Subtitles section Play video
-
Could mutant mosquitoes stop the dangerous Zika virus?
-
Hi. I’m Carl Azuz, and that’s what’s first up on our show today.
-
Zika, as we’ve told you, can dramatically harm the unborn babies of pregnant women.
-
But mosquitoes also carry malaria, yellow fewer, West Nile virus.
-
The insects are responsible for more human deaths than any other animal on the planet.
-
And so far, people have been unsuccessful in exterminating them long term.
-
Now, scientists are considering waging biological and genetic warfare against mosquitoes.
-
One option would infect them with bacteria that would stop the growth of viruses,
-
like Zika, inside mosquitoes.
-
Another would use gamma radiation to sterilize male mosquitoes
-
to keep them from reproducing with females.
-
A third possibility: genetically modified male mosquitoes to pass a deadly gene to wild female mosquitoes.
-
Critics say all of these ideas have major problems.
-
They're expensive. They’re not proven to work.
-
There are concerns about how they’d impact the environment, or the people living in it.
-
An environmentalist with Emory University says
-
it’s possible these methods could become useful tools,
-
though not a silver bullet in fighting off man’s deadliest enemy.
-
Call them stargazers, sun seekers, say the moonlights in their eyes.
-
Thousands of people in the Pacific island nation of Indonesia
-
looked up Wednesday morning to view a total solar eclipse.
-
This is when the moon moves directly between the earth and the sun.
-
The best view was on the Indonesian island of Sumatra,
-
but the event was partially visible from Hawaii to Malaysia to Australia.
-
The next total solar eclipse is expected on August 21st of next year,
-
and would be visible in a narrow part of the U.S.
-
Watching as the moon blocks out the light from the sun,
-
it can be hard to imagine the amazing cosmic coincidence taking place.
-
The sun’s diameter is some 400 times larger than the moon’s,
-
but it’s just the right distance away to appear the same size.
-
For a couple of minutes when the sun and moon are perfectly aligned,
-
the moon completely covers the sun’s disc.
-
The sun’s atmosphere or corona can be seen in the dim light, along with stars and planets.
-
This so-called totality only exists in a narrow band,
-
where the moon’s shadow falls on the Earth.
-
Outside this zone, some observers can see a partial eclipse,
-
where it looks like a chunk has been taken out of the sun.
-
It’s not a phenomenon that will last forever.
-
The moon is slowly moving away from the Earth,
-
and one day, it will appear too small in the sky to cover the sun completely.
-
If you are lucky enough to see this incredible spectacle,
-
remember, never look directly at the sun, even with everyday sunglasses.
-
You risk causing permanent damage to your eyes.
-
You know why yesterday’s transcript page was awesome,
-
because it’s where we found these three schools for our "Roll Call".
-
We’re starting in Quezon City.
-
It’s in the island nation of the Philippines, and it’s where Far Eastern University is watching.
-
Next, to Platinum, Alaska, the miners are here today.
-
Hello to everyone at Arviq School.
-
And our third mention goes to Christian County High School. It’s in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
-
We’re saluting the Colonels.
-
Several parishes in the U.S. state of Louisiana are under a flash flood emergency.
-
As of yesterday morning, they’ve gotten between eight and fourteen inches of rain
-
in a short amount of time, with another three to five inches possible by this morning.
-
Dozens of homes were evacuated.
-
Part of Interstate 20 was shut down.
-
It’s because of a slow-moving storm system that’s soaking areas in nine states, from Texas to Illinois.
-
When severe weather strikes, the leading cause of death isn’t tornadoes or hurricanes.
-
It’s flooding. And drivers are in serious danger.
-
Anytime we have major flooding events, very heavy rainfall,
-
unfortunately, the images are all too common of cars being swept right off the road,
-
many times, the drivers still inside and water rescues taking place.
-
It only takes a little bit of water to carry your car off the road.
-
In fact, six inches of water will sweep you, me off of our feet.
-
One foot of water will float your car
-
and it only takes two feet of water to completely wash your car away.
-
That’s why we say it’s so important to turn around, don’t drown.
-
You don’t know how much water is there.
-
Do not drive through it, cause it could be deadly.
-
On the eastern coast of mainland Japan, there are ghost towns,
-
contaminated by radiation.
-
Some of the houses clearly show the damage of the earthquake that struck five years ago,
-
on March 11th.
-
Some were entirely swept away by the tsunami,
-
the wall of water that washed in from the Pacific afterward.
-
Tomorrow, on the actual anniversary, we’re taking you inside one of these abandoned towns.
-
Today, an overview from a drone.
-
Five years after Japan’s tsunami.
-
The town of Namie remains desolate.
-
Houses were swept away by a 15-meter wave,
-
triggered by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake.
-
Almost 20,000 people died or disappeared.
-
But the wave wasn’t the worst of it.
-
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant went into meltdown,
-
vital cooling systems failed
-
Radiation leaked into the surrounding area.
-
Food was no longer safe.
-
Water undrinkable.
-
Contaminated soil now sits in thousands
-
and thousands of plastic bags.
-
No one lives in the town of Futaba anymore.
-
Damaged houses remain abandoned.
-
Former residents can only visit for up to 5 hours.
-
There is a 20 kilometer exclusion zone.
-
Thousands still live in temporary housing five years on.
-
Many fear they will never leave.
-
Maybe you’d have to compete against a brother or a sister before,
-
maybe you’ve just helped yours trained.
-
The Brownlee brothers are living that to the extreme.
-
For one thing, they’re triathletes, competitors in an excruciating test of endurance.
-
For another, they took home gold and bronze medals in their sport in the last Olympics,
-
the first time brothers stood on a podium together in an individual sport since 1908.
-
My name is Jonny Brownlee. I won bronze in the London 2012 Olympic Games.
-
My name is Alistair Brownlee. I’m the current Olympic and Commonwealth champion.
-
Triathlon is a sport where you do three sports, obviously.
-
You swim first. You then bike. And then you run.
-
You have to change your equipment along the way and that’s all kind of part of the race.
-
Everything we did, from running around in the garden,
-
laying badminton or football or cricket, everything we did, probably even doing the tidying up.
-
I think our parents taught us to be in outdoors.
-
The fact when you go outside, you can explore new roads.
-
Even now, you find new roads.
-
Just loving being outside, I mean that could
-
Each of us wants to win, and there’s only one person that can win.
-
But when we actually start a race, I've got a feeling that it’s a kind of us as a little team against everyone else.
-
It’s team tactic that we’re both doing our kind of aims jointly,
-
but it’s not like one sacrifices their performance to live another day.
-
We’re very, very competitive and we both want to win.
-
But we know that if we help each other for the swim and the bike and even parts of the run,
-
that’s our best chance of getting a good result.
-
But once it comes down to the last part of the run, you know,
-
all those bets are off and we’re just racing to win basically.
-
Not far from Hawaii, a remotely operated underwater vehicle
-
was recently more than two miles under the sea when it cruised up to this,
-
a type of octopus never seen before and a type that’s never been observed this deep.
-
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says
-
this animal doesn’t have the type of pigment most other cephalopods have,
-
which gives it a ghost-like appearance.
-
So, there’s an online push to get it named "Casper" because -- awesome.
-
Of course, there’s no way to know if it’s friendly.
-
It could be eight-arm the dangerous, that question could haunt scientists for a while.
-
But as far as characteristic goes, there’s no question it’s deep.
-
We’ll never know if it pigment to be discovered. I’m Carl Azuz, plumbing the deeps of puns.