Antarctic are learning all about isolation. Social distancing is hard but its key to preventing the spread of the corona virus if we carried on as normal and one infected person infected on average 2. 00 at this over a 5 day period then after 30 days that one person would be the source of more than 400. 00 infections. Reducing contact with others by 75 percent the total would be just 2 and a half infection. But what effect does isolation have on the mind and body. Lets find out by heading to a research station in one of the worlds loneliest places the at. A time out for the expedition members at germanys neumeier research station in antarctica this is the 1st. Time that theyve seen the sun after 9 months of darkness. This long period in isolation was extremely difficult for everyone here. I would work and routine is what really helps and doing a lot together but at the same time giving everyone enough space. It can get pretty lonely here in the world southernmost continent trying times for station manager and doctor big a check of back and the 8 other german team members far away from their families berlin shall the hospital is investigating the impact of this isolation the crew have to undergo medical tests and even a cat scan of the brain before their departure and on their return as well as giving all sorts of samples. Were collecting all the bottle a substances that we can get our hands on blood urine stool and every few months some hair samples. The scientists and the team themselves have noticed changes. His mind nothing sometimes you have to stop and remember which way is north east and south when youre outside you sometimes think that youve taken the wrong turn even though you actually know the way or this from my 1st things can be a bit more difficult or you forget things for example how to find your way around the station where was that again and its strange sometimes. Under these conditions one part of the brain shrinks by around 7 percent. One structure that were interested in is the hippocampus thats an important area for episodic memory for learning and memory. This area of the brain gets smaller during the long months of darkness. Research director Alexander Don has also asked the team to perform computer tests the study financed by the German Aerospace center is also intended to show what kind of changes astronauts might undergo. To complete this docking maneuver successfully we have to guide this green cross with the help of these tools toward the docking pin. Have done so and trigger the docking procedure and your time to see how quickly and precisely you can do this your its an exercise thats intended to test the brains performance during the months of darkness and isolation. Or not we do this once a month during our stay to find out how our ability to concentrate our precision and our interest in this kind of task changes over time. For people. Responses to questionnaires about emotional changes are also sent back to berlin. The impact of this isolated and austere environment and Group Dynamics is also under investigation. And as i said jack you see the classic conflict between the need for intimacy and for space that we know from our own relationships that exists in a group too it can feel constraining at times or you might want more intimacy but its not the right kind of closeness because what you really want is your own family and thats the most difficult part of the berlin researchers are also keeping an eye out for signs of depression thats a distinct possibility when youre alone with the same few people for months on end and he isnt yet one and i understand do you feel isolated from the others have you had melancholy or depressive thoughts that might possibly require medical attention and at least i. Thought im kind. This study could also help us cope with the coronavirus lockdown Alexander Stan has a piece of advice. Was going eyebrows arms i was going with my you can do simple things like brushing your teeth with your left hand while standing on one leg you know. The important thing is to avoid getting stuck in a rough kind of fight your brain needs freshened push. The neumeyer station team has created challenges for itself a boot camp to give the brain and the body a thorough workout edith is the driving force behind the exercise team and she and the other expedition members are top fit. I much it was difficult at 1st we had muscle aches and we cursed edith but weve come to love her but this. Is only a month its one of the main reasons that weve got through the winter so well. The researchers say that while the brain does shrink during isolation these changes are not permanent. Youve got an almost as. I assume that all these changes are reversible. The question is to what extent the team managed to reintegrate into everyday life you know resume their usual activities rebuild their social networks and pursue their normal lives again upon their return. Whether you spend 9 months in the icy wastes of and arctica or weeks in coronavirus markdown in your own home isolation is difficult and it takes a toll among us. Young staff who is what are your strategies for staying sane during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are some of your. Philip template jr from the philippines rose we are in the 8th week of lockdown my strategy is simple i check the news check with family and friends work from home. Then i do light exercise after dinner and read books my days are quite structured. Games from through says im one of the few people who enjoy quarantine i love spending time with my family and cooking healthy meals and eating at a leisure the pace ill be sad when things go back to normal. And then genie in indonesia says its an opportunity to try new things. Ive taken up gardening as a hobby and im trying to master hydroponics i hope to be able to eat my own harvest i thank you for writing to us. The term social distancing may be new but plates and pestilences and the practice of isolating the sick is thousands of years old but that doesnt make our Current Situation feel any less new and weird. And its all because of a microscopic vicious pathogen the suns corona virus too. But what is a virus thats what out of the un as our in sedan wants to know. A lot of viruses. A tick bite can transmit viruses such as a form of and several lighters called t b e v in humans the pathogen can cause a fatal inflammation of the brain. With. Other viral diseases are airborne so there are lots of ways they can spread. Thats clever viruses which consist of just d. N. A. Or r. N. A. In a protective envelope they dont have their own metabolism so they need a host like humans or other organisms in order to reproduce in the case of an infection a virus hijacks the host cell and injects its genetic material into it then becomes a factory for making new viruses. Many viruses can spread between species. The pathogens responsible for aids or may have traveled from apes to humans rodents can transmit hunter viruses for example. Birds some flu viruses a vaccine may prevent infection. Even though as in the case of flu the vaccine constantly. Has to be adapted as the virus mutates. One type of antiviral vaccine protects against Cervical Cancer and sometimes viruses arent pathogens but helpers. Certainly darva viruses for example target tumor cells without damaging surrounding healthy cells researchers are hoping to use them to develop a viral therapy to treat blastoma highly aggressive brain cancer. Viruses cause many diseases like hiv aids needles and hepatitis but some viruses fight disease these spec to me if ages in vain bacteria viruses are made up of the genome within a casing bacteria are more complex and mostly much larger viruses contrie produce on their own they need to hijack bacteria or other organisms to do so and that is key to their potential role in medicine. These young scientists are reviving an old method biotechnology students i am a fresh diner and her team are using bacteria phages known informally as phases to combat bacteria. So theyve yet lets say is a virus and the natural enemy of bacteria. Phages is a naturally occurring and can be found wherever there are bacteria. In the audis of water for example in soil but also in the human body and these phages can only infect specific bacteria not human cells thats why they can be used to treat bacterial infections. A fish only targets a single species of bacteria so the researchers require a whole range of them so far theyve isolated them from the environment in a complex process wozniaks employ tons in our project weve identified collected and characterized multiple phage variants. And standards these are going to be used to infect and kill different species of bacteria if its. Something stupid than it. Bacteria phages were discovered in 1917 by french canadian microbiologist felix. Recognize their potential to fight Infectious Diseases in the 1920 s. International pharmaceutical Companies Began making fades cocktails but the advent of antibiotics which were cheaper to make and more widely applicable soon displaced phage therapy until its recent read discovery but the students here need funding if their work is going to progress and big pharma isnt interested i know. For a start intellectual property is hard to secure faith is over and then to successfully apply phage therapy you have to keep slightly modifying the phage is in the course of the sarah pay. What if its that sort of dynamic treatment isnt possible given current laws you need new Clinical Trials for every faith variance. Fades therapy is also patient specific and that means that for now at least its not economically viable. That area of faith is could be used to come back to strategic difficile and hysteria which can contaminate fish meat and Dairy Products and cause a life threatening disease in humans. Some strains of e. Coli 9000 in food can also make us sick. Could fate has one day be used safely across the Food Industry to cleanse produce and products of certain bacteria. Scientists involved getting in in the netherlands are researching how to fight tiny but dangerous organisms with even tinier organisms. 8 the company my crew us develops bacteriophages. They are viruses that target specific bacteria. Cheesemaker wants to find out if ages can help make this product safer. The faces are grown in liquid bacteria cultures that allow them to multiply rapidly. The bacteria are the same as the ones that they want to get rid of and the cheese phage is our natural enemies of bacteria microsoft supplies its customers with fake has to fight listeria and some another bacteria. This is how they do it. The phage latches onto the surface of a bacterium and injects its d. N. A. Into it is a list of bacteria to replicate it stay in a producing dozens of new phages eventually they calls the bacterial cell to burst releasing new phages that then infect understory more bacteria. When the micro also researchers investigate whether their faces could help improve food manufacturers Safety Standards they always follow the same procedure they take to samples that contaminate them with the bacteria they want to destroy. In the u. S. A listeria outbreak linked to apples claimed. Number of lives. One of these contaminated products is sprayed with water stuffs the control sample. The other is sprayed with bacteria phages. The scientists take swabs from the products put them on plates containing nutrient. And leaving to incubate for 24 hours. The project leader is impressed by his faith his determination and fact that this big features are brilliant because theyre so specific they only destroy a certain strain of bacteria when you have good bacteria like those in cheese and yogurt they wont be destroyed so phages can be used in a very targeted way thats. Phages are also being used in medicine to treat bacterial Skin Infections for example it takes just a few days for symptoms to improve significantly. After an incubation period of 24 hours the listeria samples are examined by the scientists a lot of bacterial colonies have formed in the control sample and only a few in the faith sample a few shouldnt nonform as the same there are only a 10th as many as in the control sample now you could destroy 10 times more bacteria if you used 10 times as many phases but the question is is that really necessary the food safe or. Phages could soon be used in germany too in sausage factories the casings made from animal got could be impregnated with the bacteria killing viruses the faces would remain on the surface of the food and act as a line of defense to keep out bacteria that would also be useful in the production of smoked fish. Microbiologist buyer is a researcher at the university of hohenheim in st got we asked him whether phages could also pose a danger. One type of phage. Cold temperature does not immediately force its bacterial host to produce a new phase generation instead it integrates its genome into the out of the bacterium. And the bacterium reproduces it also replicates the virus genome at the same time its a very elegant method of genetic reproduction but it also makes this sort of phage potentially dangerous because when the viruses are finally released they can also transfer part of the bacterial genome of their host including genes for antibiotic resistance or toxins to other bacteria if its legal in that way its well known that bacteria phages can spread factors such as virulent genes or resistance genes and that could also possibly happen if they are used in the Food Industry but these kind of phages temperate phages which can integrate their genome into the genome of their host bacterium wouldnt be used in the Food Industry if it was legal. That sector would focus on faders that really only destroy bacteria. And there the likelihood of transmission is very very small. So in the future viruses in food could actually be good for us thats an idea that will definitely take some getting used to. Many kinds of bacteria are beneficial some live in the soil and enhanced its quantity bacteria are present in most habitats in desert sands and polar ice. It is thought that they make up 3 courses of all known species of forms of 9. 1 down around where they congregate in vast numbers is our gut for the most part theyre very welcome. Little alexis is just a few hours old he arrived by says arry inception in a badge and a birth hed have swallowed. Some of his mothers bacteria as he passed through the birth canal and dr flem are providing the newborn with maternal bacteria an alternative way. Mostly its the sort of. View we try to do at the request of the parents is to collect bottle fluids from the mother swap the babys mouth with industry into their foster the idea behind this is to pass good luck tyria from the mother to her infant of skin to bottle. This should only be done when the mother is completely healthy or it could harm the baby studies show that maternal bacteria that colonize the baby during birth are important for the Childs Health breastmilk also plays a key role. The clinic has set up a bank of breast milk donors for mothers who cant breastfeed breast milk contains the bacteria an infant needs for a healthy gut micro biome. But as we grow up we eat things that arent necessarily good for us like pizza burgers and fizzy drinks can too much unhealthy fast food impact our gut flora and even our psyche. These researchers think it can i talk farsi and off mit haasan from the Austrian University of droughts are observing the behavior of mice fed on a poor diet theyre giving their test mice either healthy grains in dried grass or the special feed that accounts for 60 percent of its calories similar to fast food after 8 weeks the scientists examine the behavior of the mice i talked thats one of the green mice into a cage it hasnt been in before it eagerly explores its new environment. Then comes the fast food mouse whos put on quite a lot of weight it has little desire to move which is a sign of depression the fast food mice are also not very sociable unlike the grain fed subjects they prefer to be alone away from their fellow mice. An examination of their feces reveals drastic changes in the gut bacteria of the fast food mice could this be the reason for their behavior. To suppressing steinle microbial we will use antibiotics and this is study we are planning to do if the depression like behavior disappears in the mice receiving antibiotics this means that exists its not in the micro biome is necessary for the development of end of depression like behavior. And thats not the only type of food thats thought to affect the gut. Foods and drinks containing artificial sweeteners popular with people trying to lose weight. Often its not clear if a product contains sugar substitutes and there is evidence that these could harm our microbiome. As part of an experiment i will be a bookie mare and julie vine bag will drink 12 saturates of saccharin every day for a week the israeli study hopes to find out whether or not this sweetener affects our intestinal flora and with our health you never know whats good for you and especially that in my family i know if we have a day of beauty if everyone to know whats good for me think. Both women are examined at the Weitzman Institute in israel. The researchers want to see how their Health Changes over the week including whether or not the sweetener impacts their blood sugar they are fitted with a sensor on the upper arm the device will measure their blood sugar levels throughout the next 7 days. The women are told to eat as they normally would so as not to skew the results and to enter everything they eat into an app. Dr yotam suez believes that sweeteners do have an influence on intestinal bacteria to find out hes asked the test subjects to provide stool samples. He identifies the different types of gut bacteria in the lab and the results show that the diversity decreases in most subjects. When they got to material its just that its just that they richly in the guts but you know we can detect looked area that are probably killed by the best or there was an. Area and theyre going to go up a can guess that they are using this of the fish of the 2 women only one saw changes in her gut bacteria. And her blood sugar levels also deteriorated. Before the test her blood sugar was normal but during the sweetener experiment the levels rose dramatically which can cause weight gain and disease more testing is needed to see whether sweeteners have this effect. But both women say they now plan to avoid them. If our love is right why our bit o. May face a dilemma do you have a science question that youve always wanted oncet like were happy to help out yes send it to us as a video text ovoid smell if we answer it on the show to send you a little s