Science In Action

The near extinction of vultures in India may be responsible for an additional half a million human deaths between 2000 and 2005. The widespread use of the painkiller diclofenac in herds of cattle, starting in 1994, led to a massive decline in vulture populations in India, as the drug is poisonous to them. We hear from environmental economist Anant Sudarshan of Warwick University.

Cooking like a Neanderthal - Mariana Nabais of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution has been replicating ancient butchering methods to learn how Neanderthals ate birds.

A faster test for sepsis – we hear from Sunghoon Kwon of Seoul National University about a new method for identifying the pathogens involved in sepsis cases. The test has the potential to reduce the turnaround times normally associated with developing treatments for infections and may improve patient outcomes.

And it seems we may have inherited some conversational habits from chimps – or rather from whatever came before us and chimps 6 million years ago. Cat Hobaiter of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience of St Andrews University and her colleagues have found that like humans, wild chimps engage in snappy, turn-taking conversations.

Presenter: Roland Pease

(Image: World Wildlife Day - Gyps fulvus feeding on a buffalo carcass at Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India. Credit: Anuwar Hazarika/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

There’s an update from asteroid expert Patrick Michel about the European Space Agency’s Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety. The ESA have received permission to begin preparatory work for the planetary defence mission which will rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis, that will be passing by the Earth on Friday, April 13th 2029.

And in news from the Moon this week – a massive cave has been discovered on its surface that might be a window into the body’s sub-surface, and even a ready-made lunar base for future astronauts to use. The claim was made in Nature Astronomy by a team of Italian planetary scientists, and two experts in remote sensing who have been re-interpreting radar data from a NASA orbiter - Leonardo Carrer and Lorenzo Bruzzone from University of Trento in Italy.

Tiny solar-powered flying robots - an ultra-lightweight, solar-powered micro aerial vehicle capable of sustained flight is described in a paper published in Nature. Peng Jinzhe of the School of Energy and Power Engineering at Beihang University was part of the team behind the 8 millimetre robot.

Presenter: Roland Pease

(Image: ESA’s Ramses mission to asteroid Apophis. Credit: The European Space Agency)

The 2024 north Atlantic hurricane season has started with a bang, with Hurricane Beryl traversing the whole ocean, and leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean, into Mexico and Texas. Presenter Roland Pease speaks to climate expert Michael Mann of Pennsylvania University about this hurricane season and the role of climate change.

And Roland speaks to Amie Eisfeld of the Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who has been looking at the infection and transmission of bovine H5N1 influenza (bird flu). The virus is shown to be transmitted through the milk of cows with bovine flu to mice and by intranasal exposure to mice and ferrets. The findings are published in Nature this week.

Ancient genomics: Neolithic farmers hit hard by the plague. Repeated outbreaks of plague may have contributed to the decline in Neolithic populations in Scandinavia, a Nature paper suggests. The analysis of ancient DNA from more than 100 individuals sheds light on the fate of these farmers around 5000 years ago. Roland speaks to geneticist Frederik Seersholm of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre in Copenhagen.

And a cheap coating that can be painted easily onto the glass of greenhouses converts part of the sunlight spectrum into red light that should boost the rate at which plants grow. Roland joins the chemists and crop scientists to see if there really is a difference with tomatoes and strawberries.

Presenter: Roland Pease

(Image: Hurricane Beryl batters northern Jamaica after killing 7 people in southeast Caribbean. Credit: Anadolu/Getty Images)

Science in Action is at the UK's Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, hunting for dark matter, melting ancient ice, cleaning up disused mines and looking for the batteries of the future.

Presenter: Roland Pease

(Image: Pile of used batteries ready for recycling. Credit: Mindful Media via Getty Images)

An injectable antiviral "PrEP" therapy that gives 100% protection against HIV infection. Trials among young women in South Africa and Uganda proved so effective, they were wound up early to accelerate its use. Linda-Gail Bekker of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation shares her excitement.

A new kind of gene therapy that uses the cell's own “epigenetic” mechanisms to silence troublesome portions of our DNA, tested against the prion protein responsible for some brain diseases. Jonathan Weissman led the research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts.

Accelerated evolution is being tested in Matthew Nitschke’s labs in the Australian Institute for Marine Science to see if it can help protect natural corals against future global warming.

The amazing 4.200 km transatlantic flight of some Painted Lady butterflies – and the extraordinary detective work ecologist Gerard Talavera and team needed to prove it.

Presenter: Roland Pease

(Image: HIV Vaccine Efficacy Trial Conducted In Uganda. Credit: Luke Dray / Stringer via Getty Images.)

How has China reached the top spot of scientific research so quickly? Science editor of The Economist, Ainslie Johnstone, gives us the CCPs grand, broad plans whilst senior reporter for Nature, Gemma Conroy, digs into the specifics of China’s future particle collider.

Also, Gene Kirtsky, who has been studying cicadas for 50 years, discusses the spectacle of the millions of insects which have been emerging across the USA this summer.

And Unexpected Elements' Marnie Chesterton gets close and personal with the stinkiest plant in the world at Kew Garden in London.

(Photo: Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory under construction. Credit: VCG/Getty Images.)

With mice being the latest species to carry the disease, pandemic expert Rick Bright calls for stronger counter measures. “It’s like PTSD from February 2020” he says. The authorities in the USA are responding too slow to the spread of H5N1 bird flu through its dairy farms – even mice are carrying the virus now, and not enough is known of how it is evolving and whether humans are threatened. He talks Roland through the complex political and public health issues.

Child sacrifices in the Mayan empire a thousand years ago have been confirmed with DNA evidence from bones recovered in the 1960s from an underground pit. Some victims were twins, possibly indicating a brutal ritualistic re-enactment of an ancient myth involving divine twins. Geneticist Rodrigo Barquera describes the analysis.

Mature orchids perform a unique form of offspring-care, feeding tiny seedlings with nutrients via networks of thread-like fungal hyphae in the soil, according to experiments conducted at Sheffield University. Mycologist Katie Field has been delving into this underground sustenance network.

Geoscientists at the edge of the Arctic ocean are looking for ancient clues to the stability of the Atlantic circulation that brings critical warmth to Europe and the northern hemisphere. Could past changes help unravel the influence of global warming? Roland talks to Renata Lucchi in the control room of Research Vessel JOIDES Resolution.

Presenter: Roland Pease

(Image: Mouse sitting on grain. Credit: SAEED KHAN/Getty Images)

The ‘origami’ superpowers of a single-celled pond hunter, it hunts by launching a neck-like proboscis that can extend more than 30 times its body length. Manu Prakash of Stanford University reveals the amazing mathematical mechanisms of the protist, Lacrymaria olor.

It’s a microbe-eat-microbe world out there, with bacteria waging constant war against each other. It’s by dipping into their ever-evolving chemical arsenal that we keep our pharmacies supplied with the antibiotics we use to fight infectious bacteria - and computer biologist Luis Coelho of Queensland University of Technology has turned to genetics and AI to speed up the search for novel compounds.

Research from Elana Hobkirk at Durham University has found that the process of domestication and selective breeding has limited the ability of domestic dogs to use facial expressions to convey emotions as effectively as their wolf ancestors. Whilst we may be easily manipulated by the ‘puppy eyes’ of our pet dogs, they are no longer able to display the same range of emotions that wolves can, who need strong visual communication to maintain their packs.

Who discovered the first black hole? Science writer Marcus Chown tells us about the discovery of Cygnus X-1 discovered by Paul Murdin and Louise Webster in 1971.

And 100 years ago this week, Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose posted his revolutionary paper to Albert Einstein, which went on to influence quantum mechanics, low-temperature physics, atomic physics, and the physics of the particles that shape the Universe. Physicist Ajoy Ghatak and presenter Roland Pease discuss the story of the man who had the word ‘boson’ coined to memorialise him in the late 1920s.

Presenter: Roland Pease

AI is already being used in every branch of science, and will become more and more a feature of future breakthroughs. But with its power to find subtle patterns in massive data sets comes a concern about how we will know when to trust its outcomes, and how to rely on its predictions. Science in Action talks to Alison Noble who just completed a Royal Society report on trust in scientific AI.

With highly pathogenic bird flu infecting around 70 dairy herds across 10 states in the USA, including a herd of alpacas, we get an update from health journalist Helen Branswell of StatNews on the latest science and efforts to get on top of the infection.

Also, from the pioneers of the mRNA vaccines that helped turn around the COVID pandemic, an experimental version that could be rolled out rapidly if the bird flu does cross worryingly into people. University of Pennsylvania’s Scott Hensley described how it works, and how promising it looks.

Science in Action also hears how Europe’s new EarthCARE satellite, equipped to peer deep inside clouds, will tackle one of the biggest unknowns in the science of global warming.

Presenter: Roland Pease

Fentanyl is a powerful morphine substitute, but it is also incredibly addictive – millions struggle with weaning themselves off it. And of the 600,000 drug deaths worldwide each year, the World Health Organisation estimates 80% are due to opioids in general, with synthetic opioids like fentanyl being a growing part of the problem. New work with genetically manipulated mice suggests that fentanyl affects two parts of the brain, one associated with the high, but also another that regulates fear. This knowledge could aid in the development of treatments to reduce addiction to the opioid.

Early developers: Long before a developing implants into a mother's uterus, in fact as the fertilised egg divides for the first time into a pair of cells, which line becomes the future baby and which will become the 'life support' system of the placenta has been decided. Embryologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz explains why this early unfolding of the genetic programme is important, and why it's taken so long to discover it.

Getting through pregnancy is only the first step in a person’s life. Surviving childhood, particularly for our old stone age ancestors, was the next challenge. And a new study looking at children’s teeth found at ancient archaeological sites gives clues as to why our ancestors fared better than the neanderthals around them during the last ice age.

Supersense: twitching hairs on some caterpillars turn out to be early-warning sensors feeling the electric field of an approaching wasp, giving the potential prey precious moments to hide or escape death. Biophysicist Daniel Robert explains the challenge of seeing the electric world of insect hunters and hunted.

Presenter: Roland Pease

(Image: Fentanyl. Credit: Isaac Lee via Getty Images.)