Original version

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

Science in Action

Science In Action

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

Science In Action: Mixing Covid vaccines

Magazines & Reviews

Vax-CROP.jpg

04/02/2021 GMT

Mixing Covid vaccines

BBC World Service - Science In Action, Mixing Covid vaccines

A new trial is about to start in the UK, seeing if different vaccines can be mixed and matched in a two-dose schedule, and whether the timing matters. Governments want to know the answer as vaccines are in short supply. Oxford University’s Matthew Snape takes Roland Pease through the thinking. 

Despite the numbers of vaccines being approved for use we still need treatments for Covid-19. A team at the University of North Carolina is upgrading the kind of manufactured antibodies that have been used to treat patients during the pandemic, monoclonal antibodies. Lisa Gralinski explains how they are designing souped-up antibodies that’ll neutralise not just SARS-CoV-2, but a whole range of coronaviruses. 

Before global warming, the big ecological worry that exercised environmentalists was acid rain. We’d routinely see pictures of forests across the world dying because of the acid soaking they’d had poisoning the soil. In a way, this has been one of environmental activism’s success stories. The culprit was sulphur in coal and in forecourt fuels – which could be removed, with immediate effect on air quality. But biogeochemist Tobias Goldhammer of the Leibniz Institute in Berlin and colleagues have found that sulphur, from other sources, is still polluting water courses. 

There’s been debate over when and where dogs became man’s best friend. Geoff Marsh reports on new research from archaeology and genetics that puts the time at around 20,000 years ago and the place as Siberia. 



(Image: Getty Images)
 

Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Deborah Cohen

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Science In Action

Mixing Covid vaccines

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

About BBC World Service