Malaria resistance breakthrough

Unexpected Elements

BBC

Science

4.4 • 570 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2020

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some East Africans have a genetic mutation which gives them resistance to Malaria. Investigations into how it works have produced a surprising finding. As researcher Silvia Kariuki explains it’s all to do with the surface tension of the red blood cells.

SARS-CoV- 2 can pass from people in the very early stages of Covid -19, before they show symptoms. New research shows identifying cases at this early stage is crucial to controlling the pandemic. And yet most testing regimes require symptoms to show before testing. Luca Ferretti did this latest analysis.

And how about getting up close with virus? That’s what Camille Ehre has done, using an electron microscope to produce remarkable pictures of the virus as it attacks lung tissue.

Carl Wunsch tells us of a technique he developed in the 1970s to measure changes in global ocean temperatures using sound waves. Revisiting this method may give us insight into the impact of climate change on the deep ocean.

And Many of us willingly subject ourselves to pain and irritation by eating chilli. CrowdScience listener Tina wonders what’s driving this apparent masochism: why does ‘feeling the burn’ make so many of us feel so good?

It’s just one of several tasty questions we tuck into in this episode. Also on the menu is stew: why does it taste better the next day? Listener Helen’s local delicacy is Welsh cawl, a meat and vegetable concoction. Tradition dictates it should be eaten the day after it’s made, but is there any science behind this?

And we finish the meal with cheese. Listener Leander asks what makes some cheeses blue, some hard and crumbly, and some run all over your fridge. How is milk transformed into such radically different end products?

(Image: 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. This is the Sansour from the BBC World Service with me, Roland Pease.
0:35.9	And on the menu this week, well, we all love our food,
0:39.5	but we do still like to spice it up just a little. The chili makes the food taste better. It makes the food
0:46.0	taste stronger. Chilies aren't just found in Mexican cooking, of course, but why has a pain-inducing
0:52.7	plant become so popular with us humans? Savory thoughts on the science of course. But why has a pain-inducing plant become so popular with us humans?
0:56.0	Savory thoughts on the science of taste on crowd science later in the podcast. Before that,
1:01.9	it'll be science in action. And distinctly missing from our menu is that fishy whiff of
1:06.6	phosphine that everyone else has been talking about, that vapid hint of life up in the clouds of
1:12.5	Venus, because we've got our feet planted firmly on solid ground. If you've any issue with that,
1:18.9	take it up with a producer. But to be fair, there's nothing that I'd drop from this podcast
1:23.7	to make way for spectral speculations. For example, what it feels like for a researcher
1:29.9	staring down a microscope onto the virus that's killed almost a million people this year.
1:36.1	Those cells, once they are infected, they become a viral factory, if you want. They spit out
1:42.4	all these viruses in clumps, big clumps of mucus.
1:46.0	We know that those ciliated cells, the hair-like, protrusions, are constantly beating.
1:52.0	They are there to chase the mucus. But here, they're going to just spread around those viruses.
	...

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