This week: Plato’s writings contain hidden meanings and musical structures.  Big news about AIDS prevention efforts in Africa.  Colombian scientists mount an attack on a nasty mealybug that’s devouring Thailand’s cassava crop.  (Their weapon – a wasp that feasts on the pest.)  Also in today’s show: finch songs in cities, the Planck telescope, and leaf-cutter ants. And don’t forget to stop by our online conversation about the origins of kindness with Israeli science historian Oren Harman.

Epiphany on Plato and Music: The writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato are cryptic and often end in riddles. Few Plato scholars claim to know precisely what the philosopher thought, but now a professor at Britain’s University of Manchester believes he has cracked a code hidden in Plato’s writings. Jay Kennedy is an expert on Greek mathematics and music theory. He talks about the epiphany he had as he was poring over his volumes of Plato one day.
Guest: Jay Kennedy
More on Plato’s writings

Hopeful News for AIDS Prevention: A new AIDS study suggests that there’s a way to encourage people to avoid the risky behavior that helps spread HIV. It involves paying them. A second study reports the development of a vaginal gel that offers protection against the virus.
Guest: David Wilson
More on the payment study by the World Bank.
The New York Times on the new AIDS studies.

Cassava Sting Operation: A team of Colombia-based scientists is mobilizing to stop a mealybug infestation from destroying the cassava crop in Thailand. To counter the pests, scientists are releasing hundreds of thousands of wasps.
Guest: Tony Bellotti, International Center for Tropical Agriculture
National Geographic’s take on the story (nice pictures here).

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• Finches Songs in Cities: City noise isn’t a bother for human ears only. Birds seem to be bothered by it too. A new study shows that house finches change the frequency of their songs to adjust to noises in urban environments.
  The Study.
  More about birdsong and city noise
  Check out pictures of Darwin’s finches on our Facebook page.
• Leaf-cutter Ants Weed Out Leaf Fungi: Leaf-cutter ants are famous for their farming prowess. These ants, which live in Central and South America, grow crops of fungi in their nests by feeding the fungi leaves harvested from plants. (See photo of ants returning to their nest with fungi food.) It turns out that these six-legged farmers are more sophisticated than scientists had realized. When the ants go looking for leaves to cut, they avoid harvesting leaves that already harbor fungi, which might compete with the fungi in their nest.
• The Study.
  Video and background about leaf-cutter ants and their fungus gardens, from PBS.

• The Planck Telescope Is Up and Running: And it has sent its first image of background microwave radiation. (That’s all the radiation left over from the Big Bang.) Scientists hope to learn more about the beginnings of the universe from future images.
  More about the Planck Mission from the European Space Agency
  Another version of the map with some landmarks labeled
  Further explanation of the image, from the Bad Astronomy blog
  Pick your own wavelength with Chromoscope

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.

This week: You’ll hear a story on the controversy over U.S. imports of oil extracted from the Canadian oil sand reserves. We have a story about agricultural failures in Nigeria, told by a reporter who first visited the country twenty-five years ago. Then some good news about  U.S fisheries, the first venomous dinosaur find and an inter-continental concert with the synthesized sounds of an ancient Greek instrument. And we launch our new Music in Science segment. (Credit for photo on left: Mike Blyth)

Canadian Oil Sands: Three weeks ago, we brought you new findings about the environmental impacts of extracting and refining the bitumen that lies deep underground in northern Alberta. Canada is under fire for the ongoing extraction of oil from those reserves. But it’s the United States that buys much of that oil. New pipelines are under construction to bring even more of it south.
Report by: The World’s Jeb Sharp.
Environmental hazards of oil sand extraction on Podcast44.
Canada’s ‘dirty oil challenge’ on the BBC .

Farming Failures in Nigeria: A few decades ago, Nigeria launched a plan to embrace modern farming. But today the country is more dependent than ever on imported food. To find out what went wrong with these agricultural efforts, a reporter travels to a Nigerian village he first visited in the 1980s.
Report by: David Hecht
Africa’s Food Challenge, a paper by the U.N Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• Saving Fisheries from Decline: Rampant overfishing has caused some fisheries to collapse. Individual fishing quotas called catch shares could help conserve fish stocks. A new analysis of catch share fisheries in the U.S. shows that the mechanism yields more stable fish stocks.
  The study.
  FAO report on climate’s impact on global fisheries.
  The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on catch-shares.
• Fanged Dinosaurs:  Scientists have found the first evidence of venom glands in dinosaurs. Sinornithosaurus, a feathered dinosaur that lived some 128 million years ago, had grooved teeth and facial features much like today’s rear-fanged snakes. The researchers think these raptors used venom to stun and kill their prey.
  The study.
  More on the BBC.
• Finding Lost Sounds: European researchers are reconstructing the sounds of ancient musical instruments. They’re using equations that describe sounds based on the shape and material of an instrument. They recently reconstructed the sounds of the barbiton, an ancient Greek stringed instrument. The sounds of the barbiton were recently used in a concert in Stockholm.  See video below.
  More about the ancient instruments project.
  More about the powerful grid-computingnetowrks used by the researchers.
  Video credit: Ancient Instrument Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application.

Music in Science: This is a new segment on the podcast.  This week, we spoke to evolutionary biologist Tim White, one of the researchers who discovered and studied the remains of our oldest known ancestor, Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi. White works in a remote desert region in Ethiopia with an international team of researchers. Listen to the podcast to find out what he and his team listened to as they dug out the remains of Ardi.
Tim White.
Ardi on The World Science Podcast 34.

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.

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

A pig in Egypt

[player] Download MP3

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