An international team of researchers has discovered that an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea in February this year was the result of re-activated Ebola virus in someone who’d been infected at least five years ago during the earlier large Ebola epidemic that swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.    This means the virus can remain dormant in some Ebola survivors for five years or more.  Virologists Alpha Kabinet Keita and Robert Garry talk to Roland Pease about the research and its implications. Also in the programme:   The eruption of lavas from Iceland’s newest volcano Fagradalsfjall continues six months on.   Geochemist Ed Marshall tells us how he gets up close to sample the molten rock with a long scoop and a bucket of water, and what he’s learning about this remarkable eruption. NASA’s Katie Stack Morgan updates Science in Action on the Perseverance rover’s successful sampling of rocks from Jezero crater on the planet Mars.   When the specimens are eventually returned to Earth, she says they may turn out to contain tiny samples of Mars’ water and atmosphere from early in the Red Planet’s history. (Image credit: Getty Images) Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Ebola can remain dormant for five years

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The highly pathogenic strain of bird flu, H5N1, has arrived on the continent. Australian bird specialist Megan Dewar, from the Federation University of Australia, has led a mission aboard the research ship the Australis.   Science in Action remembers physicist Peter Higgs 60 years after his Nobel prize winning theory of the Higgs particle.   The unfolding scandal of manipulated data behind claims of incredible room-temperature superconductivity. Science writer Dan Garisto has seen the details in a Rochester University internal investigation.  And the alga – single-celled seaweed – with superpowers. As well as capturing carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere, like other plants, this one can directly capture nitrogen too, essential for life, but which few organisms can do for themselves. We hear from the marine scientist who has revealed this evolutionary trick.  Presenter: Roland Pease 
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell  
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth  (Image: KAPPA-FLU team selecting skua carcasses for post-mortem examination. Credit: Ben Wallis)

Bird flu in Antarctica

A powerful earthquake hit Taiwan on Wednesday morning, but thanks to the country’s early warning system and engineering-preparedness, there was little destruction and few deaths. Seismologist Ross Stein, CEO of earthquake consultancy Temblor, Inc., shares his analysis. 
 
The highly pathogenic bird flu H5N1 has been detected in cattle in the US and in a cattle handler in Texas. To learn more about this special animal-to-human transmission, Roland speaks to virologist Richard Webby of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee and Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals. 
 
French Space Institute Supaero in Toulouse is collaborating with Japan’s space agency JAXA to send and land a rover on Phobos, one of Mars’ tiny moons. Roland travels to the University of Toulouse to learn more about building this wheeled Rover from Supaero’s Naomi Murdoch.  Transitioning to a clean energy future requires mining materials like rare earth minerals, but how will this impact our environment? Jessi Junker of the ecology charity ReWild explains her research and concerns for great apes as mining for these materials expands in Africa.   Presenter: Roland Pease 
Producers: Roland Pease, Ella Hubber, Jonathan Blackwell 
Researcher: Imaan Moin 
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth  (Photo: Damaged building caused by the earthquake in Hualien on April 4, 2024. Credit: SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

Earthquake in Taiwan

3000 light years from Earth, a white dwarf star called T Coronae Borealis is on the brink of a “once-in-a-lifetime” explosion.  Astrophysicist Bradley Schaefer is enthusiastic about the bright star set to appear in the night sky in the coming months.  Professor Irving Weissman has been researching ways to restore youth using mouse models for decades. He has sewn old and young mice together to join their circulatory systems and has found that giving old mice blood from younger mice reverses some signs of ageing. In his group’s paper, the use of an antibody-based therapy has been shown to restore a declining immune system in ageing mice. Not quite the fountain of youth but potentially a key step in halting many age-related diseases. Roland gets the details from Irving and first-author Dr Jason Ross.  And, in the small town of Cabrières in Southern France, producer Ella Hubber goes on the hunt for some 480-million-year-old fossils with part-time fossil prospectors Eric and Sylvie Monceret. Their latest excavation site is a gold mine of rare, soft-bodied fossils from the period during a time when this part of France was underwater. And at the South Pole.   Presenter: Roland Pease 
Producer: Ella Hubber (Photo: Illustration of the northern springtime constellations of Lyra, Hercules, Corona Borealis, and Bootes. Credit: Alan Dyer/Stocktrek Images)

Star for a day

The last great "out of Arica" movement of our ancestors swept out of the northeast of the continent 74,000 years ago. Archaeologist John Kappelman of the University of Texas brings us an update to this complex tale in the form of animal carcasses.   We take a trip to Oxford to meet some of postgraduate researcher Ally Morton-Hayward's archive of preserved brains. Not only is Ally shining a light on these underappreciated brains, she is also using them to unlock a rich treasure-trove of information about our ancestors and how they were preserved. How do you develop and promote a vaccine against a widespread but neglected parasite? Maria Elena Bottazzi from Baylor College of Medicine is in India promoting their latest development in creating a hookworm vaccine that works against these life-limiting childhood parasites.  And, is the Chandra X-Ray Observatory at risk? In a decision that has shocked astronomers, the functioning telescope is on the chopping block because of NASA budget cuts. We hear from Belinda Wilkes of Bristol University about Chandra’s impressive history and why it should keep going.  Presenter/producer: Roland Pease  
Researcher: Katie Tomsett  
Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Sunset in savannah of Africa. Credit: Anton Petrus via Getty Images)

Out of Africa

After a twelve-month set of climate records driven by global warming it is time to take stock of how we’re impacting the planet as a species.   Coral biologist Kate Quigley, of the Minderoo Foundation and James Cook University, dives into the 8th mass bleaching event at the Great Barrier Reef. We explore how deadly heat stress continues to threaten this underwater paradise and induce mass sickness in the corals that call it home. 
  
Heading onto land we reunite with Mike Flannigan, Professor of Fire Science at Thompson Rivers University, after a record-breaking Canadian forest fire season in 2023 we ask if conditions are set for a repeat.  And what about the human cost of these climbing temperatures? In the future 800 million outdoor workers in the tropics may be exposed to intolerable heat stress. However, Yuta Masuda, director of science at the Paul G Allen Family Foundation, advises that options for individual action may be limited for workers to protect themselves.  One of the driving forces behind a record year of global warming is the now waning El Niño system. With its counterpart, La Niña, due to pick up in 2024, we ask NOAA oceanographer Mike McPhaden what to expect from this transition and if we are headed for a turbulent hurricane season. 
 
Presenter/producer: Roland Pease 
Researcher: Katie Tomsett 
Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth  (Photo: The McDougall Creek wildfire burns in the hills West Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, on 17 August, 2023. Credit: Darren Hull/ AFP)

Ebola can remain dormant for five years

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