Leprosy: The Low Down

The Naked Scientists Podcast

Dr Chris Smith

Science Radio, Engineering, Naked Scientists, Natural Sciences, Technology, Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Medicine, Science

4.6 • 957 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2011

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Leprosy goes under the microscope this week as we uncover the origins of one of the oldest known human diseases, recognised this week on World Leprosy Day. A quarter of a million new cases are diagnosed every year, but how is the illness spreading, what damage does it do to the body and can it be stopped? We also hear what archaeologists are unearthing about the history of leprosy and where it came from in the first place. Plus, why it's time to rethink the workings of the circadian clock, brain scans for bilingualism, cow-stomach bacterial genes for biofuels, and the engineering that lies... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Transcript

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0:00.0	Stripping down science to the Naked Science. Hello it's Sunday, January the 30th, World Leprosy Day.
0:23.8	Welcome to the Naked Scientists with me Ben Valzler.
0:27.1	And me, Diana O' Carroll.
0:28.8	This week we're putting leprosy under the microscope.
0:31.8	We'll find out where leprosy is found in the world today,
0:34.4	how it's transmitted and treated as well as we'll peer into the past by looking at the impact
0:39.7	the disease leaves on bones.
0:41.6	In planet Earth, we listen to the music composed by earthquakes and in naked engineering
0:46.2	Dave and Mira find out how the reflective cat size laid into roads actually work.
0:51.7	And in the news this week we find out why our model of the circadian clock might be wrong,
0:56.4	how the bacteria that live inside a cow's gut could make better biofuels,
1:00.8	and why groups of animals make better decisions than one animal on its own.
1:05.0	And we find out how some bacteria keep making rapid changes to their genome,
1:10.0	avoiding the immune system as well as preventing us from making effective vaccines.
1:14.8	If you'd like to get in touch through Twitter you can just tweet at naked scientists.
1:19.2	You can write on our Facebook page that's at the naked scientists dot com slash Facebook or you can drop
1:24.5	us an email our address is Chris at the naked scientists dot com.
1:30.1	The Naked Scientists podcast is web at UK Fast.
1:35.0	The UK's best hosting provider on the web at UKfast.co.uk. This is the naked scientists with Ben Valsler and Diana O' Carroll and first up
1:50.4	we'll take a look at some of this week's top science stories.
1:54.0	Biological clocks play an essential role in physiology and in controlling behavior,
1:59.0	from regulating sleep cycles in animals to balancing photosynthesis in plants. Now research
	...

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