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.

Never let it be said that The World’s Technology Podcast does not go out of its way to explain the latest online trend (dare we call it a meme?) to you. This week, we take a look at a viral craze called “planking,” aka “The Lying Down Game.” So, what are the rules? Here is a shocker. You simply lye face down, with your arms out straight down at your sides. Yeah, kind of like you’re on a plank. Oh, and did I mention that you preferably do this in an unusual public space, and then photograph it and share it on various social networking sites? Yeah, there you go. Now you know the rules. Apparently, there are Korean, French and Japanese versions of this, but it’s in Australia that planking has really caught on. There are numerous Facebook pages devoted to it, including this one – the Brisbane Planking Association. But, as your parents always told you, what starts as a harmless bit of fun can quickly turn to tragedy. Australian police say that a man who died after falling form a seventh-floor balcony on Sunday was, well, planking at the time. This, of course, has led to the craze spreading even farther, faster. We’ll try to sort it all out by speaking with Richard Litonjua, creator of the Brisbane Planking Association, whose advice is straightforward: “Think before you plank, and don’t drink and plank.”

In this episode we’ll also have  a follow-up to last Friday’s special podcast on the Solar Impulse airplane. Thirteen hours after it left Switzerland, the world’s first totally solar-powered aircraft completed its maiden international voyage, landing in Brussels. I was lucky enough to be there for the landing, and got to tell The World’s Marco Werman about it on live radio. Watch it for yourself!

We also have an update on a new project from FrontlineSMS, the group that wants to put the power of cell phone text messaging to work in all sorts of fields – health, law, education…and now, radio! We’ll speak with FrontlineSMS’s Amy O’Donnell about an upcoming pilot project in Kenya, Sierra Leone and Zambia.

And, as our listeners have requested, we are tracking the final voyage of the Space Shuttle Endeavor.

Remember, for all the latest global tech news, follow us on Twitter or Facebook. And if you missed out on some juicy stories during the week, don’t fret. Check out our newly minted Tech Week in Review, available every Friday.

(Photo: Aimee Daniels)

This week:  We just launched a four-part series on health care rationing. You’ll hear the first story in today’s show. It’s about a South African committee that decides who received life-saving kidney dialysis and who doesn’t. Check out our series page here.  Elsa brings news about cholera in Haiti, and phone networks in the U.K. Join our online discussion on coal and China with journalist Jeff Goodell here.

A South African Health Care Rationing Committee: In South Africa, the government puts limits on life-sustaining kidney dialysis, and that puts medical professionals in a difficult position. They are tasked with deciding who lives and who dies. This is the story of two patients and the committee that determined their fates.
Reporter: Sheri Fink
Related slide shows, graphics and more.
Our Rationing Health Series page.

Socks May Help Malaria Prevention: A new study suggests that smelly socks may help in malaria prevention. Odors from the socks could be used to lure mosquitoes into traps.
Guest: Dr. Renate Smallegange
The study in Malaria journal.

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• The Mysterious Origins of Haitian Cholera: More than 90,000 Haitians have been sickened with cholera since October. Researchers have now sequenced the full genome of the Haitian cholera bacteria, and found that it most closely matches strains from Bangladesh. This supports the idea that the outbreak may be an import from south Asia. But the case is far from closed. Skeptics say that the two cholera isolates used in the new study did not capture genetic variation among the Haitian bacteria, which may have been well established along the island’s coast long before the outbreak.
  CDC page on Haitian cholera.
  The sequencing study.
  The new sequence reveals an especially toxic version of the cholera bacterium.
  Suspicions that UN peacekeepers may have introduced the cholera led to violence against the troops.
  A report filed by a French epidemiologist seemed to support those suspicions.
  But, as reported here and here, some experts say the judgment has been far too hasty, and that the cholera bacteria may have been lurking along Haiti’s coast for a long time.
• An Anti-Viral for Mosquitoes: Australian researchers are using one infection to fight another: Mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria are unable to transmit the dengue virus, which causes severe fevers in humans. Although about 60% of insect species naturally harbor Wolbachia, disease-carrying mosquitoes do not. But researchers can infect them in the lab–and Wolbachia manipulates mosquito reproduction to spread quickly through a population. Upcoming field trials in Queensland will test how well an introduced Wolbachia infection spreads to wild mosquitoes there.
  How Wolbachia quickly infiltrates insect populations.
  Website of the Eliminate Dengue research team, including links to many of the studies upon which the field trials are based.
  University of Queensland news release on the upcoming trial.
• Re-mapping the United Kingdom: Researchers have redrawn the map of the United Kingdom based on
  phone-call data that reveal which regions talk to themselves the most. Another team has found that European countries that share borders, languages or cultural alliances (i.e. that vote for one another in the Eurovision song contest) also tend to report the same top news stories. These are two examples of how high-speed computing allows researchers to sift through vast amounts of data to find insights into how we relate to the world around us.
  The phone study.
  The news study.
  BBC coverage.

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This week: The World’s Technology Correspondent Clark Boyd is in the host chair. He brings you science news from four continents: In Africa, medical workers battle a common cause of blindness. In Asia, a small nation provides scholarships to attract science talent. In Europe, scientists study what happens when we get lost in the woods. And in Australia, a biologist tries a new strategy for battling malaria. Also: astronomers find an unlikely planet, and researchers gain insights into the brains of bilinguals.

Elsa is back with her favorite science stories. Her picks this week:

• Bilingualism: Learning a second language can influence how the brain processes a native language. That’s the finding of a Belgian study of people who speak both Dutch and English. (The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (volume 20, number 8,) but since you need a subscription to even see the abstract, here’s a press release too.)

• Odd Planet: An international team of scientists has detected a planet that shouldn’t exist. This “hot Jupiter” is so close to its sun that it completes each orbit in less than a single Earth day. (The study.)

• Malaria Vaccine: An international team of scientists has genetically modified the parasite that causes malaria. Could this lab-created organism be the basis for an effective vaccine? (The study.)

Fighting Blindness: Trachoma is a bacterial infection of the eye and a leading cause of blindness. Though largely eradicated from the industrialized world, trachoma remains a common affliction in developing countries. We visit the nation with the highest burden of disease and see how one American organization is trying to preserve sight for millions.
Report: By Odette Yousef in Ethiopia. (See photographs here.)

Singapore Science: Singapore considers science the key to its future economic growth. The Asian city-state  is building world-class laboratories, but it lacks trained personnel to staff those labs. So Singapore is reaching out to other countries for the science talent and science education it needs.
Report: By Ari Daniel Shapiro in Singapore.

Lost in the Woods: A new study by scientists in Germany has confirmed that when people get disoriented in the woods or other natural environments, they really do tend to walk in circles. The researchers sent volunteers into a German forest and the Sahara Desert and tracked their movements by GPS. (Click here to see a Google Earth image of the paths taken by some volunteers in the German forest.)
Report: By The World’s David Baron.

Music:

Walkin’ in Circles, by Charles Brown with Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers

Baby harp seal

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This week: We present you with an all-animal podcast. We have stories about seals in Canada, crocs in Cambodia, Tasmanian devils in Australia, and jaguars in Panama.

Crocs at Risk: The Siamese crocodile was once a key part of Southeast Asia’s wetland ecosystems. Today, it is close to extinction. A new project in Cambodia is trying to bring them back. (You can see researchers wrestling Siamese crocs in this video from the BBC.)

Report: By the World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Cambodia.

Jaguar Corridors: National parks around the world provide important refuge for wildlife, but parks rarely provide enough space to ensure the survival of an entire species. This is especially true for large animals like jaguars. In Central America, scientists are trying to protect jaguars by identifying corridors the cats use to roam from park to park.

Report: By Julia Kumari Drapkin in Panama.

Tasmanian Devils in Trouble: The Tasmanian devil, known to many as a character in Bugs Bunny cartoons, is actually the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial.  Already an endangered species, the creatures are now threatened by a killer disease. (For more on why Australia’s giant kangaroo, marsupial lion, and other megafauna went extinct about 50,000 years ago, try these links about overhunting, climate change, and fires.)
Report: By Jake Warga in Tasmania.

Harp Seals on the Ice: Millions of harp seals live in the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off the coast of Quebec, Canada. They’re being affected by global warming, and they’re still being hunted.
Report: By The World’s Jeb Sharp in Quebec.

Music:
Every Beat of My Heart, by Booker T. and the MG’s

Mountain chicken

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This week: Swine flu may not be so bad after all. Good news and bad on climate. An aircraft manufacturer tries to green its image. A giant frog flies to safety. And too much daylight may increase suicides in the land of the midnight sun.

Climate: Australia is holding off on an ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions with carbon trading. Meanwhile, Canada says it will stop building coal-fired power plants unless they include cutting-edge anti-pollution technology.
Guests: Phil Mercer, BBC
Shawn McCarthy, Toronto Globe and Mail
Peter Thomson, The World’s environment editor

Green aviation: Emissions from international aviation are a significant cause of global warming. Critics say airlines aren’t doing enough to get greener. To solve this problem – and to get some good PR – Airbus has launched a contest to identify ways to fly more efficiently.
Report: By The World’s Alex Gallafent

Frog rescue: The mountain chicken – a creature that got its name because it tastes like you-know-what – is one of the largest frogs on Earth. The animals live on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. Like many frogs, mountain chickens are being decimated by a fungus. Scientists are now airlifting the frogs to Europe.
Guest: Andrew Cunningham, Zoological Society of London

Swine flu: The H1N1 influenza virus appears less deadly than scientists first feared. A new study from the World Health Organization suggests the virus could cause a pandemic similar to the 1957 “Asian flu.” That pandemic was serious but not nearly as devastating as the nightmarish 1918 flu.
Guest: Christophe Fraser, Imperial College, London

Science chat: Our weekly check-in with science news maven Elsa Youngsteadt.
• Bumblebees are bumbling fliers. Their wings move separately, and inefficiently. (Abstract of the study.)
• Suicides in Greenland are higher during the summer months, when it’s sunny 24-7. Is daylight is bad for our mental health? (The study.)
• Snails survive better when they have slower metabolisms. The same may be true for us. (Abstract of the study.)

Useful links:
The Natural Resources Defense Council on clean coal
A flight emissions calculator to check your own carbon footprint
A history of 20th century influenza pandemics

Songs:
Morrissey, Every Day is Like Sunday
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Sunny

This week, we have two stories about health problems in Iran. In Tehran, more and more people are buying cars, which is causing air pollution and related illnesses. And northeast of Tehran, the province of Golestan is plagued by high rates of esophageal cancer, which a new study suggests results from a local custom—drinking extremely hot tea.  Dr. Reza Malekzadeh tells us about his study.

Also: Good news about heart disease, which kills millions of people every year. A relatively new treatment that combines five pills in one—known as the polypill—reduces the risk of heart disease by treating high blood pressure and cholesterol all at once.

Scalding tea and high cholesterol may be bad for your health—but what about going to Mars? This week in Moscow, six men were locked into a space capsule. It’s an experiment to find out how astronauts might cope—or not cope—with a journey to and from Mars. They’ll try to stay in for 100 days, but the real voyage would take more than two years. Keep track of how the volunteers are doing by reading their Mars Diary, hosted by the European Space Agency.

Also this week: A mass toad killing in Australia. Citizens turned in thousands of the invasive cane toads, but researchers say ants may lend a hand—or a mandible—in the future. The Guardian posted video of ants attacking the baby toads. Also: rosy cheeks really do make you look healthy, and your brain may know what it wants before you do.

Music:
Bruce Springsteen, Trapped
T Bone Walker, Vacation

New Yorker writer David Grann has a new book out, about an explorer from the 1920s who became obsessed with finding the Lost City of Z in the Brazilian Amazon. Grann talks about his own obsession in writing the book.

A million and a half years ago, one of our ancestors took a walk in mud in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Last year, researchers from Rutgers University found these fossil footprints. John Harris, one of the scientists, says the footprints are the oldest ever found that look completely modern.

In Australia, paleontologist John Long of Museum Victoria in Melbourne has been studying fossil fish from the Gogo rock formation. He’s now found that some of these fish, called placoderms, were having sex 380 million years ago. It is the oldest recorded evidence of such behavior.

And a hundred years ago, an Italian millionaire launched a movement called futurism. The basic idea: the past was dead, and the future was all about science and technology. We look at the history of futurism.

And, according to a new study from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, infidelity may be a function of hormone levels—at least for women. The study found that women with higher levels of the hormone estradiol were more likely to flirt or have an affair.

Music:
Marvin Gaye, Let’s Get It On

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See Rutgers’ John Harris talk about the old footprints.

Almost eight years after 9/11, and after lots of money and time spent on searching, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. Two UCLA researchers have come up with a strategy to find him, using a method designed to track endangered animals. UCLA geography professor Thomas Gillespie talks about his idea.

At the beginning of the Iraq War, gangs descended on archaeological sites around the country, digging up tens of thousands of artifacts and selling them. Five years ago, archaeologist Elizabeth Stone, a professor at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, studied how widespread the destruction was. Last year, she went back. To her surprise, she found that looting had declined precipitously.

Southeast Australia is experiencing its worst drought in a century. Meanwhile, other parts of the country are being deluged by floods. Climate scientists say extreme weather will likely increase in many parts of the world due to global warming. Heidi Cullen, a senior scientist and journalist for the non-profit group Climate Central, explains how this works.

It’s not just Southeast Australia: Mexico City is running out of water, too. Twenty million people are living with intermittent water service. The reason is more complex than a changing climate.

Dr. William Close, the father of actress Glenn Close, died last month at the age of 84. From 1960 to 1977 he worked in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He first went there as part of a missionary group, but he eventually became personal doctor to Mobutu Sese Seko, the country’s president. In 1976, Close helped stop the first Ebola epidemic in the country. Dr. Joel Breman talks about his late colleague.

Music:
Air, Brakes On (Gordini Mix)

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