CrowdScience

For most people the idea of chewing on a caterpillar or tucking into a tarantula is pretty unpalatable. Yet according to the United Nations, some two billion people around the world consume insects regularly. This prompted World Service listener Saman from Pakistan to ask the BBC CrowdScience team “are insects a serious food source?”

To tackle this question, we head to Burkina Faso in West Africa where shea caterpillars are an important part of the local diet in a place where food security is low and malnutrition is high.

Here we follow scientist Charlotte Payne as she tries to crack the tricky science behind the caterpillar’s life cycle and see how local entrepreneur Kahitouo Hien is trying to change lives and reduce malnutrition with edible caterpillars.

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Presenter: Anand Jagatia

Producer: Louisa Field

(Image: Bowl of cooked Caterpillars. Credit: BBC/Anand Jagatia)

Why do we have so many accents - even when we’re speaking the same language? What's happening in our brains and mouths to make us sound so different from each other? This week’s question from listener Amanda takes CrowdScience to Glasgow in Scotland: home to one of the most studied - and distinctive - accents of English.

Along the way we visit a voice coach to try and learn a Texan accent, use ultrasound to see what different sounds look like inside our mouths and find out how a brand new dialect was formed when many accents collided in New Zealand.

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Presenter: Nastaran Tavakoli-Far

Producer: Cathy Edwards

New Zealand Mobile Unit recordings courtesy of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

(Image: A mouth screaming white letters. Credit: Thinkstock)

Do your joints ache when it's raining? Are you blighted with headaches when the wind picks up? If the answer’s yes then you're definitely not alone. People have been linking their heath to the weather since the time of the Ancient Greeks - but is the effect real?

CrowdScience heads for the hills and gets closer to the clouds to have a go at answering this 2,500 year old question.

People who believe they’re sensitive to the weather aren’t always taken seriously. But presenter Datshiane Navanayagam hears about the latest ground-breaking experiments that show there's a lot more to it than folklore. And if you've ever wondered why you're particularly prone to aches and pains in the winter, the answer could all be in your genes.

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Presenter: Datshiane Navanayagam

Producer: Anna Lacey

(Image: Man looking up to grey clouds. Credit: Thinkstock)

Can we really live on Mars? Or exist in a virtual world? And why does movie science sometimes have us shouting at the screen? Our panel of scientists and sci-fi experts reveal all in this special edition of CrowdScience recorded live at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas, USA. To tackle all of our listeners’ questions about science in film, presenter Marnie Chesterton is joined by a team of specialists.

Prof Polina Anikeeva is an MIT materials scientist and engineer whose research focuses on developing devices that work directly with the human nervous system. A sci-fi fan, Prof Anikeeva knows just how realistic brain-computer interface movies such as Avatar and The Matrix are.

Former NASA astronaut Dr Mae Jemison is a medical doctor, engineer, educator and entrepreneur, and the first African-American woman to go into space aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 1992. She is leading the 100 Year Starship Project, which aims to take humans beyond our solar system by 2112.

Prof Clifford Johnson is a theoretical physicist at USC whose work leads him to think about space-time, black holes, and extra dimensions, making him a regular contributor to documentaries about science and sci-fi films.

Rick Loverd is Program Director of The Science & Entertainment Exchange at the National Academy of Sciences, which inspires better science in Hollywood by introducing entertainment professionals to scientists and engineers. The Exchange has consulted on movies including Star Trek: Into Darkness, Iron Man 2 and Thor.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at [email protected]

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Producer: Jen Whyntie

Audio clip from Gravity

Warner Bros. Pictures

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Audio clip from Interstellar

Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures

Director: Christopher Nolan

(Image: Matt Damon in The Martian. Credit: Getty Images)

(Image: Zoe Saldana in Avatar. Credit: Getty Images)

(Image: Matthew McConaughey in Gravity. Getty Images)

The human race is getting fatter. But is it our fault? There are a whole host of factors influencing our weight - how many of them can we control?

CrowdScience discovers how factors like our environment and our genes can tip the scales in the wrong direction.

We visit an apartment complex originally designed for Olympic athletes, to see if people can get fitter just by living there. And from a brand new menu plan for overweight Mumbai police, to hormone injections that stop you getting hungry, CrowdScience asks the experts what we can do if we’ve been dealt a bad hand when it comes to our weight.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at [email protected]

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Producer: Cathy Edwards

(Image: Women and a Man standing next to each other holding hands. Credit: ThinkStock.)

Trees take in carbon dioxide but they also convert some of the toxic gases in our air. How much help can trees give us in fighting air pollution and could where we plant them make an even bigger difference? Crowdscience reports from the side of some busy roads on how canopy coverage may be part of the answer. At a lab in Louisiana one scientist is putting oak leaves through their paces to find out how effective they are at cleaning our air.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at [email protected]

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Producer: Marijke Peters

(Image: Trees in a forest Credit: Julian Stratenschulte/Getty Images)

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.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at [email protected]

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

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Producer: Louisa Field

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.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at [email protected]

Presenter: Tim Cockerill

Producer: Anna Lacey

(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?

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at [email protected]

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Producer: Jen Whyntie

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.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at [email protected]

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Produders: Cathy Edwards and Marijke Peters

(Image: Tanker ship. Credit: Getty)