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The world is gearing up for the next flu pandemic - but this time scientists have vital new clues that could prevent it's spread. In 1918 the so-called Spanish flu killed 20 million people. In this program, QUANTUM follows the discovery of live DNA from the virus, found in the lungs of a woman buried in a mass grave in Alaska in 1918. The discovery was made by a retired pathologist, 73 year-old Dr. Johan Hulton who found the lung tissue specimen after reading of work done by the US Armed Forces Pathology lab. This new information will help in designing a vaccine and in understanding how such pandemics arise.
Because 'Blue Poles' is abstract, there's been a great deal of debate about what Jackson Pollock was attempting to do in this and his other drip paintings of the later 40s and early 50s. Enter physicist and artist, Dr. Richard Taylor. Doing pure research at the School of Physics at UNSW, Dr Taylor has been studying the peculiar way electrons behave in electrical devices one hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair. But always his desire to paint and explore art has conflicted with the time Dr Taylor's had to give to his other love: science. The answer to his dilemma came in the shape of one of modern science's great ideas: Chaos Theory.
The ancient Egyptians noted it three and a half thousand years ago. Early 19th century physicians recorded the first accurate descriptions of it. But it's only in the 20th century - and particularly in the latter part of it - that asthma has gone on the rampage. In most of the world's developed countries, it is now a significant public health issue. About one in five Australian children display symptoms of asthma - a figure which has doubled in the last two decades. Whichever way you look at it, it's a lot of people living with the possibility that, at any moment, a lead weight could land on their chest and literally squeeze the air from their lungs.The fact is that being born in Australia gives you greater risk of developing asthma. The question is why?
Walk down a crowded street and imagine a world without faces. What would you know about the people around you? Their age? Their sex? Origins? Moods? Intentions? None of it. The reality is, the face is our most vital tool of communication... at times, a very means of survival. In a glance, a face can convey so much, so compellingly, science is only now beginning to understand its complexity. And television is the best medium to explain the visual wonder of the human face - and the science behind it.
QUANTUM hitches a ride on the icebreaker 'Aurora Australis' towards Antarctica. We're travelling with an eclectic and energetic bunch of young Australian scientists at the frontline of research into global warming. The destination is Macquarie Island, a tiny island in the middle of one of the most powerful climatic forces on the planet: the Southern Ocean. As carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, the climate changes and researchers are picking up worrying signs. In Hobart, climate modellers are examining the impact of warming on the Southern Ocean. Regarded as the powerhouse of the world's climate, the Southern Ocean links all the world's main oceans - and between them, they absorb 40% of the world's CO2 emissions. If present levels of CO2 emission continue, climate modellers from the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre predict ocean circulation will start to slow and within 100 years the deep ocean will start to stagnate. The impact of that will be felt on islands like Macquarie. What happens there is an indicator of the change that could eventually flow on to the rest of the world.
Dr Vaughn Clift, a medical doctor, is, as far as he knows, the only Australia working for NASA (National Aeronautic and Space Agency) at the Johnson Space Centre, in Houston Texas. He develops medical technology for astronauts, ways of monitoring their health while in space. Amongst other thins, he has invented a simple way of collecting and preserving blood without the need for refrigeration. Dr Clift shows us the sort of work he does, while taking the viewer on a guided tour around the Space Centre. We see the Space Shuttle Trainer, also the chamber where researchers are locked away for months to study recycling, and the famous 'Vomit Comet', an aircraft which dives to simulate zero gravity. Dr Vaughn is not only amusing, sometimes hilarious, host, but is passionate about space.
NO QUICK FIX follows a handful of patients through the pilot stage of one of the world's first scientific trials of Naltrexone, the controversial new drug being offered as an alternative to methadone treatment at Westmead Hospital.
We are running out of antibiotics. The microbes are fighting back, they have developed resistance to our most powerful biological weapons - and they are invading our hospitals. Already, microbes resistant to the most powerful and most toxic antibiotic, Vancomycin, have sprung up in European and American hospitals. QUANTUM talks to patients who have lived the nightmare of fighting resistant infections in Australia. We look at the link between the use of antibiotics in animals and the rise of resistance in humans. QUANTUM will for the first time reveal the extent of the problem in Australia: how the number of infections is running at tens of thousands per year. It is a silent public health emergency. It may well be that, only 54 years after penicillin arrived to save us from scourges like tuberculosis and pneumonia, that we are now entering a world where we will have to do without antibiotics.
For several years now, Australian marine scientists have been piecing together a dramatic tale of life and death on our coral reefs; bouts of frenetic sexual activity, perilous ocean voyages, harems, sex changes, invasion, colonisation and slaughter. The life of a coral reef fish is a life lived against all odds, but the story is two-fold. Not only do fish face a long and dangerous voyage through each generation, they must achieve this success in an environment made increasingly more hostile by humanity. If you are not only beautiful but tasty as well, the odds only get worse. Scientists have unravelled enough of these fishy life histories to begin making informed suggestions on how to manage the piscine population of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).
Shopping on the internet is changing the way we live. In the world of cyberspace you can buy and sell from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day. Automation makes things cheaper and video pictures, sound and interactivity make the net the ideal marketing tool. So far however internet commerce hasn't lived up to the expectations. The number one issue holding people back is security. Can the electronic tentacles of the internet be trusted with our credit card number? This program looks at the technology that aims to make the web a safe place to do business.
Something happened in a remote jungle-clad corner of the Amazon on August 13th 1930, that terrified the rainforest people of the Rio Curuca out of their wits. Shortly after sunrise the sky turned blood red and filled with dust. There were three mighty explosions, then the ground shook with the force of an earthquake. It seems the people of the Rio Curuca were unique witness to the impact of a meteor of prodigious proportions. If it wasn't for the work of a Catholic missionary who stumbled upon the shocked tribes-people only five days after the terror had fallen from the sky we might never have known anything happened. His report, published in a Vatican newsletter early in 1931, was the first clue to a remarkable scientific detective story that has spanned seven decades and will finally be solved only in this program.
Coral reefs are the jewels of the ocean. Communities of organisms as rich and diverse as any above or below the surface of the planet, they encircle the tropics like an azure necklace. SILENT SENTINELS reveals disturbing evidence that even if coral can survive continually rising ocean temperatures, they won't be able to escape the chemical effects of high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is the story of a polyp and a plant, one of the most successful biological relationships in the history of Earth and now greatly endangered.
Five billion years in a swirl of gas and dust the Sun was born. In another five billion years it's light will flicker and die, consigning its remains to interstellar space. Humans have watched the Sun keenly for thousands of years but it's only now when the Sun is approaching middle age that we're able to reach out and understand the star that created us. This is the story of the remarkable new science that's allowed us to see the Sun as it really is.
Does surgery do more harm than good? In the race for drug profits, does the patient really come first? Do diagnostic tests offer us a greater chance of discovering disease or are we being exposed to invasive and harmful intrusions? Based on the provocative book by award-winning medical journalist Ray Moynihan, TOO MUCH MEDICINE questions the faith we place in modern medical practice. TOO MUCH MEDICINE travels three continents charting the winds of change blowing through the corridors of medical power.
One of the most powerful human impulses is curiosity; it has driven the great historical voyages of discovery and is behind the fundamental questions asked by science. This program will examine a controversial research project and the cultural conflicts surrounding it. In 1991 Professor Luca Cavalli-Sforza conceived the idea of a project which might reveal the grand sweep of human migrations around the world and illuminate the diversity of the human race. Cavalli-Sforza's plan, called the Human Genome Diversity Project, is to look at the genes of hundreds of these ethnic groups where the genetic pool has remained relatively undiluted. In this way it should be possible to discover how and when the branches of the family tree were formed. But the project has run into resistance from some ethnic groups and has even been labelled Project Vampire' by its most virulent critics. Are their criticisms well formed or is the HGDP being blamed for the research sins of others?
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