CrowdScience

Short-sightedness is reaching epidemic proportions around the world. The way things are progressing, one-third of the world’s population – 2.5 billion people - could need glasses by the end of the decade. And scientists are beginning to understand why: children spend too much time indoors, bent over screens and books. Marnie Chesterton travels to Singapore, where rates of myopia are one of the highest in the world and to see how the government is curbing the condition with an array of tools, from eye-drops to sunshine remedies.

She does so in the hope of better understanding whether screens are bad for children’s eyes, a question raised by a concerned Mexican father, Fernando, about his two-year old daughter.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

(Photo: A little girl wearing headphones while using a digital tablet at home. Credit: Getty Images)

Will gravity on earth ever change? Why do insects fly towards the light? Is the plasma in a TV the same as plasma in a fusion reactor? Why are mosquito bites so itchy? What does the Higgs boson do for the Universe? In a Q+A special, Marnie Chesterton is joined by scientists Malcolm Fairbairn, Kate Lancaster and Erica McAlister to tackle a selection of questions from the CrowdScience inbox.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

(Photo: Alates insects light bulb and night. Credit: Getty Images)

Dementia affects nearly 50 million people worldwide – but doctors are still struggling to find a cure. CrowdScience investigates why this particular group of brain diseases are so hard to treat, from the difficulties around diagnosis to why the drugs just don’t currently work.

In the absence of a medical solution is it time to take a new approach? As geneticists develop tests to predict who might develop brain disease, there are others focusing on better care for those who already have it. Presenter Bobbie Lakhera visits a village in the Netherlands helping sufferers live longer independently, and hears how music projects improve non-verbal communication.

Presenter: Bobbie Lakhera

(Photo: Neurology research examining the neurons of a human head to heal memory loss or cells due to dementia. Credit: Getty Images)

Since the end of the 19th century, scientists have been predicting we would be eating a meal in a pill, but is it a serious answer to the world’s food problems? That’s what Australian listener Bridget is wondering and whether it’s possible to produce an artificial food source that can provide all the nutrients for healthy human life.

With increasing urbanisation, diets are changing and estimates suggest food production will have to increase some 60 percent by 2050 to keep up with demand. But can we provide all that extra food with limited natural resources and traditional farming methods?

First, Marnie Chesterton finds out what artificial food is currently available and whether the existing products are healthy. And while a meal in a pill might sustain our bodies, will it sustain our minds? The experience of eating involves so much more than simply taking in the right nutrients, as Marnie discovers at the Gastrophysics Chef’s Table, a restaurant and multi-sensory dining experience. On the menu is jellyfish, a possible alternative source of food for the future. It’s in plentiful supply in our oceans, but like eating insects, the thought of it may be disgusting to some, so Marnie explores how sensory-driven strategies can be used to make these food sources more appealing.

CrowdScience also visits the future of farming: A hydroponic vertical farm called Growing Underground, which is built in World War Two air-raid shelters under London. Using LED lighting instead of sunlight, leafy vegetables grow very quickly and need very little space. With higher crop yields per square metre than traditional farming, vertical farms allow fresh produce to be grown in urban centres with less impact on the environment.

Hydroponic farming is something the European Space Agency is also experimenting with as part of Project Melissa, which is developing a closed loop ecological system - using rats instead of astronauts - aimed at one day helping us grow fruit and vegetables on Mars. Listen to the podcast version of the programme to hear this interview.

Producer: Helena Selby

(Photo: Pills on a plate. Credit: Getty Images)

Listener Nikolai sends CrowdScience hunting through space and time with his deceptively simple question. Can we find perfect stillness? You are probably reading this sentence whilst standing or sitting still. So is it a daft question? We discover that there are no simple answers as we unravel the science of motion, which tells us that we cannot always trust our senses to tell us ‘the truth’ about the natural world.

The ancient Greeks believed it was the sun that rises and sets each day and this idea remained until the 16th century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus showed us that this an illusion – that we are the ones in motion, orbiting the Sun. Later, through the work of Isaac Newton and then Albert Einstein, scientists came to the conclusion that nothing in the universe can ever be truly still. Except perhaps, the fastest thing in the universe – light.

Confused? Don’t worry, so is Marnie Chesterton who sets out to explore not just the science of stillness but also the physics of stopping. To satisfy listener Nikolai’s curiosity about motion in space, CrowdScience also travels to ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. Here we find out how you stop a space craft and hear the story of when things got prickly for astronaut Tim Peake and his crew when docking at the International Space Station.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

(Photo: Astronaut wearing pressure suit against a space background. Credit: Getty Images)

Are you the master of your own decisions? Independent-minded? A free spirit? Like it or not, the answer is probably no - as we are profoundly influenced by the people around us. But why do humans follow the crowd? CrowdScience listener Cath Danes wants to know and this week we are going to be giving her answers at the BBC’s Free Thinking Festival in Gateshead.

Marnie Chesterton is joined by a crack team of neuroscientists and psychologists, who reveal the secrets behind our inner sheep. We also run an experiment to find out whether you should trust the wisdom of the crowds with life’s big decisions.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

(Photo: A flock of sheep being herded in a pasture. Credit: Getty Images)

Unlike nuclear fission power stations, which leave harmful radioactive waste to be stored or disposed of for thousands of years, a nuclear fusion power plant would create precious little burden on future generations. The fuel source would be seawater, and the energy created limitless.

Back in the 1950s, the technology to “tame the hydrogen bomb” seemed just a few decades away from practical deployment, and governments across the divide of the cold war shared the challenges, costs and laboratories.

But to the outsider, it might look like progress has been slow. In 1997 the Joint European Torus at Culham in the UK set the world record for energy released from a controlled fusion reaction, but even that was less than the energy was put in.

Keeping the plasma – the super-hot atoms of exotic types of hydrogen – at temperatures many times the temperature of the sun safely in place inside a magnetic field is not a trivial task.

Last year construction of the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor, ITER, reached its halfway point at its huge home in France, and if all goes to plan it should produce its first plasma by 2025. The hope is that operational fusion reactions will take place within a decade after that, paving the way for its successor DEMO - which would actually generate electricity - to be built sometime before 2050.

But in parallel with the big intergovernmental roadmap, in recent years a number of small commercial startups have joined the race to achieve commercial fusion energy. With their various different approaches and more ambitious timelines, will the private sector beat the publicly funded science to the goal?

Presenter: Bobbie Lakhera

(Photo of ITER Organization, with permission)

Humans have used dogs' excellent sniffing talents ever since our ancestors figured out that canine companions could help them track down their next meal.

But what about other animals? Can they take us beyond the limits of our own senses? That's what CrowdScience listener Beth wants to know, so we obligingly try to sniff out some answers.

After immersing ourselves in the world of insect senses at our local zoo, we visit an insect lab in Germany to find out whether sniffer bees could take over from sniffer dogs. And could ants help us fly the drones of the future? We meet the scientists trying to turn ant vision into computer code, to send robots into places GPS can't reach.

Presenter: Nastaran Tavakoli-Far

(Photo: A bee on a human finger. Credit: Getty Images)

A cacophony of singing and screaming creatures’ accents are explored to answer: Can animals of the same species from different places communicate with each other? Presenter Geoff Marsh tries to identify how different these calls really sound for CrowdScience.

From wolves to birds to whales and chimpanzees, most animals use sound to communicate, but if groups in different places vocalise in different ways, they may not be able to communicate with others.

CrowdScience questioner, Kitty, sets us on an exploration of the vast and varied world of animal communication with inspiration from her dog Monty.

Presenter: Geoff Marsh

(Photo: Three wolves howling on a cold day. Credit: Getty Images)

From worms who time their mating ritual with an inner lunar calendar, to how full moons could cause cows to give birth early. Listener Andreas sends CrowdScience on a mission to separate fact from fiction.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Picture: The moon rises over Kadam mountain in Uganda, on January 31, 2018, during the lunar phenomenon referred to as the 'super blue blood moon'. Credit: Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP / Getty Images