well you. in the art of climate change. africa but. what's in store. for the future in this. context for the major cities to get insight. culture. hello and welcome to tomorrow today the science show on d w. until days show we take a close look at viruses and bacteria that are good for us. but so what if the coronavirus we have to practice social distancing scientists in the antarctic are learning all about isolation. social distancing is hard but it's key to preventing the spread of the corona virus if we carried on as

normal and one infected person infected on average $2.00 at this over a 5 day period then after 30 days that one person would be the source of more than $400.00 infections. reducing contact with others by 75 percent the total would be just 2 and a half infection. but what effect does isolation have on the mind and body. let's find out by heading to a research station in one of the world's loneliest places the at. a. time out for the expedition members at germany's neumeier research station in antarctica this is the 1st time that they've seen the sun after 9 months of darkness. this long period in isolation was extremely difficult for everyone here.

i would work and routine is what really helps and doing a lot together but at the same time giving everyone enough space. it can get pretty lonely here in the world southernmost continent trying times for station manager and dr burke a check of back and the 8 other german team members far away from their families. berlin shotty hospital is investigating the impact of this isolation the crew have to undergo medical tests and even a cat scan of the brain before their departure and on their return as well as giving all sorts of samples. we're collecting all the bodily substances that we can get our hands on blood urine stool and every few months some hair samples. the scientists and the team themselves have notice changes. nothing sometimes you have to stop and remember which way is north

east and south when you're outside you sometimes think that you've taken the wrong turn even though you actually know the way or this from my 1st things can be a bit more difficult or you forget things for example how to find your way around the station where was that again it's strange sometimes. under these conditions one part of the brain shrinks by around 7 percent. one structure that we're interested in is the hippocampus that's an important area for episodic memory for learning and memory. this area of the brain gets smaller during the long months of darkness. research director alexander don has also asked the team to perform computer tests the study financed by the german aerospace center is also intended to show what kind of changes astronauts might undergo. to complete this docking maneuver successfully we have to guide this green cross with the help of these

tools toward the docking pin. pin have done so and trigger the docking procedure and your time to see how quickly and precisely you can do this is your it's an exercise that's intended to test the brain's performance during the months of darkness and isolation. of this item or not we do this once a month during our stay to find out how our ability to concentrate on our precision and our interest in this kind of task changes over time. for people. responses to questionnaires about emotional changes are also sent back to berlin. the impact of this isolated and austere environment on group dynamics is also under investigation. and as i said jack you see the classic conflict between the need for intimacy and for space that we know from our own relationships that exists in

a group too it can feel constraining at times or you might want more intimacy but it's not the right kind of closeness because what you really want is your own family and that's the most difficult part of. the berlin researchers are also keeping an eye out for signs of depression that's a distinct possibility when you're alone with the same few people for months on end and he isn't yet one and i understand do you feel isolated from the others have you had melancholy or depressive thoughts that might possibly require medical attention and ses i afford i'm kind. this study could also help us cope with the coronavirus lock down alexander done as a piece of advice. was good i was not resigned as long as you can do simple things like brushing your teeth with your left hand but standing on one leg you know. the important thing is to avoid getting stuck in

a rush. your brain needs fresh input. the neumeyer station team has created challenges for itself a boot camp to give the brain and the body a thorough workout. is the driving force behind the exercise team and she and the other expedition members are top fit. and much it was difficult at 1st we had muscle aches and we cursed but we've come to love her but i guess it isn't a point it's one of the main reasons that we've got through the winter so well and . the researchers say that while the brain does shrink during isolation these changes are not permanent. i assume that all these changes are reversible. the question is to what extent the team managed to reintegrate into everyday life you know your music their resume

their usual activities to build their social networks and pursue their normal lives again upon their return. whether you spend 9 months in the icy wastes of and arctica or weeks in coronavirus markdown in your own home isolation is difficult and it takes a tamana. view is what are your strategies for staying sane during the coronavirus pandemic. here are some of you. philip template. junior from the philippines rose we're in the 8th week of lockdown my strategy is simple i check the news chat with family and friends work from home. then i do light exercise after dinner and read books my days are quite structured. midnight

gives from peru says i'm one of the few people who enjoy quarantine i love spending time with my family and cooking healthy meals and eating adolescently case i'll be sad when things go back to normal. i mean ga in indonesia says it's an opportunity to try new things and i've taken up gardening as a hobby and i'm trying to master hydroponics i hope to be able to eat my own harvest thank you for writing to us. the term social distancing may be new but place and pestilences and the practice of isolating the sick is thousands of years old but that doesn't make our current situation feel any less new and weird. and it's all because of a microscopic vicious pathogen the sun's corona virus too. but what is a virus that's what out of the un ers are in sedan wants to know.

a lot of viruses. a tick bite can transmit viruses such as a form of and several lighters called t b e v in humans the pathogen can cause a fatal inflammation of the brain. but. other viral diseases are airborne so there are lots of ways they can spread. that's clever viruses which consist of just d.n.a. or r.n.a. in a protective envelope. they don't have their own metabolism so they need a host like humans or other organisms in order to reproduce in the case of an infection a virus hijacks the host so it injects its genetic material internet hosts and then becomes a factory for making new viruses. many viruses can spread between species.

the pathogens responsible for aids or a bowler may have traveled from apes to humans rodents can transmit hunter viruses for example. birds some flu viruses a vaccine may prevent infection. even though as in the case of flu the vaccine constantly has to be adapted as the virus mutates. one type of antiviral vaccine protects against cervical cancer and sometimes viruses aren't pathogens but helpers. certain parvo viruses for example target tumor cells without damaging surrounding healthy cells researchers are hoping to use them to develop a viral therapy to treat glioblastoma highly aggressive brain cancer. viruses cause many diseases like hiv aids needles and hepatitis but some viruses fight

disease these bacteria phages invade bacteria viruses are made up of the genome within a casing bacteria are more complex and mostly much larger viruses contrary prettiest on their own they need to hijack bacteria or other organisms to do so and that is key to their potential role in. these young scientists are reviving an old method biotechnology students i am to him her and her team are using bacteriophages known informally as phages to combat bacteria. fauquier say lots of the view that there is a virus and the natural enemy of bacteria. for fate is a naturally occurring and can be found wherever there are bacteria. in your deeds of water for example in soil but also in the human body and these phages can only

infect specific bacteria not human cells that's why they can be used to treat bacterial infections. a fish only targets a single species of bacteria so the researchers require a whole range of them so far they've isolated them from the environment in a complex process not me it's employing tons in our project we've identified collected and characterized multiple phage variants. stated these are going to be used to infect and kill different species of bacteria. and. bacteria phages were discovered in 1917 by a french canadian microbiologist felix definitely. recognized their potential to fight infectious diseases in the 1920 s. international pharmaceutical companies began making fades cocktails but the advent

of antibiotics which were cheaper to make and more widely applicable soon displaced phage therapy until its recent read discovery but the students here need funding if their work is going to progress and big pharma isn't interested. for a start intellectual property is hard to secure phage is over and then to successfully apply phage therapy you have to keep slightly modifying the phages in the course of the sarah pay. what if it's that sort of dynamic treatment is impossible given current laws you need new clinical trials for every phase of variance including. fades therapy is also patient specific and that means that for now at least it's not economically viable. that area of faith is could be used to come back to strategic difficile and hysteria which can contaminate fish meat and

dairy products and cause a life threatening disease in humans. some strains of e. coli i found in food can also make us sick. could fate has one day be used safely across the food industry to cleanse praties and products of certain bacteria. 8 scientists involved in in in the netherlands are researching how to fight tiny put dangerous organisms with even tinier organisms. 8 the company my crew us develop spec tyria phages. they are viruses that target specific bacteria. the cheese maker wants to find out if ages can help make this product safer. the faces are grown in liquid bacteria cultures that allow them to multiply rapidly. the bacteria are the same as

the ones that they want to get rid of and the cheese phage is our natural enemies of bacteria microsoft supplies its customers with phage has to fight listeria and some another bacteria. this is how they do it. in the stage latches onto the surface of a bacterium and injects its d.n.a. into it is a list of bacteria to replications d.n.a. producing dozens of new phages eventually they calls the bacterial cell to burst releasing new phages that then infect understory more bacteria. when the microsoft researchers investigate whether their faces could help improve food manufacturers safety standards they always follow the same procedure they take to samples that contaminate them with the bacteria they want to destroy. in the u.s. a listeria outbreak linked to apples claimed. number of lives. one of these contaminated

products is sprayed with water that's the control sample. the other is sprayed with bacteria phages. scientists take swabs from the products put them on plates containing nutrient. unleavened to incubate for 24 hours. the project leader is impressed by his faith his determination in fact speaking features are brilliant because they're so specific they only destroy a certain strain of bacteria when you have good bacteria like those in cheese and yogurt they won't be destroyed so features can be used in a very targeted way that's. phages are also being used in medicine to treat bacterial skin infections for example takes just a few days for symptoms to improve significantly. after an incubation period of 24 hours the listeria samples are examined by the scientists

a lot of bacterial colonies are formed in the control sample and only a few in the fake sample a few shouldn't non-form as the same there are only a 10th as many as in a control sample now you could destroy 10 times more bacteria if you used 10 times as many phage is but the question is is that really necessary the food industry is extremely hygiene and clean the risk of listeria contamination is minimal if you destroy a 90 percent of the bacteria that risk is even smaller and the food safer. phages could soon be used in germany too in sausage factories the casings made from animal got could be impregnated with the bacteria killing biases the faces would remain on the surface of the food and act as a line of defense to keep out bacteria that would also be useful in the production of smoked fish if microbiologist buyer is. a researcher at the university of hohenheim in strict got we asked him whether phages could also pose

a danger. one type of faith called temperature does not immediately force its bacterial host to produce a new phase generation instead it integrates its genome into the out of the bacterium. and the bacterium reproduces it also replicates the virus genome at the same time it's a very elegant method of genetic reproduction but it also makes this sort of phage potentially dangerous because when the viruses are finally released they can also transfer part of the bacterial genome of their host including genes for antibiotic resistance or toxins to other bacteria if you sleep people here it's well known that bacteria phages can spread factors such as virial and genes or resistance genes and that could also possibly happen if they are used in the food industry but these kind of faders temperate phages which can integrate their genome into the genome of their host bacterium wouldn't be used in the food industry.

that sector would focus on phages that really only destroy bacteria. and there the likelihood of transmission is very very small. so in the future viruses in food could actually be good for us that's an idea that will definitely take some getting used to. many kinds of bacteria are beneficial some live in the soil and enhanced its quantity bacteria are present in most habitats in desert sand and. it is thought that they make up 3 courses of all known species of forms of life. one down around with a congregation vast number is is our count for the most past their very welcome. little alexis is just a few hours old he arrived by says arry inception interventional birth could have

swallowed some of his mother's bacteria as he passed through the birth canal dr fleming is providing the newborn with maternal bacteria an alternative way. mostly it's the sort of born. we try to do at the request of the parents is to collect bhajan of fluids from the mother didn't swap the baby's mouth with industry into the foster the idea behind this is to pass good luck tyria from the mother to her infant of skin to bottle. this should only be done when the mother is completely healthy or it could harm the baby studies show that maternal bacteria that colonize the baby during birth are important for the child's health breastmilk also plays a key role. in the clinic has set up a bank of breast milk donors for mothers who can't breastfeed breast milk contains the bacteria and infant needs for

a healthy gut micro biome. but as we grow up we eat things that aren't necessarily good for us like pizza burgers and fizzy drinks can too much unhealthy fast food impact our gut flora and even our psyche. these researchers think it can i talk farsi and optimate haasan from the austrian university of droughts are observing the behavior of mice fed on a poor diet they're giving their test mice either healthy grains in dried grass or the special feed that accounts for 60 percent of its calories similar to fast food after 8 weeks the scientists examine the behavior of the mice i talked that's one of the green mice into a cage it hasn't been in before it eagerly explores its new environment. then comes the fast food mouse who's put on quite

a lot of weight it has little desire to move which is a sign of depression the fast food mice are also not very sociable unlike the grain fed subjects they prefer to be alone away from their fellow mice. an examination of their feces reveals drastic changes in the gut bacteria of the fast food mice could this be the reason for their behavior. to suppress the in-style microbial we will use antibiotics and this is study we are planning to do if the depression like behavior disappears in the mice receiving antibiotics this means that exists. in the micro biome is necessary for the development of end of depression like behavior. and that's not the only type of food that's thought to affect the gut. foods and drinks containing

artificial sweeteners are popular with people trying to lose weight. often it's not clear if a product contains sugar substitute and there is evidence that these could harm our microbiome. as part of an experiment i will be a bookie manner and julie vine bag will drink 12 saturates of saccharin every day for a week the israeli study hopes to find out whether or not this sweetener affects our intestinal flora and with our health you never know what's good for you and if they share that in my family i know if we have a day of beauty of it i really want to know what's good for me 1st thing. both women are examined at the weitzman institute in israel. the researchers want to see how their health changes over the week including whether or not the sweetener impacts their blood sugar they are fitted with

a sensor on the upper arm the device will measure their blood sugar levels throughout the next 7 days. the women are told to eat as they normally would so as not to skew the results and to enter everything they eat into a nap. dr york times u.s. believes that sweeteners do have an influence on intestinal bacteria to find out he's asked the test subjects to provide stool samples. he identifies the different types of gut bacteria in the lab and the results show that the diversity decreases in most subjects. when the guts material is just sort of shifted or they richly in the guts material we can detect materia that are probably killed by the minister there live as you can look to area and they're going to go up a can guess that they are using this for the fishes speak today of the 2 women only

one saw changes in her gut bacteria. and her blood sugar levels also deteriorated. before the test her blood sugar was normal but during the sweetener experiment the levels rose dramatically which can cause weight gain and disease more testing is needed to see whether sweeteners have this effect. but both women say they now claim to avoid them. if help what is red white are great but i'm a bit of a dilemma do you have a size question that you've always wanted answered it like we're happy to help out send it to us as a video ted's ovoid smell if we answer it on the show will send you a little surprise as a thank you can all just ask. and for more stories about the world of science visit us on our website on twitter and facebook.

that's all for today next time on tamara today we'll go exploring in one of europe's few remaining old growth forests. and build a company an expedition that's investigating why build in its habitats are so important. until then good bye.

robots they're still in the development phase of footmen it's going to happen when they grow. artificial intelligence is now spreading through our society ai will experts be able to agree on ethical guidelines or will list technology creating deadly new autonomous weapon systems. paradise robot a lapse. in 15 minutes on d w. staying

up to date don't miss our highlights. graeme online w dot com highlights. what do they dream of at night. as cleaners they see the face of horror. their job censoring for the social media industry. in manila there are thousands of so-called content monitors to take they scrubbed terrifying images from online platforms. the horrific job for starvation wage the strain it is enormous. the cleaners social media's shadow industry starts june 8th on g.w.

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is deja vu news live from berlin the bundesliga is back and the sporting world is watching but there are no fans in the stadiums as german football becomes the 1st major league in europe to resume action look at all the reaction to the 1st day back also in the show. meeting at the border germany and luxembourg foreign minister mark the lifting.