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Bird flu surges in Cambodia

There's a surge in cases and deaths from H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia - we hear what's the driver and how concerned we should be. Also, an interstellar visitor swings by.

There's a surge in cases and deaths from H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia - we hear what's the driver and how concerned we should be. Erik Karlsson, Head of Virology at the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh and director of the WHO鈥檚 H5 Reference Laboratory has been watching the uptick.

An interstellar interloper has been spotted entering our solar system. Most likely a comet, and possibly visible in the sky, it鈥檚 just the third such visitor we鈥檝e ever seen. Josep Trigo of Spain鈥檚 Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC) and the Catalan Institute for Space Studies is one of many astronomers keeping his eye out.

DNA from an ancient Egyptian buried in cave 2,500 BCE, the oldest to date, tell a tale of travelling ancestors, according to research led by Adeline Morez of Liverpool John Moore鈥檚 University and published in Nature.

Also, Corey Allard of Harvard university has been looking at a particular type of sea slug. Published in the journal Cell, the work has been trying to work out how these slugs effectively nurture and manage stolen chloroplasts 鈥 stolen from ingested plant cells - within their own bodies. Artfully, they may use these 鈥淜leptoplasts鈥 to dodge periods of food shortage.

Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Production Coordinator: Jazz George

Photo Credit: Institut Pasteur du Cambodge

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