Discovery

The hormone oxytocin is involved in mother and baby bonding and in creating trust. Linda Geddes finds out if taking oxytocin can help people with autism become more sociable.

Larry Young, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, talks about the work in voles that demonstrated the role of oxytocin in pair bonding.

Professor Markus Heinrichs, of Freiburg University in Germany, tells Linda Geddes about doing the first research on oxytocin in human subjects. He was one of the authors of an influential paper on the hormone and trust, published in Nature in 2005.

As journalists for New Scientist, Linda and her husband, Nic, invited one of the other authors of that paper, Professor Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University in Califormia, to carry out an oxytocin experiment at their wedding.

At Cambridge University, Dr Bonnie Auyeung, is currently carrying out studies to find out if giving the hormone to adults with autism can improve their social skills.

And, Professor Jennifer Bartz, from McGill University in Canada, explains how some research suggests that oxytocin doesn't always make people be more trusting and loving. She says the outcome depends on your previous relationship with the person.

Earthquakes can't be predicted. But millions of dollars are spent trying to forecast them - warning the public which regions are dangerous, what the chances are of a quake in the next number of years and how strong the shaking might be. But following the failures of the Japanese system to identify the danger on the north-east coast, struck by a giant

Others maintain it's a matter of knowledge - the more geologists can learn about the history of earthquakes, about the mechanics of plate tectonics, the better society can prepare for when the ground begins to shake.

Well over half a million have died in earthquakes and their resulting tsunamis in the past decade, so the issue is critical.

Roland Pease, who reported from Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, speaks to experts on both sides of the argument to find out how deep the crisis is - and what might be done about it.

Earthquakes are feared for their destructive, deadly force. But they are part of a geological process - plate tectonics - that some scientists say is vital for the existence of life itself. Without the ever-changing land surfaces that plate tectonics produces, or the high continental masses raised above sea level by earthquake activity, planet Earth would atrophy into a lifeless mass, like our neighbour Mars. But why is Earth the only planet with plate tectonics? And, when did they start? The clues are so faint, the traces so ephemeral, that researchers are only now beginning to find tentative answers. Extraordinarily, some say that life itself has changed the forces in plate tectonics, and helped to shape the world.

A radically different approach to dealing with bacteria would be to stop them from communicating and coordinating attacks, rather than trying to kill them. The bugs would be rendered harmless and much less likely to develop drug resistance. This is the hope of researchers who are working on an aspect of bacterial life known as Quorum Sensing.

Medical experts have warned that within 20 years, unless something is done, the spread of antibiotic resistance may have returned us to an almost 19th Century state of medicine. Infections following routine operations will be untreatable and fatal because so many common bacteria will have acquired immunity to all the available antibiotic drugs.

The vast majority of the antibiotics we rely upon today were developed between the 1940s and 1970s. There has been no new class of antibiotic for 25 years.

Bacteria may just be single-celled organisms but microbiologists now realise they have a kind of social life. They need to cooperate and coordinate their attacks on the bodies they infect. Many kinds of bacteria only become dangerous to us when they sense that their numbers are high enough. Only when they 'know' that there are enough of them to overwhelm human defences, do they release their toxins and cause illness and death.

Geoff Watts talks to scientist and doctors who are exploring this phenomenon in disease-causing bacteria. They are trying to devise ways of interfering with microbial communications.

One line of thinking is the development of drugs which stop the microbes from either 'talking' or 'hearing' the chemical messages. Another more radical idea, is to treat infected patients with doses of the kind of bacteria causing the illness - except that the 'medicinal' bugs would be ones that would subvert the communication system and bring the infection to an end.

When President Obama recently complained, that although "we can identify galaxies light years away, study particles smaller than an atom ... we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears" - he called on scientists to unravel the trillions of neural connections inside our brains that make our minds work.

Some researchers are already doing that - trying to understand the brain by starting to build one. At Reading University, at the newly constructed Brain Embodiment Laboratory, researchers plan to connect cultures of living human neurons to robots - to give meaning to their neural activity. At Georgia Tech, Atlanta, neuroengineer Steve Potter, agrees that cultured neurons not connected to the outside world suffer sensory deprivation. His neural arrays descend into spasms of epileptic activity when left alone. When plugged in, they can control machines across the planet.

"I believe these cultures are half-way to having a mind," says Potter. "Wired up to listen to their own outputs, they could be self aware."

Other researchers are building brains from inanimate materials - using tendrils of silver, silicon and sulphur that spring into life like activity when wired up to electricity. At Stanford University, plans are afoot to meld them with living neurons - perhaps to enhance our thought processes.

These devices can learn, remember and process information - but do they think? Can these scientists really build a brain? And what would it tell us about ours if they could?

As we approach 'solar max', when the sun is at its most active and ferocious, astronomer Lucie Green investigates the hidden dangers our nearest star poses to us on Earth.

In March 1989, a solar superstorm brought down Quebec's power grid. Six million people were without light and heat, as outside temperatures sank to -15C. After the winter sunrise, subway trains sat still, traffic lights went off and petrol pumps stopped delivering fuel.

Two days earlier, a giant bubble of plasma had burst from the surface of Sun traveling at millions of miles per hour. It hit the Earth and disrupted our magnetic field, creating electric currents which knocked out power grids in Canada for nine hours and even damaged two transformers here in the UK.

Now, almost a quarter of a century later, our reliance on technology that's vulnerable to solar attack is even higher, from GPS to satellites. 'Severe space weather' is the newest threat to be added to the UK National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies. The potential impacts of solar superstorm could be far-ranging, causing national blackouts, shutting airspace and interrupting financial transactions.

Lucie Green looks at what UK industry is doing to minimise the risks from solar superstorms. She visits the newly opened Space Weather Forecasting area at the Met Office and talks to engineers at the National Grid to find out how they are preparing for 'the big one'.

But with so many national hazards to deal with, from flooding to pandemic flu, how much importance should we place on solar storms?

Producer: Michelle Martin

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Amoret Whitaker, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Her intricate understanding of the life cycles of flies, beetles and the other insects, which feed on decomposing bodies, means she is regularly called by the police to the scene of a crime or a murder investigation. There she collects and analyses any insect evidence to help them pinpoint the most likely time of death. In some instances, this can be accurate to within hours.

She is one of only a handful of forensic entomologists working in the UK. She talks to Jim about her life as a research scientist, breeding flies in the far flung towers of the Natural History Museum and her work as a forensic expert with police services across the country. Dropping her work at a moment's notice, she can be called any time of day to anywhere in the country to attend a crime scene. She also talks about her regular trips to a research facility at the 'Body Farm' at the University of Tennesee in Knoxville, America, to get a better understanding of how real human bodies decompose.

Her passion is insects and while our instinctive reaction to flies and maggots may be one of revulsion - when you take time look at them properly and in detail, she says, you can see what truly incredible creatures they are.

(Image: Amoret Whitaker)

Professor Alan Watson from the University of Leeds, has spent 40 years trying to unravel a mystery at the frontier of physics. Where do cosmic rays - subatomic particles with the highest known energies in the entire Universe - come from? And which violent astronomical events are producing these hugely energetic jets of particles that travel for light years to reach us? As many as a million of them pass through us every night as we sleep, the equivalent of having 2 chest x rays every year.

His quest to find the origins of cosmic rays has taken him from the North York Moors to the South Pole and the pampas grasslands of Argentina, where he has been instrumental in creating the largest ever cosmic ray detector, covering an area bigger than Luxembourg. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about one of physics' fascinating mysteries.

(Image: Professor Alan Watson)

Dr Adam Hart continues his exploration of migratory beekeeping in the United States. Each year the beekeepers of America travel to the annual Almond bloom in California, the largest single pollination event on Earth, a thousand square miles of almond orchards bloom in unison, turning much of California's Central Valley white. Seventy-five per cent of the world's almonds come from these orchards and to ensure successful pollination, farmers need bees - a lot of bees: 1.5 million hives, or over 30 billion bees, swarm over the bloom for three weeks a year. But beekeeping on this scale carries with it a host of threats from diseases, pests, agricultural insecticides and even starvation.

In this second part of the programme Adam explores the nature of some of those threats, including the mysterious condition known as colony collapse disorder or CCD. He also talks to UK researchers about the latest EU ban on a specific kind of pesticide which could be affecting the ability of bees and other pollinators to collect nectar and navigate.

Dr Adam Hart meets the migratory bee keepers of America as they travel to the annual Almond bloom in California, the largest single pollination event on Earth. Each year, from the end of February to early March, a thousand square miles of almond orchards bloom in unison, turning much of California's Central Valley white. 75 per cent of the world's almonds come from these orchards and to ensure successful pollination, farmers need bees - a lot of bees. Around 1.5 million hives, over 30 billion bees, swarm over the bloom for three weeks a year, before they're packed up and driven on to pastures new, be it Washington Apples, Maine Cranberries or Florida Citrus. Welcome to the extraordinary world of migratory beekeeping. This isn't about the honey, it's about the money. Beset by viral diseases, pesticides, starvation and the ever-present threat of colony collapse disorder or CCD, even a vigilant bee-keeper can expect 20-30 per cent of their hives to die-off in any given year. So why bother? "This is what we do" says John Miller, "I was born to keep bees in a box". Miller's great-grandfather invented migratory beekeeping, which thanks to increasing demands from farmers, can earn even small to medium-sized keepers, millions of dollars just from almonds alone.

Producer: Rami Tzabar