The mysteries of the naked mole rat. Welcome to the show. If the camera where on the telly. Weve already seen them at the movies. That come out that tell each other what to do my humus animated action film. And vehicles that communicate via data sharing networks could soon be out on real room to prototypes are already being tested. To get some idea of how a road traffic could function in the future its worth taking a look at mars. Self driving vehicles have been navigating the planets wild surface for some time here. What works in space should also work on earth with the help of the mas rover comicon nissen is looking to solve one of the biggest problems facing autonomous driving. Under normal conditions of an Autonomous Vehicle operating autonomously they should be able to navigate intersections crosswalks all sorts of different settings obviously all that that we have mapped in are familiar with nonetheless there are going to be occasions that it doesnt counter obstacles or challenging situations that would cause it significant pas that it will need some Additional Support obstacles such as a construction site in the middle of the road how does an Autonomous Vehicle react when confronted with a gesticulating worker. Presented a solution of the twenty seventeen Consumer Electronics show in las vegas. And modern Communication System developed in conjunction with nasa. Its software that allows a human to understand what a remote system robot of a motor car is experiencing and to provide you know Solutions Provide some input to help get through a difficult situation this is how it works on mas. When the rover comes across an insurmountable obstacle it takes a picture of it which it transmits to Mission Control the crew back on earth gauges situation and provides the rover with a solution. This is how it works on. In the event an Autonomous College doesnt know what to do it comes to a complete halt examines the problem using various senses and transmits the collected data via mobile communications to a Traffic Control center. A Traffic Controller sends back a solution. And the vehicle can proceed. Human Traffic Controllers ensuring the flow of Autonomous Vehicle traffic has spent two years testing the system at a site in Silicon Valley its satisfied with the results. Because you have different operators and people in the loop they can very quickly propagate an understanding of what a situation was how to address and what to do to move to in the next instance in a real time fashion at scale so that we can get Autonomous Vehicles in a systemic way on the road sooner. More Autonomous Cars things to more human operators no drivers but driving advisors armies of Traffic Controllers helping self driving cars out of tight spots sounds absurd not to the experts. Say this is a concept that not only makes sense its absolutely vital that the system is introduced from the outset otherwise wed never get started ensuring autonomy vehicles can handle every possible road challenge would require decades of tests with a driver and thats not the point moreover the idea is that Autonomous Vehicles wont need help very often if are to the vehicle has to be able to handle ninety nine percent of all situations itself it would only require support about once a week in the city. Traffic controller would monitor several Autonomous Cars at once and each problem only needs to be solved once. Once a vehicle is being given a solution by a Traffic Controller transmits it to other robotic cars in the Vehicle System an ongoing learning process which keeps the traffic flowing. Vehicles that can communicate and receive supplementary signals are highly promising. But theres also a risk they could be hacked. A potentially frightening prospect. It probably makes sense that the vehicle is not always open to communication but personally i believe that it should be as autonomous as possible that means that the communication should be switched off in certain situations so that it system cant be accessed in other words it system is only open in the event that the vehicle comes to a stop and doesnt know how to proceed that reduces the risks. And whether on the surface of mars or down here on earth. Robotic vehicles have to be dependable if theyre to have any kind of a future. Well stay on facebook what do you fear most about self driving cars. Frederick nelson read that he worries about what would happen if the Software Malfunctions and people know what he wants to know who would be held responsible. Sean bell yes harakah and visions a scenario where people long for willfully cause the network to break down by running around with stop signs. Coming cormo wonders how a self driving car would behave if the time flew at a hundred kilometers an hour. But kennedy chim bass says we shouldnt focus on the disadvantages he thinks self driving cars will make our lives easier he calls them evolution. One thing that definitely needs to evolve is the home from the door from the one point two billion measure vehicles on the well groomed. And it to. Has out the pollution from the tailpipe is author with particular Health Hazard to people inside cars. Its a trip of around seventy kilometers from mark lucas home in frankfurt to his workplace in dom start one day you decided to measure the air inside his car looker is not just a commuter hes also a transportation researcher. If you look and. We have lots of data from cities where fixed measuring stations have been installed and in part we see alarmingly high values there. But what we realized quite soon was that drivers often get more exposure than the people who live in the cities. Are perhaps surprising result drivers breathing in more heavily polluted air than the residents on major thoroughfares but mark measurements have even more unpleasant surprises in store. The problem is ultra fine particular matter the microscopic airborne particles that enter the car through open windows or the ventilation system particulate matter and nitrogen oxides have long been seen as a problem on major urban thoroughfares where values are often higher than permitted but car interior is both thought to be ok even though studies in california a decade ago showed that some dangerous substances in car exhaust fumes could reach higher concentrations inside vehicles than on the road side those findings were largely ignored. Now mark lookers measurements point to an even bigger problem. The first time i went out on the very busy a five highway i saw values going up to more than ten times the levels in the cities where we usually did our measurements thats hard to hear more and i further measurements confirmed that the pollution is consistently highest on the highways with the most traffic. In those. Particular matter generally makes its way unhindered into the interior of the car the tiny particles are invisible to the naked eye by comparison the hair is between fifty and seventy microns in diameter find such particles often measure less than two and a half microns ultra fine particles can be as small as one hundredth of that size measuring between six and one hundred ninety meters and that makes them dangerous to human health these tiny structures have been linked to lung cancer they can get into the bloodstream and trigger a cardiovascular disease some studies suggest they might impede the efficiency of antibiotics and its believed that they make their way into the brain where theyre associated with a higher risk of dementia. So far the remarkably high levels on the german autobahn have not been studied in detail marked look and measure the highest concentrations directly in the lanes where the cars drive. But even here there are variations densely wooded stretches like this one are actually highly polluted the forest acts as a trap keeping the particles from being blown away this increases the levels of fine particulate matter on the road and. Scientists in the us have published a study examining the risk to frequent commuters who drive to work their findings tally with the observations made by the researches in darmstadt samples were taken during rush hour traffic on various stretches of road. Some busy others less so the results show that incar levels of fine particular matter a nitrogen oxides were around twice as high as roadside levels. The u. S. Research has of urged commuters to be aware of the risk but back in germany the scientists in darmstadt are among the few who have pursued the topic. Comical. Or more and more studies indicate that this is an acute issue the number of traffic deaths due to air pollution could be five to ten times higher than the number of deaths by accidents. Theres. Not much can be done to eliminate fine particulate smog inside cars but when he reaches the more heavily affected woodland stretches on his way to work mark look it turns on the recycle ation that setting shuts off the air flow from outside and circulates the air already inside that lowers the levels of particulates for a while. But the setting cant be kept on for too long at some point the oxygen inside the car will be used up. In the long term the only solution to the problem will be to reduce the amount of particulate matter and other pollutants coming out of the exhaust pipe. So how to reduce emissions and fine particulate matter its a major challenge for scientists. And theyre working on a host of different approaches. He is gone that sounds promising. It could clean up the air in cities and beautified them as well. When. Green replaces great and skyscrapers start to look like vertical forests. He takes an urban planners have realized that these living walls are a way of making cities look a lot more attractive. Singapore is just one example. And green walls on just nice to look at they also have environmental benefits exactly what they are is the focus of hobarts research he and his project partners test the walls and figure out which plants are best suited to them. What we see here are sensor no thats they contain measuring units. This year is a small window theres a u. V. Sensor beneath it and behind it are two little permeable grates that allow air to reach the sensor with them we measure Temperature Humidity and air pressure. The cables run through the vertical garden and into its immediate surroundings. The collected data is fed into a mobile measuring unit it shows to what extent greenery alters the surrounding microclimate so. This is what we call the cockpit and the wall the data were seeing here was collected at a point when the walls temperature was significantly lower than the immediate surroundings by roughly four degrees celsius. Its the gable. In high temperatures plants emit lots of water vapor which cools the surrounding air. This is useful in cities where temperatures in summer and generally much higher than they are in the surrounding countryside while normal stone or brick facade store heat Green Facades have a cooling effect but high temperatures also dry the plants out and keeping the greenery well watered in vertical gardens requires Customized Solutions on this test wall in oberhausen the Building Material itself plays a role in the area geisha and system. But im not supporting the benefit of sand limestone is that it quickly absorbs and releases water we take advantage of this by actually watering the stone which then passes its humidity on to the substrate that optimizes the irrigation of the greenery. So stone is also helping nature flourish in cities. Whats increasingly clear is the importance of open green spaces in urban settings parks provide benefits that vertical gardens cant but both help improve air quality. Tiny openings in the undersides of leaves allow plants to absorb gases from their surroundings like nitrogen oxide and Carbon Dioxide and to release oxygen in this way plants act as both filters and africanus. Providing a valuable service in fifteens where the air is often loaded with vehicle emissions so it and other micro particles. Green walls can even make Industrial Zones more livable. This farm makes the stone elements the vertical garden area geisha in systems history stunning wool helps fill to toxins from the air. And it could be fine dust that collects on surfaces like days if you look at the surface of the leaves you can see it. In the. Green surfaces also provide a habitat for inserts birds and microorganisms that have no other natural habitat in urban and industrial environments. So this manmade system provides them with a place to live in. For the last three years the project partners have been experimenting to see which plants the most likely to flourish where in a vertical garden south facing goals develop an almost mediterranean character here in an industrial zone. The look i think that we get most sun here on the south facing side so weve been experimenting with herbs. Weve tried out various things weve got. Mens. Tomatoes garlic charge and so on. Our colleagues really enjoy harvesting it all. Gardens are designed to bring back pockets of nature to the cities. Been planners have long appreciated the value of horizontal gardens on rooftops for example. They might have a negligible effect on microclimates but theyre great places to go vegetables and just hang out. Vertical horizontal it doesnt matter greenery is a valuable addition to concrete jungles. Now we leave the concrete jungle and head off to higher spheres where air pollution is not a problem but how to get there and back of you in india sent in a question asking just that. Visual from bag a on wants to know. What is a reusable rocket. Conventional rockets are like plastic containers theyre designed to be used just once then they are thrown away. When they launch rockets use stages each of which contains its own engine and propellant as a stage runs out of propellant its jettisoned. The spent rocket stages contribute to space debris the term given to defunct man made objects in earth orbit. The Space Shuttle was the first partly reusable spacecraft system to go into operation it included an external tank which fed fuel to the engines and the reusable spaceplane component the orbiter. One of its advantages was that it left behind less space debris only the rust colored external tank ended up in the ocean. The Space Shuttles two solid rocket boosters were recovered by Salvage Vessels so they could be reused in the next rocket launch. But servicing the orbiter and the engines proved vastly more expensive than expected the Space Shuttle was retired in two thousand and eleven. But no designs for reusable rockets are looking more and more promising. The technology is so far advanced that rockets are landing and taking off again after refurbishment this one is launched twice so far but a lot of Research Still has to be done before theyll be able to take off again and again. If you have a science question go to our website and send it in if we answer it on the show youll get on d. V. D. Featuring an amusing and informative look at albert einsteins most famous theories the most important thing is to never stop asking questions. Of these creatures. Or interesting. Pretty. Plenty of animals dont conform to human notions of beauty but for scientists theyre all fascinating and none more than the ones were about to show you. Its a big moment for these naked mole rats time to clean the cage. Unlike others of their species these cuties dont live in semi arid Eastern Africa but in a lab in the german capital by land. Keeper gabriela plans make sure they feel right at home. Theyre very agile and lively and their skin is so smooth. As you can see its hard to hold onto one for a long time you know. In the wild naked mole rats spend most of their time underground in tunnel systems. Over here this is where they usually sleep. And in this area here where the exercise wheel is thats the jam. And they usually go to the bathroom back there. Naked mole rats live in colonies that for a mammal unusual similar to social insects like bees and dance they have workers soldiers and a queen who bears all the colonies young and evolution has adapted them to survive in extreme environments theyve developed a range of exceptional characteristics that fascinate scientists from different fields molecular biologist gary lewis has worked with the rodents for years the aim of my group is really to try and discover what are the molecular changes that were wrought by evolution what specific changes in the genome that allow the animal to become so extreme he and his team have decoded the cellular mechanisms that make the naked mole rat largely immune to stimulate that a painful for other animals these results could help human pain patients. The scientists are also chasing down another lead they discovered in the animals genome a naked mole rats dont seem to show any signs of aging and for rodents they can live extraordinarily long lives. Because they live for thirty years without any apparent diseases it might help us to work out what special metabolism they have that protects them from getting diseases like diabetes cardiovascular disease you can for these these sorts of things up feeding time naked mole rats are vegetarians and they dont drink water the food they eat has enough to fulfill their needs thats another adaptation to an arid environment and moen rather barros dont have to be well ventilated these rodents dont have a problem with low oxygen environments this is actually fundamentally a very interesting phenomena because it could be used in people because one of the Major Medical problems that is that we have is brain damage through stroke and brain damage through stroke is essentially just a hypoxic situation because naked mole rats breed quite slowly the research is mustnt injure or kill them in the quest to decipher their genetic secrets so much of their work is done on kidney cells samples that have been multiplied with the help of modern replication methods we try to produce from the kidney cells stem cells in order to create different cell lines such as new romance. Thats a bank for us only to do other kind of experience in this way we dont always need and make it more reps or make it more an issue to work which we can use this cells to for doing experiments. When it comes to make it mole rats many unsolved puzzles remain but scientists are working hard to solve them. For more from the world of research and Technology Head to our website and get in touch on twitter and facebook we love hearing from you. That wraps it up for now but join us again next time when well take a journey to jordan where the particle accelerator sesame has gone into operation scientists from the middle east want to carry out Cutting Edge Research here and help support peace in the region along the way that and much more next time on tomorrow today see you then. Three generations of passion. From southern germany restore historical. Family with a fascination for the flying machines of. The roman. Thirty minute. Health. And hearings to long. Solidarity. May fall by the wayside when the gap between rich and poor grows. In equal societies. The divide starting november fifteenth on d. W. Every journey begins with the first step and every language of the first word i looked in the week oh hes in germany to learn german. Business just why not run with him. Its simple online on euro mile and free. Stuff. D w z e learning course goes weak german made easy. Sustainable protection for the earth ideas designed to preserve our ecosystems they exist around the world. Global ideas takes the next step protection for our planets biological diversity trailblazing projects. D. W. Dot com slash global ideals. And d. W. Hook up we speak your language. For content in dari pashto and order prospects for returning our web special refugio journeys of life in germany and the prospects for those returning home. Join the discussion on d w dot com and on facebook. Prospects for returning s d w may for mine. This is deja news coming to you live from berlin hopes of finding more survivors in iran feeds off to sundays earthquake there on declares a day of National Mourning for the more than five hundred people who were killed in the disaster efforts to end to helping the thousands of