and delivery as well as outdoor dining you know strike force was once a piece in all but tended. it watching david lee news from building day to believe business is up next remember to keep up with all the latest stories from around the world for that matter on our website at www dot com you can also follow us on twitter and instagram the handle you need is at d w news. in berlin for me in the team thanks watch. the fight against the corona virus 10 damage. has the rate of infection in developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus not day 19. on t w. it kind of good faith. because i want to see

a gemini with me the last few years have been quite o'brien. and really done the time but when it comes to be as. perhaps the biggest on the new i'll be a blood 100 on the river and i'd love to be in the news that represent their account but when you feed them all the giving you realize it copes with the novel way of living you read to me and then voted me right just do it. it's a race against the clock is new mutations continue to evolve. health officials blame high infection rates for the new strains. each new infection opens the door to unknown variants which threaten to undo the progress. there is no clear real danger of mutations making the virus mortars miscible

more lethal and more resistant to existing vaccines and we must fast. understanding what's driving the viruses mutations a crucial next step in a race against covert 19. you mutations have seen the virus spread like wildfire in parts of the world of more help is on the way the u.s. biotech firm novak says developed a vaccine demonstrating it was 90 percent efficacy in a phase 3 trial and proving successful against variance it's the need that scientists say we need to keep an eye on. last week if you were horrid he's a member states to do more in sequencing the genome of the novel coronavirus the hope is that scientists can detect mutations earlier and keep track on how they spread. so far major new variants have been identified in south africa

u.k. and in brazil all of them a cause for concern as they spread much faster. the reason is a mutation in the so-called spike protein that helps them attach more easily to human cells. the changes are not believed to cause a greater severity of illness at the higher rate of transmission in small cases putting even more pressure on health care systems in many countries there are already shortages of ventilators intensive care units and staff. plus slowing down the spread of those new strains would require even more stringent lockdown measures. initial studies have shown that biotech pfizer's covered 19 vaccine is likely to be effective against the variant found in the u.k.

. but scientists warn that may not be true for the strain found in brazil this subtype even seems to be spreading and monaulos where 75 percent of the population had previous exposure to sasco v 2. that could mean 2 things scientists say either that people remain vulnerable because their 1st infection was too long ago or that the virus has mutated to such an extent that it's resistant to existing antibodies. fire ologists are still conducting research into what that would mean for the efficacy of the vaccines if it turns out that i do not provide protection against this new type of koran or virus the vaccines would have to be updated. the good news is as the biotech fires a vixen and the one made by modern or you synthetic messenger r.n.a.

or m r n a they can both be quickly adapted scientists have suggested the changes could be made in as little as 6 weeks but testing the new vaccine and authorizing it might take much longer. party somebody is a computational geneticist at harvard and was voted time magazine's 100 most influential people dr somebody you sequenced ebola samples from patients marking the 1st in-depth use of real time d.n.a. sequencing in a pandemic how's that changed our approach to the coronavirus. i mean it is a fundamentally different world where we don't know 6 months after an outbreak passes we don't find out what happened we can actually. respond to it right away basically the genome of the virus is the blueprint it's you how we track it how we diagnose it and how it evolves over time so we want to get real time snapshots to know what the virus is doing in every moment and it constantly develop countermeasures that

target that virus so we would see later we missed the boat i mean you sequenced ebola really early on. did we did we miss out in this case. no actually we were very fast in our genome sequencing the original discovery of the iris and that was one of the really sort of sad things about this is such a missed opportunity because we actually looks like we caught the virus very soon after it entered human populations and began transmitting from human to human the problem is that respiratory viruses move quickly and so even though we were very fast we had to be lightning fast and while the sequencing in the original instantiation was actually where it needed to be our ability to then turn those into diagnostics actually did that quickly to get them to get those diagnostics everywhere in the world so we could find it when it came that was where we dropped off that's what we missed the boat so you know the united states being a famous example of that you know going backwards where we were just months into

the outbreak still didn't really have any capacity to look for it and even had some regulatory challenges and things like that that was that was what needs to change going forward but actually the original sequencing was right on we still there's a lot we can do to keep up that sequencing to figure out as this virus is really the millions of chances to move we need to keep up with it even faster oh the british brazilian and south african variants for sign to specific virus lines but no direct ancestors were identified house that problematic. it's just telling us that we're not capturing enough information that we essentially we don't know where the virus went 1st and how it got there so we're still things we're doing or sequencing than we've ever done before but we're you know one millionth hundreds of millions of cases now so it's it's a whole different world of how much you need to capture to really see what this virus is doing and just relative to the amount of cases we're still sequencing very

little you said where a race against time is the virus may stumble upon a mutation that makes it more dangerous how much time do we have. it's hard to know that's the thing and basically you know time we should move immediately that this is the way it works is every time a virus replicates in transmits to new person there's opportunities for new mutations to occur and most mutations don't have a real biological side but if you give it millions of chances can happen even the most rare event can happen and so every in every new case is a new opportunity to the virus to stumble upon something and where we're worried now because the viruses it looks like it's more infectious and looks like it can escape immune system it could also change and somehow begin to affect our children we don't know where it's going to go so we don't really want to waste a moment to find out a guest on this show told me taishan is what like clockwork why then come we predict them better when we can predict how often they'll likely occur and what we

can predict. you know we can we can predict essentially like they do it works like clockwork or certain every kind of every cycle there's a certain opportunity for infections to happen and so we have a sense of how many mutations will come and we just don't know the by a lot that we don't know we know some of it we're learning we know we pay attention to the ones that are in the spy protein because you know that's going to affect the it's how it's going to that cells and there's different things we're we're we're paying attention to but we don't know the full biological logic of the genome and how it works and which exactly it has which biological that that's part of what some of these studies are doing when they do gain a function to try to see what happens but those are those are challenging for various reasons so we're still not there yet but the more we study the more we know when the more we can predict and when vaccinating how much higher is the risk of me taishan if someone's got the 1st dose but the seconds being delayed when when it comes to a 2 shot vaccine. you know we don't we don't really know i mean i think that the

more army and system vets it down early the less chance it has to change and so so you know the best thing we can do is to prevent the best thing we can do is to prevent infections and and to sort of shore up so that our infection doesn't go to anybody else so they are but those are kind of the things where they firmly insist about sit down or quarantine well and that new area doesn't go and go anywhere and that's the best and we can do participate he from harvard thank you very much for being on the show today thank you. let me hand you over now to our science correspondent rick williams he's got answers to your questions on the corona virus. if i get vaccinated it's if they had a chance i could still get infected and fact as. yes to the 1st and we don't know yet to the 2nd we'll have

a much better idea about the dangers of both issues in a few months when when vaccination numbers really climb in a serious way worldwide i think the confusion about this topic is closely tied to how we use the words infected and infectious let's look at the word infected 1st it's used in 2 different ways in that strict sense it just means carrying a pathogen that causes a disease but it's often also used to describe symptomatically having the disease and then after exposure to this pathogen you can theoretically be both or just one you can carry source code to and have symptoms but you can also carry it and not have symptoms maybe even after you've been vaccinated get back to that in

a minute. but 1st let's look at the word infectious it means the virus is reproducing in your body whether you notice it or not and that you're shedding enough of it to pass it on to others we don't yet know if this is possible even after you've received the vaccine because all the trials showed that x. unaided people later very rarely developed symptoms of covert 19 those trials were set up to show whether they also acquired what's called a sterilising immunity that's when you're. human response after vaccination wipes out any subsequent exposures so fast the pathogen never again is a foothold in your body effectively ruling you out as a link and infection check them but right now we still don't know if you could theoretically get infected after vaccination just show no symptoms yet still give

it to others we'll have a better idea when we see whether large scale vaccine campaigns affect numbers of new infections quickly and dramatically. thanks for watching have a nice weekend also you get sick. this dolphin doing. what is this polar bear feeling right now unfortunately we can't just ask on. board so how can you measure animal wellbeing. researchers are developing methods to find out when our animals doing well.

tomorrow to doing. next d.w. . allow ourselves to. live on clay. and here's. green thinking the world in a more poetic way. p.r.t. . exclusive interview with scientists and. 20. 30. 0 boy all all all. new. movements are coming to an end. but gigantic coincidence. that janet previously the earth was just in

a messy chemistry lab about mission. to learn the impossible but. to lose touch with the creation of our solar system with our planet is a bit like winning the lottery there is a little. money's worth. starts feb 11th on t.w. . does this little guy want to tell us something. it's no wonder that we tend to humanize animals especially pets but we have a lot in common with other animals too. to separate fish for example. all round worms they will scientists call model organisms non-human species that are studied in the lab to help understand biological processes in humans.

welcome to tomorrow today the science show on d w. just supplement on a guest commonly known as the fruit fly is another model organism it's small reproduces at a very rapid rate and roughly 60 percent of its genes can also be found in humans. and there's another similarity just like people fruit flies have a security and rhythm and internal biological clock that read. dates this cycle of rest and activity. name the common fruit fly result follow gaster. habitats moist deciduous forests and shallow to fosters laboratory at southern germany's

university of routes book the researchers goal to uncover the fruit fly in secret they have an internal clock in their brains. the scientists here in bavaria want to find out just how this internal clock ticks. the. first child out of 1st to use this carbon dioxide to knock out the fruit flies. in the test tubes are normal fruit flies with an internal clock and other genetically modified specimens whose internal clocks have been removed by researchers. are there any differences the scientists look for them in a dark room for external stimuli such as light can be shut out.

of the normal thread flies do indeed have a circadian rhythm with light or without the always awake and at the same time. butterflies without an internal clock have no rhythm they're awake for 5 minutes then go to sleep for 5 minutes whether night for james. the researcher now wants to find out how this internal clock is structured by rendering it visible within the brain. a journey through the mind of a fruit fly. the bright green dots are the internal clock cells. entire networks and both brain hemispheres. here in pink

dictate the rhythm they are connected and they communicate with each other. and if i didn't feel we can learn from fruit flies because their brain works very much like our own. the big difference is that its structure is a bit simpler the internal clock for instance has just 150 cells whereas in humans it's 50000 so that's why we can take the internal clock apart more easily and also understand it in the fly and that's the m. . you know that's it's. the next step experiments on live specimens. for this the fruit fly is fixed into place and its brain exposed. the fly is still alive and its brain remains intact.

here the internal clock cells in green are busy at work and they set the pace or issue commands such as time to get up for fly or fall asleep. mike what do the cells in our lives look like to find out researchers have plugged in individual cells an electrode on the left a cell on the right. this is what an active clock cell sounds like it fires off its commands. the internal clock determines the client's workaday the scientists want to find out when the insects have their meals for instance. on the menu sugar water dispensed by a thin syringes. the outcome in fast

forward the syringe is empty out fastest in the morning their most important meal the flies seem to love. big breakfast. morning in general is their active period also when it comes to hatching. these pupae see no daylight and are blind to the red safelight under which the scientists perform their experiments. and yet they always had in the morning as the time lapse photography shows. and it makes sense. but had to flee the don't fly has to hold their head of itself once it's hatched during the daytime it can look for food it can look for a partner it can mate and they can lay eggs it's better if they hatch in the morning and some accomplish the most could be that will get eaten by

a spider from if they were to hatch in the evening they have the night ahead of them during which they can't do anything at all it's much better for them to do it in the morning. the fruit flies internal clock a crucial metronome for daily life. not only do people live by a schedule so do fruit flies. and so do other animals and while most of them sleep they don't all need the same amount. lions can sleep up to 20 hours a day. while giraffes only nod off for about 2. and migratory birds only nap for a few minutes mid-flight they sleep with only one hemisphere of the brain at a time allowing them to keep one eye open to watch out for potential threats it's the same with a whale only one half of its brain rests while the other half remains alert.

there's still a lot to learn about animals and sleep scientists aren't even sure it's something that all species do but they do know that all creatures enjoy a state of rest. but what about the way animals behave in their waking hours zoos are a good place to observe animals even if they're not quite the same as their counterparts in the wild zoos are often criticised for keeping animals in captivity but the best zoos actually ensure the survival of endangered species. and these days many conduct research into ways of keeping animals healthy and happy. this sue in southern germany wants to find out as much as possible about its animals the polar bears even help with the data collection. that are coming here

called the no come here that's right there years on come on come here come here. it's fantastic that's the no no no no mark today we want to save your poor again and now i'd like to think you've made your poor yeah it's great lovely. just several times a week all kinds of things further is very important because we can analyze the his . for example when we have the opportunity to get a horse as you can see then you can also shave off the fur to reach a vein. because if we get access to a blood vessel then we can take blood and do a blood test. we feel. today the norberg zookeepers shaving the polar

bear it's for will be analyzed to gauge its stress levels all says that have what's called protective contact with their animals train the creatures for medical diagnostic purposes here the testing is particularly painstaking. next year. i'm going to keep is to do this job out of love interest and enthusiasm for the animals. we're more than happy to help if scientists are able to prove the animals are healthy and well that this is a system and isn't just based on what we feel. it's hard not to treat the animals like humans. and if i mention if research is come and say we've developed parameters that can help us to gauge with the animals are stressed or ill then we're glad to help with the training routine to it's fun.

this is the 1st collect animal excrement as well as for laboratory testing it indicates how stressed the polar bear was a day earlier. so all of just on the hind has developed a special procedure to find out how the polar bears in this in our fairing. over a period of 3 years she measured the levels of the stress hormone cortisol a metabolic product in samples of excrement from 6 polar bears. that come out. here you can see very clearly. here where the red arrow is that there was a steep rise in courts as a lot of. this was when the post about was transported from one zoo to another nason times after his arrival the levels return to a base level relatively quickly when the green arrows indicate days on which the polar bear was shaved. as of this post has been trained to have

a 1st. come out and you can see it here that there was no steep rise in cortisol in contrast to the mean much quite common in fact sometimes. for us humans as well as for the animals ok janelle stress is completely natural but chronic stress can be dangerous. the research so far indicates that none of this is polar bears are suffering from chronic stress. but how much can an animal stress profile really tell us. as this is what than also the data is only meaningful when it's combined with other parameters for example behavioral observation and of course the veterinary element what kind of physical shape is the animal and how fit is that for the whole picture you have to look at these factors together. because i'm the harris revealed signs of stress over longer periods than excrement but not

much is really known about polar bear here so the researchers are currently refining the assessment procedure. the dolphins the nuremberg zoos a step further it's currently developing a procedure with more than 28 different parameters that help to measure animal wellbeing to magically the animals appearance is also taken into account. just as it should be no dent behind the head. or often and there isn't a reamer around the years making them then dealing with an inverter. 9 seats are getting really good. effect on that often dock 198 we have to check that again we will look in a minute. and do another way off the experts are collecting data designed to be as objective as possible. you can send up to me followed by journeys straight

after every single animal is checked regularly and a list of measurements is carefully worked through the aim is to reflect each creature's condition as precisely as possible. the data she even turns in decent tool is this really contains every indicator every aspect that we think needs to be assessed. then we corroborate the information so that it can be objectively evaluated. the idea is that we proceed objectively step by step assessing the state of health the behavior but also the emotional status of an animal that. would see owns stop us and that's really something relatively new that we don't like to evaluate that nuremberg is working together with 12 other european zoos that are all conducting the same tests. data is being gathered on more than 100 different dolphins. at regular check ups the animals are waiting and their eyes are

examined. i know abnormality that. the researchers also regularly document any new scratches and compare them with previous checkouts. these rake marks as they're called reveal quite a bit about it dolphins while being. consistent but isn't right mark you really need to take a close look at these right box is. there quite a lot of them or not at all both can be indicators of social behavior. dolphins are highly sociable animals and interactions are natural whether they have positive or sometimes negative ideas right mach's are very telling if an animal never has new scratches this can show that it's not part of the group it's isolated.

position in the world we're going to have an animal has lots of new scratches week after week of amongst then that shows that something isn't quite right within the group social structure or that the creature hasn't found its place in the group but on the. healthy behavior social interactions every single piece of information is fed into the new program to help the researchers gain as clear a picture as possible about the dolphins well being. then i believe that we have the responsibility to do everything possible to make sure that the animals kept in zoos thrive and if science can keep on providing us with new data this can help us improve the conditions they're being kept in but we should also use it to check whether our animals are well or not. the researchers hope to be able to assess wild animals with the same tools that would indicate for

example how well they're coping with increasing pressure on their natural habitats . i think it really is at the zoo in nuremberg sesame seem pretty contained especially since the recent arrival of a new baby. the similarities between apes and humans are pretty striking. a deal in guyana sent in a question about that. how closely related are we humans and chimpanzees. very closely some 98.5 percent of our d.n.a. base pairs are identical based on average findings from a range of analytical methods. and our genetic match with gorillas

is just one quarter of a percentage point less than that. orangutan has branched off from our common family tree other 2 earlier but they still share 1007 percent of their d.n.a. with us so how do we explain the huge difference between humans and apes. some primates can scale trees in the rain forest. while another species exploits other planets. the human genome contains some 3000000000 base pairs of which just 40000000 differ from those of chimpanzees but this vital difference means that certain proteins in apes have other structures and possibly other functions in the body. but for all the differences there are also many similarities using tools to eat food for example. chimpanzees use twigs to pry

delicious ants from their nests. and chimps are emotional creatures researchers have even found similarities in the sound of their laughter and ours. they understand symbols and can learn for example which one beats the other in a game of rock paper scissors. but chimpanzees will probably never be able to build computers although then again neither can most of us the famous primatologist jane goodall urges us to use our supposedly. superior intelligence to start protecting the habitats of our primate cousins and the planet as a whole. do animals exercise to find out the answer scientists set up the hamsters wheel in a forest. and sure enough a fair few critters showed up to enjoy a free workout. including

a slug though it's turned on the wheel may not have been intentional. we humans know it's healthy to exercise and work up a sweat is less well known is that because spy ring has evolutionary benefits. but. solutions the sweat is flowing. to foreign leaders are no more that's a lot but it makes good sense from an evolutionary perspective the ability to sweat has been a huge advantage. because. many animals can outrun a human but at some point they have to stop so they don't overheat that's because they can't sweat. whether hunting or playing homosapiens doesn't need to take a break for that reason sweating cools him while running. this is how the body's

own conditioner work. the brain constantly measures body temperature if it rises too high the brain sends a signal to the sweat glands in the floodgates and. as this went evaporates it draws heat out of the body and its temperature goes down the kind of sweat glands that help control temperatures are called. there are 2 to 3000000 of them over the body what they secrete consists of water salts amino acids and here but there's more to sweating than meets the eye. you mentioned. we humans have 2 different kinds of sweat gland. the other color into the upper cream glands spring into action when we are subjected to intense mental stress is a myth and this is developed over the course of evolution as a means of normal verbal communication and it is way to exchange information

without talking. that's why we sweat when we're under pressure it not only cools the body in preparation for maybe having to flee that a cold sweat of fear also warns those around you. glands developed during puberty. consists of water salts proteins and compounds with the signaling function. it was a way to warn others of an approaching danger without having to shout or scream this evolved when we were still apes we could warn each other without making any noise is. going to move for our ancestors it was probably vital for survival nowadays our inner cave man

comes out at the most inopportune moments. for example if you're nervous your hands and feet might very sweaty. or perhaps was an evolutionary advantage reading your body for flight moist hands and feet can have better traction when climbing or running. is a body care products invest lots of money and effort in trying to keep our hands and our pits both dry and fragrant. with very. deodorant supply to their armpits sit in a sauna and sweat into absorbent pads. specially trained sniffers that determine which deodorant is most effective. sweat doesn't smell when it's fresh. but our kids are home to lots of bacteria and it's the bacteria that trigger the release of odorous compounds. every person has their own special

bouquet of sense. does fix it for you but they range from. overpowering to sweet so this is there's a broad spectrum of aromas to go which an immense way there tend to be more steroids they smell musky more like a wild boar. and women sweat is more oniony or goat like that's because it contains more short chain fatty acids. deodorants target the bacteria antibacterial substances kill them and perseverance in the glance when production and perfume instict cover up any residual odor that's considered unpleasant. only sweat caused by stress is smelly. cooling sweat doesn't have any set but it does help to spread

whatever sense you do in it. does he listen there's a reason that we no longer have much use in everyday life for this evolutionary inheritance this means of non-verbal communication with it's still academic research by psychologists has determined that fear based sweat still has an impact on others to this very day. why is that sensual to me and. if we do smell bad and the deliberate fails to disguise the pungent aroma then it's time for some soap and water to dissipate the traces of a caveman fear. if al gore does read write our great item even if it. did you have a science question you'd like us to answer. the same way if we featured on the show you'll get a little surprise from us as a thank you. come on just ask. for

more science stories check out our website d.w. dot com slash science or look for us some twitter. that's all for now thanks for joining us on tomorrow today. we'll be back next week with more fascinating stories from the world of science and technology until then by.

the for. now i substitute. live on class. and here's spiderwebs. thinking the world in a more poetic way. p.r. to. lose an interview.

coming up. in a world filled with beautiful images tall differs have to work hard to stand out. to find the special place. in a compromise. the perfect moment. or just have some pretty crazy ideas by the way this camera was made of cheese nearly. 13. why are people forced to hide in trucks or.

mugs. there are many museums such as mum there are many cancers. and there are many stories. of. make up your own. mother. w. made for mines. it's about billions. it's about power. it's about the foundation of a new world order the new silk road. china wants to expand its influence with this trade network. but in europe there's

a shot of the morning when for exception money from the new superpower will become defendant to the commitment of the state to the chinese state has a lot of money at its disposal the fiscal and that's how the spending asserting its status and position in the world of. china's gateway to europe. starts feb 19th on d w. this is news and these are a top stories germany is imposing a travel ban on countries most affected by new coronavirus ferrets the measure comes into effect on saturday and move remain until at least mid favor the end says they've restrictions on necessary to prevent a surge in.