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tv   Tomorrow Today  Deutsche Welle  March 28, 2022 9:30am-10:00am CEST

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with there another way. after all, the environment isn't to recyclable. make up your own mind. d. w. made for mines. ah, the joys of spring are highly visible in the animal kingdoms, rights and rituals of courtship displays of prowess and flirtation, moving and pursuit of the ultimate pleasure, mating. yes, even animals can have sex without offspring. thanks to contraception. that's just one of our topics this week. mm hm. ah, hello and welcome to tomorrow to day d. w. science magazine.
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with the rise of spring time can also be seen in zoos. these red pandas still haven't connected yet. and these male, blue backed mannequins are going all out to win over a female. but if all the animals here were to fulfill their natural desires, wazoo would soon become very crowded. the answer is contraception for the males. this is leopold as a responsible bush pig. he takes the pill. this guy could also use it. or this guy, male birth control has been around for quite a while now for animals. but it would also work for humans in a similar way. contraceptives are already being used in zoos with mammals are
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closest relatives in the animal world. thanks. hormones looked exactly the same and all mammals, testosterone, for example, produces horns and one species, facial hair, and another, or a sexually attractive body odor. but in all cases, the hormone is required for sperm production, without which there'd be no babies. oh, you just can't get enough of them. right. that said here in munich, helen quanzhou. there is room for new babies, but not so much that the animals can reproduce as often as they would and the wild veterinarian doctor. humph. pito steinmetz is in charge of contraception, which obviously varies depending on the sex of the animal. in question. in the case of the male bush pigs, he uses hormonal contraception. that means putting lamp hold on the pill,
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except it's not a pill, but an injection. by dimensional pains. last line with a male bush peaks. you can't just go and give the animal's a shot at a loss will fall. bryson and we have to administer it with a blow gun device. it's repeated at regular intervals as a booster vaccination. that's in it's why fi more? every 2 or 3 months, you're home most to illustrate how the vaccine works. and importantly, whether it would also be effective with a human male. let's look at how sperm production and mammals basically works. imagine a man is a multi story building with the production department on the ground floor. sperm is produced down here in the testicles, along with most of the testosterone to operations are run up top in the brain
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via the hypothalamus. and right next to it, the pituitary gland. the hypothalamus is essentially the boss starting out production and releasing the g n r h hormone. the g n. r, and struggle to pituitary gland to produce 2 additional hormones, l h and f as h f s h is responsible for the sperm production line and l age for testosterone production. and while sperm cells are being turned out to stops, drones swarms out across the man's body, resulting in a little body, hair growth here, and a bit of muscle mass there before returning to the hypothalamus. with that message then operations are now up and running. the boss puts the brakes on g n r h production. but once testosterone is no longer flowing, the order comes for production to start back up again. the whole system is called the hormone feedback loop. and for contraception that loop has to be interrupted
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for leopold that happens by a remote injection using a blow gun and a kind of vaccination. in this case, the bush pigs own immune cells are used to interrupt the hormone loop. they've been programmed to block the g n r h messenger halting production. and that means no more g n are h, no l h or f s age, no sperm, and no testosterone either. leopold has all the features of a male bush pig, the tusks, the masculine jaw, but very small testicles, no libido and no sexy sent. although he does seem of pretty content little pig the same
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whole contraception, not a bad idea for disease carrying mosquitoes. some research has already been done on it. it's not needed for the many homeless mosquitoes. they by the st. just is that a female and nothing's mosquito can carry malaria. parasites that infect the host it feeds on to scientists are looking at ways to prevent malaria infection. scientists, sylvia port to ground is researching the parasite. plasmodium fancy power m, which the mosquito transmit wanted bite and which can develop into malaria. when parasites dangerous is that they grow inside your at bell south in and in your blood and they multiply. so each paras, i think within 48 hours, gives rise to $16.00 to $32.00, a nuance and, and they, they growing numbers they,
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and they binds to all the lining of the blood vessels rights. and in very small vessels that can block circulation. and these can cause a severe problems mostly in children's causes, a thing called a cerebral m malaria. dr. portugal i learned that the malaria parasite can stay dormant, the body for around 6 months without the person getting sick and inside that can help in finding the disease. vaccine would be helpful, i see very limited possibilities as with what we have right now for an efficient vaccine against malaria. but we, we've seen in many countries that just development of good hospitals, access to treatment for access to health, actually brings numbers tremendously bound. and also, mosquito vector control,
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the current vaccines still does not offer sufficient protection, access to medical care and many regions with malaria is not sufficient. either. mosquito netting treated with insecticide still seems to be the most effective protection again the disease. but the mosquitoes are developing an immunity to these poisons. therefore, further insights into fighting bavaria are still needed. russian scientist yelling oliver china isn't researching the pathogen itself, but rather the ona police mosquito that carries the malaria. she learned that not every kind of mosquito transmits the disease. based on this insight, researchers are now looking for more targeted solutions. the know about the 3 contract unless ghetto, spacious, worldwide. so it's really a, quite the number of different species and many of them are complex of species. so
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they are inside. there are still subspecies. so for the same species and out of nose, i would say around 30, it's believe globally, again, they're on the world of those which can transmits, right? and so the numbers are alia. thank of. and then in the particular area will be a one to really they the, the most efficient of actus one method scientists are working on is called gene dr . technology. the mosquitoes are genetically modified, so they either become sterile or no longer are able to absorb the malaria pathogen . this means they can no longer transmit the disease. this technology can be used to very, ah, let's say a specific way. and the, and there are many tools now which will be developing now to contain it. so you could basically stop spreading off with insects. and of course,
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you don't want to pull you to the world with new spacious or something genetically modified without really being sure of that. of this a safe promising research approaches to stop the transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans. but there's still a of work to be done before the bloodsuckers finally become plug. little less scary vaccination against malaria already exists with more in the research pipeline. like some cove at vaccinations, one min area vaccine is based on m r in a technology m renee is constantly being created in the nucleus of every cell. it's full name is messenger rival nucleic acid. after it has copy genetic information, the m r n a leaves the nucleus and it's called the blueprint, tells the cell to make a required protein. it's quite literally the genomes messenger. before the pandemic,
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hardy, anyone had even heard the name a marion a so what's behind its sudden overwhelming success? ah mathias hansa has been researching m r. n a for decades. he leads the european molecular biology, laboratory, m, heidelberg. it's new to him that so many are interested in his research. bell swung by giving out and out about m r and a at a dinner table. conversation is something that never happened before the pandemic. up on the new, evolve mr. game, m r n a. serves an important function in the body. because it's mo bile, it can transport blueprints. these blueprints are saved on the equivalent of hard drives and our body specifically, and the dna on the chromosomes. they stayed there undisturbed. to build proteins, genetic information must be translated m r n
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a contains the same information, but is more immobile. it's the way the blueprints are transported. it leaves the nucleus and brings the information to the ribozymes. this is where the m r. any is read all the possible protein combinations can now be billed from the generic specifications transmitted the body needs them for pretty much all of its processes. m r n a was long neglected by researchers. chemically. it's not much different than dna. however, it's more stable and therefore easier to handle. the scrub, he muttered earlier, there were exciting findings about dna and are in a was a bit of a late comer. but that late comers really caught up in the last few years, the light of boyhood. still some people believed in the application of m r n. a
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early on, one was in my her while doing his ph. d here in tubing. and he discovered that he could bring m renee and all its information into cells without any special packaging. at 1st he thought he'd made a mistake and have them mother you can then very carefully, i repeated, everything's about documenting, controlling at all. exactly. and got the same results. all. so then there was this eureka moment. really. when i thought the club, my god, if this actually works, it'll be revolutionary roots young. with his colleagues, her later found at the company cure evac pcs. great advantages and the medical application of m r. renee them on. yes. and i'm on the modifying other vaccines requires a lot of animal testing to see how well it works with renee and i just have to modify the sequence the order of the letters if you will holler back and you can
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talk to the body and just know that, that's the vision, and it's the same production process, whether you're developing an arna for polio or for corona, but it's the same in terms of production. when researchers know the genetic sequence of a protein, they're now able to derive that corresponding m, r n a. it's produced artificially packaged and introduced into the body, which then build the desired protein all by itself. that's also the principle behind m. r n a cove. it vaccines. the body gets the blue prince for viral spine proteins and uses them to train the immune system. but there was a problem at 1st because when m r n a moves about freely, our bodies view it as a foreign substance and sound the alarm cut to lean county co together with her calling. drew weisman, solve this problem. they used to trick and modified the m r. any so the body no
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longer attacked it. finding the change that would produce that effect was the case of trial and error. and it was, you know, caught, coming down from, wanted a different modification and you are just expecting that finally you have 3, maybe at least one of those, you know, which is not the mother. jenny can logo for all day and he's made of so that's what we found. that was the breakthrough. still, it took decades of research to enable the development of an m r. n. a cove at vaccine and record time in 20. 20. had the pandemic occurred a decade earlier, this would not have been possible mateus, hence it has great hopes for this new type of vaccine. the 1st and this is an obviously m r n a as new law as minus eastern when i consider that a positive a positive and sinner. and it's true that messenger r renee is very unstable in fabulous the highest i. what that means is it enters
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the cells, does its job, and then breaks down and disappears housing the nist existence. so the coven, 19 vaccines are very likely only the beginning for m. r. n a technology? ah, so an m r in a vaccination doesn't alter gene. but there are effects on the way to alter the genes of some living creatures to produce ingredients for medication. guts are especially interesting to they can produce a substance that prevents from bases o blood class. gates that make medicine for humans. there's one situation where a solitary goat can beat 90000 people. producing andy from ben
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doesn't ring a bell. then let's start from the beginning. researchers have been using the option of introducing foreign genes into organisms in the hope of producing medicine. diabetics have to regularly inject insulin for a long time. doctor's obtained supplies of the hormone from the pancreas is of pigs, but supplying the world's diabetics will require the insulin from one and a half 1000000000 sluggard, pigs per year, which exceeds the global population. in the late 19 seventies researchers began producing the gene responsible for insulin artificially when it was introduced to equal i bacteria. they began producing intellect. ah, am depressing the bacteria. researchers were able to isolate the insulin to the relief of animal loving diabetics. many other drugs are developed in this way
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produced by genetically modified bacteria. but the method also has its limitations . the bacterial cells then also modified the desired substances. the end result is not always ideal for humans because our cells also processed substances exempt in a completely different way than the bacteria do. one solution to this problem is to use organisms that are more closely related to us, such as plants, despite the superficial differences, their cells convert the active ingredients in a similar way to ours, which is why they're often better tolerated by humans. right now, researchers are experimenting on tobacco plans to see if they can produce a vaccine to fight cobit 19. and in addition to plants, certain animals are also a potential source of solutions. researchers were able to engineer a goat with
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a gene that's responsible for the production of anti thrombin 3, which inhibits blood clotting. but it's not produced in sufficient quantities by some people in certain situations. after surgery, for example, it then has to be administered. anti from 3 can be obtained from the blood of healthy people, all be it only in small amounts. and this is where the goats come into play. the anti thrombin gene was placed in them in such a way that the desired active ingredient appears. me animals, milk, one leader yields 10 grams of anti from bin 3 over an entire year. that means a single go produces as much as the blood of $90000.00 humans were. so goats are a major life, so we'll know what comes out of an a death. and what comes out of the back end of grazing animals is something completely different
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. but it isn't just ways go, sheep and cattle droppings are important for the ecosystem islands of life to pull insects and animals, one and average cow patty, ways to elosa measures 30 centimeters and diameter is 2 centimeters, thick. old. each animal unloads at least 10 of them on the pasture a day. they are excellent fertilizers, wherever one lands it stimulates growth, creating a clump of grass. but count patties are much more than fertilizer and one wild meadow in the town by geese and nature reserve near fryeburg insect expert jo ann, buddha and biologist. how but nichol are searching for fresh dung. here we have a fairly old patty. mike, you can tell the surface of the party is dried out and has
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a relatively thick crushed what we are already able to see. the 1st larval stage is developing inside. you can see that here, fly larvae like that, that grows in the dung is in turn food for other insects. if we mainly find these bugs inside amazon here, for example, we have a clown beetle on, it's relatively small, but there are significantly larger species. 2 of these are purely predatory english . they have a very large mouths, similar to a butcher's cutting machine limit with which they dropped larvae into small pieces and then eat them. this is a very complex food. web cow patties are little islands of life. the dung provides food and shelter for thousands of creatures. the colonization of a patty starts after a couple of seconds of his existence already with the arrival of dung flies that want to lay their eggs and the warm patties. so in the 1st dung beetle appear,
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they did passageways for their offspring. these in turn are pray for spiders and predatory bunks. 2 weeks later the earth worms arrive soon the patties themselves will disappear and their environs there is always lots of life. birds and other meadow inhabitants, such as lizards come to help themselves to the insects. don't don't care bugs o predatory beetles whole birds and then birds of prey has been thus those represent 5 tropic levels as i didn't know what a patty generates has huge functional complexity. one's a lot. and if the patties weren't there window, if the cows stayed in the should, then we would lose elements of the landscape. room. one grazing cow produces up to one ton of dung per month. that generates 20 kilograms of insects, which can feed 10 kilograms of birds. 3 storks, for example. or 30 starlings for this
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equation to work out natural farming is required. like and tell bargenson. mm hm. mm hm. ah, here 40 animals live on 70, hector is a forest, and 30 heck dares of pasture. it's never mowed her today, habit nichol wants to take stock of who was living on this pasture with a modified leaf blower, he vacuums up a sample and finds over a 100 different species. it isn't
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open this sample. there are often cicadas and bugs as intervals. there are also beatles and very often a spider left you with everything that jumps around above ground behind you look inside and you can't imagine it. you can no longer find that kind of diversity in a normal meadow, but there is a normal cow pasture near by. the meadows of this operation were recently mode. the biologist takes another sample for comparison. and he can't even find a dozen species as if you really are far fewer kinds. exactly. it's a disaster for and seconds and birds. there's almost nothing left. and what about the col, patti's themself? many animals in this pastor are given medication to ward off parasites, which affects the done of his ini. financing. i don't see a single beetle. i don't see any beetle holes below. no creatures at all. welcome
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back to the wild meadows and the nature reserve. habit. nichol believes we could easily preserve that's wonderful. realm of flora and fauna. men dodged on frank. it's just 5 percent of germany. as pastors were wild vows, more extensive all season and past year lease must insect life would get a massive grooves. reflecting even on the smallest spaces like this one, we could double or triple biotech for city in terms of species and individual numbers within 2 or 3 years that i've seen it work here. is it? it tries to say, ah, none of that would have been possible without the humble cow patty. oh, more from the wonderful world of science, visit our website,
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or join us on twitter. that's all for now from tomorrow to date, those have been a science paragraph. please do join us again next week until then day curious. with
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the destruction of a nation you wrong. oh, if you remove a regime, something needs to be created in its place. otherwise, a vacuum is created and that is usually filled with nefarious voices. but of the rise of ins, evil approached the 4th part of our series in 75 on d. w. a man with the memories of
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a woman ah ali from syria is born in a female body, forced into marriage rate far from home. ali can finally become the person he's always wanted to be. i want this very badly. oh, in the 3 credits, and we'll go through with it. i was born in berlin. starts march 30th vaughan, v w. what does war do to people? are hatred and violence inherited from generation to generation and award winning documentary searches for answers for 2 years. the author accompanies us sell a fist family in northern syria with
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insights into the isolated world of radical islamists and into a spiral of violets without end with a film about family. faith, masculinity of fathers and sons starts april 16. 0 d w ah ah, ah
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ah, ah ah, this is dw news live from berlin. below to mirrors, lensky says he's willing to consider neutral status for ukraine. with a russian invasion in a 2nd month ukraine's president says negotiators are carefully studying the issue. a central one to russia, security demands at coda. when's the best picture award? if the oscars put it on stage slap stuns the audience? actor will smith unexpectedly hits chris rock in the face.

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