Photo courtesy of Wildxplorer

This Week: A Phase 3 trial of a new malaria vaccine shows that it can halve the risk of disease. We explore whether that is significant development for controlling malaria in the future. The magnificent trees that line France’s ancient Canal du Midi are now dying. A story about waters wars in a different part of Australia. (Listen to Part I of Australia’s Water Wars in Podcast 135.)

Malaria Vaccine Trial Raises Hopes: The pharmaceutical company Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) published the results of a large scale field trial of a malaria vaccine. The results show that the vaccine can halve the risk of disease. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, (most other vaccines have an efficiency of 90% and above) but experts are hailing this as significant progress. It is also the first vaccine for a parasitic disease to be so effective. In this episode, we hear more about the vaccine from a GSK representative. Then, we get some perspective from infectious disease expert Bill Foege, who you heard in Podcast no. 125.
Read the study about the malaria vaccine trial here.
More about the vaccine on the BBC’s website.

The Dying Trees of France’s Canal du Midi:The banks along France’s Canal du Midi, are lined with trees so majestic that UNESCO called them “a work of art.” Sadly, those trees are dying. The World’s Gerry Hadden brings us this story.

Australia’s Water Wars Part II: Farmers in the great Australian Outback have never had much access to water. Now ranchers and environmentalists in the region have formed an unlikely alliance to avoid the water wars. The World’s Jason Margolis brings us this story.
Read more about Jason’s story here.

Lima shantytown, copyright 2009 David Baron

As I type these words, I’m flying 39,000 feet over Ecuador. Shortly, I will land in Lima, a sprawling city of about nine million people. Lima is one of the cities of the world most immediately threatened by global warming. The city was built on the edge of a desert, one of the driest in the world. And its primary source of water is a small river, the Rimac. The Rimac’s water trickles of glaciers high in the Andes which, unfortunately for Limeños, are rapidly melting. Peru has lost about 30 percent of its glacial ice in the last 40 years.

Over the next three weeks, I’ll explore a question that is easy to state but hard to answer: how will the Peruvian capital respond to decline of its chief source of water as its population grows and the demand for the resource grows. I’ll talk to officials at many government agencies and visit shantytowns that have waited decades just to gain running water. I’ll circle low in a prop plane over Huaytapallana, a glacier that has suffered some of the most startling losses of ice.

There are no simple solutions to Peru’s challenge, and no guarantees of success. I will explore several ideas, some hopeful, others fanciful. I’ll join glaciologist Benjamin Morales on a research expedition to study how glaciers might be insulated against melting with a coating of sawdust. Entrepreneur Eduardo Gold will show me his work trying to cool mountaintops and regrow glaciers by painting summits white. And I’ll see billboard-size fog catchers springing up on sand dunes on Lima’s outskirts. Although it almost never rains there, heavy fog blankets the region for about half the year and these simple devices are already capturing precious trickles and easing the city’s problems slightly.

Please join me on my travels. I’ll post entries daily about who I’ve met, what I’ve seen and what I’m thinking. I’ll post a photo or two as well.

Daniel Grossman reports on climate change for The World. Follow his journey to Peru by reading his additional blog posts here.

This week:  We’re coming a day late to you this week. But as I promised you’ll hear some breaking news about how global warming is threatening lizard species. Also a scientist on board a research vessel tells us what he’s seeing around the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Elsa has news about evolution of humans and human civilizations. We have some revolutionary music for our Music in Science segment.

Global Warming Threatens Lizard Populations: In recent decades, scientists have documented serious threats to frog species across the globe. Frogs and other amphibians have vanished from many areas. The exact cause is in question. It might be an infectious disease, or pollution, or habitat destruction. A study published by the journal Science suggests the world’s lizards are also in peril, and what’s threatening lizards is climate change.
Report by: Yours Truly, Rhitu Chatterjee.
The study.
Website of study author Barry Sinervo.
Sceloporus lizards in the Encyclopedia of Life.

Spilled Oil in the Deep Ocean: At least 4 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from the damaged Deepwater Horizon well, according to the Associated Press reports, and the desperate efforts to protect the gulf coast’s ecosystem from the slick continue. We hear from oceanographer Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi. Asper and a team of researchers are aboard a research vessel called the Pelican. They’re analyzing in real time the impact of the oil spill on marine organisms.
Guest: Vernon Asper
Oil spill coverage from Science magazine’s policy blog, ScienceInsider.
BBC coverage.
Fighting the spill with hair and hosiery–from The World’s Technology Podcast.
University of Southern Mississippi’s oil spill response team.
More oil spill photos from the Boston Globe.

Some of the spilled oil has started to sink into the ocean. Note the streaks of red just under the water’s surface.
Credit for above photos and video: Oceanographer Vernon Asper and his colleagues aboard the Pelican kindly shared the images and video with us.

Elsa’s Favorite Stories:

• Mixing with Neanderthals: The Neanderthal genome–newly sequenced from ancient bones–reveals that Neanderthals and early modern humans interbred in the Middle East.
  The study and news coverage from Science magazine.
  More on human evolution from the Smithsonian.
• Climate, Soil, and Economic Inequality: Why is wealth distributed unevenly around the world? It’s not all history and politics. Regional differences in climate and soil go a long way toward predicting whether humans will use land for agriculture or hunting-gathering. Land use, in turn, predicts population density and power.
  The study.
  Website of study author Jan Beck. (His lab usually studies how insects, not people, are distributed on the planet.)
  A review of Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel.
• Mayan Water Pressure: Residents of the ancient Mayan city of Palenque might have enjoyed flush toilets and decorative fountains, thanks to a high-pressure spring-fed aqueduct. A constriction at the end of the aqueduct pressurized the water, which might have spouted up to six meters high. The aqueduct is the first evidence of engineered water pressure in the Americas before the Spanish arrived.
  The study.
  History and photos of Palenque.

Music in Science: When he was in graduate school, Alonso Córdoba’s research addressed the evolutionary relationships among animals. This meant amplifying and sequencing a lot of DNA using PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Find out which little-known Bob Marley song Alonso looped for hours on end in the lab. Alonso now teaches genetics and molecular biology at Ohio Northern University.
Song: Revolution, by Bob Marley
Album: Natty Dread

This week: You’ll learn about China’s water pollution problems. You’ll hear a story about efforts to rebuild an ancient footbridge across the Blue Nile in Ethiopia. Whale evolution is among Elsa’s favorite stories this week. And a marine biologist tells us about the music that keeps him company while he searches the deep sea waters for new species.  And, we have an ONLINE SURVEY for you. Please take a few minutes to give your feedback about this podcast.

China’s Dirty Water Problem: You may already know that China has some of the worst water pollution problems in the world.  Well, the Chinese government recently released its first comprehensive review of pollution sources, and the problem appears to be even worse than previously thought.  The study found that by at least one key measure, water pollution is twice as bad as the government had reported just two years ago.  Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, and he has written extensively on China’s water challenges.  He gave us some perspective on these new findings.
Guest: Peter Gleick.

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• Scanning for Painting Forgeries: Scientists are now using a medical imaging technology to tell whether historic paintings have been altered. The imaging technique, called Optical Coherence Tomography, is used by doctors to scan the retina to detect vision problems. When used to analyze paintings, it becomes a valuable tool to look deeper into the layers of paint and varnish.
  The study. (Includes photos of the paintings the researchers analyzed.)
  NPR story on yet another way of discovering art fakes.
• Whales, Whales, and More Whales: Two new studies elucidate important aspects of whale evolutionary biology. One uses old and forgotten fossil specimens to connect modern-day baleen whales with their filter-feeding predecessors in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The other uses statistical models to discover an important factor behind the diversity of whales in our oceans today – diatoms. These tiny single-celled organisms form the base of the modern marine food web; their evolution has, in turn, supported the diversification of whales.
  The giant filter-feeding fish study.
  The diatom diversity study.
  Discover blog post about the filter-feeding fish.

Music in Science: We may be whaled out by now, but we aren’t leaving the oceans yet. In our music segment this week, a marine biologist from the U.K takes us deep down under the sea where he’s studying marine species. His name is Jon Copley, and he’s a researcher at England’s University of Southampton. What does Copley listen to while he peers into the oceans from his ship with a remotely operated vehicle? Listen and find out.
Produced by: Elsa Youngsteadt
Music: Two Tribes, by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Rebuilding the Blue Nile Footbridge: In the Blue Nile Canyon of Ethiopia, a single footbridge is the only connection for people who live on opposite sides of the river. The ancient bridge has been repeatedly destroyed and repaired over the centuries. Now, a team of American volunteers has built a new, sturdier suspension bridge across the chasm. Reporter Daniel Glick was there as the new span was put into place.
View a slide show of the project.
View map.

Credit: Bridges to Prosperity.

Tell Us What you Think Of This Podcast: Please fill out this ONLINE SURVEY, and help us improve this podcast with your feedback. It’ll only take a few minutes of your time.

This week: We’re taking you to Sydney where residents are getting their drinking water from a new desalination plant. Then to Europe where researchers found signs of consciousness inside the brains of seemingly unconscious people. Then a story about the discovery of an ancient civilization in the Brazilian Amazon. Elsa’s back with news about the evolution of human emotional expressions. And a researcher from Corvallis, OR tells us about his favorite music for doing science.

The Active Brains of ‘Vegetative’ Patients: A new study by British and Belgian scientists has raised provocative questions about the inner lives of patients in what doctors call a ‘vegetative state.’ They’re seemingly unaware of their surroundings. The new study finds that its possible for some of these patients to respond to simple “yes” and “no” questions with their brains.
Report by: Rhitu Chatterjee.
The study.

An Australian Water Factory: For years Sydney has been experiencing erratic rainfall. But the city may have found a solution to its water crisis. Starting this winter, Sydney’s residents will be getting their drinking water from a new desalination plant.
Story by: Phil Mercer
The Australian government on the future of its water sources.
Read a transcript of this story.

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• Insect Migration: Two new studies reveal how migratory insects have evolved for efficient long-distance flights.
  The study about Monarch butterfly wings.
  BBC coverage.
  We talked about monarch migration in Podcast #33, too.
  The study on high-flying migratory moths.
  More on the moths’ adaptations from NPR.
• Cold War Affected Bird Diversity: The Cold War didn’t just divide people of Western and Eastern Europe. It also curtailed the movement of alien bird species across the continent.
  The study.
• Expressing Emotions Across Cultures: Some vocal expressions seem to be more universal than others. When asked to interpret another culture’s non-verbal sounds, people found it easier to understand expressions of disgust and pain than those of surprise and pleasure.
  Note from Elsa: To do this study, the researchers had to find people who were not already exposed to western culture. They worked with the Himba, a semi-nomadic group in Namibia. I talked with study author Disa Sauter, and she told me that she worried about introducing remote groups of Himba to western clothes, technology, and stuff for the first time. They might want the same things and begin to devalue their own culture. But instead it turned out that the Himba pitied the poor researchers because they didn’t have any cows! As pastoralists, the Himba measure wealth and status in livestock, and were concerned for the pitiable westerners who didn’t have even a single goat.
  The study.
  BBC coverage.
  Listen to expressions of amusement, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and achievement. In this sound file, we’ve included Western and Himba versions of each emotion, in that order. Download MP3
  Disa Sauter for provided the recordings of emotional expressions.
  Photo: A Himba woman participates in the study. Credit: Frank Eisner.

Amazon Geoglyphs: The Amazon forest covers over a billion and a half acres of South America. The forest is dense and inhospitable to humans and anthropologists have long thought that its only inhabited by small and simple societies. But that hasn’t stopped rumors about long-lost civilizations deep inside the Amazon. Could there be any truth to those rumors? Find out in this story.
Report by: The World’s Marina Giovanelli.
Report on Pre-Columbian Geometric Earthworks.
Geoglifos.com

Music in Science: Luis Valenzuela studies root growth in berry crops at Oregon State University. His work could help farmers know the best time fertilize their crops. Luis’s days in the field are often long and uncomfortable–he spends most of his time observing roots underground using a special camera and clear plastic tubes. Luis told us which music can cheer him up when he feels burned out.
Produced by: Elsa Youngsteadt

[player] Download MP3

This week: The World’s Technology Correspondent Clark Boyd is back, with five stories about environmental change. Climate scientists show that, if it weren’t for greenhouse gases, the Arctic would be getting colder rather than warmer. Senegal struggles to maintain its once bountiful fish stocks. Indonesian communities nurture mangroves. Two scientists check in from research vessels–one in a slurry of swirling garbage, one off the shore of a recovering volcanic island. Plus, neuroscientists follow up on China’s Sichuan earthquake, and geologists expose a fake moon rock.

Elsa’s favorite science stories:

• Earthquake Trauma: Neuroscientists have detected the earliest known signs of psychological trauma in the brain. Researchers examined survivors of China’s 2008 Sichuan earthquake just a few weeks after the disaster. (The study.)

• Fake Moon Rock: Under a geologist’s microscope, a Dutch museum’s prized “moon rock” turns out to be common petrified wood. (Here’s a news story. We got the scientific details from geologist Frank Beunk.)

Arctic Ice: A new study provides the most detailed record yet of past Arctic temperatures–and confirms that recent warming is linked to greenhouse gases. Researchers used lake sediments, ice cores, and tree rings to reconstruct 2,000 years of Arctic temperatures. Only in the 1990′s did the enhanced greenhouse effect reverse a long-term cooling trend caused by a wobble in Earth’s orbit.
Report: By The World’s Katy Clark.

Senegalese Fisheries: In the 1970’s, thousands of Senegalese workers turned from mining and farming to fishing, and large foreign trawlers began to ply the same waters. Decades later, the fish are in trouble. The Senegalese government and local councils are now struggling to cut back on fishing and preserve what’s left of their marine resources.
Report: By Jori Lewis in Senegal. (See photographs here.)

Restoring Mangroves: In the past three decades, Indonesia has cleared more than half its mangroves for charcoal, firewood, and fish or shrimp farms. The destruction of these coastal habitats left the Asian nation more vulnerable to damage from the deadly 2004 tsunami. Now Indonesia is working to restore its mangrove forests.
Report: By Ari Daniel Shapiro in Indonesia. (See photos here.)

Life after Eruption: Alaska’s volcanic island Kasatochi erupted last year, burying the island in a thick layer of ash. It seemed that nothing could survive the scorching onslaught, but researchers have found some surprises as they document the gradual rebirth of Kasatochi’s ecosystem.
Guest: Entomologist Derek Sikes, University of Alaska’s Museum of the North.

Pacific Plastic: Garbage from the west coast of North America and the east coast of Asia ends up swirling in a giant, slow whirlpool known as the North Pacific Gyre. Scientists on a research ship near the gyre are trying to understand how marine organisms—from bacteria to whales—are interacting with the vast slurry of disintegrating plastic.
Guest: Oceanographer Miriam Goldstein, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

A Cambodian Lake at Risk: Even places with a relative abundance of water are experiencing problems. Cambodia is a good example. Most Cambodians depend on fish for protein. And most of that fish comes not from the ocean but from a huge inland lake called the Tonle Sap — the largest lake in Southeast Asia. The Tonle Sap ecosystem has been battered by dams, logging and other development.
Report: By the World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Cambodia.

Drought and Conflict: In the Middle East, water has long been a source of conflict. A long drought — and the threat of even less rain in years to come — is raising fears of worse times ahead. Linda Gradstein has two stories from Israel and the West Bank on the growing impact of the region’s water crisis.
Report #1: Conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over water.
Report #2: Some non-governmental organizations on both sides, such as Friends of the Earth Middle East and the Arava Institute, are trying to work together on the problem.

Water and Climate Change: Water issues are increasingly intertwined with climate change.
Guest: Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.

Potential Solutions:

• Designing Water’s Future. Finalists of the 2008-2009 Aspen Design Challenge.
• Desalination: A National Perspective. A free e-book published by the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Advancing Desalination Technology (2008).
• Desalination: Option or Distraction for a Thirsty World? Another take on desalination, from the World Wildlife Fund (2007).
• Local Solutions to the Global Water Crisis. Article featuring several projects of the International Development Research Centre.
• A Sustainable Vision for Water in the Twenty-First Century. Audio and transcript of a 2008 lecture by Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.
• Solutions for a Water-Short World. A thorough, if somewhat dated (1998) overview, published by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
• Our Water, Our Waste, Our Town. Case studies and manual for reforming urban water and sanitation facilities. From the international charity WaterAid.
• The UN-Habitat Best Practises Database includes several creative local responses to the water crisis — such as how the Spanish city of Zaragoza cut its water use to one third of the national average.

Music:
Bring Me Some Water, by Melissa Etheridge
You Don’t Miss Your Water, by Otis Redding

Pakistan has a serious water crisis. Not only is the country running out of water, much of the available water is polluted and is making people sick.

Another crucial water problem for Pakistan is the ailing Indus River. One of the world’s great rivers and home to some of the earliest civilizations, the Indus is drying up.

Spanish vultures are having a rough time. In 2002, the EU passed a law designed to prevent mad cow disease. The law required farmers not to leave out livestock carcasses for vultures. The result: the birds have been starving—especially in Spain, the vulture capital of Europe. The European Parliament may change the law to allow farmers to leave some livestock carcasses for the carrion eaters after all.

Also this week, the Chinese government reported that the Great Wall is 2,400 miles longer than previously believed. Researchers claimed that an obese population produces up to 14% more greenhouse gas than a slimmer population. And finally, a brain imaging study from Belgium suggests that night owls can stay alert not just later, but also for longer, than morning people.

Music
The Standells, Dirty Water
Blondie, Dreaming

Almost eight years after 9/11, and after lots of money and time spent on searching, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. Two UCLA researchers have come up with a strategy to find him, using a method designed to track endangered animals. UCLA geography professor Thomas Gillespie talks about his idea.

At the beginning of the Iraq War, gangs descended on archaeological sites around the country, digging up tens of thousands of artifacts and selling them. Five years ago, archaeologist Elizabeth Stone, a professor at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, studied how widespread the destruction was. Last year, she went back. To her surprise, she found that looting had declined precipitously.

Southeast Australia is experiencing its worst drought in a century. Meanwhile, other parts of the country are being deluged by floods. Climate scientists say extreme weather will likely increase in many parts of the world due to global warming. Heidi Cullen, a senior scientist and journalist for the non-profit group Climate Central, explains how this works.

It’s not just Southeast Australia: Mexico City is running out of water, too. Twenty million people are living with intermittent water service. The reason is more complex than a changing climate.

Dr. William Close, the father of actress Glenn Close, died last month at the age of 84. From 1960 to 1977 he worked in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He first went there as part of a missionary group, but he eventually became personal doctor to Mobutu Sese Seko, the country’s president. In 1976, Close helped stop the first Ebola epidemic in the country. Dr. Joel Breman talks about his late colleague.

Music:
Air, Brakes On (Gordini Mix)

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