If you’ve been a fan of Tech Podcast for any length of time, then you know how much I like to look back at the technologies of the past. WTP 337 is no exception. This week, we’ve got a BBC interview with author Taylor Downing about his new book, Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence During World War II. At left, you can see a aerial picture of Omaha Beach that was taken before the D-Day invasion. Downing has lots of interesting things to say about the cameras that were used, and about the dedicated group of individuals who turned deciphering those photos into a craft, maybe even an art form. Not to be missed, and definitely something to be shared.

I also have a couple of items for those of you interested in how tech is playing a role in the so-called Arab Spring. I’ve got a BBC interview on Syria’s Electronic Army, and an item from The World on how cell phone giant Nokia-Siemens is coming under fire for helping authorities in Bahrain stifle protest.

In the wake of events at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, many countries, especially Western countries that had once embraced nuclear power, are rethinking that commitment. But in Africa, some countries are moving ahead with plans to ramp up nuclear programs. The BBC’s Will Ross looks at the case of Kenya.

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

Photo courtesy of Massonth

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This week: We have two stories from East Africa. One about the ongoing food crisis in the Horn of Africa, and the other about lions attacking humans in Tanzania. We’re also taking you to the world’s northernmost botanical garden.

Famine in Southern Somalia: You may remember my story from last week about food security experts’ aversion to using the famine label too readily. They had labeled the ongoing food crisis in East Africa a famine. But that changed last week, when the U.N. declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia. What caused the change in terminology? I explore the answer in this story, which I originally did for the radio show.
Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
U.N. Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Network.
Oxfam is working on delivering aid in Somalia and other parts of drought stricken East Africa.

Why Lions Attack After the Full Moon: Lion attacks on humans have been growing in East African countries like Tanzania. Ecologist Craig Packer, of the University of Minnesota has been studying lions in the country for 30 years. He has published a new study that suggests that lions in Tanzania are more likely to attack humans after the full moon.
The Study.

Northernmost Botanical Garden: At almost 70 degrees north latitude, the Norwegian city of Tromsø sits above the Arctic Circle. But its climate is more temperate than you might expect — warmed by the Gulf Stream offshore. Tromsø is lush and green in the summer, and that’s an excellent time to visit the city’s unique botanical garden. The garden’s director, Arve Elvebakk, offers us this tour.

Photo Courtesy: CDC

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East Africa is experiencing a severe food crisis. Two seasons of failed rains are causing millions to face starvation. We bring you an update on the situation from a refugee camp in Kenya that is housing refugees from Somalia. We also explore the use of the word ‘famine’ for such food crises. We learn about a giant storm on Saturn. And a musician tells us about his most recent album, ‘Planets.’

Drought Ravages Parts of East Africa: Several seasons of failed rains have led to a severe food crisis in East Africa. Some ten million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Thousands of people from Somalia are moving to refugee camps in Kenya. The World’s Marco Werman speaks with the BBC’s Kevin Mwachiro who was in one of the refugee camps in Kenya.
Pictures from Kenya’s refugee camps.
More stories about the drought by the BBC.

Exploring the ‘Famine’ Label: Several news reports have called the ongoing food crisis in East Africa a famine. But food security experts are unwilling to use that label yet. “There’s been an enormous shift away from using ‘famine’ as a label,” said NASA’s Molly Brown, who works as part of the US government’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWSNET. More recently scientists have been relying on a scientific scale to rate food security. The scaled is called Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC. Learn more in this story I did for the radio show.
Follow updates about the situation on FEWSNET’s website.
Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit-Somalia.

Saturn’s Super Storm: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which is orbiting Saturn, has been tracking a giant storm on the planet.

Music in Science: This week we head into space. The band One Ring Zero‘s most recent album is called ‘Planets.’ Musician Michael Hearst explains what inspired his band to write songs about the solar system.

Masai herdsmen's cow getting tagged. (Photo: Anders Kelto)

This week, we’re talking about eradicating diseases. The U.N. just announced that rinderpest, a deadly cattle disease has been eradicated. This is the second disease to be eradicated in history. The first was a human disease—smallpox. We’ll hear from one of the scientists who led that global campaign. We’ve also launched a Forum discussion about conquering deadly diseases. Click here to join the conversation. Also, we hear from a listener in Barcelona.

End of Rinderpest: This week, the U.N. announced that for only the second time in history, a disease has been eradicated. The illness, called rinderpest, was a devastating plague of cattle and other animals. Anders Kelto reports from Kenya, the site of the last known case of the disease.
Read more here.
Efforts to eradicate Guinea worm disease in Podcast 60.
Challenges to conquering polio, in Podcast 72.

Eradication of Smallpox: The first disease to be eradicated was smallpox. That was more than thirty years ago. One of the scientists who led the global campaign was epidemiologist, William Foege. He was most closely involved in the eradication efforts in Nigeria, and India, the last stronghold of the disease. Foege has written a new book about his experiences during the fight to beat the disease. It’s called House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox. He spoke with The World’s Lisa Mullins about his book, and about the possibility of conquering other diseases .

How to Kill Killer Diseases: Foege is also taking your thoughts and questions about smallpox, and other infectious diseases in our latest Science Forum discussion. Click here to join the conversation.

Photo by Tom Paulson

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Listen to our interview with William Foege here.

William Foege was one of the scientists who led the global campaign to eradicate smallpox, a deadly disease that plagued humankind for centuries. At the time, he was working for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. His new book about the eradication campaign is called House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox.

Foege is now a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and he is our guest in this Science Forum discussion.

When Foege first started working for the smallpox eradication campaign in the late 1960s, the plan was to vaccinate everyone in affected countries. But while working in Nigeria, he found himself facing a shortage of vaccine supplies. So he enlisted local missionaries to find affected communities and only vaccinate people in the immediate vicinity of patients. The strategy is what public health officials call “surveillance and containment,” and it ultimately succeeded in eradicating the disease globally.

More than thirty years later, smallpox remains the only human disease to be eradicated. (The United Nations has just announced the first eradication of a livestock disease—rinderpest. Click here to read/listen to our story.) There are efforts to eradicate other diseases like polio, Guinea worm, and malaria.

Is eradication a feasible goal for all diseases? When should we decide to eradicate a disease versus just control it?

Bring your thoughts and questions for Foege. He’ll be participating in this discussion until July 12th.

Additional Resources:

• A review of  ‘House on Fire,’ The Wall Street Journal.
• William Foege on eradicating other diseases, NPR’s Humanosphere blog.
• Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
• Eradicating Guinea Worm Disease, PRI’s The World.

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)

Then, it’s off to Kenya to hear about how bio-fuels are also being touted there as a way of meeting energy needs, and improving the local economy. Some are worried that growing crops for bio-fuels might mean increased pressure on nature preserves, though.

We’ll also tell you about the integrated circuit, which you might know better as the microchip. It was 50 years ago that the first patent was taken out on this technology, which has revolutionized computing and therefore our day-to-day lives. The highlight of our interview with computing professor Stephen Furber is his description of what computing life was like before the microchip. Nothing like a bit of perspective to make you better appreciate what your five year old laptop can do.

And since the microchip has been such a stunning global success, we’ll balance things out by ending with a segment on failure. But not just any kind of failure. We’ll be talking about The Institute of Brilliant Failures in the Netherlands, where they celebrate those cock-ups that cause us to learn and grow in unexpected ways. Swing by their website and nominate your favorite, and find out why Viagra is considered the poster child for serendipitous failure. If that’s not enough to entice you, here’s one for you Apple lovers/haters — Steve Jobs has also been nominated.

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.

If you’ve done any traveling in the developing world, you know that cargo containers, like the one you see at right, are used for a bit of everything. They can fitted out as stores, workshops, and yes…homes. But now, Computer Aid International has a new idea: turn one of these cargo containers into a fully functioning, solar powered cyber-cafe that can be shipped and set up just about anywhere in the world. With a little help from a thin-client computing solution called NComputing (featured in WTP 259), a solar panel, and of course an internet connection, Computer Aid hopes these cargo containers can bring Internet access to places without electricity. We have an interview with Computer Aid’s Tony Roberts, on the line with us from Zambia, where one of the new cafes is due to arrive soon.

Here are some more helpful links from week’s podcast:

• Statistics without Borders
• More on the film “Erasing David”
• More on the Mars500 Mission
• Tech Podcast 214 on the Virtual Space Station
• Soccer blogger Steve Amoia reviews the World Cup Soccer Ball!

And as promised, here’s the video of the Salad Spinner Centrifuge:

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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.