DDT Controversy in Uganda: The U.S. government and the World Health Organization are encouraging African countries to spray DDT to kill malarial mosquitoes. But in some countries, this plan to protect the public has caused a public backlash.
Report: By Alison Hawkes in northern Uganda.

DDT: Poison or Protector? How toxic is DDT for humans? And how effective is it at killing mosquitoes? Is it possible to balance concern for the environment with the desire to fight malaria?
Guest: Entomologist May Berenbaum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Berenbaum is also our guest in The World’s interactive science forum. Join us for an online conversation about DDT, malaria, and the delicate balance between competing risks. Ask questions, and share your views and ideas.

Traditional Healing in Senegal: Throughout Africa, many people rely on traditional healers. Western medical care is often unavailable or too expensive, and many Africans don’t believe that Western medicine works.
Report: By Jori Lewis in Senegal.

Reforesting Ghana: Over the past century, Ghana has lost 80 percent of its forest. Now, a British firm is launching a project to plant 24 million trees in that West African nation. The idea: to get big polluters to pay for the forests as part of a carbon trading scheme.
Report: By BBC environment correspondent David Shukman, in Ghana.

Elsa’s weekly favorites:

• A new HIV strain jumps from gorillas to humans. (The study.)
• Malaria came to us from the great apes, too– from chimpanzees, to be precise. (The study.)
• Four-thousand-year-old gourds bear traces of a prehistoric Peruvian feast. (The study.) (Here’s a recipe for modern algarrobina cocktails– but you might have to make your own carob syrup.)
• Orchids imitate bees to dupe wasps. (The study.)
  Photo by Song Xi-qiang

Music:
Africa Must Be Free By 1983, by Hugh Mundell
Gossando, Star Band de Dakar

Earthquake trigger?

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This week: Swine flu among the Inuit, typhoons trigger earthquakes, elephants afraid of bees, too many jellyfish, and bigger black holes.

Inuit Flu: The World Health Organization has announced that it’s particularly worried about Inuits in northern Canada. That region is experiencing a cluster of cases.
Guest: CBC reporter Patricia Bell, under swine flu quarantine in the town of Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut.

Typhoons and Earthquakes: A new study has found that one kind of catastrophe – typhoons – may actually trigger another, earthquakes. But it’s more complicated, because these earthquakes are the “slow” kind, which means no one notices them.
Guest: Geophysicist Alan Linde of the Carnegie Institution in Washington

Science News:
A new scientific paper reviews why jellyfish are taking over the seas. (The study.) And as long as you’re thinking about jellies, you might want to enter or vote in this jellyfish naming contest.

Elephants are afraid of something else that stings: bees. Researchers have taken advantage of this to develop “beehive fences,” which seem to work well. (The study.)

Black holes turn out to be much bigger than we thought. (The study isn’t published yet, but here’s an article from Science News about the work.)

Music:
Earthquake, by Jackie Mittoo.
Stormy Monday Blues, by T-Bone Walker.

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

A pig in Egypt

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This week, we look at how industrial farms may be creating conditions for new flu strains. The H1N1 swine flu contains genes from pig, bird, and human flu viruses. Some scientists suspect that large pig farms may help incubate such hybrid viruses. We talk to Prof. Ellen Silbergeld of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Meanwhile, Egypt is slaughtering its pigs in an attempt to control swine flu. Experts say this strategy is misguided, and it has set off protests by Egyptians who depend on pigs for their livelihood.

In Antarctica, more evidence of warming. A huge piece of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has shattered into icebergs. Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, talks about what the satellite images show.

A new study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) examines the behavior and well-being of people in 18 countries. Among the findings: Americans are overweight, the Japanese watch a lot of TV, and Greece and Austria have the most bullies.

Plus more on the Flores Island hobbits, and a new study says bees may not be in so much trouble, after all. And how a brain chemical may help you get along with your spouse.

Some Useful Links:

More about swine flu from the BBC and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The bee study and more on pollinators from The National Academies of Science. (Here you can listen to a podcast on pollinators and read the book Status of Pollinators in North America for free.)

More on Flores hobbits from the BBC and from Nature, the journal that published the study. (Note: the Nature link will only be open access for a few days.)

The oxytocin study and more about oxytocin. Finally, a paper on how to change brain chemistry without drugs.

Songs

Booker T. & The MG’s, Oo Wee Baby, I Love You

All over the world, disease and habitat destruction have caused honey bee numbers to plummet. Bees are crucial because they pollinate 80 percent of our fruit and vegetable crops. This week’s podcast begins with a story from Frankfurt, Germany, about how urban apiculture may give the bees a boost.

A bigger environmental problem is climate change. Everyone thinks of cars as a key contributor to global warming, but buildings are responsible for about half the total greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption around the world. One group of architects wants to change that. They call themselves Architecture 2030. By 2030, they want to design buildings that use no fossil fuels.

Last week, an earthquake hit central Italy, killing almost 300 people. One Italian scientist, Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, predicted the earthquake on the basis of increased radon levels. Nano Seeber, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, talks about the difficulties in predicting earthquakes. Keep an eye on other earthquakes around the world at the USGS Earthquake Center.

Also this week: chimpanzees exchange meat for sex; some birds can tell where you’re looking; and researchers propose a clever new way to stop malaria by killing only old mosquitoes (see the original research paper).

Music:
Slim Harpo, I’m a King Bee
The Hives, A Stroll Through Hive Manor Corridors