Speaker 1: Welcome to How Stuff Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren
Speaker 1: vocal Baum, a researcher and writer. Here it has Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Every week, I'm bringing you three stories from our team
Speaker 1: about the weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology,
Speaker 1: and culture. This week, the mating habits of microscopic tartegrades
Speaker 1: have finally been caught on film, and they're appropriately weird unrelated.
Speaker 1: If you can smell asparagus in urine, you can thank
Speaker 1: your ancestors for a few newly identified genes. But first,
Speaker 1: a more sober story from senior writer Jonathan Strickland and
Speaker 1: our freelancer Kate Kirshner. Software that's supposed to manage criminal
Speaker 1: court cases has been throwing some serious errors, leading to
Speaker 1: innocent people being thrown in jail. Imagine being arrested for
Speaker 1: a crime you didn't commit. Your throne in jail. Your
Speaker 1: life is turned upside down. Nobody framed you. It's not
Speaker 1: due to police corruption. You're are in the slammer because
Speaker 1: of a computer error. This isn't just an upsetting hypothetical situation.
Speaker 1: This is something happening to too many people right now
Speaker 1: in places like Alameda County, in California. At Fault is
Speaker 1: a criminal system management software package called the Odyssey Case Manager.
Speaker 1: It's meant to track and organize criminal cases and make
Speaker 1: the judicial system more efficient. It's software used in several
Speaker 1: jurisdictions across the United States, and it's leading to innocent
Speaker 1: people being put in jail. In some instances, the system
Speaker 1: shows warrants as active even after they've been dismissed, and others,
Speaker 1: the software has mistakenly tagged people as sex offenders, forcing
Speaker 1: them to register as such. This is far more serious
Speaker 1: than getting the Blue screen of death before you're able
Speaker 1: to save your work. According to ours technic as Cyrus Farivar,
Speaker 1: Alameda County has been relying upon an older case management
Speaker 1: system called Corpus. It's possible that the twenty six documented
Speaker 1: errors popped up when county employed Yes tried to convert
Speaker 1: old files into the Odyssey Case Manager format. Whatever the
Speaker 1: underlying reason for the errors, the result is sobering. Justice
Speaker 1: isn't just blind, She's also working on a buggy computer system.
Speaker 1: Next up, staff editor Eves Jeff Coote and our freelance
Speaker 1: writer Jesselyn Shields explain how researchers came to identify the
Speaker 1: genes responsible for the dubious advantage of being able to
Speaker 1: smell asparagus P. If you're not one yourself, you've probably
Speaker 1: heard about people who can smell asparagus in their P.
Speaker 1: The researchers found hundreds of variants across multiple deans, but
Speaker 1: the study doesn't address a lot asparagus, of all foods,
Speaker 1: makes our urine stink and why our bodies have obviously
Speaker 1: put so much effort into detecting metabolas asparagus MP. Research
Speaker 1: going back to the nineteen fifties has shown that some
Speaker 1: people produce asparagus sent at urine and some don't, some
Speaker 1: people can smell it and some can't, and some of
Speaker 1: that research identified the two metabolites responsible for the odor,
Speaker 1: but nobody had investigated whether the ability to smell these
Speaker 1: two compounds, called methane ethiol and s methyl diosters is
Speaker 1: written on our genes. In the new study, the research
Speaker 1: team at Harvard found that of nearly seven thousand participants,
Speaker 1: about could smell the metabolize in their urine after eating asparagus,
Speaker 1: and six could not. They called the latter group asparagus anosmic.
Speaker 1: After looking at nine million genetic variants and those who
Speaker 1: are asparagus anosmic. They linked the deficiency to eight hundred
Speaker 1: seventy one sequence variations and chromosome one on genes related
Speaker 1: to our sense of smell. Strangely enough, even though women
Speaker 1: are known to correctly and consistently identify smells more often
Speaker 1: than men, fewer women reported being able to smell their
Speaker 1: own asparagus p. Because the study relied on the participant's reports,
Speaker 1: the researchers aren't sure whether some of the women fibbed
Speaker 1: about the smell of their urine out of modesty. The
Speaker 1: researchers can see that the study has limitations. For instance,
Speaker 1: it only included people of European descent, so there's no
Speaker 1: telling whether the same genetic variants would be in people
Speaker 1: of other ethnicities. Also, self reporting always leaves a little
Speaker 1: wiggle room for interpretation, and subjects reported on the smell
Speaker 1: of their own urine rather than the urine of other people.
Speaker 1: But don't worry if you can't smell the asparagus on Europe.
Speaker 1: The researchers have your back, they write in their report.
Speaker 1: Future replications studies are necessary before considering targeted therapies to
Speaker 1: help anosmic people discover what they are missing. Finally, this week,
Speaker 1: senior writer Robert Lamb and That Men's Jocelyn Shields explore
Speaker 1: the strange, amazing mating habits of everyone's favorite microscopic space
Speaker 1: faring animal, tartar grades. We all know tartar grades, or
Speaker 1: water bears, or tough as nails. This little micro animal
Speaker 1: as a fighter if there ever was one, and it's
Speaker 1: a new study in the Zoological Journal points out they're
Speaker 1: also lovers with an absurd amount of foreplay. Tartar grades
Speaker 1: thrive in a variety of habitats, from the Himalayan mountains
Speaker 1: to the deep ocean, and they're the only known animal
Speaker 1: capable of surviving the harsh void of outer space. Dry
Speaker 1: them out, freeze them up, but decline of assabaran bounce
Speaker 1: right back. Subjected to any of these trials, a tartar
Speaker 1: grade will transform into a desiccated little husk. But when
Speaker 1: it's over, you just add a little water to the
Speaker 1: corpse in a will plump right back up to life
Speaker 1: and munch on some alergy like nothing happened. When brought
Speaker 1: back to Earth after spending ten days blasted by space radiation,
Speaker 1: a tartar grade will happily revive and lay a clutch
Speaker 1: of viable eggs. But what about tartar grade love making? Now,
Speaker 1: they're around the twelve hundred species of the philing tartar
Speaker 1: Gradia out there, and not all of them mate in
Speaker 1: the same way. Summer bisexual, summer, hermaphroditic, and others reproduce
Speaker 1: a sexually. But new video footage captured by a team
Speaker 1: of researchers at the Sickenberg Museum of Natural History and Gorlitz, Germany,
Speaker 1: provides some insight into how the deed is done in
Speaker 1: one bisexual species of tartar Grade called Isocivius dot CiCi.
Speaker 1: And though it might not look like much to the
Speaker 1: untrained eye, the researchers assure us that things get weird.
Speaker 1: The animals mate right after the female has molded, something
Speaker 1: that happens several times a year. The researchers paired off
Speaker 1: thirty male female couples and then filmed them in flagrante
Speaker 1: de lecto. They found that after the female's outer skin detaches,
Speaker 1: she lays eggs inside it. If for whatever reason, no
Speaker 1: male happens to waddle by after she lays her eggs,
Speaker 1: no biggie, she just reabsorbs them back into her body,
Speaker 1: but if there is a male around, he sort of
Speaker 1: wraps his body around her head and the to engage
Speaker 1: in an hour long mutual stimulation marathon, in which he
Speaker 1: might ejaculate several times into the space between her old
Speaker 1: skin and her new skin, fertilizing her eggs in the
Speaker 1: process while you've got your self new plumbus i mean
Speaker 1: tarte grades. Witnessing this unusual sex spectacle is raised almost
Speaker 1: as many questions as it's answered. For instance, how does
Speaker 1: the mail direct his steam into the right place if
Speaker 1: he's essentially injecting it under her skin? And why so
Speaker 1: much for play? But hey, perhaps we shouldn't be too
Speaker 1: surprised that the ultimate rugged survivor organism is also an
Speaker 1: accomplished lover with a flair for the exotic. That's our
Speaker 1: show for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Further thanks to our audio producer Dylan Fagan and our
Speaker 1: editorial liaisons Alice and Laddermilk and Christopher Hassiotis. Subscribe to
Speaker 1: now Now for more of the latest science news, and
Speaker 1: send us links to anything you'd like to hear us cover,
Speaker 1: plus your New Year's resolution, Though before warned, I'll hold
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Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com, and of course,
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