be alert. We can ask
our doctors for recommendations on whether we should be getting
vaccinations or not.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And just I guess you have to.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Take anything that comes out of his office with a
grain of salt at this point, because just everybody on
this new panel, they have all sorts of things in
their background that prove that they do not have high
support in vaccination in general. We have a measles outbreak happening.
(07:28):
It's just it's very tough. So I bring that up
just so everyone's aware of what's going on, and so
hopefully we can make it clear that this is something
that we care about to our elected officials. So that's
kind of the glimmer of hope I'll give you all
is that this is another reminder to let your elected
(07:48):
officials know what matters to you, and health and human
services matter to a lot of us.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
Go figure, huh. So I really hope.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That our vaccines are still available to us and there
will still be ways to find out what the recommended
cadence is for these vaccinations, but it's very early, so
it's kind of too hard to tell what the long
term impact is going to be. So, I mean, I
know that one of the past chairs of this panel
(08:24):
said that we are now officially a laughingstock to the
rest of the world, which is unfortunate. So hopefully we
can turn things around in the future.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
So yeah, that's the that's the that is. That is
the bummer news.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So moving on, let's get into some more fun science. Hey, yawns,
did I make any.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Of you yawn? Yawns are contagious.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
We've had many stories throughout the years on why yons
might be contagious, why you might catch a yawn from.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Another human.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Or even another animal, and ultimately, the science is still out.
We do not know why yon's are contagious. We do
not know the evolutionary kind of reasoning behind it. Some
of the things we've talked about on the show before
is that some people, some research has suggested that it's
(09:44):
it's kind of a social thing.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Like I'm yawning, you're yawning. That means you're kind of
in sync with me, you're paying attention to me.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Also, there's been a theory that it's a social signal
of I can close my eye and go to sleep
because it's safe, so you can also do that. And
then you know, there's of course just the theory that
it has to do with oxygen, just needing more oxygen, right,
(10:12):
But there's not really any good proof for any of
those items. Well, for those of you watching, I have
this truly terrifying image of what they are deeming an
android yawning and chimps yawning. In turn, this is from
(10:33):
the University of London, this research, and they say that
chimpanzees can catch yons from an android imitating human facial expressions.
In this study, they prove that chimps will both yawn
and this is what's really interesting, lie down in response
to yawns made by an android, suggesting that it's a
(10:54):
queue to rest, rather than simply triggering something that's an
automatic response or a social cue or something else.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
This is just hey, time to go to bed. So
that's the theory here.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
They used an android head that could simulate facial expressions
to test the responses of fourteen adult chimpanzees between ten
and thirty three years old.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
This isn't a sanctuary in Spain.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
The android generated facial expressions of yawning, gaping, and neutral.
Each facial movement lasted ten seconds. Chimps displayed contagious yawning
in response to the yawn. The highest yon contagion was
during the full, wide open mouth yawn.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Reduced response when the mouth was partially open, they called
it gaping, and there was no contagion when the android's
mouth was closed. This is what's really interesting. Only the
yawning condition resulted in them gathering betting materials.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And then lying down.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So this is the first time I've ever heard of
this in a study related to yawning, that it actually
sparked sleep like behavior.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
So it's not just I'm tired, you're tired.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
It's not just I trust you, it's not just I
care about you, which is my favorite one, so that you only.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yawn for people you care about.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
That obviously can't be the case for these chimps because
who's this android? But they fully laid down with some
betting materials like oh, sleepy time. So this is where
you know, we know that yawning has pulled uh has
a kind of a physiological response, but we don't know
(12:50):
its primary function. We don't know why we yawn. We
don't know why it's contagious. We don't know kind of
what the trigger or mechanism behind them the contagious yawning
response is. But this is a really interesting start to
see that chimps did it with an android and that
also they had this additional response of the bedding. I
(13:14):
do think it's funny that they responded to the android
this way, and they have not done a similar study
with humans yet to see if they're of a different
response to the android versus the human versus a chimp.
So that's where this gets really complicated. I also know
that like I yawn when my dog yawns, and my
(13:36):
favorite thing is my almost two year old will yawn
when I yawn if I want them to go to bed,
and I'm trying to get him to go to sleep. Well,
I take a big yawn and till yon. So it's
contagious there. So there's a lot going on here. There's
a social piece, there could be a physiological piece, but
there's also this behavioral kind of secondary action that I've
(13:57):
just Yeah, I haven't really seen disgust before, so I
think that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
In the chat.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yes, I do think that android looks like Doug Jones
as well.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
He might have sat for it, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, And if you're listening, only look at the video
if you really want to see a freakish, Uncanny Valley
style android head. But I'll go ahead and stop sharing
that image.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
How many times did I make you all yawn?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
I'm hoping at least three, and then I guess i'd
combat at it because I provided the nightmare fuel afterwards.
All right, So those where my opening stories. Before we
(14:57):
move on to the next section, which is just more me,
I'd like to remind you that if you just tuned in,
you're listening to This Week in Science usually with doctor Kiki,
Justin Jackson and Blair Bazrich, but tonight's it's just Blair.
If you want to help us grow.
Speaker 6 (15:16):
Or support the show and everything it takes to put
it on.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Please get a friend.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
To subscribe today on YouTube, on Facebook, on iTunes, wherever
we are found, and please also check us out via Patreon.
There's a Patreon link on our website. You can help
donate to each episode monthly to help kind of keep
(15:41):
the lights on here through our streaming platform, updating our
technology as is needed, and keeping us web hosted, so
you can help with all of that stuff. And you
can also check out our zazzlelink. So we have a
Zazzle store that's found on our website and there you
(16:03):
can find all sorts of custom merchandise with some of
my drawings on it, with the Twist logo on it.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
You can go crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And if there's something that you want a particular piece
of art on, or a particular or our logo on
that's not in the store, you can actually ask us.
You can send us an email and we can put
that in the store for you. So I know, for example,
at one time, we had a high school teacher who
wanted to wear a Twist polo and so I put
that in the in the store for him and he
(16:31):
was able to get a polo with our logo on
it to wear to school.
Speaker 6 (16:34):
So AnyWho, thanks for all your support.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
We couldn't do it without you.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Now yes, oops, all Blair, It's time for more me,
but it's the me part. It's time for Blair's Animal Corner.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Loves Creatures by Pig filled a pad.
Speaker 6 (17:09):
Why I hear about animals.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Except for giant.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Pat What you got Blair?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Oh me?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Oh, I have some animal stuff. Let's talk about it. Okay, So.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
This first section I was actually really hoping to have
Keigy here to talk about because it's very technical, but
I'm going to do my very best.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
I have two different stories related.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
To animals who don't get cancer and how we could
leverage that to help humans either not get cancer or
help treat cancer. So first let's talk about sea cucumbers.
So sea cucumbers, which normally I'd like find some good
(18:01):
photos of ce cucumbers and pop them on the screen
for you, but it's I can't do that many things
it wants. So ce cucumbers they look exactly like what
they're called. They're like cucumber shaped. There there's the size.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Of like one of those Disneyland pickles. They're real big.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
They're usually in strange colors. They're kind of spiky.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I used to love working with ce cucumbers at the aquarium.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
They're really fun to kind of to touch. We would
use a nice two finger touch on them in the
touch pool when we would have kids come through. So
sea cucumbers they look spiky, they're not spiky. They're actually
very smooth, and they're basically the janitors of the sea.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
They mainly eat poop and.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Other detritus, and they themselves poop out what is basically
clean sand.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
So they are.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Essential to the health of the ocean ecosystem. Caritivores are
very important in the ocean because otherwise things would kind
of pile up. They're important up here too, but especially
I feel like in the water it's it comes up
a lot because it would just kind of float in
the water column.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Oof.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Well, the sea cucumber could also be a key to
fighting cancer. They actually researchers actually found this is researchers
from University of Mississippi. They found a sugar compound in
sea cucumbers that can effectively block sulf two.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Sulf too.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
You say, oh, yes, it's an enzyme that plays a
major role in cancer growth. So human cells and those
of most mammals are covered in tiny hair like structures
called glycans. Glycans help with cell communication, immune response, and
the recognition of threats like pathogens. In turn, cancer cells
(20:00):
alter the expression of enzymes, including sulf two, which modifies
the structure of glycans, which helps spread cancer. So basically
the change in the structure of the glycns allows the
cancer to spread. And so in theory, if you could
inhibit sulf TOI this enzyme, you could fight the spread
(20:23):
of cancer. So first they use computer modeling and then
they did a bunch of laboratory testing with cqucumbers. They
found that sugar, this this particular sugar that they have.
The sugar found in cqcumbers but not found in any
terrestrial animals.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
They let's see, oh I lost my place, where dude
I go? Oh, here we go.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
So the sugar, which they call fucos silated condroiten sulfate,
they can inhibit sulf to. So this one particular sugar,
it's not found in any land animals, it's not found
in US. It's it's really only as far as they
can tell so far, found in sea cucumbers, the fuco
(21:25):
silated chondroiten sulfate, they inhibit the sulf too, So they
tried that in a computer model in a simulation.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
It worked.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Then they brought it into the lab and they were
able to synthesize it from the sea cucumbers. And what's
really interesting is it doesn't o other previous tests to
try to inhibit sulf too also inhibits blood clotting, but
(22:00):
this one from the sea cucumber does not interfere with
blood clotting.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Why is that important?
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Right, so you don't bleed to death.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Medication that interferes with blood clotting.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
You have to be really really careful because even so,
like this tiny little small cut could end up being
life threatening if you can't if your blood won't clot
And so the fact that this particular sugar does not
interfere with the blood clotting, but it does interfere with
(22:33):
sulf to.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
This is something that could be a game changer for
the medical field.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
So it's different than anything that they've tried to use before,
but it also might be easier to create and safer
to use.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's because other.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Sugar like drugs that they have tried to use to
treat cancer. Those come from pigs or other land animals.
When they extract those, there's also a risk of transferring
viruses because pigs and other mammals are very similar to us,
so there could be a zoonotic transfer, and then there's
(23:22):
also the potential for other harm harmful agents. There's a
potential for it's just kind of too close that there's
unintended consequences. But because this is a secucumber, it's a
it's an animal that's so different mechanically than us, there's
way less risk in using a sugar from a cecucumber.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Now it's it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
You'd think that at this point we would be able
to just synthesize a lot of these things, but there's
research or scientists the medical field is still isolating drugs
from pigs because chemically synthelsie it is really really hard.
It's also very expensive. So the natural source is still
(24:05):
the preferred method for a lot of drugs, but that
means that again it comes with this risk of zoonautics
or other problems when you take it directly from the pig.
So they could synthesize directly from a sea cucumber, and
there wouldn't be these risks. The only problem there is
that harvesting sea cucumbers is a limiting factor. They're not
(24:28):
difficult to raise, but they're not quick. It's not like
a fruitfly or a mouse. So they do farm them
for food, but it's just it wouldn't be at the
level that you would need to do it at to
be able to synthesize a cancer drug yet. So really,
the way to make this come to market, the way
(24:50):
for this to enter a clinical trial, the way for
this to actually become a drug is to be able
to synthesize it in the lab. But there's This is
just the first step in a very long line of
figuring out how these sea cucumbers fight fight cancer, how
the sugar could be applied to a drug, and how
that sugar could be synthesized that drug could be synthesized synthetically.
(25:13):
So all that to say, sea cucumbers breaking sea cucumber
news for fighting cancer pretty cool and directly on the
heels of that.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Bats.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Now, I'm not going to suggest we start farming bats
and synthesizing drugs from bats, but bats have.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
A lot to teach us that's because bats, a lot.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Of them, live a really long time. And in fact,
this study from University of Rochester wanted to look at
four specific bats that live up to thirty five years.
They say that's equivalent to about one hundred and eighty
human years. Whenever you try to talk about like dog
years or bat years or it's it's tough.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
But essentially, based on the.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Way that you extrapolate animal age in relation to human
age and how how long they should live based on
body size and metabolism and all these things, they shouldn't
they should not live that long. So they live about
thirty five years at the max. And what's really interesting
is they do not appear to get cancer. So bats,
(26:25):
these four species of bats that they studied, they don't
get cancer. And they were able to boil it down
to a few specific reasons. It's not just that they're
really lucky. One, bats and humans have a gene called
P fifty three, which is a tumor suppressor shuts down cancer.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
That's a good thing, right When.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Humans get cancer, it's it's often CAUs caused by a
mutation in P fifty three that limits its ability to
act properly, and so it prevents it from killing the cancer. Basically,
(27:07):
a little brown bat found in Rochester and Upstate New York,
contains two copies of P fifty three.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Oh hi, justin, Hi, I don't know if this is
going to work.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Okay, well, thanks for joining. I'm talking about cancer and bats.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Oh I found a bat today.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Oh so, I'm so to catch you up real quick.
Four species of bats.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
They live up to.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Thirty five years, which is equivalent to about one hundred
and eighty human years.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
They don't appear to get cancer.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Why wait, that's still only thirty five human years.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I know, I know, I already talked about that. But
they live a long time.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
They live longer than they should for their shape and
their size, and their and their metabolism and their lifestyle.
They live longer than they should.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Small they don't.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Get cancer, don't live as long as it's a big creature,
which seems right it would be the other way around.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But yeah, yeah, So these four species they found out,
they live a really long time.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
They don't get cancer. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So one, the little brown bat found in Rochester and
upstate New York, they don't get or they have this
gene called P fifty three, which we also have. When
P fifty three fails, we can get cancer.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
So that happens in about It's a repair gene, I believe. Yeah,
so it can that damage that takes place normally, and
then if that gene isn't working, then the repairs don't
take place, and then cancer can.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
That's right. So so in about half of human cancer's
P fifty three failure is involved.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
In the little brown bat, they have two copies of
P fifty.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Three and they have elevated P fifty three activity and
so that is killing cancer cells before they become harmful.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Oh kid, just need more of those, right.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Two.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
An enzyme telomerase is inherently active in bats, which allows
the cells to proliferate indefinitely. This is an advantage in aging.
It supports tissuar generation during aging and injury. What's interesting
is if the cells divide uncontrollably, though, then that can
(29:30):
cause cancer. So higher P fifty three activity actually compensates
for that. So telomerase is healing injury sometimes caused by cancer,
and it's stopping it from gutting overblown and turning into cancer.
So telomerase, big deal. Three, They have an efficient immune
(29:50):
system knocking out multiple deadly pathogens, and so they recognize
and wipe out cancer cancer cells very quick and of
course as we age, we get inflammation, we get all
of kind of these areas where cancer can hide and
grow and and so they're also good at controlling inflammation.
(30:16):
So these are all of the things that are making
bats live long and not get cancer.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
And one of the things that causes inflammation and aging
is sinescent cells, which have stopped for self repairing, which
is it's that whole same system. It sounds like I'm
surprised bats die at all.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Now, right, So here's here's what's really interesting. Ultimately, through
this long comprehensive study, bats do not have a natural
barrier to cancer. Cancer cells are happening in their bodies.
They have nothing stopping cancer from happening. But their cells
can transform cancer from from turning into a problem. They
(30:58):
have all these tumor suppressing mechanis and so they survive.
So what does this mean for us, Well, there are
already several anti cancer drugs targeting P fifty three, that's
what you alluded to justin and then there's not yet
any studies on telomeriies but this could be a good
(31:19):
kind of thought to start that process. And so just
kind of between these and then what I talked about
right before this was was cucumbers. There's a there's a
couple different situations c cucumbers. Sorry it should have been
specific ce cucumbers and vats giving us some clues into
(31:39):
fighting cancer. So I love seeing that in the natural
role because cancer is a naturally occurring problem, so there's
natural solutions.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
Hi, justin, Hey, how you doing. Oh my gosh. You
side note to whatever story we're talking about. Stories we're
talking about, Yeah, I just stayed at the worst Oh
I'm not even staying there. I started this day at
the worst hotel room I have ever seen in my
entire life. And and I had checked the Wi Fi
(32:14):
ahead of time, and it was blazing fast, like the
best internet at the worst motel. Fine for the show,
I'll stay at the worst motel. But there's some weird
technical thing with specifically with mac books, Apple products and
hotel wifis that they just don't get along. And so
(32:36):
it connected it first, and then when I had to reconnect,
there's no way to reset, turned everything off, started stuff,
e ray stuff. Anyway, I found I found some road
Wi Fi here, So we'll see how this goes. I
don't know how well, but.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
All right, well I had one more animal corner story,
but I'm gonna save it because you're currently working.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Please, Okay, So I have my favorite animal story for
a while. It's an animal intelligence story, so it's gonna
fit right into the animal.
Speaker 6 (33:10):
This is.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
This is a University of Tennessee. One researcher documented in
immature Cooper's Hawk for a couple of weeks, and the
hawk was using traffic pedestrian signal patterns as a concealment
for hunting for hunting other birds. So the scenario is,
(33:37):
there's this street and at the end of the street,
there's a red light with an intersection with a pedestrian
cross and if somebody hits the pedestrian crossing sign, it goes.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Boop boop boop.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Right, So now you know, okay, somebody is going to
be crossing until that signal is sounding. That audible boop
sound is happening, the hawk is nowhere to be seen.
As soon as the pedestrian signal starts boop boop, the
(34:14):
hawk shows up at the far end of the street
on a perch, and it just sort of sits there. Now,
if there's a couple of cars at the light, the
hawk just watches, and if the light turns green and
the cars go, the hawk disappears again and doesn't come
(34:34):
back until boop boop boop, and then the hawk reappears.
And what often happens is that light, or occasionally happens
at least, is that light that red light with the
cross with the pedestrian signal is about ninety seconds stop,
so cars start to build up. If cars line up
(34:58):
at least four houses is deep, then the hawk springs
into action. Because at the other end of the street,
near the pedestrian crosswalk is a yard of somebody who
loves birds, and so every morning they throw out a
whole bunch of bird seed and crumbs and things, and
(35:19):
there's all these mourning doves and sparry. All these birds
come to snack there and they're hanging out there on
the lawn. But when those cars go four houses deep,
the hawk on the opposite side of the street of
all the you know, pecking free lunch birds comes swooping
down just a couple of feet off of the sidewalk,
(35:44):
low enough so that it's hidden behind the line of cars,
and then it goes zooms all the way down to
the street until it gets almost to the end, and
then it zips in between a couple of the stop
cars at the front bumper height and sneak attacks the
crumb eating birds. So they observed for a few times
(36:08):
a few a few weeks, they saw a couple of
confirmed kills using this strategy, and what was amazing was,
not only does the bird not even bother to come
look without the pedestrian crosswalk beeping, it also doesn't show
up on the weekends. It doesn't even bother. There's not
(36:30):
enough traffic on that street for the cars to line up.
So it's it's absolutely using the traffic patterns with an
audible signal with with a uh, you know, sort of
seeing how if the enough cars have lined up to
give it the cover whether or not it's worth making
(36:50):
this attack. It's a real deep kind of a strategy.
And it knows not to show up on the weekends.
It's got it's got the schedule of days.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
So they did the study and they found that the
next season they weren't studying it, but they observed the
behavior again and they think it's even They're not sure,
but they think it's the same likely the same bird.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Well, that's what I want to know. Is this going
to spread socially? Is it just going to stay with
this one bird? What's happening in other cities? I want
to know how widespread this is?
Speaker 6 (37:25):
But yeah, I mean it's a visual and audio q that.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
They could used to their advantage.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
And and the research is sort of pointing out that
in a normal wild environment we probably are massively underestimating
the complication, the sort of thought process or the complicated
nature of the hunting strategies. It's not just oh see
a bird, go after it, you know, sea prey, go
(37:53):
after it. But they likely are using pretty deep strategy
even in those native wild that they're just applying. This
one's now applying to an urban setting that that's figured out.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
The sun is just right, the shadows just right from
this direction with that rock or yeah, absolutely, yeah, Wow,
that's very cool.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
That's that's sharp, sharp stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Anyway, that was my favorite bird story of the a
couple of weeks old. Now I've been trying to bring
that story for like a couple of weeks.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
The cars just didn't line up for you.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
What could you do?
Speaker 4 (38:39):
Just couldn't that just didn't get the right signal.
Speaker 6 (38:44):
Did you bring any other stories?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Or I have a bunch more I could ramble on about.
But let's let's finish up the animal corner.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Okay, okay, great, So let's talk about bees taking breaks.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I love this story.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
This is a story for University California Riverside looking at
bee queens and specifically bumblebees and how they like to
take breaks. So, bumblebee queens they're the sole founders of
their colonies, and in the early stages of colony building,
(39:19):
they'll they have to do everything.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
They're all by themselves.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
They forge for food, they incubate developing broods by heating
them with their wing muscles.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
They maintain the.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Nest, and they lay eggs, and if the queen suddenly disappears,
the whole colony fails. But what's interesting is researchers just
kind of naturally discovered that these queens had this burst
of egg laying when they first established the colony, followed
by several days of inactivity. They just took a nice rest.
(39:54):
They monitored more than one hundred queens over a period
of forty five days. This is an controlled insectory. They
documented each queen's nesting activity looking at their clutches, and
they saw a pattern which was that the queen's pause
reingproduction for several days right after intense egg laying. Now
(40:20):
where this gets interesting is that it turns out it
was more than just I'm pooped from laying eggs. I'm
going to rest until I am ready to start laying
eggs again. No, no, it's more complicated than that. It
actually aligns with the developmental stages of their brood. So
the way that they figured that out is they added
(40:41):
broods at different stages to the nest while the queen
was resting. So they would add young larva, old larva,
and pupe, and they found that the time that the
queen would then suddenly begin laying eggs again was different
to on how old the brood was in her nest.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
So when you throw pupe in.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
There, which are nearly mature bees, they resumed egg laying
in only about one and a half days pretty much
right away they got back to laying eggs, But when
they added the larva, the pauses stretched to about twelve
and a half days.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
That is a long wait, so if.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
You're so, if you're the queen bee, yes, and you're
there in the brooding breeding cave or whatever it is, Yeah,
that's how else do you tell time?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So it's how do you tell time?
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yeah, But it's also it's also that they use cooperative
brood care, so having the teenagers there means they have
help for the next generation. The teenagers are old enough.
The teenagers, right, the pepe are old enough that by
(42:07):
the time new eggs hatch, they will be able to
help care for the colony. So that's yes, they're measuring time,
but they are also measuring the ability of the colony,
so like they're taking a rest because they can't have
too many babies at once. They have to wait for
the youngest to grow up old enough to be able
to help take care of the next youngest. So previously
(42:31):
the conventional thinking was that these bees and other use
social insects are just always popping out eggs across all
stages of development. They're just make as many babies as possible.
But it is strategic, it is intentional, and so in
these very vulnerable early days of establishing a colony, if
(42:55):
she pushes herself too fast, too hard, she could not
survive and the whole colony would collapse. So it's really
important that she takes care of herself. But it's also
important that she times things correctly so that she gets help.
So it's time to now look and see if other
you social insects are doing this. And of course this
(43:16):
helps us understand the biological needs of queens and the
establish it of a new colony, which is important in
this world where bees are in trouble.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
You know, I hy bees never stop the metal of
the flowers when they're when they're not working.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
Just more work, I thought you're gonna say, because.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Because it's just more work.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
All right, Well that's all my animal corner stories. What
else do you want to talk about?
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Justin That's all I had. That's all I had.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
We done.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Wait, no, I've got more. Though, I got more I
can talk about. I'm sure. And let me let me
take a look into the grab bag here.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Okay, you may pick one to two.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
Well, I got okay. Psychiatric prescriptions are linked to higher
als risk, but it might not be the medications that
are doing it. It could just be that they're they're connected.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, that would make sense for sure.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Yeah, let's see. Oh, long term study finds vascular health
leads to later dementia risk. That one's interesting because it.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Kind of shows is that just because you live longer, No, but.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
That you can actually see it coming before it gets
to dementia. In somebody's like forties, you can already see
if they have vascular problems that they are headed more
likely towards dementia because a lot of dementia is sourced
by being able to get enough blood to the brain
(45:02):
through the vascular system.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Another weird thing, red blood cells. I'm gonna do all
quick stuff. Red blood cell rupturing and not actual clotting
has been driving some of the vessel block had seen
in COVID nineteen. They thought it was, you know, the
sort of coagulating blood or something was causing the higher
risks of stroke with people who had COVID nineteen. Turns
(45:28):
out now it's lies cells that are getting stuck in
weird places. Oh doing it you know?
Speaker 6 (45:37):
Yikes?
Speaker 1 (45:38):
That sounds bad.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Yeah, hey, men and maybe women too. I don't even know.
If probably everybody colonoscopy screening, you should do it younger.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
How much younger?
Speaker 4 (45:59):
They found no difference in terms of chances of finding
stuff in people forty five to forty nine versus the
group fifty to fifty four. So as much of it's
ten years younger getting that colonoscopy, the chances of them
catching something that's not supposed to be there is just
(46:21):
as good.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I see. So there's no point to wait.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
No point in waiting. Hey, there's a new diagnostic pen
on the market that you can write in the air
with or do some handwriting, and this electronic pen has
a ninety six percent chance of correctly diagnosing Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
What just because it has a.
Speaker 6 (46:51):
With like a gyroscope in it, and I can tell
how you're moving.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
It's got a sensor and it can. Yeah, it's sort
of tracking the movement types. And it's also I think
the firmness with which the pen is being gripped is also.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Part of Well, that wouldn't work if you had a
bunch of nerve damage in your hand from an animal plight.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
But yeah, so you have to you have to try
to write with your other hand.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
I have there's damage on both.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Oh my gosh, there's all sorts of other stuff out
there in the world of science. There's always more. But yeah,
I guess that's if we're near the end of the show.
I don't know where we are. I just jumped in.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I know you've we're near the end.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
I mean we've been on the air for fifty one minutes,
but the first forty was just me talking, so.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
That sounds like a solid Hey uh, dear twistman in
the audience, how is this? Is this sufficient? I can't tell.
I can never tell the connection on this side because
it always looks fine.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
So to me, your sound is perfect. Your your visual
has glitched out a few times, but your sound has
been fine.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
All right, So.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Who needs a hotel?
Speaker 4 (48:09):
I have a backup? Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah totally. I
think it was the one place I had been going.
Everything is booked this week. I didn't think ahead. It's
the university is graduating graduation, and so they've brought all
of the relatives from all over the world to see
(48:31):
them where they have. Of course, so Patrick says, my
my sound is kind of muffled. It might not be
on the setting.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yes, it is what it is, all right.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Well, since we're doing the after show and the actual show,
maybe we should close it.
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Let's do that part.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yeah, Hey, I think that's going to do it for
us tonight on This Week in Science. Thank you for listening, watching,
joining all of us tonight. Hope you enjoyed the show.
Shout out Staffata for his help with social media and
show notes, Gored for manning the chatroom, Identity four for
recording the show. Rachel for your amazing assistance. I think
there's only a couple flubs for you, Rachel tonight. Thank
(49:14):
you in advance. And I'd like to thank are Patreons
sponsors for their generous support. I do not have the list,
so suffice it to say insert your name here.
Speaker 7 (49:26):
Robert Norland, Robert W. Farley, Lauren Gifford, Dana Lewis, Eden Mandel,
Ali Viola, Erin Anathama, Arthur Kepler, Craig Pottsburyker, Teresa Smith,
Richard Badge, Bob Coles, Kenton Northcote, George Chorus Here, Rellazar,
John Rattnaswami, Chris wo was the act maaker, just At
Donnaz Diles Aka Adun Styler, Ali Coffin, Schubert, Don Mannis Pig,
Stephen Alberon, Darryl Meishak, Andrew Swanson, Fretis Win of Fours,
(49:47):
Guy Luke, Paul Ronabus, Kevin Rearden, Noodles, Jack, Brian Carrington,
davidy young Blood, Chawn, Clarence Slam, John McKee, Grigley, Mark
Hessiplowstee Bleasman, azy Ma, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrappin, Richard,
Brenda Minish, Jenny, Johnny Gridley, let Me Day, Geberton Latimore,
Flying Out, Christopher drier, Ardiam, Greg Briggs, John Atwoodriudy Garcia,
Redney Lewis, Paul Flip, Shane Lesson, Craig Landers, Sue Doster,
(50:09):
Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Naplon, makes e Oh Adams,
Kevin par Chan, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul d Disney, Paco,
Tony Steele.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Thank you, Patreon sponsors, thank you for your support. If
you're interested in supporting us, you can find information at
patreon dot com. Slash This Week in Science. On next
week's show, we will be back with Justin, Kiki and
Me Blair. Don't miss it.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
That'll be at eight pm Pacific time, broadcasting live from Twitch,
YouTube and Facebook channels.
Speaker 4 (50:44):
You take mine now to us as it When did
you listen too? As a podcast I was on it.
You didn't have to hand off the baton. Just listen
to This Week in Science wherever podcasts are found. If
you enjoyed the show, force your friends to listen too.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Yeah, grab their phone when they're not looking and twists.
They'll never know until it pops up in their queue, and.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Then they'll be like, yes, this is amazing.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
For more information on anything you've heard here today, show
notes and links to stories will be available on our
website that's at www dot twist dot org. You can
also sign up for a newsletter that will someday come
as GOODO once did, No, he didn't.
Speaker 4 (51:24):
We love your feedback. If there's a topic you would
like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview,
haiku that comes to the night, please let us know
on one of our many many social media accounts, or
just send us an email where emails are found. Yeah,
just be sure to put twist twis somewhere in the
(51:45):
subject line, otherwise your email will end up with a
pod of unborn bees. Then that aren't getting ready to help?
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (51:57):
Sure, not so easy? Is it?
Speaker 4 (51:59):
Just it's hard to come up with it?
Speaker 8 (52:01):
On the floe like that?
Speaker 4 (52:02):
I feel like you must get you must have a
sharper mind than me.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
We look forward to discussing science with you again next week.
And if you've learned anything from the show, remember it's
all in your head.
Speaker 8 (52:20):
This week in Science, This week in science, This week
in science, This week in science. At the end of
the world. So I'm setting up shop. Got my banner refurled,
it says the scientist is in. I'm gonna sell my advice,
(52:40):
show them how to stop the robots with a simple device.
I'll reverse all the warming with a wave of my
hands and a little coffee is a couple of grass.
Because this week science.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
Is coming your way, So everybody listens to what I say.
Speaker 8 (53:00):
I use the scientific method for all that.
Speaker 7 (53:02):
It's worth, and I'll broadcast.
Speaker 8 (53:04):
My opinion all overty. Oh, it's this week in science.
This week in science. This week in science, Science Science, Science, Science, Science.
Speaker 5 (53:16):
This week is science. This weekend Science, This week in science,
This week in science, This week in science, This week
in science, This week in science, This week in science,
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