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tv   Tomorrow Today  Deutsche Welle  June 22, 2020 6:30am-7:00am CEST

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but all of them come straight from the heart to its former c.e.o. even when there's no more dilution the marsh the injured. from the fish log on to their final resting place the russians g.w. documentary. the human guts it's said that we know less about it than about the surface of the moon what we do know is that the foods we eat can affect our health and that of our immune system for instance too much stuff like this is bad for us. the signs is probing our intestines in order to understand more about diet and digestion. we'll be looking at these topics and more on this edition of tomorrow today.
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to begin with we go on a fantastic voyage it recalls the 1966 film of the same name in which. the shrunken human crew sets off on a perilous mission within the body of a sick man to save him in the nick of time. well tiny nano subs are now for real they can navigate the eyeballs of dead pigs and one day they will deliver meds to humans eyes if all goes according to plan. with modern technology taking a look at the retina on the back wall of an eye is easy and routine but actually going in there to treat disease is much harder i drops aren't enough to tackle serious issues. corkscrew shaped nano robots might be the solution they're $200.00 times smaller than the. diameter of a human hair this is
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a computer animation. the idea is to send such nano propellers through the vitreous humor of the eye to deliver medicine to the retina professor perry fisher at the max planck institute for intelligent systems in stuttgart is among the scientists who are developing these nano robots. by the invicta and not in developing the nano propeller we found inspiration in bacteria if we recreate a screw like structure that enables bacteria to move because when you rotate a corkscrew it moves forward fall that's what makes. the nano propellers are made by a pariah zing silicon dioxide and other materials including iron onto a copper or silicon wafer under high vacuum while it rotates. the way for is already coated with tiny polymer particles.
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each one of his local nano propeller is born out of the vapor. this way for is covered in billions of these nano propellers. you need a microscope to see them. so they are very small and they fit to the mesh of the vitreous. only 500 out of me there in that are there until like all so they can you see the snakes through the mesh of the vitreous. the propellers have to be harvested from the way for. bits of the way for our broken off and put into water. an ultrasonic bath disperses the particles. each truck contains a large number of them. for a nano. propellor to move through
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a body without getting stuck it has to be both tiny and slippery. so the team developed an anti stick coating. the chemical for the coating is called fluorocarbon so it's a long chain carbon that doesn't want to stick to anything so it's like. similar to the coating of your. for cooking. at tubing in university i hospital nano propellers have been tested in the eyeballs of dead pigs and shown to work. the nano robots are magnetic so they can be steered by electromagnets outside the ai. their movement can be observed in real time with the help of an imaging technique known as optical coherence tomography. reducing we could just monitor
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live how the particles move through the eye and we were able to steer them to be exact spot they were meant to go in order to establish that the nano propeller had really reached the retina the pig's eyes were frozen and then cut into thin slices . the microscope revealed that the propellers shown here in red had indeed arrived at the retina here lou. before such nano drug delivery vehicles can be used in clinical practice several problems need to be solved. how can they be removed from the eye again. and how can they be made to carry and release a cargo of medicine. to load a new. no propellor we can make use of the chemical actor buttes of its surface to
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attach certain molecules by means of a chemical process we can also make the helical body porous and they've going molecules to be transported within. if and when all the obstacles are overcome this new technology could revolutionize the treatment of diseases of the retina but not only the retina. many parts of the human body are hard to access in a minimally invasive manner. tiny slippery steerable submarines likelihoods might be able to reach parts other methods can't. suddenly means explore the deepest reaches of the oceans and the bizarre life forms that thrive thing. but they're all mysterious rounds to be explored much closer to home. one prime candidates is our guts our gastrointestinal tract
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all 9 me sense of it it's teeming with wildlife we can't do without. so let's go exploring. introducing louisa. the german name for the common european pair grown by the shores of lake constance . it's about to go on a journey through the human digestive system. and it's a pretty rough ride from the get go our teeth take care of the basic mechanical side of breaking down the fridge next the ground up food passed through abuse office and into the stomach. the ease of the pair then spends an hour or 2 drenched in the massive box in preparation for the next stage and that takes place in the small intestine. for an insider's view scientists at this
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german medical research center have a cutting edge swallow ball camera at their disposal but for all the gotcha tree precious little is known about the inner workings of our intestines. does include. the micro biome is largely still an unknown entity within our body even more so than much of the surface of the moon it's something we've only been able to start examining very recently in that respect it's like a black hole shots is. the 1st part of the small intestine has no microorganisms on is remarkably smooth louisa's trekked through this part of our body takes about 3 to 7 hours. the surface area for digestion is greatly increased by countless little projections called villa this is where the body extracts most of the nutrients which are broken down with the help of enzymes but as the parent tells
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deeper it encounters more and more microorganisms. is home to over a 1000 different species of viruses and bacteria which make up over 90 percent of our intestinal flora as well as helping us on the digestive front they also play a vital role for our immune system they even provide us with nourishment from the products of their metabolism in the form of vision means for example. moving around stimulates our digestion what remains of the pair has not reached the large intestine or colon where it will now spend the longest period of its journey between 25 and 30 hours. once in the cold the reason the pair is set upon by legions of microorganisms extracting everything the body has not yet been able to digest. their prime target is louisa's dietary fiber on the polysaccharides it contains. once broken down they use short chain fatty acids
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beauty rate for example is used by cells in the gut lining as an energy source this is why a healthy diet includes plenty of fiber from vegetables. any major shift in the balance of bacteria can lead to dangerous complications. because i know. we know for sure that when particular bacteria are killed by prescribing antibiotics other bacteria overrun the gut flora. and that can lead to a serious inflammation of the colon which is called pseudo membrane this. is a clue to use. film good bacteria are more or less why there are harmful bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and can now multiply on checked such as close tritium deficiency of. these pathogenic bacteria produce
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a toxin that attacks the god lining and compromises its ability to protect our body from infections. for the end of its journey the pair has been almost completely decomposed but our body ends up excrete is largely dead intestinal cells and bacteria practically no residual food. and in the case of louise of the pair if the fiber that makes the journey so worthwhile for the benefit of our micro biome. several kinds of fruit give us plenty of that good dietary fiber because of the pectin found in them. some kinds of pectin may even help cholesterol levels so benign as for example are a great food for many people. here in the us since in an interesting question about how bananas reproduce. bananas grow from scene
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it's. wild bananas jus have seeds stony blank seeds that can germany. normally with flowering plants pollen from one flower is care. to another where it travels to the ovary and fertilize egg cells to make scenes. the seeds containing the genetic information to produce a new plant the commercial bananas we buy in supermarkets don't contain any seeds they're specially bred to be seedless to make them tasty or. bananas are in fact the result of a genetic accident that gave their cells 3 copies of each chromosome instead of the usual 2. that made them seedless much tastier but also. the most common banana is the cavendish they're all genetically identical each one
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is a clone of the other. new banana plants are bred from off shoots of a mother plant. worldwide most bananas are bred by taking cuttings and growing new trees. the advantage of this cloning system is that all bananas have the same thick skin of the same speed and can be transported at the same time. the disadvantage is that this genetically fragile fruit is vulnerable to diseases the fungal disease tropical race for is currently ravaging the global banana industry from asia to black in america. researchers are currently looking to save the world's most popular fruit from extinction by cross-breeding the cavendish banana and the more robust wild banana.
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sweet things have a huge fan base among us humans. claim we are programmed to crave them. as a quick source of energy for our body something our stone age ancestors should evaluate . now adays need as much energy to hunt and forage for us ok but that doesn't stop us from cravings we stop them from any number of sources. cakes and candy is it a sweet and shouldn't. yes. that's the mission of researches here at brain biotech in central gemini they're looking for a sweetener that's not artificial. and there's one crucial qualification for
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that natural ingredients. we want to find a sweetener that tastes just like sugar or enhances sugar to a degree where you need less of it with an identical taste of the old products it's . a requirement that mostly is today to fail to meet which is why a lot of people aren't keen on them. and researches are still not sure about how exactly artificial sweeteners work in the. aspartame has been comprehensively tested and widely approved but critics say its links to a range of side effects such as headaches and impaired vision. researches have also discovered that unlike sugar sweetness do not release the time at sea hormones so people who consume them feel less full they also fail to activate the reward center in the brain the results could be eating more and even gaining more weight despite
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sweetness having next to no count of race almost all sweet as approved by the e.u. are artificial the sole exception is stevia approved by the e.u. in 2011. it's actually uses however a limited. doctored if there are products that don't work very well in conjunction with stevia hardly any dairy products are sweetened with it for example due to the off labors being too pronounced we're looking for a superior sweetener a superior version of stevia as opposed to a super version that also meets taste expectations and that involves breaking down the building blocks of nature these researches have a deep freeze. a story of cells and natural substances from countless clumps and funky until so far analyzed 20000 samples the vital substances can be hidden away
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in the edible or in edible components in tiny molecular compounds that contain mia traces of that all important sweetness among today's test subjects is red meat one single plant can contain hundreds if not thousands of compounds which will need to be tested in a complex and costly process. but they have help in the shape of an artificial tongue. the same says that this is the most vital element in our research these artificial cells enable us to quickly test the properties of thousands of substances and how sweet or bitter they are each of these tiny vials contains taste cells extracted from the human tongue they react to the samples tested once the cells receive a sweet signal they release messages that in turn become visible the plethora of light signals show that the red meat has plenty of potential. as it
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takes a real human being to tell the difference the researchers have subjects compared to samples number 2 is the natural variety taken from the bridge built. in the us to the 1st sample tasted sweeter the 2nd had a slightly metallic after terrorist regime which doesn't bode well for the red meat some polls that fail at this stage are of no interest to the reception's. another candidate gets top marks in the taste from a sweet protein from the pen to deploy. their fruit native to central africa but taste is not the only factor the suitability of substances varies depending on the project. there are sweeteners that are great for drinks because they dissolve so well whereas some sweeteners have an excellent test but aren't so soluble they're better suited for candy bars or chewing up.
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and while taste is important so with the short and long term effects of sweetness. it will take some time until a sweetener is found that his space effective old products and of course natural. not always bad for us it depends on what kind and how much. polysaccharides found in complex carbohydrates and grains for example don't cause blood glucose levels to spike they're also considered beneficial dietary fiber. simple carbs which break down fast into sugar are found in candy they usually don't make you feel full and do make blood glucose levels which is bad contribution to obesity and disease losing weight can be difficult and hard work can science help us to cut
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corners. imagine a safe and effective pill that will really make your fat go away that's what t.-mo miller and his colleagues are working on and they say they're getting close. to home it came as a surprise but we were delighted for it. the breakthrough involves using 2 substances one that burns fat and one that suppresses the appetite to create an effective combination therapy. there have been countless attempts to find ways to help people lose weight many pills are touted as the real thing. online you can buy any number of products that claim to do wonders without you having to do more exercise or eat less most of these claims have been shown to be bogus some products are downright dangerous. the researchers at the home holds
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diabetes center in munich aim to harness a certain capability of the human body but was only discovered a few years ago brown adipose tissue or brown fat doesn't store energy but uses energy to generate heat quite unlike regular white fat. there are deposits under the collar bone in the neck and along the spine cold temperatures stimulate brown fat we only have a few grams of it but it plays an important role in maintaining body temperature and burning fat the idea was to develop a substance that mimics cold in activating our energy metabolism. when participants in an experiment spend hours in a room left at 16 degrees celsius the volume of that brown fat grows can the same effect be generated without the chill factor t.-mo miller says the way to do it is to deploy a substance called isolating. is an
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agent that activates signaling mechanisms in the brain which in turn activated brown fat fit. the upshot is that the energy metabolism speeds up and body weight declines. in tests with my knees it works but the amount of weight loss is modest so something else is needed another component to the fat therapy. there are so many non-prescription weight loss pills out there and many are entirely useless some or worse than useless they're harmful. works at the german institute of human nutrition in parts. of times there are various substances that bind fat in food but the effects are variable and mostly minimal it and almost always come with side effects but when
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large amounts of dietary fat don't get absorbed into the body but remain in the gut it's broken down by bacteria that causes intestinal problems diarrhea or gas it can be very uncomfortable i can't recommend it. so in theory. it gets really dangerous when diet pills include banned substances that are toxic. to trymaine in particular has been associated with serious cardiovascular events that's why it's not licensed for use in the european market but products containing it can still be found and purchased online d.m.p. is also known to be extremely dangerous it's very toxic one gram can kill you as it burns fat and carbs the metabolism speeds up and the body gets hotter and hotter. at the helm holtz diabetes center they're looking for an agent with negative side effects. iceland does indeed stimulate the energy metabolism and released in mice
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but the effect is small so what 2nd substance could complement or boost the effect and here comes the breakthrough discovery. of the 2nd agent is also a synthetic molecule the m.p.p. is a small x. very much like nicotine in that it reduces our food consumption but without the negative effects that nicotine has on our brain. it suppresses appetite but not enough to be effective by itself the trick is combining eisel in and d.m.p. piece together the effect. it is impressive. if you prescribe the 2 together the combination therapy results in much greater weight loss than the to take it separately. and so. you can say that this is a case of one plus one equals 3. the results in mice have been excellent
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but there's still a lot of work to do before we humans can benefit from the breakthrough so for now the prescription in many cases but not all continues to be moved more eat less and eat healthily. because it is right why auburn but on the face of it. do you have a science question. somebody if we answer it on the show the same give a little something as a thank you you can send your question as a video text ovoid smale come on just. you'll find us on our website dot com slash science or get in touch via twitter facebook. that's all for now from tamara today next time we'll be diving deep into other
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this is the deadly news live from berlin niger corona virus outbreak at a german slaughterhouse and prices questions about workers' safety. the politicians feel the heat off the more than 1300 workers at the plant are infected 7000 people have been quarantined also on the show. scenes of violence as hundreds of people go on the the.

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