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Unexpected Elements

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

The news you know, the science you don’t.

The news you know, the science you don’t. Unexpected Elements looks beyond everyday narratives to discover a goldmine of scientific stories and connections from around the globe. From Afronauts, to why we argue, to a deep dive on animal lifespans: see the world in a new way.

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Unexpected Elements: 10/10/2015 09:06 GMT: Ancient African Genome

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AFRICAN DNA.jpg

10/10/2015 09:06 GMT

10/10/2015 09:06 GMT: Ancient African Genome

Ancient African Genome

BBC World Service - Unexpected Elements, Ancient African Genome

Researchers extracted DNA from a 4,500-year-old skull discovered in Ethiopia

Researchers extracted DNA from a 4,500-year-old skull that was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia

DNA from a 4,500 year old Ethiopian skull bone has – the first entire genome of an ancient African – when compared to that of modern Africans, has shown a huge migratory wave of West Eurasian people coming into the Horn of Africa around 3,000 years ago, bringing agriculture and a few Neanderthal genes with them.

Genome and Malaria
The largest genetic association study to date has found genetic variants associated with resistance to life threatening severe malaria. The team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge in the UK tested the genomes of thousands of children in West Africa, some with the severe form of malaria – Malaria falciparum. They were able to zoom into regions of the genome associated with resistance to the disease and found similar variants in the genetic code in the children who did not have the malaria, yet lived in malaria prone regions of West Africa. This is the first real insight into new genes involved in resistance.

Science Nobel Prizes 2015
The world’s best known science prizes, the Nobels were announced this week. Roland Pease told Jack Stewart what the winners discovered.

Chilean Miners
Five years ago, 33 men were rescued from deep within a mine in Chile after being trapped for 69 days. Jane Chambers talks to two of the miners and experts involved in their ordeal about the psychological impact of the experience.

Counter-speech Counters Hate Speech
A new report by the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos, supported by Facebook, maps the alarming scale of hate speech in populist, right-wing social media groups in Europe - and explores the potential for counter-speech to diffuse their messages from within.

Science Goes to Hollywood: Science Fact v Science Fiction
Brian Cox and Robin Ince  take to the stage in LA. They are joined by cosmologist and science adviser on movies such as Thor and Tron Legacy, Sean Carroll, comedian Joe Rogan, The Simpsons' writer and executive producer of Futurama, David X Cohen, and Eric Idle. They ask why so many movies now seem to employ a science adviser, whether scientific accuracy is really important when you are watching a film about a mythical Norse god and whether science fact can actually be far more interesting than science fiction.

(Photo: The cave where ancient African DNA was discovered in Ethiopia. Credit: Kathryn and John Arthur)

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10/10/2015 09:06 GMT: Ancient African Genome

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