Science Chat March 2024 News Round Up!

Have you ever pondered the intersection where cutting-edge technology meets the human mind? Prepare to be captivated as we navigate the fascinating realm of brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink. Alongside our insightful discussion on the ethical considerations of these devices, we highlight Nolan Arbaugh's remarkable ability to play chess using nothing but his thoughts, thanks to Neuralink's implant.

But our journey doesn't stop at the wonders of the human brain. We also turn our attention to our four-legged companions, diving into research that suggests dogs may have a deeper understanding of language than we once believed. We share touching stories about our own pets, Bunsen and Beaker, that echo the findings of scientists and challenge our assumptions about animal cognition. And we don't shy away from the less cuddly topics, like the potential risks of brain-eating amoebas from seemingly innocuous activities such as nose rinsing.

From the chemicals lurking in our homes that could be impacting our neurological health, to the awe-inspiring discovery of celestial fragments from the early days of the Milky Way, this episode is a rollercoaster of emotion and intellect.

Don't miss this episode; it's an experience that will leave your heart, and your mind, wonderfully full.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:09

Hello science enthusiasts, welcome to Science Chat. It's our weekly show. Well, sometimes weekly that's multicast live to X audio, x video, facebook live and Instagram live. This is the roundup show where Chris and I are going to talk about some of the timely science news items that have happened in the last month.

Speaker 2 0:30

My name's Jason and my co-host is Hi there, I'm Chris Sikowsky and I'm the co-host of SciChat here with Jason. I'm also the dog mom to Bunsen and Beaker and the cat mom to Ginger.

Speaker 1 0:43

That's right. That's right. So we don't have a Kahoot today. We are scrambling towards the Easter break. Do you feel like you're scrambling a bit, chris? I'm scrambling every day. I'm like clawing towards the break that's coming.

Speaker 2 0:59

No, everything's going great for me.

Speaker 1 1:01

Oh, everything's going great for you Okay.

Speaker 2 1:03

Everything is great, everything is awesome.

Speaker 1 1:06

I go to school every day prepped and prepared, with too much to do and not enough time to do it uh, jen actually suggested this and I I did a bunch of research on this and it definitely has been in the news. Since this is our science show, we're going to be talking about some of the big science news items on here. On x, everybody knows that knows that Elon Musk is the guy that owns X and SpaceX, but he also has this other company called Neuralink. So Neuralink, the whole idea, is putting a computer chip in your brain and using your brainwaves to do stuff. Now I was incredibly skeptical of all of this six months ago. I thought it was extremely far-fetched. But my mind has been slowly changed over time. Now, not necessarily because of Elon Musk's Neuralink okay, not necessarily because of that but because of another story that I did that involved a Canadian. So this lady was in an accident. She became completely paralyzed. She couldn't speak. In a somewhat similar process, they put a cage of electrodes all over her brain and, using artificial intelligence, used her brain patterns. Like when she was thinking of a word, the computer learned that that word meant hello and she was able to think thoughts. And then they hooked that up to an avatar of herself and they piped in her own voice from a previous speech. So they kind of cloned her voice. It was about 70% accurate that she had not been able to speak for a decade longer and she was able to think a conversation with her family, and that that kind of changed my mind a bit about this whole brain interface thing. So that's where I'm standing now. The story with neural link is it's very similar um, there's a, a hole that's drilled in the person's head, there's a little slide on screen, um, and a chip is put on the brain and there's thousands, over a thousand electrodes kind of make the same kind of cage.

Speaker 1 3:25

And the first human test subject his name's Noland Arbaugh, live on X. This last couple of weeks there was a video of him playing chess. So he was paralyzed and he was able to think thoughts, to move a mouse cursor and play chess. So just thinking thoughts he was able to play chess. Another game that he was able to play by thinking thoughts was a game called Civilization and once, I guess, this guy, noland, figured out and he trained his brain enough to think about playing civilization. He played it for seven hours straight.

Speaker 1 4:10

Now, one of the one of the things that when he was interviewed this isn't this is like by other reporting, not by, like you know, neural link reporting. Folks asked him a couple questions, like the first neural link test subject like are you scared about the surgery? And he was test subject like are you scared about the surgery? And he was scared about the surgery and are you scared about being like this avatar for this whole Neuralink thing? And he's like, yeah, he's a bit of apprehensiveness about it. But he said he had for him in his current life, like being completely paralyzed. He felt the risks were not going to be big enough to dissuade him from possibility, the possibility of being able to do activities he could before. So that's why he joined up.

Speaker 1 4:58

Similarly, that lady from Saskatchewan, canada, who also had the brain interface put on her brain and for a different experiment. Uh, she said she had nothing to lose, like she already was, like she was ready to try something and if it didn't go well and she got a brain infection and she died. You know that's a distinct possibility when you're opening up the skull. Um, she was okay with that. So, chris, that's the neural link story. I have a couple more things to say about it, but do you have any questions? You're kind of like coming into this without hearing it before.

Speaker 2 5:31

No, I thought it was really cool, but my concern is that's putting the toothpaste back into the tube. Once we start like, it can become an ethical slippery slope, and so did you talk about the ethics of the survey, of this study.

Speaker 1 5:48

Well, okay, so there are some, definitely some issues with putting stuff in your brain, right, there's some issues with that. Neuralink itself has come under investigation previously for some, you know, not treating, not treating the animals. They tested on this very humanely. So there are some issues with the Neuralink company. Also, of course, there's some ethical issues with if you have a company put a chip in your brain, can that like that company then has your thoughts potentially?

Speaker 1 6:25

So, if we're thinking like decades and decades down the road, where this is potentially a more routine procedure, our thoughts are very private, right, Chris? Like our thoughts, we have access, only us, me. I am the only one that knows what I'm thinking, and that's one of the big ethical concerns is these AI neural link. You know the cage, the electrode cages. If they can, A figure out what language we're thinking and, B turn our thoughts into movement on a computer screen, then companies potentially could gather data, just like all of the social media companies gather data on us for for targeted ads and things like that. Imagine targeted ads based on your deepest, innermost desires and thoughts. So that's one of the ethical concerns with this neural link stuff.

Speaker 2 7:20

But we can become X-Men right.

Speaker 1 7:23

Uh well, which x-men would you want to become? Which?

Speaker 2 7:26

which I'm thinking into thoughts like having the ability, oh, like people's thoughts like professor xavier or jean gray.

Speaker 1 7:33

Yeah, like being telepathic. Oh, anyways, it's still in its infancy. The folks who are going to be making use of this initially are just like this, just like like Nolan. So if you're watching one live, I've got a picture of the guy. He's completely paralyzed. He was apprehensive about having brain surgery, but he was thrilled with the results. He was in and out in a day. I guess the surgery was a complete and utter success. Like I said before, I was extremely skeptical of this but, as it's developed, not just Elon Musk's company, other companies have been using this to give people who have been seriously injured or had debilitating diseases potentially the ability to speak or think or do things they enjoyed.

Speaker 2 8:22

Which I love.

Speaker 1 8:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2 8:25

But what if you get it done and then you have buyer's remorse and then that's another invasive surgery to go back in and can they? Just turn it off.

Speaker 1 8:35

This is an incredibly invasive in surgery. You're going right on the brain, right, okay, chris? So, uh, that's, that's the neural link story. This is just a science roundup to get everybody kind of like up to speed on some of the big science stories that have happened this week or this month. I'll let you go to the next one. What's your story all about?

Speaker 2 8:53

My story, my favorite story, yeah, my favorite science news. It's called dogs and their toys.

Speaker 1 9:00

Dogs and their toys.

Understanding Dogs' Mental Lives

Speaker 2 9:02

Dogs and their toys and what they found. Ellen Lau, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, noted that dogs display neural signs of surprise when they are shown an unexpected toy by their owners.

Speaker 1 9:19

I love this study.

Speaker 2 9:23

It's like saying to Bunsen oh, I've got your hedgehog, Do you want your hedgehog? And then I give him a duck.

Speaker 1 9:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2 9:29

He'll be like what I wanted my hedgehog, but he likes his duck just as. No, he loves his hedgehog only.

Speaker 4 9:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2 9:38

But it's just that mental surprise, and the challenge is the idea that dog dogs reactions to words are simple reflexes, um, so that the fact that they understand more than we think um, or they understand more than they let on um. So some dogs, like the famous border collie chaser, have vocabularies of over 1 000 words for toys, which shows a deep understanding.

Speaker 1 10:04

How did they test the dogs? Based on their surprise. This ties literally into the previous story.

Speaker 2 10:09

Jumping down to electrodes, monitored the dog's brain activity and showed a larger-than-normal signal of surprise when an unexpected toy was presented. And so this larger-than-normal signal indicated the dogs had formed a mental concept and expectation for the named toy they thought that they were going to get. And the signal was particularly strong when mismatched words that the dogs reportedly knew really well. So the mismatch from the words they really knew suggested a deep understanding of knowledge of the words.

Speaker 2 10:45

Oh, I love that I know, and so this study revealed a neural signal of surprise in dogs' brains which is similar to the N400 effect in humans.

Speaker 1 10:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2 10:57

Which occurs when something unexpected happens. If we're hooked up to electrodes and see something surprising, hey, a certain area of our brain lights up. And these findings provide insight into the mental lives of dogs and suggest that they understand more than they outwardly show us. And it's kind of funny because I was talking to a colleague today and he's saying that the dogs don't really understand anything, or don't understand their name, and it doesn't matter what you call. It'd be like oh hey, dum dum and the dog's wagging their tail. But I know that bunsen beaker understand that I've never called them dum dum and I only call them nice names. Um, I said, hey, I don't know what kind of dog you've had, but I only call beaker baby girl.

Speaker 1 11:39

So I call her. I sometimes call Beaker a sweetheart. She loves when I call her a sweetheart.

Speaker 2 11:46

They do, they know, and it is tone for sure, but I like to think that our dogs know what we're saying to them. So Mariana Boros, who was a neuroscientist and ethologist at a university, studied 27 pet dogs to understand their understanding of words for toys, and so part of the study, before the electrodes went on, his owners were asked to bring five familiar toys to the lab and the dogs were fitted with those electrodes. Um, and the dogs were awake throughout the study they had to keep them awake.

Speaker 1 12:22

Some, some kept trying to fall asleep yeah, well, that's what bunsen would do yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 12:30

He'd be like, oh, lay down, this is a perfect activity for me yeah um. So dogs would hear the recordings of their owner saying words for toys and then see the owner window holding up a toy, and sometimes the name toy and the toy that was held up were different and then that's where they thought the brain activity go, like the dog going what tilt the head um what is happening yeah so I just love that um, because I love talking about dogs and I love um our dogs and I can't stop talking about dogs because they're so great.

Speaker 1 13:04

I just love that this. This is yet another study that shows how similar a human and dog brain is. In in some situations they have us completely. They have a different experience of the world with smell than us, but this is like an auditory visual thing and they're wired just like we are. We get surprised, like if someone said, hey, here's a sandwich and it's a shoe. You're like what? That's a shoe? Um, and dogs think the same way. Their brains are, get confused and flash. I love that.

Speaker 2 13:40

What did they do? Anything for cats.

Speaker 1 13:42

Well, okay, so I've talked before about this with cats. It is incredibly hard. Okay, chris has ginger right now on live. The problem with research with cats is they will do a thing once or twice and then that's it. So getting repeated trials with cats is almost impossible and, um, they are kind of disagreeable to do, like prolonged laying down and having their brain scanned. Um, whereas you can train a dog to do that and they'll lay like dogs have been trained to go through mri machines, completely immobilized. They'll, they'll do that. Um, I'm not sure you can do the same thing with a whole bunch of cats. You might find a special cat that can do it, and getting that same cat to do the same thing twice not likely. So no, we need to study cats more. They just have to do it a different way.

Speaker 2 14:37

Remember when we did Catnip Six.

Speaker 1 14:39

Catnip Six was fun. It was also a challenge getting Ginger to do like, hey, ginger, we're going to do a thing. And someday she was like, no, actually we're not doing anything today. Bye, like you can't make me. And we're like oh yeah, you're. You're not a dog, you're a cat, you. You only do things when you want to do things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 15:00

Yeah okay, chris had a fun story. I have a spooky story. You guys ready for my spooky science roundup. It's about brain eating amoebas. This is our hard turn. This is a hard turn from uh well, we're still talking about brains, I guess. Right like you were talking about dog brains, now I'm talking about amoebas. Okay, so the headline of this story is that be careful if you're rinsing out your nose with untreated water, because you could get a brain eating amoeba in your skull. That's the headline of this story.

Speaker 1 15:41

Now there are two brain eating amoebas. One's called acanthramoeba and and the other one's called nigerifilary. I probably said the second one wrong. I was practicing it before this. I'm not great with the whole Latin name.

Speaker 1 15:55

Anyways, these two amoebas are found in warmish water. They're found in the United States, the southern United States, thinking like this, closer to Mexico. They're definitely not found in Canada, chris. So we don't have to. I don't think we have to worry about these brain eating amoebas. And it is a bad deal when they get inside you. These, they come in through your nose. So these amoebas come in through your nose and you kind of have to force them in there. So you might think why would you ever force an amoeba into your brain and it's by accident. So if you're water skiing and you fall really, really hard, you can get water like blasted up into your nose or people who are, you know, diving off a dock, or if you just trip and fall in a disgusting puddle. Now, the brain-eating amoebas these two, their main source of things they enjoy eating are bacteria. But the problem is there's something they like way more than bacteria. Do you know what that is, chris?

Speaker 2 17:00

Are they like zombies? They like your brain.

Speaker 1 17:02

Yeah, they prefer brain. So the back, these amoebas get in through your olfactory canal, like you know, when you breathe in, that goes into your brain, like it's connected. They follow the nerve, like they kind of ride the nerves up into your brain and scientists think they're attracted to all of the neurotransmitters that our brain makes they they actually the, the amoebas are like they get high off that and they want more of it and they follow it up into your brain and then they start eating and they start dividing and it's all kinds of bad news. Um, now do you have to worry about this? Well, there are no cases in Canada to worry about this. Well, there are no cases in Canada. I checked and there are 10 to 12 people every year in the United States that get a brain-eating amoeba and the fatality rate is incredibly high 82% fatality rate. Like it is not good if you get a brain-eating amoeba in your brain Now it gets even spookier. Sometimes people randomly in studies have had their blood checked for antibodies that would be would have been used to fight off these, these amoebas, and they find that it's actually kind of common for people to have these amoeba antigens, antibodies, sorry in your body, which means all of these people were infected by amoebas, but their body fought them off and thus they weren't part of the case, the total case amount. They didn't get sick. Their body just killed the amoeba before it killed them or made them very, very sick. So the reason why this came came up is that just don't shoot stuff up your nose. That isn't treated and this can't. This comes from some folks in parts of the world where maybe the water coming out of the taps isn't super, super clean. Um, and they got brain-eating amoebas and a couple of them died and a couple of them survived. Now I will add one caveat that the folks who did succumb to the brain-eating amoeba had a weakened immune system. All 10 of the deaths in the United States had cancer, HIV, aids or they were like constantly, constantly, constantly rinsing their nose with dirty, disgusting water for some reason, and but they were also quite elderly, so they were immunocompromised. So generally healthy people shouldn't feel too worried about going water skiing and falling on your face in Texas. But I don't know, I don't know how. If that's something you can protect yourself against because they're in the water, they're there.

Speaker 1 19:56

Oh, you get crazy sick. Somebody asked on on X video. How does one know? Yeah, you get super, super sick and the problem is it's so rare that by the time doctors figure out what's going on with you. That's why it's fatal. Early treatment is key and there are like symptoms that you get. You just get a crazy bad fever. It's like meningitis basically, and that's unfortunately what sometimes doctors think it is and they treat that for. They treat for meningitis, when really it's this these two brain eating amoebas. Ew, gross, gross, hey, chris.

Speaker 2 20:33

I don't like that.

Speaker 1 20:34

You don't like this story. I have a slide. There's a slide I've left up of it getting into a person's brain on live. So if you're just listening to audio, okay, I've got a. Oh my god, they're amoebas. They're cool. Amoebas are awesome.

Speaker 2 20:49

They're little jelly guys, jelly jelly so jenny callahan conti says how does one know?

Speaker 1 20:58

oh I, I answered that like how does one know it's? It's symptoms similar to a severe brain infection, which is, I you know, like getting a little personal. That's what my mom died of was a brain infection, so she had, like she had terrible headaches and had a crazy high fever, so it's something similar to that and so rare doctors would think you know they'd go down one path and then unfortunately it would be too late. Okay, Chris, do you want to do your story and then leave me my, my one, for next? I don't know You're. What are you doing? Are you doing math marking while we're doing this space?

Speaker 2 21:32

Absolutely not, jason.

Speaker 1 21:35

Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 2 21:36

I am looking at my phone over here to make sure that I'm monitoring the chat.

Speaker 1 21:40

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 21:41

People want to talk.

Speaker 1 21:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2 21:42

And then I am watching Ginger lunch herself. She's being very, very cat like right now. She launched herself on top of the fridge and is trying to open up the cupboard where we have catnip six. That's funny that we were just mentioning catnip and she's going after it. It's crazy, jason. It makes me think, maybe, that she does know words, because she's like oh.

Speaker 1 22:12

I know you put the catnip sticks in here. Um, cats know way more than they let on. They just don't have the same kind of dog reaction, like I talked about that on the podcast. Like they, they absolutely know their name. They just don't respond to it.

Speaker 2 22:21

But it's, it's hilarious, um, because she doesn't. She hasn't been up there in a very long time and we wanted to keep it, you know, fresh when we were doing Catnip 6. And so keep it secret, and so she didn't get too attached to like a certain one, and we were trying to be scientific method all about it, but anyway, that happened.

Speaker 1 22:43

I've taken the amoeba off. Somebody just DM'd us and said please take the amoeba off. Somebody just dm'd us and said please take the amoeba off the live. So that was definitely disturbing. So sorry about that. I've taken the the amoeba off of our live show. Sorry about that, everybody.

Speaker 2 22:58

Okay, go ahead, chris they didn't like it they didn't I didn't really like it either it's but's a story.

Speaker 1 23:05

It's an interesting story.

Speaker 2 23:08

It is, and I think you just have to be careful, and if Food Safety Donna Cray is here, she'll tell us all about eating clean fruits and vegetables and washing our salad. And don't trust the salad in a bag without washing it, even though it says it's washed.

Speaker 1 23:27

Yeah, but to get this, Chris, you'd have to shove the salad up your nose. So I'm sure people do that, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 23:34

Have you ever met a toddler?

Speaker 1 23:36

They shove everything up their nose. Crayons fries.

Speaker 2 23:41

Nope, stop talking.

Speaker 1 23:42

Fingers.

Speaker 2 23:45

So I'm going to talk about dangerous household chemicals oh, okay, I gotta go ahead in my slideshow.

Speaker 1 23:50

Then, look, I've got some generic. Look at this. I was, oh, look at that. Generic household products from canva.

Speaker 2 23:59

Thank you, thank you, canva. Oh, so I'll share.

Speaker 4 24:06

Okay.

Speaker 2 24:07

For a while there. We thought maybe Beaker had an allergy.

Speaker 1 24:12

Yep.

Speaker 2 24:13

Because she was very itchy and she had, like the yeast on her paws and her ears were getting infected all the time and we went, took her to the vet and we got her on special food and did a little bit of steroid injections. But then they talk about, hey, the longevity of this yeah um, is not good on the dog for long term.

Speaker 2 24:33

Yeah, um, but you have to mitigate or somehow try to to have a happy balance. Um, and then we, we thought maybe it was, uh, spring related, but actually we think it's our household cleaning related we switched cleaners and it went away.

Speaker 1 24:51

Yeah.

Household Chemicals & Space Exploration

Speaker 2 24:52

Yeah, yeah, so household cleaners. Recently, a team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has highlighted the potential dangers of common household chemicals to brain health, so it sounds like we have a little bit of a common thread.

Speaker 1 25:13

Why are all my stories I picked about the brain? This is another brain story.

Speaker 2 25:19

Did you? You should put up a picture of Pinky and the brain, your favorite cartoon.

Speaker 1 25:23

Oh, what are we doing to know that Pinky asked that Brain, your favorite cartoon. Oh, what are we doing tonight? No, that Pinky asked that. The same thing we do every night. Pinky, try to take over the world. I love Rob Paulson Narf, go ahead.

Speaker 2 25:40

These chemicals are found in items like furniture and hair products, maybe linked to neurological conditions such as MS and autism. So genetics do play a role in neurological problems. You know what Environmental factors, including chemicals, are significant contributors. So the recent study that was published in Nature Neuroscience found that certain home chemicals affect something, a specialized cell that produce insulation around nerve cells.

Speaker 1 26:13

Oligodendrocytes.

Speaker 2 26:15

Oligodendrocytes.

Speaker 1 26:16

I love it.

Speaker 2 26:18

And those are specialized cells that produce insulation around the nerve cells, cells and um so chemicals like organophosphate, flame retardants and quaternary ammonium compounds were identified as damaging to the oligodendrocytes you, you spell that word in scrabble, you win.

Speaker 1 26:40

That's like triple word score a million points, you win.

Speaker 2 26:43

Scrabble ogliodendrocytes or aglio dendrocytes I don't even think you get that many letters okay um. So quaternary ammonium compounds are present in many personal care products um as well as disinfectant. Disinfectants and the organophosphate flame retardants are found in electronics and furniture.

Speaker 1 27:05

Yeah, I did a study two years ago about the flame retardant couches and how they were starting to get concerned about some of the chemicals that were in the flame retardant couches. Anyway, sorry, Keep going.

Speaker 2 27:30

Yeah, then, like I was looking to get, uh, the survival suit for winter, um, and you can get flame retardant.

Speaker 1 27:33

Um, clothing like survival suits, I had to wear those. Well, I had to wear those. When I worked in the oil patch, all of my, everything I wore had to be flame retarded so I didn't buy that because it was expensive.

Speaker 2 27:43

So I just have a normal one. That is good for me, okay? The? In the laboratory studies, the quaternary ammonium compounds caused the oligodendrocytes to die, while the organophosphate flame retardants prevented their maturation. Yeah, and so these chemicals were also shown to damage the specialized cells in developing mice, in the developing brains of mice, and exposure to one chemical was linked to poor neurological outcomes in children. So the vulnerability of those specialized cells to the chemicals highlight the need for further research on their impact on brain health.

Speaker 4 28:28

Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:31

And so a suggestion is to look at sort of long-term studies and tracking chemical levels in the brains of adults and children to understand the effect of their exposure, their exposure, and researchers hope that their work will inform regulatory measures or interventions to minimize chemical exposure and protect human health.

Speaker 1 28:57

Yeah, it's kind of shocking that, you know. It's kind of shocking that they're the, the stuff that's in our homes. There is that potential link to some of the. I guess, if you want to say, why are there so many more people who are diagnosed with xyz? You know, maybe that could be the thing there. Those chemicals are relatively new in every household in you know, human human society, speaking society, speaking right, the last like 50, 60 years.

Speaker 2 29:28

Yeah, and it definitely impacted Beaker.

Speaker 1 29:31

Well, well, the, the cleaning chemicals, like once we switched, she, she, she didn't, she wouldn't have any of the same kind of allergies and she had terrible, like terrible rashes. Um, we didn't. I like, like we posted about it. I swear, was that two years ago? It was two years ago, right? Like she was in a cone every month and a half from getting hot spots and she would lick her paws raw, right? Do you remember how, how red and sore her paws were getting gonna get? Um, and then we put her on the new food and it just didn't seem to help. But the vets like you, just gotta give it it did after she got the shot.

Speaker 2 30:13

She needed the jump. It was the shot.

Speaker 1 30:15

It wasn't the food. Then it wasn't the food, it was the steroid shot. So she just wasn't as allergic to the stuff because once they we switched yeah, once we switch she's good to go. I mean, she still gets ear infections, but that's because she's. If there's anything, she's good to go.

Speaker 2 30:31

I mean, she still gets ear infections, but that's because, if there's anything wet.

Speaker 1 30:33

She's in there. Maybe she'll get an ear amoeba, An ear amoeba. It's got to go up there in your nose I don't think there's an ear, amoeba.

Speaker 2 30:41

Okay, don't put the picture back on.

Speaker 1 30:45

No, I'll go back to mine, okay. Okay, can I talk about space?

Speaker 2 30:48

Oh my goodness, is this the JWST?

Speaker 1 30:57

Well, it.

Speaker 2 30:57

I. That is the wrong Okay.

Speaker 1 31:01

First off, we get. We get to talk about space. Okay, no, it's not about the JWST. I just love the jwst, I love it, but it's actually from the max plank uh facility. So my, my little like sciencey thing has to do with space and two wicked old Milky Way building blocks, and they were named Shakti and Shiva, and you might have heard of Shakti and Shiva before. They're chakras, so they named these building blocks kind of like in honor of chakras. Shiva symbolizes consciousness and Shakti I hope I'm saying that right symbolizes the feminine principle of power and energy. Okay now, where does this come from and why is this important? So there was a space platform launched called GAIA, which stands for Global Astronomic Interferometer, for Astrophysics, and it's actually a European Space Agency mission. Now, it was launched a long time ago. Do you even remember hearing about Gaia, chris? Have you ever heard about Gaia? This is Gaia. If you're watching live, that's what Gaia looks like.

Speaker 2 32:21

It was launched in 2013,.

Speaker 1 32:22

Yeah, yeah, I don't remember it launching. I have no recollection of Gaia launching, anyways.

Speaker 4 32:29

Yeah, I'm Gandalf, yeah.

Speaker 1 32:32

You shall not pass.

Speaker 2 32:35

Anyways, that's not the same.

Speaker 1 32:37

That's yeah. I have no recollection.

Speaker 2 32:38

I have no recollection of this place.

Speaker 1 32:41

Yeah, but then he remembers Cause the air is less foul down that way. Yeah, do you remember now, when in doubt, master Mario Duck, follow your nose, chris. I can recite that entire movie.

Speaker 2 32:52

I know, but what about this? Talk about Gaia?

Speaker 1 32:55

Okay, so I did some research on it. It's wicked cool. It is going to survey 1% of our entire galaxy. Okay, one percent now that doesn't seem like a lot one percent, but that's 100 billion stars. That's how big our galaxy is and in observation mode, like guy is already out there and it's been working since about 2017. It's been sending back good data for getting like getting near close a decade and it spins in on like it spins.

Speaker 1 33:33

If you see the picture of it, it's got kind of like a rotating thingamajig. Let's see if I got another one. Nope, that's nope, that's a galaxy. Okay, I don't have a better picture of it. That's all I had time for today, folks. Anyways, the thing spins and it takes. Uh, I lost my train of thought.

Speaker 1 33:50

Okay, it takes, it spins every six hours and it sweeps two giant telescopes across the sky and takes digital pictures of it on a digital camera, and it's a huge digital camera. It's the biggest one in space. It's different than the JWST, which is a reflector. It's a reflecting telescope. This is actually a camera, is a reflector. It's a reflecting telescope. This is actually a camera, and it has nearly a billion pixels.

Speaker 1 34:16

So the whole idea is that, by looking at all of these stars a billion stars super accurately. It's going to measure their motion, it's going to figure out what their orbit is. It's going to figure out, like, how they move around the center of galaxy. It might help like the dark matter, dark energy scientists out, and each star 1 billion stars that will be observed will be observed 70 times. Okay, all of this data is being gathered and that is an enormous amount of data. I don't know if you can like think of a billion pieces of data and then times it by 70. It is way too much data for people to go through. But some of the early, some of that early data, what?

Speaker 2 34:59

jason, you, you. One would think it's an astronomical amount of data or is it data?

Speaker 1 35:06

data astronomical amount, but I'm fine, wait, I don't have it ready. I was on my Star Wars sound effect there. There we go. Okay, I'm getting excited and I'm getting off topic.

Speaker 1 35:26

The Max Planck Institute has different arms of research and a bunch of folks from there were sifting through the data and they found some early merging galaxies. And by looking at these early merging galaxies they found stars with a lower metal count or metal content, and I've talked to astrophysicists before and that's what early stars had. Early stars didn't have a lot of metal because it takes time for the star to crunch hydrogen into helium and helium into lithium and then blow up or die and turn into a neutron star and then have two neutron stars smash together and make like super heavy or like heavier elements than iron. So whenever they find a star with a wicked low metal count, it's one of the first stars that emerged. And all of this data is like taking photos of like early, early, early stars in the Milky Way's inception. So like these, these two kind of like stellar specters that are found, are the building blocks that built the early stars.

Speaker 1 36:42

Um, the, these two kind of like goopy bits that it took took photos of maybe the first part of our entire Milky Way galaxy and if that doesn't give you shivers, I don't know what else will Like. The actual like the stuff before the Milky Way was a massive conglomerate of stars that became a galaxy. That's kind of neat, and who knows what else is on there. There's a billion pieces of data they're gonna need to use like an ai algorithm to sift through it. Maybe there's aliens on there, I don't know. I hope so, but that's my story about gaia. I didn't even know about it till I sat down today to get some research ready. I love that. I love that story.

Speaker 2 37:31

I love that. I love that story and I love that you ended on a space note, because you just love space.

Speaker 1 37:36

I do, and it has nothing to do with the brain.

Speaker 2 37:40

No, but it tickled your brain, okay.

Speaker 1 37:44

Hey, I was ready with that.

Speaker 2 37:47

That wasn't really a bad umsh, but thank you.

Speaker 1 37:49

Okay, well, was it that one?

Speaker 2 37:53

No.

Speaker 1 37:53

Okay, I don't know.

Speaker 2 37:54

It just was a comment.

Speaker 1 37:56

It just was a comment. Okay, so that's the sign A comment, not a comment.

Speaker 2 38:03

It was a comment. No, it was a comment.

Speaker 1 38:05

Okay.

Speaker 2 38:05

There, it is. There, it is Okay, I'm done.

Speaker 1 38:08

All right, All right, so that's our Science Roundup the five fun stories. Five fun stories. If you would like to make a comment or ask a question, now's the time to do it. You can type it in. If you're watching us live, the 700-odd people watching us live and the folks on Instagram, there's a whole bunch of people popping in and then taking off. And then, Chris, you've brought, you can bring people up on Twitter if they want to speak but we got Jen up.

Speaker 3 38:43

Jen you came up early about Neuralink.

Speaker 2 38:49

Just yeah. So yeah, go ahead, chris. Well, I was just going to go over the ground rules. If anybody was wanting to come up to speak, we definitely do a little bit of vetting of your account and if we know you, then awesome, and then if we don't, we send you messages to maybe find out what you want to talk about a little bit more. But, jen, you're vetted, jen is vetted.

Speaker 1 39:08

Uh-oh, you're vetted, jen is vetted.

Speaker 3 39:09

Uh-oh, anyway, so four neuroscience stories and a space one. I'm not sure what to pick from to choose to speak about. They were all great and you know I've been a neuroscientist for 30 years and I learned something from each of those neuroscience topics you talked about.

Speaker 1 39:26

You're a neuroscientist, jen right. Yeah, yeah, apparently oh.

Speaker 3 39:30

Apparently. Oh, that's what they tell me, yeah.

Speaker 1 39:33

So can I ask you a hot button question Like what do you think of these? Like not necessarily Elon Musk's Neuralink, because, like, not everybody enjoys Elon Musk, I get that, but like, what about? Like the I forget which university it is, I apologize, but the lady from Saskatchewan that they, oh wow.

Speaker 3 39:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:54

Like what do you, what do you think about that as a neuroscientist?

Speaker 3 39:58

I was skeptical at first.

Speaker 1 40:00

Yeah.

Speaker 3 40:01

And and I, like I haven't been on social media for more than a year I only signed up because my students wanted me to long story and so I didn't even have any idea that that elon musk or anyone was working on this. I would say that, uh, again, I was very skeptical. But, uh, from what I've seen, I think there's probably something there, for a few reasons. Number one, um, they have a patient where it's worked. And number two, they're keeping their cards close to their chest. So when I would ask questions, well, what brain region was it? You know I'd get crickets.

Speaker 3 40:40

So I think it's a very competitive field, and the fact that other people have been working on it besides, you know, ne uh tells me that that people are making progress. Um, so from a neuroanatomy point of view, it's possible, and I hope I don't bore anyone here. But what's interesting about what they're saying about this neural link is that they're basically talking about motor planning, right, which is a slightly different brain region than just your motor cortex, so to speak, and they keep saying that the person is imagining what they're doing. So I mean, that's what we do all the time, right, when we, especially if we start a sport or something we're not very good at it.

Speaker 3 41:24

We imagine, right, we imagine it so that's actually a really big part of the motor function in our brain, right? And so that is very interesting, that they're using that area to allow the person to actually, you know, execute motor function, and I would love to know how they do it. It's not that hard, honestly, to put something that's inert into the brain. You know, anytime you go in the brain there's a risk of infection. Yeah, but the people that will benefit from this, regardless of who comes up with it, you know, some of these diseases are just terrible. I can't think of a worse neurological illness. Diseases are just terrible. I can't think of a worse neurological illness and I do. I actually partly. I run our neurology module for our medical school with a couple of neurologists. There is probably no worse motor disease than something like ALS and those. I would imagine that if the FDA approved this, they would have made sure that this patient had full informed consent and really had nothing to lose, relatively, yeah.

Speaker 1 42:39

Well, that's what the lady from Saskatchewan said. She felt she had, like death was an okay consequence of this not working, which is, you know, that's where you are in your life, that's the that's where you are, I guess.

Speaker 3 42:53

Yeah, and that's the awful thing about these motor disorders is that you know, the person is fully, um, you know, conscious, they have their intelligence and they're stuck. So, uh, I think any progress by anybody in this field is a good thing and, um, if, if everyone is surprised, who cares? You know, I think I'm just glad that there's some success here. I I'm not sure, um, it'll be interesting to see how it translates outside, but, based on what elon musk said about his next um, they already must know something about where it's going to go and have already have some data. I want to comment one just quickly.

Speaker 3 43:38

One thing that Chris has said, and it's a legitimate concern that you know if this gets too easy, so to speak, and that that maybe some of the implants or things that are done might might get lazy and they might not be what we would aim for. But right now I think it's all in a pretty pure form. Yeah, Sorry, that was long.

Speaker 1 43:59

No, jen, that was great, and I I mean this is your area of expertise. I I just am a general scientist guy in this area and I did some research to talk about it today.

Speaker 3 44:10

So well, so well. No, I'm glad you did and, um, you know it'll be interesting to see where it goes and any hope for people with motor disorders. I mean, there's nothing like that we can do, or very little, so this is a good thing yeah, yeah, I watched the whole 30 minute video about this lady from saskatchewan.

Speaker 1 44:29

Um, she talked to her family, uh, by thinking, and then her avatar on a tv spoke in her voice and everybody was crying like they gave her her voice back, like she would have lived and died, um never being able to have a conversation like that ever, right. So, um, but I think the reason why they're playing it so close to the chest and I missed this when I was going over it was, like what would you pay if you were in that situation for a product like that? You would pay anything, right, like if somebody, like if you could finance it and you could get. That's why I think they're it's so competitive. Is the? Is the the?

Speaker 3 45:12

the amount of money a capitalist could make from it is astronomical because you know like it's life-changing potentially if you have the money well, and, and the thing is that the amount of money you invest in developing something that's going to work, um, you know, the trick is in developing it, and that takes a lot of time.

Speaker 4 45:33

Yeah.

Speaker 3 45:33

But once it's developed and it's inert and it's not causing damage in the brain, that'd be easy to copy once someone's figured it out. Yeah, so there's a lot going on there.

Speaker 1 45:46

You have the Neuralink version and the Costco low-cheap version.

Speaker 3 45:51

Well, I mean that already happens in some you know ways. I mean not not terribly, but anyway. So it'll be interesting to see where they go, but I think they're already ahead of where we think they are.

Science Roundup and Dog Toy Talk

Speaker 1 46:06

Yeah, that's, I'm with you there. Yep, all right, thanks, jen. Anybody else have questions or comments on what we talked about today? Come on up, and if not, that's okay, because remember our science roundup, it goes till it goes. Chris, you good, you doing okay over there.

Speaker 2 46:29

Yeah, I was just looking in the chat to see if anything is uh, any comments or anything uh, there's some funny.

Speaker 1 46:37

There's some funny live comments not funny, but um, they were funny about the amoeba so there are.

Speaker 2 46:44

There are people in our comments talking about um themselves getting sick from the household chemicals um yeah madison said allergies that affect dogs can be from chemicals in most dog foods though.

Speaker 1 46:58

Yes, that is, and that is true. So that's why we like 95 of like the itchiness probably does come from something in the food the dog is allergic to. Very true, um, I think paula came up.

Speaker 4 47:12

Go ahead, paula hi, good evening everybody. How's everybody doing tonight?

Speaker 4 47:16

good, good good, how are you? I'm good, thanks. Thanks, chris, I'm really doing good. Um, I have to comment about the dog thing with the names of toys. Um, I put in the chat about chaser. It was amazing that you're talking about him because I just saw a 60 Minutes a few weeks ago in here in the States and it's a Sunday night program and they featured him and Anderson Cooper was interviewing the owner and he did teach the dog.

Speaker 4 47:46

But this guy I'm not kidding you went into his house and and dumped literally boxes and crates of plastic containers, which was like like thousands of toys that were on the floor and that dog knew most of them when he would go and find them. It was. It was stunning to see this dog going for it and I live it at home because Trixie is. So she's one years old, she's a little puppy, she's a Brussels griffon for people that don't know, but she's very smart and she knows all her toys by name. We can say Trixie ball or hedgehog, or go get your donut or go get your you know a spaceman. I mean, she knows all these toys and I didn't tell her this is your spaceman, we just started naming them when we got them, like in a you know bark box or something. It's just, it was just really fun to see how she really, you know, came together. So I just had to comment on that that your dogs will know toys and it is kind of fun to see I just had to comment on that that your dogs will know toys. It is kind of fun to see.

Speaker 4 48:59

I remember a neighbor of ours that we had when I was growing up and she had a toy poodle and that dog too. She said, say she. I remember at 11 years old she would say, you know, whatever the dog's name was, hussie or something, it was cute little name and that dog knew every toy too. And I was like dumbfounded as a kid. I'm like holy cow, this dog knows toys by name, you know. So it's an interesting study.

Speaker 1 49:18

So I just love that their brains reacted the exact same way with, like our brains do when we're confused. Um, I think that's just. It's just so wholesome. I love it. Uh, so Jenny was like, we saw ginger where Bunsen and Beaker.

Speaker 1 49:35

Um, bunsen is in a uh, he's in a timeout room having a snack, so he's quiet. Chris, I think, has gone to get him, and Beaker was just on camera there. So, yeah, people are watching what's going on. There's nobody there. Well, paula, thanks for coming up to have a comment there. Appreciate that. All right, chris is back. All right, it's just going to be Bunsen and Beaker time. There we go. Bunsen's out of quarantine, bunsen's out of timeout. There he is. There you go. Everybody who's watching live, you can see Bunsen and Beaker, and if you're just listening, you'll just have to pretend oh man, he's so happy. Beaker is jealous.

Speaker 1 50:27

Again, we should probably just have a show where it's just Bunsen and Beaker on camera, and then who cares about the science? Uh, but we're going to do some wrap up. Looks like, looks like, looks like. The comments are are over and we don't have any more speakers, so just a couple of plugs with some things going on with us. Uh, please check out our website for the paw pack pup. Paw pack pup activity book. It's the activity book that we made for younger kids. It's got lots of mazes and coloring, um. And then we, we tested that. We, we ran some scientific analysis and tested on small children. Uh, they love it. So, but our, our sample size was just two kids so far so, but I this so, but our sample size was just two kids so far so, but it's 100%. That's pretty good feedback. 100% of children love the Pop Act Pup Activity Book.

Speaker 2 51:18

So we'll go back to the picture, Jason.

Speaker 1 51:20

Go back, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 51:22

So Ellie is painstakingly coloring Ginger the correct colors and you'll notice that Raffi has a green pencil and Ginger is green.

Speaker 1 51:31

Yeah, but the point is, is that Raffi's four and he's having fun with the book because it's age appropriate for him? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 51:39

And then I made a pack, a parent pup pack. So you can check that on our store. You can get an activity book for a kid and yourself a journal and a couple of our nice pens and our color changing pencils and yourself a journal and a couple of our nice pens and our color changing pencils. And then, way more popular than I thought, is the that's not your leg moose t-shirt. So that is selling like hotcakes in our store. There's a cup. I'm going to make some more designs because it's so popular. This is the little bit more expensive version because it has extra graphic on the back of bunsen taking a leg from a moose that's not your leg. And it comes as a hoodie too and some other stuff. Well, chris, that's about it for today. That was a good little science roundup, hey I thought it was really fun yeah, I, you know, I, you know.

Speaker 1 52:29

I kind of like that it. Also it forces me to really know what I'm talking about, because you can't just like you to present it. You have to know more than a superficial bit.

Speaker 2 52:43

Yeah, and it was really good because Bunsen was in quarantine and cause now. Now you can hear he's being himself.

Speaker 1 52:51

But quarantine is a good idea. I think we're going to continue the quarantine plan. Uh jen, go ahead uh, quick comment.

Speaker 3 52:57

You clearly know what you're talking about and I'm always impressed by the number of different things both you and chris look into and actually talk about really well, so great.

Upcoming Pet Chat Schedule & Guest

Speaker 1 53:09

Thank you. I do try to shoehorn in a science news item every single month, so, but you all should know that about me, I love space. Okay, let's, let's do a wrap up. So we have Pet Chat coming up Saturday, and then we don't have anything for a week, and then we don't have anything for a week. So I'm just bringing up my calendar right now. So, if you enjoy Pet Chat, it's back this Saturday, obviously, but we don't have a this Saturday.

Speaker 1 53:41

We have a guest, scarlett Rockwood, in Pet Chat. She's going to be a guest and talk about doggy adoption, using social media to make like really heartfelt little reels on instagram to get dogs adopted from shelters. So it's still going to be pet chat, but we're going to have a little guest um talking about that. Then the next week there's no side chat and there's no pet chat. Uh, we, I don't have guest book and it's our holiday, so we're taking that Tuesday off and there will not be any pet chat the following Saturday because Chris and I are traveling to see the eclipse in Dallas. So we will see you all for pet chat and then we have a week break from this business. Okay, any final words? Chris, or are you just petting the dogs over there.