CrowdScience

Our listener Joseph’s question might sound more sci-fi than science show. But as Marnie Chesterton discovers, robots have already entered the realm of medicine and are likely to become more important in the future. A visit to the operating theatre at the University College Hospital in London together with surgeon Caroline Moore reveals that robots take the scalpels out of surgery by letting surgeons treat patients with prostate cancer without having to make a single cut. And chatting to Molly the robot alongside Dr. Praminda Caleb-Sully at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Marnie discovers that robots could be the helping hand we need to look after a growing elderly population.

Machines win when it comes to data-processing. But what about empathy and intuition? Such characteristics would require machines to reach a level of artificial intelligence (AI) which critics say is decades away. The sceptics insist humans will always play a key role in healthcare. But others suggest that not only will AI change everything – but technology will one day eliminate the need for us to go to the doctor ever again.

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(Image: Three Robots on Display at the Science Museum in London. Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images)

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

A few weeks ago, CrowdScience asked if it pays to be nice. We found that the answer is yes – if you’re a human. But if being social is so great, why aren’t all animals doing it?

That’s what our US listener Tony wants to know. After listening to ‘Does it Pay to be Nice?’ he rightly pointed out that cats lead mostly solitary lives - but don’t seem any worse off for it. So why have they taken this path? And are they any less advanced than a social species as a result?

Presenter and naturalist Tim Cockerill heads to the rainforests of Madagascar in search of answers. After lots of trekking through the undergrowth, he finds out why so many animals choose group living and what’s different about cats to make them go it alone.

But does it matter which way of life an animal takes? Tim discovers that for humans at least, being social has given us much more than we imagine.

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Presenter: Tim Cockerill

(Photo: Cat lying on floor. Credit: Getty Images)

Death is one of life’s few certainties – or is it? To answer listener Pratibha’s question from New Delhi, India, presenter Marnie Chesterton asks medical and scientific experts if there is any evidence that humans could somehow come back into existence after their demise. We start at the end, by asking just what death is – and it turns out to be perhaps surprisingly complicated, especially if cold temperatures are involved. As another listener, Camilla, from Washington DC, USA points out, there are some animals that can become totally frozen over winter and return to life in spring. How does this happen, and could it have implications for the idea of deep-freezing humans – known as cryogenic preservation? Alternatively, if entire bodies might prove difficult to save, could we download our brains’ contents for later reboot instead? It sounds like science fiction, but a global network of scientists are pursuing the goal of cybernetic immortality: uploading our minds to an artificial brain in a robot avatar. Marnie heads to a brain-computer interface lab where she gets wired up to control a computer game by thinking, and discovers just how difficult it is to export thought, and how much we still have to learn about our brains. Could the way to cheat death ever be digital?

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Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Earth’s surface may be 70 percent water but many places are struggling to access it. We look at a range of water supply options including delivering it by tanker. In Malta we meet a man trying to solve its water problems, with a clever contraption to recycle sewage.

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Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

(Image: Tanker ship. Credit: Getty)

It sounds like a simple question – what is the time? But look closer and you realise time is a slippery concept that scientists still do not fully understand. Even though we now have atomic clocks that can keep time to one second in 15 billion years, this astonishing level of accuracy may not be enough. The complexity of computer-controlled systems, such as high-frequency financial trading or self-driving cars which rely on the pinpoint accuracy of GPS, could in future require clocks that are even more accurate to ensure everything runs ‘on time’.

But what does that even mean? As Anand Jagatia discovers, time is a very strange thing. He visits the origins of modern time-keeping at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and meets scientists at the National Physical Laboratory who have been counting and labelling every second since the 1950s. He meets Demetrios Matsakis, the man who defined time and visits the real-life ‘Time Lords’, at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris to find out how they co-ordinate the world’s time and why the leap second is ‘dangerous’.

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From Chihuahuas to Great Danes, Mexican Hairless to Afghan Hounds, dogs are the most diverse mammal on the planet. There are currently over 500 recognised breeds worldwide with almost every conceivable combination of size, shape, coat, colour and behaviour.

But why are there so many different kinds of dog?

That's what listener Simon St-Onge in Quebec, Canada wants to know – and CrowdScience has taken up the challenge.

Presenter Marnie Chesterton heads to Sweden, a world-class centre of canine research, to sniff around for answers. She finds out how the grey wolf morphed into the vast variety of dogs we have today, and heads out on a moose hunt with one of Scandinavia's most ancient breeds.

But are dogs really as different as they seem on the surface? The dog genome is revealing more about man's best friend than ever before – and could now be the answer to understanding both dog and human health.

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(Image: Tika, the Russian-European Laika)

Modern Martian hunting involves looking for the tiniest evidence of life. But when presenter Marnie Chesterton found out that a scientist she was meant to be chatting to about cleanliness had previously worked for NASA, the topic of space bugs turned out to be too intriguing to ignore, especially when a CrowdScience listener asked us a question on a similar theme. Could Earth's microbes hitch a ride on our missions to Mars and colonise the Martian soil? As the European Space Agency's ExoMars venture gears up to launch a rover in 2020 that aims to find out whether there is, or has ever been, life on Mars, we head to the programme's clean rooms and Mars Yard - a giant planet-simulating sandpit - to find out. Marnie meets space engineers whose job is to prevent microbial contamination of Mars whilst creating robots that can find signs of life on the Red Planet. And she discovers that planetary protection is not all about remote aliens: Could tiny Martians have already arrived here on Earth via a meteoric hitch hike?

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Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

(Picture: Mars from the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA)

To be healthy you need to be clean – or so we’ve thought throughout human history.

The dazzling array of antibacterial products that exploded onto the scene in the 20th century took things to the next level, with their promises of eliminating 99.9% of germs.

But could an obsession with cleanliness actually be bad for us? There’s a whole world of microbes out there: some make us sick, but others are essential for our health.

How do we tell the difference? Listener Younes’s question gives CrowdScience the chance to sift the good dirt from the bad, with the help of hygiene expert Professor Sally Bloomfield. Along the way we soap up our hands with schoolchildren in Mumbai, get knee deep in mud on an English farm, and find out why snuggling up to a cow might be a good idea.

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Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Is there a killer asteroid with Earth’s name on it? The dinosaurs ruled for many millions of years before coming to their violent end. Will humanity prevail or are we doomed to succumb like the dinosaurs? It’s a question that will keep you up at night. No wonder our listeners Zarin and Pablo wanted to know more.

To find out, Anand Jaggtia heads to Denmark to see first-hand the evidence for a giant asteroid impact, written into the rocks at Stevns Klint. And we will hear from scientists at Nasa who are keeping a careful eye out for asteroids on collision course with Earth. Also, we discover that asteroids have a lot to answer for, maybe even our own existence.

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Why can't we use energy from the waves of the sea to create all the electricity that we need? Listener Michael in Kingston, Jamaica wants to know. Living on a Caribbean island means he’s never far from the might of the ocean – so could it power his house?

Presenter Greg Foot heads to one of the world’s leading wave energy test locations, the coast of Cornwall in the UK, to find out. There, he witnesses the challenges of the marine environment, from metre high waves in a giant indoor test tank to being buffeted on a beach where a 25km cable runs beneath his feet to a grid-connected offshore test site. And find out if Greg’s plan to feel the power of the waves first-hand on a research boat works out – in the middle of winter, in the northern hemisphere.

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Picture: Waves, Credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images