Photo courtesy of Wildxplorer

This Week: A Phase 3 trial of a new malaria vaccine shows that it can halve the risk of disease. We explore whether that is significant development for controlling malaria in the future. The magnificent trees that line France’s ancient Canal du Midi are now dying. A story about waters wars in a different part of Australia. (Listen to Part I of Australia’s Water Wars in Podcast 135.)

Malaria Vaccine Trial Raises Hopes: The pharmaceutical company Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) published the results of a large scale field trial of a malaria vaccine. The results show that the vaccine can halve the risk of disease. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, (most other vaccines have an efficiency of 90% and above) but experts are hailing this as significant progress. It is also the first vaccine for a parasitic disease to be so effective. In this episode, we hear more about the vaccine from a GSK representative. Then, we get some perspective from infectious disease expert Bill Foege, who you heard in Podcast no. 125.
Read the study about the malaria vaccine trial here.
More about the vaccine on the BBC’s website.

The Dying Trees of France’s Canal du Midi:The banks along France’s Canal du Midi, are lined with trees so majestic that UNESCO called them “a work of art.” Sadly, those trees are dying. The World’s Gerry Hadden brings us this story.

Australia’s Water Wars Part II: Farmers in the great Australian Outback have never had much access to water. Now ranchers and environmentalists in the region have formed an unlikely alliance to avoid the water wars. The World’s Jason Margolis brings us this story.
Read more about Jason’s story here.

The Atacama large millimeter/submillimeter array is, well, awesome. In the old sense of the word. One engineer who helped to build the array has called it “The Pyramids of the 21st century. It’s the largest, most complex telescope ever built. And in this edition of the tech podcast, the BBC’s Pallab Ghosh takes you to a spot near the Chile/Bolivia border to give you a tour of the telescope. You’ll hear about how this giant array of radio antennas can help astronomers look back at events that happened billions of years ago, at the time just after the first stars were born.

Also in this podcast, we’ll take a look back at the life and work of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who passed away this week at the age of 56. You’ll hear how his work has influenced Africans, and we’ll assess the environmental cost of a world filled with iPods, iPhones, and all their clones.

Finally, we’ll tell you about Dr. Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, a NASA roboticist who is teaching students in Ghana about the theory and practice of building ‘bots.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

So, here’s a question: what happens when you’re a highly skilled engineer who has been building space shuttles for NASA for years, and then suddenly, no one wants space shuttle anymore? Well, if you’re the Treycycle Bold team, you pool your talents and create a three-wheeled, “street legal” hot-rod, of course. And if you’re worried that this is just something for those meddling kids, think again. The Treycycle is said to be designed for baby boomers with “old age body concerns.” In this episode of The World’s Technology Podcast, we’ll bring you an interview with one of the brains behind the Treycycle.

Also in this episode, we’ll give you an in-depth look at the recent events surrounding Comodohacker and DigiNotar. Find out what it means for your own online security, and for the security of online activists, particularly in Iran.

And then, it’s two stories about the social network you love to hate, and hate to love: Twitter. First, we’ll hear from an Indiana University professor who is using Twitter to play the financial markets…and win. Then, we’ll look at how the use of social media in Mexico can be a very dangerous thing.

Finally, one of those stories that proves that WTP seeks out “tech that touches the soul,” as listener Gavin Weinrich recently suggested. We’ll hear about how mobile phones are being used to improve the health of Africans.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

If you’ve been a fan of Tech Podcast for any length of time, then you know how much I like to look back at the technologies of the past. WTP 337 is no exception. This week, we’ve got a BBC interview with author Taylor Downing about his new book, Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence During World War II. At left, you can see a aerial picture of Omaha Beach that was taken before the D-Day invasion. Downing has lots of interesting things to say about the cameras that were used, and about the dedicated group of individuals who turned deciphering those photos into a craft, maybe even an art form. Not to be missed, and definitely something to be shared.

I also have a couple of items for those of you interested in how tech is playing a role in the so-called Arab Spring. I’ve got a BBC interview on Syria’s Electronic Army, and an item from The World on how cell phone giant Nokia-Siemens is coming under fire for helping authorities in Bahrain stifle protest.

In the wake of events at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, many countries, especially Western countries that had once embraced nuclear power, are rethinking that commitment. But in Africa, some countries are moving ahead with plans to ramp up nuclear programs. The BBC’s Will Ross looks at the case of Kenya.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

This week: Two new studies outline characteristics that help alien species become invasive. India rethinks its ambitious nuclear energy plans. A new study shows what we might have known all along — human language originated in Africa. Yet another study suggests that rules of grammar are far from universal. Also, our ongoing Science Forum discussion about how our physical environments influence human behavior goes until Thursday, April 21st. So, stop by and add your thoughts and questions to the conversation here. (Photo: The Burmese python has invaded parts of the U.S. Credit: U.S. National Park Service.)

India Rethinks its Nuclear Energy Plans: The disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear complex has led India to rethink its increasing reliance on nuclear power. New York Times correspondent Vikas Bajaj tells anchor Marco Werman the demands for power in India are huge and growing. Forty percent of India’s population currently has no access to electricity.
Read the transcript of the interview.
Listen to my story on India’s nuclear energy plans in Podcast no. 91.
Asia’s Push for Nuclear Power — a Wise Bet? An online Science Forum discussion.

Fukushima vs. Chernobyl — Comparison Less Useful Than Ever: Fukushima is nothing like Chernobyl — except, it’s sort of the same. Of course, it’s no nearly as bad — unless it’s worse! If your head’s hurting right now trying to keep track of official evaluations of the scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, well, get in line for the aspirin — if not yet the iodine pills. Read more in this blog post by guest blogger Peter Thomson, The World’s environment editor.

The Original Language: The world’s 7,000 languages appear to share a common ancestral tongue, which was spoken in Africa at least 50 thousand years ago. Linguists hadn’t been able to trace the roots of language that far back in time before. But by stripping speech down to its most basic components, such as vowels and consonants, a researcher was able to show how languages changed as humans migrated across the globe.
The study.
The author’s website.
ScienceNOW coverage.
Links to more news stories.

No Universal Grammar: Although all modern languages have common roots, they share few grammatical rules. Linguists had expected that certain rules of syntax would always occur together so that changing one rule would mean changing others in concert, perhaps because of the way the brain works. But a new study suggests that languages evolve in varied ways, governed more by culture than biology. Does this challenge linguist Noam Chomsky’s theory of a universal grammar ? My fellow podcaster, Patrick Cox (host of The World in Words podcast) helps us answer that question.
The study.
The authors’ user-friendly summary.
Wired Science coverage.

Invasive Species: As humans travel around the globe, we bring other animals and plants along. Biologists wish they could better predict which of these species will become invasive in their new habitats–as Burmese pythons have done in Florida. Two recent studies suggest that extra chromosomes (for plants) and big brains (for reptiles and amphibians) help species invade new habitats.
The studies: Plants and reptiles.
More on invasive plants in the U.S..
More on big brains.
Regulating trade could keep out alien invaders.

This week: It’s the 100th episode of The World Science Podcast!  We re-trace our steps since the beginning of the podcast and give you updates on stories we’ve covered before. You’ll hear about click languages, champagne bubbles and how the blind can see with sound. We’ll also give you a podcast-exclusive preview of stories to come later this year.  And don’t forget to stop by our online conversation about magic and the human mind with Macknik and Martinez-Conde in our  Science Forum.

Updates on Elsa’s Favorite Stories:

• Click Languages: In July, 2009, we brought you a story about an endangered click language from Africa. Elsa caught up with researcher Amanda Miller for an update. She has now documented a new kind of click, called a retroflex click, in a dialect of the !Xung language. It’s the most difficult click to execute, and is made by touching the bottom of the tongue to the roof of the mouth. Miller and her colleagues believe it is also the most ancestral click, which has morphed into other clicks in different dialects.
  Listen to the old story in Podcast no. 24.
  Amanda Miller’s website.
  Video tutorial for pronouncing the clicks in Khoekhoegowab, another click language.
• Champagne Bubbles: In podcasts 34 and 80, we brought you news about champagne bubbles and how best to pour your champagne so you don’t ruin the drink’s flavor. Elsa checked in with the authors of the studies and learned that they are now studying what happens to champagne as it ages.
  Listen to the original stories in podcasts 34 and 80.
  More on champagne bubbles in American Scientist.
  The researchers’ website (in French).
  The study on aged champagne.
  A champagne experiment in The World newsroom. Check out the results in this video!
  
• You Can’t Get Drunk Through Your Feet: Physicians in Denmark have disproved the Danish urban myth that you can get drunk by soaking your feet in a tub of vodka. The doctors tested the folklore by sticking their own feet in a bowl of “very cheap vodka,” says study author Peter Lommer Kristensen. And the British Medical Journal published their results in their Christmas 2010 issue.
  The study.
• Seeing With Sound: With a software program that converts images to sounds, blind people can navigate and even “see.” After just several hours of training, their brains begin to send the information from their ears to the visual cortex for interpretation.
  Listen to the original story in podcast 81.
  The inventor’s website. (To make and hear your own line drawings, click on the “demo” button at the very bottom of the page.)
  See and hear the rest of the walk around the yard.
  Check this NPR story for a completely different reason to convert information into sounds.
• Scary Sex for Water Striders: When it’s time to mate, some male water striders climb on top of the females and start tapping the surface of the water. This behavior attracts predators from below–the threat of which intimidates females into mating more quickly to stop the tapping.
  Listen to the original story in podcast 80.
  The study.
  Some crickets have taken the opposite route: The risk of being eaten has made males completely mute.
  More on how predators affect mating signals in other animals (a weighty pdf from the Quarterly Review of Biology).

Strawberry and Cacao Genomes Sequenced: Scientists have just sequenced the genomes of the cacao and strawberry plants. The World’s science and health editor David Baron tells us how the sequences could help scientists, crop breeders and farmers.
Guest: David Baron

This week: We’re going to Africa where scientists have found what may be a giant impact crater. Then an update on the controversial plan to build a road through Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park.  And we take you to a country that has the highest percentage of rainforest cover on the planet. Thanks to everyone who stopped by our online discussion on tigers. We’d love to know what you think of us in this online survey!

A Potential Impact Crater in Africa: Thanks to deforestation, scientists have stumbled upon a giant ring structure in central Africa. It could be the remnant of a meteorite crash from millions of years ago.
Guest: John Spray
Check out the Earth Impact Database for potential impact craters around the world.
How can you tell you’re looking at an impact crater?
Credit for image: Terrametrics Inc.

Scientists Opposed to Proposed Serengeti Road: In podcast no. 81, we brought you a story about a controversial plan to build a road through Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. This week, more than 20 leading ecologists and conservation biologists have expressed concerns over the proposed plan. In an opinion piece published in the journal Nature, they propose an alternate road south of the Serengeti that would connect the remote parts of Tanzania while keeping the national park intact.
Guest: Andrew Dobson.


According to Dobson and his colleagues, the alternate southern road (purple) proposed by the scientists would serve five times as many people as the currently planned road (black). Image credit: Nature.
The opinion piece in Nature.
An accompanying editorial in the journal.
If you missed it, check out the story about Serengeti’s conservation battles in Podcast 81.

Suriname’s Rainforests:We’re taking you to a tiny South American country. It may be the smallest independent nation in the subcontinent but it has the highest percentage of rainforest cover in the world. And parts of these forests are still pristine.
Guest: Russell Mittermeier
See pictures of Suriname and its forests from Conservation International.
More on Suriname from the BBC.

This week: Particle accelerators are helping scientists peek inside prehistoric bugs trapped in amber. One group of archaeologists has found the oldest evidence for communal feasting. Another group has stumbled upon signs of antibiotic use by ancient Nubians. British scientists have built a bridge for dormice. And climate change may not fuel conflict in Africa after all. We’re still talking tigers in our latest Science Forum discussion. Stop by with your questions and thoughts. And please tell us what you think of our reporting in this online survey!

Ancient Communal Feasts: Archaeologists have stumbled upon the oldest known evidence for communal feasting. The site of the discovery is northern Israel where people were feasting to commemorate the death of an elder some 12,000 years ago.
Guest: Natalie Munro.
The study.

Elsa’s Favorite Stories:

• Africa’s Non-Climate Wars: Back in November, we reported on a study which concluded that for every degree Celsius increase in temperature the chance of civil war in Africa increased by 50%. That’s because hot dry years could lead to food shortages and unrest. But a new study says the relationship is not so clear and that traditional political and economic factors are more important than climate.
  The new study.
  The previous study.
  Podcast 81, where we talked about the previous study.
  Related post from Discover magazine’s 80 Beats blog.
• Elephants Don’t Like Ants: Big and burly as they are, elephants will avoid insects that bite and sting. If an elephant hears a bee or smells an ant, it will take off. A kind of acacia tree has adapted to take advantage of this. The whistling-thorn tree houses ants inside its thorns and that keeps elephants from wrecking it like they do other acacia trees. The ants help stabilize the amount of tree cover in the savanna ecosystem.
  The study. (Includes a video narrated by one of the authors.)
  More about elephants and bees in Podcast 18 and Podcast 65.
  Termites also have a notable effect on the savanna landscape.
  Here’s a video of what elephants can do to trees that don’t have ant bodyguards! Video by Ed Yong.
  
• Antibiotics in Nubian “Beer”: In the early 1980s, anthropologists noticed that bones of 2,000-year-old Nubian mummies fluoresced under black light, as do bones of modern humans who’ve taken the antibiotic tetracycline. That observation launched a series of studies about ancient antibiotic use, and researchers have concluded that the Nubians regularly produced a fermented beverage that contained tetracycline-producing bacteria. Their latest evidence includes extraction and chemical identification of the tetracycline from the mummies’ bones.
  The study.
  In Podcast 49, we talked about another ancient medicine, from Egypt.
  The photo at right shows tetracycline-labeled bone fluorescing under black light. Photo courtesy of eScienceCommons.
• No Mammoth-Killer Comet: Nearly 13,000 years ago, mammoths and other megafauna went extinct across North America. Researchers have proposed that the mass extinction resulted from a comet or meteorite that exploded over the continent but the hypothesis seems not to have held up well under scrutiny. A new study deals what may be the final blow to the notion of a mammoth-killer impact.
  The study.
  The original mammoth-killer study.
  ScienceNOW coverage.
  More on the various explanations for the mass extinction from NOVA.

Peering Inside Ancient Bugs: Remember the mosquito trapped in amber in the movie Jurassic Park? Of course scientists can’t really use DNA from ancient mosquitoes to recreate dinosaurs but they can gain valuable insights by studying all sorts of ancient insects preserved in fossilized tree resin. Getting to the insects through the amber is fraught with difficulties. Now scientists in France are using a Synchrotron particle accelerator to scan opaque amber and create 3-D models of these insects.
Report by: Ari Daniel Shapiro.

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.
A few images of the insects.

A Bridge for Dormice: What has big shiny, black eyes and small, rounded ears, a cute fluffy tail and a suspension bridge? Its a British dormouse. The charming little rodent has a new way to cross a highway in the form of a $ 250,000 bridge in South Wales.
Guest: Robert Jones Parry, the conservation manager of the Wildlife Trust of South Wales.
BBC video about the bridge.

What the Internet Does to Your Brain: Find out in this week’s Technology podcast by my colleague Clark Boyd.

We Need Your Help! Give us your feedback. Take a minute to fill out this online survey.

This week:  Our online conversation with author Ethan Watters continues through next Monday. Don’t forget to stop by the Science Forum discussion with your own comments and questions. Today you’ll hear another story related to this Forum discussion. It’s about treating mental illness in Sudan. Also in today’s show, termites in the Kenyan savanna, celebrity culture among chimps and the ecological impacts of the oil spill.

Treating Mental Illness in Sudan: Traditionally, when people in Sudan suffer mental illness, they seek out exorcists and other spiritual healers. But in Khartoum, a growing number of patients are also seeing Western-style psychiatrists and psychologists. The result is a tense rapprochement between health practitioners who have historically been at odds.
Report by: Hana Baba
Visit our Science Forum discussion with author Ethan Watters. He’s taking your comments and questions about culture and mental health.
The journal PLoS Medicine recently published a series of papers on mental health care in low- and middle-income countries. You can read those articles here.

Elsa’s Favorite Stories:

• Setback to Bt Cotton in China: A 10-year study has some surprising findings about transgenic cotton in China. The Bt cotton variety has a gene for a bacterial toxin that kills a variety of pests–especially caterpillars–that feed on the plants. Bt cotton has allowed farmers to decrease their dependence on broad-spectrum pesticide sprays. But in the absence of such sprays, populations of formerly insignificant pests such as mirid bugs have billowed out of control.
  The study.
  Our Science Forum discussion and coverage of Bt brinjal.
  Read more about the ongoing debate over genetically modified crops in India.
  
• Termites Shape the African Savanna: Termite mounds occur at strikingly regular intervals in the Kenyan savanna–probably because of the way the colonies maintain non-overlapping territories. The effects of these tiny insects ripple up through the savanna ecosystem, ultimately boosting the abundance of plants, lizards and other insects. The hotspots of plant growth associated with termite mounds are visible in satellite photos such as the one at right. (Photo taken from the study.)
  The study.
  More on fungus-farming termites from The New York Times.
  While I was looking for a good termite link, I discovered that some snails farm fungi too! Check it out.
• Celebrity Culture in Chimpanzees: Chimps prefer to mimic high-status members of their social groups, even when the underdogs’ methods obviously work just as well. The study helps explain how chimpanzee culture gets handed down over time, and hints at ancient evolutionary roots for our own tendency to copy prestigious people.
  The study.
  More on chimpanzee culture from the BBC.

Lessons from Global Oil Spills: BP is trying another technique to plug the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Let’s hope it works. In the meantime, the spilled oil is already threatening coastal environments.  Oil spills are, sadly, a global phenomenon, and we may be able to learn from previous spills and from the efforts to clean them up.
Guest: Jay Holcomb of the International Bird Rescue Research Center.
Photos of oiled and scrubbed birds from the International Bird Rescue Research Center.
More photos of the oil impact on shore from the Boston Globe.
About BP’s “Top-Kill” technique on NPR. This page also includes a live webcam where you can watch BP’s efforts to plug the oil well.

Thousands died. Hundreds of thousands were injured.

The disaster alerted the world to the dangers of toxic substances.

Listen to Rhitu Chatterjee’s story on Bhopal’s legacy here. Or Download MP3

Yet a quarter century after the Bhopal disaster, toxic chemicals still threaten lives in the developing world.

• Chemical spills poison Chinese rivers.
• Toxic waste sickens people in West Africa.
• In Bhopal, chemical contamination continues.

What can be done to safeguard the public in developing countries from toxic chemicals? Can consumers and investors in developed countries play a role?

In this World Science Forum, we talk to Henrik Selin.

He’s a professor of international relations at Boston University and author of the forthcoming book Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals.

Listen to our interview with Selin. Download MP3, or listen here: [player]

Now it’s your chance to ask the questions. Join our conversation with Henrik Selin.

• Has the U.S. unfairly exported its toxic risks to other countries?
• Selin says the World Trade Organization helps regulate the safety of products but not processes. Should that change?
• How can you ensure that the holiday gifts you buy don’t come from unsafe factories?