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Just weeks after the outbreak of Ebola was declared over in the west of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a new outbreak has emerged in the east of the country. The World Health Organization (WHO) has responded rapidly to the emergency – having learned lessons from the West Africa outbreak which killed more than 11,000 people. The WHO’s Deputy Director-General of Emergency Preparedness and Response, Dr Peter Salama, says the current outbreak will be much trickier to contain because of conflict in North Kivu province.

Helium at 150
It is the 150th birthday of the discovery of helium, which, after hydrogen is the second most abundant element in the universe. It’s surprisingly rare on Earth, but it makes up much of the content of the gas giants in our local neighbourhood, Jupiter and Saturn. Adam Rutherford hears from Particle physicist and Science Museum curator Dr Harry Cliff on how it was first discovered through a telescope rather than in a lab, and Jessica Spake of Exeter University tells Science Hour how she discovered helium around an exoplanet 200 light-years away.

Biosecure-ID
New Zealand has very strict biosecurity laws, and that is because of the risk to valuable exports like wood, kiwi fruit, wine and milk powder. Simon Morton talks to Varvara Vetrov from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch on a new system being developed that uses deep neural networks and machine learning to keep unwanted pests out - it’s called Biosecure-ID.

Nasa’s Solar Probe Launch
Nasa is just a few days away from launching its next science mission, a spacecraft called the Parker Solar Probe that will eventually "touch the sun." If all goes according to plan, the probe will take off aboard a rocket on Saturday Aug. 11 from Cape Canaveral in Florida. On its final close approach, in 2025, the Parker Solar Probe will get within 6 million kilometres of the Sun's surface — so close that it will actually fly through the star's incredibly hot atmosphere, called the corona. It’s hoped the mission will provide answers to some of the Sun’s mysteries - why its atmosphere becomes hotter further away from the surface of the sun? How the solar wind of charged particles streaming out into space is born? And what causes the gigantic outbursts scientists call coronal mass ejections? Roland Pease talks to Project scientist Nicky Fox from Johns Hopkins University in California.

New Horizons to Visit Ultima Thule
Ultima Thule is the name given to an asteroid, or pair of asteroids, in the Kuiper Belt – a ring of rocky bodies at the edge of the Solar System. The New Horizons mission, which captured such amazing data on Pluto, got a mission extension to travel further out. This week the asteroid passed in front of a distant star, giving the team a chance to see more detail of the rocky body, which will be the furthest object visited by a man-made craft, when New Horizon’s gets there in November. Mission principal investigator Alan Stern spoke to Roland Pease.

Music for Arrhythmia
Music can soothe or excite people – sending our hearts racing or slowing them down. Scientists in London wondered if music could also help control irregular heart rhythms known as arrhythmias. So patients with the condition have had their hearts monitored during a special live music performance. Bobbie Lakhera reports.

Lionfish on the Menu
The lionfish is an invasive species causing serious damage to local fish populations in the Caribbean. The fish were released into the oceans off the Florida coast by pet owners once the fish became a problem in their aquariums. Since then the population has grown and is causing havoc in the sea. One way of controlling their numbers is to eat them. But what are the downsides of such a strategy? Nicola Smith from Simon Fraser University in Canada explains.

(Photo caption: Ebola vaccinations for high risk populations in North Kivu province, Mangina © EPA/WHO)

The Science Hour was presented by Roland Pease with comments from freelance science journalist, Dr Claire Ainsworth

Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz
Editor: Deborah Cohen

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