This Week in Science

2010-04-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

Fundraising week at KDVS!

This Week: Recantations, Bubbling Tar Microbes, Nervous Nerves, Dark Matters, Brainy Science, The Skinny, Migrating Genes, and More!

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Retraction: Boob Benefits Not Yet Scientifically Proven
A story from last week about the health benefits of staring at woman’s breasts turns out to be a hoax. Thanks to the minions who helped to unearth it. Check out snopes.com to learn about other such hoaxes.

Microbes: Masters of Living Anywhere
Scientists have discovered microbial life in pools of asphalt in hydrocarbon tar-pits, opening up our minds to the possibility of life on other planets with similar conditions which we previously thought were unlivable.

Nervous Nerves
Scientists studying the causes of epilepsy have found that nerve cells can theoretically alter specific channels to control their own excitability.

Researchers found the temperature sensitive domain of a certain temperature receptor by inducing mutations of individual amino acids to see which were needed for temperature sensitivity.

Masses of Dark Matter Seen Loitering Around Galaxies and Clumping into Cigar Shapes
Scientists are creating maps of dark matter distribution using gravitational lensing. Dark matter is invisible to all forms of our instrumentation so far and is only detectable through its gravitational pull on regular matter.

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TWIS Book Club has a new book for April: Collider - The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern. Get your copy here:

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Climate Change leading to Migratory Change for Birds
Scientists are looking at how birds adapt to changes in migratory cues a study showed the actual genetic changes were taking place through this adaptation. Within two generations, researchers were able to completely selectively breed out migratory behavior in study birds.

The Skinny on Smarts
Gene variant that helps us gain weight may shrink our brains as well.

Brainy Genes
Scientists have found certain genes influence your brainwave patterns and that the slow wave activation of your brain is different if you are an alcoholic.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Justin Jackson, and The Gifted Apes.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

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2010-04-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Fundraising week at KDVS!

This Week: Beneficial Breasts, Multitudes of Microbes, Cyber-Security, DARPA loves Cats, Brainy Fibers, NASA’s Moon Mission, Electrified Space, Chicken or Egg, Messing With Mitochondria, and Much More!

Listen to it all Here!

Donate now:

Donate to KDVS and get the 2010 TWIS Science Music Compilation!

Staring at Women's Breasts Is Good for Men's Health
Just ten minutes of staring at cleavage is roughly equivalent to a 30 minute workout, according to a new study. Since sexual desire is linked to better blood circulation, it can lower blood pressure and provide all the benefits of a healthier heart.

Multitudes of Microbes
In 2004 an international census of marine microbes was kicked off wherein a maximum of 600,000 species were predicted. Now they are announcing a new estimate of at least 20 million species, all of which could potentially work together and be very interdependent.

To Be or Not to Be...Cancerous?
The human produced protein alpha-lactalbumin, or HAMLET, is a compound found in breast milk, which is lethal to cancer cells. Laboratory tests have shown it to kill over 40 different kinds of cancers while NOT killing normal human cells. It doesn't seem to spontaneously form in breast milk, but rather in the acidic environment of the stomach.

Microbes as a Carbon Sink
Researchers looking at which species of microbes are actually carbon fixers, found that 44% of microbial carbon fixation is done by tiny, previously dismissed eukaryotic phytoplankton.

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TWIS Book Club has a new book for April: Collider - The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern. Get your copy here:

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DARPA Loves Cats
With the development of artificial biological-like synapses that keep memory even after the charge is gone, DARPA is funding the creation of a super computer that is as fast as a cat's brain.

International Cyber Security
How do we defend ourselves against cyber terrorism? The government thinks we need to go on the OFFENSIVE.

Dissolving into the Brain
Scientists have developed silk fibers which can be used as bio-integrated electrodes and dissolved into the surface of the brain to record information with more accuracy than any previous brain-computer-interface.

"I heard NASA was cancelled..."
Its not really... just the 20 year moon based landing plans, which were goals of a previous administration. NASA's plan had actually been Mars and it got derailed for awhile while working on going to the moon. Now NASA is back to having Mars as the main goal.

Electrified Moon
Solar wind is causing the moon's craters to become electrified.

Lighting on Saturn
For the first time we are able to undoubtedly observe powerful lightning storms on Saturn. Scientists have captured the visible lighting flash and even a soundtrack that features the crackle of radio waves when thunder strikes.

Playing Chicken with H1N1
Most of our vaccinations are created in chicken eggs, and now scientists have discovered that eggs laid by hens vaccinated by the H1N1 virus have immunity to the virus.

Mitochondrial Mix-up
Scientists have created a "proof of principle" that we can potentially cure mitochondrial diseases: basically by swapping in healthy mitochondria from a donor, but still using the mothers nucleus.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Devo Spice, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-04-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

TWIS on TWIT: Take 1

This Week: Deep Black Smokers, World Robot Domination, Cooperating Neurons, Surfer’s Theory Sinks, Autistic Genes, Supertaskers Among Us, Banning Old Drivers, Australopi Missing Link, Memristors Return, Empathy Versus Violence, Demoting Fruit Flies, Japanese Gut Bacteria, And Much More…

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Deep Black Smokers
Researchers have found organisms living in extremely deep, extremely hot sea vents where it was previously thought no life could exist.

Is Manual Folding of Clothes Obsolete?
Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a robot that can fold clothes which you can have at home for around 50,000 dollars. One step closer to world robot domination?

How do Neurons Get Their Say?
It takes a little coordination. Researchers modeled neuronal activation, and determined that it takes only 30 active synapses to trigger a reaction in a neuron.

Is Autism Reversible?
Scientists have found a new way to detect the disease using blood, and that differences in methylation (DNA tagging) for certain genes may contribute to the development of autism. Blocking the chemical tagging of certain genes MAY actually reverse some of the symptoms of autism.

Limits on Everything...
New guidelines have been published that any new "theory of everything" must follow.

Brainstorming = Bad?
A study shows brainstorming in a group that may be counter-productive, can lead to fixation on only one idea or possibility, leading eventually to conformity on this idea... or group-think. Thinking about ideas in groups can lead people to subconsciously suggest ideas that mimic their coworkers ideas.

Supertaskers Walk Among Us
A study looked at the ability to multitask, and whereas the majority of people fail miserably, they found 1 in 40 people is a supertasker, someone who retains memory and attention while multitasking. They are now looking at whether people of certain abilities self select for certain occupations.

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TWIS Book Club has a new book for April: Collider - The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern. Get your copy here:

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Are You Ready for a New Species?
Australopithecus sebida estimated around 2 millions year old and could possibly be the missing link between more ape-like species and modern humans.

Memristers are Finally Here...
...and they can...'perform a full set of logic operations at the same time as they function as non volatile memory'. What? Basically, you could use a memrister in your computer that would act as memory that would not be affected by you turning off the computer, so they could be instant off, instant on.

Are You Violently Empathetic?
Scientists have found that the cerebral circuits for both empathy and violence are similar. Possibly one blocks out the other? An empathic person may not develop the violence pathways as much nor vice versa.

Poor Fruit Fly: Drosophila Dropping Out
Drosophila melanogaster, a cornerstone species of modern behavioral and genetic studies is potentially losing its status in the Drosophila genus after closer examination.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, funky49, Jake Mann, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-04-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

Ali Takes The Stage For Climate Change

This Week: Science News and the Decade of Climate Change in Review!

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Decade In Science: Climate Change

By A. Depsky

Polar bears are losing their homes, frogs are getting sick, flowers are losing their smell and humans might be next. As ice caps melt, sea levels rise and local precipitation and temperatures are shifting. Many species cannot deal with the changes. Scientists warn that if we do not act soon humans will be forced to deal with a changing climate that will alter agriculture, and displace cities.

HOW IT WORKS

The “greenhouse effect” is a good thing, we need it to live. Without it, earth would be an ice cube. When sunlight hits the earth much of it is reflected back to space. Due to gases in the atmosphere known as “greenhouse gases” some of this thermal energy is prevented from escaping and is trapped in the atmosphere. But, it becomes a problem when humans inject the atmosphere with unusually high levels of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons (gases once used widely as refrigerants and spray propellants), and effectively enhance the greenhouse effect.

The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide remained roughly stable for nearly 10,000 years, but have rapidly increased within the last 200 years. Reports place Co2 levels at about 35 percent higher than preindustrial levels, methane around two and a half times higher, and nitrous oxide levels around 20 percent higher. Extensive studies have shown that atmospheric carbon dioxide is rising by 2 ppm every year and that the global temperature has increased by about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.

HISTORY

Many people are under the impression that scientists have thought about climate change only very recently, but, in fact, scientists have been warning about the possibility of human activities altering the climate for fifty years, and have had knowledge of the "greenhouse effect" for far longer.

As early as 1863 an Irish scientist named John Tyndall published a paper describing how water vapor can be a greenhouse gas. And, in the 1890's a Swedish scientist known as Svante Arrhenius and an American called P C Chamberlain independently considered the possibility of global warming due to build up of CO2 in the atmosphere, though neither one suspected that this may have already begun to happen. Arrhenius even thought that it might be an improvement for future generations to live "under a milder sky."

In 1957, US oceanographer Roger Revelle warned people that humans are unintentionally conducting a "large-scale geophysical experiment" by releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gases, and in that same year, his colleague, David Keeling, set up continuous monitoring of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which soon revealed a yearly increase that has continued to this day.

In 1979, the first World Climate Conference was held in Genevaand led to the establishment of the World Climate Programme, an "international scientific programme whose goals are to improve understanding of the climate system and to apply that understanding for the benefit of societies coping with climate variability and change."

In 1985, scientists at the World Climate Program in Austria predicted that increased CO2 will lead to a significant rise in earth's temperature, and that same year, a hole in the ozone layer was discovered over Antarctica.

Due to increasing concern, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to provide reports on the knowledge and viewpoints within the scientific community. (This institution has since been accused both of being too conservative in its reports as well as too exaggeratory.)

In June of this year, Dr James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies delivered a testimony to the U.S. Senate in which he stated that based on computer models and temperature measurements, he was 99% certain that human-caused greenhouse effects are already changing the climate.

LAST TEN YEARS
Within the last decade evidence to support this claim has amassed rapidly, coming from many diverse fields of science due to the wide reaching effects of climate change. Political response, however, has occurred at an much slower rate.

In 2000 a series of major floods around the world reinforced public concern about the possibility of global warming raising the risk of extreme weather events. That year IPCC scientists issued an assessment of future emissions warning that the earth could rise in temperature by 6 degrees C within a century. Talks held in The Hague to finalise the "Kyoto rule book" failed to reach an agreement after the EU and the US backed out.

In May of 2001, the Kyoto Protocol was finalized despite the refusal by George W. Bush to allow the US to join out of fear of harming the US economy. The third official report by the IPCC concluded that it was "likely," or more than 66% probable that most of the recent warming was caused by humans.

In 2002 a piece of the Larsen Ice Shelf roughly the size of Rhode Island on the northernmost part of the mainland of Antarctica broke up. This was also the hottest year on record.

2003 followed as the third hottest year on record, but for Europe it was the hottest summer in at least 500 years and it was estimated that 30,000 people died as a result. Researchers later came to the conclusion that climate change can at least DOUBLE the likely-hood of a heatwave occurring. 2003 also showed an abrupt increase in the rate and accumulation of greenhouse gases, which confused scientists.

In November of 2004 Russia agreed to back the Kyoto protocol, giving it enough participation to become a legally binding treaty by 2005, though Australia and the US still refuse to join.

2005 was the second warmest year on record and researchers linked the warmer climate to a record US hurricane season, as well as acceleration of the melting of Artic sea ice and Siberian permafrost. Some scientists gave warnings that the Antarctic ice sheet was starting to collapse, and others reported polar bear drownings because they have to swim farther to reach solid ice.

In 2006, the "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," by economist Nicholas Stern was commissioned by the UK government. It basically said that the cost of preventing climate change is far less than the cost of dealing with it later.

It states, "our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes. Tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy for the longer term and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries"

This was the same year that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was released and became a box office hit, CO2 emissions were reported to be rising faster than in the 1990’s, wildfires hit a record for a season with nearly 100,000 fires reported, and severe heatwaves in North America left at least 225 people dead.

By 2007, 175 countries had ratified the Kyoto Treaty including, now, Australia. Arctic sea ice covered an all time record low in area, and it was reported that within the last 30 years an area the size of Norway, Sweden and Denmark has disappeared. The fourth official IPCC report was released this year, and it now claimed 90% certainty that global warming is caused by humans. The report included a number of observed consequences from the changing climate including: decreased snowfall, rise in sea level due to both heating expanse and ice melting, and changes in large scale patterns of precipitation. It also included a reconstruction of past climate from tree rings and other proxies which indicated that the warmth of the last fifty years is unusual at least within the last 1,300 years. Measurements were published this year that showed a decline in solar activity since the 1980’s, debunking the theory that increased solar activity could be the reason for global warming.

In 2008 the polar bear became listed as an endangered species because of its current and predicted habitat loss due to climate change, and 160 miles of the “Wilkens Shelf” broke off from the Antarctic coast. At the annual UN climate summit, representatives from around the world agreed to a timetable to create a post 2012 replacement for the Kyoto Protocol.

In 2009 Indigenous peoples from around the world gathered in Anchorage, AK to come to a united consensus about climate change, and demanded a greater voice in the global decision making process and in the Kyoto replacement. In September of this year the World Bank Issued a statement on the social and economic state of climate change which insisted that developing countries can shift to lower-carbon paths while still reducing poverty and continuing to develop, but that it will require financial and technological assistance from rich countries.

According to the World Bank Chief Economist, Justin Lin, “Developing countries face 75-80 percent of the potential damage from climate change. They urgently need help to prepare for drought, floods, and rising sea levels. They also need to intensify agricultural productivity, contain malnutrition and disease, and build climate-resilient infrastructure,” Developing countries will be the most impacted by climate change not only because of their lack of financial and infrastructural resources, but also their reliance on direct agriculture and animals in their lifestyles, their physically exposed locations.

In December 2009 the United Nation Climate Change Conference, or Copenhagen Summit, produced disappointing results. Shortly thereafter United Nation's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, announced his resignation after the conference failed “to agree to more than vague promises to limit carbon dioxide emissions”.

CONTROVERSY

Much of the stagnation in climate change policy-making stems from the controversy surrounding the issue. The complexity and uncertainty inherent in the science makes it an easy target for manipulation and dispute. Recently in November of 2009, a series of emails between scientists were leaked from a hacked server used by the Climate Research Unit. The emails contained comments that could be interpreted as conspiring to manipulate the data, though this has been denied. Skeptics jumped on this incident, calling it “Climategate.”

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” was released in 2006 and argues against the science behind anthropogenic global warming, asserting that it is “the biggest scam of modern times.” The original working title was “Apocalypse my arse.” The documentary points to a number of political reasons for the “scam” such as increased funding for climate science and global warming research, influence of vested interest groups who are making a living off the theory, influence and support of the theory by those with political ideologies against capitalism, globalization, etc, and the film goes so far as to even claim the theory was invented by Margaret Thatcher to promote nuclear power and lessen the blow of striking coal miners. There are many denial websites out there that discuss the “global warming hoax” such as globalwarminghoax.com, where they claim, “Only the Truth Heats Up.”

Conversely, many people counter that climate change denial is a finely crafted “scam” to keep industries safe from regulation. In a report, titled "Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science," Greenpeace outlines a history of the war waged by polluting industries against climate change science, the IPCC, and individual scientists, focusing especially on ExxonMobil, which is known to have invested over $23 million since 1998 to fund anti-climate change think-tanks and non-profits.

SCIENCE AND SOLUTIONS

Despite the debating public, the climate change science continues… A recent study attributes the lowered activity of some pollinators to a dryer climate which causes “The aroma producing chemical compounds in flowers [to] dry up faster now compared with before." The State of the Birds: 2010 Report on Climate Change, follows a comprehensive report released a year ago showing that that nearly a third of the nation's 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline:

Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg, director of Conservation Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says, “For well over a century, migratory birds have faced stresses such as commercial hunting, loss of forests, the use of DDT and other pesticides, a loss of wetlands and other key habitat, the introduction of invasive species, and other impacts of human development,” Salazar said. “Now they are facing a new threat--climate change--that could dramatically alter their habitat and food supply and push many species towards extinction.” “Birds are excellent indicators of the health of our environment, and right now they are telling us an important story about climate change. Many species of conservation concern will face heightened threats, giving us an increased sense of urgency to protect and conserve vital bird habitat.”

And now, innovative solutions are rolling in, ranging from commonsensical to outlandish. Some of the more creative ideas include:

wrapping Greenland in white blankets to replace the reflective surfaces lost from ice sheets melting,

artificially feeding a greater population of plankton because they are important carbon sinks,

shooting huge mirrors into space to reflect some of the sun’s rays,

adding extra clouds consistently via ocean patrol boats spraying sea water high into the sky,

feeding cows garlic because it is known to kill the methane-producing stomach bacteria,

pumping sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight,

and planting fake trees that contain proprietary absorbent materials that remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it, possibly to be sold to soda companies for carbonation.

And that soda could be sold in a vending machine that itself fights climate change. This is not just an idea, but a reality, “Coke, Pepsi, Ben & Jerry's and GE are phasing out the use of ozone-depleting refrigerants, turning instead to carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons”. Most vending machines rely on a hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), for their refrigerant that although it is a highly effective air coolant, is also 1,430 times more harmful to the climate than CO2.

“We talk about fighting fire with fire,” said Bryan Jacob, director of energy and climate protection for Coke, who says CO2 is nonflammable, nontoxic, comparatively inexpensive and readily available. “In the right application, CO2 can be a solution to climate change.”

FUTURE

With the complexity of the science, the predictions for the future vary widely, but even the lowest predicted changes could lead to disruption of food and water supplies, increasingly flooded coastlines, and the extinction of many species.

Using computer models based on supposed future emissions, scientists predict that the global temperature will increase at an average rate of about 0.2 degree C per decade. However, long-term warming is very much dependent on the future rate of emissions.

Scientists warn governments that short term financial hardships should not stop them from taking action. Climate change will have far more devastating effects if no action is taken now.

Rosina Bierbaum, WDR co-director and Dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment says,“Grappling with climate shocks that are already hampering development will not be easy. But promising new energy technologies can vastly reduce future greenhouse gas emissions and prevent catastrophic climate change.”

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TWIS Book Club has a new book for April: Collider - The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern. Get your copy here:

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-04-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

Dear TWIS Minions,

This Week in Science is making a few changes.

After 10 years of broadcasting live just about every Tuesday morning from KDVS 90.3 FM in Davis, CA, TWIS is making a move.

As of 8:00 pm PT on Monday, April 12th, 2010, TWIS will broadcast live on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech Network.

It only seems natural that the TWI's join forces as many people have been confused by the separate worlds of TWIS and TWIT for years anyway.

So, from April 12th onward TWIS will be live in video format on TWIT every Monday night at 8pm PT.

TWIS will continue to exist on KDVS, but as a pre-recorded show only.

You will also be able to continue to subscribe to and download TWIS as an audio rss feed without making any changes. We are keeping the feed address the same.

We think that the new format and platform will work together to make TWIS better than ever, and we'll keep bringing you quality science infotainment.

Thanks for listening. We look forward to seeing you at live.twit.tv on Monday nights.

It's all in your head,
--kirsten and Justin

2010-03-30T11:24:00.001-07:00

Life And Asteroids... or, Pac Man?

In the show this week: Hubble Confirmations, Brainy Drug Dealer, PacMan In Space, Fuel Friendly Yeast, Methanogens Breathe Easy, Pinky Sex, A Lead Burrito, Seeing In The Dark, Momma Knows Best, Stinky Birds, This Week in World Robot Domination, And Much More!

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Hubble Confirms Einstein's Theory of Relativity
European scientists used the Hubble space telescope to survey nearly 450,000 galaxies. They looked at the way light changes as a result of gravitational mass, or "weak lensing", over distances to essentially create a descriptive dark matter skeleton of the universe.

War On Drugs... and Cheesecake
Scientists have found that the same molecular pathways in the brain that regulate and control addiction to narcotics are also activated by junk food.

Pacman in Space
Temperature signatures obtained from one of Saturn's moons returns unexpected results in the shape of pacman eating a power dot.

TWIS Book Club has a new book for April: Collider - The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern. Get your copy here:

Yeast Powering Cars?
Scientists are engineering yeast that can transform a wider range of sugars into alcohol and that could be used as a new source of biofuel.

Methanogens Breathe Easy
Researchers have discovered a methanogen that lives in anaerobic conditions, takes up methane and nitrogen containing compounds, and through its own pathways makes its own oxygen to breathe.

Women is found in Siberia, She Quickly Gives them the Finger
Scientists have found a finger that appears to belong to a child who died 48-80 thousand years ago, and whose DNA indicates that it is a new human-like species.

A Lead Burrito
An 1,700-year-old, 800 lb lead sarcophagus has been found in a tomb near Rome. Its very unusual and intrigued researchers are thinking of melting a little hole in it and inserting a camera to see who or what is inside.

Asteroids Headed for Earth? Now, we'll know...
The WISE telescope looking for dark objects in space has started to spot dozens of asteroids, one that is as close as 3 times the distance of the earth to the moon. Not all of them are huge risks, however, many of them they are just piles of dust and gravel.

Bird News!
Momma knows best...
Mother canaries leave a message for their chicks about the environment even before they are hatched so that the babies can adjust how hard they should beg for food.

Some Birds Discriminate by Smell
Among California songbirds, each bird has an individual odor that is characterized by the population to which it belongs. This suggests that birds could selectively mate with only those whose smell they approve of, leading to reproductive isolation and eventually new species.

World Robot Domination
Japanese researchers created a journalist robot capable of researching online, interviewing, taking pictures and video, and writing a final story.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Obka, Chris Taylor, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-03-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

We All Need A Vacation

In the show this week: SXSW Recap, Exceptional Shrimps, Could Be A Hobbit's Uncle, How To Grow A New Leg, Glaucoma Gets Brainy, Planck Gets Dusty, Seaweed Supplementation, Sperm Play Tron, Science Plays Poker, LHC Record Breaking, And Much More!

Listen to it all Here!

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TWIS Book Club is currently reading Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle. Get your copy here:

Question for Minions:
Can you smell in your dreams?

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Anton Barbeau, Johnny Brickhouse, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-03-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

Go West, Man...

In the show this week: A City On the Move, Asteroids To Blame, Minion Miffed At Geo-Engineering, Ritalin On The Brain, A Snowball's Chance, Gluten-Free Genes, Magnetic Meanderings, Ants vs. Toads, and Much More...

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A City On the Move - According to GPS measurements, Concepcion, Chile is said to have physically moved 10 feet.

Asteroids To Blame - Who killed the dinosaurs? 41 scientists agree it was the Chixiclub asteroid impact.

Ants vs. Toads - Australians are killing cane toads with ants. Sounds like a brutal way to go.

WE NEED YOUR SCIENCE-Y SONGS for our 2010 Fundraiser Compilation CD!! Email Kirsten for more info... ASAP!!!

TWIS Book Club is currently reading Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle. Get your copy here:

A Snowball's Chance - Evidence from rocks found in Canada suggests that areas of the tropics were covered in ice nearly 720 million years ago.

Ritalin On The Brain - Ritalin increases dopamine activity in the brain and stimulates neural plasticity, which can speed up learning and boost memory.

Gluten-Free Genes - A Finnish study found a link between genes for the immune system, viruses, and gluten. Your body might think gluten is a virus if you have certain genes.

Magnetic Meanderings - 3.5 billion years ago, the Earth's magnetic field was half the size it is today. This news suggests that the solar wind would have easily wicked away our atmosphere.

Question for Minions:
Can you smell in your dreams?

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Drew Vics, Jake Mann, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-03-02T10:56:00.000-08:00

Let Me Peer Into Your Brain...

In the show this week: Materialistic Quantum Leap, R U Who U Think U R, Planets Old And New, Beware Cows And Women, Discriminating Damselfish, Cocaine 4 Babies, and Interview w/ Dr. Richard Mooney and Dr. Todd Roberts on Bird Brains and Lasers.

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Stuff Science
Engineers improved on an equation that allows them to start designing materials at the atomic level using computers. This has potential to have a huge impact on the nature of the products we use everyday.

Know Thyself
Studies have shown that you may not know yourself as well as you might think; friends or even strangers may have a better understanding of your personality than you do.

This Week in Space: How it Feels to be Torn Apart
International group of scientists have found a massive extra-solar planet which is bloating up due to the gravitational force of its nearby host star, leading to to its impending death at a "young" age.

Yet as old stars die, baby stars are born.
The youngest star in the universe (so far) has been located.

Why to Stay Away from Cows and Women
Women who have frequent contact with cows may contract a bacteria that can be passed on to and possibly cause death in newborn babies. This zoonotic disease may have significant public health concerns.

Discriminating Damsel Fish
Coral reef fish use UV vision to tell the difference between their species and other species.

Cocaine for Babies
Hope for prenatal babies exposed to cocaine: new research shows surprisingly little damage in key areas of the brain.

WE NEED YOUR SCIENCE-Y SONGS for our 2010 Fundraiser Compilation CD!! Email Kirsten for more info...

TWIS Book Club is currently reading Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle. Get your copy here:

Interview: Looking at Bird Brains with Lasers?
We talked with Richard Mooney and Todd Roberts from Duke University about their recent ground-breaking study.

Question for Minions:
Can you smell in your dreams?

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Trebetheric, Jake Mann, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-02-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

When Man Becomes Machine...

In the show this week: Kirsten Goes to AAAS, Dolphin Debates, Math With A Purpose, Power Naps, Wasps And Butterflies, Biological Aging, Exploring Explorit, TWI the Decade of Science: Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Much, Much More...

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Kirsten went to the AAAS conference, and lived to tell about it.

Dolphins are People too
Dolphins might be a good model species for studying type 2 diabetes, but some people think dolphins should be given non human person status making diabetes research on them unethical.

Math with a Purpose for a Change (heh, jk)
Mathematicians are teaming up with city planners to model the illogical behaviors of people in groups and use this information to model the design of city areas.

Power Naps
Getting a one and a half hour snooze can boost the brain's ability to learn new things, while pulling an all nighter decreases a student's ability to learn new facts by 40%. The part of your brain that allows you to learn and store new information seems to shut down during sleep deprivation.

Parasitic Wasps Take Advantage of Stinky Butterflies
Two species of parasitic wasps hone in on the after-sex smells of female butterflies, and catch a ride with them to their soon to be laid eggs, which they then parasitize with their own eggs.

Whats my Biological Age Again?
Despite being the same age in years, peoples biological age, or the age of their cells may vary and some people are genetically programmed to age at slower or faster rate.

The Explorit Science Center Needs Your Help!
A Explorit Science Center is non-profit science outreach program in Davis. It lights the spark for science in kids by helping bridge the gap between book learning and experience, and provides summer programs for kids. Due to lack of funding they may have to shut down unless they can generate enough funds. They need 600,000 dollars.

How can you help?
Rally behind them.
Even just 10$ could help.

Go to www.explorit.org

WE NEED YOUR SCIENCEY SONGS!! Email Kirsten for more info...

TWIS Book Club is currently reading Jan Zalasiewicz's The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?. Get your copy here:

Decade in Science : Brain Computer Interfaces
Links to come...

A Question for the Minions:
If a crash happened in space would there be smoke from an explosion or fire. and what would it look like?

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Trebetheric, George Hrab, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-02-16T10:58:00.000-08:00

While Justin is Away The Girls Will Talk Science

In the show this week: Synthesizing Proteins, Tiny Tightrope Walkers, GABA Goes Immune, Fabricating Electric Clothes, Multidemensional Drake Equation, Adventurous Great Tits, The Dino-Bird Question, Robot Patients, The Spiritual Brain, This Week in The End of The World, and Much More!

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

Making Proteins from Scratch
Scientists have created the possibility of a new genetic language by synthesizing a ribosome that can read instructions that are 4 base pairs long, paving the way for the development of unique designer proteins.

Tiny Molecules Walk This Way
Researchers have designed tiny molecules that can walk along a track unidirectionally, which some day may be used to deliver drugs to specific locations, carry fans to direct the flow of liquids or grab viruses and bring them out of the body.

Fighting Multiple Sclerosis with Neurotransmitters
Using prior research that shows that the neurotransmitter GABA is produced by immune cells and seems to lower inflammation, scientists hypothesize that low levels of this chemical may be partially responsible for the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS).

Do Androids Dream of Electric Clothing?
Researchers have developed organic nanofibers that can function as nanogenerators and produce energy when stretched. These are small and flexible enough to be sewn into clothing and harness the natural movements people make for energy.

The Drake Equation Gets Multidimensional
The Drake equation estimates the probability of the existence of intelligent life in our galaxy using a hierarchy of various factors. Marcelo Gleiser at Dartmouth College points out that this equation needs updating for our new ideas cosmology, including the existence of multiple universes that may have completely different physical properties from our own.

WE NEED YOUR SCIENCEY SONGS!!

TWIS Book Club is currently reading Jan Zalasiewicz's The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?. Get your copy here:

Great (Adventurous?) Tits
Studies with Great Tit populations have shown that variations in a certain gene (the "dopamine receptor D4" or DRD4 gene) make some birds more adventurous or "novelty seeking" than others. Humans also exhibit the same propensity for novelty-seeking behavior when they have the DRD4 gene.

Dinosaurs Came from Birds?
A new study provides more evidence that birds did not descend from the ground dwelling therapod dinosaurs, continuing to challenge the accepted theories about the evolution of flight in birds. In fact, the evidence suggests that some animals that are usually considered dinosaurs, such as raptors, were actually descended from birds rather than the other way around.

Robot Patients
Pharmacy students at the University of Bath are now practicing their skills on a life like robot that can be programmed to exhibit a range of medical conditions and even react adversely to delivery of the wrong drug.

God in the Brain
A new study with cancer patients shows that patients who lost parts of their posterior parietal cortex were more likely to experience a feeling of spiritual oneness with the universe. The posterior parietal brain regions provide awareness of the body's position and location in space, or a sense of physical self.

This Week In the End of the World: Food for Thought about Climate Change
In a recent issue of Science, an international panel of scientists urge world leaders to "get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology," and consider the growing population that must be fed by a warming planet.

A Question for the Minions:
If a crash happened in space would there be smoke from an explosion or fire. and what would it look like?

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, My Poor Kevin, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-02-09T10:42:00.000-08:00

Ali Pulls the Plug on Justin...

In the show this week: Quantum Algae, Determining Vegetative States, Remember the Prions, Gay Science, Zen Bats and Drunk Bats, Scientists Say: Drink Beer, Daddy Sang Bass, Minion Mailbag, and Much More!

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

Quantum Algae
Scientists shot algae with lasers and supported the hypothesis that photosynthesis might work via quantum mechanics. As we advance our knowledge on how photo-systems work, we get closer to being able to create solar cells that are based on photosynthesis.

Vegetative State: Should they pull the plug?
Scientists used FMRI imaging technology to uncover awareness in individuals diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. The study suggests that many patients may be more aware than previously thought.

Remember the Prions
Prions, the cause of mad cow disease, among other things, are a type of protein found all over the animal kingdom. Recent studies with sea slugs have shown that they may contribute to storing memories in the brain.

WE NEED YOUR SCIENCEY SONGS!!

TWIS Book Club is currently reading Jan Zalasiewicz's The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?. Get your copy here:

Gay Science
An evolutionary view on homosexuality comes from studies in the Pacific island of Samoa where being gay is widely recognized and accepted. Homosexual family members contribute to their family unit and increase the fitness of their gene pool.

Going Batty
Studies of echolocation with Egyptian fruit bats have shown that unlike other species that use high pitched pulses aimed directly at the target object, these bats use clicks aimed AROUND the object to 'see' it.

Getting Bats Drunk
Researchers have found that fruit bats have an extremely high tolerance for alcohol, even with high blood alcohol levels. This is presumably an adaptation that allows them to feed on fermented fruit without getting too drunk to fly home.

Scientists Say: Drink Beer
Beer contains large amounts of dietary silicon in a very bio-available form. Silicon is a key ingredient for increasing bone mineral density, so moderate consumption of beer could help you fight osteoporosis. The silicon comes from the malted barely in the beer, and the lighter the beer the more silicon.

Daddy Sang Bass...
Blue Whales are singing lower frequency songs. This is possibly due to post whaling population growth. Perhaps now whales don't have to call so far away to reach a female, and thus can focus on developing sexier, deeper frequency mating calls.

More stories:

This Week in Science History

Plants have progesterone... the female hormone is found in plants but why?

Pluto has seasons!

Lo-Jacked Chickens: exploring use of wireless tech to monitor chicken movements and habits.

A Question for the Minions:
If a crash happened in space would there be smoke from an explosion or fire. and what would it look like?

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, TMBG, Warp11, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-01-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

How-To Do Just About Anything...

In the show this week: More Neurons For Your Brain, Uranus is a Girl's Best Friend, How To Melt a Moon, Mental Time Travel Moves, How To Run Faster, The Dolphin Bat, Levitating Magnets and Dust-Bunnies, Minion Mailbag, and Much More!

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

How to Make Neurons Behave...
... Raise them to act appropriately...
While scientists are currently able to turn stem cells into nerve cells, getting them to integrate into the brain is another story. However, a new study has moved science a step toward using stem cells to fight degenerative brain disease: nerve cells differentiated from embryonic stem cells and implanted into newborn mouse brains made appropriate neural connections.

Diamond Oceans?
Research into the melting point of diamonds shows that it behaves like water, with its solid form floating upon its liquid form. Liquid oceans of diamond may explain the unique magnetic poles of Uranus and Neptune.

How to Melt a Moon
Bombard it with space debris, according to scientists puzzling over why two similarly sized moons of Jupiter, Ganymede and Callisto, appear to have formed by melting and freezing, respectively. They concluded that though of similar size and location Ganymede was hit by 80 times more mass in the form of asteroids and comets, which caused it to melt.

Experiment:
Think back to what you were doing five years ago... now think about what you'll be doing five years from now. Did you lean backwards and then forwards? A study shows that people tend to lean back when thinking about the past, and forward while think about the future, leading to interesting questions about how we process time.

Book Club - The Canon by Natalie Angier. Discuss this book at twisbookclub.ning.com:

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How to Run Faster
Scientists researching the biological limits of running speeds previously assumed that we were at or near the physiological limit to our top speed. However, studies involving hopping have shown that we have not actually reached our full force-on-limb potential. They think our muscles can produce MORE force, raising our potential speed to greater than 40 mph.

Dolphins are More Batty than Previously Thought
Scientists looking at the specialized inner ear hair cells that enable echolocation in both dolphins and bats have found that the same mutations in the same gene are responsible for the trait in both species. This finding suggests that there might be only one way the mutations COULD occur to cause echolocation.

Better Fusion Through Levitation
Taking inspiration from our own planet, MIT scientists have created a magnetic plasma containment system by levitating a half-ton magnet inside an electromagnetic field. Currently, they are studying plasma dynamics, but the hope is that it will lead to the fusion reactor of the future.

Acoustic Levitation
Scientists have developed a new way to dust by shooting a standing wave of acoustic energy at dust particles. This overcomes the van der waals adhesive forces that bind the particles to a surface, levitating the dust, which can then blow away. This was developed to deal with the overwhelming presence of fine dust on the Moon and Mars, the only catch is you need an atmosphere to create sound waves. This technique might also be used to unstick geckos from walls, a common problem.

Minion Mailbag: Justin's Science Career advice!
Ignore the idea that what you study for initially will be your life's work. Justin predicts good science-y career potential in Microbiology and Computer Programming.

Some links from minion Ed Brydon related to HERVs: A research paper... Virology discussion about the research paper... NYTimes article that gets the science mostly right, one of the few press articles that does, and furthers the discussion.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, TMBG, Warp11, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-01-19T10:56:00.000-08:00

Shake and Rattle Your Science

In the show this week: Haitian Earthquake Aftermath, Combo For Remedy, Rainbow of Planets, Eye Test For Brains, Smart Oil, Big Thinking Bacteria, Killer Whale Speciation?, And Much More!

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

Haitian Earthquake Aftermath
Geologists warned the Haitian government that they were at extreme earthquake risk and should reinforce buildings such as hospitals but to no avail.

Certain groups are suggesting homeopathy kits be sent to the front line, which may hinder delivery of other treatments and supplies. This is serious because the biggest impediments to aid now are the logistics of delivery.

Tetanus vaccination rates in Haiti are only about 50% This is normally not much of an issue but in a situation where people have wounds, it becomes a problem and vaccination can prevent it from becoming an issue.

Consider donating/ offering support:

Doctors Without Borders Red Cross Oxfam

New Remedy
Taking BOTH calcium and vitamin D supplements will reduce risk of bone fractures regardless of age, sex or medical history.

Rainbow of Planets
In a far away solar system with a sun (HR8799) 1.5 times the mass of ours, scientists are using the wavelengths of light emitted from various chemicals to determine the composition of the planets, seeing if they are similar to our own. Specifically they are looking at the middle planet, which has a mass ten times that of Jupiter and a temperature of 800 degrees C.

An Eye Test for your Brain
Scientists have developed a new laser technique that will enable retinal/ brain cell death to be measured in real time, assuming that the condition of the retina is directly related to the condition of the visual area of the brain to which it is connected.

Book Club - The Canon by Natalie Angier. Discuss this book at twisbookclub.ning.com:

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Smart Oil
A droplet of oil consisting of hexyldecanoic acid put into a labyrinth was able to find the shortest possible path to the exit, apparently propelled forward by a difference in pH. This demonstrates a sort of primitive intelligence, and is promising for possible use in medicine delivery in the body.

Big Thinking
Bacteria Studies with the bacteria Asosperiliaspirlum brasilisense focused on the way an individual receptor can sense its environment and can be extrapolated to predict bacterial ability to perform complex decision making.

Killer Whales - Two species in one?
Scientist think there is a possibility that killer whales are splitting into two separate species: a larger mammal-eater and a smaller fish-sucker. The different diets possibly allow niche specialization and resultant body-shape differences in a similar manner to the widely adaptive Galapagos finch populations.

Other Stories:
Alligators breath like birds: what are the paleontological implications? ... Chimps and Humans: the Y chromosome is evolving faster than expected... Rosetta just did its gravity slingshot to rendezvous with a comet.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, TMBG, Warp11, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2010-01-12T11:18:00.001-08:00

As the Universe Turns...

Yay! Ali is back!

In the show this week: A New Physics Theory Vindicates Justin, Do More Yoga, Being Sheeple, ADHD Discord, Barefoot Jogging, Green Slugs and Viral Me, Water Don't Burn, See Thru Fish, Save the Fish Save the Coral, and Much, Much More...

Listen to it all Here!
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A New Physics Theory?
Eric Verlinde may have given us a new way of looking at the universe and gravity: Maybe gravity is, in fact, an effect of information rather than a force itself! According to his theory, space and gravity are emergent through a holographic scenario. He published his calculations on archive.org, which means that they aren't yet peer reviewed. But, that doesn't mean it's not good food for thought.

New Years Resolution: Do More Yoga...
A study recently showed that regular yoga practice may actually live up to some of the claims of yogis. Yoga has been shown to lower levels of cytokine interleukin 6, an inflammatory protein, which might in turn decrease inflammation. This may provide a multitude of health benefits as we know inflammation plays a role in many diseases.

Vinegar Diet for Better Health...
Acetic Acid might be good for your health. Several studies suggest that it might help insulin control in diabetics and promote satiety.

What is Osteopenia?
NPR discovered that the company that produces a drug for osteopenia also designed the machine that scans for bone loss. The broad definition of osteopenia and the relationship between the drug company and the diagnosis equipment makes the necessity of the drug for this "disease" suspect.

Book Club - The Canon by Natalie Angier. Discuss this book at twisbookclub.ning.com:

The Neuroscience of ADHD...
Researchers are investigating what is going on inside the brains of kids with ADHD. They first showed them the letter V on a screen followed by a picture or an A followed by a sound. If you have a stimulus the frontal regions would tell the visual areas to pay attention and same with auditory. Kids with ADHD did not have the same brain processing in preparing for a stimulus. This is the first concrete electrical difference shown for kids with ADHD.

What Shoes to Wear Running: None...
A study shows that wearing running shoes is worse for your joints than running barefoot.

Slug or Plant?
The green sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, is the first plant animal combo. The slug feeds on algae, and in doing so also sucks up the algal photosynthesizing machinery, called chloroplasts. Then the slug stores the chloroplasts so that they still function. This allows the slug to go without feeding if it needs to because it can now get its energy from the sun.

8% of human genetic material comes from a virus...
... specifically, Bornaviruses, RNA viruses whose replication and transcription takes place in the nucleus. Some suspect this extra DNA may actually be a cause of some pyschiatric disorders. Bornaviruses infect only neurons and reside in the brain, but somehow became a part of our DNA.

Gardening Tip:
Lots of people know not to water their lawn at the midday because the sun can hit the water droplets and focus the light to burn the plant. When this common knowledge was put to the test, scientists found that hairier plants are more likely to burn. The hair holds water droplets off the leaf surface allowing them to act like a lens.

See Through Goldfish
In Japan you can now purchase see through goldfish where you can see the internal organs. See through frogs are already available.

Let's Save Fish
Marine Reserves are highly important for allowing coral reefs to recover. The whole ecosystem is essential for the health of the coral. The parrot fish eats seaweed, basically weeding the coral reef and giving it space to thrive. More evidence that you must look at an ecosystem perspective in dealing with conservation.

Be an Astronomer!
Amateur astronomers can collect data and observe epsilon aurigae.

Shout-outs to...

all the TWIS minions, but especially those of you who send us stories, have donated money, and who simply write us to keep us in line. You keep us going. You are the TWIS lifeblood. Thanks for everything.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, TMBG, Warp11, and The Gifted Apes. Buy it HERE.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-12-29T13:16:00.000-08:00

Science is the Reason for the Season

In the show this week: the 2009 Best 11 Ideas in Science Countdown. We break it down so you don't have to.

A big thank you to Craig Messerman of Missoula, Montana for writing up our show notes!

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

Top Ten Science Stories of 2009

Eleven: Climydia---New data every year. Copenhagen: Is carbon trading as good as real change? Antarctica is warming. Plankton affects ocean mixing and carbon storage. Boron isotopes stored in plankton show ocean pH and therefore CO2 levels back 2.1 My. CO2 has been quite stable until recently.

Ten: Computing power---Programmable quantum computer made with Beryllium. (At Yale? Wikipedia says Aluminum…) Instead of bits, quantum computers use Qubits, or quantum bits, with the quantum state of an atom working as a transistor.

Nine: Batteries---Viruses used to make (thin) rechargeable Li-ion batteries. Microbe batteries (Geobacter microbial fuel cells, via MIT). Carbon paper batteries and capacitors.

Eight: Origin of Life on Earth---Origin of RNA from primitive reactions. RNA may have been the first life code. Did comets seed Earth with life? Panspermia: interplanetary molecules of life spreading through the galaxy.

Seven: Environmental health---BPA still in news, leaching from plastics and affecting heart, reproduction genes. Behavior alteration in children from exposure to BPA. We used to play with radioactive isotopes in science kits, and swam in radioactive waters. Will we think of BPA the same way in the future?

Six: Clever creatures---Animal behavior research: Octopuses using tools (coconut shell); premeditated rock hurling from zoo chimps; Do crows deliberately drop walnuts in front of cars? We have always underestimated animal intelligence.

Five: Genetics and Stem Cells---First draft of Neanderthal genome, maize, cattle, casaba melons, pig, cucumber, horse, panda, common cold virus, potato famine pathogen, cancer. Price drop in sequencing genomes. Foreign gene in marmosets passed on to next generation; first transgenic primate. Curing color-blindness in monkeys. Stem cells turned into sperm and eggs, and live mice. Are custom sperm and egg cells around the corner? Treatment of macular degeneration.

Four: Epigenetics---the first epigenome sequenced. Identical twins have similar epigenome (tissue methylation signatures). (The epigenome turns our genes on and off in specific cells and responds to our environment, via Univ. of Utah). Mice pass learned behaviors on through changes in their epigenome. Is there a Lamarckian middle ground going here? (Justin would love that!)

Three: Exploring the Universe---International Year of Astronomy---So much learned this year such as: antimatter detected in lightning, many more exoplanets discovered, dark matter detected in a mine, perhaps, speed of our galaxy, heliospheric bubble with no tail (IBEX satellite, Justin right on this one, with a neutral atom ribbon, yes Kirsten), new images of Mercury, adjustments to the “standard candle.” LHC turned on without breaking,and set record of 1.18 TeV.

Two: Paleontology and Human Origins--- Ardipithicus ramadus finally published. Upright -walking 4.4 Myo primate ancestor. Characteristics of hominids and earlier primates. Ancestor of Australopithecus? Ida turns out to be a lemur’s uncle, not a monkey’s uncle. Oldest feathered dinosaur (150 My) discovered; venomous birds; whale ancestor that gave birth on land? Smallest carnivorous dino. Downsizing of dinosaur family tree by consolidating specimens.

One: Water!---Water on the moon! Shoot the moon! NASA is doing a lot with less money. Water further confirmed on Mars too. Earth’s water from comets? Fresh water is a limited commodity on Earth and will be a huge issue to all people in the future. Will we need to go get it from the Moon? Will global warming increase precipitation?

Shout-outs to...

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Trebetheric, My Poor Kevin, and The Gifted Apes.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-12-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

Science is the Reason for the Season

IF someone would like to write some show notes for us, I will be more than happy to use them in place of the measly ones you see below.

In the show this week: Dark Matter Detected in a Dark Mine? Is Santa bad for our health? Or, is it the media? Getting Santa Drunk. It's TWISmas, not Halloween, but ghosts of mountains past are being explored! Cellphones remind us why we need science in this TWISmas time. And, much more...

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

It's TWISmas time! And, if you remember from last week, we have a special giveaway thanks to Evolvems. We're giving away a special Evolvem plush toy this week to Justina and Angela for these great TWISmas tales...

Dashing through Kigoma
Dashing through Kigoma
Chasing after chimps
Trying to find a fecal sample
So I can gather it.

Collecting all my data
Each minute that tick tocks
Man it can be grueling
But science really rocks!

Oh grad student, grad student
Making science waves
Working on some new research
For this TWISmas day.

Grad student, grad student
Future science nerd
Making sure the messages
Of evolutionary biology are heard. YAY!

Darwin of TWISmas Past
I didn‘t want a lot for TWISmas,
There was just one thing I dreamed about,
I didn‘t care about the fossils
Or anything that science found –
I just wanted the red-bellied Claus
To slide my chimney at night
And turn me into a flying unicorn!
So I could join his deers in flight.

To my defense it can be said
That it was many years ago,
And nothing much was yet in my head.
But I had the desire to grow
Into a shiny flying unicorn!
And so I went to school to learn how
Only in the new light to be born
Into a scientist-to-be somehow.

And then the glorious star of education
Started shining like energy-save bulb.
I started following it with no vacation
For my hungry brain. I joined the club –
I followed Newton, Mendell and Einstein;
But still my dream lived on –
While all the knowledge was fine,
I wanted to be a unicorn!
But everyone would say
(Less and less patiently to a varying degree)
That there was no way!
But I needed the argument explained to me!
I was told that it was how people were created,
And nothing would ever change.
I thought that there were things to be debated,
But the bell rang TWISmas break.

And so I went home on the night before TWISmas,
Snuggled up in bed, and was fast asleep,
When I heard a whooshing sound, and sitting up
I saw the Grandfather Darwin from the deep
Of Christmas past. He explained
How species come to be and evolution works.
And I listened, my breath bated,
Waiting to find out if I could be a unicorn!
But Grandfather Darwin went on to tell
How every individual is born with slight variations,
And they survive more or less well.
Those that reproduce pass on their adaptations,
Which takes years and years and years.
And that is how species change and form.
The evidence is all around out there!
To survive you have to be strong
And to adapt to the conditions.
That is how useful traits remain:
Some have the predisposition
To become another‘s prey...

And so a new picture appeared
In my mind: species fell in their places
On the huge Earth family tree.

Grandpa Darwin vanished without traces.
I cuddled up and fell asleep,
Happy that it was all in my head.

Shout-outs to...
Patrick Ford, Tony Steele, Ed Martin, Doug Perry, Rob Maskrey, Rob McCabe, James Hulsey, Travis Hale, Stu Sotozaki-Leech, Brian Chance, Mark Sherman, Ed Dyer, Jeff Peterson, Louis Bookbinder, Logan Waterman, Shannan Mortimer, Dylan Combelick and Dale Fisher for sending in a story about movies of photons, Sherman Dorn, and Leif Andersen

All the best and many more this TWISmas season!!!

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Jonathan Coulton, TMBG, and The Gifted Apes.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-12-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

TWiSmas Extendo-Rama!!!

And, Ali, our trusted intern, is on winter break. So, I apologize, but the show notes will be weak as a result. IF someone would like to write some show notes for us, I will be more than happy to use them in place of the measly ones you see below.

In the show this week you get more than you bargain for... and extra hour more!: Stem Cells Beat Sickle Cell, Breathing Space Gas, Eight-legged Coconut?, TWIS and Global Warming, One - Two - Six?, Stem Cell Grudge Match, Bacteria To Burn, Evolvem Giveaway, and Much, Much More...

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

Get your own Evolvems NOW:
10% discount until Dec. 25th by ordering at www.evolvems.com/twis. Tell your friends!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thank you to Daniel for the following notes summarizing our climate change segment:

Evidence for Global Climate Change:
1. Greenhouse effect is a natural effect that warms the planet. CO2 is a small percentage of atmosphere but has large effect due to longevity (50 year half-life).
Data Shows CO2 is increasing/ strongly correlated to fossil fuel use, emissions and deforestation
2. Carbon Isotopes data different forms of carbon/ links carbon dioxide over the past 150 years human carbon use
plant form has a different isotope
3. Carbon Dioxide level now higher than past 500-650 thousand years
past not due to humans but at slower rate
present rate is concerning
4. Several years in past decade highest on record last 15 years higher
media claims cooling trend: not true trend is still upward, media misnomer
Recent warming not due to solar activity because has been low
5. sea level has risen from 1.5 to 3 mm per year over past 100 years
6. 1 degree increase in temp over the past 100 years
7. public data is available unless under contractual obligation

Arguments:
1 planet is so big
rebuttal: livable planet very small portion, atmosphere is 50 miles breathable oxygen level ends about 16 miles up
2 volcanoes add a lot
rebuttal: myth volcanic activity is .02-.05 gigatons/year humans produce 8
particulate matter from volcano actually cools the area around them because it blocks the sun
3 There's more snowfall (more precipitation)
rebuttal: Climate change involves the melting of existing snow at ice caps, which does end up back in the atmosphere and therefore returns to the earth as snow/rain
4 Aren't the oceans going to increase their ability to retain carbon as water levels increase?
rebuttal: Saturation of water is dependent on the temperature;
Carbon doesn't precipitate out as ocean reaches capacity carbon is going to leak out
Sources:
Justin: peakoildesign.com
Kirsten: realclimate.org, globalresearch.ca

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It's TWISmas time! And, if you remember from last week, we have a special giveaway thanks to Evolvems. We're giving away a special Evolvem plush toy this week to Jason Quade for this amazing TWiSmas story... seriously, sit back and enjoy. Get your cookies and milk for this one...

A Visit From Kirk Cameron
'Twas the night before Twis-mas, when all through the lab,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a rat;
Post it notes hung by the monitor with care,
With hopes that my efforts would soon come to bear.

I drove home my car, while clearing my head,
My children were nestled all snug into bed,
Robo-wife in charging dock, I had a night cap,
And settled into bed for a long winter's nap-

When out in the garden there arose such a clamour,
The Mrs. warm-booted and asked, 'What's the matter?'
Ran to the window and I could have sworn,
There was a tiny sleigh pulled by unicorns.

Cell phone in my hand as I dialed Nine - One - One
I knew in a moment it must be Kirk Cameron.
Creationist tunes seemed to play from a band,
But they came from Ray Comfort, a banana in hand.

More rapid than the progress of science they came,
They whistled, and shouted, and call'd unicorns by name:
"Now! Young-Earth, now! Old-Earth, now! Ussher, and Malign,
"On! Blinders, on! Pseudo, on! On Intelligent-Design;

A shovel my wife produced, I asked, "Why?"
She said that weak arguments would soon pile high.
"Scientific proof they claim to come by,
When they meet with an obstacle, they point to the sky";

So up to the house-top Kirk Cameron he flew,
Propelled by hot air from the conclusions he drew.
As I put down my phone, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Mike Seaver came in with a bound:

A bundle of books was flung on his back,
And he look'd like a peddler just selling some crap:
His eyes - how they twinkled! His dimples how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;

A wink of his eye soon gave me to know
This mid-night visitor would not readily go.
He tip-toed across, like a man who is mad,
And proffered a book which he laid in my hand.

His Hollywood mouth gave me the Heeby-Jeebies,
The book that he gave was 'On the Origin of Species'
"Don't worry he said", with a sideways look,
"There's nothing to fear in my little book.

We've prefaced the thing with lies near to treason
Sometimes you have to circumvent reason.
We took out the worst parts that put holes in our theory.
A chapter ..... or four. They were rather dreary."

My hackles were up, but Violence wasn't the solution
The poor Man-Boy needed an education in evolution.
And I said:
"Tis true Darwin's book is of public domain,
To mar it with fairy tales, for that I say SHAME.

Individuals are variable, Variations are inheritable
Some offspring within a species are naturally perishable.
Survival and reproduction is for the apt and the strong,
And the history of the earth is very very long."

When I finished he pulled his fingers promptly from his ears,
First I thought he didn't listen, and then I saw the tears.
And it was at that moment that he had a choice,
He could embrace the science, do good with his voice.

Would his brain stay three-sizes-too-small that Twis-mas Eve
Or would he get excited, understand and believe?
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And ran out the window; it shattered, What a jerk!,
And laying his middle finger aside of his nose
He flipped me the bird, Ray Comfort was a-doze.

He sprung to his sleigh, children still in their beds,
His pony unicorns lost the cones from their heads.
But I heard him exclaim, ere they drove out of sight-
"Just because it's not true doesn't mean it's not right!"

We also want to thank Angela Heinz for sending in a TWiSmas submission... if you are looking to try and get yourself or a friend a little plush Evolvem for TWiSmas, we'll be giving away one more toy next week! Send us your TWISmas stories, songs, poems... anything fun, festive, and filled with evolution and the spirit of TWiSmas.

Shout-outs to...
Ed Dyer for all the stories he sent in... Ed is an intern (my story intern) even though he doesn't know it.
David (in North Wales), Minion Dale (Niles, MI), Steve Turrisi (Weston, Florida), Bobby (somewhere), TWIS minion Patrick (wants to let the TWiS minions know that they can edit Conservapedia), Rick Mellott, Michael Johnson, Susanne McGaugh (Durham, NC - suggests we take a look at horrible-science.co.uk for some kidlet TWiSmas gifts... might be more Halloweenish, but it's always fun to mix holidays), James Marshall (Swinburne University - has been working on a game portal for autistic kids called whizkidsgames.com).

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, TMBG, and The Gifted Apes.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-12-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

It's Almost TWiSmas...

And, Ali, our trusted intern, is studying for finals (Good luck, Ali! We hope you get some sleep this week.). So, I apologize, but the show notes will be weak as a result. IF someone would like to write some show notes for us, I will be more than happy to use them in place of the measly ones you see below.

In the show this week: Hopen and Copen, Pain in my... blood vessel?, Don't blame the cows, Twinkle Twinkle, Metal Clouds, A Contest and Presents!, Baggin' on the Boys, Implant Apps, Minion Mailbag, and Much More...

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

Get your own Evolvems NOW:
10% discount until Dec. 25th by ordering at www.evolvems.com/twis. Tell your friends!

Listener mail bag...
Ritchie from Manchester tells of his surreptitious CO2 experiment involving artificial cerebro-spinal fluid.
Dan relives his Mentos-soda shower.
Andrew gives us a graph to consider.

Shout-outs to...
Ed Dyer for all the stories he sent in... Antarctic refuges, metamorphosis master switch, and carbon and trees.
Chris Lauf sent in a story about the speech - music connection.
David Eckard made me sad with a story about butterflies in space.
Tony Steele - our TWIS 2009 album art artist - sent in a story about scientists accidentally discovering a perfect blue pigment.
Artyom had a story about the evolution / religion debate in Alexandria, Egypt.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, Little Tin Frog, and The Gifted Apes.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-12-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

It's World Aids Day

Do we have a cure yet? No, and the numbers of cases keep increasing. Awareness is a crucial part of the battle.

In the show this week: Complexity Abounds, Oxygen Deprived Mole Rats, TWi The End of The World!, Lagging Brain Time, That Hearing Feeling, Once Again... Man Woman Differences, TWIS In Space, Minion Mailbag, and Much More...

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

The Complexity of Life
Simple cells are more complex than previously thought: three extensive quantitative studies of the bacteria mycoplasma pneumoniae were published in the journal Science. By taking a look at one of the simplest bacterial cells, researchers are figuring out what things are absolutely required for life to work: the shared features, the bare essentials of life.

Blind! Naked!
Researchers have found that adult naked mole rat brains can sustain extreme oxygen deprivation. The mole rats live 6ft underground in colonies of up to 300 members where breathing can be a luxury. This low oxygen, high carbon dioxide environment would do irreversible brain damage in any other mammal. However, naked mole rats seem to have persistent neural characteristics that are associated with most other mammals only while in the womb.

The Oceans Cant Take it Any Longer...
...or can they? What is the carbon dioxide carrying capacity of our oceans? A Yale geophysicist has found that the time frame of the interannual variation in CO2 and temperature changes, which was five months 20 years ago, has now increased to fifteen months. He suggests that this is because the oceans are absorbing less carbon dioxide, strengthening the predictions that the pace of future climate change will quicken.

Between What We See and When We See It...
...there is a delay. Between eyeball capture and conscious recognition of the image there is time lost. If it was too long, our activities would have to be slower. However as it stands, this delay was measured to be around half a second, or 300-400 milliseconds.

Do You Hear What I Feel?
Researchers have found that feeling puffs of air against your skin can influence how you hear. Certain "Pa" sounds (the "plosive" sounds) are associated with puffs of air, and during the study whether puffs of air were present or not influenced whether people heard accurately. Mismatched puffs of air influenced people to hear the wrong sound. This worked even with air puffs on people's ANKLES.

Men and Women are Different
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain activation, researchers found that men and women respond differently to positive and negative stimuli. The differences indicate that women pay more attention to the emotional aspects of stimuli, while men process them in regards to the action that should follow. It also suggests that women may analyze positive stimuli in a broader social context.

TWIS in space
NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) is taking picture of the sun at right angles. In Feb of 2009 it captured a sunspot eruption, helping scientists understand that solar tsunamis are real, and consist of a giant wave of hot plasma and magnetism. This can help us gather information about the sun's lower atmosphere and help forecast space weather.

Saturn's Moon Titan
There are lakes on the moon's north pole, but not the south. Due to Saturn's eccentric orbital pattern, titan has tens of thousands of years of climate cycles, which may be similar to the climate effects of cycles on earth.

Intel Inside... Your Brain?
A computer chip company wants to implant sensing devices into the brain to give people the ability to use their computers using thoughts alone.

Listener mail bag
More skepticism about the car accident victim who was in a coma and is now supposedly communicating with the outside world.

Music this week was by Unbalanced Wheel, TMBG, Little Tin Frog, and The Gifted Apes.

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-11-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Anniversary, Origin!!!

Today is the anniversary of Charles Darwin's publication of "On the Origin of Species." It's rare that such a work of science or literature gets as much attention as this book has since its announcement. Just goes to show, you can't keep a good book down.

In the show this week: So much crazy science it was hard to file down the list of stories, but somehow we managed.

Listen to it all Here!
Donate now:

Your Brain is Like a Radio...
... that tunes you into the past and the present. How does your brain tell whats a memory and what is happening right now? Researchers have discovered the brain's mechanism for keeping your past and present straight by looking at frequency waves that are carried by the neurons. Gamma waves seem to be the information carrier, using lower frequencies for the past and higher frequencies for the present. Cells synchronize so they can tune in to what is going on and keep reality straight.

What is Scarier than Rampaging Robots? Rampaging Robot Vampires!
Will robots need lawyers? Robots are currently used for a multitude of purposes, which can only be expected to increase as we head into the future. This brings up the question of who we will sue if a robot hurts someone? What if robots are susceptible to being hacked, and are maliciously turned into spies or vandals? The robot industry is expected to exceed 5 billion dollars by 2015, and this problem is expected to grow.

Mutations are a Part of Life
Our cells have repair mechanisms to constantly monitor and fix mistakes, but how do they find that one little mutation among the many? A new theory involves the recognition of the specific electrical signature of DNA that the repair mechanisms tune into, suggesting that this is may be less of a random search than was previously thought. Experimental evidence shows that cancer causing mutations change the electrical signature of DNA in an identifiable way.

Finding the Origin of RNA and DNA
Researchers have reconstructed one of the earliest steps in the formation of RNA using warm water. Ancient molecules called cyclic nucleotides can fuse together in water to create polymers. This counteracts the idea that extreme temperature or acidic conditions are necessary for development of these molecules.

Biophotonic Communication
Evidence in this growing new field of research suggests that biological cells can communicate with each other through the exchange of photons: cells emit light that can somehow be picked up by other cells and cause them to synchronize. They showed that human cells could synchronize when they were separated in every way, except the ability to exchange photons. The suggested mechanism for this involves running the electron transport chain and the photosystem backwards to bump an electron up the chain to emit a photon of light.

Life as a Carrot
A Belgian man thought to be in a coma for the last twenty years is now able to communicate with some sort of system using his foot to type. He has been in a comatose state since a 1983 car accident, it was not until 2006 that doctors began to discover his mental capacities were still there.

Kiki Rants
Hackers broke into a university email server and published many years of correspondence between scientists about climate change research. The hackers claimed that this proved that climate science is a bunch of hogwash, however, these emails actually just show the scientific process at work. The scientific literature suggests that humans are responsible for the runaway greenhouse effect with 90% certainty.

The End of the World
Its not going to matter if we conserve or not: one scientist argues that the rising carbon dioxide conditions won't stabilize unless the global economy collapses or we meet energy demands by building one new nuclear power plant per day. He claims that energy conservation does not really save energy but instead spurs economic growth which in turn uses more energy. He also caluclates that we need to increase non-carbon releasing power sources at a rate of 2.1% per yer.

Also...
... Scientists looking at a massive star in the process of forming suggested that magnetism may be important for star formation. There are bacteria in your cigarettes. Researchers using human embryonic stem cells have created a complete epidermal skin layer. Lockheed-Martin is looking into sending humans to an asteroid. And, the LHC is back up and running.

TWIS Book Club is currently reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann-- scientific history of the Americas:

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-11-17T10:48:00.001-08:00

Did We Forget the Leonids???

Listen to it all Here!

Um, in a word, yes. We forgot to mention the current Leonid meteor shower. But, it's not over... you can stay up into the dark hours of the night tonight for more intense meteoric action. Check out the Fluxtimator to discover the best viewing times in your area.

Does Making Memories Involve Erasing Memories?
Usually experiences become memories by first passing through the hippocampus, but then they get moved out to other areas of the brain for long-term storage by a process called consolidation. After a certain period of time, the memory is no longer expressed in the hippocampus. No one knows how this happens. Researchers at the University of Toyama in Japan found that by stopping neurogenesis in the hippocampus memories of a fearful experience were maintained within the hippocampus long after they should have been removed. They also found that voluntary exercise increased the birthrate of neurons and stimulated the turnover and formation of new memories. SO EXERCISE!

Oh Rats!
Abandoned landmines have a general life expectancy of over 50 years. They are dangerous, difficult to disable, and the equipment required is expensive and big. Bart Weejens from Belguim formed an organization called Apopo, which trains rats to seek out land mines in places such as Mozambique, Angloa and the Congo. The rats don't get hurt in the process, they just go out and detect the location of the landmines. An area that take a full day using traditional methods only takes fifteen minutes for the rat.

Hackers Hacking Pacemakers
No one has reported being hacked yet, but manufacturers have started enabling pacemakers with wifi technology so that they can be monitored wirelessly, which poses a potential hacker target. Researchers are developing a system with ultrasound sensing capabilities to verify and sync with any incoming signals to get around the hacker threat.

Grow your Own Breast Implants
New implants developed in Australia: a method of growing a breasts with patients own tissue. They implant a chamber with fat tissue into the breast, and within eight months fat tissue grows and fills the chamber. The procedure could be used to regrow other organs in the future.

A Tale of Two Drugs
Why is it that some drugs work well together, and others don't? Researchers at Harvard Medical school looked at the interactions between the antibiotics Cipro and Tetracycline. Cipro blocks DNA replication forcing the bacteria into a stressed out state, which includes the over-production of ribosomes. Tetracycline blocks protein synthesis and inhibits the ribosome, and therefore, counteracts the effects of Cipro. It was believed that two drugs together are better than one, but obviously this is not always the case.

iCough: Digital Diagnosing
High tech programs that will diagnose by the sound of a cough, for an instant diagnosis. This could cut down on trips to doctors. One quarter of a second of a cough contains distinct sounds the could help doctors diagnose a problem cough over the phone.

Genie in a Needle Builds Muscle
Researchers injected a protein producing transgene into the thigh muscle of primates. This new gene therapy process stimulated muscle growth and increased strength for three months after the treatment. It is being developed as therapy for people with muscle disorders, but there is definite potential for misuse as an athletic enhancement.

Making a Better Electric Car?
If you Could Push a Button and Turn your Current vehicle into an Electric Vehicle, Would You? Engineers have turned a 2002 Scion XB into an electric car. Their project involves analyzing the needs of actual people, and creating cars suited to their particular needs. their goal is to create a system that will use the skeletal system of existing cars in order to make them electric.

Golden Gloves, Golden Ears, or Golden Pipes?
The "golden ear" is closer than it ever was before. Scientists have created mice with a "golden ear." They bred a strain of mice with hearing that gets worse gradually over time with a strain where it stays good, but then gets bad really fast. In a seemingly unexpected turn, the offspring of these two genetic lineages can hear really well into old age. Now we have a new kind of mouse that opens up a new clear window into the aging brain.

Right-handed Chimpanzees and Language.
A recent study suggests there maybe some evolutionary roots between hand gestures and language. The majority of chimps in the study showed right handed gestures in communicating, mostly with humans (they resort to hand gesturing to try to communicate). Humans generally favor the right hand as well. These hand gestures were interpreted as universal gestures, the same as humans might use. The fact that most language functions and the right-handed gestures are controlled by the left hemisphere may point to the behavioral origins of language.

Minion Mailbag
Gary Ritter -- "Cat Lady" has 126 cats, used to be normal and somehow got caught up in the cat life. Was is the Toxoplasma gondii?

Logan Waterman -- proposed a new award show to award "2012" the award for the worst science in a science based movie for the use of the phrase"mutating neutrinos".

TWIS Book Club is currently reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann-- scientific history of the Americas:

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-11-10T10:26:00.001-08:00

A Week of BIG News

Listen to it all Here!

Fermi finds antimatter...
The Fermi Space Telescope focused on Earth and spotted traces of antimatter in several lightning flashes emanating from two storms. Gamma rays and x-rays have been spotted previously, but never antimatter. This opens up a whole new question for scientists about the electromagnetic workings of lightning.

It's a novel nova!
First noticed in 2002, but classified as a Type 1a supernova, a white dwarf exploded with the light of billions of suns. Published in Science, research now reclassifies this dwarf as a .1a supernova, a type of supernova only theorized to exist a couple of years ago.

Genetics build a family tree for extinct island fox...
Using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from museum specimens, scientists pieced together the family tree of the Faulkland Island Fox, which went extinct over 140 years ago. Previously thought to have been introduced to the Faulkland Islands by humans, the evidence now suggests that it managed to get there itself over 70,000 years ago. And, that its island exile may have saved it from an extinction event during the late-Pleistocene.

Altruistic ants protect nestmates...
While ants can be quite vicious, when it comes to helping their nestmates they would risk their own lives. This study found that nestmates went out of their way to rescue a trapped ant, and that simple responses to chemical signatures can't explain all of their actions.

Virus surprises in the icy Antarctic...
In an icy lake in the Antarctic exists a thriving ecosystem, which ebbs and flows with the seasons. Surprisingly, the dynamics are tied to a varied population of DNA viruses, some never before known to scientists.

Uracil in the lab...
In the lab, NASA scientists stuck pyrimidine (a polycylic aromatic hydrocarbon, which has been detected all over the universe) in ice and exposed it to the harsh conditions of outer space. They found that it doesn't break down as easily when in ice as in open space. In fact, it combines with other compound and forms uracil (a nucleic acid found in RNA, and also considered a building block for life), which suggests a pathway of how uracil could have been created in outer space.

PreNatal Phonetics...
French babies cry differently than German babies. Scientists compared 30 French and 30 German newborns. They found that the French babies cry with a rising melody contour, while the German babies with a falling melody contour. This matches speech patterns in the respective languages suggesting that they learned the inflections while in the womb. It's interesting to note that the sense of hearing is the first sense developed.

Synthetic HIV solutions...
Synthetic molecules were created to target HIV and prostate cancer. In rats, synthetic antibody recruiting molecules, ARMH and ARMP, were used to bind antibodies (segments of protein present in the blood stream). The molecules act as a big flag indicating the cells with HIV or prostate cancer. Whereas the immune system normally ignores the infected or cancerous cells, the synthetic molecules instigate an immune attack.

Extreme Exposure to Food Advertisments...
Researchers at UC Davis analyzed food advertisements watched by children.
Out of 5724 commercials 1562 were food-related... overall, about 5 per hour. Junk food counted for more than 70% of the food-related ads. Children's networks had the highest percent, consisting mostly of ads for sugary cereals, sweets, and high fat foods. Saturday mornings had the most food-related ads with one every 8 minutes.

TWIS Book Club is currently reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann-- scientific history of the Americas:

Check Out A Book By Justin Jackson:

2009-11-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

Don't Toss Those Pumpkins!

Justin tells you why in this episode of TWIS. We also discussed a major advance in reproductive science; how tadpoles know danger; why your genes might be behind your bad driving record; a call to engineers to build a better teapot; how an ancient stellar blast is telling us about our universe; why there are going to be fewer dinosaurs; how the fish are reacting to oceanic changes; and more...

Two books for you this month:

A Book By Justin Jackson:
The TWIS Bookclub is reading:

Donate to TWIS! We thank you for your support.

Let us know what you think and follow us on Twitter: @jacksonfly and @drkiki

Help Get The Word Out About TWIS!
Listen to the Broadcast - Link to TWIS - Write an iTunes Review - Get a TWIS Sig

Music on the show was by Unbalanced Wheel, They Might Be Giants, and The Gifted Apes.

Listen to it all here.

2009-10-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

They Want To Drink Your Blood!

Today's guest, Dr. Bill Schutt, is an expert in the area of sanguivores. (If you don't know what that means, just take a listen to the show.) As a hint, just take a look at your calendar... it soon will be Halloween, a holiday filled with all the things we find creepy. He gave us all sorts of insight into the truth and myths of these special creatures. You can learn more by reading his book, Dark Banquet...

If you like reading science-y books in general, head on over to the TWIS Bookclub to share books with others. We're getting ready to start a new book for the month of November!

We themed up for Halloween with many stories about brains (thank you Society for Neuroscience for your timely conference!) and other creepy things. Scientists are reporting multiple ways to renew sight in the blind. Robots are getting whiskers for the sense of touch. UC Davis researchers have discovered another chemical that makes us smell yummy to mosquitoes. We have neurons for harmony... musically that is. Nerve regeneration looks to be on its way. The bees might be making a comeback from CCD. The best dinosaur ever was a transformer. And, butterflies hear multiple frequencies with the ears in their wings. They might be listening to you right now.

Music on the show was by Unbalanced Wheel, They Might Be Giants, Melodysheep, and The Gifted Apes.

Listen to it all here.

Hey! Justin wrote a book. It's called 'Ome'.

Check it out:

Let us know what you think and follow us on Twitter: @jacksonfly and @drkiki

If you love us, tell your friends about us. There is nothing better than the feeling of sharing TWIS.

Help Get The Word Out!
Listen to the Broadcast - Link to TWIS - Write an iTunes Review - Get a TWIS Sig

There is also no better feeling than donating! We thank you for your support.