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Unexpected Elements

Are children the biggest Covid-19 spreaders?

Unexpected Elements

BBC

Science

4.4570 Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2020

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

An analysis of Covid-19 data from South India shows children more than any other group are transmitting the virus both to other children and adults, Epidemiologist Ramanan Laxminarayan tell us the data also shows the situations in which the virus is most likely to spread, public transport is of particular concern.

The WHO has launched an initiative to roll out rapid testing, particularly to countries that don’t have access to lab based tests, Catharina Boehme who leads one of the WHO’s partner organisation in the project tells us the test, which looks similar to home pregnancy tests should give results within fifteen minutes.

Andrea Crisanti led a ground-breaking testing initiative in Italy which eliminated Covid-19 in a small town in a matter of weeks. We look to the lessons learned.

And in California residents have been in a kind of self- enforced lockdown, not because of Covid – 19 but due to wildfires fires. Molly Bentley from the Seti Institute podcast ‘ Big Picture Science’ tells us about how the fires have created an atmosphere of toxic smoke, even in the cities.

Also, What makes things sticky? Listener Mitch from the USA began wondering while he was taking down some very sticky wallpaper. Our world would quite literally fall apart without adhesives. They are almost everywhere – in our buildings, in our cars and in our smartphones. But how do they hold things together?

To find out, presenter Marnie Chesterton visits a luthier, Anette Fajardo, who uses animal glues every day in her job making violins. These glues have been used since the ancient Egyptians –but adhesives are much older than that. Marnie speaks to archaeologist Dr Geeske Langejans from Delft University of Technology about prehistoric glues made from birch bark, dated to 200,000 years ago. She goes to see a chemist, Prof Steven Abbott, who helps her understand why anything actually sticks to anything else. And she speaks to physicist Dr Ivan Vera-Marun at the University of Manchester, about the nanotechnologists using adhesion at tiny scales to make materials of the future.

(Image: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

In 2019, we began investigating the disappearance of Dr. Ruzha Ignatva.

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I believe we are a very special network.

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A scammer who stole billions from investors around the world.

0:15.0

She's on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.

0:18.0

And now, we have some unmissable updates. She has money and when you have

0:23.0

money you have power. Join me, Jamie Bartlett, as the hunt for the missing crypto queen continues.

0:29.5

Listen first on BBC Sounds. You're about to get stuck into the Science Hour podcast from the BBC

0:36.0

World Service with me, Roland Peas.

0:38.3

And in half an hour, Marley Chesterton will be meeting gravity-defying geckos.

0:44.1

There is one that has delightfully stuck itself to the glass for us so that we can see its yellow

0:49.9

belly, pretty much demonstrating the reason that we're here to see them.

0:56.1

They can run up walls and stick to ceilings. Though they're not glued there permanently, which is important, as you'll

1:02.1

hear, as crowd science explores adhesion later in the podcast. Before that on science and action,

1:07.9

we're mostly sticking to coronavirus again. And we're going big on

1:12.9

testing and tracing this week with a WHO initiative to secure 120 million rapid COVID tests

1:20.6

for the more vulnerable nations around the world. They look very different. They really

1:26.1

look like a pregnancy test, deliver a result in 15 minutes.

1:31.5

And evidence from Italy of how powerful testing can be in the fight against coronavirus.

1:37.4

Reproduction rate of the virus dropped by 98%. We discovered that more than 40% of cases were asymptomatic and they were able to transmit.

1:47.7

But after the second testing, no endogenous transmission was recorded in the last four months.

1:54.0

And California is being tested as the wildfire season gets locked in.

1:58.6

Smoke had drifted over the area here and kind of blotted out the sun,

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