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Cases of measles in Europe have hit a record high, according to the World Health Organization. More than 41,000 people have been infected in the first six months of 2018, leading to 37 deaths. Last year there were 23,927 cases and the year before 5,273. The epidemic is also spreading across parts of Latin America just two years after the Americas were declared free of measles. Claudia Hammond spoke to Clare Wilson, Medical Reporter at New Scientist, about the latest epidemic in Latin America.

Bangladesh’s Drowning Children
Every year in Bangladesh 15,000 children die by drowning. It is the commonest cause of death in children under four. The problem gets worse during the current monsoon season when there is a lot of flooding. We hear how new initiatives, such as crèches, have proved successful in Barisal, southern Bangladesh, which has the highest drowning rates in the country.

Fungal Threat to World’s Favourite Banana
The Cavendish banana is the favourite variety for much of the world – it is big and seedless, accounts for 47% of the global production market and nearly all global trade in bananas are Cavendish. But it is under attack. A vegetative clone (i.e. all genetically identical) and a fungus which kills the Cavendish and some other varieties is spreading across the world. So can genetics save it? James Dale from Queensland University of Technology in Australia spoke to Roland Pease.

Neanderthals and Denisovans
Denisovans are an extinct group of hominins that separated from Neanderthals more than 390,000 years ago. Scant remains of a handful of individuals were found in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia in 2010. It’s a cave that has also been inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans over thousands of years. Now, genomic analysis of the bones of one individual shows she was around 13 years old, her mother was a Neanderthal, her father was a Denisovan - proving interbreeding between these two hominin lineages. Roland Pease talks to Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London.

Guillemot Eggs
The extraordinary shape of the guillemot egg is one of ornithology’s great mysteries. This seabird lays something twice the size of a hen’s egg, which looks a bit like an obelisk, blue, speckled and weirdly elongated at one end, with almost flat sides. There have been a handful of theories to explain why it’s evolved. Marnie Chesterton talks to Professor of Behaviour and Evolution Tim Birkhead, at the University of Sheffield.

Emotional Support
If you have had a bad day at work, do you get the support you need from your partner? Researchers gave diaries to men and women in the Netherlands and found that women gave emotional support regardless of how much stress they were under, unlike their male counterparts. Claudia Hammond spoke to Associate Professor of Management Lieke ten Brummelhuis at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

(Photo caption: Doctor holding newborn baby which is sick with measles © Getty Images)

The Science Hour was presented by Claudia Hammond with comments from freelance writer and columnist for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Future, David Robson

Producer: Katy Takatsuki

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