This week: We meet an Indian scientist who spent nearly three decades developing improved varieties of pigeon pea. A Dutch company is trying to make urban agriculture a possibility. And faced with the shortage of electricity, residents of Tokyo find creative ways of dealing with a hot summer.

Developing Hybrid Pigeon Pea: It’s not your most glamorous of crops. But pigeon pea is popular among thousands of subsistence farmers in India and other parts of the world. There are reasons for it’s popularity, especially in arid, drought-stricken areas. It’s deep roots impart drought tolerance to the plant. It also replenishes levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil, so farmers don’t have to rely as much on fertilizers. Crop scientist K.B. Saxena, of the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has spent nearly three decades developing high-yielding hybrid varieties of pigeon pea. Now, Indian farmers are benefiting from his years of work, by using his newly developed varieties.
Learn more about pigeon pea from ICRISAT’s website.
See pictures of Saxena’s pigeon pea hybrids, and take a tour of ICRISAT in this slide show:

Japanese Get Creative Without AC: This summer is especially hot for residents of Tokyo. Not because temperatures are higher than usual, but because of the ongoing electricity shortage since the shut down of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. So companies are getting creative: shuffling the work week, getting wild with its dress code, and covering buildings in vines. Reporter Liz Ruskin has the story.

Indoor Farming in the Netherlands: A Dutch experiment is attempting to make urban growing a viable possibility. Clark Boyd has the story.

HIV Treatment as HIV Prevention: This was the biggest and most hopeful AIDS news in some time. Check out our interview on what the new study results could mean for Africa. And here’s a story we ran last year, from South Africa, that also explores the strategy of treating HIV to prevent the virus’s spread.

Obama’s Global Health Initiative: Early in his presidency, Barack Obama announced a new Global Health Initiative to combat disease in the developing world. Two years later, the effort appears disorganized, ill-defined, and lacking clear progress, according to this in-depth and welcome investigation by reporter John Donnelly for GlobalPost.

Conflict in Cote d’Ivoire Disrupts Polio Eradication Drive: Yet more bad news from a country in turmoil. Read this news report from IRIN, the UN’s source of humanitarian news.

WHO Considers Fate of Smallpox: And you thought that smallpox had been eradicated. Not quite. Nature looks at the debate over what to do with stored virus samples.

Angela Merkel Champions Green Energy: An unexpected political turn by the German chancellor is cheered by environmentalists. Read this fascinating story by Christian Schwägerl at Yale Environment 360.

UK Fungi Redraw Evolutionary Tree: It’s amazing how much work taxonomists have yet to do. As reported in Nature, a discovery in a British pond could upset scientists’ understanding of fungal evolution.

Bedbugs and Drug-resistant Bacteria: Two of my least favorite things team up against us. As reported by AP.

Ambassador for Clean Cookstoves: In case you were wondering why Julia Roberts graces this week-in-review post, the Hollywood star has been named global ambassador by the Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, according to this U.S. State Department news release. Why appoint an Academy Award-winning actress to teach about the dangers of dirty cook stoves in the developing world? Because stars draw media attention, of course. and in my case the ploy worked! Her appointment also gives me an excuse to point you to Rhitu Chatterjee’s excellent story last year about efforts to clean up cook stoves in India. (The story was also featured on Science Podcast #80.)

Enjoy the weekend!

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

(Photo: flickr image by David Shankbone.)

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.

Listen to a story by The World’s Mary Kay Magistad about China’s growing dependence on coal. That’s followed by our interview with journalist and author Jeff Goodell. He was our guest in this Science Forum discussion.

Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and is the author of the 2006 book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.

Despite being the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, coal continues to be used globally at a growing pace.

Here in the U.S., roughly half of our electricity comes from coal, and utility companies are continuing to build new coal power plants. But not for long, says Goodell. “The era of fossil fuels is coming to a close.”

That’s because coal reserves are finite, and we will eventually exhaust them. Add to that the growing concerns over the human and environmental costs of coal which have led to tighter regulation of the industry here in the U.S.

Goodell says energy companies and local economies can benefit from exploring renewable sources of energy.

But how to wean ourselves away from this relatively abundant resource? And can we do it soon enough? Ask Goodell. Check out our conversation with Goodell.

• If we accounted for the human and environmental costs of coal, how expensive would it be?
• How much more are you willing to pay to switch from coal to renewable sources of energy?

Additional Resources:

• Listen to our series on China’s Coal Habit by The World’s Mary Kay Magistad.
• ‘After a Strong Counterattack, Big Coal Makes a Comeback,’ by Jeff Goodell, Yale360.
• ‘Coal Industry Spending to Sway Next Congress,’ John M. Broder, New York Times.

This week:  You’ll hear the first of my stories from my recent trip to India. It’s about India’s ambitious plans for expanding its civilian power sector. That’s followed by an interview with M.V. Ramana, a nuclear analyst about Asia’s rush to build nuclear power plants. Ramana and his colleague Alexander Glaser are guests in our latest Science Forum discussion, and they’re taking your questions about the pros and cons of nuclear power. So, do stop by and share your thoughts. (Photo courtesy of Amy).

India’s Nuclear Plans Hit Road Bumps: Today India’s booming economy relies heavily on coal. But those coal reserves are finite, and come with heavy environmental costs. So the country is eying other sources of energy. Nuclear energy currently provides roughly 3% of India’s total energy needs. The government wants to amp it up to some 10% by 2030, with help from other countries like the U.S. But people in India are concerned about liability issues in case of an accident and land acquisition to build new plants.
Reporter: Rhitu Chatterjee
View a photo/video slide show from my trip to India.

Asia’s Push for Nuclear Power–a Wise Bet? Many Asian countries including China, Vietnam, and South Korea have big plans for nuclear power. But what are the risks from this trend? Our Forum guest, M.V Ramana talks to Marco Werman about the issue, and also about the global landscape of nuclear energy. What do you think about the tradeoffs of nuclear energy? Should the U.S. too follow Asia’s lead? Bring your thoughts and questions to our online discussion with Ramana and his colleague, Alex Galser.
Guest: M.V. Ramana
Join our online Science Forum discussion about nuclear energy. Ramana and Glaser are taking your questions through November 19th.

This week: The United Nations hosts an international climate summit. Meanwhile, the Indian government pledges to cap its carbon emissions, and a scientist says China should harvest its tremendous wind power potential. We remember a cave-dwelling Italian scientist. And Elsa Youngsteadt brings us animal news: new species of whale-eating worms, paralyzed rats that can walk, and a surprising finding about how monarch butterflies navigate.

UN Climate Summit: World leaders met this week at the United Nations climate conference in New York. Many leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, acknowledged the urgent need to reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide. But prospects for negotiating a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December look grim.
Report: By The World’s Alex Gallafent.

India Promises Cuts: India has refused to accept binding international limits on its carbon emissions unless the United States agrees to do the same. But this week the Indian government made a surprising announcement; it promised to cap its emissions by 2020.
Guest: Jairam Ramesh, Indian Environment Minister.

Wind Power in China: China has invested billions of dollars in renewable energy. The country hopes to get 20% of its electricity from wind and solar power by 2020. But a recently published study in Science magazine says China could think a lot bigger when it comes to renewables.
Guest: Michael McElroy, Professor of Environmental Studies, Harvard University.

Elsa’s favorite science stories:

• Marine Scavengers: Scientists have discovered nine new species of marine worms that scavenge on dead whales.
• Rats Recover from Spinal Injuries: An international team of researchers has succeeded in getting rats with spinal cord injuries to walk again. A combination of electrical stimulation, drugs, and exercise caused the legs to move and bear weight, although the rats’ brains were not in charge.
  The study
  Video of walking rats
  
  Video credit: Grégoire Courtine
• Monarch Navigation: Each year, monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles to Central Mexico using the sun as a compass. But how do the insects track the changing position of the sun? New research shows they use a biological clock that resides in their antennae.
  The study

Remembering a Cave-dwelling Scientist: Maurizio Montalbini subjected himself to some bizarre experiments. He spent a good part of his life alone, underground, in caves. His work gave us important clues about human biological clocks. We remember the scientist, who died of a stroke last week.

Music: In the Belly of the Whale, by Newsboys.

[player] Download MP3
This week: Three energy-related stories – two on solar power, and one on a city that’s turned to bicycling as an alternative to a car-centered society. Plus we’ll look at an old animal that’s apparently learned a new trick, and we have good news — and bad — about pandas.

Bicycling In Amsterdam: Around the world, cities are generally following in America’s car-centered footsteps. The result: more vehicles, more traffic, more pollution. But at least one European city is trying a different tack.
Report: By Kathleen Schalch in Amsterdam.

Solar Thermal Energy: Among the most promising renewable energy technologies is called solar thermal, or concentrating solar. It uses the sun’s heat to produce electricity. The United States helped pioneer the field, but Spain has now taken the lead.
Report: By Cynthia Graber in Spain.

A Dad at 100?: A Galapagos tortoise named Lonesome George, who is between 90 and 100 years old, is thought to be the last of his species. After years of work by researchers, George may become a first-time father.
Guest: Linda Cayot, science advisor, Galapagos Conservancy.

Solar in Africa: A group of European businesses is developing what would be the world’s most ambitious solar  project — in North Africa. The goal: to provide electricity for Africa and Europe.
Report: By Gerry Hadden in Morocco.

Elsa’s favorite stories of the week:

• Jellyfish — and other swimming creatures — stir up the oceans. (The study.)
• The Sichuan earthquake of 2008 damaged over half of the world’s giant panda habitat. Researchers are calling for conservation corridors to compensate. (The study.)
• Chinese researchers announced the birth of a panda cub produced by artificial insemination with thawed frozen sperm — a breakthrough that could help maintain genetic diversity in panda breeding programs. (News from the Wolong Panda Club and the Associated Press.)

Music:
Owner of a Lonely Heart, by Yes
In The Air Tonight, by Phil Collins

[player] Download MP3

This week: As the U.S. works with China to cut emissions, we look at the green efforts of the world’s biggest greenhouse emitter. Europe debates the wisdom of biofuels. Plus, how a jockey can improve a horse’s speed, and six men survive being squeezed into a simulated space capsule for three months.

Dirty China: U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu visited China this week and talked about climate change. Many critics say the country must rely much less on dirty coal.

Report: By The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

Green China: China is embracing renewable energy and has plans to vastly expand solar and wind energy production. But can the country change fast enough to really make a difference for the planet?

Guest: Julian L. Wong, policy analyst, Center for American Progress.

Wong is also our guest in The World’s interactive science forum. Join us for a conversation on China and global warming — ask questions, share your fears, your hopes, your ideas.

Biofuels Debate: Scientists agree that the world must reduce its use of oil and other fossil fuels. A few years ago, biofuels seemed like a potential answer, and the U.S. and the European Union are trying to ramp up production. But many in Europe now say biofuels may make things worse.

Report: By Kathleen Schalch in Brussels.

Elsa (back from Bulgaria!) picks her favorite science stories of the week:

• How a jockey can help a horse go faster.

• Swearing eases pain.

• Simulated Mars mission accomplished. (Don’t miss the 17 entries in the volunteers’ Mars Diary!)

Music:

Shining Star, by Earth, Wind and Fire

Chill Out, by Black Uhuru

This week: Mediterranean bluefin tuna, being decimated. Watching for swine flu in Africa. Germany leads the way on renewable energy. And some surprising results from a mummy CAT scan. Plus carbs and cardiovascular disease, and genetic links between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Bluefin Tuna Troubles: In the Mediterranean, fishing for bluefin tuna goes back thousands of years. But now, overfishing is taking a severe toll, and the bluefin tuna population is crashing.
Report: By The World’s Gerry Hadden in Barcelona.

Swine Flu in Africa: The World Health Organization has tallied more than 70,000 confirmed cases of swine flu worldwide. Of those, fewer than ten are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even so, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worries that Africa could be hit hard by the pandemic. Experts say crowded slums on the continent could serve as perfect places for the spread of H1N1.
Report: By The World’s Andrea Crossan in Nairobi, Kenya.

An interactive worldwide swine flu map from the WHO

Solar Energy in East Germany: A decade ago, Germany’s government decided to focus on creating new sources of clean, renewable energy — and putting people to work in these new industries. The strategy succeeded. It helped create a solar power industry and revive a depressed region of the former East Germany. This story is the first installment in a five-part series on how Europe is confronting the challenge of climate change.
Report: By Kathleen Schalch in Frankfurt an Oder, Germany.

German Renewable Energy Federation

Mummies Get CAT Scans: Researchers in New York gave CAT scans to four mummies from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The scans revealed a few surprises, including the fact that one mummy long thought to be a woman is actually a man.
Report: By The World’s Lisa Mullins.

Mummy photos from the Brooklyn Museum

David’s favorite science stories of the week (Elsa’s away, having fun — we hope — in Bulgaria):

• New details on how some carbohydrates can damage the cardiovascular system
• A large international schizophrenia study finds genetic evidence that the disease has an immune component, and comes up with a genetic link to bipolar disorder.

Music:
Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, by World Party
Way Down Now, by World Party

This week, we have two stories about alternative energy in Spain. Over the last decade, Spanish companies like Iberdrola and Gamesa have become top wind energy producers. This success has laid the groundwork for more renewable tech; solar is next, with projects like the Solúcar solar platform.

But big business brings corruption—and renewable energy is no exception. The town of La Muela allegedly got greedy. La Muela grew rich on wind power—but its mayor, María Victoria Pinilla, is now in jail on bribery charges.The scandal began with the wind energy boom and rising property values. Another wind-related scandal is playing out in the town of Bigastro.

Of course, renewable energy isn’t always big business. The British charity Forum for the Future just awarded a $75,000 prize to inventor Jon Bohmer for his work on a cheap cardboard solar oven. Bohmer hopes to spread the technology across the world as a way to save lives, fight global warming, and conserve the environment. Similar ovens have been around for decades, but Bohmer has come up with a way to make and distribute them cheaply and quickly.

Also this week, Chinese scientists challenged textbook tenets when they reported that old female mice may still be able to produce eggs. New research indicates that inbreeding killed off a Spanish royal family, the Hapsburgs, in 1700. And scientists have made a surprising discovery about how DNA molecules can improve vision.

Music:

Three Dog Night, Never Been to Spain
June Carter Cash, Keep on the Sunny Side