This week: Researchers have identified the form of hemophilia that Queen Victoria passed on to European royal families. A census of autistic adults offers intriguing results. Astronomers find a new, giant ring around Saturn. Scientists have created a 3-D model of an asteroid that hit the Earth last year. China’s education system is starting to encourage creative thinking among children. And farmers in Bangladesh protect their farmlands from floods and rising sea levels.

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• Scientists Identify “Royal Disease“: Britain’s Queen Victoria passed on a gene for hemophilia, an inherited bleeding disorder that affects mostly males. Her children then passed the gene, by marriage, to other European royal families. Researchers have now identified the type of hemophilia by analyzing DNA samples from the remains Alexandra Romanov–Victoria’s granddaughter–and her five children. The Romanov family was executed during the Bolshevik Revolution, and their remains only recently identified.
  The study
• Tamiflu in Japanese Rivers: Researchers have found the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu in Japanese rivers, downstream from sewage treatment plants. Scientists fear that the drug, excreted by people, could promote the evolution of drug-resistant influenza virus in infected waterfowl. And that could ultimately pose a threat to humans.
  The study
• Autistic Numbers: England’s National Health Service has found that the percentage of adults with autism is similar to the percentage of children. The finding suggests that, contrary to popular reports, autism rates among children are not rising.
  The English study
  The U.S. study
  The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention have also conducted a related study, not yet published.
• Saturn’s New Ring: NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted yet another around Saturn, and this one is a giant.
  BBC story on the finding
  More on the Spitzer Space Telescope

Portrait of an Asteroid: Last fall, for the first time ever scientists spotted an asteroid hurtling through space less than a day before it crashed into our planet. The pieces of the asteroid, 2008 TC3 fell in the Nubian desert in northern Sudan. An international team of researchers have been studying those pieces. This week they released a virtual 3-D model of this asteroid. It resembled a loaf of “walnut raisin” bread, they say, and it contained amino acids.
Guest: Peter Jenniskens

• The World’s previous coverage of Peter Jennisken’s work on the asteroid
• Video: Animation of asteroid 2008 TC3 as it would have appeared on approach to Earth on October 6, 2008. Animation by P. Scheirich (Ondrejov Observatory).
  

Chinese Education System: China wants to raise a new generation of inventors and creative thinkers, but innovation comes not just from infrastructure and investment; it also requires a culture that encourages originality, rewards risk-taking, and tolerates failure.
Report: By The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.
Series Page: Created in China

Raising Bangladesh: As the climate warms, rising seas could inundate low-lying countries like Bangladesh. Farmers in that South Asian nation are testing a new technique to protect themselves against coastal flooding.  They are intentionally allowing rivers to overflow their banks and deposit silt, raising the level of the land.
Report: By Daniel Grossman in Bangladesh.

Music: Allah Megh De, by Abbasuddin Ahmed.

This week, we look at the global outbreak of H1N1 swine flu. First stop: a Mexican hospital, where new patients are showing up every day with what may be symptoms of the disease. Doctors are puzzled by the apparent high rate of death in Mexico while the virus causes much milder symptoms elsewhere.

China is also cautious about the outbreak. Authorities are watching for foreign visitors with symptoms, and the government has banned pork from Mexico and three American states. But eating pork doesn’t spread the disease, and as we hear from Michael Osterholm of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, closing borders could make the problem worse.

We conclude our swine flu tour with some time travel. In 1976 there was a swine flu outbreak at the U.S. Army’s Fort Dix in New Jersey. Public health officials feared a repeat of the deadly flu pandemic of 1918, so the response was quick and massive. It was also mistaken. Dr. Richard Wenzel, who diagnosed some of the first cases of the 1976 outbreak, talks about what happened.

Finally, we take a break from swine flu to look at other science news: The short history of HIV’s ancestors, an asteroid that may not have killed off the dinosaurs after all, and what dancing birds tell us about the origin of musicality.

Some Useful Links:

All you need to know about swine flu from the BBC and the CDC.

The SIV study, and more on the evolution of HIV.

More on the asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs, and why some researchers think the asteroid couldn’t have caused the extinction. The Geological Society is publishing this latest study.

Video of dancing parrots from YouTube and Current Biology. Elephants can also dance and mimic sounds. The dancing animal studies are avaiable here and here.

Music:

The Meters, Ease Back

Huey Smith, Rock and Roll Pneumonia, Boogie Woogie Flu

This week we focus on malaria, which sickens hundreds of millions of people a year, mostly in developing countries in Africa and Asia. The disease is caused by a parasite that is spread by mosquitoes. The World Health Organization says a key anti-malaria drug may be losing its power. We travel to Cambodia, where the malaria parasite seems to be developing resistance to the drug.

We also have a malaria story from the United States, which eradicated the disease in the 1940s. We take a historical look at how the U.S. accomplished that feat. The story originally ran as part of a fantastic series in 2005.

We check in on the Mosquito Barcode Initiative. It is trying to catalogue the DNA of every mosquito species in the world. Researcher Yvonne-Marie Linton is leading the project. It’s a rough job—often, researchers catch the mosquitoes by using themselves as bait.

In astronomy news, last October scientists spotted an asteroid hurtling through space on a collision course with earth. It wasn’t big enough to cause mass extinction, but it offered a rare opportunity for scientists. Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, tells us about his effort to recover pieces of the meteoroid from Sudan.

For years there’s been a debate over which animal is the closest living relative to whales. The top two contestants have been hippos and pigs. New research out this week from the University of Calgary and Georgia Southern University gives the edge to hippos. This rebuts a study of prehistoric bones done two years ago by another group of researchers. The latest work focused on DNA.

Music:
Ros Serey Sothea, I’m Sixteen