Universal flu vaccine; Science games; AllTrials; Penguin camera
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2013
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Influenza causes up to five million cases of severe illness and half a million deaths globally every year. Yet, as Adam Rutherford finds out, our current vaccination strategy is a seasonal game of chance, based on guessing the strain that will appear next. Research published this week in Science Translational Medicine, by a team from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, offers hope for a universal flu vaccine, based on newly discovered antibodies.
Earlier this week, a game to help combat ash dieback was launched on Facebook, called Fraxinus. Reporter Gaia Vince looks at the growing trend for using games to solve scientific problems. Is this new way of gathering and analysing data changing the way science is done?
Currently half of all clinical trials are not published worldwide. Adam talks to Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Pharma, about his new campaign 'AllTrials', which aims to change that.
Finally this week, physicist Peter Barham shows us his instrument - a spy camera system that he's designed to recognise penguins.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello Adam Rutherford here with your weekly dose of inside science, terms and conditions, |
| 0:41.0 | at BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:44.0 | radio for. |
| 0:45.1 | I wonder if anyone has ever read them. |
| 0:47.4 | This week we have the case of the missing drug trials. |
| 0:50.3 | Ben Gold Acres campaign for much needed transparency in how the medicines that we take are tested. |
| 0:56.0 | We have a report from Gaya Vince on scientists needing tons of data and have turned to gamers to plug in and play. |
| 1:02.0 | And fingerprinting penguins. Yes, penguins. and have turned to gamers to plug in and play. |
| 1:02.5 | And fingerprinting penguins. |
| 1:03.8 | Yes, penguins technically don't have fingers, |
| 1:06.6 | but how can we ID them in a crowd? |
| 1:08.6 | A flock? |
| 1:09.6 | A colony? |
| 1:10.6 | A Kresh? |
| 1:11.2 | Whatever the collective noun for a penguin is, make one up, send it in, inside science at |
| 1:14.5 | BBC.co.uk. |
... |
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