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India has launched an ambitious new health funding scheme, Modicare. Taxes on the middle and upper classes will fund the world’s biggest government-funded health care project – paying for hospital treatment for the country’s 100 million poorest families Claudia Hammond hears from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s reporter in Delhi, Devina Gupta.

Hayabusa-2
The audacious Japanese space mission has successfully landed two rovers (Minerva II 1a + b) on the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The asteroid is currently 4 years travel away from Earth, so much of the mission has been carried out autonomously. Roland Pease talks to planetary scientist Eric Asphaug and Stefania Soldini from the Japanese Space Agency JAXA.

Deadly 1918 Flu Pandemic
A hundred years ago, the 1918 flu pandemic killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide and infected around half a billion. Seasonal flu accounts for about 650,000 deaths per year. As this year’s flu season approaches, there are new insights into how the influenza virus causes disease and why some strains like the 1918 one (a subtype of the avian strain H1N1) are so deadly compared with the seasonal kind. In the most serious cases, there’s an extreme immune reaction in the lungs, and people can effectively suffocate. The latest research from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford has uncovered a molecule that might be behind that immune overreaction. Dr Aartjan te Velthuis explains the findings to Gareth Mitchell.

Killer of Killer Whales
Despite being banned in the 1980’s the organophosphate PCB is killing the world’s killer whales. As top predators, killer whales, or Orca, bioaccumulate the toxin in their fat reserves and then nursing mothers pass on the chemical to the young in their fat-rich milk. Paul Jepson, conservationist with the Zoological Society of London spoke to Roland Pease.

Why Are the Dutch So Tall?
The Netherlands might be a small country but its people have grown rapidly over the last 200 years, now regularly topping the list of the world’s tallest people. Adult men in Holland measure on average1 m 85 – that’s 6 foot in height while the people of some other nations such as the US are falling behind. In the past this has been put down to improved diet and living conditions in the Netherlands. But a new study in the north of country has found that natural selection may also be playing a part. Marijke Peters explains.

Teenage Brain
Adam Rutherford talks to Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of UCL about her book, Inventing Ourselves: the Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. She explains why teenagers take risks and don’t like getting up early in the morning.

(Picture caption: An Indian woman receives treatment in a hospital in Mumbai © Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images)

The Science Hour was presented by Claudia Hammond with comments from ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Science reporter Helen Briggs

Producer: Katy Takatsuki

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