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Unexpected Elements

Death in the rainforest

Unexpected Elements

BBC

Science

4.4568 Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2022

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tree mortality in tropical moist forests in Australia has been increasing since the mid 1980s. The death rate of trees appears to have doubled over that time period. According to an international team of researchers, the primary cause is drier air in these forests, the consequence of human-induced climate change. According to ecologist David Bauman, a similar process is likely underway in tropical forests on other continents.

Also in the programme: the outbreaks of monkeypox in Europe and North America… Could SARS-CoV-2 infection lingering in the gut be a cause of Long Covid? News of a vaccine against Epstein Barr virus, the cause of mononucleosis, various cancers and multiple sclerosis.

Digging and excavating are bywords for archaeology. But why does history end up deep under our feet?

This question struck CrowdScience listener Sunil in an underground car park. Archaeological remains found during the car park’s construction were displayed in the subterranean stairwells, getting progressively older the deeper he went. How had these treasures become covered in so much soil over the centuries?

CrowdScience visits Lisbon, the capital of Portugal – and home to the above-mentioned multi-storey car park. The city has evidence of human habitation stretching back into prehistory, with remnants of successive civilisations embedded and jumbled up below today’s street level. Why did it all end up like this?

Human behaviour is one factor, but natural processes are at work too. Over at Butser Ancient Farm, an experimental archaeology site in the UK, we explore the myriad forces of nature that cover up – or expose - ancient buildings and artefacts over time.

Image: Credit: Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0

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

0:08.0

I believe we are a very special network.

0:10.0

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. There's lots of hidden treasures here on the Science Hour from the

0:35.0

BBC World Service with me, Roland Peace, talking of which,

0:38.7

how do the little treasures of archaeology get buried?

0:42.5

All of those processes that are leading to the formation of hills and valleys have an effect

0:48.7

on cultural material. You can have rainfall, mobilising soils, biological processes like earthworm action, and windblown processes like blown sand.

0:59.7

Answers blowing in the wind and running with the rainfall on crowd science later in the hour, asking what comes before archaeology.

1:08.3

Before that, science in action is looking rather viral with questions about the new cases of monkeypox,

1:14.7

long-term COVID and the implications of an experimental vaccine.

1:19.2

Though, we're also looking at the health of forests as the world warms.

1:24.3

For the last 50 years in this tropical moist forest, we see that across species and sites,

1:31.3

tree mortality markedly increased. And this increase seems to have begun the mid-80s, more or less.

1:39.1

Monkeypox has entered the news with four countries outside Africa now reporting cases. First, the UK,

1:45.7

but now also Spain, Portugal and the US, and there are suspected cases in Canada. The incidence

1:51.7

of the smallpox relative is higher in western Central Africa and case rates have been increasing

1:57.0

there since the first child with the infection was identified in 1970.

2:02.1

Marion Copman says a virologist and expert in Zoroanosis at Erasmus Medical Center in

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