As part of the Vesuvius Challenge, computer scientists have used machine learning to successfully reveal 2,000 characters from the Herculaneum scrolls. These artefacts were charred to a crisp following the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Papyrologist Federica Nicolardi has been translating the writings, and tells us what exactly has been deciphered.  Following this week’s launch of NASA’s PACE satellite, NASA scientist Dr Susanne Craig tells us how the mission will be giving our planet a health check.   Bird flu is still an issue. This month, scientists have reported that hundreds of penguin chicks have died from the virus in the Falklands. Meanwhile, in Argentina, avian flu has killed huge numbers of elephant seal pups. Professor Wendy Barclay, a virologist from Imperial College London, tells us more about the virus and how it can jump between species.  Sunday 11th February is International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Physicist Dr Jess Wade, who has written hundreds of Wikipedia biographies of women and underrepresented scientists, reveals one of her favourite scientists that people haven’t heard of.   Presenter: Victoria Gill 
Producers: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Florian Bohr, Louise Orchard 
Assistant Producer: Jonathan Blackwell 
Researcher: Imaan Moin 
Editor: Martin Smith 
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth   BBC Inside Science is produced in collaboration with the Open University.

Ancient Roman writings revealed

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In 1824, 200 years ago, Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur to ever be described in a scientific paper. William Buckland studied fossils from Stonesfield in Oxfordshire in order to describe the animal.  In this episode, Victoria Gill visits palaeontologist Dr Emma Nicholls at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, who shows her those very fossils that launched the new science of palaeontology. Danielle Czerkaszyn then opens the archives to reveal the scientific illustrations of Megalosaurus by Mary Morland, which helped shape Buckland's description. But this was just the beginning. Over the coming decades, remains kept being discovered and scientists were gripped with dinosaur mania, racing to find species. Now, in 2024, we're finding new dinosaurs all the time. Victoria travels to the University of Edinburgh to meet Professor Steve Brusatte and Dr Tom Challands as they start extracting a dinosaur bone from a piece of Jurassic rock - could this be a new species? Together, they reflect on how palaeontology has changed over the last 200 years and ponder the ongoing mysteries of these charismatic animals. Presenter: Victoria Gill
Producers: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell and Hannah Robins
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth 
Editor: Martin Smith

200 years of dinosaur science

Microbiomes are a multi-million-pound industry. Every week, many people send off poop samples to be examined so we can learn about our own ecosystems of bacteria, virus and fungi that live in our guts, with a view to improving health. But how accurate are these tests? Microbiologist Prof Jacques Ravel is calling for better controls in what is currently an unregulated industry. He joins us along with Prof Tim Spector, scientific co-founder of personalised nutrition app ZOE, to discuss the areas of concern, and potential benefits, of this direct-to-consumer model.  Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has died at the age of 90. Widely acknowledged as one of the world's most influential psychologists, his many years of study centred on how and why we make the decisions we do. In 2011, his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which summarizes much of his research, was published and became a best seller. We’re joined by presenter and author Claudia Hammond to unpick his legacy.  The price of lab monkeys has plummeted. Used for drug development and testing, their value skyrocketed during the vaccine development period of the pandemic. But when the boom for vaccines died, the demand for (and value of) these monkeys plunged. Journalist Eleanor Olcott provides the full picture.   Are there alternatives to animal testing? Marnie visits a lab in Cambridge to find out about neural organoids, cellular clumps grown from stem cells made to replicate the brain. Developmental biologist Prof Madeline Lancaster shows her around and Dr Sarah Chan from the University of Edinburgh digs into the ethics of this cutting-edge branch of science. Presenter: Marnie Chesterton 
Producers: Florian Bohr, Hannah Robins, Louise Orchard and Imaan Moin 
Editor: Martin Smith 
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth   BBC Inside Science is produced in collaboration with the Open University.

Inside Your Microbiome

Professor and presenter, Chris Lintott, talks about his new book Our Accidental Universe; a tour of chance encounters and human error in pursuit of asteroids, pulsars, radio waves, new stars and alien life. Even with incredible technological developments, the major astronomical events of the past century are largely down to plain ol’ good luck; discovered not, as you might assume, by careful experiment, but as surprises when we have been looking for something else entirely. For instance, the most promising habitat for life beyond Earth turns out to be Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus, whose oceans were revealed when NASA's Cassini probe did a drive-by and, we get the most from the Hubble Space Telescope by pointing it at absolutely nothing!  A new company has launched which aims to mine Helium-3 on the moon to sell on Earth. This rare isotope is used for supercooling quantum computers and some scientists dream of using it in nuclear fusion as a new source of renewable energy. But is this ambition realistic and, if so, could it be within reach anytime soon? Planetary scientist Sara Russell of the Natural History Museum explains all.  There are many moons in our solar systems, but one of the strangest is Titan; the largest moon of the Saturn system. It gets colder than 100 degrees Celsius and has a thick atmosphere that creates weather. But its biggest mystery is the enormous, coffee-coloured dunes that cover a large part of its surface. Where did they come from? Planetary scientist Bill Bottke has a cunning theory.  In our universe, some stars are twins. They originate from the same molecular clouds and should be identical, but some pairs are not as similar as you’d expect. Marnie speaks to astrophysicist Yuan-Sen Ting about his new paper which illuminates how this difference might occur. His theory is that one of the stars, perhaps the evil twin, has been busy eating up vulnerable planets...  
 
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton 
Producers: Louise Orchard, Florian Bohr and Imaan Moin 
Editor: Martin Smith 
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth   BBC Inside Science is produced in collaboration with the Open University.

Our Accidental Universe

The world’s oldest fossilised forest was uncovered in Somerset last week. We head to palaeobotanist, Dr Christopher Berry’s, lab at Cardiff University to learn about these cladoxylopsids. They lived 390 million years ago and although they are not the ancestors of today’s trees, they reveal some extraordinary evolutionary secrets.  Also, Marnie speaks to Dr Chris Thorogood of the University of Oxford Botanic Gardens about his new book Pathless Forest: The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers. Called “Rafflesia” plants and found in the remotest parts of South East Asia, their flowers burst from the rain forest floor the size of pumpkins and are critically endangered.  Chris talks of his world of extreme fieldwork and hair-raising expeditions, braving leeches, lizards and lethal forest swamps, to discover the rarest of rare blooms.  Plus, the Wildlife Trust’s Making Friends with Molluscs campaign starts today, and I’m sure many gardeners will declare this an impossible task! We visit some allotments in Bristol to find out how people are managing slug and snail populations. And chat to Brian Eversham from the Trust of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, who explains why these garden creatures should be considered our friends, not foes.    And finally, Dr Stewart Husband from last week’s programme returns to answer more of your burning questions about your tap water.

World’s oldest forest fossils

A recent study on how to get rid of microplastics in water sparked presenter Marnie Chesterton’s curiosity. When she turns on the tap in her kitchen each day, what comes out is drinkable, clean water. But where did it come from, and what’s in it? Dr Stewart Husband from Sheffield University answers this and more, including listener questions from around the UK. Is water sterile? Should I use a filter? And why does my water smell like chlorine?  Also, new research indicates that bumblebees can show each other how to solve puzzles too complex for them to learn on their own. Professor Lars Chittka put these clever insects to the test and found that they could learn through social interaction. How exactly did the experiment work, and what does this mean for our understanding of social insects? Reporter Hannah Fisher visits the bee lab at Queen Mary University in London.   And finally, more than 20 million years ago, our branch of the tree of life lost its tail. At that point in time, apes split from another animal group, monkeys. Now, geneticist Dr Bo Xia at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard thinks he may have found the specific mutation that took our tails. Marnie speaks with evolutionary biologist Dr Tom Stubbs from the Open University about why being tail-less could be beneficial. What would a hypothetical parallel universe look like where humans roam the earth, tails intact? And what would these tails look like?  Presenter: Marnie Chesterton 
Producers: Louise Orchard, Florian Bohr, Jonathan Blackwell, Imaan Moin 
Editor: Martin Smith 
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth   BBC Inside Science is produced in collaboration with the Open University.

Ancient Roman writings revealed

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