Malaria, origins and a potential new treatment
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2019
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A variety of malarial parasites have existed amongst the great apes for millennia, we look at how one of them jumped species and why humans became its preferred host. And from Antarctica we hear about a potential new treatment for malaria found in a deep sea sponge.
We also look at why improved monitoring is changing our perceptions of earthquakes and follow the story of an endangered Polynesian snail.
What exactly is the relationship between mathematics and reality? That’s the impossibly difficult question we have been set this week by our listener Sergio in Peru. It’s one that’s been pondered by humans for millennia: the Greek philosopher Pythagoras believed “All is number”.
Is maths a human construct to help us make sense of reality - a tool, a model, a language? Does maths create its own reality? Or is it reality itself?
(Photo: A young gorilla. Credit: Hermes Images/AGF/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might |
| 0:04.7 | like our podcast too. You might. You might. It is called Sightracked with me, Nick Grimshaw. |
| 0:09.2 | And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music. All the news, all the cultural |
| 0:14.0 | happenings in the UK and beyond. And great guests. And it's on BBC Sounds. Yes, where you can |
| 0:19.7 | also enjoy lots of playlists, music mixes and |
| 0:22.6 | live radio, everything from my six music breakfast show to Radio 3 Unwind. But obviously start |
| 0:29.2 | with our podcast sidetrack. Obviously. Obviously. So if you like music, listen on BBC |
| 0:33.7 | Sounds. This is the Science Hour from the BBC World Service with me, Roland Pease. |
| 0:37.8 | And for the crowd science team later in the podcast, the challenge of equating maths with |
| 0:43.6 | great science wasn't on its own enough. |
| 0:46.9 | So they had to add in a plate of cake. |
| 0:50.6 | It's quite a big portion as we'd be expected to eat all of that at one go. |
| 0:54.3 | Yes. |
| 0:55.3 | For this programme, please can you shove the entire thing in your mouth and then explain string theory? |
| 1:00.9 | Grums, the unreasonable effectiveness of maths is dissected in half an hour on crowd science. |
| 1:07.1 | Before that, on science and action, we're talking earthquakes, galactic bangs, and snail conservation. |
| 1:13.7 | We start, though, with malaria. |
| 1:16.2 | Despite years of effort and a lot of success, to be fair, malaria remains one of the world's |
| 1:21.3 | major afflictions. |
| 1:22.3 | There are still over 200 million cases every year and over 400,000 deaths. |
| 1:30.4 | The disease is parasitic, mostly caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciperum, which undergoes a complex life cycle, having to be incubated |
| 1:36.5 | effectively in the human liver before transferring into red blood cells, then via mosquito bites |
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