what secrets lie behind. discover new adventures in the 360 degree. and explore fascinating world heritage sites. t.w. world heritage 360 getting up now. crowds and busy city spaces have become a problem in times of covered 19. how can we maintain social distancing and get back as far as possible to our normal lives. d.w. science magazine takes a look. welcome to this edition of tomorrow today.

empty public squares deserted streets and restaurants familiar images the world over. normally these spaces are bustling with people but it's hard to imagine how we could maintain social distancing and stay safe under such circumstances. computer simulations and risk analysis could point the way. in many parts of the world life has been returning to city streets people are travelling on trams buses and trains again but social distancing remains a priority even if it's not always easy to maintain and it's busier during rush hour but not like it used to be hell to feel not too crowded social distancing is ok sometimes it's a bit overcrowded you can't maintain the minimum distance with us there's quite a lot of space and people tend to stay apart mind their farms. i've had largely

negative experiences because people do as they please a lot of people aren't being very careful. or. preventing overcrowding is something these people specialize in accurate is a munich based startup made up of a team of i t and simulation experts. the coronavirus pandemic has brought them new challenges normally they work on emergency evacuation plans security concepts for bigger events and passenger flow analyses. now they're also working on ways to help protect passengers visitors and workers from infection with the coronavirus. because one of the coronavirus crisis has shown us that simulations are more than just a way to analyze the behavior of crowns so they can also help us figure out how to maintain social distancing that's important in office buildings rocks are caught but also for ensuring passenger safety and railway stations. for simulations use

forecasts based on the behavior of these human avatars agents which follow realistic movement patterns social distancing rules have added a new twist to the calculations the agents aren't supposed to get too close to each other which is hard in tight quarters. here we've already incorporated social distancing the agents are surrounded by a green circle with a diameter of 3 meters or a radius of one and a half and. now they all have to leave but there's a bottleneck. be the 1st to leave the doorways just one metre why and what you're supposed to keep a distance of 1.5 meters some of the agents are now turning red that shows they haven't been able to maintain a social distancing for a certain amount of time doctors. they don't yet have specifically coronavirus related data to incorporate into their simulations who keeps their distance who

tries to barge through but they can draw on many experiments with crowd behavior carried out over the years. wherever we have in downtown areas railway stations airports or accused outside concerts we have to know how the flow of pedestrians tends to work where do bottlenecks develop. that's useful to know in all sorts of contexts like evacuating crowded sports stadiums or schools or figuring out whether a train station is just busy or whether it's actually overcrowded. so far the simulations function without the fear of the. in a virus as a parameter to help the agents maintain social distancing research is looking for new ways to guide pedestrian flow. using we already have queuing systems in place at entrances to supermarkets for example the kind of research we're doing now draws on similar concepts. we're trying

to understand and describe what's happening when people are waiting in line. or. those insights could help us design queuing systems in other contexts. so. social distancing can even help to decrease queues and crowding. in railway stations and stairwells a one way system can keep pedestrians flowing smoothly. this is a huge opportunity the authorities have fastrack terrible occasion for a research project that will allow us to expand the scope of our stimulator we could make a real contribution to getting life back to something more like normal. that will entail combining real life pedestrian and commuter volumes flows and well times with true to scale architectural data to help daily life in cities flow more smoothly. the brazilian city of minnows was hit so hard

by the corona virus that it was forced to bury its dead in mass graves because symmetries couldn't keep up. but then infection rates suddenly slowed for a time even though few measures have been taken to protect people from the virus. it looked as though the city might have managed to write the 1st wave of coded 19 paradoxically due to widespread infection a phenomenon called herd immunity. sadly rising numbers now seem to say otherwise. but how can we even gauge immunity. am i already immune some people hope a rapid antibody test could answer that question and potentially provide reassurance. the test involves taking a blood sample and generates a result within minutes but it doesn't detect the virus itself it shows the

presence or absence of antibodies that may indicate past infection. unfortunately there is a chance that you will test positive if you have antibodies linked to other types of corona virus including the common cold. false positives of this kind are possible. and even if the test rectally identifies antibodies against the corona virus it doesn't automatically mean that person is immune. our bodies produce different kinds of antibodies in response to the virus but only those that actually help put it out of action offer protection the so called neutralizing antibodies to be sure you would have to perform a 2nd test to demonstrate the presence of neutralizing antibodies using real viruses in the cell culture these kinds of tests are complicated and have to be carried out and specialized labs. so immunity can only really be

shown in a follow up test but even if you do detect neutralizing antibodies specific to the corona virus one problem remains it's unclear for now how long community actually lasts following an infection. aspects of the immune system could also explain why africa has been less hard hit back over 19 then feared it's possible that the immune systems of people living there are more used to coping with infections. we asked one researcher why certain parasites might be linked to milder cases of co the 19. 1 of the early dominant features is that there was ensure their survival for 10 years and longer in the body by suppressing the immune response and the potus is our hope is that

this overshooting immune reaction that comes with we're 90 cases might be mitigated because the people of our wars in heaven you know suppressed general. status. these insights about parasites help us find drugs to treat cavite 19. there's long been thought to sort of carve out the beneficial part of the immune response of a parasite immunosuppressive mold avoids the talking parasitic infections that this is very tricky you have to imagine that the parasite was about 10000 different proteins and even more of the molecules 'd that it can play with in order to exert down regulate the system not to speak about the infection in the locality and all these things it's very complicated so far. except for a few molecules that for example. i have been showing today. now

becomes those specific receptors that of politics in the immune system also play a. role in setting infections or they can be addressed by small molecules but they are still in the brutal development so we are not yet there and definitely the longer. perspective. id seen which seems to be moralists. tiny parasites are in the scientific spotlight some insect species are quietly disappearing. to assess the situation of our 6 legged friends a german conservation organization is harnessing the help of the general public to keep tabs on the insect number is. a prime example of citizens.

these people are in the garden. here's something really tiny and i mean these 2 in a farmer's field down there. and these people are in a forest meadow there you see. but they're all doing the same thing by. their. they're counting insects for germany's nature and biodiversity conservation union for the past 2 summers the organization has called on the general public for help in the world it's a fun thing to do but the situation is serious because insects are on the decline in germany part of a global trend. among my studies the results of the insect count she says the initiative was very important. work on song we have a greater decline now than what we saw in the past and we urgently need to start

collecting data that's that we can show what's happening in. the goal is to take an inventory of insects in various locations for one week members of the public were asked to count insects for one hour following a set pattern within a radius of 10 meters gobby and new to our searching in a wildlife garden a pamphlet showing pictures of various insects plus a photo app on their phone helped them to identify the most common species their garden is a treasure trove. it's been quite about i'm happy and surprised to see so many honeybees there's these everywhere baqir. and perhaps even more important the pair also finds bumble bees and other wild species population numbers for wild bees in particular have plummeted. hover flies have also taken a hit 30 percent of hover fly species are threatened with extinction badge and

hartman meanwhile are struggling to find much of anything in their chosen field with the until recently there was we growing here now after the harvest the field is a desert. millipede here. and despite it there and that's it. it was a long time before we found on the thing that i know and then only small insects that probably arrived after the harvest. for have before that the fields would have been treated heavily with chemicals of course to boost the yield go through. intensive farming monocultures on the use of pesticides have all taken their toll pests that damage the harvest like the colorado beetle are being targeted but many useful insects like the green dot people that eat sweets are also suffering other species that live in the forest like the stand beetle are also endangered. in this

forest many of the reasons even are being kept busy there's plenty going on at ground level he. they find grasshoppers in particular this area is the launch of the wild life to nature butterflies are also out in force here. butterflies are also in decline they make up the 2nd largest group of insects after beetles but in the last 10 years alone their numbers have dropped 10 percent. but it's not clear which species of butterfly are most at risk in order to understand what's happening in detail precise scientific studies are needed. entomologist get into lima has set up traps with bottles of alcohol to attract flying insects so that she can check their numbers their traps that looked like tents have been set up in nature reserves that are located near agricultural fields

. the project is funded by the german government and continues a long term study into insects that ran for 30 years. in 27 team that study showed a dramatic drop in flying insects in western germany at least in terms of the overall numbers of insects caught. it's in our study we've chosen 21 representative locations that are spread all over germany and we record the specific species not just overall numbers we decode the d.n.a. of insects to produce a barcode and then we can say exactly which species were in the trout in all. and. this study will run for 4 years allowing the scientists to see which insects are endangered and to what extent then they hope to have exact numbers. lists here

books on the list to produce recommendations for the politicians on how best to preserve insect diversity in germany one student. one useful practice is to plant a flower bed along the edge of fields while not sufficient it does show how important diverse vegetation is for insects. alive and just what's flying in the air there is a 100 times what's here. after a whole hour down to hot moat found only a handful of insects the reasons so mostly grasshoppers and butterflies in the forest meadow but still they counted more than 70 of those. some as i think that's quite good because they play an important role in nature. of course vital for our lives and they're declining fast from. all of us can do something to help an insect friendly garden is one option. to find the most insects by far counting more than

$150.00 in one hour they also have the largest range of species. at some other and i've given them a zing result we found so many insects it's great. next summer germany will launch any other insect count in the hope of safeguarding their future and ours. development is right why are they right on. now do you have a science question you'd like us to answer. send it in if we featured on the show you'll get a little surprise as a thank you. come on just ask. your find us on the web dot com slash suds or check us out on twitter. this week's question comes from cancer me.

why are mammals born blind. some not all mammals are born especially helpless blinded with no fur to protect them and this means their parents have to spend more time caring for them before they can fend for themselves . it's not until they've developed sight and the ability to roam by themselves that the young animals leave their nests caves or hideouts a model that's common among predators. that's because along pregnancy is not advantageous for the mother it would stop her from hunting. that's why her are born before they're fully mature in their eyes are not yet properly developed. ringback are born fully developed they can live in their nests right away and are born with vision they're also quick

to get on their feet. the group includes giraffes and elephants. to them survival means being able to seen and fully speed off in the babies are able to feed themselves. up 3rd group and get carried around one parent usually the mother carries the offspring around with her kangaroos are an example. blind one born. others in this group. are born. only some kinds of mammals are born blind. so what about humans. newborns can see joined distance of about 30 centimeters they can hear too but they can't walk so are carried around by their parents.

but there are also some young people who take their time fleeing the nest science has yet to come up with an official term to describe that phenomenon. of the. the age at which young people leave their parents' homes varies a lot across europe well many swedes leave when they're 18 people in montenegro of 33 on average the e.u. average is 26 just like in the us. in south american countries there are also light stasis. there it's not just about money or the need to look up. elderly relatives living in extended family space just small part of the culture. yet people would love. to set its streets at that end in stations but this time it's not because of the pandemic. an unexploded world war 2 bomb has been on earth

in a residential neighborhood jenny still has lots of undetonated ordinance in the ground a fund like this means emergency services have to organize large scale and disruptive evacuations. a researcher in southern germany is trying to help them against the risk more accurately with some rather dramatic experiments. like. this is the kind of destruction that could be unleashed if an unexploded bomb from the 2nd world war suddenly detonates. but the device creation that shockwave is not old munition but a compressed air common.

this is a controlled experiment of the frowned over in situ for high speed dynamics in southwestern germany. the pressure wave shatters windowpanes and cause a cloud of glass and even harold's chairs across the test room. for alexander stalls destruction delivers vital insights his aim is to optimize the evacuation of locations following the discovery of unexploded bombs. among the tools at his disposal are high speed cameras which can identify the size speed and direction of the glass flying through the air right down to the tiniest shards.

the engineer has conducted dozens of such experiments under a variety of different conditions the results are fed into a simulation program the more data he collects the better he can predict the physical fallout from an explosion. as it was here and the authorities always cordon off a huge area around the mission to find. that but if there is a hospital in that area with intensive care patients that's a problem. be them have to be evacuated which constitutes a danger to those patients. but does the bomb really pose a threat to the hospital or is a vacuum perhaps unnecessary. the red spots in the simulation represent areas that are extremely vulnerable to the shockwave blew regions less so. here the hospital takes a direct hit some sections the convergence and amplification of the shock waves.

and the subsequent analysis the red areas show where windows would be shattered this hospital would be devastated despite being 200 meters away and theoretically shielded by the buildings in between. under shockwave is not the only danger when old munitions go off. the researchers conduct a 2nd test to look at the effects of shrapnel. this is not your typical 200 kilogram bomb but a small metal cylinder containing just 250 grams of explosive material. the damage incurred is evaluated by its impact on the she's and. metal safety 1st which means the researchers retreating to an observation bunker.

even the high speed camera it seems has trouble capturing exactly what happened during the explosion. but one broken down the footage shows how the shrapnel pierces the metal she said on the wooden board behind us. the force of the explosion took its toll not only on the concrete block but also on the metal and without any of the standing here would have sustained serious injuries from the shrapnel possibly fatal ones. with a real bomb that kind of damage could be caused up to 100 meters away another factor for the researchers to incorporate into their simulations as they seek to pinpoint areas that really would need evacuating. that's

all for now thank you for joining us. for morning dressing stories about science and technology visit our websites. will be back next week with a fresh edition of tomorrow today until then by.

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