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Material World

Factual: Science & Nature

Science programme reporting on developments across the disciplines

Science programme reporting on developments across the disciplines. Each week, scientists describe their work, conveying the excitement they feel for their research projects

Material World: Clay on Mars, Neanderthals, Cholera, Tapeworms

14/03/2013

Clay on Mars, Neanderthals, Cholera, Tapeworms

BBC Radio 4 - Material World, Clay on Mars, Neanderthals, Cholera, Tapeworms

Drinking water on Mars, big eyes in Neanderthals, cholera history and tapeworm genetics.

Drinking water on Mars, the latest findings from the Red Planet. Big eyes in Neanderthals were no advantage, cholera history questioned, and tapeworm genetics. With Quentin Cooper.

Dr. Matthew Balme from the Open University talks to Quentin Cooper about the latest results from the Mars Curiosity Mission. The finding of neutral water, he says, indicates that many more types of microorganism may have once inhabited the Red Planet.

Ellie Pearce, from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology in Oxford, explains why big eyes in Neanderthals may have led to a stunted social life, and eventually their extinction.

Is John Snow, born 200 years ago this week, really the man who should be remembered as the father of modern epidemiology? He is credited with tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho in 1854 to a single water supply in Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Canadian bioethicist and author of "Disease Maps" Professor Tom Koch argues that there were others involved, and that such findings are seldom so straightforward.

Finally a novel approach to finding drugs for tapeworms. Scientists have sequenced the genomes of four tapeworms and have published their work in the journal Nature. They are now trying to identify drugs that interact with human proteins and seeing if they would also work in the same way in tapeworms. Dr. Magdalena Zarowiecki, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, explains how this method could be a cheap and quick way of finding a treatment for some of the world's most neglected diseases.

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