Microblogs, or “weibo,” are immensely popular in China. As anywhere else in the world, the uses range from discussing cat food, to criticizing the government, to organizing mass protests. But the Chinese government is a little bit worried (about the criticizing and the mass protests). Beijing has just introduced new rules designed to make it harder for Chinese to hide their identities. Effective immediately, new microblog users will have to submit their real names, and current users have three months to do so. In this episode of The World’s Technology Podcast, you’ll get the latest, and some context, from the BBC’s Michael Bristow.

Also in this episode, we’ll take a look at just how, and how much, Wikileaks has changed the way intelligence is gathered and shared. And you’ll hear about some academic research that’s been done recently of the role of Twitter in recent social movements.

Of course, we hate to let an episode go by without some Tech That Matters, and so we’ve also got an interview with Dr. Peter A. Singer, the man who would like to develop a smartphone app that could detect malaria, and HIV and tuberculosis. Here’s a video I found that offers a teaser:

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

In all the talk about electric vehicles and hybrids, I was starting to wonder about hydrogen-powered cars. Well, it turns out that Britain just got its first public hydrogen filling station. Now…I guess they just need some hydrogen powered cars to stop by. In this episode of WTP, you’ll hear from one person who thinks hydrogen power can play an important role in weaning ourselves off of gas-powered vehicles, and also from a skeptic who says the tech (not to mention people’s will to switch) is just not there yet.

Also in this episode: India’s $35 tablet computer (yes, that’s with a government subsidy), the Chinese and conflict minerals in Congo, and Israel tries to embrace solar power.

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

I’m posting the podcast from Canada. I’m in British Columbia doing some reporting that you’ll hear in future episodes. But in today’s episode we’re talking about toilets. That’s because about a third of the world still does not have access to proper sanitation. The World is airing a series called Toilet Tales. In this podcast, you’ll hear the first part of the series. You’ll hear a story about innovative project to solve China’s sanitation problems, and a story about the world’s only Toilet Museum. We’ve also launched a new Science Forum discussion about innovative ways to solve the world’s sanitation crisis.


Toilet Tales-China: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports on an effort to save water and recycle nutrients in an arid part of China by building an apartment complex with dry, composting toilets.
Read more about the project here.

The Benefits of Eco-Sanitation: Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Arno Rosemarin about the potential of dry composting toilets to help solve the world’s sanitation crisis. Rosemarin runs the ecological sanitation project at the Stockholm Environment Institute. He’s also the guest in our latest Science Forum discussion. Join the conversation!

India’s Toilet Museum: Some 600 million people in India alone don’t have access to basic sanitation. That makes the country an unusual place for what may be the world’s only Toilet Museum. I recently visited that tiny museum, and brought this report about the museum’s public health and social mission.
Read more here.

Listener E-mail: Listener, Andrew O’Keeffe is a regular listener of this podcast. He works as a gardener for the City of Burnaby, not far from Vancouver, Canada. He sent us this photo of his workplace.

Rosemarin is an expert on sanitation. He works at the Stockholm Environment Institute, and he’s our guest in this Science Forum discussion. He’s taking your questions about sanitation and toilets.

Why talk about toilets? Because even today — in the 21st century – a third of the world does not have access to basic sanitation. The result: water and soil pollution, and widespread health problems like cholera and dysentery.

Sanitation is “something that human beings have… trouble talking about,” says Rosemarin. But he contends we must get over our aversion to the subject if we are to solve the earth’s sanitation challenges.

So how can we provide basic sanitation to those who don’t have access to it? And would you be willing to trade your flush toilet for a more earth-friendly design? Bring your thoughts and questions to the conversation.

Although the modern flush toilet carries away our waste and reduces the transmission of disease, it uses a lot of water. In China, toilets account for up to half the water used in a typical household, worsening the country’s chronic water scarcity.

Rosemarin would like to move people away from flush toilets, but that is no easy task. When he tried to introduce a sustainable, dry-composting toilet in a Chinese city, unforeseen problems prevented the toilets from working properly. You can listen to that story at the top of this page, or read it here.

Follow our Toilet Tales from China, India, Haiti, and the U.S.

Looming Quake Risk in Japan: A series of studies in Science, as reported by Nature, suggests another big quake could be in the offing south of where the Great Tohoku Earthquake struck.

Congress Restricts Sino-American Science Collaboration: Here’s one I missed a couple of weeks ago. A little-known clause in the latest federal budget bans certain forms of scientific collaboration between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China. Here’s one take on the issue from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Skin Disease in the Mind: A Mayo Clinic study suggests that Morgellons disease — which sufferers say is caused by parasites crawling under the skin — is actually caused by delusions, says a story in the L.A. Times. (The disease sounds reminiscent of Guinea worm disease, which is all too real. Check out my story on a former U.S. president’s battle against Guinea worm.)

Mummies with Heart Disease: We’ve heard this before: scientists put mummies in CT scanners to diagnose diseases of ancient Egypt. But this latest study is especially large and finds a surprisingly high rate of atherosclerosis. Report by Discovery News.

DDT vs. Malaria: The New York Times provides an update on a controversy in Northern Uganda. Are the benefits of combating malaria with DDT worth the risks? It’s a subject we investigated in 2009 with a lengthy news report and a World Science Forum discussion.

David Baron is the health & science editor at The World.

(Photo: flickr image by Ian Turton.)

Download audio file (science109.mp3)
Download MP3

This week: A new report says the Arctic permafrost is rapidly thawing due to climate change. We hear about a study of dengue fever in a modern Malaysian city, which shows that mosquito-borne diseases can occur in clean, well-planned environments — not just in poverty-stricken areas. We talk to a researcher who has been studying the secrets behind long-distance navigation by tiger sharks in the Pacific.

Melting Permafrost: We have heard a lot about the problem of melting ice as climate change warms the Arctic. But scientists are also worried about something else that is melting up there – permafrost. Permafrost is the permanently frozen soil underneath much of the northern part of the planet. Now, a report says over half of it may thaw out within the next 200 years, with big consequences for the global climate.
The projected changes in permafrost.
National Snow and Ice Data Center.
All about frozen ground.

Dengue Fever in Malaysia: We think of mosquito-borne infectious diseases like dengue as ailments that plague poor parts of the world. But modern urban development does not necessarily lead to controlling such diseases, according to new findings recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Kate Mulligan is a graduate student at Canada’s McMaster University, and her research shows that well-planned, modern cities can also cause the spread of infectious diseases like dengue fever.

How Sharks Find Their Way: The Pacific Ocean is home to countless species of fish that have a natural ability to navigate around their underwater environment. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with marine biologist Yannis Papastamatiou of the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville about his research on how fish of one species — the tiger shark — seem to  how exactly where they’re going.

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.

This week:  We’re taking you to Newfoundland for an update on the collapsed Atlantic cod fishery, followed by a quick look at global fisheries. Fisheries are also the topic of our ongoing Science Forum discussion. We’re speaking with Fisheries economist Rashid Sumaila. Join the discussion and learn what you can do to help protect fish species around the world. Also, a brief chat with the author of the new book, Written in Stone.

A Glimmer of Hope for the Atlantic Cod: Some of the world’s most endangered wildlife are obscure species, haunting far-flung corners of the planet, but other endangered creatures are much more familiar. Scotland is the last refuge of a small wild cat that has prowled parts of Great Britain since the last ice age.
Reporter: Jeb Sharp
See Jeb’s slide show from Newfoundland.
Jeb Sharp’s Encounters documentary.

Global Fisheries in Decline: According to a new WWF report, seventy percent of commercial marine fisheries are on the decline. Rashid Sumaila directs the Fisheries Center the the University of British Columbia. He tells us about the problems facing the global fisheries industry, and what consumers can do to encourage sustainable fishing practices. Dr. Sumaila is also the guest in our online Science Forum. Join the discussion here.
Guest:Rashid Sumaila

Written In Stone: Fossils tell a fascinating tale of the process of evolution and our own place in nature. And that’s the topic of the new book, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature. I caught up briefly with Switek, just before he headed out to the New Jersey State Museum to clean a fossil crocodile.
Guest: Brian Switek.
Smithsonian’s Dinosaur Tracking Blog.

Listen to a story by Rhitu Chatterjee about India’s nuclear energy plans. That’s followed by an interview with physicist M.V. Ramana of Princeton University.

Ramana is our guest in this Science Forum discussion, and he’s joined by Princeton colleague Alexander Glaser. Both scholars analyze the nuclear industry. They’ll be taking your comments and questions through November 19th.

India’s economy is booming, its people are hungry for energy, and the country wants to move away from its heavy reliance on coal and other fossil fuels. So India is eyeing other sources of energy — including nuclear. It’s planning a ten-fold increase in its nuclear power generation capacity in the next 20 years.

The same is true for many Asian countries. China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and neighboring countries plan to build new nuclear power plants. But is nuclear energy a wise solution to these countries’ energy needs?

Ramana says that many Asian countries aren’t prepared to understand and manage the risks from nuclear power plants. For example, he says Vietnam and Bangladesh don’t even have an agency to regulate the nuclear industry. Does this mean Asia’s investment in nuclear power is a risky bet?

Join the conversation with Ramana and Glaser. It’s just to the right.

• How do you view the trade-offs of nuclear energy? Do you support nuclear power as a way to combat climate change?
• The United States is encouraging India’s nuclear power expansion. Should it be doing so?
• If Asia’s rising economic powers are investing in new nuclear plants, will other nations follow suit?

Watch this video of local protests to a proposed nuclear power plant in India.

Additional Resources:

• The Future of Nuclear Power – an MIT report.
• Will Asia dominate the global nuclear industry?
• Asia’s nuclear energy growth.

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This week: You’ll hear about the environmental costs of China’s growing pork consumption. Also, one scientist’s search for the evolutionary origins of human language. And a little audio treat from India — which is where I’m podcasting from this week.

China’s Pork Boom: China’s appetite for pork is growing fast, and so is the size of Chinese pig farms. The government says that’s good for food safety, but it may not be so good for the environment.
Reported by: Elise Potaka

Evolutionary Roots of Language: Scientists looking for the origins of language often study communication in animals. One such researcher in Klaus Zuberbühler. He’s at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and he’s been studying vocal communication in monkeys in Ivory Coast. Zuberbühler was part of a panel on animal intelligence at the World Science Festival back in June. I caught up with him after the panel and asked him about some of his findings.
Guest: Klaus Zuberbühler
More from the 2010 World Science Festival in Podcast no. 70.
Watch the All Creatures Great and Smart panel from the 2010 World Science Festival.