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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: Wolbachia to Eliminate Dengue

Discussion & Talk

The body of a female mosquito fills up and balloons as she sucks blood from a hand

29/10/2016 GMT

Wolbachia to Eliminate Dengue

BBC World Service - Unexpected Elements, Wolbachia to Eliminate Dengue

Trials using Wolbachia to control mosquito-transmitted diseases

Wolbachia to Eliminate Dengue; BlindSquare; CO2 levels; Tasers; Ascension Island; Spider science

Adam Rutherford meets the Australian scientist Scott O’Neill, who is leader of the Eliminate Dengue project which is developing a new approach using Wolbachia to control mosquito-transmitted diseases.

BlindSquare
Blindsquare is an innovative smart app that helps blind people to navigate indoors and outdoors. Simon Morton reports on its use in New Zealand.

CO2 at Record Levels
2016 is the first year that carbon dioxide has been consistently above 400 parts per million globally, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.  Adam Rutherford spoke to Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office Hadley Centre, who told him about the significance of 400 parts per million.

Tasers and Memory 
Professor Rob Kane from Drexel University in the US tasered students and then found they had serious deficits in their ability to recall facts in the hours after being tasered. Some of the victims performed so poorly in cognitive tests that they could be diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Claudia Hammond asks what implications these new findings have for the timing of police interviews after somebody has been tasered.

Ascension Island Vegetation 
Ascension Island is in the tropical mid-Atlantic roughly halfway between Brazil and Africa. It is the tip of a giant undersea volcano – rugged, remote and, up until around 150 years ago, almost completely devoid of vegetation.  Peter Gibbs visits to learn how it was transformed into a forest by 19th Century botanist Joseph Hooker, encouraged by Charles Darwin, and what is being done about it now by conservationist Sam Webber. 

Spiders
Spiders are remarkable creatures. We have all heard about how incredibly strong their silk is. But it is the water spider’s diving bell that is currently intriguing scientists. The spiders spin a bubble of silk with a unique protein-gel coating, which has special gas-permeable properties, allowing the air-breathing spider to spend time underwater. Could this be a new kind of silk that could be copied in the lab?

(Photo: The body of a female mosquito fills up and balloons as she sucks blood from a hand © Tom Ervin/Getty Images)

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