BBC Inside Science

By BBC Radio 4Science

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BBC Inside Science episodes

July 17, 2014 A special programme on plants and their pollinators, poisons and pests
Plants and bees
The relationship between flowering plants and bees is a long-evolved, complex one. Plant scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are currently conducting field trials to see how Acontium, or Monkshood, uses toxins to protect itself against nectar-thieving, short-tongued bumblebees. But how does it make sure it doesn't poison the helpful, pollinating long-tongued bumblebees?
Plants from Roots to Riches
Professor Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew will be presenting a new series on BBC Radio 4 exploring our relationship with plants from the birth of botany through to modern day. She describes some of the series highlights.
The Azolla Event
A tiny ancient fern-like pond weed could have been responsible for changing the fate of the planet. Some scientists think that Azolla could have played a significant role in reversing an increase in the greenhouse effect that occurred 55 million years ago. The researchers claim that massive patches of Azolla growing on the (then) freshwater surface of the Arctic Ocean consumed enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for the global greenhouse effect to decline, eventually causing the formation of ice sheets in Antarctica and the current "Icehouse period" which we are still in.
Chomping caterpillars
Plants can hear. Well, they can sense sound-vibrations. New research from the University of Missouri shows that when the mustard-like Arabidopsis senses the chomping sounds of a caterpillar munching on leaves, it primes itself for a chemical response.
Composting low down
A listener asks why orange peel takes so long to rot down in the compost heap? Is it because it's an exotic fruit? Adam asks Kew's Head of Horticulture and 'keeper of the heap' Dave Barns.
Producer: Fiona Roberts.
29 min
July 10, 2014 Behavioural profiling at airports; Light and colour in art; Hadrian's Wall; Cassini
Airport security has been tightened recently. Passengers must be able to switch on their electronic devices to prove they don't contain explosives. Inside Science asks about the science behind spotting a potential terrorist. Adam asks whether behavioural profiling works. Can trained security staff tell the difference between a nervous traveller and a potential terrorist?
Light and colour in art
Pigments and paint evolved over time, and these changes are one focus of the 'Making Colour' exhibition at the National Gallery. Different paints fade and degrade in different ways; often the patina of age is what appeals when looking at art, so how do you decide which hue to use when restoring paintings? Another intriguing issue is how you light a painting. The National Gallery is moving away from tungsten lighting, to more modern, tuneable LED lights. How does this affect the way visitors view the art? An interactive experiment is helping them to unpick light perception.
Hadrian's Wall
A listener asks how did the Romans knew where to build the great defensive wall. We get the answer from Professor Ian Haynes, an archaeologist at Newcastle University, who reveals that the Romans were obsessed with measuring.
Cassini mission to Saturn
Cassini-Huygens is an unmanned spacecraft sent to the planet Saturn. The NASA-ESA-ASI robotic spacecraft has been orbiting and studying the planet and its many natural satellites for 10 years. Adam talks to the mission's leader of the imaging science team, Carolyn Porco, about how successful it's been. And he offers her a blank cheque to choose her next mission.
Producer: Fiona Roberts.
29 min
July 03, 2014 Informed consent, El Nino, Gravitational Waves, Cloud cover
Informed consent
Facebook has been under fire for running a controversial 'emotion manipulation' study on 689,003 Facebook users. The experiment, to find out whether emotions were contagious on the social network, involved minor changes to users' news feeds. It's contentious because the users were not informed that they were taking part in an experiment. Facebook says, check the terms and conditions, but Dr Chris Chambers at Cardiff University says that the ethical standards for science are higher, and should involve informed consent. Dan O'Connor, Head of Medical Humanities at the Wellcome Trust, gives a short history of consent in experimentation.
El Nino
According to the Met Office, the world is almost certain to be struck by the "El Nino" phenomenon this year, with the potential to induce "major climactic impacts" around the world. Roland Pease investigates this flip in the climate state of the Pacific basin, and asks the experts studying this phenomenon, whether it'll be a major event and how it might affect the climate.
Gravitational Waves
The announcement, earlier this year, that the BICEP 2 telescope at the South Pole had detected evidence that gravitational waves exist may have been premature. Gravitational waves are theoretical phenomena, based on observation of polarisation of ancient cosmic light. Finding them, adds to the evidence that the Universe is expanding. The data has now been made public, but the confidence in the numbers is being questioned.
Cloud cover
A listener asks about cloud cover and night time temperatures, and how air temperature and moisture content interact. Our expert Peter Sloss from the Met Office answers.
Producer: Fiona Roberts.
29 min
June 26, 2014 Longitude Prize Winner; Solar cells; New species; Fiji fisherwomen; Physics questions
Longitude Prize 2014 Winning Challenge
Antibiotics resistance has been selected as the focus for the £10m prize. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of a "post-antibiotic era" where key drugs no longer work and people die from previously treatable infections. The next step in the challenge is to tackle this resistance, by developing a simple, cheap, quick test that allows you to tell whether an infection is bacterial or not. This will conserve the 50% of antibiotics that are currently given in situations where they have no effect.
Solar Cells
A popular form of photovoltaic, or solar, cells is made using a harmful and expensive chemical called cadmium chloride. Now a team has found a new, cheaper, safer way of making solar cells by replacing the toxic element in the process with a material found in bath salts, magnesium chloride, and these are just as efficient. Professor Ken Durose from Liverpool University explains how it could reduce the cost of solar energy.
New Species
How easy is it to find a new species for science? Whilst in the Bornean jungle, Dr Tim Cockerill discovered that it was relatively easy - one fell in his cup of tea! It was a tiny parasitic wasp. Another new species, of the same type of parasitic wasp, was recently discovered in a school playground in the UK. So new insects seem to be quite easy to find, but what about a new mammal or bird? Tim reveals that finding the creature is just the start of a lot of work needed to get his finding published and accepted.
Fijian Fisherwomen
More and more conservationists are turning to local knowledge to work out the best way to save ecosystems. A great illustration of this grass-roots approach is underway in Fiji. They use a traditional system where villages will close an area of fishing grounds for a few months for fish stocks to recover. Conservationists are now learning about this system, known as 'tambu', to see if it can be used on a longer-term basis to help give fish stocks, that have become seriously depleted in the last few decades, a chance to recover.
Physics questions
University College London cosmologist, Andrew Pontzen answers questions sent in by listeners about why, given the immense heat at the Big Bang, is there so much hydrogen in the universe, and not more of the larger atoms, which are forged under conditions of great heat? And are black holes responsible for the missing matter in the universe?
Producer: Fiona Roberts.
29 min
June 19, 2014 Antarctic Invaders; Patents; Longitude Challenges for Water and Antibiotics
Antarctic Invasion
Antarctica is the most pristine place on Earth, having only been visited by humans in the last 200 years, and being tens of thousands of miles from the nearest land. But these days, around 40,000 tourists and hundreds of scientists visit the Antarctic every year, and with them come stowaways in the form of bugs, beetles and plants. As a result, the ice -free areas of the Antarctic are at severe risk of invasion. Is it too late to do anything about it?
Longitude Prize: Water
How can we ensure everyone can have access to safe and clean water? Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. 44 per cent of the world's population and 28 per cent of the world's agriculture are in regions where water is scarce. The challenge is to alleviate the growing pressure on the planet's fresh water by creating a cheap, environmentally sustainable desalination technology. London's Becton desalination plant is expensive to run, and so used for emergencies only. Marnie Chesterton meets some Danish chemists using membranes from nature which could help make salt water drinkable, without the energy requirement of current technology.
Patents in science
European Inventor Award winner Christofer Toumazou explains his invention - a USB microchip that reads a patient's DNA. He tells Adam Rutherford how the patent system has protected his ideas.
Longitude Prize: Antibiotics
Dame Sally Davies explains why, in an era of growing antibiotic resistance, it's important to have a cheap, easy-to-use test to identify bacteria. Muna Anjum from the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency is working on identifying those resistance genes in certain bacteria. Paul Freemont's team at Imperial College is using synthetic biology to build a device that can detect specific bacteria - precisely the sort of work that might answer the Longitude Prize's challenge.
Producer: Fiona Roberts.
29 min
June 12, 2014 Turing test; World Cup exo-skeleton; Plant cyborgs; Music hooks
The first ball kick of the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Cup is taken by a young paraplegic Brazilian, wearing a robotic exo-skeleton, controlled using his mind. Adam hears from Miguel Nicolelis, the neurophysiologist behind the high profile science stunt. Closer to home Sophie Morgan, paralysed for a decade, demonstrates her robot exo-skeleton, or REX, which allows her to walk and stand.
This week, scientists at the University of Reading claim to have created a computer that has successfully duped humans into thinking it was a 13-year-old boy. This has been widely reported as the first computer to pass the Turing test, but is it? Is this a leap forward in artificial intelligence or a case of moving the goalposts. Anil Seth from the University of Sussex, gives us his opinion.
Forget the Internet of things, welcome, the internet of vegetables. An EU-wide project has developed "cyborg plants" with in-built sensors. These allow the plant to "talk" to scientists, giving them updates on water and nitrogen levels. Koushik Maharatna from the University of Southampton explains the benefits of being able to talk to plants.
We are surprisingly good at remembering songs we haven't heard for many years, but what is it about a song that makes it so memorable? Is there a perfect formula? Scientists hope that a new game will find out. A citizen science project plans to analyse thousands of results from the songs best remembered by the public. Adam Rutherford sings along and asks Dr Ashley Burgoyne, a computational musicologist from the University of Amsterdam, why some songs are more memorable than others.
Producer: Fiona Hill.
29 min
June 05, 2014 Moving Mountains; Invasive Species; Football Stickers
Moving Mountains
Removing the tops off mountains was common practice in the eastern United States to strip mine for coal. Critics have previously called for it to be banned because of the health risks. But in China, the same thing is now happening but on a much larger scale, all to create new land for people to live on. In a comment piece in this week's Nature journal, Chinese scientists call this unprecedented geo-engineering "folly", and liken the practice to "performing major surgery on Earth's crust". Dr Adam Rutherford talks to Dr Emily Bernhardt from Duke University in the US about the potential risks of the Chinese mountain moving.
Alien Invader Species
Inside Science bug man, Tim Cockerill, responds to headlines that alien killer snakes, capable of killing dogs, cats and even children, are on the loose in Britain. He goes to look for the supposedly terrifying reptiles, and finds out instead, about a colony of aesculapian snakes, whose biggest meal might be a rat. In search of more danger, he goes on to Sheerness in Kent, to hunt for the "alien" yellow-tailed scorpion. These arachnids don't prove much of a threat either, he discovers. As long as you keep your trousers tucked in your socks.
Longitude Prize: Zero Carbon Flight
If our use of air travel continues to rise at the current rate, by 2050, it'll make up 15 per cent of global warming from human activities. If the Longitude Prize topic chosen is flight, the challenge will be to design and build a zero or close-to-zero-carbon aeroplane that is capable of flying from London to Edinburgh, at comparable speed to today's aircraft. Marnie Chesterton speaks to physicist Helen Czerski and Professor Callum Thomas, from Manchester Metropolitan's Centre for Aviation, Transport and the Environment, about the possible options.
Football Stickers
"Got, Got, Got, Need!". With the football World Cup upon us, footy-mad kids barter to fill their world cup sticker books. Adam talks to mathematician Professor Yvan Velenik from the University of Geneva, about the myth that some stickers are rarer than others, and shares his statistical analysis about how many stickers you would need to buy, to fill the book.
Producer: Fiona Hill.
28 min
May 29, 2014 Women scientists; Mapping the ocean floor; Amplituhedron
Women of science
London's Royal Society was buzzing last week as historians and scientists chewed over the lives of iconic women scientists. But at a time when far more women go into science, the percentage who make it to professor is still alarmingly low compared to men. Last week's Revealing Lives event by The Royal Society was also about learning lessons from history which are of benefit to women working in science today.
Mapping the ocean floor
We really do know less about the ocean floor on Earth than we do about the surface of Mars, Venus and the Moon. In the case of the Red Planet, the maps are about 250 times better. This gap in our home-planet knowledge has recently been highlighted by the search for the missing Malaysia airlines plane MH370. The suspected search area in a remote part of the Indian Ocean is so poorly mapped, it's not even clear how deep the deepest parts are. Ocean floor mapping can be done by ship board echo-sounders, bouncing sound waves off the sea floor. But this is very expensive. A new cheaper, quicker way is to use a satellite to measure fluctuations in the sea surface caused by gravitational perturbations caused by underwater topography.
Longitude Challenge 2014 - Food security
By 2050 there will be an estimated 9.1 billion people on the planet. In the face of limited resources and climate change, how can we feed the world with less? Michael Moseley thinks eating insects is a start whilst Marnie Chesterton checks out a field of self-fertilising crops. And the issue that it's not always the amount of food, but the right food is highlighted in a report from the Metropolitan Manila area of the Philippines where a portion of fries and a burger is cheaper than a kilo of carrots.
Amplituhedron
Particle physicists have discovered a mysterious jewel-like object that exists in higher dimensions in mathematical space. This multifaceted object, The Amplituhedron, greatly simplifies the complex calculations that explain what happens during particle collisions - the kind of collisions studied at particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider. No one's entirely sure exactly what this object is, or how important it might turn out to be - there's some suggestion it may challenge the very notion that space-time is a fundamental property of our universe. Joel Werner caught up with the man who discovered this jewel, Nima Arkani-Hamed, at the Institute for Advanced Study in the United States to try and unravel exactly what this mysterious object is.
Producer: Fiona Roberts.
30 min
May 22, 2014 Longitude Prize 2014; Dementia; Matter from light; Coastal deposition
Longitude Prize 2014
The Longitude Prize offers a £10 million prize pot to help find the solution to one of the greatest issues of our age. Votes from the British public will decide what that issue will be. This week, the six shortlisted challenges have been unveiled. They cover flight, food, antibiotics, paralysis, water and dementia. Alice Roberts talks to Adam about why we need an X-factor for science. Over the next month, Inside Science will profile each of these challenges and explain how you can cast your vote.
Matter from Light
In 12 months' time, researchers say they will be able to make matter from light. Three physicists were sitting in a tiny office at Imperial College London and while drinking coffee they found what they call a fairly simple way to prove a theory first suggested by scientists 80 years ago: to convert photons - i.e. particles of light - into electrons (particles of matter) and positrons (antimatter). Adam discusses the work with theoretical physicist Professor Steven Rose from Imperial College London and science writer Philip Ball.
Longitude challenge - Dementia
How can we help people with dementia to live independently for longer? Dr Kevin Fong is the champion for this Longitude Challenge, arguing that we all use technology to support our lifestyles but that people with dementia need extra tech. Marnie Chesterton visits Designability, a Bath-based design charity that works with people with dementia to develop new technologies. Their Day Clock shows that a simple design can produce radical results.
Coastal deposition
The destructive winter storms that hit the UK caused were flooded by the worst tidal surge on the east coast in 60 years.
Sand dunes play an important defensive role on our coastline but little is known about their resilience or recovery rate. So after the December 5th storm, scientists sprang into action in Lincolnshire with a new project that officially began in February. The aim is to help future coastal management by researching the effects of storm surges on sand dunes.
Producer: Fiona Roberts.
29 min
May 15, 2014 Antarctic melt; brain enhancing devices, atomic clocks and anti-bat moth sounds
Melting Antarctic Ice Shelf
Nothing can stop the collapse of the Antarctic Western Ice shelf. That’s according to NASA this week. Key glaciers in Antarctica are irreversibly retreating, and according to the scientists studying this region they’ve reached a state of irreversible retreat - the point of no return.
Brain enhancing devices
If given the option, would you think faster or increase your attention span? Neuroscientists now say that non-invasive brain stimulation using electrical currents could do just that. The technology is still fairly new but is now being sold by commercial companies often marketed to gamers suggesting that it could increase your attention and make you think faster. But do they actually work? Inside Science sent Melissa Hogenboom to Oxford try one out and to discuss the science behind the hype.
Black holes
How big can black holes get? A listener asks and Professor Andy Fabien, Director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University answers.
Optical and atomic clocks
At this week’s ‘Quantum Timing, Navigation and Sensing’ Showcase at the National Physical Laboratory, researchers are working on sensors that allow us to see through walls; super-accurate atomic clocks the size of matchboxes; and GPS trackers that can elude an enemy jamming the signal. We sent Inside Science reporter Tracey Logan to work on her time management.
Bat jamming moth noises and other insects that go bump, chirrup, squeak in the night
Inside Science’s resident entomologist, Dr. Tim Cockerill has been exploring a whole soundscape that’s hidden from our limited hearing range. Including, eavesdropping on a secret sonic arms race between echo-locating bats and bat-jamming acoustics created by the genitals of a hawkmoth.
Producer: Fiona Roberts
29 min